TikTok is banning Amazon links 🤬 

The sky is falling!!!!

No, it isn’t 🤬 ….. this changes nothing…

I have received a ton of questions about this article and want to set the record straight….

Short answer….. NOWHERE!!!!

So why is everyone stressed about it?

(Actually, the ONLY place to include your Amazon link is in the bio…. you get one link, that’s it….. but few brands actually use it).

Now let’s breakdown the article:

TikTok Shop is growing

I hate to say it….. TikTok Shop is the new gold rush for Amazon sellers (I am here selling shovels 👩‍🌾).

TikTok Shop is growing…. they are currently running at a loss, but it’s growth costs. They are hiring the best engineers to make this happen.

TikTok Shop failed in the UK, but they learnt from their mistakes (the UK platform picked up, but the initial launch was terrible).

I know a bunch of Amazon sellers that added TikTok Shop as another sales platform and hence, have a new income stream (in some cases TikTok Shop sales overtook their Amazon sales 😲).

In my opinion, it’s the easiest platform to get started and an Amazon seller would grasp the platform before their special DTC competitors.

TikTok ‘tells’ users what to buy

This is a big one…..

A quote from Marketplace Pulse:

People don’t want to be sold to on TikTok and as a result; they don’t like ads.

This is positive and negative:

Positive:

• TikTok increases the brand search on Amazon ie. More people are searching for your brand/product on Amazon (just make sure to tell them how to find your product on Amazon…. tell them to search [BRANDNAME] [KEYWORD]).

• This is ideal for PPC and relevancy. If you can demonstrate to the A9 algorithm that your brand sends valuable external traffic and then target the traffic with PPC, then you hit a number of ranking factors (PPC costs drops for branded search and relevancy increases).

• Users can click on an Ad or Search for the product on Amazon. TikTok users think they know more than us (Gen Z thing?) and if they are lazy they will click on the ad……but if they are feeling independent and smart, they will search for the product on Amazon, this increases the branded search on Amazon

Negative

• Tracking sales from TikTok is a pointless task It really is….. Amazon Attribution cannot be trusted. The attribution metrics are kinda like me saying to my wife “Yeah, I will take out the trash”…….. sounds nice…. but can I be trusted?… I don’t even know where the bins are…. kinda like Amazon 😞

• No short term sales boost Unless the content goes viral or you see a huge sales spike (very rare), don’t bet on sales…… but keep the traffic up for a few weeks and you will see a gradual increase in sales (generally, we see a 30-40% increase in sales based on campaigns that have been run for 90 days).

What to do with your Amazon link

There are a few places to use your Amazon links on TikTok:

• Link in the Bio

  • Every TikTok profile allows you to use one link in your bio

  • This can be any link but generally used for Linktree pages (see below)

• Linktree

  • There are a bunch of tools that allow you to create your own page that is referenced on the profile page (using the Bio link)

  • There are tons of these types of pages and software.

  • Very important: The pages are not on TikTok, they are there own stand-alone websites. So TikTok cannot restrict links here (this may change in the future 😞)

• TikTok Ads

  • As mentioned below, TikTok is going the same way as Meta

  • Amazon links are allowed in TikTok ads and it is unlikely TikTok would change this as then they would lose out on the advertising revenue (they may make ads with Amazon links more expensive than TikTok links)

• Comments

  • This is a tough one….. but you can post the Amazon links in the comments under the video

  • However, I have not seen much success doing this (maybe I am doing it wrong…. let me know if you see better results).

• Hashtags

  • You cannot use hashtags as URL’s but make sure to cross reference the hashtag with Amazon Brand Analytics.

  • TikTok has a direct influence on the keywords on Amazon and if a hashtag is widely used, you ca see if referenced on the Amazon reports

TikTok is following Facebook Meta

TikTok Ads are kinda like Facebook ads from 2015.

‘Cos TikTok is the Wild West….. It is still unregulated and what we can do now, will likely be shut down in the future.

With Facebook,

When running ads on Facebook, any ad that sends the user off of Facebook were more expensive than ads that push the user to a Facebook platform (Pages, Messenger, etc).

TikTok wants to keep the user on their platform, hence ads that push the user to TikTok Shop, profiles, etc are generally cheaper.

In summary:

• TikTok wants to keep users on their platform, so Amazon links are not preferred.

• The article was already edited:

  

  • TikTok denies that Amazon links are banned…. but this may change.

• There is nothing to worry about… this does not affect Amazon sellers.

So next time someone says Amazon links are banned on TikTok, ask them what that means…. ‘cos most don’t know and are just relaying what they heard.

❌ Don’t trust the headlines ❌

After all, I used the same headline to get you to read this article 😉.

Thanks for reading

- Paul