#688 – Your TikTok Shop First 60-Day Blueprint

Join us on this exciting episode as we welcome Delaney Del Mundo, VP of Account Strategy at Vendo, to explore the dynamic world of TikTok Shop. Delaney shares her expertise on crafting a successful 60-day blueprint for launching on TikTok Shop, a platform with significant potential to rival Amazon in sales. Discover how TikTok Shop not only creates demand but also enhances branded search volumes on Amazon, benefiting existing businesses. Delaney emphasizes the importance of patience and strategic planning, suggesting that TikTok Shop needs at least six months to establish a solid proof of concept.

Listen in as we discuss building robust affiliate and influencer partnerships to boost sales on TikTok Shop. We dive into strategies for launching GMV Max campaigns and constructing an effective affiliate pre-sale funnel. Discover how to utilize top-performing creatives as ads and the significance of setting optimal target ROAS. We highlight the importance of clear communication with affiliates, competitive commission rates, and tiered incentive programs. By creating leaderboards for affiliate performance, brands can foster healthy competition and learning among creators, ultimately enhancing engagement and driving sales.

Finally, we explore strategies for maximizing TikTok Shop growth through influencer collaboration and optimizing sales across various e-commerce platforms. Delaney shares insights on the nuances of TikTok Shop, including creator network effects, ad amplification, and affiliate incentives. Discover how to overcome new brands’ challenges in attracting affiliates and the importance of securing initial sales to establish proof of concept. Learn about setting strategic commission rates and the potential for success with high-ticket products through proper discounts and incentives. This episode is packed with valuable strategies to help you thrive on TikTok Shop and beyond.

In episode 688 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Delaney discuss:

• 00:00 – TikTok Training for Sellers 
• 01:30 – Strategies for Launching on TikTok Shop
• 03:18 – Driving Demand From TikTok to Amazon
• 08:09 – Utilizing Helium 10 for TikTok Trends
• 11:19 – Optimizing Listings for TikTok Shop
• 13:13 – Building Affiliate and Influencer Partnerships
• 23:24 – Optimizing Affiliate Engine For TikTok
• 26:47 – Maximizing TikTok Shop Growth With Influencers
• 31:52 – Optimizing Commission Rates for TikTok Shop
• 36:34 – Discounting Strategy for High-End Products
• 40:31 – Utilizing TikTok for Business Growth

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Are you just getting started on TikTok shop? Today we have an expert on the show giving you your first 60-day blueprint for TikTok shop. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that is our TikTok Thursday monthly broadcast, where we bring on an expert in TikTok shop to train on a different aspect so that you guys can level up on the hottest platform that is out there to sell on right now. So a lot of you said you are not selling on TikTok shop yet and some of you just started. This is a perfect one for you guys to watch, because this, what we’re talking about today, is like your first couple months blueprint. All right, you signed up today, or maybe you signed up a few weeks ago, but you haven’t really started promoting.

Bradley Sutton:

What should, how should you launch your business? Maybe your business is on Amazon. How can you launch it on TikTok shop? That’s the exact thing we’re going to be talking about today with our special guests the steps that you need to take to start ramping up your sales, and so let’s go ahead and invite our guest on here. She’s also in California. I believe you’ve been traveling around, haven’t you lately?

Delaney:

I have a little bit. Hey, Bradley, great to see you.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, so you come from Vendo. That’s a great play on words. In Spanish for I sell. Tell us a little bit about you.

Delaney:

Yeah, absolutely so just a little bit about who I am. My name is Delaney Del Mundo and I’m our VP of Account Strategy at Vendo, so I lead our Amazon and TikTok shop teams. Everything from an Account Strategy Department reports up to me. I previously worked at Walmart, so have a very omni-channel view on the business itself, which has helped as we’ve expanded into TikTok shop over the last couple of years. And just as far as who Vendo is, we are a full service digital growth marketing agency, so we focus on all things marketplace management from Amazon, Walmart, TikTok shop and then full media buying and retail marketing across the board, and then all things marketing as well, so have a separate influencer and affiliate arm to our business too. And then just a little bit more about Vendo is we’re part of a larger company called Platform. That’s our holding company, so we have deep rooted relationships in retail across Walmart stores, Costco, Target, et cetera, which helps us to really execute across all marketplace channels more seamlessly. 

Bradley Sutton:

Cool. Cool. Now, just anecdotally, what can you tell people about why they’ve made a right decision, like if they’re selling on Amazon or Shopify or somewhere else and now they’re expanding to TikTok, like you know? You don’t have to give like specific, you know customer names or anything, but talk about some of the ones that you know where, where they were doing X on Amazon and then they started on TikTok and were already able to be making Y on TikTok and even made a bump to their Amazon. Can you talk a little bit about some examples to inspire the crowd here?

Delaney:

Yeah, absolutely. Tons of great examples. I think, as Bradley talked about, this is the hottest marketplace. We’ve actually seen for some of our top brands that their TikTok sales are outpacing their Amazon sales. So we know how big Amazon’s marketplace is, but the potential on TikTok shop is massive. And then, on top of that, when you start to see some creator and affiliate posts go viral on TikTok shop, we’re seeing as much as five to 10 X branded search volume increases on Amazon itself.

Delaney:

So, as we know, on TikTok shop, where it’s more difficult to have the fast and free two-day shipping, a lot of brands aren’t offering that right now. Brands naturally are customers, naturally are going to go and purchase on Amazon, but they’re going to see the product on TikTok shop first. So how we really like to view it is TikTok shop is your vehicle to build demand and then Amazon is your vehicle to capture that demand. Of course, there’s other ways that you can build demand on the platform, but 5 to 10x increases in branded search just due to efforts on TikTok shop is pretty massive. And then, of course, that leads to efficiencies in CPCs and customer acquisition costs, et cetera, which will only make your Amazon business more profitable, despite all of the increases in fees that we continue to see on that platform.

Bradley Sutton:

Yep, Yep. So remember, guys, it’s not just about hey, let’s add some other, you know side revenue on a new platform, but you’re getting incremental benefits also for your Amazon business as well. I’ve heard of. I don’t want to, I’m not sure if I want to say countless, but a number of people have said oh man, I thought I was about to just like have to hang up my cleats for Amazon because the profitability went way down, my sales went down, but I launched on TikTok and it saved my Amazon business. So this is the right spot to be in if you’re considering selling on TikTok shop. So, Delaney, go ahead and take it away and let us know what all of these sellers here online should be doing in their first 60 days on TikTok.

Delaney:

Yeah, absolutely so. One thing that I want to caveat as we begin here is just that TikTok shop as a marketplace takes time to get up and running right. In the essence of you are working with a massive affiliate network and those affiliates need time to one receive the samples and then, of course, post content, and then you need to drive traffic to that those pieces of content to further amplify. So while we’re talking about a first 60 day launch blueprint, we recommend at Vendo you need to give TikTok shop at least six months to really understand if you have proof of concept on the platform, just because a lot of that brunt work early on is going to be around building that creator community on the platform. So I’m going to talk a little bit today about how you can set yourself up for success just within those first 60 days as you launch. But a lot of these strategies are going to be ongoing over those first six months and then some as you continue to grow the affiliate base there. So this is a bit of an eyesore, but I wanted to include all of the information when it comes to setting your brand up for success in the first 15 days. Even so, you finally got your account registered and approved and now it’s time to start to set up your products. Now, one of the most important things, before you just go and set up all of your catalog on TikTok shop, is to really understand what is the best in class offer that I want to launch on TikTok shop in order to have a listing that’s in a position to convert right? You can’t look at this the same way that you look at Amazon, in which you can just put your whole catalog on there. Then you can make sure that you’re only running ads on maybe some of your top sellers and then driving cross promotions and other marketing vehicles across the others.

Delaney:

No, TikTok shop really is a hero item strategy approach. So that means that when you’re launching on the platform, you want to make sure that you are investing more heavily into your hero items. So, first and foremost, what does that best in class offer look like? You one want to understand that exclusivity works well on the platform On TikTok shop. Customers are savvy enough to understand when there is the same offer off platform. So if you can get exclusive with, let’s say, different flavors, different colorways, different scents that you don’t offer on Amazon or Walmart, that’s probably going different flavors, different colorways, different scents that you don’t offer on Amazon or Walmart that’s probably going to be a great opportunity for you to launch on TikTok shop. But if that’s not the case and you’re looking at just the assortment that you have now, you can still see a lot of success with that assortment specifically, and that’s really when you narrow in on the hero item specifically.

Delaney:

So what we recommend is do the upfront research. You could use Helium 10 trends. You could really understand, okay, what is it that’s trending well on TikTok shop right now, and you’ll see very clearly that over 80% of sales on TikTok shop are done by just affiliates, right? So this is a common misconception that, hey, I can launch on TikTok shop without investing in the affiliate program. That’s not the case. You have to invest in affiliates at scale, but first you need to make sure you have an offer that is best in class.

Delaney:

So, as far as pricing goes, this is one thing that you wanna think about. Pricing on TikTok shop should not be higher than pricing on Amazon, the reason being, again, you already have the fast and free two-day shipping on Amazon. You are not going to convert on TikTok shop if you’re not priced at least in line with where you’re at on Amazon. You actually if you can afford to do so from a margin standpoint want to take a little bit of a hit on pricing and just test, if TikTok shop has best in class pricing, what that’s going to do for your brand. You’re going to often see that that’s when conversion is going to peak. But because TikTok shop’s referral fee is only 6% and Amazon’s, across many categories, is 15, you have a little bit of room to play from a margin standpoint there, just as far as cost to sell on the platform. So once you have your offer and you’re really looking to now set up your products on the platform, you can sync your TikTok shop catalog with either your Shopify backend or Amazon MCF and Helium 10 just released a couple of weeks ago One of the most pivotal things that we have been looking for and that is a very quick and easy Amazon MCF connector.

Delaney:

We use this for our brands. A couple of weeks ago and it literally took five minutes for us to get connected through Amazon MCF and now all of our listings through Amazon have automatically transferred over to TikTok shop in a click of a button Super easy. We recommend that, but before you do that, look at your margin analyses while using Amazon MCF and Shopify. There might be a case in which you can use Shopify and that is more profitable for your brand. You shipping to the customer directly, or maybe Amazon MCF is going to be the more favorable option there, and it’s, of course, easier because Amazon is fully handling all that.

Delaney:

What I will say with Shopify for our brands using it or any other third party connector app for that case is that you can get the customer information right. That’s not something that you can do on Amazon as it stands right now. There used to be other ways, from a gray hat perspective, that you could probably pull that information. Not as much anymore. Amazon has really cracked down on that. But on TikTok shop specifically, if you’re using Shopify, you have all that customer information. So things like product inserts, things like messaging customers and trying to retarget them down the line those are all things that, through using Shopify and having that customer information that allows you to send out emails and do all of these retargeting mechanisms that you can do using Amazon FBM, for example.

Delaney:

So once you’ve synced your catalog, now it’s time to optimize your listings. Of course, you want your titles, your images, your descriptions, to be keyword rich. You want to align that with the value of your product. You want to tell a story on TikTok shop, but this isn’t the most important thing, right? You’re not really keyword stuffing or you’re not really looking at the SEO as much as you are on Amazon.

Delaney:

Yes, yes, it’s still good that you have a buttoned up listing, because creators are going to go to that listing and they’re going to want to see what are the key selling points of this listing when they go to it. So you want to make sure that that is buttoned up as well. And then the last thing from a review standpoint is there are a few third-party review apps that you can use, like JudgeMe, Yotpo, Reviews.io, that just build credibility for your listing at launch. Right? So now you already are launching a listing with strong reviews, you can sync that directly from your direct-to-consumer site. So, unlike Amazon, where you’re launching via Vine or you’re engaging in other review programs, you don’t have to do this on TikTok shop because your reviews will syndicate on the platform. That’s important for you to do. You should do that rather than starting with zero reviews.

Shivali Patel:

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Delaney:

And then the next step here is launching your initial GMV Max campaigns. So what GMV Max is, is it is an ad type on TikTok shop that basically takes all of your top performing creatives and it serves them as ads to the consumers. So you want to start with a smaller budget here between $100 to $150 per day just to test. And one thing you can do with GMV Max is you can set an optimal target ROAS. So if you’re saying, hey, I don’t want to advertise as early on because I don’t think that the efficiency is going to be up to par, then you can fully control that by setting that optimal target ROAS within GMV Max. But again here, prioritize just your top two to three SKUs that have stronger content to launch that you think are going to drive sales for you, and then make sure you have a strong offer to stack on top of that, whether that’s a 15% off coupon to drive conversion rate, that creators can also message as well, et cetera. And now, once you have your shop set up, you’re really starting to build the affiliate pre-sale funnel. So what does this look like for you? One, you need to allocate units for seating. So generally, to start, you want between 75 and a hundred free units. There’s a lot of debate here on whether you need more. At a point in time, you will need more. You want between 200 to 500 units set aside for samples at launch. But just from a cost of goods standpoint and to get you going, you want 75 to 100 units and you’re going to want to dedicate 60% of that to your tier two and tier three creators. Again, you don’t have sales right now on TikTok shop and creators are looking to work with brands who have already registered sales on the platform. So one of the most difficult things to do is get out of the cold start phase. So the most important thing to do is work with some of these high volume creators first. That’s why 40% of your total samples are going to go to some of those tier one creators that you can negotiate either paid partnerships with or incentivize them differently than you’re maybe incentivizing your everyday creators. So separate those into tiers. You have your tier one creators 40% goes out to them and then you have your tier two and three smaller follower counts but, again, higher engagement there across the board. One of the biggest unlocks is if your brand, if you are a brand that’s already working with affiliates, because now you have an opportunity to onboard those affiliates onto TikTok shop and you’ve already identified those as top performing affiliates for your brand. So again, they know how to sell your product.

Delaney:

One thing we’re going to talk about a lot here is discord groups. So one of the most important things for TikTok shop is, as early as you can, get those creators off platform, do it. They’re getting a ton of messages every single day from a lot of different brands with opportunities. You want to invite them off platform where you can communicate with them more seamlessly. You can manage that community differently. You can give that same community access to drops, higher commission rates, etc. It’s all about building and nurturing those relationships with those affiliates. So now you have a group of affiliates that you’ve already worked with in the past and you can use their content as assets for you to show other affiliates what examples are of top performing content on the site there, and then just a few other strategic things. You can even position some of these top performing affiliates that you already have working with off-platform as maybe co-hosts for some creator tournaments that you have again all about.

Delaney:

How can I drive community influence on TikTok shop. On the right here. The most important thing how can I find high quality affiliates or how do I find influencers in general for TikTok shop? Now, helium 10 has an influencer finder. That’s a great tool. We’ve been using it a lot, not just for TikTok shop, but for our influencer and affiliate programs. That’s another place to find some high, proven converters that are going to work with your brand. You have the creator marketplace. You have the ads library. There are so many different places that you can work with these affiliates here.

Delaney:

So another thing to check out is make sure you’re pulling from different sources, but you want to scale that affiliate structure as quickly as possible there. And then what do you need to tell them? You need to have a strong hook, right? So whether that’s through DM or whether you’re sending that via email, you need to really align on the offer that you’re giving to affiliates. You will be able to see the average commission rate for your brand. So generally, it’s between 15 to 20 percent that these creators are offering, right? So you’re gonna want to start with 15 to 20 percent, but you also want to look at what other tiered incentives can I give these creators right, or what other initiatives can I implement to further incentivize them. For example, all of my top creators are going to earn X dollars if they post X number of times in week one or if they generate X number of sales. Right, align on those tiered incentives programs so they’re not just getting a free sample, they’re also getting some additional bonuses and you’re standing out versus the competition here. So I know that sounds like a lot for the first 15 days, but it’s really setting yourself up for further success, to build your content flywheel and to build your community flywheel in general.

Delaney:

So this goes into okay, what do I do next? How do I further nurture these relationships? Affiliate performance stacks you want to create leaderboards as much as possible, right? These creators are competitive with one another, so you want to say like okay, who’s doing well and why are they doing well? How am I tracking their GMV, their click-through rate, conversion rate, etc. These creators want to learn from each other as well. They want to know what is going to earn them more money. So, again, create a leaderboard. Give them points. The more they post, the more they engage with lives. Give them access to different bonus tiers, whether that’s giving them merch, whether that’s dedicating ad budget, whether that’s giving them access to early drops. Right, there are so many different things that you can do here to incentivize them besides just the commission rate alone. And then what we recommend, too within the Discord group, is build some different challenges, give them different flash sales. If you say, here’s a flash sale that’s running for X brand, if you generate X sales, you’ll get X dollars in cash bonuses. Cash is king on TikTok shop, so the more you can incentivize them that way, the better.

Delaney:

And then a question that we often get is how important is our own content, how important it is that we are actually posting on our TikTok shop organically and I would say, overall. What you should aim to do is post three to five times per week, if you can, and a few focuses for this content is one some value driven content, whether that’s staff POVs they really want to understand, like what is this brand doing internally, what does this brand stand behind? And then, of course, some different creator collabs, which are very beneficial as well. So you want to use that organic content to build as much awareness for your brand, because that’s the most important part of that. Again, 80 percent of sales are still going to be driven by affiliates, so this is less of a transaction or sales vehicle. It’s more so building your brand on the platform, showing both creators and customers that you have a fully built out brand here and that you’re interacting with them and that you really value building relationships as well. Cool.

Delaney:

So that’s the first 30 days, and then, as we go into phase three here, you really want to expand upon live expansion, and how am I accelerating GMV? So this is when you should really start to look at okay, in my, in the content that I have currently, how am I increasing our GMV max budget based on the skew profitability that I’m seeing and different signals that I’m seeing? Am I seeing higher engagement rates across the board? Am I seeing that some of my top performing videos are starting to get higher numbers of organic views? These are definitely different examples here of how you can look at some of the best creator content and then include some top call to actions within those creator pieces of content as well. And then live shopping. You’ll generally see that live shopping does about 20 to 25% of sales within a given category. It definitely varies category to category, but you’ll see that a lot of the brands that are seeing success are also going live often.

Delaney:

So, whether that’s running different live, creator challenges, rewarding those creators who schedule at least three plus lives in a week, giving them extra commission for going live right, again, it’s all about what giveaways you’re engaging with the audience in during the live, but more than anything, it’s about how you’re building awareness for that live before the live actually takes place. So you want to look at okay, how am I bringing overall traffic to this live so that during the live, when I’m offering these giveaways, when I’m offering these free products, et cetera, you’re maximizing your conversion rate and then that’s having an effect after the live as well. When I’m offering these free products, et cetera, you’re maximizing your conversion rate and then that’s having an effect after the live as well. And then, of course, you want to align on what milestones and performance tiers you’re offering to those creators. Again, as I said, you don’t just want to stick to commission rate. You can do that in the beginning, but you really have to focus on how am I aligning on these additional affiliate incentive tiers? You’re seeing, like the top brands in the space and again, not recommending you do this because you have to be cognizant of profitability to some extent, but some of them are giving away Tesla’s or down payments on homes, and they’re getting really focused with what sorts of milestones and performance tiers they’re implementing. So if you’re just launching on the platform, do this at a smaller scale, right. Whether that’s a brand page feature, whether that’s ad spend, whether that’s a paid club, there’s different ways to incentivize those creators. And then, lastly, for those creators that are doing really well, give them some opportunities for paid partnerships, right. It’s better to go deeper with those top performing creators than trying to spread yourself too thin. So you always want to be finding new creators, but you also want to understand when it’s time to invest in some of the top performing creators. Awesome.

Delaney:

And then phase four here just rounding out days 45 to 60 is looking at how am I optimizing my affiliate engine and how am I looking at this more full funnel, right. So again, relaunch your outreach. And, most importantly, what we would recommend is look at TikTok as a retention and loyalty engine as well. So there are tons of opportunities to build CRMs within TikTok. Shop Reacher, which is the bot we use, allows us to do this very easily, but what you can do is you can separate your creators into different groups. You could say hey, here are my VIP affiliates, here are my high engagement affiliates, etc. You could incentivize those VIP affiliates differently, but you could also easily message them with opportunities for new product launches, for exclusive offers, etc.

Delaney:

And then, lastly, from a cross platform standpoint again as I said in the beginning of this, we’re seeing so much of a halo effect onto Amazon, so don’t just look at the content that you’re receiving on TikTok shop in a silo. Look at how you can repurpose that for other content as well, whether that’s on Instagram, whether that’s YouTube shorts, et cetera. These are things that you want to be looking at and then launching other challenges, like a creator of the week, but not just focusing on TikTok shop specifically looking across all of your brand’s social channels and really using TikTok shop to fuel a larger affiliate strategy on behalf of your brand. Awesome.

Delaney:

And then just a summary of some key metrics that you’re going to want to be looking for. From a seeding allocation standpoint, about 75 to 100 units, at a least 100, plus shoppable videos. At launch, you’ll often see that 1000 is where you’ll start to see some momentum. Build is when you have those first 1000 videos, but you’re going to want to start with at least 100 within those first 30 days or so to get the fly wheel going. And then, from a shop page standpoint, 12 to 20 strategic posts throughout the month, three to four times per week there, plus two to three lives per week, if you’re open to that again, not 100% necessary, but great from an awareness standpoint there as well.

Delaney:

And then, lastly, for your top creators, you’re often going to see a two to 3% conversion rate. What TikTok shop looks at is something called a creator conversion rate, and creator conversion rate is what percentage of creators that are actually receiving a sample for my product are driving sales. You will see that 20 to 30% is actually pretty decent within those first 60 days or so. That that’s going to be pretty high. But you should expect that is what I’m trying to say, because you shouldn’t expect that everyone who receives a sample is going to, of course, generate sales. That’s where this could get a little bit more of a costly platform for you. But that’s why you need at least six months to see that out, because you need to be able to test different offers. You need to test different affiliate structures, different tiered incentives, etc. Just an overall summary to close out here.

Delaney:

One TikTok shop scale comes from the creator network effects plus ad amplification. Common misconception, too, is that you don’t need to be running ads. You look at all of the top affiliates and their videos are being pushed by these brands with ad spend. TikTok shop used to have a honeymoon period they don’t as much anymore where they would give your content free views. Since that doesn’t exist anymore, advertising is very important there. And then, of course, from a affiliate incentive standpoint, reward your affiliates. Focus on the community experience. There is the way that you’ll actually see some exponential GMV lift. And then, lastly, here it’s a flywheel right you need to execute and test and reward your affiliates, and that needs to continue to be an ongoing pattern. Once you see a video or two go viral, don’t stop there. You need to then pour gas on the fire. Use that as examples for future affiliates to learn from, and then build that as part of your larger community to really incentivize them differently. Cool, I think. That’s it, Bradley, on my side, awesome.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, so just some you know, instant questions. I had, I get to play host, host privilege here and do my questions before everybody else is. But the GMV Max, as we we’ve had some, some in-depth, you know, tutorials in Freedom Ticket and the podcast about it. But you can make that on your videos and the videos that influencers have created for you.

Delaney:

Yes, correct.

Bradley Sutton:

And what you know. I know it’s very, very limited as far as customizability and stuff. Like you know, like you can’t do negative matching on keywords and stuff like that. You know TikTok is in complete control. But what can you control, like so is it the videos? Like I can say, hey, I only want it on this video or that video, or what are the things that the seller has control over when doing GMV Max ads?

Delaney:

Yeah, that’s a great question. So, yes, you can control some of the videos themselves, but also, what we’d recommend is set up some of the separate, some separate campaigns, right. Like, don’t put everything into one campaign. Have between two to three campaigns with a few different products included in those, so that way GMV Max pulls from different pieces of content as well. But to Bradley’s point, I think that’s the biggest change that TikTok shop is undergoing. Until August 5, before then you were able to take top performing content and then push that with spark ads in the form of video shopping ads.

Delaney:

Now they’re leaning more towards GMV Max. So, again, because you could optimize for the target row, as this is the most important thing we’re seeing for some of our brands between a 10 to 20x pro as, and again, that’s on like 20k per month in spend. So it’s not super small, as many would guess. But yes, I would say the biggest thing there is set up two to three different campaigns, so that way it gets a little bit more targeted in its approach, although it’s not very targeted as it is and there aren’t many mechanisms that you can push right now.

Bradley Sutton:

And what is it actually doing? Is it pushing the content to more people’s For You Page, or what?

Delaney:

Yeah, so it basically is just giving your content more impressions across the board, but it’s higher quality impressions, right? So right now we’re seeing that a lot of brands that are not choosing to run GMB Max are sticking between that 200 to 300 view mark, so they’re not able to get over the hump, and that’s just because there’s not as much organic traffic on the platform without the ads itself. So this is just a way for you to get more eyeballs on the site, more impressions, and then you’ll really be able to gauge the engagement rate better, because now there’s at least enough traffic to gauge if that video has engagement that’s going to hold. If that video has engagement, that’s going to hold.

Bradley Sutton:

Let’s go ahead and start with. Amina says for new brands, attracting affiliates to unknown brands is more challenging. To entice those affiliate creators, is there a commission percentage that you recommend based on the products, or is there a tested percentage that is more enticing for affiliates? So what do you usually start off with if you don’t have enough, you don’t have a lot of brand recognition?

Delaney:

 Yeah, I would say, overall, it will give you an average commission rate across every category and best practice would be probably just add 5% to that. So overall, I would say we’re seeing a lot of brands that are between a 20 to 30% commission rate at launch. But again, I totally understand what the challenge is here. So the most important thing is get the content first and get the sales on the platform. Again, there’s other ways of doing that, of course, but you need those first 100 sales on the platform so that creators can see that there is proof of concept for that product specifically and then try to incentivize them differently. Right, so reach out to them separately on email, on their social handles. There’s gonna be a lot more upfront work in those first 60 days than there is, just so you could set yourself up to scale.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, Kim says you know we might not be able to fully know without knowing the product, but I’ve got a low price line in a niche hardware category. It has nothing to do with fashion, personal care or beauty. Sounds like a profit suck for a business like mine. But there’s random stuff that you wouldn’t think you know. That definitely are not. You know fashion, personal care or beauty, but still go off on TikTok, right.

Delaney:

Yeah, absolutely tons. And I would say that creators overall are looking for around $5 in commission. So that’s what we’ve seen as a little bit of the sweet spot there. I would say, Kim, map that out and see what the commission rate would be to get you to around $5. Again, if you can incentivize them differently, then that’s another added bonus, so you can get around that $5 commission rate. But what I would really encourage you to do is not just look at it in a silo, as Bradley and I were talking about in the beginning. If you’re willing to use TikTok shop as a channel where you’re going to break even or even be a bit more negative, you will see an organic lift on Amazon. So you should look at that holistically rather than just looking at it from a TikTok shop perspective, because you might want to invest in that platform so that Amazon and Walmart and all of these other platforms see that halo impact as well.

Bradley Sutton:

Derek says, we saw a training before where they said to have 20, 30 pieces of good content ready should. Is this a good number or start with less? What would be the total amount? I just have one video and no affiliates have made videos or no creators have made videos. Should I be doing GMV Max or should I be waiting to a combination of a number of videos from both?

Delaney:

20 to 30, I think, is a great benchmark there. Overall, you would used to want to wait for more, just because then GMV Max would have time to learn. But because GMV Max is the only ad type now and because you want to gain impressions as early on as possible, 20 to 30 is a good starting point for that. Again, you don’t want to have no content at all, or else GMV Max doesn’t have content to choose from. So 20 to 30 is a good starting point.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, Nico says I had 50 affiliate videos but I didn’t get sales from these affiliate videos and I created GMV Max ad and it said my creator videos were not being delivered because they didn’t test well, so where would he have gone wrong? Like, maybe the creator’s audiences were not really good for his product and he needs to maybe re-look at how he’s choosing these creators. I mean, obviously, without seeing the entire thing, we’re kind of limited with what we can say. But what would you say just with this info here?

Delaney:

Yeah, shameless plug, Nico, but use Helium 10’s Influencer Finder. I think that, just in terms of the quality of affiliates that you’re looking for, you want to look within the category, right? I’m sure within the category you plan there’s a bunch of affiliates that are already seeing sales. We’ve talked to creators specifically. They don’t have any sort of worries about working with brands in the same category, so you don’t have to worry about like, oh, if they’re working with my top competitor, they would never work with me. That’s not the case. Where there’s money and where there’s opportunity, they’re going to gravitate towards that, right?

Delaney:

So I would say look at the existing category you play in, but also look at adjacent categories, right? Let’s say, you’re in the fashion category. You’re probably going to see a strong overlap with beauty creators too. So I would say 50 specifically isn’t probably the best gauge. It’s still pretty small. You want to get to at least a hundred. So continue to work on building up the affiliate content there, but also make sure you’re refining the approach to Bradley’s point content there, but also make sure you’re refining the approach to Bradley’s point.

Bradley Sutton:

Santiago says. I have a question about TikTok shop commissions. I see options for affiliate commissions and ad commission within the same affiliate campaign. What’s the difference? And if I said both to 20, does that mean 40% total?

Delaney:

Yeah, so those would be two separate things, right? So what it’s saying is that if the sale is driven from an affiliate, you will get 20% commission. If the sale is driven from an ad, you would get 20% commission separately. So what we see brands doing more so is tailoring down the commission rate for ads, specifically because now again, you’re investing into the ads, which is depleting your margin. So maybe you’re going to want to offer 15% commission rate for ads and 20% commission rate for affiliates. So that’s not stacking both of them. It’s just saying if it’s driven by an ad, okay, 15% commission in that case, and if it’s driven by an affiliate, but it wasn’t from an ad where it was purchased, then it’s 20% commission.

Bradley Sutton:

Brandon’s got an interesting one here. Would discounting help move higher end products? I actually sell higher end kitchen appliances. Only four SKUs are under $100. Everything else is over $150. We see sporadic sales here and there. Most of our sales are on Amazon. So what’s the strategy when you’ve got high ticket items, like Brandon has for TikTok Shop?

Delaney:

Yes, definitely you will need to discount. Again, I think that a common misconception is that higher price point items cannot perform well on TikTok shop. That’s not the case. Generally, items priced between $30 to $50 perform best on TikTok shop, and that’s just because you’ll be able to get to that $5 commission rate sooner and there’s less sort of friction as far as point of entry there for those products. But again, $150 product or $150 or $100 only screams higher commission for those creators, so they might not always move away from that product just because of price point.

Delaney:

But it is important. TikTok has many different campaigns, right. You can sign up for some of those campaigns in which they give you some added visibility there as well, and you could implement some more aggressive discounts. And if your Amazon shopper is already aware of that and maybe you’ve already built up some social presence, then message that on your social platforms, right, and say hey, on TikTok shop exclusively, we’re offering a deal at 30 to 40% off. Watch what it does to your Amazon business when you do that. Just simply because you’re now gonna have more eyeballs on TikTok shop. But you’re also gonna have creators that are talking about the sale, and that’s the most important thing, because then they’ll go to TikTok, to Amazon, and maybe they’re willing to pay a little bit more because of the fast and free two-day shipping too.

Bradley Sutton:

Greg says, is there a sweet spot in regards to the selling price for an item for TikTok shop?

Delaney:

Yeah, I would say, overall, probably between $30 to $50. We have some brands, though, that are selling at a $10 to $20 price point and, of course, seeing a lot of success. We also have some brands that are at a $70 to $80 price point and are seeing some success. So I’d focus more on how you’re incentivizing the creators. Again, you’re probably going to see that creators are going to look for that $5 commission rate, so that’s why I say the $30 to $50, because it’s easier to get to that rather than a lower price product, and then, with profitability, you need to take that into account. But that would be the general sweet spot.

Bradley Sutton:

Sue says I had violation tickets on my one account and so I started another account, but it’s saying my company document is invalid. Could that be if she’s trying to use the same company document she should probably like how she’d have to use a different company or entity or something.

Delaney:

Yeah, I would say if you’re trying to create a new account and that previous account still exists, to Bradley’s point, you don’t want to upload the same documents to the new account, you want it to be different. So they’re matching everything from bank account address et cetera. If any of those match up, then it’s just going to get flagged as a multiple account, similar to what you see on Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, excellent. How can people find you on the interwebs out there, reach out to you?

Delaney:

Yeah, on LinkedIn. You can find me there, and then my email is Delaney at VendoCommerce.com, if you wanted to reach out there.

Bradley Sutton:

So for anybody here on this call who is selling on TikTok shop, make sure your TikTok is connected to Helium 10, regardless of whatever plan you have. Connect it. Right now, it’s completely free. You’re going to be able to use our tools for the platform our Messenger and others, depending on the level of service you have at Helium 10. But make sure to connect that. If you guys don’t know how, ask Customer Service. You just click on your name on the top right of your Helium 10 screen and there’s a dropdown that that happens and then hit connections. Make sure you’re signed into TikTok shop. It takes like 60 seconds to connect your Helium 10 account. Guys, listen to the episode I did recently with NeuroGum. All right, everybody knows NeuroGum. I got some right here.

Bradley Sutton:

It’s amazing stuff. Joe Rogan uses it and they are like they want. They dialed back their spend on Amazon advertising because by pushing that spend to TikTok they were able to more drastically increase their Amazon sales. So using TikTok as kind of like a pseudo-advertising arm of your business is absolutely one of the ways to go. So, Delaney, thank you so much. We’ll be bringing you back maybe in a few months and actually I want to work with you on maybe one of one of our accounts here, like our coffin shelf or something where let’s use Vendo services to kind of like, ramp up our TikTok shop sales and then we can come back and tell people how it went. How’s that sound?

Delaney:

Awesome. Sounds great. Bradley, talk to you soon.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, see you guys later.

Delaney:

Bye now.

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