TikTok offers a number of different performance marketing solutions for different goals that range from lead generation (both on and off TikTok) to search ads, in-app events, driving clicks through to a website or store, and purchases.
However, there’s no denying that consumers will often drop away when directed to a link that takes them off the app – and particularly when conversions are taking place through a retail partner, FMCGs are multiple steps removed from the actual sale channel and subsequent data.
For this reason, marketers who know that their FMCG brand has an audience on TikTok may be taking a closer look at TikTok Shop. TikTok is focused on demonstrating that its platform can be used for the full marketing funnel, with the entire customer journey from research and inspiration to end purchase carried out within the app. To this end, it has created a range of ad solutions that tie into TikTok Shop, encouraging users to shop within TikTok videos, from search and the Shopping Centre, and during live shopping streams.
Yet TikTok Shop is still young and, despite TikTok’s established clout as a video-sharing social platform, brands may be hesitant to commit to an ecommerce presence there. Is it necessary for lower-funnel success on TikTok?
In this article we’ll look at:
TikTok Shop operates as an online marketplace, with all of the benefits and drawbacks that this entails: the potential of visibility and discoverability; a source of customer behaviour and performance data; ease of access to international markets (within the bounds of where TikTok Shop is available, which is still a minority of countries at this point); faster time to market; and also competition to contend with, plus the need to learn the ins and outs of an additional social and ecommerce platform.
TikTok Shop’s analytics provide insight into transactions, traffic, GMV, and the conversion rate of individual products, as well as post-purchase data like reviews, cancellations and returns, and order complaints – opening up more visibility into product performance and customer base than FMCGs selling through retail partners are typically afforded.
Brands that establish themselves on TikTok Shop also gain access to ad formats like GMV Max, an automation solution that optimises for total ROI; and Shop Ads, which come in three forms: Video Shopping Ads (shoppable videos), Product Shopping Ads (which use product listings as ad creative), and Live Shopping Ads (which promote a brand’s livestream shopping sessions). They also have the capability to host livestreamed shopping sessions – a relatively new mode of social commerce on TikTok that blends shopping with entertainment.
Sellers can handle their own order fulfilment, but they don’t have to; TikTok has a fulfilment offering, Fulfilled by TikTok (FBT), which means that FMCG brands listing on TikTok Shop won’t have to suddenly find warehouse space and develop a fulfilment operation (unless they choose to go that route). Partnering with a third-party fulfilment solution is also an option, with many companies marketing themselves as offering dedicated fulfilment for TikTok Shop.
It’s worth making the point that brands should experiment with TikTok first and build a presence there before expanding into in-app commerce: any subsequent ecommerce efforts will be much more successful if a brand has an existing TikTok following, and this provides valuable insight into what part of the brand’s customer base is present on TikTok and how to connect with it.
Dean Rojas, co-founder of agency Gassed, argued that TikTok should not be a ‘one and done’ for FMCGs when speaking to Econsultancy back in 2023: “The most common thing we hear is ‘We tried TikTok and it didn’t work.’ But I think brands forget that new platforms require a learning phase before you can reach profit,” he said.
“Every time we launch a new TikTok it takes three months to start shifting to a positive ROAS. This platform needs to be seen as an investment and not a quick cash grab.”
We recently published a round-up of how four FMCG brands are driving sales through TikTok, which examined a range of strategies being successfully used by FMCG brands including creator partnerships, performance advertising, TikTok Shop and live shopping, affiliate sales, and more.
While all of the brands we featured, such as P.Louise and Momofuku, do have a presence on TikTok Shop, a Shop presence has generally been one component of an overall strategy that drives sales both on- and off-TikTok.
Some brands will find Shop success more readily than others; beauty brands, for example, thrive on TikTok and therefore tend to be heavily represented in any list of TikTok case studies. TikTok’s short video format lends itself extremely well to demonstrating makeup looks, showing haircare products and styles in action, explaining skincare routines, and more. Subsequently, TikTok users who are in the market for beauty products will seek out these types of videos, engage more readily, and become more likely to buy (or buy again).
The same will not necessarily be true for every type of FMCG product – and as anyone reading this article will be well aware, FMCG contains multitudes, spanning personal care and beauty, snacks and confectionery, baby care, household products, and everything in between.
Posting organically on TikTok can help marketers determine where the customer base for their brand is on the platform (if it’s there at all) and how to cater to it.
It’s also important to explore a variety of tactics for converting customers. One FMCG brand that has driven considerable sales volume thanks to TikTok is Scrub Daddy, a smiley face-shaped sponge that went viral on the platform thanks to light-hearted and humorous content and an iconic product appearance.
While Scrub Daddy didn’t launch on TikTok – it was already a popular product due to making its debut on Shark Tank in 2012 and subsequently selling through QVC – the brand has reached a younger audience through TikTok and increased its male customer base, after setting out to move beyond a traditionally older female demographic, according to a 2022 AdAge interview.
Scrub Daddy is listed on TikTok Shop and even put out a call for a TikTok Livestream host in August 2024 – but the brand’s image is geared around being self-aware, and Scrub Daddy’s social media managers have said that they are wary of going too far with the hard sell.
Despite this stance, the brand has enjoyed a rising retail sales due in part to its social media marketing, which is reportedly Scrub Daddy’s sole marketing channel.
@scrubdaddy They call him daddy… crocs. daddy. Want your own? Enter the giveaway: -Follow @crocs and @scrubdaddy -Comment “????” below -Winners will be randomly selected Giveaway closes on July 31st 2024 at 9:00 am MT #CrocDaddy #smile #crocstok #smile #croctok @Crocs ♬ original sound – Scrub Daddy
Scrub Daddy, seen here promoting a giveaway with Crocs, has made waves (and sales) on TikTok with entertaining and tongue-in-cheek content.
The case of Lifebuoy Shampoo, a herbal shampoo brand sold in Pakistan, shows that TikTok works even for brands who sell purely through retail partners. Lifebuoy ran a six-month In-Feed campaign on TikTok aimed at driving both brand awareness and sales. The campaign reportedly reached 85% of the brand’s target audience and generated 6.8 million clicks to retailer websites, at a 35% lower cost per click when compared to the industry average.
Faizan Zaheer, Senior Brand Manager at Lifebuoy Shampoo, stated that “The relevance of our messaging [during the campaign], combined with TikTok’s innovative ad formats, played a crucial role in our e-commerce success this year.”
High-profile brands from Gucci to Crocs are well-known for marketing on TikTok, but fewer major brands actually list their products on TikTok Shop. L’Oréal Paris has held high-profile partnerships with TikTok and availed itself of live shopping, and K18 – a premium haircare brand owned by Unilever – has incorporated TikTok Shop into its overall strategy for the platform.
However, most big-name brands are notably absent from its listings (although their products may be for sale by resellers – whether authorised or not). There are various potential reasons for this absence: at the time of writing, TikTok Shop is primarily the domain of low-priced products, and so anything higher-end can be a difficult sell by comparison.
Michelle Miller, CMO at K18, has explained why the brand’s products are listed on TikTok Shop despite the fact that their pricing does not fit with TikTok Shop’s typical profile. “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,” she told a Vogue Business podcast.
The brand gauged that a TikTok Shop presence was worthwhile as, “…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.”
Experts that Econsultancy spoke to for our social commerce predictions for 2025 pointed to a potential lack of trust from consumers in social commerce transactions, which may also cause major brands to hesitate. Irving Shark, Head of Companion at Billion Dollar Boy, noted that, “A significant majority of US consumers still view social commerce as a discovery tool rather than a reliable channel for transactions. Recent research found that three quarters of consumers browse products on social platforms but choose to complete their purchases on retailer websites.”
If major brands can enjoy the best of both worlds by marketing their products on TikTok but having consumers follow them off the platform to make a purchase, the logic may go: why disrupt what’s working?
Päivi Korvela, formerly of Unilever and currently TikTok Shop’s Ecommerce Head of Beauty, argued that big brands have been to slow to master TikTok but are coming around. “Currently, the landscape is heavily dominated by small and medium size businesses… Big companies have been in my opinion way too slow, but they are gradually waking up. L’Oréal is paving the way and others are following,” she said.
It’s telling that major brands in the beauty space have been quicker to move, perhaps perceiving that the opportunities TikTok Shop presents outweigh the risks. Ultimately it may be about just that: opportunity. As Billion Dollar Boy’s Shark noted, social commerce – at least in markets like the US and UK – is still new to and untrusted by consumers, and so major brands are largely playing a ‘wait and see’ game.
In some categories like beauty and fashion, social commerce has seen more take-up, and thus the new channel has the potential to pay dividends for brands of various sizes. In most others, it is smaller and medium-sized brands that are pivoting and experimenting with TikTok Shop because they have more to gain and less to lose.
Brands will need to weigh up whether the opportunity that TikTok Shop has to offer is worth any potential risks, or whether they are content to use its other capabilities while abstaining from direct ecommerce sales for now.