It’s not about “TikTok Shop” it’s about giving better signals.
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Happy Sunday!
If you’re reading this, let me promise you one thing. Today’s email is going to be a quick one... I know your only focus right now is making sure BFCM is set. Just give me 2 minutes, and you can forward it to whoever manages TikTok for you after. Before we get to that...
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Limited Supply
This past week on Limited Supply, I sat down with Zain, a TikTok Shop expert. Zain helps some of your favorite brands scale on TikTok Shop, and he dropped some tips around how to maximize the channel, what products are a good fit, and how to get started.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube (just search “Limited Supply”).
Social Shopping is Happening
Whether or not your brand is actively pursuing the channel, social shopping is happening, it’s here, and it’s here to stay. Social shopping is the concept of buying (or, in our case, selling) products on platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, etc.
Brands that we love on TikTok for their content strategy are not necessarily the same ones to look at for what makes a good TikTok Shop / social shopping experience for consumers. Instead, I like to keep a list of brands I know push the boundaries with TikTok Shop alphas, betas, and formats. Brands like Comfrt, Made by Mitchell, PetPivot, and more.
Just like a good DJ spends their off-hours finding hidden tracks, I encourage you to spend your brain-rot time on TikTok to find shops that do things you like, and keep checking-in on them.
Now listen... if you’re not on this train, you’re wasting time. Social shopping, which happens inside the apps themselves, allow for these platforms to register and collect a lot more data about users, their shopping habits, who your customers are, and why they’re buying, etc. With the addition of reviews being fed back to TikTok & Meta Shop so quickly, it’s safe to say that if you’re NOT actively working on a social shopping strategy, you’re holding back the opportunity for these large platforms to learn and be more efficient for your business.
All that said, here’s a quick checklist of things I have noticed brands doing differently, recently. I recommend making sure your store has most or all of these incorporated into your TikTok Shop listings.
Carousel Imagery & Description
Every brand that had a lot of units sold (100k+) had incredible carousel imagery. The carousel acts like a landing page and includes a lot of the same elements (see below for a recommended list). Because TikTok Shop (TTS) tells you your shop conversion rate, you can A/B test the first image too (this is why you want to have a few shops you keep checking).
Here are some ideas for what different images can be in your shop carousel:
Cover image (should include product, benefit call-out, social proof)
Product image with text call-outs/overlays
Ingredients breakdown
What’s Inside (everything in the order)
Comparison chart (us vs. them)
Ingredients label (Gruns even calls out “Click to zoom icon the nutrition label”)
Clinical trial / clinical study data
Customer reviews in a graphic
Before & After from customers
What to Expect / How It Works
Testimonial/recommendation/quote from an authoritative figure (doctor, teacher, makeup artist, vet, etc.)
Campaign-style imagery with text overlays
What stores you’re sold/available in (this is more social proof)
Quick message from the founder (note, signature, candid photo)
Brands can also maximize their listing by treating the description like a mini landing page. Using formatting options (bold/underline), emojis, and inserting imagery, you can create a landing page. Some sections/things to include:
Screenshots of reviews or custom review graphics
Why {Insert Product Here}? / 5 Benefits
How It Works / The Science
How to Use / Directions
Certifications / Social Proof
Before & Afters / Testimonials
Being lazy and having a bad product description is not only an opportunity for shopper to leave and go find that information elsewhere, but you’re also not giving the platforms the most information to learn your products.
Going LIVE
I understand it’s not easy for everyone to go live, but for those who do or plan to, it’s clear to me that live shopping is only going to get bigger. Comfrt had 300 people watching a live shopping session. PetPivot had a single creator with 1,200 people watching at the same time.
Inside the lives, brands are now running giveaways, except they’re giving away discounts, coupons and chances to win. The way you enter? You follow the account hosting the live, and the brand can also ask you to drop a specific comment (which juices the live algorithm).
Brands like MediCube and PetPivot leverage creators with huge followings to go live on their behalf and host a full QVC-level-production show. During BFCM, I’ll screen record a number of examples and share them next Sunday.
Subscriptions, Discounts & Sales
It’s finally here. TikTok Shop now allows you to leverage subscriptions as a brand. Not only that, you can add an additional discount to the first order to incentivize customer acquisition. TikTok processes the subscriptions itself, and still gives customers the option to skip, cancel, swap, etc. Surprisingly most DTC brands aren’t leveraging subscription, let-alone first time subscriber discounts.
One feature a lot of brands are using properly is the sale call-outs. Some call out a flash sale, some a Black Friday sale. Others have products categorized into separate Black-Friday-filtered views. The discounts are clearly called-out (thanks to TikTok’s conversion-focused design).
Brands like NeuroGum even run evergreen offers allowing customers to follow them and take advantage of an $8 coupon. Once you follow, you’re prompted to spend >$15 with NeuroGum to take advantage of the offer. Of course, the $8 isn’t them just giving a 50% discount, they have done the math to understand their overall net-new-customer CPA and that math, maths.
Juicing the Shop
The last thing I’m seeing is how brands are now juicing their shops. This time last year, everyone was focused on creator seeding. This year, here is what brands are doing to juice their TikTok Shop presence and sales:
Underground Social Commerce. Companies like Zagged work with brands to create thousands of pieces of content, posted across accounts that have aged themselves into a niche (i.e. wellness, kids toys, etc.) driving millions of impressions at a fraction of the cost. Clipping, memes, AI-created content, slideshows, etc. These posts all include education of the products and can include TikTok Shop stickers, which open the shopping experience.
Seeing Creators. This is still one of the best ways to do it. Seed to hundreds or thousands of content creators in a systematic way. You need to make it enticing for creators to join your program, understand what content works best with your brand, and then scale the program showing how much money you can make for them as a creator. You should listen to this interview with Hudson, the founder of Comfrt. He’s the expert on this.
Running Ads. Per Hudson’s recommendation, take your best performing organic creator posts, and put ad dollars behind those posts. Can you go ahead and launch your own brand-specific content? Sure, but most likely the creator stuff will outperform it. You know how Redditors hate when brands run ads? That’s how TikTok is too, so you’re better off finding creator content that works, and then scaling that.
Brands like Jolie run fun AI pictures as ads, which plays into the fun nature of the platform. Do fun stuff like that, don’t bring your Instagram video ads to TikTok and expect it to work well. Lastly, because it’s ads on TikTok, and it’s vicious waters, keep your comments clean. Too many brands don’t moderate the comments sections of their ads, and it’s a bad look overall.
Okay, that’s all I got for today. I told you it was a quick one, and hopefully will give you a couple ideas of how to enhance your social shopping experience. I hope this email makes you at least an extra $50,000 in the next 2 weeks to implement some of this.
That's all for this week
Listen, if no one told you this yet, everything that happens in the next week is on you. The wins? All you. The losses? All you. Own it. Take accountability. Don’t blame your agency, an outside contractor, or point fingers internally... if you missed something, own it. It’s all on you, whether you love it or not. That’s part of the gig. That said, hydrate, sleep good, fuel yourself properly, and lock in.
It’s Sunday night, so make sure you get a full 9 hours of sleep tonight. This week is it. Take care of yourself, and enjoy the ups and the downs.
