How To Start Selling on TikTok Shop: 5 Top Tips

February 2025

TikTok has become a fast-growing social media platform within a few years. In September 2023 TikTok launched its wide-ranging feature “TikTok Shop”, which allows its users to experience in-app shopping experience. With a huge 1.5 billion active monthly users (Statista) it became a lucrative place for businesses that are interested in boosting their sales and brand visibility. 

Whether you are a popular brand or a start-up, you must not ignore the opportunities available on this busy social media platform. In this post, we are going to discuss such top 5 tips that can guide you on how to sell on TikTok shop

What is a TikTok shop?

A TikTok Shop is an e-commerce feature integrated within the TikTok app, allowing users to discover and purchase products directly from videos, live streams, and the profiles of creators and brands. This feature enables businesses and influencers to set up an online store within TikTok, providing a seamless shopping experience for users without leaving the app. TikTok Shop combines social media engagement with online shopping, leveraging the platform’s massive user base and interactive content to drive sales and brand awareness.

How does a TikTok shop work?

TikTok Shop is an integrated e-commerce platform within the TikTok app, allowing users to discover and purchase products directly from videos, live streams, and creator profiles. Launched to capitalize on the app’s massive user base and engagement, it offers a seamless shopping experience without requiring users to leave the app. Brands and individual sellers can set up their shops, list products, and engage with potential buyers through creative content and live sessions.

To start selling, businesses must first apply and be approved by TikTok. Once approved, they can list products and link them to videos or live streams, where viewers can see product details and make purchases with a few taps. The integration includes features like real-time analytics, inventory management, and promotional tools, enabling sellers to optimize their strategies.

A key aspect of TikTok Shop is its use of influencers and content creators to drive sales. By partnering with popular creators, brands can reach wider audiences and leverage the trust and influence these creators have built with their followers. According to a report by Insider Intelligence, “40% of Gen Z prefer using social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok over Google to explore brands”, highlighting the potential of TikTok Shop in tapping into this market.

Overall, TikTok Shop leverages the app’s entertainment-driven environment to make shopping an engaging and integrated experience. Its combination of creative content, influencer partnerships, and seamless transactions sets it apart as a potent tool for modern e-commerce. As social commerce continues to grow, TikTok Shop is well-positioned to become a significant player in the industry.

How to start selling on TikTok Shop, step-by-step guide:

TikTok shop generated $11.09 billion in Gross Merchandise Value only in the year 2023. This is a big number and now everyone wants a glass of water from this ocean.

For that, we need to understand exactly how the TikTok shop works and how can we start selling on this platform. So here is a step-by-step guide on how to start selling on TikTok shop.

1. Sign Up and set up a TikTok Business Account:

Signing up for a TikTok business account is simple. Visit the TikTok Seller Center website and sign up there using your email address or mobile number.

You will need to provide your business details in the next step such as your business name, address, and contact information.

Then verify your business by uploading all required documents like business licenses or government-approved IDs and wait for approval from their side. 

TikTok will review all provided documents and approve your account if everything is in order.

2. Add products to your TikTok shop:

Once your account is approved, you can add products to your store. You should provide clear descriptions and high-quality images of your products to attract customers. 

Add price and discount, and categorize them properly so that customers won’t need to bother to find their desired product.

3. Optimize your profile:

Optimize your profile by adding a nice profile picture for your band, writing an informative bio, and providing your website link. Make sure your profile picture and bio is properly mirroring your business.

After doing all these things you need to enable the shopping tab on your profile so that users can easily get access to your shop and see your listed products.

4. Promote your shop:

Now your TikTok shop is ready and your products are waiting to get orders from TikTok users. So now the task is to promote your shop. For that, you can create video content on TikTok about your products and mention the product link in it.

You can try different ideas like how to use, benefits, or after-effects of using the product for creating content. And leave them to reach billions of TikTok users organically. 

Though I have mentioned 5 tips for increasing sales on TikTik in the next segment of this blog.

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Mastering the TikTok SEO

Search Engine Optimization(SEO) for social media you are using to sell your products is also equally important as SEO for Google. As here we are discussing selling products on the TikTok shop, now it’s unavoidable to talk about how to do SEO on TikTok. So let’s start

Use Relevant Hashtags:

Do research to find out the popular trending hashtags that fall under your niche. You can use tools like TikTok’s search function for better results. Or you can browse the content of popular creators of your niche.

Use niche hashtags along with popular hashtags to reach out to the target audience. Use them while posting content on TikTok.

Optimize Your Captions:

This is just like traditional SEO. use relevant keywords in your captions. It will help the TikTok algorithm to understand your content and will bring more and more interested audiences to your content. 

Participate in TikTok trends

TikTok trends some particular hashtags and challenges from time to time. Always stay updated about these trends and participate in them. It can make you popular overnight. 

Just follow and keep checking the profiles of popular creators to stay updated about these trends and challenges.

Utilize TikTok analytics

Keep monitoring your performance by using TikTok matrics. Look into the numbers of likes, comments, and shares to understand which type of content is being loved by the audiences. Make your content strategy based on these analytics.

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Top 5 tips for increasing sales with TikTop shop

We have now created a TikTok shop and have added products to that, but the main aim is to increase our sales by leveraging TikTok’s large user base. So now let’s discuss the top 5 tips for increasing sales with TikTop shop.

1. Create Engaging Content:

Stay up to date with the latest TikTok trends and make engaging content using them to promote your products on the platform.

As you know TikTok is a short video-sharing platform so make sure you create short, engaging, and to-the-point videos. Remember TikTok users have short attention spans.

Use storytelling to make viewers relate to your products. Show them how your products can solve their problems or make their lives easier.

2. Collaborate with Influencers:

Find an influencer with strong followers and whose contents are aligned with your product. Partner with them to accelerate your reach to a huge audience.

Invest in sponsored content, where influencers will endorse your products and ask their followers to buy them.

Work with influencers to create TikTok challenges and hashtags. Encourage your buyers to make user-made content. This will help increase brand awareness.

3. Leverage TikTok Ads:

Invest in TikTok’s in-feed ads to reach users. Make sure to create a visually appealing ad and don’t forget to include a call-to-actionn button in it.

Encourage your users to participate in hashtag challenges. This can make you viral and drive traffic to your TikTok shop.

4. Optimize Your TikTok Shop:

As we have discussed earlier in this post, make sure your products have a clear and appealing image and an easy-to-understand description. Highlight features, benefits, ingredients, and how to use them. It will grab the attention of the crowd.

You can create discount coupons having the initials of your partner influencers, limited time offers to boost sales.

Encourage your satisfied customers to review your products. This will build trust and establish a brand image. Also will encourage potential customers to make a purchase.

5. Engage with Your Audience:

Engage with the audience by replying to their comments and answering questions promptly. It will make them feel special and help build a loyal community for your brand.

Use TikTok’s live stream to demonstrate how to use your products. Interact with your customers, and clarify their doubts in real-time. Also, you can do this with collaboration with an established influencer.

By implementing these strategies, you can effectively use TikTok Shop to increase your sales and grow your brand presence on the platform.

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Helplama: best social media customer service outsourcing company

Helplama stands tall as a leading social media customer service outsourcing company. It offers the best customer service support for various social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and all other popular platforms available. 

It can help you to stay engaged with your customers real-time 24/7. Let’s discuss some of its key features.

Key Features:

  • Multi-Channel Integration: Integrate it to all the platforms you use to communicate with your customers e.g. TikTok, Instagram, or WhatsApp, and manage them all from a single screen.
  • 24/7 Live Chat Support: Be available for your customers 24/7 whenever they need you, without hiring an extra customer support team or paying for overtime. Helplama will answer your customers while you are on rest.
  • Real-Time Analytics: Get useful insights analytics with real-time data about how your overall customer service program is performing. These analytics include ticket density, resolution time, and conversion rate. You can easily find out your areas for improvement to get the maximum out of customer service.
  • Automation and Human Touch: It provides both AI-featured automated chatbots along with human-agent interaction for more specific or complicated issues. 
  • User-friendly interface: Using it won’t be another complicated task for you because of its user-friendly interface. You can easily explore all its features and access the analytics.

Conclusion

TikTok Shop presents a unique opportunity for businesses to capitalize on the platform’s massive user base and innovative features. With 4.43 billion minutes of daily watching time TikTok is definitely a great platform to reach huge audience. By leveraging TikTok’s engaging content and influencer partnerships can significantly boost sales and brand visibility.

Additionally, using services like Helplama for social media customer support can ensure you stay connected with your audience 24/7, enhancing customer satisfaction and driving growth.