As a TikTok agency, we know that TikTok Shop has grown fast, it’s changing ecommerce, and it’s where a lot of smart brands are putting their energy in 2025.
We recently hosted an in-person event in London with the likes of L’Oréal, The Ordinary, Glow For It, Free Soul and TikTok themselves to unpack exactly how to win.
This guide brings together everything we learned. Let’s get into it.
The Power of TikTok Shop
In the ever-evolving landscape of social commerce, TikTok Shop has emerged as a game-changing platform for brands of all sizes.
With over 200,000 active businesses on TikTok Shop UK alone and more than 42 million sales facilitated, it’s clear that this platform is revolutionising how brands connect with consumers.
The platform’s growth is nothing short of remarkable:
- Over 6,000 live shopping sessions per day in the UK (64% increase from previous year.)
- 61% of UK TikTok users have made purchases either directly on TikTok or after seeing TikTok ads.
- By 2024, Douyin’s (ByteDance’s Chinese version of TikTok) annual GMV had grown about 30–46% year-on-year – reaching roughly £380 billion in 2024.
- Now launched into Ireland, Spain, Germany, France and Italy in 2025.
Top 8 Countries TikTok Shop GMV in 2024
Read more on The Power of TikTok Shop
To help brands navigate this exciting opportunity, we recently hosted an exclusive TikTok Shop event in London featuring industry leaders from L’Oréal, Glow For It, The Ordinary, Free Soul, and TikTok Shop themselves. Here’s what we learned:
Setting Up Your TikTok Shop For Success
TikTok Shop strategy covers a lot of things
From products, pricing, shop management, affiliates, influencers, organic, live & paid, there is a huge amount to cover when it comes to winning on TikTok Shop.
A huge piece of advice we have is that doing everything isn’t easy, so do what you can do well, and outsource what you can’t.
Pick your products
You need to decide what key products that you’re going to focus on for the activity are. We recommend choosing between 3-5 hero products that you can focus your main attention on as you get started.
For this you should consider your USPs vs the market and how this category is currently performing on TikTok Shop today.
Ideally you want to consider products that have a decent margin in them that allow you to include discounts, or putting them into bundles whilst also offering commission to affiliates on them.
Alongside this, upload your entire catalogue to TikTok Shop, but don’t worry as much about pushing all of your products.
Getting your shop ready
Your whole shop needs continuous management and optimisations, just like an ecommerce website – treat this like a full conversion rate optimisation (CRO) program.
Product optimisation is crucial for visibility and sales. Similar to Amazon’s marketplace strategy, success on TikTok Shop requires careful attention to:
Shop score optimisation
Your TikTok Shop Shop Score plays a major role in visibility, customer trust, and ultimately sales. To maintain a high score:
- Fast and reliable fulfillment – Ensure orders are processed and shipped promptly to maintain positive ratings. Late shipments can negatively impact your score.
- High product quality and positive reviews – Encourage happy customers to leave reviews and ratings, as these directly influence your ranking.
- Excellent customer service – Quick responses to inquiries and handling returns efficiently can improve your shop’s credibility and boost customer satisfaction.
- Low refund and dispute rates – Keep refund requests minimal by providing accurate product descriptions, clear sizing guides, and quality visuals to set the right expectations.
Strategic pricing and bundle offers
Pricing strategy is a key factor in driving conversions and staying competitive. How competitive are you going to be?
Consider these tactics:
- Competitive market-based pricing – Monitor competitors’ pricing and adjust accordingly to stay attractive while maintaining profitability – how does it compare to other platforms?
- Consider your strike through and flash sale pricing– Can you offer a permanent discount (say 10% to start), and flash deals that pop up consistently such as an extra 5% on the weekend or around peak buying moments
- Bundle offers to increase average order value (AOV) – Group complementary products together at a slight discount to entice customers (e.g., a skincare set instead of selling individual items).
- How does it compare to other platforms – Users are price savvy and will go directly to your website and Amazon. Ideally your TikTok Shop should at the very least match your cheapest offering (and at best be cheaper!)
Consider Fulfillment
Fulfillment By TikTok (FBT) – TikTok stores your inventory in their warehouses and handles packing, shipping, and returns.
Self-fulfilled – You manage your own inventory, packing, and shipping. This offers more control but requires efficient systems to avoid delays.
Content Strategy
Affiliate Partnerships
This strategy involves defining commission rates, how many you want to work with and sending out potentially thousands of products whilst keeping track of everything.
Affiliates can: generate faster sales, you can scale easier, there is an element of social proof and trust, and there is low risk, high reward when partnering with them.
Where to find affiliates?
You can use TikTok’s affiliate centre or bespoke tech such as Kalodata
Find the top affiliates in your niche:
- Followers: Can filter by how many.
- See what revenue they generate: See full GMV history and what they’ve been selling.
- Who are they working with: Find people that might be popular in your niche.. or avoid those that work with your competitors.
A successful affiliate strategy involves:
- Building strong, long-term relationships with affiliates – Instead of just focusing on short-term sales, invest in nurturing connections with affiliates who align with your brand’s values. Regular check-ins, make them feel special, exclusive offers and bonuses, and strong communication help create a loyal and motivated affiliate network.
- Encouraging live streaming for maximum engagement – Affiliates who go live frequently tend to drive more conversions. Encourage them to use engaging formats, answer audience questions in real-time, and showcase products authentically to build trust.
- Providing refundable samples (as suggested by Broghan from TikTok Shop) – Lowering the risk for affiliates by offering refundable samples makes it easier for them to try products, create authentic content, and confidently promote them to their audience.
A big thing brands need to get used to as that a lot of affiliate content can be quite low fi. Don’t be afraid of content that doesn’t look ‘influencer’ level that you might be used to.
For instance this low fi affiliate content has generated over £389k of revenue on TikTok Shop:
A great tip suggested during the day to improve the look and feel of affiliate content is that affiliates get led by other content that is already out there. So pushing influencers first to create content that fits the brand well and looks good. Affiliates can then typically copy that approach.
Nurturing affiliates
Once you find success with affiliates, you also should consider how you leverage them even further.
For instance a lot of brands at the moment will have a dedicated Lark group for affiliates (Lark is Bytedance’s version of Slack/Teams) where they push out offers and messages.
Alongside this, many brands are offering extra incentives to affiliates. For instance, small cash bonuses for whoever goes live the most, or a prize for the most GMV made in a month. One brand that we know has even given away a holiday as a prize to their top affiliates.
You can even turn your affiliates into content creators and live streamers, which is exactly what a few brands have done, with live streamers being former affiliates.
Speaking of live streaming…
Livestreaming Excellence
This is a high effort, high reward strategy that requires you to go all in for success.
TikTok Shop live streams have so much potential, but they’re hard:
- Go live for a long time: You need to plan to be live for a long time, many of the top selling lives go for up to 12 hours a day.
- When is peak time: Plan for work on evenings alongside the day time.
- Engagement: You need a great presenter who can bring the whole live to life
- Compelling offers: Mixed with a compelling offer to get people to purchase there and then.
In the first 15-30 seconds, the viewer needs to be hooked
- Introduce the brand – who you are and what the brand is / brand values.
- Communicate – say hello by name to the audience.
- Pain points – what scenario does the product solve?
- The product and price – talk about what it is and what it does, and for how much (what is the saving?)
- Create a sense of urgency – why should they buy there and now?
Key insights from industry leaders on running high-impact livestreams:
- Preheating is really important! This is where you get people to register for the live so there are as many people as people that get notified when you go live (the first 10 minutes are crucial for the algorithm). Alongside this you can also use your wider marketing channels to push your live through email or even through text. This way you can alert followers before a session starts, creating anticipation and ensuring a strong start with a highly engaged audience.
- The first 10 minutes are really important. This is where your live can be pushed further by TikTok, so start as strong as possible here with the biggest audience that you can.
- Build a roster of live presenters. To go live as much as you need to win you will need a good roster of live presenters. Look to your team initially, and then work with freelancers to pad this out. The best ones are expensive, however look at how you could use up and comers or even your affiliates.
Use influencer livestreams to jumpstart your strategy – Partnering with influencers who already have a loyal following allows brands to leverage their credibility and expand their reach. Influencers bring authenticity, which helps convert viewers into customers.
Paid and Organic Content
Paid content can promote everything that has come before and generate a great ROAS whilst integrating dark ads.
Use Paid Ads to amplify what works:
- Boost high-performing affiliate videos and organic videos and turn them into Spark Ads.
- Promote your lives with live shopping ads.
- Retarget engaged viewers & cart abandoners.
- Scale winning products fast while keeping costs low.
- Use dark ads to build memorability and talk about messages that your affiliates haven’t.
Winning with paid ads
Creative
- Dark: Keep your own ads short, between 9-15 seconds. Focus on memorability.
- Spark: The best performing affiliate and organic content that you have. Drop those that don’t work.
Scale
- Optimise continuously: Feed it new creative all the time, 3-5 ad videos in rotation minimum.
- Push your spend: Once you have good ROI, scale the budget to maximise returns.
Budget
- Start slowly: Utilise a pot of money on your best converting products.
- Test: Try daily and lifetime and see what’s most effective.
Targeting
- Broad: Use broad mixed with your own data and TikTok’s automations.
- Own data: Mix with your own data and TikTok’s automations.
Utilise GMV Max for optimal results
GMV Max is a new TikTok Shop feature that helps optimise campaigns for maximum gross merchandise value. Leveraging this tool allows brands to ensure their content is reaching the right audience and converting effectively.
Winning with organic
Organic content can be used for brand building or for really pushing on TikTok Shop. This requires a lot of investment in content and might not pay back as quickly as affiliates.
- 27% increase in brand recall when a user views a brand’s organic TikTok before seeing its paid ad.
- Users scroll on TikTok the length of the Eiffel Tower per day.
If your brand’s purpose on TikTok is to sell through TikTok Shop, then your organic strategy needs to be geared towards quantity and pushing product as much as possible.
If you’re also doing brand building, then consider having two accounts.
Ultimately there is a lot to think about with brands to win organically on TikTok. Watch this space for a more in depth guide for brands.
Read more on How To Create A Winning TikTok Shop Strategy
Critical Success Factors
Based on Nonsensical’s and our guest speakers’ experiences, these elements are crucial for long-term success:
- Highlight your unique selling proposition (USP) – As demonstrated by Free Soul in the competitive supplement industry – In a crowded market, standing out is essential. Free Soul differentiated itself by focusing on its niche audience and tailoring messaging to emphasise what makes its products unique. Identify and consistently communicate what sets your brand apart.
- Dedicate resources appropriately for TikTok Shop – Both The Ordinary and L’Oréal are introducing dedicated TikTok Shop teams – Success on TikTok Shop requires focus. By creating dedicated teams, these brands ensure that strategy, execution, and performance tracking are given the attention they need to drive sustained results. TikTok Shop cuts across organic, paid, e-commerce, conversion rate optimisation, influencer and many others, you need to make sure your business has the right focus to get things to happen.
- Focus on relationship building – Take time to develop strong partnerships, as evidenced by Free Soul’s two-year journey – Establishing a strong brand presence and building trust with affiliates, influencers, and customers takes time. Free Soul’s success proves that patience, consistency, and strategic partnerships lead to long-term growth. Glow For It’s Founder, Daisy Kelly says their main focus when it comes to affiliates is building strong relationships and encouraging affiliates to go live to drive engagement and sales.L’Oreal’s UK TikTok Shop Director, Jack Timpany at our How To Win on TikTok Shop event on: The Future of Beauty: TikTok Shop, Creators & The New Era of Commerce
Why Act Now?
TikTok Shop has now launched across the EU in Ireland, Spain, Germany, France and Italy which is a huge opportunity for brands in 2025.
Early adoption in these markets presents significant opportunities for growth-minded brands.
Some of the biggest brands on TikTok Shop in the UK were those that moved first, and there’s a big opportunity for UK brands to now take their expertise and launch and disrupt these new markets before local businesses catch up.
Key Takeaways
🚀 No brand is too big or small for TikTok Shop. From global powerhouses like L’Oréal to breakout brands like Glow For It and Made by Mitchell, the platform creates opportunities for businesses of all sizes.
🔎 TikTok Shop is a discovery machine. It can introduce you to brand-new audiences and potentially unlock your most valuable customer segments yet—so be bold and experiment with your approach!
🎯 Find your focus. Whether it’s live streaming, affiliate partnerships, or consistent daily posting, don’t try to do it all at once—master a strategy that works best for your brand and scale from there.
👥 Just getting started? Lean into affiliate partnerships. More creators promoting your products means more visibility, more sales, and more chances to go viral.
🔥 Once you choose a strategy, go all in! TikTok rewards brands that commit. This isn’t the time for half-measures—consistency and confidence win on this platform.
About Nonsensical.
We’re a TikTok agency based in the UK who work across strategy, organic, influencer, paid and TikTok Shop.
You can find more TikTok insight from us in our Substack – The TikTok Sauce that releases every 2 weeks.
We’re also have a German TikTok Shop operation you can find here.
