As TikTok continues to revolutionize the social media landscape, it’s also becoming a powerful e-commerce platform.
In the past year, 44% of TikTok users discovered something on the platform and immediately went to buy it.
And with over 1.5 billion active users globally, TikTok offers an incredible opportunity for businesses to reach a massive, engaged audience.
If you’re a business or e-commerce leader looking to jumpstart your company’s reach, understanding how to sell on TikTok Shop could be your next big move.
But where does one start?
Lucky for you, our team at eAccountable has created a comprehensive, step-by-step guide on how to make money on TikTok Shop.
We’ll cover everything from:
- The benefits of TikTok Shop
- How to sell on TikTok Shop
- How to run effective TikTok ads
- The ins and outs of the TikTok Shop affiliate marketing program
We’ll also talk about how, as an official TikTok partner, eAccountable can help you navigate this dynamic platform to grow your brand and boost your sales.
What is TikTok Shop?
TikTok Shop was first introduced to US consumers on September 12, 2023. It added a storefront to the application, allowing users to buy, sell, and promote products directly within the application.
Daily sales on TikTok Shop averaged $7 million within a month of it being introduced in October 2023, and as of April 2024, it has over 500,000 merchants just in the United States.
And it’s only growing.
Why TikTok Shop?
If you’re a beginner to TikTok marketing, you’re probably wondering – why should my business invest in this platform?
Is it worth my time?
The short answer is yes.
Shop in One Place
For starters, TikTok Shop eliminates the extra step it takes to convert your TikTok fans into customers–they no longer have to click a link in your bio and leave the app to purchase your products or services.
This provides a streamlined shopping experience that reduces friction in the buyer’s journey, increasing the likelihood of impulse purchases and enhancing overall sales. It doesn’t hurt that the transaction process is secure, straightforward, and reliable for customers.
Wide Demographic of Potential Customers
As of August 2024, TikTok is the 5th most popular social media platform in the world. By utilizing the social shopping feature on TikTok Shop, you are broadcasting to a wide demographic of potential customers.
Organic reach on TikTok can be substantial, allowing businesses to gain visibility without significant ad spend. The popular hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt generates one billion views per week, according to the platform.
TikTok’s algorithm is built to help users find new content from people outside of their immediate circle, which makes it an amazing platform to grow your brand awareness and expand your reach.
Creating a viral TikTok video is a much more attainable goal than creating a viral Instagram post or hit tweet on X.com.
This is why the potential for new customer acquisition is through the roof on this platform.
You’re leaving money on the table by not utilizing it.
Entertaining Shopping Experience
TikTok Shop provides an innovative and unique shopping experience as it combines entertainment with the shopping experience.
This makes products even more enticing to users through immersive, point-of-view (POV) TikTok videos that showcase your products in action.
This allows you to creatively position your products in an entertaining context, as you can drive users to buy your products through creative, user-generated content.
Highly Engaged Users
Next, TikTok’s user base is highly engaged, spending significant time on the app–an average TikTok user spends over 95 minutes on the app daily. To put this in perspective, an average Instagram user spends only 30 minutes a day on the app.
Since they are so highly engaged, you get more opportunities for users to engage with your content and buy your products.
So, not only are you broadcasting to a wider demographic of potential customers, these are highly engaged users who have more of a chance to interact with your content.
Target Your Audience
TikTok Shop has extremely effective targeting.
It leverages TikTok’s one-of-a-kind algorithm to present relevant products to potential customers based on their personalized user behavior.
This means you’re getting connected with users who are actually going to be interested in your products and services.
TikTok Shop also provides sellers with valuable analytics and insights into their target audience’s behavior, preferences, and purchasing patterns. You can leverage this data to refine your marketing strategies, optimize product listings, and make informed decisions to drive a healthy return on investment on TikTok and beyond.
How to Sell on TikTok Shop
Now that you understand the benefits of using the app, how do you get set up?
Eligibility
First, make sure you’re eligible. TikTok Shop is only currently available in the United States, United Kingdom, and China. It is currently unavailable in Canada.
There are four different types of commerce users on TikTok Shop:
- Sellers
- Creators
- Partners
- Affiliates
For a seller account, you just need to reside in one of the supported countries and provide ID, proof of residency, and a business license.
Creator accounts have additional criteria for selling, including minimum follower counts.
Let’s talk about sellers.
How to Set Up a TikTok Shop as a Seller
The product side of TikTok Shop acts as a marketplace, similar to Amazon. Your brand can add your products, manage reviews and orders, and choose to either self-fulfill or fulfill through TikTok.
Consumers will shop the TikTok Shop through keyword-based searches, seeing key product information (such as product titles, price, reviews, images, and even videos).
Selling products through TikTok is a streamlined and effective process:
If you’re eligible for a seller account, follow these five easy steps:
Step 1. Create a business account
Creating a business account is free and easy. Just the act of signing up for a business account gives you access to advanced analytics and access to the TikTok Ads Manager.
Step 2. Register for TikTok Shop
Next up, you’ll want to navigate to the TikTok Seller Center registration page and fill out the application. Here you will upload the required documents, including your ID, proof of residency, and proof of business ownership.
Step 3. Link your account
You will receive an email about your application result one to two days after applying as a seller.
Once accepted, you can link your TikTok account to your TikTok Shop so you can start selling.
Step 4. Add products
Now that you’ve been accepted as a TikTok seller, there are two ways to add products to your account.
- Manual Product Upload: Sellers can manually upload their products directly through the TikTok Shop Seller Center. This involves filling out product details, uploading images, setting prices, and managing inventory levels either individually or in bulk.
- Integration with Shopify: Sellers can integrate their Shopify store with TikTok Shop. This allows for seamless synchronization of product listings, inventory, and orders between Shopify and TikTok. The integration simplifies the process of managing products, as any updates made in Shopify are automatically reflected on TikTok Shop.
Step 5. Determine Fulfillment Model
When it comes to fulfillment, there are two options that TikTok provides:
- Seller Fulfilled: In this method, the seller handles all aspects of inventory management, packaging, and shipping directly to the customer. This allows sellers to maintain control over their logistics and fulfillment processes.
- TikTok Fulfilled (FBT): With TikTok Fulfilled, the platform manages the inventory, packaging, and shipping on behalf of the seller (similar to Fulfilled By Amazon (FBA)). This service streamlines the fulfillment process, ensuring faster delivery and a consistent customer experience as TikTok leverages its logistics network.
- Dropshipping: This model allows you to connect a third-party vendor to dropship your products to your customers. This allows users to promote products without having to keep inventory or ship them themselves.
Once these five steps are completed, you’ll be ready to start selling!
5 Ways to Sell Your Products in the TikTok App
Ready to start selling your products?
If you’re a TikTok seller, here are five different ways you can sell your products through the app:
- Live Shopping: One effective way to sell your products is through a TikTok livestream. You can demo products and answer questions in real-time, while users can buy the products simultaneously, which are pinned to your stream.
- Shoppable Videos: Shoppable videos are in-feed TikTok videos that include product links, which allow users to buy products without having to stop watching the content.
- Product Showcase: The Showcase feature allows customers to shop directly from a seller’s or creator’s profile, marked by a convenient shopping bag icon that users can click to browse their products.
- Shoppable Ads: If your brand is ineligible for TikTok Shop, don’t fear. You can utilize shoppable ads through the TikTok App for Shopify to sync your product catalog, build creative videos using products, and create TikTok ad campaigns.
- Shop Tab: The shop tab is TikTok’s marketplace page that can be found between the Following and the For You Page. Here, you can browse through millions of products, personalized for you based on your user behavior.
As you can see, TikTok offers a wide range of ways to sell your products through the app. This gives you ample opportunities to find new potential customers in the TikTok community.
Tapping Into TikTok Ads
TikTok ads are a key part of any successful TikTok marketing strategy.
The platform’s targeting capabilities allow you to reach exactly who you’re looking for based on interests, behaviors, demographics, languages, and more.
Consumers will be able to view these ads while scrolling their TikTok feed or browsing within the TikTok shop.
Advanced Targeting Capabilities
What makes TikTok ads different is its advanced targeting capabilities, which can help you find the right people at the right time.
- Behavior Targeting: Deliver ads based on recent in-app behavior, such as video views or interactions with specific creators. This ensures that your ads are shown to users who are most likely to be interested in your products.
- Interest Targeting: Find users based on their long-term interests and interactions with content on TikTok. This method allows you to build a custom audience that’s highly relevant to your brand.
- Custom Audiences: Create tailored audiences using data from your website, app activity, or previous TikTok engagement. This feature allows you to re-engage users who have already shown interest in your brand.
TikTok Ad Formats
What type of ad should you run? TikTok offers several ad formats designed to meet different campaign objectives:
- In-Feed Ads: These ads appear natively in the For You feed and can be used to drive users to your Shopping Page or website, depending on your campaign objective.
- LIVE Shopping Ads: These ads promote real-time shopping experiences, driving users to your live shopping events where they can interact with products and make purchases.
- Product Shopping Ads: These ads use product images and information from your Details Page to reach users in the Shopping Center and search results. You can optimize these ads based on your product information and relevant keywords.
- TopView Ads: A premium ad format that appears at the top of the “For You” page after users open the app. This ensures your ad receives maximum reach and visibility by positioning it as the first thing your audience sees.
- Branded Effect Ads: These are custom effects sponsored by brands to promote their advertising campaigns. These effects can include brand logos, calls-to-actions, and custom audience targeting. Brands can work directly with TikTok effect creators to produce Branded Effects through Effect House.
- Branded Mission Ads: This is a type of ad that connects brands with TikTok creators by offering them incentives to develop authentic video content based on parameters that you establish. This is a great way to meaningfully engage with your audience on TikTok.
- Spark Ads: A native ad format that allows you to leverage organic TikTok posts and their features in your advertising. You can utilize your own TikTok posts as well as content from other creators for Spark Ads.
TikTok Shop Affiliate Program
If you’re a small business looking to expand your reach, the TikTok Shop Affiliate Program might be just for you.
The TikTok Shop Affiliate Marketing Program allows brands to easily discover, connect with, and offer commission-based partnerships to content creators, who can seamlessly promote your brand through shoppable content.
You can connect with verified influencers and brand ambassadors who can include your product links in their own user-generated content (UGC). This way you can reach new audiences, boost sales, and build credibility in a cost-effective way.
How the TikTok Shop Affiliate Program Works
The TikTok Shop Affiliate Program is designed to be flexible and accessible, making it an excellent tool for small businesses and large e-commerce enterprises alike. At eAccountable, our experienced affiliate marketing team helps brands like yours make the most of their affiliate program on TikTok.
Here’s how it works and how we can position your brand for success:
- Open or Targeted Collaborations: When it comes to affiliate collaborations, your brand can opt for open collaborations with the entire TikTok creator marketplace or targeted, invite-only partnerships. This flexibility allows you to strategically align your brand with creators who best match your audience and goals.
- Performance-Based Model: The program operates on a commission basis, meaning creators are incentivized to sell your products. This performance model ensures that your marketing budget is spent effectively, as creators are motivated to produce high-quality, engaging content.
- Hyper-Targeted Partnership Strategy: At eAccountable, we help you strategically find and vet creators that would be a good fit for your brand. This involves evaluating a creator’s audience, positioning, and engagement rates, and ensuring brand safety. We also implement customized outreach and product gifting in order to recruit TikTok creators that would be a great fit for your brand.
- Tiered Commission Offering: Want to make sure you’re not cutting into your margins? eAccountable can help you offer a tiered commission offering based on a creator’s engagement and reach in order to incentivize high-quality content and conversions on your product.
- Content Negotiation Process: Before you start working with an affiliate on TikTok, make sure you’re on the same page about content. eAccountable can help facilitate the content negotiation process by establishing a clear timeline and confirmed deliverables while providing brand assets, product information, and content guidelines to creators to ensure brand consistency and safety.
- Live Monitoring and Reporting: Our team provides real-time monitoring of the performance of your affiliate partnerships. We review metrics and optimize partnerships to ensure that your brand gets the most out of the TikTok Shop Affiliate Program.
The eAccountable Advantage: Expert Partners in TikTok Success
It’s undeniable that TikTok is at the forefront of digital trends and culture.
At eAccountable, we understand the unique challenges and opportunities that TikTok Shop presents. As an official TikTok partner, we’re equipped to help you navigate this dynamic platform and achieve your e-commerce goals. Here’s how we can assist:
- TikTok Shop Management: We can set up, manage, and scale your TikTok Shop, ensuring your products are perfectly positioned to engage TikTok’s highly active user base. With our expertise, you can seamlessly upload products, manage orders, and choose the fulfillment method that best suits your business.
- Paid Media Expertise: Our team will create targeted ad campaigns that resonate with TikTok users, driving traffic and conversions. We leverage TikTok’s advanced targeting capabilities, including behavior and interest-based targeting, to ensure your ads reach the right audience.
- Affiliate Marketing on TikTok: We connect brands with content creators who can authentically promote your products through TikTok’s Affiliate Marketing program. By strategically vetting creators and managing partnerships, we help you reach new customers with impactful, shoppable content.
- Leveraging the TikTok-Amazon Partnership: The recent partnership between TikTok and Amazon enables users to purchase Amazon products directly through TikTok, blending entertainment with a seamless shopping experience. As an agency that also specializes in Amazon management, eAccountable is perfectly positioned to help your brand leverage this partnership to its fullest potential. Whether you’re looking to drive sales on TikTok, Amazon, or both, we have the expertise to guide you.
Drop Us A Line
With our new TikTok partnership, eAccountable is ready to take your brand to the next level. Whether you’re interested in setting up a TikTok Shop, launching paid media campaigns, exploring affiliate marketing opportunities, or selling your Amazon products on the platform, our team is here to help.
Interested in learning more? Drop us a line here for a free consultation with our team.