Brand Fortress HQ: Amazon FBA Success Strategies
Welcome to the Brand Fortress HQ Podcast, the ultimate resource for mastering Amazon FBA success. Dive deep into the world of e-commerce with your hosts, Jon Stojan, Mike Kaufman, and Matt Atkins—three seasoned Amazon brand owners who have seen it all and are ready to unveil the secrets of their success.
Your hosts each and every week are Jon Stojan, Mike Kaufman, and Matt Atkins. Jon is a former predictive analyst for the Air Force and brings his analytical prowess to the e-commerce battleground. After establishing his own 6-figure brand on Amazon, he founded First North Marketing, a beacon for brands aiming to conquer the Amazon marketplace.
Mike Kaufman is an e-commerce pioneer, having been navigating the online sales sphere for over three decades. His expertise has not only led to the creation of a mid 7-figure brand on Amazon but also birthed invaluable tools and resources to bolster other aspiring brands.
Matt is the jack-of-all-trades in the e-commerce arena, from building a 7 figure meal prep brand, multiple Amazon brands, coaching new brand builders, to helping brands of all sizes grow at Canopy Management. His passion lies in fostering a community of entrepreneurs, offering them the wisdom and connections needed to thrive.
Join us for Tactics Tuesdays, where Jon, Mike, and Matt dissect the real-life strategies propelling their own brands and companies forward. Plus, tune in every Thursday for enlightening interviews with the brightest minds in FBA—transparent leaders and business owners who are shaping the present and future of e-commerce.
With two episodes every week, the Brand Fortress HQ Podcast is your stronghold for insider knowledge, innovative tactics, and inspiring stories. Whether you’re an established seller or just starting your FBA journey, our hosts are here to guide you through the intricacies of the Amazon marketplace. Unlock your brand’s potential and build your own fortress with us at Brand Fortress HQ.
Brand Fortress HQ: Amazon FBA Success Strategies
065: Tactic Tuesdays: Social Selling on TikTok for E-Commerce Brands in 2025
Unlock the secrets of social selling on TikTok and transform your e-commerce strategy. What if the key to skyrocketing your brand's success lies in 15-second videos and the power of micro-influencers? Discover how successful Amazon sellers are pivoting to TikTok, despite the looming shadow of potential bans, to harness its unique social selling capabilities inspired by China’s digital market.
From a former video editor turned marketing maestro, learn how to capture attention in those crucial first seconds and maintain viewer engagement. Dive into the world of viral content creation and uncover the strategies that turned a Trump greeting card brand into a TikTok sensation. Embrace the art of leveraging micro-influencers to amplify your brand's reach, and explore the vital role of building strong creator relationships to enhance both engagement and sales.
We’ll also explore the ripple effect TikTok has on platforms like Amazon, sharing case studies of how viral exposure fueled massive search and sales numbers. Get insights from Amazon sellers expanding into TikTok and learn why enduring brand-building principles remain vital. Whether you're a seasoned seller or new to TikTok, this episode promises to equip you with the strategies to succeed in today's dynamic e-commerce landscape.
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Welcome everyone to the Brand Fortress HQ podcast. We have another Tactics Tuesday, and today we are talking about the hot topic of TikTok. There's a lot to talk about on this topic. Matt just actually came back from a conference with a lot of what's happening on TikTok right now, so I'm actually going to turn it over to you, matt, if you share some background and just kind of what your thoughts are on where TikTok is at when it comes to e-commerce landscape.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there is a lot to talk about, especially with the current state of affairs. And what's crazy what I'll start off with is that this workshop happened right before. So I think TikTok went dark on Saturday night, I think before. So I think the the band or TikTok, went dark on Saturday night. I think this workshop was happening the week before and what was very interesting to me is that you had this, it's it's. It wasn't really a conference, it was more. I'm in a mastermind group with about 40 to 50 other sellers who are all successful on Amazon, who have switched their focus to TikTok. That was kind of who was at this conference. So very successful Amazon sellers. They've realized and have started to see a little bit of success on TikTok. And it was really a group of these sellers coming together and sharing tips, tricks, strategies, that kind of stuff. But what was very interesting to me is that at the very beginning of the workshop, obviously we addressed the elephant in the room. We knew that this was looming, but that was it Like. We talked about it maybe for a 15, 20 minutes and the rest of it was business as usual. None of us were really I don't want to say not concerned about it, but it was. You know the conversations that we were having weren't? Oh crap, what are we going to do when TikTok goes away? It was. These are the things that are working right now. These are the things that I'll be working next week and you know part of the a couple of the sessions started with.
Speaker 2:Even if TikTok does go away, a lot of what we're talking about is just it will work. I mean, what's not going away is social selling, and TikTok did start that. You know there's been Instagram, there's been Facebook, there's ways that you can sell products on those platforms, but TikTok really is who started this whole social selling? And if you look at China, where TikTok comes from, the vast majority of physical products are sold in this type of an environment, this kind of social selling, almost like a QVC on your phone the vast majority. So Gary V V has been talking about this social selling thing for a couple of years now. He's always a couple of years before the trends.
Speaker 2:But like that's not going away and that's really what a lot of this workshop talked about is that, whether or not TikTok goes away, there's, there's going to be another platform that comes up. There's 170 million eyeballs on TikTok right now. Those aren't just going to disappear. That attention is going to move to another platform. So a lot of what we talked about are principles that, no matter what the platform is, these are the things that you need to do in order to grow your business with that type of selling environment. So that's first off. That was the first thing, and yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1:So, before we dive anymore, I want to make sure, quite frankly, for myself and also for our listeners, that you know we get a little clarification around some of these concepts, because I think they're so super important. So, when you talk about social selling, give me an idea of you know. What does that look like? How is it different from Amazon, and why is TikTok really exploded as the channel for this versus, you know, facebook or Instagram?
Speaker 2:So I think that it's just. I can't necessarily answer the question of why TikTok. I mean, I think that Facebook has tried like there's Facebook and Instagram, there's reels, like there's there's vertical format type of videos, but nobody really did it like with integrated it into their shopping platform Like TikTok. Did you know? Amazon tried it, but it really did it like with integrated it into their shopping platform Like TikTok. Did you know? Amazon tried it, but it was a flop. Like I don't know.
Speaker 2:I don't even know how long that lasted, but I remember it was even before TikTok became an actual thing. This is three years ago, like I remember, I worked for an agency at the time. We had we were launching a brand on Amazon and they had an A-list influencer that was behind the brand and they invited her. They did this whole homepage takeover for this brand launch and they invited her to do lives and I remember it was the most underwhelming thing imaginable. I thought it was going to be. We've expected thousands and thousands of units sold in this live session, but it just didn't take off.
Speaker 2:So I don't think that Amazon executed it very well. I think for TikTok it was more of a natural, like eyeballs. You know, tiktok came onto the scene, people gravitated towards it in terms of consuming content that way, and then it was easy for them because in China these platforms already existed, where they attached the shopping platform to the social platform. So I think they already had the roadmap on how to do it, because it's such a big thing in China already, and so I think it was just right place, right time for TikTok.
Speaker 3:And I also want to just say, too, though, that I think the thing with TikTok is they really were. They were the first platform that really got the algorithm right for this Right.
Speaker 3:Social shopping is a thing, but what is critical there, though, is how long can you keep someone in the app watching videos? Right, and TikTok nailed that, because they really figured out exactly how to make sure that the next video and the next video and the next video that shows up in the feed are exactly what you want to see, so that you are just going to continue to scroll and scroll and scroll, and until you eventually hit that video where there's something actually being sold and you just click buy. But they were able to keep people in the app and keep them scrolling and interested, and when they tied that together with that really low friction buying experience, then they really had something, and there's just been no other platform that really put it together in that way.
Speaker 1:Well, and I think the other thing and I'm going to, you know, get a little over my ski tips probably on this, but that I've heard from you, know sources that are fairly reliable is that the algorithm works a lot different than Facebook and Instagram.
Speaker 1:So it's not on those platforms.
Speaker 1:It's very much based on you know who you're connected with.
Speaker 1:So you know if you have thousands or tens of thousands of connections, then your stuff gets seen more than if you have, you know, two friends on there, right, whereas TikTok is much more. They have this concept of it's much more about the content than it's about the users, and so any piece of content in theory because their algorithm is open source, in theory, the way it works is every piece of content gets shown to at least one person because they want to see how that person reacts to it. And if somebody whatever the specifics are on that, how long they watch it, if they interact with it all those types of things determine does it go to now 10 more people? And so I think what's important for brands to understand on that is that, rather than having a million followers, what's really more important for a platform and how TikTok is built is you have something that people are willing to watch and engage with, and it's much more about the quality of the content than it is about the number of followers or connections that you have.
Speaker 3:Well, it's also good for the actual influencers themselves, or content creators I mean, they're not all really true influencers, but but from a content creator perspective, tiktok was getting massive amounts of content production exactly because of what you just said, john, and that is because of the way the algorithm was structured. Every single person that was creating content for TikTok knew it doesn't matter how many followers I have I could get 10 million views on this if I put up good content. And because every creator knows that and they know they don't have to have a large audience to really get something to go viral and get some production out of it, they would put the time into doing good videos, and there was just a lot more content being produced for TikTok than for other platforms because of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so one of the things that I think it was, mike, what you said is, I think, to double click on one of the things that you said is the seamless, frictionless buying experience. When I first bought something on TikTok, I didn't have my credit card loaded, I didn't have my address, they had no information from me. I bought my first product and it took me 10 seconds to walk through that buying experience. I integrated with Apple Pay so I was able to just you know, I didn't have to put my credit card information in. Apple Pay already had my address information, so I found the product that I wanted. I searched for it, I found it, I click on buy and 10 seconds later it was on its way to my house. So I think that's another part of it is that, yes, amazon is also very easy, but like the amount of time that it took me to go from I know what I want to it's on its way to me was so frictionless. I think that's a big part of TikTok success too. So, and also to kind of this is actually what you guys were just talking about is a good segue into some of the topics. Now I do have to be careful.
Speaker 2:We one of the things that was talked about at the very beginning of this workshop is it was a very closed type of an environment, so there's certain things that I can't share but, like I said, just overall principles I think are important to understand here, and what Mike talked about is the videos that go viral, and I think that a couple of the sessions that were the most interesting to me was there was one guy who was there who he has. He's a video editor. Actually, I think that was his background, was he was a video editor. Now he's a marketing manager for a brand that ended up going viral on TikTok several times. It was a Trump greeting card, so it was actually the perfect time for this type of a product to go viral leading up to the election.
Speaker 2:But I mean, what I think is the topic of his session was retention, video editing and what he's learned and the experience that he brought to TikTok was how to get someone's attention in the first couple of seconds of the video, but then also how to keep their attention throughout the video.
Speaker 2:There was a lot of really cool things you know, like with text, overlay and and then what I really found interesting and actually what I loved about this workshop as opposed to going to a conference and just sitting in the crowd is we actually had our laptops and phones out and we had CapCut out and we actually had.
Speaker 2:He had a couple of videos that we were editing, but one of the things I loved about what his strategy was is how and I think you've probably, if you spend any amount of time on TikTok, you've seen these videos where it's a great video, you're very invested in it and the end feels like the beginning and you don't even know that you are back at the beginning of the video because of how seamless that transition was. And part of the algorithm is watch time, like Mike was talking about, but then also how many times that video is watched. So just the fact that that video restarts again is giving signals to the algorithm that, hey, I want to send this to more people, because people are not only watching this whole video, but they're watching it more than once.
Speaker 2:So, like the amount of effort and the amount of testing that went into him figuring out all of these things like and that's really what it was. It was it's not like he had the blueprint to what TikTok's algorithm wants. It's he iterated and tested and tested and what does this work? And am I getting more watch time? Is this going viral? Like the amount of testing that he did and then distilling that knowledge to us was fascinating to me. I am not a creative person. My stick figures are unrecognizable, so, like even you know me getting my phone out and trying to play around with cap cut, I feel I'm like a fish out of water. So I didn't really get the experience like others did who even have one little bit of a creative bone in their body, but just the the principles of how to get someone to stop scrolling, initially in the first couple of seconds, but then also how to keep their attention. There were so many nuggets of information that he gave on the different things that he uses and it's just a way of editing the video, like the video he started with. This very and that's the problem that I have with creating content for my own brands is I, you know, you and I. We all talk on these this once a week, sometimes twice a week, about this podcast and and other nerding out on our businesses. But, like, for some reason, whenever I hit record on my phone, like I just freeze up. It's just the craziest thing.
Speaker 2:But what he talked about is don't hit the stop button, Just keep talking, because you can edit that video at the end and you can make it like.
Speaker 2:These tools are so easy he used CapCut that it's so easy to splice that video and to make those transitions seem like they're seamless, that you don't have to hit stop. And I can't tell you how many videos I have on my phone that are just me saying something and crap and starting over and crap. I did it again and I got so many times. So that's one of the things I learned from him is that don't hit the stop button. First of all, don't be hard on yourself. Second of all, don't hit the stop button. You can edit it later. But what I learned from him I think the biggest takeaway that I learned from him is that don't be hard on yourself, because the videos that he has seen go viral for his brand are the ones that he thought were trash and didn't even want to post it in the beginning, so you never know what kind of video is going to go viral, as long as you follow the same principles from the very beginning.
Speaker 1:So did they talk at all at that conference about what they're seeing as the top two or three, yeah, items that you know for brands that are selling on TikTok that really drive sales? You know, is it? You know, is there some sort of you know ratings or indicator or shipping or what does that look like as far as you know, the big things that really move the needle for brands that are getting started on TikTok to actually start generating some sales.
Speaker 2:So there was a big, giant brand there. I probably can say the name of the brand, but, just in case I don't want to get into, there was a huge brand that did 30 million on TikTok last year but did 300 million overall on their brand. Like, if I said the name, you would know who it is. They do massive amounts of revenue on on Amazon, but what? What was fascinating to me that he talked about is they do spend money on advertising, but the money that they spend on advertising on TikTok is they. So to answer your question, then I'll kind of talk about how they view their ad spend on TikTok is micro-influencers. That's what you need to work on and that's what what I talked about initially is that social selling isn't going away. So the principles that we learned will follow you to any other platform that comes up next after TikTok.
Speaker 2:If it does go away is having an army of micro influencers is really the biggest thing that are taking brands to the next level, not just on TikTok, but then also the spillover effect that happens on Amazon. Most of these TikTok affiliates and content creators are also affiliates on Amazon and other platforms as well. So if you find a good creator on TikTok. Chances are they're also a creator on these other platforms. So this big giant brand they can afford to just blitz TikTok with ad spend and they'll probably get a whole lot of sales that way.
Speaker 2:But how they look at it is they focus their attention on finding micro influencers and then they look to see. They're very analytical about which of those videos are getting traction and the only time that they spend money on ads is when they see a video getting organic traction and then they'll put gas on the fire with ad spend. So, yes, they're spending well into the six figures on ad spend. They're only doing that when one of their micro influencers and again, this is a brand that can afford an A-list influencer they don't work with any A-list influencers.
Speaker 2:Every single one of their influencers started out as a micro influencer with and he defined that as the minimum 5,000 followers, which is nothing. 5,000 followers is hardly anything. But again, with the analytics that TikTok gives you and how you can tell if a video is getting traction and then putting money behind it like that's how they grew on TikTok, it wasn't just throwing a whole bunch of money, it was make relationships with micro influencers, tell them the type of content that we want. As soon as one of those videos starts getting traction, then blitz it with that spend.
Speaker 1:So when you talk about those micro influencers, are there any best practices that you can share around that, as far as you know, you know what does that look like, is it? I mean, obviously you're sending them a product so that way they can hey, this, this is the product and that type of stuff, is it? Then just send them a product and say here's a discount code, or you know what are those best practices look like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so actually there was a content creator there who has driven multiple six figures in GMV in a very short amount of time. She's mainly in the beauty space, but so she gave a lot of tips on managing relationships with content creators and affiliates. That probably was I think it was tied for first for my favorite session and really because it allowed us to get into the mind of what a content creator is looking for. So, on TikTok, really the biggest thing from them is they have the creators have, or the affiliates and creators have analytics tools that allow them to look to see and actually we as just users of TikTok can also see how many units are sold and how much revenue has been driven by that particular product. The way that creators look at that data is they're able to sort and filter the data by how many units sold. So, like her, for example, she said that now that she's driven a significant amount of revenue for the brands that she works with, we have tools like CaloData is one of them, fastmoss is another one where we can see influencers and how much revenue they've driven and how many units they've sold. So that's what we have as sellers to look to see. What are the good content creators. Well, content creators also have similar tools on what are the brands that I want to work with. So, for her, what she said and this is something that we knew already because we've been developing these processes on getting to a certain amount of of units sold before we even start reaching out to creators, she's like I don't even, I don't even look at your message in on Tik TOK unless you have X amount of units sold. And now again, she's at a higher level. So, and the other thing is that everyone and their mother is a content creator now. So she was like you'll find content creators that will, that will, create content for you, but the ones that are actually know how to create content that gets seen on TikTok. We have a threshold of how many units sold before you even work with us. It starts there. You've got to get to a number of units sold very, very fast.
Speaker 2:A big part of this workshop was doing that. We all know back in 2015, 2016, when Amazon was the wild wild west, there were a lot of creative kind of gray hat types of things that we could do to get reviews and get units sold and that kind of stuff, and TikTok right now is like those days. I mean, tiktok is very much the wild, wild west days, wild West days and there are some things that we're doing to help you get to that number of units sold, to where you're attractive to those content creators that actually know how to drive revenue. So that's where it starts, is that you have to have some traction on TikTok in order to be attractive to content creators that know what the heck they're doing.
Speaker 2:Second of all, she gave a lot of really cool ideas on how to reach out to them and a lot of them are obvious, you know. She said if I get an email, first of all, she said email is a better way to reach out because she gets thousands and thousands of DMS on Tik, tok. That is hard for her to keep up. So she's like the brands that take that other step and send me an email, which her email address is on her profile that that there's a much higher likelihood of getting responded to.
Speaker 2:But she took it even a step further. She said, if you start your email with deer, straight into the trash, every single time straight into the trash. So, like I mean, that's obvious for us. Like same thing with LinkedIn DMs for me, if I get a LinkedIn DM that starts with deer, I'm not even paying attention to the next word that comes out of their mouth. So it's, you know, it's very. Some of that's very, very, very obvious. But yeah, it was really just treating them like real people and not just sending 6,000. And that big brand they send 6,000 messages a day to content creators and it's very much a numbers game. This is a brand that does sell a lot of units.
Speaker 1:I think that process and again maybe I'm just speaking for myself I think brands are probably more familiar with that process where I feel like they're a lot less or where brands really stumble, is okay, I have a creator, I think they're halfway decent, I can give them a coupon code, but I feel like that's probably not really exciting, like what does you know working with that creator to on something that you know obviously is useful for them but also is going to actually, you know, move product for the brand?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the way it works on on TikTok is they they request a sample for it from your brand, and what I love about what one of TikTok's recent updates is is that you can set stipulations on that sample. Where it's not necessarily free, it will be free, but the video has to get at least one sale. That's one of the thresholds. Or you can set however many number of sales that you want, or your video has to get X amount of views. There's a couple of different ways that you can set that.
Speaker 2:And if you, if you do this, if you post a video and if you get a sale, then we'll reimburse you for that, that sample to where it then becomes free and TikTok manages all of that. Like instead of us back back in the day where you used to have like many chat flows and all this kind of nonsense, like all of that's handled within TikTok, and so, like that's the biggest thing, is that you you can now set it up to where because I mean that you know giving out samples. If you're sending out 6,000 messages a day and everyone and their mother is a content creator looking for free product, that gets really expensive, really fast. So being able to set those thresholds that, yeah, we'll give you a sample. You're going to pay for it in the beginning, but as soon as you get one sale, we'll reimburse you for it. That incentivized that content creator to actually do something with it and to end up getting that product for free.
Speaker 3:Well, it also, too, though, it sets the bar in terms of who actually responds. There's no creator is going to respond to that and actually buy the product unless they actually think they can produce that sale and they're actually going to do some decent content to try and do that. I wanted to circle back to a few things from earlier in the conversation, though, too, that I think are fairly important. So one of the things that you've talked a lot about is kind of that relationship building, that relationship with the content creators, and I think that one of the value plays there is having a system in place and probably also having at least one individual in place on your team who this is their job. It might not be their only job, but it will be a significant part of their job, and that is maintaining communications and relationship with those content creators. But one of the things that I've heard talked about a lot that I think makes a lot of sense, and it'll tie into something else that I wanted to mention, and that is when something is working for either your brand, like a video that you have created, or something that's working for other content creators. You know, for your brand, you should be telling other content creators within your sphere. Hey, this is working for so-and-so, this is the template. You should do this right. You should try this. Here's the video. Try and reproduce that right. Here's the elements of that video that we believe are driving views and driving sales and driving engagement and whatever. Try to incorporate those things into the video.
Speaker 3:I also think that that ties back to testing. You were talking about the whole testing thing. One of the things that's interesting is on YouTube. So thumbnails for standard videos not short form videos, but they're standard videos. There are tools out there that if you go to YouTube and you pull up any video on YouTube, the tool will show you all of the previous thumbnails that were used for that video. And if you look at any of the channels that have significant viewership and significant subscribers and views to their videos, you will see many of those videos will have dozens of thumbnails that they tried and eventually they settle on one.
Speaker 3:That is good. Well, how do they settle on it? Because the number of people that see the thumbnail versus the number of people that actually watch the video, versus the amount of time that's watched, like they're testing that and they're iterating through these thumbnails. Well, for short form thumbnail is irrelevant, but that first two seconds or even the first second of your video kind of is your thumbnail.
Speaker 3:And so one thing and I know that Hermosi talks about this, but there's a lot of other creators that have talked about this and that is when you produce a video, you know changing out that first second or two of the video and doing that multiple different times and testing. You know how that results in. You know more views or longer views, you know, or whatever that is testing how it loops into the backend so that you get that repeat view. You know whatever. Once you iterate through that and you find something that works, again you need to be telling the content creators that are producing content for you. This is what we did. This was the intro that we used for the video. This is the one that worked the best and we iterated through like 20 different ones, so you know what to use. That's part of that relationship, because when you start giving them the ammunition that they need to produce good videos that are going to get those views, they're going to stick with you because if they generate views, they generate sales and they generate money.
Speaker 2:That is exactly what she said. It's such a good insight there. She actually said that exact same thing, and that's why she loves brands that aren't just sending her a canned message from automation tool, ones that actually took the time to watch some of her videos and again being in sales for as long as I have. Like these are, these are just standard practice, like just sending a cold email to someone, like it's, the chances of you being responded to are so much higher. But then also that starts off that relationship on the right foot to where, like this, I'm not just a number to this person. Like this, this brand actually cares about the content that I'm creating. They care enough to give me examples on what's driven GMV for them with other creators Like those are the ones that she chooses to work with, and it starts off at the very first message that she gets sent from that brand.
Speaker 1:So I guess I'm curious, cause I'm. This is one area that's a big blind spot for me is, you know again, getting the creators? What? So? Let's say that you've got a stable of you know three, five, 10, a hundred creators, whatever it happens to be, or, if you're just starting out, maybe you just got a handful of creators, what is that a successful relationship look like as far as you know? So, mike, you brought up a great point as like hey, here's what worked for this creator of sharing that content, but what other you know best practices or best practices are there to, you know, help that relationship be as successful as possible for both the brand and the creator.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she gave. She gave some of those tips. Like one of the things that she said that most creators like is when there are like exclusives, like if you have an exclusive flavor or an exclusive color that is just exclusive to TikTok. Like that gives them a hook, like a built-in hook, for them to talk about. She said that she likes that a lot. Also, she one of the other things that she said and we're actually going to implement this for our new upcoming brand launch here in about a month and a half is like when when a brand takes the extra step to send me a product without me asking for a sample and like it's just some sort of even if it's just a cool box or there's something inside of the box, that it's not just like the blank box that you send from Amazon if you send it MCF. Like if you put a little bit more effort into it and like show some sort of presentation around your product. Like that tells me that you're investing in your brand and it makes me excited to create content for you. So that was that was a big part of of what managing that relationship looks like. But also she gave some tips on what not to do you know?
Speaker 2:There are brands that she's now Mike you said giving them examples of things that I've worked from other creators.
Speaker 2:She's worked with brands before that were trying to micromanage the relationship and she said that was a huge turnoff for her and she feels like now she's had enough success on TikTok and driving revenue for brands that she kind of knows what goes viral.
Speaker 2:So one of the things that turns off right at the very beginning is if she gets this big, giant, long, creative brief of I want you to do this, this, this and say this exactly, and she's like the whole micromanaging thing, it's kind of a turnoff. If you're approaching a creator that knows what they're doing and it says driven revenue for brands, you have to give us some sort of trust. Now obviously she's like I love it when brands give me direction, I love it when they show me examples, but let me do my thing and I'll you know I'm definitely willing to take feedback but, like I know, I know how my audience works, I know how I know what type of things go viral. Let me do my thing is kind of what she said. So that was a big part of a big, really good tip that she gave us.
Speaker 1:What is? Is it mostly for those creators? Is it what is? Is it mostly for those creators? Is it, is it all commission based and, if so, like what?
Speaker 2:is that you know affiliate percentage typically look like so for her. She likes so, but again, she's she's on the high end of of creators and affiliates. So for her, the brands that she likes to work with offer a commission plus a flat rate. Now, the big giant brand that we were talking about, they never pay any sort of flat rate. It's totally commission based, but they pay on the high side of the commission. So I would say, on, probably an average commission rate is 10 to, maybe close to 15%, but I would say probably close. 10 to 12% is standard. 20% is considered on the high side.
Speaker 2:Now, if you think about this in terms of your ad spend on Amazon, that's significantly cheaper than what I'm paying for a sale in terms of Amazon. So I'll give a creator 20%. What I love about the creator model and this affiliate model is I don't have to pay you until you get a sale. So I am more than happy giving you 20% of a sale because it's way cheaper than what it costs me to get a sale on Amazon. So I would say I wouldn't offer anything less than a 20% commission and that's going to put you at the top of the pile because, on average, brands are around 10 to 13%.
Speaker 2:Now for our brand upcoming brand launch, because of what she told us about these higher level creators, like I am going to build a micro influencer army. We are going to offer them just a commission, but I also have a big budget set aside for the kind of the higher end creators. Now for us, we want to launch right out of the gate with a full army of micro but also a couple of, you know, macro type influencers. So we're going to have to offer them some cash in the beginning, but I would say most creators, especially at the micro level, are happy working for just, you know, 10 to 20% commission.
Speaker 3:Can you Matt on TikTok, what is so like? Of course, on Amazon, you know we have whatever our ad spend is. Then we've got the Amazon referral fee and then we've got fulfillment. You know fees if we're using FBA, describe for any listeners who don't really know what the structure of like what the fee structure is on TikTok in terms of what are all the expenses that you're paying. How does fulfillment work? You know what does that look like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hold on, I'm responding to someone in the comments real quick. Yeah, so the fee structure is fairly similar. There is, there is similar. It's not an FBA fee, obviously, but there is a fulfilled by TikTok fee. I don't remember what theirs is called, but there is a fee. Now, six months ago, eight months ago, that fee was like 6% or something like that, or even maybe even less than that.
Speaker 2:So I mean, but that was when TikTok was very, very aggressively courting new sellers. Not only were they I mean, there were so many things that they were doing to court new sellers, their fee structure was significantly less but also they were running sales on your product but still giving you the full retail price. That was when I say sales, I'm talking about like 50, 60, 70% off sales, but giving the brand the full price of the sale. That was one of the things that they were doing. Also, the shipping fees, so their fees. I think now again, I'm still kind of in the early stages of TikTok I do help another brand that's already selling, but I don't think that the shipping is built into the fee the same way that it is on Amazon. So another thing that TikTok was doing was they were also subsidizing some of that shipping fee. Now a lot of that's changed. I don't know what the current percentage of the TikTok fee is now, but I think it's now creeping up to around 10%, I think. So it's getting a lot higher, but it's still a lot cheaper to sell on TikTok than it is on Amazon.
Speaker 2:In terms of fulfillment, they do have fulfilled by TikTok. At the time of the workshop, even this big giant brand was severely limited in the amount of inventory they were able to send into TikTok's fulfillment centers, and I think part of that had to do with the question mark about what was going to happen with TikTok. But I know that they're investing heavily in their fulfillment centers across the country. So right now I don't think as many brands are doing Fulfilled by TikTok as on the flip side, on Amazon, but they're investing pretty heavily on that. So it's still cheaper to sell on TikTok.
Speaker 2:The ads percentage of ads like we've talked about you don't need to invest a ton in ad spend for a video to go viral. So overall the cost of doing business on TikTok is less than the cost of doing on Amazon and the chance of going viral on TikTok. There's no such thing as going viral. On Amazon, you can spend more to get to the top of page one, but there's no opportunity to have a video go viral from a content creator who has 3,000 followers. So there's just so many upsides to TikTok.
Speaker 1:So I'm glad you. I think that's a great place to ask the question of what was kind of the mood, for you know most of the people that were at this workshop. You mentioned that you know there were Amazon sellers that were now, that were really focused, had switched their focus and attention to TikTok. So I guess two questions One is what is that relationship as far as like, let's say, going viral? I think is kind of a thing that's hard to manufacture, but let's say that you're successful on TikTok or you've got good traction how much of that halo affects over to Amazon? And I guess my second question is what was the mood as far as where they like, hey, you know we want to be heavily TikTok, where that's a bigger portion of our business than Amazon and, like you know, basically you know demoting Amazon, or is it just, hey, tiktok is a great opportunity to do in addition to what we're doing on Amazon.
Speaker 2:So I'll give you an example. The first question that you asked is the spillover to Amazon, and I'll give you an example. Far before this workshop ever happened, or even before I was in this mastermind, About a year ago, I worked for an agency and a brand approached us who had gone viral on TikTok. It was a TV mount, very, very innovative TV mount. I have a big TV right here and the mount is this big giant X that you have to find studs and drill into the wall and it's this big, big, long process. Well, these TV mounts there's two of them and they're about this big and you just had to nail into the drywall, Like you didn't need a stud, you just nailed into the drywall and it was because of the angle, the way that the nails went into this, that it could hold up a big giant 90 inch TV. It went viral on TikTok. When they approached us, they wanted to come on Amazon. They didn't know how to do it.
Speaker 2:But what was fascinating to me when we did the analysis, the pre-sales analysis is there were over 10,000 people a month searching for their brand on Amazon. They had never been on Amazon yet, but these people had sought on TikTok. They went straight to Amazon and that's where they wanted to purchase. Now, this was before TikTok shop had really taken off. This is about a year ago and that just kind of highlighted the spillover, how powerful that spillover effect is.
Speaker 2:If you were to go on, this is another about three or four months ago, when I first started to kind of actually dig into TikTok, there was a skincare brand that I noticed on Amazon had a massive amount of search volume, organic search volume, branded search volume and their Amazon listings looked terrible, Like it wasn't. You know, like we all know, that big giant brands, household name brands most of their listings look bad on Amazon. This wasn't one of those Like. It was obviously a Chinese brand. They had zero branding at all.
Speaker 2:They had two images on their Amazon listing but they were doing six figures a month on Amazon and I just I couldn't figure it out. And then I there's this tool that you can look to see. I told like Calo data is one of them. Fast Moss is another one where you can see which products are generating a lot of revenue. And it was because it went viral on TikTok that it was created. It had created multimillion dollar business on Amazon just because videos went viral on TikTok so ridiculously powerful the spillover effect from TikTok over to Amazon. What was your second question?
Speaker 1:My second question was what was the feeling in the room from people who had been selling on Amazon for a long time? Was it hey, we want to transition the bulk of our sales over to TikTok, or this is a great opportunity to do it, in addition to what we already have on Amazon?
Speaker 2:I would say the vast majority of the sellers that are in this mastermind were like I told you.
Speaker 2:They were brands that were successful on Amazon but they had just dabbled, kind of put, stuck their toes in the water on the TikTok side, but ended up seeing success right out of the gate.
Speaker 2:So all of the brand owners that were there at the workshop had they they most of them had a team.
Speaker 2:You know most of these were seven, some eight figure sellers on Amazon.
Speaker 2:So they have a team, they have an agency running their advertising, they have a creative team, they have their Amazon brand, a brand A lot of it is on autopilot from the founder standpoint which gave them the opportunity to dive into the TikTok side. So I would say that the vast majority of them had their Amazon brand kind of running on autopilot with their team, but they were diving into the TikTok side and a lot of them, like this big giant brand that I'm talking about, like they have a whole team now dedicated to TikTok because of the success that they saw early on and a lot of the other brands were duplicating that success because of the different things that we were talking about and the strategies that we were developing inside the mastermind. So now the mastermind has gotten significantly bigger just in the past couple of months because now friends are telling friends and like, hey, you need to get in here because this is what we're seeing on TikTok, and now we're just kind of starting to spread a little bit within the seller community.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think I mean there's so much we could talk about with this. You know that I think this is probably a good place to kind of wrap for today. I will say so for people that are listening to this on the podcast. First of all, thank you for listening. Secondly, we also do this live on LinkedIn. I think we're having a little bit of an audio issue with one of our folks right now, but we answer and respond to questions and that type of stuff live on LinkedIn. So we do these on Tuesdays. So if you're interested in asking questions live, you can find us over on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1:And then, at least for me, I'll finish with this final thought, which is I think there's some amazing opportunities on TikTok and I think it just really comes full circle back to something that we talk about a lot in Brand Fortress, which is TikTok is the new vehicle, if you will, or kind of the shiny new object.
Speaker 1:The reality of it is is the same brand building principles that we talk on here a lot about, that have been successful on Amazon and off Amazon, are also, in the long term, going to be successful on TikTok, just in a different format. So for listeners out there, they're like how do I adapt to this, that type of thing? Think about what those first principles are for building a brand and in the long term, you're going to be successful on TikTok just like any other platform or any other sales channel for your brand. With that, I guess you know, matt, for listeners that you know maybe have dabbled a little bit in TikTok as sellers but not really you know are looking to do more. What are maybe one or two words of advice that you would give.
Speaker 2:The first thing that I would say is don't be scared of a TikTok ban, because the growth that you can achieve on a platform like TikTok like you just said the platform doesn't matter If you are building a brand in the right way. And I would say, to piggyback on that with my other tip is start building a army of micro influencers, similar to Mike and his, where he's built an email list of over 40,000 people that have bought his products and he can take that anywhere. With this army of micro-influencers, you can also take that anywhere and you can direct attention to the next platform that comes up if it's not TikTok. So, first of all, don't be scared of the TikTok ban, because there's even if it does go away, there's going to be another one pop up. And second, start building your army of micro influencers that you can mobilize and move to any platform that's out there.
Speaker 3:Which is actually. I mean, it's interesting to see that from that perspective on TikTok, because now, essentially, you have the opportunity to build that list on both ends of the sale. That list on both ends of the sale, you get to build the salesperson list, which is all of these micro influencers, and you should also, just the same way that you would on Amazon, if you're selling on TikTok, you should still be building that backend list. You know, because, again, those people who are on TikTok like, okay, that's great, you connected with them on TikTok and you sold something to them, but if you don't have a way to communicate with them and TikTok was to get banned, well, that person who bought your product you now have no way to communicate with because TikTok was your mechanism. So make sure that you're building that list on both ends, building a list of micro influencers that you can take to any platform, but also building that list of customers on the backend that you can take anywhere also.
Speaker 1:Yep, yeah, I think that's a great place to wrap for our listeners out there. If you want to hear more about TikTok, let us know over on LinkedIn. If we get enough interest, we'll do another episode. Otherwise, thank everybody for listening and we'll see you at another Tactics Tuesday.
