How to Generate TikTok Mobile App URLs for Amazon Affiliates, Influencers, and Marketers

Published on July 29, 2022

Teenagers, trendy dances, a cat video or two— any of that sound familiar? Sure it does. TikTok has eclipsed the world of social media apps, and the company's advertising platform is positioned to challenge Facebook's dominance over the domain. And yes, if you’re above the age of 25, it very well may elicit an eye roll or groan— but hey, this is big business.

If you still firmly believe that TikTok exists only for the entertainment of youngsters across the globe, you’d be very wrong. In essence, you'd be passing up a major advertising opportunity to increase your company’s conversion rates and revenue. Yes Amazon sellers, it's time to advertise from TikTok directly to your Amazon store and product pages.

Like many sellers, you may be looking for a fast, easy-to-implement tactic to significantly grow your Amazon revenue while trying to reach specific audiences with your advertising methods. So wouldn't you say it’s vital for you to gain traction on every emerging platform (yes, even TikTok!) in a world obsessed with mobile apps? The fact of the matter is, you can't fulfill the entirety of your sales potential without driving non-Amazon traffic into the Amazon app from social apps— including TikTok.

And let’s say you did seize the opportunity and set up your ad campaigns on TikTok— wouldn’t it then make even more sense to link into the Amazon app vs. website? Yes— we do mean link from the TikTok app into the Amazon app with not a single login prompt in sight.

Are we throwing too many hypotheticals at you? This post will tell you how to do that step-by-step with app deep linking and without SDKs!

First, maybe you (or your boss!) need a bit more convincing that you should invest right now this year in TikTok advertising directly to Amazon.

The Stunning Growth of TikTok in 2021

The main reason you should be advertising directly from TikTok to Amazon? Because of the impressive growth of TikTok's advertising platform. Why not grow with TikTok and let your marketing team ride those coattails to increase e-commerce sales on Amazon? Here are some very big numbers to wow your boss with that will help you secure that TikTok advertising budget.

TikTok Consumer Spend Growth 2021 - 2022

Did you know that in 2021, consumer spending on TikTok surged by a stunning 77 percent? Overall, users spent $2.3 billion in the app, up from $1.3 billion the previous year with 13% of TikTok's total global revenue coming from the U.S.— there’s no denying that these numbers are far from shabby.

TikTok Influencers Help You Sell on Amazon

Now when it comes to making great videos about your products, the TikTok content creators are ultimately the influencers with the power to sway audiences to purchase your product or service. Collaboration with creators increases view-through rates of ads by 193 percent! Through the TikTok Creator Marketplace, brands can collaborate with over 100,000 content creators to curate content aimed at their target consumers.

Content creators benefit both TikTok users and brands: 35% of consumers learn about products and brands through creators, and 66% said they love it when creators post about products and brands.

Research also showed that 67 percent of TikTok users express that the app inspires them to purchase new items, regardless of whether they intended to shop or not. How? Why? Well, the app’s users enjoy connecting with companies and brands in special ways, with 73% saying that they experience deeper connections with companies on the TikTok platform as opposed to others.

TikTok even researched the behavior of their users’ shopping habits themselves. The report? An average of 37 percent of the app’s users will find a product on their feed and immediately want to purchase it. Whereas 29 percent of users have attempted to buy something from TikTok, only to find that it was already sold out.

There’s a reason why the hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt garnered upward of 7.4 billion views in 2021.

Why Are My TikTok Affiliate Links Not Opening in the Amazon App?

You already know how important it is to drive non-Amazon traffic to your Amazon store and listings. So now that you're sold on TikTok advertising, let's go over how to optimize your Amazon links for your TikTok shop and campaigns so that you can link your Amazon products on TikTok.

Why do you need to update your Amazon affiliate links on the TikTok app? There happens to be a major roadblock that will interfere with the success of your TikTok ad campaign. The dreaded TikTok walled garden. That refers to TikTok not letting your shopper leave TikTok to temporarily go to another app— in this case Amazon (but it could be any app).

How to Link App-to-App from TikTok to Amazon

So what does TikTok do instead? It sends you to the Amazon web login even when you have the Amazon app installed on your phone. Talk about hitting a wall while trying to shop! Your product might as well be out of stock, because your customer is less inclined to log in that way.

We’re going to let you in on a little secret to smoothly link from a TikTok click to the Amazon app on iOS or Android— all automatically from the same campaign link! Now this is what we call true Amazon linking— Amazon deep linking, to be precise.

Platforms such as URLgenius (that’s us!) enable Amazon sellers to update their links to give them some additional app deep linking capabilities that solve for that walled garden issue. A regular TikTok URL link simply can't open the Amazon app, but rather it directs the user to the Amazon website— where logging in is required to purchase the product. Although it might sound like nothing more than a minor hiccup, this ultimately leads to most individuals abandoning their shopping journey.

Not only do you lose the sale, you also lose any engagement that would put the shopper back into the funnel for remarketing. Meaning that your sales go down while your Amazon search rankings suffer because of the loss of sales velocity.

As we briefly mentioned before, the solution is simple. The solution is to place a URLgenius Amazon deep link in your TikTok ad, which will launch the Amazon app immediately to the target store or product screen, increasing in-app engagement and conversion.

App deep linking from the TikTok app to the Amazon shopping app rather than logging in to the Amazon mobile website will help you boost engagement, product consideration, revenue and product rankings.

Pro Tip: Your shoppers may not be familiar with the URLgenius domain. You can use your brand's domain for your URLgenius Amazon app deep links. This helps you extend your brand name to the link and establish increased trust when deep linking from TikTok to the Amazon app.

Step-by-Step: How to Generate Affiliate Mobile App URLs to Link Amazon to TikTok

Creating an Amazon app deep link? Easy. At URLgenius, we’ve perfected the process— you don’t need any technical resources and there's not a single thing to install.

The first thing you need to do is to navigate to the desired Amazon product or page and copy the link from the address bar. (This could be the link to your storefront, product, or even a product category link.)
You only need the core links— you can remove any navigation tags that may have been added as you searched for the right Amazon link to make sure they don't interfere with tracking or opening the app.

Pro tip: If you are enrolled in the Amazon Attribution program, you can authenticate your Amazon account in the settings for your URLgenius account. Once you do that, URLgenius will automatically include your Amazon Attribution tags!

Paste the link into the box provided on the URLgenius home page. When pasting the link, notice the Amazon icon is highlighted— this tells you that URLgenius understands the type of link you just pasted.
You can customize the end of the link to match your campaign to make it easy to find later. If not needed, just use the pre-populated random characters.
Click the “Compose” which takes you to the settings page for your Amazon app deep link, where you can copy and place it into your TikTok ad. To test the behavior of the link, you can scan the QR code or email it.

Notice that there are advanced features on the settings page— this is also where you can see clicks and the number of app-opens. You can also enable Amazon Attribution tags on the link so you can track how much revenue is being driven by your TikTok campaign and your URLgenius app deep link.

QR Codes for the Amazon App

Doing a multi-channel campaign in coordination with your TikTok ad? Lucky for you, every URLgenius app deep link also has a corresponding QR code.

Create a branded app deep link and custom QR code to use online or offline to promote your Amazon store and product listings. Use them in posters, retail displays, tradeshows, and giveaway promotions. Just click on 'QR Settings' to find and download your code.

TikTok Advertising Best Practices for Amazon

URLgenius will track scans and clicks separately and you can append tags for tracking in ways that won't disrupt scanning (including too many tags and appending them the wrong way is a common 'QR code fail!').

URLgenius Is the Deep Link Between TikTok Advertising and Amazon Marketing Success

As of today, TikTok is the number one social media app and Amazon is the number one e-commerce app. So then, doesn’t it make sense to build a seamless bridge between the two with a URLgenius app deep link?

As they say, time is money— and don’t you hear it “TikTok-ing” away? Here at URLgenius we are here to help! Contact us with questions at info@urlgeni.us about Amazon marketing and deep links.

If you found this content helpful, check out some of our latest how-to posts for deep link app marketing:

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