How TikTok and Shopify are Fueling Shoppable Videos

Earlier this year, TikTok announced a $200 million creator fund with a goal of helping more leading creators in its community sustain themselves financially solely through TikTok. More recently, the platform announced a partnership with Teespring allowing creators to sell merchandise they design and create directly to fans via the app itself.

As social commerce continues to proliferate, brands and retailers are recognizing that to rise above the noise they must tap emerging spaces with highly creative and engaged audiences. In this spirit, TikTok and Shopfiy announced a global partnership geared to help more than one million merchants reach highly engaged audiences and drive sales by tapping into TikTok’s global scale.

Helping Shopify Merchants Engage TikTok Users

“The TikTok channel means Shopify merchants—even those without a strong TikTok following of their own yet—can connect with these new audiences using content that feels authentic and genuine to the TikTok experience,” said Satish Kanwar, Vice President of Product at Shopify, in a statement about the new partnership.

At a high level, the partnership enables merchants access to TikTok’s key business features and software as part of its Business Ads manager including the ability to designate which product they want to spotlight. They can also access a variety of TikTok’s ready-made templates to help customize their campaign with their brands’ images, and videos. The tools are already designed for commerce and compatible for “merchants of any size,” so any heavy lifting is removed from the equation.

As a perk, they can claim a $300 ad credit to put toward their first TikTok campaign. Beyond launching ads, merchants can use the software to target specific audiences and track ad performance so they can more easily track for what they’re doing well versus what they can improve on in their next ad.

#ShopBlack Challenge

Prior to its latest push, TikTok had toyed with allowing users to drop e-commerce inks in their bios, launched ‘Shop Now’ buttons for brands to incorporate into their videos, and introduced shoppable components to hashtags with Hashtag Challenge Plus, it’s e-commerce feature.

Along the vein of hashtags as a commerce function, as part of the partnership TikTok and Shopify are hosting a co-branded #ShopBlack challenge scheduled to run from November 10 to November 15. The effort will feature products from over 40 merchants in a powerful testament to the responsibility and meaningful opportunity for today’s social platforms to support the notion that societal issues like racial equality and business growth are connected efforts. Specifically, by serving as an outlet through which Black entrepreneurs can share their stories and inspiration as business owners within the larger TikTok community.

Separately, Shopify released its own Black Business Directory through which users can discover and buy from Black Shopify merchants. The platform also recently announced its partnership with Operation Hope to create one million Black-owned businesses by 2030.

Simplifying social commerce

This partnership is just one example that speaks to the growing social commerce movement, a trend that has been accelerated by the coronavirus. As the physical stores closed in 2020 and sent massive traffic to online destinations, platforms spanning Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest rushed to update their shopping features. Mobile-apps are the shopping malls of the internet.

Content can be moved more cheaply and quickly than ever before and there are new ways to make it to ensure it stands out above the crowd. The influx of social channels as retail avenues doesn’t come without its own challenges, however.

“One of the concerns brands have with [the] growth of e-commerce across social, retailers and their own .com is that it requires managing multiple retail streams,” shared Jess Richards, EVP and Managing Director of Commerce at Havas Media Group. “The connectivity with Shopify for Merchants can simplify the approach.”

In an era of empowered consumers, experiences should be the primary focus for brands — and these have to be easy-to-navigate, streamlined, and delivered in hyper-relevant formats that match the space and flow of communication. Video is one of these expanding areas worth watching.

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