TikTok Highlights Growing eCommerce Opportunities and the Unique Potential for Brands in the App

TikTok has been growing and pushing to add new monetization alternatives. Because of this, TikTok is increasingly focusing on eCommerce, which can assist higher advertiser activity while also giving more money potential for individual artists through brand collaborations. As the holiday season approaches, TikTok is attempting to position itself as a crucial product display and shopping destination via what it calls 'Community Commerce,' or creator-driven word-of-mouth marketing.

The TikTok-made-me-buy-it phenomena have helped all kinds of things fly off the shelves - from leggings and milk frothers to cranberry juice, cleaning products, homewares, and everything in between. It's no secret that TikTok has been instrumental in the rise of several well-known businesses. As a result, the app is frequently mentioned in the media, and some retailers have responded by setting up special #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt sections in their stores to cater to the needs of app users.

TikTok's growing popularity indeed opens up an entirely new set of marketing opportunities, and the virality of its trends is inspiring shoppers to try new things in the process. TikTok has released some fresh insights and ideas with marketers to help them increase their product marketing efforts in the app, which could help you alter your approach to TikTok marketing.

As a starting point, according to TikTok, the platform offers new potential for marketers looking to maximize customer engagement with their products through entertainment. People are dissatisfied with a large percentage of the advertising they see online. Around a third of individuals want commerce to be more amusing, thus they're looking for engaging ad experiences in general. That's what TikTok excels at: creating short, engaging videos that keep users browsing through their feeds. There's no better way to tap into those similar trends for brands than to create TikToks instead of commercials on the site, which is how many eCommerce retailers are seeing success.

TikTok further mentions that its algorithm and 'hyper-relevant For You page' are two more major advantages in this regard:

While other content streams are based on whom a person follows, the For You page is based on what videos a user likes, shares, and revisits. A person whose For You page shows videos about makeup or home decor is likely to be interested in those topics.

TikTok's focus on content rather than artists or personalities means it has the opportunity to feature content from a wider variety of sources. TikTok's algorithm is also very good at detecting what you like and showing you more of it (as anyone who's spent more than an hour scrolling through the app can attest to), with its full-screen presentation format also providing directly indicative signals that the algorithm can then use to further tailor its recommendations to each viewer. As TikTok points out, this works well for regular clips as well as displaying relevant products, so keep that in mind as you develop your strategy.

Tilt further emphasizes that Community Commerce helps discovery by encouraging users to produce amusing content instead of brands to share their own. This information is then disseminated and enjoyed by the fans of the original authors who created it. Word-of-mouth marketing has been digitized, and this gives brands the potential to communicate with customers in a way that promotes brand awareness, favorability, and sales.

Leveraging TikTok's community sharing and remix culture may be a wonderful method to raise brand awareness in this regard, and collaborating with experienced producers on the platform can assist to fuel this strategy, as they try to put your product in line with audience expectations in the app.

Last but not least, according to TikTok, its ever-evolving eCommerce features let consumers jump from "discovery to action in a split second":

Their For You page features movies that introduce them to new items. Once they've engaged with the content in these videos, they're more likely to visit the brand's website to explore around or make a purchase. All of this happens within the TikTok app, and it's so seamless that users may return to their feeds and resume the process right away.

With the holiday season rapidly coming and TikTok continuing to lead the monthly app download rankings, it may be worthwhile to try with TikTok marketing and see what results you can achieve, especially through influencer relationships or platform specialists. Although it's a highly addicting site, you may use it to your advantage by leveraging it with your promotions.