Step-by-step tutorial: How to get started selling on TikTok as a Shopify merchant without watching your budget go to total waste

In recent years, marketing channels such as Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Google have been gold-mine leads for marketers. However, many such marketers have found new directions in emerging social networks like TikTok, Reddit and Quora.

TikTok is currently the highest trending social network globally, with more than 800 million active users. It’s getting a lot of attention from marketers as a promising channel to promote any product or service.

Recently, there was good news for Shopify merchants, as Shopify announced a partnership with TikTok to give merchants with Shopify stores more access to this trendy social media channel.

So, why is promoting products on TikTok necessary for a Shopify store? And how do you advertise your products on this channel? In this article, we will learn about the world’s most rapidly expanding video social network and learn how to bring your Shopify store to its market.

Most of you must have heard of TikTok or watched TikTok videos somewhere on the internet.

TikTok is a social network aimed at sharing short, entertaining videos. For that reason, TikTok videos are often shared a lot on other social networks like Facebook, Instagram or Reddit. This sharing greatly increases TikTok's popularity, especially among teenagers.

According to a reputable study from 2019, the number of users aged 16 to 24 accounts for 41% of TikTok users. TikTok could be a potential market if you’re targeting teen customers.

In June 2020 TikTok launched the TikTok for Business tool, which is a platform with tips, notes, and links to other platforms with TikTok. This tool also provides valuable data on market research and analysis, thereby helping merchants understand the market and use TikTok in the best way for their ad campaigns.

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In late October 2020 Shopify announced a partnership with TikTok For Business and joined the TikTok Hashtag Challenge #ShopBlack, which aims to support black-owned startups.

Also during this collaboration, the TikTok channel was released on Shopify App Store. This app is the primary tool that Shopify merchants can use to post content on TikTok. However, the TikTok channel is currently only available to merchants in the U.S. market, although Shopify is likely to release the TikTok channel to merchants in Europe and Asia in early 2021.

Through the TikTok channel, merchants can install TikTok Pixel on their Shopify stores and monitor the performance of their TikTok Ads. To make it almost effortless for users to create content on TikTok, the designers included creative tools like short video templates and transitions that can create impressive TikTok clips.

Not only that, but to attract more merchants and marketers, TikTok is also ready to give merchants $300-worth of credits to test a TikTok ad campaign before investing in the channel.

To install the TikTok channel on your Shopify store, you can find the TikTok app on the Shopify App Store.

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When you are on the TikTok app page, click on ‘add app’ to install the TikTok channel on your Shopify store.    

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After finishing the installation, the TikTok channel will appear on the left side bar of the Shopify Admin Dashboard. You should be able to connect your TikTok For Business account to your Shopify store from this panel.

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On the next page, I already logged in my account so I will just click on Connect. You can use your own accounts or change users by using “Switching User”:

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After you connect to your store successfully, the TikTok Business Dashboard will appear. This is where you can control the TikTok business account and completely install the TikTok channel on your Shopify store.

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Finally, after having the TikTok channel on your store, we can start creating TikTok content to promote your business. Most of the content on TikTok are short videos with music and filter effects, and if you don’t know how to make a video like that, you can find the tools for it on the TikTok Business Dashboard.

To prepare your first TikTok content, please go to https://ads.tiktok.com/ and login with your business account. After that, you can check the Main menu, Assets > Creative and make TikTok videos on this page. Please click on the Create button to open the Video maker panel.

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This is the video making panel, it shows 3 options to help you create a complete ads video.

• Video Template: to create a slideshow video for ads. This video will be based on a template which can be edited and modified.  
• Smart Video: upload the product images to this Smart Video feature, and it will generate videos with background music. There are many special effects and musics available, you won’t need time to learn a new video editing tool or to find no copyrighted song anymore.
• Smart Video Soundtrack: don’t worry if your video does not have a soundtrack. Let the Smart video soundtrack from TikTok find you one. The smart technology will generate background music for your no-sound video, so all you have to do is to upload the original video to this tool.

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When your video content is ready, it is time to move to the next step: setting up a campaign. On the Dashboard page of TikTok Ads Manager, please click on the Create an Ad button of the middle section.

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The next page will allow you to set up your campaign. First, you need to choose the Advertising Objective and make some changes in the Settings.

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On the Advertising Objective setting, you will have the same menu like other Ads platforms with Awareness, Consideration and Conversion. The section on which you should focus on this page is the A/B Testing feature:

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This split testing feature will let you choose between 2 variables, Targeting and Creative.

Targeting can help you to aim your ads on two different target markets at the same time, using the same content and landing page. Otherwise, Creative can allow you to test two ads contents on the same audience. Regardless of the strategies of your campaign, this A/B Testing feature will be very useful to optimize your ads.

The next step will require you to work with bidding and targeting.

Most of the settings in this step are similar to other ads platforms. However, TikTok is mainly a mobile application, so there will be some additional options related to mobile devices.

You can also choose the TikTok Pixel and how to track your ads from this panel.

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After finishing some settings for your ads, you only need to push the ad's content, which you have prepared for this campaign.

Even if you don't have any videos yet, it is still possible to create video content right on this page.

There are two types of ads for you to select, Single Video and Single Image. But only the Single Video ads will work on TikTok, since it is a sharing video network to begin with.

Just like the video making feature in the Assets/Creative page, rendering an ads video is easy, or you can use the video that you've created before from the library.

Since the A/B Testing feature is enabled in this campaign, you will have to make 2 ads for it.

When you are done with the Ad A, you can repeat those steps with the Ad B, the only thing that you need to change is the content of the video.

Once you've completed the steps above, your first promotional video for TikTok is ready to be seen by the world! This ad will be delivered at any time as soon as you've setup the payment method for your TikTok Business account.

TikTok's partnership with Shopify has opened a big door for Shopify merchants to access this potential (younger) market. For marketers, TikTok is an indispensable marketing channel; one with huge potential considering that, when it was released, it was the most downloaded app in the App Store (Q1 2019-2021).

Through the TikTok Shopify app, you can control and adjust the settings of TikTok campaigns right from the Shopify Dashboard, all without having to open any additional pages.

This panel is also where you can create short videos in the signature TikTok style to showcase your products to users on the platform.

With its ease of installation, huge user base (especially teenagers) and a $300 credit offer, there's no reason not to try this marketing channel.

Good luck, and happy selling!