As consumers trade traditional search engines for social feeds, brands are approaching these platforms as drivers of brand awareness and conversion.

• TikTok Shop has rapidly become the eighth-largest beauty retailer in the United States, according to a February report from NielsenIQ.
• 41% of Gen Z turns to social platforms first for finding information, ahead of search engines (32%), AI chatbots (11%), and friends and family (9%), according to a May Sprout Social survey.

“It’s not on the consumer to figure out where they can find your product,” said Kelly Shah-McDonnell, vice president of digital commerce at e.l.f. Beauty, at a Creator Economy Live session on social commerce.

Here’s how e.l.f. Beauty and Image Skincare are adapting their strategies for a social-first shopping landscape.

Pairing experts and influencers

Image Skincare leverages its clinical positioning by partnering with medical professionals like dermatologist Dr. Raja Sivamani, said Image’s chief digital officer Alexandra McClay. While these partners drive the most engagement, the brand’s success comes from a combination of endorsements from professionals and everyday skincare enthusiasts, she said.

E.l.f. values professional partnerships as a long-term funnel investment, and believes a full-funnel approach to creator strategy requires cross-channel collaboration, said Shah-McDonnell.

“It should be about looking at creators as a holistic strategy in the same way digital is conducted,” she said. “It’s not one team that owns digital. We should all be experts.”

Blending TikTok Shop and social listening

E.l.f. sees their presence on TikTok Shop as a convenience play that aligns with their value proposition, said Shah-McDonnell.

“E.l.f. is about democratizing accessibility from a price point and also access to a product,” she said. “As soon as commerce becomes enabled, we’ll be there.”

The brand has driven engagement and excitement around TikTok Shop through products inspired by social listening. E.l.f. has launched products based on comments and trends, including a DIY Halo Gloss Kit, responding to a trend of consumers repurposing their empty foundation bottles as lip gloss bottles.

Constantly monitoring the comments is a company-wide effort, said Shah-McDonnell.

“It’s not just one team,” she said. “We are very switched on as an organization and see this as fundamental. It’s about finding that pain point in the consumer journey and turning it around.”

Approaching attribution

Working with national chains like Hand and Stone gives Image an edge in measurement, allowing them to combine booking data with geotargeting. That said, Image has low brand awareness and can't always focus on immediate conversion when mapping success, said McClay.

“We have to balance top-of-funnel awareness with bottom-of-funnel conversion,” she said. “At the end of the day, we have a board that wants to know what we’re spending, so we have to take a blended approach.”

While TikTok Shop offers brands discovery opportunities, it brings measurement challenges. Sometimes a creator will post about a product without tagging it on TikTok Shop, giving the channel more efficacy for multiplatform lift, said Shah-McDonnell. E.l.f.’s Beauty Squad loyalty program can fill in those attribution gaps by providing insights into where people are shopping, she said.

“The consumer is going to shop where they want,” said moderator Leslie Ann Hall, CEO and founder of Iced Media. “TikTok is a great channel for discovery, but a lot of times we see a halo lift that isn’t necessarily direct attribution.”

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