These days, social media is where people spend most of their time, for better or worse. Adapting to this new reality, businesses have correctly recognized social platforms as the best place to reach consumers, engage with them, and lead them down the funnel toward purchase. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram occupy the highest places among platforms for social shopping, with their dedicated eCommerce features – TikTok Shop and Instagram Shopping.
In this article we’re exploring the features and virtues of the two platforms, hoping to help businesses make an informed decision on which to use for their expansion to social commerce.
TikTok Shop: Pros and Cons
Since its launch in late 2023, TikTok Shop has attracted many businesses looking to reach new, engaged audiences with a high potential for impulse shopping. It is a full-fledged eCommerce feature that leverages the powerful TikTok algorithm and allows businesses to display their products to exactly the audience that is the most likely to purchase them.
As of 2024, TikTok boasts 1.04 billion users. This immense user base combined with TikTok’s advanced algorithm allows brands to target users based on a range of demographic and behavioral criteria. And thanks to rich TikTok Shop Ads capabilities, businesses are able to maximize their ROAS.
Furthermore, TikTok Shop offers features designed to streamline the shopping experience – the entire journey from discovery to checkout happens within the app. This removes friction and significantly reduces cart abandonment rates.
Another thing that makes TikTok Shop an excellent platform for growing sales is the dynamic and engaging nature of its content. Organic, natural and youthful, unstaged and spontaneous — content like this has a high chance of putting viewers in a great mood for shopping. User-generated content has been demonstrated as a great driver of conversions across all industries, and TikTok Shop excels in just that.
TikTok’s machine learning algorithm analyzes user behavior to deliver personalized product recommendations, aligning with individual preferences and past interactions. The platform’s intimate, user-driven content, like personalized skincare routines, enhances product relevance and boosts conversion rates by tailoring suggestions to viewers’ specific needs.
Brands get to collaborate with creators through the TikTok Shop Affiliate Program, ensuring the perfect brand-creator match and maximizing the efficiency of campaigns.
Some of the most important TikTok Shop benefits include:
- Immense audience reach
- Unique algorithm and user engagement model
- Frictionless user experience
- Ease of use
- High engagement
- Data-driven insights
- Personalized recommendations
Instagram Shop: Pros and Cons
As one of the more established social platforms, Instagram boasts a vast and loyal user base, still surpassing TikTok in size—though projections suggest TikTok may soon overtake it. Launched in 2020, Instagram Shopping has developed into a robust tool for businesses looking to tap into social commerce. Seamlessly integrated into the Instagram app, it transforms the platform’s visually rich environment into a dynamic shopping experience, enabling users to discover and purchase products without leaving the app.
In 2023, however, Instagram made a notable change by removing the Shopping tab from the home screen, refocusing the platform on user interactions and visual content discovery. While the shopping feature remains intact, it is no longer as prominently displayed, and the dedicated Instagram Shopping page has been discontinued.
Today, one of Instagram Shopping’s standout features is the ability to tag products in posts, stories, and reels. This allows businesses to showcase products in lifestyle contexts, letting users click on tagged items and instantly view product details. This feature makes product discovery feel seamless and non-intrusive, integrating naturally into users’ feeds and streamlining the path from discovery to purchase.
Instagram Checkout offers another key advantage by allowing users to complete purchases directly within the app, eliminating the need to redirect to external websites. Available to eligible businesses in the U.S., this feature enhances the shopping experience by reducing checkout friction, which in turn lowers the risk of cart abandonment.
As part of the Meta ecosystem, Instagram allows businesses to create a unified product catalog that can be used across both Instagram and Facebook. Product stickers and tags can be easily applied to posts, stories, and reels, ensuring products are discoverable across all shoppable surfaces on the platform. Instagram also offers promotional tools that enable brands to set up consistent pricing across all sales channels, while product-tagged ads can help businesses reach custom audiences, similar to TikTok’s ad offerings.
Instagram, the birthplace of influencer culture, continues to thrive as a hub for brand-influencer collaborations. Brands and influencers can easily connect to create partnerships, and organic content featuring brand tags can be integrated into the brand’s shop. Additionally, user-generated content can be managed directly within the app, streamlining the process of permission and usage.
Key benefits of Instagram Shopping include:
- Detailed product exploration
- Curated shopping experience
- Well-established global audience
- Easy to implement
- Great for community-building
TikTok Shop vs Instagram Shopping: Major Differences
While the two social shopping giants share many common traits, from high engagement to creator collaborations, there are some aspects in which one platform excels over the other, or that make one platform more suitable for certain types of brands than the other.
Demographics
TikTok is a young person’s platform. Gen Z is predominant on TikTok while Instagram boasts a combination of Gen Z and millennials.
When it comes to spending habits, TikTok Shop customers are more likely to purchase smaller and more affordable items as seen in micro- and nano-influencer content. At the same time, the audience on Instagram is more likely to engage with lifestyle and luxury content.
Market
Both platforms have a global presence but TikTok Shop is particularly popular in Asia. It’s largest market is China, but the user base has seen a great surge across Europe and in the United States as well.
As for Instagram, its largest market is the United States, but it’s also big in Europe, Asia, and South America.
Content Formats
TikTok is a short-form video platform par excellence, with primarily vertical video orientation. The content is predominantly spontaneous, youthful, fun, and engaging, and it typically features all sorts of challenges, dance or lip-sync battles, humorous POV videos, etc. Natural, unstaged content by “regular people” for “regular people” in everyday situations that TikTok is all about.
Instagram, on the other hand, offers a much more curated experience and often features content with a carefully crafted aesthetic. It allows for more formats – pictures, videos, and live streams. It supports vertical and horizontal orientation and its Reels feature bears a strong resemblance to the typical TikTok video format.
Virality and Reach
When we think of “viral” we think of TikTok. Virality is the very essence of the app and the quality that’s made it so popular so quickly. With great virality comes the great ability to reach vast audiences quickly, using hashtag challenges, branded effects, and other assets.
Where TikTok excels in virality, Instagram does in visual storytelling, allowing brands to craft beautiful and complex narratives that attract new audiences. However, as the algorithm tailors content individually for each user and displays what’s most likely to resonate with them, businesses need to have a clear understanding of who they want to target and what appeals to them.
Advertising Options
TikTok Shop and Instagram Shopping both offer rich advertising options, with some differences. For instance, Instagram focuses on photo-based ads and videos, while TikTok Shop favors video ads that match the format of organic posts. In short, ads on Instagram tend to be more curated, while on TikTok it’s best if they appear organic and natural.
TikTok’s range of ads includes In-Feed ads, Brand Takeover ads, Top View Ads, Branded Effects, and others, and TikTok Shop Ads formats like Video Shopping Ads or Product Shopping Ads can be seamlessly integrated to drive revenue and reach more people.
Instagram, on the other hand, runs ads through Meta Ads Manager and offers formats like Video Ads Carousel Ads, Photo Ads, Stories Ads and Explore Ads.
Targeting and budgeting options are similar on both platforms.
Tiktok Shopping Feature
TikTok Shop offers a frictionless customer experience with integrated checkout so the users never have to leave the app to complete a purchase. In-app purchases can be synced with whatever other eCommerce platform a business uses for its website, like Shopify or BigCommerce.
Instagram Shopping Feature
As for Instagram Shopping, it too has an integrated checkout functionality, however, it’s not available outside of the U.S. Brands who can’t use this feature can still direct the users to the product pages on their website, from where they can proceed to checkout.
Affiliate Program
TikTok Shop has a full-fledged Affiliate Program that helps brands connect with the right influencers, with specific features designed for the two collaborator sides – businesses and creators. It includes a marketplace where creators can pick the products they want to promote and the collaboration is set and managed from within the app.
Instagram Shopping, on the other hand, doesn’t have a program like this. More specifically, it did have an affiliate program but it was discontinued in 2022.
Tiktok vs Instagram for Business: Which is Better?
The answer to this question depends on several factors. First of all, the brand’s target audience. Businesses that cater predominantly to Gen Z should focus on TikTok since that’s where those users prefer to do their shopping. This doesn’t exclude millennials, as this generation is also known for impulse shopping habits and their number on the platform is on a constant rise. Gen X and earlier generations are not frequent on TikTok.
Instagram, on the other hand, attracts millennials the most, as well as Gen Z and, to some extent, Gen X.
There’s another relevant difference here that goes beyond age – more affluent consumers and those interested in higher-end products prefer Instagram, which makes Instagram Shopping a better option for lifestyle and luxury brands and TikTok for, well, everything else.
If we look at marketing goals, TikTok is an amazing vehicle for communicating the brand identity with a huge audience over a relatively short period, due to its virality, while Instagram would be better for brand storytelling.
That said, there’s really no reason why brands shouldn’t use both if their resources permit it. For instance, they can create a curated social media presence on Instagram that promotes their brand story, while promoting individual products through interactive and dynamic content on TikTok.
As an official TikTok Shop Partner and also an Instagram marketing agency, GrowMojo is uniquely positioned to help you maximize your potential on either platform. Whether you want to harness the power of TikTok’s algorithm to reach new audiences or leverage Instagram’s shoppable posts and influencer culture, our team can create a tailored strategy that fits your business needs. Contact GrowMojo today to start building a winning social commerce strategy on TikTok, Instagram, or both.
