Dropshipping is an excellent business model for those looking for minimal startup costs, broad product selections, and low risks. Requiring no inventory management, it allows you the flexibility to focus on what matters most for scaling up your business.
And where better to set up a dropshipping store than on Shopify? This e-commerce platform controls 32% of the global e-commerce platform market, with over 4.4 million active users. Even more interesting is the fact that only around 7% of Shopify stores use dropshipping services to distribute their products.
This means the dropshipping industry is still growing and won't be saturated anytime soon, as more brands see it as a viable option for boosting sales. Now is the best time to kick off your dropshipping business on Shopify.
Additionally, Shopify now offers a feature that allows you to sync your website with TikTok. Tapping into the fastest-growing social media network is a massive step toward the success of your dropshipping Shopify store.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to drive organic traffic from TikTok to your Shopify store. We’ll start by syncing your accounts on the two platforms and creating high-quality TikTok videos that can rake in views and valuable leads.
How do you link your dropshipping Shopify store with your TikTok account?
Are you selling products through Shopify for the first time? If so, you'll be thrilled to know that you can add TikTok as a sales channel. This can help you drive more organic traffic to your dropshipping Shopify store.
Follow this simple guide:
First, create a TikTok for Business account. This will enable you to create and publish ads on TikTok Ads Manager, manage your store through Business Center, and create spark ads using organic TikTok content. Here's where you can create one.
To complete the sync, you must also change your personal TikTok account to a business account. TikTok will require specific business information in this step, and approval usually takes up to 24 hours.
If you already have a TikTok for Business account, you only need to link the one that shows up on the prompt by clicking 'Connect.' Then, under Data Sharing, select 'Enhanced' and click 'Confirm.' Finally, hit 'Finish setup.'
On the succeeding page, you will notice that your ad account is under review (unless you already have one linked to your TikTok for Business account). This account was automatically created when you set up a TikTok for Business account.
You need an ad account to run paid ads and use Pixel, which tracks events on your Dropshipping Shopify store and integrates the data into your paid ad campaigns.
On the same page, select 'Marketing Catalog.' This will require you to link a TikTok Business Center, another TikTok account that serves as a hub for all your other accounts. Then, click 'Finish setup.' The sync takes 3 to 5 days to complete.
What happens when the Shopify-TikTok sync is complete?
One of the coolest things about Shopify is that it automates some aspects of the sales process, from order fulfillment and inventory management to marketing and customer service. This lets you focus on scaling your business and creating off-site ad campaigns.
The only drawback is that reach and visibility are limited, even if you tap into Shopify Markets to build a localized presence. The good news is you can integrate your Dropshipping Shopify store with your TikTok business account and tap into TikTok's immense market.
Once the sync is complete, you get to enjoy the best of both apps—automation that affords you flexibility and a market with at least one billion monthly active users. You can increase your brand awareness and gain access to valuable data that can help you enhance your marketing strategy.
Most importantly, you can boost your engagement, which is almost impossible with other marketing channels. With social media, especially a giant like TikTok, you can communicate with prospective customers in real-time, address their concerns, collect feedback, and build lasting relationships.
That said, engagement isn't guaranteed, even on social media. You can improve it with organic marketing. If you spark curiosity in your audience, they'll likely interact with you and check out your dropshipping Shopify store.
What does organic traffic mean for TikTok users?
On TikTok, organic traffic refers to the views, likes, shares, and interactions a video receives naturally, without paid promotion or advertising. It comes from users discovering and engaging with your content through their feed, the "For You" page, or shares from other users rather than through sponsored placements.
Organic traffic measures how well your content resonates with TikTok's user base. Building organic traffic involves creating engaging, high-quality content that appeals to your target audience and encourages them to interact with and share your videos.
Creating TikTok content to attract organic traffic is pretty easy because TikTok focuses on one format: short videos filling the screen. But it's for this very reason that making content with a viral factor can be quite challenging.
Think about it—everyone is competing for a unique concept, and there are only so many concepts you can work with, especially if your video is about a product. Plus, you must continue creating videos for the same product to stay visible.
Elements of a Viral TikTok Video
Creating a viral TikTok video is the only way to put your products in front of many eyes. This video must contain various elements that capture viewers' attention and prompt them to engage with you or take action. These elements include:
- Trending Sound: Using catchy songs or sounds can make your TikTok video more engaging for viewers. If your video doesn't need music, consider adding a voiceover or letting a popular tune play softly in the background.
- Concept: A unique idea is essential for standing out on TikTok. Whether it's a funny skit, a dance challenge, a lip-sync performance, or a relatable moment, originality and creativity can help your video go viral.
- Visual Appeal: High-quality visuals, interesting editing techniques, and eye-catching effects can make your TikTok video more visually appealing and engaging for viewers. Experiment with different camera angles, transitions, and filters to make your content visually compelling.
- Engaging Content: Your TikTok video must grab viewers' attention within the first few seconds. Use humor, emotions, surprises, or excitement to connect with your audience. This makes them more likely to watch your video all the way through.
- Relatability: TikTok videos that tap into universal experiences, emotions, or trends tend to perform well. Creating content viewers can relate to or find personally meaningful can increase engagement and sharing.
- Timing and Trends: Staying up-to-date with current trends, challenges, and memes on TikTok can help increase the visibility of your content. Participating in popular trends or using trending hashtags can expose your video to a larger audience.
- Shareability: Designing content that encourages viewers to engage with and share your video with their followers can help boost its virality. Including a call-to-action (CTA) in your video's caption or encouraging viewers to duet or remix your content can increase its shareability.
- Consistency: Consistently posting high-quality content can help grow your TikTok following and increase the likelihood of your videos going viral. Building a strong presence on the platform and cultivating an engaged audience can drive organic traffic to your dropshipping Shopify store.
Driving Traffic for Your Dropshipping Shopify Store with Tiktok Organic Traffic
Now that your TikTok business account and Shopify store are linked, you can concentrate on creating a marketing plan to attract more customers from TikTok to your Shopify store. Here's a simple step-by-step guide you can follow.
Step 1: Choose a product.
Your chosen product and your marketing strategy go hand in hand. If your product isn't interesting, doesn't solve a problem, or belongs to an unknown niche, no amount of organic TikTok marketing can convince people to buy it.
Three things to look for in a product:
- Wow factor: The product must be a scroll-stopper and evoke strong, positive emotion.
- Mass appeal: You're a dropshipper, not a private label. You don't need to focus on a specific niche. Choose a product that appeals to the public, regardless of gender, age, or culture.
- Provides a solution: Products that solve problems or make life easier are the bestsellers in any marketplace.
Here are a few ways to find winning products:
- Take advantage of TikTok's algorithm. You can use your existing TikTok account for this step, but because of all the data your account has generated so far, the algorithm might take a while to provide you with relevant suggestions. Consider creating a new TikTok account instead.
- List all popular hashtags related to product buying, such as #tiktokmademebuyit, #summervibes, #tumblersoftiktok, and #amazonmushaves. Search for posts with these hashtags using your new TikTok account and engage with them for at least five days—hearting, adding to favorites, commenting, and sharing. Follow their creators to get notified when they post a new product.
You'll soon notice that similar or relevant content, including posts from top brands and dropshipping stores, is beginning to flood your 'For You' feed. Eventually, you'll discover items worth selling.
- Resource hubs like TikTok Creative Center and Facebook Ad Library are great places to search for well-performing ads. You can play around with their filter to find exactly the products that can give you the most ROI.
You can explore other spy or scraper tools, but most of them require a paid subscription. Try the free ones first, and if you can't find products to test, consider investing in the paid tools.
What's great about these tools is that they offer more filtering options than the free ones, sort data more efficiently, and present products with high-quality images and copy. They also allow users to import images to their stores to enhance their product listings.
- Check out popular marketplaces and ad platforms like Amazon, Facebook Ads, and Ali Express. They are excellent sources of recent to real-time information on trending products that would make perfect additions to your inventory.
When logging into these platforms, go incognito to avoid messing up their tracking. You want the results they'll show you to be from actual visitors, not from you.
Once you find a product that catches your eye, scroll down to the bottom to see all related results. You might discover equally profitable products that have yet to be scaled by any brand.
After completing your product list, evaluate each item using specific criteria:
- Price: Prioritize products that you can flip for three times the price without looking overpriced. Products priced too high will not sell, regardless of your organic marketing strategy.
- Reviews: Your products must also have excellent reviews. Potential buyers want to know what previous buyers have to say about them before deciding to purchase. Are they satisfied? Did they find any defect? What are these products' return rates? Are they durable?
Some popular products become famous quickly because of viral ads. But soon, bad reviews pour in when customers find flaws and realize those products aren't as good as advertised. That's why you should check how long a product has been listed. Products with good ratings that have been around for months are usually good picks.
- Saturation: Cross out high-competition products. How do you know if the market is oversaturated with a particular product? If you find five similar listings, and each has thousands of reviews, it's likely too late to invest in that product now.
Another way is to look up the keywords for that product on TikTok and see how many brands are selling it. You want to avoid products featured in dozens or hundreds of videos. Chances are you'll lose leads you generated through your videos to other brands.
Step 2: Create content.
Getting people to visit your dropshipping Shopify store organically is cheaper than ads. However, you need to put in the work to get results. It's also not entirely free. You'll need to invest in equipment, props, and the products you're selling. Also, you'll have to dedicate much time each day to filming and editing videos.
Here's a tip: A good scaling strategy is to start with organic marketing to experiment with different concepts and formats. Then, you can run ads on content that goes viral or yields the most conversions.
Selling different product types on a single TikTok store is better than creating a TikTok store for each product type. This lets you share all your content in one spot, no matter what product you're promoting. Likewise, focusing on a particular niche or product may not be profitable, given the high fulfillment cost with a third-party provider.
More tips: To get satisfying results, create at least 30 videos about each product in your inventory and post 3 to 5 videos for different products daily. Each video must generate thousands of views to trigger events in your Shopify store.
How do you come up with unique and exciting ideas for that many videos?
It's not easy, but it can be done, as proven by the many dropshipping TikTok stores that generate thousands of monthly sales through regular posting. Your resourcefulness will be put to the test here.
Thankfully, there are resources you can rely on. Just as you used different tools and platforms to search for products to dropship, you can also use these resources to create a foolproof content strategy.
The first one is TikTok Creative Center. There's no better place to start your search for ideas than TikTok's data center. This is where creators and advertisers get free assets, from the latest trends and ad examples to best practices and tools for crafting high-quality TikTok ads.
Follow these simple steps to maximize TikTok Creative Center:
- Open TikTok Creative Center. Go to the top right corner and select 'Trend Intelligence.' You'll see four subpages—hashtags, songs, creators, and TikTok videos—each showing the top performers during the last 7 to 30 days.
- Click 'Songs' to reveal all the trending tracks and sounds on TikTok. Pick the ones that fit your content plan and concept and add them to your assets. The TikTok algorithm recognizes popular music, whether used as the main track or for specific cuts in a video.
Narrow your search further by scrolling down to see what regions or countries those tracks and sounds are trending in. This information is crucial if you're targeting a specific location. You can also check the performance of each sound to see which month it usually becomes popular among viewers.
- Return to the top and click 'Hashtags.' Choose a related category and pick the hashtags you want to include in your video caption. Hashtags can help viewers find your video more easily. During product research, you used hashtags to search for top-performing content and ads. You should use those hashtags to optimize your content.
- Select 'TikTok Videos' to see what videos are trending. These are the videos from which you want to model your content. It can be tempting to be unique, but that might do your traffic more harm than good. Always go for what's already working and only try unique ideas if you have enough following to compensate for the fallout.
Study these videos by listing what elements they share and how they differ from other videos that don't work. Note the color palette, lighting, cuts, transitions, font styles, props, and other common elements in those videos. Then, implement all the ideas you've gathered in your content.
- You may also check out the trending creators, but as I said, these creators are the trendsetters of TikTok. Whatever ideas they put out will most likely go viral because they already have enough followers to view and engage with their content. This means copying their concepts may not always work for you.
Additional Tips:
- Create content that blends into your target audience's "For You" page. Put yourself in their shoes and imagine what your TikTok feed would look like. You want your content to be at the top, or even if it ends up somewhere in the middle, make sure it's unique and exciting enough to compel them to stop scrolling and watch through to the end.
- Consider gender when setting up the backdrop for your video. If you're promoting a product for women and you're a man, at least shoot your video in a woman's room. Also, if your concept involves holding the product, having a woman hold it instead of you is better. Viewers might find it odd or uncomfortable if a man's hand is holding the product, especially one that's veiny or hairy.
- Modeling after a trending video doesn't mean creating a replica. You need to put your own spin on your video to make it your own and prevent viewers from mistaking it for the original. You don't want them to skip your video because they think they've already seen it.
- Create several variations of the same video to produce more videos. Many content creators do this to save time and meet their 3 to 5 videos daily quota. This strategy works well if you can only film for one or two days a week.
Drive Traffic for Your Dropshipping Shopify Store with TikTok Organic Traffic Now!
Creating engaging TikTok videos is a quick way to promote your brand and drive organic traffic to your Shopify store. TikTok continues to improve its services and offer tools and resources to help creators make viral videos. The best part is that this marketing approach is completely free.
In addition, even if you're considering paid advertising in the future, you'll still need high-quality content to support your ads. Organic marketing is a budget-friendly method to experiment with content that can later be used for paid ads, helping you build your brand's credibility in your field.