HOW TIKTOK SHOP HELPS BRANDS GROW: WEBINAR RECAP

There is no doubt about it: The TikTok app is an important business driver in this era of online natural products marketing. That’s why Naturally Chicago hosted the “Selling Your Brand on TikTok Shop webinar on Thursday, October 16 featuring two leading experts on TikTok. 

Attendees received insights from Aalap Shah, founder of Chicago’s 108 Agency, a leading digital marketing and content firm, and Cameron Gould-Saltman, former head of Food and Beverage at TikTok Shop, the app’s ecommerce platform. 

TikTok Shop is transforming how natural product brands reach and convert consumers, combining the power of short-form video with seamless ecommerce integration. This session revealed actionable strategies to drive visibility, engagement and sales through the TikTok Shop platform. 

We urge you to click the button below to view the full recording of this engaging and informative program.

Or scroll below for our recap of the webinar’s takeaways. 

First, we want to share these generous discounts offered to the Naturally Chicago community by our webinar partners:

108 Agency is offering a complimentary paid + organic content audit to assess opportunities for 2026 retail, e-commerce, Amazon and TikTok. Brands will receive a 2-3 page overview for success and potential strategy areas to review based on the initial discussion and goals. Book a session at calendly.com/aalap7.

Cameron Gould-Saltman (CGS & Co.) is offering is offering a free 30-minute brand fit consultation and audit for TikTok Shop and 15 percent off their first 5 hours of TikTok Shop strategy work with CGS & Co. if they mention Naturally Chicago. Book a consultation here.

The Recap

Cameron kicked things off with a lengthy presentation, which he opened with his background and how he came to his role in the rise of TikTok Shop. 

“I spent a few years in Chicago... I met my wife at The Hatchery Chicago [food business incubator], and went to school at Booth [University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business]. So I live and breathe early-stage food and beverage startups.  

“It's why I took the role at TikTok Shop...  I understand the challenges that you're coming from, and that's the lens through which we'll approach today's webinar.” 

He explained how the TikTok app decided to start TikTok Shop four years ago: “TikTok, this entertainment platform, was built, then became an ads platform very quickly. And the TikTok leadership saw that a lot of brands were coming on as advertisers and leading to their own DTC [direct to consumer] sites? They were trying to make sales by utilizing those advertisements, and you were losing a lot of customers in that funnel.”

He continued: “They stood up TikTok Shop, which was essentially just a front end built on top of an existing direct to consumer infrastructure. This allowed a customer to go from scrolling cat videos and golf videos to seeing a shoppable video advertising a particular product. That would allow a customer to purchase then and there in the application, and then go back to scrolling videos, which meant higher conversion, more excitement, but also kind of, frankly, the invention of social commerce as we know it today.” 

The presentation was then dominated by, in Cameron’s words, “the number of ways to sell on TikTok shop and how seamless that conversion can be.” He expressed his view on how this platform is shaking up — and, in his word, democratizing — food and beverage marketing: 

“We built a back end that facilitated the engagement between brand and creator. So not to say agencies are gone, but the role of agencies have certainly changed.

“And that's why I find this very exciting, because a lot of the gatekeepers or data that was behind closed doors is now put in front of brands to make those sales optimizing decisions.” 

Cameron noted that TikTok Shop not only provides vendors with a platform to sell their products, but opportunities to do live programming that helps them connect directly with customers.  

Describing a fictional granola company as an example, he explained, “’Where's this granola based? Is it free of allergens?’ And I can see those comments directly. And I can say, ‘Absolutely, I can interact with him. I can community-build. But I can also see what is exciting the community.’ If I have an influx of traffic into my live session, I can say, ‘Oh, wow, this is something that really worked, right?’ Maybe I give did a giveaway, and that excited a bunch of people. The algorithm put me in front of a bunch more users, and they joined my live session.” 

He continued, “You should have a strategy. You should understand what role you want to play. That role can often be, ‘I want to supplement my Amazon listings or my DTC listings.’ It can be, ‘I want to generate awareness that I'm then going to convert elsewhere.’ It can be, ‘I want to drive some velocity so that I can go raise my next round of capital. And I know that brands are being built on TikTok Shop right now.’ So understand what you want out of this channel and then build the corresponding strategy.” 

Timing for a sales-boosting campaign is as important on TikTok Shop as it is on other retail or e-commerce platforms. “Campaigns and promotions around seasonally relevant timelines really make the platform go round,” Cameron said, “So campaigns like Black Friday, Cyber Monday are often opportunities to increase your visibility, generate a bunch more sales, and TikTok Shop will often co-invest with you.

“So if you drop your product price by 10 percent, TikTok Shop might subsidize another 5 percent or something like that.” 

He added, “The takeaway here is platform campaigns are almost a non-negotiable, and you should look at those first. So Black Friday, Cyber Monday is coming up quickly. If there's a takeaway for today, and you're not on TikTok Shop, it would be register for TikTok Shop and then register for the Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaign, because that's where all of the Q4 attention is going to go.” 

The rest of Cameron’s presentation is rich in details about how brands can best leverage the platform. We urge you to watch the full recording to get the most out of the knowledge he shared.

Aalap Shah then weighed in on how his 108 Agency helps its brand clients best utilize TikTok Shop: 

“One of the things that we've learned the most is to be really selective about the type of products that you're putting on that shop. Oftentimes, I see our brands put their entire catalog, and in working with Cameron, what we've been able to do for our brands is really curate that shop and pick a best seller, a variety pack of some sorts.”  

Aalap noted that (as in most brand marketing) having a great backstory for your product should be a high priority. “It's that founder story,” he said. “People will buy almost anything if they have a reason to believe, right?... Just being really, really specific about how you curate and merchandise your TikTok Shop, to make it easy to drive that trial, because they probably won't continue buying on TikTok, they're then going to come to your DTC or Amazon or retail channels to come find you.” 

And Aalap emphasized that while TikTok Shop provides opportunities for entrepreneurs to fly solo, marketing agencies such as his can play a big role in helping them cut through the traffic and noise on the busy platform: “You can email to the abyss and schedule Calendly calls with the folks at the TikTok Shop team. In my experience, it's very, very hard to get that attention because they're getting bombarded constantly. So working with agencies that have connections when you're at your absolute wit's end can sometimes be fruitful and and be helpful.”  

He concluded, “But to me, it's just starting with every i and t has to be crossed and dotted... There's all sorts of little points of irritation that can happen. So finding a good advisor can be helpful if you're if you're deep into it and can't find any any success.”