Study Reveals Why You Should Use TikTok For Your Direct-To-Consumer Store

Everything You Need to Know in Less Than 50 Words

TikTok is currently one of the most popular social media platforms. Brands have found that the video format is an excellent way to engage with customers. Since TikTok has lower ad rates than Facebook, it’s also the best way to sell direct-to-consumer products while still making a profit.

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Direct-to-consumer brands (DTC) sell products to consumers directly. They can keep costs lower because they don’t have to go through a retailer. Running a completely-online business means the company can charge customers less for quality products while keeping overhead low.

This innovative approach to selling merchandise carries through to how these DTC companies market their products. Instead of spending 10% of their budget on traditional advertising, brands that showcase their goods on TikTok are seeing annual revenue increase.

TikTok is a newer platform, so ads aren’t as expensive as they are on Facebook and Snapchat. Even the impressive marketing platform of Google Ads fell second to TikTok in the second quarter of 2022.

What Industries Can Benefit?

TikTok started in 2016 but became mainstream in 2020. Its audience grew exponentially during the pandemic lockdown, enabling content creators to explore a new platform and make money. Brands realized that TikTok had a massive young audience and wanted to take advantage of the fresh opportunity.

Triple Whale conducted a study and found that 5,000 eCommerce stores spent $530 million in advertising on the TikTok platform. Most of these shops are smaller brands that could try a new outlet without seeing a decrease in revenue from pulling other ads.

Some of the most profitable industries on TikTok include:

• Clothing, spending $153.5 million
• Health and beauty, spending $141.9 million
• Home and garden, spending $58.3 million
• Food and beverage, spending $55.6 million
• Jewelry, spending $48.7 million

These products are easy to showcase in TikTok videos, and the platform’s younger audience is willing to spend money on new brands in these industries.

The study also showed that some brands are better off sticking to Facebook ads. Baby products, collectible items, and books sell better on the more established platform.

How It Works

Using TikTok takes some research. You can’t start sharing ads and expect to make sales organically. Instead, smaller companies release videos of test content to see what performs well with their audience. They then use their marketing budgets to push ads to users beyond those who would usually view their footage.

You can also partner with TikTok users to have them try and review your products on the platform. It’s a similar approach to using influencers on Instagram and can have a broad reach.

The video-based format of TikTok allows brands to control their identity and tell engaging stories in ways more stagnant social media restricts. DTC brands using TikTok see it as a TV show where they can create videos, tell a story, and insert a few commercials.

Source: AdAge