← The Commerce Collective Podcast
The Commerce Collective Podcast
The ultimate playbook for scaling creator-driven sales on TikTok Shop
00:32:17
Loading summary
Transcript52 lines
- [00:00]
A
These right categories. There's 170 million hours, I think we said, in the playbook of time spent on TikTok shop today. Like, that is where the target customers that you are trying to reach, they've all spending all their time in platform today. And so you're leaving millions of dollars on the table if you're not like injecting yourself into that conversation.
- [00:23]
B
Welcome back to the Commerce Collective podcast. My name is Emma Irwin, your host for this show and today we are talking TikTok shop. We're digging into the key themes from our recently pub white paper. TikTok shop unlocks the ultimate brand playbook for turning views into profitable growth. In this episode, you'll see what you're missing out on if you're treating TikTok shop like just another social channel. And we'll walk through product selection, working with creators, scaling your content strategy and measuring all of the effort. All right, let's get into it and welcome today's guest back on the show.
- [00:52]
A
My name is Darren Baker. I'm the CEO of Flywheel Ventures. Flywheel Ventures goal is to help brands understand what are that next generation of retail marketplaces that they need to invest in. And we did a broad purview and we spend all our time on TikTok shop.
- [01:05]
B
Amazing. And since we are talking all TikTok shop, I have to note as you being the person leading up this endeavor, like, are you purchasing things off of TikTok shop? Have you bought anything cool or do you just watch from the sidelines?
- [01:17]
A
No, no, no. I've definitely, I've definitely bought stuff. I have two teenage daughters and I think all the stuff that you hear about TikTok shop is like my. It's true. I mean, like, that's where they spend all of their time when it comes to like product discovery and entertainment. And so we bought my daughter's, my younger daughter's, like, office chair, like studying chair that she uses in her desk at home on TikTok shop. And my other daughter both buys products on TikTok shop and is like trying to become a nano micro influencer too. So it was really interesting at a conference last week. We talked about, one of the things we chatted about was like how the world of advertising is changing and that the people that are getting advertised to can also become the content creators and the sort of like pseudo advertisers. And so it's like turning the whole thing on its head in a way that's like very, very like social media.
- [02:09]
B
First, let's set the Scene. As I mentioned, Darren recently wrote this TikTok shop playbook for brands. You can find it linked in the episode description. Of course I don't have to tell you what TikTok shop is. We are beyond that. But I did want to understand the motivations for now being the right time to write this playbook. So I started off by asking Jared, you know what changed in the last 12 to 18 months or so that really has moved TikTok shop from being this interesting growing channel to watch to an opportunity that brands should be maximizing.
- [02:40]
A
I think there's a couple of things that changed. One, just the pure volume of commerce that's going through TikTok. So you know the way we've quantified that and you and I've talked about this a bunch is TikTok shop in the US is now the same size as ebay. It took TikTok what, three years to get to the size of ebay. That took them 30 years to get to. So it's the pace and the scale of growth is just shocking. I think that has been driven by. It's not a bold prediction to say in the categories where people want to put things on their face, try on clothes, taste something and describe it like the categories that just gravitate towards more of that like content, video, form of content. It just continues to just grow like a rocket ship on TikTok shop. And it only makes sense that like if you're thinking five years in the future, why wouldn't it be as big as any other retail channel out there when it in those kinds of categories? It's just the way that consumers want to interact with the product and like and talk about it. And then I think the other thing is like the, the inside baseball sort of way to think about it like the how it all hand operates internally. The world of going after affiliates has changed significantly in that it used to be just sort of like try to reach out to as many affiliates as you can as often as you can and just blast volume out there. And it's still a volume game on TikTok shop from the number of videos you need. But it's no longer a volume game on the affiliate space. It's like about developing repeatable, scalable long term relationships with affiliates, not just blasting all of them with like please try to sell this product for me.
- [04:16]
B
Obviously most big brands are on TikTok shop. I think at this point most big brands are if you're not, what are you doing? But some might still be treating it more of like a side project in your view, like why does that leave potentially millions on the table if you're just treating it as a side project now?
- [04:31]
A
I think it leaves millions on the table because again in like these right categories there's 180 million hours or 170 million hours. I think we said on, in the, in the playbook of time spent on TikTok shop today, like that is where the target customers that you are trying to reach all are spending all their time in platform today. And so you're leaving millions of dollars on the table. If you're not like injecting yourself into that conversation, leveraging it for the volume of like authentic creator driven content that you want and then actually looping that back to the commerce capabilities that are on TikTok shop, you're also leaving that massive halo effect that you're going to see just from the pure amount of conversations that are happening on TikTok which lead to downstream transactions on Amazon or your D2C site or other channels like that.
- [05:15]
B
Got it. I'm going back to you mentioning like working with a ton of affiliates previously. I feel like what I understood of big brands and working through treating something like a social media channel is a lot of them like focus heavily on working with a couple of giant influencers. Is there room for that on TikTok shop? Or what is the balance between a million affiliates or not a million affiliates. That's an exaggeration. But many versus big influencers, look the
- [05:42]
A
brands that want to grow the most can certainly incorporate those larger influences, let's call it like paid social, into their TikTok shop environments. But to be successful on TikTok shop you still need thousands and thousands of affiliate driven videos. Now where I think the world of affiliates is changing is that or the influencers in general. Like I was at a conference last week down in Southern California, social commerce conference and we had a dinner with about a couple dozen what you would consider to be those bigger creators that mostly do like paid brand deals. They are starting to recognize that the world of like big brand deals and like I'm going to get paid nothing and make it on the back end. Affiliates battle is starting to converge a little bit. So like we are doing more work on the lower nano and micro creators and helping those affiliates generate more content by giving them like small amounts of money. So please, you know, we'll give you a hundred bucks to create five videos. Mega influencers are like experimenting with becoming more of an affiliate and seeing really, really amazing returns without sort of like overly impacting their brand on the paid brand side of things. And so I think you're seeing those worlds converge a little bit. Like it's not going to be this clear cut, like, oh no, no, I don't do affiliate. I'm a, I'm a paid influencer or I only do affiliate. Like it's going to get all muddy in the middle.
- [06:58]
B
When you look across brands who are trying to win on TikTok shop right now, where do most of them fall down? Like, can you identify one mistakes that almost guarantee that you're not going to see meaningful revenue?
- [07:09]
A
The biggest mistake is to treat TikTok shop like a singular P and L and sort of say I'm only going to invest a dollar in this thing or a million dollars in this thing if I know that I'm going to be profitable on that channel from day one. It you're not going to be, it's going to take a while. You get three benefits out of it. You get sales on TikTok shop, which you know should be relatively significant. But for a lot of the large brands we're working with, it pales in comparison to what they're doing on, you know, the large retailers or in store. But you are getting a massive amount of affiliate traded content and therefore video views at a really, really low cost. And you were going to see the halo on other platforms too. So the brands that are succeeding are sort of looking at it across all three of those areas and like making their investment appropriately rather than saying like top down. This has to be, you know, just profitable from a top down P and
- [08:06]
B
L. Now that we have a better understanding of the TikTok shop landscape, what makes it different and why brands need to be acting strategically. Here we're going to get into how to actually do that. That brings us to the first step in the playbook which is choosing the right products. Products that capture attention and fit naturally into the culture of the TikTok feed. But how should brands think about which products belong on TikTok shop versus their Amazon or even DTC assortment department?
- [08:30]
A
Yeah, look, I think the way to think about this is like the easiest way to think about it is like put yourself in the position of the affiliate or the creator. Like what is the thing that you are going to tell the creator that is interesting and exciting about this product? And like, you know, a year ago everyone thought that was price, price, price. Like it has to be cheaper on TikTok than other places. Obviously the large brands that we work with are not going to do that, right? That's just not even like a discussion to have. So once you move beyond price, then it's like a unique bundling strategy. Maybe it's like a different bundle of products and you can get other places. Maybe it is launching new products into The World of TikTok shop. We've got some, some examples in the playbook that we launched about brands that are using it as a product innovation platform. Because if you want to generate a bunch of buzz at a reasonable marketing cost, TikTok shop is the place to do it. So launch your products first on TikTok shop. In some cases it's product collaborations. We've had other, you know, two brands sort of come together and say we're going to create something unique together and launch it on TikTok shop. So there's lots of ways to the the product strategy. It just has to start with like the number one most important thing is we on the brand's behalf have to go out and get creators excited about this product. What is the thing that's going to get them excited? What is the hook?
- [09:46]
B
It's kind of like it's this essentially the fastest feedback like R and D sort of channel that you have for products and deciding like what works in this format and what can we build that's new that kind of works in the format and get feedback almost completely instantly.
- [10:02]
A
It's the fastest and it's the broadest with the most data. And this is a challenge for a lot of the large brands, but the ones that get get it is it. You are not, you are telling the creator like please say these five things and please don't say these five things. But you are giving them enough room to create with their own authenticity. And so it's like a giant R and D lab that you're getting like immediate feedback from a large volume of data in a way that you don't have like total control over the end message but, but you have enough control over it to make sure it's like safe. But you're getting all this interesting stuff back. And like one of the real interesting insights is like a lot of the videos that perform best are not the super polished videos that a brand would be used to getting in a paid social environment. It is the mom after soccer practice propping her phone up on the steering wheel and like something really authentic that delivers a slightly different message than the one you would have thought resonated. But that's what resonates and that that's a lot of the Power of it is like you get a lot of that data back and you can really analyze it for sure.
- [11:01]
B
I think like when I'm scrolling through TikTok or even like Instagram reels, I spend probably split amount of time or equal split amount of time on the 2. Like the second I see something super polished and it just looks like an ad, I'm going away so fast. But if you catch my attention with just some kind of real life looking scenario, I'm way more likely to listen to your story and look at the product that you're talking about.
- [11:24]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so we actually want the creators to do that and that's that really interesting briefing process where you're like telling them what's interesting about the brand, giving them enough, enough insight to make sure that like they need to make the right claim about the product that actually you know, reinforces the message that the brand wants. But like other than that, like let them, let them create, let them create that authenticity for sure.
- [11:48]
B
I have one more question before we start getting more into what you're talking about. And you mentioned like price and that branches in general aren't going to talk like oh hey, super low price. This is why you should buy this. But there was a perception for a long time that products on TikTok shop are ultra low price. Like this is an ultra low price marketplace. But I know you would challenge that assumption. But I'm curious, like what have you seen actually work when it comes to pricing margin on TikTok shop? Is that assumption wrong and why?
- [12:13]
A
It's definitely wrong. We've seen a lot of brands succeed at higher price points than, than you would necessarily think. We've got a prestige beauty brand that we talk about in the playbook that did a really great job of selling a not that cheap product on TikTok shop. We've got other apparel brands that are very brand safety conscious and price conscious and they're not going to discount or sell cheap stuff. So we had an, a third apparel brand who's, who's like fleece wear jacket that was over a hundred bucks was the one that took off on TikTok shop, you know, versus some of the lower priced products. So I think that was true at the beginning when most of the products listed were relatively cheap and people were a little bit more reticent to like actually make a transaction on TikTok that that world is like gone now. You know, I might argue that a guy selling a really, really expensive product it requires to reading a lot of reviews and like doing a ton of research is probably not quite the right fit, but that's like in the thousands of dollars. Like if you, the TikTok sells tons of products that are over a hundred bucks now, which is very different than what it was a year ago.
- [13:21]
B
Gotcha. Okay. Moving into working with the right creators to get your message in front of high intent consumers for teams who maybe grew up in search and retail media, which means you're not all that old. But this idea that creators are sitting at the center of your strategy I think can feel pretty foreign. Like, how do you explain why creators are the real growth engine on TikTok shop?
- [13:42]
A
Yeah, I mean look, there's just no other. Like, it's interesting sometimes when we talk to brands, they think TikTok shop is a media strategy. Right? Like it's like we're just going to come buy a bunch of ads and the people who are coming to look for products will find our products. And it's like, no, no, no, like that's, that's not, you know. Yes, more people are searching for products on TikTok, but that's not really how most of them find it. Most of them find the products on TikTok via Creator Driven affiliate videos. Like, and so just from a very basic premise of how TikTok shop works, there is no way around that, like there is no way around engaging a massive amount of creators, thousands and thousands of creators to create that content for you. The challenge is, is like you brand are not the only one who knows that strategy. And these, so these creators are hot commodities, especially the ones who convert the best. Like everybody wants to work with them. And so how do you cut through that clutter and like get them associated to your brand to work with you? That's our job on behalf of brands.
- [14:44]
B
And one of my favorite things when we were working on the white paper was there's some kind of line that's talking about like you need to work through creators because essentially you're selling your product to a creator's audience. You're not selling it to really the wide public Internet of TikTok shop.
- [15:01]
A
Yeah, I mean even the paid media tool on TikTok shop is not an audience targeting capability. Right. It's not, it's not saying like I want this socio demographic for this kind of person. It is basically saying, well, you've got ousand, you got 5,000 affiliate videos live. And all the paid media tool does is say, well what subset of that, what small percentage of that is actually converting really well? And then it just boosts that up into the feedback of that creator's followers already. So it isn't, it's like an audience once removed strategy. It's the audience of the creator, not the audience that you're trying to target. And so our job is to get in front of the creators that have the followers that the brand wants to get to.
- [15:42]
B
Where do you see brands getting the balance right between, you know, their like, content and safety guardrails versus like letting creators sell in their own voice. Do you have any examples of this working? Well?
- [15:55]
A
So, and this has been an evolution on our part, right, because when we started a year ago, there was an enormous amount of work done into vetting, you know, is this creator right for a brand in like excruciating detail. The challenge with that approach is you end, the more you narrow the pool of the upfront volume of content that got the, that you can get, the worse your performance is going to be. It's just true. And again, the Playbook lists out some very specific examples of brands who, you know, didn't want any creators that had tattoos or didn't want any creators that had bad lighting or whatever. The reason is, what we have done is we have figured out how to partner with a company called Unbox Commerce, which is a third party company that's like, works really closely in collaboration with our efforts on behalf of a brand to say, okay, look, you can still vet the pool of affiliates. We get it. It doesn't mean you're open to working with every single person on the universe, but you have to get a pool of affiliates that is big enough to let you create 5,000 affiliate videos on a very regular basis. And then we can both coach those affiliate affiliates up front and brief them on your product. Please do these five things. Please do, don't, don't do these five things. And we can overlay Unbox Commerce content moderation capabilities that once a video is live, we can check for those things. Like, we can very simply say like, hey, we told you not to promote the overconsumption of sugary foods on a video. And the, the tool checks that something was said that does cross that line and then it goes into a queue and we figure out what to do about that video. So it is, it is a process that has passed the compliance muster of every large enterprise brand that we work with and gotten us to a strategy that actually helps those brands be successful.
- [17:35]
B
On TikTok, okay, we have covered picking the right products, we've covered working with affiliates, and the next part of the playbook to cover is designing your sampling and then content strategy for scale. I bet you didn't have sampling strategy top of mind thinking through how to win on TikTok Shop. So I asked Darren to break down what we recommend and what that sampling strategy then unlocks for your content.
- [17:57]
A
Very simply the way the platform works is that you have to get the product that you are selling on TikTok into the hands of an affiliate to create a video to promote that product. So again back to my in a water bottle example like that actual water bottle needs to be the same product. It is in the hands of the affiliates that are creating the video so that if they make a purchase on TikTok shop you pay them their commission. So it is a table stakes must have for being successful on TikTok shop. But we recognize in the larger scheme of that of that like P and L that I was talking about earlier, it is challenging for a brand to be able to make bear the cost of sending out thousands of samples to creators on a very regular basis. So in the playbook we go over like you need to allocate about a thousand to two thousand samples a month to get into the hands of creators. Obviously that's going to become come from your generally lower priced products in your portfolio to build up your shop presence. And then we suggest you split that strategy between what's called the targeted and the open affiliate plan. So just to use easy math, I'll take a thousand samples a month, allocate 500 of them for the targeted affiliate program which is basically flywheel on a brand's behalf, reaching out to a set of creators that we think fit into your brand profile and that we proactively want to reach out to and work with you send the sample to that affiliate for free. Like you eat the cost of that and the affiliate gets the sample. And then the other 500 we, we think you allocate towards the open affiliate program which is basically like I am open to working with any affiliate that applies to want to work with me but I still retain some control over whether I want to approve that affiliate to work with and I'm going to make them buy a sample on TikTok that is refundable and once they generate X amount of sales on TikTok 50 bucks or a hundred dollars, then I will refund them the cost of that sample through their commissions. So it's just a way to sort of like still get the volume of samples out there. We work with really well known brands so like affiliates want to work with all of these brands and the open affiliate program usually works really, really well. But you can set your commissions a little lower. You can make them pre buy the sample, you can like manipulate the P and L so that that part becomes a little bit more palatable to do at scale.
- [20:16]
B
And I think something we haven't mentioned yet out loud in this conversation is that affiliates for anyone that didn't like hasn't worked really in social affiliates they only get paid if they sell a product. So they want to, they want to work with you, they are in the partnership with you.
- [20:31]
A
They only get, and not only do they only get paid, they only get paid if they sell a product on TikTok shop if the purchase is made on TikTok shop for the product they were promoting in the video. So they are heavily motivated to create high converting content that strikes that balance between like the brand told me to say these things but I know my audience really well and I know this is what resonates. So it's like that, that is the secret sauce is like how do you strike that, that balance at scale on an ongoing basis?
- [20:59]
B
Once a brand has a lot of creator content live, how do you suggest they decide what videos are worth putting paid behind? Or is that not how it works at all? And TikTok's algorithm does a lot of that for you. Can you kind of. What do we mean by this section of the playbook?
- [21:13]
A
I love the leading question right into yeah, so, so like we were talking about earlier, so about a year ago TikTok Sunset these tools called PSA and VSA which were very much like I've got all these videos, I like Emma's videos or I like so and so's videos and I'm going to bump that up. That's not the way that works anymore. They sunset all of those and they launched an algorithm based paid media tool called GMV Max. And what GMV Max again does in simple math is I've got 5,000 videos live. I can look at data. The algorithm looks at data and says like these are the fifty or a hundred that are performing the highest. Converting the most sales on TikTok. I'm going to bump that up in the feed of that creator's followers. And so it's a very blunt instrument that doesn't give brands a ton of like micro level control over which video they want to promote but it solves the problem which is like maximizing sales on TikTok within ROI thresholds. So brands allocate a budget, they allocate ROI thresholds and they let the algorithm run. You know, I would say this in any environment, including with TikTok. It's a new algorithm, it is like still evolving. They're still putting a bunch of R and D effort behind it. And so it's getting better and better and better at solving the problem that it's supposed to solve on a regular basis. But it is still new and it is still improving on a regular basis.
- [22:36]
B
And this brings us to measurement. Darren just mentioned that TikTok's GMP Max algorithm is is going to boost the top creator videos based on sales and conversion. And in the playbook we make an argument that TikTok shop should be treated like a real sales and retail channel with sales as the KPI. But why is that distinction so important for brands?
- [22:55]
A
I think the big thing is it differentiates TikTok social commerce from some of the other social platforms out there, right? I mean even on TikTok there's tons of upper funnel brand awareness advertising tools that every brand should be using, same as there are in Google and Meta and anywhere else you want to advertise on. TikTok shop is decidedly different, is that it's all within the platform with commerce injected into the platform and they've built very calibrated media tools to take advantage of that unique ecosystem. I mean only bumping up affiliate content like that's what that thing does and it doesn't quite well within the constraints that you stick into the system.
- [23:31]
B
You mentioned early on in the episode the halo effect. So I'm going to make you talk through the halo effect. Measuring the halo is hard, you know, without getting into complicated models and charts and whatnot. How do you recommend brands think about the halo so that TikTok shop gets fair credit when you are looking at your different channel mix.
- [23:48]
A
So that second KPI that I talk about, like KPI number one is I sell a bunch of stuff on TikTok. The second KPI is you now have 5,000 affiliate videos out there and the average one in our network is getting 10,000 views. That's a lot of millions and millions of video views on TikTok for virtually no upfront cost. We've had brands that in like heavy promotional periods have gotten 35,000 views on average for each video. So you can be generating 50, you know, 75 million video views in a month on TikTok for a fraction of what you'd spend on like your average paid social campaign. That pure volume of exposure within TikTok is going to have an impact on other platforms for a user who isn't ready to buy at that moment or isn't going to buy on TikTok or for whatever, you know, myriad of reasons might exist in that user's shopping behavior. And so two things, One, having a connective tissue to say I am doing these things on TikTok shop and I need to make sure that I am also amplifying that on Amazon and other platforms is really important. And that's one of the unique capabilities that we've got where we can help a brand. Because we manage a lot of brands, both TikTok shops and our Amazon retail media side of their business. There's a set of five things you should be doing to take advantage of all that traffic on Amazon that we can help you think through from the very beginning of your TikTok shop strategy. And then second, being able to measure that. And so today the world of measuring that I would say is in like three phases. There are a whole lot of like mmms out there, mixed media models that are trying to quantify this. I find those to be a bit confusing because like it's, you know, 50 pieces of data input in from all over the place, spit out a number and it's like 15%. It's like, can someone explain to me how we got to the 15% number a little bit better? It's like a little kind of like behind, behind the curtain. And so what we've done with a lot of brands in a very blunt instrument way is say we can look at the SKUs that you are promoting on TikTok Shop. We can match those to the, the ASINs that you've got on Amazon and we compare the sales uplift to all the products on Amazon that you weren't promoting on TikTok shop. So it is a very blunt instrument approach, but it works really well. And we've been able to quantify the sort of wisdom of crowds halo effect on Amazon really well. We are now experimenting with some much more deterministic, interesting ways to do that where we can quantify it even further. I'm not going to go farther on those on this episode right now, but if brands want to talk about that, like please reach out because there's some very interesting R and D projects that we've got going on in that, in that space.
- [26:24]
B
Okay. Because you have made it this far, we are going to do some fun rapid ish fire questions to close out this episode. So let's get right into it. Is there a product category that has no business being on TikTok shop.
- [26:38]
A
Great question. I'm going to answer that in two different ways. Super high end, super low end. Meaning if you are a highly considered purchase that is going to require people to check, read tons of user reviews, check lots of different retailers to, you know, look at price, things like that that are like highly considered purchases for a lot of money, thousands of dollars, probably not the right fit for TikTok shop today. That may change in the future. And then I would say on the other end, if you are a utilitarian product, where I'm going to pick on one category, sorry, for anyone in this category, batteries. Like, I don't know why you would need to buy batteries on TikTok shop. Like it's a very utilitarian purpose purchase, you know, like that, that sort of thing. So I think it's again back to like, you need to think about it from the perspective of like, what can you get the creator excited about in your product that they convey to that end user in like 10 seconds, maybe 20 seconds. If you've got a product that fits into that category that's a perfect fit for TikTok shop.
- [27:39]
B
What is an underrated, maybe even boring product that would secretly Crush it on TikTok shop?
- [27:46]
A
I mean, we've got brands that are like, you know, we run a couple of eyedrop brands, right, which I would consider to be a very kind of straightforward brand and they actually do really well. They are scaling really quickly on TikTok shop.
- [28:00]
B
What is one thing that big brands need to unlearn from traditional social before they touch TikTok shop?
- [28:07]
A
Great question. You don't get to approve everything very
- [28:11]
B
simply, okay, what is the most overrated TikTok shop best practice, you hear right now out in the spheres and when you travel and go to conferences.
- [28:19]
A
I think that there's still a perception of a lot of people that like just blasting the most messages out to creators is the way to be successful on TikTok shop. There are, I mean the real way to think about that is there's a couple of platforms that let you do that. We all have access to all the same platform. So anybody can blast with very simple tools a massive amount of creators with like a very generic message that isn't going to get anywhere. That's, that's not the trick. Like you need to be much more thoughtful of. We've, as we've talked about, about the offer that you're getting and who are the creators that you're going after and what's your value proposition as opposed to just like we can blast the most creators.
- [28:58]
B
Got it. Okay. If you're a brand, you just magically get a million dollars to test something on TikTok shop tomorrow. What is the first thing you sell?
- [29:05]
A
Spend it on a million dollars is a very significant marketing budget on TikTok shop because of the way the affiliate model works. I would say. No, I'm serious. Like I would say bank a good portion of that, spend a quarter, really getting your shop up and running and reaching out to a lot of affiliates. Work with those lower level affiliates by giving them small incentives like we talked about before. You know, take a fraction of that money and say, hey, top 10 affiliate sellers in this category, I'm going to give you these retainers, this small amount of money to go create a bunch of content for me. And then once you've got those 5,000 videos like we talk about in the Playbook live, then start amplifying it with like the rest of that million dollars. On the paid media perspective, that would be the right approach. But you know, you can launch on TikTok shop tomorrow and waste a whole bunch of money on paid media without that affiliate flywheel working really well and you're not going to see much success.
- [30:02]
B
Got it? Okay, last one before my final question to close us out here. Which matters more for TikTok shop success, the product or the creator?
- [30:11]
A
Well, I would say the offer matters the most. Meaning forget the product. Right, because the product's the product. It's the same product that you're selling on multiple platforms. The unique selling opportunity on TikTok Shop, and again, why those creators are going to get excited about the product when you first reach out to them, is the number one table stakes. If it's priced way worse than it is on Amazon, if it is the exact same thing you could buy at the corner store, if you don't have like something that's a little different about it that you're trying to promote and get people excited about on Amazon. And that could be very basic things like I'm bundling these three flavors together or I'm putting these two colors together in the same bundle or, you know, whatever it is. There's lots of different ways to do that. But like the number one thing is what is the unique selling proposition about the product on the platform? Then the second most important piece is like, then you find the creators to help you amplify that message. But if you don't get the message right, the creators can't fix that.
- [31:07]
B
Phew okay, we've done it. We've made it through all the questions I wrote. That rarely happens. Good for us to close it out. I asked Darren to briefly talk about how we can help you win on TikTok shop.
- [31:17]
A
Yeah, sure. I mean, look, I think the thing that's, that's unique about Flywheel is that we have this combination of, like, deep understanding of what makes TikTok shop work, all the stuff we've talked about today. But we also get that if you are a large brand, the world of TikTok shop can be a slightly new and scary place. And we can help you work through that in all the ways that we talked about with content compliance and those remediation steps.
- [31:45]
B
And that's it for this episode of the Commerce Collective podcast. As I mentioned mentioned earlier, you can Download the full TikTokshop playbook in the description of this episode. And you really should, because the playbook breaks down everything we've talked about here with even more granularity and provides really tactical advice for elevating your TikTok shop strategy and driving meaningful scalable GMB through creator content. Thank you to Darren for all of his insights. I've been your host, Emma Irwin, and we will see you next time.