Kenyans Have Hacked Tiktok 💸
Consistency is King, Content is Queen.
Tiktok moves content and it also moves music. The other thing that Tiktok moves that’s yet to be taken advantage of fully is product.
Tiktok moves product, not the Cartel kind (but who knows); clothes, shoes, food, toys, you name it. In this case, we look at Kenyans/Africans moving products via Tiktok.
The content doesn’t even have to be out of this world or the funniest skits, you just need to show what you are selling in a short video and thousands if not millions of people will find it watch-worthy. Out of the thousands, a percentage will engage with the content and a percentage of that will turn into customers.
There are Kenyans who have hacked the art of selling via short videos, reels and live sessions on Tiktok.
Take for instance this business based out of Roysambu along Thika Road in Nairobi, Fashion hub collections. A number of his videos have up of 3 million views each with many people asking how to purchase his products on the comment section, including people outside of Kenya.
This other lady, shiquo4 on Tiktok who runs hiii-style.com helps Kenyans purchase products in wholesale from China by first showing them via video what is available on the other end. The products she sells are half the price (or lower) of what they are sold for in Kenya. After watching her videos, you either make orders via WhatsApp or directly on her website. If there’s one person doing it right, it’s her.
It’s pretty simple, put out videos consistently, direct Tiktok users to a website or a catalogue online, if you don’t have a website online engage potential customers directly via WhatsApp.
The videos need only be high quality so that people can see the products clearly, and they also need to be simple, if the product needs an explainer, a casual chat will do, in other cases people use trending music on Tiktok because the algorithm favors these trends.
The Tiktok algorithm is good to everyone, this is where Tiktok wins, it is good to people who are just starting out with no followers just as it favors big influencers with millions of followers. If you have zero followers, your content could still hit a few thousand views.
The one question that Kenyans ask the most on these product videos is “how much?” and “Where are you located?”. The first question is the most important and if it’s possible to have a product catalogue online then by all means have one to make it easier to divert potential customers to where they need to be.
The second question is mostly about trust, if there is a physical shop to visit, it boosts trust and makes it easier to touch and verify a product before purchase. If one cannot afford a physical store, then having the online catalogue using platforms such as uzakitu and a few verifiable reviews goes a long way to boost trust.
If you are not using Tiktok yet to move your product, whatever it may be, then you should make that first vertical video today. Consistency is King, Content is Queen.
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TikTok is a big driver of traffic for new e-commerce businesses. Great article.