TikTok Shop right now is bigger than Amazon or Shopify was from launch. That is what TikTok Shop is right now." Bold statement? Maybe. But Jordan West, founder and CEO of Social Commerce Club, has the data to back it up. With CPMs dropping 26% last year while ad spend increases, and creators with under 10K followers generating $250K in monthly sales, we're witnessing the early stages of what could be the biggest disruption in e-commerce since Amazon itself. In this explosive episode, Jordan breaks down his exact three-phase playbook for scaling from zero to $100K per month on TikTok Shop, reveals why big brands like Estée Lauder are struggling to adapt, and shares the underground strategies that are creating millionaire creators overnight.

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Sponsored by OMG Commerce - go to (https://www.omgcommerce.com/contact) and request your FREE strategy session today!

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Chapters: 

(00:00) Introducting Jordan West

(05:18) The Exponential Growth of TikTok Shops

(10:48) Understanding the TikTok Shops Ecosystem

(14:12) The Power of Social Search

(16:16) Understanding Social Commerce

(19:34) Misconceptions about TikTok Shops

(24:33) The 80/20 Rule for Viral Content

(26:16) Best Practices

(31:36) Making It From Zero to Viral

(33:20) The Tiktok Shop Playbook: Phase One

(38:18) The Tiktok Shop Playbook: Phase Two

(42:44) The Tiktok Shop Playbook: Phase Three

(46:21) Exploring YouTube’s Potential in Social Commerce

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Connect With Brett: 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrettcurry/ 
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@omgcommerce 
• Website: https://www.omgcommerce.com/ 

Relevant Links:

• Jordan’s LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/jordan-west-marketer

Past guests on eCommerce Evolution include Ezra Firestone, Steve Chou, Drew Sanocki, Jacques Spitzer, Jeremy Horowitz, Ryan Moran, Sean Frank, Andrew Youderian, Ryan McKenzie, Joseph Wilkins, Cody Wittick, Miki Agrawal, Justin Brooke, Nish Samantray, Kurt Elster, John Parkes, Chris Mercer, Rabah Rahil, Bear Handlon, JC Hite, Frederick Vallaeys, Preston Rutherford, Anthony Mink, Bill D’Allessandro, Stephane Colleu, Jeff Oxford, Bryan Porter and more

TikTok shop right now is bigger.

The exponential curve that we see right

now is bigger than Amazon or Shopify

was from launch.

Well, hello and welcome to another edition

of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast.

I'm your host, Brett

Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce,

and today we've got a returning guest.

We've got a long time friend on the pod,

and we're talking about one

of the hottest of hot topics

TikTok shops. What do you need to

know? What are some misconceptions?

What's the growth playbook?

And we're going to zoom out beyond that

as well and look at social commerce as a

whole. What's YouTube up to and

what's going to happen in this space?

And so my guest is Jordan West.

He's the founder and CEO

of Social Commerce Club.

He's also the host of a fabulous podcast,

scaling your E-Commerce brand.

And so we're going to get into it,

but with that, Jordan, welcome to

the show and how's it going, man?

Brett, so nice to be on here. Last

time you and I met a couple months ago,

you came on my podcast. It was good. It

was actually very, very well received.

I looked at the download numbers and I

was like, oh, people really like brand.

They like YouTube. People like talking

about this kind of stuff. Yeah.

Yeah.

I should put some money behind that one.

So secrets to Scaling your

e-Commerce brand. We've been around,

it's like 650 episodes now.

Whoa.

I'll tell you, if there's

one thing that I am good at,

it is finding something and then

just doubling down, doubling down,

doubling down, which is

why TikTok, TikTok Shop,

I am telling you I haven't been this

excited about something in a long,

long time.

And with good reason,

there's merit behind it.

We're going to talk about the data. We're

going to talk about the case studies.

We're going to talk about the stories

that'll motivate you to go hard into

TikTok shops. But first, I

got to hit the pause button.

650 episodes, is that what

you said? 600 episodes?

Yes, yes, yes. Holy, how so?

There's a couple of things that

I do every single week I take,

and just so you know,

it's very, very selfish.

I just take all of the different things

that I'm learning in our different

businesses. And all I do is I

consolidate the learning in a podcast.

And in LinkedIn, if you

guys follow me on LinkedIn,

I'll post multiple times a day

and it's just selfish, everyone,

just so you know.

I'm just taking what I'm learning

and then putting it out there.

That's the only reason that I do this.

And then it just happens to help people.

And I kind of forget when I'm on this

side. I forget that there's, for us,

it's like we're in the thousands of

downloads per episode. I'm like, oh yeah,

that's right. I was at

Shop Talk recently and you,

I'm walking down and people like, Jordan,

I listen to your podcast all the time.

I watch your podcast. I'm like, oh

yeah, I forget. I do it. Honestly,

I just forget that I do it because it's

just a matter of consolidating all the

learning that I have. That's why I do it.

Such a great way to look at

it. What do you want to learn?

What do you want to add to your business?

What expert do you need to get

to know? Do a podcast on that.

And now you're creating media that

your marketplace is going to enjoy.

It's going to attract people into

your network and your learning,

and you can share the learnings with

your team. And same with LinkedIn.

I love that approach. Super,

super smart. And yeah,

quick funny story that's related.

So we're about 300 episodes

in on e-commerce evolution.

I'm not as prolific as Jordan

West. Now you set the bar up here.

I got to see what I can do to up my game.

Maybe there's been a few

times where this is a grind.

It's also a grind to do a podcast when

you're running a company and hiring

people and running marketing

and all this stuff.

And so there's been one time

in particular where I was like,

I got to quit the podcast. It's just too

much of a grind, too much of a hassle.

I go to a trade show and three

or four people stop me and say,

I love the podcast, man. Keep up the good

work. It's so good. And I'm like, oh,

okay. No, this is part of why I do it.

And so I've been doing it ever since.

And.

I also have to say,

so last week I had Curtis

Matz on my podcast.

Curtis is the founder and CEO at Portland

Leather Goods big company. Awesome.

I met him in Austin just a

couple weeks ago. Great guy.

Yeah, Curtis is awesome. So I had

him on when they were little too,

and he came back on and they were going

to do two or 300 million this year.

Pretty good company. But.

Think maybe pushing four, I think I heard

pushing four. But either way insane.

To me, once you're over a

couple hundred million, I mean,

what's another a hundred?

Here's the thing that Curtis and I

talked about that I think is really

interesting for everybody

who's listening to this,

especially if you're a brand owner.

Curtis has been absolutely grinding at

building a personal brand this year.

And.

I asked him, I said, what's the number

one reason you do it? And he said people.

He said,

the reason why I'm doing this is for the

people and the kind of people that come

in when I post on LinkedIn and I

say, Hey, I've got an open position.

A players that come through are just

phenomenal. And yes, I have to S through,

but those people that are the learners,

that's who I'm always going for.

I'm like, if you are listening

to all of this new stuff,

you're probably my kind of people.

Totally. It's a great call out.

Great call out. Okay, awesome.

So now everyone's motivated to start

their own podcast or it is a grind,

but we love it and we do endorse it. So

with that, let's dive into TikTok shops.

And so Jordan Dazzle

us. Wow us, motivate us.

Why should we consider TikTok shops?

What are you seeing with

your agency clients and the

brands you're investing in?

What's going on with

TikTok shops right now?

Alright, here's your soundbite.

Brett TikTok shop right now is bigger.

The exponential curve that we see

right now is bigger than Amazon or

Shopify was from launch. Wow. That

is what TikTok shop is right now.

People will make fun of it on some of

the bigger brands will make fun of it.

So from a.

Wait, unpack that a little bit

or define that a little bit.

So TikTok Shops is bigger

now than Amazon was

after launch, or what do

you mean specifically?

Exactly.

So it is bigger than

Amazon or Shopify was when

they launched, and it's not even

close the exponential curve.

None of us understand what an

exponential curve looks like.

It's really difficult for us

to wrap our brains around.

All we know is we see it afterwards

and we know we're like, oh,

that's what exponential growth is, right?

AI is one of those things right now that

we're like, everyone's like, oh yeah,

I was sitting in my backyard of

a different house that I have,

and I was sitting back there with my

brother-in-law and we have to redo the

roof, right? Oh, great, we have

to redo the roof. I'm like,

I'll bet you in three years that there's

going to be a robot that goes and does

that. And he's like, oh,

no way. No way. I'm like,

then you don't understand an exponential

curve because if you look today,

oh three PRO is released.

It is scary, intelligent,

what oh three Pro does, and again, we're

at the bottom of an exponential curve,

the same thing right now with TikTok shop.

So when you see that curve starting to

rise and you understand what that looks

like for people who are not watching it,

is this exponential hockey

when we understand that

we're at the bottom of it on

TikTok shopping.

Social commerce. So you think we're

about to hit that inflection point.

Right now? Absolutely. I don't even think

we're even close to it on TikTok shop.

I don't think that people are getting

trained right now how to purchase, right?

They're getting trained

how to socially purchase.

We've done it for a while with Facebook,

but we haven't really Facebook and sorry,

meta never really cracked

the code on Social.

Promise, right? They tried a

few years ago social shopping,

and I think Zuck was just ahead of his

time a little bit there that it looked

promising, it made sense, it didn't work.

But TikTok shops has kind cracked the

code. Now, I want to clarify a little bit.

So you think we're just getting started

with TikTok shops, is that because,

I mean, it's huge.

So the number of users was hundred 30

million users in the US or whatever the

users are there.

It's 180 million are on there

for 60 minutes or more a day.

Holy cow. That's insanity.

So are you saying it's really just

beginning to explode though TikTok shops

because people are still not

buying mass on TikTok shops.

So of that 180 million,

there's only a smaller percentage

that are actually buying.

And so there's all that upside there.

Yes. Because the trust

factor is not there yet.

And also the affiliates

aren't quite there yet either.

So I will tell you a leading indicator

that tells me that this is the biggest

opportunity ever.

CPMs dropped last year by 26% on TikTok.

No way.

So what does that tell you? To me,

that doesn't tell me that that's a

demand issue with advertising because

advertising dollars have only gone up.

What it tells me is that it's a

supply issue in a good way. Sorry,

that there is more supply

that is driving CPMs down.

What me? Super excited.

I was on a webinar yesterday

with Triple Whale and Fin Loop,

and they were going

over these stats. To me,

I'm just a huge nerd when

it comes to this stuff.

And I was looking at some of

these numbers just being like,

nobody realizes right now

still 70 to 80% of all

spend,

and this is from Triple Whale who has

tons of stats out there out there.

Hopefully you don't have a triple oil

competitor as a sponsor of this or

anything.

I don't. No, but I'm friends with a lot

of them and friends with Triple oil.

Love those guys.

Wonderful. So in the stats that they see,

70 to 80% of all ads spend

is happening on meta.

Just think about.

The disruption and their purview is like

D two C brands. So D two C brands, 70,

80% is on meta. Yeah.

Totally. The amount of brands that

have tried TikTok and been like, well,

I'm just not getting the

right attribution, right? Oh,

attribution isn't working. All of

that is going away. By the way,

in the world of ai,

mms are going to be so cheap and we're

going to be able to measure all this

stuff. Well, that brands

are going to realize, oh,

there's all of these 180 million people

that could be discovering my products

over on TikTok that aren't yet.

Yeah, it totally makes sense.

And it's one of those things,

and we experienced this a lot

on the YouTube side of things,

where billions of users

long engagement time is 40

some minutes a day.

Average session for YouTube users

are both behind TikTok, it seems.

So there's a ton of supply there.

There's really no reason that it shouldn't

work other than if your approach is

wrong, your creative is wrong or something

like that. Same is true with TikTok.

It has the users, people

are addicted to it.

So if you can get the right

message there in the right way,

there's zero reason it shouldn't work.

And so if it hasn't price some

fundamental reasons for that,

which we can unpack. And so yeah,

so it's about to hockey stick,

even though it's been

growing rapidly so far.

But really when you look

at it, you're like, okay,

so the top brand is doing 15 million

a month, right? That's not that big.

It's not that big.

That's not that big when you

compare it to an Amazon or Shopify.

Brands that's on Amazon or whatever. Yeah.

It's not that big. And that's why

brands are ignoring it. And I'm like,

go ahead and ignore it at your own

peril if you want to ignore it.

And especially big brands, look

at, I'm just going to name them.

Look at Estee Lauder.

They just laid off 6,000 people in q1,

6,000 people. They laid

them off for a reason.

They are having a hard time

penetrating that market.

It is a very difficult

market to penetrate,

and they are having a very difficult time.

They own a ton of different brands

and they laid 6,000 people off.

That is wild. And it continues to happen.

It's continuing to happen in the space

for brands that are not changing.

P and g just happened to them too, and I

think it was around 6,000 as well. Now,

AI I think is part of that, right?

AI's part of that, But I do think that

these old dinosaurs are having a very

difficult time moving over and

thinking about social commerce.

I'll tell you why, Brett,

the reason why they're having such a hard

time with this is that they don't get

to say yes or no to the

content that comes out.

I sat in a boardroom recently, TikTok

shop headquarters are in Seattle.

I live just as Vancouver. And I went

down there and I went down for a coffee,

by the way. That's what I was

told, that it was a coffee.

I get in and there's a

boardroom of 30 or 35 people.

I thought you went over to seven.

Coffee. There's your coffee. Sit.

Down, we got questions for you. Yeah.

Look, I didn't have a presentation

or anything. I was just like, okay,

so we're just going to do q and a or

what's it going to look like? Don't worry,

I'm really good on the

spot. So it was good.

But I was with the

global key accounts team.

So this is brands that

do 4 billion in a bus

and they have to be across. They

can't just do 4 billion in the states.

It has to be in multiple markets,

right? Really big high-end team.

And they said, what do

you do when a brand,

one of the biggest pushbacks that we

get from the global key accounts team,

from the, sorry, global

Key accounts. Brands,

is that they want to say yes or

no to content. I'm like, okay.

So the salesperson to me says, yes,

absolutely you can, but you can't.

You can't. You can't. I'm sorry.

You just have to say yes to

all of it or no to all of it.

And that's why they're losing. That's

why the big brands are losing. Yeah.

I mean, think about it this way.

Are you going to say you want

to say yes or no to Amazon?

Product reviews pretty limited there.

If it's fraudulent or whatever,

illegal or malicious, you can get

that removed. But other than that,

those reviews are going to be

there. So that's the way it works.

And shoppers want those reviews and they

trust those reviews and they look at

those reviews. And the

same is true on TikTok.

People go there for

product recommendations.

I was talking to my 17-year-old

daughter just the other day,

and I was trying to convince her to

use TikTok less just for her own mental

health. She's very healthy, she's an

amazing student, all these things.

But I'm like, Hey, spend less

time there. And she's like, well,

but I search for stuff there and

that's where I even crazy details,

crazy stuff I want to find. I search

on TikTok. I'm like, okay, makes sense.

And so that's where people

want to consume content.

That's where they want to get product

recommendations. So you can avoid it,

but you're avoiding it

at your own app peril.

So this is really interesting. Let's go

into social search here for a second.

This is really interesting. All of

the stuff out there right now

is AI search is going to eat,

Google AI search is going to eat

Google. It's like, yeah, probably.

I'd search for so many

things using CHA bt.

But.

For the upcoming generation,

social search will crush Google. It

will absolutely crush Google. I mean,

you see it on YouTube and I consider

that social search. Social search.

I think that's one of the

places that's where I put money.

I put money on my podcast on YouTube just

because it's a great place for people

to discover the podcast.

And we get tons of subscribers just from

putting a little bit of money behind it

because that's where they're right.

I'm talking about D two C here,

but the same rules apply

and social search is

massive. So a brand that we work with,

we started working with them last August.

In August,

we ran a study on TikTok because

they're a global key account brand.

And we ran a study to see how

many searches they had on TikTok.

The answer was zero. They didn't show up,

nobody was searching for them

on social search on TikTok.

We ran that same study after bringing

them to over 2 million a month on

TikTok, and they had 880,000

searches in the previous two weeks.

We ran this in December. Whoa. It's

crazy. Crazy. Think about that.

Think about all of, and then the

halo to everywhere from that,

it is the discovery engine. It's also,

I think about these big brands, p and g,

Estee Lauder, all these big brands.

Do you know how much money they spend

on product research and marketing

research? It's crazy.

It's a pretty meaningful line item.

So we're talking about tens of

millions of dollars a year. Yeah.

Totally.

And my bet is that a lot

of that is going to go

away with social commerce because

you put the products out there.

Now people, what they have to do,

the reason why I love TikTok shop so

much is I own brands over the years.

That's the thing that we did. I

ran brands. I love building brands.

One of the things I hated

was working with influencers.

I despise working with influencers.

The reason is because you never

know what you're going to get.

You can pay a thousand dollars

for a post and be like, oh,

is this going to be good? At

least I like the CPM model.

I think that there's a really

interesting CCP M model like, well,

because then you're paying for reach. So

if the video works, I'm paying for it,

no problem. Totally.

But I'm not just randomly paying

for something to go out there.

That's the scary sort of part

of working with influencers.

So when TikTok shop came, I

understood it immediately. I was like,

this is the first time that

we've aligned incentives.

And how many salespeople do you

hire? You're always aligning comp,

the incentives with what you want to

get out of them. That is always what you

do. And it's the same thing

with influencers. You want

to get sales out your.

Influencers, show me the incentive,

I'll show you the result.

And it's very true here as well.

And so all of these creators on TikTok

shop are only incentivized to make

money. Rarely are you paying out

big commissions, right? Sorry,

big retainers. Very, very rarely.

And so let's think about this.

You are completely incentivized. They

are just trying to sell your product.

And so what they're going to do is

they're going to get really creative and

they're going to think about the different

ways to sell your product and what

exactly is unique about

the product to sell.

And so now you get all of this

market research, you're like, oh,

it was when they said, use

the eyeshadow under your eyes.

And that's a cool use case.

I dunno. I dunno makeup.

But what I'm telling you is there's

all of these different ways with a shoe

brand that we work with. They

came up with catch phrases, Brett,

there's catchphrases

that the brand now uses.

There was a product for with a shoe

brand that we work with, a very big,

well-known shoe brand. It was a dog,

the product, nobody was buying it,

absolutely no one.

And then the crazy thing is that they

from this product ended up

going absolutely viral on TikTok

selling out completely.

Now Sydney Sweeney is representing

that product and it's now one of their

core products, the ultimate influencer

of our day right now. What is.

This product? Can you

mention this product?

It's shoes. I don't dunno if

I can mention the brand, but.

You can probably search on TikTok for

Sydney Sweeney and Shoes and you'll see

it. So there you go. Yeah, so check it.

Out and you'll be like, Sydney

Sweeney represented this shoe brand.

It was incredible. Such

a great play. But guys,

these shoes were sitting

doing nothing. They were dogs,

absolutely. But this person came up

with a really unique hook for this shoe,

and it just ended up going

absolutely viral. And again,

then they got Sidney Sweeney on. Wow.

Crazy, crazy.

This would've never happened.

They never in their wildest dreams

would've been able to do that through some

kind of focus group,

which is why I'm obsessed with talking

to the big brands and all the time,

I cannot wait to tell people about some

of these huge brands that we're working

with because it's really, really

fun. And you'll be like, oh,

this old chap is coming into

the social commerce space.

Interesting.

Yeah, yeah, I love it. But talk about

real time feedback, unvarnished truth.

This is people taking action and voting

with their attention span and with their

wallet on what they want to pay

attention to, what they care about.

Focus groups are nice but misleading

and kind of old and old approach,

so get real time feedback. You

can get that on TikTok for sure.

So I love that. What

are some misconceptions,

because I talk at a lot

of events as to you,

I'm usually talking about YouTube or

Amazon, but TikTok comes up a lot.

I hear all kinds of wild things sitting

over a lunch or dinner table or talking

in hallways and stuff,

but what are some misconceptions

about TikTok shops that we need to

bust and clarify?

The misconception is that any old

Amazon brand can come over and sell on

TikTok.

The biggest misconception that I see

with all brands is that they think it's a

demand capture channel.

It's a demand gen channel.

This is why so many agencies

don't understand it because

they come from Amazon

world. You and I have talked about this.

A lot of them have been trying to acquire

us because they don't understand how

to demand gen.

Right?

When you come from direct to consumer,

and I have to say when for me,

coming from direct to

consumer in apparel is,

and not cheap apparel is

the most difficult thing

you can possibly do, right?

Totally agree. Coming from there and

trying to sell on TikTok shop is like,

awesome. This is so easy. So.

Easy.

Yeah, you're just generating demand.

But.

I think that one of the

biggest misconceptions is

that it's just easy and that

it's just going to work. It's like, no,

it takes a long time. We tell people,

when people come to us, we're like,

are you willing to light 50 K on fire?

It might not.

Are you willing to?

Now one of your competitors

has done pretty well,

but you need to be willing to light

$50,000 on fire or we can't talk because

this is one of those channels.

I recently was with the top TikTok

shop agencies, the other ones,

there was four of us in a room and

we were talking and we're like,

so how are things going? They're

like, well, things are really,

really good. And I'm like, well,

how good. They're like, well,

I would say we're about as good as the

average all star baseball players batting

average. Awesome. So about 400.

So yeah, yeah, three, maybe 400. Yeah,

400 is like Ted Williams type stuff.

So.

Just remember that this is a brand

new channel that we just don't

know. Now what you get out of

this channel is phenomenal.

I just got off of a workshop that I was

presenting on and I was talking about

this,

and I think that this might be the biggest

takeaway that people get from this,

Brett, is that that content,

even if you light $50,000 on

fire, let's just say, right?

I'm being hyperbolic here,

but let's just say that you light

$50,000 on fire and you get back

$20,000 in sales or something like that.

You still have all of this market research

and all of this content now that you

can repurpose across other channels.

YouTube being one of the main ones.

How much inventory is now on shorts?

Think about all of this

incredible content.

I think of TikTok Shop as the content.

TikTok shop content particularly is

the content that moves across channels.

TikTok is a Rubicon, so a Rubicon

being a door that you can enter,

but you cannot leave. It's a one way door.

TikTok content is a Rubicon. It can

travel wherever you wanted to travel.

You want to travel to Meta?

Yeah.

Awesome. We're obsessed right now.

So one of the things I didn't tell

you before at Social Commerce Club,

which is the agency that I run,

unless they're a huge brand that's working

with a performance agency that they

just can't get out of the contract,

we're actually not taking on anyone that

doesn't work with us across channels.

Wow. Yeah, I.

Know.

Crazy because that's smart. I mean,

you've got the greatest opportunity to

influence real growth if you do it that

way.

Totally.

And all of the brands that are working

with us are crushing where they're seeing

all of their channels up here.

And you and I know this consolidation

play in the agency world.

The reason why we're doing it is so that

we can actually help brands with their

entire business. This is the reason why

you and me and people like us are doing

this sort of thing because it's

so important for all of the areas.

And so I picture these

creators. First of all,

a year from now or two years from now,

every single brand is going to have a

creator community. And if they don't,

they're not going to be around.

They're going to have a creator community

and they're going to be leveraging

that creator community. I

tweeted about this yesterday.

I had a UGC creator quote me,

$450 for one post and

$50 a hook. I'm like,

no. In the world of TikTok,

that will not happen.

It just will not happen

because TikTok shop,

they're just going to do it for free

and they're going to probably make five

videos. We try it. Social commerce club.

We try and get five videos out of every

single TikTok shop creator. Interesting.

Sorry. Out of every sample we

send out, that is our goal.

That is one of the big

metrics we do that we.

Run every week. Why is

that? So why five pieces,

and then what are you doing to

ensure that? I love this angle. Okay.

So let me walk you through the numbers.

So we know that we must live

in some sort of mathematical,

whatever this world is that we live in,

but there's weird things

that happen with numbers,

and the Pareto principle

is just one of them.

We know that 80 20 works all the

time. You can just look at an end.

You can continue to go down on

80 20. So the more videos we get,

so let's say that we seed

to 200 influencers and we

get five videos from each of

them. We're getting a

thousand work at that point.

We're getting a thousand

videos from them from there,

200 of those videos are

going to be pretty good.

So 200 of those videos are going to be

good. Now take the 80 20 of those 200.

So now we're looking at 40 videos

of those will probably go viral.

The more videos we get, the

more chance we have to go viral.

That's just how it works.

Makes.

Sense. It's just the

numbers of what works and.

Why the PA principle works. The 20 rule

is so one out of five might work at all.

So if a creator only creates four,

they might not have gotten to

the one that actually works yet.

And so those all four

are a bust at that point.

So the numbers are really

important. Putting in the numbers,

the 650 podcast episodes, this is where

this comes in handy, right? You're like,

I'm just going to put in the reps.

Most brands will send out a

hundred samples and be like,

TikTok shop doesn't work.

I'm like, you're right.

You're right with that attitude.

You're absolutely right.

That's where I get fatherly.

Yeah, exactly. Not with

that attitude. It won't.

Yeah. So that's amazing. Let's

talk about this for a second then.

I want to get into some X factors in a

minute of what really moves the needle in

results. I'm sure it's a

numbers game, of course,

but what product categories,

what product offers,

what tends to work well on TikTok

and what tends not to work as well

on TikTok? What's your experience there?

So in general, now there

are exceptions to this rule.

High A OV does not work high,

high A OV does not work. Now,

mind you, I cannot tell

you which brand this is,

but we are working with one of the high

A OV electronics brand that I think is

going to crush their A OV is

going to be around 400 bucks,

but really fun product that you

want to buy on TikTok shop. Now,

I've seen Dyson. I wish

that we worked at Dyson.

It'd be a sweet logo and just very

fun to work with because I love their

products. I've seen Dyson

starting to crush on TikTok shop.

Think about how Spencer

Dyson are. So there.

Are exceptions to every rule.

Exceptions to every rule.

Couch, oovs, like AOV is over a hundred,

or what are you considering high OV here?

I would say anything over 200, I

wouldn't touch Ninja's. Done really well.

So Ninja has sold their creamy,

which is round the $200 mark and

done a really, really good job.

Bunch of the influencers at

Social Commerce Club, sorry,

creators at Social Commerce Club work

for Ninja as well, and have done really,

really well. So they're in this

multimillions of dollars a month in sales,

so it can work, but I wouldn't go

there first if I was a big Got it.

Totally makes sense.

Yeah. I would work with TikTok,

shop creators to create content.

So we do that at Social

Commerce Club and be like, Hey,

let's not go all in because we have

to send these massive samples too.

Really big backpack company came to

us recently wanting to work with us,

and their cost of goods is like a hundred

bucks per backpack. And I was like,

eh.

Tough man.

I don't want to send that many out

because your post rate is only going to be

about 80%. So 20% of those

aren't even going to post.

So that just happens. That's just

part of TikTok shop, unfortunately.

Yep. Yep. Great. So hi ov, avoid that.

Any particular categories

or impulse purchases,

which that's lower A

OV and stuff like that,

but what categories work versus

don't work, generally speaking?

So supplements is an interesting

one. If you are a supplement brand,

you're going to have a hard

time working with an agency,

because I actually saw recently

on the TikTok shop chat,

somebody's like, Hey, I've

got 20 supplement brands.

Don't want to work with them

anymore. Anybody want them?

Because it's just a grind.

It is a grind because let's be honest,

90% of supplements are bs. Right?

Right. That's.

True. And so you're.

Trying to, I take a lot of supplements,

but most of them are garbage. Yeah.

Totally.

And so you have to wade through and

figure out what is a good supplement?

What do I actually want to stand behind?

And creators are kind of getting sick

of working with supplements. Now,

another reason why supplements are

so tough is because there's so many

guidelines that will get your account

shut down if you're a creator and you talk

about the supplement. So they're

just like, I don't want to touch it.

That's why it's getting difficult

to sell supplements there. Now,

can you Absolutely. Some of the biggest

brands out there are supplement brands.

Goalie is still one of the top ones,

right? They've done an awesome job,

but also they sell great stuff, goalie.

We all know and trust Goalie already.

So there's already that factor.

So supplements, I'm sorry,

you're just going to have a more

difficult time doing that, right?

Yeah, you can try. You can try, but it's

just going to be a lot more difficult.

So just so you are aware.

Right? But things like beauty,

fashion, maybe food and Bev,

some of those categories

tend to work well, right?

Yeah. We have a new beauty brand,

fairly well known who came to us.

They were doing 6,000 a month.

We've gotten them this month they'll

probably do 200 K profitably. So again,

people are like, oh, those aren't

big numbers. It's like, well,

actually they'll have 30 million views.

Do you know how much in media value

that is? Crazy. Amounts insane.

And every other.

Channel is popping. It's low cpm.

That's an insane amount of money.

Yeah.

Totally.

Yeah. And you've got now,

if you're selling on Amazon or on

your own Shopify store or whatever,

to buy those 30 million views

on YouTube or on Meta or on

tv, forget about that. It's a

massive, massive budget. Massive.

Probably had a $30 CPM to buy those views.

Depending on where you're

buying. Yeah, yeah. I mean,

maybe you get it down into the single

digits if you're buying certain YouTube

areas or like Amazon DSP or something.

But if you're buying premium stuff

like YouTube Select or Hulu or Netflix,

$30 CPM for sure.

So people don't get this, Brett,

these are premium placements.

These are in the feed.

This is all premium inventory and it's

organic inventory.

The thing that we didn't talk about

before was the ability then to take that

content use.

There's a tool that I like called

Funnel that identifies the content.

Then you can whitelist that

content right in there.

So you just ask for whitelisting

one click over into meta, right?

And then there's awesome. I mean,

you'd be able to speak more

into whitelisting on YouTube,

but there's very simple ways to

whitelist on YouTube as well, right?

This content, and this

is the way of the future,

and this is how brands

are going to succeed.

Totally makes sense. Walk me through

some, what are some of the X factors?

What are some of the things that

need to be true about your brand,

about your product? Is it feature

driven? Is it something new and novel?

Is it something that's just really visual?

What are some of the X factors that can

help determine whether this is going to

be a success or not?

So that's the crazy thing.

You can sell boring products

on TikTok shop, right?

I made a whole YouTube video on this.

Here's how you position boring products,

and actually boring products do really

well. It's what the creators do with it.

It's the little bit of the value that

you give to the creators and the little

bit of direction that you give to them

that really make your product go and it

doesn't need products, don't need X

factors, they just don't. That's great.

I could probably sell a pencil on TikTok

shop. I've often thought I'm like,

I want to become a TikTok shop

creator. Just I can show people, Hey,

here's how you do it. Here's how

you're going to go about this.

Storytelling is a really big one.

People who tell really good stories,

they crush.

Nobody thinks they're selling,

telling that story that lands it's

benefit oriented, and then yeah,

it can be something simple every day

and can still work. So it's amazing.

So.

No X factor. I hate to tell everyone

the X factor is your creativity.

Good. That's good. Yep, yep. So your

creativity, the creative's, creativity,

creativity, totally makes sense.

So walk us through high level.

What does the TikTok

Shops playbook look like?

So how am I starting,

how am I hopefully not completely

burning my 50 K or whatever,

but how am I starting? How am I finding

influencers? How am I seeding products?

How am I testing, iterating, learning,

and then how am I eventually

getting to viral success?

Totally. So let me walk through

the zero to a hundred K playbook.

There's three phases

to this playbook, okay?

So number one is make sure your

products are set up correctly,

right? This is a massive part of this.

So make sure that your products

are set up very similar to Amazon,

where you want to make sure that you

have the ability to use to sample.

So if you were using a bundle, sorry,

you're trying to sell a bundle,

which I highly recommend that you do,

don't just try and sell $15 products.

Try and bundle those products. You don't

want to send your bundle out to them.

You want to the creator, you want to

send out one product to the creator,

and then they talk about your bundle.

So making sure that stuff

like that is set up correctly.

Making sure that your listings,

your TikTok shop listings are

pretty and are going to convert.

So there's a bunch of stuff.

I won't get into all of that,

but making sure that all of that is

set up correctly is really important.

Then using,

I do not recommend this movement out there

right now of people manually reaching

out to people. I'm like, there's

no value in manually reaching out,

use a bot.

So I recommend reacher.

I've been an advisor to theirs for

quite a while. They're awesome guys.

They're really building some cool

stuff. I recommend using them,

or Yuca is the other one that's out there.

Reach out to as many influencers as

you or creators as you possibly can.

So again, two different

things. Creators, influencers.

So you're reaching out to

them, offering them product,

seeing if they're interested. What

does that outreach message look like?

Totally. So sorry, before that,

one thing that I want to make sure

that people understand is that you can

syndicate your reviews from D

two C over into TikTok shop.

Really important that you do that,

because what you're trying to do at first

is build up all of this social proof

that you don't have yet. So

if people know, oh, good,

there's 7,000 reviews that they have from

D two C that you move over there with.

Awesome. Judge Me is a really good

one. It's like 15 bucks a month.

It actually will scrape all of your

Amazon reviews and move them over again.

Nice. I did not give you that advice.

I think it's somewhere

grayish in terms of service.

Just know that you can do that.

One, but you need the

social proof there for the.

Influencers and for the shoppers. Exactly.

So the biggest thing that you're actually

trying to do is you're trying to sell

to the influencers at first. So what

you're trying to do is be like, Hey,

by the way,

we've sold X number of millions of these

over on Amazon, over on Shopify.

We're new to TikTok shop.

We would love you.

Look like you've got some great content

and that you can really help us out

here. We'd love to offer you X

percentage to be able to do this. Now,

be as generous as possible at first.

So offer whatever your even

is without running ads.

See what that is and offer that. If

you can offer 40% commission at first,

do it like, Hey, look, I'm going

to offer you 40% commission,

and if your videos also let them

know if your videos do well.

We're going to put ad spend behind

your videos right now. So greater.

Visibility, greater audience growth

for you potentially as an influencer.

Is that kind of part of the

benefit there or the pitch to them?

Totally. And get in on the

ground floor, all of the things,

all the messages that you would use in

multi-level marketing, just use here.

Get on the ground floor, get

your friends involved. I.

Love that. Love that. It's hilarious.

So one of the things that you're going

to want to do though at first is make

sure that you have two different

levels of commission set up.

One for organic and one for ads.

Really important that you do that.

You do not want to also give them 40%.

On ads because ads, you're

funding a lot of that reach.

So that needs to be a lower commission.

Totally.

And as more and more creators get on

there and more people create content on

TikTok, it's just harder

and harder to go viral.

And so you'll want to spend a

decent amount of money on ads.

Now when you get to a certain point,

there's a screenshot that

I shared this morning.

It was like $3,500 worth of ads spend

for like $55,000 worth of sales.

That's crazy. Crazy.

That is what happens when you

start getting this flywheel going.

That's like a 14 return on ad

spend. Just wild numbers doesn't.

Anywhere else.

They're not crazy numbers, but it

takes a while. You need to be patient.

These things take a while to

be able to happen and snowball.

So just know that this takes a while.

So that's all part of phase one is

getting those Got it messages out there.

You want to be on it.

So as soon as they say yes and

make sure at this point too,

I don't know how detailed

we can exactly get here,

but I'll try and get

into some of the gotchas.

So one of them is making sure that

you don't auto approve samples.

Make sure you want to, when

have a cast a pretty wide net,

there's going to be people that say

yes that you don't want, right? Right.

Cast a wide net.

See who wants to take the sample and

then approve them from there, right?

But don't be too picky.

Definitely not too picky at first.

I don't ever go after any creators

that don't already have GMV.

They have to have GMV.

They have to have produced some revenue

for somebody before I'm going to go

after. Makes sense?

Yep. Yep.

So that's the first phase.

That's all phase one.

So yeah, what's phase two?

So phase two now is seeing what

works and pouring gasoline on that

fire. So now you've gotten to your

first thousand sales in phase one,

and now you're looking and seeing,

okay, who do I now want to recruit for?

A couple different things. One is

brand owned content is awesome,

and what you can do is you can actually

work with some of these creators,

give them a retainer and a percentage

of sales to start posting on your brand

handle.

So that's one that TikTok is going

to be pushing a lot in Q3 this year.

From what we've heard, they're going to

be pushing brand owned handles a lot,

and so this is where you can start

to hire a creator to do that for you,

for your brand handle. So start

identifying some of those creators now.

Start putting money behind creators that

are doing well and let them know. By

the way, if you do 10 videos for me,

I'm going to put minimum a

thousand dollars behind your ads,

behind your content. That's where

you start to get this flywheel going.

Start to then take those

people and put them

into a brand owned community. Like I said,

every single brand is going to have a

brand owned community in the future.

We have a massive, really

high GMV creator community at Social

Commerce Club that we have curated and is

incredible.

Start to take those people and put

them into your own brand community.

You can use Discord, you can use

WhatsApp. I like WhatsApp personally.

I think it's the millennial

in me that likes it.

Discords a great option as well though.

It's just the engagement on Discord

isn't quite as high to be totally honest.

People have a million discord. Discord.

Is kind of messy. I don't really

enjoy being on there personally.

But it's like being in another

Slack group. You're just like, oh,

another Slack group. I just can't

keep up with all these. Oh my gosh,

yes. So this is something

to do at this point,

and then this is where you're

going to identify. So at first,

I forgot to mention in phase one, you're

going to pick your top three skews.

After this,

your top three products after this is

where you're going to start to pour

gasoline on one of them. Go after

one of them as your Heroku, right?

You'll find out which

one works really well,

and then you're going to go after that.

This is where you're

going to start scaling.

But I like that versus just testing

one because you may be wrong.

That may not be the one that takes off

or catches fire on TikTok. So try three,

then zero in on your hero product.

Totally. And if you're a huge

brand listening to this, try 10.

Just try again.

Try some of your products that might not

be working because people might not be

searching them on Amazon or caring

about them on D two C. Just try.

The worst thing that you can do is you

sent out a bunch of products that weren't

moving anyway, and you got

some good content out of them.

This is where you're going to want

to start to build your relationships,

and you're going to want to start to

ask about whitelisting across other

platforms. So again, this is why I am so

obsessed with this where I'm like, no,

you're not brands.

You may not work with us on TikTok

shop unless we have the whole thing,

because otherwise you are wasting

all of this incredible content.

That's the only content you should be

using is all of this creator content

listed. The studies.

Are you're only get a fraction of the

benefit. You're creating all this content.

You got all this gold

that's being created here,

you got to redeploy it or else

you're not getting max value.

Well, meta just put out a study,

and there's actually five of them,

five different case studies.

The sort of average across the case

studies is that whitelisted ads,

the CPA is 50% lower than brand ads

would you not do?

Why would you not stop literally

everything you're doing right now and go

whitelist every single ad that you have

because people buy from other people

that they like know and trust,

not from your brand. Nobody

wants to buy from your brand.

Maybe they do,

but they would much rather buy from

somebody they like know and trust and a

third party that is talking about Totally.

It's the same principle in everything.

This is the way that SEO works, right?

This is why still the number one

signal in SEO is backlinks because.

It backlinks, even when Google

denies it, it's still backlink.

It is a vote of confidence from the rest

of the internet right there. Social.

Proof, social proof. There's no

better way than for you to do that.

That's why people like Brett and I go

on each other's podcast to say, Brett,

you are an awesome guy.

I just gave you some of my social proof

over and I'm hoping you're going to do

the same, Brett.

Yes, exactly, exactly. But it makes a

huge, huge difference. So I love that.

Okay, I think we're ready

for phase three then.

So phase three is where we get a lot

of brands into, which is really fun.

So this is a hundred thousand

dollars a month plus.

This is where you are going

to now go out to an even

bigger creator community. So this is

where I like to start sending out.

So if you had a hundred

thousand dollars a month,

this is where I want you to start

sending out 500 samples a month to

only the highest SGMV creators

because they can see how much money

people have done on your

particular skew, right?

Or on your particular product id. PID

is as people internally always call it,

I'm like, can you just call it

product id? I hate the word pi. Pi,

but PID is also where you house multiple.

You can house multiple skews in a pi.

So anyway, there's all that

boring. You can cut that part out.

No, let's leave it in. The occasional

touch of nerdiness is great.

We want that.

So this is where you're going to start

to go after a lot of high GMV creators

and then pour gasoline on the other

ones. So now throughout all of this,

we're using different kinds of ads

throughout. So at first, during phase one,

we're using product shopping

ads and video shopping ads.

Product shopping ads are

essentially Google Shopping ads.

So if you think about them like

that, they happen on search. Again,

social search is massive. So

they're happening over there

and we're just leaving it wide open.

We're doing video shopping ads,

which are basically spark ads,

whitelisted ads from these creators.

We're just getting permission to use

them and we're doing those in phase one.

In phase two,

we're going to start to set some target

return on ad spends and see how much

better we can get as far as the amount of

efficacy that we're getting from those

ads during phase one. Don't care.

Just don't care.

You're just trying to get to a certain

level where other creators want to work

with you.

During phase three is where we're going

to transition into GM v max and GMV Max

is like, it's

their AI on steroids

that's working for you.

Once you get to that certain

level into phase three,

that's where I recommend

going into GMV Max. Now,

the problem is you do not choose

where your ad spend goes with GMV Max.

So I recommend using that at the end.

It's like a very automated system.

This is where during phase three,

you now want to start identifying other

products that could potentially work and

start seeding those products

as well. Interesting.

That's the really high

level playbook for you.

So I love that. It was really

a very clear breakdown,

and it'll be all be in the

show notes. We can see it,

but it sounds like ads are actually a

pretty important component of this, right?

Did you ever see someone excel with

TikTok shops without the ad component?

Nope. Nope, nope. Ads have to be a.

Part of that You use at every stage,

or mostly like stage two and stage

three or phase two and three.

No ads need to be a part of it the

entire way through the entire time,

the entire way through. Unfortunately,

you just cannot just send product

out and hope it goes viral.

Totally makes sense. Totally

makes sense. Love it.

Once you pour ads onto it,

creators want to work with you,

you're going to get into

the algorithm a lot more,

and it's just the way that it works. It's

unfortunate too, for organic YouTube,

it's the same thing, right?

There was a heyday and maybe,

and also if you hit the algo absolutely

perfectly right on organic YouTube,

you can do this. For the most part,

you need to promote that with ads to get

it into the algo and start working for

you. It's just the way, I hate that

that's the game, but that's just the game.

It's the game. It's the game.

Totally makes sense there. Totally.

It makes sense. Well, let's step

back a little bit. First of all,

this has been fantastic. Thank you,

Jordan. We're about out of time,

but I want to talk about one

final topic here as we wrap up,

or one big topic and then a

subset. So social commerce,

you and I are both very

bullish on this, obviously.

I think we're really in the early

innings. It's going to take off.

I think meta is going to solve it.

I think Google's going to solve it,

or YouTube rather,

with YouTube affiliate and YouTube

shopping and things like that.

But what are you guys doing

right now with YouTube?

So I know your focus

is mostly TikTok shops,

but you guys are doing some

cool stuff on YouTube as well.

So tell us about that.

Totally.

So we're beta testing something right

now with a few really big brands that I,

I'm so excited about, and these

are creator ad reads, right?

Within YouTube videos.

The big issue as everybody knows is

trying to actually get ahold of these

creators and then negotiate with them.

So we found an awesome partner that

we are working with right now that

does this using ai, and also there's

all of the brand safety issues,

all of this kind of stuff.

We are seeing some insane,

insane results with this right

now. Nothing. You guys have seen.

You paying them those

creators on a CPM basis.

So you're using this AI tool to find them.

Then you're paying them on

a CCP M basis or commission.

Them on the CCP M basis. Exactly.

And the AI is taking care of all of

the measurement and everything in the

background. Wow. The cool thing is,

is that you're actually only paying for

the first 30 days of CPMs. Interesting.

And YouTube gets better over

time or the right videos.

Do the right videos get better over time?

They get the long tail on those videos,

massive long tail on those videos.

So it ends up being,

so let's say you're paying

like a $50 CPM at first,

your CCP M ends up usually

coming in at about half of that.

The actual effect of ccpm plus,

these are incredible reads,

and they don't show up as ads.

They're not skippable, right?

Yep. It's in the content,

the creator, it's Mr. Beast.

I don't know that he does that,

but other creators being like, Hey,

this is the thing I use and this

is why I love it, Ridge wallets.

It's how Ridge Wallets really

initially got their hockey sick growth,

and now they do a ton of stuff, biggest

spinner on meta stuff like that,

but they did live Nvidia

reads with influencers or with

creators on YouTube. That's

kind how they took off.

So to me,

this is our foray at Social

Commerce Club into YouTube until

the YouTube,

until YouTube figures out how to

replicate what TikTok Shop has done.

I just want to talk to that. They're

working on it. They're working on it.

I think they'll get there, but

they're not there yet. For sure.

I'll tell you why I'm scared about it

is because their platform,

YouTube's platform is not built

for virality in the same way that

TikTok is.

We have a TikTok shop creator that

has less than 10,000 followers who

produce $250,000 of GMV last month,

less than 10,000 followers. That's

not the way that YouTube works, right?

Think the algorithm not that aggressive.

You don't go that viral that quick.

Yeah.

Last time I checked,

you have to have 10,000 followers

to even be in the affiliate program

versus TikTok. It's like anyone

can go be a TikTok shop creator,

and it's incredible the amount of people

that are making careers out of this and

literally paying their

house off. It's wild.

The people that are doing this

YouTube has not yet figured that out,

and I have talked to 'em

many times and told them,

here's your issues that

you're having right now,

is that not anyone can just go

on there and do this. Right?

And maybe that's on purpose.

I don't know. I don't know.

I think that it's going to

be a really cool channel.

I'm bullish on anything Google

does. They do, right? So I.

Think they'll figure it out. I

mean, the creators are there,

the viewers are there, the watch time

is there, all the components are there.

So unless YouTube just completely

screws it up again and again,

I think they're going to eventually

nail it. But you're right,

and content doesn't go viral as quickly.

Back to my 17-year-old who I'm trying to

convince to spend less time on TikTok,

she's like, YouTube shorts. I think this

is going to sound real professional,

but I think the work she used was

it's booty cheeks compared to TikTok.

I've never heard that term before.

Isn't it funny? She's like, okay,

that's a weird way to say it, but okay.

She's like, no,

TikTok learns you so quickly and the

content is all really valuable and what I

want, I don't get the same thing

on YouTube shorts is what she said.

So I think YouTube's got some

things to figure out there,

but I am bullish on it. I

think they will figure it out.

And so man, I love what you're

doing within Nvidia live reads.

Is that something you

can share that source?

So that's probably a little

bit proprietary there,

the AI tool and what you're

using to manage all of that.

As of right now, I'm going

to keep that one between.

Totally get it totally between you and

me. So the interesting thing actually,

we were actually,

I was doing some sponsorship kind

of stuff with them and I realized,

and they came to me and they said, Hey,

we have all these giant brands coming in

and we thought that this tool could be

used without an agency and

actually it needs an agency.

Interesting, interesting.

It needs somebody monitoring

it and the AI cannot yet say

approve these things and the

brand safety is really important.

So there has to be someone in the middle.

So it's either a full-time person on

your team or an agency. Right. Doing it.

Totally makes.

Sense. Totally.

Makes sense.

Awesome. Well Jordan, this

has been fantastic, man.

I absolutely love what you guys are

up to. Love watching your journey,

love doing the podcast

swap with you. Super fun.

And so if there are brands

out there that are like, man,

I need to get on this TikTok shop train,

but I need someone who knows what they're

doing to guide me through those three

phases, how can they get in touch with

you? Who should get in touch with you?

And then how else can we get

our daily fill of Jordan?

Let's go to LinkedIn. I am very

active on LinkedIn and Twitter,

so you can go there and just search for

Jordan West marketer over there. But

we work with two levels of brands.

So we work with the bigger brands

on a full service sort of basis.

You can go to social commerce club.com.

That's the classic agency offering.

There's something actually recently that

we just launched right now that is in

beta. It's called Tick

TikTok Shop os Plus.

The idea is that we actually walk

smaller brands through who should not be

hiring an agency who need to be

doing this stuff on their own, right?

These are brands under

5 million ish generally,

and this walks them through their first

six months of scaling from zero to a

hundred thousand. We

meet every single week.

You can tap into all the resources

that we have as an agency,

but it's more of a done with you

type of program. We are like,

every single brand we talk to about

this is like yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Because they want to learn the muscle.

They just don't have the strategy or the

expertise to do it, and we do. So very.

Excited about that.

Love that.

Love that. And what's

that called One more time?

And that's all@socialcommerceclub.com.

That's all@socialcommerceclub.com.

That's called TikTok.

Shop OS Plus. Amazing. Love it. Jordan,

Wes, ladies and gentlemen, Jordan,

really appreciate it, man. Ton of fun.

Can't wait for round three or four,

whatever it's going to

be when we do this again.

Absolutely. We not nearly as much time

in between this time, Brett. Okay.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Let's make it a

regular segment. That's what we got to do.

Love it. Awesome brother so much,

Brett. Absolutely. And as always,

thank you for tuning in.

We'd love to hear from you.

What would you like to hear more of on

the show? And if you've not done so,

we'd love that review on iTunes. Makes

my day, helps other people find the pod.

And with that, until next

time, thank you for listening.