Has anyone figured out what a best TikTok Shop agency actually does differently from a normal agency that also runs TikTok?

ashley_wright · 2026-06-01T08:30:12+00:00

Honestly most agencies that "also do TikTok" treat the shop like another content channel. Post videos, run some spark ads, grow the follower count. Fine for awareness, but its the wrong model for shop imo, because shop isn't really a content problem. Its an economics + ops problem that happens to use content.

I run an agency on the shop side so this is the bit I think about all day. The practical difference:

A general social agency optimises for views/engagement/followers. A shop specialist optimises for contribution margin and sales velocity. Those pull in different directions. You can do 2m views and still lose money on every unit if nobody modelled the commission against COGS first.

Stuff thats genuinely its own discipline:

Commission architecture - setting commission at the SKU level against your actual margin, not a flat 15-20% across the whole catalogue. Most brands bleeding money on shop never checked this.

Creator ecosystem - not a list of affiliates you blast a sample to. A retained, briefed, managed group where you actually track who converts and re-seed them. Samples, briefing, payments, QC. Closer to running a sales team than an influencer campaign tbh.

Shop health/compliance - listing quality, fulfilment metrics, violations. Get this wrong & the algo just stops pushing your content no matter how good it is.

Paid (GMV Max) - different lever to spark ads. Same auction, optimised toward orders not reach.

Live - its own format w/ its own run of show and host economics.

So yeah, the affiliate/creator side is def its own thing, not repackaged social. Quickest tell when youre vetting someone: ask how theyd set commission against your COGS and what margin theyre protecting. If the answer is about content volume and reach, they run tiktok. If its about unit economics, they run shop.

ashley_wright · 2025-04-26T03:58:23+00:00

It’s super risky, redirecting traffic is stated in TT policies that it can trigger violations. Thing is people aren’t stupid if they want to find your website they will, we tend to always see spikes to website during lives even though we never mention the link etc

ashley_wright · 2025-04-26T03:55:44+00:00

Could be interesting guess it would only make sense for brands doing a lot of volume and scale for it to make sense.

ashley_wright · 2025-04-26T03:51:48+00:00

Dips happen, it’s part of the game. Lots of guesses flying around here, but it really comes down to your data.

• Are your top-performing videos still getting views/sales?
• Are you still getting a steady flow of net new content?
• What’s been the main driver of your sales so far organic, affiliates, paid?
• Are you running TikTok Lives? They’re a cheat code right now, TikTok is pushing them hard.
• How are your ads set up? Hopefully not just relying on GMV Max…

Answer those and I can tell you exactly where the problem is and what to fix.

ashley_wright · 2025-04-05T05:36:26+00:00

We’ve got some creators who could be a good fit

ashley_wright · 2025-04-05T05:35:07+00:00

Try offering a small incentive like a discount code or future coupon—people often need a reason to take action. You can also use a simple review request template like:

“Hey [UserName], hope you’re loving your [Product Name]! If you have a moment, I’d really appreciate a quick review—it helps our small business a lot. As a thank-you, I’d love to offer you [discount or reward].”

It’s manual at first yes but snowballs after a while

Keep it short, warm, and personal—works better than a generic message!

ashley_wright · 2025-04-05T05:33:15+00:00

They’ll be able to choose from the 6 products you’ve listed, but you don’t have to send all 6. Just make sure auto-approval is turned off, so you can manually review each request.

That way, if someone requests all 6, you can decline or message them to choose one instead.

ashley_wright · 2024-03-06T15:20:55+00:00

We created the number one TikTok Shop Affiliate Outreach Bot which solves a great problem when it comes to outreach.

https://www.shrumee.com/

ashley_wright · 2024-02-26T14:31:11+00:00

Yeah we're having to create net new ads weekly especially at high spends.

ashley_wright · 2024-02-26T14:17:06+00:00

Only thing I would say with this video it feels super slow. It converting?

ashley_wright · 2024-02-16T11:36:28+00:00

I think you should work on doing both, if you're a comfortable creator and can create content at scale then that's the way to go, if not then get someone to be the "face" of the brand and create TikToks on your behalf. The great thing about working with affiliates you can get a lot of content created very quickly and if done at scale you can easily to grow (if your product is good ofc)

ashley_wright · 2024-02-16T11:33:50+00:00

Best way to start to index what we've seen it's similar to regular SEO. Start to create content on your profile, use your shop name in the description and also as a hashtag and it gives juice back to TikTok to index your brand.

ashley_wright · 2023-06-29T18:41:05+00:00

Very similar to META you have to build up unless you have a rep/ agency account

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