TikTok Shop's growth has produced a wave of agencies, and many are social media shops that rebranded last quarter. The difference shows up in your GMV six months later. Here are the seven checks that separate operators from opportunists.
1. Ask for GMV, not case study views
Views are easy on TikTok. Revenue is not. Any agency worth hiring can tell you how much GMV they have generated, for how many brands, and show shop dashboards to back it up. We publish ours: £7M+ GMV across 50+ brands.
2. Check they are an official TikTok Shop Partner
TikTok maintains an official partner programme with rankings. Partner status means platform training, early feature access and a direct line to TikTok, and the rankings are based on real performance. Ask where they rank.
3. Look at the creator network
Affiliate content is the discovery engine of TikTok Shop, and it is a volume game. An agency with a genuine network activates hundreds of creators per brand. Ask how many creators posted for their last three clients, not how many are "in the network".
4. Ask where the lives happen
Live selling is the highest-converting lever on the platform, and it needs infrastructure: a studio, trained hosts, producers. If the answer is "we partner with hosts", the capability is rented and your schedule will depend on someone else's availability.
5. Interrogate the reporting
Ask to see a real weekly report. It should lead with GMV, conversion rate, ROAS and profit contribution. If it leads with impressions and engagement rate, the agency is measuring the wrong business.
6. Check operational depth
Ask what happens when a live sells three weeks of stock in a night, or when shipping SLAs slip and the shop's health score drops. Agencies that have scaled brands have answers involving fulfilment partners and inventory planning. Agencies that have not will talk about content calendars.
7. Make sure incentives align
The structure matters less than the alignment: an agency confident in its ability to grow you will accept meaningful performance-linked pay. Read our full breakdown of agency pricing models before negotiating.
If you want to run these seven checks against us, everything is on our TikTok Shop agency page, and the rest we will show you on a call.
Shortlisting agencies? Put us on the list and run the checklist against us on a free call.
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