Should Amazon PPC Sellers Try a TikTok Shop?

Should Amazon PPC Sellers Try a TikTok Shop? Michael Erickson Facchin: What's going on Badger Nation? Welcome to The PPC Den podcast. My name is Michael Erickson Facchin and this is the world's first and longest running show all about Amazon advertising to make your Amazon PPC life a little bit easier and a little bit more profitable. We have a phenomenal checklist which categorizes And indexes, all the topics that we've talked about on the show, is a free checklist. And it's one of the coolest parts of what it is that we do, which is organizing all this information, making it a little bit easier for you to have an easier time on Amazon PPC. Today, we're actually stepping outside of Amazon PPC. We're having good dear friend of the show, Mina Elias from Trivium, talk to us about his Experience with branching off of Amazon onto TikTok shop. So if you've been hearing about TikTok shop and selling on TikTok shop, this is going to be an awesome episode for you. Thank you so much. Let's jump in to the episode. Unknown Speaker: I've launched campaigns and picked keywords. I've got my bids, set placements too. Now bad mistakes, I've made a few I've had my share of rocky ones, but I've gone through We are the BBC, they're my friends We are the BBC dead. We're talking about Amazon. No time for Medicoms, cos we've fixed the game. Michael Erickson Facchin: Mina, the first thing I need to ask you about is this badass office that you're in. We got the Trivium logo behind you. I see some cords, so I think that thing lights up when it gets dark. You're surrounded by ferns. Shout out to the Zach Galifianakis show, Between Two Ferns. Actually, those aren't ferns. But what's this I hear about you moving to Miami? Mina Elias: Dude, that's it, man. It's my time in LA is coming to an end. And in a few months, I'll be moving to Miami. Fresh start, you know, like, there's a lot of benefits, right? And I can run into some of them, but I've done LA for five years. If so, I want to figure out, you know, where like the future is. I want to do it before kids, right? Everything before kids, because like once the kids come, it's all complicated shit. So it's just more calculations. I'm going to need someone on staff full time, like managing, like, oh, you're traveling with kids, let me do all this, you know, extra, because I still want to live my life the same way I am now. But it's either LA or Miami or Dubai, right? Those are the top three places. Dubai, It's nice, but it doesn't have that business, right? Miami is way closer to Europe, so travel's going to be better. I could do weekend trips in the Bahamas, the Caribbean, the Virgin Islands, a couple hours to Columbia. Fun, right? So I could do a lot more travel, which also allows me to do things like cool masterminds and stuff like that that's very close. The taxes help, the 13% savings. For the same Rent that I'm paying right now, I'm getting double the unit size. So this is a two-bedroom, I'm getting a four-bedroom there. Same, like this is a penthouse, the other one's like on the 40th floor or whatever. And I think business and networking and all that stuff is nice. And you can drive 15 minutes out of Miami and be in a very nice like, you know, Coral Gables type of like community and it's chill. And then you can go and be in Miami. In LA, you don't have that. Like LA, like the entire coastline is just like protected and it's just like, Very difficult to, you know, it's not, it's not easy at all. It's not like Miami. And so those are just some of the reasons. Michael Erickson Facchin: Number one, just thank you so much for this energy that you bring on the show, man. I just like, even you talking about Miami versus Los Angeles. I'm like stoked that you're here. A couple notes. Number one, absolutely. Get all your pre kids moving around, shaking around, seeing how you like different places. You know, it's funny, my wife and I, we had a really long Pre-kid buildup, we're like, let's go do this crazy trip. Let's go to Europe for 12 weeks. Like, let's go over here. Like, of course, we're going to go to Thailand this summer. Like, we had this crazy thing. And then, like, we would do it again next year. We're like, hey, wasn't that awesome last year? Like, let's keep, let's keep going. Like, let's, let's do another crazy year before we have kids. And we did that for like a couple years. We're just like, all right, this is our last year. But then we want to do another adventure year until We felt like we got it out of our system. And then we really felt ready to have kids. So that was spot on for doing that. Second thing I would say, Miami's great. Los Angeles is great. Florida is great. California is great. I love the debate of like, if you want sunshine in the ocean, should you live in Florida or should you live in California? And my answer is always like, well, actually the best place for that is Hawaii. But maybe that doesn't count. Talk about time zones. Mina Elias: The time zone is rough. The time zone is wild. Michael Erickson Facchin: I love that conversation. I would probably do an entire episode on that exact topic. The other thing that you mentioned was I do feel like the East Coast time zone of Miami is definitely better than You know, Pacific Time. Sorry, Pacific Time people out there. Like, let's get really, you know, people in New York already, like, finished their day and you're just rolling out of bed. So, every time I go to the West Coast, I feel like I'm always behind as opposed to, like, when I'm in Europe, I feel like I'm, like, way ahead of everybody. Did I agree? Mina Elias: I think the time zone makes a huge difference because when I work, I start working at, like, nine. I'll wake up at five. From 5.15 to 6.15, I'll work for an hour, answering slacks, all that kind of stuff. And then my wife will wake up, we'll spend some time together. And then I'll hit the gym and then I'll be on the computer and like dialed at nine, which is, you know, it's already noon Eastern. And then my team is like, the European team is clocking out at 11am. And I'm like, Dude, I only had a couple hours. I had a couple calls and now like everyone's clocked out and I didn't get a chance like I did talk to them a little bit at five but like there's not enough time. There it would be you know I'm talking in at nine and I have until 2 p.m. and so I think it's gonna be a lot better. Michael Erickson Facchin: And one other thing I would say too is you know my wife and I we still have that energy to want to like move around see different places so you can't do it because we spent The summer in Barcelona with a one year old and so you can still have a little bit of your adventure. And what I can say about it is that it was absolutely miserable. It was like the hardest time to have a good time. Meaning, you know, we're running around Barcelona, sweating, carrying the stroller, like, you know, all this stuff, kid needs a nap. It was a very different trip because we've been to Barcelona a bunch. It was a very different trip once you have a kid, but you can still do it. We ultimately had a great time, of course. Mina Elias: Yeah, you can still do it as long as you don't care about having fun. Michael Erickson Facchin: As long as you don't care about having fun. And sometimes you just got to sit and look at, I don't know, a leaf on the sidewalk for 35 minutes and that's your afternoon. But, Mina, I love having you on the show. A couple of weeks ago, we had Sam Lee on the show where we talked about Amazon DSP. We talked about AMC. And actually, the feedback on that was probably some of the best feedback we ever got when talking about DSP and AMC. I'm a big Sam fan. I thank you so much for having him on the show because I think that was, you're like, hey, what if Sam also comes on? So that was awesome. So thank you for that. But today, Switching up a little bit, this is of course The PPC Den where we go deep into Amazon PPC for over 300 And 50 episodes. Can you believe it? It's wild. It's been a while. Mina Elias: That's crazy. Michael Erickson Facchin: That's crazy. So every once in a while, we like to leave the mud down in the dirt in the garage of working on Amazon PPC. I like to zoom out a little bit more into seeing what the overall e-commerce experience is doing globally. When I say global, I mean outside of Amazon or even things beyond Amazon PPC. And one thing that's been on the ears of a lot of people who sell on Amazon Not only people who sell on Amazon, but also people that work with Amazon brands, because I know a lot of agencies and freelancers listen to the show as well. And that topic is TikTok. Selling on TikTok or managing campaigns on TikTok, you know, participating in the TikTok experience for e-commerce. I will tell you that I I am an unashamed TikTok user. I've cultivated a perfect algorithm over the years and I find great enjoyment in seeing what my TikTok feed has to offer me today. So I've seen as a user of TikTok having a change over time where it's like, oh, here's some random person trying to sell me a Power Wheels for, you know, my kid. And it's like, dang, like, well targeted, you know, and that's an organic post. And I can sort of like See that they're, you know, talking about a product here. And of course, they're sponsored media on TikTok as well, where the entire video is an ad. So it's impossible to not notice the e-commerce drive on TikTok. I know I was podcasting with Brent from AMZPathfinder a couple weeks ago. And actually one of my goals for 2025 is actually to get involved with at least A campaign or two on TikTok in the new year. So I'm excited. Personally, I think anyone listening on the show should be aware of some of the things that you're sharing here. But actually, before we get into it, like, take me back to, like, I want to know, like, what made you initially jump out and start exploring TikTok? Because, you know, being Amazon people, sometimes it can be, you know, a little nervous leaving the safety net of, you know, The thing that you know so well, Amazon, so when did you get started and why did you get started doing it? Talk to us about when and what you experienced as you started, early thoughts. Mina Elias: Yeah, great question. So first of all, it's a few things, right? It's usually a few things happen and then there's the straw that broke the camel's back. So I'll give you the background. First of all, I started watching how my wife was, she's a Gen Z, right? She's 27. So right at the cusp of Gen Z. So she is like using TikTok all the time. Any free time she has, she's on TikTok. She's bought one or two things off of TikTok. So I'm like, interesting. It seems like people are definitely heavily using the platform, right? And as you talk to more younger people, yeah, they're definitely all on TikTok, right? Just the younger people I'm watching on TikTok. So I'm like, okay, There is a strong presence here. And I'm kind of like, you know, I'm still like, TikTok, it's a creative platform. And like, it's like Facebook ads, you know what I mean? Like, I'm an Amazon guy, like we do paid search. So, you know, someone types in a keyword, I can show my product there. There's not a lot of variables versus like Facebook is like, there's the copy, there's the creative, there's a landing page, there's the funnel, there's all this stuff. So, I stayed away from that. And then, you know, I started thinking and You always are worried, me and you as an agency, what's our longevity? How long are we going to keep doing this Amazon agency thing until maybe Amazon's no longer around? And I always ask myself that question. Is Amazon under any sort of threat of becoming extinct? Because I got to pivot quickly so I can keep making money. It's just a real thing. As a business owner, you should be thinking about it. Whatever product you have, you just need to understand. Michael Erickson Facchin: Platform risk, man. Platform risk. Mina Elias: Yeah, yeah. So I'm like, okay, Walmart is not going to do anything. TikTok Shop, like, what about TikTok Shop? And so I don't think TikTok Shop compares to Amazon at all. I don't think it's even close to being able to compete with it. But there's the one thing that could change the whole, shift the entire dynamic, right? And if it's People start shopping differently. Our parents shopped only on store. In physical, in person, I need to touch it. We are like, dude, I don't want to go to the store. I want to shop from my computer, from my phone. Make it easy. There's a new generation that potentially they're like, I don't even want to shop. I want to see other people using the products first. Yeah, social commerce, right? So I want to see other people using the product and be convinced by their videos, and then I'm going to buy it. And, you know, TikTok has all the users, like Amazon can try and compete, but It's going to be pretty difficult unless like Amazon has some sort of deal, which it is with TikTok, but where you go into the search results and you can type in a keyword and then you can watch videos on the product as opposed to just like a search results page. But again, that is the only competition. So in the back of my mind, I'm like, OK, there is some competition as the younger generation gets older. That's what could cause a threat. And then the straw that broke the camel's back is I was at my friend's house and he was like, dude, have you gone on TikTok Shop yet? He's like, I've been messing around with it. All I did was I created an account, I added a product. I hit up a couple of affiliates, sent them the product all through the platform, and they made a video, and I sold like four units. And I'm like, it's that simple? Okay, I got to get into it. And I've been delaying it for two... I was a very early user of TikTok Shop, by the way, but in my eyes, I was kind of already late. But I went in and I'm like, okay, I got to figure this thing out. And obviously the best thing to use is my brand, MMA Nutrition. It's a perfect brand. It's electrolytes. You know, you know, people definitely buy socially electrolytes like on social shopping. I'm like, let me get into it. So I'm like, okay, let's create an account to create an account. Let's create a TikTok page. I created a TikTok page. I already had one for the brand and it had some content. So I just added a little bit of content. And I'm like, okay, cool. You know, what's next? Like, what's the fulfillment like? So I'm like, I would rather keep everything in Amazon. So I found a software that connected TikTok Shop to Amazon, multi-channel fulfillment. So Anytime a product is purchased here, MCF fulfills it, which by the way, I do not recommend because MCF is too slow. And so I got penalized so much that they are now not allowing me to use MCF. So I'm going towards ShipBob where I'm sending them units directly there and they're doing the fulfillment for me. So I'm like, okay, cool. Fulfillment's done. What's next? How do I sell? And it's pretty much You need to find affiliates. And so then I went down that rabbit hole. Okay, let me find some affiliates. I found a bot. And what this bot does is it does automatic outbound messaging to all these different affiliates. I could just put criteria. I want them to be in the health category. I want them to be this age. And I want them to have generated at least $300 in sales. And they'll just start hitting these people up with a message saying, hey, we'd love to work with you. I'm like, okay, cool. So that's automated. So now I don't even have to worry about Content creation. And then I'm like, okay, let's take it a step further because so we do outreach to them and then they're like, oh, yeah, I'm down. I request the sample so they can get a free product so they can make the video with it. So then, you know, when they get the free product, when they request the sample, I don't approve everyone. I look at their content and I'm like, is their content good enough? And I only approve the right ones. And to take it a step further to, you know, optimize the results of the content, I start sending them a creative brief. So what I did was I went and I found some of my top competitors like best performing content. So there's a something called FastMoss, a software called FastMoss. It's like the helium 10 of TikTok Shop. And so I went and spied on some of my competitors and I saw their best performing content, which is usually like It's a paid influencer creator. It's not like a free product for content. It's more like, hey, $300, $500 for one video. But like, it's a banger because this person is like a really good content creator. So I took that and I'm like, you know, here's here's some good examples like, you know, things to mention benefits of the product, you know, things to avoid mentioning, but you know, use your freedom and creativity. And so that started increasing the quality of the content. So now, People request, I'm automatically pitching people. They're requesting samples. I'm looking at their content, approving the good ones. And then once they create the content, I'm like, okay, what's the next step? So now I have all these people creating content. I'm like, bring me the money. Like now it's just gonna rain money. But it's like, okay, that's not working. It's not making enough money. So what's the next step? Well, the next step is ads. And it's basically taking that content and then juicing it. It's like, you know, a boosted post on Instagram, basically. So I started saying, okay, hit up every single person that's made a piece of content for me, get their spark code, which is like the unique code of that video. And then I put it in the campaign. And when I spend money, it spends money on that video. So it's like whitelisting done, like done very easily. And so the next step was like, okay, let's start running ads. So I start running ads. And, you know, I put initially I put like 10 videos in a campaign with like a certain budget. And then whichever video performs the best, I create a new campaign with that video alone. And then I look at the audience insights. And, you know, whatever audience that I created the video again, but then shaved down the audience. So it's the best converting audience. And then I create a retargeting video. And so that became kind of like the next step of evolution is like, now I'm, you know, going after all these different people and finding the best ones and trying to maximize like the performance of my content by giving them a good creative brief. And then I'm anything that, you know, that I think is good, I'm pushing it with ads and then the top performers, I'm pushing it even harder. And then I was like, okay, but we need to take it even a step further because these people are random ass people, honestly, and their content is weird most of the time, right? It's just the random creators. So I'm like, Let's take it a step further. So then I went to platforms like Incense, Incense.pro, and it's basically an upwork for creators. Everyone on there is like a dialed-in creator. They know the game. They know how to speak. They know how to make the content. They know how to do all this stuff. So I'm like, okay, let's put a budget, like $50 a video or $100 for three videos, something like that. And, you know, I put the, whatever it's called, the brief out there and then people started applying or whatever. And I started, I reached out to people and we got some people. So I'm like, okay. And that platform manages everything. So like, you know, it makes it very streamlined for you to basically do the whole TikTok shop thing with the creators on there. So I started getting some high level content, like really nice content. And that essentially, I was like, okay, fine. Everything's good. I'll pause here because now we got to talk about the results, right? Like, did I make money or not? But that was kind of like my progression from like, Oh, I'm hearing about this. It could be a serious thing to, okay, now I'm actually have my brand on TikTok Shop and I'm running it. Michael Erickson Facchin: Well, first of all, I feel like we could just finish the episode right there because that was so valuable. Love the process and the transition and the learning and just sort of getting after it. I mean, one of the first topics you talked about was just platform risk. And that should be something that every single person who works on the internet, who gets customers through digital marketing should be well aware of, right? Like you hear this all the time. You know, a Shopify store relies a lot on Google SEO, Google SEO changes an algorithm or whatever. And now they just lost 50% of their sales or something like that, you know, relying too much on Facebook ads and like Facebook changes privacy, you know, Apple changes privacy settings. And now some of their best campaigns retargeting are not nearly as effective as they once were. Or like, You know, Amazon changes something, whatever you're, so like there's risk all around us. And I think some of the best companies do think about and help mitigate some of that risk for sure. And one way to do it is to think more globally, like what other platforms do customers go on? If they're not searching on Amazon, maybe they are on TikTok, or maybe, you know, you get extra audience by being on TikTok. I love the breakdown of just sort of the You know, creating your account, creating a shop, sending some products, playing with multi-channel fulfillment, you know, testing that out. And it sounds like there's lots of, there's a good software ecosystem here as well to jump over hurdles, like where the shipping comes from, how to find people. A couple of different finer points here too was, did you start with the exact same amount of SKUs? Like, or did you just do some? Mina Elias: I did one. I only did one, right? I started with just one and I suggest that you start with your hero. Because, you know, you can make a lot of money with one hero. And then you also want to dial in your process with one hero and then move on to the next one. So, yeah, I just started with one. Michael Erickson Facchin: And the other thing, too, was I also didn't hear you say, and I want to ask the question, which is like, it seems like you were able to work with people and get them to create content for you without you hiring like a professional TikTok person to create You know, content for your brand nonstop. It seems like you didn't need a full-time social media person who's going to be good on camera and good at creating stuff for you. You're able to tap into, because that's one obstacle that a lot of people have. It's like, oh man, I want to be on these more visual mediums. Amazon is visual, but I'm talking like video creation, video editing, having a personality, coming up with Jumping on TikTok trends for your brand. There are e-commerce brands that do that, but they have someone dedicated to that brand making specific content for them every single day. That's sort of the organic approach on TikTok. But it sounds like you were able to tap into, you know, because people are hungry. Like a lot of people want to be creators. And it sounds like you were mentioning video prices, you know, hey, can you review this product in a video? Can I get a video from you for like 300, 500 bucks? You know, you hear, you know, Kim Kardashian gets paid, you know, $5 million for like a 10 second video or something. So like you hear the range of creatives, but I think it's good that you mentioned that, like you can get some creatives, which I also think you use the word weird to describe them. But like there's tiers of it. And yeah, that's the next question I was going to ask. And before we get into like what the results were, just so people can visualize it, just in case they're unfamiliar with it, what were you having those people do and how is it connected to your product? Because like I know what you're referring to, but like in case somebody doesn't know, like what kind of content were they creating and how does it link back to your shop? Mina Elias: Yeah. You know, I just want to mention, right, when I started Amazon, I was like, when I started on Amazon, like with my own brand, I was like, listen, I don't have resources to create content. I'm not a creative person. I don't want to deal with a lot of people. I love the Amazon because it's like, okay, let me get my product on Amazon. Let me optimize my listing, right? Just better images, you know, better copy. Let me, you know, maybe do some coupons, whatever. And then I'm just running PPC. And it's all me and it's very small, very tight. I don't need to talk to people. I actually launched a second brand called Lapira. And that one was 100, like we didn't even run ads and we were hitting 50, 60K a month in revenue. And it was like 55% profit margin, but we did it because I had a partner who was like super like touchy-feely, talks to people, has emotion, so many emotions, right? And he would just go in and he would just talk to all these girls and like literally sell them this crazy vision and they would be so bought in and they would make content. So, you know, I seen that work. I'm just like, but I saw what he was doing and I'm like, dude, I have no desire to do that. So when I was about to get into TikTok Shop, I was like very worried. Because I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to do all the talking. But that was the beauty of TikTok Shop is that it's almost like the content creation part is automated by other people. And you don't even need to tell them anything. You're just like, make whatever you want. But then you can just slowly add some refinements and say, hey, we've noticed that this kind of content works. Maybe make it like this. Oh, we've noticed like when people have a hook like, you know, they slam like a liquid IV bag off the table that performs a little bit better. So the content that I was getting like initially was like very weird like and again, this is like all free content, but it was stuff like Oh, I got this, you know, electrolytes on like, you know, TikTok and it's so good. They would just, you know, it's got glutamine, BCAAs. They were just saying like, I was like, I have no idea, but that stuff sold. I mean, I sold like from that one video, maybe like 30 or 40 units with ads, not without ads. And then, so there's all this random stuff. And then I actually started getting a sprinkle of like good stuff, like You know, one guy like did this really cool thing where he just slapped like the like liquid IV or whatever. And he's like, you don't need any of this stuff. This is what you need. And so it was there was some creativity. And this is all on the free level. Michael Erickson Facchin: And on the free level, those people are still are they still affiliates, meaning are there affiliate links that. Mina Elias: Let me get into that detail. Sorry that I overlooked that. So the way that it works is you go on TikTok Shop and then they tell you, okay, you can reach out to people or you can open up your store and say, anyone who wants to apply can apply for 20% off. So I created a 30% off affiliate campaign and I would reach out to all these people that were in the category, had made at least a few hundred dollars in sales. And I would say, hey, I'd love to invite you to become an affiliate. Once they accept it, whenever they create a video, they can literally add the product on the video. So they create a video and as they're uploading it, they click, they want to add a product that's mentioned in this video. And so they just click add and my product. And then because we've kind of established that relationship, like I've sent them a request to become an affiliate. They have accepted it. Whenever they use It's not a code, right? Whenever they put my product link on any of their videos, any sale, they get 30% off. So TikTok makes it super easy to get. You don't even have to think about commissions. You just have to think about how much percent do you want to give? And for me, I was like, okay, initially, I just want to give a lot off because I want people to be incentivized to work with me. And if I get a ton of content out there and they're like, yo, MMA Nutrition is everywhere. And then maybe, you know, like let's say I had 600 videos out there, you know, and they're, you know, I'm sprinkling some ads across all of them. Everyone that's working with me is going to be happy because more visibility on their videos means they're making probably getting more followers, which, you know, the vanity metric that they care about. But then also people are going to start saying, wow, this is a legit brand. So then I could just start offering 20% or 15% and still get people on there. So that is kind of the free tier and it's a good it's a good layer you kind of want to have that base layer of like a lot of not you want people to feel like normal people are Making content about your product without really being incentivized. Then you go a step up. The step up is, okay, I want good content done by good people and those people know how good they are so they have a price. And it's not a steep price, it's 50 bucks. So 30 to 50, you can negotiate. But usually I'll try and do 30 to 50 for one or 50 or something at 50, 60 to 100 for three. Something like that, just whatever, a deal. But then I get these people and they start making content for me. And usually when I ask for three, I'll tell them to post two and I'll take the third one. So the third one, they give me the file and I put it on my page. So at least my page now is being kind of built up because you can't like, let's say you, Mike, can't do a video, post it on your page. And then I post that same one on my page. Because then TikTok will shut us down or whatever, they'll penalize us. But I can say, hey, can you make three videos, post two of them, and then the third one, give it to me, I'll post it on my page. And we could do that. And then your page starts getting built up with really nice content, again, for very cheap. And then they're putting out that good content. So that next tier of content, that starts to do a lot better. And honestly, I haven't seen much difference when you go up to the higher, bigger following, like you really need to jump from the 30 to 50, not to the 200, 300, but you need to jump straight to like the massive influencers like, you know, that have like a huge following, like the not the not not Joe Rogan level, but like, you know, like, you know, Mike, there's like this guy, Chris Williams, Chris Williams, have you heard of him? He's like a British So he's like a fitness kind of influencer. So you just got to jump to like a really high level for it to make a difference, like true influence, not just like, you know, high, high amount of follower content creator, because that like content creator and the person that's getting $50 that is equally as good of a content creator just doesn't have the following, they're going to produce the same results pretty much, you know, mostly in my experience. So There's that. Now, keep in mind, as with anything, it's kind of like people need to see you and then people need to click on you and then people need to buy. So people seeing you, that's like how many videos you're putting out there and how many ads you're running and how much money you're putting behind it. People clicking on you is the quality of the video. So that's why You know, guiding, at least guiding the people is going to be good. Now, the next level is people actually, you know, wanting to buy. That's where I think, you know, your creatives and reviews are going to be, you know, play a big role is just focus on your creatives, your pricing, your reviews. Those three things will generally influence the entire purchase. Now, here's the results, right? And so I started running these ads on one product and I'm like, okay, first of all, I'm spending $100, no sales, then I'm spending $100, you know, $50 in sales, and then spending $100, $100 in sales. And so I got up to spending like, you know, two or $300 a day, and getting two or $300 a day in sales. Now, what I noticed is like, okay, man, like, I'm not really cracking it. I'm not really cracking this, this, you know, TikTok shop thing. And I was kind of like, what am I doing wrong? Do I need more reviews? What is it? And then I noticed something. I was looking at my profits on Amazon for that same product and there was no change in anything on Amazon. It's literally the ads are barely even running on Amazon and my profits like quadrupled. And I'm like, damn, like there's only one explanation here. There's only one. And then, you know, like you can see that the profit is changing with the amount of impressions or whatever views that I'm getting on TikTok Shop. So then I started realizing, I was like, Is it possible that TikTok Shop is not like a straight up revenue generating platform? But is it something that, you know, we were talking about this, the self liquidating funnel, or like a self liquidating funnel, pretty much, where I'm putting $100 in ads, I'm getting $100 in sales, which doesn't mean I'm breaking even, it means I'm probably losing a little bit of money. But I'm getting like an additional bonus, which is 10,000 views. And then if I put $10,000 in spend, I get $10,000 in sales. I'm losing maybe one or $2,000 in the cost of goods and all that kind of stuff, plus the commission and everything. But then I'm getting a million views from it. And then what is the value of the million views? It's hard to quantify because who knows, right? But then when you track your change of profit on Amazon, you're like, I was doing 2K a month in profit. Now I'm doing 5K a month in profit. That's 3K. That's, you know, 3K more, that's what the million, obviously, if you're getting a million views, it's probably going to be way more than 3K. But essentially, that's what we started realizing. And so when I rolled this out to clients, I said, listen, you know, one of three things will happen. Number one, TikTok Shop is not going to be for your product. It's going to completely flop. And, you know, we're going to know because influencers, sorry, affiliates don't want it. Like it's getting poor visibility. It's just the metrics don't work. The second one is your product is amazing. And like, you know, we spend $10,000 and you make $50,000 on TikTok Shop and you go viral and all this stuff. And the third, which is the most common, like most people are going to be in this category, is that We're not going to make money on TikTok Shop. We're going to break even or maybe we're going to lose a little bit of money, but we're going to get a ton, a shit ton of impressions, shit ton of views. And that's going to translate into branded search on Amazon, which is number one, going to improve your profits. And number two, going to help with your organic rank. And that's what it's just a phenomenon that I'm seeing is as your branded searches Increase your organic rank just goes up and I'm not sure why. But that's kind of, you know, my results and we can get even deeper if you want. Michael Erickson Facchin: I think what you described is something that takes people who have just been on Amazon only like a long time to nail down because on Amazon, it's not so apparent right away, especially in sort of like the Amazon FBA world, which is like I've been doing like Google ads and Facebook ads for a very long time. And the easiest clients to ever work with are the ones who have an insane social following. Like they're big on YouTube. They're big on, you know, various social platforms. You just like do the exact same thing for them as you do somebody else. And it's so much easier because of like the brand recognition. Like there's this emergent effect that happens that is incredibly, I think it's impossible to quantify where it's just like, it almost feels like you're just getting lucky. Like, you just like launched the same sort of campaign that you would like normally do, except you're just like, wow, the results here are so good, like the conversion rate is so good. So it would absolutely hold true that like, if you are generating a lot of Views on any platform, like people who are interested in engaging with it, it is very likely that they will then go and like seek you out on the platform that they want to transact with. And maybe that is just something that is unique to right now. Like maybe in the future, people will get a lot more comfortable with TikTok and buying something on TikTok. But for now, like they have their credentials in Amazon, so they're just going to go to Amazon to make the purchase. I love that you brought that up. And it's so true. And it is very difficult to quantify, but logic would have it that if you were to just add tens of thousands of views for your product, number one, you're going to get direct sales on that platform, hopefully. But it is a very top of funnel environment. And it is possible that that's just the way that funnels will work right now on TikTok for the time being until people get maybe more comfortable with TikTok. And you would imagine that there will be people People who go to TikTok as their first search for a product, meaning they're not even scrolling through, they might go to TikTok first and type in electrolytes. And they start their search, not on Google, not on Amazon, but they might actually start it on TikTok as a way like, let me just see what people are talking about when it comes to electrolytes. Mina Elias: Well, that's what's actually happening right now. My wife does that. She first goes on TikTok. And then she's like, okay, you know, what is the best like, you know, beef towel skin care or beef towel moisturizer right now? And then she'll see all the content and she'll see all the people and she'll like just spend, you know, 15-20 minutes listening to all these random people. And then She'll say, OK, I've come up with the conclusion that like we need one that has these ingredients, not that ingredient. And it seems like these are the best ones. I'm like, OK, cool. Which one are we going to buy? And so let's go to Amazon. And then we go to Amazon and that's where we buy it. So people are already starting to search there. So, I mean, even if people are going to transact on Amazon, you still want to be on TikTok and you still want to at least have enough where, like, when someone searches beef tallow or whatever, you start popping up and, you know, you have all this storytelling about your brand and, you know, you kind of are there in people's minds like, oh, let me go buy it or check it out on Amazon. Michael Erickson Facchin: Can we close out this episode, talk to us a little bit about what it was like running campaigns on TikTok, paid traffic campaigns, meaning you are grabbing Content and you're putting dollars behind it. Talk to us about that platform and like how easy was it for you to apply your Amazon advertising skills to a video-based platform? Mina Elias: Yeah, so there is definitely some nuances. Like for example, never set a budget level, like a campaign level budget, always set an ad group level budget. So there's like a little bit of these things, but generally it was very easy. You go, you create a campaign and it says, okay, cool, name your campaign. What's the budget? You skip that part. What's the goal of the campaign? And it's like purchases. And then you're like, okay, cool, move on to the next stage. What's the ad group? What's the budget? You know, whatever $100 a day. And then cool. So what's the creative? Or what's the audience? So you can, you know, pick the audience or just start broad, say, show it to everyone. And then you're like, okay, now what's the creative that you just click plus and then it says, you know, use existing Chris. It's something like use existing creatives or whatever. And essentially I have a spreadsheet with all of my creators creatives and the spark code that they gave us. Copy the spark code, paste it. And it's like, boom, this video, right? You're like, yes. And, and that was it. So I'm like, OK, cool. We're going to start by loading up five of those videos and we'll let the algorithm kind of tell us which one is best. Then you're like, OK, you move the best to their own. And then, you know, from there, you're like you refine them. So you just you just click on audience insights and you're like, OK, let me see the insights. Well, majority women are buying the product. So let me create a new campaign. The PPC Den has the winners, but just showing to the women because it seems like they're doing better. How's the ROAS there? And then the final piece is just creating a retargeting campaign, which was just very easy and intuitive. So it was pretty easy, pretty straightforward. And now it's even easier because they have this auto campaign type of thing called GMV Max. And literally, we've just been throwing ads in the GMV Max and putting a budget. And the algorithm is doing a lot of the heavy lifting and showing it to the right people and all that kind of stuff. Overall, coming from Amazon where it's just keywords and bids and so many different things, it was pretty much a lot easier. I remember the days of trying to learn Amazon. I remember the day where I was at work. I was still in my 9 to 5 and I was looking at the computer. I'm like, if I'm to be a good seller on Amazon, I need to understand booksheets. And I'm like, no more being a coward. No more saying you're not good enough at PPC or anything. Let's just open it up. Go one by one. What is this thing? What is this thing? I don't know what this thing is. Let me look if there's a YouTube video on it. Let me look if there's like anything on Amazon on it. You know, that was how grueling PPC was. This was just like, oh, create a campaign. Oh, add a video. Oh, change the audience. Cool. Let's try a different audience. You know what I mean? It was just like much easier. And in my opinion, it's heavy creative. So creative does 95% of the work. So if there's anything to do, it's just to figure out, like, how can you get more creatives, better creatives, what works, what doesn't work. The one thing, though, that, you know, kind of if you really want to take it to the next level, is you have to create these communities. Like, you have to, basically, what we're doing is we created a Discord community. And every single creator that we're working with, we're putting them in our community and saying, yo, you guys are amazing. We want to keep empowering you. And we want to keep giving you video, like giving you products and giving you opportunities. And we're going to do a contest. And the person who You know, does this much in sales in 30 days is going to get like a free iPhone and stuff like that. So that is kind of like the next level of like what you need to do. And I think it is really it just becomes At the base, you want a lot of awareness with random people and just do your best to refine their content through the creative brief. Then you want to step up, which is like really kind of good content from like people that you pay. And then you want the highest level as you graduate the cream of the crop, the 10, 15 girls or guys that are making amazing content. And you're like, listen, like I'm just going to keep paying you money and I'm going to give you whatever it takes to make you create the best, like you're going to be an employee basically. On the cheapest level that I can afford, and I'm going to motivate you to nonstop pump content for me that is going to convert, and that is going to be my source of ads. That's going to be my source of ad creatives, basically. Michael Erickson Facchin: I love it. Well, Mina, I think you've done a tremendous job at pointing out Any Amazon seller who's been curious about TikTok, I feel more empowered. So hopefully, I think you've empowered a lot of people to do that. If there's any service providers out there too, hopefully you feel a little bit more empowered too. So we all thank you for coming on and sharing your expertise and your experience here. So tell me this, what percentage of your Amazon clients have you tested TikTok with? Mina Elias: Yeah, so we have about 25-ish percent of all of our brands on TikTok Shop right now that we're managing on TikTok Shop. So we definitely have had like a few, a good maybe four or five that we got on TikTok Shop and it's like we try this, try that as like There's no impact on sale. There was this one which is shocking because it was a very, very, very nice protein bar. And we got it in the hands of a lot of people. We promoted it with all this stuff. And I thought I was like, dude, protein bar, for sure, it's going to move on TikTok. But it really didn't get any traction. Our sales on Amazon were completely flat. And so You know, sometimes it doesn't work, but it's okay. I mean, test it. You're not dumping tens of thousands of dollars. Michael Erickson Facchin: That's one thing that really impressed me about this episode and the way that you described it. It's like all that stuff that you mentioned was pretty inexpensive. It's not an insurmountable knowledge gap. It's not an insurmountable amount of work. It seems like it's manageable. Mina Elias: Definitely. Yeah. I mean, A few hundred units, right? Send a few hundred units to Shabab. Maybe $1,000 for creating maximum. Maybe $1,000 or $2,000 for ads. We'll call it a couple thousand dollars for ads. And start there and see how it goes. And I think You're going to start seeing some traction and it's going to give you positive or negative signals. And if it's giving you at least some traction, some positive signals, you could put a little bit more. And then the hope is that at least the overflow into Amazon is making you more profit than whatever you're expensing out. Michael Erickson Facchin: Right on. When do you move to Miami? Mina Elias: The end of March. Michael Erickson Facchin: Okay. So are you going to do a whole bunch of touristy stuff in California before you leave? Mina Elias: Maybe. We do have a bucket list. But honestly, man, I don't even know. I'm barely here. I'm here. I'm gone. Starting Friday, I'm going to be at Art Basel in Miami for two weeks. I'm doing a family vacation there for two weeks. Then we get back for a couple of weeks. Then I have a wedding in Miami. By then, it's already February. I have maybe a month or two left. Michael Erickson Facchin: Well, stop and smell the roses. Life can get fast, Mina. Mina Elias: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Michael Erickson Facchin: Anyway, thank you so much. We have links to Trivium, of course, in the description. It's an absolute pleasure. I hope people reach out to you and ask you some more questions about TikTok Shop because it was great. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing. Mina Elias: Yeah, if anyone has any questions, hit me up. Just go to the website, TriviumCo.com and on the contact us, you can write any question and I'll see it and I'll respond. Michael Erickson Facchin: Thank you so much, Mina.