Lives - an ongoing storefront that has to be staffed and run in real time. And, a completely different ball game.

During BFCM, when urgency and volume both peak, Lives are one of the highest-leverage levers available on the platform - but only if the cadence and hosting are built with intention.

Cadence: Build the Habit Before BFCM, Not During It

The instinct with Lives is to treat them as a one-off event - go big on launch day, then figure out what's next. But, they compound, and BFCM is the wrong week to be finding that out for the first time.

Where we are with this right now: We're actively building this Live cadence model out across a number of brands ahead of this year's BFCM, starting August/September groundwork now so there's a genuine training period before peak week arrives.

The early signal from the beauty brand launch is exactly why we're pushing this earlier for more brands this year - the uplift created a complete step-change in the Shop's baseline weekly GMV that held after the Live ended. That's the effect we're trying to replicate on purpose, brand by brand.

🗓️ SEPTEMBER: Start building Live cadence.

Whether that's daily, every other day, or a few times a week (depends on your resourcing), but the goal is the same: by the time BFCM demands more of you, you should be in a rhythm.

We ran Lives for a popular beauty brand, and their first-ever TikTok Shop Live is a good proof point here: an 8-hour launch event built around an exclusive bundle and a proven bestseller hit £1K GMV within the first hour, finished on just over £8K, and - more importantly - lifted the Shop's weekly GMV from £1.8K the month before to £20K the week after.

These results came from a genuinely well-built moment. Running your own version of that test in September or early October, well before BFCM, is how you find out what your equivalent looks like.

We have also started to build this out across other brands:

🗓️ OCTOBER: The training month.

This is where you find out what pacing, what offer stacks, and what presenter combinations actually land with your audience before the stakes are highest.

🗓️ NOVEMBER: Scale.

By November, you should already know your best pacing, your strongest presenter combos, and which offer stacks actually convert an audience. BFCM week is essentially where you take all of those learnings and turn the dial up: more frequent Lives, longer sessions where the data supports it, and your top-tier creators (see the tiering section above) brought in to host or co-host Black Friday itself, your best bundle drop, and/or restock windows.

❌ The brands who go into BFCM week and suddenly try to "do a big Live" for the first time are the ones who will struggle.

✅ The brands who go in having already run six or eight weeks of Lives are the ones who know exactly what £1K-in-the-first-hour looks like for them, and can engineer for it on purpose instead of hoping for it.

Hosts: Hire Performers

The single biggest mistake brands make with Lives is assuming product knowledge is the main qualification for hosting. Instead, hire for energy and presence on camera, then build product knowledge into that person… not the other way round.