Dropshipping with TikTok! …wait, what?
Not Facebook, not Instagram, not even YouTube… but TIKTOK of all places?! That’s right! In 2023, TikTok is the powerhouse you need to focus on. Because as much as the average person (and entire countries) dislike Tiktok for being “cringy” and an absolute waste of time; it has immeasurable business potential just waiting for you to tap into it.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s still absolutely a waste of time from a consumer point of view. ahem, just like any other social media and video platform out there (Except perhaps the knowledge-based ones). But from a BUSINESS point of view, TikTok can be an absolute blessing for you! Combined with the fact that it has never been easier for you to start your own dropshipping business, TikTok can seriously boost your sales, brand recognition and long term growth if you play your cards right.
So instead of setting it aside and labeling it with biases as a “cringe” platform, why not harness its immense power for your own financial freedom? For all you know, it could turn your online Ecommerce dropshipping business around from a tiny store to a big booming brand sensation!
If you need more reasons on why it’s a good idea, we’ve already covered that well in depth as to what Tiktok is and why you should seriously start dropshipping with it. This article won’t go through the why, but rather the how (though we will dive into some statistics).
This blogpost will teach you everything you need to know about dropshipping with TikTok as a beginner. We’ll be diving deep into detail about all the ways you can leverage this platform for your ultimate success, so buckle up!
We’ll discuss several ways in which you can advertise on TikTok, as well as how to develop and grow your own profile for more reliable sales. To top that, we’ll also share with you some tips as well as the pros and cons of advertising on this infamous platform. You’ll find out everything you need to know to start selling instantly on the next biggest social media platform in the world!
So let’s go!
WARNING: You will have to create a Tiktok account and actually use the platform, so proceed with caution. Seriously, it can become easily addictive if you fall in the consumer trap, so stay sharp.
Quick Dropshipping Recap…
Dropshipping is a business model where you sell products you don’t have in stock and buy them as needed from other suppliers. This way, you can specialize in an audience niche or two and sell many different products online to make a commission (profit) on each item sold. All without the sweat of carrying any inventory for your shopify store. Pretty sweet, right?
By the way, if you don’t have a shopify dropshipping store, check out how you can set up your very first one in less than 30 minutes by clicking right here.
Now back to the show. You see, the reason why social media is so vital in today’s age for a dropshipping store is that it offers you a way to get products in front of your audience and develop a recurring customer base by engaging with them. One of these brand new social media sites happens to be Tiktok; A relatively new platform you can use to advertise products on.
And whether you like it or not, TikTok Dropshipping is a huge growing opportunity for online sellers to take advantage of in this digital revolution. Especially if your products or services are catered towards an audience that’s between a 20 – 40 age group (teens, young adults, etc.). Have your doubts? These numbers will blow them all away.
Major Statistics: Why Use Tiktok For Dropshipping?
There was a time when people could make fun of you for calling your professional career as “Youtuber” or an “Influencer”. They could mock you and tell you to ‘get a real job’ time and time again. But those same people are now looking into how to become Youtubers and influencers themselves! Because funnily enough, these internet stars make a WHOLE lot more than regular job workers (all while having more fun, freedom and happiness). They manage to promote dropshipping products and sometimes even their own products and services, growing a brand to the skies. It’s pretty crazy!
Tiktok is the latest platform that has encouraged this boom. You’ve probably heard about TikTok dozens of times now and how much impact it’s been having lately (even Facebook and YouTube have pushed their platforms to be more Tiktok-like, what with YouTube shorts and Facebook stories).
Tiktok, formerly known as musical.ly, has just crossed about 1 BILLION global monthly users as of 2022, making it the #3 platform in terms of monthly users, right behind Facebook and Instagram.
Furthermore, according to Statista, as of January of 2022, the United States had the largest TikTok audience in the world. With over 136.5 million active users engaging with the social media platform and 200M+ downloads. Indonesia followed with 99 million, Brazil with 74 million and Russia with over 50 million registered users. And while teens consist of a significant portion of TikTok users, 75% of US TikTok users are aged 20 or older, which means there’s market potential for every seller. It’s important to point out that while TikTok’s user base is often associated with Gen Z, there are still a lot of brands successfully selling on the platform, even though their target audience is older.
These are just a few of the mind blowing statistics that this platform has been shattering across the globe. Tiktok’s algorithm makes it easy and fun to advertise your products and demonstrate to people how it works, all in a completely natural and non-salesy way. US sellers and dropshippers can especially benefit from the rise of Tiktok and increase their ecommerce profits exponentially.
Dropshipping with TikTok in 2023 is a great way to make some serious income. It is the best way to engage with a niche audience, and create interesting content to promote your products or services. This is why lots of eCommerce businesses keep tapping into this ever-growing market.
But despite so much potential, there are some downsides to using the platform for business growth…
Pros & Cons Of Using Tiktok Dropshipping
Even though TikTok is one of the hottest platforms to market your products right now, some dropshippers are doubting if it’s worth investing in.
General Pros of Tik Tok
We’ve already mentioned how many active users Tiktok has and how its younger audience tends to attract many business owners. This makes your marketing efforts more efficient because organic traffic and ads are essentially the same in Tiktok. Basically, the ads you run are… just another “Tiktok video” on the platform. So rather than feeling like ads, they feel like just another video.
TikTok as a social commerce platform not only offers a high traffic rate but also an awesome engagement rate between creators, marketers, influencers, etc. In summary, increasing your brand awareness or impressions along with potential leads and sales flows pretty well on this platform.
Tiktok also offers competitive ad rates and has become more engaging than other platforms out there, which means your products get noticed and understood. Short-form videos are the perfect fit for today’s generation, which has an attention span less than that of a goldfish. You can quickly demonstrate your products in a concise and natural manner, and if the target audience likes it — they’ll make the purchase!
General Cons of Tik Tok
Pretty side of TikTok aside for a moment, let’s talk about the problems.
Although TikTok has an amazing volume where you can easily interact with many audiences organically; if you really want to push some sales up, you need to invest in advertising TikTok video content (especially if you’re only starting out). The catch here is that you may need to place down at least $50 per day to make an impactful campaign.
This is the difference between Facebook ads and TikTok, on Facebook although there is no actual limit to what you can start with, the minimum required for some decent results is roughly around $20. So if you are a small business owner starting your TikTok Dropshipping journey, investing this much per day may be difficult to sustain.
Another disadvantage of this platform is the type of content you create. The high amount of engagement rate you get is not only because of the app’s algorithm, but also the quality of content you may create.
For example, the majority of TikTokers develop low-quality but high impactful content with videos of lip sync singing, quirky dances, and comedy satire. But when it comes to selling on TikTok, your content should be top-notch and entertaining in order to drive quality traffic that will not only engage with your audience, but also encourage purchase.
Not to mention, you will also be competing with a high amount of daily content creators in an app that has millions of constantly active users engaging with all sorts of content — it’s a fight for people’s attention!
It is also important to point out that you won’t be able to target desktop users primarily since the app is pretty much mobile-centered. This means that your marketing efforts will have to go to iOS and Android. This may not necessarily be a con, but remember that you won’t get desktop users in the bag.
Another common concern with TikTok is regarding privacy; that your data and information may be used against you, which can deter people from creating an account and sharing their identity altogether. But what can we say? In this age of the internet, no one’s hidden forever. Even Facebook leaked your data without you knowing. It’s just one of the trade-offs of the modern technological world that we have to accept and live with, for better or worse. So if you can’t hide, you might as well start profiting off of it!
How To Start Dropshipping With TikTok In 2023
Tiktok Dropshipping is a must going into New Year 2023, we’ve established that much so far. In order to use Tik Tok for selling products, you’ll need to have a Shopify business account and link it to your Tik Tok account.
Find out how to create your Shopify account in less than 30 minutes right here. Of course if you don’t have a Tik Tok account, you’ll have to create that too (Personal branded accounts with a name, face and relatable identity tend to work better in the long run) Feelings sell, always remember that.
Prerequisite: Create A Tiktok Account & Connect It To Your Shopify Store
Once your store is ready, connect it to Tiktok. The process is fairly simple, just head on over to the Shopify App store and download the TikTok app there.
Once you’re done with the installation process, the TikTok channel will appear on the left sidebar of your Shopify Admin Dashboard. From there, you will be able to connect your TikTok For Business account in order to have your TikTok shop.
After you connect your account to your store successfully, you will see a Tik Tok Business Dashboard which is where you will be able to control the Tik Tok business account.
This is where you will be able to create an interesting video ad, target your audience, view your ad management toolbar to see insights reporting, etc. When you’re a TikTok merchant, you can display product inventory through the Shop tab on your feed. Customers will be able to browse around your store and see what products you offer.
Basically, whenever any shopper taps the bag icon in your video or clicks on a product in your Shop tab, they can view the product’s name, description, photos, price and the direct link to buy the product right from your Shopify store (pretty nifty way to sell, to be honest).
This shopping feature is available for online sellers that have their product catalog connected to TikTok for Business. Tiktok has various ad types you can run, that we’ll discuss next.
Once you’ve completed this, you can use any of the 6 strategies below to start making sales. 3 of these are marketing methods (Ads, Organic Content & Influencers), while the latter 3 are ways to help you boost your efforts and sales. Keep in mind they’re unranked, which means you can go ahead with whichever one you like best, or whichever combination you prefer. Some people prefer using Influencers only, while some rely on organic content and some prefer using a combination of ads, Influencers and organic reach; the choice is yours after all.
1) Run Great Ads On TikTok
TikTok Ads resembles Facebook Ads to some extent, with how we set them up, that is. Similar to Facebook, TikTok offers an easy-to-use platform where you can spend your time on everything regarding targeting, ad creation, insight reports, and ad management tools.
The main difference is how those ads are displayed to the audience. Here are the 5 main types of TikTok ads you can run for your businesses:
1) In-Feed Ads: TikTok’s In-Feed Ads look and feel similar to the ads you see when tapping through Instagram stories. These ads appear in between user videos as they’re scrolling through the “for you” page. These type of ads suit dropshippers best.
2) Brand Takeover: Brand Takeover ads appear as soon as you open the app, hence the word “Takeover”. With these ads, you will be able to present a full-screen video to your target audience as soon as they open TikTok. The platform makes sure that users only see one Brand Takeover ad per day, making them quite expensive.
3) TopView: TikTok TopView ads are like an upgraded version of In-Feed Ads. TopView ads appear at the top of TikTok’s “for you” page and can be up to 60-seconds of full-screen video with auto-play and sound.
4) Branded Hashtag Challenge: In these ads, a brand creates their own unique hashtag and pays TikTok to display it to their target audience. We don’t recommend using these for dropshipping stores though, certainly at the start since a Branded Hashtag Challenge campaign can easily cost thousands of dollars.
5) Branded Effects: Lastly, TikTok offers brands the opportunity to design their own filters within the app. These can then be shared by users, which allows users to directly interact with your brand in a fun and unique way.
Steps To Setup Your First TikTok Ad Campaign:
If you have prior experience with Facebook Ads, then setting up a TikTok ad campaign will be relatively easy for you. Simply login to TikTok Ads Manager. Then, click on the “Create” button to start working on your first campaign!
Next up, you will have to choose an advertising objective. If you are creating a campaign for your dropshipping store, “Conversions” is likely the right one for you.
The last step is setting up the campaign name and budget. This budget can be set either at the campaign level or at the ad group level.
Once you’re done setting up the campaign, you can continue creating the ad group and the ads!
For a detailed explanation of creating your first TikTok Ads, check out TikTok’s help page for creating a campaign, ad groups, and setting up fresh ads.
Best Practices For Tiktok Ads:
Social media ad platforms tend to work similarly to each other (since they’re always copying each other, after all). Generally, you want to research your audience thoroughly, use lookalike audiences, spy on what others are doing and just create engaging videos that explain, demonstrate and showcase your wonderful products. Luckily, Adserea has it all done for you for over thousands of products. The research, the data, the audience… all of it!
Adserea also has a brand new Tiktok agency account program you can check out, in case you face troubles with bans and restrictions. Check out Tiktok’s ad policies and guidelines here.
2) Grow Your Own Profile (Organic Reach)
When people hear about “Organic growth”, they only think about posting content and then waiting decades for their profile to explode. But what if I told you, there’s a lot more to it than that? Infact, Organic Content on TikTok grows way faster as compared to Youtube channels, Facebook pages and Instagram profiles.
While Facebook pages are dead and Instagram profiles are not growing due to new algorithm changes; TikTok keeps flourishing by putting their content first in front of the right audience.
Organic Content advertising involves creating your business’s own TikTok account and posting content on that profile. This way, you kind of become an influencer yourself! You can choose to make content around products, helpful tips, DIYs, product comparisons, etc. Once again, just get creative and experiment with new ideas!
By consistently posting content around your niches and products, you’ll gain more and more followers. With time, you can keep them engaged and coming back by orchestrating things like giveaways and contests on top of discounts, deals and promos.
While the two popular marketing methods involve spending money (TikTok ads and influencer marketing), One main edge of advertising your business on TikTok through organic content is that it’s basically free (though slow, because organic growth is like that). But all it really requires is a little time, dedication and patience.
You can engage with your audiences by replying to comments, going live, etc. Building your own business page on TikTok can get you free traffic, which means that you can save on ad costs and enjoy a higher profit margin!
Another benefit of having and growing your own profile is that TikTok and Shopify now go hand-in-hand (as we discussed how to integrate the two together above). This happened in August 2021, when TikTok announced a new shop tab expansion for Shopify merchant profiles. This partnership now allows Shopify businesses to display all their products in the TikTok app, pretty crazy, isn’t it?
And to think this feature wasn’t available just over a year ago. It makes having your own TikTok business page become even more valuable, as your followers can browse through all your products straight from the TikTok app. It’s extremely invaluable.
And once your customers get interested in a product or two, TikTok will link them directly to your dropshipping store for the checkout process. This partnership has made selling through TikTok way TOO simple not to take advantage of.
Although…
Keep in mind that growing with only organic content takes a lot of time in order to build up a following. Not to mention, creating content is a grind, so you’ll have to constantly think about new videos to create, publish them, and manage comments/questions from your followers.
Using Tiktok for dropshipping with organic content is not for the ones that give up too fast, or seek immediate results rather than long-term sustainability. Ideally, if you’re just getting started, we recommend using a combination of ads and organic approach, and expanding to influencer marketing once you’re making consistent profits.
3) Use Popular Niche Influencers
Word of mouth is a powerful force. How likely are you to buy something if a trusted friend refers it to you? Definitely more as compared to someone in an ad telling you to buy it, right? People will gladly take the word of a friend, or someone they admire, respect and look up to… Rather than trust a stranger. This is PRECISELY why influencer marketing is so amazing. If an influencer you partner with shows how amazing your product is to their audience, then it’ll definitely cause a sales spike in your charts.
Advertising your products using TikTok influencers is a fine strategy that is pretty similar to using Instagram influencers. TikTok influencers are just regular people who’ve managed to build a large following. While they don’t have a celebrity status and people don’t necessarily gawk wherever they go; they still have power, and hence “influence”. Because of the influencers’ authority and reach, they’re able to showcase not only their products, but YOUR products to their followers as well and get them to purchase.
Let us show you how it works in three simple steps:
1) Search & Approach Influencers:
The first step is to find a good TikTok influencer. This step is crucial, as the person you choose must have a good following and fit your business/product (you can’t just go up to any influencer and tell them to promote your products). Finding the right influencer is key. You don’t have to get someone that has millions of followers, but simply getting someone who has perhaps 10K+ for a start can show you the potential. The more popular an influencer is, the higher they will charge you for promoting their products. Adserea’s TikTok spy tool can help you find amazing influencers on top of amazing products (and analytics) that fit your brand.
2) Influencer Promotes Your Product:
After negotiating a price and sending the influencer your product, they will make a video about it, reviewing it or demonstrating how it works. The goal is to get as many of their followers to click on the link and check out your website to view your entire catalog. This works similar to how instagram Influencers do paid partnerships with brands, but once again the key here is choosing the right influencer. For example, choose a fitness influencer if you’re selling sports goods, or a chef/home-cook if you’re marketing Kitchenware products. The influencer should match your niche and product catalog.
3) Hit Those Sales:
If you play your cards right and the influencer’s followers deem your product worthy, then they’re going to buy! In the end, you will be able to add all revenues and subtract the costs to see if working with that particular influencer was profitable for you or not.
You will find TikTok influencers of various sizes, ranging from smaller ones, the “micro-influencers” with 5k to 30k followers, to the biggest ones with over 100M followers. Starting out, it’s good to target micro influencers on a budget to see how it works for you. Micro influencers will charge you less, as it is generally easier to create a large following on TikTok compared to Instagram or any other platform for that matter (as stated earlier). Due to the low costs of TikTok’s new influencers, it’s a great strategy for low budget dropshippers. Marketing using TikTok influencers allows you to expose your product to thousands of people at affordable costs.
Due to the nature of TikTok, people who self-create unique, quality content can become an influencer in less than a year (or overnight if they go viral, but that’s a rarity).
But Tiktok influencer marketing has its negatives too, as you have little control over the type of audience you are targeting. Sometimes, an influencer can have a generalist audience rather than a dedicated niche one. This means that the products you advertise through them won’t necessarily reach the right people, especially if they’re quite niche. While TikTok Ads allow you to target audiences based on their age, gender, interests, and more, the influencers will automatically target every single follower.
Not to mention, since the platform offers an endless stream of dopamine-inducing content, users aren’t usually motivated or bothered to click on links that will let them exit the platform. If they do click through, the engagement ends up being typically low. This is more common with ads though.
But don’t let this demotivate you, as hundreds of thousands of businesses keep advertising on TikTok through these various methods. Which means one way or another, sooner or later; they find a way towards profitability, so you can too! Plus the fact that now you can purchase products directly from within TikTok makes users more likely to buy than they did previously.
4) Shooting, Editing & Storytelling.
If you play your cards right and the influencer’s followers deem your product worthy, then they’re going to buy! In the end, you will be able to add all revenues and subtract the costs to see if working with that particular influencer was profitable for you or not.
You will find TikTok influencers of various sizes, ranging from smaller ones, the “micro-influencers” with 5k to 30k followers, to the biggest ones with over 100M followers. Starting out, it’s good to target micro influencers on a budget to see how it works for you. Micro influencers will charge you less, as it is generally easier to create a large following on TikTok compared to Instagram or any other platform for that matter (as stated earlier). Due to the low costs of TikTok’s new influencers, it’s a great strategy for low budget dropshippers. Marketing using TikTok influencers allows you to expose your product to thousands of people at affordable costs.
Due to the nature of TikTok, people who self-create unique, quality content can become an influencer in less than a year (or overnight if they go viral, but that’s a rarity).
But Tiktok influencer marketing has its negatives too, as you have little control over the type of audience you are targeting. Sometimes, an influencer can have a generalist audience rather than a dedicated niche one. This means that the products you advertise through them won’t necessarily reach the right people, especially if they’re quite niche. While TikTok Ads allow you to target audiences based on their age, gender, interests, and more, the influencers will automatically target every single follower.
Not to mention, since the platform offers an endless stream of dopamine-inducing content, users aren’t usually motivated or bothered to click on links that will let them exit the platform. If they do click through, the engagement ends up being typically low. This is more common with ads though.
But don’t let this demotivate you, as hundreds of thousands of businesses keep advertising on TikTok through these various methods. Which means one way or another, sooner or later; they find a way towards profitability, so you can too! Plus the fact that now you can purchase products directly from within TikTok makes users more likely to buy than they did previously.
CONCLUSION:
There you have it! In order to fully reap the benefits of dropshipping, you will need to understand your responsibilities and what Dropship mistakes usually cause people to fail.
Here are some quick honorable mentions of some other common dropshipping mistakes which new entrepreneurs make:
- Not having PayPal as a payment gateway
- Not offering much product variety and colors
- Blowing off big bucks on influencer marketing from the get-go
- Paying $100 or more for a single video ad
- Ignoring special occasions and events
- Not catching emails with a pop-up offer
- Not paying attention to creative design
- Not having a plan or strategy to follow
- Not having a proper logo and color scheme
- False advertising
- Using bad copywriting on your website and ads
Apart from that, here’s one of the key takeaways: The more you give, the more you get. If you make it about the customers, the customers will make it about you in return. Keep in mind that creativity and flexibility is something you’ll need to exercise yourself. Those are soft skills that you develop only by doing, so don’t stress out if a thing or two doesn’t go as well as planned.
And now that you know how to prevent these dropshipping mistakes that tend to make new dropshippers fail, here’s a little surprise for you to start and grow your Ecommerce store to the skies, giving you all the time in the world to enjoy the seasons with your friends, family and everything you love to do.
Here’s the quickest and easiest way to find top winning products and import them to your dropshipping store in one click, all thanks to Adserea!
Adserea.com is the one-stop solution for all your dropshipping needs. Designed to save time, effort and money, our handy software has made it VERY easy for the average joe to start, scale and maintain a fruitful dropshipping store from absolutely anywhere in the world.
How so? Well, we offer over 1000+ winning products in dozens of niches that you can add to your store with the click of a button. But not only that, you also enjoy ad content (engaging video ads, ad copies, descriptions) and targeting suggestions for every single product and loads of authentic data to analyze and witness the potential for your own eyes.
We also add 2 FRESH brand new winning products daily in various niches!
Adserea even offers you some amazing Spy tools and A.I Analyzers that you can use to copy or take inspiration from the best, most popular stores across the web. This gives you a proper roadmap to follow in order to scale and sustain your business by simply mimicking what works. In a nutshell, you won’t have to beat around the bush and waste time figuring things out all by yourself.
This is the secret platform that the top dropshippers in the world don’t want you to know about, but we’re spilling all their secrets for you to start benefiting today. So what do you say?
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Summary: 7 Big Mistakes That Make New Dropshippers Fail
(And How To Avoid Them In 2022)
Tip #1: Offer Interesting Products
Tip #2: Offer “FOMO” Discounts
Tip #3: Promote Coupon Codes
Tip #4: Offer Free Shipping
Tip #5: Choose The Right Suppliers
Tip #6: Leverage Digital Marketing
Tip #7: Strategize In Advance
Tip #8: Launching An Email Campaign
Tip #9: Automate Your Tasks
Tip #10: Tell A Story
