Should Amazon Sellers Run TikTok Ads? Opportunities and Risks

Are you an Amazon seller wondering if TikTok ads are worth the investment? You’re already juggling Amazon PPC, and the thought of learning a whole new platform might feel overwhelming.

It’s a valid concern. TikTok is hot, but is it right for your Amazon brand? In this article, we’ll break down the potential benefits and risks of TikTok advertising for Amazon sellers, helping you decide if it’s the right move for your business. We’ll cover what to expect in terms of audience, creative, and potential return. Let’s dive in.

TikTok Ads for Amazon Brands: Understanding the Opportunity

TikTok is a massive platform with a young, engaged audience. But that doesn’t automatically translate to Amazon sales.

Here’s what’s happening: TikTok is primarily a platform for discovery and entertainment, not necessarily direct purchasing. Most users are looking for fun, engaging content, not necessarily products to buy. That said, the platform can be great for brand awareness and can lead to sales.

Reaching a New Audience Beyond Amazon

One of the biggest potential benefits of TikTok is reaching a demographic that you might not be hitting on Amazon. Think Gen Z and younger Millennials.

If your target audience aligns with this demographic, TikTok can be a powerful tool for building brand awareness and driving traffic to your Amazon store. But if your target audience is older, TikTok may not be the best use of your ad budget.

Driving External Traffic to Amazon

While direct sales might not be the primary goal, TikTok ads can drive external traffic to your Amazon listings.

Here’s how to make that happen: Use compelling video content that showcases your product’s benefits and includes a clear call to action, like “Shop now on Amazon!” Make sure your Amazon listings are optimized for conversion, with clear product descriptions, high-quality images, and customer reviews.

The Risks of TikTok Advertising for Amazon Sellers

Before you jump on the TikTok bandwagon, it’s important to understand the potential downsides. TikTok advertising isn’t for everyone.

High Creative Demands and Costs

TikTok is a visual platform, and users expect high-quality, engaging video content. This means you’ll need to invest in creating compelling creatives that capture attention and resonate with your target audience.

Here’s the thing: Unlike Amazon, where product images and bullet points often suffice, TikTok demands authentic, creative, and engaging videos. This can mean hiring video editors or investing in learning how to create TikTok-worthy content yourself.

Attribution Challenges and Tracking

Attributing sales directly to TikTok ads can be tricky. Amazon doesn’t provide detailed attribution data for external traffic, so it’s difficult to track which TikTok campaigns are driving the most sales.

Let me break this down: You’ll need to use UTM parameters in your TikTok ad URLs to track traffic in Google Analytics or other analytics platforms. Even then, it’s hard to connect those visits to actual Amazon purchases definitively.

Different Audience Expectations

The way users interact with ads on TikTok is very different from Amazon. On Amazon, people are actively searching for products. On TikTok, they’re scrolling through entertaining videos.

Most sellers don’t realize: You can’t just repurpose your Amazon product images and expect them to work on TikTok. You need to create content that’s native to the platform and aligns with user expectations. Think short, engaging videos that showcase your product in a fun and creative way.

Is TikTok Right for Your Amazon Brand? Ask These Questions

So, should you be running TikTok ads? Here are some questions to consider:

• What is your target audience? Does your target audience align with TikTok’s user base (primarily Gen Z and younger Millennials)?
• What are your goals? Are you primarily looking to build brand awareness, drive traffic, or generate direct sales?
• What’s your budget? Can you afford to invest in high-quality video content creation?
• What resources do you have? Do you have the in-house expertise to create and manage TikTok campaigns, or will you need to hire an agency?

Strategies for Success on TikTok

If you decide to give TikTok a try, here are some tips for success:

• Create authentic, engaging content: Focus on creating videos that are native to the platform and resonate with your target audience.
• Use relevant hashtags: Use relevant hashtags to help people discover your content.
• Run contests and giveaways: Contests and giveaways can be a great way to generate buzz and drive traffic to your Amazon store.
• Partner with influencers: Partnering with relevant influencers can help you reach a wider audience and build credibility.

TikTok Ad Example – Before & After

Let’s look at a real example of how an Amazon seller could improve their TikTok ad performance.

Before: A seller of ergonomic office chairs runs a TikTok ad featuring a static product image with text overlay. The ad gets very few impressions and no clicks. ACOS is essentially infinite.

After: The seller creates a short, engaging video showing people using the chair in different work-from-home scenarios. The video highlights the chair’s comfort and ergonomic benefits. They add trending audio to increase visibility. This leads to more impressions, clicks to their Amazon store, and measurable sales lift on Amazon.

Conclusion

TikTok ads can be a powerful tool for Amazon sellers, but it’s not a guaranteed success. It requires a significant investment in creative content and a deep understanding of the platform’s unique audience and culture. Focus on creating authentic, engaging videos that resonate with your target audience, and be patient as you test and optimize your campaigns. Don’t expect overnight results, but with the right strategy, TikTok can be a valuable addition to your Amazon advertising arsenal.

Key Discussion Points from the Episode

Here are some of the most valuable insights Andrew and Stephen shared during the full episode discussion:

Yeah. I didn’t even know that there were 26 platforms. I thought it was just three.

I thought it was just Amazon, Target. Walmart, Marketplace and marketplaces a lot. It’s just the, the problem with all of the marketplaces out there is most brands are going to do nothing on them.

So if you take a brand, you could take a million dollar brand on Amazon and Launch it on Macy’s.com and it’ll do absolutely nothing, right? It really comes down to what, what marketplaces are right for, for what brands at what time. So let’s talk about TikTok.

We’ve got a, a bunch of questions. Get through. I’m not even sure where to begin, but I think maybe to start, I would love to hear your experience with the brands you’ve been working with about TikTok shop.

Because this is a relatively new thing is my understanding and none of my brands are on TikTok shop. Can you help us understand what that is, how it works?

Yeah, but those are wise words from Picasso, which if anyone doesn’t know, he’s one of the most successful E comm sellers of all time. So definitely worth giving him, giving him a listen. Eric, could you speak, could you speak a little bit to the size of opportunity on TikTok?

So I’m curious, when you take brands from Amazon and they move on to TikTok, what’s the percentage of sales on TikTok that they see compared to Amazon? Maybe within the first three months versus other brands that have been there for. Well, I guess it’s only been six.

Months, but super hard to answer that question because it, it’s, I mean the market is, is massive. So I, I would say it’s almost the same question of what’s the opportunity on Amazon? Which, which can be hard to answer.

You can look at. What are the, what are your monthly searches? You know, what, where, where can you compete?

What, you know, what products can you beat in in various ways, TikTok is kind of the same and it really is going to depend on how aggressive the brand is. It’s going to depend on budget. But I would say it’s.

Unless you’re super viral and you put everything into it, like rise, it’s probably going to be a little smaller than Amazon, but the Potential is there. It just takes a lot of different work and a lot of different tools. You can master Amazon with a very small amount of video on TikTok.

You have to be video centric, so you can easily do, you know, tens of thousands of dollars a month. It just depends on how aggressive you are and how much of a focus it is. It’s not one of those things.

I always say this to our brands. It’s not one of those things where you, a brand wants to just hand it off to an agency and say, run some ads and give me an account the size of Amazon. It needs to be a focus if you want it to be a big channel.

This article is based on Episode 45 of That Amazon Ads Podcast. Subscribe for weekly Amazon PPC strategies.