Episode Summary
In episode 11 of the 7 Figures and Beyond podcast, Greg interviews Josh and Jenna from Graceful by Design, a successful business that pivoted to TikTok shops for e-commerce growth. They discuss the shift from Amazon to TikTok, the advantages of TikTok shops in terms of direct customer interaction and brand growth, and their strategic use of influencers to drive sales. Their business sells workbooks, planners, and charts and has seen significant success since focusing on TikTok as a sales channel.
Video Replay
Key Takeaways
- TikTok Shops as a Powerful E-commerce Platform: TikTok shops are emerging as a significant platform for e-commerce brands, offering a direct line to customers and a new avenue for brand growth and visibility.
- Strategic Pivot to TikTok: Josh and Jenna’s decision to pivot to TikTok shops was driven by the platform’s rising popularity and the direct engagement it offers between brands and consumers, leading to a notable increase in their business’s growth and success.
- Influencer Collaboration is Key: Working with influencers, especially those with engaged but not necessarily huge followings, has been instrumental in driving visibility and sales for their products on TikTok.
- Accessibility and Ease of Use: Despite initial perceptions, setting up and optimizing a TikTok shop is straightforward and accessible, making it an attractive option for e-commerce businesses looking to expand their reach.
- Community and Customer Interaction: TikTok shops facilitate a closer interaction between brands and their audience, allowing for immediate feedback, product promotion, and a deeper understanding of customer needs and preferences.
Links
Greg Shuey LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-shuey/
Jenna Coleman LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gracefulbydesign/
Graceful By Design: https://gracefulbydesign.com/
Selling On Tiktok Course: https://www.sahm-entrepreneur.com/tiktok-setup
Episode Transcript
Greg: 0:28
Welcome to episode 11 of the 7 Figures and Beyond podcast. After some technical difficulties this morning with getting everyone online and headphones, we are off and running, so I’m super stoked about that. In our episode yesterday, we had a really good discussion about influencer marketing. We talked a little bit about TikTok, influencers and driving brand awareness and growth there, and that really kind of dovetails back into what we’re going to be talking about today. As most of you know, I really approach influencer marketing pretty cautiously, so I was really pleased about some of the takeaways that I got out of that discussion. If you haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet, I recommend you do so. Today we’re going to be talking with Josh and Jenna from Graceful by Design. They have a really cool business. If you haven’t heard of them, go search for them on Google. Take a look at their products. They sell really really cool workbooks, planners, charts, et cetera. They’re just awesome. Today we’re going to be talking about TikTok shops, which, from what I understand, are all the rage right now. Literally I can’t get on LinkedIn without seeing someone talking about TikTok shops. I’ve had a lot of discussions around this topic with prospects and clients. Some are jazzed about it. Others are a little bit skeptical, but I believe that they are here to stay, which is why I reached out to them to have this discussion. Over the last few months, they have pivoted their efforts from Amazon and have gone all in over on their TikTok shop, and they are having a lot of success. We’re going to talk about TikTok shops, how to set them up, how to properly optimize them and how to collaborate with creators to boost visibility and sales. Before we dive in, just want to give a little plug to them. They’ve also recently launched a little mini course, I believe. Is that what you’re calling it? A course Mini?
Jenna: 2:31
course.
Greg: 2:32
A mini course to help educate brand owners on how to make that jump and how to get the most out of their TikTok shop. We’ll include a link to that in our show notes, but it’s $97, not too expensive, so go out and get that. Today I’m going to Start learning. Let’s jump in. Before we jump into our questions with both of you, just take a few minutes, introduce yourselves to our listeners and share a little bit about your personal story and how you’ve gotten to where you are today.
Jenna: 3:06
Great, thank you for having us. My name is Jenna, I’m Dash. I’m going to let you introduce yourself. We started Grasile by Design. I started it, I guess. Now I feel like it’s been about a year and a half we launched our first. it hasn’t even been a year since we launched our first product on Amazon. We do still have products on Amazon and fully enjoy it, but TikTok shop is really where our business has taken off and grown. I would say it’s been about a year and a half since maybe almost two years now that I decided to jump into e-commerce. Before that, neither of us had had a background in e-commerce. I had been admiring it from afar for, I feel like the better part of a decade. He knows that I just was waiting for life to slow down. We had newborn twins and I was like I’m going to stay home a little bit. I was a former public school teacher. Before that I was in business and marketing and then I went back and got my matches of education. We had our kids and I was like, okay, life will slow down. Before I knew it and I know you’re laughing because you have- kids that look to our kids age it doesn’t, it only speeds up. I feel like we hit this breaking point, that life was the craziest it ever was. I think newborn twins was like. I remember thinking back to that and I was like, wow, that sounds like a rest right now, just because of everything we had going on. I was like if I don’t do this, I’m never going to. I dove all in. I took multiple courses and my podcasts are all learning and education about this. I just jumped all in and he’s watching from afar. Go ahead, you do your thing. I was really enjoying it. My side of it is more I love creative things. I’m a creative. I like creating things, designing things. A lot of the stuff that we created are things that I’ve been passionate about anyways. Organization, education those are the things that were definitely in my wheelhouse. Once we learned product research and found products that were in my area of what I had passions for in creating, that’s where we really started to jump in. I knew that I’m not the numbers person. I am definitely not the business mind as much as he is. When he found out there was a lot of data, analytics and all of that stuff too, that’s where I looped him in. I was like look at all this nerd software here. You can go into Helium 10 and study it. He was like, all right, that’s pretty cool At first, I wasn’t invited to be there.
Josh: 5:36
In terms of where that parlays, my background is a lot in math and quantitative based. I’m not a creative at all, unless it’s spreadsheet creative. When it comes to that. Where it went together well is she really wanted to serve a certain audience, like she said, with a certain passion, but really didn’t understand. There was no real way I didn’t want to guess of what that audience was actually looking for at the time. It was fun. I got to use my analytical mind to jump in and learn. When I was like here’s the places they are. At first I think they should be over here. I was like okay, but right now they’re not. She was like, okay, we’ll park that one and let’s do that. It was things that she was passionate about. But you have to understand that if you really want to serve an audience, you got to go where they’re going. You can’t really serve an audience by telling them what to do. It doesn’t really. That’s really how we combine the two things. After COVID, when the five of us actually got to be home together, that really was addicting.
Jenna: 6:49
I don’t know how you flew so much.
Josh: 6:50
Yeah, I mean so much flying and so much traveling and so much on the run. It was like, wow, it’s really fun being able to have this time Now. I wouldn’t trade over anything.
Greg: 7:03
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Now you do this full time, stay home 100%.
Josh: 7:09
Yeah, we do it all together. I do it 120% of the time. I found a few more hours in the day.
Jenna: 7:16
Although, as much as it’s interesting, we thought working together would be actually together, we really divide what we do. There are days that I’ve been like hey, at the end of the day I haven’t seen it, just because we’re doing very different things. I homeschool our children as well. Then I work on the creative side of things. There definitely are days that I’m like, wow, okay, let’s have a husband and wife conversation, because I haven’t actually said hi in how we’re yeah, some days.
Greg: 7:38
That’s awesome. I love that. Sometimes I wish my wife would come work with us and really help move the business forward. She has no interest, so lucky you two. I love that.
Josh: 7:52
And I was invited and I got invited.
Jenna: 7:53
You did get invited eventually. Well, I needed help. I needed major help with IT. So there you go, All right.
Greg: 8:03
Well, I’ve prepared a couple of questions to just guide our conversation today. Are you guys ready to get started?
Jenna: 8:10
Let’s do it. Yeah, let’s do it Perfect.
Greg: 8:12
All right, why don’t we take some time here to just talk about what TikTok shops are in general? What are they and why are they the next big thing for e-commerce brands?
Josh: 8:26
So TikTok shop, actually, I’m going to say, is two different things. There’s a brand and a creator side. So creators have what’s called a showcase, where they are basically ambassadors for various brands and they can put products on their showcase and they can earn commission on sales that come from their link or that come from their showcase and their links and videos. And basically the TikTok shop side the brand side, is people who have items that want to promote them and want to basically build a sales force and a sales force ambassadors of their brand, and they have their products on their shop. So the difference is showcase for creators, shop for brands, right?
Greg: 9:20
Cool, all right. And how do these shops I mean before we kind of get into the next question how do these shops compare to Amazon? Like, I haven’t spent a whole lot of time in these tick like, how do they compare to an Amazon? How do they compare to a direct to consumer type website?
Jenna: 9:41
So I think one of the biggest misconceptions that people have about these is that they’re actually super complex, and I think that’s kind of what holds people back from getting them set up, especially when you come from the world of Amazon. Right, it’s a completely different. It’s a different beast, all of its own, but it is very simplified. So I mean I’ll let you get into the specifics of it, but I do want to clarify that it’s easy. It’s very simple.
Josh: 10:02
Yes, yeah, and I think actually I didn’t finish answering your first question about why is it the next big thing? The next big thing, the reason and the is not complicated, but it really allows brands direct access to their audience and it allows them to. You know, in business, outside of you calm, when you have a salesperson, but really like an ambassador, a disciple of your brand, it’s far more powerful than a brand owner even pitching what they do, because it’s someone that’s actually using that thing or that service. Well, tiktok shop, in the social selling world in general, it really provides, instead of just a product, it provides really like the why and the like functionality first and because the first time of user sees the product, typically it’s in a video being used you know and they get to understand what it is immediately, instead of looking at no matter how fancy an image is flat on the screen, it’s really. You don’t necessarily know what it is till you look more. Whereas in TikTok shop, the video is specifically of the product and TikTok specifically is pushing content that is talking and things like that. It’s not like Instagram, where it’s like you know, create a like vintage, look at our product in the mountain, you know scenery, it’s like that’s not what it is. It’s like this is exactly how it’s used and what you know what I like about it and things like that. So, social selling in general, where it is more interactive, there’s comments, responses, all those types of things, and then, as the brand, we’re right there too. We’re answering questions or comments. When customers purchase and leave a review, we can begin a dialogue with it, like, in other words, we’re getting feedback even on product development from our customers in TikTok shop. Right, and that is really the to us. Why it’s the next big thing is it’s truly a way for smaller brands to interact realistically, like we are the ones doing it. We don’t have, like, a team of customer service, people you know, reaching out to people. It’s like oh Jen, this person thinks this or this. What about this idea? We got one yesterday. We were like, definitely never thought of that. That is why I think it’s the future and why I think Amazon’s trying to build their influencer program. Now Walmart is actually adding one. They just hired someone to run that, and so I think it’s really in flip flip shop, which is something we’re, you know, working on as well, like those types of platforms where the social selling is taking the front, the audience and the and what the products do is taking. The forefront to me is the future of e-commerce.
Greg: 12:53
I love it. I love it and it probably again. I don’t have the data behind it, but just keeping everything in platform as well, right, it’s just very consistent and I would imagine conversion rates are better than trying to take them off platform to a D2C website and trying to convert them there. It’s just the ecosystem in the community, just I can imagine it’s just huge. Well, it’s interesting.
Jenna: 13:17
You said that one of the things that I found was surprising with some of our like more viral videos. There are plenty of people that buy directly on the platform, but I thought what was really interesting with some of our viral videos is that people saw it on TikTok because we could tell from the timing and then would go to purchase on our website and or Amazon, so we had sales increase on each of those platforms because that must be where they’re comfortable buying. For some of them the majority of it was on TikTok, but I found that really interesting that when we’d have a viral video and a spike, it would affect the other platforms too. Just preference of the buyer.
Josh: 13:50
Which is why, to me, there’s no reason for an Ecom brand to not be there in some fashion, because we noticed, when we look at we use helium 10 for our like data research and we noticed that we were able after our first viral video, like a month later, as the data was all coming out, like the title on our product on TikTok shop, as it appears, was a search term that actually like had enough volume on Amazon that you see, and so then you really connect the dots and you’re like okay, if you’re trying to organically rank on other platforms and people are typing in exactly what’s the name of your product, that starts to influence. You know what you name the product and how you communicate what it is, and that is a very interesting observation that we did not necessarily expect.
Jenna: 14:38
I mean especially from a small brand like ours. We only launched our products in July. In July so for someone to be searching us. It was because of the viral videos.
Greg: 14:46
That’s cool and that makes sense, that they trickle over to Amazon. I call it. The Amazon effect we see with D2C as well, just right through the website, is you know, we’ve trained people to go to Amazon to see if it’s there, if it’s cheaper, if it’s got free two-day shipping right, and so we do not.
Josh: 15:06
We do not have our product priced differently on different platforms because, regardless of if one maybe would impulse buy and pay a little more, it’s like no, no, this look, our product is, yeah, what it is across platforms. It’s not trying to like benefit someone finding it somewhere yeah, awesome, I love that cool, all right.
Greg: 15:28
So when you decided, you know you needed to take a look at this and potentially, you know, move the brand over and go all in on TikTok. Was this shift driven by data or did you just see an opportunity to jump on a trend and ride it like a rocket ship, like maybe you can share with us what you’re seeing from a revenue breakdown before and after the shift and just some data points around these decisions that you made?
Jenna: 15:55
I mean, I’ll let you do the numbers for sure, but I would say it’s definitely both with us and partly our personality. But we went to a conference in New York and we learned about it. What was that? In October?
Josh: 16:06
and we so there was definitely data there that I didn’t want to go to that I didn’t want to go to.
Jenna: 16:10
I was like TikTok I mean, I wasn’t even on TikTok myself anyways. It was like I don’t do TikTok and I that. That again is another misconception. I hear from people they’re like I don’t know how to do TikTok. I’m like I.
Speaker 1: 16:19
I don’t even have one.
Greg: 16:20
I don’t. Yeah, I have no idea Exactly.
Jenna: 16:25
And so we get there and we heard from another Amazon small business owner who has had a lot of success. She walked us through kind of her journey, especially when it was the beta testing group of TikTok shop, and it was just fascinating and it was just a few hours and now we live in Philly, so it’s what, not even a three hour drive from New York City home. We were just kind of soaking in I’m sure he was taking the data but I was like all in, I’m like we got it. Why would we not? What is there to risk? We’ve made these great products, let’s test the market out. And on the drive home, the three hour drive home he had he, he had a set up. Now this was early on. It still takes a little bit longer now, but literally we were pulling and I can remember and he was like done, let’s go. I was like what do you think done? And he was like he’s like our TikTok shop is set up, let’s go. I mean he’s, he’s fast with technology anyways. But I was like okay, so you know we still had more to learn and how to reach out to influencers and that part of it. But we are like the not like dip your toe and we’re the 50 foot jump, like let’s go like type of a yeah.
Josh: 17:25
And so to answer your questions about the, the data driven and the revenue side, is what we did first is common sense, simple things like we looked up our competitors on TikTok shop and none of them were there and I was like, okay, well, the. The question is, have they tried it and got off the platform, or or just haven’t tried it and it was brand new, so they obviously hadn’t tried it. So I was like, all right, so that’s good to be first. And so from a revenue share standpoint, I mean by Thanksgiving we probably had like 120 followers, like again it was it takes some. I will definitely say the investment in time up front is there so even in December no, no, I just mean right, and still someone looking at your stuff right here. Products only get so many views as you’re kind of starting to reach out to influencers and everything. So what we saw from the creator outreach we did in November with content that was then started to be posted in beginning of December. Christmas day was the first time a video went like viral or like mini viral and it was a video posted three weeks before. Okay, so it went organically viral three weeks after it was posted and that day was the first time it actually led to December being almost as much on TikTok shop as on Amazon, which leading up to that, was 90, 10 Amazon right like or maybe more 95 on a single video posted on Chris that went viral on Christmas day.
Greg: 18:57
The month was almost. Wow, it was almost over.
Josh: 19:00
It’s sold. They sold us out in two days. Yeah, whoa, and. And so then you’re like, whoa, this is a thing. Like so then because again, I was laughing because it was Christmas day and my phone was, but I’m like not that many people like me enough to say Merry Christmas, like why, why? Why is my phone? So it was just so unexpected, especially when you go and look at the post and you’re like this post was made like December 3rd or 4th, like that doesn’t, because in our minds, right, that doesn’t make sense. Like even saying it out loud now you’re like, but it’s old, like it doesn’t. But that’s really where the ability to do those reachouts, as I said, that’s a month, yeah, from from the time we reached out, sent a sample, they got it, posted a video and then it eventually went and took off.
Jenna: 19:47
You know it was a month so you know that’s that’s still some some time that you have to be patient and work the you know system and and keep that effort going and continuing to reach out with influencers, because I think the the craziest part to us is two of our most viral videos that had the most sales on them. They’re not giant influencers. I can remember connecting with influencers that I mean influencers that were 500, 000 a million. We were like, yes, they’re gonna take our part. This is fantastic. And they did and they did videos and they did. Okay, yeah, but our two I mean our, our groove books, one that’s like over 11 million. She’s 33 000 followers, which is is great, but it’s not. She’s not a mega influencer huge yeah right and she has over 11 million views on that and it really drove stuff. So I think it’s amazing to me to see the how, in, how quickly a video can really start to to take off and and you don’t know what type of an influencer it’s going to be so we have seen.
Josh: 20:41
So from a data perspective, right, because that’s just how I try to look at things. Um, the the larger influencers believe it are not. A lot of them aren’t actually affiliates on tiktok that can have a showcase and earn commission believe it, or it’s still to this day. You’d be shocked at the percentage. So in other words you could have you know 800 000 followers and do a viral video on tiktok shop, but if you’re not set up as an affiliate, they can’t buy right from your link, so conversion will be lower, naturally, because they can’t buy from the video and they can earn commission and so it’s kind of a lose lose for them in the brand in some ways. So what we found from an observation standpoint is the 10 to 50 000 followers have much more engaged audiences on tiktok shop from a conversion perspective. So, like large influencers might have a lot of views and comments here and there and stuff, but the 10 to 50 000 really is the, for us, has been the sweet spot. Most of our influencers have been in that range, but what we’ve seen single most important driver is not views, it’s actually comments, because people will comment and the videos that have taken off. The creator of the content is in the comments all the time, responding, putting different things in there, tagging us, like, hey, tag, tag in, because there’s a question that you know is the ink non-toxic, like hop in and answer that and things, and so the creators that interact with the content is tiktok seems to reward with traffic interesting.
Greg: 22:17
That’s, that’s cool, that is really cool, great, all right. So, as I mentioned kind of when we kicked this thing off, a lot of the brands I’m talking with are, I don’t know, the skeptical is the right word. But, cautious like they’re, like, I don’t want to put a lot of time into this. I don’t know, you know, if it, if it’s gonna work and if the reward is gonna be there. So, as you’ve talked to other people, like, what are some of the common Misconceptions that people have about tick-tock shops and how do you overcome those?
Jenna: 22:53
So I think you kind of hit the nail on the head is that a lot of people are like I don’t have time for this. That’s exactly it, and it’s because we’re used to other platforms that take a lot more time to get set up on, sure, and they’re a complex I mean, especially when you come from the world of Amazon, right, or setting up your own website and Driving traffic that way whereas this one, as much as the setup, is different, it’s very, very simple compared to other ones, and then it’s a new. I feel like it’s almost like a new language you’re learning in terms of Social media, but it’s not social media the way that you think it is. A lot of people are like I don’t want to do lives. I don’t want to be, I don’t want to show my face, I don’t want to do a lot of social media myself or, you know, have to have someone to do lives. That’s another thing that people have come to me and they’re like I don’t want to do lives, you don’t have to do lives. I did lives. I tried that in the beginning, because they had a promotion for new sellers that gave you ad credits and I did that and I crickets almost no sales, yeah. But what I would say is that it’s really connecting to influencers and that takes time up front. But that time up front really Changes once you start to make sales and lessens your time right. So in the beginning we’re reaching out to influencers a lot because we haven’t made sales yet and we’re trying to connect. This is our brand and we’re trying to get them to share our products. But once you show that your products are selling and making money, they come to you and that now we’re like, okay, we, we have to start saying no because we only have so much inventory to manage, especially with things like our group books that keep Going out of out of stock. So it it changes. It is some upfront work and it is learning a new system, anything new, right, there’s, there’s always fear of change and I think that was the same, you know, for us with basically any platform We’ve looked at, but it is Significantly less time, I would say. Then people would assume so and I would say the same has been said for a lot of people that just recently took our mini course. I will say that they were like wow, I’m up, I’m running, I made my first sale, you know.
Josh: 24:51
So yeah, yeah, and and I think that’s one of the things is One of the initial reactions. I mean, first off, if you have Shopify, they made it so easy now that you can, that actually you can be up and running almost immediately.
Greg: 25:03
I was gonna ask connect it and pull all your products over?
Josh: 25:07
Yes, and actually not only that, but Shopify will create you the business center account and ads account that you need in tiktok on the business side as well. That’s awesome. It’s pretty wild and Someone was like I keep making changes on tiktok shop and it keeps reverting and I’m like I know everything is in Shopify. If you change it, shopify is gonna be like nope. But so the misconception I think there is like that one Shopify one is like an over-the-top one, so easy once you have that, but the other is is things that do make a lot of sense to be concerned about, like fulfillment, like people are like, but my inventory is that Amazon or my inventory is that a 3p out like a different warehouse, like. I don’t have to worry about doing that and the advantage is the inventory could be at your house, at Amazon or some of each, or a warehouse or whatever, and tiktok Fulfillment options kind of right now work into whatever works for you, so you can fulfill from Amazon, you can fulfill from home. Tiktok will actually Currently print the label or you have to print it. They’ll buy the label for you and so they’ll provide free shipping to the customer a lot of times and then they’ll actually Create you a label and you can ship it from your house if you prefer. So, like they’re, they’re coming to the brand when it comes to making it Easy to like, get on to the platform and learn, and so inventory should not be a Hold up for anyone, because, no matter where it is located, you know the they’ll work with that.
Jenna: 26:39
I will say you said that well that tiktok wants new sellers on their platform. They have incentives and and we have a funny story about that we actually helped a friend get set up Before we had launched our mini course and you helped her get her system set up. And so sometimes they’ll run flash sales that they are taking the cost of it, not you. They’re paying the cost of the discount on your sale to get your shop going. And she was like you know, josh has helped her in the background get everything set up and she’s like why did Josh come up with that? And she’s like why did Josh cut my price so much? She’s just like I mean, I don’t know if I can make these margins work.
Josh: 27:13
She’s like yeah, why’d you do that? I was like what are you talking about? She’s like tiktok shop as my product 30% off. I’m like I would not. I would not do that to you. And so there are times that tiktok shop will provide incentives or like coupons that tiktok will fund.
Jenna: 27:28
I think we have been going right now they’re funding and it’s most of our products are 30% off right now and we’re not because they want new sellers on the platform and that is what’s kind of fun.
Josh: 27:37
I think it was 15 today, like it goes back and forth right.
Jenna: 27:40
So, like with being with another group of small business owners, are a little community that comes with it and they see these things. It’s so foreign to you. When you’re on another platform, you pay.
Josh: 27:47
Sure.
Speaker 1: 27:48
Play on another platform right in here so they’re like.
Jenna: 27:50
So that was just kind of a funny story of it. But yeah, they want new sellers on their platform.
Greg: 27:55
That’s crazy. That’s. That’s a pretty sweet incentive, like that’s awesome.
Josh: 28:00
It’s a really big. It’s a really big incentive, and I think it’s because they know that there’s a lot of Trepidation for folks, but then they also know that when you are getting set up as a brand, look, these would be hurdles that all of us would naturally have with any platform. Yeah but they’re trying to like Solve ahead of time, if you will make it. Make it easy, cool, easy, nothing’s easy.
Greg: 28:24
That’s awesome. So my next question talked about setup. I think we’ve talked a lot about setup already, like so how, once you’re set up, how do you optimize the shop? Are there a handful of things that you need to do in order to optimize and make sure that you can get more traction?
Josh: 28:41
So To two parts of it. On the actual listings, tic-tac uses their AI pretty heavily to make recommendations on your bullets and your and your description and and things like that which, again, when it’s made or Designed by the platform you know, for the most part, I take most of their advice because they’re the ones, sure, with the traffic you know, in their hands. So the AI actually does a good job. I Actually use some of it for the description on our website. I was like that’s a pretty good way to say it. So they’re there. On the shop optimization side, I think it’s as you’re putting in the products. They give some good guidance as to what they want. But then on the setup side, on the social side, I’ll let Jenna talk, because it’s more about getting content so that when a creator or someone Before you can be totally reaching out to creators, first thing we all do on a web is go to a company’s website. First thing a creator is gonna do is go to your page and they don’t want to see 7-second Instagram reels. They want to see like what is this thing? Like? Where would it? What is this thing that they’re Promoting? What’s the history like some, something they want to learn about the product.
Jenna: 29:51
Right. So I think it’s really important to get your brand story out there, or the story behind your product, specifically because when someone wants to share your products, they need to be able to go to your page and learn about it when you initially reach out to them. It needs to be concise, impactful. You need to have your. You know your commission’s got everything that you’re offering in there, but you’re not really getting in your brand story there. So your option for that there immediately gonna click on your tick tock shop and you do not need to be someone consistently posting reels or getting lots of followers or Views on yours, but you’re. Then you’re thinking almost as the influencers are going to come to your page and that’s important as much as as customers coming to your page. It’s really the influencers coming to your page, because when I am talking about, maybe our group handwriting workbooks that we created, how I created them, maybe a little bit about my background, you know I have my master’s in education and a passion for learning, so I’m explaining why I created these the way that I did, and then that’s something that they I have even found sometimes they share that in their reels a little bit Because you’re connecting with people, right, people buy from people. Now they feel like they know the brand behind this. This is a brand created by a mom, so they’re talking to moms and now you have a connection there. Maybe your product isn’t for moms, but whatever it is, they need to be able to connect with your buyer and your story of your brand through your reels or information on your page. They don’t have to be amazingly done I am not like I’m not an influencer and I have plenty of my reels that have not even a hundred views but it’s really just they connect with the ability to go through your tick tock and see why you made the product or the story behind it, or the story behind your brand. That’s your main goal is for them to be able to easily go to your page and see what about your story, and it doesn’t have to be your face. I usually get that question too. It doesn’t have to be your face, but maybe it’s like you know why you designed it this way, and that, to me, is another thing that they use. So, for example, like our, but these stick on any surface. They’re for, not for. Magnetic are calendar sets, and that is what a lot of the influencers have used in their videos talking about the fact that you have a fridge that is not magnetic. Yeah you’re going to show it to you and sparked a whole debate.
Josh: 32:04
There was one video that has six figures of views, and all the comments are debating whether stainless steel is magnetic.
Jenna: 32:09
It wasn’t even about our product in it and it had a ton of sales. Because she said you know, I have a stainless steel fridge and it’s not magnetic. And then everybody’s in her comments like your fridge is in stainless steel If it’s not magnetic. And they’re going back, not even about our product, and I’m like why are our sales going up from this? So it’s cool. Yeah, it’s just details like that that help sometimes to get you know to get set up is you have to have that’s the foundation.
Josh: 32:32
I would say is you have to have the basics of the listing and then you have to have the visual story of your brand and your products on your, on your account.
Greg: 32:41
Got it Okay? I mean, we’ve talked a fair amount about influencers, creators, whatever we want to call them these days, right, how do you start working with creators? Like, what does that process look like? I know you’ve just touched on it briefly. Maybe we can get a little bit more in depth.
Josh: 33:01
Yep. So there’s two types of collaborations that TikTok shop provides brands. First one is an open collaboration, which is where you add products to it and you provide a commission rate that’s accessible to all creators. So all creators in the TikTok affiliate world can go into their affiliate portal and see products that are available for open collaboration. Okay, so you would add all your products typically to it and, look, I would kind of blanket statement but recommend that in an open collaboration, you know you’re starting with at least 10% that you’re offering as a commission to creators so they go in, they can see that, see what the product is, and then they can add it to their showcase. Typically, if they want like they don’t even have to, you know, do anything, usually for permission wise they can at least add it to their showcase and say, you know, like I like this, this is cool, or I bought this or whatever. But the second part of the open collaboration is whether or not you offer samples. So creators can request samples if you provide them and then they use that obviously to make content. So I would tell new brands that the biggest investment that they should make is the time to reach out to influencers and the samples to send out, like, create a budget of samples and get them in influencers hands because that’s what they’re using to create content, right so? And it make they make it really easy to send samples If the creator requests it. You’ll see a request for a sample. You can look at the creator. You can see their metrics, their demographic of the people who see their, their content and engage with their content. You can see their performance history. How much revenue have they generated brands over the last month, like? You can see all this detail and you can say, oh, their audience is perfect. You can improve it and it’ll. You know it’ll create an order and you ship it out to the influencers. So that’s open where they can come to you and and come to the product. Target is then push marketing, if you will. Right, where now you’re going to influencers? You can find them in the find creator section, literally what it’s called. So you find creators, you can search by whatever you want interest, all these types of things and then you can do a reach out to you, create a template. You can reach out to up to 50 at once. Where you’d create a template, add a specific product, like a planner to like we have a fitness planner. So I would create a target outreach where you put the fitness planner and you have to make a commission offer. So you’d make one, at least you know. Say, if you did 10%, you do 15%, and then it’ll show up with this little up arrow that says higher commission than open, like higher commission than is provided to everybody, if you will, and then it’ll give you 500 characters to put a little thing in there and it’ll show the product with the discount and then they’ll you can reach, the message will go to them directly. You don’t need to like, be friends or anything like that It’ll. It’ll send it straight to them with the offer and your little blurb and the commission and that you can then do. Push marketing to creators 50 at a time.
Greg: 36:24
That way, Wow, sounds like they’ve made it really easy, like way easier than your traditional influencer marketing. And let me make sure I understand that first one that you talked about. That almost feels like an affiliate network where an affiliate can say I want to work with that brand and then request maybe that’s not the request, but you don’t have to do any work. They see you, they see your product and they’re like I want to promote that. Is that right?
Jenna: 36:50
Definitely, and I would say that in the beginning it was, it was, it was much more with the target right. We’re reaching out to people because we didn’t have products that people knew about or had seen sales, and I remember in the beginning thinking, wow, this is, this is a lot of outreach. But once you have had some sales, it seems to multiply. And now we have I don’t even know how many shops that we’re in right now that you can see, there’s almost 1000 creators that have one of our products in their showcase, at least right, which is crazy to us, you know. So it does change, but it is upfront work, for sure, reaching out. But once you really have some success then, then it changes and it really has both in your model.
Josh: 37:29
So the first two months are revenue allocation. Open versus target was 90%, target 10% open. So we pushed to 90% of the creators and now this past month it’s 90, 10 other way, whoa.
Greg: 37:46
Whoa, and it’s just happening while you’re sleeping. It’s just happening. That is so awesome.
Josh: 37:52
It’s happening and it’s still then communication, because they’re coming to you and requesting a sample and such that you still have to go through their profile. You have to make sure that they’re you know, consistent, everything. And then you, you talk to them, you communicate. Usually they’re people who fit your profile. You don’t have to do all these demographic searches because that’s how they’re finding you. So that’s been that, that whole thing, to be able to see that life cycle. Oh and then, because I promised the actual information for brands, we had about a 5% response rate. So if we sent out 50, we would have maybe two or three that would come back and say like yeah, I’ll work with you and like request a sample and usually one post content at first because we are new. They can see when you reach out it has the little product card with your listing image and says the commission and then sells how many have been sold, shows how many have been sold. So when we reach out with groups and it says 8000 sold in two months, you know like the inputs are much different conversion rate in terms of them responding.
Greg: 38:58
People say that looks easy because everyone’s buying it. Yeah right, okay, okay Cool, that’s awesome, all right. Last question I have for both of you today is outside of creators, what other strategies are you seeing that can be leveraged to grow your visibility in the channel?
Jenna: 39:18
You mean within TikTok.
Greg: 39:19
Yeah, yep.
Josh: 39:21
So, outside of specific creator outreach, my vote would be the TikTok promotions. Okay, so TikTok shop provides campaigns. They’re called. If you’re a brand and you’re in your dashboard, it’s called a campaign on the left. And right now they just opened the spring campaign that you can go and register for. So when you click on it they’ll there’s a seller live stream, a creator live stream, competition type thing that you can enter in. And then you have a certain amount of time or a certain window of time that you do lives or you do whatever, and they run traffic to you. And we could they definitely do so. They’ll run traffic to you. You can do like live giveaways, you can do all these things, and then they’ll have a video creator promotion where it’s like look, if you’re just a brand that wants to create some, some, some videos, you can do that. They’ll run extra traffic to them. You just you have to go in and register your brand for it. Yeah, and then the last one is promotions. So you go into that product campaign and you can say I’m going to make this product 10, 15% off, something like that, and then the tiktok will tell you and then we’ll also provide a discount to our customers on top of your discount that will fund. Those, to me, are the things that are right there to take advantage of Right.
Greg: 40:52
And are those like ads that you’re running, like Facebook type ads?
Josh: 40:57
So you can run ads, but this is tiktok campaigns, where they’re actually pushing traffic to it. Yeah, interesting, Cool. And then in the shop tab, like if, instead of like seeing it on a video, if you go into, like the tiktok shop it’ll have like a thing that’s like spring. You know products you might like in the spring campaign.
Greg: 41:19
Oh cool.
Josh: 41:20
Right yeah.
Greg: 41:22
Have you, have you guys ever tried running ads before?
Josh: 41:25
Yes.
Greg: 41:26
And how does?
Josh: 41:26
that work. So the ads platform is really easy to use and I would say it’s like meta, if it was way simpler. So so you can do good targeting and things like that, but the advantage is that you are boosting, in a way, creator content, not creating separate ads typically. So, in other words, if a creator creates content, you go to them and ask permission, for you can’t repost creator content, by the way like it? Absolutely no, no. So you go to them and you say we’d like to boost your you know post because everybody wins, type of thing. They give you a code that authorizes you for a certain amount of time. When you go in, you do all the targeting and everything, and then, for the actual ad, you would say authorized video, put in the code, and then you can’t change a thing. You can’t change the product that’s promoting, you can’t change the captions, you can’t change a single thing, which, frankly, thank goodness, because like then you have to do all this analysis and what you should change it’s not. It’s not like that it’s. You then run the ad.
Greg: 42:41
Click with this, I can go.
Josh: 42:44
Yep Exactly.
Greg: 42:46
So below is that. That’s cool and I would imagine that works really well, especially on the video that already get traction and just right, exactly. That’s cool, awesome, great. Any final words of wisdom?
Jenna: 43:01
Oh, I mean, this is a this is a great conversation. It was really nice getting to chat with you and I feel like I guess if I did have a word of wisdom, I would say that ask, ask the questions instead of sitting in what you think it might be. So I do think there are a lot of misconceptions with TikTok shop that it is very complex or too difficult to get on, or that you need to be an influencer or spend a lot of time on or new learn all of these new things that are you know you just don’t have time for with your business. I would say ask the questions and I would definitely say go for it. I think it’s a great platform it is. They are very open to small business owners like us, and just don’t let those misconceptions stop you from from taking a little bit of time to check it out.
Greg: 43:44
That’s awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you both for being on today.
Jenna: 43:48
Absolutely yeah.
Greg is the founder and CEO of Stryde and a seasoned digital marketer who has worked with thousands of businesses, large and small, to generate more revenue via online marketing strategy and execution. Greg has written hundreds of blog posts as well as spoken at many events about online marketing strategy. You can follow Greg on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.
