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TikTok is a game-changer for social media platforms. The growth of TikTok has attracted the attention of brands and businesses. TikTok promises to be a fertile ground for e-commerce development, including print on demand.
If you want to attack the fertile and potential TikTok market, this article is truly for you. Through this blog post, we will guide you on how to sell print on demand on TikTok as well as tips to help you succeed.
Why Should You Choose TikTok for Print on Demand?
TikTok’s potential is undeniable. If you’re still skeptical, let’s take a look at some numbers about the platform:
- Huge user base: TikTok has reached 1 billion regular users, surpassing older platforms like Pinterest, Snapchat or Twitter.
- High engagement: Since its early days, TikTok has been an extremely engaging, even addictive app. On average, users spend 52 minutes per day on TikTok. And up to 90% of TikTok users use the app daily. Not only that, the average time for each “TikTok" session is 10 minutes 51 seconds – the highest of all social media platforms. Coming in second is Pintest with an average visit time of 5 minutes 36 seconds, only half that of TikTok.
- Young audience: Young people are the gold mine of the future. TikTok is an ideal platform for brands to interact and build relationships with young customer groups such as GenZ or Millenials. Data shows that up to 37.3% of Gen Z internet users in the US access TikTok at least once a month and nearly half of the users on this application are Gen Z.
- Low advertising costs: TikTok Ads are considered a more affordable and effective solution compared to Facebook Ads, the most popular advertising tool for e-commerce businesses today. While advertising costs on Facebook and other platforms are becoming more expensive but efficiency and ROI are decreasing, TikTok offers a more cost-effective alternative. Because it is new, advertising prices on TikTok are quite cheap. Now is the best time to start advertising on TikTok before the big guys land on this platform. Additionally, TikTok’s audience is different than Facebook’s, which means you have the opportunity to reach a completely new audience with untapped potential.
Best Products to Sell on TikTok
There are many kinds of products you can sell on TikTok. Therefore, the product categories you choose to sell will largely depend on your market niche. If you don’t have any ideas for selling on your store, you can consider the below options with our analysis:
1. T-shirts
The first product on this list is T-shirts. This is the most popular item when it comes to creating custom products like clothing. If you think this is a boring option, just look at the demand for it over the past 5 years. According to Google, searches for the keyword “t-shirt” in the US typically peak in the summer and are showing signs of increasing right now.
Anyone of any age or gender has at least one T-shirt in their wardrobe. Therefore, it becomes the top choice for printing on demand. You can easily customize the design to print on T-shirts from logos, slogans, and trending sayings, to profound quotes suitable for printing on shirts. If you want to build your own clothing brand, a unique t-shirt is the top choice for you.
2. Hoodies
The next name on this list is the custom hoodies. This shirt is suitable for autumn and winter weather or on cool days. Compared to T-shirts, hoodies are more expensive but they allow you to customize more places than T-shirts, such as sleeve or hood designs.
Although hoodies are seasonal, their widespread popularity means they can be sold year-round. As long as you have unique designs that appeal to your target audience, you can be sure that they will continue to sell year-round.
3. Sweatshirts
In addition to hoodies, sweatshirts is one of the most popular custom clothing on TikTok because of its versatility. This shirt can be combined with many different types of outfits such as leggings, baggy pants, skirts, etc. It is also suitable for many types of weather and can be sold all year round.
Customers’ interest in sweatshirts is no less than that of hoodies, which shows the potential of this item. Be creative to get unique shirts that attract your target customers.
4. Phone Cases
Currently, about 91.54% of the world’s population uses mobile phones, most of which are smartphones. Many people have the habit of using cases to protect their devices. Therefore, the demand for phone cases is extremely large, especially when it shows the user’s personality.
5. Tote Bags
Tote bags have become all the rage in the last few years along with the environmental movement. They can hold a variety of items and are convenient for everyday use. So a beautifully designed bag will easily attract your customers.
If the above information is not enough to convince you to sell tote bags on TikTok, then take a look at the chart below. You can see that the interest in tote bags is always stable at all times of the year and has never dropped significantly. Take advantage of this interest to earn huge revenue today.
How to Sell Print on Demand on TikTok?
Selling print on demand on a free platform like TikTok gives you many advantages because the products are only produced when there is an order. This helps you save on costs for importing goods and warehousing. So how to start selling print on demand on TikTok, follow the steps below:
1. Choose a Print on Demand Supplier
The first step is to find a print on demand company that can help you produce and ship your products to customers. The most important thing here is choosing a quality supplier that fits your business goals. If your goal is to build your own brand, don’t worry, Merchize offers professional branding services that ensure only your own brand is featured on your products.
Merchize is a print on demand service provider that integrates directly with TikTok Shop, so you don’t have to do any manual syncing. Moreover, signing up for a seller account is free and easy, visit Merchize.com to create your account. There are no costs involved, you only pay for the product when an order is placed.
2. Connect Merchize with TikTok
After creating your TikTok and Merchize accounts, the next step is to connect them. This ensures that all the products you sell on TikTok are synchronized with our system. When an order is placed, Merchize will automatically produce and ship it to your customers.
The connection process involves several steps, such as verifying your identity and setting up shipping methods. We have provided detailed instructions on this page. Sign up for Merchize for free and follow the instructions to easily complete the connection process.
3. Select Your Products
Merchize offers more than 340+ products in many categories from clothing to decoration for you to choose freely based on your business goals. In addition, we have various modern printing technologies such as DTF, DTG, sublimation printing, embroidery, engraving, etc. to meet all your needs.
If you are overwhelmed by too many choices, start with simple choices such as t-shirts, hoodies or mugs. Choose the product you like best, start with design ideas and expand your product catalog when you are ready.
4. Create Designs
Once you have chosen a product to sell, you need to create unique designs that will appeal to your target audience. To do this, you need to research and really understand your niche. Ask yourself: what do they like? What do they care about? Once you understand these things, you can create designs that appeal to the needs of consumers and make them spend money on your product.
Some tools you can use to create designs are: Canva, Adobe Photoshop, Placeit, and so on.
You can learn more about how to create designs for print on demand through this article.
5. Order Product Sample
Product quality plays an important role in building customer trust in your brand. But how can you ensure quality when you don’t directly manufacture? Don’t worry! Merchize offers a sample order option at a preferential price, helping you check the quality before placing a large order.
Once you have a satisfactory design, order a sample product and try it out for a while to evaluate its durability, print quality, and feel. Not only does it help you feel more confident when selling, sample products are also a useful tool for creating promotional content on TikTok and other social media platforms. Take real photos and videos to introduce the product in the most authentic way. In addition, you can wear the product in everyday videos instead of just appearing in advertising content. This helps customers approach the product naturally, reduces the feeling of being “forced by advertising" and increases the ability to persuade.
6. List Your Products and Start Selling
After completing these steps above, you have to price your product strategically. To achieve this goal, you need to carefully consider factors such as production costs, shipping, returns, and desired profit margins. Your price should be competitive but also ensure sustainable profits for your business model. Check out your competitors’ prices and optimize your product with factors such as unique design and good customer service to increase the value of your product without having to discount it.
7. Create New Content to Promote Your Products
When selling products online, customers cannot touch the product directly, instead, they can only feel it through your images, videos and descriptions. Therefore, creating attractive and quality content is the key to convincing them to buy. You can exploit many different types of content such as:
- Product creation process
- Exciting unboxing videos
- Product feature demonstration videos
- Detailed and easy-to-understand user guides
No matter the type of content, it is important to ensure authenticity and uniqueness, along with a personal story to connect with customers. This authenticity will help you build trust and significantly increase your purchase rate.
Successful Print On Demand Selling Strategies on TikTok
Creating a TikTok online store and uploading products is not enough if you want to be a success. Therefore, we list some tips to increase success on TitkTok below:
1. Attack Niche Market
Focusing on niche markets is a key to success for print on demand. This strategy also can apply to the TikTok platform. TikTok is very effective in reaching new audiences in niche markets. Thanks to its sophisticated algorithms, TikTok can distribute content to audiences interested in the niche you are targeting through the For You page – where TikTok selects and aggregates content that is considered most suitable for users.
However, audiences on TikTok can be slightly different from other platforms. Even if you have achieved certain success with print on demand on other platforms, when joining TikTok, you will still need to re-evaluate the size of audiences in your target niche on TikTok to see if it is worth the investment. You can also research user audiences on TikTok to find new niches that are unique to this platform.
2. Create Unique and Honest Content
Whether you are creating branded or promotional content, creative content that is suitable for TikTok is very important. Content on TikTok is unique and different from other platforms. To be successful, you must understand what content really attracts and attention. Here are some key factors that you must keep in mind to create viral TikTok content:
- Keep it short and sweet: Although TikTok now allows posting long-form videos, short videos are still the most popular and optimal content on TikTok. Especially for branded and e-commerce content, you need to keep the content short and sweet, avoiding rambling, making viewers feel bored, and scrolling to the next video.
- Be authentic and interesting: TikTok became popular mainly because of its fun nature. Authenticity is especially important and is highly appreciated by TikTok. Avoid traditional, rigid advertising formulas on this platform.
- Follow trends: Trends are extremely important on TikTok. When TikTok detects and determines that interest in a topic is increasing, it pushes relevant content to more viewers. To create viral content, you should grasp the trend and add, or change the trend to suit your niche or brand.
3. Collaborate with Influencers
TikTok has an enviable engagement rate compared to other platforms. Accounts with more than 100,000 followers on TikTok have an average engagement rate of 5.3%, which is 5 times higher than Instagram, the mecca of influencers. In addition to high engagement rates, TikTok is also the perfect place to develop user-generated content. On TikTok, everyone can create content and review their favorite products and brands. Even for content creators with a small following, their content can still go viral and reach a large audience. Many brands have achieved great success thanks to natural user-generated content. However, you can also achieve similar success by collaborating with creators, KOLs, and KOCs. The good news is that the price to book KOLs and KOCs on TikTok is cheaper than on other platforms. If you know how to deploy, you can reap success from collaborating with content creators on TikTok. Here are some tips for successful collaboration on TikTok:
- Let content creators be creative: On TikTok, personality, and authenticity are important and difficult to create on their own. Giving too many instructions can limit their creativity. Instead, let content creators be free to act in their own way.
- Find the right content creator for your brand: While you shouldn’t control how creators create, you do have full control over who you collaborate with. To find the right person, in addition to checking the numbers, you also have to check if their audience matches your target group.
- Affiliate marketing: Affiliate marketing is also a highly effective way to promote products on TikTok. In addition, TikTok also offers some effective tools to connect brands with content creators, such as Creator Marketplace.
4. Find Opportunities With TikTok Ads
The rising cost of advertising on Facebook has been a headache for advertisers. But don’t worry! TikTok is a potential alternative. Similar to content on TikTok, to be successful with TikTok Ads, instead of creating some traditional sales content, you should create advertising content with high authenticity and entertainment. To help marketers promote their products more conveniently, TikTok offers many different forms of advertising, including:
- Top View Ads: Every time you open the app, this is the first ad you see.
- In-feed Ads: This type of ad will be displayed when users scroll on the For You page.
- Brand Takeover: Full-screen video with strong visuals.
- Branded Hashtag: This ad format includes three types of placements, in-feed, featured banner, and hashtag challenge.
- Brand Effect: Brands can create special effects or stickers, filters that users can use on their videos.
FAQs
1. How to sell products on TikTok?
- Download the TikTok app and create a Business account.
- Go to the TikTok Shop page and create your Seller account.
- Connect the Business account to the Seller Center.
- Start adding products to your shop.
- Create videos and tag your products.
2. Is selling on TikTok Shop free?
Yes, setting up a TikTok store is free, but transaction fees apply when you make sales.
3. How much does it cost to sell products on TikTok?
Setting up a store on TikTok is free. However, you should still consider the transaction fees that apply to each order. These fees can vary based on the type of product and the transaction value. To find out the exact latest fees, you should check your business account settings or visit TikTok’s official website.
