Marketing Funnels & TikTok Shop

Tim Jordan.m4a [ 00:00:00 ]Hey everybody, Tim Jordan here and I'm in the basement of the Gatsby Mansion in Austin, Texas at the BDSS Marketing Masters Think Tank Mastermind. I was asked to share something that was really impactful for me already in the time that I've been here that kind of realigned some of my thinking to be helpful for my ability to grow businesses on Amazon myself. I have a lot of context in the industry that I'm blessed to see with my role at Carbon 6, with having my own brands, with being able to get to work with other brand owners. I see a lot of things that actually creates a problem. It creates a lot of confusion, and the exact conversation that we were having upstairs with a bunch of successful sellers and great agency directors, and some other smart folks was really related to trying to figure out how to weed through the noise and figure out what actually makes an impact on our business because we all get a lot of signals. [ 00:00:46 ] We get a lot of information. Join this webinar. Learn this method. Use this marketplace. Do this. It's too much. We can't handle it all, but I also think that we need to be looking at a lot of different ways in which to sell. A lot of different ways in which to market our products and not just stick with one path. There's got to be an in-between, right? So I asked the group upstairs. I said, hey, how many of you are Amazon sellers? And he's like, all of us, of course. And I said, you're all idiots. Stop being Amazon sellers. They're like, what? And I said, start being product sellers that sell on Amazon. And the context of this was related to TikTok shop. There are a lot of exciting messages being talked about TikTok shop. [ 00:01:23 ] Should we move our focus from Amazon to TikTok shop? Should we use TikTok shop as a lead source? And what I was able to do in this giant debate with these really, really smart people was be able to conceptualize or operationalize a concept, I should say, on how we should at least be thinking about our focus when it comes to selling more products and the kind of consolidation of some different opportunities to help us sell those products, right? So if you'll bear with me, I'm going to draw this out. This is how the conversation went, which was awesome. So a tip. So this is how the conversation went. I'm going to draw it out for you. And this was awesome for me. Hopefully you get a lot of value out of this. [ 00:02:06 ] So a typical marketing funnel is three phases. Okay. Those three phases are awareness, consideration, and like high intent to purchase. So if this is awareness, this is consideration, and this is intent. Really simple analogy for these, if you're not familiar with it. Awareness is I'm driving down the road and I see a billboard for Coca-Cola. I can't stop and buy Coca-Cola at that billboard, but it's making me aware that Coca-Cola is awesome. Consideration is I walk into a restaurant or I walk into a convenience store and I want a drink and I'm considering Coca-Cola. Intent is when I walk into a convenience store and I say, I'm going in here to buy a Coke. Our products are the same. We need to be using all of these different pieces of the marketing funnel. [ 00:02:59 ] We need to be using all of these different pieces of the marketing funnel to be able to sell our products. Because again, we're not Amazon sellers. We're product sellers that sell on Amazon. Amazon has a lot of this baked in. Now, because Amazon is a search engine based marketplace where people go to buy products, they typically don't go there to be entertained. They typically don't go there to discover some new brand. They typically go there to buy. They type it in the search engine. Amazon is heavily indexed with intent. I need brakes for my 1994 Honda Civic. Okay. New brake parts. I go to Amazon, I type it in. And then I go to Amazon and I go to Coca-Cola. And then I go to high intent to purchase. [ 00:03:31 ] Well, you can also go to Amazon and shop a little bit. All right. I need something to help me lose some weight. I'm going to go poke around these different listings and find different nootropics or, or, uh, you know, supplements to help me lose weight. I'm going to discover a little bit. I'm going to consider some different options. So in this consideration, Amazon has this thing like posts or Amazon live, right? I'm not actually going with a specific product in mind, but I'm considering a product like for weight loss, right? I'm exploring the opportunities where if I am interested in making my home look better and I've gone to Amazon to look for different products, but I see an Amazon post or I'm following an Amazon live influencer that's showing me a home decor idea or brand that is awareness. [ 00:04:14 ] I'm becoming aware that this thing exists, right? So when I think about where Amazon really focuses, they have a lot more ability on the intent to lose weight. So when I think about where Amazon really focuses, they have a lot more purchase side of the funnel and less ability in the awareness side of the funnel. Okay. So there is some, but it's less, there's a lot more down here. Now let's talk about TikTok. The debate we were having specifically about TikTok is how much time we should focus on it. Here's what I believe to be true about TikTok, uh, not TikTok Shop, TikTok. It is an entertainment platform. People only go to TikTok to be entertained. That's why they go there. They don't go there with high intent to purchase. [ 00:04:52 ] Now, once they're there and they see a product they like, they see an influencer talking about a product endorsing it, then they go from an awareness to a potential consideration intent, and TikTok Shop makes that transition smoother. Okay. So they're taking somebody from awareness section to the ability to buy quickly and easily with TikTok shop. The problem is any entertainment platform, whether it's a regular meta social media, whether it's a blog, uh, potentially, whether it's TikTok, they over index here and they have less ability here. So what we were talking about in this, this entire conversation was like, well, what do we focus on? And I was saying, look, I don't think it's this or that. I think it's this and that. So maybe we, we have a combination of these, right? [ 00:05:43 ] We use a lot of awareness calories on things like TikTok entertainment platforms, knowing that people will come down with higher intent here. And we started looking at these two pyramids. And I was like, well, what do we focus on? And I was like, well, we started looking at these two pyramids or upside-down inverted pyramid. What we realized is that if you have the TikTok and I'm using TikTok as an example, the TikTok, uh, I don't know, like impact score higher and awareness and lower and intent, but you have the Amazon triangle, which is inverted. When I'm looking at these two, I'm thinking, Hey, there's not a lot of power in intentional ability to purchase for TikTok where there's a lot more intentional power, less awareness. [ 00:06:24 ] If I'm using Amazon again, this is just an example, these two platforms. So what if you marry them both? What you end up with is a much more robust funnel. You have something that's stable on the top and the bottom by combining two. Now this is philosophical. It's not strategic. I can't tell you exactly how to use this, but here's the challenge that I was given in this meeting upstairs. And this is the big takeaway that I came from: it's not one or the other. It's not more focused on this and less focused on that. And it's more focused on what you're doing. It's more focused on what you're doing. It's more focused on what you're doing. It's more focused on what you're doing. It's more focused on what you're doing. [ 00:06:58 ] No, there's some awareness and entertainment here. There is some intentional purchase here on the TikTok funnel with a TikTok shop. So my challenge to you is to stop thinking about which it should be. All right. It shouldn't definitely be one or the other. You have to start combining these two to make a larger pillar for your business because you're not an Amazon seller. You're a product seller. That's using all the resources available. And when you're considering where to spend your time, where to spend your income, where to spend your time, where to spend your energy, where to spend your money, your investment to hire agencies or to gain education - constantly be thinking about this funnel because we forget this. [ 00:07:33 ] We forget that this is important as quote unquote Amazon sellers and start trying to turn your funnel, which is a triangle into a rectangle that's stable on both sides of the buyer journey. That's my advice to you, which I got from all the awesome smart people here. Hopefully this is helpful, and hopefully you are able to take something from this. And continue to grow your business. And again, I'd love to know if you think this is valuable. Hit me up on LinkedIn. You can find me, Tim Jordan. We also have a lot of content about general digital marketing, how that kind of blends with marketplace e-commerce at carbon6.io. Tons of free resources there. And just follow me on LinkedIn or social. And I got a lot of stuff like this coming out in the near future. [ 00:08:16 ] A lot of stuff from the past that's actually still good because traditional marketing is always going to supersede gimmicky marketing. And I think that's a good thing. And I think that's a good thing. And I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. Get rich quick scheme style methods that may work for a minute, but when you're thinking about what you do as a real business adds a lot of value to your business long term.