Everyone's going on about TikTok like it's some magic bullet for e-commerce. They see a teenager get millions of views for dancing with a bottle of juice and think, "I can do that for my handcrafted sustainable dog collars." And then they spend a thousand quid and get precisely zero sales. The truth is, TikTok can be an absolute goldmine for e-commerce, but most brands approach it with a completely flawed mindset. They treat it like a cheaper version of Facebook, upload their polished, corporate-looking video ads, and wonder why nobody's buying.
This guide is going to break down how to actually use TikTok to sell products. We're not talking about vanity metrics like views or followers. We're talking about a repeatable system for turning ad spend into profit. It's not about going viral. It's about understanding the platform's unique culture, creating ads that don't feel like ads, and letting the algorithm do the heavy lifting for you. Forget everything you think you know, because what works on Instagram will likely get you laughed out of the room on TikTok.
So, why do so many brands get it wrong?
The number one mistake is failing to understand that TikTok is an entertainment platform first and a social network second. People open the app to be entertained or to learn something new in a fun way, not to be sold to. Your perfectly lit product shots and slick corporate videos? They stick out like a sore thumb in a feed full of raw, authentic, user-generated content. Users will scroll past it in less than a second. It screams "AD!" from a mile away, and that's the kiss of death.
I remember one client, a women's apparel brand, came to us after burning through their budget on TikTok with nothing to show for it. They had these beautifully shot videos, professional models, everything looked perfect – the kind of stuff that worked brilliantly on their Instagram page. On TikTok? Crickets. The problem wasn't the product; it was the presentation. It was too polished, too try-hard. It didn't fit the native feel of the platform.
The second biggest issue is a fundamental misunderstanding of the algorithm. On Facebook, you used to have to build hyper-specific audiences with dozens of interest layers. On TikTok, the creative *is* the targeting. A good video ad will tell the algorithm exactly who to show it to. If you make a video about how your running shoes help with shin splints, TikTok's algorithm is smart enough to find people who have watched content about running, fitness, and injury prevention. You don't need to spoon-feed it as much as you think. Brands that fail are often the ones who bring their old, restrictive targeting habits from other platforms, strangling the algorithm before it even has a chance to learn. A lot of the time, we see brands complain about poor results on their e-commerce campaigns, and the root cause is often trying to apply the same creative and targeting logic across completely different platforms without any adjustment.
Is TikTok even the right platform for your brand?
Let's be brutally honest for a moment. TikTok isn't for everyone. If you're selling high-ticket B2B software or complex industrial machinery, this probably isn't your primary channel. The platform thrives on impulse, visual appeal, and products that are easy to understand and desire quickly. Ask yourself these questions:
-> Is your product visually interesting? Things like fashion, cosmetics, gadgets, food, home decor, and unique accessories do incredibly well. It's much harder to sell insurance or accounting services here. We've seen massive success with products that have a 'wow' factor or a satisfying element to them, like a cleaning product that shows a dramatic before-and-after. One of our most successful campaigns was for a brand of cleaning products that got a 633% return, purely because the videos were so satisfying to watch.
-> Is your price point in the impulse-buy range? Generally, products under £100 perform best. Someone might take a punt on a £25 t-shirt or a £40 gadget they saw in a cool video. They are far less likely to drop £1,000 on a bespoke sofa without doing a lot more research. This isn't a hard and fast rule, but it's a strong guideline. If your product is more expensive, TikTok can still be used for top-of-funnel awareness, but you need a solid retargeting strategy on other platforms to close the sale.
-> Can you explain your product's value in 15 seconds? The attention span on TikTok is ridiculously short. If you need a whitepaper to explain what your product does, you're going to struggle. The value proposition needs to be instant. This is where a lot of brands fail. They have a great product but they can't communicate its benefit quickly and clearly. You might be getting loads of traffic from your ads, but if it doesn't lead to conversions, the problem is often a disconnect between the ad's hook and the product's perceived value on the landing page.
-> Who is your target customer? While TikTok's demographic is broadening, its core is still Gen Z and Millennials. If your ideal customer is a 65-year-old retiree, you might have better luck elsewhere. However, if you sell something like bespoke dog collars, and your audience is 25-40 year old dog lovers, you could absolutley clean up. A client selling these saw their sales plateau until they cracked the creative for TikTok and found a whole new audience.
Don't just jump on the bandwagon because it's the trendy thing to do. Be honest about whether your product and audience are a natural fit for the platform's culture.
The Real Secret: Your Creative is Everything
I've said it already, but it's the most important point in this entire guide: on TikTok, your creative is more important than your targeting, your bidding strategy, and your budget combined. A killer creative with broad targeting will outperform a mediocre creative with the most 'perfect' audience you can build. Your ad has to blend in to stand out. It needs to look and feel like a native TikTok video, not a glossy ad.
This means you need to forget about studio lighting and professional models. The gold standard for TikTok ads is User-Generated Content (UGC). This is content made to look like it was created by a real customer. It's authentic, it's relatable, and it builds trust instantly. It feels like a recommendation from a friend rather than a sales pitch from a faceless brand.
So, what does good UGC-style creative actually look like?
The First 3 Seconds (The Hook): This is where you win or lose. You have to grab their attention immediately. Don't start with your logo. Start with a problem, a bold statement, or something visually arresting.
- Bad Hook: "Introducing the new Hydro-Flask 2.0..." (Boring)
- Good Hook: "Stop buying water bottles that leak all over your bag." (Problem-focused)
- Bad Hook: "Shop our new summer collection." (Generic)
- Good Hook: "3 outfits from my new favourite brand that I'm obsessed with." (Authentic, curiosity-driven)
The Content Itself: It should be simple and demonstrate value. Show, don't just tell. Unboxings, product demonstrations, "a day in the life" featuring your product, before-and-afters, and tutorials all work brilliantly. The key is to keep it looking lo-fi. Film it on a phone, use natural lighting, don't over-edit it. The small imperfections are what make it feel real.
Sound is Non-Negotiable: Over 80% of TikTok videos are watched with the sound on. Sound is half the experience. Using a trending song or audio clip can give your ad a massive organic boost and make it feel more native to the platform. Don't just slap any old corporate stock music on it. Spend 10 minutes scrolling the For You Page to see what sounds are currently popular and relevant to your niche.
The Call to Action (CTA): Don't just rely on the little "Shop Now" button. Include a verbal or text-overlay CTA in the video itself. Something like, "The link is in my bio to get one!" or "Tap the button to check it out." It reinforces the action you want them to take.
Getting the right creative can be a challenge. You have a few options, and frankly, some are better than others. You could try making it yourself, but many brands struggle to get the authentic tone right. There are a lot of questions around whether you should use ripped content, AI videos, or work with creators, and the answer is almost always to work with real people to get custom UGC. It's an investment that pays for itself many times over.
Example Creative Formats That Work
| Format | Description | Why it Works |
|---|---|---|
| Unboxing/First Impressions | A creator opens your product for the first time and shares their genuine reaction. | Builds excitement and anticipation. Feels authentic and trustworthy. |
| Problem/Solution | Start by showing a common, relatable problem. Then, introduce your product as the hero that solves it. | Directly addresses the customer's pain point and provides immediate value. |
| "Things you didn't know you needed" | Position your product within a list of other cool finds or 'Amazon favourites'. | Feels like a genuine recommendation, not an ad. Great for impulse-buy items. |
| Before & After | Show a clear, dramatic transformation. Works for cleaning, beauty, fitness, and home organisation. | Visually compelling and provides undeniable proof of the product's effectiveness. |
How to Structure Your Campaigns for Profit, Not Views
Right, let's get into the ads manager. This is where people get lost, but the principles are simple if you follow them. Your goal is to make money, not to get views. This means your entire setup should be geared towards conversions.
Campaign Objective: When you create a new campaign, TikTok will ask you for your objective. 99% of the time, for e-commerce, you should choose "Website Conversions". Do not choose "Reach" or "Traffic". Choosing "Reach" tells the algorithm "find me the cheapest people to show this to, I don't care if they buy anything". Choosing "Traffic" tells it "find me people who love to click on things but never buy". You are actively paying the algorithm to find you the worst possible audience. By choosing "Conversions" and setting your optimisation event to "Complete Payment" or "Purchase", you're giving it a clear command: "Go and find me people who are likely to actually buy my product."
The TikTok Pixel is Your Best Friend: Before you spend a single penny, make sure your TikTok Pixel is installed correctly on your website (e.g., your Shopify store) and that you're tracking key events like View Content, Add to Cart, Initiate Checkout, and Complete Payment. Without this data, the algorithm is flying blind. It needs to see who is converting so it can find more people like them. We often see clients reporting that TikTok clicks aren't being properly counted in their store analytics, which usually points to a pixel setup issue that needs to be fixed urgently.
Campaign Structure: Don't overcomplicate it. A simple, effective structure to start with is:
-> 1 Testing Campaign (ABO - Ad Set Budget Optimisation): This is where you test your creatives. Create one campaign, and within it, create multiple ad sets. Each ad set should have just ONE creative in it. Set a small daily budget for each ad set (e.g., £20/day). Let them run for 3-4 days. This setup allows you to see exactly which video is performing best. The targeting here can be quite broad - we'll get to that in a minute.
-> 1 Scaling Campaign (CBO - Campaign Budget Optimisation): Once you've identified your winning creatives from the testing campaign (the ones with the best ROAS or lowest CPA), you turn off the losing ad sets. Then, you duplicate the winning ad sets into a new CBO campaign. In a CBO campaign, you set the budget at the campaign level (e.g., £100/day), and TikTok will automatically distribute that budget to the best-performing ad set (and creative) within it. This is how you scale efficiently.
This simple two-campaign structure keeps things organised and allows you to constantly test new creatives while scaling your winners, which is crucial for avoiding ad fatigue. Many brands get stuck with mediocre results because they aren't systematic with their testing and scaling.
Targeting on TikTok: Less is More
This is going to feel counter-intuitive if you're used to other platforms, but on TikTok, you often get better results by going broad. The algorithm is incredibly powerful. Your main job is to feed it a great creative and get out of its way.
When you're starting out in your testing campaign, here's a good approach:
Start Broad: For your first few ad sets, try targeting with no interests at all. Just select the country, gender, and age range of your typical customer and let it run. The creative itself will do the targeting. You'll be amazed at how effective this can be for products with mass appeal.
Layer in Some Interests: For other ad sets, test 1-3 related interests. Don't go crazy and stack 20 interests. If you're selling gym apparel, you might test one ad set targeting people interested in "Gym/Training" and "Bodybuilding", and another ad set targeting people who have interacted with creators in the "Fitness & Health" category. Keep it simple. The goal is to give the algorithm a gentle nudge in the right direction, not to put it in a straightjacket. This is where many people go wrong, and they start to question if their interest targeting is actually hurting sales, when the real problem is often that they're being too restrictive.
Retargeting and Lookalikes: Once your pixel has gathered enough data (at least 1000 events for a specific action like "Add to Cart"), you can start using more advanced targeting.
- Retargeting: Create audiences of people who have visited your website, viewed a product, or added to cart but didn't purchase. These are warm leads, and hitting them with a slightly different ad (maybe with a small discount code) can be very effective.
- Lookalikes: This is where the magic happens. You can tell TikTok to create a "Lookalike Audience" of people who are similar to your past purchasers. A 1% Lookalike of your "Complete Payment" event is often the highest-performing audience you will ever create.
Prioritise your audiences. Start with broad and simple interests. Once you have data, create retargeting audiences. Once you have more data, create Lookalikes of your best customers. Test them all systematically.
What Metrics Actually Matter (and How to Read Them)
You can easily drown in data. You need to focus on the metrics that actually tell you if you're making money or losing it. Here are the main ones for e-commerce:
-> ROAS (Return On Ad Spend): This is your north star. It's the total revenue generated from your ads divided by your ad spend. A 2x ROAS means for every £1 you spend, you make £2 back. A ROAS below your break-even point means you're losing money. Everything you do should be aimed at improving this number.
-> CPA (Cost Per Acquisition/Purchase): This is how much it costs you, on average, to get one sale. If your product costs £50 and your CPA is £25, your ROAS is 2x. Knowing your target CPA is crucial for making quick decisions about which ads to turn off.
-> CTR (Click-Through Rate): This is the percentage of people who see your ad and click on it. A low CTR (generally below 1% on TikTok) is a massive red flag that your creative is not working. It's not grabbing attention, or it's not resonating with the audience. This is your first diagnostic tool. If your CTR is bad, nothing else matters – fix the creative.
-> CPC (Cost Per Click): How much you pay every time someone clicks your ad. This is influenced by your CTR. A better creative leads to a higher CTR, which leads to a lower CPC.
You can use these metrics to diagnose problems. Here’s a simple framework:
- Low CTR: Your hook is weak, your video is boring, it looks too much like an ad. Go back to the drawing board with your creative.
- High CTR, but low Add-to-Carts: People are interested enough to click, but something on your product page is putting them off. Is the price too high? Are the product photos bad? Is the description unclear? The problem is likely your landing page, not the ad. This is a common issue we see, where brands have a high CTR but no sales to show for it.
- High Add-to-Carts, but low Purchase Rate: They want to buy, but something in the checkout process is stopping them. Is your shipping too expensive? Do you not offer the right payment options? Is your checkout process long and complicated? This is often where unexpected costs kill conversions. We've helped jewellery brands fix their funnels when they were seeing exactly this pattern of high intent but low final sales.
By analysing the data this way, you can pinpoint exactly where your funnel is broken and focus your efforts on fixing it.
My Main Recommendations for You
This is a lot to take in, I know. But success on TikTok isn't complicated, it's just different. It requires a new way of thinking. If you only take away a few things from this guide, make them these:
| Area of Focus | Your Key Action | Why This Is Non-Negotiable |
|---|---|---|
| Mindset & Strategy | Stop advertising, start entertaining. Your goal is to make "TikToks", not "ads". | Users are on the platform for entertainment. Blending in with native content is the only way to earn their attention and trust before you can ask for a sale. |
| Creative | Commit to a UGC-first approach. Source or create authentic, lo-fi video content that feels like it was made by a real customer. | This is the single biggest factor for success. Authentic content builds trust and tells the algorithm who to target far better than polished corporate videos. |
| Campaign Setup | ALWAYS use the "Website Conversions" objective, optimising for "Complete Payment". Install your pixel correctly from day one. | This tells the algorithm your actual goal is to find buyers, not just clicks or views. Without correct pixel data, the algorithm is blind and cannot optimise effectively. |
| Targeting | Start with Broad targeting (no interests) or very wide interest categories (1-3 max). Let the creative do the heavy lifting. | TikTok's algorithm is powerful. Overly specific targeting restricts its ability to learn and find pockets of customers you would've never thought of. Trust the creative. |
| Testing & Optimisation | Systematically test one variable at a time (ideally, one creative per ad set). Use ROAS and CPA as your primary metrics to decide winners and losers. | Guesswork leads to wasted budget. Data-driven testing is the only way to build a repeatable system that you can scale profitably. |
Running successful TikTok ad campaigns is a skill. It takes time, a lot of creative testing, and a deep understanding of the platform's ever-changing landscape. It's not just about setting up a campaign and hoping for the best; it's about building a robust testing framework, analysing data correctly, and having a constant pipeline of fresh, native creative.
This is where getting professional help can make a massive difference. An experienced eye can spot issues with your funnel in minutes, provide a stream of high-performing creative ideas, and implement a campaign structure that's built for scale from the ground up. If you're tired of burning cash and want to see what a properly managed TikTok advertising strategy can do for your e-commerce brand, consider getting some expert advice.
We offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can take a look at what you're doing and give you some straight, actionable advice on how to improve. It might be the most valuable 20 minutes you spend on your marketing all year.
