TikTok Shop: How Brands & Creators Can Leverage this New Feature

TikTok recently unveiled an exciting new update they hope will change how brands, merchants, and creators connect with their audiences while on the app. 

• The TikTok Shop update introduces a powerful shopping feature allowing for seamless product showcasing and selling directly within the app.
• The changes will facilitate a 1:1 buyer x shopper transaction and eliminate the need to take the transaction off the platform.
• The new TikTok Shop feature allows merchants to highlight their products during live broadcasts, in-feed content, and the product showcase tab.

As a brand or creator, it's essential to understand the ins and outs of this innovative feature as it may benefit your product sales and bolster your relationship with consumers on the viral platform. Let’s dig into the different ways to incorporate this new feature.

Three ways to incorporate TikTok Shop into your content

Selling through In-Feed Video

TikTok Shop allows brands and creators to sell products through in-feed video content, providing a more dynamic experience for the audience. You can now create engaging and immersive videos highlighting specific products within the content, eliminating the need for audience members to comment asking, “Where’d you get that top?” This way is more native and frequent integration of TikTok Shop, a seamless addition to natural user flow.

By using the TikTok Shop product integration and adding shoppable links and tags within content, you can lead your audience directly to the product page for a seamless shopping experience. We see this as most beneficial for brands and creators promoting specific products or sale promotions to encourage followers to interact with the video, explore the showcased items, and make quick purchases effortlessly—all within the TikTok app.

Selling through TikTok Live

TikTok's LIVE feature has gained immense popularity over the past few years, enabling real-time interactions with followers. With the Shop update, you can now create real-time sales connections with consumers, making this a powerful tool. 

Think: QVC for Gen Z. Sellers can answer questions about product quality, styling, and functionality in real time, getting consumers excited enough about the product to purchase while viewing the Live. We’ve seen this done successfully on Instagram with our client, Kohl’s Shoppable Livestreams. 

By integrating the shopping feature, you can easily link the products you discuss, driving sales and creating an interactive shopping experience for your followers.

Selling through the Product Showcase Tab

TikTok's new Product Showcase tab allows creators and brands to curate a dedicated storefront within their profiles. This is a separate tab within a creator’s profile akin to an Amazon Storefront, where creators curate products on their profile they’re already talking about and buying.

This feature provides a centralized space where influencers can display their clients' products, making it easier for followers to explore and purchase items. Like how brands leverage their storefronts on Instagram, brands and creators can organize products into specific categories that help guide the user experience. We’d imagine a creator leveraging this tabe to promote exclusive collaborations, limited-edition launches, or highlight best-selling products, to easily direct their audiences to products and increase your product sales.

Are consumers ready for TikTok Shop?

Are U.S. consumers ready for TikTok Shop? We last reported on this feature in November of 2022 (hello, HotToks), and the release was slow but steady. That may be the case for consumer adoption, too. 

As we've talked about before on Negronis with Nord, influencers aren't infomercials. And unlike Chinese consumers whose lives are integrated into superapps like WhatsApp, U.S. consumers might not yet want to shop where they're being entertained.

Gen Z has popularized TikTok in recent years. According to a survey conducted by Jungle Scout, Gen Z is more likely to use Instagram (71%), followed by YouTube (68%), TikTok (68%), Facebook (62%), then Snapchat (55%) to make a purchase decision. 

It’s not surprising Instagram is first preference for purchases, as Instagram was the first to roll out its in-platform shopping experience and, since then, garnered many brands to adopt their shopping tool in their e-comm strategies.

Yet TikTok might not be far behind – by combining the virality of TikTok and the seamless shopping experience offered by the Shop feature, brands can engage with their audience in a more immersive and conversion-driven manner, potentially leading to increased sales and brand loyalty. 

How to leverage the new features from here

Our recommendation for brands and influencers is to test TikTok Shop in their marketing and sales strategies, as it is so new that there just isn’t enough data to prove that it is necessary for success or an increase in sales. 

TikTok has proven itself as a powerhouse platform for brand visibility and connecting with a younger demographic. TikTok Shop is an excellent tool to enhance the overall marketing approach and capture first-step attribution from influencers to sales. 

Want more on TikTok Shop? Download the Need-to-Knows of TikTok Shop Guide here.