How to achieve success on TikTok Shop
6 strategies you need to optimize to boost your affiliate sales
TikTok's algorithm boosts shoppable videos that generate sales, increasing their visibility and engagement. To leverage this, brands need to focus on key areas: working with the right influencers, creating quality content, and building a strong affiliate community.
TikTok Shop sales come from two main channels: about 30% from brands’ own TikTok Shops, and 70% from influencer posts. Given this, brands need a lot of influencer content and influencers who can drive sales with engaging, viral posts.
Let’s explore the most effective strategies and tactics to help you succeed and boost your affiliate sales on TikTok Shop
Strategy 1: Content is (still) King
TikTok Shop videos should be snappy, authentic, entertaining, engaging, and on-trend.
At the same time, TikTok Shop is a platform for conversions, the content for your campaigns needs to appear authentic and organic while maintaining the elements of an effective UGC ad: strong hook + content body/story + CTA.
See here for an example of a TikTok Shop brief.
Pro-tip: Equip your affiliates with dynamic strategies that drive conversions by staying on top of trends and regularly updating your brand messaging on TikTok. Whether it's highlighting product textures (for example, smoothness or glow), showcasing results, or telling your brand story and announcing new releases, adapt your messages to maintain audience interest and keep your content fresh and relevant.
Strategy 2: Flat fee + Commission
When working with TikTok creators for TikTok Shop, there are two primary paths: commission campaigns and flat fee + commission campaigns. We recommend our clients to push for both types of campaigns equally:
Commission campaigns
Assure volume and find product enthusiasts by hiring every possible creator interested in promoting your product. Note that this approach has low predictability, and some items may be counted as losses.
TikTok suggests a starting commission rate of 15% for affiliates, but it's crucial to set the highest feasible commission based on profit margins. Offering an appealing commission rate not only activates more affiliates but also encourages their continued engagement. Experiment with different commission levels to observe the impact on affiliate activations and order volumes.
Flat Fee + Commission
Attract higher-quality creators and provide specific briefs to them. Ensure you hire creators in your product's niche who can create storytelling and personal recommendation videos, and clearly promote products on their TikTok accounts.
Control over creative direction and usage rights: Align content with your brand’s vision, repurpose it for broader marketing efforts, and maximize the value of each piece of content created.
Guaranteed posts: Ensure your products get the visibility they need and reduce the risk of creators not delivering after receiving products.
On Insense, you can set and pay out the flat fee to creators in addition to the commissions they earn in the Affiliate Center. You can set a flat fee as modest as USD 30-50. However, it's important to recognize that certain high-profile creators may command higher fees, particularly those with sizable built-in audiences.
Strategy 3: Choosing affiliates that will sell your product
As TikTok becomes a major platform for social commerce, brands need to adapt their approach to selecting creators.
Before: Brands focused on traditional metrics like likes, comments, and follower counts.
Now: Prioritize engagement rates based on views, content virality, and product affinity. These new KPIs more accurately measure an influencer's impact on direct sales and brand fit.
Using TikTok Shop's analytical tools, brands can identify and collaborate with creators who attract large audiences and drive actual sales.
When choosing creators:
Focus on their niche: Ensure it aligns with your product category. See if your product fits naturally into their content.
Verify audience demographics: Use viewer reports to ensure their followers match your target audience: location, age, gender.
Assess content skills: Look for storytelling, personal recommendations, and use of TikTok's in-app editing tools to ensure they can produce high-quality, engaging content that drives conversions.
Read here how to attract and screen the right TikTok Shop affiliates on Insense
Pro tip: Affiliate Community: Affiliate campaigns require building relationships with the influencers and nurturing this relationship in the long term. Offer your TikTok Shop influencers a community to join: a space where they can receive incentives and education around your products and content creation. This could be a closed group or Instagram/TikTok account.
Strategy 4: Volume is key
Why volume matters
The more creators you send your products to, the more chances you have to convert:
Increases exposure: more creators mean more visibility for your product.
Boosts virality: higher chances of creating content that TikTok’s algorithm will promote.
Drives Sales: collaborating with many creators maximizes sales opportunities.
Generates content with the low CPM: provides a library of content that can be repurposed for both organic and paid
Volume recommendations
Work with as many creators as your margins and team capacity allow. According to our data,
Small brands should aim for at least 50 affiliates per month
While larger brands should strive for 100–150 affiliates
Steps to achieve high volume
To maximize your chances of conversions and viral content:
Use both outbound (massive email outreach via Affiliate Center) and inbound (via platforms like Insense with vetted influencers) methods.
Offer a combination of commissions and flat fees to attract and incentivize higher quality influencers.
Understanding the distinct stages of sourcing and engaging influencers will help build an efficient process and give you an idea of how many creators you should work with to achieve results:
Stage | Via Affiliate Center | Via Insense |
Sourcing | By having an open plan in your Seller Center, affiliates can see your products and request a sample. However, first you need to build a strong brand presence so that affiliates want to naturally work with you. You can also search for creators in the center and message them, but as they receive hundreds of messages every day, it's easy that your request may end up lost in their inbox. That is why Emailing and sending DMs is also important. In terms of effectively emailing affiliates, generate a mass email outreach: send a large number of outreach emails to source influencers in the Affiliate Center. Out of these outreach emails, expect a 5% response rate | Receive inbound applications: launch a campaign, and see affiliates applying to your campaign with no outreach within 2 days. Screen them using our creator profile features, incl. audience data and content portfolio |
Engagement | From the responses, anticipate that 10% will opt in to enroll in the program; those are influencers who will agree to participate in your program, and you will send them your product. |
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Activation | Activation Rate: Of those who opt-in, expect an 80% affiliates posting the content and tagging your product |
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Conversion | Sales Conversion: Out of the creators who post, approximately 2 to 10% will convert and generate sales. |
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Build long term partnerships with the high converting creators for the consistent results. | ||
Strategy 5: Leveraging organic content on your Brand’s TikTok account
Customers can buy on TikTok Shop in two ways: through a clickable link on an influencer video, or directly from your TikTok Shop brand account. For this reason, it’s essential to fill your TikTok account with organic content to push for sales.
Repurpose the videos that creators sent you through Insense for your own TikTok handle.
Pro tip: Always get the raw files from the creators. Later, you can do post-production and create more videos for your TikTok page. While setting up a campaign, choose the ‘Ready to use + Raw footage’ option inside the Deliverables brief section:
Need a hand with the video editing? Read here about our post-production service.
Strategy 6: Combining Organic + Paid with TikTok Spark Ads
Paid Ads on TikTok Shop is a path to predictability, scalability and revenue growth on TikTok Shop. As soon as you spot TikTok Shop videos gathering a high number of views and/or generating sales, we strongly recommend you to leverage this content as Spark Ads. Pushing the organic content as Spark Ads will allow your videos to reach more audiences and hence increase conversions.
To read more about TikTok Spark Ads campaigns on Insense, click here.
Continuous TikTok Shop Success Cycle
Related Articles
How to set up a TikTok Shop campaign
How to create a TikTok Shop Campaign Brief
How to find and choose TikTok Shop Affiliates
How to compensate TikTok Shop Affiliates
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