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Ivan
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. Welcome everyone to TikTok Shop Insiders podcast, your source for the latest news and strategies on TikTok shop. I am your host, Ivan. What is up, everyone? It's been a crazy last couple weeks since I talked with you guys, right? Right now, today is January 24th, recording this podcast and beginning of the year until now has just been super crazy, right? We're banned. We're not banned. You know, the, the, you know, the inauguration happened, you know, the different, you know, social media heads are meeting with Trump and you know, one day I'm thinking we don't have a business, the next day, you know, we're, we're live and thriving. So anyway, yeah, pretty crazy week the last couple weeks since we last talked, but as of the moment give you some updates here. But Trump just took office on the 20th and he basically is in favor for TikTok shop, right? And so in doing so he granted like a 75 day extension to the TikTok shop TikTok ban. Right. And so we have 75 days to figure out who it is. He also suggested some things like a 50% joint venture between ByteDance and a US partner as well as the US government being a part of that mix. Right. So I read somewhere where it would be a license, let's say, and the US would grant the license to the US company who will buy TikTok, the US portion of TikTok and the US government will get their piece of the pie, the investor will get their piece of the Pie and ByteDance will get TikTok US purchase from them versus not existing. Right. So I guess away everyone wins and that's kind of how deals go, right? It's not going to be all granted to TikTok and then just TikTok wins. And this is a way for kind of everyone to get their piece of the pie. So yeah, I think it's a huge thing, right? I mean, my business is made for me. I feel that a number of our listeners here, their, their businesses are huge, right? So, you know, 170 million users, 75 or, I'm sorry, 7 million small businesses. And I'm sure that includes, you know, advertisers on there as well as affiliates, et cetera. So huge economic impact and yeah, I think it's good thing that TikTok shop will exist. So I'm happy for that. And then, you know, right now it's only a 75 day ban or 75 day extension, but I fully expect it to go past that. 75 days, right. I don't believe we're going to be in the same situation of kind of that limbo stage that we were a couple weeks ago. Right. So negotiations are happening, potential buyers. So TikTok just, just stay tuned. I'll, I'll, I'll update you as soon as I can. All right. And so, yeah, I think as of this morning or yesterday afternoon, TikTok is not available on US App Store. So if you're unfortunately deleted your app, you cannot redownload it. Right. And so I fully anticipate it coming back, but I think this was in preparation for the ban. Right. So I know Apple and Google were going to get fined. I think it's like $5,000 per user if they kept the app up available for download. Right. So obviously I could mount up to something huge and they kind of didn't want to take the risk, so they probably took it off their platforms until further notice. Right. So, yeah, it's not unusual to see TikTok app not available. I'm kind of seeing it, you know, across the, across the, you know, the range of people that I've talked with. So, yeah, I think fully expected to come back. So keep an eye out for that. You know, we get emails from TikTok as sellers. We get emails all the time. Right. One of them I'm very excited about, I think it was new TikTok shop rules, authenticity and affiliate marketing and campaigns. And what I took from here is that they're going to get more strict on authentic products being sold on TikTok shop. And that's great. I know previous podcasts me and Pat talked about that Lenovo wannabe and essentially using Lenovo's name and likeness and kind of, you know, throwing out a kind of earphone that isn't authentic. Right. And I actually read some Reddit posts about it causing headaches. Right. But anyway, so yeah, that's, that's a problem, right. If you don't have authentic goods, you're going to get lower quality products and overall unhappy customer. And I know our friends at GoPure, they see this a lot and really, really successful TikTok shop brands, they see this a lot where they get a viral hit, they get a viral product and dozens of competitors or counterfeit listings pop up. Right. It's not the same product. They're not trying to sell the brand names, product, but the pictures, images, packaging, everything else but the name is a direct copy. Right. And so that's kind of crazy to see. And a novice shopper or beginner shopper, new to the platform won't know the difference, right? They just see the color of the product and think it's, you know, you know, a product that is authentic and they don't, they don't know the difference. Right. So they see other products, other videos out there that are, you know, viral and for the real product and they get re, they get retargeted with a different product and you know, they think it's one of the same. So yeah, I would. This, this is great. As in like TikTok is now going to remove some of those products that are getting a high rate of counterfeit claims or in authenticity claims. So I'm super excited about that. It's going to make the headaches of brands that are doing well or brands that are getting copycatted some reprieve. Cool. Up next. So some of the lessons that I've learned through this band, it's like, okay, expand, right? TikTok might not be forever, but that's just maybe a drastic way of looking at it. But you should always be on the lookout for what are these other channels? What else can be, know, can, can we use to our advantage. Right. Social commerce is just, you know, the, the umbrella that covers it all. TikTok's just the first iteration of it, but there's plenty of other options out there. So some of them are Flip, which is a platform that highlights product reviews. So essentially an affiliate, a content creator can talk about a product and therefore sell that product within Flip and get a commission base. Right. But the pro there is that it's built out. There's lots of brands getting sales, but the con is there's not a lot of traffic. You know, TikTok has traffic from its kind of native app, right? Just entertainment app, but Flip doesn't really have that. And this next section of apps, it's kind of a different category of not quite developed yet. Speaking about Meta and Instagram, right? Facebook Instagram. So I just actually saw the first iteration of Facebook Shops or reels connected to a affiliates affiliates video. And there's like a small, small ellipses on the bottom and a small, small kind of button that you need to click. And I think this is for like kind of testing purposes. But anyway, so it connected a viral video or not necessarily viral, but it connected a video that's promoting a product. To a product page that you can buy from. So this is just kind of like V1 of that Facebook shop experience. Right. So I'm super excited to see that. So yeah, I know it's just right around the corner, so just keep an eye out for it. Another one is YouTube. YouTube's social commerce iteration is a YouTube short with a kind of bigger bullet button and that connects to a, either a Target.com or a Walmart.com and select brands websites. Right. So a Shopify website. And so you go from YouTube short to click that button and it takes you externally to that, that, that website where you can buy the product. So this is, this is great, right? I in my first test within talking with YouTube affiliates and YouTube brands, the power here is that you can now track those affiliate sales commissions, et cetera, and they get paid accordingly. So the very basics are there. The pros for YouTube. I'm seeing it frequently, I'm seeing every time I see one or let's say like 50% of the time I see a YouTube affiliate button, the product will be sold out. So, so YouTube, YouTube videos. It's YouTube affiliates. It's on the horizon and it's coming. A bad part about it is that it's not internal to the app. Right. You have to go external to YouTube. Right. So it doesn't have its own version of shops. I fully intended to have its shops, but right now it doesn't. And so the problem, I don't even know if it's a problem but you know, you go from the traffic going from YouTube to the website and, and it, you know, the sale happening on your.com or on target, et cetera. So yeah, I'm excited for that as well. And then kind of some quick notes here. It's X X Twitter rolled out with its video, its short form video feature in their, in their menu bar there. Right. So not only can you scroll for text and you know, copy and tweets, now you can, they have a video section. So I just know that shoppable content is going to soon follow. Right. So keep a lookout for all that stuff. And now for the main portion of the podcast. I wanted to talk about kind of like the different platforms and the pros and cons of the different platforms. Right. And a little history on myself. So I started as the, with my own Amazon product. I was a private label seller. I sold seat cushions and orthopedic braces and foot, foot, foot pads, et cetera. This was 10, 10, 12 years ago. Yeah. And so nights and weekends I would, you know, research products. I would find what was ranking on Amazon and you know, how can I change that product so that it's more appealing to buyers. Right. I landed on a seat cushion where I would, you know, I bought a thousand units of a seat cushion on a credit card. I think it was like $5,000. Yeah, yeah, $5,000 on a credit card. Not the smartest decision. Something I wouldn't, you know, advise anyone. But you know, I, I did it and I'm glad I did it. But yeah, So I bought 5,000 units of a seat cushion, put that up on Amazon and, and continued to sell. Right. And so back then it was kind of like the wild, wild west. You could do a lot more than, you know, gray hat tactics, right? So you would get friends and family to buy and leave a review, you would get review review groups to buy and leave a review and then that would puff up your, your review rating and then also puff up your, your ranking on Amazon. So I was ranking top 1, 2, 3, 4 seat cushions and you know, back braces and feet cushions, right. So I grew that to a seven figure business in about two and a half, three years and then I sold it there. Right. So ten years of Amazon experience is kind of like where, you know, I, I have my backbone in, in E commerce. So I learned a lot about Amazon there and with that skill set I became the head of Amazon at a number of brands, right. My fur. One of my first jobs as a head of Amazon was at a, is at a supplement company and their main traffic revenue channel was Facebook ads to website. And you know, it was great. Like I ran like they did so well that a lot of their traffic to Amazon was, you know, a lot of their traffic was spilling over to Amazon and they were getting sales and they didn't have anyone to manage their Amazon channel. It wasn't optimized. Ads were kind of all over the place. There wasn't really a system or something in charge. And I was like, yeah, I could lead that really easily. So yeah, I went to that company. But during that time of that company, I learned so much about Facebook marketing. Just what it took, landing pages a, B, testing the different content that you need, the different videos, et cetera, all the huge funnel, top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel. So I learned all that at that company and it was great. Ran the Amazon there, learned a lot about, you know, just Facebook marketing at that company. And I kind of wanted to talk about the differences that I see between Facebook Amazon and TikTok shop. And for me, you know, I'll break it down first with Facebook. On Facebook, I think you need. One of the characteristics of a successful brand or product on Facebook is a higher AOV, right? You can't make Facebook work with a $10 product. Just the, the, the CPAs, the cost per acquisition is, you know, kind of. It's not going to be scalable, right? So your CPAs, your cost per acquisitions has to be, you know, less than your. Your. Your product price, your average order value. Right. So on Facebook, you kind of. I learned that you need to have a higher AOV or order value to make it work there. And so you needed that premium product kind of, you know, either bundles or whatnot. So what made it great is that you can kind of, you know, once you found a system where you only paid $10 for a $20 product, well, now you can scale that. Right now the Facebook audience is so big, and then you can kind of, you know, the, the challenge now is, you know, scaling that and getting it to a wider audience. Right? And so, yeah, I think Facebook is great in that aspect. You can kind of build a business from that. What sucks about is that as time goes on, your audience will get smaller and smaller. That effectiveness will dissipate over time and kind of have a cap to that. There'll be more competition. If a competitor or similar product sees you're doing great on Facebook, they're probably going to do similar campaigns in yours. So it's going to get tougher and tougher as time goes on. So the challenge there is to iterate and differentiate as time goes on. The better you can do that, the better success you're going to get on Facebook, right? Yeah. So that's kind of like. My quick thoughts on Facebook up next is I have pretty deep knowledge on this, but Amazon, what's a successful product on Amazon? So for me, it started with product selection. And, you know, know when you think of product selection, you want to think of what is the best seller, what are the best sellers on Amazon for your category, for your product. And then you have to think about in your product development, like, what makes that product, like, sell well, what can you do to change the, you know, the form or the construction of the product to, you know, be differentiated, have a higher perceived value? Very important here, like, what's the higher perceived value that you can add to your product that others aren't other existing ones? So for me, it was a seat cushion, like 10 years ago. So back in the day, it Was just like one kind of simple looking piece of foam with like a gray or black cover. Super simple. So I was like, okay, let me think about this. So what I did was I was like, what if we put like mesh for like breathable material, right? Because one of the biggest complaints is it got too hot. Well, if we added mesh, we opened it up, now it's breathable, now it's less hot. So that, that's one thing I did as well as a handle. They're like one of the, one of the complaints I saw one of the negative reviews is I can't carry it anywhere. It's a big, bulky type seat cushion. You know, it'd be great if there's a handle. So I added a handle. And so, you know, a couple other things. Oh, I, instead of just make it mono color, like one color I had, you know, different. You know, the side was one color, the top was one color, and the bottom was a, like kind of a slip proof material. So it, you know, kind of all those factors together kind of when you had it as the same price or even I think it was like $10 higher. It's a no brainer. Like, oh yeah, I would want all these features for just $10 more versus competitors, right? So yeah, that's what I did. You know, on Amazon, it starts with product selection and product development. Like, how can you make yours different? So that's, yeah, I put that out there and then from there it becomes a battle of putting it online, putting a listing up and then getting the reviews. So that's what I did. Ask friends and families, review groups, et cetera. You get those reviews and then that kind of enhanced product plus your kind of onboarding, your startup of process with the listing over time, you know, eventually rolls the ranks and Rosa ranks and rolls, ranks, right? So span of, you know, three years, did that same thing across 10 products and then grew it to a seven figure business and exited. Right? So it's great because you know, you get your product up there and you know, you, you battle to get your SEO value up and get higher in the rankings, but at that point it's pretty much an easy game. I don't want to say set it and forget it, but it says set it and forget it as you can, right? So you spend some time with the product research, you spend some time with, you know, battling, you know, optimizing your SEO and you're kind of maybe writing a little pretty. Right? And so that's, it's a great kind of entry way for Me in E commerce learning Amazon. But yeah, I think, you know, some of the bad parts about it are like slim margins, right. Constant price wars. Like after a year I saw copycats. Right. And so it's, that's gonna take its toll as well as customer loyalty. Right. Amazon's a pretty commoditized platform where a customer doesn't care one brand from the next, right. So they're not gonna be loyal to your brand. So yeah, I think the game became, you know, more product launches with more unique ideas and then kind of continuing that over time to kind of maintain your Amazon business. So yeah, that's kind of what I did. So yeah, that was a great business and yeah, successfully exited from that. And then that allowed me to kind of get connections and really understand TikTok shop. Right. So during my time I was the head of Amazon at GoPure Beauty, which is a top five top ten TikTok shop seller that went viral with their neck cream. And so I was a head of Amazon at GoPure Beauty and saw firsthand how amazing TikTok shop was and how viral can get, right? So, you know, seven figure sales off one product, off the back of TikTok shop affiliate videos. I was like, this is a no brainer. This is like amazing. I felt like I struck gold just by being witness to the whole system. So this was mid 23 or late 23, 2023. And I was like, I was hooked. Spent nights and weekends just thinking about TikTok shop and the kind of impact that it could have on E commerce and it continues to have. So yeah, in 24, decided to branch off on my own and start my own kind of TikTok shop empire, if you will. Right. So you know this podcast agency, you know, affiliate Network, affiliate Academy HQ where we interview the top 1% of TikTok shop affiliates and you know, really went headfirst into the TikTok Shop space. So yeah, yeah, so that's kind of, you know, my Amazon journey led me to a company that went, you know, that did, you know, crazy numbers on TikTok Shop. And from that I kind of found the spark of like wanting to be, you know, a thought leader in the space. So here we are today. But I compiled, I've compiled some thoughts here, like why TikTok so awesome, right? So characteristics of a top TikTok product. TikTok shop brand trend friendly. Right? You want to make sure that, you know, the top products, if you look, they're, they have a little bit of a kind of uniqueness to them, right. Like Go Pure's Net Cream. Very unique, right. There's not a leader. There's not a leader in the space. But if you're gonna kind of. There aren't very many, like commoditized Amazon products like Sheet Cushion won't necessarily do too well. Right. Because it's kind of commoditized. So yeah, I think another characteristic is a great before and after. On a, on a product, you want to make sure that, you know, the videos translate a great before and after. Right. So that's why, you know, vacuums do well, like dirty, not dirty or skincare. This is, you know, I've been using it for two weeks. This is what I look like before. That's pretty awesome, right? So kind of like that, that before and after, what makes a good product, right. And I think TikTok shop also provides us with, you know, in a place for people to, you know, have impulse buys, right. They see the product, they see before and after. Well, it's a quick button to press to get that buy across. Right. So combining that E commerce element with a viral video, it's kind of amazing, right? We haven't really seen that before. So yeah, yeah, I think that's kind of a great successful product there. And what really sucks about it is sometimes it's in certain niches it can be oversaturated. You know, you'll start to see one product lead off and copycats of that product and so it'll get saturated fast. And I think one common thing that I have about TikTok is it's, it'll get, it moves very fast, right. So it's fast to have a success there, but at the same time it's fast for copycatters to come and kind of take a little bit of that success. So it's important to kind of stay on top of it, you know, more products, you know, you know, don't let up on your affiliate, you know, marketing. Right. And so to bring, I'm thinking about this one story. So I was talking with this brand and it's a supplement brand and they killed it on TikTok shop. I think they were doing like 300,000 a week early 24. And they were killing it. And so leadership was saying that they didn't want to send as many samples and they wanted to kind of pull back on samples and kind of let, you know, everything take its course. And so that eventually translated to not many samples sent out, not, not many videos made and slowly kind of ate away at the business. Right. They took away that flywheel that was happening on TikTok shop because they wanted to get more profitable on their P and L. So yeah, it was kind of one of those stories where, you know, you gotta really keep your foot on the gas when it comes to TikTok success, right? You get one viral hit, you will, you, you wanna find more viral hits, right? So yeah, that's one lesson I took away. It, it, it acts super fast. Both your growth but also people that want to take away from your growth. So definitely stick on it. And yeah, I think that pretty much ends it for, for today's episode, I just wanted to kind of go over what I thoughts on the different platforms, right? Like Facebook, you know, has its pros and cons, like high aov, having to stay on top of trends and you know, testing consistently and making sure that that's always kind of forefront right on Amazon. It's a lot of hard work up front, a lot of competition, differentiation, but once you're up there, it's kind of maybe a little bit smoother than it is to start. And then TikTok shop, it's viral hits and E commerce, e commerce element to the viral hits and moving fast. And so yeah, I think also TikTok shop is just maybe a little over a year old now and it's only going to get more kind of involved and more details and a lot more kind of things to come, right? Like TikTok's development team is the fastest I've ever seen. So there's going to be more and more new features and you know, et cetera, that that's going to come across. So yeah, I'm excited for it. That's, you know, main reason I made this podcast is just kind of get my ideas out there and talk about TikTok shop. Anyone that wants to talk TikTok shop, you can, you know, visit tiktokshopinsiders.com There's a link to the Slack group there. You can message me and talk TikTok shop all day. And yeah, that concludes it for today, the different channels and wanted to kind of lay it out there. If you have any questions, let me know. Be on tiktokshopinsiders. Com. All right, guys, thanks, Sue. Thanks. Catch you next time.