TikTok Shop has recently become a major player in the e-commerce space, offering brands unique opportunities to reach a wide audience and enable that audience to make purchases directly within the TikTok app.

Known for its viral content and engaging format, TikTok has quickly become a central place to discover new products and trends.

But as brands use this platform to sell products and gain popularity, a crucial question arises: Does success in the TikTok shop actually lead to higher sales on Amazon?

The power of virality

TikTok’s algorithm is designed to promote engaging content, allowing products to go viral and quickly reach millions of users.

Brands that succeed on TikTok often see a significant increase in their visibility and sales, with their products sometimes selling out within hours. Popular brands that can keep their inventory stocked often see tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of units sold—on the TikTok Shop alone.

When a product gains traction on TikTok, consumers often search for it on Amazon, leading to an increase in searches and sales for the same items. This trend suggests that success on TikTok Shop can undoubtedly spill over to Amazon, benefiting brands across multiple sales channels.

Let’s take a look at the brand mentioned above, Micro Ingredients. They have been selling products on Amazon for 4-5 years and were already successful before TikTok Shop existed.

Products that had the TikTok shop effect

According to Jungle Scout Extension, their Vitamin D3+K2 supplement sold an average of 12,000 copies per month, which is amazing. Micro Ingredients launched their products on TikTok Shop and offered high commissions, which attracted hundreds of affiliates to create videos about their products.

(The orange line in the extension shows unit sales.)

There is a spike in sales around February and March 2024. This is around the time when videos for Micro Ingredients products went viral on TikTok. Then, in April, several videos reached over 20 million views each, and you can see the massive spike in sales in April.

In April they sold over 60,000 units of their Vitamin D3+K2 supplement on Amazon!

Videos of their products continue to go viral on TikTok, and now their Amazon sales are four to five times higher each month than they were last year.

Looking at Jungle Scout Cobalt’s sales over time, you can see how Micro Ingredients took off. Today, they dominate this market, with videos of their products going viral on TikTok to this day.

At the end of 2023, they achieved respectable sales revenues, but were nowhere near as dominant in the vitamin D3+K2 market.

Here is a snapshot of this niche from mid-September.

Today, Micro Ingredients is the number one brand for Vitamin D3+K2 and owns 10% of the total market.

(Sales of the last 12 months)

A variety of products can go viral on TikTok

Another product that saw a significant increase in sales after it went viral on TikTok Shop is the book Don’t Believe Everything You Think. It’s about how to stop overthinking. As you can imagine, rumination and anxiety are common in life, so it was pretty easy to create videos about this book.

In January and February 2024, developers began creating videos about this product. Many of the videos reached millions and millions of views, resulting in over 80,000 copies sold on the TikTok Shop alone.

This book sold quite well on Amazon before it went viral on Amazon, achieving an average ranking of around 400-500 among the best-selling items in the Books category on Amazon.

When the book went viral on TikTok Shop, sales on Amazon skyrocketed toward the end of January. At one point, the book reached the 7th spot in the Books category, which equates to thousands of sales per day.

Meoky Mug

Another example is the Meoky tumbler. Meoky is a brand that has found success on Amazon (and TikTok) due to the water bottle hype of the past few years.

Many creators on TikTok created videos about Meoky cups around January 2024, many of which went viral with millions of views. During this time, Meoky saw an increase in sales on Amazon.

Since January, however, their sales have returned to their usual levels, but they did see a nice increase in sales in January.

January saw the big spike, after which sales started to return to normal. For brands to maintain momentum after virality, they should optimize their offers, advertise to capitalize on the increase in search volume, and continue to promote affiliate videos on social media.

Cross-platform strategy

For brands, leveraging TikTok’s virality while maintaining a strong presence on Amazon can be an extremely effective strategy.

TikTok serves as a powerful marketing tool that generates awareness and excitement about products, while Amazon acts as a trusted marketplace that attracts customers who prefer to buy from Amazon rather than TikTok.

To maximize this cross-platform potential, brands can implement several strategies.

• Consistent brand presence. Ensuring that branding, product descriptions, and images are consistent across both the TikTok shop and Amazon will help you maintain a consistent identity and make it easier for consumers to find and recognize your products.

• Exciting content. Brands should continue to produce engaging TikTok content that resonates with their audience to convert viewers into buyers, whether on the TikTok Shop or on Amazon.

• Use the features of Amazon. By leveraging Amazon’s advertising tools and brand registry, such as Sponsored Products, A+ Content, Videos, and Amazon Stores, you can further increase visibility and conversions and capitalize on the interest generated by TikTok.

• Monitor and adapt. By tracking sales data, customer reviews, and search trends, brands can understand the impact of their TikTok presence on Amazon sales and adjust their strategies accordingly.

• Use affiliate marketing. If you sell products on TikTok Shop, be sure to enable affiliate commissions as you will then have top affiliates creating videos about your products. This is what will drive the majority of sales and traffic on TikTok Shop. Pay an attractive commission of around 10-20% and watch as many affiliates create high-quality videos to boost traffic and sales of your products.

Get your products in the TikTok Shop

If your brand hasn’t launched on TikTok Shop yet, take this as a sign that it’s on. TikTok can help you accelerate your growth quickly using viral content and affiliate marketing.

Using viral marketing on TikTok, you can inadvertently increase your Amazon traffic and sales as consumers shop on their preferred marketplace.