Smart Retail Tech Expo 2024 review: How to make shoppable content on TikTok For You Pages
“TikTok is a trusted platform today,” said Amanda Uduku, Merchant Growth Strategy Manager, TikTok, on the opening day of Smart Retail Tech 2024 (27th February) at ExCel London, as she outlined how to make shoppable content on its For You Pages (FYP) creator portal.
This is the first page you land on in the app with algo suggested recommendations of things you might like.
Victoria Beckham recently launched a t-shirt on TikTok, linking it with the popular Beckhams TV documentary, in the knowledge that the fast growing social media platform would get her fashion business new eyes and potential customers.
Many brands, such as L’Oreal, Oakley and adidas, already partner with TikTok, explained Uduku at Smart Retail Tech 2024, as she outlined the growing importance of the platform for retailers in the Keynote Theatre.
The #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt garnered 88 billion+ video views by January of this year.
“This success led to the establishment of TikTok shop,” said Uduku, which is backed up by the new Product Optimiser AI tool unveiled late last year.
“This highlights what you need to do improve SEO on the platform, get products to appear as recommended, and so on.”
Uduku is a former Asos and eBay employee who is convinced TikTok will rival these, Facebook and many other players in the social media retail space. She outlined three crucial elements in TikTok Shop, namely:
· Shop Tab: this shows deals and offers based on TikTok users’ pre-existing content and data footprint, “so a brand must have high quality images, complete product details and so on” to maximise the eyeballs it gets.
· Shoppable videos: make in-app purchases easy and utilise reply functions, voiceover features and a number of other such tools, especially via the Shoppable Video Center that is a good entry mechanism for creators.
These videos help those wishing to sell on the social media platform to do it in the most effective way. The criteria for success outlined by Uduku included subtitles, clear sound and backgrounds, high quality video without pixelisation, real people stories etc..
“First person stories and unboxing events work well, as do instant three-second hooks [on the boilerplate homepage],” advised Uduku.
· Shoppable Lives: connects creators with audiences in real-time, backed up by features like Billboard. This allows content creators to add stickers to live videos explaining what they are about – be that a sale; a how to tutorial; product making or launch event; or a Q&A.
These concepts should be supported by pre-live teaser videos, and creator techniques to further engage audiences, such as introducing yourself to drive personalisation and presenter repetition to welcome any new joiners.
“Remember people buy from people, so don’t product push,” Uduku stressed,
Success stories on the new TikTok Shop platform were shared by Uduku, including Levitex that has educated their insomniac prone community about how to sleep better, garnering £465,000 already, and Hair Autonomy UK, “whose founder left her job at HSBC” to pursue the dream of setting up a digitally savvy startup.
You can bank on TikTok to provide an opportunity for startup or established brands to flourish.
The platform is continuing to grow its numbers, trust profile and features – to the extent that it can now be considered as a rival to Meta’s Facebook Marketplace and others in the evolving social media driven retail arena.
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