Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / "You have NOT missed the boat" on TikTok (Shop) for Your Small Business

Transcript

"You have NOT missed the boat" on TikTok (Shop) for Your Small Business · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:09
  Hello. Hello, hello. How's it going? It is so good. It's going so good. I mean, it's raining here in Australia, in Sydney today. It poured rain actually, but you know, besides that, all very good. How are you? Good. I love to hear it. I'm doing well. Yeah. Feeling all around very good. Last day in Portugal. Can't complain. Back to the UK. Last day in Portugal.
• 0:35
  back to the UK tonight. And it feels good. I feel like whenever I close a chapter, I kind of pre-do my freak out a few weeks before where I'm like, I don't want to go. And it doesn't feel like it's time yet until the day. And then when it comes, I'm totally fine. And I'm really ready to leave. You're like, I need to be at home and in my own bed. Exactly. You know the feeling. And you're off. Today? Tomorrow? Tomorrow. Tomorrow. We never book morning flights, but we're on a freaking early flight at like...
• 1:04
  some stupid hour that I'm never awake at. And yeah, tomorrow, Indonesia, my favorite place. It will make the morning go quickly. If you kind of plan everything tonight and then zoom, zoom, zoom. And then because you're in such a half asleep state as you're traveling, suddenly you'll just be in Bali. That's true. That's true. I haven't packed yet or like even thought about it. But like after this call,
• 1:30
  I will be thinking about it and I will start getting excited. Yeah, I'm excited for you. It's a current me thing now. I don't like thinking about those future things. I'm more like what's happening right now? And now it's about to happen. And right now we're going to chat about TikTok shop. Let's do it. Let's talk about TikTok shop. And I'm excited. I'm excited for this one. Our new favorite topic.
• 1:53
  Exactly. It's been super top of mind for us recently, these past few weeks, I feel. So I'm excited to jump into this one. And I think to start with, I just wanted to give a bit of an overview of what TikTok Shop is for people that might not be fully familiar. Just a very kind of back to basics topic.
• 2:14
  definition and kind of how I see it and jump in if you have another idea of it, but is that it's essentially the e-commerce arm of TikTok. So it's a place where any sellers can sell products directly through the platform. So a bit of kind of Amazon's cool cousin, I like to think of it as.
• 2:33
  a direct competitor to Amazon, but a huge benefit of it being that there's already such a huge customer base on there because there are so many people on TikTok and that you essentially have a very easy transaction that takes place on the platform itself. Yeah, that's how I see it. Do you agree? Okay, let me jump in. Okay, let me add to that. Like, let me layer on some things because I was talking to someone about this yesterday and the way that I kind of like
• 3:01
  describe TikTok shop to other people who might not know what it is yet or might not truly grasp what's about to happen or what is happening in the US and is about to happen, well, US, UK, and I think in the Philippines maybe, but it's going to be everywhere soon, is that movie Joy
• 3:18
  where she invents the mop and she goes on like Jennifer Lawrence, Jennifer Lawrence. Yep. And she goes on to QVC in America and, you know, they have these studios and they have these hosts and they're kind of like live selling on TV. And like in the moment you're watching TV and you're like, oh yeah, I want that mop. There's an offer right now. Like, let me get it.
• 3:40
  That's basically like old school live selling, new school live selling and like live shoppable videos is through TikTok. So this concept of being live on those channels and like promoting the products that you have and people being able to buy it in the moment with the offer kind of without leaving TikTok. So you're just like checking out. It's just happening in the moment. But the other really interesting thing, so that's like kind of, you know, taking the old concept from TV and like putting it onto your phone and like this content.
• 4:10
  really in the moment kind of situation and accessing different deals, different offers. But what else is happening is it doesn't just have to be the brand and the business selling. What else is happening is you as a creator with a thousand followers or 5,000 followers, you could create an account that says, yep, I'm going to be an affiliate on TikTok shop. And I can access all these different brands and I can create my own shoppable videos and my own live streams.
• 4:38
  talking for hours about my favorite beauty products and sell those products directly through my own videos and get a commission on the products I'm selling. So like you become an affiliate for these brands. So...
• 4:54
  As a brand owner, you can also be a seller and a creator of the content, which is what, for example, Female Startup Club is going to be doing. We're going to be selling our own products and we're going to be promoting our own videos and our own live streams and things like that. But then we're going to have thousands of affiliates also out there creating shoppable videos and live streams about Female Startup Club's products.
• 5:16
  And it's kind of democratizing how we shop online and who we buy from. Because of course, if you make this amazing... You have a thousand followers. You're kind of like a creator with not necessarily a huge audience, but you're just getting started. You're getting into it. But imagine you create a viral video that gets 10 million views. And it's promoting this amazing eyeshadow or baby product or...
• 5:43
  new food thing that you discovered, why shouldn't you get a piece of the revenue that is driven from this video that is so powerful? And in today's world where we're not so much focused on the growth and how many followers we have, and we're much more focused on, can we create viral videos that get eyeballs and attention? This is just about to blow up how we buy and how we shop online. And we're already seeing this in America. You know,
• 6:11
  TikTok shop launched in 2022. It's been around for just over a year. And there are brands that go from being absolutely beginner, cool, edgy, the new brand to discover to doing $20 million a month on TikTok shop alone. It is powerful. And it's so crazy, especially when you compare it to
• 6:34
  you know, or when you watch the growth that's happening in China. And I'm pretty sure like everyone has seen that viral video of the host who's selling products, but she literally is just like flinging them to the side. And that live host, she makes some crazy numbers. Like I forget how many millions, but she just does like crazy amount of millions a day on her channel selling these products really fast. And yeah,
• 6:59
  you know, it's about to launch in Australia. So all of this stuff is about to kind of like come to Australia in July. And there is this huge opportunity for brands and content creators who even don't have an audience to also capitalize on this opportunity.
• 7:16
  Everyone is going to be a business owner in some respect, you know? Yeah, exactly. It puts a lot of power back into the hands of creators and sellers. And this reminds me of a TikTok video that we recently created, which might be a good moment to introduce Melody, because we've actually brought on someone kind of in reaction to this new development of TikTok shop.
• 7:40
  And someone that's helping us create a lot of content right now about exactly how you get started, different growth hacks, the different things you can be doing to really excel on that platform. And she made a video recently, which was all about her mum. Oh, my God. Who creates crochet, selling on TikTok shop, which I just thought was incredible. And...
• 8:02
  When you then compare it to these other e-commerce sites like Amazon, it's such a process to get yourself on there as a brand. And like you're saying, this democratization, the entire process. So everyone has the power to put themselves on there. Even her mom, she's...
• 8:18
  talked us through the whole process. It took her, you know, a matter of a few hours to get her shop set up. And now she's selling her crochet online to an audience of millions of people. It's amazing. I mean, Melody's mom. I just love this story so much. And when I first was going through the process of meeting Melody and, you know, going through that kind of hiring process,
• 8:42
  She was telling me the story about her mom, who is 65 years old. She's a crafting crochet woman. And Melody helped set up her TikTok shop. And now she's making sales and getting on there and creating content and doing lives and all this kind of stuff. And it's just so cool. And I'm
• 9:04
  working on this thing that she loves and it's usually just a hobby. And now she's able to monetize that and be a business owner from the comfort of her home just through a phone and
• 9:18
  content and video. Like to me, it's just so crazy. But to go back to Melody, Melody is so great. I hope everyone goes and checks out our, you know, TikTok account. It's female startup club underscore US. And Melody is our TikTok shop host and educator part of female startup club. And she's the best. I'm learning a lot. It's so exciting.
• 9:44
  Yeah. What played a big role in your kind of mind to bring someone on in that role and to kind of seize this opportunity as TikTok shop? Because I think it speaks a lot to the impact that this is going to have. And, you know, that you thought it was important enough to hire someone. We're a lean team. What was that thought process like for you?
• 10:03
  in terms of bringing someone on? Yeah, so we've been spending a lot of time kind of fine-tuning what Female Startup Club is and kind of what we want to offer and knowing the kind of direction that we're going in, you know, wanting to offer affordable kind of project-based mini programs where you get really practical, like applicable learnings and you come out with a finished project
• 10:25
  something. So whether that's like, cool, your email automations are set up or cool, you have a pitch deck ready to go or cool, you know how to start selling and doing like live streaming or live videos on TikTok shop. So knowing that we wanted to go into that route of, you know, affordable for everyone kind of educational content,
• 10:46
  And knowing that the power of, oh, seeing firsthand the power of these brands that are absolutely dominating in the US and it's about to start happening here in Australia, we can just see, we know that we're at a unique moment in time where things are about to change. And I think we all have a really incredible opportunity to jump on board this thing that is coming, especially to Australia, and that is already happening in America and the UK and
• 11:16
  and use that as a primary sales channel to grow our businesses. And for us, our kind of branding and our tone of voice and the way that we show up online in this digital kind of universe just suits TikTok shop. It suits the TikTok world. And for me, I think...
• 11:36
  Ecommerce in terms of physical products is absolutely dominating. But I also know that for us with digital products, we can scale, we can offer better affiliate commissions, we can kind of incentivize in an even more exciting way. And so I see Female Startup Club being very much a first mover, a pioneer in selling digital products financially.
• 11:59
  through TikTok shop and kind of just taking this opportunity that is happening right now and really running with it and just being like, let's go all in and let's see what happens. Because, you know, if we think back to Meta and Facebook and Instagram ads,
• 12:16
  Before 2020, when the iOS 14 updates happened, you know, the return on ad spend, so the rowers were just insane numbers. You could get a 40 rowers on something or like a 20 rowers on something. And now those numbers are just unrealistic. The cost of ads have gone up dramatically. The way that the platform works has changed dramatically.
• 12:36
  in just such a different way. And so TikTok is really at that point where it's exciting and things are really working. And so if you can do it and you can do it well, and you can jump on the train, then why not go all in kind of thing? So that's my thinking. And I think what's really exciting about it is especially for small business owners who don't necessarily have a big following or
• 13:01
  don't even want to do content in a big way, you actually still have the opportunity to be really part of this movement because you don't even have to create content. You can be just doing it through the marketplace and having affiliate creators making all the content on all their own channels. It doesn't have to just be coming from you, which normally it is just coming from you and your content and your output.
• 13:28
  But now, I mean, I think you should do both. I think it should be coming from your own account and you should be as a brand kind of like getting in there and being part of it. So it's all rising at the same time and that buzz is kind of swirling. But you've got your sales channel and then you've got thousands of other sales channels that can also kind of be creating content at all times to blow up your business.
• 13:51
  Yeah, I love that. And I've heard that comparison a lot that this is a bit of a moment of what Facebook was in the early days. And I looked up this return of ROI. And at the moment for TikTok shop, that's an average return of $2 for every $1 spent. So that's like a pretty crazy return. And for Instagram right now, it's 3.5 times the ad spend that you're putting in.
• 14:16
  So those numbers really speak for themselves in terms of what you're getting back. And, you know, I'm not good at processing numbers like that, but I also, I was talking to someone recently and because the platform for TikTok isn't a hundred percent kind of like super sophisticated in the same way that it attributes sales to like, to where like meta is basically like.
• 14:40
  they were saying, you know, kind of along these lines of, you might not even get the full attribution, but if you are spending and you are kind of like, you know, doing performance within TikTok ad manager and things like that, your like sales are going up. It's just that the attribution is a little funky still, but it's continually getting like better and better and better. And so you might even think like you might be getting this number of, you know, your rowers is X, whatever, but it actually...
• 15:07
  And this is coming from a performance marketer who has better terminology than I do. But it is working. It's just that the attribution is a little bit off. But basically, it's just now is the time to really double down on that as a channel if you're going to pursue it.
• 15:26
  And double down on that opportunity to go viral, I remember it being a big topic on the podcast about a year, two years ago, that a lot of brands were starting to kick off on TikTok. For example, Pop and Bottle, they would have these huge viral moments and a big...
• 15:41
  block for them was getting people off the TikTok platform onto their own website for people to actually kind of purchase and make those purchasing decisions because there were so many more steps involved and this has completely removed that roadblock so people are already there on the platform and you can really capitalize on those viral moments to a degree that we've never been able to before.
• 16:03
  Totally. It's like a one-click purchase. You're just like Apple paying your way through the viral product that you see. You're watching the lip plumping happening in action and you're like, cool, add to cart, done, check out. That's coming to my house. What's the next video? I didn't even leave the platform. I'm still scrolling.
• 16:24
  Amazing. And even we mentioned this a lot, but just thinking of yourself as a consumer, that's how you want to be purchasing products, kind of putting yourself back into those footsteps. You can see why it will work. A hundred percent.
• 16:37
  In terms of kind of if I was a first time founder listening in right now thinking, you know, this all sounds great. But how do I actually get started? How much time can I expect something like this to take? Is it a big process? What can I imagine? Well, it depends where you are because it's not currently in Australia. It's launching in July.
• 16:58
  But if you're in the US, it's not like just one click and like you're there kind of thing. There's a registration process and you have to go through kind of filling out all your details, adding through your business information. There are a number of like things that you have to do to get approved. So it's just a matter of going to like the TikTok shop website and going through the steps to register either as a creator or a seller or both.
• 17:21
  So for example, we would be a seller because we're going to sell products, but we're also going to be a creator and we're also going to create shoppable videos for other brands too. So for example, you might see other female founded brands on our live streams that we're promoting and selling at the same time. So...
• 17:37
  It's really just a matter of going through the steps. You sign up, you register, you add in all your details, and then you wait to be approved. And then if you're signing up, for example, as a seller, you then have to upload your products into what's called the marketplace, and you upload all the details about the offer that you have. So you might be like, cool, here's my product. It's usually...
• 17:57
  $10, I'm going to be giving a 20% commission to anyone who sells that. And that's obviously your acquisition cost. And so you will get, if it's 20%, you'll get $2 for every sale that you make. And so for example, for us, because we're digital products, we'll be able to go in there and put really extreme incentives, like 50% commission rate on what we're selling because it's a digital product and we don't have those kind of, the cost of goods sold is, once the product's developed, it's developed kind of thing. So
• 18:27
  So the thing about TikTok shop is it is really finicky and it's really specific and you can get, you know, in trouble and banned and all this kind of thing really easily. And so that is really why we have Melody creating a lot of educational content around TikTok shop. And so when you go to our female startup club underscore US TikTok account, you know, we are building out that channel as a very like
• 18:54
  educational, entertainment-based platform where you can go for the up-to-date information that you need to know about TikTok Shop. And I'll give you an example. She goes through and tells you the mistakes that people make and how they get rejected from their TikTok Shop application. So she steps you through what that...
• 19:11
  means, what you need to do to avoid it, and gives you basically the insight ahead of time. So it's really useful content in terms of the finicky side of it. And then she also kind of is creating content and videos around the new updates and the things that are happening because TikTok and TikTok Shop are really focusing on creating this just stuff that we haven't seen before. Like, you know, recently they just announced they've started launching sample
• 19:40
  So they're basically creating these studios with thousands of products, which are the trending viral products and studios. So any creator can go there, pick products off the shelf and create videos there in their studios or go live in their studios or access educational resources and things like that. So they're really...
• 20:02
  doubling down on how can just an everyday creator who may only have a thousand followers leverage this opportunity. And so those kind of updates, they're also coming on our channel every day. And there's also a lot of different things that TikTok does around certain campaigns. So for example, if a Mother's Day campaign is going live and they've got better deals and better terms and things like that,
• 20:25
  that's the kind of stuff that you'll find on our channel through Melody's content. So it's definitely worth checking out. We have a lot more things in the works coming from Melody for, you know, more specific learning and info digital products that you'll be able to access from her. But yeah, it's a crazy time.
• 20:44
  It's a crazy time for sure. You spoke a little bit there about how we're putting different types of content out there. So we have educational content, we have the affiliate links, we'll be selling our digital products. How important is kind of content creation and posting different styles of content for success on TikTok shop?
• 21:05
  I mean, like I said earlier, you don't have to technically do it as a brand, but you should be doing it. Because I think someone put out a tweet recently that we reshared and it said something along the lines of, you know, D2C brand owners.
• 21:22
  in today's landscape, really need to understand that they're not a product business, they're a content business. And if you are able to either do yourself or hire people to generate content that makes you feel something, that makes you feel really happy, or you're entertained in some way, so you're scared, or you are able to relate to that kind of content, this is going to be how you become...
• 21:46
  a really successful, profitable brand in today's landscape. Because, you know, a couple of years ago, you really could just launch ads and acquire customers, you know, at a much lower cost that you can now. That was really the strategy. It was ads and like that was it.
• 22:02
  Whereas now it is organic content and having the ability to create awareness, attention, and getting eyeballs. And awareness and attention and eyeballs equals sales in today's world. And then you amplify through your performance marketing. So you amplify through your meta ads and through your TikTok ads to even further the reach and the kind of craziness and basically pouring fuel on the fire. So in today's world,
• 22:26
  You technically don't have to and you could have just affiliates creating content around your brand, but you want to have like the full storm in action. You want to be creating content on your own channels. You want to be then leveraging that and amplifying that through ads. But then you also want affiliates creating buzz online. And that is the number one skill that you can like double down on as any kind of business owner. Yeah.
• 22:52
  Or even as a creator, if you can create viral videos and you can tap into the emotions of people and make them feel something, that is the winning skill set.
• 23:03
  Mm hmm. Content is king. Content is king. Content is king. And I feel like this, especially with the affiliate situation at TikTok shop, you have such a great tool to infiltrate these networks of people where it's suddenly going to feel like you're everywhere. If you get within a certain network of, you know, whether it's moms, whether it's dog owners, whether it's.
• 23:24
  anything within your niche and you target different creators within that niche that are also putting out your content, it will start to feel like you're everywhere. And you can already play this to an extent on Instagram, but this just levels up the playing field. Totally. And I mean, I don't know, like, I love Instagram, got a lot of time for it. But the algorithm is just so different. The way that these platforms work, like,
• 23:51
  Instagram is just, it feels really not sophisticated. Sometimes I'll search something and just like nothing will come up, even though it is the right, like, or ish, the right ish handle variation or something. And it like, won't come up. Like you have to have it like spot on. Whereas like TikTok will just like know exactly what you mean when you're searching for something. And like,
• 24:11
  you know, find it and like show you what you need to be seen. And the other thing that's really interesting, and I only learned about this today, but there's this new feature that came on TikTok. And this isn't about TikTok shop, but just because we're on the kind of topic is the creator. I think it's called creator search insights tool. And basically when you're on TikTok as a creator,
• 24:32
  or as a brand, like anyone on TikTok who creates content, it'll say like, it's like this thing, and it'll basically show you where the gaps in the content are on TikTok. So it might be like, hey, we don't have... We know that people are searching for...
• 24:48
  astrology videos for dogs, but there is no content that is answering these queries, kind of like we don't have anything to show them, but we know that you kind of create content in this space. So if you can create this content, like you will fill this query and this video is going to be pushed out. So if you go on and in that moment, create the videos it's telling you to create and using the search terms it's telling you to use, they're going to push that video out further and you can kind of leverage this moment where TikTok is telling you what they want.
• 25:18
  Again, like if you just do what TikTok tells you to do, you will win because TikTok is telling you to do it, you know?
• 25:28
  It's crazy. Which also places TikTok as a kind of, it's the Google for the future. I think something around, I think it's 41% of Americans now use TikTok as their main search engine. Like TikTok is my search engine for discovering, for learning hacks, for like thinking about things that I haven't thought about. And then chat with BT is more for like everything else. Google just isn't my search engine at all anymore. It's like,
• 25:55
  either TikTok or ChatGPT. It's pretty crazy. It's amazing. Yeah. And if you think for product discovery, then if you want to get your product out there, this is the place to be. This is the place to be. To round things off, I just wanted to ask you one question, and that's what do you see working very well on TikTok Shop at the moment? We spoke a little bit about digital products and
• 26:18
  You also touched upon the fact that product-based businesses are probably growing the fastest. Could you speak a bit more to that and kind of outline what's doing well and different tips that people can take home with them? Yes. So first of all, Melody's doing a recap on what the products that are trending are each week. So I know this because Melody told me.
• 26:39
  Thank you, Melody. But basically, when you go inside the marketplace and you're looking at all the different offers to create content around, it will show you what products are trending. It will show you how many units have sold of a certain product. And so then if that product is sold out, it'll say sold out and you won't be able to create videos that generate sales from that product anymore. But then when it comes back available, you could start again. So for example, I was looking at like the best performing viral products for
• 27:05
  from like two weeks ago. And there's this Beachwaver. I think the brand is Beachwaver, but they have this like iconic curling wand that's just going absolutely insane. You've seen it, right. You've seen the viral videos. And so that product has sold 340,000 units on TikTok shop alone since it started going viral. And so like,
• 27:27
  you know that like, okay, well, that's already a viral product. I should go on there and I should like make videos about that product because this is what people are already kind of like wanting to know. We're wanting to see the tutorials. We're wanting to see what's possible. Another brand that's doing really, really well at the moment is called Guru Nanda. They're just like absolutely dominating, selling so many different products and just it's
• 27:52
  Also, some of them are like brands that you just wouldn't even expect. Like it's just insane. Like I even can't wrap my head around it. Like it's just crazy. And yeah, basically you can see all this stuff inside the marketplace. You can see the number of units sold, what's available, what the good offers are, what's kind of being promoted within it. And you obviously want to be one of those brands. But Melody is creating that video every week. You can go and check out what's going viral just by looking at our channel.
• 28:21
  Okay, super cool. I'll also link that one in the show notes so we have it handy there. I almost feel like this should be a regular segment. I feel like there are going to be such kind of quick changes in this landscape and new strategies popping up all the time and different things that we need to jump on top of. So if this is something that you'd like us to do more often, we're always there in the Facebook group chat.
• 28:46
  Come chat to us. Tell us if this is useful for you. I feel like we could talk about this ad infinitum. There's so much stuff. So much gold. So much gold. Oh my gosh. I'm so excited. I feel like TikTok shop is the future. Well, it's the current, but it's also the future.
• 29:04
  And there's really something to be said for the brands who are kind of building that community and building that content on that today. They are going to be the ones reaping the highest rewards when TikTok shop is launched. The amount of times that we'll get a really successful founder on the show and they say, well, you know, I started Instagram in the early days. So that was that huge leg up and.
• 29:27
  that's TikTok right now. So instead of kind of rolling our eyes at those moments and thinking like, oh, oh, how lucky or what a different time that was. Let's jump on the new Instagram. Exactly. And you know, I feel like a lot of people actually say, oh, you know, I feel like I've missed the boat with TikTok. Like it's already had like kind of like big moment. And I'm like, okay, first of all, that's not true. Like you, everyone can still blow up on TikTok. Like it's,
• 29:54
  knowing that, especially for people in Australia, knowing that it hasn't even launched yet, and we can see what's happening in the US, we can see what's happening in China, we can see what's happening in the other places around the world. It's like, okay, we're telling you ahead of the time. You haven't missed the boat because it hasn't started yet, but it is about to start. And it's like,
• 30:16
  get ready for it and like do everything that you can to be part of what's going to happen. Because especially if you are like a product based business, this is an opportunity. This is it. Uh-huh. A hundred percent. I'm so excited. So excited. Loved this. Let us know on the Facebook group if you have any questions. Yeah. Thank you so much. And if we should do this in a regular segment, I love that. And we will see you next week. We'll see you next week. We'll be back in your ears. That's the pod. That's the pod.
• 30:51
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 31:15
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• 31:38
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