Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:01]
A
Welcome to TikTok Shop Insiders podcast, your source for actionable news, trends and strategies. If you want to build a thriving brand or Creator presence on TikTok shop, this is your essential listen. Let's get started. Hey, welcome to TikTok Shop Insiders podcast, your source for the latest news and strategies on TikTok. Don't forget to join our free community at TikTokShopInsiders.com and, and yeah, thank you everyone, everyone for joining. It's been a minute since I last talked with you. I think the beginning of December was the last one. And yeah, just as you all know, it gets super busy around holiday time. Parties, recitals, kids, school homework, you know, visiting, traveling, et cetera. So appreciate the kind of patience and getting these, these podcast episodes out to you. And yeah, hopefully kind of many more as the year goes on. But yeah, I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year. 2025 is a big one, especially this first part of 2025 in the TikTok space with Trump taking office as well as the potential ban. I'll go into that more later. But yeah, happy New year everyone. I think 2025 is going to be a big one for social commerce and TikTok shop. So excited, definitely, definitely excited. An update that we have here. I think multiple people have commented on the number of downloads that we've had. So right now we're sitting at 20,300 downloads. So within a year, less than a year, way less than a year of us with this podcast, you know, we reach 20,000 downloads. I think that's top 20% of, of total podcasts out there. So, you know, a very niche subject but still getting a lot of downloads and you know, people interested in the topic so want to definitely continue that as going forward. So it's really been awesome just communicating and connecting with different people in the, you know, TikTok shop space. You know, people who have created apps and, and, and software for the space as well as brands. I've spoken, spoken with so many brands that, you know, are super excited about TikTok shop and all the success that it's brought them and you know, how can this kind of roll into even more success? Right? And I feel, you know, a big advocate for it, of course, because, you know, it's just the tip of the iceberg for me. There's going to be much, much, much more innovation and you know, I think it's going to be hockey stick growth for TikTok shop. Just like Amazon was 10 years ago when, when I started There. So awesome. One big complaint that we've had is that we aren't consistent with our podcast episodes. I apologize for that. You know, running an agency doing, you know, podcast episodes, it's hard to get in the calendar. It's always going to get bumped. You know, know it's maybe not the highest priority, but you know, one thing I want to commit to in 2025 is consistent episodes. So we'll see how that goes. But essentially, in order to do this, we're gonna have to have solo episodes for myself. Right. So I will have a solo episode giving you, you know, the latest news, but also some strategies that have come up in, in my mind and have come across my plate. So what that means, I know a lot of you guys are fans of Pat, but he'll be not a available for every episode, but hopefully he'll jump in here and there as time goes on. But yeah, my, you know, New Year's resolution, you know, you know how that'll go. But every two weeks I plan on having an episode. So I have it in my calendar, non negotiable. So I'm hoping to bring you more TikTok information from there. So, yeah, onto the news. The biggest item, kind of behemoth is the potential TikTok shop ban in the US right? So just some facts here. Supreme Court has scheduled for January 10th to review TikTok's free speech argument and you know, and kind of hear what TikTok has to say. There's the official ban or what's in written in law and how it will execute is by January 19th, TikTok will be banned. And what that means is it will not be available on the app store or you know, any of the app stores. So as is, it will still exist on your phone, you will still be able to browse content, you will still be able to sell your products, but updates will not be available to you. So yeah, I think, you know, another piece here is that the 90 day extension, right? So if the government determines that TikTok is kind of entertaining or on the track of selling their interest, they have a 90 day extension for that ban deadline. So those are just some of the facts there. But potential scenarios, right? If the band ban succeeds, if the, if the ban kind of happens on January 19, on January 20, your use of TikTok won't change, right? It'll still be available, It'll still be, you know, you can still buy products, you can still sell your products, affiliates can still make their videos. But you know, like I said earlier, it won't be able to be downloaded. Right. So your kind of app will degregate over time. But like, again, like, you, it'll be okay. Like, you don't download a new version of the app every day, day. So as is, it'll be cool for like, at least a month or two, for sure. So, you know, you kind of have that deadline there. But I think in that month or two, there's going to be some action, right? There's going to be a resolution to TikTok, like, what is it? How is it going to live going forward? Right. So, you know, TBD on what exactly that is. But, you know, some things we can go off of is Trump, he said multiple times that TikTok is super special to him. He attributes a lot of his success to the election to TikTok and just reaching the younger demographic, which I think it did. But, you know, I think he said he wants to keep it around. Kind of bouncing around the idea of him keeping it around. So, you know, on the bright side, I think he will kind of stop the ban, right? He will kind of, kind of be on TikTok side and say, you know, let's not, you know, continue with the band because it did so well for me. But my real thoughts are he hasn't said that I'm, I'm gonna, you know, remove the ban, but my thoughts are like, why the delay? Why not say it's like, I think he's just trying to figure a way to kind of make money on his own, or how can he have his, you know, interests align with the keeping of TikTok, right. And so, you know, maybe there's a scenario where Trump forces a sale, but to his friends, I don't know, his entities of his own or whatever it may be, but, you know, force TikTok to sell. That's a possibility. But, yeah, I think, you know, Trump will. I'm sorry, TikTok will exist in the future. What that really holds, I'm not sure, but I know that it will be kind of a force going forward as a social media, a social commerce platform. So, yeah, I think some things you need to think about is there's other social commerce platforms out there. Maybe not definitely not as strong as TikTok, but they're in development. Right. So definitely take a look at YouTube. They have an affiliate program, meta. They are. I don't know if it's out yet, but definitely signs of developing their own affiliate program. So definitely just keep an ear out. You know, listen to this podcast we'll have updates with you. I know we're working with some YouTube affiliates and not quite Facebook yet. It's not released to the public. But you know, that's coming for sure, right? How? You know, social commerce is a beast. And you know, Mark Zuckerberg's gonna, you know, use his kind of. He's, he's gonna want a piece of that pie, right? So, yeah, TBD, as of this recording, it's January 9th. So tomorrow we'll hear a little bit more from supreme court. And then January 19th is the big day. Will, will it, won't it be banned from, you know, us app stores? Up next, a pretty cool article that I saw is that TikTok Shop is outperforming Shein and Sephora among U.S. shoppers online. So pretty awesome to see that TikTok shop, which is a little over a year old, is climbing the ranks in e commerce platforms that have been here for decades. Maybe Sephora. I know my wife shops there a lot and kind of gets all her makeup and, you know, items there and it's just like that's been around for decades. But here you come, a new, new platform that's really kind of taking more and more of the puzzle, right? Or more and more of the, the pie. So, yeah, I think just a little taste of things to come. You know, there's going to be a day where I believe TikTok Shop will surpass Target, will surpass Walmart. I don't think it'll be quite Amazon, but tbd, I don't see, you know, low probability, but you know, if someone told me that, I wouldn't kind of doubt it. Right. So yeah, the, onto the meat and potatoes of this podcast is I wanted to provide a little bit of outlook, you know, a common question I get. It's like, how can a brand succeed on TikTok Shop? Or, you know, how do you go from zero to sales on TikTok Shop? And I wanted to kind of give a three step guide to TikTok shop success in 2025. Right. TikTok shop changes so much. You know, there's, you know, strategies that develop and you add to et cetera. And this is kind of what we found Work works for, you know, new brands on TikTok Shop. And we've seen it multiple times with the brands that we work with, getting them from $0 to 6 figures in sales, 7 figures in sales, month over month. So it's kind of, you know, pretty, pretty new strategy or, you know, it's not necessarily a New strategy. But we're always iterating on our, on our strategies to, you know, see what works. So wanted to share that with you. One thing I say, want to say is any brand on TikTok can succeed, right? You see all the time brands that you've never heard of on TikTok shop that have hundreds of thousands, millions in sales. And this is really a platform that's new to brand new customers are going to see a video of a product they've never seen before. They're, you know, they kind of get exposed to those brands. So it's really pretty amazing that you have these no name brands or at least brands you don't see in retail stores or very rarely online succeeding very well in TikTok shop. So it's like any brand can succeed. And you know, this is a kind of a summary of how, right? So the first step is optimizing your listing. You want to make sure that for me the number one characteristic or item on an optimized listing is number of units sold and number of views, right? If you have 0 units sold and 0 reviews, number one, your affiliate isn't going to want to promote that product, right? Because it's like, well that doesn't have any social proof, like who knows how it goes, like they're, they're less inclined to promote your product. And then also obviously the potential purchaser is not going to buy a product that doesn't have any sales or reviews, right? So I always say let's start with one. What if you can get a friend or family to buy a product, leave a review, you know, a 15 star review is better than 0 reviews at all, right? So get, you know, your listing populated with units sold and also reviews, you know, some is better than none. And then you know, you can get more, you know, if you have an existing audience, let them know that you have a promotion going on TikTok shop and then have them buy and you know, hopefully leave a review. So yeah, definitely want to populate it with units sold and reviews. Up next is images. I'm a big person about product and use so I definitely want to see your product in the hands of a human or applied, you know, if it's a moisturizer getting applied to a human and then you know if it's a golf club, someone holding the golf club. So yeah, really just for me that makes a connection from an online buyer, someone who's looking at it on the screen and making a connection to how they're going to use it, right? And it's kind of a closer connection. Would you rather see a product on a table that's nicely lit and has, you know, nice colors or would you rather see someone like using it and they can picture themselves using it as well? Right. So product and use is super important for me on the images. Something to think about as well is TikTok shop buyer is more of a new to brand. So they likely have never heard of your brand before, right? Because they see a viral video and they see your product and they haven't heard of your brand anymore. More often than not, that's what happens. And so you want to support that new to brand customer with some brand information in your images, right. What are some accolades that you've received for your brand, for your product? Right. Did it receive any awards, did it go out of sale, et cetera? Right. So really proving to that first time viewer that your product is something that they want, right? Not just nice pictures. You really want to kind of usher them along the journey of like why they should buy your product. Up next is kind of the, definitely the meat and potatoes. So like I would say where we concentrate 90% of our time is, is a strong affiliate strategy, right? How do you get affiliates to promote your product, how do you find them, how do you educate them, et cetera. So I'll go into that before, about a year ago when TikTok was just starting to pop off, you could get away with a hundred to 200 samples over a couple weeks and you'd start to see some sales from that. Right. And that kind of started TikTok shop. Now we're noticing that you need 400 to 500 units over a four to five month period to really see that, you know, momentum swing on TikTok shop. I know that sounds a lot, but you know, obviously you can get away with less. But you know, 400 to 500 is really what it will take, right. And so I'll give you a quick timeline. So start in the process. You have that first month where you reach out to affiliates and you know, you send out, I like to send out 100 or 200 in a first blast, right. And that gets a lot of videos made, really small period of time. What I'm noticing now is TikTok needs time for those videos to sit and marinate in their system, in the algorithm, to know what to link it to, to know where to show it. Right. So you have your first 200 samples out in the, out in the atmosphere, kind of getting seasoned, right. Once you kind of Start to have it in the, in the atmosphere of TikTok shop, you start to support it with more videos. Right. So the first month is going to be 200 units. Month two and three is probably going to be around 100 units each month. Right. And so you kind of slowly trickle in the supporting videos that, that it will need. So yeah, that's kind of a roundabout number. That's what we've seen succeed. Again, the number was 200 earlier in this year. Now we're seeing it increase. Right. As more brands get on the platform, as more affiliates get on the platform, the, the feed's gonna get more crowded and so you're gonna need more pieces of video, more pieces of samples to send to affiliates to get those videos created. So yeah, I think that's where it's at. Bots and automation, right? How do you find these affiliates? Right. There's groups out there, but the main way in the beginning was bots and automation, right? Sending out a blanket message to as many affiliates as possible. And inevitably it's a numbers game. You're going to get a certain percentage back that are interested. Right? So the idea is to catch a wide net or to cast a wide net and field what comes back, who's interested. You know, you can take a look at their profile. Are they, you know, high sellers? Do they have great content? Do they have content that aligns with your brand? So bots and automation is one way. We have a, you know, a tool that we always use, Yuka AI, the link will be in the show notes. But essentially it's a, it's an automation tool that you can reach out to, you know, hundreds of thousands of TikTok shop affiliates and, you know, see if they're interested in, you know, promoting your product. So bots and automation, one thing that we like to do is something that we specialize in recently is how can we optimize this, right? Like by bots and automation, you're going to get a wide net, which means you're going to get a wide range of affiliates, right? Good and most likely bad. Right? Because they, you know, they don't necessarily have. Your brand is new, so they're not going to be inclined to taking on a new product. But the people, the affiliates who kind of don't have that experience don't have that GMV will likely, you know, represent your brand. And so this causes a problem because, you know, not experienced affiliates aren't going to make the best videos. So one thing that we establish here is a network of affiliates that are in our network. Right. So other brands that we work with, you know, our relationships with affiliates over time. We have hundreds of affiliates that we work with. And so that's one thing that you get when you partner with us. It's, we have a, you know, core set of affiliates that we work with. You know, onboarding a brand is a lot more simpler. You don't have to go through the bots and automation and filter through not great affiliates. Why not? Why not just work with affiliates that we've already vetted? Right. So that's one thing that you gain with partnering with us. One other thing that I want to mention that we're working on. Super, yeah, I've been working on it for the last four months now. But along the notes of what I said earlier is more and more the importance of high quality affiliates. Right. How do we get those? And so I've developed a community, actually a new podcast and community, it's called Affiliate Academy hq. And essentially what I do there is I interview the top 1% of affiliates. They're kicking butt. They're, they're getting high GMV, you know, millions of dollars in GMV, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and really just understanding their story and their strategy. Right. How do they make viral videos? They're able to do it multiple times. They have a system for it. How can I get that system and share it with other affiliates? Right. And so by doing that, I'm creating a community of these high quality affiliates. And so now, you know, I have that resource that I can pull if and when there's a new brand that hops along. Right. So it's really a matter of, you know, getting high quality affiliates in your network so that if and when you have a product that you want to promote, it's an easier lift. Right. So, you know, I noticed that it was harder and harder to reach out to affiliates through bots and automation. Well, the answer is creating a community of your own. So, yeah, if you're interested, if you're a brand interested in partnering, definitely give me a call and we'll figure out what best works for you. So, yeah, I think going into our strategy a little bit more. Right. So we have our affiliate strategy more. We have initial contact with affiliates, right. And they're interested. What does that really look like? You know, how do you start talking to them? So I wanted to kind of give a step by step, you know, process on how we talk to our affiliates. Right. So we connect. We, you know, we have mutual interest in working together. We approve the Samples at an open plan. You know, let's call it 10%. What we do is we have a tiered structure to our commission structure, right? We have a low end of 10%, which is our open rate. And then we have a higher end that we agree upon with our brands. Like what's the highest commission that you can have? Right? And so they'll either tell us, you know, 20%, 25%, and then we'll construct a tiered system from that. So let's call it 20% is their highest. So now we have, you know, a low and a high, right? So we start with 10% and we have the affiliate create a video for us, right? What we do now is we say, hey, affiliate, you created this awesome video. We would you like a higher commission if you make more videos? So make two more videos, we'll give you 15%. More often than not, they're kind of ignore it, but there are some that are going to make more videos for you because of a higher commission. They like the product, of course they're going to want a higher commission and it's easy for them to make a video. So, you know, your product costs are already sunk in to what you already sent out. Why not have a higher commission, offer a higher commission to make more videos, Right? Right. And so a step further, it's like, okay, well, you made more videos. Well, let's increase your commission even more to make more videos, right? And so that's kind of, you kind of see the tiered system there. Another aspect is we like to reserve that higher commission for like the, the highest commission for the really, really good affiliates, right? And they, we want, they want them, or we want them to feel special and so we reward them for that with that, with that higher, highest commission. So, yeah, up next is, you know, if a video goes viral, like, what do you do? It's pretty awesome. It's a great feeling. You see that number climb up. But if a video goes viral, immediately think about how do I make this affiliate feel special, right? How do I get them, you know, what they need? Do I give them more product? Do I give them my whole catalog, et cetera, like really make them feel special because they know how to sell your product. So it's really just like cultivating that relationship so that they can make more products or more videos of your products, right? And so we like to give this, we like to give this, what it called, what do you call it, suggestions to the affiliates, right? So when there's a viral video, we suggest for them we'll make more viral videos. So just like take your viral video and just remake it in a different setting, right? Maybe have a different hook, maybe have a different call to action, but remake that video. You can even make it 100% the exact same video. Just rerecord it, right? To kind of get past TikTok's algorithm, but like refilm the video again. That'll typically get a good amount of, you know, success. Another thing that we suggest for our affiliates is to reply to the comments. There's probably, if it's gone viral, there's going to be comments, right? Good, bad. You know, some will comment on your look, some will comment on the, you know, efficacy of the product. Like that didn't work. Um, but comment on them, you know, make more videos on it. It'll kind of retarget those people that, you know, did make those comments. So those are two things that we suggest. You know, we, we, we relay to our affiliates that have had success. Other things is a retainer, right? So you have an affiliate, they made content, they made killer content. It went viral, or not even if it went viral, but you feel that they're making content. That's great. Well, why not offer them a retainer? Right? So I'll offer you money to make more videos, right? A flat fee. If it's a proven seller that sold one or two units. Well, they can sell 100 units. So give them a flat fee to make more, right? And so let's say you wanted them to make 20 videos. Well, what's 20 videos times 20 samples, right? Let's call it like $10 a sample, right? So that's $200 for 20 samples that you were going to give out. So why not give that $200 to an affiliate that just knows how to sell your product already, right? So you're kind of moving the product cost that you would in samples to a flat fee for an affiliate. So that's also been pretty successful for us, right? If you have successful affiliates, give them a flat fee to make more videos. So it's really about, you know, just finding the affiliates, you know, casting a wide net, finding affiliates and then of those that show signs of being a good affiliate, getting sales, getting, you know, conversions, getting sessions. Well, how can we make more? You know, let's, let's work together to make more, you know, it's in their benefit to make higher quality videos, higher selling videos as well. So yeah, that concludes a big affiliate outreach section. Probably go more into that or if you have any more Questions just reach out to me. And yeah, the last piece here, I'll kind of more. We reviewed this in the previous podcast, but ads, right? So just a rough kind of guidelines here. It's, you know, 50 pieces of content. So 50 Spark codes that you request from the affiliates is kind of what you need to get it going, right? So you want to get, you want to, you know, I said earlier, 400 to 500 samples to give out. Well, of those there's going to be a handful that are great, right? So you want to get about 50 of those, those videos in those spark codes, pull those and put them into a GMV Max campaign on the back end of seller center. And with that, you know, you can kind of go from there, right? And so that's a, you know, I don't want to go too deep into ads, but that's, you know, once we see, you know, a handful of videos, get back a lot of success, then, you know, throw that into a GMV Max campaign. We can put some dollars behind the views and kind of go from there. So we'll dive deeper into ads. But I want to kind of give you, you know, a three pronged system of, you know, one, optimizing your list, making sure it's good for the affiliates, making sure that it's, you know, highly converting for the, the purchasers as well as the, the strong affiliate strategy. This is where the bread and butter is. This is kind of where we, you know, hold, you know, where, where we kind of put our stake in the ground. And you know, this is changing all the time. So yeah, super important to have a, a strong affiliate strategy and then, you know, following that up once you get those views, supporting you with ads, right. You know, pay to play. It's not organic anymore. TikTok Shop has gotten pretty competitive. So you kind of have to put some ad dollars behind it. So yeah, so that's kind of the core, you know, it can, I believe that this can work for, you know, any brand, most brands. But there are factors that will increase your success off TikTok sales, right? So if you have Amazon sales, if you have your dot com and retail, right. If you're a noticeable brand, like you're going to have better success, right. Just because brand familiarity and you know, they're going to go to Amaz for reviews, they're going to see that and just, you know, that's a better story to tell for some, a brand that you never heard of, right. So off TikTok Shop success is something that, you know, is A big factor in it will help on TikTok Shop samples to give. If you can brute force your way to like a thousand samples, I think that would, you know, that's a better story to have, right? Because if you're limited to only 10 samples, that's not going to go very far, right? If you have a hundred, you know, may it used to work before but it probably won't work now. If you have, you know, right now I suggest, you know, 5, 4 to 4, 4 to 500. That that's kind of what I'm seeing now work and it has worked for some of our clients. But what if you had 10,000? What if you had a hundred thousand, right? So it's like I'm not saying to give a hundred thousand but like the more samples to give the better, right. Reviews. Reviews is huge. One thing that you know, an example of, of this is we launched the brand, it did really well on TikTok Shop to the tune of $10,000 weeks. And it was just starting and we got a lot of sales, a lot of moving a lot of sales, a lot of units. There was viral videos and everything was gravy. Well, once that initial rush kind of went out to customers, they started reviewing the product and the reviews came back not great. I mean, you know, 3.8 is 3.9, you know, below 4.0 review rating is what we were seeing and that kind of killed the momentum, right. And so we had a upward right trajectory and the review rating started to go down. So it's important to kind of have a quality product but like, you know, knowing that the reviews can, you know, bring down your product if, you know, if you don't have a, a great product out there or it can, it can bring down the, the TikTok Shop success if you don't have a great product. So having great reviews, proven reviews on Amazon on your.com will go a long way. And just making sure that to TikTok Shop something other things factors that are pretty good is like brand content. So having your own TikTok Shop brand content, making sure someone internal, your social team is creating brand content. Because a potential shopper will see your TikTok Shop listing inevitably they'll go to your brand and you know, if you're present there, if you're vibrant, having great content, they're more likely to buy than not having that content. And then some other things here is like making sure lives. If you have the resources to go live, all the better. And then yeah, just maintaining those high performing affiliates. Right. If you can have a system where you get those high performing affiliates to create content you know all the time that's an advantage that you have. Right. So the factors that increase success you know in addition to the top three that I mentioned earlier but like off TikTok sales Amazon.com, lots of samples to give making sure your views are tight and and high great quality product and making sure you have lives, brand content etc. Making sure that all that's there kind of to orchestrate into a successful TikTok shop strategy. So yeah that wraps it up for today's episode you know first solo episode so definitely let me know how I did leave a reminder and leave a reminder to kind of you go out there and you know let me know if you have any questions. You can go to tik tok shop insiders.com access our free Slack group ask me questions there and yeah thanks for your time today. I appreciate it and happy new Year again. Thanks everyone.