How To Use TikTok As Part of Your e-Commerce Strategy

TikTok is among the most popular social media platforms today with a total of 1.534 billion users out of which 1 billion are monthly active users. The app has taken Gen Z by storm and became an amazing, highly effective medium for e-Commerce marketing with over 1 billion videos watched every day.

Users spend on average one hour per day on TikTok, and 90% of users visit the app more than once per day. That said, TikTok provides great opportunities for e-Commerce businesses to target their audience or tap into new ones all while successfully boosting sales.

The social media platform is free for business owners and has a pro mode that allows you to track key metrics, such as statistics about your followers, profile traffic, engagement, and content performance. Moreover, TikTok enables you to track ads performance and in-app e-Commerce metrics, such as Shopify.

Develop Your Marketing Strategy

As for every other social media channel, you’ll have to develop a marketing strategy for TikTok based on your goals and available resources. The first step will be to identify your audience and consider whether you’ll focus on a general or on a niche audience. Furthermore, you’ll have to determine your audience’s age, gender, and location, their interests, their habits and behaviors, and their favorite websites and apps.

To have a better overview on who your audience is and who you are trying to target on TikTok or any other social channels, you can create a buyer persona. There are many online tools that can help you build your own persona, such as this amazing one provided by HubSpot: https://www.hubspot.com/make-my-persona. To further discover and ensure that you continue reaching your best market, you can use TikTok’s Pro mode and the For You page to find the right target audience.

To excel in your marketing strategy on TikTok, follow few of our main tips:

Keep It Brief

The so-called ‘hook’ of your content is critical on TikTok. You want to catch your audience’s attention in the first three seconds of your video, making it clear what the TikTok’s theme is and why they should keep watching. If you’re showcasing a product for example, make sure to also capture it in the first three seconds of your clip. According to TikTok, over 63% of all videos with the highest click-through rate (CTR) highlight their key message or product within the first 3 seconds.

Moreover, shorter clips between 15 and 20 seconds perform better than long ones and are more likely to be rewatched and shared. TikTok is all about making it short, catchy, and to the point otherwise users will just swipe next.

Create Entertaining & Relatable Content

TikTok is known for its funny, raw content compared to other social media platforms out there. The app became so popular over the last few years because of how engaging, relatable, and unpolished the content is, which is something nowadays people seem to appreciate more and more. 

For example, funny or entertaining content that made people laugh is one way of getting the attention of TikTok users. Another successful method is to appeal to people’s emotions by creating relatable content. Thanks to its raw format, TikTok is the best platform to share this type of content, which allows you and your e-Commerce business to connect with your audience at a whole different level. Be as authentic as you can be and show users your products/services in action.

Follow Trends

Keeping up with the latest trends is critical, especially across social media and in this case, on TikTok it’s all about trends. They represent a collection of viral videos that use popular features, songs, sound effects, and/or hashtags. By incorporating these trends into your TikTok content, your videos can generate more engagement and become notable across the platform as well as beyond.  

To get a glimpse of the latest TikTok trends, access the For You page and the Discover Section, which will feature videos from other accounts and help you identify what’s trending. It can be a song, a dance, a scene, or simply a hashtag. Whatever it is, just try to stay on top of viral content from an early stage as it can really put you on the map in and outside the TikTok environment.

Irina Popa