Somerce, a UK-based social commerce agency specializing in TikTok Shop marketing, has grown from a startup to managing over 55 client accounts across the UK, U.S., and Europe in just one year. Founded in 2024 by Joe Yates, the agency emerged as TikTok Shop was experiencing growth in the UK market, where the platform now facilitates over 6,000 live broadcasts daily and has recorded a 180% year-on-year revenue growth according to Nielsen IQ research.

Before Somerce, Joe had built and exited a marketing agency by 2021, then worked as a fractional CMO. When TikTok approached a client about TikTok Shop, the business jumped from £20,000 to £400,000 monthly through creators—including nano-influencers making £20,000 monthly on commission alone. This experience revealed that creators with modest followings could drive significant sales through genuine product recommendations.

“What a lot of brands that scale and then fall quite quickly do is they gift people once, and they don’t think about building a community. And that word ‘community’ is where I think we thrive,” explains Joe. “The best brands on TikTok Shop typically have affiliates posting 2.5 to 3.5 times a month, which doesn’t feel like a lot, but if you’ve got 4,000 people posting for you, that’s a lot of content created.”

As TikTok Shop gained momentum, there were no true experts available to guide brands through this ecosystem. “When we were in the process of scaling, there were no experts on the market. TikTok was learning at the same pace, if not slightly slower, than what we, as operators, were doing. Everyone was learning,” Joe recalls the state of affairs when he founded Somerce. 

While Somerce works with various clients, the agency has “built a strong expertise in beauty,” as Joe notes, aligning with Traackr’s research identifying beauty and fashion as the top two product categories consumers purchase through social media. According to TikTok, beauty products sell every two seconds on the platform.

The Somerce Community Approach

Somerce has developed a method for building and nurturing creator communities. Rather than viewing creators as interchangeable promotional channels, they treat them as valuable partners in a brand’s growth.

“Every client that we work with has a creator community that we manage as Somerce, and we manage on behalf of the brand,” Joe explains. “The creator has the view that it’s the brand that they’re talking to, and we will essentially gift those creators samples but then also incentivize them through cash rewards, through product rewards, through weekly sprint competitions, etc.”

This community-centered model has proven effective in the beauty vertical, on which Somerce doubled down. For beauty brand Glow For It, founded by Daisy Kelly, Somerce has cultivated a community of approximately 1,200 creators, with 800 actively engaged and regularly posting. Many creators in their communities post 5-7 times monthly, with some creating upwards of 30 pieces of content per month, which, as Joe notes, exceeds the industry average.

The business model that underpins this approach reflects Joe’s commitment to performance-based partnerships. “Our business works on relatively low minimum retainers and then takes a commission on sales. So it really is a partnership,” he says. “On our base package, we lose money every month if we don’t deliver, so we are incentivised to make this work.”

TikTok Platform Shift

According to Traackr’s research, there has been a 73% increase in active influencers and a 135% increase in mentions year-over-year on TikTok Shop from January 2023 to November 2024. As the platform has matured, so too have creator expectations.

“A year ago, brands would launch on the platform, gift small creators, and get good awareness,” Joe explains. “Now, the big brands have come in and gone, ‘We have anywhere between $10,000 and $50,000 per month invested in affiliates on TikTok.’ This has resulted in many creators expecting to be paid by brands, creating a macro shift in the platform, both in the UK and the U.S. 

This shift means brands now need to be more strategic with their creator investments, an area where Somerce specializes. The agency has adapted by developing a tiered strategy: paying established influencers for guaranteed performance while nurturing communities of smaller creators who amplify these messages.

“Brands now need to be a lot smarter with their budgets and invest in influence marketing more traditionally,” Joe notes. “If you do it right, you pay for these tier one influences. Also, we work with star creators on a payment basis; people we know get consistent, instant sales for us. That creates this halo effect for all the other creators.”

Case Study: The Kyra-Mae Effect

Somerce’s community approach is well illustrated by their campaign with Glow For It and creator Kyra-Mae Turner, which demonstrates how smaller creators can leverage the influence of larger ones within a well-managed community.

“We decided to do a collaboration with a creator who was up and coming called Kyra-Mae, who ended up winning the #1 creator on TikTok last year,” Joe explains. The team created a special box edit featuring Mae’s selected products, complete with custom packaging featuring her face.

While the initial collaboration with Kyra-Mae herself achieved results, what happened next revealed the true potential of creator communities: “We decided to gift all of our top creators within our community the Kyra-Mae Box Edit, thinking this could generate some results, what we didn’t expect was that it would drive nearly 10x the success of the original activation.

These smaller creators began enthusiastically promoting the box featuring a prominent creator they admired, creating a multiplier effect. “Everyone was talking about this big creator who was up and coming, loads of people loved. But actually, it wasn’t Kyra-Mae generating those sales. It was people using her channel and leveraging her name to get sales in a very commercial way,” Joe says.

As Joe shares, the result was their best month ever through that campaign, proving that creator communities can generate more impact than individual influencer partnerships. This insight has shaped Somerce’s strategy for seasonal campaigns: creating products that leverage relationships between creators of different tiers to maximize engagement and sales.

Expanding the Strategy

As Somerce continues to grow, Joe is developing new resources to support their community-centered approach. In July, he launched Somerce Studios after taking over the lease of the former TikTok Shop Manchester Studios when TikTok announced its closure.

“A lot of our clients were reliant on them for hitting targets as well as a load of other brands,” Joe explains. “I responded quickly and got in touch with TikTok, got in touch with the company that owned the studios, and I said, ‘Look, if you guys are going to close this down, we will take over it and we will continue to run it for you.'”

Looking forward, Joe is developing a SaaS platform focused on live streaming and creator management, set to launch in the coming months. “We are developing a platform not just for brands and e-commerce, but also for opening opportunities for young people to have a new way of earning money,” Joe explains.

Creator Communities in Social Commerce

As TikTok continues to expand its UK presence, now reaching 30 million monthly users, the opportunities for creator-driven commerce will only grow.

Joe envisions a future where social commerce becomes increasingly integrated across platforms and even physical retail spaces. “In China, a lot of stores have live streaming within them, and they have malls where people are live streaming,” he notes. “I think the UK will definitely follow.”

For brands looking to succeed in this space, Joe’s advice is clear: “Create a community the same way you’d create a customer community, but it’s somewhat, to a degree, even more important. The cost of getting 50 creators in a room is so low compared to what they would make you.”

Somerce’s growth to 50+ clients in just one year demonstrates how effective communities can be. As Joe puts it, “It isn’t all about discounting. Until people shift from being heavily discount-led, that reputation won’t improve on TikTok Shop. But, you can leverage great success through your creator communities.”

All images are credited to Somerce.

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