Tik.Tok. Countdown to the US ban | Ecom AI branding hacks

Author

Ada at Sellify
December 16, 2024

In partnership with

Hey Savvy Seller,

Hope you’re keeping well as we countdown to Q1 2025. In today’s edition, we’re discussing:

  • The US TikTok ban

  • How to improve your sales with brand consistency

  • What an AI brand consultant can do for you

  • Trending product: Tinted serum

Byebye TikTok

TikTok is set to be banned in the U.S. on January 19, 2025 (unless its parent company, ByteDance, sells to non-Chinese ownership).

While speculators hinted that Amazon might buy TikTok (and save us merchants the headache), this hasn’t happened yet. Rather, TikTok appealed the ban and lost at the federal appeals court last Friday.

This will affect your store if you rely on TikTok:

a.) for in-app sales to US-based customers

b.) as a traffic source for reaching US customers

You need to take action and rejig your social media strategy before the app is rendered useless in your target market. Here’s what you can do next:

✅ Make every visit count: Tighten up product pages with reviews to increase trust, clear headlines and CTAs, and more graphics of your product in use. Might be time to revisit this post from earlier this year

✅ Redirect your TikTok traffic: Send TikTok viewers to your store by adding a “Get it here” link to all your TikToks henceforth. Abandoned carts here are better than nothing as they give you a chance to re-engage later.

✅ Repurpose Your TikTok Content:

  • Repurpose TikTok videos for YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and Facebook.

  • Until further notice, multistream across IG, YouTube, and Facebook to expand your reach. You can use an app like Restream and earn $10 to try it out!

✅ Find Influencers Elsewhere: Start negotiating with top-performing creators on Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook as they’ll be in high demand in 2025.

Growth Hack: Brand consistency = trust +sales

As you explore other sources of traffic, one common problem that you might run into is a lack of trust from new visitors. We hear it all the time, but it’s true—people buy from who they trust.

Fortunately, this is not a difficult problem to solve because today’s customers are visually driven. People make snap judgments about your brand based on visuals alone.

So you can use consistent, polished branding to build trust and make would-be customers feel at home, just like Baking Steel, a small Shopify seller of baking steel does.

First, they’ve optimized their traffic sources using Plug In SEO for organic traffic and creating content for multiple social media platforms. Next, they’ve nailed a clean, visually stunning site that feels high-end and professional. Customers trust it, and they buy.

And the brand consistency isn’t reserved for the website alone. The store’s founder (and biggest UGC influencer, it looks like!) creates most of their videos wearing a plain black shirt with the Baking Steel logo prominently displayed.

The numbers don’t lie: Researchers say that brand consistency can increase revenue by up to 33%. What would 33% + your last month’s revenue look like for you?

Weekly Challenge

Take 60 minutes this week to keep your fonts, colors, and imagery aligned across your site, social media, and emails.

If your entire branding strategy is due an overhaul in 2025, here’s a cool video that explains exactly what you need to look out for when creating a new brand identity.

Better still, you can speed up this using AI brand consultant to create your new brand identity. All you need to do is answer a few questions about your business and design preferences, and you’ll get multiple logo options to save/edit. The tool uses machine learning to apply design rules to color contrast, font pairings, etc., (sorry, brand consultants who made a killing from this just 10 years ago!).

Once you find your perfect logo, you can buy a one-time package or a logo/brand kit subscription, which includes access to 300+ branded designs, including business cards, social posts, flyers, and more. 

Tinted serums are exactly what they sound like: skincare serums with a touch of color.

They’ve grown in popularity (1067% in the last 5 years), thanks to a brand called Ilia that pulls in a cool $455K/month on Amazon.

How you can leverage this trend:

  • With Gen Z’s turning to AI for skin routine advice, partner with a skin routine app to launch a new line of skincare serums (and other products).

  • Test related products like tinted sunscreen ( guaranteed to blow up in summer 2025)

  • Use a service like Jubilee to source, personalize, create, and supply beauty products from US-based suppliers.

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