Brands selling on TikTok Shop must prepare for—not panic over—a TikTok ban

A US TikTok ban may happen in the near future, but brands that sell on TikTok Shop shouldn’t abandon it until they have to.

“Don’t change your strategy until things change. You should be on TikTok as long as TikTok is there,” said Evan Horowitz, CEO and co-founder of creative agency Movers+Shakers.

Some 17% of US adults have used TikTok Shop, up from 8% in September 2023, according to CivicScience. The TikTok ban or forced sale that might take place in 2025 would send those shoppers and the one in three people in the US who use TikTok, per our forecast, to other platforms. Brands need to be prepared to meet users on those platforms, while still maintaining their current TikTok strategy.

“Consumers are on TikTok because it provides something that they’re looking for, which is short-form, entertaining social content,” Horowitz said. “If and when TikTok goes away, people are looking to scratch that itch elsewhere. If Netflix went away, people wouldn’t stop watching movies, they’d just move to Hulu.”

In the event of a ban, TikTok’s users would likely move to YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels.

• 30% of US adults would move to YouTube, per a March 2024 survey from CivicScience.

• 29% would move to Facebook and 15% would move to Instagram.

TikTok Shop’s disappearance wouldn’t immediately lead to social buying elsewhere. While Meta’s properties and YouTube are shoppable, consumers haven’t adopted social commerce activity on those platforms with the same enthusiasm as they have on TikTok.

Facebook and Instagram’s approach to social commerce has always seemed “kind of half-hearted,” said our analyst Sky Canaves. “TikTok has taken the opposite approach of putting shopping front and center in front of its users, and telling the brands that it already had on board as advertisers to start selling on the platform.”

While Meta and Google would have even more incentive to encourage social buying in the event of a TikTok ban, the impetus is on brands themselves to be prepared to keep consumers.

What should brands do right now to prepare for a TikTok ban?

1. Don’t abandon TikTok preemptively

A TikTok ban hasn’t yet taken place, and it’s unclear when one will happen and what it will look like in terms of enforcement or potential sale. Brands using TikTok Shop should keep using the feature while it’s still available.

2. Have a presence on Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts

If consumers move en masse to these TikTok alternatives, brands need to be there already. In fact, they already should be on Reels and Shorts to capture the users spending time there.

At a minimum, brands should be cross-posting TikTok content into these formats, Horowitz recommended.

3. Build loyal consumers who will follow brands to other platforms

If TikTok Shop disappears, marketers need consumers to seek out their brands in other places, not only on social media but also on Amazon, on brand-owned websites, and in-store.

Brands relying on TikTok for discovery will have a lot more trouble than those with loyalists who are seeking new product launches and exclusive deals on TikTok, Horowitz said.

Hair tool company Beachwaver is one brand that successfully pivoted from live shopping on TV to a successful TikTok Shop brand. “They pulled back from [TV]. They made it on TikTok Shop. They could do the same thing on any other platform,” Canaves said.

Brands can pivot platforms, but they need to stay agile and have a strong brand identity in order to do so.

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