Uduku is a former Asos and eBay employee who is convinced TikTok will rival these, Facebook and many other players in the social media retail space. She outlined three crucial elements in TikTok Shop, namely:
· Shop Tab: this shows deals and offers based on TikTok users’ pre-existing content and data footprint, “so a brand must have high quality images, complete product details and so on” to maximise the eyeballs it gets.
· Shoppable videos: make in-app purchases easy and utilise reply functions, voiceover features and a number of other such tools, especially via the Shoppable Video Center that is a good entry mechanism for creators.
These videos help those wishing to sell on the social media platform to do it in the most effective way. The criteria for success outlined by Uduku included subtitles, clear sound and backgrounds, high quality video without pixelisation, real people stories etc..
“First person stories and unboxing events work well, as do instant three-second hooks [on the boilerplate homepage],” advised Uduku.
· Shoppable Lives: connects creators with audiences in real-time, backed up by features like Billboard. This allows content creators to add stickers to live videos explaining what they are about – be that a sale; a how to tutorial; product making or launch event; or a Q&A.
These concepts should be supported by pre-live teaser videos, and creator techniques to further engage audiences, such as introducing yourself to drive personalisation and presenter repetition to welcome any new joiners.
“Remember people buy from people, so don’t product push,” Uduku stressed,
Success stories on the new TikTok Shop platform were shared by Uduku, including Levitex that has educated their insomniac prone community about how to sleep better, garnering £465,000 already, and Hair Autonomy UK, “whose founder left her job at HSBC” to pursue the dream of setting up a digitally savvy startup.
You can bank on TikTok to provide an opportunity for startup or established brands to flourish.
The platform is continuing to grow its numbers, trust profile and features – to the extent that it can now be considered as a rival to Meta’s Facebook Marketplace and others in the evolving social media driven retail arena.
