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- [00:01]
A
Welcome back to Limited Supply, the podcast where we get deep into the tactical and strategic side of e commerce, digital marketing and building consumer brands. I'm your host, Nick Sharma. I've spent the last nine years building, scaling and investing in brands. And through this show and my weekly newsletter at Nick Co Email, I'm here to share everything I've learned. The wins, the losses, the experiments, the tactics and the insights. All so you can unlock your next hundred thousand dollars in revenue. Today's episode is a good one, but before we dive in, let me tell you about our chosen sponsor for this week's episode. Think about your best friend and how they shop. It's vastly different than how you might shop online and you both should never get the same cart. Reminder emails. That's where instant AI takes over. In the last few weeks, Instant rolled out AI flows for over 500 brands. The momentum is crazy. And one of my favorite brands tripled their email revenue in just 60 days. That's one of hundreds of wins they've had so far. Here's why it works. Instant can immediately understand who's on your site and what all they've been looking at. The discount, the copy, the imagery, the on site promotion, all of that's pulled dynamically into personal email flows. Then it sends it at the exact moment that the shopper is ready to buy. Black Friday is basically tomorrow and every hour you wait is money you'll never get back. Don't let your retention email stay old and lame while everyone else cashes in. Book a demo by November 28th and get 50% off your first 60 days at Instant One. Sharma, do it now and turn this Q4 into your biggest ever. What's going on everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Limited Supply. Today we've got my buddy Zen on. He is. If you don't follow him on Twitter, you. You maybe do or you've maybe seen his tweets. He's always got the funniest memes and posts within the e commerce and direct consumer industry. But Zen is a really. He's just really knowledgeable when it comes to all things social shopping. So today we focus a lot on TikTok shop. It's kind of been his bread and butter for the last couple years. He started by. Well, he'll get into it, but he started by basically launching a few brands of his own. They were doing so well. And then he started doing it as a service and everything from creative affiliates, how you get your first affiliates on board, what kind of image carousel you put in the Actual gallery on TikTok Shop. How do you think about percentages, commissions? How does goalie do it? All this stuff we dove into. So enjoy the episode. It's a nice quick episode. Hits you with all the good stuff. We didn't spend too much time kind of verbalizing shitposting until the very end. But check out the episode. Let me know what you think and whatever you think we should dive deeper on from this episode. Let me know DM me on Twitter or shoot me an email. I'm just Nick at Nick Co now and let me know what you like the best because we're going to go way deeper. I'm going to try to create some more like masterclass style episodes where we just go grab experts and go super deep and teach a bunch of things. So anyways, enjoy the episode and looking forward to hear what your thoughts are. Well, Zane, it's amazing to have you here. We've met in person a few times. I've obviously giggled at your Twitter for, for months now and it's exciting to meet you in person or not in person, but virtually and do this. So thank you for coming on and for, for doing this.
- [03:18]
B
Yeah, man, thanks for having me.
- [03:20]
A
So I think you know everybody. There's a lot of things going on right now. There's Black Friday, we've got the holidays. We've little Q5 period in between Christmas and New Year's and then New Year starts and we've got the wellness Super Bowl. Then we go into, you know, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day. All big, very Hallmark kind of holidays coming up mixed with these non so Hallmark holidays. And everybody's just thinking about what they're doing from a sales standpoint. One of the biggest channels that a lot of brands are now trying to focus on is TikTok Shop, which is your specialty. So I'm excited to get into that today. But I guess before we get into what's coming up next, how would you explain kind of the state of social shopping right now in the world of consumer brands?
- [04:05]
B
Yeah, for sure. It's kind of the new hot thing that you're seeing. Not just like short videos. Ugc, that's kind of been around. TikTok Shop just enables that to be much easier. But live streaming has been kind of the thing that people are watching. We're seeing a lot of streamers become kind of like the cultural norm. People are watching people like speed and they're getting tons of views and tons of live streams and the whole younger audience is kind of obsessed with it. So we're kind of watching that transition into more of a shopping thing. Already in China and other parts of Asia, live streaming is huge. It's making up like 10, 20, 30% of E commerce sales. So it's still like in its infancy, but it's like the cool kid on the block. And it's just, I think, something for all brands to keep an eye on.
- [04:51]
A
Yeah, it's interesting. I feel like the live streaming, there's a huge wave of like live streaming which then kind of kicked off clipping, I feel. And clipping, at least my definition is the. Is just a bunch of kids who are taking long form, longer form pieces of content, chopping them up into what they think will generate views or engagement, and then posting it up and trying to gather as many views as possible. Because they get paid on a CPM basis and the people paying them, at first they were like, you know, as live streamers. Like a speed would get clipped up and then they'd put a casino logo on it and a casino would pay them, you know, some cpm. But now it's a lot of consumer brands also who are starting to play around with the clipping strategy and pumping out crazy amounts of content. But actually, before we get into all this, I realized, let's give yourself an intro. Can you just give as if you're bragging? As if your mom was bragging. How would your mom introduce you?
- [05:46]
B
Yeah, for sure, dude. My mom probably would have no idea what I do for a living if I told her like 10 times. But yeah, we started off on the brand side like we been doing. My partner and I have been doing e Commerce since 2018. We had a couple e commerce brands that we scaled to like, each one was like seven, close to eight figures in revenue. We launched one of them on TikTok shop in October of 23. That did really well. We were posting a lot about it, Twitter, LinkedIn. People just kind of assumed that it was just like a lead gen funnel. And they were pinging us like, hey, run our TikTok shop. And we were like, we don't really do that, right? We just have our own brands. So started referring them out to agencies at that time in 23 because it was so new that like a lot of these agencies didn't really understand TikTok shop. They were just trying to cash in on the gold rush. So we saw the opportunity there. You know, we were, we were referring people to agencies, but they weren't having a good experience. So we launched the agency last year and now that's become our main thing. Like, the brands are bootstrapped. We don't really answer to anyone. But with the agency, we have clients, so that's been kind of our main focus. That's been doing pretty well. It's like, still pretty boutique. Um, we have around like 20 clients across health and wellness, food and beverage. You know, supplements is probably like 80% of our clients, and then a lot of food and bad brands as well.
- [06:59]
A
Amazing. I feel like supp. I've never seen a supplement brand not crushing. Have you?
- [07:04]
B
It's very rare. As long as it's not like luxury price point, like TikTok shop is really good for, like, the cheap stuff. If it's like 20, $30, that's perfect. If you're trying to do like a luxury supplement or like you're only sending selling bundles, it's like 70, 80 bucks. That's not really the right fit for TikTok shop. That's the only time we've really struggled. But yeah, supplements does really well. Even food and beverage, as long as it's good price point. Like, that's so easy. Like, you send something out, someone eats it on camera. It's very TikTok native. They're like, ooh, this is delicious. The sales kind of roll in.
- [07:32]
A
You mentioned TikTok native. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Like, what. What do you think constitutes to be TikTok native?
- [07:39]
B
Yeah, so if you think about like the millennial Gen Z, the. I think there was like a. A tweet that kind of went viral lately where, like, everyone's like, kind of using the same font, like the Surrey font or whatever.
- [07:50]
A
The blending.
- [07:51]
B
Yeah, exactly. That kind of blanding type stuff does really well because the younger audience. Right. A lot of millennials, it's a lot of Gen Z if it looks native and it's just like more some blending, but also very colorful as well. Like things that really stand out because you're. You're trying to make a product that like someone pulls out on a video and it stops a scroll, which is, you know, pretty difficult. So it can't be something that's just like, for like an older audience. It can't be like 40, 50, 60. It just has to be geared towards a younger audience that's typically. Who is more active in buying on TikTok shop.
- [08:21]
A
Totally. And when you talk about like, supplements doing well on TikTok, what kind of supplements are doing well? Is it like the colostrums? Is it vitamin gummies? Is it like you know, daily vitamins. Is it vitamin C? What kind of stuff is it?
- [08:35]
B
Yeah, so kind of always like cycling, like the one that like people kind of know the most for TikTok Shop, just because goal kind of exploded with it out of the gate was Ashwagandha. Now that's like a little bit tougher. It's like, it's usually like something pops off and then every supplement brand kind of jumps on because it's just so much quicker to get to manufacturing than it was like in the past. Like within six months it's being copied. So Ashwagandha has done pretty well. The daily vitamins do well, but it's not really like a problem solving type thing. So it's just, it's not going to get as much. Any supplement that can help with like weight loss or if it's like, you know, something that's going to help with like more appearance, those are going to do well. Even if, you know, you kind of have to be careful what you say. So even things like magnesium, things like you said, like colostrum, those are starting to get big. Creatine is pretty big protein. As long as it's within kind of a kind of that TikTok native, like just product form or form factor. If, like, if it's like a gummy, if it's like a stick pack that tends to do well, if it's just like pills or powder, that's just not as cool and it's just not going to perform as well.
- [09:42]
A
Yeah, it's. I remember when Lemmy started doing Tik Tock Shop and it was blowing my mind how fast they were getting sales. I mean, some of their SKUs here have, you know, 26,000 units sold on a bundle of two SKUs together. How, how do some of these brands, like, how do they get started? Like, what is the secret to getting started and doing it right? Because from what I remember or from what I know, it's like it's really about building that social proof. It's about getting affiliates on board. You have to do some work to even make it attractive to those early people as well. Like, is there sort of a playbook or a formula or something that's kind of standard that you go through?
- [10:21]
B
Yeah, for sure. So like TikTok has like a graph that basically shows GMV or like revenue versus number of videos posted and it's basically a straight line. Like the more, the larger volume of content you have coming in, the more chances of something going viral. Like when TikTok Shop started Is like you could throw a shop link on and like 1 out of 50 videos would go viral just because they were trying to juice it and they're trying to get brands on board now it's like maybe like one in a hundred, one in 150, maybe even one in 200. So you just need like a ton of content coming in every month. Every brand that you see, whether it's Lemmy or like any brand that's doing over a million GMV per month, they have at least a thousand videos being posted per month plus also like live streaming. So they're just sampling out like crazy. Like, let me, I can guarantee you. So it sends out several hundred samples per month. They're just really maximizing the amount of content that's coming in. They might have live streaming as well. Sometimes it takes, you know, that makes up like 10, 15%. But primarily a short video, primarily sending out a ton of samples. Some brands also give like flat fees. Like they'll send you a sample and they'll give you like 10, 20, 50 bucks for video just to post like every a video every day. Maximize that content. Then you put ad spend behind what's working and that's what is what really drives you to those kind of numbers.
- [11:33]
A
Wow. So like so on, on paid social, I feel like a good hit rate is like around, you know, 5 to 10% here. It sounds like basically half a percent to 1% is pretty standard hit rate. And I totally agree. I mean, every time I've talked to a brand like a founder that crushes on TikTok shop, they always say it's a volume game and you know, the more content you put out, the luckier you get. So one thing I heard from from another brand was like they almost built their own ambassador network of a few hundred people. Have you seen brands doing that a lot or is that more like less common?
- [12:07]
B
Yeah, so like the brands that are like coming from a different platform where they already had that, like let's say they built that out on Instagram, let's say it's something like comfort, where they already have like tons of ambassadors, they kind of shift that over to TikTok shop. If this is like their first rodeo, like this is their first time doing like social selling or anything like that, Likely they don't have that network already where then they're just starting from scratch. Like they're mainly sending out samples, they're seeing who's posting videos, who's doing well, and then they're kind of re engaging those people. They're putting them into a discord group or something like that and just like getting them to post more. So if you're already like a brand that's like very used to that, you already have the ambassador network, like they tend to just shift over and like they can crush it pretty quickly. But like 95% of brands have, you know, they're still just, they're just doing Meta or they're just doing Amazon.
- [12:52]
A
Yeah, yeah. I feel like most brands too that want to get on TikTok shop, they almost just like put it on, they upload the products and then maybe they invite a few affiliates but then it kind of just sits and they don't really like aggressively push it. But I think from what I'm gathering, it sounds like you have to pretty aggressively get onboarded on the platform before you can kind of let it coast a little bit.
- [13:15]
B
Yeah, 100%. It's very much like a momentum based platform and there's definitely like an initial investment. Like once you are kind of scaled up, then it's like it's harder for sales to drop off. But in the beginning it's like, it's such a, it's such a flywheel that you have to start turning. Even if you started tomorrow, like let's say you sent out 50 samples tomorrow, it's going to take three or four days for the creator to get it. TikTok gives them two weeks to post, they post. It takes a week or two for the video to get traction. The video starts getting views. TikTok has no idea who to target. Right. Like they're just showing it to people who are watching it. Once you get like 100 sales, a thousand sales, now it's, now it's not just showing to anybody. It's like, okay, people who bought, you know, your product also bought this product last week. So let me start showing it to those people who bought, you know, a similar product. It starts to target better, but it's just like it's not getting any of that data until you know you're at a hundred orders, a thousand orders you sent out, you know, a thousand samples. By that point it's not like meta where they have like 13 years, 15 years longitudinal data. Right. Like they know socks. Last month you're going to buy this product just based like the AI and data that they have. TikTok shops like really been around for just like a few years. Their, their data is a little bit more siloed. They take a little bit longer to learn. They're looking at it like your sales as they're coming in and then they're kind of making adjustments so it just takes longer. But then once it's scaled up, it's not even about like the sales that you're getting on TikTok shop. Just like the amount of brand awareness, the amount of just like cultural significance of being viral on TikTok that can create a huge spillover to Amazon, give you creatives that you can get usage rights, run on meta, do a ton of spend there. Like there's a ton of just like knock on benefits.
- [14:54]
A
Yeah. I even remember the early days of TikTok and like products putting the badge, you know, as seen on TikTok shop or you know gone viral on TikTok. Like that badge would help increase conversion rate on a website even if there was no evidence that it did go viral or was big on TikTok.
- [15:15]
B
Yeah, it's like the number one like social proof that you can have these days, right? Like yeah, besides like a celebrity endorsement which I wouldn't consider like social proof even, but it's just like you could have like a bunch of five star reviews and nowadays people just kind of think that that's like fake. You could have like a ton of orders which like TikTok shop it like the order count is like actually accurate. It's not like on a website where you can just say like oh, a hundred thousand people bought it or whatever it is. But once it goes viral on TikTok then like everyone's thinking like oh I gotta have it. Like this is something totally. It's like super on trend so it helps. We've even seen like retailers like Target, they'll take shelf space and they'll just dedicate it to brands that are viral on TikTok. So give them shelf space that normally you'd have to pay like a pretty good amount for. Just knowing that like if it's going viral on TikTok and somebody walks in and they recognize the product immediately sell through is going to be better. Just velocity is going to be better. And that's what they're looking for, right? Like they're looking for products and brands are just going to sell through quickly.
- [16:12]
A
Yeah, I remember. Do you remember that influencer Emily Marico, she used to make the salmon bowl?
- [16:19]
B
I don't think so, but she went.
- [16:22]
A
Viral for like making this. Day after day after you cook salmon like salmon and rice bowl and Trader Joe's across the country made a whole section near the front of the store with all the ingredients to make the Salmon bowl. And I was like, wow, that's amazing because they don't have to pay her anything. They just basically saw what was kind of trending or, or like this group of merchandising that worked well and then they just put that in every store and like it was, the sell through was amazing. It was right in the front. But I think that's going to be happening a lot more. And I'm also curious too. Like, I'm curious to see how retailers are going to be adapting themselves for what's viral on the Internet. Like, we kind of see it a little bit here and there, but a lot of that right now is very pay to play. But I think it's going to flip the other way where the retailers are going to be like, wait a second, forget paying these guys to put their stuff or getting money from the product, let's create our own sections, merchandise it in a way where we know sell through is going to be way higher and make our own money that way.
- [17:21]
B
Yeah, for sure. I think retail is kind of like the boomers of E commerce where they're always like a little bit slower. You could have a call with the buyer and be like, hey, I'm spending a million a month on meta. And they'd be like, okay, that means nothing to me. But nowadays it's starting to change where they're like, oh, okay, cool. Like you're generating all this brand awareness that we don't have to do now.
- [17:39]
A
Right, right.
- [17:39]
B
But we tell them the viral on TikTok. We told them a year or two ago, they'd be like, yeah, that's cool. Like, you know, I don't care. Now it's like, oh, okay. That's something that like we're actually considering. And even like we've seen brands like if you go viral on TikTok, like everybody's on TikTok whether they're willing to admit it or not to some degree. The buyer on TikTok and if they're scrolling through TikTok and it seems like you're everywhere, then now they suddenly they want you. You're suddenly like punching above your weight and you actually seem way bigger than you are. You could be like just a 5 million a year business, a 10 million year business. To them. You look like you're a nine figure year total business that they're like, why aren't they in Walmart? Yeah. Why aren't they in target?
- [18:15]
A
Yeah, 100%. I'm curious your take on TikTok creative, whether it's TikTok shop TikTok creators TikTok ads do you do much TikTok ad stuff as well?
- [18:25]
B
Yeah, we pretty much use GMB Max, which is like a feature within TikTok ads where it just takes all of your top performing TikTok shop videos across your videos and create videos and it just spends behind what it thinks will do best. So it just kind of automates it and it sends it to the videos on Shop. But yeah, what we found is like with TikTok creative, it used to be, I mean it's still pretty different from like what works on other platforms but also at the same time like the way that other platforms have started to just copy TikTok where like Instagram reels, Instagram stories, they're all pretty much the same format. So we've seen brands like if they have a video that does really well on TikTok shop, there's like a good like 20, 25% chance that it'll do well on Meta ads as well. So we have a client where like their top performing creatives on meta are from TikTok shop because it's like okay, if it's working on TikTok, pretty good chance like the exact same format, exact same thing, it's going to work on Instagram reels.
- [19:21]
A
Yeah. Brands like Third Love, Liquid IV and Neurogum all swear by Instant, they've tripled their email revenue and some like Karen Kane, even see a 5x increase. Why? Well, because AI can build hundreds of versions that you'll never have time to make while you're running your brand. Instant is running all the experiments, figuring out what works and then continuously optimizing those to keep the conversions growing. Last chance. Don't get left behind while everyone else goes. AI book a demo by November 28th and get 50% off your first 60 days at Instant One. Sharma, go lock it in and crush BFCM. Yeah, I feel like, I feel like that's so true. I remember even with a Tequila brand a couple years ago, like the best TikTok ad had the, had the highest click through rate on Facebook and Instagram and we were just like, I get, I mean it makes sense like especially for a beverage product, it's, you know, it demonstrates it. You can see the reaction, you can see how it looks. But yeah, I feel like there's going to be a lot more just carryover of that kind of more native feeling creative of like, you know, what's native in the palm of your hand versus on Meta. It tends to be a lot of more Studio shot stuff or pretty stuff, things that are highly edited. What about when it comes to creators and, and maybe even live? Like, how do you think about creative direction there when it comes to creators? Are you one on the side of like, let's let them figure out the product and talk about it or let's give them some guidance or let's give them a script or. One thing we used to do is we would give like a bullet point as a brief. So like, hey, for your intro, make sure you touch on these three. For your main talking points, make sure you hit these points and for your closeout thoughts, you know, hit these and then we could, we would usually take that and mix and match a bunch of the different bullet points.
- [21:09]
B
Yeah, 100%. I think with TikTok it's a little bit different because it's like for TikTok shop, a lot of times you're just sending them the sample, you're not paying them upfront. Like if you go on some UGC marketplace and you're paying someone $100 for video, you can be pretty strict on like what you want in the brief and if they don't meet what's in the brief, it's like, hey, you're not getting paid and you get revisions and things like that. With TikTok Shop, if you send them a sample, there's no revisions. They're really just getting the free product. Like Maybe it's a $20 product and they know it's probably costing you five or six bucks. It's probably not going to be something that they spend like three hours making. But at the same time it's like you still want to give them some direction. Typically what we do, instead of like writing like a two page brief, a three page brief, you're definitely in the right ballpark in like what we do in terms of like a bullet point, but what we find like even more powerful. It's like sending just example videos. Because if you're a TikTok creator and this is pretty much everyone these days, like they're not really reading, nobody wants to read a big paragraph of text or something. But everyone on the platform who's a TikTok creator watches TikTok videos. So if you send them like three videos, I've done really well for you. Perfect. They can watch all three, they get some inspiration, they put their own twist on it. Kind of going back to what you're saying. Like in meta, it's like a 5, 10 hit rate that when TikTok shop is much lower it's like you're just paying them like, you know, the cost of product. It's like 10, 20 bucks. So like on a dollar basis you're probably getting the same hit rate. But you're gonna get a lot of people who just get the product. Maybe they just want the free product. Maybe they do like an unboxing that's like kind of lazy. Or they do like a video that you're not super happy with, but at the same time it's just like a volume play. Like you know, you get five videos for the cost of whatever it costs. For one off of a marketplace, if one out of five just does a really good job, you're probably going to be happy.
- [22:49]
A
Yeah, totally. And then how do you think about creative and the actual TikTok shop listing?
- [22:55]
B
So within the listing it's kind of the same thing where it's like we're not really worried about like the words that are in like the product description. Most people aren't going to read that. What we really want to do is just have really good images, like at least six or seven really solid images all serving like a different purpose. There should be one that's just like very well branded. It can have some call outs like you mentioned. Like TikTok is just way more lenient than Amazon on them. So you can say like number, number one best selling. You can like whatever badge you want to put on there. It's much easier than Amazon. A couple pictures of it being used or it's just more of a lifestyle shot. And then if you have a video in the listing, that's great as well of like, you know, kind of your top video or like a customer demonstrating it, how it looks in the real world, how it looks in real life. That's kind of how we think about it. So we just really want to maximize the images. And video description is a little bit less important. People aren't reading that as much.
- [23:45]
A
Yeah, I find. Have you ever seen like Neurogum's TikTok shop imagery? I feel like those are some of the best. Neurogum or even there's another one, Medicube, they have very like infographic driven imagery.
- [23:57]
B
Yeah, Neurogum's a great example. Kind of going back to what you're saying in terms of like the Ambassador program. That's really how they've been thinking about it. It's like they don't think of it as like, oh, these are creators. We send them a product and they make a post and then like we forget about Them, it's like, no, we want these people to be like ambassadors of a brand. We want them to love the brand. They probably have like one of the stronger discord communities and they really. Because it's kind of a, it's more of a commoditized product. It's just, it's like gum with like caffeine and there's a lot of caffeine infused products. There's a lot of different energy drinks. Like it's pretty tough market. Yeah. And it's not like it's a super, you know, unique like ingredient list, but they've just really figured out that marketing and really figured out how to get creators to like really care about the brand.
- [24:38]
A
Yeah, I think they're also just a good example of like, you know, on Meta you really need to pump AOV to make it work. And on TikTok shop, if you've got good product channel fit, you can kind of rip regardless of aov.
- [24:50]
B
Yeah, you're typically not going to get a super high aov. It's like young people, they're looking for a deal, they're looking for like a 20, $30 product, but you can get great LTV. It's like kind of TikTok shop is like your way of introducing people to the brand. Once they've tried Neurogum, once they really like the product, they're going to come back. Whether it's on Amazon, on your website, wherever that they can find, it's when they're going to come back. So you really want to focus on like kind of the intro almost sample pack, really small size that they can try. 20 bucks and then if the product's good, then you're confident that you're going to get that repeat rate. Okay.
- [25:21]
A
The other thing I want to talk about is the affiliate program. So I talked a little bit about this with Aaron Paul when he came on before, but he was mostly talking about affiliates as like media buyers being affiliates. This is obviously much different. This is like TikTok shop affiliates or creators who are affiliates. And I'm curious, like how, what is the strategy to get affiliates on board? Like there's obviously the TikTok tools to go and invite affiliates or to send products or invite people to a gifting experience. But how do you actually incentivize your first like a hundred affiliates to come on and actually get excited about a product that's just come to market, has no credibility, no social proof?
- [26:03]
B
Yeah, that's always like one of the toughest part of TikTok shop is like that 0 to 1. It's always helpful if you have, like, something like, if you have, like, you know, pretty strong Instagram or you're in a bunch of retailers or you're really doing well on Amazon, that's something that you can kind of show us, like, some kind of credibility or social proof. You see a lot of brands like Neurogum, like, they're mentioning that they're on Shark Tank. Things that, like, the average person can really resonate with. Typically, what we see in brands in the beginning, they'll just offer, like, a very competitive rate. So, like, typically, you're going to get 15, 20% commission. They'll offer like 30%. They might offer, like, some flat fees. You'll see brands like Goalie. We helped them publicize this campaign where they did a bunch of prizes that went, like, almost viral, where they're like, yeah, it was basically like an extra 20% commission rate. They're like, hey, if you do, you know, a thousand in sales and you get like a. Basically a product that was worth 200 bucks, like, it was almost like an extra 20 commission rate. But the way they kind of gamified it, where you're like, okay, you have to hit this and you get a prize, and like, the top prize is like a Lamborghini or, like Miami Condo or something. And then that's what gets clicks, that's what gets attention. So you really have to stand out because, like, every week there's like a hundred brands onboarding. It's like, what can you do that'll stand up, stand out? Like, a lot of people have copied that contest now, but it's just like, you got to think of something different.
- [27:19]
A
Yeah, I feel like the. The contest is a great idea. The goalie I've always known does like those prizes. Like, Instead of giving 20 off to customers, they'll tell the affiliates, like, whoever. Whoever drives the most will give you a car or something. And I've always thought that's genius because when you back it out at the volume they're probably doing, the car is probably cheaper than whatever commission they would normally pay.
- [27:40]
B
Yeah, it's interesting because it's like they. And I don't think this is like a secret, but they lose money on TikTok shop. Like, they spend. Like, I think when they did that contest, they were the biggest spender on TikTok ads that month, which was like June or July of like, I think it was like 24 or something. But they lost a lot of money on TikTok shop. But they're playing kind of like the long game where they're, they're in every single retailer. So like they started, if you look at the Nielsen reports, you pull the Nielsen reports for them across like a bunch of retailers like Target, they were like exploding. That's actually what led to, to Target then doing that program where they're like, okay, if a brand's viral on TikTok, we're going some great shelf space. Yeah, they knew that. Like, hey, we have like a 30 repurchase rate. Average person buys like six bottles or whatever. We can lose a lot of money on the front end. Like, we can lose a lot of money on TikTok Shop knowing that like Amazon, like their Amazon ranking for the Ashwagandha Gummy doubled, like sales double. They climb so much sales rank and it's like, okay, great, now there's like a 20% spill over to Amazon. Maybe there's like a 10, 15, 20 uplift in retail. And then over six months, like, okay, we're pretty confident we're gonna make that money back. So it's kind of like, you know, when people talk about meta, they're like, whoever can afford to pay the highest CPA is gonna win. It's kind of the same thing on TikTok shop where it's like a lot of these supplement brands like Physician's Choice, Nature made Goalie. Like they're just trying to break even on the channel because they're everywhere else and they're just driving a ton of brand awareness. Even if you're doing 100k a month on TikTok Shop, you're doing like millions of views, maybe even like 10 million views. So it's just a ton of top of funnel brand awareness that's being generated.
- [29:12]
A
Yeah, I feel like TikTok shop is kind of like it's got, I mean, it's got the same view through channel effect that like a celebrity or, or a big TV campaign has where you can pick up like it sprinkles awareness in the same ways as if like Mr. Beast was posting about your product.
- [29:31]
B
Yeah, exactly. Like if you think about TikTok shop, like it's grown pretty quickly. Like I think just last month they hit the size of ebay and they did that in like in just like a couple years. Crazy that TikTok shop's been around. But like TikTok is like a billion a day platform. Even like outside Q4 or sorry, A billion a month platform. But Amazon's a billion a day, right? So Amazon's like 30 times as big. So if you, you know, do 100k a month, 200k a month, whatever, on TikTok shop, you're breaking even after everything. But then you gain like four or five rankings on a very competitive search term on Amazon. And you go from like the second page, like the first page, like, suddenly like, your, your sales on Amazon have just like, like exploded. And it's very hard to do that on Amazon. Right? Like, there's tons, tons more feeds on Amazon. Amazon PBC is like super competitive, but once you start driving, like off channel traffic, they love that. Right? Like, that's. Yeah, it's a huge hack. Like, they see goalies, Ashwagandha Gummy, they're like, okay, great. I've never bought from TikTok before. They're calming whatever anxiety, like reducing whatever it is. Like, I have a big presentation tomorrow. Like, I need them, like, tomorrow. Right? So they get on Amazon, Amazon prime, they get that next day delivery, they search for Ashwagandha Gummy. They scroll until they find the product that they saw on TikTok. They click it, they buy it. Now Amazon's like, wow, you're the best term for Ashwagandha. Got me. Like, nobody's even looking at anything else. They're getting to you. They're clicking. It's like 100 conversion rate. They're like.
- [30:56]
A
And it's telling Amazon that when somebody searches Ashwagandha, they want exactly this product. That's amazing.
- [31:01]
B
Yeah. Yep. And that it's just super powerful. And then if you're also taking, you know, that creative that did well on TikTok shop, you're pinging the creator like, hey, let me get usage rights for this video. I want to test it on Facebook, Instagram. You're paying them like 100, 150, $200 flat. You're then taking over to Meta. You're not even editing it at all. Like, you're not even chopping it up. You're seeing the same exact video on Meta. There's like a 20, 25% chance that it does fall on Meta. You're increasing your meta spend by 20, 25%. We've had like a client that's just been able to double spend just from the amount of creatives are getting from TikTok shop now. Like, that's, you know, that's running at like a 20% EBITDA or whatever it is. So you can really break even on TikTok shop. And then knowing that these other channels is like where you're really going to make Your money.
- [31:44]
A
Right. Amazing. Wow. Dude, you're like a wealth of knowledge for all things TikTok. Like even I can tell by the words you're saying too. You're so deep in it. It's amazing.
- [31:53]
B
Yeah. This like past year and a half, it's like been our main thing. Right. This is like our bread and butter now.
- [31:58]
A
Yeah. Before we finish up, I have one question for you. What does Vermont do?
- [32:05]
B
Dude, I wish I could tell you, man. Soon as I. As soon as I find out, I'll ping you.
- [32:10]
A
Yeah, come let me know. Zane, thank you so much for coming on. We're gonna definitely have you back and I'm curious. I'm gonna. I'm gonna ask people who listen to this to like pinpoint some of their favorite parts or where they want to go deeper. And we should definitely have you back and go deeper just because you've got such a. A a deep book of knowledge when it comes to all things social, shopping, where can people find you, get in touch with you, ask you personal questions, et cetera, et cetera.
- [32:35]
B
Yeah, for sure. So if you're just looking for shit, posting general memes, I'm pretty active on Twitter and it's my handle. Yeah, not Zen again on Twitter. If you're looking for something that's like TikTok shop specific, you can go to our website, which is Zenith Agency. So Z A I N I T H. Amazing.
- [32:57]
A
Thank you, bro, for coming on. Appreciate you doing this.
- [32:59]
B
Thanks for having me, man.
- [33:02]
A
Thanks for listening. We'll be back next time to cut through the noise on CPG retail and e commerce. If you enjoyed this episode, why not share it with a friend? And be sure to subscribe wherever you listen so you don't miss the next one.
- [33:20]
B
Sa.