TikTok Shop Management

TikTok Shop is not messing around. At Spree, we're building a shoppable video platform, but also a studio where we help brands and creators onboard, market, and sell through social platforms. Think of it like influencer marketing in a post-cookie world: full funnel from awareness to purchase, but all in one short-form video. Recently, our TikTok Shop partnership has been getting a lot of love. A few interesting learnings from this holiday season: 1. 'Viral' products are a shortcut. We uploaded one 'viral product' into the system and started getting sales before we posted our first video. Naturally, we ordered a few hundred more ASAP. 2. TikTok Shop success aligns closely with the rules of great influencer marketing. Get a creator with an engaged, lean-in audience. Find a product they actually like that their audience will actually like. Sell by telling a story, not by telling viewers to buy. 3. Most brands want to be on TikTok Shop but don't know how. It's complex. But once you've done it dozens of times (per day, in our case) it moves fast. I don't care if you're a mom and pop stationary shop, a creator merch brand, or a Fortune 500: you want to experiment here with a team who knows this market. 4. Live is great, but don't sleep on shoppable VOD. A perfect 30 second video of a product can do the work of a one hour live stream. Both are valuable, but too many people are talking about live shoppable and not enough are talking about shoppable shortform. 5. Trends + Product = Sales. Wednesday Addams' dance is popping? Sell the costume. King Bach flashlight dance is trending? Sell the flashlight. Spotify Wrapped is everywhere? Sell headphones. 6. Creators beware: not all audiences want this. If you make gold digger prank content, don't start selling The Feminine Mystique hardcover. If you are a creator and want to try it, make great content first and let a brand ride along. 7. Create like a creator. This is the rule for every brand on every social platform, but certainly pertains here. Don't do one tentpole shoppable live stream on TikTok and judge TT Shop on that. You need to habituate your audience, build a format, and keep it entertaining. In case you can't tell, this is addicting for a social media wonk like me. Smart influencer marketers are already testing this market understanding it will be a huge part of their ecommerce future. And those who haven't need to start today. #ecommerce #creatoreconomy #tiktok https://lnkd.in/e926z8zm

We are the alpha partner for TikTok Shop and we’ve compiled the best practices and blueprint to drive business outcomes. Over the last decade, and across all platforms, we have generated over $2.5 Billion in creator commerce, online and offline. Here are Influential’s five tips for leveraging TikTok Shop: 1. Craft engaging content: "Prioritize engaging content that is specific to your vertical and is differentiated from your competitive set, integrate and highlight products to benefit from occasional virality." 2. Ride the trend wave: "Leverage popular TikTok trends like songs, sounds and filters. Trends can catapult your shoppable posts to the FYP.” 3. Product launch opportunities: "Use TikTok Shop for product launches, create anticipation and excitement around new releases." 4. Educational content works: "Show your products in action! Explain all the problems your product solves." 5. Optimize your shoppable posts: "Keep videos between 30 and 45 seconds, showcase product usage, work with top influencers with high ERs, add clear CTAs and use emojis to point to the buy button. #influential

I've spoken to over 100 operators about TikTok Shop in the last six months, and they've all shared the same shocking truth. Everyone's treating the channel like a garage sale, throwing products at the wall in the hope that something sticks. The brands crushing it aren't guessing. They're being methodical with their merchandising strategy. Here's what separates the winners: 1. Test Hero SKUs vs. catalog Most brands dump their product line into TikTok Shop. The top 1% know that less is more. The algorithm rewards focus and depth over breadth. 2. Experiment with price elasticity The algorithm actually responds differently to pricing tiers. We've tested five different price points for the same product and found the sweet spot where algorithm reach and margin fit perfectly. 3. Structure bundles strategically Test bundle configurations obsessively. We found that 3-item bundles with a 15% discount outperformed 2-item bundles with 20% off by 4X. The winners know: it's not WHAT you're selling on TikTok Shop. It's HOW you're merchandising it to feed the algorithm exactly what it wants. Here’s the truth - you can’t scale what you haven’t structured. Merchandising isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s infrastructure.

If you are on TikTok shop, you may have noticed a nuke of an update that was dropped today. There's now a limit on how many creators you can reach out to based on your store's weekly GMV. Here's what this means: - Many new sellers are going to have a harder time getting off the ground - More than ever, organic performance follows paid. You MUST invest into paid ads as a foundational tactic to get the flywheel spinning. This has been true but now going organic-only isn't going to work. - Bands out of the gates could focus on paid relationships at first with pay per deliverable. Offer $50-100 flat rate plus commission for posts with spark codes. You can tap your existing relationships, or leverage tools like Insense on top of TikTok's platform to acquire spark codes. - We noticed that cap is only for open collab DMs. Sellers can still leverage target collabs (1000's of invites per day) to reach out to affiliates. - For those that approach TikTok Shop with the right strategy, this will be a benefit because there will be less noise and competition at the top. For those that don't, RIP. #tiktokshop

Cold start beauty brands— TikTok Shop is NOT the place to offload leftover inventory. If you’re just starting out on TikTok Shop, don’t treat it like a throwaway experimental channel, especially if you’re expecting to drive six figures of monthly GMV. That mindset will set you up to fail. TikTok Shop requires strategy and investment on all levels. Let’s talk about what actually matters on TikTok Shop: your hero product. If you’re approaching an agency about TikTok Shop (which you should because it requires way too much specialized expertise to manage in-house), chances are you’re serious about turning it into a meaningful, incremental revenue stream. If that’s the case, here’s what drives GMV growth. And the two work hand in hand: 1. Tagged content volume, accounting for recency 2. Sales velocity Together, these build algorithmic favorability for your product listing, just like a high-performing video does on organic TikTok. TikTok Shop isn’t the place to manufacture interest out of thin air or push your internal product priorities on affiliates. If you want to scale quickly, use Shop to fan the flames of what’s already working. That means listening to your community and leaning into the product(s) they already love. Not sure what that is? Search your brand name in the TikTok Explore tab. What product is your audience organically posting and raving about, and what is generating unique interest on the platform? That’s your hero. That’s the one to double down on. If you're serious about hitting your GMV goals, leading with your most content-able, widely-loved product (on TikTok, specifically) is a no-brainer.* *Note: Of course, there are additional factors that determine a hero product and ultimately we want to create an offering that feels exclusive to TikTok Shop, but in the meantime— this is the best place to start when you're beginning to sample affiliates and you want the greatest likelihood of receiving impactful content in return.

Confession: I'm tired of seeing TikTok Shop videos. 😢 And I run a TikTok Shop Partner agency. 😳 So many of the TikTok Shop videos that come up on my page follow the same formula: Step 1) Make a shocked, emphatic testimonial about how x product did y. Step 2) Use the product while talking about it with puffing language. Step 3) Mention how they didn't expect it to work (but it did!). Step 4) Tell viewers to buy it from their TikTok Shop link. To put it simply, this is just boring. If creators and brands follow this format, viewers will increasingly become more fatigued. Now, how do we fix this? 🏆 Act like actual humans online, not salespeople. TikTok consumers don't need you to overly sell to them. Consider why LTK (formerly rewardStyle & LIKEtoKNOW.it) is so successful: people on Instagram asked creators for links/recommendations of where to buy things. Key word here is ASKED. Western consumers lean on the side of wanting to be trendsetters and are confident online. These two characteristics combined make them less receptive to being sold to, but rather the type of consumer that seeks to discover and share. If creators and brands want to make TikTok Shop a success, it will require that they all lean into making more great content that includes products in their videos and allowing the consumers to take charge to make purchases. https://lnkd.in/gxzT89g7

In talking to ecommerce marketers in and around my network, community, and customers, here are 6 of the most important things I discovered about their shoppers. 1. Redirecting shoppers in the shopping journey is hurting conversions. - They have very little patience. They’re dropping off if they find too many steps in the buying journey. - The fewer & more direct paths to purchase, the better. Amazon has nailed it in providing a smooth buying journey. 2. If they can complete purchases directly in a channel, they’ll do it. - Apps like TikTok and Instagram have already begun experimenting with this, and it’s working. - Very soon we will enter into an era where all messaging channels will become avenues to shop end-to-end. 3. The search bar on the website is extremely valuable. It's where 50%+ of shoppers start their journey. It’s a huge deal-breaker if shoppers can't find what they're looking for. - Shoppers often use the search bar to search for something specific. If they don’t find the product, they drop-off your website/app. - The recommendations that come while searching need to be as relevant in-session as possible to keep the shoppers engaged. This improves the odds of conversions. 4. They are willing to share their personal details to get better offers - Only if they will get special discounts or offers. Anything that has a strong incentive that benefits them. - If they receive good benefits from loyalty programs and the programs meet their expectations, they’ll become lifelong customers. - These sound obvious, but if this is still a concern even today, it only shows that many marketers still don’t take this path seriously. 5. Many shoppers still receive irrelevant recommendations. This is pushing them away cause of bad experiences. - This means that shopper data that is being collected is broken and inaccurate. - It also indicates that marketers using automation tools to send messages and gather data are not good enough. They need to upgrade to better ones that really understand shopper intent, more importantly, with the products that are being shopped. 6. Over-personalizing the experience is counterintuitive. - Shoppers feel the brands are being intrusive and creepy. - This indicates that the shopper data is being abused without respecting privacy. Here are my biggest takeaways 🛒 Shoppers want convenience at every step in their shopping journey. 💡 Marketers are aware of this. They know what they have to do. They’re just not aware of the right marketing tools to solve this problem. 🔎 These tools can channelize the data customers willingly share about both their intent and the type of product they'd like to purchase, to create relevant, contextual, and even predict recommendations that make it easy for their shoppers. 💰 Kill the redirect and the subsequent loss of intent. Convert in channel! It’s 2024! The shopping experience has evolved. Adapt or die.