- 29% would move to Facebook and 15% would move to Instagram.
TikTok Shop’s disappearance wouldn’t immediately lead to social buying elsewhere. While Meta’s properties and YouTube are shoppable, consumers haven’t adopted social commerce activity on those platforms with the same enthusiasm as they have on TikTok.
Facebook and Instagram’s approach to social commerce has always seemed “kind of half-hearted,” said our analyst Sky Canaves. “TikTok has taken the opposite approach of putting shopping front and center in front of its users, and telling the brands that it already had on board as advertisers to start selling on the platform.”
While Meta and Google would have even more incentive to encourage social buying in the event of a TikTok ban, the impetus is on brands themselves to be prepared to keep consumers.
What should brands do right now to prepare for a TikTok ban?
1. Don’t abandon TikTok preemptively
A TikTok ban hasn’t yet taken place, and it’s unclear when one will happen and what it will look like in terms of enforcement or potential sale. Brands using TikTok Shop should keep using the feature while it’s still available.
2. Have a presence on Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts
If consumers move en masse to these TikTok alternatives, brands need to be there already. In fact, they already should be on Reels and Shorts to capture the users spending time there.
At a minimum, brands should be cross-posting TikTok content into these formats, Horowitz recommended.
3. Build loyal consumers who will follow brands to other platforms
If TikTok Shop disappears, marketers need consumers to seek out their brands in other places, not only on social media but also on Amazon, on brand-owned websites, and in-store.
Brands relying on TikTok for discovery will have a lot more trouble than those with loyalists who are seeking new product launches and exclusive deals on TikTok, Horowitz said.
Hair tool company Beachwaver is one brand that successfully pivoted from live shopping on TV to a successful TikTok Shop brand. “They pulled back from [TV]. They made it on TikTok Shop. They could do the same thing on any other platform,” Canaves said.
Brands can pivot platforms, but they need to stay agile and have a strong brand identity in order to do so.
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