January 29, 2025 • 44 mins
Unlock the secrets of social selling on TikTok and transform your e-commerce strategy. What if the key to skyrocketing your brand's success lies in 15-second videos and the power of micro-influencers? Discover how successful Amazon sellers are pivoting to TikTok, despite the looming shadow of potential bans, to harness its unique social selling capabilities inspired by China’s digital market.
From a former video editor turned marketing maestro, learn how to capture attention in those crucial first seconds and maintain viewer engagement. Dive into the world of viral content creation and uncover the strategies that turned a Trump greeting card brand into a TikTok sensation. Embrace the art of leveraging micro-influencers to amplify your brand's reach, and explore the vital role of building strong creator relationships to enhance both engagement and sales.
We’ll also explore the ripple effect TikTok has on platforms like Amazon, sharing case studies of how viral exposure fueled massive search and sales numbers. Get insights from Amazon sellers expanding into TikTok and learn why enduring brand-building principles remain vital. Whether you're a seasoned seller or new to TikTok, this episode promises to equip you with the strategies to succeed in today's dynamic e-commerce landscape.
🚀 Transform your brand on Amazon by building a powerful customer list with the After Purchase Funnel Blueprint course. Click here to get the full course for free.
➡️ Ready to go deeper into your Amazon FBA journey to accelerate your success? Get your hands on ALL of the Brand Fortress HQ resources, mentorship, and knowledge base by visiting us at BrandFortressHQ.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everyone to the Brand Fortress HQ podcast.
We have another Tactics Tuesday, and today we are talking about
the hot topic of TikTok.
There's a lot to talk about onthis topic.
Matt just actually came backfrom a conference with a lot of
what's happening on TikTok rightnow, so I'm actually going to
turn it over to you, matt, ifyou share some background and
(00:23):
just kind of what your thoughtsare on where TikTok is at when
it comes to e-commerce landscape.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Yeah, there is a lot to talk about, especially with
the current state of affairs.
And what's crazy what I'llstart off with is that this
workshop happened right before.
So I think TikTok went dark onSaturday night, I think before.
So I think the the band orTikTok, went dark on Saturday
night.
I think this workshop washappening the week before and
what was very interesting to meis that you had this, it's it's.
(00:53):
It wasn't really a conference,it was more.
I'm in a mastermind group withabout 40 to 50 other sellers who
are all successful on Amazon,who have switched their focus to
TikTok.
That was kind of who was atthis conference.
So very successful Amazonsellers.
They've realized and havestarted to see a little bit of
success on TikTok.
And it was really a group ofthese sellers coming together
(01:16):
and sharing tips, tricks,strategies, that kind of stuff.
But what was very interestingto me is that at the very
beginning of the workshop,obviously we addressed the
elephant in the room.
We knew that this was looming,but that was it Like.
We talked about it maybe for a15, 20 minutes and the rest of
it was business as usual.
None of us were really I don'twant to say not concerned about
(01:37):
it, but it was.
You know the conversations thatwe were having weren't?
Oh crap, what are we going todo when TikTok goes away?
It was.
These are the things that areworking right now.
These are the things that I'llbe working next week and you
know part of the a couple of thesessions started with.
Even if TikTok does go away, alot of what we're talking about
is just it will work.
(01:58):
I mean, what's not going awayis social selling, and TikTok
did start that.
You know there's been Instagram, there's been Facebook, there's
ways that you can sell productson those platforms, but TikTok
really is who started this wholesocial selling?
And if you look at China, whereTikTok comes from, the vast
majority of physical productsare sold in this type of an
environment, this kind of socialselling, almost like a QVC on
(02:20):
your phone the vast majority.
So Gary V V has been talkingabout this social selling thing
for a couple of years now.
He's always a couple of yearsbefore the trends.
But like that's not going awayand that's really what a lot of
this workshop talked about isthat, whether or not TikTok goes
away, there's, there's going tobe another platform that comes
up.
There's 170 million eyeballs onTikTok right now.
(02:41):
Those aren't just going todisappear.
That attention is going to moveto another platform.
So a lot of what we talkedabout are principles that, no
matter what the platform is,these are the things that you
need to do in order to grow yourbusiness with that type of
selling environment.
So that's first off.
That was the first thing, andyeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
So, before we dive anymore, I want to make sure,
quite frankly, for myself andalso for our listeners, that you
know we get a littleclarification around some of
these concepts, because I thinkthey're so super important.
So, when you talk about socialselling, give me an idea of you
know.
What does that look like?
How is it different from Amazon, and why is TikTok really
(03:21):
exploded as the channel for thisversus, you know, facebook or
Instagram?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
So I think that it's just.
I can't necessarily answer thequestion of why TikTok.
I mean, I think that Facebookhas tried like there's Facebook
and Instagram, there's reels,like there's there's vertical
format type of videos, butnobody really did it like with
integrated it into theirshopping platform Like TikTok.
Did you know?
Amazon tried it, but it reallydid it like with integrated it
into their shopping platformLike TikTok.
Did you know?
(03:47):
Amazon tried it, but it was aflop.
Like I don't know.
I don't even know how long thatlasted, but I remember it was
even before TikTok became anactual thing.
This is three years ago, like Iremember, I worked for an
agency at the time.
We had we were launching abrand on Amazon and they had an
A-list influencer that wasbehind the brand and they
invited her.
They did this whole homepagetakeover for this brand launch
(04:10):
and they invited her to do livesand I remember it was the most
underwhelming thing imaginable.
I thought it was going to be.
We've expected thousands andthousands of units sold in this
live session, but it just didn'ttake off.
So I don't think that Amazonexecuted it very well.
I think for TikTok it was moreof a natural, like eyeballs.
You know, tiktok came onto thescene, people gravitated towards
(04:32):
it in terms of consumingcontent that way, and then it
was easy for them because inChina these platforms already
existed, where they attached theshopping platform to the social
platform.
So I think they already had theroadmap on how to do it,
because it's such a big thing inChina already, and so I think
it was just right place, righttime for TikTok.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
And I also want to just say, too, though, that I
think the thing with TikTok isthey really were.
They were the first platformthat really got the algorithm
right for this Right.
Social shopping is a thing, butwhat is critical there, though,
(05:12):
is how long can you keep someonein the app watching videos?
Right, and TikTok nailed that,because they really figured out
exactly how to make sure thatthe next video and the next
video and the next video thatshows up in the feed are exactly
what you want to see, so thatyou are just going to continue
(05:35):
to scroll and scroll and scroll,and until you eventually hit
that video where there'ssomething actually being sold
and you just click buy.
But they were able to keeppeople in the app and keep them
scrolling and interested, andwhen they tied that together
with that really low frictionbuying experience, then they
(05:56):
really had something, andthere's just been no other
platform that really put ittogether in that way.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Well, and I think the other thing and I'm going to,
you know, get a little over myski tips probably on this, but
that I've heard from you, knowsources that are fairly reliable
is that the algorithm works alot different than Facebook and
Instagram.
So it's not on those platforms.
It's very much based on you knowwho you're connected with.
(06:23):
So you know if you havethousands or tens of thousands
of connections, then your stuffgets seen more than if you have,
you know, two friends on there,right, whereas TikTok is much
more.
They have this concept of it'smuch more about the content than
it's about the users, and soany piece of content in theory
(06:43):
because their algorithm is opensource, in theory, the way it
works is every piece of contentgets shown to at least one
person because they want to seehow that person reacts to it.
And if somebody whatever thespecifics are on that, how long
they watch it, if they interactwith it all those types of
things determine does it go tonow 10 more people?
(07:05):
And so I think what's importantfor brands to understand on
that is that, rather than havinga million followers, what's
really more important for aplatform and how TikTok is built
is you have something thatpeople are willing to watch and
engage with, and it's much moreabout the quality of the content
than it is about the number offollowers or connections that
(07:29):
you have.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Well, it's also good for the actual influencers
themselves, or content creatorsI mean, they're not all really
true influencers, but but from acontent creator perspective,
tiktok was getting massiveamounts of content production
exactly because of what you justsaid, john, and that is because
of the way the algorithm wasstructured.
(07:51):
Every single person that wascreating content for TikTok knew
it doesn't matter how manyfollowers I have I could get 10
million views on this if I putup good content.
And because every creator knowsthat and they know they don't
have to have a large audience toreally get something to go
viral and get some productionout of it, they would put the
(08:12):
time into doing good videos, andthere was just a lot more
content being produced forTikTok than for other platforms
because of it.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Yeah, so one of the things that I think it was, mike
, what you said is, I think, todouble click on one of the
things that you said is theseamless, frictionless buying
experience.
When I first bought somethingon TikTok, I didn't have my
credit card loaded, I didn'thave my address, they had no
information from me.
I bought my first product andit took me 10 seconds to walk
(08:43):
through that buying experience.
I integrated with Apple Pay soI was able to just you know, I
didn't have to put my creditcard information in.
Apple Pay already had myaddress information, so I found
the product that I wanted.
I searched for it, I found it,I click on buy and 10 seconds
later it was on its way to myhouse.
So I think that's another partof it is that, yes, amazon is
(09:04):
also very easy, but like theamount of time that it took me
to go from I know what I want toit's on its way to me was so
frictionless.
I think that's a big part ofTikTok success too.
So, and also to kind of this isactually what you guys were
just talking about is a goodsegue into some of the topics.
Now I do have to be careful.
We one of the things that wastalked about at the very
(09:27):
beginning of this workshop is itwas a very closed type of an
environment, so there's certainthings that I can't share but,
like I said, just overallprinciples I think are important
to understand here, and whatMike talked about is the videos
that go viral, and I think thata couple of the sessions that
were the most interesting to mewas there was one guy who was
(09:49):
there who he has.
He's a video editor.
Actually, I think that was hisbackground, was he was a video
editor.
Now he's a marketing managerfor a brand that ended up going
viral on TikTok several times.
It was a Trump greeting card,so it was actually the perfect
time for this type of a productto go viral leading up to the
election.
But I mean, what I think is thetopic of his session was
(10:11):
retention, video editing andwhat he's learned and the
experience that he brought toTikTok was how to get someone's
attention in the first couple ofseconds of the video, but then
also how to keep their attentionthroughout the video.
There was a lot of really coolthings you know, like with text,
overlay and and then what Ireally found interesting and
(10:32):
actually what I loved about thisworkshop as opposed to going to
a conference and just sittingin the crowd is we actually had
our laptops and phones out andwe had CapCut out and we
actually had.
He had a couple of videos thatwe were editing, but one of the
things I loved about what hisstrategy was is how and I think
you've probably, if you spendany amount of time on TikTok,
you've seen these videos whereit's a great video, you're very
(10:54):
invested in it and the end feelslike the beginning and you
don't even know that you areback at the beginning of the
video because of how seamlessthat transition was.
And part of the algorithm iswatch time, like Mike was
talking about, but then also howmany times that video is
watched.
So just the fact that thatvideo restarts again is giving
(11:18):
signals to the algorithm that,hey, I want to send this to more
people, because people are notonly watching this whole video,
but they're watching it morethan once.
So, like the amount of effortand the amount of testing that
went into him figuring out allof these things like and that's
really what it was.
It was it's not like he had theblueprint to what TikTok's
algorithm wants.
It's he iterated and tested andtested and what does this work?
(11:40):
And am I getting more watchtime?
Is this going viral?
Like the amount of testing thathe did and then distilling that
knowledge to us was fascinatingto me.
I am not a creative person.
My stick figures areunrecognizable, so, like even
you know me getting my phone outand trying to play around with
cap cut, I feel I'm like a fishout of water.
So I didn't really get theexperience like others did who
(12:02):
even have one little bit of acreative bone in their body, but
just the the principles of howto get someone to stop scrolling
, initially in the first coupleof seconds, but then also how to
keep their attention.
There were so many nuggets ofinformation that he gave on the
different things that he usesand it's just a way of editing
the video, like the video hestarted with.
This very and that's theproblem that I have with
(12:25):
creating content for my ownbrands is I, you know, you and I
.
We all talk on these this oncea week, sometimes twice a week,
about this podcast and and othernerding out on our businesses.
But, like, for some reason,whenever I hit record on my
phone, like I just freeze up.
It's just the craziest thing.
But what he talked about isdon't hit the stop button, Just
keep talking, because you canedit that video at the end and
(12:47):
you can make it like.
These tools are so easy he usedCapCut that it's so easy to
splice that video and to makethose transitions seem like
they're seamless, that you don'thave to hit stop.
And I can't tell you how manyvideos I have on my phone that
are just me saying something andcrap and starting over and crap
.
I did it again and I got somany times.
(13:08):
So that's one of the things Ilearned from him is that don't
hit the stop button.
First of all, don't be hard onyourself.
Second of all, don't hit thestop button.
You can edit it later.
But what I learned from him Ithink the biggest takeaway that
I learned from him is that don'tbe hard on yourself, because
the videos that he has seen goviral for his brand are the ones
that he thought were trash anddidn't even want to post it in
(13:29):
the beginning, so you never knowwhat kind of video is going to
go viral, as long as you followthe same principles from the
very beginning.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
So did they talk at all at that conference about
what they're seeing as the toptwo or three, yeah, items that
you know for brands that areselling on TikTok that really
drive sales?
You know, is it?
You know, is there some sort ofyou know ratings or indicator
or shipping or what does thatlook like as far as you know,
(14:01):
the big things that really movethe needle for brands that are
getting started on TikTok toactually start generating some
sales.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
So there was a big, giant brand there.
I probably can say the name ofthe brand, but, just in case I
don't want to get into, therewas a huge brand that did 30
million on TikTok last year butdid 300 million overall on their
brand.
Like, if I said the name, youwould know who it is.
They do massive amounts ofrevenue on on Amazon, but what?
What was fascinating to me thathe talked about is they do
(14:33):
spend money on advertising, butthe money that they spend on
advertising on TikTok is they.
So to answer your question,then I'll kind of talk about how
they view their ad spend onTikTok is micro-influencers.
That's what you need to work onand that's what what I talked
about initially is that socialselling isn't going away.
(14:53):
So the principles that welearned will follow you to any
other platform that comes upnext after TikTok.
If it does go away is having anarmy of micro influencers is
really the biggest thing thatare taking brands to the next
level, not just on TikTok, butthen also the spillover effect
that happens on Amazon.
Most of these TikTok affiliatesand content creators are also
(15:17):
affiliates on Amazon and otherplatforms as well.
So if you find a good creatoron TikTok.
Chances are they're also acreator on these other platforms
.
So this big giant brand theycan afford to just blitz TikTok
with ad spend and they'llprobably get a whole lot of
sales that way.
But how they look at it is theyfocus their attention on finding
micro influencers and then theylook to see.
(15:38):
They're very analytical aboutwhich of those videos are
getting traction and the onlytime that they spend money on
ads is when they see a videogetting organic traction and
then they'll put gas on the firewith ad spend.
So, yes, they're spending wellinto the six figures on ad spend
.
They're only doing that whenone of their micro influencers
(15:59):
and again, this is a brand thatcan afford an A-list influencer
they don't work with any A-listinfluencers.
Every single one of theirinfluencers started out as a
micro influencer with and hedefined that as the minimum
5,000 followers, which isnothing.
5,000 followers is hardlyanything.
But again, with the analyticsthat TikTok gives you and how
(16:20):
you can tell if a video isgetting traction and then
putting money behind it likethat's how they grew on TikTok,
it wasn't just throwing a wholebunch of money, it was make
relationships with microinfluencers, tell them the type
of content that we want.
As soon as one of those videosstarts getting traction, then
blitz it with that spend.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
So when you talk about those micro influencers,
are there any best practicesthat you can share around that,
as far as you know, you knowwhat does that look like, is it?
I mean, obviously you'resending them a product so that
way they can hey, this, this isthe product and that type of
stuff, is it?
Then just send them a productand say here's a discount code,
or you know what are those bestpractices look like?
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yeah, so actually there was a content creator
there who has driven multiplesix figures in GMV in a very
short amount of time.
She's mainly in the beautyspace, but so she gave a lot of
tips on managing relationshipswith content creators and
affiliates.
That probably was I think itwas tied for first for my
(17:19):
favorite session and reallybecause it allowed us to get
into the mind of what a contentcreator is looking for.
So, on TikTok, really thebiggest thing from them is they
have the creators have, or theaffiliates and creators have
analytics tools that allow themto look to see and actually we
as just users of TikTok can alsosee how many units are sold and
(17:40):
how much revenue has beendriven by that particular
product.
The way that creators look atthat data is they're able to
sort and filter the data by howmany units sold.
So, like her, for example, shesaid that now that she's driven
a significant amount of revenuefor the brands that she works
with, we have tools likeCaloData is one of them,
fastmoss is another one where wecan see influencers and how
(18:03):
much revenue they've driven andhow many units they've sold.
So that's what we have assellers to look to see.
What are the good contentcreators.
Well, content creators alsohave similar tools on what are
the brands that I want to workwith.
So, for her, what she said andthis is something that we knew
already because we've beendeveloping these processes on
getting to a certain amount ofof units sold before we even
(18:25):
start reaching out to creators,she's like I don't even, I don't
even look at your message in onTik TOK unless you have X
amount of units sold.
And now again, she's at ahigher level.
So, and the other thing is thateveryone and their mother is a
content creator now.
So she was like you'll findcontent creators that will, that
will, create content for you,but the ones that are actually
(18:49):
know how to create content thatgets seen on TikTok.
We have a threshold of how manyunits sold before you even work
with us.
It starts there.
You've got to get to a numberof units sold very, very fast.
A big part of this workshop wasdoing that.
We all know back in 2015, 2016,when Amazon was the wild wild
(19:11):
west, there were a lot ofcreative kind of gray hat types
of things that we could do toget reviews and get units sold
and that kind of stuff, andTikTok right now is like those
days.
I mean, tiktok is very much thewild, wild west days, wild West
days and there are some thingsthat we're doing to help you get
(19:31):
to that number of units sold,to where you're attractive to
those content creators thatactually know how to drive
revenue.
So that's where it starts, isthat you have to have some
traction on TikTok in order tobe attractive to content
creators that know what the heckthey're doing.
Second of all, she gave a lot ofreally cool ideas on how to
reach out to them and a lot ofthem are obvious, you know.
She said if I get an email,first of all, she said email is
(19:54):
a better way to reach outbecause she gets thousands and
thousands of DMS on Tik, tok.
That is hard for her to keep up.
So she's like the brands thattake that other step and send me
an email, which her emailaddress is on her profile that
that there's a much higherlikelihood of getting responded
to.
But she took it even a stepfurther.
She said, if you start youremail with deer, straight into
the trash, every single timestraight into the trash.
(20:16):
So, like I mean, that's obviousfor us.
Like same thing with LinkedInDMs for me, if I get a LinkedIn
DM that starts with deer, I'mnot even paying attention to the
next word that comes out oftheir mouth.
So it's, you know, it's very.
Some of that's very, very, veryobvious.
But yeah, it was really justtreating them like real people
and not just sending 6,000.
(20:36):
And that big brand they send6,000 messages a day to content
creators and it's very much anumbers game.
This is a brand that does sella lot of units.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
I think that process and again maybe I'm just
speaking for myself I thinkbrands are probably more
familiar with that process whereI feel like they're a lot less
or where brands really stumble,is okay, I have a creator, I
think they're halfway decent, Ican give them a coupon code, but
(21:06):
I feel like that's probably notreally exciting, like what does
you know working with thatcreator to on something that you
know obviously is useful forthem but also is going to
actually, you know, move productfor the brand?
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Yeah, so the way it works on on TikTok is they they
request a sample for it fromyour brand, and what I love
about what one of TikTok'srecent updates is is that you
can set stipulations on thatsample.
Where it's not necessarily free, it will be free, but the video
has to get at least one sale.
(21:42):
That's one of the thresholds.
Or you can set however manynumber of sales that you want,
or your video has to get Xamount of views.
There's a couple of differentways that you can set that.
And if you, if you do this, ifyou post a video and if you get
a sale, then we'll reimburse youfor that, that sample to where
it then becomes free and TikTokmanages all of that.
Like instead of us back back inthe day where you used to have
(22:05):
like many chat flows and allthis kind of nonsense, like all
of that's handled within TikTok,and so, like that's the biggest
thing, is that you you can nowset it up to where because I
mean that you know giving outsamples.
If you're sending out 6,000messages a day and everyone and
their mother is a contentcreator looking for free product
, that gets really expensive,really fast.
So being able to set thosethresholds that, yeah, we'll
(22:28):
give you a sample.
You're going to pay for it inthe beginning, but as soon as
you get one sale, we'llreimburse you for it.
That incentivized that contentcreator to actually do something
with it and to end up gettingthat product for free.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Well, it also, too, though, it sets the bar in terms
of who actually responds.
There's no creator is going torespond to that and actually buy
the product unless theyactually think they can produce
that sale and they're actuallygoing to do some decent content
to try and do that.
I wanted to circle back to afew things from earlier in the
(23:01):
conversation, though, too, thatI think are fairly important.
So one of the things thatyou've talked a lot about is
kind of that relationshipbuilding, that relationship with
the content creators, and Ithink that one of the value
plays there is having a systemin place and probably also
having at least one individualin place on your team who this
(23:24):
is their job.
It might not be their only job,but it will be a significant
part of their job, and that ismaintaining communications and
relationship with those contentcreators.
But one of the things that I'veheard talked about a lot that I
think makes a lot of sense, andit'll tie into something else
that I wanted to mention, andthat is when something is
working for either your brand,like a video that you have
(23:47):
created, or something that'sworking for other content
creators.
You know, for your brand, youshould be telling other content
creators within your sphere.
Hey, this is working forso-and-so, this is the template.
You should do this right.
You should try this.
Here's the video.
Try and reproduce that right.
Here's the elements of thatvideo that we believe are
(24:09):
driving views and driving salesand driving engagement and
whatever.
Try to incorporate those thingsinto the video.
I also think that that ties backto testing.
You were talking about thewhole testing thing.
One of the things that'sinteresting is on YouTube.
So thumbnails for standardvideos not short form videos,
(24:34):
but they're standard videos.
There are tools out there thatif you go to YouTube and you
pull up any video on YouTube,the tool will show you all of
the previous thumbnails thatwere used for that video.
And if you look at any of thechannels that have significant
viewership and significantsubscribers and views to their
videos, you will see many ofthose videos will have dozens of
(24:58):
thumbnails that they tried andeventually they settle on one.
That is good.
Well, how do they settle on it?
Because the number of peoplethat see the thumbnail versus
the number of people thatactually watch the video, versus
the amount of time that'swatched, like they're testing
that and they're iteratingthrough these thumbnails.
Well, for short form thumbnailis irrelevant, but that first
(25:19):
two seconds or even the firstsecond of your video kind of is
your thumbnail.
And so one thing and I know thatHermosi talks about this, but
there's a lot of other creatorsthat have talked about this and
that is when you produce a video, you know changing out that
first second or two of the videoand doing that multiple
different times and testing.
(25:41):
You know how that results in.
You know more views or longerviews, you know, or whatever
that is testing how it loopsinto the backend so that you get
that repeat view.
You know whatever.
Once you iterate through thatand you find something that
works, again you need to betelling the content creators
that are producing content foryou.
This is what we did.
(26:02):
This was the intro that we usedfor the video.
This is the one that worked thebest and we iterated through
like 20 different ones, so youknow what to use.
That's part of thatrelationship, because when you
start giving them the ammunitionthat they need to produce good
videos that are going to getthose views, they're going to
stick with you because if theygenerate views, they generate
sales and they generate money.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
That is exactly what she said.
It's such a good insight there.
She actually said that exactsame thing, and that's why she
loves brands that aren't justsending her a canned message
from automation tool, ones thatactually took the time to watch
some of her videos and againbeing in sales for as long as I
have.
Like these are, these are juststandard practice, like just
sending a cold email to someone,like it's, the chances of you
(26:47):
being responded to are so muchhigher.
But then also that starts offthat relationship on the right
foot to where, like this, I'mnot just a number to this person
(27:09):
.
Like this, this brand actuallycares about the content that I'm
creating.
They care enough to give meexamples on what's driven GMV
for them with other creatorsLike those are the ones that she
chooses to work with, and itstarts off at the very first
message that she gets sent fromthat brand.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
So I guess I'm curious, cause I'm.
This is one area that's a bigblind spot for me is, you know
again, getting the creators?
What?
So?
Let's say that you've got astable of you know three, five,
10, a hundred creators, whateverit happens to be, or, if you're
(27:50):
just starting out, maybe youjust got a handful of creators,
what is that a successfulrelationship look like as far as
you know?
So, mike, you brought up agreat point as like hey, here's
what worked for this creator ofsharing that content, but what
other you know best practices orbest practices are there to,
you know, help that relationshipbe as successful as possible
for both the brand and thecreator.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Yeah, she gave.
She gave some of those tips.
Like one of the things that shesaid that most creators like is
when there are like exclusives,like if you have an exclusive
flavor or an exclusive colorthat is just exclusive to TikTok
.
Like that gives them a hook,like a built-in hook, for them
to talk about.
She said that she likes that alot.
Also, she one of the otherthings that she said and we're
(28:33):
actually going to implement thisfor our new upcoming brand
launch here in about a month anda half is like when when a
brand takes the extra step tosend me a product without me
asking for a sample and likeit's just some sort of even if
it's just a cool box or there'ssomething inside of the box,
that it's not just like theblank box that you send from
(28:53):
Amazon if you send it MCF.
Like if you put a little bitmore effort into it and like
show some sort of presentationaround your product.
Like that tells me that you'reinvesting in your brand and it
makes me excited to createcontent for you.
So that was that was a big partof of what managing that
relationship looks like.
But also she gave some tips onwhat not to do you know?
(29:14):
There are brands that she's nowMike you said giving them
examples of things that I'veworked from other creators.
She's worked with brands beforethat were trying to micromanage
the relationship and she saidthat was a huge turnoff for her
and she feels like now she's hadenough success on TikTok and
driving revenue for brands thatshe kind of knows what goes
(29:36):
viral.
So one of the things that turnsoff right at the very beginning
is if she gets this big, giant,long, creative brief of I want
you to do this, this, this andsay this exactly, and she's like
the whole micromanaging thing,it's kind of a turnoff.
If you're approaching a creatorthat knows what they're doing
and it says driven revenue forbrands, you have to give us some
sort of trust.
(29:57):
Now obviously she's like I loveit when brands give me
direction, I love it when theyshow me examples, but let me do
my thing and I'll you know I'mdefinitely willing to take
feedback but, like I know, Iknow how my audience works, I
know how I know what type ofthings go viral.
Let me do my thing is kind ofwhat she said.
So that was a big part of a big, really good tip that she gave
(30:17):
us.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
What is?
Is it mostly for those creators?
Is it what is?
Is it mostly for those creators?
Is it, is it all commissionbased and, if so, like what?
Speaker 2 (30:30):
is that you know affiliate percentage typically
look like so for her.
She likes so, but again, she'sshe's on the high end of of
creators and affiliates.
So for her, the brands that shelikes to work with offer a
commission plus a flat rate.
Now, the big giant brand thatwe were talking about, they
never pay any sort of flat rate.
It's totally commission based,but they pay on the high side of
(30:50):
the commission.
So I would say, on, probably anaverage commission rate is 10
to, maybe close to 15%, but Iwould say probably close.
10 to 12% is standard.
20% is considered on the highside.
Now, if you think about this interms of your ad spend on Amazon
, that's significantly cheaperthan what I'm paying for a sale
(31:13):
in terms of Amazon.
So I'll give a creator 20%.
What I love about the creatormodel and this affiliate model
is I don't have to pay you untilyou get a sale.
So I am more than happy givingyou 20% of a sale because it's
way cheaper than what it costsme to get a sale on Amazon.
So I would say I wouldn't offeranything less than a 20%
(31:33):
commission and that's going toput you at the top of the pile
because, on average, brands arearound 10 to 13%.
Now for our brand upcoming brandlaunch, because of what she
told us about these higher levelcreators, like I am going to
build a micro influencer army.
We are going to offer them justa commission, but I also have a
big budget set aside for thekind of the higher end creators.
(31:55):
Now for us, we want to launchright out of the gate with a
full army of micro but also acouple of, you know, macro type
influencers.
So we're going to have to offerthem some cash in the beginning
, but I would say most creators,especially at the micro level,
are happy working for just, youknow, 10 to 20% commission.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Can you Matt on TikTok, what is so like?
Of course, on Amazon, you knowwe have whatever our ad spend is
.
Then we've got the Amazonreferral fee and then we've got
fulfillment.
You know fees if we're usingFBA, describe for any listeners
who don't really know what thestructure of like what the fee
(32:36):
structure is on TikTok in termsof what are all the expenses
that you're paying.
How does fulfillment work?
You know what does that looklike.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Yeah, hold on, I'm responding to someone in the
comments real quick.
Yeah, so the fee structure isfairly similar.
There is, there is similar.
It's not an FBA fee, obviously,but there is a fulfilled by
TikTok fee.
I don't remember what theirs iscalled, but there is a fee.
Now, six months ago, eightmonths ago, that fee was like 6%
(33:06):
or something like that, or evenmaybe even less than that.
So I mean, but that was whenTikTok was very, very
aggressively courting newsellers.
Not only were they I mean,there were so many things that
they were doing to court newsellers, their fee structure was
significantly less but alsothey were running sales on your
product but still giving you thefull retail price.
(33:27):
That was when I say sales, I'mtalking about like 50, 60, 70%
off sales, but giving the brandthe full price of the sale.
That was one of the things thatthey were doing.
Also, the shipping fees, sotheir fees.
I think now again, I'm stillkind of in the early stages of
TikTok I do help another brandthat's already selling, but I
(33:49):
don't think that the shipping isbuilt into the fee the same way
that it is on Amazon.
So another thing that TikTokwas doing was they were also
subsidizing some of thatshipping fee.
Now a lot of that's changed.
I don't know what the currentpercentage of the TikTok fee is
now, but I think it's nowcreeping up to around 10%, I
(34:10):
think.
So it's getting a lot higher,but it's still a lot cheaper to
sell on TikTok than it is onAmazon.
In terms of fulfillment, they dohave fulfilled by TikTok.
At the time of the workshop,even this big giant brand was
severely limited in the amountof inventory they were able to
send into TikTok's fulfillmentcenters, and I think part of
(34:33):
that had to do with the questionmark about what was going to
happen with TikTok.
But I know that they'reinvesting heavily in their
fulfillment centers across thecountry.
So right now I don't think asmany brands are doing Fulfilled
by TikTok as on the flip side,on Amazon, but they're investing
pretty heavily on that.
So it's still cheaper to sellon TikTok.
(34:55):
The ads percentage of ads likewe've talked about you don't
need to invest a ton in ad spendfor a video to go viral.
So overall the cost of doingbusiness on TikTok is less than
the cost of doing on Amazon andthe chance of going viral on
TikTok.
There's no such thing as goingviral.
On Amazon, you can spend moreto get to the top of page one,
(35:16):
but there's no opportunity tohave a video go viral from a
content creator who has 3,000followers.
So there's just so many upsidesto TikTok.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
So I'm glad you.
I think that's a great place toask the question of what was
kind of the mood, for you knowmost of the people that were at
this workshop.
You mentioned that you knowthere were Amazon sellers that
were now, that were reallyfocused, had switched their
focus and attention to TikTok.
So I guess two questions One iswhat is that relationship as
(35:50):
far as like, let's say, goingviral?
I think is kind of a thingthat's hard to manufacture, but
let's say that you're successfulon TikTok or you've got good
traction how much of that haloaffects over to Amazon?
And I guess my second questionis what was the mood as far as
where they like, hey, you knowwe want to be heavily TikTok,
(36:13):
where that's a bigger portion ofour business than Amazon and,
like you know, basically youknow demoting Amazon, or is it
just, hey, tiktok is a greatopportunity to do in addition to
what we're doing on Amazon.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
So I'll give you an example.
The first question that youasked is the spillover to Amazon
, and I'll give you an example.
Far before this workshop everhappened, or even before I was
in this mastermind, About a yearago, I worked for an agency and
a brand approached us who hadgone viral on TikTok.
It was a TV mount, very, veryinnovative TV mount.
I have a big TV right here andthe mount is this big giant X
(36:51):
that you have to find studs anddrill into the wall and it's
this big, big, long process.
Well, these TV mounts there'stwo of them and they're about
this big and you just had tonail into the drywall, Like you
didn't need a stud, you justnailed into the drywall and it
was because of the angle, theway that the nails went into
this, that it could hold up abig giant 90 inch TV.
(37:11):
It went viral on TikTok.
When they approached us, theywanted to come on Amazon.
They didn't know how to do it.
But what was fascinating to mewhen we did the analysis, the
pre-sales analysis is there wereover 10,000 people a month
searching for their brand onAmazon.
They had never been on Amazonyet, but these people had sought
on TikTok.
They went straight to Amazonand that's where they wanted to
(37:34):
purchase.
Now, this was before TikTokshop had really taken off.
This is about a year ago andthat just kind of highlighted
the spillover, how powerful thatspillover effect is.
If you were to go on, this isanother about three or four
months ago, when I first startedto kind of actually dig into
TikTok, there was a skincarebrand that I noticed on Amazon
(37:54):
had a massive amount of searchvolume, organic search volume,
branded search volume and theirAmazon listings looked terrible,
Like it wasn't.
You know, like we all know,that big giant brands, household
name brands most of theirlistings look bad on Amazon.
This wasn't one of those Like.
It was obviously a Chinesebrand.
They had zero branding at all.
They had two images on theirAmazon listing but they were
(38:15):
doing six figures a month onAmazon and I just I couldn't
figure it out.
And then I there's this toolthat you can look to see.
I told like Calo data is one ofthem.
Fast Moss is another one whereyou can see which products are
generating a lot of revenue.
And it was because it wentviral on TikTok that it was
created.
It had created multimilliondollar business on Amazon just
(38:36):
because videos went viral onTikTok so ridiculously powerful
the spillover effect from TikTokover to Amazon.
What was your second question?
Speaker 1 (38:45):
My second question was what was the feeling in the
room from people who had beenselling on Amazon for a long
time?
Was it hey, we want totransition the bulk of our sales
over to TikTok, or this is agreat opportunity to do it, in
addition to what we already haveon Amazon?
Speaker 2 (39:02):
I would say the vast majority of the sellers that are
in this mastermind were like Itold you.
They were brands that weresuccessful on Amazon but they
had just dabbled, kind of put,stuck their toes in the water on
the TikTok side, but ended upseeing success right out of the
gate.
So all of the brand owners thatwere there at the workshop had
(39:24):
they they most of them had ateam.
You know most of these wereseven, some eight figure sellers
on Amazon.
So they have a team, they havean agency running their
advertising, they have acreative team, they have their
Amazon brand, a brand A lot ofit is on autopilot from the
founder standpoint which gavethem the opportunity to dive
into the TikTok side.
So I would say that the vastmajority of them had their
(39:45):
Amazon brand kind of running onautopilot with their team, but
they were diving into the TikTokside and a lot of them, like
this big giant brand that I'mtalking about, like they have a
whole team now dedicated toTikTok because of the success
that they saw early on and a lotof the other brands were
duplicating that success becauseof the different things that we
were talking about and thestrategies that we were
(40:05):
developing inside the mastermind.
So now the mastermind hasgotten significantly bigger just
in the past couple of monthsbecause now friends are telling
friends and like, hey, you needto get in here because this is
what we're seeing on TikTok, andnow we're just kind of starting
to spread a little bit withinthe seller community.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Yeah, and I think I mean there's so much we could
talk about with this.
You know that I think this isprobably a good place to kind of
wrap for today.
I will say so for people thatare listening to this on the
podcast.
First of all, thank you forlistening.
Secondly, we also do this liveon LinkedIn.
I think we're having a littlebit of an audio issue with one
of our folks right now, but weanswer and respond to questions
(40:45):
and that type of stuff live onLinkedIn.
So we do these on Tuesdays.
So if you're interested inasking questions live, you can
find us over on LinkedIn.
And then, at least for me, I'llfinish with this final thought,
which is I think there's someamazing opportunities on TikTok
and I think it just really comesfull circle back to something
that we talk about a lot inBrand Fortress, which is TikTok
(41:09):
is the new vehicle, if you will,or kind of the shiny new object
.
The reality of it is is the samebrand building principles that
we talk on here a lot about,that have been successful on
Amazon and off Amazon, are also,in the long term, going to be
successful on TikTok, just in adifferent format.
So for listeners out there,they're like how do I adapt to
(41:31):
this, that type of thing?
Think about what those firstprinciples are for building a
brand and in the long term,you're going to be successful on
TikTok just like any otherplatform or any other sales
channel for your brand.
With that, I guess you know,matt, for listeners that you
know maybe have dabbled a littlebit in TikTok as sellers but
not really you know are lookingto do more.
(41:53):
What are maybe one or two wordsof advice that you would give.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
The first thing that I would say is don't be scared
of a TikTok ban, because thegrowth that you can achieve on a
platform like TikTok like youjust said the platform doesn't
matter If you are building abrand in the right way.
And I would say, to piggybackon that with my other tip is
start building a army of microinfluencers, similar to Mike and
(42:20):
his, where he's built an emaillist of over 40,000 people that
have bought his products and hecan take that anywhere.
With this army ofmicro-influencers, you can also
take that anywhere and you candirect attention to the next
platform that comes up if it'snot TikTok.
So, first of all, don't bescared of the TikTok ban,
because there's even if it doesgo away, there's going to be
another one pop up.
And second, start building yourarmy of micro influencers that
(42:43):
you can mobilize and move to anyplatform that's out there.
Speaker 3 (42:48):
Which is actually.
I mean, it's interesting to seethat from that perspective on
TikTok, because now, essentially, you have the opportunity to
build that list on both ends ofthe sale.
That list on both ends of thesale, you get to build the
(43:08):
salesperson list, which is allof these micro influencers, and
you should also, just the sameway that you would on Amazon, if
you're selling on TikTok, youshould still be building that
backend list.
You know, because, again, thosepeople who are on TikTok like,
okay, that's great, youconnected with them on TikTok
and you sold something to them,but if you don't have a way to
communicate with them and TikTokwas to get banned, well, that
(43:29):
person who bought your productyou now have no way to
communicate with because TikTokwas your mechanism.
So make sure that you'rebuilding that list on both ends,
building a list of microinfluencers that you can take to
any platform, but also buildingthat list of customers on the
backend that you can takeanywhere also.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
Yep, yeah, I think that's a great place to wrap for
our listeners out there.
If you want to hear more aboutTikTok, let us know over on
LinkedIn.
If we get enough interest,we'll do another episode.
Otherwise, thank everybody forlistening and we'll see you at
another Tactics Tuesday.
Welcome everyone to the Brand Fortress HQ podcast.
We have another Tactics Tuesday, and today we are talking about
the hot topic of TikTok.
There's a lot to talk about onthis topic.
Matt just actually came backfrom a conference with a lot of
what's happening on TikTok rightnow, so I'm actually going to
turn it over to you, matt, ifyou share some background and
(00:23):
just kind of what your thoughtsare on where TikTok is at when
it comes to e-commerce landscape.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Yeah, there is a lot to talk about, especially with
the current state of affairs.
And what's crazy what I'llstart off with is that this
workshop happened right before.
So I think TikTok went dark onSaturday night, I think before.
So I think the the band orTikTok, went dark on Saturday
night.
I think this workshop washappening the week before and
what was very interesting to meis that you had this, it's it's.
(00:53):
It wasn't really a conference,it was more.
I'm in a mastermind group withabout 40 to 50 other sellers who
are all successful on Amazon,who have switched their focus to
TikTok.
That was kind of who was atthis conference.
So very successful Amazonsellers.
They've realized and havestarted to see a little bit of
success on TikTok.
And it was really a group ofthese sellers coming together
(01:16):
and sharing tips, tricks,strategies, that kind of stuff.
But what was very interestingto me is that at the very
beginning of the workshop,obviously we addressed the
elephant in the room.
We knew that this was looming,but that was it Like.
We talked about it maybe for a15, 20 minutes and the rest of
it was business as usual.
None of us were really I don'twant to say not concerned about
(01:37):
it, but it was.
You know the conversations thatwe were having weren't?
Oh crap, what are we going todo when TikTok goes away?
It was.
These are the things that areworking right now.
These are the things that I'llbe working next week and you
know part of the a couple of thesessions started with.
Even if TikTok does go away, alot of what we're talking about
is just it will work.
(01:58):
I mean, what's not going awayis social selling, and TikTok
did start that.
You know there's been Instagram, there's been Facebook, there's
ways that you can sell productson those platforms, but TikTok
really is who started this wholesocial selling?
And if you look at China, whereTikTok comes from, the vast
majority of physical productsare sold in this type of an
environment, this kind of socialselling, almost like a QVC on
(02:20):
your phone the vast majority.
So Gary V V has been talkingabout this social selling thing
for a couple of years now.
He's always a couple of yearsbefore the trends.
But like that's not going awayand that's really what a lot of
this workshop talked about isthat, whether or not TikTok goes
away, there's, there's going tobe another platform that comes
up.
There's 170 million eyeballs onTikTok right now.
(02:41):
Those aren't just going todisappear.
That attention is going to moveto another platform.
So a lot of what we talkedabout are principles that, no
matter what the platform is,these are the things that you
need to do in order to grow yourbusiness with that type of
selling environment.
So that's first off.
That was the first thing, andyeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
So, before we dive anymore, I want to make sure,
quite frankly, for myself andalso for our listeners, that you
know we get a littleclarification around some of
these concepts, because I thinkthey're so super important.
So, when you talk about socialselling, give me an idea of you
know.
What does that look like?
How is it different from Amazon, and why is TikTok really
(03:21):
exploded as the channel for thisversus, you know, facebook or
Instagram?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
So I think that it's just.
I can't necessarily answer thequestion of why TikTok.
I mean, I think that Facebookhas tried like there's Facebook
and Instagram, there's reels,like there's there's vertical
format type of videos, butnobody really did it like with
integrated it into theirshopping platform Like TikTok.
Did you know?
Amazon tried it, but it reallydid it like with integrated it
into their shopping platformLike TikTok.
Did you know?
(03:47):
Amazon tried it, but it was aflop.
Like I don't know.
I don't even know how long thatlasted, but I remember it was
even before TikTok became anactual thing.
This is three years ago, like Iremember, I worked for an
agency at the time.
We had we were launching abrand on Amazon and they had an
A-list influencer that wasbehind the brand and they
invited her.
They did this whole homepagetakeover for this brand launch
(04:10):
and they invited her to do livesand I remember it was the most
underwhelming thing imaginable.
I thought it was going to be.
We've expected thousands andthousands of units sold in this
live session, but it just didn'ttake off.
So I don't think that Amazonexecuted it very well.
I think for TikTok it was moreof a natural, like eyeballs.
You know, tiktok came onto thescene, people gravitated towards
(04:32):
it in terms of consumingcontent that way, and then it
was easy for them because inChina these platforms already
existed, where they attached theshopping platform to the social
platform.
So I think they already had theroadmap on how to do it,
because it's such a big thing inChina already, and so I think
it was just right place, righttime for TikTok.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
And I also want to just say, too, though, that I
think the thing with TikTok isthey really were.
They were the first platformthat really got the algorithm
right for this Right.
Social shopping is a thing, butwhat is critical there, though,
(05:12):
is how long can you keep someonein the app watching videos?
Right, and TikTok nailed that,because they really figured out
exactly how to make sure thatthe next video and the next
video and the next video thatshows up in the feed are exactly
what you want to see, so thatyou are just going to continue
(05:35):
to scroll and scroll and scroll,and until you eventually hit
that video where there'ssomething actually being sold
and you just click buy.
But they were able to keeppeople in the app and keep them
scrolling and interested, andwhen they tied that together
with that really low frictionbuying experience, then they
(05:56):
really had something, andthere's just been no other
platform that really put ittogether in that way.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Well, and I think the other thing and I'm going to,
you know, get a little over myski tips probably on this, but
that I've heard from you, knowsources that are fairly reliable
is that the algorithm works alot different than Facebook and
Instagram.
So it's not on those platforms.
It's very much based on you knowwho you're connected with.
(06:23):
So you know if you havethousands or tens of thousands
of connections, then your stuffgets seen more than if you have,
you know, two friends on there,right, whereas TikTok is much
more.
They have this concept of it'smuch more about the content than
it's about the users, and soany piece of content in theory
(06:43):
because their algorithm is opensource, in theory, the way it
works is every piece of contentgets shown to at least one
person because they want to seehow that person reacts to it.
And if somebody whatever thespecifics are on that, how long
they watch it, if they interactwith it all those types of
things determine does it go tonow 10 more people?
(07:05):
And so I think what's importantfor brands to understand on
that is that, rather than havinga million followers, what's
really more important for aplatform and how TikTok is built
is you have something thatpeople are willing to watch and
engage with, and it's much moreabout the quality of the content
than it is about the number offollowers or connections that
(07:29):
you have.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Well, it's also good for the actual influencers
themselves, or content creatorsI mean, they're not all really
true influencers, but but from acontent creator perspective,
tiktok was getting massiveamounts of content production
exactly because of what you justsaid, john, and that is because
of the way the algorithm wasstructured.
(07:51):
Every single person that wascreating content for TikTok knew
it doesn't matter how manyfollowers I have I could get 10
million views on this if I putup good content.
And because every creator knowsthat and they know they don't
have to have a large audience toreally get something to go
viral and get some productionout of it, they would put the
(08:12):
time into doing good videos, andthere was just a lot more
content being produced forTikTok than for other platforms
because of it.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Yeah, so one of the things that I think it was, mike
, what you said is, I think, todouble click on one of the
things that you said is theseamless, frictionless buying
experience.
When I first bought somethingon TikTok, I didn't have my
credit card loaded, I didn'thave my address, they had no
information from me.
I bought my first product andit took me 10 seconds to walk
(08:43):
through that buying experience.
I integrated with Apple Pay soI was able to just you know, I
didn't have to put my creditcard information in.
Apple Pay already had myaddress information, so I found
the product that I wanted.
I searched for it, I found it,I click on buy and 10 seconds
later it was on its way to myhouse.
So I think that's another partof it is that, yes, amazon is
(09:04):
also very easy, but like theamount of time that it took me
to go from I know what I want toit's on its way to me was so
frictionless.
I think that's a big part ofTikTok success too.
So, and also to kind of this isactually what you guys were
just talking about is a goodsegue into some of the topics.
Now I do have to be careful.
We one of the things that wastalked about at the very
(09:27):
beginning of this workshop is itwas a very closed type of an
environment, so there's certainthings that I can't share but,
like I said, just overallprinciples I think are important
to understand here, and whatMike talked about is the videos
that go viral, and I think thata couple of the sessions that
were the most interesting to mewas there was one guy who was
(09:49):
there who he has.
He's a video editor.
Actually, I think that was hisbackground, was he was a video
editor.
Now he's a marketing managerfor a brand that ended up going
viral on TikTok several times.
It was a Trump greeting card,so it was actually the perfect
time for this type of a productto go viral leading up to the
election.
But I mean, what I think is thetopic of his session was
(10:11):
retention, video editing andwhat he's learned and the
experience that he brought toTikTok was how to get someone's
attention in the first couple ofseconds of the video, but then
also how to keep their attentionthroughout the video.
There was a lot of really coolthings you know, like with text,
overlay and and then what Ireally found interesting and
(10:32):
actually what I loved about thisworkshop as opposed to going to
a conference and just sittingin the crowd is we actually had
our laptops and phones out andwe had CapCut out and we
actually had.
He had a couple of videos thatwe were editing, but one of the
things I loved about what hisstrategy was is how and I think
you've probably, if you spendany amount of time on TikTok,
you've seen these videos whereit's a great video, you're very
(10:54):
invested in it and the end feelslike the beginning and you
don't even know that you areback at the beginning of the
video because of how seamlessthat transition was.
And part of the algorithm iswatch time, like Mike was
talking about, but then also howmany times that video is
watched.
So just the fact that thatvideo restarts again is giving
(11:18):
signals to the algorithm that,hey, I want to send this to more
people, because people are notonly watching this whole video,
but they're watching it morethan once.
So, like the amount of effortand the amount of testing that
went into him figuring out allof these things like and that's
really what it was.
It was it's not like he had theblueprint to what TikTok's
algorithm wants.
It's he iterated and tested andtested and what does this work?
(11:40):
And am I getting more watchtime?
Is this going viral?
Like the amount of testing thathe did and then distilling that
knowledge to us was fascinatingto me.
I am not a creative person.
My stick figures areunrecognizable, so, like even
you know me getting my phone outand trying to play around with
cap cut, I feel I'm like a fishout of water.
So I didn't really get theexperience like others did who
(12:02):
even have one little bit of acreative bone in their body, but
just the the principles of howto get someone to stop scrolling
, initially in the first coupleof seconds, but then also how to
keep their attention.
There were so many nuggets ofinformation that he gave on the
different things that he usesand it's just a way of editing
the video, like the video hestarted with.
This very and that's theproblem that I have with
(12:25):
creating content for my ownbrands is I, you know, you and I
.
We all talk on these this oncea week, sometimes twice a week,
about this podcast and and othernerding out on our businesses.
But, like, for some reason,whenever I hit record on my
phone, like I just freeze up.
It's just the craziest thing.
But what he talked about isdon't hit the stop button, Just
keep talking, because you canedit that video at the end and
(12:47):
you can make it like.
These tools are so easy he usedCapCut that it's so easy to
splice that video and to makethose transitions seem like
they're seamless, that you don'thave to hit stop.
And I can't tell you how manyvideos I have on my phone that
are just me saying something andcrap and starting over and crap
.
I did it again and I got somany times.
(13:08):
So that's one of the things Ilearned from him is that don't
hit the stop button.
First of all, don't be hard onyourself.
Second of all, don't hit thestop button.
You can edit it later.
But what I learned from him Ithink the biggest takeaway that
I learned from him is that don'tbe hard on yourself, because
the videos that he has seen goviral for his brand are the ones
that he thought were trash anddidn't even want to post it in
(13:29):
the beginning, so you never knowwhat kind of video is going to
go viral, as long as you followthe same principles from the
very beginning.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
So did they talk at all at that conference about
what they're seeing as the toptwo or three, yeah, items that
you know for brands that areselling on TikTok that really
drive sales?
You know, is it?
You know, is there some sort ofyou know ratings or indicator
or shipping or what does thatlook like as far as you know,
(14:01):
the big things that really movethe needle for brands that are
getting started on TikTok toactually start generating some
sales.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
So there was a big, giant brand there.
I probably can say the name ofthe brand, but, just in case I
don't want to get into, therewas a huge brand that did 30
million on TikTok last year butdid 300 million overall on their
brand.
Like, if I said the name, youwould know who it is.
They do massive amounts ofrevenue on on Amazon, but what?
What was fascinating to me thathe talked about is they do
(14:33):
spend money on advertising, butthe money that they spend on
advertising on TikTok is they.
So to answer your question,then I'll kind of talk about how
they view their ad spend onTikTok is micro-influencers.
That's what you need to work onand that's what what I talked
about initially is that socialselling isn't going away.
(14:53):
So the principles that welearned will follow you to any
other platform that comes upnext after TikTok.
If it does go away is having anarmy of micro influencers is
really the biggest thing thatare taking brands to the next
level, not just on TikTok, butthen also the spillover effect
that happens on Amazon.
Most of these TikTok affiliatesand content creators are also
(15:17):
affiliates on Amazon and otherplatforms as well.
So if you find a good creatoron TikTok.
Chances are they're also acreator on these other platforms
.
So this big giant brand theycan afford to just blitz TikTok
with ad spend and they'llprobably get a whole lot of
sales that way.
But how they look at it is theyfocus their attention on finding
micro influencers and then theylook to see.
(15:38):
They're very analytical aboutwhich of those videos are
getting traction and the onlytime that they spend money on
ads is when they see a videogetting organic traction and
then they'll put gas on the firewith ad spend.
So, yes, they're spending wellinto the six figures on ad spend
.
They're only doing that whenone of their micro influencers
(15:59):
and again, this is a brand thatcan afford an A-list influencer
they don't work with any A-listinfluencers.
Every single one of theirinfluencers started out as a
micro influencer with and hedefined that as the minimum
5,000 followers, which isnothing.
5,000 followers is hardlyanything.
But again, with the analyticsthat TikTok gives you and how
(16:20):
you can tell if a video isgetting traction and then
putting money behind it likethat's how they grew on TikTok,
it wasn't just throwing a wholebunch of money, it was make
relationships with microinfluencers, tell them the type
of content that we want.
As soon as one of those videosstarts getting traction, then
blitz it with that spend.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
So when you talk about those micro influencers,
are there any best practicesthat you can share around that,
as far as you know, you knowwhat does that look like, is it?
I mean, obviously you'resending them a product so that
way they can hey, this, this isthe product and that type of
stuff, is it?
Then just send them a productand say here's a discount code,
or you know what are those bestpractices look like?
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yeah, so actually there was a content creator
there who has driven multiplesix figures in GMV in a very
short amount of time.
She's mainly in the beautyspace, but so she gave a lot of
tips on managing relationshipswith content creators and
affiliates.
That probably was I think itwas tied for first for my
(17:19):
favorite session and reallybecause it allowed us to get
into the mind of what a contentcreator is looking for.
So, on TikTok, really thebiggest thing from them is they
have the creators have, or theaffiliates and creators have
analytics tools that allow themto look to see and actually we
as just users of TikTok can alsosee how many units are sold and
(17:40):
how much revenue has beendriven by that particular
product.
The way that creators look atthat data is they're able to
sort and filter the data by howmany units sold.
So, like her, for example, shesaid that now that she's driven
a significant amount of revenuefor the brands that she works
with, we have tools likeCaloData is one of them,
fastmoss is another one where wecan see influencers and how
(18:03):
much revenue they've driven andhow many units they've sold.
So that's what we have assellers to look to see.
What are the good contentcreators.
Well, content creators alsohave similar tools on what are
the brands that I want to workwith.
So, for her, what she said andthis is something that we knew
already because we've beendeveloping these processes on
getting to a certain amount ofof units sold before we even
(18:25):
start reaching out to creators,she's like I don't even, I don't
even look at your message in onTik TOK unless you have X
amount of units sold.
And now again, she's at ahigher level.
So, and the other thing is thateveryone and their mother is a
content creator now.
So she was like you'll findcontent creators that will, that
will, create content for you,but the ones that are actually
(18:49):
know how to create content thatgets seen on TikTok.
We have a threshold of how manyunits sold before you even work
with us.
It starts there.
You've got to get to a numberof units sold very, very fast.
A big part of this workshop wasdoing that.
We all know back in 2015, 2016,when Amazon was the wild wild
(19:11):
west, there were a lot ofcreative kind of gray hat types
of things that we could do toget reviews and get units sold
and that kind of stuff, andTikTok right now is like those
days.
I mean, tiktok is very much thewild, wild west days, wild West
days and there are some thingsthat we're doing to help you get
(19:31):
to that number of units sold,to where you're attractive to
those content creators thatactually know how to drive
revenue.
So that's where it starts, isthat you have to have some
traction on TikTok in order tobe attractive to content
creators that know what the heckthey're doing.
Second of all, she gave a lot ofreally cool ideas on how to
reach out to them and a lot ofthem are obvious, you know.
She said if I get an email,first of all, she said email is
(19:54):
a better way to reach outbecause she gets thousands and
thousands of DMS on Tik, tok.
That is hard for her to keep up.
So she's like the brands thattake that other step and send me
an email, which her emailaddress is on her profile that
that there's a much higherlikelihood of getting responded
to.
But she took it even a stepfurther.
She said, if you start youremail with deer, straight into
the trash, every single timestraight into the trash.
(20:16):
So, like I mean, that's obviousfor us.
Like same thing with LinkedInDMs for me, if I get a LinkedIn
DM that starts with deer, I'mnot even paying attention to the
next word that comes out oftheir mouth.
So it's, you know, it's very.
Some of that's very, very, veryobvious.
But yeah, it was really justtreating them like real people
and not just sending 6,000.
(20:36):
And that big brand they send6,000 messages a day to content
creators and it's very much anumbers game.
This is a brand that does sella lot of units.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
I think that process and again maybe I'm just
speaking for myself I thinkbrands are probably more
familiar with that process whereI feel like they're a lot less
or where brands really stumble,is okay, I have a creator, I
think they're halfway decent, Ican give them a coupon code, but
(21:06):
I feel like that's probably notreally exciting, like what does
you know working with thatcreator to on something that you
know obviously is useful forthem but also is going to
actually, you know, move productfor the brand?
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Yeah, so the way it works on on TikTok is they they
request a sample for it fromyour brand, and what I love
about what one of TikTok'srecent updates is is that you
can set stipulations on thatsample.
Where it's not necessarily free, it will be free, but the video
has to get at least one sale.
(21:42):
That's one of the thresholds.
Or you can set however manynumber of sales that you want,
or your video has to get Xamount of views.
There's a couple of differentways that you can set that.
And if you, if you do this, ifyou post a video and if you get
a sale, then we'll reimburse youfor that, that sample to where
it then becomes free and TikTokmanages all of that.
Like instead of us back back inthe day where you used to have
(22:05):
like many chat flows and allthis kind of nonsense, like all
of that's handled within TikTok,and so, like that's the biggest
thing, is that you you can nowset it up to where because I
mean that you know giving outsamples.
If you're sending out 6,000messages a day and everyone and
their mother is a contentcreator looking for free product
, that gets really expensive,really fast.
So being able to set thosethresholds that, yeah, we'll
(22:28):
give you a sample.
You're going to pay for it inthe beginning, but as soon as
you get one sale, we'llreimburse you for it.
That incentivized that contentcreator to actually do something
with it and to end up gettingthat product for free.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Well, it also, too, though, it sets the bar in terms
of who actually responds.
There's no creator is going torespond to that and actually buy
the product unless theyactually think they can produce
that sale and they're actuallygoing to do some decent content
to try and do that.
I wanted to circle back to afew things from earlier in the
(23:01):
conversation, though, too, thatI think are fairly important.
So one of the things thatyou've talked a lot about is
kind of that relationshipbuilding, that relationship with
the content creators, and Ithink that one of the value
plays there is having a systemin place and probably also
having at least one individualin place on your team who this
(23:24):
is their job.
It might not be their only job,but it will be a significant
part of their job, and that ismaintaining communications and
relationship with those contentcreators.
But one of the things that I'veheard talked about a lot that I
think makes a lot of sense, andit'll tie into something else
that I wanted to mention, andthat is when something is
working for either your brand,like a video that you have
(23:47):
created, or something that'sworking for other content
creators.
You know, for your brand, youshould be telling other content
creators within your sphere.
Hey, this is working forso-and-so, this is the template.
You should do this right.
You should try this.
Here's the video.
Try and reproduce that right.
Here's the elements of thatvideo that we believe are
(24:09):
driving views and driving salesand driving engagement and
whatever.
Try to incorporate those thingsinto the video.
I also think that that ties backto testing.
You were talking about thewhole testing thing.
One of the things that'sinteresting is on YouTube.
So thumbnails for standardvideos not short form videos,
(24:34):
but they're standard videos.
There are tools out there thatif you go to YouTube and you
pull up any video on YouTube,the tool will show you all of
the previous thumbnails thatwere used for that video.
And if you look at any of thechannels that have significant
viewership and significantsubscribers and views to their
videos, you will see many ofthose videos will have dozens of
(24:58):
thumbnails that they tried andeventually they settle on one.
That is good.
Well, how do they settle on it?
Because the number of peoplethat see the thumbnail versus
the number of people thatactually watch the video, versus
the amount of time that'swatched, like they're testing
that and they're iteratingthrough these thumbnails.
Well, for short form thumbnailis irrelevant, but that first
(25:19):
two seconds or even the firstsecond of your video kind of is
your thumbnail.
And so one thing and I know thatHermosi talks about this, but
there's a lot of other creatorsthat have talked about this and
that is when you produce a video, you know changing out that
first second or two of the videoand doing that multiple
different times and testing.
(25:41):
You know how that results in.
You know more views or longerviews, you know, or whatever
that is testing how it loopsinto the backend so that you get
that repeat view.
You know whatever.
Once you iterate through thatand you find something that
works, again you need to betelling the content creators
that are producing content foryou.
This is what we did.
(26:02):
This was the intro that we usedfor the video.
This is the one that worked thebest and we iterated through
like 20 different ones, so youknow what to use.
That's part of thatrelationship, because when you
start giving them the ammunitionthat they need to produce good
videos that are going to getthose views, they're going to
stick with you because if theygenerate views, they generate
sales and they generate money.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
That is exactly what she said.
It's such a good insight there.
She actually said that exactsame thing, and that's why she
loves brands that aren't justsending her a canned message
from automation tool, ones thatactually took the time to watch
some of her videos and againbeing in sales for as long as I
have.
Like these are, these are juststandard practice, like just
sending a cold email to someone,like it's, the chances of you
(26:47):
being responded to are so muchhigher.
But then also that starts offthat relationship on the right
foot to where, like this, I'mnot just a number to this person
(27:09):
.
Like this, this brand actuallycares about the content that I'm
creating.
They care enough to give meexamples on what's driven GMV
for them with other creatorsLike those are the ones that she
chooses to work with, and itstarts off at the very first
message that she gets sent fromthat brand.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
So I guess I'm curious, cause I'm.
This is one area that's a bigblind spot for me is, you know
again, getting the creators?
What?
So?
Let's say that you've got astable of you know three, five,
10, a hundred creators, whateverit happens to be, or, if you're
(27:50):
just starting out, maybe youjust got a handful of creators,
what is that a successfulrelationship look like as far as
you know?
So, mike, you brought up agreat point as like hey, here's
what worked for this creator ofsharing that content, but what
other you know best practices orbest practices are there to,
you know, help that relationshipbe as successful as possible
for both the brand and thecreator.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Yeah, she gave.
She gave some of those tips.
Like one of the things that shesaid that most creators like is
when there are like exclusives,like if you have an exclusive
flavor or an exclusive colorthat is just exclusive to TikTok
.
Like that gives them a hook,like a built-in hook, for them
to talk about.
She said that she likes that alot.
Also, she one of the otherthings that she said and we're
(28:33):
actually going to implement thisfor our new upcoming brand
launch here in about a month anda half is like when when a
brand takes the extra step tosend me a product without me
asking for a sample and likeit's just some sort of even if
it's just a cool box or there'ssomething inside of the box,
that it's not just like theblank box that you send from
(28:53):
Amazon if you send it MCF.
Like if you put a little bitmore effort into it and like
show some sort of presentationaround your product.
Like that tells me that you'reinvesting in your brand and it
makes me excited to createcontent for you.
So that was that was a big partof of what managing that
relationship looks like.
But also she gave some tips onwhat not to do you know?
(29:14):
There are brands that she's nowMike you said giving them
examples of things that I'veworked from other creators.
She's worked with brands beforethat were trying to micromanage
the relationship and she saidthat was a huge turnoff for her
and she feels like now she's hadenough success on TikTok and
driving revenue for brands thatshe kind of knows what goes
(29:36):
viral.
So one of the things that turnsoff right at the very beginning
is if she gets this big, giant,long, creative brief of I want
you to do this, this, this andsay this exactly, and she's like
the whole micromanaging thing,it's kind of a turnoff.
If you're approaching a creatorthat knows what they're doing
and it says driven revenue forbrands, you have to give us some
sort of trust.
(29:57):
Now obviously she's like I loveit when brands give me
direction, I love it when theyshow me examples, but let me do
my thing and I'll you know I'mdefinitely willing to take
feedback but, like I know, Iknow how my audience works, I
know how I know what type ofthings go viral.
Let me do my thing is kind ofwhat she said.
So that was a big part of a big, really good tip that she gave
(30:17):
us.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
What is?
Is it mostly for those creators?
Is it what is?
Is it mostly for those creators?
Is it, is it all commissionbased and, if so, like what?
Speaker 2 (30:30):
is that you know affiliate percentage typically
look like so for her.
She likes so, but again, she'sshe's on the high end of of
creators and affiliates.
So for her, the brands that shelikes to work with offer a
commission plus a flat rate.
Now, the big giant brand thatwe were talking about, they
never pay any sort of flat rate.
It's totally commission based,but they pay on the high side of
(30:50):
the commission.
So I would say, on, probably anaverage commission rate is 10
to, maybe close to 15%, but Iwould say probably close.
10 to 12% is standard.
20% is considered on the highside.
Now, if you think about this interms of your ad spend on Amazon
, that's significantly cheaperthan what I'm paying for a sale
(31:13):
in terms of Amazon.
So I'll give a creator 20%.
What I love about the creatormodel and this affiliate model
is I don't have to pay you untilyou get a sale.
So I am more than happy givingyou 20% of a sale because it's
way cheaper than what it costsme to get a sale on Amazon.
So I would say I wouldn't offeranything less than a 20%
(31:33):
commission and that's going toput you at the top of the pile
because, on average, brands arearound 10 to 13%.
Now for our brand upcoming brandlaunch, because of what she
told us about these higher levelcreators, like I am going to
build a micro influencer army.
We are going to offer them justa commission, but I also have a
big budget set aside for thekind of the higher end creators.
(31:55):
Now for us, we want to launchright out of the gate with a
full army of micro but also acouple of, you know, macro type
influencers.
So we're going to have to offerthem some cash in the beginning
, but I would say most creators,especially at the micro level,
are happy working for just, youknow, 10 to 20% commission.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Can you Matt on TikTok, what is so like?
Of course, on Amazon, you knowwe have whatever our ad spend is
.
Then we've got the Amazonreferral fee and then we've got
fulfillment.
You know fees if we're usingFBA, describe for any listeners
who don't really know what thestructure of like what the fee
(32:36):
structure is on TikTok in termsof what are all the expenses
that you're paying.
How does fulfillment work?
You know what does that looklike.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Yeah, hold on, I'm responding to someone in the
comments real quick.
Yeah, so the fee structure isfairly similar.
There is, there is similar.
It's not an FBA fee, obviously,but there is a fulfilled by
TikTok fee.
I don't remember what theirs iscalled, but there is a fee.
Now, six months ago, eightmonths ago, that fee was like 6%
(33:06):
or something like that, or evenmaybe even less than that.
So I mean, but that was whenTikTok was very, very
aggressively courting newsellers.
Not only were they I mean,there were so many things that
they were doing to court newsellers, their fee structure was
significantly less but alsothey were running sales on your
product but still giving you thefull retail price.
(33:27):
That was when I say sales, I'mtalking about like 50, 60, 70%
off sales, but giving the brandthe full price of the sale.
That was one of the things thatthey were doing.
Also, the shipping fees, sotheir fees.
I think now again, I'm stillkind of in the early stages of
TikTok I do help another brandthat's already selling, but I
(33:49):
don't think that the shipping isbuilt into the fee the same way
that it is on Amazon.
So another thing that TikTokwas doing was they were also
subsidizing some of thatshipping fee.
Now a lot of that's changed.
I don't know what the currentpercentage of the TikTok fee is
now, but I think it's nowcreeping up to around 10%, I
(34:10):
think.
So it's getting a lot higher,but it's still a lot cheaper to
sell on TikTok than it is onAmazon.
In terms of fulfillment, they dohave fulfilled by TikTok.
At the time of the workshop,even this big giant brand was
severely limited in the amountof inventory they were able to
send into TikTok's fulfillmentcenters, and I think part of
(34:33):
that had to do with the questionmark about what was going to
happen with TikTok.
But I know that they'reinvesting heavily in their
fulfillment centers across thecountry.
So right now I don't think asmany brands are doing Fulfilled
by TikTok as on the flip side,on Amazon, but they're investing
pretty heavily on that.
So it's still cheaper to sellon TikTok.
(34:55):
The ads percentage of ads likewe've talked about you don't
need to invest a ton in ad spendfor a video to go viral.
So overall the cost of doingbusiness on TikTok is less than
the cost of doing on Amazon andthe chance of going viral on
TikTok.
There's no such thing as goingviral.
On Amazon, you can spend moreto get to the top of page one,
(35:16):
but there's no opportunity tohave a video go viral from a
content creator who has 3,000followers.
So there's just so many upsidesto TikTok.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
So I'm glad you.
I think that's a great place toask the question of what was
kind of the mood, for you knowmost of the people that were at
this workshop.
You mentioned that you knowthere were Amazon sellers that
were now, that were reallyfocused, had switched their
focus and attention to TikTok.
So I guess two questions One iswhat is that relationship as
(35:50):
far as like, let's say, goingviral?
I think is kind of a thingthat's hard to manufacture, but
let's say that you're successfulon TikTok or you've got good
traction how much of that haloaffects over to Amazon?
And I guess my second questionis what was the mood as far as
where they like, hey, you knowwe want to be heavily TikTok,
(36:13):
where that's a bigger portion ofour business than Amazon and,
like you know, basically youknow demoting Amazon, or is it
just, hey, tiktok is a greatopportunity to do in addition to
what we're doing on Amazon.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
So I'll give you an example.
The first question that youasked is the spillover to Amazon
, and I'll give you an example.
Far before this workshop everhappened, or even before I was
in this mastermind, About a yearago, I worked for an agency and
a brand approached us who hadgone viral on TikTok.
It was a TV mount, very, veryinnovative TV mount.
I have a big TV right here andthe mount is this big giant X
(36:51):
that you have to find studs anddrill into the wall and it's
this big, big, long process.
Well, these TV mounts there'stwo of them and they're about
this big and you just had tonail into the drywall, Like you
didn't need a stud, you justnailed into the drywall and it
was because of the angle, theway that the nails went into
this, that it could hold up abig giant 90 inch TV.
(37:11):
It went viral on TikTok.
When they approached us, theywanted to come on Amazon.
They didn't know how to do it.
But what was fascinating to mewhen we did the analysis, the
pre-sales analysis is there wereover 10,000 people a month
searching for their brand onAmazon.
They had never been on Amazonyet, but these people had sought
on TikTok.
They went straight to Amazonand that's where they wanted to
(37:34):
purchase.
Now, this was before TikTokshop had really taken off.
This is about a year ago andthat just kind of highlighted
the spillover, how powerful thatspillover effect is.
If you were to go on, this isanother about three or four
months ago, when I first startedto kind of actually dig into
TikTok, there was a skincarebrand that I noticed on Amazon
(37:54):
had a massive amount of searchvolume, organic search volume,
branded search volume and theirAmazon listings looked terrible,
Like it wasn't.
You know, like we all know,that big giant brands, household
name brands most of theirlistings look bad on Amazon.
This wasn't one of those Like.
It was obviously a Chinesebrand.
They had zero branding at all.
They had two images on theirAmazon listing but they were
(38:15):
doing six figures a month onAmazon and I just I couldn't
figure it out.
And then I there's this toolthat you can look to see.
I told like Calo data is one ofthem.
Fast Moss is another one whereyou can see which products are
generating a lot of revenue.
And it was because it wentviral on TikTok that it was
created.
It had created multimilliondollar business on Amazon just
(38:36):
because videos went viral onTikTok so ridiculously powerful
the spillover effect from TikTokover to Amazon.
What was your second question?
Speaker 1 (38:45):
My second question was what was the feeling in the
room from people who had beenselling on Amazon for a long
time?
Was it hey, we want totransition the bulk of our sales
over to TikTok, or this is agreat opportunity to do it, in
addition to what we already haveon Amazon?
Speaker 2 (39:02):
I would say the vast majority of the sellers that are
in this mastermind were like Itold you.
They were brands that weresuccessful on Amazon but they
had just dabbled, kind of put,stuck their toes in the water on
the TikTok side, but ended upseeing success right out of the
gate.
So all of the brand owners thatwere there at the workshop had
(39:24):
they they most of them had ateam.
You know most of these wereseven, some eight figure sellers
on Amazon.
So they have a team, they havean agency running their
advertising, they have acreative team, they have their
Amazon brand, a brand A lot ofit is on autopilot from the
founder standpoint which gavethem the opportunity to dive
into the TikTok side.
So I would say that the vastmajority of them had their
(39:45):
Amazon brand kind of running onautopilot with their team, but
they were diving into the TikTokside and a lot of them, like
this big giant brand that I'mtalking about, like they have a
whole team now dedicated toTikTok because of the success
that they saw early on and a lotof the other brands were
duplicating that success becauseof the different things that we
were talking about and thestrategies that we were
(40:05):
developing inside the mastermind.
So now the mastermind hasgotten significantly bigger just
in the past couple of monthsbecause now friends are telling
friends and like, hey, you needto get in here because this is
what we're seeing on TikTok, andnow we're just kind of starting
to spread a little bit withinthe seller community.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Yeah, and I think I mean there's so much we could
talk about with this.
You know that I think this isprobably a good place to kind of
wrap for today.
I will say so for people thatare listening to this on the
podcast.
First of all, thank you forlistening.
Secondly, we also do this liveon LinkedIn.
I think we're having a littlebit of an audio issue with one
of our folks right now, but weanswer and respond to questions
(40:45):
and that type of stuff live onLinkedIn.
So we do these on Tuesdays.
So if you're interested inasking questions live, you can
find us over on LinkedIn.
And then, at least for me, I'llfinish with this final thought,
which is I think there's someamazing opportunities on TikTok
and I think it just really comesfull circle back to something
that we talk about a lot inBrand Fortress, which is TikTok
(41:09):
is the new vehicle, if you will,or kind of the shiny new object
.
The reality of it is is the samebrand building principles that
we talk on here a lot about,that have been successful on
Amazon and off Amazon, are also,in the long term, going to be
successful on TikTok, just in adifferent format.
So for listeners out there,they're like how do I adapt to
(41:31):
this, that type of thing?
Think about what those firstprinciples are for building a
brand and in the long term,you're going to be successful on
TikTok just like any otherplatform or any other sales
channel for your brand.
With that, I guess you know,matt, for listeners that you
know maybe have dabbled a littlebit in TikTok as sellers but
not really you know are lookingto do more.
(41:53):
What are maybe one or two wordsof advice that you would give.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
The first thing that I would say is don't be scared
of a TikTok ban, because thegrowth that you can achieve on a
platform like TikTok like youjust said the platform doesn't
matter If you are building abrand in the right way.
And I would say, to piggybackon that with my other tip is
start building a army of microinfluencers, similar to Mike and
(42:20):
his, where he's built an emaillist of over 40,000 people that
have bought his products and hecan take that anywhere.
With this army ofmicro-influencers, you can also
take that anywhere and you candirect attention to the next
platform that comes up if it'snot TikTok.
So, first of all, don't bescared of the TikTok ban,
because there's even if it doesgo away, there's going to be
another one pop up.
And second, start building yourarmy of micro influencers that
(42:43):
you can mobilize and move to anyplatform that's out there.
Speaker 3 (42:48):
Which is actually.
I mean, it's interesting to seethat from that perspective on
TikTok, because now, essentially, you have the opportunity to
build that list on both ends ofthe sale.
That list on both ends of thesale, you get to build the
(43:08):
salesperson list, which is allof these micro influencers, and
you should also, just the sameway that you would on Amazon, if
you're selling on TikTok, youshould still be building that
backend list.
You know, because, again, thosepeople who are on TikTok like,
okay, that's great, youconnected with them on TikTok
and you sold something to them,but if you don't have a way to
communicate with them and TikTokwas to get banned, well, that
(43:29):
person who bought your productyou now have no way to
communicate with because TikTokwas your mechanism.
So make sure that you'rebuilding that list on both ends,
building a list of microinfluencers that you can take to
any platform, but also buildingthat list of customers on the
backend that you can takeanywhere also.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
Yep, yeah, I think that's a great place to wrap for
our listeners out there.
If you want to hear more aboutTikTok, let us know over on
LinkedIn.
If we get enough interest,we'll do another episode.
Otherwise, thank everybody forlistening and we'll see you at
another Tactics Tuesday.
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