Hello and welcome back to the e commerce impact podcast. Today I am super excited that we have Jordan West here to talk to us today all about TikTok shop. So Jordan, it's great to have you here.

Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.

I'm just wondering, why are we talking about TikTok shop? If TikTok is going to get banned in the United States, what's the point of even talking about it?

Well, that is a great question. What are you, what's your answer to that one?

like setting up my own questions here. Like

I love it.

Love it.

the question that I'm getting from everybody right now when people are saying, well, I don't even know if there's a point to doing it. And you know, I, I don't think that we're going to go hard on Tik TOK shops.

Well, here's the point that the 5 billion. Pound gorilla in the room meta is rolling out this exact same thing in Q3. So whether or not you like it, you are going to have to figure out social selling and you're going to have to figure out what this looks like. This weird confluence between Amazon and Facebook and all of these things, you're going to have to figure it out.

It's, it's not going to be a, like, like a nice to have for brands. It's going to be a, a need to have for brands. So whether TikTok gets banned in the U S or not, 

but I mean, the, the real fact is like, yes, it's one market that may not have Tik TOK.

I don't think that's even going to happen. I really do believe that like the States, if, if Americans care about one thing, it is money, right. And Tik TOK brings in a massive amount of money into the American economy. I can't even imagine them shutting that down. Do you know that a hundred million people.

In the States are on tick tock for 90 minutes plus a day I for myself as a dad, I think about that. And like, I will not let my kids on tick tock. Absolutely not. That is crack, right? Like it, it actually, I'm, funny. I'm, I'm starting this podcast out being like, I'm actually kind of against it as a parent, as a marketer. It's brilliant. It's an incredible thing. I'm not going to change their

there. So you know, as far as, as far as I'm concerned, we might as well put products out there, right? We might as well be one of the ones that are out there doing

that's kind of where I stand with all

I hear you totally hear you on the addiction. I have deleted tech talk for the 20th time. I'm about 10 days in to not having tech talk on my phone. It's so addictive. I do love it, but I don't think it's the best use of my time, but yeah, agree on the marketing front, like 90 minutes a day. That's a feature film length of content that people are watching.

So as a brand, you need to be on there and tick tock shop seems like a smart way to be there personally. I might regret saying this by the time this podcast comes out, but I think they'll find a way to keep TikTok in some form in the US, like you say, like. It's such an integral part of many kind of industries now, but in what form it takes will be interesting to see how the, how the regulators pull it off, but yes.

Okay. Wow. We haven't actually done a proper intro to you. So do you want to tell us Jordan, we like a bit about you and what you've done recently in your career and a little bit why you're You're here to talk to us about TikTok shop.

, my, my name is Jordan West. I've been in the e commerce space since about 2014 ish. My very first e com store that I had was a, a hoverboard drop shipping site. And so that was, that was the time when hoverboards were blowing up on planes and stuff. And I decided, Hey, I'm going to get into it. I actually made some pretty decent money, but it was the point where I sold one to somebody in my neighborhood and it was being drop shipped from China. And then I saw it and I was like, Hey, I actually sold that to you.

And then it broke. And I was like, Oh no, like I can't sell something that I can't stand behind. And so from there my wife and I started a baby clothing brand. From there we acquired a bunch of brands. At one point it was up to six. I started an agency at that time as well to service e commerce brands.

I've had a podcast that has almost 550 episodes in the space

like we had about 40, 000 downloads a month. didn't know that there was that many people in e commerce to even listen. And so

Yeah. Right.

Yeah. So name drop your podcast for those who aren't already following it.

yes. Hopefully you are listening to it. It's called secrets to scaling your e commerce brand. And I do interviews with people that are way smarter than me.

So,

Yeah. Awesome. Okay, well, let's dive into our topic then. Super excited to talk about this. So, TikTok Shop, we touched briefly on why tiktoks such a great platform. Why particularly, are you excited about TikTok shop in particular, as a, as a channel within the platform? Mm

the reason why I think that TikTok shop is just an incredible change and it's so much bigger than everyone even realizes right now. And I think a couple of people realize it, but for the most part, people look at me kind of blankly when I, when I tell them the reason why is it changes. Everything to do with the way that we interact with influencers. I, you know, I'm being a brand owner for, for years. One of the worst things to do is to negotiate with an influencer because it's, there, there is nothing that is transparent or visible about the, the interaction with an influencer, right?

You're going to pay them a thousand bucks and hope, hope that you get what out of it. Like, we don't even know how many sales come from it, right? That's the problem. And then you get a video that's usually not usable for ads. So there's not really any value that's being added. And then there's this whole idea of like, well, it's just about, you know, top of funnel and it's about awareness and all of this.

And it's like, well, brands right now can't afford awareness. That's not something that people can afford. And so. It changes everything when it comes to this on TikTok shop, you do not pay. And it's funny, like even I was talking to a software company that does this and they're like, well, you should make sure to pay them at least 50 bucks a post.

I'm like, You don't actually get how this platform works to you. You don't pay anything. You seed product to them and they make money when you make money. That's it. It's an affiliate relationship. So I like to call it performance influencer, right? And the reason why it's so

it's changing all of the ways in which we interact with influencers, right? TikTok shop. Again, if TikTok shop goes away tomorrow. It doesn't matter because everything has changed in the influencer space. This is why it's so incredible at the same time. And sorry, I am very long winded. I'm going to try not to be so, so long winded. I'll try and be as concise as possible, but this is as concise as I can be. When you think about how we used to do things, right? We would seed product out there and we'd hope, right? I remember having somebody on my podcast. He's like, yeah, we seed 500 products out. And then we hope that we're going to get 20 percent of those people posting, right? And then maybe 20 percent of those will be good, right?

If we just kind of use the 80 20 rule and which is true, I mean, it's just constantly true. This is why we live in a, in a simulation, you know, because like these rules just somehow apply and So,

Yeah.

so, so I won't get into that though. So when, so when you really look at this, you're flipping everything on its head instead of testing, right?

Testing new creative, testing new copy, testing new offers. You're getting paid to test because you're seeding the product out. The influencers are going to do what they're going to do, right? You can give them some kind of creative brief, but you're not going to give them the script. And then you can see what works. And you know how, you know, what works, what drives actual money. That's it. Like, that's it. At the end of the day, it's like, Oh,

money into TikTok shops. Well, it's probably going to work everywhere else. That's why I'm obsessed with it. Not even necessarily like all of the money that brands are making over there.

That's cool. But to me, that's not even that interesting comparatively to being able to take that creative. We always get rights for this creative, right? Right out the gate, we get rights for it so that we can download it. We use this tool

download it. And then use it on Meta, right? And still Meta, crushes any other platform still, like if people aren't running Meta ads because of some reason or say that like, Oh, Meta performance is down this month.

It's like, well, it's still about 10 times better than any other platform. So. Okay.

So wait a minute, if I've understood this correctly, you've basically hacked getting UGC for your ads. And the, and, and being able to pre test it on real people first and solve that whole problem that brands have of how do I get UGC? How do I find creators? How do I solve that whole problem of getting good quality content to create UGC for my ads?

You're saying TikTok shop actually solves that.

the incentives are completely aligned because the influencer isn't posting content that they think that their community is going to like, they're posting content to try to sell a product because that's the only way that they get

So, so no longer is it like, well, yeah, I mean, I'm not going to show the label because that's just not the kind of influencer I am.

It's like, okay, then the kind of influencer you

Yeah.

Because you're not getting paid

the only thing that works. And so what will happen, and this is what happens with all new things, right? Is the marketers are going to ruin it, right? It's going to, and it's already happened on Tik TOK, right?

You're going to see a bunch of content that's just really cringe with people trying to sell, and then you're going to start to see beautiful, incredible content out there that you're like, Oh, that was an ad. Oh my gosh. There was this beautiful one from from a company called Lemmy. And the beautiful, as in like she swore and she did all these things, but it was like the most incredible hook. She was like, unless you're Chloe or it was either Chloe or Courtney. I don't know the Kardashians, one of the Kardashians, unless you're one of the Kardashians. This video isn't for you now. I saw that this video had like 3. 4 million likes on it while I was watching. I was like, well, I guess I got to watch this.

Right. And then she goes in and talks about how much she like, Oh, Courtney, you sent me this, these sleep gummies. You think these are going to work on me? And then she goes into talk about like how like her, like all of the like horrible things that go on in her head and all of these things and how, like, there's no possible way that these stupid things are going to work. then at the end, then she talks about how it actually worked. And you're like. Oh, that was an ad. so this is what's going to come from this, right? We're going to see a lot of bad stuff going on. And then we're going to see content creators that really figure out. It's just, it's evolution, right? It's a way that we evolve.

And so things look a little messy at first. And now things are starting to get better.

But yeah. And you're no longer paying them to learn and figure it out. They're doing it on their own time. And if it works, you make money, they make money and everyone's happy, but you're not like paying a creator to create a whole bunch of content who doesn't understand marketing, who doesn't understand hooks.

And then you pay for that content and it flops on Meta and you're back to square one. Yeah, that's so, so, so interesting.

there's, there's even, sorry, I know you've got questions, so I'm going to, I'm going to stick with your questions. You go for it.

So, well, I was going to ask, like, what are some of the results you've got for brands on either your brands or brands you work with on TikTok shop, like wow us with the with the numbers.

let, let me talk about my, my buddy's brand here. So one of my, one of my good friends has been going in the space for a while now I'm going to, I'm going to let you guys know can send out a hundred products and to creators and get a hundred people to create something for you and you might not get a lot of sales, but when one hits. You will absolutely crush. And so it is a numbers game. It is an absolute numbers game. We're sending out thousands of messages a day. We're working with creators all over the place. When, when we're doing this, let me talk about one of my buddies and, and and his brand. So he runs a company called frost buddy and TOK shops since I think it was like around September last year.

And he was just kind of like trying to figure it out, getting a lot of product out there, getting a lot of duds. And then he finally hit. Something, right? And so the whole idea for him is that he was really trying to make sure that he gave good enough creative brief that people would understand kind of what he was going after, but they could still be, they could still be themselves when they were creating this. And so he started to see numbers like, and, and remember there's, there's all of the halo effects of all this, but in December alone, 350, 000 in sales on tick tock shops alone. Think about that 350k

Yeah.

So for us, you know, Canadians, we're probably similar to you guys. That's like 500, 000. That's a lot of money. And the crazy thing is so many of the discounts were subsidized by TikTok. And there's still, they continue to be subsidized by TikTok, which is just crazy. And so that alone was December and December. Isn't like a massive month in general, not comparatively to November, November, usually.

You've only got two weeks, really? Yeah.

those are the kinds of numbers, right? That, that we're starting to see with brands that we work with. We're starting to see other brands out there doing things. If you follow, there's a guy on X Paul, I forget what his last name is. Just insane. He shows this TikTok shop effect and when you hit, right.

And so it might take a month, it might take two months. When you hit and you start to double down on those particular creators, and it takes, it takes a certain kind of creator to be able to go big on this. What I'm really obsessed with, though, is Is not just like TikTok shop is just one place to throw traffic to, right?

It's just, it's just a met, like when I'm talking about TikTok shop, I'm also talking about this, like this new way of doing things. And so don't stop at TikTok shop, right? Test, test Amazon, test your Amazon storefront. Why not send traffic there, right? Huge SEO play for Amazon, test your D2C store, right?

I've always been obsessive with D2C. That's kind of like all that we've ever done in our brands and, and and brands that we work with. Test sending this traffic to your DTC site, test sending it all over the place because TikTok shop is just one place to send it. It's incredible. And I think that, I think that it is the way, but I want to make sure that people understand, like, just cause I'm saying it's incredible doesn't mean that you can then be like, well, I'm not going to focus on any of my other channels, like, I don't know, don't, don't do that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. This shouldn't be your only strategy, but you're not saying that you're getting the creators to send people, the creators on TikTok are still sending people to TikTok shop, right? Or are you suggesting testing

destination being

reason why I'm suggesting testing, sending them to both is that there's about 95, 000 active creators that are signed up through the TikTok shop affiliate program. 95, 000.

not a lot. is not a lot of creators. Oh man. So you know how many messages these creators are getting every single day?

Between 50 and a hundred messages. They won't even open them. And so we've had to, as an agency, really figure this out and be like, where are we going to get a hold of them? Like it's so through the affiliate marketplace, that is not the place to get a hold of them. So then we go to create a marketplace.

They're already inundated there, right? Then we go over to Shopify collabs and we talk to people over there. Then we have, we have some, some proprietary software that we use that I cannot tell people about that we're able to get straight into their inboxes and they are compelled to respond to us. And we have about 50, 000 creators that we can talk to in there. there's a lot of different ways to go about this. But at the beginning right now, guys, it is a lot of recruiting people over to TikTok shops. That's the other thing too, right? There's just not enough creators to go

Yeah. Right. So you are saying like, this creator looks good. Let's message them, like, explain to them how it all works and get 'em set up kind of thing. So you're actually doing the work for TikTok of getting them

Totally. Totally. Yes. Yes. So there's a bunch of different ways to go about it. There's a bunch of tools that you can use. There's some really good AI tools out there for messaging. But again, it's where you're messaging them. TikTok creators are not

used to going into the affiliate marketplace and getting messages, right?

So where else can you message them? Instagram is a huge place,

into their DMS on Instagram, slip into their DMS on TikTok, right? There's all of these different ways, but the affiliate marketplace is like, eh, then that's where most brands are going. So like brands come to me all the time. Jordan, we've tried this for a while. Nothing's working. Nothing's working. I'm like, where are you messaging them? Where would you want to be messaged?

Yeah.

that. Where, where are you going to respond? Right. If you can get into my Slack, you will get a message back from me. You get into my emails.

Okay. Good

Yeah.

You know, like my, first of all, my assistant filters out 99 percent of emails. Right. That I don't even see. And so you've got to think about that with the people that you're messaging. Like the medium is the message when it comes to, to tick tock shop.

Yeah. So interesting. So talking about your buddy's brand, like, let's break that down a little bit. So he, when he said it wasn't working, it was that he was sending out messages, but he wasn't being able to successfully recruit creators. Is that kind of what the beginning looked like? And then what did he change and how did he get to a position where he had a bunch of creators that worked?

Yeah.

the creators that you should work with. Right. It's, it's not being too picky, right? So you don't want to be too picky where you're like, because there's not enough creators out there at this point. Right. And then. then it's figuring out who actually will move the needle for the right amount of money, right?

So you want to be able to offer a pretty big percentage at first. So for him, he realized, okay, let's go to 25%. We can afford that. Now remember 25%, that's a four row as that's listening to this would not take a four row as on new customer acquisition, everyone would.

A hundred percent. Yeah.

on metal last year was like 1.

87. So we know that everyone would take a four, right? So just be willing to offer 25%. That's the number one thing. And, and it doesn't really matter what your AOV is because I find that the influencers don't actually do the math. They just look at the percentage. Right. And I'm sorry, influencers, if you're listening to this, it's just like, you're not mathematicians. And that's okay. And that's like, there's a rule. I, the very first business I ever owned was a restaurant. And I remember they taught us this rule of 100. So if a discount is below, if the, sorry, if the average ticket price is below a hundred dollars, always use a percentage, right? Because a percentage. no, sorry.

Use a dollar amount because dollar amount looks bigger. Something like that. Anyway. Dollar amount

Yeah. Right.

just make the number look bigger, right? And so 25 percent is better than saying, you know, I'm going to give you 7 from this. It's like people look at the 25 like, oh yeah, okay, this is a good offer, right? So that was the, that was the first big thing. Second is make sure you send product out, right? A lot of, a lot of brands are like, no, can you just green screen? It's like, no, send the product out to them. Right? If you're willing to do influencer seeding, which basically everybody does, right? Everyone will randomly send stuff out to influencers. You might as well actually send a targeted ones that are incentivized to then share videos about your product. And then after that, it was

about doubling down. And that's the same with our brands that we're working with. When we find one creator that hits, it's just like, How many more videos can we do?

What else can we send you? Oh, Hey, here's some other ideas that we had. We think you'd be great for this. Right? I think the biggest thing is remembering that you're selling, right? The entire thing is a sales process to the influencer. You want to sell to them. You want to compliment them, let them know, Hey, your content that you make is actually awesome.

I will tell you, I like, I do a lot of I get sponsored by a lot of software companies and a lot of that. When somebody reaches out and it's like, George, I've listened to your last like 10 podcasts. Love your content. Oh my gosh. When you said this thing that really resonated. I'm like, what can I do for you? You just let me know. I'll give you a deal. Right. That is so much easier than, than trying to convince them. Right. Just compliment people. It's that easy.

Yeah. That's so interesting. Yeah. Get to know them, stalk them a little bit, comment on their stuff. Yeah. Okay. Amazing. So he, and that revenue he made was how many, like out of curiosity, how many creators was he working with to generate that revenue? Like, was there one or two that were really big or was it more of like a spread?

about 2000 creators. So just so everyone understands

Wow.

depth in which you need to be at and the amount of products that you need to get out when you've sent out 20 products and you're not getting a response, that's not okay. Continue on,

Yeah,

on. And again, right now it's so flooded right now that you are going to have a hard time getting that many products out and getting influencers to post for you.

Just so you know, like we're, you know, we work with, I don't even know how many brands we have. With us right now, ish, something like that. It's a lot and we're having a hard time ourselves. And so we're finding all of these different inroads. So just remember it is a slog. Like there is so much work when it comes to this.

This is not an easy button. knows this is not an easy button. So yeah, that's now that's on the influencer side. I don't know. Do we want to get into the other, like the other things that brands can do?

sure. Go for it. Right.

influencers. So that's the, that's the big side of it.

That's where I think that everything's going to change in influencer world, but. Now you've got all this content, right? So imagine my buddy who has 2000 influencers out there posting for him. And now we grab all of this content using refunnel, right? We have the rights to use all of this content, right?

Because we've asked for the rights and they just say, confirm. And we're like, awesome. We now download this content. We're not just going to use it for ads. We're now going to take that content and we're going to change up like one thing. Maybe it's the song. Maybe it's like adding one more. Like sticker on it, something to change that content up. Well, do think that it's not going to go viral again? And now you've posted it from your page, right? Of course, there's going to go viral again. Like 99 percent of the time, what went viral the first time will go viral again, because it has all the elements of virality, right? Which is also a very important thing to study.

If, if anyone wants to, there's a great book by Jonah Berger called Contagious, and it talks about the five elements of how to go viral, very much recommend that because. That's really what it comes down to is, like, people, they don't, I don't think most influencers know the principles, they just know how to do it, right?

There's like a lot of things that, like, you

experience, do this, do this, do this. And then it'll work, right? There are actual principles. And again, I won't get into like the whole, the whole spiel I've done,

you know, massive podcast episodes on this before, really it comes down to take that content and put it back on Tik TOK.

Take that content, go put it on your reels. It's probably better than most of the content you're creating, right? Like, I'm sorry.

wish I had people creating better content for me at the agency, you know, and, and even with our

Yeah. So now you can post five times a day, 10 times a day.

content. 99. 99999 percent of people have not seen that content.

Right? So if you think like, well, people are going to know that someone else has posted it, it's like, no, they won't. Right? Like, sure. Maybe one person out there is going to be like, Oh, I thought I saw that on a different feed and it's like, well, yeah, that's, that's okay to do. Just make sure you change up something about it.

Another fun little hack that we like to use is add a little typing screen at first, right? So that's a really good way to get those first three seconds is just add a little typing screen. So typing in being like, you won't. Believe this product, or you won't believe what she did at

in like black, like white on black typing and then have the video right again.

Right. So that's just added on to the front, like not overlaid.

So we've just got like in our cap cut. We just have like mounds of these, right. That we're just like, Oh, this one will work here. Sweet. This will work here and then, and then post those, those tech talks. Like that's a really good way. And then link to your, to your shop from there. So I, at first, at first, when you're thinking about a promotional plan, think influencers first, right after that, then start thinking about viral content for yourself, use the influencers content.

Don't go and try and make a ton more content yourself, unless you're really good at it. If that's what you've, what you've done, that's great. I'll let you ask more questions cause I would just keep talking and talking.

Yeah. So, so behind the scenes, you know, reaching out to 2000, having 2000 influencers on board, what does that look like? We have like a team of kind of VAs who are kind of, you know, You've scripted out the process and they're kind of reaching out and then you're putting them into some kind of CRM system.

Like, what does it kind of look like behind the scenes when you're doing those kinds of numbers and managing that number of influences?

So it's a lot of, it depends on the size of, of influencer. Lots of it, or sorry the size of the brand. Lots of it is, is managed in sheets. We use some specific software. Again, I'm not, I'm, Fortunately, I'm not going to share this one with you guys. But there is software out there that you can use.

It's more agency level, expensive kind of software that helps you manage and run all of this. So essentially think about it like a CRM that, that can also cross pollinate between brands, right? That's the cool thing. And that's the, the advantage of having an agency is that now you're like, sweet for all my baby brands.

I know that Megan. I just chose the most like

That Megan crushes. And so we're going to send a ton of stuff to Megan. We're going to create a great relationship with Megan. If Megan produces, you know, a million dollars of sales this year, we're going to fly her and her family down to Disneyland, right?

Like that's the kind of stuff that we're trying to do. And the incentives that we're trying to reach with particular influencers. And so we use the CRM kind of system in the background. that. Is each brand has its own spot, but then we can also share between the brands and that's the really cool thing.

Yeah. Because even if Megan's a mom, she might also be interested in skincare. So that's the cool thing as well. Right. You can kind of, as long as the, she appeals to a similar customer, then you can use her across the board. Yeah. That's awesome.

What's that?

she probably does care about her skin, you know?

Yeah, totally, right? As a mom, I can confirm.

So what kind of products do best? Like if you're looking at, you know, you have clients coming to you, who's going to be like a shoe in and who's going to be like, Oh, that's a bit going to be a trickier one. And what's a no go for you in terms of the types of products that do well.

So a, a must, you must be on TikTok shop if you are below 30 bucks and you're consumable. If you are that kind of brand, like you will rush on TikTok shop consumables do really, really well, especially if there is some kind of element to them now sorry, some kind of interesting element to them. There is a caveat there. You cannot yet do subscriptions on TikTok shop. So remember if you're consumable. Right. Don't let that stop you from going on Tik Tok shop. I actually just had a conversation with a brand right before this, that just wanted to, to do a bit of consulting. And they were asking me about this.

Like, well, how do we justify being on there when we're a subscription brand? Like, well, number one, would you be okay selling another 3 million of product, even if it's not subscription this year to new customers who don't know you? Yes. Okay, good. Okay. So there's one thing. Number two, can you think of any creative ways? To get people to come over and subscribe to your product after. And then they're like, yeah, of course we can. So like for, for them, what we were thinking is there's a couple of different ways, and these are really interesting ways to get, to get people to subscribe. So number one, just the classic old QR code on a page, right.

Or like on a postcard, right? So you've got a QR code. Hey, come and get a massive discount on your next one. When you subscribe, if you love this, you're going to want to subscribe. That's that's easy. We all know that one now, this one. most people don't know. Now, if you're some kind of consumable, right?

That is not necessarily like a CPG product, but let's say that you are the kind of consumable that has hardware attached to it. Okay. That you need to continually re up. Offer them the chance to get a free warranty when they come to your site. Okay, so now they come to your site for

Right.

They have to fill out their information and they go through and place a 0 order. While they're placing that 0 order, they're going to get upsold some kind of deal on the subscription next. Can you imagine how many people would take

Wow.

So many people. So if it's anything that needs to be replaced more often that you want to stand behind. Offer a warranty. It's like the easiest possible thing that you can do and will cost you so little comparatively to trying to reacquire that customer. So yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's the big downside really for brands of TikTok shop is like the fact that you don't, you don't get the email address at all. Is that right?

think about it just like Amazon. So interesting. Actually, tons of Amazon brands have reached out to me for this. And I I'm realizing our capacity at the agency, like it's very difficult to keep up with the capacity of the brands coming in. So we've been a little bit more choosy and we haven't been taking Amazon only brands because it is Amazon. Meets social, right? It's Amazon meets D to C together. So all these Amazon brands are like, I want to

shops. I'm like, yeah, but you don't even know, you don't even have a brand. You don't know how to advertise. You have a product. That's, that's cool.

Yeah.

nothing like what you need, right?

You need a brand when you're on TikTok shop. So

Yeah. Cause yeah. Cause Amazon only brands tend to be about demand capture, right? The demand already exists. People are looking for it already. Whereas with TikTok shop, it's like. Yeah, it's more about people connecting with the brand and having not had a need before they swiped up.

now there is an interesting element because TikTok is becoming one of the biggest search engines in the world, So there's that element too, right? Where now you're able to S SEO your listings and you're able to like, try to get some of that demand capture as well. But I do think that it's, it's much more like a meta type product, right?

Where it's like, no, actually we're just going to get in front of the people that we think are going to buy. And TikTok's algorithm is, is great. Just crazy. I don't know if you know this or not, or if

this, but that version of Tik TOK was banned in China, right? That algorithm was banned in China because it's that powerful.

Like, I think that we don't realize like, so as a Canadian, right. You look down at the States and I'm sure similarly, and you're like, wow, we're okay with that infiltrating. Like the, like, 90 minutes a day. Of like little tiny tweaks that they can make to this algorithm and whether, who cares, it doesn't matter whether a foreign person owns it or an American person owns it.

It doesn't really matter either way. You can literally just change people's mind about anything by just continually showing them

I know

smaller content like that.

I read, I read somewhere the other day that it's one of the reasons TikTok so successful is because it doesn't have the legacy that Facebook and Instagram have of having to show us our boring friends content. We want to see our friends, but our friends are not as entertaining as creators.

Because TikTok just doesn't have that constraint upon it. It can just show you the content that's most exciting and viral, and therefore it's way more addictive, which is interesting.

Yeah. It's really interesting. I was going to go down a rabbit trail, but I'm not going to, so continue.

Yeah, okay, we won't do it. So, okay, so those cheaper, consumable products are best. Like, what's a kind of no no? Who would you say, like, don't bother?

Yeah. So I would say that, It's really hard because I do think that everyone should be practicing this in principle, but as far as actually making sales on the platform, I think that as soon as you get into that luxury area, you're probably not going to do as well on TikTok shop. Do I still think you should do it? Yes, I do. I really do. Just for content sake. The reason why is you're going to get incredible influencers because say you have like a 300 bag, right? Like one of the companies that that we're going to be working with soon. They're like a really high end bag company. I heard them on on one of my favorite podcasts and I was like, Oh, so glad for them as well. And for them, it's like. Yes, let's put it out because we're going to get the most incredible influencer content that we know. Are they going to sell, know, 7, 000 bags next month? No, no. People don't make those kind of purchases necessarily. Now, will they start to make those kind of purchases? Absolutely. Amazon started with books

Yeah.

now you can buy cars. So we're going to get there. Eventually. We even have like a trampoline client that we do TikTok shops for, and it's like a 3, 000 trampoline. So

Wow.

content, so that's cool. 

That's a lot of trampoline that you've got to be giving away to the creators though, right?

not send them trampolines. That is one thing we, we do

versus the, you know, the bag company. It's like, yeah, we, we got to send these out. We really do.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

which is a great thing for an influencer as well, but I'll tell you, there's a crazy followup series to make sure that we get that content, right?

Because that's one of those ones where it's like, ah, I got the bag and ran. Because. It was just a great bag.

Yeah.

yeah,

Yeah. Okay. So, and what about, what markets are you seeing the best performance like USA, Canada, UK? I

Yeah.

it's USA, right? But

we're just heavy in, in the USA right now with all the brands that we work with it is not live in Canada yet. We wish it was. So Canadian brands are having to find workarounds to get live in the States, which is really interesting. I won't get into that cause there's a lot of a lot of stuff you have to do to get live in the States. So yeah.

yeah, but actually UK shop, sorry, TikTok shop started in the UK first, I think before the USA or am I wrong with that? Yeah. So it's pretty established there. Yeah.

great place to to get going. If you're, if you're in Europe, there's like Indonesia, there's the Philippines there was India, I believe at one point, but I believe that TikTok is now banned in India as well.

It's banded into you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

like, just from a moral standpoint, it's not like, I feel like even talking about this, I'm like, yes, I love this as an opportunity, but it's an opportunity that's, that's really interesting from a morality standpoint and the, what we're doing to our brains.

That's all I want to say is like,

Right.

It's like, yeah, I get this opportunity and yet it's really scary. You know what, we're the, what we're putting into our brains. And like for you saying like, yeah, I'm, I threw my next like 10 day stint off of Tik TOK, like that's crazy. Right. That's like, there's

I know.

happening because

I guess we don't think it's a big deal.

I don't know.

I know. Yeah. I was listening to a good podcast, which was on the human lab with Cal Newport and they, that's what kind of inspired me to go off it again. Just that behavioral addiction of picking it up, picking it up, picking it up over and over and I just didn't feel it was a good use of my time. We should all, you know, be mindful of what we're doing with these things and especially with our kids and teens.

 Cool. So, and for the newbies who haven't kind of dived into this at all yet what are we, what are we talking about from a technical side? Like what is fulfilled by TikTok?

Do you have to use fulfilled by TikTok? You know, what are the technical requirements here for getting set up?

fulfilled by tick tock. It is actually not their own warehouses. They have partnered with ship up. So that is, that's one thing to keep in mind. You do not have to use them similar to, to fulfillment by Amazon. You do not have to use FBA. You don't even get preferential treatment right now for using fulfilled by tick tock.

They do want you to use their. You know, their centers, which is, which is great. They're, you know, completely subsidizing things right now. So like, if you want to send product in, go for it. I, I wouldn't test like that at first I would test and see like, Hey, is my audience there? Are we actually doing, you know, good numbers there?

I think that the, one of the big issues from this side, and I don't know if you have these, these, these. You know, these people are your listeners, but if there's millennials listening, we don't get tick tock. If you haven't done well on tick tock up until now, and you keep using the same strategy, you're not going to do well going forward.

Right. It's like, right. You just like, if you keep making the same mistake and you don't change your behavior, it's not going to, nothing's going to change. So really going into tick tock shop and just, just think about it. Just call it shop. Don't even call it tick tock. Be like, what is something new that I'm going to do here? I'm not going to lean on my own content that has 200 views every

I don't know if anyone knows this, but if you're getting between two and 300 views a video. No one likes your content, right? That's the very first that it's just not catchy. Right. And so that's the first point in which TikTok tests an audience out is with that, you know, two to 300. I'm sure you've talked about this before, but like, basically if that's all you're hitting, TikTok is like, nah. Nah, we're not opening it up to more people. Sorry. And they're putting it mostly to your followers at that point. So again, don't buy followers or any of that kind of stuff because that really hurts you in the algorithm.

So just start a new channel or a new account. That's what I would do.

Right. So if you're as a brand, you've been on TikTok and been Stuck in that tick tock hole of just a few hundred views. You would suggest starting a fresh tick tock when you launch tick tock shop,

Well, you need to have a thousand followers. So I would

changing your content first,

that out first and seeing if you start to get some virality from that. One of the big things on, on TikTok in general, and this also is true for sending traffic to TikTok shop, is that you really only can talk about one main thing with your brand.

Right. Like there's one big category. And then underneath that are a few different categories. Right. So like, let's say for me on the agency side on tech talk, right. If I were to talk about how agencies suck, which is like my, my tagline. Right. So I have that right. Here's why agencies suck. Here's all these things. And then I also decide to talk about email marketing. Right on this side, probably doesn't work in the same sort of way of, Hey, I'm going to talk about a huge mistake and agency made in email. Perfect. Good. Right. It's like it's coming

the same category. That's all that tick tock cares about. You'll know if you go up and you go into the search bar, And there's nothing there, right?

If there's nothing auto populated in the search bar, it means that TikTok doesn't know what category you're talking about or who to even serve your, your

Right.

that's a huge thing for if you want to go

and then get your product shown and then people click and go to shops. So that's, that's a really important thing.

Right. Right. Interesting. Okay, cool. I think we've talked a lot about the kind of content that works, but I mean, so you're talking the catchy viral content. Are there any kind of lessons you have learned about ways to approach the content for particularly for product brands and how to kind of guide your creators on, on what works?

you want to either be humorous or educate or both, right? Hopefully you can do both of those things, right? So I, I use this document that we've created that has like. I don't know, 700 hooks or something like that. We just look and see the hooks and we're like, okay, what would be good in this scenario? And make sure you've got a good hook. That's really all that matters at the beginning of your video. Your video is not going to get seen by anyone if you don't have a good hook. And so like, just start with really simple hooks. Just search like up a hook document. If you find me online, you can message me and I might be able to send it over to you.

Like it's, it's that, that is the beginning part of it. And then it's just educating and entertaining. Right. You just need to be like, like, make sure you have good video. That's, that's another really like simple thing that people sometimes forget because they're like, well, the content on Tik TOK isn't that good.

I'm like, no, it is good. Like the video is good. It just, it's more like, like, that'd be like you saying Mr. Beast content isn't good. It's not polished is what it is. Right. Like it's,

content. It's just not polished, but the camera is good. The audio has to be perfect. Right. If you can see, like, I am using a beautiful microphone, right?

The reason why is because

matters so much. If you're listening to this and you're like, Oh man, I can barely hear him. He's crackling out and stuff. He would just wouldn't work in the same sort of way. So same on Tik TOK. So those are, those are a couple of like really simple things, but I think actually like we'll change everything for you.

If you just decide to do that. I, in my pocket carry, and I'm just going to show the camera here. I always carry a lapel mic with me wherever I go.

Oh, wow.

I know that audio matters that much. And so it's, it's even got a lightning connector on the bottom. Yes. I still have an old iPhone that has lightning. And, and so everywhere that I go, I make sure that I have good audio. If I'm going to like do a face to camera video, or if I'm going to quickly interview someone or wherever it is, I keep this in my pocket. Like it goes between my pants and like, just keep it with me everywhere because

much.

Yeah. I love that. So you're creating content all the time then? Wherever you are.

constantly creating content. Yes. Whether it gets out or not, I, I have a, I'm actually hiring like a full time person just to be my content person with me. Because I really do think that it's like, that is what everyone consumes all the time. And so I want to put out really good content to help e comm store owners thrive, right.

And realize like, Like a lot of people out there are having a really hard time. And I want to see people, you know, be able to go on vacation and not be like tied down to their store and what they're doing. And it matters to me. So

Quick final question before we wrap up. So what about ads? Like if you have creators that are doing well and you know, you've had some viral content, do you also run TikTok ads for those for that content? Or are you just preferring meta for those ads? Are you doing both?

really good question again. So what, what we prefer is actually in the outreach process, we will tell, sorry, let me tell you how this works. When you use a, it's called a spark ad. So you use their particular post, right? A creator's post to run traffic to your Tik TOK shop. From a spark ad, you were paying for the ad and their percentage. Just so you know, still

Right, right.

on that spark ad. So you gotta, you gotta really be aware of that. But we use that as a leverage point and we let bigger influencers know, Hey, we're going to run traffic behind this afterwards for you too. So just so you know, it's not just going to be

So they're going to grow.

If this hits. 50, 000 views, we're going to run a thousand bucks behind this because we think that it's going to do pretty well. Or actually, sorry, I wouldn't incentivize it by views. I'd incentivize it by, Hey, if you do 10, 000 worth of sales, we're going to then actually put another thousand bucks of ads you get in front of more people.

We get more sales. It's a win win. So yes. So that's the first way that I recommend doing it. The second way is then taking their content, downloading it. Re uploading it with the change and then running it from your account in particular. You can also do that just straight in ads manager. I just like spark ads.

It's like boosting posts. It's like, it's, it's easy. It's simple. 

It's like, it's white listing effectively, isn't it? So the, the authority, it potentially could perform a lot better because the authority is coming from them, not from you. Yeah.

a huge whitelisting fan guys. Like if you are not whitelisting in your account, you are missing out massively. If you're not whitelisting on meta. It's just a, just such a cheat code.

Yeah, and for our listeners who don't know what it is, if you've been under a rock, whitelisting is when you run your ads from an influencer's account or even a media company's account rather than your own brand when it's content from them and it means that you kind of piggyback off their credibility.

So it's a little bit of a it's a little bit of a psychological trick really, to make the endorsement seem more powerful, but yeah. Cool. Anything else you want to share with our listeners about TikTok shop or, and also let us know how we can follow you and keep in touch with you and hear more about what you're doing.

anything with, with anything we talk about in e commerce, you just have to do it. Like that's just the, the hard truth is you've learned enough. You've listened to us for 46 minutes. You've learned enough if you are in the States, if you're in the uk, you just need to go and do it. And that's really all that it comes down

then you need to test and test and then test some more and you'll, you'll do just fine. And then for me you can follow me on Twitter or on x just search Jordan West Jordan T. West e-com, and then Jordan West everywhere else. And then listen to my podcast. Secrets to Scaling Your e-Commerce brand.

And then if you're a brand that's like. man, this just sounds like way too much work. You can find us at up growth, up growth commerce. So that's where we are.

I will put all of that in the show notes so people can find you really easily. And And keep following and getting more amazing secrets of growing their Econ brand. So that's amazing.

Thanks, Jordan. Thanks for coming.

is great.