Does TikTok Shop Actually Impact Amazon Sales?

TikTok Shop has emerged recently as a significant player in the ecommerce space, offering brands unique opportunities to reach a vast audience and allow that audience to purchase directly within the TikTok app. 

Known for its viral content and engaging format, TikTok has quickly become a hub for discovering new products and trends. 

But as brands capitalize on this platform to sell products and gain popularity, a crucial question arises: Does success on TikTok Shop actually translate to increased sales on Amazon?

The power of virality

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

Brands that succeed on TikTok often experience a surge in visibility and sales, with products sometimes selling out within hours. Popular brands that are able to keep their inventory in stock often see tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of units sold — just on TikTok Shop.

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

Let’s take a look at the brand above, Micro Ingredients. They have been selling products on Amazon for 4-5 years and have seen success even before TikTok Shop became a thing. 

Products that had the TikTok Shop effect

According to the Jungle Scout Extension, their Vitamin D3+K2 supplement was selling an average of 12,000 units per month, which is amazing. Micro Ingredients launched their products on TikTok Shop and offered high commission rates, prompting hundreds of affiliates to create videos on their products. 

(The orange line in the Extension indicates unit sales.)

You start to see an uptick in sales around February and March of 2024. This is around the time videos for Micro Ingredients products were starting to go viral on TikTok. Then, in April, multiple videos reached over 20 million views a piece, 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 4-5x higher each month compared to last year’s sales. 

Looking at the revenue over time within Jungle Scout Cobalt, you can see where Micro Ingredients took off. Now, they dominate this market as videos of their products continue to go viral on TikTok to this day. 

In late 2023, they had respectable sales revenue but were nowhere near as dominant in the Vitamin D3+K2 market.

Here’s a snapshot of this niche in mid-September.

Now Micro Ingredients is the number one brand for Vitamin D3+K2, owning 10% of the total market. 

(Past 12 months sales)

A variety of products can go viral on TikTok

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

Creators started making videos about this product in January and February of 2024, with many videos reaching millions and millions of views — resulting in over 80,000 copies sold just on TikTok Shop. 

This book was selling pretty well on Amazon before going viral on Amazon, with an average rank of roughly 400-500 among the best-selling items in the Books category on Amazon. 

Then, when the book started to go viral on TikTok Shop, sales skyrocketed on Amazon towards the end of January. At one point, the sales rank reached #7 in books, which equates to thousands of sales a day. 

Meoky tumbler

One more example is the Meoky tumbler. Meoky is a brand that has seen success on Amazon (and TikTok) due to the water bottles craze over the past few years. 

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

Since January, however, their sales have gone back to their usual volume, but they saw a nice influx of revenue in January. 

You can see the big spike in January, then the sales started to return back to normal. For brands to keep up the momentum after virality, they should ensure their listings are optimized, run advertising to take advantage of the influx of search volume and continue to encourage affiliate videos on social media. 

Cross-platform strategy

For brands, leveraging the virality of TikTok while maintaining a strong presence on Amazon can be a highly effective strategy. 

TikTok serves as a powerful marketing tool, creating awareness and excitement around products, while Amazon acts as a trusted marketplace that captures customers who prefer buying from Amazon instead of TikTok.

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

• Consistent branding. Ensuring that branding, product descriptions, and images are consistent across both TikTok Shop and Amazon helps maintain a cohesive identity, making it easier for consumers to find and recognize your products.

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

• Leveraging Amazon’s features. Utilizing Amazon’s advertising tools and Brand Registry, such as Sponsored Products, A+ Content, videos, and Amazon Stores, can further boost visibility and conversions, capitalizing on the interest generated by TikTok.

• Monitoring and adapting. Keeping track of sales data, customer reviews, and search trends can help brands understand the impact of their TikTok presence on Amazon sales and adjust their strategies accordingly.

• Utilize affiliate marketing. If you sell products on TikTok Shop, make sure you enable affiliate commissions as you will then have top affiliates creating videos about your products. This is what drives the majority of sales and traffic on TikTok Shop. Pay a desirable commission around 10-20%, and watch how many affiliates create quality videos to drive traffic and sales to your products. 

Get your products on TikTok Shop

If your brand has not yet launched on TikTok Shop, use this as a sign to do so. TikTok can help accelerate your growth quickly with the help of viral content and affiliate marketing. 

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