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Tips to Market and Grow Your Shopify Store on TikTok

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Tips to Market and Grow Your Shopify Store on TikTok

The e-commerce and retail industry is constantly evolving, with new trends emerging every day. One of the most recent ones combines marketing directly with shopping, called social commerce. Total annual social commerce sales will reach over $50 billion by the end of 2023, data by eMarketer.

Which leads us to TikTok, a popular social media platform for posting short-form video clips and creative content. TikTok is launching new features and collaborations favorable for e-commerce brands wanting to promote their business through social shopping, live commerce, and influencer marketing.

The platform, launched initially as a social app, appeals to creators and viewers as well as e-commerce businesses worldwide. After all, promoting a wide variety of products through highly engaging content sounds like an excellent idea, doesn’t it?

TikTok investing heavily in marketing features

TikTok is investing heavily in its new marketing avenues. According to a report by the media outlet LatePost in China, TikTok’s marketing revenue was $4 billion in 2021, with a goal to nearly triple this to $12 billion revenue share by the end of 2022. What is more, TikTok nearly doubled its size in terms of its advertising and product teams in 2021.

With the increasing popularity of influencer marketing, social commerce, and live commerce, TikTok offers limitless opportunities to creative e-commerce marketers and shouldn’t be ignored in 2022 and going forward. Let’s have a brief look at what TikTok is, then dive into some tips and best practices for marketing your brand on the platform.

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What is TikTok?

TikTok app, launched by ByteDance in China in 2016, is a social platform that allows posting short-form videos ranging from 15 seconds to 3 minutes, enabling easy video editing and adding filters and music.

The video-sharing social platform has been especially appealing to Gen-Z and Millennials. As of September 2021, nearly 50% of users were below 30 and fell into the 10-29 age range, according to Statista.

TikTok app is where e-commerce businesses, content creators, and influencers merge and come together to express their style, trends, share experiences, or promote brand awareness. That is a significant reason why, similarly to Instagram and Facebook, TikTok is starting to emphasize its e-commerce marketing features and activities.

While these features are similar to other major social platforms, several differentiating factors make TikTok marketing unique and have its advantages.

Unlike other apps and platforms, TikTok has a specific discovery algorithm that gives each clip an equal chance for virality, whether the brand or person is new to the platform or how popular the creator is. Of course, it does help to have already amassed a wide following or opt for paid campaigns, but it doesn’t only account for that; all users have a chance to go viral if their content is good.

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TikTok and Shopify integration

In 2021, TikTok launched a Shopify integration that allows sellers on the Shopify e-commerce platform to sync their products directly with the TikTok Business account. It creates a separate “storefront” on TikTok and displays all product catalogs sold on the brand’s online store directly
to their online shop and allows a direct check-out without ever leaving the app.

They realized the potential of social commerce and the growing live commerce trend. TikTok is the perfect platform for that. TikTok and Shopify revealed their partnership in October 2021 and is currently available for the US, Canada, and UK merchants; it has announced that it will be launched in other countries soon.

Their e-commerce strategy partnership allows merchants to create and manage campaigns directly on TikTok business accounts. TikTok hopes to attract brands and new users with its new features and e-commerce capabilities.

TikTok generates revenue primarily through: advertising, in-app purchases, and e-commerce features and comes with four different ad types: in-feed ads, brand takeovers, top views, branded hashtags, and branded effects.  

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TikTok e-commerce marketing tips

Even though the social media landscape is changing, with tweaks in algorithms, marketing campaign types, and rising costs, it is the place for brands and retailers to showcase their products, create more awareness, and increase sales.

What is more, brand storytelling is becoming increasingly important. Storytelling can have a tremendous and direct impact on the increase in sales and conversions. One survey found that 55% of consumers are more likely to buy if the brand has a story behind it. Social commerce is the perfect way to create and promote brand stories and directly engage with customers.

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Even though TikTok has changed its algorithms over the years, one thing remains constant – TikTok is and will remain a go-to marketing platform for the years to come. TikTok is an excellent platform for brands to create trust and connect with their customers, increase loyalty, grow sales, and actively show their brand story through high-quality and engaging content.

So, how to market your e-commerce brand on TikTok? Here are some tips to incorporate to your TikTok marketing strategy::

1. Don’t sell, entertain

As the whole concept of TikTok is entertaining its users, keeping them engaged and on the platform as long as possible, brands and retailers should think about ways to engage the consumer rather than directly sell to them.

As an example, let’s take the sportswear brand GymShark. They regularly post entertaining content revolving around gym and training with a twist of humor on TikTok using relevant influencers in the sports community and encourage user-generated content (USG) through various hashtag challenges.

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It isn’t about posting and pushing one paid ad. It is about creating the whole story around your brand so customers can follow your story. Having loyal fans on TikTok who love the store is a great way to build trust, loyalty, and engagement and grow sales simultaneously.

2. Be your authentic self

Even though TikTok’s algorithm isn’t only to favor the accounts and creators with the most followers but also great content, it is crucial to get it right. And to create good content, it is important to stay authentic on the platform.

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With so much competition and noise, it is crucial to know how to relate to the audience to stand out. Content that comes across strongly like a sales pitch or is just another paid product ad won’t get you far.

For example, let’s take a look at an independent accessories label XXL Scrunchie from Canada, active on TikTok. They regularly post authentic content about their family production process, “how-to” videos, and general business day-to-day business that brings their customers in and makes them feel like a part of the brand, which increases trust and loyalty.

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Figure out how your ideal customer and target audience would want to see and engage them. For example, test the algorithm on what else (other content) comes up in the feed by scrolling through the feeds from your brand’s point of view; this can give more insights into what kind of content appeals to the target users.

3. Live commerce – use TikTok Live feature

In 2016, China’s e-commerce behemoth Alibaba launched Taobao Live on their online shopping app Taobao, where influencers or key opinion leaders (KOLs) present various products on live-stream videos, marking a new chapter for social commerce.

Live commerce connects online broadcasts directly to e-commerce stores, allowing customers to purchase products in the videos while watching the stream, either through SMS messages or in-app messaging services. These live streams are hosted through specialized livestream shopping platforms such as ShopShops or Talkshoplive or, in this case, social media platforms Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.

TikTok launched their first live-stream event called “Holiday Shop-Along Spectacular” in December 2021, a collaboration between Walmart and TikTok.

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Ever since, the live stream shopping feature has been favored by several other e-commerce brands, including beauty brands such as E.l.f, Too Faced, and Milk Makeup, or luxury designers including Saint Laurent, JW Anderson, and Louis Vuitton.

4. Engage in conversations with your customers

To truly connect and engage with your audience, consider participating in conversations with them by replying to the comments and questions underneath your posts, as it can grow loyalty and brand trust. TikTok comments are a great place to answer any questions, have an open conversation, or explain how your products and services work.

As your responses are tagged with a “Creator badge” next to your username, it is quite clear when you, an expert in the field, have responded, liked the comment, or engaged in the conversation. When you engage with a viewer’s comments, they automatically get a notification “Liked by Creator” pop up on the app, instantly giving it a personal touch and making them feel acknowledged.

5. Follow the hashtag challenge trends

Checking the trending hashtags section is a great way to get a feel for what is popular at the time. Of course, not all trends, or perhaps none, will match one-on-one to your brands’ target audience. However, it could act as an inspiration to your TikTok content marketing strategy.

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While drafting new posts, keep an eye on what is trending and use trending hashtags to appear in front of a larger audience. However, don’t use a popular hashtag or hashtags with your content just because they are trending; always make sure they are also relevant to the content you post; otherwise, it might appear irrelevant and not interesting for the viewing audience.

6. Monitor and implement new features

A recent news post on Techcrunch from January 2022 announced that TikTok is launching several new features. These include Bitmoji-like avatars, keyword filtering on the “For You” page, group chats, audio-only live streaming, screen sharing during live streams, and subscription features, allowing subscriber-only comment sections.

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TikTok is coming up with new features to keep users engaged, and e-commerce brands can leverage these to do the same. While the algorithm is kept a secret, tracking what’s new in terms of possibilities and new features can enhance the user experience to keep your feed fresh and engaging, attract new followers, and maintain existing ones. Implementing new features helps to stay ahead of the competition.

7. Post regularly

Like other major social media platforms with several commerce features, Instagram and Facebook, TikTok has perfect posting times for maximum performance results and ROI.

Following a comprehensive study conducted by Influencer Marketing Hub, who analyzed over 100,000 TikTok posts to see a pattern for best posting times:

Monday: 6.00 am, 10.00 am, or 10.00 pm
Tuesday: 2 am, 4 am, or 9 am
Wednesday: 7 am, 8 am, or 11 pm
Thursday: 9 am, 12 am, or 7 pm
Friday: 5 am, 1 pm, or 3 pm
Saturday: 11 am, 7 pm, or 8 pm
Sunday: 7 am, 8 am, or 4 pm

Consider that TikTok often swallows users to their feeds, so users are more active before or after work hours, as we can also see from the pattern above. And most importantly, also check and consider when your followers engage most with your content, it is a trial and error process.

Grow your e-commerce with social and live commerce

Social commerce is exploding, and it seems like the next big thing in the US, and Europe is live commerce. TikTok, among other social media platforms, offers both of these features and possibilities for brands and retailers to grow their sales and customer base.

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TikTok’s expansion to several new online shopping features comes when e-commerce trends continue to explore new areas. Whereas Instagram and Facebook have been among the first to jump on the social media shopping bandwagon, TikTok is catching up to incorporate these new features into business accounts.

In 2021, Gen-Z represented a collective purchasing power of $150 billion, leaving brands to understand their unique shopping behaviors. TikTok can offer the right audience, analytical capabilities to see what they like, and excellent features such as in-app purchases and live stream shopping to catch the customers at the right time.


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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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