How They Made $1M+ with TikTok (FULL STRATEGY) transcript

I recently visited Tik tok's HQ and got to meet up with one of our clients in the one-on-one ads Mastery mentorship who has done over seven figures with Tik Tok and in today's video we're going to cover exactly how we were able to get over a 5x row as with Tik Tok ads and Jordan is going to share the viral secrets and strategies he's using to generate sales with Tik Tok organically and how they were able to grow their account to nearly 600,000 plus followers this video is an absolute must-watch there's so much value that we cover so let's get right into the interview and if you haven't seen our Tik Tok HQ recap video then I highly recommend checking that video out because we cover so much on the latest updates with Tik Tok we just Jordan and I were just recently at Tik tok's HQ together what' you think about the event dude the event was one of the best events that I've been to I like the small knit Community got to meet a lot of great people and some of the things they talked about were fantastic so it was all around a prime right there in New York city so I really really enjoyed it yeah New York was fun there was so many cool people there and a lot of new insights that we got to cover with Tik Tok ads and what they're releasing for sure yeah yeah it was great cool yeah so Jordan do you want to give a little bit of a background on who you are what you do yeah for sure yeah so my name is Jordan kilg um I co-founded a company called game netics um I'll be showing you guys a little bit more about this here soon um we've done just under eight figures and sales we started in 2015 um then also started an e-commerce agency called xfactor where we help e-commerce Brands scale with Tik Tok ads and um we also do uh coaching with our coaching program called ecomex we help uh Drop Shipping Brands and business owners on how to make scaling simple uh primarily through Tik Tok so you can see a common theme Tik Tok is a pretty common theme across the board um and we're very passionate about um having a big focus on on Tik Tok Tik tok's going crazy for so many different Brands and oh yeah it's it's absolutely insane that the results that people are getting right now and like with y'all y'all did roughly over what 500,000 just on Tik Tok ads alone yeah yeah that was a little little bit ago now um we've done a bit more since but even on that half a million we've done with the Tik Tok ads man I think that was in 2023 and 2022 um we were able to maintain over five row as and you know Chase was able to help us out a little bit with getting some of those results so it's pretty crazy yeah and so what is gametic explain what that company is and what you'll do there for sure yeah so um game netics is a is a custom controller company so it's an e-commerce brand I'll show you guys the product here don't know how many of you out there are Gamers but we've kind of designed this whole product experience um for the end user where it's kind of provides that wow factor right I'm sure Chase talks to you guys about you know creating a product that really stands out and especially on social media it's a really important part so as you open it up you kind of get this uh experience where you have the name of of the customer on the card um and then inside of here what's really cool is there's like a personalized note that goes to you from the team and then it's actually hand signed by the controller technician who builds your controller aming and so there's that personalized aspect to it right um and then inside which is we get into the product here is this really nice um nylon mesh case we've got the gnetic logos on Zips and then inside this is kind of where all the anticipation comes to an end where you get to reveal and see your custom build aome so yeah it's it's a custom controller company you can customize a PlayStation or an Xbox controller you can get like modifications on them like back buttons and mouse click triggers and what's cool about us is what we try to design the company for is to be the world's most customizable controller Builder you can change every individual button on your controller yeah that's awesome so how much with the unboxing and product experience how much does that impact people posting online and sharing El's company yeah it's it's a really good question because I think that if people want to be successful online focusing on this aspect is a very key part because think about it right if you're able to make an experience so powerful for the end user that they just naturally want to show it off because they're proud of what they have and what they own then it makes it spread by word of mouth so much easier so the impact that it's had on our brand um is is astronomical I believe it's one of the big reasons why we blew up um with our organic presence on Tik Tok back in January of 2022 and how we've garnered so many views I mean we've done we have 1.1 million followers across all of our socials in the last two years alone maybe more than two years now and um we've generated over a billion views across all of our shorts one so it's had a very heav that's a billion views with a B yeah and that's insane because most people don't get that many views on you know Tik Tok like some people will go viral one time but y'all really nailed the strategy for being able to consistently get videos to go viral what's what's the secret sauce what are people missing whenever they're making a viral video yeah that's a good question too and I think that you know as you and I both know the platform's definitely evolved over the last couple years there's been a lot of changes been more competition more content right and so you know back in 2022 I think that there was a very big window of opportunity for a lot of people um yeah and and the algorithm is just built different we all kind of know that um and so you know going viral um I think comes primarily through the experimentation of creating content around your brand like it it's about taking action as well now there's principles that you can apply for going viral one of the most important things is that you know and we noticed this among accounts who you know do go viral they don't have a lot of followers right it's not like Instagram and Facebook right Tik Tok if you make a really good video that resonates or connects and is authentic to the audience you're trying to reach you can get a lot of views and that's where I think the core of it really comes from is the ability to let down your God not try and create commercials not try and create this kind of refined image like you really want to be down to Earth authentic and one thing that we've noticed that has been very impactful is the entertainment Factor so for any business if you can kind of be less serious it generally is easier to be a bit more um authentic and resonate with the audience like for example right this is perfect example you walk into a car de dealership to buy a product buy a car right if the person the car salesman is very cold and serious you've got your walls up you don't want to share anything you know he's there trying to sell you sure but as soon as he cracks a joke or as soon as he kind of breaks that like barrier where you crack a smile or you laugh with them all of a sudden you have this like different connection with the person and that's the same thing that we're trying to do with content is we want to break that wall where normally people might be a bit more reserved and say oh these guys are actually kind of funny or that's kind of interesting and I like the way they did that you know it's not all about just selling their product and shoving it down their throat so um one last thing I'll mention about the virality aspect is um with short form content you you've got to you've got to keep people's attention we live in a world today where attention is continuously becoming less and less and so those first three seconds are so important and some of the ways we've done that is um for example we've taken the product you got to get creative we've taken the product um and we've covered it in weird substances so for example there's one video that's gone viral where we covered this in peanut butter like full peanut butter okay and in the first few seconds of the video the camera or the the phone pans into the controller and it's covered in peanut butter and so instantly people are hooked like what the hell is this yeah exactly and then from there strategically what we did is we clean up the controller and then we customize it so at the end of the video you can see oh I can actually get a custom controller from these guys so that came from making hundreds and hundreds of Tik toks and so I think the action itself of just getting out there and AC that hey I'm a brand I'm a business let's just start making content let's show inside of our business let's show people the personalities let's show people let's show us shipping out orders and then you can kind of get a feel and understanding of like what works for you by applying some of the things we just talked about too I love it yeah so I always say like when you're filming a video you want to think as if you're FaceTiming a friend a family member and explaining to them exactly how would you explain it to them versus getting on camera and like trying to just promote mode you want to be able to have the authenticity be able to film The Right video have the right clips and cuts you all are really good at being able to get the timing down too with your videos so just about every clip is like you know just a few seconds there's transitions there's even you know just like we are on the live right now there's a top screen a bottom screen one showing the controller another person talking it keeps people in engaged and that's a big thing and one thing is to go viral another one is to be able to go viral and get so was there ever time when you were posting videos and going Bor on not seeing any purchases yeah yeah I do have one particular instance where this happened and and I think Chase brings up a really good point because many of you listening who are trying to go viral um it's a really important aspect to understand because you know you can put a lot of time and effort into a particular video but then you're like where are the sales you know why didn't that happen and so we learned the hard way um there was a particular instance where we we created this viral Trend it was so weird um I did a video standing outside of Walmart doing this um it's called party mode and so the idea behind this party mode was if you guys remember back in the day where you could put in cheat codes on your controller and you know you'd be able to get certain things unlocked like in the game or whatever the case may be we did this like cheat code thing where we put in a a series of button clicks on the controller and then the colors of the buttons would start cycling through like RGB lights um but it was all a post- production thing it wasn't actually like a real thing okay and so we went viral on one of the videos because it was an idea we had and we made dozens and dozens of those party mode videos because they were just going viral but what we noticed comparison to um the peanut butter video for example where we actually showcased the custom controller being done we noticed that that resulted a lot more conversion so just because you go viral it doesn't mean sales for the party mode um viral video for example idea we had it was entertaining it got people to look and and watch and try it out for themselves like people were like sharing it there were pages that were like trying to prove it wrong right because we never told people that was fake for like months we we LED this on for like so long and we never really talked about our custom controllers it was just more of hey do this cheat code your controller changes color that's it we didn't even have a product that did party mode like if we would have sold a product with buttons that changed color we could have monetized that really well so there is some thought process that needs to go behind if we approach this viral angle we we try this this you've got a viral video already and you're trying to replicate it have a way to discreetly or very smoothly introduce your product in a way that's not like hey buy this then that's the perfect combination and it's it's just it's different for every brand you really just have to have that creativity behind it in order to execute and that creativity I think also comes by taking action because I think you know chase you know this too A lot of people sit there like I don't know how to go viral I don't know how to make content I'm bad at X Y and Z but through the action and doing it your creativity will evolve as you make content you'll get ideas based on a video that maybe you would classify as like not a good video and then that kind of evolves into then going viral that's exactly what we did that's awesome and how much are youall like averaging how much organic cells you know compared to the overall cells volume you do like what is an average video produce like just for reference like how much money could people make organically just by posting yeah yeah um so as you know it's hard to track exact video sales through one particular organic um post but I mean we would see huge spikes when we would go viral on certain you know viral videos we'd see a spike of anywhere between you know 10 to 100,000 over the month um just based on know a couple of viral videos just viral videos no ad spin 100K per month you know depending on how viral how well it converts you know some of these videos are doing that well let let me tell you this Chase is when we first started on Tik Tok we weren't actually doing any ads we were doing all organic and so for yeah for those listening in we we started posting Tik toks in around the middle of January of 2022 and at the time we were like I saw the opportunity that Tik Tok presented I was like we have to go all in on this platform forget Facebook forget Instagram forget YouTube we're going all in on Tik Tok and so um at the time you know I was more of the the marketing content guy my brother was more of the operations you know make sure orders got out on time that's how how our Dynamic would work and so myself and our creative director at the time I was like let's let's just make as many Tik toks as we can we also had another videographer and we were making four to five Tik toks a day like no joke like it was like almost all that we did during that time and for almost 6 weeks we were making between you know 2 3 four five Tik toks a day that's amazing and we went from zero no one knew our brand right because a little bit of context here we launched the brand we completely rebranded we had no packaging before which could be a whole another conversation about brand um we completely rebranded had new social media followings we launched and within six weeks we did $71,000 Shopify all through Tik Tok organic and um then the rest of the year we did around half a million dollars through organic as well so it was it was pretty crazy big impact organic had yeah a lot of people don't realize there's a lot of iterations you have to go through with the website you know it could be the packaging it could be the videos the creatives everything that you're doing there's always you know Improvement changes tweaks until it really starts consistently converting and scaling up yeah so you're seeing the growth on the organic side and then talk to me about what yall started doing on Tik Tok ads yeah for sure so we started Tik Tok ads around uh April is of 2022 um I had some experience prior with you know some meta ads as well um I had run you know previous agencies before this was about probably three I three or four months before I think I met you and I found your program Chase um we were doing around like 2 2 to three row as roughly on our campaign so they were doing okay um but we knew that we had to increase those results um so we were testing campaigns what we were doing we were running probably a little bit more of a um a traditional sales type ad so what we were doing is basically we would have the product in hand and Chase reference this a little bit earlier where we had the split screen of showing the controller and then showing what the inputs did on the the top half of the screen and we talk about all the features of the controller you know the quality the packaging um the details and all that and we ran those as ads and they're working pretty well and what we were trying to find is like how do we how do we make them a bit more authentic and we were kind of stuck at like 2.5 to three row hours I would say during this time and that's where we were like okay let's go out and find someone who has a bit more experience doing this stuff and see if we can get better ideas on campaign structure and creative guidance and that's when I found you and so we we started going through some of the Tik Tok ads we're optimizing campaigns and one of the things we did was Tik Tok has this creative tool where you can analyze you know the difference in creatives and then we were noticing you know certain you know like PlayStation versus Xbox right these two different audiences and segmenting them out rather than you know just having everything and just you know just putting up a lot of random testing is more like okay we see that this is working these specific creatives are going well and then segmenting out those campaigns and then all of a sudden what did we start seeing with you know it was like the PlayStation audience started taking off to three four 5x yeah and then spin started rising and y'all are like let's scale up yeah yeah no you're 100% right it's it's so funny having this conversation with you because it's taken me back to I remember having this conversation with you like segmenting out the audiences and you know we were like okay you know how is PlayStation going to compare against Xbox and we started we started putting instead of having like a play and Xbox controller in a creative we only had those specific controllers in creatives tting that audience and so lot more relevant yeah exactly and so what's funny is um the PlayStation audience has continued to perform um to this day and we kind of transitioned I don't know when it was exactly but as you know like the ad platforms have kind of evolved a little bit especially with AI we do a lot of just open campaigns now without any targeting we let the creative targeting and to this day we run basically only PlayStation campaigns because they just convert the best um they they they just outperform Xbox but we still get sales for Xbox controllers but we advertise PlayStation so now we're doing you know we get campaigns like our average campaign is doing between 4.5 to six rowers um you know during Christmas Straight Like no variation results maintain and that's what a lot of people Miss is whenever they're not getting consistency it's usually doe the the fact that they're either not doing enough testing to find out what's working yeah or whenever they run the test they then don't analyze the campaigns in a way to where they know exactly what worked from that test one thing is just putting up creatives and saying oh this one's working let's run this one more but you have to ask the question why is it the creative is it the creative combined with the actual audience is the structure of the video what's doing it you have to analyze all these different things and then once you're able to extract those numbers and you can see okay we're getting really consistent 5x 6X Ras here and then you scale that up and then keep what is working going on a continuous basis and just dropping in new creatives consistently every month next thing you know you're averaging five throughout the entire year and lots of people have a huge drop off they either don't update their creatives or they just don't know what changes to make so the consistency Factor comes in knowing exactly what's working and then sticking to it yeah it's true piece of the pot yeah and so throughout that time were you all leveraging organic videos would you take a viral video added into the Tik Tok ads what was some of the strategy was it a different you know were the creators totally different did you customize them only for ads yeah yeah good question so the we we we did have a lot of back and forth with um you know we kind of had a bit of a hit or miss with using you know spark ads or using viral videos to then use as spark ads to run as ads and we actually noticed that at the time the viral videos just weren't quite hitting it the same as the videos of just just demoing the product right because I think that and you could probably agree with this is demonstrating how the product functions and works to give people a bit of a vision of like hey if I own this this is what it's going to be like demonstration video Yeah it it it conveys so much more power in conversion than anything else and so I think that for a while there we had those videos still continue to do very well and if we skip forward to say um let's say last year even mid last year we started doing some of the peanut butter um you know covered controller videos pop Tock covered controller videos and we tested those and we noticed they still didn't convert as well as I would have liked them to um but we have had a few since then where we talk about the custom controller at the end of the video like we clean up and and customize it with those videos are converting a lot better so again speaking to what we were discussing a little earlier is you've got to have ability to have that connection to the to the product in a way that's subtle enough where it's not in your face right but you've drawn them in with that attention grabbing hook you know because like you run an ad with like a covered peanut butter controller you're going to get a lot of weirdos you know looking at that video so you know what I mean it has an impact on like ad performance optimizing it so one thing's entertainment we know if you can get the right entertainment the right engaging hook you can go viral and if you have the right call to actions and you know the product actually displayed in a way in those organic videos you can get sales from with the ads we're seeing you know being more direct with it while still being entertaining but keeping it product Focus product demonstration videos we know these are you know formats that convert on Tik Tok ads where product comparisons where you're comparing it against what they're currently doing versus what they could have like those are other formats and I think a lot of people need to understand that these formats are pretty Universal across a lot of different businesses right they might say you know we don't sell Gaming controllers but these a product demonstration is for any product you just need to know how to structure the video you have to have the hook the clips have to be organized in a way where you can fully you know visualize exactly how the product's being used what the benefits are why you should buy it and then a strong call to action at the end of the video Yeah and people think true Tik tok's you know for lower pric items what are you currently pressed that average order value is $190 to $200 there we go people are doing it all day long on Tik Tok they're spending hundreds of dollars on a product we see it with so many different brands see covers they're averaging 200 aovs youall are at 190 so you know people are willing to put up the money if the video you know if they find Value in it if they engage and you can get a lot of sales by doing that so what are y's goals for this year what's the plan yeah great great question so we had I wanted to highlight this a little bit earlier too this will this will um segue right into that question um during December or or sorry November December and January of you know 2023 going into the beginning of this year in 2024 um we absolutely destroyed our previous Tik Tok ad results I mean we went all in like we we analyzed all of our previous creatives some of the suggestions and creatives all the way back to when you know we were working together um with the ad account and we basically um you know put even more effort into make like increasing quantity because we knew we wanted to scale right so we had first is is finding that proven creative that works and converts then it's iterating on that and expanding out that creative pool that you have to be able to put inside of the out account and run those campaigns and we are ready we're ready for November so November December and January we did just shy of three4 of million dollars in three months we did primarily most of that through um Tik Tok and meta um we did I think it was just under or just over half a million dollars in in attributed sales to the Tik Tok and meta platform um and what we were doing is we were um this is something we can also talk about Chase is repurposing Tik Tok um styled ads to meta as well which is our strategy works so well um and so we had a huge huge influx and by the way the average row as was over seven it was like with with meta and Tik Tok combined it was around 6.5 average over those three months I love it yeah that's insane it's crazy and we were mind blown you know we just tried to give it everything we got and because of that and this goes to our goals for this year we were so overwhelmed like we we had to hire like we were hiring people like during December um we were trying to hire people in January um we got backlogged pretty bad because it's a custom product so you know if if you guys don't know like all of these products we have some pre-builts but every part is actually customized to the user and we have like a controller Builder on our website where you can do that and so we were making custom orders our build times went out to like four to six weeks and then it just it like it just kept getting worse we we were like six or eight weeks out from building controllers so we've been playing catchup all this year we had to scale way back and so now we're starting to scale back up we're on top of orders you know one to two week ship time now um we definitely learned our lesson to be a bit more prepared maybe for this Q4 um and our goal is by this year we want to be able to hit around two to three million I think we can still do that as long as we can have the right people in place and we have enough controller technicians and people in our shipping department so that's kind of the goal for this year I love it I see it all the time with Brands we're working with they'll come in they'll start getting insane results start to scale up and then it's always the inventory that starts to break the logistics the realization this is going so well it's amazing and then the moment where it's wait we have to fulfill all this now and that's like another thing you have to have those Partners or those key people on the back end who can help service you have to have pre-order strategies or sold out strategies and know how to leverage that for the transition so you can continue that growth and yeah exactly that's it's it's one of the crazy parts of you know scaling up and what are yall doing with scaling how are the budgets working are yall increasing by two times is it 20% what's what's the number yeah yeah so if I was to if I'm to reference back to like how we scaled during um you know kind of Q4 of last year um and we're we're right now we're approaching it a little bit like slower we're not going too aggressive right now um but the way we were scaling we plan to do this same scaling strategy going into you know building into the end of the year so what we were doing is basically we were um increasing budgets um usually around 50 to 100% so like if we were seeing good results within 3 to four days 5 days we'd increase budget like 50 to 100% depending on basically our kpi which was our rows that was the most important metric for us um and so we would scale it around you know 50 to 100% And we just kind of keep doing that every three to five days or we just kind of let the campaign run out because typically we're doing a new campaign refresh refresh every two to three weeks roughly I would say on average um and so we were kind of following that that main um strategy and then what we started doing when we were scaling is like okay we've had a previously successful campaign we did it at1 $200 a day let's bump up this one and see if we can do it at $300 a day with these you know similar creative so we we'd up the budget to 300 start there then scale that as well and then when we got into the heat of November and December and we were really trying to maximize on one Black Friday and then you know uh Christmas sales New Year sales the crazy times we did um something that people probably pretty familiar with which is surf scaling so what we did is basically every 2 to 3 hours um during that day we would increase budget 100% or decrease budget 100% of where we're at so we were we were getting up to you know I think at one point we had like a 10 to $15,000 Budget on some of our campaigns during the day on meta and Tik Tok and we were just surf scaling these campaigns so that's that's like the strategy we used in order to get to doing you know three4 of million dollars and doing it very profitably I love it and what are some of the things you would recommend if someone wants to be able to you know get results with Tik Tok ads if they haven't tested them before yeah you know I talk with a lot of people um you know you and I both we talk with a lot of you know new brands or new new companies who are getting started on Tik Tok and I think it can be a really big challenge for people because I think the mindset going into Tik Tok and and what we've learned over the years um not only with our own brand but just being able to work with other brands is the the organic presence has such a big impact on how the ad results come through in the beginning and so if you don't have an organic presence on Tik Tok then it makes it a little bit more difficult to really get started and really start seeing those results that you want I think meta it just has a bit more maturity to the platform I think that I think influences in a way where it's maybe quite on quite a bit easier to get sales out of the gate without much of a following with Tik Tok if you're starting out let's say you know if you have an organic presence get on it now because you're going to have a massive advantage against you know all the other competitors huge Advantage yeah you'll know creatives you'll see what's working and you're gonna have a base to work with once you go into Tik Tok ads yeah exactly but for Brands who don't have a presence there um it's very important that you learn quickly how to make good Tik toks and so I think that it comes with a lot of creative explor exploration in the beginning um it comes with a lot of testing and really trying to find that creative style that converts and resonates with your customers and not only that but also you know when you start a new ad account right you're starting with no data in the account so you've got to build that up right so you know typically in the beginning you could you could try running a purchase conversion campaign but typically sometimes it's a little bit harder for that to to convert so you might start with like a video views campaign get people coming in and then move to an adoc cart campaign get you know um 10 25 50 different adoc carts and then move it to a purchase conversion in the beginning um but 100% if you're doing Tik Tok ads find a way to also start your organic presence because it has such a big impact get everything Tes on organic and then once you have a good Cadence going you're seeing people respond you can see what their objections are you work in those into the video Styles refine your editing strategy and then eventually launch the Tik Tok ads and it's going to be a much smoother transition yeah by the way we're talking we're not talking about the ephant in the room right I mean you and I both know the power of Tik Tok shop I mean this is by far one of the biggest opportunities that everyone here has to start a Tik Tok shop you don't need to have a thousand followers you can start it out out of the gate as long as you're not Drop Shipping you know you can fulfill on two-day delivery you can actually make that happen right um so this is a huge opportunity for Tik Tok shop um we're running really good Tok shop campaigns and that is also having an impact on overall performance with you know organic right like I don't know if you talk about this much Chase but we see heavily with the brands we're working with where if you just link a product on your your post when you make a post it's getting five 10 times more views than just a normal post take advantage of that you know what I mean Tik Tok pushing out Tik Tok shop they want people to buy they're offering incentives it's growing very quickly and whenever we look at accounts you know pretty consistently if they're running Tik Tok sh ads and they have the you know product cards the interactive add-ons they're very consistently seeing you know four to seven EXT return and AD spend day in and day out just by cycling in those creatives and staying on top of Tik Tok shop it's another distribution channel that a lot of people miss out on yeah it's true and I remember um I don't know if you remember you did an interview with Alex at the Tik Tok event and he told me we said the same thing Tik Tok shop is going to become the next Amazon FBA and I wholeheartedly believe that 100% well I love it this has been a ton of value I'm sure so many people got a ton of notes from this and having gone through the mentorship who would you recommend it to who is it for yeah good question so Chase is really good at being able to advise on not only campaign structure but also creative um I think Chase where he stands out is his ability because he has such a wide experience with not only Brands he's work with but also his clients just understanding and seeing so many creatives all the time I think that that's really where um you know he he provides a lot of value and so for Brands who are like trying to figure out their creative strategy and really trying to understand like what they need to do in order to scale it most likely comes down to your creative and so um I would say that Brands who are struggling to figure out their creative they're struggling to um find ways to film more creative and how to approach that if you're struggling with your row hours or your return um that th those Brands I think would benefit most from from the mentorship 100% agree absolutely love it where can people find you and gametic yeah yeah so here on Instagram um Jordan kilg and then um gametic you can also find um gam.com um so I can show you guys here while I'm talking here gam.com um and then uh yeah on YouTube as well just Jordan kilg so awesome everybody should go get a gaming controller yeah for sure sweet well thank you so much for hopping on the live that was super amazing and we'll have to do another one of these soon yeah for sure man sounds good thanks J awesome absolutely all right so I hope you enjoyed that interview with Jordan he's been absolutely crushing it inside of the mentorship and if you are interested in joining our ads Mastery oneon-one mentorship then I highly recommend booking a call down below to see if you qualify and once again it's your favorite digital marketer here Chase Chapel cheers and bye all