TikTok is an ever-growing popular social media platform for posting creative content in short-form video clips. Like most popular social media sites, Instagram and Facebook paved the way to capitalize on innovative e-commerce features. TikTok seems to be fast catching up to step up the competition.
Social commerce grew hugely over the past couple of years, driven by the Covid-19 pandemic. By the end of 2023, sales are expected to reach over $50 billion, according to eMarketer. With new social commerce features such as live stream shopping, branded hashtag challenges, and recently, a collaboration with Shopify, TikTok is developing and expanding on their social shopping, live commerce, and influencer marketing features, becoming a starting point for e-commerce marketing. According to recent news reports, TikTok aims to reach $12 billion in marketing revenues by the end of 2022, which is nearly triple compared to 2021.
TikTok is a video-sharing platform launched in China by conglomerate ByteDance in 2016. It has become the world’s third most popular social media platform in only a few years. It allows posting 15 seconds to a maximum of 3-minute video clips, and users can edit, add background music, filters, tag products, and even launch a live stream directly in the app.
TikTok is the perfect platform and gives e-commerce brands and retailers the opportunity to create awareness and generate more sales in a natural and fun, non-salesly way. To further focus on the e-commerce features, they even collaborated with Shopify in 2021 to allow merchandisers on the Shopify platform to sync directly with their TikTok business account.
Businesses benefit from the integration by creating their own separate “storefront” on their TikTok page and tagging all products sold on their website catalog. Customers benefit from being able to shop directly on the app.
Marketing is increasingly shifting away from traditional “salesy” campaigns and more towards natural product placements, user-generated content, and promoting products through engaging and entertaining content. Brand story and storytelling are more impotent than ever. Nearly 60% of consumers prefer to purchase from brands with a story behind them, one research found. TikTok is an excellent platform to do so and reach a broad audience to get your brand in front of millions of customers.
Creative storytelling and entertaining content can increase traffic, sales, and conversions organically and positively impact customer loyalty rates. If you wonder how and what content to create, follow the tips and tricks below to incorporate them into your upcoming TikTok campaigns.
As with all social media platforms, when promoting your brand, it is vital that these marketing efforts come across naturally and not in a direct selling way. It can put off customers, and you are at the risk of losing followers.
Brands should think about ways to engage rather than sell. One way to keep them loyal and to return is generating engaging and entertaining content that keeps users engaged as long as possible. It helps to build trust and increase followers and sales simultaneously.
On average, globally, a 76% increase in product sales came through live stream shopping events during the Covid-19 pandemic. That shows enormous potential as an engaging marketing tool that creates awareness and increases sales simultaneously.
Even though livestream shopping has been wildly popular in China since 2016, when Taobao Live was launched, TikTok had its first live online broadcast shopping event in December 2021 in collaboration with a large department store Walmart. Live-streaming, where influencers present various products and talk through their features, has proven highly effective.
Viewers can comment, enquire, and engage in conversations during the live stream, to ask questions about the products. The communication usually happens through in-app live chat, chatbot functionality, or SMS messages.
Understandably, it would be technically impossible to do for more prominent brands and retailers, who get hundreds of comments each day. However, this is doable for small businesses that can create authenticity to increase customer engagement and loyalty.
By participating in conversations in the comments section underneath your posts, such as replying to a customer inquiry about a product, you can show you genuinely care about each customer and their experience with your brand.
Each reply is tagged with a “creator badge,” which means the customer gets a notification once their comment has been responded to. It can help make customers feel special and valued, thus increasing customer loyalty and keeping them returning.
An excellent tip is always to check what is trending in the hashtag challenges section and see if you could use any of the hashtags in your campaigns or posts to get the extra traffic. Make sure they remain relevant and interesting to your posts to keep the interest of your audience. Be careful not to use a random one that has got a lot of traction just for its sake, as if it is not related to your campaign or product, it can decrease the engagement rather than increase it.
TikTok constantly adds new features to improve the user experience, including shopping and marketing functionalities, to its platform. In January 2022, they announced the release of several new features, including an audio-only live-streaming and subscriber-only comments section. Being the first to implement new features, you can keep up with the trends and keep your audience engaged, attract new followers, and stand out to stay ahead of the competition.
TikTok is emerging as a new, crucial marketing platform for both e-commerce and retail businesses. Whether or not you need to engage with your audience through TikTok actively depends on your customer profile and target market. A large chunk of the users is 18 – 30, geared towards Gen-Z and Millennials.
However, in any case, it is essential to understand how the social media landscape is changing the way we connect and communicate with brands and how it is shaping the future of e-commerce marketing.
If you are interested in even more social media-related articles and information from us here at Bit Rebels, then we have a lot to choose from.
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