TikTok has, for a while now, been a social channel of huge influence, birthing trends and shaping purchase decisions (just think of the infamous hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt).
Despite this, however, TikTok is more thought of as an upper-funnel brand- and awareness-building platform than a direct driver of sales. ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, has been working to establish TikTok’s credentials as a full-funnel marketing channel, with bottom-of-the-funnel performance solutions, an affiliate programme, and an ecommerce platform (TikTok Shop) that can be integrated with advertising to streamline the path to purchase.
What do these solutions look like in action, and how are FMCG brands in particular – from beauty and personal care to meal and snack brands – using TikTok to drive lower-funnel conversions and sales? I’ve taken a close look at the TikTok strategies of four brands who do just that.
Founded by beauty artist Paige Williams, P.Louise is a creator-led pureplay brand that has grown thanks to the strength of its founder’s following online. Unsurprisingly, this makes selling through online channels like TikTok second nature to Williams.
Williams told Grazia Daily how the success of the brand is grounded in commitment to community and use of social media – as well as a focus on creating high-quality and affordable products.
In fact, TikTok is the main sales channel for the brand, with the platform proving itself in the beauty category as a driver of impulsive purchases.
P.Louise has made use of TikTok’s lower-funnel ads products – Spark Ads and Video Shopping Ads – to facilitate those impulses. For example, in 2022, P.Louise ran a campaign from 1st November to 5th December to coincide with the holiday shopping season and in particular Black Friday, targeting female shoppers aged 18-55 (see the TikTok case study page).
The brand used Spark Ads, a native ad format that turns organic TikTok posts from the account holder or another creator (with permission) into an ad placement, to promote posts and creative featuring their best-selling products. Some of these took the form of tutorial videos that showed the viewer how to get the most out of each product. Spark Ads and Video Shopping Ads helped to reduce the steps between ad view and product purchase, making it easier for shoppers to act on the decision to buy.
The campaign drove conversions for both TikTok Shop and the P.Louise website, netting a ROAS of 20.8 and achieving more than 10,000 completed purchases in a single campaign.
P.Louise has also had success with its affiliate programme, reportedly paying out more than US $0.5 million in affiliate commissions during Black Friday 2024, during which the brand brought in $7.8 million total GMV.
P.Louise’s name is frequently referenced in conjunction with TikTok live shopping: a newer (to TikTok) format that combines live streaming with ecommerce. Hosts – frequently influencers or brand founders – spend several hours during the livestream introducing, demonstrating, and discussing products that are available to buy, often initiating giveaways and announcing limited-time discounts for livestream viewers.
In July 2024, P.Louise broke records with a 12-hour livestream making it the highest-earning UK brand on TikTok Shop, bringing in £1.5 million in revenue over the course of the stream and selling more than 96,000 items.
Undoubtedly, the discounts helped to move sales as some products were made available for as little as £1 during the livestream, but Williams successfully engaged fans during the stream and got more of P.Louise’s products into the hands of buyers. Live shopping events double as entertainment, with viewers tuning in to enjoy a skilled influencer talking up products; the livestream gives a chance for them to see products in action, which helps nudge buyers along the purchase funnel.
Beauty products particularly benefit from this type of demonstration as viewers can understand how to apply them and get a sense of how the product looks and works. This may well be why beauty has emerged as a banner category for live shopping on TikTok, with other beauty brands like L’Oréal and Made by Mitchell pulling in significant sales figures during live events. (I’ve written more on this for our sibling publication Marketing Week).
Live shopping is still a long way from becoming ingrained in the social media and ecommerce landscape in regions like the UK and the US, compared with say, China or Indonesia, where it is a major phenomenon. However, brands like P.Louise – aided by TikTok’s promotional push around the format – are finding it to be a useful part of their social commerce toolkit.
Hair product brand K18 is no stranger to TikTok, having originally launched on the platform in December 2020, originally creating content that targeted the hair stylist community as its products were only available in salons.
A year later, it used the platform as a springboard to promote its launch on Sephora, partnering with TikTok to create the sponsored hashtag #K18hairflip in which video creators “flipped” their healthy, strong hair (all thanks to K18 products, of course).
Thanks to a savvy approach to TikTok in which the brand posts a mixture of how-to and product demonstration content, often featuring expert stylists; and jokey ‘meme’ content; K18 has built up a strong following of more than 200,000 users and enjoys an organic presence in the ‘hairtok’ community. As one user trying out the K18 molecular repair mask says in her video, “You’ve probably already seen this all over your For You Page”.
Influencer partnerships are a key plank of K18’s approach to TikTok, and the brand’s CMO told Marketing Brew that K18 has 15 pro-stylist influencer ambassadors on its payroll. K18 has also entered into partnerships with much larger celebrity figures, such as gymnast Simon Biles and beauty and fashion influencer Alix Earle. The right partnership can be a powerful driver of sales: K18 partnered with Earle for the launch of its AirWash Dry Shampoo and the product sold out, with CMO Michelle Miller saying, “We couldn’t keep it in stock this year.”
@alixearle I’m confused on how this works so well, it’s magical! @K18 Hair @sephora #k18results #k18partner ♬ original sound – Alix Earle
Beauty and fashion influencer Alix Earle promotes the new AirWash dry shampoo for K18, a collaboration that resulted in the product selling out. (Source: @AlixEarle on TikTok)
K18 is also unusual as a premium brand that has a presence on TikTok Shop. TikTok Shop’s products are primarily low-priced goods, and Miller told a Vogue Business podcast that, “We don’t really discount our product, and what we’ve seen is TikTok Shop is a place with a lot of discounting – so … being available there is important, but we aren’t heavily discounting.” K18 does make some exclusive offers and bundles available on TikTok Shop.
The brand found that TikTok Shop’s heavy link to product demonstration videos and the short journey from research and inspiration to purchase made being present there worthwhile. “TikTok is the best way that you can see the value of a product … We can show how long a product will last to you; how little of the product you need. How visible the results are,” Miller said on the podcast.
“…we knew that [TikTok is] a search engine also, and that as people are researching what they’re buying, a lot of times people go to the website to see all of the slick content, all of the science; but they’re going to social media to see it in real life.”
Momofuku is the consumer goods arm of Momofuku Noodle Bar, run by renowned chef and restauranteur David Chang, which aims to make ‘restaurant-quality’ food available to cook at home.
The brand uses TikTok to great effect to promote and drive sales of its ramen noodles, which fit seamlessly into TikTok’s existing culture of promoting easy home recipes and food ‘hacks’, particularly for instant noodles. Momofuku’s organic TikTok content is a combination of posts to promote its restaurant locations and posts to promote its line of products, often incorporating them into recipe videos. (The brand also has a dedicated account for its consumer product line, Momofuku Goods, but it seems to no longer be in use).
A major ingredient in Momofuku’s ubiquity on TikTok is the success of its affiliate programme, with which numerous TikTok creators have signed on to create videos of themselves promoting Momofuku’s ramen noodles in exchange for sales commissions. The Momofuku affiliate videos have the benefit of boosting brand and product awareness as TikTok creators demonstrate and talk up the products (often showing how Momofuku noodles can be prepared in different ways) while also moving sales.
At times, Momofuku offers dedicated bundles through TikTok Shop, adding a jar of its famous ‘chili crunch’ or another bonus item to its variety packs, and at other times its products are available at a steep discount exclusive to TikTok. Although these drive urgency and move sales on TikTok, they may have the effect of cannibalising its in-store sales through supermarkets, as many TikTok users contrast the cheaper price available on TikTok with the ‘expensive’ recommended retail price in-store.
TikTok’s affiliate programme is open to a wider range of creators than a rival platform like Instagram, where a creator with fewer than 10,000 followers is unlikely to have many prospects. On TikTok, the required threshold is 5,000 followers, although TikTok briefly experimented with lowering the threshold to 1,000 followers in mid-2024.
TikTok has been leaning further into affiliate marketing as it looks to establish itself further as an ecommerce and advertising destination, most recently integrating with social commerce app LTK, which specialises in fashion, home, beauty and fitness products. Some TikTok creators have also gained the ability to add affiliate links to their uploads, facilitating in-stream shopping and driving direct traffic to brand product pages.
The Snax Lab is a home-grown business started by two childhood friends that ships ‘exotic’ international and limited-edition snacks to buyers across the United States.
The brand has built up a following of nearly 13,000 followers on TikTok since its launch in 2023. The founders use videos to showcase snacks from their snack boxes and give an insight into production and shipping by filming themselves packing orders and (as the business has grown) moving cases of product around in their warehouse. Fans of the brand frequently comment on TikTok videos to request their order be packed on camera.
The Snax Lab’s founders credit TikTok advertising for growing the brand to the size that they can “quit [their] day jobs, get a warehouse, and even hire employees”. The brand has employed a range of TikTok’s ad formats including Spark Ads, Product Shopping Ads – which showcase product images in TikTok’s Shopping Centre and search – Video Shopping Ads, and Live Shopping Ads.
The ads reportedly achieved both upper-funnel brand awareness – particularly helping to grow The Snax Lab’s following on TikTok – and lower-funnel sales, bringing in gross revenue of more than $100,000 over the course of four months. The brand also enjoyed more than 4,000 unique purchases during the course of the ad campaign and increased their average order volume from 5-10 per day to more than 100.
The Snax Lab has also built a following for their TikTok live shopping streams, which are often asked after by fans, and which the team uses to hold giveaways, premiere new and unreleased products, and offer limited-time discounts.
@thesnaxlab Replying to @Hagen New THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!! #snacks #exoticsnacks #giftbundle #packingorders ♬ Olympo Rave – Kobe Mane & SoyFlowers
The Snax Lab responds to a fan comment and packs their order on-camera. (Source: @TheSnaxLab on TikTok)
TikTok has attracted significant interest as a platform for marketing due to its huge userbase and global reach and the engaging, compelling nature of its videos (among other things), all of which can be powerful tools for FMCG brands to employ.
At the same time, being present on TikTok – and even using its ad solutions – isn’t a guarantee of success with a brand’s desired audience. All of the brands examined in this article have built their success on a foundation of a strong organic presence on TikTok, which involves understanding the types of posts that resonate with TikTok’s audience.
This shows TikTok users why a brand is worth following and buying from, builds trust, and helps marketing reach further (it also facilitates things like creator partnerships and gives marketing teams a sense of what creative will land with users).
Tapping into the trends and communities that exist on TikTok, from #hairtok to #beautytok, the Get Ready With Me (GRWM) trend, recipes and food challenges, cleaning hacks, and more, will give FMCG brands a significant boost on TikTok and make advertising and marketing many times more effective. It is also an excellent way to test the waters before committing ad spend.
As a brand marketer, conducting research and looking at what has been effective for competitors is key when developing TikTok into a channel that will ultimately convert and bring revenue.
TikTok Shop and social commerce trends for 2025: We ask the experts