In 2021, the effects of the pandemic had been felt by most parts of the world. But none more so than in Southeast Asia, where 70.6% of small businesses were forced to cease operations for a period of time. For these emerging markets, where mom-and-pop shops form the backbone of the economy, a shutdown of such magnitude had potentially devastating effects.

To help preserve the livelihood of Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs), we created Shop Local Saturday at TikTok– a platform that gave local businesses in Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam an opportunity to sell their products and services to the TikTok community. With this, the local communities were able to make purchases on SMB listings every Saturday over the course of a month.

Our approach had a dual-purpose: We wanted to help SMBs in Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam that were in the midst of their operational hiatus, by creating a platform that targets the local communities. We also wanted to show that TikTok can go beyond song and dance challenges.

Thus, Shop Local Saturday at TikTok was born – to get the local communities to support SMBs on every Saturday, from 1st to 30th June 2021.

For one month, we spotlighted SMBs and their products by listing them on the TikTok platform (H5 mobile page), to allow users to discover and lead them to product purchase.

With exclusive access to content creators, creative workshops and listings on TikTok’s website and platblog platform, SMBs in Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam were able to connect with new audiences to convert them into new customers.

The numbers speak for themselves. Over 120 SMBs from Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam were featured on our platform. Resulting in over 2 million clicks on SMB listings, reaching 120 million viewers and 1.6 billion PR reach – exceeding our marketing goals.

1 in every 3 SMBs in Indonesia and Vietnam, and 1 in every 4 SMBs in Thailand, have used TikTok as their preferred ad platform and found it to be most effective – highlighting the strength of the platform as a marketing tool for SMBs to drive their business goals. For a campaign that ran for just one month, the results were outstanding.