October 8, 2025 • 26 mins
In this 204th solo episode of The E-Comm Show, host Andrew Maff breaks down exactly how to make TikTok Shop, Instagram Shop, and other social commerce platforms actually convert. Learn how to combine organic content, paid ads, and influencer marketing into a single strategy that drives real sales.
If your TikTok or Instagram shop isn’t working (or you don’t know where to start), this episode shows you what to prioritize, what most brands miss, and how to set up a profitable social commerce system.
What You’ll Learn:
- Social Commerce 101: Why TikTok Shop, Instagram Shop, and live shopping matter now.
- Organic + Paid + Influencers: How to integrate all three for consistent sales.
- TikTok Shop Realities: What price points and products actually convert.
- Influencer Marketing That Works: Seeding vs. paid partnerships vs. content creators.
- Retargeting Strategies: Lower ad costs and boost conversions with warm audiences.
- Content = Currency: How to keep content flowing without overspending.
- Building Your Brand “TV Channel”: Andrew’s framework for turning your profile into a conversion machine.
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🐤 Twitter: / bluetuskr
📧 Email: info@bluetuskr.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Andrew Maff (00:00):
There's something to think about when it comes to
(00:04):
Tiktok. It is not impossible tosell a high ticket item on
Tiktok, but it is verydifficult.
Narrator (00:11):
Welcome to the E comm Show podcast. I am your host.
Andrew Maff, owner and founderof Bluetuskr, from
groundbreaking industry updatesto success stories and
strategies. Get to know the insand outs of the e Commerce
Industry from top leaders in thespace. Let's get into it.
Andrew Maff (00:26):
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of
the E comm show as usual. I amyour host, Andrew Maff, and
today I'm going to be talking toyou about what tends to be a bit
of a very interesting topic thata lot of brands are referring to
as social commerce. If you'renot familiar with this, this is
really just selling product onsocial media, that's about it,
but we're calling it socialcommerce to make it fancy. Isn't
(00:48):
that nice? So here's the thing,there's a lot of stuff to
consider with this. It's reallystarting to come from the Tiktok
age, because Tiktok shop hasdone a really good job at taking
over market share frommarketplaces pretty much like
Amazon, and so it's becomingmore and more of an interesting
place to open up to. And a lotof brands, especially Amazon
brands, are finding it veryinteresting to sell product on
(01:09):
things like Tiktok shop, becauseit doesn't require them to have
their own brand website. Theycan just start doing social
media on Tiktok and essentiallyjust sending people to Tiktok
shop and then fulfilling it fromthere. So it makes life a lot
easier. Here's the thing I wantto talk about, regarding social
commerce, because a lot ofbrands jump into it thinking
that, okay, I'm just going tolaunch some stuff on, let's say,
(01:33):
Tiktok or Instagram, and it'sgoing to be extremely
successful, just like anythingelse. It takes a lot of testing
and a lot of work to get thatdone correctly. So there are
ways you can ease into it,right, like it's it's not that
complicated in terms of beingable to ease into it, because
really what you can do is, let'ssay you're a brand on Amazon.
(01:53):
You want to start testing Tiktokyou launch a Tiktok profile, you
put your you get your productall loaded up in Tiktok shop,
and then you start working withInstagram. Instagram, sorry, you
start working with influencersto start peddling your product
and giving them a some type ofcommission for selling your
product. They send people toTiktok shop. Purchase happens,
one and done. Here's the thingthat's not always as easy,
(02:17):
right? So there are a lot ofpeople on Tiktok that are really
open to selling almost anything,and same thing on Instagram,
right? There's a ton ofInstagram shop does well, but it
tends to do well through, likeadvertising. It's not fantastic
through just kind oftraditional, I guess we would
call social commerce, ofleveraging different influencers
(02:38):
and things like that. But itdoes have its pros and its cons.
On the Tiktok side, what'sreally interesting is you're
seeing a lot of growth there.
You're seeing a lot ofimprovement there, but you're
also seeing a lot of brands thatjust go there, start trying it,
and get upset when it doesn'twork. There's something to think
about when it comes to Tiktok.
It is not impossible to sell ahigh ticket item on Tiktok, but
(02:59):
it is very difficult. Tiktok,even though is obviously gotten
to a really good size, and it isnot just kids anymore. It is
still a younger audience. And sothe obviously, the income isn't
exactly huge. And so to beselling something that is 100
plus dollars, hundreds ofdollars, 1000s of dollars, makes
it a little bit more difficultto sell anything below $30
(03:21):
becomes a lot easier, but thatalso kind of depends on the
product, right? Needs to be verydifferentiated. It needs to
clearly showcase either why thisproduct exists, if there's
nothing else like it, or whyit's so different from its
competition. So I want to talk alittle bit about kind of the the
way to do this, right? So it'snot, as I mentioned, it is
(03:42):
possible. You just launch it onTiktok shop, work with some
influencers, start having thempush the product, and you're all
set. But to do it correctlyrequires using the entire
platform. And this goes not justfor Tiktok. It goes for
Instagram, Facebook, if you'restill doing that. So let's look
at it like this, right yourthere's a book, actually, that I
(04:04):
have here with me called it'sfrom Gary Vee. Don't judge me. I
forgot how many jabs. It's Jab,Jab, Jab, Right Hook, I think is
what it's called. There's like,four or five jabs. Essentially,
what it's about is it's a bookfrom it. Honestly, it might be a
decade old at this point, butit's still very relevant on how
to sell on social media. Andreally what it talks about is
(04:27):
you're providing value, you'reproviding entertainment, you're
being interesting in any way,shape or form. And then the
right hook is that's when yousell. That concept has not
changed, so it's a little bitdifferent now in how you do it,
and honestly, to me, it's almostlike all jabs and then your
right hooks are a little bitdifferent. So I want you to
think of it like this. Yoursocial media profile is like a
(04:50):
TV channel, right? And yoursocial media profile is the
show. Your job is to bring in arelevant audience, entertain
them, educate. Them, scare them,make them feel good, make them
cry, do whatever you got to dobased on the show that you want
to put on, and that's whatyou're doing, and that's it. All
you're trying to do is bring ina like minded audience to your
(05:13):
social media profile. So whatyou're really attempting to do
here is build out this communityof people that always want to
come to your profile to seewhat's going on. What are you
posting about? Is it fun? Is itfunny? Is it entertaining? Is it
educational? Doesn't matterwhatever you're doing to attract
people to your profile. Now, Iknow a lot of people think like,
(05:34):
Yeah, but I got to make money.
How do I sell on this? It is, ifyou've run any paid ads in your
life, you know damn well it issignificantly easier to get a
better ROAs through retargetingefforts, right? And retargeting
does not always mean, oh, it'spast purchasers and yeah, that's
how you're getting credit. No,no, I'm talking about people
that have already been a littlebit educated in your product
(05:54):
line. That's why, from peoplewho visit your website and then
leave, they've already shownmore interest just by visiting
your website. They learned aboutyour product line, they left and
that's why you're justcontinuing to educate them and
incentivize them to purchaseyou're doing the same thing on
social media. So on Instagram,Tiktok doesn't matter. You have
the ability to retarget yourfollowers. You have the ability
(06:16):
to retarget people that haveengaged with you. You have the
ability to retarget people thathave watched a certain amount of
your videos, so these are peoplethat are showing some type of
interest in what you have tosay. So now you have to start
thinking about your socialadvertising, like the ads that
are being run on your TVchannel, right? So you own the
channel, and your profile is theshow, and your advertising is
(06:40):
the advertising. And so this isallowing you to basically bring
in people at a low cost withoutspending money on advertising.
At least you're obviouslyspending money on the content
creation and then educating themon a continued basis about the
pros and cons of your of yourproduct. The social commerce
(07:00):
side is where not only sellingon the social media platform in
itself comes into play, but alsoleveraging the influencers. And
that's a different beast, right?
This is where it becomes kind ofinteresting, because now it's a
little bit more like it's alittle bit almost like other TV
(07:21):
channels are telling people togo watch this show. So it's
almost like, how would I putthis? Similar to if you were
watching a show and they weremaking a ton of references to
another TV show, you might startlooking into it. Or if,
obviously product placement inmovies used to happen all the
time. People would just kind ofpush products into certain areas
that product paid for that spot,and they would make a little bit
of money off it. Now the benefitis you start leveraging these
influencers to spread the wordfor you. Same thing with content
(07:42):
creators, except they're notalways posting it on their own
profiles right now, here's thething. Here's why this works.
When you are running your own TVchannel, and you're running your
own advertising. It is you ownit. It is clear to the user,
(08:05):
right? So you are always goingto say, we have the best product
we this is why you should shopwith us, etc. So using someone
like a content creator, andusing that content in your
advertising or an influencer,where they're pushing it on
their own to their own audience.
The reason this works so well isbecause, even though the user
knows that they've probably beenpaid to do this, it's still in
(08:27):
the back of their head that theywouldn't just do this if they
didn't have some belief in theproduct, right? So the user is
still going to do some of theirdue diligence, but it is
allowing them to kind ofrealize, like, Okay, here's
someone else that likes thisproduct, taking it with a grain
of salt, but here's someone elsewho likes the product. And so by
(08:48):
someone else spreading this wordfor you, you don't come off as
bias, because they're the onescommunicating to their users
about how good it is. And thenat that point, you then have to
look at how else you can usethat content. So then it's using
that influencers content, notonly to post to your own
profile, or using it in youradvertising, or working with
them on a sponsored post andboosting it through there.
(09:09):
There's a ton of differentdirections on it, but there's a
sec essentially, there are threedifferent major elements to
social commerce, right? You haveyour organic posts, you have
your advertising, and then youhave your influencer marketing.
The three of these things worktogether hand in hand, because
your influencers are not onlygoing to potentially push your
(09:30):
product and try to get people topurchase it, but they're also
going to push people to yourprofile. Now the issue becomes
most, most influencers, theirjob is not to sell. Their job is
to get you as many eyeballs aspossible. A lot of brands make
this mistake of you know, I, Idon't want to work with anyone
(09:53):
who doesn't bring us sales, andwe don't make money on the on
the on the post with them.
Narrator (10:00):
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revenue. Bluetuskr has helpedmany brands like yours excel.
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toward your business growth. Asan extension of your marketing
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(10:23):
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Andrew Maff (10:31):
That is 100% accurate. However, there are
also some nuances that you haveto factor in. For example,
conversion rate. It's not up tothe influencer to fix your
website or price point for theproduct if it's comparative to
competitors, or the amount ofreviews you have, or anything
like that. There's a lot ofdifferent things that's outside
of their control that sometimesyou have to think about, because
(10:51):
it actually could be a verysuccessful post with a lot of
views and a lot of engagement,but maybe not as many orders.
But what you do have to thinkabout is if you're confident
that your website's converting,well, then maybe that was just
not a great audience. And sothose are things that you kind
of have to factor in. Andthere's data that you can look
at to try to evaluate thosethings. But by doing this type
(11:12):
of stuff, you also have tofactor in the additional KPIs
out of the sales that you'regetting. Yes, you can factor in
brand awareness, but even theamount of people that are coming
over to your profile, are nowgoing to engage with your
profile. Hopefully they're goingto follow you. Hopefully they're
going to view some of yourvideos. And then that's when
your retargeting ads start tokick in. So, you know, a lot of
(11:33):
brands end up going to thesechannels, and they immediately
go to, you know, if you're doingmeta and you want to just swing
for the fences and do kind of athrow shit at a wall and see
what sticks. You start doingadvantage, plus you just put up
some creative and hope it works,or you start to do more like
interest based targeting. Youcould still do look alikes.
They're not as great as theyonce were. And so you start
(11:55):
going after these certainaudiences, and you're doing very
top of funnel. You're paying tostart educating that consumer,
but they're to educate someoneto get them to purchase off of
seeing that ad one, two or threetimes is very difficult. There's
a standard rule of seven inadvertising that's been around
for generations, where it'seffectively like until someone
has seen your brand or yourproduct seven or more times
(12:16):
they're not very familiar withit. And that's also not just
over the lifetime. That could bewithin a certain amount of time.
It kind of depends on theproduct, but so you need to show
these types of ads to people ona regular basis too, and get
them to convert. And so that'swhen you start factoring in
frequency and things like that.
But when you have to do thesetypes of things, it's a lot less
expensive to educate them aheadof time. So if they're seeing a
(12:37):
lot of your organic posts,they're seeing a lot of
influencers mention you, theymay already be at touch point
five or six, so that yourseventh time you're touching
them is a retargeting ad, andall of a sudden they're
converting really well. Sothere's a lot of different
nuances that you have to factorinto that. In the social
commerce side, there's a wholeother beast that you have to
think about right. There aredozens of companies now that
(13:00):
offer user generated content.
And basically, most of them areall very much the same. The
pricing might be very different,you know, the way that they work
could be kind of different. Thequality of creators they have
might be in a tiered system orsomething like that, but there's
a ton of them out there. Andessentially, you pay this
company. They give you access totheir database, they give you
(13:21):
access to their software to havethe communication, and then you
get some content from it. Thegreat thing about that is you
are basically paying peoplecouple 100 bucks to create a
video for you that is talkingabout the the your product, and
it gives you a ton of content touse, because that's the type of
stuff that does really well onsocial media, because it blends
in. Influencer marketing isdifferent because, obviously,
(13:43):
they're sharing it to theirusers. There are a handful of
platforms out there that helpwith finding influencers. In
fact, there's more than ahandful. There's probably dozens
of those too. The issue withalmost all of those becomes the
lack of relationship, right? Soyou have to look at influencer
marketing almost like you'rerecruiting right, kind of like
you're recruiting for employees,to a certain extent, because
(14:04):
really, what you're trying to dois find influencers that not
only are genuinely interested inyour product, but have an
audience that's very interestedin working with you. And so
you're trying to find ways toslowly start to work with each
other to evaluate if this isgoing to be a more long term
relationship, in which casenegotiations tend to happen from
there. So there's platforms outthere, handful of them. I really
(14:25):
like a couple of them that we'vehad people on, on the podcast in
itself. I know the CEO of stackinfluence is one of them that
was on the show. You know,they're all, they're all really
good for certain things. Some ofthem are extremely expensive.
Some of them are reallyinexpensive. And then, you know,
there's a reason some of themare great for seating. So that's
giving product to influencerscompletely for free, in exchange
(14:47):
for them to actually post aboutsomething. There's something
about that that I love, and thatis. Volume, right? Like, if a
lot of people look at like, Hey,I don't want to pay an
influencer, you know, 1000s and1000s of dollars to post about
my product if I'm not going tomake any money on it. And it's a
one time thing, it's a reallybig risk. Well, a lower risk is
to get 1000s of influencers at alower cost to actually post your
(15:09):
post about your product, andyour cost is only giving away
the product for free. This iswhy higher ticket products. It
doesn't always work out, becauseyou're giving away a pretty
expensive product, but in somescenarios, it can work. And so
by doing this, you're looking atmore of a volume perspective.
But then from there, what youcan figure out is like, Okay,
which of all these 1000s ofinfluences that we worked with
(15:30):
worked the best? Let's take thisoff of these platforms and start
to have conversations with themabout working with us more
often, the issue becomes, whenyou're seeding influencers and
they're posting about yourproduct completely for free,
there's a bunch of things inplace that make sure that they
actually post. You don't reallyhave to worry about that. But
they are not, they're startingtheir influencer journey, you
(15:51):
have no idea if their their youknow brand is going to work. You
don't really know who theiraudience is. You're just you're
just swinging the fences. Sothere's pros and cons to it,
because you look at a volumeside, which I really like around
like holidays and productlaunches and things like that,
but it can also be kind ofdifficult, because you don't
really know what's going tohappen. And so then you also
(16:12):
have to look at the other sideof things, and this is where
starting these conversationshappen. And there are websites
out there and platforms thatallow you to kind of put
parameters together, and you canscrape all these influencers.
But nothing works better thansitting on social media, going
through different posts, seeingwho's commenting, seeing who's,
you know, doing all thesedifferent things, and then
(16:33):
starting those conversations andbuilding that in a more organic
approach, just like if you wereto hire someone, you're going to
want to speak to them directly.
It's really not that different.
And so that's where buildingthese different relationships
becomes very interesting to thentalk to them. And essentially,
what you're trying to do with amix of the seating and a mix of
the scraping differentinfluencers and paying some of
(16:55):
them, some of them you'reseating, you know, some of them
are on a commission. Some ofthem do get a flat rate like you
fat, you figure all that stuffout. And what you want to do is
you want to develop a databaseof influencers and creators that
you really enjoy working with.
And those are the ones that youbasically start to then get away
from the seating, you get awayfrom all the other elements, and
you start to work with them on amore regular basis. As you work
(17:17):
with them on a regular basis, Ireally like to have them all do
stuff around the same time tokind of develop that snowball
effect. It works out great. Butthen, like I said, you have to
make sure that you're notforgetting your own profile,
because you can't. You're goingto get a lot of people that do
their own due diligence. It'sthe biggest thing in E commerce
right now that a lot of brandsdon't realize is that consumers
(17:38):
are way smarter than they oncewere 10 years ago. They are
going to different websites tosee if you've got different
price points on your website,versus Amazon versus Walmart, et
cetera. They're going to all ofthem to check all of your
reviews. They're goingeverywhere to kind of make sure
that you're legitimate. And ifthey find you on a Tiktok or an
Instagram, one of the firstplaces they're going to is your
(17:59):
own profile. So if they go toyour profile and they see like,
hey, you've got, you know, 400followers and you haven't posted
in six months, they're going tothink you suck, and they're
never going to shop with you. Sothat's something you have to
factor in. So the best way to dosocial commerce is to look at
the entire platform and leverageit correctly. That means
leveraging not just having it ona Tiktok shop, but also
(18:21):
leveraging influencers, contentcreators, your organic social
media advertising and havingthem all work together. Social
media is really like its ownecosystem, right? When you think
about let's look at your D to Cwebsite, right? The more traffic
you drive to it, the better yourorganic search is going to do.
Your SEO starts to improve. Ifyou make sure, from a technical
perspective, from a keywordperspective, a content
(18:42):
perspective, et cetera, your SEOwill continue to grow. So the
more and more traffic you driveto that page, the faster you
actually improve organically. Sothere's a lot of extra things
that will affect your SEO,right? Same thing with email
marketing, you can't you're notgonna make $1 off email if you
don't have an email list. Well,you've got to grow the email
list. Well, that comes fromdriving traffic to the website,
(19:03):
and then more traffic you driveto the website, more emails you
have. And so, like, it's a lotof things. There's a lot of gray
area. There's a lot of thingsthat overlap with each other on
social media. It's all in itsown ecosystem. It all overlaps
with each other. It's a it'sreally, really hard to make a
lot of sales through organicposts unless you're doing some
type of advertising as well, oreven just boosting posts. It's
(19:25):
really hard to make salesorganically on social media
unless you're leveraginginfluencers who are pushing
people to your profile. It'salso really difficult as a brand
to grow your own followers. Alot of people don't want to
follow companies because theyknow that you're biased and they
know that you're just trying tosell them stuff and blah blah.
So you have to find a way toposition your messaging and your
(19:46):
profile and your youreffectively your TV show, to. Be
more entertainment, educational,and not just pedaling a product
the whole time. So you've got tofind ways to get them all to
work together, to workcorrectly. So this is why you
see a lot of Amazon sellers thatwill come from Amazon, because
they want to start diversifying,and they go over to Tiktok to
try and like, just, hey, I'mgoing to put up this product,
(20:07):
and then I'm just going to giveinfluencers the option to sell
it and then make a ton of moneyif you're lucky enough that
someone picks it up and it goesviral, yeah, but chances of that
happening are slim. You have toput the work behind it. You have
to put the relationships behindit with the influencers to get
it all to work, and then, eventhen, to make sure that you're
covering all of your bases,that's when you've got to make
(20:29):
sure that you also have youradvertising efforts in place.
And you'll notice this wholetime, I didn't talk about any
really prospecting advertising.
I didn't talk about running anyads towards completely cold
audiences. I'm not saying itdoesn't work. It absolutely
works. There's just a finethere's a finesse to doing top
of funnel versus more middle offunnel. And if you're looking to
(20:50):
really improve on the socialcommerce side, there's dozens of
things you can do to grow thataudience that's going to get
pixeled for you to then be ableto retarget so social commerce
becoming huge, you also thenfactor in like live, like live,
social commerce, shopping andthings like that. And these are
influencers that are effectivelylive streaming and talking about
the product. And you know howpeople should be purchasing it?
(21:11):
There's, I don't know if you'veever seen it. It's hilarious.
There's a influencer that, Ithink there's a couple of them,
different Asian influencers,that literally, like, they'll
grab, like, a product, andthey'll be like, buy this, and
then they'll move it, and thenthey'll buy it. And they'll,
like, I saw one this girl,she'll like, grab a dress, put
the dress on, be like, This iswhat it looks like, and then
(21:32):
she'll go to the next dress.
And, like, literally, inseconds. It's hilarious. It's
awesome. Apparently it works. Ithink she's making, like, a
ridiculous amount of money doingit, but it's stuff like that
that can be very interestingthat you have to keep testing.
Live shopping, pros and cons,QVC. I'm based out of
Westchester, Pennsylvania. Ifyou know where that is, that is
(21:53):
where QVC is. So this area isvery interesting in terms of
people that are constantlygetting a job and losing a job,
because QVC is trying to figureout what the hell is going on.
They're trying social commerce,shopping. Now we'll see what
happens. And so that's alwayskind of interesting, right? Of
like it worked on TV. Can itwork on social media? And so now
more and more company mediacompanies like that, are trying
(22:15):
to lean in on it. And so theseare different areas that where
social media becomes a reallydifferent beast. The problem is
the lift of social media, right?
A lot of brands jump over tocertain platforms, and they just
wonder, like, Why isn't thisworking? For me, it's like SEO.
It doesn't happen overnight. Itcan take a really long time for
things to really start to growand start to get that snowball
effect. But just like SEO, assoon as you stop doing it, you
(22:37):
just start to go downhill. Andso if you do decide you want to
start again, you've got to rampit back up, and then it's an
uphill battle to even get itback to where it was. So it's
one of those things that ifyou're going to do it, you have
to commit to it and make surethat it's being done correctly.
So you've got to think about, ifyou're creating your own
content, you may need videoeditors. You may need
(22:59):
photographers. You're going toneed content creators. You're
going to need to get that you'regoing to need to get the product
to the content creators. Youneed to develop a system to get
the content in to make sure it'sscheduled, and testing different
copy and different posts andthings like that. You're going
to make sure you haveadvertising in place. You're
gonna need someone who wants towork with the influencers.
(23:20):
There's six or seven people thatcan be involved over in through
doing social commerce correctly.
And one of the reasons I wantedto do this topic today was
because I find a lot ofspecifically Amazon sellers,
because they're always kind ofhesitant to jump into doing
their own website, so they justwant to go to Tiktok because
it's the new shiny thing. Andthe issue kind of becomes with
(23:41):
jumping from an Amazon to aTiktok Amazon. You know, years
ago, used to be like, get aproduct, throw it up. Especially
if you make your listing lookreally good, you're going to do
just fine. And the logic tothese brands is, oh, I'm going
to do the same thing on Tiktok.
That's 100% not the case. Tiktokdoes take a lot of work. There's
still a lot of things that haveto go into play there. And it's
the same thing on Instagram,even even through other areas
(24:04):
like Pinterest and YouTube andall these different social media
channels, there's a lot ofdifferent things you have to
factor in, and it can be anextremely lucrative way to start
to diversify and not be soreliant on these different like
marketplaces and things likethat. But the other thing to
think about is, once you startventuring into social media,
they start to do their own duediligence. And if you don't have
(24:25):
your own website, they're goingto be kind of skeptical about
the reality and how good thisproduct might actually be. And
so that's where it becomes kindof a risk to do that, unless you
can make sure that you'repushing them to Amazon and
Amazon alone. So socialcommerce, overall, a lot of
stuff going on. It's constantlya growing area, but it's
something I wanted to talk aboutbecause we do so much of it, and
(24:46):
there's so many commonmisconceptions about how it
should be done, at least in thebeginning. To test it, once you
get going, it's pretty selfexplanatory. Everyone knows it,
but it's more about when thesebrands come from. An Amazon and
want to jump into Tiktok or evenany other social media platform
is knowing the reality of whatis necessary to really get a
social media platform reallybeing beneficial for you,
(25:08):
questions, comments, concerns,feel free to reach out to me.
But as usual, thank you all forjoining me today. I appreciate
it, and feel free to check outecom show.com check out all of
our previous episodes, but asusual, thanks you all for
joining us, we will see you nexttime. Have a good one!
Narrator (25:29):
Thank you for tuning in to the Ecomm Show. Head over
to e commshow.com to subscribeon your favorite podcast
platform or on the BlueTuskerYouTube channel. The E comm show
is brought to you by BlueTusker,a full service digital marketing
company specifically for Ecommerce sellers looking to
(25:51):
accelerate their growth. Go tobluetuskr.com now for more
information, make sure to tunein next week for another amazing
episode of the Ecomm Show.
There's something to think about when it comes to
(00:04):
Tiktok. It is not impossible tosell a high ticket item on
Tiktok, but it is verydifficult.
Narrator (00:11):
Welcome to the E comm Show podcast. I am your host.
Andrew Maff, owner and founderof Bluetuskr, from
groundbreaking industry updatesto success stories and
strategies. Get to know the insand outs of the e Commerce
Industry from top leaders in thespace. Let's get into it.
Andrew Maff (00:26):
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of
the E comm show as usual. I amyour host, Andrew Maff, and
today I'm going to be talking toyou about what tends to be a bit
of a very interesting topic thata lot of brands are referring to
as social commerce. If you'renot familiar with this, this is
really just selling product onsocial media, that's about it,
but we're calling it socialcommerce to make it fancy. Isn't
(00:48):
that nice? So here's the thing,there's a lot of stuff to
consider with this. It's reallystarting to come from the Tiktok
age, because Tiktok shop hasdone a really good job at taking
over market share frommarketplaces pretty much like
Amazon, and so it's becomingmore and more of an interesting
place to open up to. And a lotof brands, especially Amazon
brands, are finding it veryinteresting to sell product on
(01:09):
things like Tiktok shop, becauseit doesn't require them to have
their own brand website. Theycan just start doing social
media on Tiktok and essentiallyjust sending people to Tiktok
shop and then fulfilling it fromthere. So it makes life a lot
easier. Here's the thing I wantto talk about, regarding social
commerce, because a lot ofbrands jump into it thinking
that, okay, I'm just going tolaunch some stuff on, let's say,
(01:33):
Tiktok or Instagram, and it'sgoing to be extremely
successful, just like anythingelse. It takes a lot of testing
and a lot of work to get thatdone correctly. So there are
ways you can ease into it,right, like it's it's not that
complicated in terms of beingable to ease into it, because
really what you can do is, let'ssay you're a brand on Amazon.
(01:53):
You want to start testing Tiktokyou launch a Tiktok profile, you
put your you get your productall loaded up in Tiktok shop,
and then you start working withInstagram. Instagram, sorry, you
start working with influencersto start peddling your product
and giving them a some type ofcommission for selling your
product. They send people toTiktok shop. Purchase happens,
one and done. Here's the thingthat's not always as easy,
(02:17):
right? So there are a lot ofpeople on Tiktok that are really
open to selling almost anything,and same thing on Instagram,
right? There's a ton ofInstagram shop does well, but it
tends to do well through, likeadvertising. It's not fantastic
through just kind oftraditional, I guess we would
call social commerce, ofleveraging different influencers
(02:38):
and things like that. But itdoes have its pros and its cons.
On the Tiktok side, what'sreally interesting is you're
seeing a lot of growth there.
You're seeing a lot ofimprovement there, but you're
also seeing a lot of brands thatjust go there, start trying it,
and get upset when it doesn'twork. There's something to think
about when it comes to Tiktok.
It is not impossible to sell ahigh ticket item on Tiktok, but
(02:59):
it is very difficult. Tiktok,even though is obviously gotten
to a really good size, and it isnot just kids anymore. It is
still a younger audience. And sothe obviously, the income isn't
exactly huge. And so to beselling something that is 100
plus dollars, hundreds ofdollars, 1000s of dollars, makes
it a little bit more difficultto sell anything below $30
(03:21):
becomes a lot easier, but thatalso kind of depends on the
product, right? Needs to be verydifferentiated. It needs to
clearly showcase either why thisproduct exists, if there's
nothing else like it, or whyit's so different from its
competition. So I want to talk alittle bit about kind of the the
way to do this, right? So it'snot, as I mentioned, it is
(03:42):
possible. You just launch it onTiktok shop, work with some
influencers, start having thempush the product, and you're all
set. But to do it correctlyrequires using the entire
platform. And this goes not justfor Tiktok. It goes for
Instagram, Facebook, if you'restill doing that. So let's look
at it like this, right yourthere's a book, actually, that I
(04:04):
have here with me called it'sfrom Gary Vee. Don't judge me. I
forgot how many jabs. It's Jab,Jab, Jab, Right Hook, I think is
what it's called. There's like,four or five jabs. Essentially,
what it's about is it's a bookfrom it. Honestly, it might be a
decade old at this point, butit's still very relevant on how
to sell on social media. Andreally what it talks about is
(04:27):
you're providing value, you'reproviding entertainment, you're
being interesting in any way,shape or form. And then the
right hook is that's when yousell. That concept has not
changed, so it's a little bitdifferent now in how you do it,
and honestly, to me, it's almostlike all jabs and then your
right hooks are a little bitdifferent. So I want you to
think of it like this. Yoursocial media profile is like a
(04:50):
TV channel, right? And yoursocial media profile is the
show. Your job is to bring in arelevant audience, entertain
them, educate. Them, scare them,make them feel good, make them
cry, do whatever you got to dobased on the show that you want
to put on, and that's whatyou're doing, and that's it. All
you're trying to do is bring ina like minded audience to your
(05:13):
social media profile. So whatyou're really attempting to do
here is build out this communityof people that always want to
come to your profile to seewhat's going on. What are you
posting about? Is it fun? Is itfunny? Is it entertaining? Is it
educational? Doesn't matterwhatever you're doing to attract
people to your profile. Now, Iknow a lot of people think like,
(05:34):
Yeah, but I got to make money.
How do I sell on this? It is, ifyou've run any paid ads in your
life, you know damn well it issignificantly easier to get a
better ROAs through retargetingefforts, right? And retargeting
does not always mean, oh, it'spast purchasers and yeah, that's
how you're getting credit. No,no, I'm talking about people
that have already been a littlebit educated in your product
(05:54):
line. That's why, from peoplewho visit your website and then
leave, they've already shownmore interest just by visiting
your website. They learned aboutyour product line, they left and
that's why you're justcontinuing to educate them and
incentivize them to purchaseyou're doing the same thing on
social media. So on Instagram,Tiktok doesn't matter. You have
the ability to retarget yourfollowers. You have the ability
(06:16):
to retarget people that haveengaged with you. You have the
ability to retarget people thathave watched a certain amount of
your videos, so these are peoplethat are showing some type of
interest in what you have tosay. So now you have to start
thinking about your socialadvertising, like the ads that
are being run on your TVchannel, right? So you own the
channel, and your profile is theshow, and your advertising is
(06:40):
the advertising. And so this isallowing you to basically bring
in people at a low cost withoutspending money on advertising.
At least you're obviouslyspending money on the content
creation and then educating themon a continued basis about the
pros and cons of your of yourproduct. The social commerce
(07:00):
side is where not only sellingon the social media platform in
itself comes into play, but alsoleveraging the influencers. And
that's a different beast, right?
This is where it becomes kind ofinteresting, because now it's a
little bit more like it's alittle bit almost like other TV
(07:21):
channels are telling people togo watch this show. So it's
almost like, how would I putthis? Similar to if you were
watching a show and they weremaking a ton of references to
another TV show, you might startlooking into it. Or if,
obviously product placement inmovies used to happen all the
time. People would just kind ofpush products into certain areas
that product paid for that spot,and they would make a little bit
of money off it. Now the benefitis you start leveraging these
influencers to spread the wordfor you. Same thing with content
(07:42):
creators, except they're notalways posting it on their own
profiles right now, here's thething. Here's why this works.
When you are running your own TVchannel, and you're running your
own advertising. It is you ownit. It is clear to the user,
(08:05):
right? So you are always goingto say, we have the best product
we this is why you should shopwith us, etc. So using someone
like a content creator, andusing that content in your
advertising or an influencer,where they're pushing it on
their own to their own audience.
The reason this works so well isbecause, even though the user
knows that they've probably beenpaid to do this, it's still in
(08:27):
the back of their head that theywouldn't just do this if they
didn't have some belief in theproduct, right? So the user is
still going to do some of theirdue diligence, but it is
allowing them to kind ofrealize, like, Okay, here's
someone else that likes thisproduct, taking it with a grain
of salt, but here's someone elsewho likes the product. And so by
(08:48):
someone else spreading this wordfor you, you don't come off as
bias, because they're the onescommunicating to their users
about how good it is. And thenat that point, you then have to
look at how else you can usethat content. So then it's using
that influencers content, notonly to post to your own
profile, or using it in youradvertising, or working with
them on a sponsored post andboosting it through there.
(09:09):
There's a ton of differentdirections on it, but there's a
sec essentially, there are threedifferent major elements to
social commerce, right? You haveyour organic posts, you have
your advertising, and then youhave your influencer marketing.
The three of these things worktogether hand in hand, because
your influencers are not onlygoing to potentially push your
(09:30):
product and try to get people topurchase it, but they're also
going to push people to yourprofile. Now the issue becomes
most, most influencers, theirjob is not to sell. Their job is
to get you as many eyeballs aspossible. A lot of brands make
this mistake of you know, I, Idon't want to work with anyone
(09:53):
who doesn't bring us sales, andwe don't make money on the on
the on the post with them.
Narrator (10:00):
Is your E commerce business experiencing falling
revenue. Bluetuskr has helpedmany brands like yours excel.
Unlike other marketing partners,Bluetuskr leverages a team of
specialists to ensure everystrategy is created and executed
toward your business growth. Asan extension of your marketing
team, Bluetuskr prides itself onhelping to fill in the gaps and
develop strong omnichannelstrategies to diversify your
(10:23):
business from the rest. Ready toscale your marketing
initiatives? Visit theirwebsite, bluetuskr.com, that's
B, l, u, e, t, u, s, k, r.com.
Andrew Maff (10:31):
That is 100% accurate. However, there are
also some nuances that you haveto factor in. For example,
conversion rate. It's not up tothe influencer to fix your
website or price point for theproduct if it's comparative to
competitors, or the amount ofreviews you have, or anything
like that. There's a lot ofdifferent things that's outside
of their control that sometimesyou have to think about, because
(10:51):
it actually could be a verysuccessful post with a lot of
views and a lot of engagement,but maybe not as many orders.
But what you do have to thinkabout is if you're confident
that your website's converting,well, then maybe that was just
not a great audience. And sothose are things that you kind
of have to factor in. Andthere's data that you can look
at to try to evaluate thosethings. But by doing this type
(11:12):
of stuff, you also have tofactor in the additional KPIs
out of the sales that you'regetting. Yes, you can factor in
brand awareness, but even theamount of people that are coming
over to your profile, are nowgoing to engage with your
profile. Hopefully they're goingto follow you. Hopefully they're
going to view some of yourvideos. And then that's when
your retargeting ads start tokick in. So, you know, a lot of
(11:33):
brands end up going to thesechannels, and they immediately
go to, you know, if you're doingmeta and you want to just swing
for the fences and do kind of athrow shit at a wall and see
what sticks. You start doingadvantage, plus you just put up
some creative and hope it works,or you start to do more like
interest based targeting. Youcould still do look alikes.
They're not as great as theyonce were. And so you start
(11:55):
going after these certainaudiences, and you're doing very
top of funnel. You're paying tostart educating that consumer,
but they're to educate someoneto get them to purchase off of
seeing that ad one, two or threetimes is very difficult. There's
a standard rule of seven inadvertising that's been around
for generations, where it'seffectively like until someone
has seen your brand or yourproduct seven or more times
(12:16):
they're not very familiar withit. And that's also not just
over the lifetime. That could bewithin a certain amount of time.
It kind of depends on theproduct, but so you need to show
these types of ads to people ona regular basis too, and get
them to convert. And so that'swhen you start factoring in
frequency and things like that.
But when you have to do thesetypes of things, it's a lot less
expensive to educate them aheadof time. So if they're seeing a
(12:37):
lot of your organic posts,they're seeing a lot of
influencers mention you, theymay already be at touch point
five or six, so that yourseventh time you're touching
them is a retargeting ad, andall of a sudden they're
converting really well. Sothere's a lot of different
nuances that you have to factorinto that. In the social
commerce side, there's a wholeother beast that you have to
think about right. There aredozens of companies now that
(13:00):
offer user generated content.
And basically, most of them areall very much the same. The
pricing might be very different,you know, the way that they work
could be kind of different. Thequality of creators they have
might be in a tiered system orsomething like that, but there's
a ton of them out there. Andessentially, you pay this
company. They give you access totheir database, they give you
(13:21):
access to their software to havethe communication, and then you
get some content from it. Thegreat thing about that is you
are basically paying peoplecouple 100 bucks to create a
video for you that is talkingabout the the your product, and
it gives you a ton of content touse, because that's the type of
stuff that does really well onsocial media, because it blends
in. Influencer marketing isdifferent because, obviously,
(13:43):
they're sharing it to theirusers. There are a handful of
platforms out there that helpwith finding influencers. In
fact, there's more than ahandful. There's probably dozens
of those too. The issue withalmost all of those becomes the
lack of relationship, right? Soyou have to look at influencer
marketing almost like you'rerecruiting right, kind of like
you're recruiting for employees,to a certain extent, because
(14:04):
really, what you're trying to dois find influencers that not
only are genuinely interested inyour product, but have an
audience that's very interestedin working with you. And so
you're trying to find ways toslowly start to work with each
other to evaluate if this isgoing to be a more long term
relationship, in which casenegotiations tend to happen from
there. So there's platforms outthere, handful of them. I really
(14:25):
like a couple of them that we'vehad people on, on the podcast in
itself. I know the CEO of stackinfluence is one of them that
was on the show. You know,they're all, they're all really
good for certain things. Some ofthem are extremely expensive.
Some of them are reallyinexpensive. And then, you know,
there's a reason some of themare great for seating. So that's
giving product to influencerscompletely for free, in exchange
(14:47):
for them to actually post aboutsomething. There's something
about that that I love, and thatis. Volume, right? Like, if a
lot of people look at like, Hey,I don't want to pay an
influencer, you know, 1000s and1000s of dollars to post about
my product if I'm not going tomake any money on it. And it's a
one time thing, it's a reallybig risk. Well, a lower risk is
to get 1000s of influencers at alower cost to actually post your
(15:09):
post about your product, andyour cost is only giving away
the product for free. This iswhy higher ticket products. It
doesn't always work out, becauseyou're giving away a pretty
expensive product, but in somescenarios, it can work. And so
by doing this, you're looking atmore of a volume perspective.
But then from there, what youcan figure out is like, Okay,
which of all these 1000s ofinfluences that we worked with
(15:30):
worked the best? Let's take thisoff of these platforms and start
to have conversations with themabout working with us more
often, the issue becomes, whenyou're seeding influencers and
they're posting about yourproduct completely for free,
there's a bunch of things inplace that make sure that they
actually post. You don't reallyhave to worry about that. But
they are not, they're startingtheir influencer journey, you
(15:51):
have no idea if their their youknow brand is going to work. You
don't really know who theiraudience is. You're just you're
just swinging the fences. Sothere's pros and cons to it,
because you look at a volumeside, which I really like around
like holidays and productlaunches and things like that,
but it can also be kind ofdifficult, because you don't
really know what's going tohappen. And so then you also
(16:12):
have to look at the other sideof things, and this is where
starting these conversationshappen. And there are websites
out there and platforms thatallow you to kind of put
parameters together, and you canscrape all these influencers.
But nothing works better thansitting on social media, going
through different posts, seeingwho's commenting, seeing who's,
you know, doing all thesedifferent things, and then
(16:33):
starting those conversations andbuilding that in a more organic
approach, just like if you wereto hire someone, you're going to
want to speak to them directly.
It's really not that different.
And so that's where buildingthese different relationships
becomes very interesting to thentalk to them. And essentially,
what you're trying to do with amix of the seating and a mix of
the scraping differentinfluencers and paying some of
(16:55):
them, some of them you'reseating, you know, some of them
are on a commission. Some ofthem do get a flat rate like you
fat, you figure all that stuffout. And what you want to do is
you want to develop a databaseof influencers and creators that
you really enjoy working with.
And those are the ones that youbasically start to then get away
from the seating, you get awayfrom all the other elements, and
you start to work with them on amore regular basis. As you work
(17:17):
with them on a regular basis, Ireally like to have them all do
stuff around the same time tokind of develop that snowball
effect. It works out great. Butthen, like I said, you have to
make sure that you're notforgetting your own profile,
because you can't. You're goingto get a lot of people that do
their own due diligence. It'sthe biggest thing in E commerce
right now that a lot of brandsdon't realize is that consumers
(17:38):
are way smarter than they oncewere 10 years ago. They are
going to different websites tosee if you've got different
price points on your website,versus Amazon versus Walmart, et
cetera. They're going to all ofthem to check all of your
reviews. They're goingeverywhere to kind of make sure
that you're legitimate. And ifthey find you on a Tiktok or an
Instagram, one of the firstplaces they're going to is your
(17:59):
own profile. So if they go toyour profile and they see like,
hey, you've got, you know, 400followers and you haven't posted
in six months, they're going tothink you suck, and they're
never going to shop with you. Sothat's something you have to
factor in. So the best way to dosocial commerce is to look at
the entire platform and leverageit correctly. That means
leveraging not just having it ona Tiktok shop, but also
(18:21):
leveraging influencers, contentcreators, your organic social
media advertising and havingthem all work together. Social
media is really like its ownecosystem, right? When you think
about let's look at your D to Cwebsite, right? The more traffic
you drive to it, the better yourorganic search is going to do.
Your SEO starts to improve. Ifyou make sure, from a technical
perspective, from a keywordperspective, a content
(18:42):
perspective, et cetera, your SEOwill continue to grow. So the
more and more traffic you driveto that page, the faster you
actually improve organically. Sothere's a lot of extra things
that will affect your SEO,right? Same thing with email
marketing, you can't you're notgonna make $1 off email if you
don't have an email list. Well,you've got to grow the email
list. Well, that comes fromdriving traffic to the website,
(19:03):
and then more traffic you driveto the website, more emails you
have. And so, like, it's a lotof things. There's a lot of gray
area. There's a lot of thingsthat overlap with each other on
social media. It's all in itsown ecosystem. It all overlaps
with each other. It's a it'sreally, really hard to make a
lot of sales through organicposts unless you're doing some
type of advertising as well, oreven just boosting posts. It's
(19:25):
really hard to make salesorganically on social media
unless you're leveraginginfluencers who are pushing
people to your profile. It'salso really difficult as a brand
to grow your own followers. Alot of people don't want to
follow companies because theyknow that you're biased and they
know that you're just trying tosell them stuff and blah blah.
So you have to find a way toposition your messaging and your
(19:46):
profile and your youreffectively your TV show, to. Be
more entertainment, educational,and not just pedaling a product
the whole time. So you've got tofind ways to get them all to
work together, to workcorrectly. So this is why you
see a lot of Amazon sellers thatwill come from Amazon, because
they want to start diversifying,and they go over to Tiktok to
try and like, just, hey, I'mgoing to put up this product,
(20:07):
and then I'm just going to giveinfluencers the option to sell
it and then make a ton of moneyif you're lucky enough that
someone picks it up and it goesviral, yeah, but chances of that
happening are slim. You have toput the work behind it. You have
to put the relationships behindit with the influencers to get
it all to work, and then, eventhen, to make sure that you're
covering all of your bases,that's when you've got to make
(20:29):
sure that you also have youradvertising efforts in place.
And you'll notice this wholetime, I didn't talk about any
really prospecting advertising.
I didn't talk about running anyads towards completely cold
audiences. I'm not saying itdoesn't work. It absolutely
works. There's just a finethere's a finesse to doing top
of funnel versus more middle offunnel. And if you're looking to
(20:50):
really improve on the socialcommerce side, there's dozens of
things you can do to grow thataudience that's going to get
pixeled for you to then be ableto retarget so social commerce
becoming huge, you also thenfactor in like live, like live,
social commerce, shopping andthings like that. And these are
influencers that are effectivelylive streaming and talking about
the product. And you know howpeople should be purchasing it?
(21:11):
There's, I don't know if you'veever seen it. It's hilarious.
There's a influencer that, Ithink there's a couple of them,
different Asian influencers,that literally, like, they'll
grab, like, a product, andthey'll be like, buy this, and
then they'll move it, and thenthey'll buy it. And they'll,
like, I saw one this girl,she'll like, grab a dress, put
the dress on, be like, This iswhat it looks like, and then
(21:32):
she'll go to the next dress.
And, like, literally, inseconds. It's hilarious. It's
awesome. Apparently it works. Ithink she's making, like, a
ridiculous amount of money doingit, but it's stuff like that
that can be very interestingthat you have to keep testing.
Live shopping, pros and cons,QVC. I'm based out of
Westchester, Pennsylvania. Ifyou know where that is, that is
(21:53):
where QVC is. So this area isvery interesting in terms of
people that are constantlygetting a job and losing a job,
because QVC is trying to figureout what the hell is going on.
They're trying social commerce,shopping. Now we'll see what
happens. And so that's alwayskind of interesting, right? Of
like it worked on TV. Can itwork on social media? And so now
more and more company mediacompanies like that, are trying
(22:15):
to lean in on it. And so theseare different areas that where
social media becomes a reallydifferent beast. The problem is
the lift of social media, right?
A lot of brands jump over tocertain platforms, and they just
wonder, like, Why isn't thisworking? For me, it's like SEO.
It doesn't happen overnight. Itcan take a really long time for
things to really start to growand start to get that snowball
effect. But just like SEO, assoon as you stop doing it, you
(22:37):
just start to go downhill. Andso if you do decide you want to
start again, you've got to rampit back up, and then it's an
uphill battle to even get itback to where it was. So it's
one of those things that ifyou're going to do it, you have
to commit to it and make surethat it's being done correctly.
So you've got to think about, ifyou're creating your own
content, you may need videoeditors. You may need
(22:59):
photographers. You're going toneed content creators. You're
going to need to get that you'regoing to need to get the product
to the content creators. Youneed to develop a system to get
the content in to make sure it'sscheduled, and testing different
copy and different posts andthings like that. You're going
to make sure you haveadvertising in place. You're
gonna need someone who wants towork with the influencers.
(23:20):
There's six or seven people thatcan be involved over in through
doing social commerce correctly.
And one of the reasons I wantedto do this topic today was
because I find a lot ofspecifically Amazon sellers,
because they're always kind ofhesitant to jump into doing
their own website, so they justwant to go to Tiktok because
it's the new shiny thing. Andthe issue kind of becomes with
(23:41):
jumping from an Amazon to aTiktok Amazon. You know, years
ago, used to be like, get aproduct, throw it up. Especially
if you make your listing lookreally good, you're going to do
just fine. And the logic tothese brands is, oh, I'm going
to do the same thing on Tiktok.
That's 100% not the case. Tiktokdoes take a lot of work. There's
still a lot of things that haveto go into play there. And it's
the same thing on Instagram,even even through other areas
(24:04):
like Pinterest and YouTube andall these different social media
channels, there's a lot ofdifferent things you have to
factor in, and it can be anextremely lucrative way to start
to diversify and not be soreliant on these different like
marketplaces and things likethat. But the other thing to
think about is, once you startventuring into social media,
they start to do their own duediligence. And if you don't have
(24:25):
your own website, they're goingto be kind of skeptical about
the reality and how good thisproduct might actually be. And
so that's where it becomes kindof a risk to do that, unless you
can make sure that you'repushing them to Amazon and
Amazon alone. So socialcommerce, overall, a lot of
stuff going on. It's constantlya growing area, but it's
something I wanted to talk aboutbecause we do so much of it, and
(24:46):
there's so many commonmisconceptions about how it
should be done, at least in thebeginning. To test it, once you
get going, it's pretty selfexplanatory. Everyone knows it,
but it's more about when thesebrands come from. An Amazon and
want to jump into Tiktok or evenany other social media platform
is knowing the reality of whatis necessary to really get a
social media platform reallybeing beneficial for you,
(25:08):
questions, comments, concerns,feel free to reach out to me.
But as usual, thank you all forjoining me today. I appreciate
it, and feel free to check outecom show.com check out all of
our previous episodes, but asusual, thanks you all for
joining us, we will see you nexttime. Have a good one!
Narrator (25:29):
Thank you for tuning in to the Ecomm Show. Head over
to e commshow.com to subscribeon your favorite podcast
platform or on the BlueTuskerYouTube channel. The E comm show
is brought to you by BlueTusker,a full service digital marketing
company specifically for Ecommerce sellers looking to
(25:51):
accelerate their growth. Go tobluetuskr.com now for more
information, make sure to tunein next week for another amazing
episode of the Ecomm Show.
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