← TikTok Shop Insiders
TikTok Shop Insiders
I Studied Hundreds of Listings in TikTok Shop--These 7 Tricks Make or Break Your Sales
00:24:11
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:01]
A
Welcome to TikTok Shop Insiders podcast, your source for actionable news, trends and strategies. If you want to build a thriving brand or Creator presence on TikTok shop, this is your essential listen. Let's get started. All right. Hey, everyone. Welcome to TikTok Shop Insiders podcast, your source for the latest news and strategies on TikTok shop. I am your host, Ivan. How's it going, everyone? It's been a minute since we last talked and today kind of have an interesting topic today. Pretty relevant and I think super important when it comes to TikTok shop, and that is TikTok shop listing optimization, right? So I've analyzed hundreds of maybe thousands of TikTok shop listings, especially the top sellers, right? And what really sticks out from them, what characteristics that we can pull from the leading sellers and, you know, know, optimizations that they do that you can have on your listing, right? Because, you know, you say you get that traffic and if you can improve that conversion rate from a 1% or 2%, that's doubling your sales. Right. So those optimizations are super key, and I have seven tips here to kind of help you along that process. So, yep, been super busy since we last talked right now. This is funny. So when I talk to people, when one of the things they mention is that, oh, how are your downloads doing? And they kind of follow along with how much, you know, how our downloads are doing. And, you know, last time it was tied to kind of a dinner with Pat, which is kind of cool. But, yeah, it's kind of funny. People are listening to downloads and I think I got an email today from like a podcast marketer, if you will, and they said, like, I'm in the top 10% of podcasts, which is kind of cool. You know, never really thought to be that in that position, but here I am. So, yeah, right now we're at sitting at 24,000 downloads for those following. And yeah, been a cool ride so far. So more to come. Yeah, it's been super busy right at the beginning of the year, you know, TikTok ban, all that stuff, and it's picked up quite nicely right after the TikTok ban has passed us. Lots of interest in TikTok shop and lots of kind of client success that we've had, right? So namely, in the last, you know, couple months, we've got a Couple clients to 100k a month in sales and more in sales, and that's been really, really cool to see. And yeah, just really getting these client wins and onboarding new clients. We Onboarded three just last week, which is super cool. Pretty big brands and then nine figure brand, an eight figure brand and then kind of like a startup brand that's in the niche category, more niche products. So yeah, I mean, you know, if you're interested in, in getting your, your products on TikTok shop, definitely, you know, click my calendly, schedule a call. I'd love to talk to you about it. You know, it's a opportunity you don't want to miss. You know, I'm noticing now more and more of my sales calls. A lot more kind of, I don't say honest but like I'll tell you if your product is not good or not or doesn't fit or my honest opinion. Right. I've been doing that more so recently just because, you know, I don't want people to waste their time and money on it. So anyway, yeah, schedule a call if you're interested in learning. Some other things I've been working on are YouTube shops. I've had a call about two weeks ago from the head of YouTube shops. So a Google employee, head of YouTube shops and kind of just breaking down, you know, how I can help them and they can help me. So a lot of really cool things around YouTube shops, you know, up and coming. So if you're not a seller on there, you can kind of take a look and maybe, you know, just to see if you're eligible. So yeah, that's a upcoming platform that really hasn't kind of spread its wings yet. So definitely take a look at that. YouTube shops. Yeah, and another super cool call just an hour ago. So someone from TikTok UK reached out to me and we had a call, it's regarding their podcast beyond the hashtag. And they just started it about two, three months ago, maybe a month ago. And it's TikTok kind of like it's, it's, it's ran by TikTok official TikTok UK and they're kind of highlighting the story of sellers on the UK platform on TikTok shop. So yeah, they just kind of saw what we were doing over here at TikTok shop insiders and wanted to see if there's opportunity to partner. So that's pretty awesome. I never thought that that was going to happen. I always kind of had a, a pipe dream and you know, wish it would happen or maybe, you know, one day it might. But yeah, it's here, right? So yeah, we're going to be working together, kind of have some synergy and refer each other and Just maybe even be a guest on each other's show. So pretty cool just to have someone within TikTok kind of acknowledge you. So yeah, a lot of cool stuff in the works that we've been doing over here. So I'll give you updates as time goes on. But like always we like to give you some news like what's the latest and greatest in the TikTok shop world. So up on the up Next we have TikTok is back on the Apple and Google App store, right? So when the ban happened, Apple and Google removed TikTok from their app store and that was causing a tizzy I saw on ebay, like phones for sale with the TikTok app on it for sale for like thousands of dollars, right? Because people when it got banned, people deleted it and when they it came back they weren't able to download it. And so it affected them that much that, you know, people would buy them on ebay, which is extremely crazy. So if you're listening to this and you are bummed that TikTok is not available or wasn't for a little bit, is now back on so you can go to the store and download it. Another piece of news here is TikTok launch subscriptions, right? And you know, subscribe and save is huge on Amazon and you know, for those businesses out there that have, you know, beauty products or consumables, supplements, et cetera, ltv lifetime value of a product is super important and kind of allows you to, you know, to kind of earmark multiple sales of one product and with that, you know, increases your ability to spend more, right? So if you can get, if you know one customer is going to get you, you know, two times a product, then you can spend two times the ad budget, right? And so yeah, their TikTok shop have launched it. A little bit of inside information, you are able to see it in your backend. But at the moment TikTok has to greenlight your product for sale, right? So they have a bunch of KPIs that they have to look at and see if you're approved. So it might look like you have it and then it kind of doesn't show up. So that's maybe a reason why, if you're wondering why it doesn't show up, it's TikTok has to approve it. They have their internal lists and they'll be kind of going through that. I'm sure they'll expand as time goes on. But at the moment it's kind of approval by internal TikTok so yeah, I mean, predictable revenue streams, stronger customer relationships, higher ltv. These are things that, you know, shops gives you, I'm sorry, subscription. Subscriptions give you. So keep an eye out on that. And then kind of quick note here. I was doing some research insights on TikTok Shop US and revenue in January. And so that was January is when the ban happened. Right. And so it's kind of like a shaky month, if you will. But you know, looking at Callow data and shop plus numbers here, we have $857 million in revenue. So close to, you know, you know, a billion dollars maybe. I mean, still, still kind of far away from a billion dollars. But it's getting up there. Right, but it's a month that was relatively slower, right. With the band. I'm sure people, you know, it was even down for a little bit and people kind of avoided the app. But huge numbers, revenue numbers on TikTok Shop. And it's month and yeah, it's, it's kind of crazy. So TikTok shop is definitely where it's at. Another piece of note here is campaign calendar. So we're gonna have a link in the, in the description of the podcast below. But super big in the TikTok shop space is these promotional periods. Right. And every month it seems like there's three or four. For instance, for the month of March, there's category specific ones like Spring Into Health, Spring Beauty, March Treasure Finds. Right. So these are all kind of holidays, shopping holidays that they kind of manufacture within TikTok to kind of have the brands enroll in so that they can create promotions around that shopping holiday. Right. So another one in April, Spring Into Action, Blooming Deals, Spring Spotlight Sale, Spring Break and Vacation Beauty. Right. So each category will kind of have its own holiday shopping holiday, if you will. Right. Another one is in May we have Mother's Day sale, obviously. Right. And then Memorial Day sale. Fun in the Sun. A big one is around Amazon's prime day, which is typically in July. Right. So you're going to have a big shopping holiday on TikTok in July. So again there's I think four or five a month, five or six a month and kind of some of them have TikTok funded promotions where if you enroll, TikTok will find part of that promotion for you, which is always a win. So yeah, keep an eye out. I mean, you get a million emails from TikTok, but we'll have it linked to the notes below. So check out there. All right, onto the main part of the podcast, which is Listing optimizations, right? And so what that means is essentially the product page that you have on TikTok shop, how do you optimize it? And like I said earlier, if you have a conversion rate of 1% and it turns into 2%, which is not terribly hard, maybe you can double your sales, right? And so you know, you're getting the same traffic and you can kind of double your efficiency by, by slight conversions, right. And so we actually a b tested all of these, maybe not all of them, but most of them. And kind of this is what we found is like a great, you know, list of optimizations for you. So we have seven key optimizations to make sure your TikTok shop listing is good to go. So first up is initial setup, right? This may be known, but you know, making sure that your listing runs smoothly with test orders, right? We've had a client in the past where they've had multiple fulfillment options in the backend and some orders would come into one and some in the other and then it would, it wouldn't come in correctly and kind of all headaches come up and if it doesn't come in correctly, it doesn't go out correctly and so shipping might get messed up, right? And so making sure that your fulfillment is correct in back end, you have the right amount of warehouses, it's going to the right place, it fulfills correctly and just making sure that you're on top of it, right? Because you know, one of the main factors of a optimized listing is reviews. And so if you get a product that is delivered in a weird manner or not delivered at all, you're going to get negative reviews and you want to avoid that as much as possible. So first up is your initial setup, making sure that your listings are up and that products are delivered in a timely manner. Up next is kind of general product listing optimization, right? And so the first thing I like to talk about is images. That's the first thing they see when they click that orange button on a, on a, on a affiliate's video on Amazon and other platforms. That first image, the primary image is typically pretty bare, right? It's just the product with a white background. According to TikTok, that's how it should be. But there's so many sellers on TikTok right now where you can fill up that primary image with a ton of different items, right? You can put the ingredients, you can put call outs, you can put viral on TikTok, etc. So I think as people are doing it and TikTok's allowing it, you should definitely try it, right? And so an example of that is like viral on TikTok or kind of bestseller or ingredients on there, right? And so anything to kind of differentiate yourself from competition, have five star ratings on there, et cetera. So that initial primary image is super important to get that initial bump from those eyeballs and then supporting images. One, there's a couple items here, but one thing I like to share with my clients and we implement for them is product in use, right? And so typically, well, maybe like some brands will have their product sitting on a table or kind of just sitting there or sprawled out. But what I like to do is add a human element in those pictures. And so what I mean by that is like someone holding it or if it's a face cream, then someone applying it to their face, right? And so what that does, it adds a human element to a traditionally not human space of digital marketing or digital shopping space. And so if they see a product with someone using it, they can picture themselves using it. So that's a general kind of idea of an image that you like to do. Second up and product listing optimization with your images is call outs and accolades. How do you make sure that you are representing your brand and you're communicating that your brand as best as possible. So one way that we do is accolades. So taking a look at your, you know, out of stocks, like this product went out of stock 10 times. Or maybe your review rating like this has 10,000Amazon five star reviews. That's all crazy. Or maybe it's venture backing. Like this was backed by, you know, a celebrity that, that's great. Or you know, medical claims, call outs, et cetera, right? So you definitely want to, you know, at this point visually convince the customer that your product is worth buying or looking into. Right? And so this is that the, you know, mobile shoppers are predominantly, you know, visual, right? So you want to make sure it's visually conveyed that your product is better than the rest. Another item to have in here is a comparison, right? So your item and then kind of two columns, one column your item, the other column your competitors and kind of like a, you know, a check mark, right? And so, you know, price cheaper, higher quality, better, you know, value if it's like a skincare product, you know, has this ingredient, et cetera. So really comparison and how you beat the competition. So a lot of other kind of strategies there. But, you know, those are the top three that I like to implement for our, our clients. Up next is like SEO. So keyword and search optimization, right? And making sure that your product shows up, right. And so there's multiple facets here, right? One, if someone looks for a keyword, right, like skincare, that you have that in your title, right? And so if someone search for it, search for it, you are likely to show up, right? And so you want to make sure you have the valuable keywords in your, in your title as well as, you know, TikTok's algorithm also shows it for videos, right? And if it makes the connection from other videos, right? And so the more keywords you have, the more opportunities it is to connect to, you know, videos that are popping or videos in that category, right? And so, you know, start, you know, I'm pretty sure if you're established seller, you kind of know what your main keywords are, but making sure that those are all in your title, description, etc. Kind of helps with two things. One, it's, you know, the SEO someone searches for the product, but also helps TikTok understand what videos are connected to what products, right? And what, what category keywords. Up next is customer engage. So number one was the initial setup. Number two is listing optimization with high resolution images. Number three was descriptive title, SEO, etc. And then number four is customer engagement and social proof. This one to me is the most important. And there's two things that I look at when I'm a buyer as well as affiliates look at when they're evaluating products and brands to partner with is the number of units sold and the review rating. So yeah, you want to make those, make sure those are as high as possible, right? And so, you know, me being an agency or our team being an agency, a lot of things we see is cold start brands, aka not on TikTok shop before. So they have zero reviews and zero sales, right? Couple things there. One, you can import your reviews, right? If you use yotpo on your.com, you can import those reviews onto TikTok shop. So definitely make sure to do that. And then two, you have zero sales, zero reviews, right? So you know, this is against terms of service, you know, review manipulation and you know, having people buy your product and leave a review. But you know, I would suggest you could do one or two, right? One, one or two is a better look than zero, right? And so, you know, have a friend or family buy it and kind of, you're not necessarily manipulating it, right? You can, you kind of have a friend buy it and, and see and give their honest opinion. Um, and I think that's definitely within the realm of acceptability. So, yeah, I think, you know, again, if, if you have zero on there, there's no social proof and less likely for an affiliate to pick up the product or to, to want to make a video for it. And then also less likely for a potential customer to want to buy it and, and, and, and kind of, you know, get, get that sale. So, yeah, customer engagement, social proof, making sure that, you know, you have those units sold, you have those reviews up there. So yeah, along those notes, definitely follow up with customers, especially the very beginning, message them and ask them how the product was and follow up with a review request. Right? Like, hey, how's everything going? Just checking in and then they say everything's great. Oh, it'd be great if you could leave us a review. Right. So communicating them and kind of hustling to get those first set of reviews are uber important. So. All right, up next is promotions and campaigns. So flash deals, coupons, discounts, you know, we talked about earlier, the TikTok campaigns, you know, they show up differently. They have badges on them with the TikTok campaign. So make sure that you're enrolled in all those. Right. And so I think the way I look at it is a TikTok listing is a pal, a blank slate. And the more differentiated your product can be versus competitors or what they're seeing, the better. Right? And so if you have a badge that's a different color, it kind of sticks out when you're scrolling. If you have a flash deal, obviously that's huge, right? So on the main image, you're going to get a red line that you normally don't see, right? So those, these are all like, you know, fraction or they're going to improve your conversion rate. And so the more you can have on there, the, you know, eventually it'll equate to a higher converting listing. Right? So that's number five, promotions and campaigns. All right. Up next is ongoing maintenance, right? So weekly, monthly, seasonal, weekly. I like to check performance, you know, updates, descriptions, and adjust pricing. Right? Making sure that, you know, taking like the competition, seeing what's, what's working for others and kind of adjusting your strategy. Right. It's not necessarily you have to change them all, but you want to make sure that you're checking, right? Am I priced correctly? Is my description relevant? Do I have the proper keywords? Is there a new ingredient that's popping that I can include? Right. How many, you know, do I need to adjust my reviews, et cetera, like my review count, Right. So instead of 10 million sold. I can do 11 million sold. Right. So that type of checking, another one is monthly check ins. Right. So we actually do this maybe weekly, but more, more monthly. But I have here conversion rates, right. How's your conversion rate trend over time? Right. How's your session rate over time? Right. Checking those things and making sure that you can optimize if conversion rate has gone down and you see what was, try to track down what the reason was. Maybe something reverted back to an old listing. I've had that before where a client, we were humming great, and then TikTok automatically updated the listing to be what's on Shopify. And that essentially took away all of our optimizations that we had and we noticed a conversion rate drop. Okay, well, let's take a look at the date. What happened? Take a look at the listing, you know, and kind of pinpoint it. And then once you change it back, you know, you should be in a better place. So yeah, yeah, definitely kind of those couple things of ongoing maintenance, making sure your listings are still correct. Number seven, last on our list is inventory and performance management. So definitely. So this along goes along with the first item that we had. But making sure your listing is still selling and selling well and fulfilling well. Something we like to set is low stock alerts to make sure that, you know, when there's, you know, something that's gonna run out of stock. Right? And so TikTok is kind of the blessing. The curse of TikTok is virality, right? And so if your item gets super viral, you're gonna run out of stock, right? And so knowing when that item is going to be kind of forecasted to stock out, you can change things, you can change the pricing, you can change, you can stop your outreach, you can, you know, do those, do other items, Right. So creating slow stock alerts is super important for planning, right? You want to make sure that you have all those in and yeah, those are kind of the seven optimization strategies that we like to implore for your product listings on TikTok Shop. So just to recap, we have initial setup, making sure items get to where they need to get to in a timely manner. Product listing optimization through images, making sure, you know, it looks great. Keyword search optimization and you know, copy looks is up to up to par. Social proof and customer engagement, making sure you have the units sold and you know, reviews tidied up. And obviously to me that's the most important. Promotions and campaigns, flash deals, coupons, TikTok campaigns, making sure you're a part of that, to kind of add that badge, get that differentiator in there. Ongoing maintenance, just making sure you're on track. Keep on, you know, checking back in with your, your product and, and making sure that it's, it's the way you want it to be represented. And then, you know, inventory management, making sure, low stock alerts. You know, worst case scenario, you run out of stock, and then you have to figure out what to do. Right? So you want to get ahead of that by making sure you're on top of your inventory level. So, yeah, I mean, check the show notes below for, you know, I have this in a PDF format in a checklist. So, you know, you can go ahead and click that link, download the checklist, so you have it. So Again, that's at TikTokShopInsiders.com you can join a community there. And then also in the show notes of this podcast, you'll have that optimization checklist. Guys, that concludes it for today's episode. And, oh, I think 2025 has just started off with a big boom. I know it's gonna continue that way and I'm, I'm excited for the ride. And yeah, just stay tuned to the next one. And again, a friendly reminder. Join our community tiktokshopinsiders.com if you like the information in kind of like, really enjoy the process here. Leave us a review just to let me know how it's going. Any constructive criticism, reach out to me. And if you're a brand interested in selling on TikTok shop, I'm your guy. All right, until then, catch you later. See you.