The virality of hashtags like #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt and #BookTok are making brands eager to crack the formula for what drives sales on TikTok. But while TikTok is getting all the accolades for making products go viral, platforms like Facebook and Instagram are still driving most of the e-commerce traffic online.

TikTok, the Chinese-owned app, proved it can peddle products with precision, especially when it comes to unpaid “viral” posts. But with paid media, Facebook and sibling app Instagram are still the biggest drivers of e-commerce traffic, according to MikMak, the e-commerce platform that works with more than 500 brands on digital media marketing strategies and sales.

Billie, a direct-to-consumer brand that just put out a new ad campaign calling itself “the internet’s favorite razor,” is a prime example of Instagram’s pull. TikTok factors into Billie’s marketing push, but Instagram is the base of its advertising operations, according to Georgina Gooley, Billie's co-founder.

“We’ve been on Facebook and Instagram really since the beginning,” Gooley said. “And we’ve had a number of viral campaigns, and this was even years before TikTok really took off, and so we’ve always had success on those platforms.”

See Ad Age’s 2021 Social Commerce Guide here.

Billie launched as a direct-to-consumer shaving-kit company in 2017, and last year it was sold to Edgewell Personal Care for $310 million. Billie products were sold exclusively online until this month, when it announced Walmart would carry the products in stores and on Walmart.com. The new ad campaign was launched to promote the new retail union.

Billie will buy traditional ad space on Facebook and Instagram to run its 30-second commercial, which will also appear across websites and on TV. Billie is working with social media creators on Instagram and TikTok, but there isn’t a plan to pay to run the commercial on TikTok, Gooley said. “We will partner with influencers and create content in that respect,” Gooley said. “So that it’s not just a brand posting their ads on TikTok, but it’s really working with the TikTok community to create content that is relevant to the brand, but also relevant to the audience there.”

That’s how brands should approach social commerce marketing, according to Rachel Tipograph, founder and CEO of MikMak. On Facebook and Instagram, which know their consumers very well, shopping comes from well-placed paid posts. On TikTok, the shopping intent comes from the organic algorithm picking up what interests shoppers, Tipograph said.

“When you look at how brands are overall investing in their media mix,” Tipograph said, “a large portion of their traffic continues to come from Facebook and Instagram.”

In 2021, MikMak tracked the percentage of web shopping traffic coming from each platform and found that Facebook and Instagram accounted for 56%, which was up from 53% in 2020. TikTok is growing though. In 2020, TikTok accounted for just 1% of shopper traffic coming from social channels, but it made up 10% of that traffic in 2021, according to MikMak. 

All brands are trying to figure out social as a driver of sales, as the number of shoppers on all apps—Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, YouTube and TikTok—rises. U.S. social commerce sales topped $36 billion in 2021, and 36% of U.S. internet users made a social commerce purchase in 2021, according to eMarketer. This has only been buoyed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

MikMak also analyzed the percentage of sales that come from paid and unpaid social media posts. Here the numbers reflect the effectiveness of Instagram as an ad platform: Paid and organic posts both saw conversion rates of 18%. MikMak counts the “conversion rate” as the percentage of consumers who took an action on a social commerce post, like clicking to view a product, visiting a site or adding to a cart. MikMak found that on TikTok, organic posts had a 14% conversion rate, while paid media had a 2.3% conversion rate.

#TikTokMadeMeBuyIt

Danisha Lomax, senior VP and head of national paid social media at Digitas, said that TikTok is leading to many viral commerce moments. But trends come and go so quickly that many brands aren’t able to plan to capitalize when products pop. “We’re seeing a ton of activity on TikTok, there is no denying that at all,” Lomax said. “What we are trying to push TikTok on is, just naturally, how do you find the integration when people talk about a certain thing, and let a brand come in and be part of that experience.”

“Some of the brands come in late,” Lomax said.

Virality has earned TikTok its reputation as a sales machine. Last year, Amazon created an “internet famous” section on its site, where the products featured were ones that trended on TikTok. Users of the platform are known for creating consumer-friendly videos, demonstrating how a skincare company’s face product clears pores; how a cleaning solution wipes away grime; or how a dish is best prepared with a brand-name dip. And #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt is a common hashtag.

Instagram makes people buy it, too, just through surprisingly well-targeted ads, said Amy Lanzi, commerce practice lead North America at Publicis Groupe. “You’re discovering things that you didn’t necessarily think that you needed,” Lanzi said.

On TikTok, the sales pitch has to come more naturally, Lanzi said. “TikTok is the clear winner primarily in terms of organic, because you can’t control it,” Lanzi said. “The way a brand shows up on TikTok has to be so authentic that if you do anything so aggressive in a paid world, anything that is too coordinated, it doesn’t work for the platform, that’s the power of TikTok.”

Register for Ad Age Next: Health & Wellness at AdAge.com/NextWellness.