Measuring TikTok Shop Performance: From Leading Indicators to GMV

Bring up TikTok Shop performance, and the phrase “GMV” (Gross Merchandise Value) won’t be far behind. Why? Because driving revenue is the entire point of being active on the platform.

But if your brand is still establishing your TikTok Shop presence, you’re not going to build GMV right out of the starting gate. It takes time, consistency, and LOT of investment before TikTok Shop will start generating reliable sales for your brand.

In the meantime, you need to understand how to measure and optimize all of the different stages on the road to revenue. As Micah Whitehead of Zeroto1 explains, you need a strong foundation if your brand is going to realize its GMV potential:

“Every stage of that pipeline, there's going to be a KPI that ultimately leads to GMV, which is all we're chasing after here.”

- Micah Whitehead, CEO and Co-Founder of Zeroto1.

So, what metrics should influencer marketers be looking at on their way to GMV? How can you be confident that you’re pioneering a strategy that’s going to drive revenue?

Let’s dive in!

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Look for your leading indicators

We all know that GMV is the north star metric on TikTok Shop. But what should your brand be tracking while your affiliate program is still in its early stages?

It takes time for your brand can achieve the volume in outreach, seeding, and collaborations necessary to gain traction and start growing GMV. In the meantime, there are other indicators that influencer marketers should be monitoring closely

Micah at Zeroto1 refers to these indicators as ‘milestones’ and uses them to assess clients as they build their presence on TikTok Shop:

“Everyone is obviously looking for GMV. They're looking for attributable revenue. Ahead of that though, it's important to measure performance based on leading indicators. We call them milestones at Zeroto1–it's the activities that produce certain results which ultimately lead to revenue and tell you if you're on track or off track.”

Here are the indicators or “milestones” you should be tracking:

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Reply rates

Scale is the name of the game on TikTok Shop. You need to be reaching out to thousands of creators each day to have regular collaborations. This makes reply rates is an important measure of whether your messaging is properly targeted.

As Micah explains, most of your outreach isn’t going to result in a partnership. However, a low reply rate could indicate an issue how you’re positioning an opportunity to collaborate:

”If we start sending messages that are reaching out to thousands of affiliates, we're looking for at least 25% of those people to respond to our messages. If we're on track, if we're off track, we can adjust from there because our messaging has a problem with it.”

- Micah Whitehead, CEO and Co-Founder of Zeroto1.

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Opt-in rates and samples requested

Once you get a regular dialogue going with creators, you need to keep a close eye on how many of these conversations are progressing into actions. How many creators from your outreach are actually opting into collaborations and requesting product samples?

If the percentage is low, this could indicate a problem with who your brand is trying to target, or that what you’re offering just isn’t compelling enough to entice creators.

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Hit rate and posting frequency

When you’re seeding product and creators are accepting that inventory, they’re required by TikTok Shop to post content for your brand. While the hit rate of content posted by affiliates is extremely high (around 80%) you want to keep an eye on your rate of posted content overall; is it continuing to increase, or is it tapering off as your seeding activity grows?

Affiliate content is your brand’s gateway to more visibility on the platform and enhances your ability to drive sales. But if your investment in product seeding isn’t bearing fruit, it’s a massive upfront cost with no ROI:

“How we judge TikTok shop programs early on is how many affiliates are posting each month. As long as that number keeps going up, eventually you're going to hit the tipping point where the shop is doing really well. If that affiliate number is going down or stagnating, then you're in trouble.”

- Jonathan Snow, Co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Avenue Z.

These leading indicators are your best guide of whether your current TikTok Shop strategy is carrying you towards GMV and profitability. As Amanda Young, Senior TikTok Shop Specialist at Zeroto1 explains, they also allow you to identify missteps in real-time and make changes:

"If you're watching these metrics closely on a daily basis, you will be able to catch these trends on if something is changing or if a product isn't doing as well as you initially thought, which gives you as a brand all the tools to pivot quickly and get ahead, instead of being reactive."

- Amanda Young, Senior TikTok Shop Specialist at Zeroto1.

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GMV (Gross Merchandise Value)

Finally, we arrive at GMV: The king of TikTok Shop metrics.

GMV refers to total value of the merchandise a brand has sold through TikTok Shop over a given period of time. It’s the ultimate insight into growth and sales volume. If GMV isn’t growing, then somewhere along the line your strategy isn’t working:

“First and foremost, sales and GMV are going to be the primary KPI. That's why they're here. They're here to sell products, and that's what they want to achieve.”

- Oliver Silzer, Partnerships and Business Development TikTok Shop.

As we keep saying throughout this Guide, TikTok Shop is a volume game; it’s all about going broad and seeing what lands in the goal. This means that GMV won’t be driven evenly across your affiliate program, but by a comparatively small number of creators:

“Even if you look at large brands, you will have a very, very small portion of videos that drive a very, very large part of the revenue. You cannot just say we reached out to 10 creators and didn't work; If you reached out to the 11th creator, they might crush it. And now, you've made $20,000 in sales based on that.”

- Pontus Karlsson, Product Lead at Superfiliate.

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Assessing profitability

Despite the importance of GMV it’s important not to confuse this with the long-term viability of your strategy. Your TikTok Shop could drive incredibly high GMV, especially if you’re in a popular category such as beauty or supplements. However, GMV calculations don’t factor in any of the following costs:

• Operational costs
• Shipping costs
• Product sampling costs
• Commission paid to affiliates
• Seller fees

It’s important to note that TikTok Shop partnerships are also starting to pivot away from purely affiliate arrangements; as the platform grows more competitive, more creators are negotiating for upfront payments in addition to commission.

As Jonathan Snow, Co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Avenue Z ****cautions, an influencer marketer’s ability to manage these costs effectively will decide how viable TikTok Shop is for their brand:

“You have to pay your creators commission on those paid sales as well. So if they get a thousand views organically, but you're putting thousands of dollars to get it to 100,000 views, they get commission on all the sales they generate from the full hundred thousand of views on that video. Revenue is very important early on, but profitability is how that channel is going to be viable for you long term.”

- Jonathan Snow, Co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Avenue Z.

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Additional metrics to assess TikTok Shop performance

Outside of this direct funnel from outreach to profitability, there are other KPIs that highlight the overall strength on your TikTok Shop presence. Although not  linked with direct sales outcomes, these metrics are still valuable for assessing whether or not TikTok Shop is driving a halo effect on other ecommerce channels:

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Organic content performance

Don’t forget that TikTok Shop is ultimately a social media channel. All the metrics that you pay close attention to on other platforms—views, impressions, engagement, reposting—help to tell a story about whether your TikTok Shop content is resonating with your audience.

As Oliver from TikTok explains, being able to showcase more data to leadership than just sales numbers helps to show how your TikTok program is driving holistic benefit for your brand:

”Aside from just how many units I sold and how much money I've made, you should be looking at things like how many people saw my content and engaged with it, how many people added to cart, how many were new visitors to my shop page. While sales is always the goal, I think there's a lot of other metrics that indicate positive momentum and can help you inform your strategy.”

- Oliver Silzer, Partnerships and Business Development TikTok Shop.

With Superfiliate’s TikTok integration, it’s easy to get a clear overview of how your store is performing. In addition to leading metrics like GMV and Average Order Value, you can also dive into impressions, page views, and page visitors in our Insights tab to identify trends and areas for improvement.

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Earned Media Value (EMV)

Earned Media Value is a key metric to quantify the holistic value your TikTok Shop efforts are generating for your brand. EMV refers to the exposure and engagement your brand receives through affiliate content—even if it doesn't result in immediate, attributable sales through the platform.

By focusing only short-term attribution, it’s easy to end up selling your program short. EMV helps you to understand the halo effect that TikTok Shop is driving across platforms:

“TikTok shop is generating earned media every day, all day. It's creating brand awareness, brand loyalty and that earned media is showing a silent attribution of value across your ecosystem of your consumer purchasing points.”

- Dan Albert, Co-Founder and Partner at 456 Growth.

Consistently exposing your audience to creator content can drive a lift in other channels—even if GMV itself stays static. For example, your main website could see a boost in traffic following a TikTok Shop campaign, or a growth in social media mentions or branded search volume.

In sum, EMV allows you to demonstrate the value of the different types of media that TikTok Shop is earning for you across various channels, proving the overall effectiveness of that spend.

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Track—and keep tracking!

Measuring the effectiveness of your TikTok Shop affiliate program isn’t a one-off effort. To keep driving toward revenue, you need to be consistently assessing these indicators and metrics to understand where your strategy can be refined.

Remember: A lack of efficiency at one stage of this funnel has an outsized impact on your ability to build GMV, so keeping an eye on every action is crucial for long-term success:

“What does my outreach look like? What is my response rate? How effective am I at getting samples out? How effective are those creators at creating videos, and how long does it take for that video to start generating value to my product? And then when do I advertise against that? So there's little steps in this process to continue to track.”

- Molly O’Bryen, Senior Director of TikTok Shop at Flywheel.

Next, you can start thinking about how to grow what is working—let’s move onto how to scale TikTok Shop!

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