Is your business on TikTok Shop Ready for the Holiday Season?

Social media has transformed itself from just being a channel of socializing to a digital mall where consumers can shop while interacting with brands and creators. Social media platforms such as TikTok are witnessing a steep pivot as more and more customers are scrolling every day to find gifting inspiration and shop online during the holiday season.

According to online data from Statista, 2023 sales through social networks accounted for 18.5% of the total online sales with more and more shoppers deriving purchase inspiration from TikTok. 

The union of social media and eCommerce, Social Commerce, has brought a paradigm shift in how consumers interact and buy online.

A classic example of this is TikTok Shop by Tiktok. Besides enabling massive reach for the sellers, TikTok has made the click-to-buy journey highly seamless for users with its TikTok Shop.

With holidays like Halloween, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, and New Year fast approaching, presence on social commerce can not be ignored.

Here’s how you can plan your social commerce strategy to scale your business for the TikTok Holiday season.

TikTok: Leading Social Commerce channel

With over 1 billion active users, TikTok is a master hub for sellers like you looking to leverage social commerce for seasonal holiday sales.
TikTok has created a new shopping culture with its TikTok Shop to help brands ascend their eCommerce growth and attain more conversion.
With TikTok Shop, you can connect with highly engaged customers based on their interests. Further, you can combine the unified power of creativity, community, and commerce to deliver a smooth shopping experience.

In this blog, we have included a step-by-step TikTok holiday guide to help your store get ready for the upcoming TikTok holiday trends and sales.

TikTok holiday guide to prep your store for the holiday season

The holiday season is just around the corner. This is the time to capitalize on key shopping moments to scale your TikTok festive sales.

Follow these steps and strategies to help scale your business on TikTok Shop and make the most of the TikTok holiday trends.

1. Week-wise Holiday Strategy:

Planning a strategy to make the most of the holiday season can seem daunting. With this week-wise TikTok holiday guide, you can cut through the clutter and gain first-mover benefits of the TikTok festive sales season.

6 to 8 weeks out:

Use this time to determine seasonal goals and plan creative strategies. This involves planning your product catalog, defining your content calendar, and managing ad resources that best suit your campaign goals.

3 to 4 weeks out:

The next step involves creative production and operational setup. It entails developing your brand voice, creating designs/ads, and setting up your target parameters and budget.

1 week out:

This week should be all about adding the creative, final touch to your campaign before the ball rolls. Preview your creatives, and add third-party tracking URLs to your Ad Manager. Make sure to double-check your campaign setup before going live with your store during the TikTok festive sales season.

2. Integrate TikTok Shop with your eCommerce platform:

With the ever-evolving eCommerce ecosystem, synchronization between TikTok Shop and the eCommerce platform is crucial. An integration solution like TikTok Shop Connector by CedCommerce can help you manage your store with minimal hassles to maximize results.

• Manage inventory and get real-time updates to avoid overselling or underselling.
• Manage orders effortlessly with a centralized dashboard.
• Save time and effort with one-click bulk upload of products on TikTok Shop.
• Map your eCommerce product categories with customized templates to maintain consistency.
• Get 24*7 assistance from a dedicated manager for uninterrupted business operations.

Break through the chaos of this TikTok festive sales season and achieve operational efficiency with TikTok Shop Connector.

3. Creative codes by TikTok:

You can engage and entertain your customers by bringing the holiday spirit to life through TikTok’s creative inspirations and tools. With this suite of tools, you can embrace the authenticity of the TikTok holiday trends and its community to create captivating ads on the platform.
The set of tools include:

• Video Templates:
  TikTok provides many impressive templates that use photos and video bytes. You can use these to create interesting holiday content that feels authentic and organic to the audience.
• TikTok Video Editor:
  Embedded within the Ads Manager, this tool gives access to TikTok-style editing features.
• Smart Video:
  An AI-driven tool to help you add editing and visual bits to existing creative assets. You can make use of this feature to grab attention and drive action with your holiday storytelling.
• Smart Video Soundtrack:
  A tool that can be used to add royalty-free music to existing video assets and adjust the original score of the video. With this, you can join ongoing holiday conversations and garner reactions.
• Automated Creative Optimization:
  A creative tool that generates combinations of creative assets for mid-campaign optimizations and additional creative insights. TikTok Holiday Playbook 2022 recognizes this tool as one of the app’s most crucial features. With this, you can combat the creative fatigue of the holiday season and improve your campaign performance for optimum results.

4. Holiday campaign in action:

Once the strategy for the TikTok holiday trends is implemented and creatives are planned, the next step in the TikTok holiday guide involves finalizing the solutions to complement your campaign goals. The three solutions are:

• Full-funnel solutions:
  It cocoons the entire journey from awareness to loyalty. You should view this as something other than a linear journey to step back and focus on each step to maximize Return on Ad Spends (ROAS). Video shopping ads on TikTok are the foundation for achieving full-funnel goals.
• Branding solutions:
  You can pair your full-funnel strategies with branding solutions to boost product awareness. You can bundle your video shopping ads with either of the ad products to realize your campaign goals. The types of ad products are as follows:
  • Top-view:
    TikTok’s most premium ad format. You can bundle top-view ads with video shopping ads to grab the audience’s attention. This will be the first video the viewer sees, transitioning into their For You Page.
  • Focused view:
    An exciting way to drive consideration is by using your video shopping ads to target a focused audience willing to spend over 6 seconds on your ad.
  • Branded mission:
    A new branding solution that can connect your brand with TikTok creators. The creators develop authentic video content for your brand in return for incentives or sell-to-earn commission rates. This can lead to higher engagement on the platform.
• Commerce solution:
  You can develop your costing plan to target new or retarget existing prospects. This solution also entails planning promotional strategies to drive leads, sales, and engagements by running discounts, flash sales, and more. TikTok holiday playbook 2022 considers this imperative to drive sales during the peak of the holiday season, viz. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and also during post-holiday sales.

Conclusion

A well-honed strategy is necessary to prepare your store for the upcoming holiday season. The key to success in the ending quarter of the year is to nail the social commerce domain during the holiday season.

According to the TikTok holiday playbook 2024, 71% of TikTok users use TikTok for intentional exploration and discovery, making it a phenomenal space to reach the target audience and create a buzz around your products. With this TikTok holiday playbook 2024, you can know where to look, how to target the demography, and navigate smoothly through the holiday rush.

The possibilities of growth on TikTok Shop are endless, and by incorporating these steps, you can get one step closer to driving greater awareness and conversions.

Happy Holiday Season!