You Can’t GMV-Max Your Way to a Brand

Almost every brand that comes to us for TikTok starts with the same three letters: GMV.

They want it quickly, so the budget goes into GMV Max and the sampling starts immediately. I understand the instinct. If the goal is revenue, putting the budget closest to the conversion seems like the most efficient approach.

It can work for a while.

The problem comes when there isn’t enough happening elsewhere in the funnel to keep feeding it. A TikTok GMV Max strategy still needs creator content, audience development, and activity higher in the funnel to support continued growth.

Why Brands Jump Straight to GMV Max

The logic makes sense. GMV Max is designed to optimize toward sales, so brands naturally want to put as much budget there as possible.

But conversion campaigns still need people to convert.

If a brand isn’t continually introducing itself to new customers, generating interest, testing creative, and building audiences, the pool of people closest to purchase can become harder and more expensive to reach.

That’s when brands can start seeing CAC rise even though nothing obvious has changed inside the campaign.

How Does GMV Max Work Best?

GMV Max becomes more useful when there’s a healthy stream of creative and audience signals feeding the platform.

That means brands still need activity higher in the funnel.

TikTok is particularly suited to this because discovery is a major part of how people use TikTok Shop. According to TikTok and GlobalData research, 83% of TikTok Shop shoppers said they’d discovered a new product on the platform, while 70% said they’d discovered a new brand.

That discovery behavior gives brands an opportunity to introduce products before someone is actively shopping for them.

It also means every interaction shouldn’t assume the customer is already at the bottom of the funnel.

What Happens When You Skip Top of Funnel?

Focusing almost entirely on conversion creates two risks.

The first is audience saturation. Research from Taboola and Qualtrics found that nearly 75% of performance marketers have experienced diminishing returns from social media ad investments, with audience saturation, rising costs, and ad fatigue among the reported challenges.

The second risk is harder to see in a channel report.

Your marketing may create interest in a category without doing enough to make customers prefer your brand. Someone sees the product on TikTok, becomes interested, searches around, compares options, and buys from a competitor with stronger reviews, better search visibility, or a more compelling offer.

Your marketing contributed to the demand, but your competitor got the sale.

Why a Full-Funnel TikTok Strategy Matters

GMV Max can still play an important role. The goal is to give it more to work with.

Research conducted by Monks in partnership with TikTok Marketing Science found that full-funnel TikTok strategies produced 13% to 26% better ROAS than programs using only conversion campaigns.

We’ve seen a similar effect in our own work. Adding mid-funnel activity to the media mix has driven:

Upper and mid-funnel activity keeps bringing qualified customers and useful signals into the system so conversion campaigns have more opportunities to work with.

What Does Top of Funnel Look Like on TikTok?

Top-of-funnel TikTok doesn’t have to mean producing a big brand campaign and hoping people remember it.

It can include:

Those activities introduce the brand to new audiences while generating creative and behavioral signals that can support retargeting and conversion campaigns later.

Creator content is especially useful here because it gives customers a way to learn about a product from someone other than the brand itself.

By the time that person encounters a conversion-focused ad, they may already understand what the product is, why it’s relevant, and whether they trust it.

What a Full-Funnel TikTok Strategy Looks Like in Practice

For one wellness brand launching on TikTok Shop, we deliberately built the program in stages.

Month one focused on demand shaping, curated creators, and developing an ambassador network.

In month two, we opened affiliate to creators who were already familiar with the brand.

In month three, we added paid media to amplify creator content that was already performing.

Over nine months, affiliate GMV grew roughly 36x from month one, while GMV per sample increased from approximately $12 to $180.

We’ve seen the same approach work at a larger scale. A challenger food and beverage brand built its TikTok presence in phases, beginning with branded content and capture, followed by affiliate and full-funnel media, then top-of-funnel paid media and retail.

The brand generated more than $5 million in a quarter and approximately 30x ROAS during its first 90 days. [5]

Each phase gave the next one better inputs to work with.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is GMV Max Enough for a TikTok Shop Strategy?

GMV Max can be an effective conversion tool, but brands shouldn’t rely on it to handle every part of their TikTok Shop strategy. Creator content, prospecting, audience development, and mid-funnel activity can help support continued conversion performance.

Should New TikTok Shop Brands Use GMV Max Right Away?

It depends on the signals and creative the brand already has. Newer brands may benefit from building creator content, audience signals, and proven creative alongside conversion activity rather than relying on GMV Max alone.

What Counts as Top of Funnel on TikTok?

Top-of-funnel activity can include video views, prospecting, branded creator content, and discovery-focused content designed to introduce the brand to new audiences.

Does Top-of-Funnel Spend Hurt Short-Term ROAS?

It can look less efficient when evaluated only through last-click attribution. Broader measurement can show how upper-funnel activity contributes to conversion elsewhere. The Monks and TikTok analysis found full-funnel programs generated 13% to 26% better ROAS than conversion-only programs.

How Should Brands Split Budget Between Upper Funnel and Conversion?

There’s no universal percentage that works for every brand. Look at whether your conversion campaigns have enough fresh creative, audience growth, and signals to continue scaling efficiently. Then test additional upper and mid-funnel investment against blended performance.

Build More Than a Conversion Campaign

GMV Max can be an important part of a TikTok Shop strategy. It shouldn’t have to carry the entire strategy.

Go Fish Digital helps brands connect creator content, affiliate, paid media, and TikTok Shop so each part of the program supports the others.

Reach out to us to see how we can help!