Navigating the World of Online Sales with TikTok

Can TikTok Shop redefine the future of e-commerce? Join us as Eitan Koter, co-founder and co-CEO of Vimmi, guides us through the exciting world of TikTok Shop—a platform shaking up the e-commerce landscape with its ability to produce engaging and shoppable videos. Eitan reveals how brands can harness this tool to drive sales without the burden of expensive paid media or the battleground of SEO. We dive into the expansion of TikTok Shop in the U.S. and Asia, exploring the diverse products it supports, from fashion to luxury items. Eitan also shares invaluable insights on setting up a TikTok Shop, including navigating regulatory hurdles and utilizing fulfillment services to bolster online presence and success.

Beyond TikTok, we shine a light on the broader realm of social commerce, emphasizing the power of short-form videos and live streaming in connecting with audiences. With practical strategies for creating content that resonates and addresses customer pain points, this episode underscores the power of authenticity and consistency in the fast-paced world of video marketing. We discuss the integration of tools like Vimeo and StreamYard to streamline sales efforts across platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest. Eitan and I highlight the nuances of video storytelling and the potent role of founder-led and employee-generated content in capturing the attention of Gen Z and millennials. Whether you're a seasoned marketer or new to social commerce, this episode equips you with strategies to leverage video for substantial business growth.

Chapters

• 0:00 TikTok Shop
• 15:38 Leveraging Social Commerce for Sales
• 21:28 Mastering Video Marketing for Social Commerce

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Elevate Media Podcast with your host, chris Anderson. In this show, chris and his guests will share their knowledge and experience on how to go from zero to successful entrepreneur. They have built their businesses from scratch and are now ready to give back to those who are just starting. Let's get ready to learn, grow and elevate our businesses. And now your host, chris Anderson.

Speaker 2: 0:24

Welcome back to another recording of the Elevate Media Podcast. I'm Chris Anderson, your host. Today is going to be a cool episode because it's something I don't think we've ever talked about yet on the show. For those who have a product specifically that they're trying to sell, TikTok shop is a newer avenue, but it's doing really well for a lot of people and the organic growth that comes from that.

Speaker 2: 0:48

and talking about, you know shoppable videos and how to grow organically with that, so we brought on an expert. We brought on Eitan Cotur and he is the co-founder and the co-CEO of Veeamie, a leading video commerce SaaS company providing multi-channel shoppable video and live shopping solutions to brands and retailers. Now he's been in the space for two decades at the minimum, and he's got all that experience in startups, public companies, including a NASDAQ IPO. So Eitan is a thought leader in video commerce, in digital marketing, social commerce and startup bootstrapping. So we're super excited to have Eitan on today. Eitan, welcome to the Elevate Media Show today.

Speaker 3: 1:34

Hey, thank you for a wonderful intro. How are you?

Speaker 2: 1:37

I'm doing great, doing great man. So yeah, let's dive right into it. For those who might not have any clue what this is what is TikTok shop right now?

Speaker 3: 1:46

So TikTok shop is probably one of the amazing ways today to grow organically online. We know it's so difficult to acquire new customers to our amazing brandcom website, right, right, whether if we do that through paid media, which is getting more and more expensive, or through SEO, which is getting very competitive and long-term. Tiktok Shop has been actively pushed very hard, positively, by TikTok itself, providing a lot of incentives, very low commission for any type of sales, and the idea is to create a variety of content. And we know that TikTok is video-based, right. So the engine of all these marketing activities are obviously videos, primarily the short-form videos and another flavor of video which is the live shopping video, which is kind of a longer form type of entertainment and commerce experience. And just to give you some number, tiktok shop generated around $11 billion in GMV last year in the US. This year they're expecting probably to double this amount and I think they're definitely on track. So I mean they're growing like crazy all over the world, obviously in terms of users, right. So like US is like at the forefront, right. So us uh account for about 12 percent of tiktok shop from from, uh, from a worldwide perspective, like the major countries are in asia, like indonesia with 20 percent, thailand with 18 percent, like in asia.

Speaker 3: 3:20

It's really interesting because when a new brand want to launch online, they don't build their own Shopify or whatever e-commerce platform. They go to TikTok shop and the big difference is is that you will capture attention the attention of the algorithms and attention of the real users. Yeah, and you can go viral organically right, something that you cannot do in any anywhere else and in tiktok shop it gives you the ability to create checkout experiences for shoppers. When they do this endless scrolling on TikTok right, suddenly they see one of your videos. It doesn't have to be a promoted video, it's an organic video, but it has a link or a buy now button.

Speaker 3: 4:16

It's kind of an interactive. When you click on that link, it redirects you to the TikTok shop area where the specific product page has been set up. It's a regular product page, like you have on any other e-commerce site, and you can actually check out from within the TikTok environment. And today you can check out. Users can check out through TikTok but also through Amazon Prime checkout, for example, which is a new partnership that they have. So they're doing a lot of things to help new arrivals, like small, medium brands, companies to sell online, and it started with probably fashion cosmetics like these small products. Yeah, probably less than hundred dollars. That's very easy to showcase something like a differentiate differentiator within like 30 seconds, right. But today all the niches are active on TikTok, from car dealers to furnitures, high ticket numbers like four digit items Everything works on TikTok these days.

Speaker 2: 5:17

So how hard is it to get into TikTok shop? Is it hard to set up? Is it pretty user-friendly and simple, or what's that process like getting one rolling?

Speaker 3: 5:25

So I'll give you the general let's say the general feedback is that it's very complicated. Okay, the issue is that I mean you need to have for sure you need to have a company registered in the US. You need to make sure that you can show various billing items, like receipts, that you can share. There is a process. It's not complicated in terms of the amount of information you need to provide. It's kind of cumbersome because they're asking for a lot of things. I guess it's from privacy regulation perspective.

Speaker 3: 5:56

They need to make sure you are based in the US. They need to make sure you are a solid company that is already working and they need to make sure you have a're a solid company that is already working and you need to. They need to make sure you have a fulfillment setup. If you don't, you. They are providing, like amazon are providing fba fulfilled by amazon. There is, you know, fbt fulfilled by tiktok so that they can provide the entire fulfillment, warehousing, shipping services. But it's not a must. Uh, they, it's a must to check out in tiktok, right, but it's not a must to be fulfilled. A must to check out in TikTok, right, but it's not a must to be fulfilled by TikTok. So you can choose any of your 3PLs or any of your warehouse and shipping companies. So the way to set up and I always recommend to use an agency for that because the setup is just one step Sometimes it takes three weeks, sometimes it takes maybe two months, gotcha, but once it's been set up, there is a lot of work and just maintaining, because you need to build your entire business in TikTok, meaning all the product pages, the inventory numbers, the pricing, probably before and after discount.

Speaker 3: 7:00

You need to make sure everything is managed professionally because they test you on every step of the process is managed professionally because they test you on every step of the process. Right, and you've been all they know. They test you on the quality of service, on the customer support, ship shipping times. They're like very, uh, strict. You know customer service expectation they want to provide to the us customer and they're very strict, very strict on this so is there?

Speaker 2: 7:24

is there a point where maybe people aren't ready to do TikTok shop, Like, should they be having so many sales per month to be able to say, okay, it's, it's makes sense? Or like, if they're just starting out, does it still make sense to get on TikTok shop even though they don't have a lot of sales?

Speaker 3: 7:38

Yeah, most of the scenarios are you know people, they already companies that already have their existing brandcom website and they're extending this. All the e-commerce providers are providing plugins to manage TikTok shop from within their environment. This is the way to go. As I said, in Asia, it's very common for most of the brands to launch on TikTok from day one and then, once they're successful, they will launch their own brandcom e-commerce platform. The US is the other way around, so you need to have your own e-commerce platform. You need to show some traction, that you have a physical address, that you're getting bills. They want to see that all these are in place before they get approved, and I guess it depends on the specific niche that you operate Some of the niches. They are very helpful in terms of helping you set up the TikTok shop and even provide incentives, because the way to promote, once everything is set up, the way to promote that is through video.

Speaker 3: 8:49

Okay, and video can be created in various ways. The most common way is to use the TikTok affiliate marketplace, where you can just engage or reconnect or connect with influencers that are active on TikTok in their various niches. Send them the products what we call probably product seeding or gifting and if they're happy, they will create videos for you and then you need to pay them a revenue share. Somewhere between 15 to 25% of the revenues will go to that specific influencer. So usually influencer marketing has. There are various ways to engage with those influencers. It could be a paid scenario where there's a hundred percent guarantee that you will get the video and they will. The influencer will post it on their own Instagram, on their own TikTok platform account Sorry, on gifting and sitting is just ship the product Again, if you select it within the niche that you operate, and they will create videos, promote it on their account and there is a mechanism within the TikTok shop just to create all these revenue shares. So if we talk about revenue shares and numbers, any company out there needs to understand that they need to spend at least 35% to 40% of their revenues towards this activity. So 15% to 40% of the revenues towards this activity. So 15 to 25% goes to the influencer. Tiktok will take somewhere between probably 8 to 11 or 12%, depend on the niches and then you probably need to work with an agency, will take another 5% plus a small retainer just to operate. Probably 5 to 10%. So there's a 35% to 40% commission that you need to price into this activity, which is fine because this will probably be the ratio of spend that you will go.

Speaker 3: 10:37

If you go into meta advertising or paid media, for example, or Amazon, and it's very, very difficult to succeed, the return on ad spend is really unknown. What used to work and better three years ago is not working today Because of the way they operate and competition same as Amazon. And on TikTok, you can ask an influencer to create content and all you pay is just that revenue share fees and if you are successful, you can then move to the next stage and spend on advertising on TikTok itself so you can promote that video. On the Vimeo platform, we are providing a video commerce platform that helps brands and companies to publish videos on their own website, but also on all the other social media accounts TikTok, instagram, facebook, youtube, pinterest, also other marketplaces and once we do that, we are able, through analytics, to understand which video works better and then we are able to push that video with advertisement, which we know the return on that spend is going to be quite dramatically good, right. So that's the way to work these days Start organically, and we always ask and recommend companies to be consistent, because TikTok is all about authenticity and consistency.

Speaker 3: 12:01

Right, it's not those long form YouTube where you need to spend weeks just to edit and make sure everything's set up perfectly, and this doesn't work on TikTok. Tiktok is all about authenticity. Even if you go live for a couple of hours, it needs to be authentic. No one cares about the background too much, right? It's vertical videos, right, and the idea is to create content that is resonating. Very well, it's authentic. And we always recommend at least two to three months consistency, at least three, five videos per per day sorry, per week, in order to make sure, um, you know, the shoppers are getting more confident about your content. They see that you are totally committed to the activity, they build some relationship with you and then you can promote them, you know, with some kind of a proposal of proposing your product so yeah, with that, with the video side of things, you know, what do you see work best?

Speaker 2: 12:55

I know you talked about shoppable videos and things like that. Yeah, what is a good, good way to grow on tiktok with the videos connected to the shop? How does that work?

Speaker 3: 13:05

yeah. So it really depends on which stage of the market they follow you are. So let's, if we just break it to three major parts awareness, consideration and decision stages. So if you're in awareness, just launching a new product, launching a new company, a new brand don't talk about your product, just provide educational content, marketing information like checklist, like trends in the industry. Provide knowledge and values right, checklist. It's very, very important. That creates a lot of confidence and followers because people are getting value. They're not being pushed with some kind of a product. They don't feel that they're in a sales event and this creates rapport and this creates relationship building, loyalty building and community building within the TikTok environment and any other environment.

Speaker 3: 13:48

Once shoppers are in the consideration stage so they're evaluating a few options don't be afraid to provide content around sharing information about your competitors right, because your customers, potential customers, they know about your competitors, they're spending time, so if you provide this information for them, they will respect you, right? So all these versus blogs that we used to have like a few years ago, that were traditionally created by affiliates and are creating by the providers themselves. So create content, share information how you are differentiated from your competitors and don't be afraid to mention your competitor's name. Create content around how to provide some case studies of what's working and what's not, and only in the decision phase, which is the last phase of the marketing funnel. Push the product just. Provide more product information primarily product reviews, testimonials, case studies provide prices, some special terms and use the videos to just convert. So video marketing has been around for quite a while and we know it's a major share of the overall marketing budget, right? So, like, 91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool, right, but not all of them are using shoppable video as a marketing tool. So shoppable video is a unique version of video marketing. Shoppable video is a marketing tool, so shoppable video is a unique version of video marketing, which is the interactivity element creates the option to check out from within the video itself, right? So think about a video with some interactivity on the video player. So you have like a buy now button or a chat system that you can communicate with the seller, ask some questions and once you click this buy now button, it gives you the ability to redirect your product page where you can create a complete, a full checkout experience, right?

Speaker 3: 15:38

So we always recommend start with those authentic short form videos 30 to 60 seconds, not more, using the right hook. Seconds, not more. Using the right hook, any business owner should know how to create a list of 50 of his biggest customer pains, right, and just create a video on each one of those pains and your feedback and your recommendation on how to overcome that pain. That should be not that complicated for anyone out there. Using the right hook, you can use a lot of AI tools just to help you with scripting. You can use like a teleprompter or you can use, if you're happy, just going out there and be natural in front of camera, be consistent for at least two to three months for the algorithms to work on your favor and also for audience to get to know you better. And that's on the short form video.

Speaker 3: 16:28

Tiktok and all the other platforms also. They have a live component as well. Live is also very big and the live shopping is a special version of live again, which gives you the ability to check out during those live events and ask questions through the chat Again, one-to-many video experience, but gives you the ability to check out, to ask questions through the chat and those live events can go, you know, for hours, right, and you can sell multiple products over there and you can invite co-hosts. And the idea is to push these events to your own website for anyone who is just currently on a website to get notified about these events and having the ability to check out from within the video, but also, in parallel, stream those videos, whether live or non-live, to all your social media channels so you can just enjoy the huge potential of social commerce and give the shoppers the ability to check out where they're spending most of their time. Obviously, they're not spending most of the time on your website. They're spending most of their time on TikTok, instagram, facebook, youtube, pinterest and all the others, and each one of those platforms are providing some sort of conversion functionalities, right, and it's really pushed a lot by all the platforms.

Speaker 3: 17:47

And it's really pushed a lot by all the platforms. Obviously, tiktok shop is leading the way because it's transferred from an entertainment platform to a search platform and now to a shopping platform. Youtube and Facebook and Instagram has their own focus. They're not a shopping platform, but they are providing a lot of tools to enable this interactivity from within the video, to create those checkout experience, and we just, on the Vimeo platform, we just created a very easy way. Just connect all your social media accounts. We integrated all the APIs of all these platforms, the shopping capabilities, and from one console, from one dashboard, you can manage and accelerate sales across all these channels social channels, your own website, marketplaces. This embed video player can be embedded on your website. All product pages are enriched with videos, with those interactive videos, which is very, very powerful. You can share this video with your partners, affiliate, just expanding the reach, bringing more customers and create more checkout and shopping experiences and opportunities right across all these channels.

Speaker 2: 18:56

And I think that's definitely huge and that's why you know, we use StreamYard for our just live streams, nothing shopping or anything, because you do one thing and if we go live, we can be on all platforms, and I think it's a huge thing to be able to do now with with these live streams, with these videos. You talk about interactivity. Is it only interactive on tiktok, where people can click, or does it become interactive on the other media platforms as well, so it's interactive almost on all the platforms.

Speaker 3: 19:25

So tiktok shop is the just the most straightforward experience that we know from an e-commerce platform. You click to purchase product page checkout, putting your credit card or Amazon checkout. On YouTube, for example, there is a new functionality that YouTube introduced it's called Digital Shelf which gives you the ability to add clickable buttons on the video player just to redirect to external product page, probably to your Shopify store or to your Amazon shop or to TikTok shop. I mean all these redirects again, you can manage from within the Vimeo platform on YouTube. Youtube also provide the ability to to add on the video description the actual link where you can able to to purchase, and the representation will be like a thumbnail below the video player where you can check out, also in live, those there in live, we know there is a chat so you can pin the link to purchase in the live.

Speaker 3: 20:21

So, and on instagram, you can tag products and and, for example, on Instagram stories, right, you can add the link. If you have more than 1000 followers, you can have a link to redirect to a product page. Facebook you have Facebook shop and Pinterest are providing checkout and shopping capabilities. Obviously, you know, obviously, amazon and Walmart they have a live shopping service that, again, can be published from within our platform. But the idea is just to leverage all these platforms to make sure we hit as many potential shoppers as we can from within this experience. And yes, any one of these platforms are providing kind of a checkout experience, but it will be developed more and more in the near future because everyone understands that social commerce is big and they want to monetize this opportunity.

Speaker 2: 21:21

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's going to continue to grow. We're going to continue to see it leveraged and utilized even more. Now, with a video, if people are making videos for, would you say, TikTok, you know you've kind of mentioned it a little bit Can you kind of go back through on the structure of that video to be most successful on that platform?

Speaker 3: 21:42

Yeah, so start with short form videos. Just spend a few minutes, you know. Create a list of the topics you want to cover, primarily around customer pains, and just define where you are in the marketing following, as we discussed, awareness consideration decision. Create a a content planning for the next quarter around um, around this type of ideas. You need to use the right hook because people are making decisions like within less than two seconds if they want to keep watching that video or just swipe up, right. So the hook is very, very important. And again, the only way to know what's working for a brand is just experiment. There is no blueprint for this, right. Something that works for the same brands in the same nation with the same product will not work for the other brands because customer sentiment is different, people are different, we all expose ourselves in a different way. So it's also very recommended for the brand owner that founder-led content is very, very powerful. Right. It's very easy to go and hire someone else to create content for you. We usually don't recommend that. You know it's not part of any ceo cmo job description to create content on video and tick tock right. But I think it's going to be a must right in the future and anyone wants to put himself out there. I mean, that's one of the only ways to differentiate and to break through is just, you know, putting yourself out there. Share your story why you started this company, why are you? You know, developing these products, what's inspiring you, what motivates you?

Speaker 3: 23:23

This is very, very powerful in the new generation of shoppers, like Gen Z, millennials, right, that are making decisions not just by this overly produced type of advertising and content, but through authenticity, differentiation, front-let content, employee-generated content. So we know about UGC, which is the user-generated content, but what's working today? A lot is EGC, that's the employee-generated content. So think about even a small company, medium-sized company. Few stakeholders in the companies and employees are creating content. They need to be incentivized on creating this content. This creates like a snowball effect and it's very, very powerful.

Speaker 3: 24:01

Think about it. You see video from various departments, like from the supply chain side, or manufacturing, then marketing, then sales, maybe the CEO, and this whole content planning creates huge effects. So EGC is very, very powerful. Yeah, it doesn't have to be overly polished. No one cares about those studios or high production values. Authenticity wins right and consistency wins. So, just if you're going to make one video in a week or two weeks, it's not going to work. You need to have this critical mass of reaching at least 100 videos right Within a scope of a few months and then you'll see the benefits of this tool. It's very, very powerful. It's so great.

Speaker 3: 24:45

I saw that in many, many instances during the last few years. I've been doing this for like two decades not TikTok, but video and video commerce is a special flavor that my company started about four years ago Just the use of video to sell products online right, obviously triggered by COVID and things that's happening in China with live shopping. But in the US, for example, the amount of gross merchandise value around live shopping and shopable video is increasing dramatically. We know that affiliate marketing is working very, very good and just growing, according to any reports, and so the video is just the main fuel for all these type of activities.

Speaker 3: 25:30

And just open your smartphone, whether you use a kind of a transcript tool or that you can find very easily, or just one of those people who can just highlight within a few bullets and just speak to the camera, just start to do that. After a few times you get very experienced to do that. So, like I'm creating videos, I'm not spending more than five minutes, right, and some of these videos, like went viral with, you know, hundreds of thousands of impressions, and don't ask me why it just you. You keep going right and just put yourself out there, be consistent and be authentic, right, no, just maybe captioned like almost zero editing, right, right, just do that and just the. The. The value of the content makes a lot of difference and how people are feel towards you and if they see you on a daily basis, it has a lot of, a lot of power for the success of your business.

Speaker 2: 26:24

Absolutely yeah, and I couldn't agree more. I, you know, we kind of got people with what we do, like you need to be creating your own videos because it's authentic, like you've been saying all this and like, especially with AI coming, yeah, people want more and more like authenticity. They want to see the actual person who's running the company or who's in charge of things, and you know. So those things definitely are the foundation and then when we come in with you know the professional video productions, it serves a different purpose. It's for you know the brand story. It's for that solidifying yourself as a professional, legitimate thing. But you've got to start, you know, from your phone to build that foundation and to be able to grow from your phone, to build that foundation and to be able to grow.

Speaker 3: 27:09

So I saw the evolution of look. Today we have short form videos. That needs to be authentic. We didn't have those, you know, two years ago, every video was like planning. You need to have those. Videos, by the way, are growing as well. Youtube long form is growing and TikTok is growing. That's the beauty and the power of video marketing. Right, you need to have. The evolution is today.

Speaker 3: 27:31

Start with short form, which is probably the easiest way to start. Get analytics, improve scripting, improve. You know what time, when, what time do you prefer to post a lot of insights from analytics just to help you improve. And once you're successful, you can increase the team. There are so many AI tools to help you with. You know content ideas, with post-production, with just providing all the show notes. You know the video metadata and information and just this. You know AI editing tools that are very easy Again, working for short form videos.

Speaker 3: 28:02

And once that's successful, you can include more elements like live shopping. Maybe. Start with a weekly show 20 minutes. Just go out there with a new release, new product, new promotion, share with your users, get their feedback, learn along the way. Once you have those two elements, you can then move to longer form right and probably work with companies like yourself. Create more, you know, thought provoking content which is kind of a long form really, more polished. All these has a very powerful effect on success of any marketing activities. Video is like the gold rush time, I think so that's, and it has so many flavors and it's very, very easy to start.

Speaker 2: 28:45

Don't be afraid, absolutely so you know, Eitan, this has been a great episode. I've really enjoyed diving into TikTok Shop and the shoppable videos and all of that and your expertise, so I appreciate you sharing and being open to do that. You know, if people want to learn more from you, learn more about TikTok Shop, shoppable videos, things of that nature where's the best place for them to go to learn more and connect with you?

Speaker 3: 29:07

yeah, so I'm on linkedin actively, you know, sharing content around video marketing, video commerce, social commerce. I'm on ethan cotter, e-i-t-a-n-k-o-t-e-r and also on our website, viminet. It's v-i-m-m-inet and you can start with a free for life package which will help you to start with live shopping, with shoppable video, social commerce, again with a free package for life, and if you need more capacity, it can increase. You know the volume, go upgrade to additional packages awesome.

Speaker 2: 29:42

Well, yeah, guys, if you're looking to sell on tikt shop, sell on any of these platforms and continue to grow. Check out Eitan and what they're doing at Vimy and, yeah, just continue to learn, get connected and continue to grow. So again, eitan, thanks so much for being on the Elevate Media podcast today.

Speaker 3: 30:00

Thank you, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 30:02

Absolutely, and if you guys know, if you're listening to this and you're like I mean, I know a buddy, he's trying to sell a product online Share this episode with him so we can help him as well. Help them continue to grow, because we can do so much more together by sharing, and we appreciate it. But until next time, continue to go out there, elevate your life, elevate your brands, and we'll talk to you again soon.

Speaker 1: 30:24

Thank you for listening to the Elevate Media podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. See you in the next episode.