#385 – Is TikTok Shop The Next Big Thing? Insights From Paul Harvey
Ever wondered how TikTok could skyrocket your e-commerce business, especially if you’re running your own Amazon or Walmart brand? That’s exactly what Paul Harvey, an experienced Amazon seller and TikTok expert, and Kevin unpack in a candid conversation that could redefine how you see social media and influencer marketing. We dive into the fascinating emergence of TikTok Shop and its ripple effects on the online marketplace, providing actionable strategies for those ready to take their Amazon FBA and Walmart business to the next level. Paul’s extensive background—from Amazon seller in 2012 to consulting with Amazon aggregators—equips us with a rare perspective on the evolution of online marketplace strategies that have shifted from FBA and PPC to the current UGC social media-dominated era.
This episode peels back the curtain on the enigmatic world of online account purchases. Paul and Kevin navigate the murky waters of Amazon and TikTok account sales, discussing the lucrative tactics non-U.S. residents use to gain access to features inside TikTok. We also delve into the platform’s evolving policies, giving a heads-up to entrepreneurs about the nuances of fulfillment services and ever-fluctuating commission rates. It’s a gold mine of advice for international sellers looking to tap into the vast potential of the U.S. market, emphasizing the need to remain nimble and well-informed to thrive in this rapidly changing e-commerce landscape.
Lastly, we turn the spotlight on the intricate art of influencer marketing within TikTok’s booming e-commerce scene. Unlock the secrets of engaging a Gen Z audience that’s famously resistant to ads and discover how to nudge them towards Amazon searches, boosting your sales without the hard sell. We spill the beans on the platform’s ad simplicity and the surprising budget-friendly benefits when funneling traffic to Amazon rather than TikTok Shop. Strap in for a masterclass on content iteration and finding that ‘winning’ video formula that could catapult your Amazon or E-commerce brand to heights of success.
In episode 385 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin and Paul discuss:
- 00:00 – Leveraging TikTok for E-Commerce Success
- 07:03 – Software for Measuring Verticals in Sales
- 10:26 – TikTok’s Growth and Future Opportunities
- 11:38 – TikTok’s Resilience and Chinese Competition
- 16:08 – TikTok Hiring Top Engineers for E-Commerce
- 21:01 – Selling Amazon and TikTok Accounts
- 29:09 – Influencer Marketing Strategies for TikTok
- 29:39 – Leveraging TikTok Lives for Product Promotion
- 43:19 – Seeking Niche Influencers for Free Content
- 48:19 – TikTok Product Promotion Strategies for Amazon Success
- 52:30 – Kevin’s Words Of Wisdom
Transcript
Kevin King:
Welcome to Episode 385 of the AM|PM Podcast. My guest this week is coming to us from across the pond in the UK, Paul Harvey. You know, right now a hot topic is TikTok. Should you or shouldn’t you actually pay attention to what’s going on with TikTok and TikTok shop? Paul Harvey is the expert. He’s got a great newsletter all about TikTok for e-commerce sellers. He knows what’s going on. He helps people launch on TikTok, whether it be TikTok shop to make actual sales through there or just to get massive, massive promotion for their Amazon stores and to launch products on Amazon. We’re going to be talking about all that and more this week. Enjoy this episode with Mr. Paul Harvey.
Kevin King:
Welcome, Paul Harvey. How are you doing, man? It’s good to see you again.
Paul Harvey:
Big thanks, Kevin. Yeah, all good my side. How things your side?
Kevin King:
Things of my side are good. Everything’s rocking at Helium 10. We’ve got a brand new edition of the Freedom Ticket coming out soon. We’ve got I know everything’s going good with the Helium 10 Elite. It just opened up to everybody those of you listening if you’re not to H10.me/Elite, I know you’ve been a speaker in that before. They just opened that up to everybody. Got busy with my Billion Dollar Seller Summits, busy selling products, just no time to sleep. I don’t know about you, but no time to sleep.
Paul Harvey:
You know what I started Amazon like 10 years ago. I’m still waiting to sleep, and 10 years in the Amazon world means you’re old, you’re ancient.
Kevin King:
I know
Paul Harvey:
And like yeah, I’ll tell you I’ll move so quickly in the Amazon world.
Kevin King:
Yeah, I feel sometimes I talk to people and they’re like I started selling FBA in 2015. I’ve been selling on Amazon since 2001. But the FBA model 2015. And I’ll talk to someone that started in 2019 or 2020. You know, they’ve already had a big exit or something. I’m like man, what did I miss there? What did I screw up? I’ve been doing this 10 years but no, I’m happy. I’ve made a lot of good money. I still sell, do a lot of good stuff, but I’m always happy for those people that come in and focus and just crush it.
Paul Harvey:
I just miss the pace of penny clicks on PPC. Like I remember, like I used to have a budget of like $10 per day and would never get used up, and that’s just because PPC back in the day yeah, no one did it. I miss those days.
Kevin King:
I remember when PPC first came about in the internet before Amazon, there was a company called GoTo G-O-T-O GoTo.com that came out. This must have been maybe late 90s, early 2000, somewhere around there. They came out and they started as a paper click model, and they would I forget exactly how it actually worked it tagged onto the Yahoo or tagged onto your site or something, I forget exactly how it worked, but bids on it. I were initially a penny, literally one cent, and they got so upset that everybody just bidding one cent, they actually raised it to two cents as a minimum bid and then Google ended up buying them and incorporating that technology and exploding it into what they do. But yeah, it was called GoTo.com and I remember that it’s been a big day, a big promotion, maybe like $8 or $10 or something like that one day and I’d be like man, I’m making so much money. Only cost me $10 to advertise. Those days are definitely gone. But now we have a new game in town. We’re going to talk about that social media and there’s ways to leverage social media to actually get in essence in some cases pre-clicks free publicity that you couldn’t have gotten back then, but you’ve been. So you started out just to give everybody a background, a little bit about you. You started out as a seller, right?
Paul Harvey:
Yeah. Originally I started with ASM 1 and if you know what ASM is, you’ve been the game for way too long. But yeah, I started then and I’m basically I’ve
Kevin King:
Been like 2012, 2013 or so.
Paul Harvey:
Yeah, well, exactly, because my daughter’s now coming up on 10 and I started the course when she was born. So, yeah, I used that because I looked around and said, wow, you’re old, like that’s how long I’ve been on Amazon. So, yeah, so ideally, like with me, I’ve worn pretty much every Amazon hat there is of being a seller, consultants, running agencies, worked in aggregators, pretty much everything. So, yeah, so, like the way I think of it is like 10 years in Amazon and just pretty much everyone knows like the experience level. You just do everything because you have to.
Kevin King:
Yeah, exactly so. And then you evolved out of that. Did you just you were selling and then did you have an exit, or did you just kind of migrate into something else?
Paul Harvey:
What happened was I launched my own chatbots with my company everything and then was a ChatBot over messenger and then literally overnight. Facebook turned us off and like if you want to see a business fail quickly overnight. That’s exactly how it happened. Amazon Facebook just turned us off and then we changed a few things, but then, during the aggregator model, when it was really blowing up, a lot of my clients were being bought up by an aggregator. So the aggregator then says to me Paul, come to us, join us. Like, as one of the founding members, I was like, cool, I do that, but I had to sacrifice everything, like everything, like all my accounts, my agencies, everything, software, everything we had to cut off to join them. So I did, because the aim was I joined their low salary but high equity and if they went public, that would be my big day. That really would be, and this is a time when everyone thought every aggregator would make it so. And then, like, I joined there as the first few employees and it scaled to 120 employees in 6 months. However, I was the only person that had any actual Amazon experience, so I was pretty much. I even created a course to teach people how to do their job, because no one knew what to do, and I was being Amazon seller, much like yourself. We can do everything and that’s not a brag, but just we have to do everything. So I mean, I was doing PPC for one brand, logistics for the other, listing optimization for one, external check for the other was doing everything, and we could because we’re sellers, but for a new person they don’t know what they were doing and fortunately, that aggregator closed down a few months afterwards. But they did one thing really well, the one thing I really, really appreciate them for they purchased the software that would measure the verticals across all their brands, and the software was so expensive. They wouldn’t tell me how much I paid for it, because and they were friends of mine, but they were just too embarrassed to say how much it cost but essentially, the software wouldn’t measure every vertical. So if there was a sales increase, you would see an increase on Amazon or Walmart or social signals, whatever, and we’ll tell you why this is happening. It was great, it really was. There’s a really great software. However, every time I ran a TikTok ad campaign, we would see a minor spark, a minor increase in sales on the main platforms like Amazon and Walmart and so on and so forth. However, the software could never knew why. And then I cannot tell us why there was a sales increase, but every time it happened because of TikTok. We were running some campaigns and so on and so forth, and me, being an Amazon seller, I said, “Guys, this is because of TikTok, drop everything and go all in on TikTok.” And they said, “No, Paul, the software doesn’t tell us.” But being an Amazon seller, you know better than most. So if you see something working, you say, okay, it’s because of this. And there may not be, there may not be any proof, but you know like a seller knows. And where I did was I argued with them back and forth for a quite long time and then actually left the company just to start up my own TikTok agency for Amazon sellers and went really well. The problem was at this agency, purely to rub salt in their wounds, to say I’m right, you’re wrong. However, by the time I could prove them I was right, they were no longer around and they played the whole like a greater model where they got absorbed by others and so on and so forth. So now it’s not as rewarding because I don’t have anyone to rub salt in their wounds. I’ve known to say “I’m right, you’re wrong” and yeah. But essentially
Kevin King:
Was it a US aggregator or European based aggregator?
Paul Harvey:
It was European one.
Kevin King:
Okay.
Paul Harvey:
Well, I see European, but like I don’t know where, like the offices mainly were, because they were all over the place, but as far as I know, their main offices were European and yeah, they were one of the first aggregators to to kind of get absorbed. And when I left there, I then started working with other aggregators and what I realized was that first aggregator wasn’t bad they were better than most and just shows aggregators space how much help they needed, because love is aggregators just don’t have the manpower to make it work, they don’t have the experience to work and I mean you know better than me, but yeah, we, we kind of saw that coming.
Kevin King:
So you’ve been involved in TikTok, then, since the early days. I mean, I remember TikTok wasn’t originally called Musically or something like that, and I remember Gary Vee was talking about this thing. This is like I don’t know 7, 8 years ago or something, this thing Musically that’s just going to take off. And then it ended up of. I don’t know if it got bought out or they changed the name. I’m not sure exactly how that worked, but I remember Change the name. Yeah, they changed the name and then around 20, because I think I first somewhat on around 2018, 2019. It wasn’t Amazon events, I think one of these other 10 X events or something like that. And we went over there and there’s a couple of people said hey Kevin, have you seen this TikTok? I’m like what the heck? I never heard of this. What are you talking about? They’re like oh, it’s going to be the next big thing. This is 2018, 2019. So I downloaded it and start playing with it. It’s like this is pretty addictive. This is actually pretty cool. So I’ve been playing on TikTok, you know, since the early days, I guess you could say, of TikTok, and I’ve seen it evolve and there’s I know there’s a. That’s what you specialize in. There’s a lot of opportunity now. We’ve got people that are on the my Billion Dollar Seller Summit that talked about going from Zero to $5 million in 10 months just on TikTok. There’s a whole ecosystem evolving coming up around it with, you know, tools like Helium 10, but for TikTok, so you can analyze stuff. But there’s also a school thought of people saying that you know, there’s one person in this, in our industry, that has a newsletter that says you’re wasting your time if you do TikTok, that the government’s going to shut it down, that this is not going to exist and don’t spend a second of your time on TikTok. You’re basically it’s not smart. Is what he’s saying to do that? Focus on Amazon and blow off TikTok. It’s not going to be around in a year anyway. What are your thoughts on that? Um, you know, with the governments and stuff with, with it being Chinese and all that.
Paul Harvey:
So, like the first thing is that the way I view TikTok is much like a Chinese hijacker. You won’t get rid of them, you really won’t, and like everything. If we look at that
Kevin King:
I love that. That’s great, that’s great.
Paul Harvey:
It’s true, though, because if we look at TikTok, Santa’s truck, the US truck, and they’ve all failed, and like if you waited in the past, you’re now behind. And like the way I look at things, is that okay? Let’s say TikTok crashes, okay, so it crashes. We learned that, like when I ran a Facebook Messenger ChatBot. Facebook turned off the software overnight and we lost the whole business, but at least we tried. And the same with TikTok. It’s great, but like it’s like a Chinese hijacker as soon as you take one off, there’ll be another one over and over again. And that’s the same with TikTok. Like Santa’s tried. US tried and come back stronger every time. So I’m betting on the resilience of the Chinese. Cause we know their effectively can scale much faster than us, and then they are, I feel, far smarter than my cell phone Pretty much anyone that’s not in the East.
Kevin King:
Yeah, there’s a lot of people that say what’s it even matter? You know, let’s make hay while the sun shines. You know, even if something does go down a couple of years from now or a year from now or whatever, at least I got in there and I made, made a few million bucks or something. You know, you, still, Amazon is going to be your steady horse maybe but there’s tons. TikTok right now is a big wide ocean and I think every Amazon seller, in my opinion, I think Amazon, TikTok is giving me number two to Amazon. I don’t think it’s going anywhere. You know, there’s going to be some more media talk and you know, but if TikTok they’ll, like you said, they’re a hijacker. They’ll come back another way. You know, maybe they got to change the name and they got to sell to us and there’s some agreement where you got to be X amount US owned more than they are now, or there’ll be something. But it’s not. I don’t think it’s going away and I think it’s going to continue to grow and I think it’s going to be the second biggest marketplace ahead of Walmart. At some point, especially once they get their fulfillments, distribution centers in. Where I think they could have a problem, though, is now there’s so many people going on to TikTok, actually, and the feeds are getting corrupted, so it used to be the go on, I want to be entertained, I just want to watch a bunch of people dance or see some jokes or whatever, and now it’s like every other video is it an influencer or UGC or an ad, and TikTok’s got to get a handle on that, I think, to define that right balance, or they’re going to turn some people off. What are your thoughts on how it’s evolving right now in that regard?
Paul Harvey:
So, if we look at TikTok, we’re a little bit about them. The USP has always been about a really, really addictive news feed. That’s their USP. However, now, with them just testing out shoppable posts and kind of flooding the system with TikTok shop content, they’re kind of killing their own addictive algorithm. So, like what I do foresee is that they’re aware of this and they are the right now. They’re just testing multiple things at once to see what works, what doesn’t work, and as soon as they know what works, they’ll just scale down. Like what’s crazy is I know a bunch of Chinese sellers that just do Amazon and TikTok shop and they crush it Like they do like a few hundred thousand dollars in sales on TikTok shop. When they do a live per day, it’s purely because yeah per day, and just crazy. And like when they tell me this, I’m like wow, that’s really scary because they’ve done this. And when you see that content, it’s just horrible. It’s one person staying in front of a camera saying, buy this and then we’re going to the next item by this there’s no like they’re not just sold to you, but people like that and I see that just growing, growing, growing and effectively, whatever they’re learning in the East, is coming over to the West but and they will optimize it for the West and go from there.
Kevin King:
I mean, I saw that TikTok has like a a $4 billion budget for this year, a promotional budget, you know, and last last fall they were trying to compete and they were doing basically I don’t know if it’s still going on right now to the same extent, but I know there’s basically almost zero percent fees. I know they’re raising that up in taxes here. Then they’re reimbursing you. If you were giving a discount, you know, 50% off to buy my makeup mirror, they were reimbursing the seller for that. Plus they’re reimbursing them for shipping where you can actually make money on the shipping reimbursement. I think, if I recall correctly, is that still going on or is that starting to those kind of promotions still going on to attract sellers, or have they gotten enough in where they’re backing off on? Some of that
Paul Harvey:
Yeah, they’re kind of backing off, I’ve noticed, and not as aggressive as they once were. But also one thing I did notice is that over the past year I’ve been following on TikTok with their hiring trends and they are hiring the world’s best engineers for e-commerce. That hasn’t slowed down. I like that because if you know what they’re building, if you know that the background works really well, that’s why I like to buy TikTok, because they’re hiring the best people to figure out what works and what doesn’t work, whereas most agencies like I recently spoke to their clients they’re saying to me but Paul, I’m on Walmart, it’s taken me months to actually launch on Walmart and get a few sales. With TikTok Shop, they’re getting sales within a week. Really, is that simple? And that’s what I like about TikTok it just moves very, very quickly, whereas Walmart, being based in the West, they’re still learning, they’re still trying to figure everything. Here’s TikTok just come in and immediately, in the first week or a few days, you’re making sales at the gate.
Kevin King:
I think I saw some statistic that their sales last year were $17 billion. I think this year they’re trying to hit $30 billion. I forget the exact number right now. Let’s put that in perspective, though. That’s a lot of money. $17 billion in sales is a lot of money, but that’s a weekend for Amazon. That’s a good weekend over Black Friday, Cyber Monday for Amazon. They do more than that. To put that in perspective, TikTok is still a little fly when it compared to Amazon, but the opportunities and the growth potential are immense. It’s like the guys that got in. You did ASM-1, you said those guys that started ASM-1 in 2013 were selling their company to these aggregators in 2018, 2019, 2020 for crazy money. They got in at the right time where they didn’t. All they had to do was stick their name on, find something on Alibaba and stick their logo on it. That was it. Just put it up and then go to the beach. Law of those guys. This is the problem with the aggregators you were talking about. Nobody knew what they’re doing. They would buy these companies that started in 2013, 2014, where people were right place, right time, and they would try to hire some of them and they would figure out these people who actually don’t know what they’re doing. Some of these guys that sold for millions of bucks to an aggregator. They went out and was like, well, I’ll just do this again. They try to start another Amazon business and they fail miserably because they have no clue what they’re doing. It’s like right now, in a way, TikTok is that same place. It’s like that blue ocean. Get in there and there’s not a lot of competition. Is there a competition coming? Absolutely, there’s more and more every day. Get in there. Now a lot of people are saying, man, it’s difficult. What are some of the rules? I have to be a US citizen. I live in Canada, I live in Europe and I’m selling on Amazon, but TikTok won’t let me in. I have to be what? Uk citizen, or US citizen, or US business, uk business I can’t even be Canadian. Some people are saying, man, the process is arduous to sign up. Other people are saying, no, if you just go through Shopify I think maybe you posted this in your newsletter or something, I don’t know why so if you go through Shopify and get approved that way, you can get instantly approved on TikTok. What are some of the roadblocks right now to getting up and some of the requirements?
Paul Harvey:
The first thing is everyone asks me Paul, why aren’t you on TikTok shop? Why do you want to agency? Why don’t you sell there? Because you’re on Amazon. So I’m like, listen to the accent. This is why I’m not on TikTok shop. Clearly because you need to be a US citizen. I have a bunch of.
Kevin King:
Just to clarify of South Africa.
Paul Harvey:
Oh yeah, there we go. Pretty much. Yeah, you need to be a US citizen. We need someone to submit your documents. What I’ve noticed is I’ve been through a lot of clients like this and you need someone to document and then your passport and your driver’s license. However, you just need to submit your driver’s license and passport to show that you’re in the US. The driver’s license and passport that you submit doesn’t have to be related to the company. A lot of users what I’ve found doing is they have a US entity but then they hire someone to just be the face just their name and their details to get access to TikTok shop. So much so that now, if you’re going to allow these TikTok shop Facebook groups, people are selling their driver’s license and details so then you can use it to get access to TikTok shop. Yeah, it’s a huge thing. Back in the day, selling Amazon accounts was like a thing. People used to do it, and now it’s the same thing with TikTok. It’s still a thing now.
Kevin King:
It’s still a thing. I just recently sold an old Amazon account and used it in years for 14 grand.
Paul Harvey:
Could you get same day reimbursements in that one?
Kevin King:
No, I have one that you can that I’m holding onto, but I was offered a lot of money for that one. It’s an old one, but the ones I sold were from 2019, 2020. They had some good feedbacks and stuff. I have another one. I have a vendor account that’s going to go for significant five figures. We’re just betting a few things on it right now, but yeah, there’s a whole business around that. Yeah, it still exists. So if I’m living in South Africa and I’m selling on Amazon already but I want to get on TikTok top shop in the US, I just need to partner up with somebody that’s American. Basically, it’s a serious entity. It has an LLC and I could be a partner in that company, or I can own 99% of it and they own 1%, or whatever. What about the Chinese? Is there a? They have to do the same thing, or they have a special agreement that if you’re Chinese, that you can sell on TikTok.
Paul Harvey:
From what I’ve noticed, that the person’s details you use to access, to show that you’re a US citizen, doesn’t actually need to be affiliated to the business. What I’ve seen some clients do is they have the US entity, our CEO and stuff, and then their wife is like American. They use their wife as the placeholder to get into the shop, even though there’s no tax implications. Everything that’s just access. I assume that’s what most people are doing. One thing I should say is literally don’t take my advice on tax. This is purely assumption. I always say that because I don’t know literally right now. TikTok shop is very much like Amazon from back in the day. It’s very easy to get in, and I say easy to get in. However, 10% of the new accounts that are created for TikTok shop are rejected. I had one client they do 20 million per year on Amazon and TikTok has been courting them asking them to open a TikTok shop accounts, but every time they do they get denied access. The reason being is that TikTok purely doesn’t like their passport details. That’s the reason TikTok actually said back to them sorry, we can’t accept you because the system doesn’t like you and they are their own problems sometimes.
Kevin King:
What about this? Is it that there’s some sort of Shopify workaround? Or if you have a Shopify plugin or something I heard something about that where actually you can just hit a button and it automatically approves you into the shop or something? There’s something like Backdoor workaround.
Paul Harvey:
There is a Backdoor workaround like that where you can use Shopify to get access to TikTok shop. However, it’s backdoor access with limited access. I’ve noticed sometimes is that when their seller goes to Shopify it’s great, but then things like opening up an ad account or adding users to the account or the normal mundane stuff they can’t do and then actually have to go through the normal routes to actually open the accounts. What I’ve noticed is with every brand it’s kind of like what works for that brand may work for that brand but may not work for other brand. It’s a very much an individualized approach to see to kind of like get access as quickly as possible.
Kevin King:
Now, no TikTok, they don’t have their own fulfillment network yet. They have partnership agreements right with some people, but their long-term goal is to basically build their own fulfillment network with warehouses, just like Amazon, like FBA, and I think when they do that that’s going to be another game changer, but that’s probably a little ways off where that really gets up and going. They might start dabbling in it soon.
Paul Harvey:
FBT Fulfilled by TikTok is open right now to some brands. However, I want everyone don’t use it, because it’s like a TikTok’s beta program, which means there’s going to be problems, and what will probably happen is, if you keep stock in their warehouse and they ship it out late, that comes on your record. They’ll probably go for your record and then it shows that you are a bad seller because your shipping rates are really bad, even though it went through TikTok. And I say this because TikTok doesn’t know the problems they’re going to face yet. So, rather, hold back on doing Fulfilled by TikTok for as long as possible until the guinea pigs have tested it, and don’t be a guinea pig, because they can’t come back and bite you.
Kevin King:
Like you said, TikTok is really anal on the shipping, right, you got to ship within two days, or something like that. Or they penalize the heck out of you. There’s no margin of error, right, because they want customers, they know they’re launching, they can’t screw up. Or people are like, ah, it took me forever to get my stuff and it changes their reputation the whole shop. So what are the rules when it comes to shipping out of TikTok?
Paul Harvey:
So basically, once you can order on TikTok shop, you have 3 days to get the product to the customer. That’s it.
Kevin King:
Three days to actually be delivered not to ship, but delivered.
Paul Harvey:
It depends. Ideally, I tell everyone 3 days till it arrives at their door. The reason I say that is because it’s normally 3 days to be delivered. But they’re changing things. For example you mentioned earlier about TikTok is increasing their commission rates. It was 3%, now it’s 7%, which still it’s a fraction compared to Amazon, but from 3% to 7%, that’s double. So bear in mind. So a few things people need to be aware of. The shipping times may change drastically, so I’ll say to everyone 3 days to get there. That’s a good, safe thing to bet on.
Kevin King:
I’ve ordered quite a few things on TikTok. Some of them have taken a couple of weeks, some of them I just ordered something last weekend. It got here yesterday, so that would be like four or five days delivery. I mean, I got a shipment notice within a day or two, but it wasn’t. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten anything in 3 days actually delivered. I’ve probably ordered seven or eight things off of TikTok. Some of them have just dropped, shipped out of China, and some of them it looks like it’s shipped from here. The other beautiful thing about TikTok is you get the customer data right. It’s not like Amazon.
Paul Harvey:
You get the customer data but not their, you get their name and phone number, but not their email address.
Kevin King:
But you get their physical address?
Paul Harvey:
Yes, you do. Yeah.
Kevin King:
Okay, so you could. You can download that and you could. If you’re open to get an email address, you could use software companies out there to build a list off of that there’s, you know, like Melissa data or some of those that will take physical addresses and match them and go into email.
Paul Harvey:
And right now that’s not against the rules. It might be in the future, but right now it works much like Amazon. Back in the day before they said don’t do rebates, you could do rebates. It’s the same thing now with TikTok. Is that what’s happening now is that the strategies right now might be against the rules in the future. So do everything you can right now.
Kevin King:
Yeah, so what? What are the categories that are working really well on TikTok? I mean, can I sell automotive tires if I’m an automotive or something, or is it more the gadgets and the beauty that’s really taken on? What are some of the like the key categories that just just always do well on TikTok shop? And what are some that just don’t do so good?
Paul Harvey:
The main thing I’m seeing is fashion. Fashion just crushes it. So much so that I have one brand, when we start running their ads, they get a 20x ROI on their ads alone. They’re crushing it really are like, even if we don’t want ads, they still get love sales organically and that’s great. And that’s once the niche, which isn’t the same for everyone. So, like I say this because it works great for them, but not for other brands Right now. We have about 15 brands right now that we have on TikTok shop and some of them are great, some of the poor, but the main thing is those that how much of a of impulse buy is your product? That’s the main thing. It’s impulse by the dude right now and impulse by anything below like 30 dollars. I’m seeing the best sweet spot I’m. We saw some products over hundred dollars and they do really well. It’s just not as well as the lower products. But one thing I’m seeing ridiculous success with is going to live. I just noticed a bunch of brands are future. There’s really boring products and them as themselves, as a person, as a presenter, as a host, is really really boring, like really boring. However, they get such great reach when you go live. Even if a lot doesn’t work, you just get a lot of great reach out of that. What’s great about that is two aspects. You can actually boost lives using TikTok ads. That way, you are your live to get more reach. And secondly is that you can anyone that watches your live or clicks in your live. After you boost it, you can retarget them throughout. So a lot of TikTok users think my products are going viral only because I’ve retargeted to them over and over again with different pieces of videos, same product, different videos. So they see I’m at least 10 to 15 creators talking about the same product in their minds and looks like it’s going viral because they being retargeted so much like and that works really, really well as a result.
Kevin King:
Remember you talked about something similar to that in your newsletter. You have a newsletter for TikTok, for e-commerce sellers or for Amazon sellers. Basically, how do you put out a new one comes out every, every week?
Paul Harvey:
Every few hours. Today, yeah.
Kevin King:
I remember one of those a while back, you actually had some strategy there I thought was pretty cool when you actually say, go out and get some content creators to do your product for you know some UGC and then have them post the video and some of those may go viral. Some of those may only have a 100 views or something you know something small, but then run ads. Take those 10 or 15 people run ads on their videos to a very and run all the ads to the same like 5000 people audience or something like a small, a very small audience of like five thousand people, and it’s the same people you’re targeting with each one of those ads, basically. And then what starts happening is they start seeing it and come up all from all these different influencers and they think, like you just said, they think this must be, this is I’m seeing this over and over, everybody must be talking about this is I mean you pay attention and that can then cause those other videos, the natural, organic ones, to start getting more and more organic plays into. Hopefully a couple of them go viral and explode. That was a pretty brilliant strategy I thought that you were shared there, actually a way to actually force that, almost force that virality.
Paul Harvey:
And the reason I love that strategy is because it just shows that a lot of the TikTok users are Gen Z and everything, and Gen Z people do not like clicking on ads. They really don’t, really don’t like, they don’t think that’s so, but they will search on Amazon by default. So what I noticed was is that, first of all, if they see your product being featured on TikTok by an ad or by influencer, whichever they see it, they probably will forget about it. But then they see it again by another person talking about it. Their interest is peaked third time over and every time you retarget them it really really works because they think that they this product, everyone’s talking about it. So all we really do is retarget that same the same person over and over again with different pieces of content, and then what happens is the user may still not click on the ad because they don’t like ads, but they will go searching Amazon by default. So one thing we do really really well is we tell them how to find it on Amazon. So we say to them okay with, the one common thing in all those videos is when we give them instructions, and instructions are go find on Amazon, just search brand name keyword. That’s it. That’s the one common line in all those videos. Search brand name keyword. What happens then? That they may not click on the ad, but they will go to Amazon search by default. But how are they gonna search for your product? You told them brand name keyword. So, for example, I use, like baby grove, baby blankets. The reason I use the brand name is because that way, your product, your brand, will appear in the search results and it works really well to a point where we’ve been able to manipulate the search or the Brand Analytics and the search volume for that brand and their keyword before we run TikTok ads, you may not even see the brand name or the keyword referenced on Brand Analytics, but then, after running these campaigns for a few weeks, people come to Amazon and they search for the brand and they do exactly how you instructed them, search brand name keyword. And then we see anywhere from about from zero keyword to about 10 to 15 keywords then referenced on Brand Analytics as a result.
Kevin King:
Now, you used to you could run, you could put links to Amazon storefronts, but now TikTok really doesn’t like that or did they actually ban that, or did they just they frown on that and they penalize you for it?
Paul Harvey:
So what happened was this is like the rumor moments and started up a while ago. There is that they say that Amazon, TikTok does not like Amazon references and they may be true, may not be true, but the main thing is that the articles were saying, if you can’t run TikTok ads to Amazon and like, that’s like saying you can’t run Facebook ads to go TikTok. You can. Facebook will never turn down your money. TikTok will never turn down your money. The only cost is maybe by pushing traffic to Amazon, the cost are a little bit more, but I haven’t seen much. So I only run TikTok ads to Amazon, when not doing TikTok shop and the CPCs are pretty much the same. As long as you have great content, the CPCs can be ignored and we get. We get CPCs is about 10 cents and we have. For the past I would say yeah, you’re not off. All depends on creating great content, not so much the product. Creating great content, you get great CPCs.
Kevin King:
So the make sure I understand. So if someone’s gonna go out. If I’m gonna launch on TikTok and I get into the TikTok shop with my products, then I’m what you recommend is go to an influencer and say, hey, feature my product. And I want you to say you know somewhere in there say you can get this on Amazon. Search the brand name keyword or you can buy it here in TikTok shop. And so that gives them the choice of maybe they prefer Amazon cuz they trust Amazon, their credit cards are in there or whatever. So it gives them the choice and click the link below to go to the buy it in shop or they can go search find it on Amazon. And I know a lot of people are saying that the you know when this is done right, they’re getting a big lift, like you said on Amazon, as they’re making some money out of TikTok because people just buy it right there. But they’re also seeing big lifts and helping them with their launch and help them with with ranking and sales on Amazon.
Paul Harvey:
Yeah, a lot of users don’t trust TikTok shop, but they do trust Amazon. So I have a few brands that we spend like a few hundred dollars a day on ads on TikTok shop, and they’ve not made any sales at all. But the caveat is their search analytics, their sales on Amazon have improved as a result of the TikTok shop ads. Because right now TikTok is great for brand awareness. It really is and people don’t trust. Well, some users don’t trust TikTok shops. They won’t buy a TikTok shop, but they will go search for your products on Amazon and then do a price difference the price of the currency. When can I get the product on Amazon? And I trust Amazon more as opposed to TikTok shop. And that’s definitely for every product, every niche.
Kevin King:
So if you’re saying that in the video, having the content creators say that to go search for Amazon, are you doing anything with coupons? Because that would be a direct way to track it. So if you tell them, go search for a brand name keyword on Amazon and to get 20% off, enter code TK02. And then you would know that exactly that sale specifically not everybody’s going to type in the code because they’ll forget it or whatever, but enough of them will where you’ll at least get a baseline idea of these were this order came from TikTok. You just look at how many of those codes are redeeming. Is anybody doing or any of your clients doing something like that?
Paul Harvey:
Absolutely no one, and I’ve tried that a lot. The problem is TikTok users are lazy, like lazy, so so damn lazy. If you give them instructions, I can pretty much guarantee no one will follow it. What we’ve done, we split test the difference between sending traffic to an Amazon listing versus a storefront, and what we came to realize is that every sense of the storefront that means they have to read. They have to go through the products in their storefronts and figure out which is the one in the video they just watched. And that sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. When you send traffic to the storefront it doesn’t work because it’s one extra click to get to the Amazon listing and they don’t want to click that. They really don’t. So I just find the best results being as simple as possible. For example, we re-chart to about 300 to 400 affiliates on the TikTok shop database every week, every brand. But what we noticed was we split test the message when we sent out to them. We sent them first of all. We tried, like we said hey, you’re amazing, we love this video you did. Would you mind doing a video for us? We’re going to be boosting it with ads so you can. More sales, more stuff. So we had like a nice little write up telling them how to win for them to work with us, and that went absolutely nowhere, like nowhere. We tried personalization, everything. At the end of it, three lines is the optimized length. We said to them hey, you’re great, we want to work with you. Here’s the product. Let me know, that’s it. And that has been the most effective way of contacting affiliates, because they get about 40 or 50 people reaching out to them per day and they don’t care about your sub story, they don’t care anything about your brand. They just want to see how would this make them more money? Or just make them look cooler than everyone else? And if you can.
Kevin King:
You set the affiliate rate too, Right? You set their commission rate. Yeah, so if you, if you’re doing a big launch, you can make it some really good product. Make it some really high affiliate rate just to get them on board, even though you might be breaking even or losing money. But it can help on a launch and then dial that back and over time, right?
Paul Harvey:
Exactly that. The only issue is I’ve experimented and, like for me, the world noticed is the best commission rate is 20%. I’ll just make it 20% and leave it at that. And I’ve been really aggressive and made like 50, 60, 70% of them testing around that the issue is is you can see a business model, but they can’t, they really can’t. So like you have to tell them you’re going to make 60, 70% commission. It’s in your best interest to do this and you would think by increasing the commission it gets the interest. It doesn’t. However, as soon as the users can see that you’re making sales on TikTok shop, then they’re more likely to endorse your product. So by just sending them a link to a product or storefront, the first thing they look at is how many sales has this brand made? If you have many sales, it doesn’t matter what your commission rate is, because they went promoted because they can’t see a way of making quick sales or quick buck.
Kevin King:
So how do you get around that if you’re brand new?
Paul Harvey:
So pretty much the only way to get around it is just be relentless, contact as many people as possible. You could even make your price much, much lower and then push stuff. The main thing about TikTok is that you have there are two traffic signals in TikTok the organic growth and the ads. And I would say, across the brands I work with, 80% of the traffic that comes to their storefront on TikTok is all ads. Very, very few make any sales organically because right now TikTok is trying to work out how TikTok search works and they just recently released some information on the TikTok shop showing the search for their products. But the search has absolutely nothing to do with the product. I saw the other day a fitness product and the keyword was kitchen products. Like someone searched kitchen products and TikTok offered up this fitness product and they bought. So like TikTok is still trying to figure out all the search results and so on and so forth. So it’s getting there, but not anytime soon.
Kevin King:
How do you find these content? What you said, you’re reaching out to 3, 400 a day. How are you finding them? What’s the process to actually? Is there agencies that have these databases of them, or are you just having to go hunt and pack and find them, or how are you finding them?
Paul Harvey:
There’s two ways of doing it. First of all, you get the TikTok affiliate on the TikTok shop platform. You can contact them en masse on there. The only issue is there is you can only DM them and these affiliates can only be contacted through that platform. So you can’t contact them anyway else, and that’s your own way. So what my team does, first thing we do, is contact as many as possible. They will be related to the niche of the product. Contact as many as possible, and normally we get a lot of free content out of that. The problem is the free content is just horrible, like really really horrible Like. So horrible, in fact, that I feel the need to apologize to the clients every time because the content is so bad. But sometimes the worse off it is, the better it is. And right now, TikTok is about quantity, not quality. So and it’s hard for Amazon seller because we’re used to quality being the main thing like try selling Amazon with unoptimized images of your product. Not going to happen, right, with TikTok shop, it still can work. You can still do really well having an unoptimized content and stuff, purely because quantity beats quality every single time. So the main thing is contact as many people as possible, and what we do we contact everyone to get free content and they will say, great, there was the free content, now let’s do paid. We’re going to pay people to create content and then we can’t pay everything back and forth and, as a result, we launch, I would say, about at least five videos per week. Every week, and the rule is five videos. And the reason we do five videos is because, let’s say, you’re 20 videos, you launch 20 videos in your ad campaign. The problem is the way the TikTok algorithm, or ad algorithm, works is that others 20 videos normally one or two videos will take the lion’s share of the budget, which means there will be 18 videos that haven’t probably been tested. So I take five videos because others five videos one or two will be the winners and the others will still get some live. So you know what’s the best video. So every week we run 5 videos and then we take the winning one from that and then the following week another 5 videos and take the winner from that until you have 5 winners. And once you get those 5 winners, you put them together to see who is the better product. So who is the better video. And then, once you have that ultimate winner, that’s the guard line, that’s the showcase for the brand, because now you know what works. So now, once I have that proven, we go to all those affiliate creators and say to them great, we hear some content, or we want you to create content like this, because we’re going to be boosting your content with ads, so you get more commission, more followers and we get more sales. So it’s a one-to-one situation. We know it works, this strategy works or this content works. Make your please postpone this. And then you know what works and what doesn’t work. And then there is and this is an ongoing process where you continually get new videos all the time and just pretty much testing everything throughout.
Kevin King:
So how’s the ad platform work? Is it similar to like Facebook or Amazon, where you can target certain segments or you can target certain people and you set your own bids? What’s the general just overview of how that platform works?
Paul Harvey:
It’s pretty much very similar to Facebook, but nowhere near as advanced. You could spend a day or two on the TikTok algorithm, TikTok ad platform and pretty much master it over a few days, because it really is plain catch up. But essentially what you do is you target people based on their interest. So let’s say you’re doing a baby blanket, you would target like newborns or parents of newborns, like mom talk, like mommy talk, like TikTok. So anything related to kids would do well, and then all you do then is you put the budget in. You’re gonna budget like $50 per day and then let go. What’s interesting is sometimes, actually most of the time I don’t do any interest based targeting, I just let TikTok do the targeting for me. So I don’t put any restrictions. I say before me and normally I get the best results like that as opposed to doing interest based targeting.
Kevin King:
And you said on average about 10 cents or less per click.
Paul Harvey:
Yeah, what’s interesting 10 cents per click going to Amazon, but about $2 sometimes when you go to TikTok shop, which is weird.
Kevin King:
Oh really?
Paul Harvey:
Yeah, and I’m still trying to figure this out. But I assume first of all is that if they see it’s an Amazon product, they trust Amazon. So it’s cheap clicks, cheap high quality clicks, but it goes to TikTok shop they might not then be keen, and I’m still trying to figure out. Also, the main issue I’m seeing is that TikTok shop I don’t trust their metrics. Like when you run ads, I still don’t trust their metrics. So maybe they still try and figure out a few things that go from there.
Kevin King:
So what do you think TikTok is going on? Why should people listening right now, seriously, if they’re not on TikTok, seriously be concerned? What are like the three big things that like what you’re seeing, like, oh my gosh, if you’re not doing this, you’re missing out on these things. Or why should people really pay attention, set up and try to get on TikTok.?
0:48:40 – Paul Harvey:
The main reason people should, if you just look at this, is that TikTok right now is very focused on the creators. They’re very focused on the influencers and it’s the only platform where it’s a one-one situation a one-for-the-seller and a one-for-the-affiliate. So right now, if you look at Amazon, I think what’s the standard affiliate rate percentage is there. I think it’s about like 5% to 10%. I could be wrong, but what’s really great about TikTok shop essentially is that if you get content, the affiliate gets their money upfront or the money from every single sale, and then you get more sales as a result. So it’s a one-one situation. You help them get more sales or you help them get more commission. You get more sales, and it’s nice because there’s no barrier to entry, whereas with Amazon Associates there is. You need to have something like a few hundred thousand followers on Instagram and so on and so forth, whereas with TikTok it just really works well. So the aim is right now, let’s assume you have 15 influencers I use that term very loosely like anyone can’t be an influencer on TikTok. So let’s say you have 15 influencers that all talk about your product. Now you can simultaneously boost all 15 pieces of content. And why this is so good is because you’re not boosting a video about your product. You’re boosting a video, an influencer’s video, so it comes up to the user, they see it on their news feed and it looks like an influencer just recommending your product and doesn’t come across as an ad. That’s why it’s so effective. So you have 15 videos just talking about your product and you boost them all. That works really really well because a lot of the brands I work with don’t even have a TikTok profile for their brand, but they have over a hundred influencers talking about their product. What’s more effective, those people, or having your own branded accounts? The brand accounts pretty useless if you have a lot of people talking about the product and then pushing the traffic from there.
Kevin King:
So how do people get your newsletter? If they wanna learn more and keep up with the latest of what’s going on and list strategies on when it comes to TikTok for e-commerce, how do they get the newsletter?
Paul Harvey:
Best thing to do go to rankster.co and newsletter there. It’s pretty email address and every week we send you updates and stuff and go from there.
Kevin King:
And if they wanna reach out to you as an agency or want you to help them get set up and run some of their ads and stuff for them, how do they do that?
Paul Harvey:
Very much, yeah. So on the site rankster.co, once they sign up or their links there to contact me directly or member my team.
Kevin King:
So that’s rankster.co, right, correct?
Paul Harvey:
Yeah.
Kevin King:
Awesome. Paul, I really appreciate you spending some time today and sharing this. TikTok is a hot new thing. It’s a hot subject everywhere. So all kinds of people popping up right now trying to show people how to sell on TikTok and a lot of them actually aren’t selling themselves or aren’t doing it. They’re just jumping on the opportunity to try to make some money teaching people. But you’re actually in the weeds out there doing it. So you’re one of the people that everybody should follow and listen to because you’re actually doing this and are successful doing it. So if you wanna get into TikTok and you need some guidance or want someone just to kind of manage it or hold your hand Paul’s your man go to rankster.co and check him out. Thanks again, Paul, for coming on the AMPM podcast.
Kevin King:
Like we talked about, I think TikTok has the potential to be the next biggest thing, even above Walmart, and they’re not there right now. You got a little ways to catch up, but at the pace they’re going and some of what they’re doing, I think they have a good shot at being number two, still distant behind Amazon. But it’s something to pay attention to and why not try it right now, as Paul was saying, and get your feet wet and maybe make a little money and make it rain while the sun is shining. I hope you enjoyed this episode, got some good practical advice on TikTok out of it and hopefully you can apply this and give it a shot. We’ll be back again next week with another great episode, but before we go, as always, I’ve got some words of wisdom for you. Ads are fast, but content lasts. Ads are fast, but content lasts. Kevin King signing out. We’ll see you again next week.
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