TikTok Live Strategy Guide: Creator Sourcing & Content Tips

The Complete Guide to Social Commerce Success

Building a successful TikTok Live channel is becoming an essential part of a well-rounded social commerce strategy—especially for influencer marketers looking to stay ahead of TikTok Shop’s evolution.

By tapping into the creativity and spontaneity of live video, brands can showcase products, answer customer questions, and build relationships with followers in a way that feels more genuine and unfiltered than pre-recorded content. But TikTok Live is a very different beast from TikTok Shop itself; brands need to commit to building a dedicated content and community strategy if we’re going to find success with Live sessions.

What is TikTok Live?

TikTok Live is a feature in the TikTok ecosystem that allows users to broadcast live videos to their followers in real-time. During Live sessions, viewers can comment and interact directly with the host, asking questions and influencing the flow of the content.

For D2C brands, TikTok Live offers numerous opportunities to showcase products and build a community. From live demonstrations to BTS content or Q&A sessions, brands can tap into a level of spontaneity and authenticity that is harder to achieve with non-live content.

As Brittany Barnes from ClearSTEM notes, integrating TikTok Live into your broader TikTok Shop strategy is essential to keep pace with TikTok’s evolution as a social commerce platform:

“How I'm looking at TikTok Live right now is how TikTok was in 2020, when those creators got into TikTok and just figuring it out. The ones that are working are now the biggest creators that blew up in 2020. That's now for companies on TikTok Live.”

- Brittany Barnes, Senior Marketing Manager at CLEARSTEM.

How should you be thinking about TikTok Live and TikTok Shop?

TikTok Shop and TikTok Live are technically seperate features in the TikTok ecosystem. While the TikTok Shop functionality allows users to purchase items natively, it’s TikTok Live that allows brands to drive those impulse buying behaviors on the app.

Unlike other shoppable content, TikTok Lives bring consumers into the brand’s living room. They get to interact directly with creators, brand reps, social media managers, and even company founders via the comments. This nurtures a strong community in a superior way to users passively consuming content.

In other words, TikTok Live needs to be viewed as its own channel within your overall social media and influencer marketing strategy—from the outset.

“At ClearSTEM, for example, we don't just look at social media as the social media marketing department. We break it up. So, we have our Instagram and our other social platforms and then we're building out our own TikTok department. Inside TikTok, we're breaking down affiliates. TikTok Live Organic and TikTok Live affiliates.”

- Brittany Barnes, Senior Marketing Manager at CLEARSTEM.

Sourcing creators for TikTok Live

Creator discovery for TikTok Live follows the same principles as TikTok Shop; volume-based outreach is key to ensure a steady supply of relevant creators to work with.  As Amanda Young at Zeroto1 explains, this means outreaching to around 1,000 to 2,000 creators per day:

“The volume game can seem very daunting, but the goal is to cast a wide net into your target audience so you can bring back a decent percentage of people that will truly believe and be behind your product and help you sell it truly from the inside out.” Amanda Young, Senior TikTok Shop Specialist at Zeroto1.

However, it’s important that you are targeting niches that are relevant to your product; otherwise, your social selling won’t have credibility. A creator on TikTok Live needs to be able to talk about your product with knowledge and confidence, especially for industries like beauty, where consumers are very clued up on routines and ingredients.

For Brittany at ClearSTEM, finding a cross-section of creators who would benefit from their skincare products is the key to sourcing appropriate creators for their TikTok Live channel:

“Where we've been starting with our affiliate is what kind of creators is our product going to fit the best with for them to go live and talk about. We've been reaching out to a lot of wellness, the fitness girls, a lot of women who are into their hormones, acne safe creators, and they have been going live with ClearSTEM.”

- Brittany Barnes, Senior Marketing Manager at CLEARSTEM.

Using a tool that integrates directly with TikTok will make your outreach truly scalable by automating the sending of collaboration invites and product samples. Brittany is using Superfiliate’s integration to manage all of their TikTok Live outreach:

“Superfiliate has been the best tool for us to scale with TikTok Live, because we've been able to reach out to four or five hundred creators at one time that are specific for TikTok Live.”

- Brittany Barnes, Senior Marketing Manager at CLEARSTEM

Creating content for TikTok Live

Avoid “analysis paralysis”

Launching a TikTok Live strategy can be daunting, especially for brands who are new to the platform. It’s easy to end up over-thinking your strategy and psyching yourself of out of investing in this channel.

The best way to get started with TikTok Live? Just start! You won’t know what works until you start experimenting and getting enough data to assess performance. So, don’t be afraid to test different ideas and formats early on instead of getting attached to a format that feels “safe” and predictable:

“I would just go for it and see the feedback that you get and just trial and error. On Mary Ruth’s, we've tried mocktails, we've tried doing just flash deals, we've tried influencers. And so we start building up and building up data.”

- Catalina Leyva, Director of Retention and Social Commerce at Mary Ruth’s.

Design a realistic schedule

Don’t make the mistake of over-burdening your team when you start out; it’s important to set a floor for your TikTok Lives that is realistic to maintain, especially during busy promotional periods. For small brands, this might only be one TikTok Live per week to start, but it provides you a place to scale from as you get used to this format.

In addition to the frequency of your Lives, you also need to think about when is the optimum time of day to address your audience. As Brittany at CLEARSTEM explains, a good starting point is to think about when you as a consumer would be looking at TikTok Lives:

“We have found that evenings are great between 4 to 7 Pacific Standard Time because that's when people are getting off work and they are on their phones and they're just hanging out. Sunday afternoon is also a really great time because most people are just at home.”

- Brittany Barnes, Senior Marketing Manager at CLEARSTEM.

Create a compelling space for your TikTok Live sessions

The setting for your TikTok Lives is just as important as the people who are hosting them. When someone is swiping through TikTok and sees your Live, you want them to immediately recognize your brand and engage.

Make sure you’re using a well-lit space which features your logo prominently in frame and feels welcoming to your followers. This doesn’t have to be an expensive or luxury set-up, but it does need to build recognition:

“When people are swiping through their For You page and they see your logo, it'll create brand awareness. And if someone knows the product, they'll have a higher chance of stopping and watching your Live.”

- Brittany Barnes, Senior Marketing Manager at CLEARSTEM.

Embrace the founder persona

Your best weapon on TikTok Live? The people behind your brand. TikTok is the mecca for authentic content; not polished PR and advertising. To connect with users, you need to tell your brand’s story and how you’re serving the needs of a particular audience.

Getting your founders onto TikTok Live on a regular basis is the best way to build that deeper community connection with your followers:

“If you are a founder, you need to be on TikTok live and find your niche. You don't need to be going on there and selling a ton, but find it and educate. Educate the audience, educate the community and really think about TikTok Live as a community space to continue to build your community.”

- Brittany Barnes, Senior Marketing Manager at CLEARSTEM.

Use audience responses to guide your content

Don’t feel as though it’s entirely up to your marketing team to come up with ideas for TikTok Lives—if you pay close attention to the comments, your followers are already doing this work for you!

TikTok Live sessions provide an incredibly fast feedback loop. Rather than waiting out the duration of a campaign to see whether a new product or marketing strategy was successful, you can assess this in real-time during a Live.

For example: How many people are engaging? What is the drop-off rate? Is there a particular content format that’s driving people to purchase? Integrating viewer reactions and comments straight back into product development and marketing means brands can pivot quickly and refine their strategy in line with what customers want.

By monitoring customer reviews and questions to your support team, you can better understand what topics your audience is interested in and tailor your Live events accordingly!

“I've seen so many makeup brands doing product demos and showing it in real-life. I think you can really look at your reviews and see what are common questions people are asking. Take those questions and have that as your starting point.”

- Catalina Leyva, Director of Retention and Social Commerce at Mary Ruth’s.

Types of promotions to use in TikTok Lives

Promotions are a vital part of driving sales and engagement during TikTok Live sessions. Without a good offer for your viewers, you’re not going to drive meaningful conversions. Here are some promotional offers you can leverage for TikTok Lives:

Flash sales. Flash deals and discounts are excellent for creating a sense of urgency to purchase. These time-limited offers encourage viewers to make impulse purchasing decisions, boosting sales and engagement during a Live session.

Content challenges: These help to create a halo effect via organic content by encouraging users to create content and use a hashtag in exchange for entering a giveaway. Less about driving sales, content challenges are a great community building technique and leverage your audience to extend reach on TikTok.

Free gifts with purchase: If you’re trying to get viewers to experiment with new products or check out your wider range, gifts with purchase are a great strategy to sweeten the deal and boost perceived value.

Minimum purchase thresholds: Purchase thresholds are excellent for getting customers to spend more in exchange for free shipping or further discounts. As Catalina explains, TikTok offers a lot of levers to help brands to boost AOV on the platform:

“TikTok shop has tiered offers, there's coupons if you spend a certain amount. If you're looking to boost certain LTVs or your AOVs, there's certain ways with the promotions.”

- Catalina Leyva, Director of Retention and Social Commerce at Mary Ruth’s.

However, the key to effectiveness with any type of promotion is strategic planning and communication. Make sure your audience is aware of the promotional details both before and after the Live via dedicated social media posts or email. During Lives, remind viewers frequently about promotions to keep them engaged.

Preparing your TikTok Shop calendar

A well-planned calendar for TikTok Live is crucial to maximize the impact of your sessions. While you want your Lives to feel spontaneous and casual, there’s a LOT of planning that goes on behind the scenes to give this impression!

For example, preparing for peak sales periods such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday should involve analyzing historical data to understand which promotions and types of content performed the best in previous years. However, you should never overlook the value of engaging with your affiliates to get them amped up and understand their perspective on what content/promotions will get the most traction:

“We've even done some polls: What are you most excited about? What do you think would resonate the most with your audience? They know how to sell the best on TikTok shop. So, we use their feedback as we continue to build out the different campaigns and different structures. Do you guys like 24 hour deals? Do you like weekend deals? Do you like week deals? Just any little nuggets that we can get from them.”

- Catalina Leyva, Director of Retention and Social Commerce at Mary Ruth’s.

Micro-creators in particular have the closest connection with their followers, making their feedback and suggestions particularly valuable. By involving them in your planning process, you can tailor your content and promotions to better meet the needs and preferences of your audience.

As you come to understand what content resonates with your audience, it’s becomes easier to schedule out recurring Lives that leverage specific formats or people at your brand. This consistency helps to build engagement, as your followers will come to know your schedule and what content to expect on different days. At CLEARSTEM, Brittany has worked to develop regular programming that their followers can come to anticipate and get excited about:

“We're creating kind of like a TV channel around our TikTok Live, and we have specific people going live at specific times every week. We already have so many followers, new followers, tons of net-new customers that are looking forward to our episodes every single week. For example, Shay, our community manager, she goes live every Tuesday morning and does her skincare routine.”

- Brittany Barnes, Senior Marketing Manager at CLEARSTEM.

TikTok Live offers a unique and powerful platform for D2C brands to engage with their audience in real-time, foster a sense of community, and drive sales through authentic interactions. By integrating TikTok Live successfully into your TikTok Shop strategy, influencer marketers can set the stage for success not only in this platform, but also benegit from a halo effect across other channels.