This TikTok Shop Strategy Is Making Brands Go Viral!

This TikTok Shop Strategy Is Making Brands Go Viral! Speaker 3: You have to understand that content is key on TikTok. Social commerce is the name of the game. Because TikTok is content voracious, you need to have at least 50 be posting, have product posts going out, 50 to 100 pieces of content per month. Minimum, minimum. Speaker 4: TikTok shop is exploding. Brands are scaling fast. Sellers are making serious money and millions of people are shopping daily. But with the looming ban on TikTok, is it worth the risk? Will TikTok shop survive in 2025 or are sellers about to lose everything? Today, we're uncovering the truth, the biggest opportunities and what you need to know before jumping in. Our guest has been on the forefront of external marketing for Amazon sellers since 2017. In 2022, she explored TikTok's potential for boosting Amazon brands And with the launch of TikTok Shop in the US in 2023, she quickly leveraged it and scaled it so to help other brands. Her expertise is recognized by Forbes, Business Insider, and Inc. She's a frequent expert at events like the Titan Network, BDSS, or the Billion Dollar Seller Summit, Traffic and Conversion, and many others. Michelle Barnum Smith. Tired of negative reviews dragging down your star rating in sales? TraceFuse has your back. TraceFuse specializes in removing non-compliant Amazon reviews the right way. I'm talking 100% compliant with Amazon Terms of Service. And with over 11,000 reviews removed for 400 plus brands, they know what it takes to protect your reputation and boost conversions. And here's the best part. You only pay for performance. That means you only pay for reviews they successfully remove. No contracts, no monthly fees, just results. Plus, as a Lunch With Norm listener, you get two reviews removed for free. Ready to clean up your reviews? Visit TraceFuse.ai. That's TraceFuse, T-R-A-C-E-F-U-S-E dot A-I. People are drawn to TikTok, but there's so many sellers. And I'm talking, I don't know what the actual number is, but I would say the high, high majority still have not gone on to TikTok. Use TikTok Shop. It is a blank slate. When you're going out there, the bigger brands are, I don't know why, like it's- Bigger brands suck at TikTok. Absolutely. Yeah. And you take a look at these bigger brands and I'm not going to say the window guys, but you know, you can figure it out. Unknown Speaker: But what they try to do with influencer marketing is hilarious. It's so bad. Speaker 4: It's funny. And I don't know if they meant it to be that way or they're just too big of a brand to really do anything Influencer or creator based. Speaker 3: Well, and here's the reason for it. It's one, it comes down to one word and that's authenticity. So big brands cannot come across as authentic because they're so big that not only are they like not agile, they are so that like any content that gets produced has to go through so many, you know, screening. There's too many people that are touching it for it to end up as authentic. And even like working with influencers, they're very like, or, you know, shop affiliates, they're very like, possessive and restrictive about what can be done, who can be worked with, how it's done. You know, they just, they're just really bad at it. And one of the reasons why is because TikTok was born in COVID. Right, like I know we don't want to remember those times but that was those were the days when all of us were like, you know, our roots were grown out and our our Kids are running around except for you Yeah The kids were running around in the background while you're trying to do zoom calls, you know it's just a time of where every like all pretenses were dropped and we're like listen if We're all just in this together. You know, we're all just trying to survive, right? And and so TikTok was born in those conditions where people were just showing up as is and that's what really took fire because the to compare it to anything, you know, the comparison was Instagram and Instagram was highly curated, you know, everything was everything looked high production high, you know, it was all kind of aspirational content. And it was like this, oh my gosh, you were following somebody that you could never, like you were inspired by their lifestyle, but you also could never attain it or never achieve it. And then TikTok roars into the scene where people are just showing up as is. And sometimes that was not, that was like straight out of bed, sobbing on the floor because of whatever, you know, and people just loved that authenticity. And that is what continues to do well on the platform is that authenticity. And so the opportunity for tick tock shop for these for these brands for smaller brands, like the, the, you know, last year in 2024 alone. TikTok Shop doubled its previous year's GMB. I think it landed around just shy of 34 billion. Speaker 4: It's going to double again this year, isn't it? Speaker 3: It sure is. It almost doubled just in the month of January, which we'll get to in a minute. But, you know, a lot of that revenue is driven by small and medium businesses. Speaker 4: I still want to try to figure out, What it is, why, with all the evidence out there and all the success stories that brands We are still not using creators, influencers. They're not going on to a highly successful platform like TikTok Shop or just TikTok in general, you know, just to get their message out there. I don't know if you have any insight into that, but it's just baffles me. We've been talking about creator marketing for how many years now? And the majority, like I said, are still not taking advantage of it. Check out our latest video on the state of supply chain and Trump tariffs. Watch my newest episode right here with Corrine Cuffuri. And don't forget to subscribe. And remember, we have new episodes every Monday. Speaker 3: In my opinion, there's a lot of, you know, if we're talking about the fortune, you know, the fortune 500, the fortune 100, as it relates to brands and commerce brands, Traditional DTC, you know, like consumer-based brands, not B2B or B2G. Those, you know, those brands are just so huge and their divisions and how, what happens behind the corporate, in the corporate machine. I came from corporate. I came from, you know, working for the Fortune 50. Right, like the biggest companies in the world I've done business with and the corporate infrastructure is so like red tape over. Oh, yeah, like there's just so much you cannot do anything. You cannot like there is no agility. There is no Bob and weave with the market conditions. If there's any sense of you know, and there's also like they have stockholders, right? Like they're a publicly traded company or something like that and they can't be seen to you know, be investing in something that could potentially like you know, go away, right? So in some ways the ban or the rumors of the ban were actually really good for keeping big business out of TikTok because they didn't, they were like, oh, well maybe if it stabilizes, they're very like in the, in the marketing adoption curve, you know, they're laggards at best, right? Like they're on the opposite end of the bell. Let's put laggards over here. If we're doing the bell, the traditional bell curve, there's like the bleeding edge and then there's the early adoption. They're way over here because they're risk managing, right? But that leaves a whole world of opportunity for the smaller sellers. And smaller sellers is not like somebody who's just getting started. Like I'm talking about eight and nine figure sellers on Amazon as well who have a huge opportunity to get on TikTok shop. We're still just in the beginning of this and it's still such a huge opportunity. Speaker 4: I'm finding that so many people I don't want to be the face of the brand. So that's fine. Find somebody or have multiple creators go out and do it. You have all these people that think it's so difficult. So they don't want to get started because it's difficult. So then they go to an agency and they're a small brand and they find it overpriced. A lot of agencies aren't meant for the guy that's just starting out. I don't know, but it doesn't seem to me, at least for TikTok itself, not TikTok Shop, but for TikTok, Look, I'm not an old guy. I'm a fossil when it comes to this type of marketing, right? So I'm used to old school marketing. You ask me about any type of marketing, that way I can answer. Putting a camera in front of my face and then, you know, I'm saying, Kels, can you edit this for me? No, you edit it yourself. I don't want to do that, but guess what? I adopted it, you know, and I can do it now. I understand a small portion of it. I'm still not a guy that just flicks it on. I'm not Athena. Nobody's like Athena. So Athena is one of the co-founders of the Titan Network and she knows how to use TikTok, doesn't she? Speaker 3: She's very good on camera. Speaker 4: Yeah, she is. Speaker 3: However, it is a fallacy that you think that you have to be the face of your brand. You don't. And that's the beauty of TikTok is that it's really a marketplace and inside of TikTok Shop, there's a whole marketplace of creators who are TikTok Shop affiliates who want to represent your products, who want the chance to create content for you. It's just a matter of like finding them and putting them to work. You know, so they're like, it's not requisite that you be the face of your brand and create shoppable posts on TikTok. Now that being said, I have leaned in the last, you know, the last quarter and really focused on creating content just so that I can understand content creators a little bit better as I'm, you know, obviously I understand the seller side really well and I want to understand the creator side. As well too. So sometimes it's just about a matter of showing up every day and creating a video, putting a video out there and just showing up and getting and practice makes, you know, You get better. Practice makes not perfect, but practice makes progress. That's what we're talking about. Speaker 4: Practice is also split testing the way that you deliver your messaging, right? Speaker 3: Absolutely, absolutely. And the algorithm is constantly changing and shifting as well. So even if creators have done well in the past, there's no guarantee that they'll do well in the future. And that can be scary to some people, but it's actually a huge opportunity for anybody who's just getting started. Either on the content creation side or on the selling side, because it levels the playing field. It's not like Instagram where, oh my gosh, they have like 7 million followers and I'm never gonna be that person. You know, like, guess what? You don't have to be, you don't have to be the it girl to have content that converts. And TikTok is really good at helping people find their niche and find their audience. It's also extremely searchable. Like, I don't know if it's the last time you tried to search for anything on Instagram, We just want to know where good tacos are nearby. It's impossible. It's terrible. Meta has really screwed themselves over with their platforms. I don't know why they haven't leaned into search. But TikTok is now where people love to search for content. They know, number one, it's going to be authentic. It's going to be somebody's Like legitimate feelings and there's so and there's like so much Content to work with that even if you're like, oh, I'm not sure about their take on it. There's somebody else's To work with as well whether it's a skin condition I was searching for appendicitis symptoms last night because my little one was like, oh my right side hurt and as a mom I'm gonna be like, ah Yeah, what are the symptoms of appendicitis? Yeah So I didn't turn to Google I turned to tick-tock because I knew that there was gonna be you know information there for me to learn in. Speaker 4: It's becoming a huge search platform, isn't it? Speaker 3: Absolutely. Speaker 4: So one of the things I want to talk to you about, so maybe you're new, maybe you're new to TikTok. Most of us, you know, are very involved. A lot of people are, like you said, hours a day watching TikTok. Are there any action steps a brand can take? Now we're not talking TikTok shop, but just TikTok in general. I'm a brand. I want to get onto TikTok. I might want to do it myself. I might want to hire some creators to do it. What are four or five action steps that they can do? Hey, check this out. If you want a personalized reply from me, all you need to do is subscribe and leave a comment saying I subscribed. Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, first and foremost, you need to have a Like one of the biggest mistakes I would see sellers make is that they outsource the creation of their TikTok social media accounts. And this absolutely sets you up for failure from day one. And the reason being is that if TikTok is geo-locked, meaning if that account is created in the Philippines, in Costa Rica, you know, some other country, guess what it's geo-locked for? Speaker 4: We're Canada. Speaker 3: Yeah, which is great. We love Canada. Speaker 4: 30 million people though. Speaker 3: Right, exactly. So when I meet with sellers and they're like really attached to their TikTok account, but that TikTok account is based in Argentina and they might have 30,000 followers. I'm like, listen, those 30,000 followers are Argentinian. Like your account is not worth anything, right? So the first step is to make sure that you're setting up your TikTok account in the United States. Speaker 4: Can you do that with a VPN though? Speaker 3: You can mm-hmm. Yeah, but still if you are if you are a US seller and like don't outsource the creation of That TikTok account first and foremost, you can then go and provide logins to your social media VA or whoever, but they need to be logging in with a VPN as well so that your TikTok account doesn't reset itself for their region. So these are just these are kind of like The core, the core steps. It's like you rush on thinking that you need to be focused on content creation and you've made all these mistakes even before you like you shot yourself in the foot even before you've gotten started, right? So getting started is crucial. Can you update the region after the fact? Yes, but it is really time-consuming and you have to get tech support involved and and I can't tell you how difficult that like, you know, there's It's very time consuming and I work, I have connections on the inside, right? Like I'm highly connected inside of TikTok and TikTok Shop and it still is quite the process to update regions. So I would rather you just like abandon a TikTok account and start a new one versus, you know, using one that's in the wrong region with an audience that's irrelevant. Speaker 4: So I'm curious if, This is hypothetical, but let's say you know a bearded guy in Canada and he wants to set up... Speaker 3: I could probably help that bearded guy. Speaker 4: All right. So he sets up in the US using a VPN. But he might forget because he's old, like he hides his own Easter eggs. So he might forget one day and all of a sudden he's in Canada or he's traveling over to Iceland or wherever. Because it's geo-fenced in the US, does it matter if all of a sudden now you start doing your work from Canada? Speaker 3: No, it has to be 60 days of content creation. I was in Mexico for Titan's Cancun event last week and I'm using the platform, I'm posting from Mexico and TikTok knew I was in Mexico, by the way, and it started feeding me all sorts of Content about where I was in Cancun and things I needed to do and food I needed to eat and write, extremely relevant all of a sudden. It was also in Spanish a good portion of the time. I was like, well, that's not helpful. But yeah, I would have to be there for longer than a week for it to reset. So posting from Iceland, not a big deal, but posting from Canada, which is actually where you live, you know, it probably, It would be good for you to just check under profile and account settings and account region and see for yourself what you are assigned. Speaker 4: Okay, so we got that as the first action step. Anything else? Speaker 3: One and two. Speaker 4: So one and two. Yeah. Speaker 3: Steps one and two. So TikTok does have a creator marketplace. So let's say that you're not on shop. You're just wanting to work with TikTok creators to start to represent your brand or just start to help you create content. There's a couple of different ways that you can go down this route. The creator marketplace, the TikTok creator marketplace is now called TikTok One. So you can just Google search for TikTok One. It's now part of their ad platform and they have all sorts of ad incentives running right now where you can put a creative brief out there, attract TikTok creators to work on your brand and advertising will Like the ads, as long as you commit to a certain level of ad spend, then that content is free. You can get like 10 pieces of content a week, you know, for a $2,000 per month ad spend. There's some like killer incentives going on right now. Um, so TikTok one is a great, uh, a great place to start if you're not on TikTok shop. Um, there's also a ton of UGC creation platforms, joint brands, Incense Pro, Billo. Um, these are all, uh, basically creator marketplaces and matchmaking between brands and, um, And, you know, content creators and any content creator worth their salt right now is on TikTok. It's not like they're Instagram only or YouTube only it's now. Every creator is on TikTok because that's where the opportunities for creators are. Speaker 4: Michelle, why don't you mention what you're giving away today? It's pretty cool. Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. So I have a TikTok Top course. I have a five-step framework that I teach sellers how to get started on TikTok. Everything from, you know, just those onboarding issues and questions that people have during business registration all the way through making your first $20K and beyond. More money, more problems, of course, with any platform. But it really is a hugely valuable system because it's not just throwing information at you. It actually gives you a step-by-step strategy. It's a $2,000 course and we are giving away A free course membership. Speaker 4: Okay, so hashtag wheel of Kelsey. Tag two people, you'll get a second entry. Kelsey, let's go to a commercial. Hey, Amazon, Walmart, and TikTok sellers, we're in Q4 and I know the pressure's on. So how do you rank higher and sell more during the busiest time of year? Well, as a certified Amazon partner agency, AzRank has the expertise and proven strategies to take your projects to the top, driving visibility and sales across all platforms. With a proven expertise in optimizing search rankings, AzRank guarantees your products stand out during this critical shopping season. You can email AzRank today at hello at AzRank.com. That's A-Z-R-A-N-K.com. And don't forget to mention the beard guy sent you, and that's going to unlock an exclusive discount. Let's move on to TikTok Shop. What is TikTok Shop and how is it different than TikTok? Speaker 3: Yeah, so TikTok is the user experience. So when somebody wants to get on and discover and get inundated with all the latest cool whatever Crazy topics that TikTok is known for. That's just the TikTok app and you download that and you become a user. And sellers, if you are interested in selling on TikTok, I highly recommend that you become a user of TikTok so that you can understand what the platform and the experience is like. And I would also say every time I speak, every time I'm on a stage somewhere, I always ask them like, y'all are interested in selling on TikTok Shop, how many of you have bought something off of TikTok Shop? And you will not believe how few hands I see. And I'm like, for you to really understand the true beauty of TikTok shop is you need to understand it from a customer checkout buying experience to go from discovery to checkout in seconds and back to scrolling. As a marketer, we love that frictionless discovery to purchase experience. We're not sending you off platform. It's all within the platform. So if you're just new or considering this, download TikTok. It's back in the app stores. There's nothing to stop you from becoming a TikTok user in general. Speaker 4: Now let's get a little bit more into TikTok Shop. Let's take a couple of steps. How can you get involved? I've heard some people having some problems just going through the onboarding process. Speaker 3: Yeah. Business registration is notoriously difficult. We'll say that. There's a few tips to help people get started efficiently. So first and foremost, you want to make sure that your business registration documents actually match your business registration information. So, for example, I know, crazy, but let me just give you an example, okay? So, for those of you who are looking at the visuals, this is an IRS SS4 document. This document is required. The actual scanned in version of this, not the electronic version you get from the IRS. And they want it because on this document, it actually says the business name, the address, the person, you know, the attention, this person, you know, kind of a thing, along with the EIN. And so when you're actually entering your business registration information, you won't believe how many times that document was created like 10 years ago and you've moved business locations now, you know, or you're changing the brand name or something like that. And so the documentation you're providing actually doesn't match the information that you are providing. I'm not going to say it's easy to update. It requires a call to the IRS to update that information, but that's requisite, right? You're wanting to sell on a marketplace. You need to have accurate business information to be able to do so. Speaker 4: But that should be, to be compliant, you need to do that anyways, right? Speaker 3: Right. Right. Exactly. Complain to me when you are the problem and not updating your business information. It really doesn't take that long to get it updated. I think usually the IRS, once you get on the phone with them, a new document is on its way to you immediately and you'll have that within a week. So that's kind of like number one, is make sure that your business registration information actually matches. Also, the system doesn't read PDFs well, so send in all your documentation in JPEG. So you're going to have to probably do some file conversions. It's not a big deal. The next big issue is your US point of contact. And this is an IRS requirement, right? Like this is not a TikTok shop requirement. They're not picking on you. But if you're going to be doing business in the United States, you need to have a U.S. business entity and a U.S. point of contact. So my international selling friends, I love you, but you have to have a U.S. point of contact. And it used to be harder. It used to be a U.S. beneficial owner. So they've now removed That's still allowed. You can obviously register a U.S. beneficial owner. But if for anybody who's not based in the U.S., you can just have a U.S. point of contact and that person has no legal liabilities, tax liabilities. It's just their social security number, proof of ID, as well as proof of residency. So no P.O. boxes. This has to be like a utility bill or a credit card bill or somewhere that actually proves that they live in the United States. And and that's just to start with as well. So this is not I saw on like a a In an Amazon chat thread the other day, somebody's like, oh, you can go on Fiverr and buy somebody's social security number. And I'm like, do not do that. Do you think Fiverr is like a legitimate place to find somebody's social security? That is called identity theft. What are you thinking? You do not want to build your business on identity theft. Like, oh my gosh. So please don't do that. Please. Speaker 4: Oh my gosh. So if I have, I've been asked this a bunch of times, but if I, a bunch, I don't know how many. Speaker 3: I've been asked a million times. Speaker 4: Okay. So Canadian, again, these are Canadians reaching out. I have a Canadian company. Do I have to open up a U.S. company to get onto TikTok shop? They've been having a lot of problems. I'm just talking strictly Canada now. Can a Canadian company open up and use a U.S. resident or U.S. contact to work their TikTok shop? Speaker 3: So I'm not a an attorney or business a business attorney, but a US a Canadian company can own a US company. So, oh, so you still have to open up a US don't have to have a US company with your bank account Okay And a US point of con like and a big account requires a US point of contact again. Oh Just something to keep in mind. I would talk to a legal representative about this. WyomingAttorneys.com is like a great place to just get a U.S. entity in a state that has very low taxes. So that's usually where I send people to have those conversations. I'm not a lawyer, go talk to one, you know? Speaker 4: Yeah, and there's another really, really great company called MyCorp. And they can just set it up wherever you want, Wyoming or wherever. Now, just to get off topic for a second, people say, why Wyoming? Well, one real good reason, it's cheap. If you go to Nevada, and again, I'm not, just like you, this is not legal advice, but if you go to Nevada, which gives you, it's tax free as well, but, You're going to pay a heck of a lot more for that permit each year or for that registration each year. So Wyoming is very, very inexpensive when it comes to that. But now let's get off of that. We don't wanna, and we did say disclaimers, right? We've had like 10 disclaimers on that. The TikTok ban shook the eCommerce world, but is it actually happening? Listen to Michelle Barnum Smith as she shares the latest in insider updates. And let's circle back to the ban. This is big on everybody's, everybody's talking about it. What's happening? Speaker 3: Well, the ban, What has happened is in effect. So the ban is actually a law and that law went into effect January 18th or January 19th, the day before the inauguration. Let me just double check which day it was. I think I'm pretty sure it was January 19th. But it was the day before the presidential inauguration. So what essentially happened was, you know, TikTok, you know, the Biden administration was on the way out. The Trump administration was on the way in and TikTok wasn't receiving any kind of clarity, like a clear concrete, you know, statement of whether they would have any kind of protections if they continue to, you know, Remain active, remain live. So the fines, just so you guys understand, the fines were the issue. If TikTok stayed running and available, the fines were $5,000 per user per day. So that's, you get the math, but that's a pretty hefty fine for anyone. So TikTok would be fined. Oracle, who's the one that manages their servers, the app stores, Apple, Google, you know, nobody wants a billion dollar a day fine, right? So TikTok of their own volition said, hey, we're not receiving like strong enough language for us to, you know, put our service providers at risk. So we're of our own volition. We're going to shut down. They shut down for 12 hours. And then, you know, Trump, of course, like this is huge, you know, obviously, no matter how you feel about Trump, I think we can all agree that he's, you know, he thinks he's a big deal. So, for him to like shift his focus from his inauguration to this, to TikTok and basically say, hey, like we got you, like the ban can come and go, but I'm the one that tells the Attorney General to enforce the ban and we won't enforce the ban. Essentially, that was put in writing and TikTok then came back online after 12 hours of being shut down. The app stores themselves took another month to come back and allow the TikTok app to be online. They also received letters from the Attorney General saying, hey, we're not enforcing this and you're not going to have any fines for supporting the app. That's kind of what happened leading up to the ban. Usage of the platform was insane, was insane. You know, we talked about like 90 average of 95 minutes a day of use on the platform. No, it was like four to eight hours a day of use on the platform. People were just like, Soaking it all up, like the amount of usage on the platform was insane. And I was telling my sellers, I'm like, look, I don't, TikTok is not going away. Even if they shut down for a minute, they're going to be right back up. Like this is not going away. And we leaned in hard and sales just soared in the weeks leading up to the ban and immediately after as well. So, and, and things have stabilized since then. I've launched, I launched brands right before the ban and they killed it, killed it. So, you know, for people who are like, Oh, I want to see what happens. And I'm not so sure, you know, it's like, guys, you are missing out on, and I have, I have, I've been saying that from day one of the ban. I'm like, go get your money. There's so much opportunity here. Now, essentially, Trump also said like, hey, you know, as it relates to the ban, we're going to delay enforcement 75 days. 75 days is April 4th. So we're coming up against another deadline. And just this week, you know, there's lots of talk in the space about like, oh, you know, Mark Zuckerberg is going, oh, Elon's going to buy it. You know, this billionaire, Mr. Beast is going to buy it. It's all this fluff. All of that is categorically false. They can, they can talk all they want. I have always said from the beginning that it was going to be Oracle. And Oracle is their server provider. It's where all their data is hosted, you know, and it makes most sense for Oracle to be who ByteDance and subsequently the Chinese Republic, the Chinese People's Republic of China would allow that sale to happen with. And it's that one's, you know, coming out as like the forerunner. Because it's not some figurehead who's going to screw with how TikTok is actually run, how the algorithm actually functions, all of those things. So I'm not saying that the deal is done, but it's looking very good that Oracle is the one that's going to get the deal. All right. Speaker 4: Well, we will see in a couple of weeks if you're right. Speaker 3: We sure will. But on top of that, though, Trump gets to decide if the law has been fulfilled. Congress and the Senate are the ones who passed the law and Biden's the one that, you know, didn't veto it or anything like that. He actually, you know, approved it as well. But the president is also the one who gets to decide when the law has been fulfilled. So, you know, he's already said like, hey, as long as I see, you know, progress being made, I can push the deadline for as long as I want. Speaker 4: Okay. Very, very good. Kelsey, I want you to come back on for a sec. The reason I wanted you to come on, Kels, is you're heavy into TikTok and TikTok Shop as well. Do you have any questions that you think would be great for our listeners? Speaker 1: I think what I find is most important for sellers and where there's a gap What is the knowledge needed to fulfill the strategy for TikTok Shop? Sellers don't really know how TikTok Shop works and so they don't really understand, especially if they're coming from Amazon, it's just a completely different game. Speaker 3: Absolutely. Speaker 1: About the samples you have to send, like being comfortable with sending up to a hundred samples to get your... Speaker 3: More than that. Speaker 1: Yeah, just to get started for the shop and getting your videos done by creators and How to run the GMB Max ads behind that all and how that all works together and getting the spark code. So what is the overall strategy that sellers need when they're on TikTok shop? Speaker 3: Oh man, there is not one. I have like five different strategies. They all kind of layer into each other, but there are core workflows. And I think it's really important to understand that when you're in what's called the cold start period, your first 90 days on TikTok, TikTok Shop, that it's all about momentum building. And so doing the right things at the right times is really critical and knowing what to do from the business registration steps, All the way through listing setup and then starting to work on your traffic strategy. So there are so many mistakes that get made along the way. And just like with Amazon, I tell sellers this all the time. I'm like, you would not start driving traffic. You wouldn't turn on PPC to an optimized listing. And so you really have to focus first and foremost on, you know, getting registered and getting all your fulfillment aligned and all doing test orders and making sure everything is set up correctly. And then focusing on onboarding your listings and which listings to bring over, which products to bring over. Because not every product is TikTokable. Not every product is the right fit for TikTok. And really kind of creating what I call the tip of the spear strategy and focusing on the best products for TikTok and having that be your focus. I see sellers bring over their entire catalog to TikTok and it doesn't work like that. It doesn't work like that. You want to really focus on the best opportunity for TikTok and sometimes that's your best seller. Sometimes it's your worst seller. And you could be having like a liquidation style strategy. I was just in Cancun and I was in meetings with seven, eight, nine figure sellers. And I was like, how many of you have inventory you would love to liquidate from Amazon? And they all raised their hands. Of course they do. And I'm like, that is a huge opportunity for you on TikTok Shop because it's low risk for you to get started. You don't care whether these products like do well or not. And as long as they're not terrible products and giving your brand a bad rep, It's a great, you know, it's a great strategy to lead from. I'm gonna be teaching that strategy. I call it the anti-hero strategy. I'm gonna be teaching that at Billion Dollar Seller Summit in Iceland. A little preview of what's to come. Speaker 4: Very good. Speaker 3: So there's so many different layers to it. And we haven't even talked about the affiliate outreach and the content creation portion. Speaker 4: It's just like, do you wanna just touch on it? We got a few more minutes to go. What do you think the last segment should be? Speaker 3: So the last segment is, is that you have to understand that content is king on TikTok. And so many sellers are thinking, Oh, I would need a social media presence. And I'm like, we don't even say social media anymore. Like you need to have a social media manager, like social commerce is the name of the game. And because TikTok is content voracious, you need to have at least 50 be posting, have product posts going out of your, you know, main product focus, 50 to a hundred pieces of content per month. Minimum, minimum. So you do the math, that's over three posts a day. Speaker 4: And you've got to find the people to do it, right? Are you selling on TikTok Shop? You need at least 50 to 100 videos per month. That is per month. Let's listen to Michelle Barnum Smith as she shares how to scale content fast without making it yourself. Speaker 3: Right. So that can be a mix of you as a brand investing in social content and posting social, you know, shoppable posts. On your brand social media page, it can also be working with affiliates and having affiliates create that content for you. So you're not going to have that day one, month one, right? You have to like lay the foundation and then start to build this momentum and you know, doing outreach. Even doing seeding in the form of paid UGC and getting those content creators posting for you upfront and building some momentum that way as well. So you have to know what the content goal is, that content number. And if you're going to be seeding that from a sample perspective, that's an investment in product as well. And if your product is very expensive, maybe TikTok Shop is not right for you. These are some of the requirements or you need to lean more heavily into branded content like you're the one creating the content or you have a team that's creating content if you're not going to be sending out a whole bunch of samples. One of the questions that I get is what if I could just pay a big content creator? And they, they think of it as like a, um, as a shortcut, a shortcut to success. And it's not, it's not. So, um, because every like follower count only matters in going live. It's not a guarantee that, hey, I'm working with Phil, my pharmacist, whom I have brought in to teach in my social track at Prosper. He's got a huge presence on TikTok Shop. He's the face of TikTok Shop help. But just a post from him isn't going to guarantee you a million dollar day, you know. So even working with these big creators is not a shortcut. It really is about building momentum. And starting that kind of what I call affiliate snowball effect where once you start selling other affiliates can see that and they want to hop on and get a part of that bandwagon as well. So that moment, the cold start period really has a lot of momentum building actions in it and you need to be committed for the long term. And if you're not, if you're here just dabbling, you will fail. You will fail. There's no dabbling and accidentally being successful on TikTok Shop. Speaker 4: Right. Yeah. And that's pretty much anything that you do, right? If you just stick a toe in and not two feet, well, you're just going to get your toe wet. Speaker 3: Yep. Speaker 4: Oh, by the way, I just wanted to throw this in there. So I was thinking while you were talking that your husband and I should be a partner, partnership, and do women's beauty products on TikTok. Now, I know that I tried to do this before and I started to learn about the demographics and working with your avatar because all I got in my feed were guys with beards and bears. Speaker 3: Beards and bears. I feel like that should be your social handle, Norm. Unknown Speaker: That's good. Speaker 4: Beards and bears. All right, there we go. So look, you actually gave me a great idea. Actually, it's Kelsey that gave me the idea, but it was on this podcast and we might change around the way that we do The Wheel of Kelsey. And that is going to give our guests way more exposure. And we're going to not just put it into our WhatsApp group, we're going to actually do a dedicated email to all of our thousands of subscribers. So that's going to give you some more exposure and whoever wins the contest will still do the will, but whoever wins the contest will get that $2,000 course. How do people get a hold of you other than seeing you in Iceland? Speaker 3: Prosper and Vegas, Iceland. I'm on LinkedIn. You can always search for my name, Michelle Barnum Smith. I'm also ttshopsellers.com is my website where you can learn more about our programs. And have no fear for anybody who's not a winner. We will have a special discount code. Speaker 4: What is that discount code? Speaker 3: It's Norm. Wow. Speaker 4: Who'd have thought? Speaker 3: That's right. That's right. And it's a good one. It's 50% off the course. So yeah, it's a juicy one. So we'll, we'll make sure that gets sent out in the email as well so that you guys can. Take advantage of that opportunity. Oh, it's here on the screen too. Beautiful. Speaker 4: There we go. All right. So Kels, why don't we just go to our last sponsor, then we'll call it a day. Speaker 2: Start, scale, exit, repeat. I'm Colin C. Campbell, and I've started over a dozen multi-million dollar companies in the last 30 years. I spent the last 10 years writing the book Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat to figure out what it is that these serial entrepreneurs do over and over again. We interviewed over 200 people. We created 58 chapters. Over 30 illustrations, 180 call-outs, and we quite frankly made this book for the ADHD entrepreneur. It's been number one on Amazon in 15 categories and has won 12 awards globally. Get your book today either on eBook, paperback, hardcover, or Audible on Amazon or your favorite bookstore. Speaker 4: All right, that was my buddy Colin Campbell. And he'll be in Iceland as well, by the way. Speaker 3: Awesome. Speaker 4: So, okay. We will see you later. Thanks so much for your time. I want you to come back and talk more about TikTok Shop. All right, Michelle, we'll see you later. If you want to be part of the Lunch With Norm world, you can watch the podcast. You can join the newsletter, which is lwn.news. You can join our WhatsApp group, our subreddit group, or our Facebook group. All right, everybody, we'll see you next week. Unknown Speaker: Lunch With Norm.