Navigating the Challenges of TikTok Shop: 5 Key Lessons From Geling Guo on Scaling for Success – The Village Voice

E-commerce can be a strange and lively industry, combining all the organizational challenges of retail with the supply chain complexities of shipping and the unpredictable trends of social media.

TikTok Shop is a new kind of market that brings these elements together on a single platform, offering a unique mix of culture, marketing strategies, and influencer interaction. It does come with its challenges, however. Navigating this environment requires a deep understanding of both e-commerce and social media trends, making it crucial for sellers to adapt quickly and strategically to succeed.

TikTok Shop calls for a new, specialized expert. For that, the biggest names on TikTok turn to Geling Guo, a producer and social media manager who co-founded the New Beginnings Creator Network (NBCN), a company built around content-driven e-commerce strategies for TikTok Shop.

Guo is a media school graduate who has an intimate understanding of the short-form video content that drives TikTok. Her experience managing influencers puts her in the perfect position to make the most of TikTok Shop.

At the time the shop launched, Guo had already helped manage the content strategies of hundreds of TikTok influencers. She had the right expertise and was well-positioned at the right time. NBCN and TikTok Shop were seemingly made for one another, and she has learned many important lessons on the way to success.

Guo has seen TikTok Shop’s daily gross merchandise value move from the thousands to the tens of millions since founding NBCN, but both platforms still have a lot of growing to do.

If you want to be part of this growth, these five lessons learned over Guo’s years of experience will help you on your way.

1.   Embrace Rapid Iteration

“The biggest challenge with TikTok Shop is that it’s a very new market,” says Guo. “Without a well-established track record of success or proven methodologies to sustain long-term business success. Therefore, rapid iteration and strategy adjustments are key.”

The pace of the shop is set by the pace of social media, meaning a strategy that might’ve gone viral one month could be a flop the next. When NBCN first launched, they ran their own TikTok Shop and achieved $200,000 in sales within two months. Their marketing was working, but the ‘shop’ part of the formula became a problem.

“We quickly encountered supply chain issues,” says Guo. Rather than sticking to the same approach, they embraced the fast-changing nature of TikTok Shop and shifted their focus. “When we transitioned to becoming a service provider, connecting brands with influencers for affiliate marketing, we surpassed $1 million in sales in just one month.”

It’s essential to be willing to change your approach. TikTok Shop is a market that may seem to be moving in one direction, but then it quickly shifts in another.

Quick decision-making can make or break your success.

2. Leverage Your Team’s Adaptability and Execution

Quick iteration means fast execution and extreme adaptability.

“NBCN’s core competitive advantage is quite simple,” says Guo. “Our team’s exceptional execution and adaptability. Other agencies might take a month or longer to test a new business, but for us, it always takes just one week.”

The goal is to stay ahead of trends, leaving competitors in the dust. You need to move quickly, have radical ideas, and not be afraid to test and implement them with the shifting of social media trends. Sometimes your ideas will fail, but failure is part of how you succeed on TikTok Shop.

3. Learn from Failures and Use Them to Drive Success

Failure is inevitable. Don’t fear it, but make sure that when an idea tanks, it doesn’t take your shop with it and you have the following idea lined up and ready to go.

Guo credits her team’s success directly to the number of times they’ve failed, saying, “Our success is simply because we’ve made more mistakes in a shorter amount of time than others, and ultimately found the one path that led to success.”

When aiming to succeed at something, always remember that it doesn’t matter how many times you fail as long as you keep going. You need to learn continually and make sure your team is learning with you.

“No one in the US has experience with operating TikTok Shop,” points out Guo, “So I place the highest value on the team’s self-learning attitude and innovation capabilities. I firmly believe that only when team members grow can the entire company truly develop sustainably.”

4. Adapt to the Rising Costs of Influencer Marketing

TikTok Shop is growing. If you’re already working with the shop, or plan to enter the market soon, that’s good news because its growth is your growth. But this also means that influencer marketing is becoming an even bigger deal, and the costs will reflect that.

Only three months after NBCN shifted to providing a service, the performance of short videos by influencers began to decline and the cost of engaging influencers kept rising, making this business increasingly challenging.

Continued growth means reassessing where marketing money goes and what kind of performance they pay for. Staying on top of these changing conditions is essential for profiting as the market changes around you.

5. Embrace the Uncertainty of the Market

“Everything is changing in real-time, and everyone needs to constantly adapt to the fast pace of content e-commerce. This is the industry’s difficulty, but it’s also its allure,” says Guo. With the right mindset, the fast pace of radical industry shifts can provide great opportunities for growth.

Guo recalls how she had to adjust her entire business mindset to better suit changes in TikTok Shop, saying, “Previously, my favorite business model was one where we could build a self-sustaining system that could develop healthily on its own. But looking back, that idea was quite naive. So now, what I constantly emphasize to the team is embracing change.”

If you’re going to succeed in TikTok Shop, you need to learn to love the kind of changes that would disrupt other corners of e-commerce. The platform’s constant evolution is its greatest and most challenging feature, but it is also an opportunity for incredible ideas to succeed rapidly.

“TikTok Shop is a perfect blend of marketing and sales,” says Guo, “Where every marketing strategy is planned based on sales data. It’s a brand-new way of marketing, but we firmly believe it is the future!”

Final Thoughts

TikTok Shop is an ever-evolving, fast-paced platform that demands flexibility and quick thinking.

Geling Guo’s lessons show that success comes from embracing change, learning from mistakes, and staying ahead of the curve. For influencers and brands, thriving on TikTok Shop means being open to new strategies, rolling with the challenges, and adapting to rising costs. As the platform continues to grow, those who can keep up with its rapid pace will be the ones driving the future of e-commerce.