Mastering Tiktok Commerce

80k orders into TikTok Shop, here's what I've been surprised to learn.   1. Samples have only driven 7% of our TikTok Shop sales.   40% of orders come from product card. Of the 60% are driven by videos.   Product card: Customers organically finding our product on TikTok. These orders aren't charged commission. 🤌   Video: Most video sales are from affiliates who already have our product or they show our product image. On samples sent to affiliates, we get a 3 ROAS. Factoring halo sales on Amazon & DTC, it's a 6 ROAS (more in point 3). Half of our revenue from samples are from one affiliate. If you remove them, omni-channel ROAS is closer to a 3.   Product drop video posts from our own account can really work. Without commission owed, we can afford to put ad spend behind them.   2. TikTok Shop sales haven’t driven meaningful Simple Modern TikTok followers.   In the 6 months we sold 80k units on TikTok Shop, Simple Modern's TikTok follower count grew less than the previous 6 months.   Surprising to me considering we've driven 186m product impressions.   3. Over 100% halo effect between Amazon and Website.   When a product has a successful video driving TikTok Shop revenue, the bump on other eComm channels is clear. Typically we see more sales driven by TikTok videos on Amazon + DTC than TikTok Shop.   Customer trust is higher on Amazon and brand's websites.   The real magic is when TikTok videos goose Amazon listing placement permanently.   4. Revenue/video is flat once affiliates have more than 50k followers.   Followers: Revenue/video 0-1K: $13 1k-5k: $25 5k-10k: $40 10k-50k: $75 50+: $100   Affiliates with 50k followers have performed the same as 1m follower accounts. We have not engaged multi-million follower accounts with highly engaged audiences (celebrities).   5. Amazon best sellers don't drive our TikTok Shop business.   Products that have worked have had at least one of these qualities:  - Interesting  - New  - Relevant to culture or season  - Niche cult following (ex: Winnie the Pooh)   Our best sellers in retail typically don't have these qualities. These factors make inventory planning for TikTok Shop challenging.   6. Affiliates asking for 4+ samples are taking advantage of you.   We've sent 51 affiliates 4+ samples. Only one generated a sale.   13% of our total samples have been sent to grifters. 🙃   ************* TikTok Shop is a uniquely valuable channel since it's also a marketing engine.   It has required a different strategy from us and has been fun to learn.   I'd love to read what others have learned in the comments.

If live commerce isn’t in your 2025 strategy, you’re already losing market share. ✨ RM 3.8mil in GMV. 34.7mil product views. 60,406 items sold, in 30 days. The previous year, I did RM1.2mil in 30 days; this Yang Riang Raya campaign was a game-changer for us. We experimented, pushed boundaries, and most importantly, delivered results. 🚀 Here’s what made it work: 🎥 Trying Something New We uploaded pre-hype videos before the event and went full cinematic drama. Filming with cameras, crafting engaging storytelling, and negotiating prices live kept audiences hooked. We also filmed the videos with Dato Sri Siti Nurhaliza and Dato Sri Meer Habib, with views > 1mil each. 🌤️ Taking the Livestream Outdoors 99.9% of live-selling is done indoors on TikTok. The whole viewing experience are different for the viewers, the average viewing duration improved by 200%. Big thank you for Perbandanan Putrajaya, and Canon's team set up. 💸 Boosting with Ads Investing in ad boosting was another key factor in our success. By strategically running ads during the live sessions, we managed to attract more targeted audiences for the products we were selling. The result? A return on spend (ROS) of 5-10 times our ad investment. ⏰ Timing Matters We discovered that the sahur period (3am - 7am) and night hours (8pm-12am) were peak times for product demand, leading to higher engagement and sales. Knowing when your audience is most active can make a huge difference. 🤝 Brand Collaboration We also found that the brands that performed the best were those that actively supported us throughout the campaign. Brands that showed up, engaged with the process, and collaborated closely saw significantly better results. ⚡ Turning Viewers into Buyers—The FOMO Formula We didn’t just sell—we made people feel the rush of securing a deal before it was gone. Here’s how: 🔥 Build Anticipation Before the Drop – Instead of instantly adding products to the stream, we hyped them up. For example, before launching the viral Beg Kuning, we got viewers to comment “1” if they were ready. Only when we hit 100 comments then we release the link — but not before a suspenseful countdown! ⏳ Limited Quantity Sells – “Only 100 units available!” When people saw the stock count drop in real-time, it triggered instant action. No one wanted to be the one who missed out. 🎯 Educate, Then Convert – We made sure people fully understood the product before dropping the link. This meant that the moment it became available, they were ready to buy—no second-guessing, just instant conversion. 📊 Understanding Market Trends We sold what people wanted. By monitoring TikTok Shop rankings, product reviews, and audience sentiment, we identified the best Raya-related products and crafted strong narratives to make them irresistible. Is live-selling your next 8 months strategy? Let me know!

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

This one shift has improved our business the most in Q3 👇 Zeroto1 is now a TikTok Shop AOR (agency of record) that is only taking on brands that are committed to the channel for a minimum of 12 months Here's why this is was the best decision we could make for our clients: 1. It takes a significant amount of time and resources to get a shop live and scale it The agency often has to make a considerable investment up front to get things going: And if they are only on 3 month contracts and aren't setting proper expectations -- aka not promising a moon shot -- they will have high churn Which means they will stop making the time and resource investment needed to drive results on TTS Not good 2. If the team is charging a cheaper retainer plus % of GMV plus a 3 month minimum -> they have a broken model They'll have to combat that with low cost talent Or be forced to take on too many clients to make up for their low margin Meaning your account is most likely missing senior level strategy, senior level account management, or the team your working with is over stretched Leaving you without the time and attention required to achieve success on TikTok Shop 3. There are 6 components needed to scale a successful TikTok Shop: -- shop operation and management -- affiliate recruitment -- short form video management (UGC) -- paid media -- Live shopping -- organic social Without a healthy retainer and long enough runway you are going to sacrifice one or multiple components needed to achieve success on TikTok Shop And TikTok Shop is more of an all or nothing platform at this stage For example -- you could be scaling affiliates, content, and spark ads but if you don't have shop operations support and your shop score drops below a 3 it can tank your shop erasing all of the work and time you put into the channel 4. Successful marketing channels aren't built over night. Our top clients went 2-4 months with no results before their shops exploded If we would of been on a 2-4 month test instead of a longer contract they wouldn't be sitting on a new channel that is driving efficient revenue while having a halo effect across their entire business 5. Longer retainers = more resources and senior strategy to invest into each client Shorter retainers often means lower LTV for an agency. Lower LTV means less resources to invest in your biggest asset: YOUR PEOPLE Increasing our LTV has allowed us to recruit multiple top TikTok Shop strategists from brands and agencies that have scaled the biggest TikTok Shops Transitioning to an AOR has meant that we've had to turn down a lot of business that wasn't willing commit to 12 months And that's okay We're not trying to be the agency partner for everyone Our mission is to guide category leading brands to their dream outcome of an IPO or acquisition through our services And this move has gotten us one step closer to be able to achieve that for every client we work with

"Give creators full creative freedom." That’s the advice most brands still swallow. And it’s killing their conversions. If performance is your goal, "creative freedom" isn’t a strategy – it’s a gamble. Here’s a strategy you can steal instead – one that makes briefs better, content sharper, and results repeatable (especially when you put paid behind your top performers). Most brands still create from “inspiration.” A trend. A vibe. A competitor’s post that did numbers. Cool. But they’re guessing. Guessing what the algorithm wants. Guessing what their audience needs. Guessing what might convert. We don’t guess. We reverse-engineer. 1.⁠ ⁠Start where people are already searching •⁠ ⁠TikTok Search •⁠ ⁠Google Autosuggest •⁠ ⁠Reddit threads •⁠ ⁠Pinterest trends •⁠ ⁠YouTube & IG comments You don’t need a muse. You need a market. 2.⁠ ⁠Build content that answers real problems   Hooks that talk to their buying triggers. Replies to questions (just plant the questions).     Valuable > Viral 3.⁠ ⁠Optimise for discoverability •⁠ ⁠Keyword-rich captions •⁠ ⁠Search-friendly titles •⁠ ⁠Intent-based hashtags •⁠ ⁠Metadata that matches user behaviour We don’t chase the algorithm – we make the algorithm work for us. Stop briefing creators with vibes. Start briefing them with insights that convert. Steal this, test it, tell me what it earns you. #SocialMediaMarketing

Goli hit $6.36M in sales on TikTok Shop in just one month. Here’s how they nailed their affiliate strategy and smashed the TikTok Shop Playbook: → Trained creators & proven frameworks One video alone brought in $350k, using a tight formula: ↳ Curiosity hook ↳ 3rd-party social proof ↳ Unique angle (KSM 6) on a known product → Smart incentive structure Affiliates earned serious rewards: ↳ iPhones for $4k sales ↳ Miami retreats for $25k ↳ BMWs for $250k (Plus, a 20% base commission (boosted to 25% past $5k)) → Creator volume ↳ Goli worked with 6,902 creators, generating 25,900 videos. ↳ 7 creators alone pulled in $1.3M (20% of the total revenue). → Irresistible offer ↳ Goli’s gummies retail at $45, but TikTok Shop offered them for $31 — a 31% discount that drove virality. → Network effect ↳ Goli was TikTok’s #1 ad spender in August. ↳ This led to a spike in search and sales — Google Trends had them up 75% from Q2. It's a masterclass in affiliate strategy.

TikTok Shop is making a BIG push towards product quality (and listings). While everyone's focused on commission rates and creator collaborations, TikTok is quietly building the infrastructure for a quality-focused marketplace that could fundamentally change how DTC brands approach social commerce. The platform's new quality standards are strategic guardrails designed to create sustainable competitive advantages for sellers who take them seriously. A few observations worth sharing: 1️⃣ Self-testing requirements are particularly strict for fragile items. If you're in beauty, home goods, or electronics, TikTok is demanding comprehensive pre-market testing. This is about training their algorithm to preference listings with lower return rates. 2️⃣ The emphasis on "clarity is everything" for assembly instructions signals TikTok's awareness that post-purchase experience drives repeat customers. Sellers that invest in superior documentation will see downstream benefits in review quality. 3️⃣ The platform's focus on review management is about feeding their recommendation engine with sentiment data. Brands actively responding to feedback are getting algorithmic preference. TikTok Shop's core value proposition is "authentic content that drives impulse purchases." Now they're protecting the very trust mechanism that makes creator-driven commerce work. For brands considering TikTok Shop: either meet these standards proactively or struggle with poor visibility and higher acquisition costs later. The sellers who will win on this platform are focused on building quality-centric operations that translate naturally into the content-commerce ecosystem TikTok is building.

MAC launched on TikTok Shop on April 1st. 150 products.  10% creator commission.  Record day-one sales for a beauty launch. What's taken fifteen years to play out on Amazon is playing out on TikTok Shop in about two.  For a long time, the big beauty brands turned their nose up at Amazon. Some still do.  Amazon has to run a white-glove service just to get brands like Clinique on board. That slow adoption left a vacuum.  Native Amazon sellers filled it. Build a product for a search gap, rank well, build in a reason to repurchase, and there was a business there. That window has mostly closed on Amazon now.  Native sellers who haven't evolved are being squeezed out by the bigger brands, finally turning up. On TikTok Shop, the same thing is happening. Much faster. Look at MAC.  150 products live, not three. A 10% commission, because they don't need to pay creators more to recruit them.  2,000 creator videos in the first seven days. No native TikTok brand of two or three people is competing with that.  So the question for a new brand looking at TikTok Shop isn't really whether there's an opportunity. It's whether there's a window before the MACs of the category arrive. For most categories, that window is shorter than it looks.

A Love Islander organically plugs your product in a vlog. You get a prime time slot on Dragon's Den. This is the founder's dream, right? Not necessarily, the dream isn't the mention. It's capitalising on it. We recently had this happen for two of our client brands. One got a rave review from a Love Islander. The other had an appearance on Dragon's Den. We knew the value was in amplifying these moments, and that TikTok was the key vehicle. Here's the playbook we ran: ➡️ Create the core assets We didn't just share the news. We clipped the best moments and created owned brand videos celebrating it. This became the new source material. ➡️ Alert our creators We informed our creator communities for both brands. We didn't just tell them the news, we sent them the clips, the press articles, and got clear on the mission. ➡️ Incentivise like crazy We offered higher commission rates on TikTok Shop, as well as repurposing their best performing content as Meta ads, giving them a commission on all sales generated there, too. More eyeballs, more earnings. ➡️ Gamify the moment For one brand, we turned it into a full blown competition. Bonuses for up to 3 creators whose videos we felt had the highest potential. The Dragon's Den brand sold out completely. They had their best sales month across all channels in just a few hours. The other saw creator videos go viral on TikTok, driving high levels of GMV directly through their Shop. This is the power of preparation. Anyone will tell you, virality is fleeting. Having an activated community of creators ready to amplify these moments is a strategy. That's the difference.