TikTok Shop Secrets to Explosive Growth for Shopify Stores w/ TikTok Expert Jordan West

25:01You're going to have to actually reach out to creators. And first of all, just identify who you're going to go after. And how do you do that? So how do you use a tool so you can either go into TikTok shop affiliate center, right? And you can manually do this. That's going to take you hours upon hours, just scrolling through creators, finding ones that you like their content. There maybe, I don't know, like if you sell beauty products, they're focused on beauty products. If they sell health and wellness or like that kind of a, okay. Yeah. Or you can use the tool like Reacher. That's like the easiest there's Reacher and Yuka are kind of the two big ones.

25:35Uptick is another one. I recommend Reacher just because I've advised them for so long and told them to build everything. I'm like, nah, we now need this now. No, we need this. So, so anything that I've wanted, they've, they've built because I've been there, they're sort of like primary advisor. Well, if it's good enough for you, it's good enough for our listeners yeah well that's kind of my thought is like is unless people are seeing things that i'm not but we we we work with a lot of brands we see a lot of stuff out there so and also just you know tiktok is building stuff for us all the time too like lots of the stuff that you guys see in gmv max is from our team you know we spend tens of millions of dollars on the platform so they're like oh okay we'll listen to them i've heard that from other people too that they're extremely responsive to feature suggestions from like from agencies like you you You can't even get ahold of someone probably at meta, but it's crazy when you're in Tik tock and you realize, and then you go back to meta and you're like, Oh yeah, we like, we have no support whatsoever from them or like voice comparatively to Tik TOK.

26:32Yeah. It's wild. Uh, there's also their own like messaging platform. So like at any point I could just like go ask a question to one of my people and they'll like immediately get back to me, which is really great. That's awesome. So yeah, it's, it still feels like a small team, which is funny. Well, it's why it's not. I was at their Seattle TikTok shops head offices in Seattle and I was there recently and it's a very big team it's I'm sure multiple floors and like yeah it's it's uh it's really cool so going back here so we're going to identify the creators we're going to use a tool like reacher to identify the creators then sorry just real quick on on reacher does it actually find creators or is it just the tool to automate reach outs and so it actually finds the creators too and some really cool features that we've helped build into or like AI features.

27:17So they actually go and scrape these creators. So say TikTok, say it's not in like one of TikTok's categories. So let's say that we're looking for a very specific look of a creator, right? This was something, especially when you work with really big brands, they want very, very tight, tight looks for their creators, right? Very difficult to do on TikTok shop. So we actually got an AI to go and scrape that. And so you can actually now put in filters like that. Like you might, if you sell a skincare product, you might actually be looking for someone that has acne or if you sell plus size products, you want someone who's plus size or whatever, right?

27:55Like exactly. And you can't find that on normal filters, right? And TikTok is not going to put that into their filter. So that's super interesting. Yes. This AI actually goes and scrapes that. And so that we can actually go and find those people. Right. So now we reach out to, you know, if we're trying to get say 200 creators, we're probably going to have to reach out to 2000 of them. So you get before any sales, you get 2000 reach outs. Um, and then you actually have to make sales on your store. So that's right. And the reach out is just like DMing a creator. Exactly. Yeah. So we're going to do our first 2000 reach outs, but this is the key here.

28:32And this is what I am preaching to everyone. Do not, if you're going to go into TikTok shop, do not dip your toes. You cannot dip your toes. This isn't Facebook ads where you can be like, oh, I'm going to spend 50 bucks a day. No, no, no, no, no, no. You cannot do that. You have to go and you have to go all out if you're going to do it. So whatever budget that is, just know you have to go all out. And this is the strategy that I've seen work time and time again with. Now, it's going to say with any size budget, it's not with any size budget. You need to have like minimum$10 ,000 to do this budget.

29:03OK, so you're going to. so we're going to reach out to our first, our first 2000 creators. We're looking to get 200 creators. Now, the reason why you're probably going to be able to get that is you're going to tell them a compelling story about this blitz launch that you're going to do. Hey, we're new on tech talk. We're offering 40 % commission and we're doing something really interesting. You probably haven't seen before. We're going to do a blitz launch. So we don't want you to post as soon as you get the product, we want you to get three to five videos ready for the Blitz launch. And we're going to be putting now of the hundred thousand, I would say we're going to be putting $70 ,000 in the first weekend into this launch.

29:43Are you with us? Right. We're going to be putting 70 ,000 in ad spend behind it. Right. And we're offering a commission. Well, it's pretty hard for them to say no to that. Right. And that's awesome. Part of a fun event. Yeah. Right. And just when the ads, is it driving to their specific content or like where are the ads driving to? GMV max is going to pull from all things that you're tagged in. Okay. So anything they produce, as long as it's tagged, it's going to get amplified because of that ad spend. Exactly. And they generally want to do well organically. They're going to do well as a paid ad.

30:21So that's why we tell them we're like, post as many times as you can, because we're going to put a ton of ad spend behind it on this first weekend. So what this, what this does, it creates a flywheel, right? It creates this flywheel because now everyone is seeing them everywhere. They're like, oh my gosh, this brand is literally everywhere. Right. And it's, but it's not just, it's not just customers that are seeing it everywhere. Right. It's also, uh, other creators that are seeing it everywhere. So these creators now were like, oh my gosh, this product is blowing up. I want to get on this product.

30:52And what will happen is some creators, they'll, they know what a viral product looks like. And they'll be like, Oh sweet. They'll actually go into a store and go buy that product. If it's a retail product or they'll go to their Shopify site or Amazon and just go buy the product because they can't wait for the sample because they're like, I just want the product right away on what, and I want to hop on this. That's how you launch on TikTok shop. And a lot of brands like they'll come to us and we'll tell them about the split strategy. Like, we just can't commit we just want to kind of like slowly try this out i'm like then don't and because yeah it's it's not a channel like that it's not like an amazon where you can just have your product there so that when people are searching you're there like right it's not that you got to go yeah something i just thought of so do do you find creators do they ever demand or in requests that well if i'm going to be a creator you have to be doing at least X amount of ad spend towards it?

31:44So, so yes. So bigger creators. Yes. And this is actually something we help TikTok build out in their, in GMV max. So you can actually now allocate certain amounts of spend into those creators if you want. Okay. And you can, I personally haven't sold through TikTok shops. I'm asking all the dumb questions here. So that's great. So you can, in your seller dashboard, a sale that came through an ad, a promoted click, pay a different commission versus one that did not come through one of, through your ad spend? Yes, yes. And so TikTok takes care of all of that in the background. They take care of all of the payments to creators.

32:25They take care of everything for you. And then at the end of the day, you get what's left over deposited into your bank. At the top of the show, I mentioned OmniSan can now talk to ChatGPT and Claude. And I want to tell you why that's even bigger than it sounds. So if you missed it, quick catch up. OmniSend is what I use for email and SMS on every Shopify store I work with, plus for this show as well. And you can now connect your AI, Claude, ChatGPT, straight to your OmniSend account. Your data, your campaigns, your flows, everything. You open a chat and you ask, what should I focus on this week to make more money?

33:02And it will come back with real answers about your store, which flow is underperforming, which automation needs improvement, which customers are going quiet, what's missing, everything. My favorite part though is AI segments. I used to build these by hand clicking through filters forever. Now I just type something like customers who bought twice but ignored my last campaign and it just builds it. And anything it writes already sounds exactly like your brand because it pulls from all your previous emails from your website, your logo, your color, your voice, everything. I've been doing this for 15 years and this is the closest I've ever felt to having a full-time marketer sitting right beside me.

33:39I have a link for you in the show notes that will give you 30 % off for your first three months or you can just use code J30 when you sign up. J-A-Y-3-0. If you're ready to migrate from Klaviyo to OmniSend like thousands of others, they will do everything for you. You just show up and all your campaigns and automations from Klaviyo will be set up and running in OmniSend ready to go and usually at 35 % less what you were paying Klaviyo. You get what's left over deposited into your bank. Gotcha. Now, what do you recommend in terms of like, think of a product to sell here. I don't know. Let's think of something.

34:17A case, I got a hard drive on my desk. I'm looking at a hard drive, indestructible case, so I can drop my portable hard drive. And I want to send that to creators. do you give the creators talking points and tell them all the features and benefits or do you just send it to them and let them figure it out themselves so they can so it can be organic whether they're figuring it out like any what's the best process for that so the the best thing to do is just to give them an overview so remember some of these creators will get like a hundred products a week right so you want to make sure to set them up for success they're not going to go and do research on your product.

34:55So give them the talking points first. Yeah. Right. And let them know like, hey, here's, here's kind of the big things people are talking about with this product. And then on the other side of this, let them have, but be like, hey, but whatever you think to sell this product, we trust you. Here's a few examples of other videos that have gone viral. Just so you have some examples. Gotcha. Okay. What are, I mentioned kind of a few of these, but like, what are the biggest mistakes you see brands making when they're trying to, they're like, they hear, oh, TikTok shop, everyone's making money on it and they go.

35:27And what are the mistakes they're making? The biggest mistake is being too picky with creators, right? So number one, not going all in. That's a huge one. Being too picky with creators is another one. Not spending money on ads is another one, right? Like they'll just be like, oh, well, it should just be organic. I'm sending out 200 samples. And it's like, well, no, because if you don't spend money on ads, then creators don't want to post more. The other one too is not just taking advantage of the creators that already have your products, right? And sorry, a huge mistake is not getting them off the platform, right?

35:58So we use the Blitz launch strategy to get them off platform into like WhatsApp or Discord. So that's another really big thing. Oh, the conversation with the creators. Exactly, because we don't want the conversation to happen one-to-one over there. We want to have a community so that everyone's starting to share, hey, I just had this video go viral. Hey, do you want to like and comment on this video? Like we love to build communities around every single brand. So your creators, they all, there's like, it's collaborative. They like helping each other. Oh, they love it. Yes. Even though they're kind of competing, but there's, it's, it's a sense of they're on the same team.

36:36Totally. Because they know that the products that go viral, they're all going to get something from. Right. The better they all do ultimately, then the, the more it boosts and it's probably, you know, rising tide theory, right? Exactly. All ships. Yeah, exactly. So what, so you create a discord group or a Slack group, invite everyone in. Yeah. What's that is my, is, is my number one recommendation right now. Yeah. Probably makes sense. That's more international too. Right. And you get notifications comparatively to like, like discord and Slack. It's like, Oh, another Slack group, right? Like another group.

37:09I can sympathize with that. Yeah. Interesting. And then are you like nurturing this group and sending daily updates and this person did this and Hey, John, John. just sold 10 ,000 products just doing that, just nurturing the group. Wow. That's awesome. Yeah. So that's, that's, that's, that's essentially a role at a, at an e-commerce company. That's a absolutely, it's like, it's like, treat these, like, remember this is your ad spend, right? These people are your ad spend. Okay. I want to touch more on the Amazon mistake. I guess, if you want to call it that you, you said one time you've worked with brands that have crushed it on Amazon, but then just totally flopped on TikTok.

37:55And I imagine the same things too, like crushed it on Shopify or e-commerce, but then totally flopped. Why, what is the difference in maybe some of like the algorithmic differences and brand identity versus product identity? And can you touch on some of that? Totally. So TikTok shop is really like an amalgamation of both of these, right? Amazon and Shopify together, which I think is what makes it so hard. It's this brand new muscle that no one really has figured out yet. So Amazon, right, is inherently a demand capture channel, right? D to C is inherently you have to be really good at demand gen, right?

38:33On D to C. But with D to C, we've been so spoiled with Facebook, right? Where it's like, I'll just throw Facebook ads up and it's just going to kind of work and that sort of thing. And most people just stay away from influencers or creators or any of that kind of stuff. This is like all of that, but then, then bring the influencer and the creator mix in. Interesting. Right. Okay. What are brands just don't get it. Amazon brands are the worst at this, right? Like for the most part, like they just don't understand, like you have to learn how to generate demand for your product. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's why they're on Amazon because they don't know how to generate demand.

39:11So they pay a marketplace fee and they are great. They are great at optimizing. There's a whole strategy around optimizing and ranking on Amazon. It's all about the ranking. It's not about generating demand. But that could be a whole show because I do think we've seen some brands. Liquid Death is actually used to be. They were one of our clients for a long time. And they were one of the first ones that I saw. They used our subscription software. And I remember one day I went on their site and they were selling a case of Liquid Death for$19.99 on their site or$16.99 on Amazon. Oh, interesting. I remember hearing that.

39:54Yeah, and I thought, well, that's completely backwards. Usually Amazon charges 15 % whatever commission, and they should charge more on Amazon and give a deal for people who buy it on your site. But they took the opposite approach. They actually drove all their traffic to Amazon to create demand or push demand there, I should say, not create demand and then ranked high. And then eventually they captured position number one. And I think now, like if you search like mineral water, they're like one, two and three. Now they own, they own that. Right. And so there is a whole strategy around that as well too.

40:30But I think you're right. By default, Amazon sellers don't think that way. Like most, most people are not thinking like that. Now, momentous just recently did this with Tik TOK shop. They were sending a ton of Facebook ads from Facebook over to Tik TOK. shop I was like what the heck are you doing interesting yeah it makes sense like yeah yeah there is enough content already in this episode that is worth a million dollars to someone listening if they execute this I just want to get to a couple more questions that I had because I talking around products are there are there if you have a range of products is there a sweet spot maybe they can't be too cheap like a$20 product doesn't have enough margin and like Should a brand be thinking, you know, can we save someone wasting their time if they have a$20 product?

41:17And does it have to be$100 and$250? Certain types of products. Packaging. Do you create special packages for these creators that maybe aren't available on your website? And you can call them like the TikTok bundles or whatever. Tell me about what's a product strategy for this. Yeah. So I've had this discussion with so many brands. um so we've been lucky enough for tiktok to fly us out to a lot of the sort of like brands that everyone kind of knows and uses all the time and this is like legitimately the question that they're asking all the time like what what where do we where do we put this because a lot of people thought well tiktok shop is just it's like these lower priced products and that's not necessarily true but also aov is a really big deal so right you so high aov products generally are not going to work.

42:08If you've got a product over a hundred bucks, I probably wouldn't test unless you've got a really decent testing budget. Oh, interesting. Okay. There might've been a sweet spot higher because the margins more, but maybe, maybe so we're, we're working, we're, you know, we're in the midst of working with some, some pretty big high AOV brands right now, and we haven't quite got to launch yet, but just imagine what that seeding process looks like. Right. So, um, right. That, that becomes pretty expensive, right? So we're like really big electronic companies you guys probably all heard of and trying to get those out to to creators is a lot of money right so i think that's the that's the difficulty so if you're sub 100 do it you know we work with the brand that their aov is around 80 sort of in the apparel space they're doing multiple millions of dollars a month and very profitable with this channel so yeah it definitely can be done in that sort of higher close to 100 i really recommend that brands get their aov right around$50 if they can, if they're lower, right?

43:07So bundling strategies are really important. Now, what creators want is they want something that's special that people can't go buy anywhere else because they, what they feel like is like, well, I'm putting in the work for nothing. And I don't want people, you know, I talk about the halo effect all the time, right? Go people from TikTok going and purchasing on Amazon and DTC. I'm like, the halo effect is real. Creators don't like the halo effect because they don't get paid on the halo. Right. And so that is the the the crux of the problem that you're trying to solve is how do i create something specifically for tiktok that creators can trust me that they're that we're not just trying to get them to to go off the platform afterwards how do we do that that's the really big thing yeah makes sense then are you is everything getting if you have a shopify store do the orders get pushed back into shopify admin or are you fulfilling them through a tiktok order management No, those will get pushed back in.

44:01So there's a couple of different connectors that you can use. So one is called Shopdance. That's our recommendation. Aftership is another one, though. So yes, so that is my my recommendation is always use a connector. Do not use the native Shopify connector. You need to use one of these connectors. Shopdance is the best, in my opinion. Okay. And then once it pushes into Shopify, if you use any fulfillment service, it's just a regular order at that point. Exactly. Exactly. Now, multi-channel fulfillment is also a thing. So you can actually use like Amazon. You can use like some of your different warehouses to be able to do that, especially for bigger brands.

44:30That's a really good idea. I do not recommend using TikToks fulfilled by TikTok until you get to a substantial amount of volume and you can make it make sense. There's not really any reason to use it from TikTok's perspective right now. Gotcha. And when would you tell a brand they're not ready to go on TikTok? I mean, could you go on TikTok if you're just doing$10 ,000? I don't know. Maybe that's way too low. But like you know like if you're a smaller brand on e-com on on shopify when would you say you're not ready for tiktok you need to be at a certain scale obviously budget matters that you could put some ad spend behind it but yeah when would you say you're not ready yet and and why under a million don't do it don't do a million annual annual annual revenue under a million annual revenue don't don't do it just stay just just wait till i i just don't think i think under a million you haven't hit product market fit yet in a substantial sort of way just keep doing what you're doing there right now if i were to launch a brand from scratch today i would use tiktok shop as the initial channel i think that it's the cheapest way to get a ton of traction right away and to get so this is something wild that big brands we're working with are talking about they're talking about getting rid of entire parts of their business that are in like like the consumer psychology the messaging all of that because our creators are doing it all right they don't need to do these like test groups because the creators are the ones doing the test groups.

45:59They're giving like, you know, we'll get like two to 5 ,000 videos a month. Well, that's two to 5 ,000 different angles that we're getting on the product that people are like, Oh, never saw that one. Interesting. And you can see in real time how much people are actually reacting to that. So that's how I would launch a brand today is like straight on Tik TOK shop with D to C and Amazon already set up. I'd, I'd have all of them set up, but Tik TOK shop as my like number one sort of channel. There's a great interview with the founder of NeuroGum recently where he talked about moving the majority of all of his budget is on TikTok shop now and that he's basically just retargeting on other channels and that's it.

46:37And this is like a nine figure brand. Well, is there have you seen people do just TikTok shop to launch without an e-commerce store? I have not yet done it with with people, but I don't recommend it because you should have a shopify store that it all runs through like use shopify as your like centralized hub as your okay yeah yeah yeah i mean there's no there's not really much of a cost to you having that store up there especially for the halo i would hate for you not to have just a decent shopify site there but just know that like your like your everything engine can be tiktok shop if you do it right right makes sense jordan this has been awesome i know we're over time you've been so gracious where can people find you?

47:21And I've attended some of your webinars and listened to some of your talks. And like, where do you want to send people? Because I think you are a wealth of information and we could probably talk for hours. But there's people right now that are like excited about this. They want to learn more. They want to get started with TikTok. Where do you want to send them? So I think the best place for people is just on YouTube. You just search Jordan West e-commerce. I post a new video, if not two, every single week on all of this. There's so much changing right now that I'm like constantly putting new stuff out there.

47:54So YouTube is great. And then LinkedIn is another great place. And then from there, you'll find my newsletter. And that's kind of where I announce all the live sessions and stuff that I'm doing. Go check out Social Commerce Club, our agency. Awesome. I'll make sure all the links are in the show notes. Jordan, thank you so much. This has been so much fun. This is fun. Thanks, Jay. Okay, so you know at the end of every episode, I share a 1 % win. Because, well, if this is your first episode, if you improve 1 % a day for a year, that compounds to a 3 ,700 % increase. Yes, that's right, 37x. 1 % compounded over a year increases 3 ,700%.

48:37So the whole purpose of the show is each episode, each time you listen, everything you implement makes you 1 % better. And so at the end of every episode, I share a 1 % win. So today, I'd like to share something that I think a little bit ties into this episode today. A brand that I work with, actually, we wanted to get more UGC, more user-generated content. Now, this isn't working with TikTok creators, but this is getting content for social media, running in ads and other areas. And so one of the challenges was we wanted UGC, but we didn't know how to get it. what we wanted is 10 to 60 second clips of customers talking about the product.

49:17So what we did is we did a little experiment and we created an email that went out. I think it's 10 days after the order. I can't remember. It might be seven, but we kind of tried to time it with when the product would get there. Now, the product they ship is a little bit of a bigger product. So it does take five to seven days to get there. but the whole purpose was that the email would get there basically the day before or on the day they get the order and all the email so the subject line just says video trade question mark that's it and then the email says we think your order probably came hopefully everything's good if you have any questions of course let us know but the reason for this email is I wanted to know if you would trade a short video in exchange for a, I think we're giving a$20 credit.

50:04Now you can do more, you can do$50, you can do whatever you think it takes and you can do it as a coupon code or you can do it as a refund on their order. I actually think doing it as a refund on the order is the way to go. That is more impactful because it's money spent. So, and if you, man, if you think about the value of getting video of your, from your customers and what you can turn that into on social media and run your ads with it, $20 is nothing. $50 is nothing. So the email would say something along the lines of, we would love to hear your honest review of the product, maybe unboxing it, maybe using it, maybe showcasing what you like about it and upload it.

50:42There's a link below and we will refund $50 on your order or$20 your order right now, no questions asked. And then we used JotForm. there's a ton of form makers you can do to do this jot form is super simple that we just have a form that says your name your shop and then we have actually have a sample video in there three tips just hold your your phone out vertical is great not horizontal and just make sure there's no light behind you light shining on your face that's it these are not professional videos the videos that actually convert the best are the ones where someone's just holding it talking and it feels very organic and natural.

51:19So don't tell them to over edit or over polish it. No, don't add background music or anything like that. Just you talking about the products in your living room, in your kitchen, whatever, wherever it is. And then click upload and it uploads the video. And I would encourage them to do, you know, minimum like 15 seconds and honestly, no more than like two minutes. But generally like 30 to 60 seconds is a sweet spot, especially if you're going to use them for reels. A little bit shorter is better, but you'll see that you'll get variations. So don't worry about that too much. Some people will send a 20 minute or sorry, a 20 second one.

51:55Some people will send a five minute one. It's just they will. You'll get variations of them. We did this and we started getting hundreds of videos, in fact, too many videos. And now we've categorized them. We put them all into different folders. Some of them are showcasing different features of the product. and when we need videos for a certain ad or maybe we're creating an ad and we want to layer in some testimonials, we have more than we ever need. The only thing we do is we make sure on the form it has their name, their store, some quick tips and then a checkbox that says, yes, you can use my video on your website and social media.

52:34We love your brand. I kind of word permission to use my likeness and whatever, or my, my video somewhere else, like any, any legal words you can get out, the better. You honestly, depending on your, your tone of voice for your brand, it could be something like, heck yeah, you can use it on your website and social media, you know, something fun like that. And then they do check that just to make sure that if they ever come after you saying, Hey, you're not supposed to use this on social media. You, you checked it right so that's it this is a huge win honestly this is like a 10 win because as you get this content you can feed this through your reels your stories all over social you can put it on your website actually what's great is if you use an app like video wise which i am a huge proponent of actually with this store that we're doing this we're using video wise as well too and VideoWise opens up a player on your website that feels like TikTok, like you scroll it with your thumb.

53:40The biggest benefit of it is they don't leave your website and they can shop right in that experience as well too. So take all these videos and what we do is we dump them all in VideoWise and then on the product pages, anyone can click on it and just start scrolling through hundreds of videos of customers talking about the product. Like that is so powerful for conversion and then you can use them for ads and then you can use them on your website. like your homepage, not just your product pages. So the sky's the limit with what you can repurpose them as. You can pull quotes out of them to use as quotes on your site.

54:13There's just so much you can do with it. So it's definitely a huge win, but today it's your 1 % win. If you go out and implement that, I guarantee you'll come back a year later and you'll thank me because you start doing it today. The videos will start coming in over time and play around with the dollar amount discounts you get and see what works the best, but I promise you it'll be worth it. So that's your 1 % win for today. This was a fantastic episode. I'm so thankful for Jordan as a friend and that he came on. The last thing I want to say is if you guys are enjoying this podcast, would you please leave me a five-star review?

54:45You know, speaking of reviews and feedback and video testimonials, they mean a lot to me as well too. And as thankful as you are when one of your customers leaves a video review for you or leaves a testimonial of some sort, it's the same thing for me. So if you would take a minute and just go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify and leave a five star review, that'd be awesome. But would be even more amazing is if you would write something, especially in Apple Podcasts, because that shows on our website and other places too. If you can just write, thank you so much. I'm learning so much from this podcast or this, whatever, whatever you want to write, that would be amazing.

55:20And if you do shoot me an email because I have a special gift for you. Jay at Shopify one percent dot com. That's Jay. Let me know. And because I don't get notified when people leave a review and actually don't have a way of knowing who left it, I can just see a username, but it's they're anonymous. So just let me know. And I have something very special for you. OK, thanks so much, everyone. We'll see you on the next episode. This has been a lot of fun.