How To Use Tiktok To Promote Your Dropshipping Store

Tiktok has skyrocketed to success in the last few years to become the social media platform of the moment, boasting more than 800 million active users from more than 150 countries. This makes it the next hot place on social media for e-commerce business owners to showcase their products to such a big community and embrace the power of video marketing. 

For dropshippers, promoting products on TikTok is an emerging trend that offers many potentials, but it's not easy for newcomers to the app who are looking to reach their target audience and make sure they're the go-to store. In this article, you will find real answers to help you take advantage of the app and promote your dropshipping store. Here are five ways to grow your dropshipping business using TikTok.

1. Use paid TikTok ads 

TikTok ads is a great advertising opportunity for brands and dropshippers alike, with big brands like Nike and Apple Music leveraging the platform to promote their products with unique and entertaining ads. One of the advantages TikTok advertising has over other social platforms is that few small businesses have jumped on the ad bandwagon, offering you an opportunity to stand out. 

As far as advertising goes on TikTok, there are different options to consider. The most popular types of advertising include:

• Brand takeover: A large-format ad that appears for a few seconds when users open the app and then turns into an in-feed video app. It is limited to one advertiser per day. 

• Branded AR content: This type of ad allows you to create branded stickers, lenses, and other types of AR content for users to incorporate into their videos, similar to Snapchat and Instagram. 

• In-feed video: As the name indicates, this type of ad appears among users' news feed on the      "For You" page. 

• Hashtag challenge: This ad pops up in the "Discovery" section and typically creates viral user-generated content via unique challenges that encourage users to participate. 

• Sponsored influencer content: This type of ad involves promoting your products through sponsored content from an influential TikTok user.

Most small businesses looking to advertise often have no idea what type of TikTok ads to use, but for most dropshippers, a simple In-feed ad is quite effective. 

To advertise on TikTok, you must create a TikTok ads account by visiting the TikTok ads homepage. Once you're inside, you will need to create an ad campaign by clicking on the "campaign" tab and then the "Create button." Next, you will be asked to choose between automatic and manual placement. Choose automatically. From this point, you can create your ad, set the targeting and then submit it for review. 

2. Partner with influencers

Influencer marketing is another excellent way to promote your dropshipping store and draw customers to your site. Influencers can help you reach more followers and boost your sales by creating engaging and effective video content, which is basically what the video-centric platform is all about. Both small and large brands are experiencing tremendous success in working with influencers to expand their audience. 

If you're looking to promote your dropshipping store via influencer partnership, it's vital to know how to find the right influencers for your niche. To do that, here are a few tips to help:

• Set goals and expectations: The first thing you want to do is define your reasons for seeking a partnership with an influencer and what you intend to achieve through it. This will help you make the right decision on which influencer to choose. 

• Look for a shared audience demographic: Once you have established your goals, look for influencers with a shared target demographic. The idea is to ensure that the influencers you're considering are relevant to your industry and have a significant number of followers that constitute your target audience. You can reach out to those you've shortlisted to request a detailed report of their follower demographics. 

• Evaluate their reach and engagement: When looking for an influencer, you want followers who engage with their content. To determine their engagement rate, check for how many views, comments, and the number of "hearts" their content gets. 

• Get the agreement in writing: By now, you should be able to decide which influencer. Be sure to get the agreement in writing. Outline the payment terms, how many posts will be included, and any guidelines or limitations surrounding how your product is presented.

3. Start and participate in hashtag challenges 

You've probably seen a couple of videos on social media about different challenges from TikTok. Tiktok thrives on hashtags and challenges as they're an easy way for anyone to feel like they're a part of the community, which is why users often attempt to do the same thing. Therefore, any business that seeks to leverage the platform to promote its products must learn how to start and participate in hashtag challenges. Now there are primarily two ways to promote your dropshipping store on TikTok. Let's get into them.

i. Participate in a popular existing TikTok challenge

TikTok has tons of unbranded organic challenges that you can jump on right away, and all you have to do is look for the challenge that fits your brand and that you can attempt. You can find such challenges on your "For You" page, or you can navigate to the sounds section of the app, where you will find a list of top trending sounds. Note that the list of these challenges changes regularly, so you need to join any challenge you choose in good time.

ii. Launch your own branded TikTok challenge campaign

While this can be challenging, creating your own branded TikTok has its perks, especially the freedom to determine how you want to craft it. However, you will need to do a lot of planning as your goal isn't just to entertain your audience but also to get them to your store.

Among other things to consider is context. Ensure that you get the context right, as this can go a long way to boost your campaign. For instance, if you're promoting skincare products, you want to use clips of recent chart-topping music with a theme about women empowerment or beauty.

Furthermore, you will have to decide on the promotional strategy to use. For example, you can either work directly with TikTok to promote the challenge or run an influencer marketing campaign or turn the challenge into a competition where top creators will be rewarded.

4. Create a cross-platform strategy

This tip works most if you have an established social media presence on other platforms. The idea is to use your presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the likes to grow your TikTok following and vice versa. This strategy allows you to grow your TikTok following faster, promote your products both on TikTok and other platforms (since your content is optimized for other platforms), and reduce the time and effort exerted in content creation for different platforms.

If you're looking to employ a cross-platform strategy, you will have to create content for TikTok that you can share and reuse on other platforms. The videos can help improve your marketing efforts on other apps while driving traffic from those platforms to TikTok. In the long run, you will be creating multiple touchpoints to engage and connect with your ideal customer, meaning your message will be reinforced, and the chances of your followers missing the content will be slim.

The repeated exposure to your content will drive awareness of your brand, increase the chances of users visiting your website, and ultimately buying from your store.

5. Create informative content

Although TikTok content is often based on fun and creativity, the platform is also suitable for sharing informative content. You can create content that provides value to your audience by educating them regarding the products you have in store. 

For instance, if your products are female clothes, you can create videos that educate them on different ways they can rock those outfits. This gives them ideas on how to look chic and serves as an excellent way to get them to visit your dropshipping store and get those products since you have showcased tutorials about them.

Additionally, keep in mind that users on the app are looking for videos that entertain and interest them, so you want to make your informative content fun without losing the message you're trying to pass across. 

Final thoughts

In the world of TikTok, interesting, fun, and engaging content reigns supreme. To maximize TikTok for your dropshipping store, it's vital to ensure you have access to suppliers for your products. Doba is a leading dropshipping website since 2002, dedicated to providing high-quality dropshipping suppliers and products for online sellers to dropship. Doba provides integrations with top marketplaces and e-commerce platforms, including Amazon, eBay, Shopify, and more, allowing sellers to add products to their stores and sync orders to the suppliers to fulfill efficiently.