A Beginner's Guide for TikTok Dropshipping in 2023

TikTok, one the most widely used up in the current world, offers a wide platform for dropshippers to showcase their business. It is a huge opportunity for online sellers to take advantage of this booming Social media platform. If you painstakingly go through this article until the end, then I’m sure you will acquire vast knowledge of how you can use it to sell your e-commerce products.

To begin with, I know in one way or another other you have probably heard about the famous app TikTok. Interestingly, this app has had over a 175million downloads only in Q1 for this year, specifically from January first, all through to 31^st March—counting.

According to Statista, as of January 2022, the United States recorded the largest TikTok audience in the world, with over 136.5 million active users engaging with the Social Media platform. Indonesia Came second with 99 million, Brazil with 74 million, and Russia with 50 million registered users.

It is therefore needless to say that US dropshippers and sellers can benefit a lot from this popular Social Media application and increase their e-shop profits.

Dropshipping with TikTok is a great way to make some serious cash nowadays. It is the best way in my verdict, to engage with the audience.

An important point to take note of however is; if you want to start a dropshipping business for TikTok, you will also need a Shopify store, which is dubbed as the biggest platform that allows you to easily and effectively create a beautiful website for your store.

As an advice, you should know that when it comes to e-commerce and dropshipping, it is not only about selling on the marketplaces. It is very possible for you to today perform Social Commerce dropshipping, the majority of Millennials and Gen Z are constantly active on Social Media. Did you know that TikTok outranked Social platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Tinder, and Netflix in 2020?

Let’s take a look at what you need to know about dropshipping on TikTok and how you should start.

Merits of Using TikTok Dropshipping

I know you must have the existence of the term dropshipping. This is a business model where you sell high-demand products without the need of having to purchase an inventory ahead. You simply have to dedicate yourself to sourcing winning products from different suppliers. With this, you can make a profit from the sales of different products in your store. You can as well check out some of the best products from this amazing app.

An average dropshipper tends to make between $1000 to $5000 a month. Needless to say, you need to invest in order to grow. For instance, you will have to spend money plus the fees for hosting websites. You should do marketing as well as it is a way to attract customers.

For TikTok Dropshipping, however, having an online store is a priority. Therefore, seek product suppliers where you can source from like Dropshipman, and good marketing efforts in order to gain relevant traffic. Besides, being a trend-driven Social Media platform, for creating, sharing, and watching short video clips. TikTok has gathered over 698 million monthly users since Its launch in 2017. Therefore, for independent content creators, businesses, and brands, TikTok plays a crucial role in the provision of a platform to promote your work, products, personalities, and ideas in creative and entertaining ways to global audiences. The most important part of it all is how easy it is to create, share, and interact with the audience combined with the common celebrity sightings, the wonderful algorithm, and the focus on localized content. TikTok thus is a win-win place to promote your dropshipping business.

TikTok ad Shopify Stores

Shopify boasts of an amazing integration system with different marketplaces where it connects the TikTok platform to its own online store. Shopify dropshipping has become widely known nowadays. It has the potential of bringing quality traffic.

 

What makes this amazing app worth it? Well for beginners, it is probably going to be a little bit difficult to jump into the Shopify bandwagon right away, more so if they lack the required experience and money to invest. The reason behind this is that in order to build a success sinful Shopify store, you’ll need to invest in paid-to-Google and a good SEO strategy as well in order to rank in the search results pages.

 

The good news about integration with the TikTok app, however, is that this social media platform has an awesome ability to engage, with users. Additionally, it prides itself on millions of active users who always visit this coveted app every single day!

Your only crucial role is to painstakingly understand your target audience and provide great products that they will want to purchase using awesome and dynamic content. Therefore, it’ll be simpler for you as a dropshipper to create convenient ad campaigns on the social media platform.

 

As if that’s not enough, Shopify permits sellers to enable an in-app shopping experience where they can place their products on the platform’s discovery feed thus, helping TikTok commerce gain more traction.

Also very vital for you to know is that Shopify and TikTok partnered up in order to bring product links to Shopify merchants. This can be used to tag products in organic TikTok posts. The TikTok community can have a selection on whether to shop directly from the seller’s storefront or even click on a tagged product in a TikTok short video — which will take the user directly to the seller’s online store for checkout. This one sounds fun, isn’t it?

Ways of Finding Products on TikTok to Dropship

It doesn’t matter how many ad campaigns you run and the money spent, if your products aren’t right for the audience, all the efforts you apply will remain futile.

Here is a comprehensive guide on how you can do some valuable research on products suitable for TikTok dropshipping:

1. Browse Hashtags

The quickest and most efficient way to find products on TikTok is by going to the search bar and browsing through the hashtags and conducting a comprehensive analysis of how many people are talking about those products.

You can either dropship the same products, or find a similar niche that isn’t targeted by many dropshippers.

2. Search for e-commerce Platforms

Make this possible by using the search filter of e-commerce platforms where you’ll find hundreds of thousands of videos of people sharing different products. Do some research on how people promote, advertise, and present products. You can also get access to what is trendy.

3. Look for Latest Product Trends.

As I had already stated above, TikTok is widely used by people in their 20s. So look for trends and experiences that appeal to the younger generation. Your choice of products doesn’t have to be sophisticated or unique but rather something that resonates well with a younger crowd. Let it be known to you that your vast majority of customers will be Gen Z and Millennials

 TikTok marketing strategies for dropshippers Which are used Quite Often

There are many ways of advertising products on TikTok. Each of them is fairly similar to bother marketing methods you may be familiar with, such as Facebook Ads, and Instagram influencers, just to mention a few. Here is a comprehensive analysis of how you can make use of these common marketing strategies to make sure your TikTok dropshipping business becomes more noticeable and eventually outstanding:

 

1. Ability to Host Livestreams

TikTok’s algorithm works uniquely and you totally unaware of what video may get picked by it. Therefore, hosting consistent live streams can be a great way to capture the attention of the audience. Just make a plan on what you will be doing to keep the audience entertained.

2. Influencer Marketing

This is one of the most effective and efficient ways to promote your dropshipping business these days.

In case the influencer has a huge fan base and a lot of followers, they can help you promote your products and get you instant traffic, by producing produce quality content. It might even be better than running an ad campaign.

Moreover, influencers have what it takes to grab the attention of the audience and in return, help to make your brand more recognizable.

3. Giveaways & Contests

Giveaways & contests are both evergreen and captivating methods to fully capture the attention of the masses, I mean…after all, who abhors free stuff?!

Just combine exciting giveaways with hashtag challenges and you have a recipe for going viral.

Your TikTok giveaway entry guidelines should be kept pretty simple. Just discuss the rules in your TikTok video and briefly address them in the video captions. Typically, a contest will probably request that people follow you, use your hashtag, comment on your video, tag someone, or duet or stitch your video. You will also need an entry deadline with the end time and time zone.

4. Paid ads

The TikTok paid ads are a fairly new advancement in their offerings. However, with a simple set-up process and familiar interface, you can get your brand in front of your one-billion-strong audience within no time. Additionally, you can set up, run and manage your ad campaigns.

According to TikTok’s website, users can get access to the privilege of enjoying the following benefits:

• Access to 5-60 second, full-screen vertical video with sound-on.
• Gain the privilege of Optimizing for traffic and conversion objectives; app installs and events.
• Enhance their Precise targeting options which include: interest, event-based behaviors, custom, and lookalike audiences just to mention a few.
• Get access to a range of billing options, CPM, CPV, and CPC

How to perfectly build a TikTok dropshipping profile TikTok for Dropshipping

To begin with, TikTok offers – a Pro account and a personal account.

 A TikTok Pro account allows you to see statistics on your posts, overall performance, etc.

The following are some of the many benefits a TikTok Pro account offers:

• With it, you can have full access to views on your videos and content trend status.
• You can as well get detailed Geographical information about your audience.
• Detailed audience insights, including their gender, are also fully availed at your fingertips for easy access.
• It enhances the overall growth of your account.
• It is as well pre-packaged with TopView to drive maximum reach.
• Interestingly, you get access to six days of in-app promotion on their Discover page.
• It also offers the Integration of soundtracks into campaigns to add sonic identity;
• It ensures a day takeover with a 100% share of voice, premium, brand-safe placement, and many more.

When registering a Pro account, users can choose a creator account (This is advantageous in that it actively pays video makers for their work) or a business account.

In case you want to be part and parcel of all the benefits of the Pro account, you should switch to it.

Pros and cons of TikTok Dropshipping:

Although TikTok is one of the most popular apps in the market with millions of active users, dropshippers are still wrapped up in a great deal of doubt if TikTok Dropshipping is worth investing in. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of this approach.

Pros of TikTok Dropshipping

• Its huge number of active users interacting with the application makes it a great idea for dropshippers. This will make your marketing efforts a little bit easier because organic traffic is constantly flowing — just like a river.

That being said, there is a need for you to understand TikTok’s audience and who you want to target as your ideal customer.

 

What type of users engages with the TikTok channel?

Most of the TikTok users are Gen Z and Millennials.  In other words, the platform is filled with teens and young adults. Approximately 60% of the platform’s audience in the US for instance, is between the ages 16-24.

It’s important to point out that while TikTok’s user base is often associated with Generation Z, there are a lot of brands that are successfully selling on the platform, even though their target audience is older.

• TikTok as a social commerce platform not only offers a high traffic rate but also an awesome engagement rate between creators, ads creatives, influencers, etc. with the social media audience. In conclusion, increasing your brand awareness or impressions along with potential leads and sales goes without saying.

Cons of TikTok e-commerce:  

As far as I’m concerned, it is needless to say that just like anything else in life, everything has a flip side, there is always a downside too.

• TikTok has an amazing volume of traffic where you can easily interact with the audience organically. Nevertheless, to push some sales up, you need to invest in advertising TikTok video content. The catch here is that you may need to place down at least $50 per day to make an impactful campaign.

This makes the difference between Facebook ads and TikTok, on Facebook although there is no actual limit to what you can invest, the minimum required is $20. Thu is rather ideal for the newbies in this business platform. So if you are a small business owner starting your TikTok Dropshipping journey, investing this much per day may be difficult to maintain.

• Another shortcoming of this platform is the type of content you create. The high amount of engagement rate you get is not only because of the app’s algorithm but also the quality of content you may create.  For instance, the majority of TikTok users develop low-quality but highly impactful content with videos of lip singing, small dances, and comedy satire. However, when it comes to selling on TikTok, your content is expected to be top-notch in order to drive quality traffic that will not only engage with your ads but also enter as potential customers.

There are no gathered resources to help you start creating TikTok ads. Besides, you will have to compete with a high amount of daily content creators in an app that has millions of active users constantly engaging with these types of content.  

• Finally, it is important to point out that you won’t be able to target desktop users since the app is pretty much only for mobile. This means that your marketing efforts will have to go to iOS and Android.

Conclusion

To relatively and with much ease reach potential customers for your online store, engage in dropshipping with TikTok. I believe you have acquired enough information to help strengthen your confidence as you make your first steps in this booming TikTok advertising world!