TikTok Marketing: A Guide for Ecommerce Brands

TikTok has advanced from a platform recognized for viral dance strikes to a spot of fast product discovery.

Manufacturers massive (like Ray-Ban) and small (like Scrub Daddy) have grown to tens of millions of followers and seen exponential ROI. 

For ecommerce enterprise house owners and entrepreneurs, leaping on this bandwagon is totally different to leaping on Fb and Instagram.

On this article, you’ll discover ways to achieve traction on TikTok to develop consciousness, site visitors, and acquisition.

Why ought to your model be on TikTok?

TikTok customers spent $2.5 billion on the platform in 2021, based on SensorTower—greater than on some other app. App Annie predicts spending will quickly surpass $3 billion. 

These figures spotlight the truth that TikTok customers are naturally engaged with social procuring, though it’s not an e-commerce platform. Some 67% of users say they’re impressed to buy on TikTok even once they weren’t planning to take action. 

TikTok research into person habits reveals that 37% of customers uncover a product and instantly need to purchase it. Almost a 3rd have tried to purchase one thing solely to search out it was bought out. 

The New York Times named this urge to purchase one thing the “TikTok Feta Impact,” after a viral recipe for baked feta pasta resulted within the cheese promoting out nationwide within the U.S.

The TikTok shopping for craze even has its personal viral hashtag: #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt. This hashtag has grow to be a one-stop TikTok store for the strange merchandise ecommerce companies promote on the platform, with over 20 billion views and counting.

The advantages of TikTok for ecommerce manufacturers don’t begin and finish with a sale. Mum or dad firm ByteDance sees the trail to buy as an infinite loop: 

Individuals uncover, think about, and purchase merchandise, then put up about their purchases and spread awareness. 

As a substitute of making an attempt to drive shoppers onto the linear buy path of the previous, TikTok’s path to success has relied on placing the ability into our customers’ palms, constructing round their behaviors, and following their lead.

By listening to the TikTok group, we meet customers the place they need to be met, and it’s not within the funnel. Moderately, it’s an infinite loop with no begin or finish level, and it empowers manufacturers to ascertain extra significant relationships with shoppers that end in communities of name loyalists, repeat purchases, and larger spending. [via TikTok]

TikTok’s engagement powers are second to none. Customers spend on common 10.85 minutes per session on the app—greater than double Pinterest and triple the time spent on Instagram. 

The prolonged time spent makes TikTok fertile floor for establishing significant relationships with customers. 

However is it simply youngsters and Gen Z scrolling and shopping for on the app? 

TikTok’s user demographic is broader than generally thought. 1 / 4 of its customers fall within the 10–19 class, however over 60% is pretty evenly break up between customers of their 20s, 30s, and 40s. The remaining 11% of the person base is over 50. 

With over 1.5 billion month-to-month lively customers, there’s a large viewers to develop your small business, no matter your target demographic. 

The way to use TikTok to develop your model 

TikTok is constructed on discovering recent content material. Its For You Web page (“FYP”), TikTok’s model of the house feed on Twitter or Fb, is an infinite video stream. These movies are customized based mostly on previous interactions and predictions about what customers interact with most. 

On this method, TikTok’s feed is just like the urged content material that different social media platforms serve up. It stands out on its potential for getting content material seen; your variety of followers doesn’t restrict your visibility. 

In different phrases, in case your content material is partaking, you stand as a lot likelihood of going viral as any main model with tens of millions of followers. 

For instance, after initially selling her vary of scrunchies on Instagram, Enchanted Scrunch founder Dasha Derkach began posting on TikTok. 

Her first video about beginning a enterprise acquired 15K views, which resulted in 10 orders. From there, views elevated for every video powering the channel to recover from three million likes.

TikTok now accounts for 90% of the model’s gross sales, serving to it develop from small enterprise to six-figure firm with over 182k followers. 

It has considerably boosted our gross sales. Earlier than TikTok, we acquired round two orders per week, then as soon as we began round 100 per week, now we additionally do TikTok Lives almost daily and get nearly 500 orders per week! [via Shopify]

To faucet into this viral potential and acquire customers, your movies have to land in your viewers’s FYP. Listed here are some techniques that can assist you achieve traction.

Above all else, make entertaining movies

GWI research into how folks use social media revealed that almost all of individuals primarily use TikTok to search out entertaining content material (i.e. content material receivers). This units the app other than Instagram and Snapchat, which individuals primarily use to put up their very own content material. 

The query to ask your self is: What does my viewers discover entertaining?

Have a look at your customer data. Which sort of content material will get probably the most engagement on different social networks? What issues does your viewers look to you to resolve?

Subsequent, take a look at how your competition engages their audiences on TikTok. 

For instance, how lengthy are their movies? Analysis from Invideo reveals that brief movies of 15 seconds or much less have a median watch time of over 90%. This decreases because the video will get longer, with 30 seconds clips receiving a 50–60% common watch time. 

This isn’t to say longer movies are nugatory. TikTok studies that movies over one minute obtain over five billion views. Study what’s working in your business and split test different types of content and video lengths to see what resonates.

Analysis will aid you set up a distinct segment and elegance that you should use to create familiarity. It’ll additionally aid you hone in on a specific audience. Noble Leather-based Co. has grow to be recognized for its entertaining ASMR content material by creating content material across the #OddlySatisfying development. 

Milk Bar focuses totally on dessert recipes. A lot of which characteristic its merchandise. 

In each examples, video size varies. Customers are drawn in by the story of what’s being made and the entertaining method it’s being advised.

Maximizing the attain of your content material is pushed by two issues: hashtags and sounds.

Discover trending hashtags

When customers interact with movies which have sure hashtags, TikTok populates their FYP with related content material. 

TikTok’s Discover page offers an outline of what’s trending on the platform. Cross-reference trending hashtags with subjects that curiosity your viewers. 

Word: In a characteristic take a look at for some customers, TikTok has changed the Uncover tab with a Pals tab (encouraging customers to work together with contacts). The Uncover tab remains to be out there on desktop. You may also be taught what’s trending on information websites akin to Mashable and Fanbytes’ weekly TikTok trends newsletter. 

To succeed in as a lot of your viewers as doable, experiment with a mix of seasonal and evergreen developments. 

Seasonal developments enchantment to what’s sizzling on the time (e.g., #Thanksgiving, #Christmas, and #SuperBowl). 

Evergreen developments aren’t time-sensitive, which means older movies keep related for longer (e.g., #magnificence, #style, and #baking).

For instance, Heinz ran a faux advert to unfold the enjoyment of Christmas and capitalize on the non permanent #ChristmasAd hashtag. 

Its account largely focuses on enduring hashtags akin to #easyrecipe, which has over 22 billion views. 

By mixing up evergreen and trending content material, you possibly can guarantee your channel by no means turns into stale. It additionally permits you to constantly enchantment to new customers who come to TikTok looking for leisure.  

Rising your viewers with sounds

TikTok movies play with audio on by default, making the soundtrack as necessary because the visuals for grabbing attention. 

“Sounds” are audio clips from songs, films, or different TikTok movies that you may add to your content material. 

TikTok treats audio the identical as hashtags. If a person engages with a video that has a sure sort of sound, TikTok will present them movies with related sounds. 

For instance, in the event you watch a video that’s dubbed over a clip from an episode of “Pals,” TikTok will populate your FYP with extra sound clips from Pals. 

You could find which sounds are trending by tapping the + icon within the TikTok app, heading to Sounds, then TikTok Viral.

TikTok’s Creative Center additionally publishes a rundown of the highest trending sounds that you may obtain and place in your movies.

TikTok, greater than some other social platform, is pushed by spontaneity. There’s no telling what is going to go viral. The place else would one thing like eating frozen honey entice 1.7 billion views?

Embrace experimentation in your content material. Use sounds which are as offbeat as your brand voice will enable. However don’t drive it. 

The fantastic thing about TikTok is that it’s enjoyable and real with out pushing gross sales.      

Make your self memorable with a branded theme

The struggle to get on the FYP of your viewers places you in competitors with an countless variety of different movies TikTok deems related for his or her matter or sound. 

To face out, create a theme to make your content material distinctive and constant.

Mattress firm Purple, for instance, options the colour purple in every of its movies to create a memorable aesthetic. 

Even movies that aren’t product-related characteristic intelligent use of purple in clothes, equipment, or captions. 

The marketing “Rule of Seven” states that an individual must see a message a minimum of seven instances earlier than it sinks in. This helps the notion that individuals be taught and bear in mind by way of repetition. 

Purple’s constant use of shade signifies that folks seeing its movies (or different movies with a sure shade of purple) affiliate the colour with the model. This creates top-of-mind consciousness, permitting them to face out from rivals that blend up their marketing messaging. 

Scrub Daddy makes use of themes otherwise, with a video sequence that follows a yellow scrubber on adventures. 

It’s bizarre and chaotic, however it works. The yellow scrubber being a fixture creates consistency, whereas Scrub Daddy’s use of trending audio clips lets them reap the benefits of TikTok’s algorithm. 

This technique helped the corporate develop to over 2 million followers with a TikTok ROI that entrepreneur and CEO Aaron Krause says is “thousands of percent.”

Use your model or product as a central theme to your TikTok content material. Repetition and consistency create familiarity, which builds trust, making folks extra possible to purchase. 

Set your viewers a problem to create user-generated content material

To grasp perceptions of the platform, TikTok commissioned a Neilsen study. It revealed that customers discover TikTok content material to be genuine and real. 

This examine’s findings mirror what shoppers need to see from manufacturers. In response to a report from Stackla, now Nosto, there’s a disparity between what entrepreneurs suppose they’re doing (creating genuine content material) and what shoppers really see:

The report additionally discovered that 83% of individuals consider retailers ought to present extra genuine on-line procuring experiences pushed by consumer-created content material. 

That resonates with TikTok’s base. Person-generated content material (UGC) movies are 22% more effective on TikTok than branded movies. 

Individuals are inclined to trust it more as a result of it presents the content material folks search.

Stackla analysis demonstrates that 79% of shoppers are influenced to buy by UGC, in comparison with simply 12% who’re influenced by brand-created content material. 

UCG additionally acts as a type of social proof, making it an economical advertising tactic.

In case you’re delivering nice customer experiences, UGC can occur organically. #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt is full of folks sharing their ideas on merchandise they’ve bought within the app. 

Nevertheless, these opinions are out of your management. To amass UGC strategically, give your viewers a motive to create.

Provide you with a hashtag problem that prompts customers to finish a activity and add it to their account.

For instance, to unfold consciousness for its free supply on digital orders, Chipotle created the #ChipotleLidFlip challenge that inspired customers to copy an worker’s spectacular method of assembling burrito bowls. This resulted in 111,000 submissions and record-breaking gross sales. 

By partnering with YouTube influencer and Chipotle fan David Dobrik, Chipotle tapped into a big viewers and constructed preliminary momentum. 

Its wider success could be attributed to its simplicity: the lid flip problem was enjoyable and simple to strive. All members wanted was a telephone and a burrito bowl. 

Create a low barrier to entry. Preserve hashtags easy in order that they’re memorable and simple to spell. Let folks be a part of within the enjoyable with none specialist gear. 

To realize extra traction, think about partnering with influencers in your area of interest (extra on this quickly) or providing a tangible incentive. 

GymShark, for instance, acquired folks to participate in its 66 Days: Change your Life fitness challenge (#gymshark66) by giving them the possibility to win a GymShark membership.

This incentive is effective to the model’s viewers of health fanatics and relatable to the problem. 

It helped drive the marketing campaign to 193 million views, rising the corporate’s model consciousness and serving to GymShark construct a group on the platform within the course of.

Companion with creators to seize extra consideration

To generate curiosity in your product, accomplice with TikTok influencers who share your values. Creator collaborations end in higher view rates and greater engagement. 

Additionally they positively influence model consciousness and gross sales:  

• 35% of TikTok customers say they uncover merchandise and types by way of creators;
• 65% of customers take pleasure in it when creators put up about merchandise;
• 71% of customers say creator authenticity has motivated them to purchase a product or model. 

Take skincare model Bulldog. To spice up model consciousness and promote its product to a brand new viewers, the corporate labored with creators to make movies across the hashtag #IchRasiereDich (I shave you). 

The movies featured shaving makeovers, mishaps, and errors delivered by creators in their very own model: 

This helped Bulldog attain new audiences with out content material coming throughout as pressured. Over three weeks, the marketing campaign generated over 29 million impressions and a 5–10% increase in gross sales.

Use the TikTok Creator Marketplace (TTCM) and the superior search perform to find creators to collaborate with. To slender your search, TikTok allows you to search by efficiency metrics, area of interest, and demographics.

Create a shortlist of potential collaborators and analyze their Creator Profiles. Right here you possibly can entry common video views, engagement charge, follower numbers, common likes and shares, and viewers demographics. 

Use this analytics instrument to make data-driven choices and join with creators who resonate along with your viewers. 

As soon as a creator accepts your invitation, you possibly can oversee the artistic course of earlier than posting and handle campaigns inside the TTCM. 

Creators know create content material that works, however the platform’s chaotic nature means campaigns are all the time trial and error. 

Use TikTok’s reporting instruments to research what’s working and what might be improved to fine-tune your content material.

To run profitable creator campaigns, take a look at TikTok’s free marketer’s collaboration playbook.  

Go LIVE to have interaction your viewers in actual time

Get nearer to your viewers by spending time with them within the second. An Ipsos study discovered that TikTok customers are 50% extra occupied with branded dwell content material than non-TikTok customers. 

They’re additionally extra prone to watch dwell content material to find manufacturers and purchase merchandise.

NBC has referred to as TikTok Dwell Gen Z’s house procuring community.

“Dozens of accounts on TikTok go dwell almost daily to hawk stuffed animals, coloured contact lenses, keychains, footwear, telephone circumstances, fake leather-based purses, make-up instruments, in addition to a plethora of different items. 

Some influencers have amassed greater than 100,000 followers and recurrently have lots of or hundreds of individuals watching their dwell streams concurrently.” [via NBC]

In contrast to customary movies, TikTok LIVE has no time restrict, permitting you to spend high quality time along with your followers. 

It additionally seems on the FYP, supplying you with the possibility to seize the eye of scrolling customers. Nevertheless, there are two boundaries to going LIVE: you have to be a minimum of 16 years previous and have a minimum of 1,000 followers.

Align live stream content with your small business aims. For instance, if you wish to construct model consciousness, deal with academic content material. In case your purpose is to drive gross sales, run a dwell stream procuring occasion the place followers can buy the merchandise you’re showcasing in actual time. 

Ipsos’s examine revealed the kind of content material customers are most occupied with: 

• How-to/tutorials (80%);
• Product releases (78%);
• In-depth product opinions (77%);
• Q&As (74%);
• Product gross sales (72%);
• Dwell occasions (72%).

Use this perception to tell your technique.

When you can take pleasure in success internet hosting your personal occasions, if you need extra eyeballs, strive experimenting with influencers as co-hosts and particular visitor hosts in your account. 

Establishing a TikTok LIVE

You can begin a LIVE at any time by hitting the “+” icon within the TikTok app and deciding on “Go Dwell.” 

Construct anticipation and schedule your occasion forward of time. Put it on the market, emphasizing the advantages for LIVE watchers, and improve your potential viewers. 

Schedule the stream when your viewers is most lively on the platform by taking a look at your TikTok analytics.

Add a associated video to your scheduled occasion with a hyperlink that customers can click on to enroll and share occasion hyperlinks by way of direct message and different advertising channels to unfold the phrase. These function each a reminder and a handy method to be a part of. 

Lastly, don’t wing it. Plan your occasions to maintain folks engaged all through. You don’t need it to return throughout as scripted, however it is best to have a central theme and a schedule to stay to. To maintain viewers invested, observe TikTok’s greatest practices. 

– Be constant: Go LIVE recurrently to ascertain a behavior along with your followers.
– Location, location, location: Convey your viewers into an uncommon place (like a office, newsroom, manufacturing unit, showroom).
– Have interaction immediately: Use Q&A to work together with commenters, reply, and adapt to what the viewers is occupied with.
– Momentum: Construct a pure sense of anticipation – construct, draw, prepare dinner, or do a countdown to make it partaking. Drive the story ahead.
– Be lively: All the time have one thing visually fascinating happening, ideally an exercise. Speaking head-style content material doesn’t drive as a lot engagement. [via TikTok]

Experiment with TikTok Advertisements to drive extra gross sales

TikTok has larger potential to go viral organically than maybe some other social media platform. However like different platforms, if you wish to seize a big viewers quick, it pays to pay. 

TikTok presents a number of totally different ad options to experiment with:

• In-Feed Advertisements. Nonetheless pictures or video content material that seems on a person’s FYP. Like native content material, customers can like, remark, share, observe and re-use sounds on In-Feed Advertisements.
• Spark Advertisements. Boosted natural posts out of your account or creator accounts (with permission).
• TopView. Locations In-Feed Advertisements on the prime of a person’s FYP, making it the primary content material they see once they open the app.
• Branded Hashtag Problem. A sponsored hashtag that reveals up on the FYP and Uncover web page.
• Model Takeover. A dynamic video that takes up all the display and makes it clickable. These advertisements present up as quickly as a person opens TikTok, putting your message entrance and middle for mass consciousness. 
• Branded Results. Custom-made stickers, video games, filters, and particular results that customers can add to their very own movies, encouraging them to work together along with your model.
• Video Procuring Advertisements. Promoted social commerce advertisements that use TikTok’s procuring options to allow you to tag merchandise with descriptions that hyperlink to merchandise in your on-line retailer. 
• Dynamic Showcase Advertisements (DSA). Advertisements served to customers based mostly on exercise and pursuits. If a person has interacted along with your content material, a DSA will present up of their FYP.  

TikTok advertisements work as a result of they’re indistinguishable from native content material. They don’t interrupt the expertise, making customers extra receptive to them. 

In response to TikTok, 61% of customers really feel that advertisements on the platform are distinctive in comparison with different social platforms, and 45% see them as artistic vs. 29% on different platforms. That is mirrored in a cost-per-impression (CPM) charge round five times lower than Meta’s Fb and Instagram. 

The Essence Vault’s advert marketing campaign is a superb instance of TikTok customers’ openness to advertisements. To rapidly increase consciousness and develop gross sales on the platform, the corporate used Spark Advertisements to spice up natural content material created within the model of Creator content material. 

As folks started to work together with the advertisements, The Essence Vault launched artistic workshops and boosted these to extend visibility additional. 

The general marketing campaign resulted in over one million views, 8,000 new followers, and a 23% improve in advert gross sales. The model additionally elevated TikTok gross sales by 10% and improved its conversion charge from 4.47% to five.35%. 

You don’t need to differ out of your organic strategy to win at TikTok advertisements. Take the content material your viewers is most engaged with, produce extra, and put cash behind it to achieve customers that match your customer personas by way of advert focusing on or custom audiences. 

Be taught extra about driving model consciousness and gross sales in our information to TikTok Advertisements.  

The way to measure success on TikTok

Not all the things you create on TikTok will hit the mark, however by frequently experimenting and analyzing outcomes, you’ll start to see which sort of content material to construct a technique round. 

To measure success, it helps to consider what TikTok desires viral movies to do: convey extra each day customers to the platform and improve the time they spend on the app. 

To attain this, TikTok wants creators to provide content material that individuals watch and share. The key metrics that you must take a look at to gauge success are:

• Common watch time;
• Watched full video;
• Reached viewers.

The extra those that watch your video, the extra possible TikTok is to prioritize it, which means the video reveals up in additional FYPs and reaches a bigger viewers, getting nearer to viral standing. 

One other clear indication that your movies are hitting the mark is engagement: likes, feedback, and shares. 

Calculate engagement on TikTok by dividing whole engagement by the variety of video views you’ve gotten.

Engagement Charge = [(total number of likes + comments + shares) / total number of views)] x 100

So in case your video has 5,000 likes, 30 feedback, 300 shares, and 250,000 views, your engagement charge would seem like this:

[(5000 + 30 + 300) / 250,000] x 100 = 2.13%

In response to Socialinsider analysis, TikTok is probably the most engaged platform with a median engagement charge of 5.96%. FMCG Meals has the very best common engagement charge at 15.82%, whereas media-house has the bottom at 3.43%. 

Use these benchmarks to information efficiency, however needless to say charges are larger for manufacturers and creators with massive followings. Justin Bieber has an engagement rate of 49%, for instance. 

Don’t examine creator partnership engagement with natural content material. As a substitute, take a look at how your movies are contributing to your total TikTok advertising technique.

Conclusion

TikTok’s lively viewers and their willingness to embrace manufacturers makes this platform engaging for ecommerce advertising. 

Success on TikTok is pushed by two major components: authenticity and creativity. Keep true to your model and what your prospects need, however don’t be afraid to experiment along with your content material and creator collaborations. 

There are few norms about what works and what doesn’t on TikTok. In case you suppose one thing is likely to be humorous or entertaining to your viewers, strive it. Engagement metrics will aid you set up which content material strikes a chord.

Be taught extra about get advertisements off to a flying begin in our TikTok Ads course.