How One Creator Drove $250K in Sales with Under 10K Followers (Ft. Jordan West) transcript

Within the mind of Jordan West contains all of the knowledge possible on earth about using leveraging creators in your e-commerce business with a focus on Tik Tok shops, but also with the ability to have creative relationships across every channel that you are on. And that's why today I have brought him on the show to talk about how creators play into your brand strategy. Jordan is the CEO of Social Commerce Club, an agency that focuses specifically on helping e-commerce brands engage with creators, specifically Tik Tok shop.

He can talk more about exactly what they do, but the point is this. Creators need to be a part of your brand strategy. Something I'm thinking about a ton at AGF Growth right now. And so I've brought Jordan on because he knows what he's talking about with this because he does it all day. Let's get into it right now with Jordan West from Social Commerce Club. Let's do it. Hello. We talked just the other day and here we are talking again.

How you doing? I feel like I talk to you more than I talk to like my team. So this is really really exciting. Andrew, I think I thought you were going to say your wife, but I'm glad you didn't say your wife. I thought I thought that's what you were going to say. Or your children. Yeah. No, I talked to her a lot. A lot right now. I was telling you she's four months pregnant, so like or four months pregnant. We're pregnant with our fourth kid.

No, she's like very pregnant right now. So, no, we're talking all the time. Good. Good. Yeah. Yeah. You just had me on your show to talk about uh social uh which um uh which is called Secrets of Scaling Your E-Commerce Brand. And we talked about uh my I don't know if it's contrarian opinion about AI. I'm not sure. anyway about AI and and AI creative and you are on my show to talk about the opposite of AI which is humans actual creators talking about brands.

Um so maybe maybe you can help just give the quick bonafides on why you are qualified to talk about creator relationships with brands like what do you do all day and and help people understand your context just in case they don't know. So I would say I'm I'm decently qualified to talk about this just because of the amount of bats that I've had in this arena. So, I've owned seven different e-commerce brands. I actually I say seven, but it's actually like more like nine.

Um, if you include hoverboard. Okay. All right. But I'm just going to say seven cuz that's kind of like my thing. Um, I'd rather be lower than than higher. Yeah. And and so I have worked You're at a number where it's hard to remember how many. That's the point. Oh, totally. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's a it's it's a lot. And one of the things that I hated the most was working with influencers. I will tell you I despised working with influencers because there was so much opaqueness, right?

It was like, okay, what exactly do we like, how are we going to pay you? What are we going to get for that? Is there any sort of performance, you know, incentives in any of this? And I just never really found that we were able to get what we wanted. And then there's the whole UGC side of things where it's like, I don't know, I feel like you can see through UGC videos, you know, like uh a lot of times. Now there's AI UGC, right, which we've been talking a little bit about of like, do we like AI UGC?

You know, I've got a I I do a little bit of SAS founder consulting and one of my SAS founder uh SAS founders is building this out right now. And every time we talk, I'm kind of just like h I don't I don't know. I don't know if I love it. And you and I talked extensively about this on my pod, right? And and what we think about AI creative and and sort of where you're at with it. For me, I you know, at at our agency, we've worked with I I think close to 100 brands now on Tik Tok shop.

And I will tell you not all of them have been successful. So, uh if you can trust me with anything, it's the fact that we have tried everything everything up until this point. Um and I I'm obsessed with it as a central brand strategy. Creators as a central brand strategy. People used to talk about influencers. They don't talk about influencers anymore. They do actually, but they talk about creators more often. And there's some definition of terms that could be done.

Um, and in fact, one of the things that really stood out to me at the Meta Performance Marketing Summit just a couple weeks ago was that they they had a big emphasis on creator relationships. And while I expected them to talk all about uh generative AI for creative, they actually didn't talk about that almost at all. It I it barely came up uh at the conference. Instead, it was like how to optimize your strategy for reals and how to use creators to do that and how you can use their marketplace to connect with creators, which forget any of those individual things.

Just receive it as a comment about um about what they are focused on, which I think actually fits the thing that you were telling me you want to talk about today and I think is really helpful. Uh which is this idea of the sort of creator centric relationships that brands are going to be having and the continuing development of that. in some respect not news, but in another respect I actually think it's really interesting because of how much push there is on the AI side of things and generative AI and all that kind of stuff.

So, um I don't want to put any words in your mouth. Tell me why what you think what it is you're talking about like in the sense of when you say, you know, creator relationships are going are like so central and and part of your thesis for the future. I can't remember if you were recording already when you said that to me or if it was beforehand, but No, it was before it was before. This is a big this is a big thing.

This is this is a reveal. So make your make so say your thesis and define what you mean by creator when you do. So when I say creator, let me first tell you a story. Uh and it's funny because I actually see her talking on the WhatsApp group right now. There is a creator in our creator community at social commerce club who did last month alone for a brand $250,000 in sales and she has less than 10,000 followers. She is not an influencer.

An influencer has a big following and builds trust. Creators do not do that. Now, are can they be trustworthy? Absolutely. But because of the way that the Tik Tok algorithm works and every other platform's algorithm now, it is based on content, not on your followers, right? And so, it's your content that goes viral, right? And so, you don't have to have a lot of followers as a creator to actually make a decent amount of money.

And now when you think that like affiliate fees are anywhere between 10 and 20% for high GMV creators like that, she's making a lot of money, right? This is the big difference between creators and affiliate and and influencers, right? Is that creators are are out there and really good at selling products. What what I like to say, Andrew, is like this is the new era of like this is the new MLM, the new multi-level marketing for moms that are out there, right? that are like, "Hey, I'm really good at selling this stuff." Right?

The cool thing is, right, these creators, they don't need to worry about their brand. And so, they can do a lot of really fun things versus somebody who's building a personal brand, right, and needs to really protect. I mean, you and I know this like absolutely inherently. You and I are, I would say, are influencers in the space, in the B2B space. And it's very different because when somebody approaches me with a software, I will tell you the first thing I am is skeptical and I will not talk about that software.

I actually I I highly highly regret. I sent out an email, an unsolicited email to my list about a software that I thought was absolutely incredible because of the promises. I didn't get paid or anything for it. And it turns out this software is garbage. It is not working. I think at some point they're going to get it to work. Again, I don't want to mention them, but like um that's what an influencer does. they have to care about their personal trust and image whereas creators don't.

They just really don't. Um, so why do you think that's interesting the MLM comparison is is an interesting thing. I I've I've had the same thought at times, but the you know, you just you just clarified the person doesn't have to have a lot of followers, but they actually have to be good at is selling and it's like a new version of an MLM. So, do you think that uh do you think that like MLMs this is a like engaging with creative relationships is something that some brands should do in particular uh and not necessarily something that every brand should be doing or do you think that more brands should be making uh a creator relationships whether it's on Tik Tok shop or otherwise like really really central to the like you know essentially like how widespread should the adoption be of creator relationship like this.

So, I think that every single brand should be building a creator pool that they are working with that actually like their product and know how to talk about it and are incentivized in a win-win sort of fashion to be able to actually do that. You know that I love more staffing. I just sent another client to more staffing to go chase down great quality talent in the Philippines for your e-commerce business. And if you're thinking about the Philippines as like $5 an hour or less, virtual assistant level talent, etc.

I can just tell you for certain that you are thinking about it wrong, you are missing out on the opportunity. And I know that because my business is being built with a majority of my team based in the Philippines staffed by More Staffing or one of its sister companies. And that's because more staffing is led by incredible Filipino executives who have built businesses in the US who came from e-commerce businesses in the US.

They know what it is like to be in the day-to-day of e-commerce businesses at every level, like from assistant levels all the way up through executive levels in those businesses. And therefore, they can help you staff your business with best-in-class talent from the Philippines, people who are native English speakers, who understand American culture, if you're an American-based business, who are a short flight away from lots of places where you manufacture in the world.

If you bring people on the manufacturing side, who are experienced as video editors, who are experienced on supply chain, who are experienced in marketing, there's people across every step, uh, every moment, every place in an e-commerce organization that can help your business. And more staffing helps you do that. They will recruit, help you onboard, they will do provide ongoing training and coaching for your employees in your business, and they'll even give you a one-year guarantee on Filipino talent in your business.

So, if they hire help you hire somebody, that person does not make it in your organization for a year. Well, then in that case, um, you they will replace that person for free, which is way longer than most headunting firms will allow you to do. Listen, I think there's a massive opportunity for brands to keep their opex low and add great talent at the same time and provide amazing job experiences for people in the Philippines.

It's a winwin in every possible way. I recommend you do it with more staffing because instead of just finding the cheapest talent, they're going to help you find the best talent at a price that is much lower than finding equivalent talent elsewhere. Go to morestaffing.co/ aforstaffing.co/ af or follow the link in the show notes of this episode to get a conversation started with more staffing today. Right? That's why I love Tik Tok shop.

That's why I understood Tik Tok shop when it came around and that's why Instagram has yet to be able to replicate this, right? Instagram's got the algorithm, right? They've got some of the creators, but I would argue, I mean, if if you saw recently, it was like about 6 months ago, maybe it was like 3 to 6 months ago, I don't know, time just flies. Um, when uh when Instagram and Meta were actually offering $300,000 for big Tik Tok creators to come over and only post on Instagram, right?

Why? Because Tik Tok has the best creators, right? They really do. The creators that understand that platform are are incredible. And that content travels really well. That content travels everywhere, right? It travels over to Meta, travels over to YouTube Shorts, right, which there's tons tons and tons of inventory over there right now. You might even be watching this clip on YouTube shorts right now. How meta would that be?

Um, it travels over to Pinterest. It travels over onto your your PDPs, right? All of this content is absolutely incredible. Not only that, these creators really have the reigns to be able to do what they want. You you cannot just go and approve their content. Now, there is one way that you can do that now. Um, but it's very it actually you're paying in sort of a a different sort of way and it costs you a lot more if you want to do that, but I would say for the most part these creators get to sort of have the reigns and that's the beautiful thing.

There's massive brands that are coming to us now, Andrew, that are like, well, we think that we might just get rid of our product testers, right? We might get rid of like any of those like um whatever you call those groups like focus groups because they're getting all of their marketing material and they're figuring out what people actually want. There's a brand that uh that we work with and they launched a shoe in uh sorry there was a shoe.

It was just like an absolute dog and they're like hey let's try and sell this on Tik Tok shop. Well one of our creators created a viral video with it. This shoe ended up completely selling out everywhere. retail, D TOC, Tik Tok shop, everywhere this shoe sold out. It was just crazy. Um, they then got Sydney Sweeney to be the face of this shoe afterwards. A shoe that was literally like they just wanted to get rid of and now it's one of their top selling shoes in their line.

That's crazy. That's crazy. And that would not have happened without Tik Tok Shop. That's why I love this idea of these creators over here specifically. I mean, what I what I hear everybody say about Tik Tok shop is that the investment is like extremely massive on the front end. But you also just said something else, which is that like maybe the real key is like just getting people actually liking the product first. And that doesn't feel like necessarily a huge investment um to do.

That means doing a lot of product seeding and finding people who really love it. Like what is the starting place for this for brands? Like let's say I'm running a $10 million a year e-commerce brand. I've got some money. I'm doing well. I'm trying to get past just meta only. you know, I I don't need to like pinch every single penny. If I blow 50 grand doing this, it's not going to be the end of the world necessarily, you know.

Um like, you know, I mean, it's a lot 50 grand, but like but yeah. Anyway, like how should that kind of brand start? So, that brand should spend that $50,000 on month one. So, this is this is really the the playbook that I have heard that that works for us. This is the playbook that I have heard over and over again. I was recently listening to an incredible interview with the founder of Neurogum and he basically went through and I was like that's the playbook.

That's the play. No wonder it works. They're pouring 75% of their budget now and this is a nine figure brand, right? Um and has become a nine figure brand this year by the way, right? By pouring 75% of their budget into Tik Tok shop. They are no longer prospecting on Meta. That's crazy. They're just retargeting on Meta. They're running PMAX over on Google to to capture all that. their entire top of funnel right now a nine figure brand everyone is running on Tik Tok shop right so this is what's really interesting right is all of this so so let let's go into into that budget and then I'm going to talk about going on to different platforms right because obviously do I still believe in meta yes like like still I was I was doing a a webinar recently with final loop and with uh triple whale and triple whale brought up some interesting stats right essentially 90 uh sorry 3% of all marketing budgets on DTOC is spent on Tik Tok. 3%.

It's like 70% on Meta. So, by no means is is Tik Tok going anywhere, but uh sorry, as far as like capturing a ton of uh a ton of the purchase power out there, but what's interesting is that their CPMs are actually dropping massively. So, there's continual demand on the platform. um uh sorry continual eyeballs and more and more you know thousand impressions that are on the platform but demand has not kept up with it which is why it's still the best possible opportunity for brands to do it.

No, but isn't but but but hold on hold on. I have to stop you there because No, no, no. I just want to keep going. CPMs are reflective of the value. The reason the CPMs are dropping is precisely the same reason the spend is so low, right? It's because it's because people aren't seeing a return and therefore money leaves the platform and therefore gets cheaper. It's the same. It's the counter. That's the That's the other side of the thing everybody says about Meta, which is like everybody's like, "Oh, CPMs are going up every year." It's like, yeah, that's because it keeps working better all the time. like the value the value is increasing and you get what you pay for and they're actually getting more efficient at matching people and also inflation also in right yeah and also inflation is a thing by the way um but the the the so the when I hear that when I hear the idea that like Tik Tok CPMs are so low I consider that kind of a negative like if CPMs are going down I suggest to that that means that unless you are incredibly savvy in some way like the like this nine figure brand you talked about right I look at that and say like it Doesn't that isn't that because the value is reflected and it kind of brings me back to my question which is like in the early stages for a brand how ought again that sort of low eight figure brand I'm like completely with you and thinking so much right now about like how do I get the brands that are working with me to be thinking more about creator relationships it just it seems like such a massive overwhelming opportunity if you can do it well but there's some kind of blocker there early on and part of it might be that 50 grand that we talked about blowing which if you do that in the first month and it doesn't go well you are not going back there.

It's not happening. Like you're just going to be like, "Nope, I tried that and I'm going to wait for 2 years until we're, you know, whatever." So, do you know how few So, I Okay, I'm going to talk to the CPM part because I I actually have a different take on it. Um uh so number one, do you know how few DTOC brands are on the platform? I don't know the numbers exactly, but what I know is that it's very very few DTOC brands as a as a majority of brands that are out there.

Um, the reason that I know this is that I have had two meetings with TikTok the last two days begging me to put something on to get DTOC brands in and they're going to do the entire onboardings for them for free if they come through me. And I'm like, okay, so they really want brands doing a million dollars plus, which is like a lot of brands, right? There's a lot of brands that are in that million-doll plus range that are that are in DTOC, but they can't seem to get them over to Tik Tok shop.

And I really truly believe it's because of this cold start problem. I I think that's I think that's exactly right. It's because when you get started, you just like again, if you're a million-doll brand and I mean, if it's going to cost 50 grand to get going, like you just can't do it. It's not it's done. It's over. You can't do it unless you're, you know, and most Well, you certainly can't hire an agency to do it, right?

And the problem is there's not really a lot of great advice out there and a lot of like great playbooks as far as like what to do on Tik Tok shop. So let me walk you through the playbook of whatever budget you have. Do not spread it over 6 months. This is not one of those platforms, right? What you need to create is this instance. And we're going to go back to CPMs just so you know, Andrew, I'm not forgetting about that because I I do have an argument.

Um, great. Great. And we'll argue back and forth on that podcast. This is our fourth podcast together. We haven't done enough arguing. It's time. It's time now. Oh yeah, it's definitely time. Um, so if you have that that that amount of budget, what you are trying to do, the feeling that you're trying to do is, "Oh my gosh, I am seeing them everywhere. Not just for the customers that are out there, right? But this is also for the creators, right?

Remember, at the end of the day, I don't really care that much about Tik Tok shop. I care about the fact that people are buying things differently. And I truly think my my take on AI is that it is going to push humans to want to buy from humans even more that we are going to sniff out AI so fast. I mean, you know, it like like LinkedIn and Twitter are just like great examples of like I like I'm going to be honest. I've got this like Jordan bot that will write posts for me.

I try it almost every day and every single day I'm like nah garbage. No garbage cuz I can sniff it out and I'm like if I can I know someone else will and I just don't like that. I'll use it to like maybe get some inspiration, but we all, I think, are going to be incredibly tuned to what is human and what is not. And creators are a really big part of that, right? Maybe at some point AI will figure it out exactly. And it's incredible.

I mean, AI is just like, can you imagine? I was talking about this 5 years ago, like AI could barely write a good sentence at that point. Like, copy AI. I remember it came out and it was like, this is garbage. Now, at least we're at at at a place where it's like, oh, okay, you're a B player. you're a solid B player in in most ways. Now, as an executive thinker, I would say it's an A+ player. That is where people are not using it enough in my opinion.

Um, I talk to it more than I talk to my executive team. Sorry everyone, if you're watching this, but you're probably not. Um, throwing my team under the bus here. I know I love my team, just everyone knows. Really love them. Um, uh, so, um, when I think about what to do though, you want to create that moment. And so, actually, let let me call out uh one of my um heads of uh department, Liz Davis, who runs our social commerce department.

I want to call her out because I think that she uh she has an incredible take on this. And the take is this. Take all of that money you would have spent in the first 3 to 6 months and instead preede your product out there before you even go live on Tik Tok shop. So, get your product out there. Now, we have the advantage of doing that at the agency and I'm just going to run through like how we would do that. We have a a big group of creators.

We have a ton of high GMV creators. They do over $50,000 a month. We preede to them and to the high potential ones who are doing between 10 and 50,000. We preede to them. So 200 of them posting, right? So these are these high potent these high GMV high potential creators. We seed out to them and then we take as much possible ad spend as we can and we just flood Tik Tok with as much ad spend as possible as they are posting.

So we say, "Hey, we want you to post between, let's just say, Friday at noon and Saturday at noon, and we're getting as many possible posts out there. We want you each to post five times, and we're going to put a ton of ad spend behind this." That's when the algorithm looks and they're like, "Whoa, this product's really taking off. Oh my gosh, they made a thousand sales this day, 2,000 sales this day. And now that product starts to get pushed out more.

Now, creators are ones that are on the platform all the time because they're constantly looking for trends, right? And they're on the platform, they're like, "Whoa, I'm like constantly seeing this brand. Man, let me see if they have an open collab and see if I can get on there." Right? That is how you create a snowball. And now, this is where most brands totally fall flat. And as an agency, something that I saw ages ago was going to be the biggest thing is then capturing those creators in a group because again, if only 3% of spend is happening on Tik Tok.

Tik Tok's great, but like this morning I was looking and the top brands on Tik Tok shop are doing like 7.5 million a month. Like yawn, no one cares, right, about that. And that's why I think that a ton of DDC brands have not taken it seriously yet because they don't understand. The majority of people don't understand. And I'm sure I've used this phrase with you before, Andrew, so don't think it's it's not unique to me, okay?

But most people have no idea what a hockey stick looks like in an exponential curve. Most people are standing at the bottom of an exponential curve and are like, "Oh, like think about the amount of stuff you and I have gone through in our life where I'm like where we're looking. We're like, "Oh, the mobile revolution." I remember my wife was working as a graphic designer at the time and people were talking about this mobile revolution.

I didn't realize it. I had no no clue what a hockey stick looks like. Now I do. Now I do and this is that in AI and in creators we have two hockey sticks right now and I am taking advantage of both of them right now. The fastest way that I know of to get building and testing landing pages and funnels in your e-commerce business fast is with Vermont. Vermont commerce. vermont.com/af is where you go to get started with V for V for V for V for V for V for V for V for V for V for V for V for V for V for V for V for V for V for V for V for to experience the fastest best landing page and funnel builder that I know of.

You can build truly custom funnels all the way through every part of your uh landing page and funnel experience uh with Vermont and you can do it really really fast and really really easily. That's basically what Vermont is all about. They're all about making it possible for direct response advertisers to spin out landing page and funnel experiences that are going to be great and high converting for customers at as much scale as possible as quickly as possible so that you can go do the kind of performance marketing uh that moves the needle for your brand or for your client's brand.

Um, Vermont allows you to customize uh every part of the process extremely easily and quickly. Of course, they're building AI into every step of uh of their funnel building process. You can build custom cart upsells. You can build uh all kinds of offer testing with very easy inplatform uh testing environments so that you know which funnels are working, which ones are not. The basic basic point here is this. If you want the uh most robust landing page software that exists out there and the most customizable landing page software, you should go to vermontCommerce.com to build.

Landing page undersells it. It actually does way more than just landing pages, but it's really cool, really slick software. Go check out today. Commerce.com AF. just get on a call uh and take a tour of the product and see how cool it is. It really is something my clients use it. You will love it too. So to come back to my question, do I I mean so so one potential argument from to your point is take the risk and be aggressive, right?

Like essentially like yeah, it's it's uh it's an opportunity unlike other opportunities. You need to just go try to capitalize on it and it's worth taking a pretty big bet on. If that's the answer, that's the answer. you know, like, you know, like if if that's what you're saying. Um, I think I think that's possible for plenty of brands. What I really wonder about is like is there some way I mean even just at the level of like creator relationships, product seeding, those kinds of things.

Is there some way to build relationships that you feel better about in advance of this to where you've got people in some way making content for you that doesn't require that big of an investment upfront and then you you know like I don't know maybe that's just exactly the thing you said not to do. But I'm trying to I'm trying to sort through like if I want creators who actually like my product or who actually understand and know how to talk about my product.

Um it just it just always feels like that takes time, you know? It just takes time. It takes a lot of reaching out to people. takes a lot of people going like I don't care and ignoring it and you have to sort of sort through. It's like almost like LinkedIn cold calling or something which I assume works for somebody because I get so many of those messages all the time but uh but I'm assuming it's like a low conversion rate at a high volume and maybe that is that the answer for Tik Tok uh or or is it just like yeah you just have to just like hammer your spend in that first month and go for it.

So I really do think it's the second unfortunately. I would love I'd love to tell brands like, "Oh yeah, go ahead. Go low and slow and figure this out." And I've seen that and I've seen brands that have wanted to do that with us and we used to say like, "Yeah, that's okay. We can start like that." I don't believe in that anymore. I just don't I don't think that that is the way that the platform works. It's not the way the algorithm works, right?

Like look at the way the algorithm works and what it's trying to do is create moments, right? It's really good at creating moments and taking those moments and then putting them in front of people. That's what it's good at. And so just so is the ideal brand then is the ideal brand then uh maybe a brand that is like pumping profit is trying to you know is trying to diversify from meta and is ready to go take a bigger bet essentially like what I hear in that advice is that like a lot of brands should not do the thing that Tik Tok asked you to get people to do which is like go over to the platform and start engaging with it because if they go and do that they are going to um not be able to invest in it seriously enough.

It's just going to be like a little shiny object thing that they don't actually take seriously. the brands that should go over there and do it. It sounds like it sounds like if I understand your your approach to this correctly. Um is it it should be a brand that is like more mature is generating some profit and is ready to go like all right I did a bunch of money last year. I am ready to take my next bet on my next thing and we're going to go push in on it.

And that means that brand's probably doing 20 million plus and you know sort of more or whatever 15 plus at a big bottom line and is ready to go make a bigger investment. I think that there's another there's there's a third way in here somewhere, right? And this third way is that I love organic content more than anything. I think that whatever works organic is generally going to work fairly well as an ad, right? That's what the platform wants.

That's what Meta, that's what YouTube, they want you to stay on the platform as long as possible. They reward you with lower CPMs generally when you do that comparatively to the platform CPM, right? That's why I love tracking CPMs, and we could fight over that if you want. Um but but generally that's what they want you to do, right? And so my my actually other way that I would get a brand to go in is to create 10 to 20 pieces of content every single day on your brand handle.

Now I have the um the good graces of Tik Tok and they will always tell me because I ask them. I'm like, "Hey, what are your KPIs this month or what are your KPIs this quarter or this six months?" Because that's what I know the algorithm is going to do. So, I will tell you, Tik Tok will like kill me. Um, but I will tell you what they care about right now is brand content. They want brand handles to number one go live, and number two, they want them to create content and run ads off the brand handles.

I don't exactly know what their play is there, but I I like it. I like it a lot. It's to build Facebook, man. It's in terms of the ad revenue. Totally. Yes. Yes. Totally. And so they want to they want to get as much possible uh content onto the platform uh as they can from brands, right? Think about like the biggest I was watching this Gary Vee clip the other day. It's like the biggest opportunity right now is Facebook organic for brands because no one's posting.

I'm like when's the last time I've posted on Facebook as a brand because there's no there used to be no reach. That's so funny. Yeah. Isn't this it's so funny? most things unless it's like crypto. I love Gary Von. Um, and I think that he's like really got a very good sort of eye of what's going on. And so you look and see where the where the underpriced attention is. And that my friend is how we're going to come back here into the lowerriced attention on Tik Tok.

I actually think that right now what they have is just an inventory problem, right? and that brands haven't figured it out because brands now triple whale is the problem right at the end of the day triple whale is the problem because triple whale came along and said we can tell you exactly how uh a customer journey happens and Tik Tok was just inherently bad at that attribution off of Tik Tok was terrible and yet you look at brands and you're like wait 40% of my post-purchase surveys say that they're coming from Tik Tok and zero say that they're coming there on Triple whale it's like well who are you going to believe right I'll can Can I tell you who I believe?

Triple oil. Well, actually, I believe neither of them in that case. Um, and I because I just think postpurchase surveys like are are extremely questionable in terms of self-reported data. Probably the actual answer is that they're both telling part of the truth, which is that like I mean, what I really believe is my bank account. That's what I really believe. And so, if you're posting and if you're and if you're running ads there and the and the dollars go up, then you win.

But like I think I I I think I've got a better way. I've got I've got a I've got a maybe a hot take here for you. Yeah. Okay, great. I think that if you just measure like an old school marketer would measure, which is just basically CPMs, and it's just basically like, hey, where can I find the most attention? I think about a brand that that works with us that generally gets they're doing like 2 millionish a month on the platform, which is good.

They're getting between 50 and 100 million product views on their videos that have products. Think about that. A hundred million views in like a $25 CPM environment is worth $2.5 million. Yeah, that's a lot. Just think about it like that. Yeah. Yeah. It I mean that's a lot of views, right? So that that's like that makes sense. That that that many views does net out. But that that CPM is extremely low at that point, right?

Like to to be able to generate that much money, I think. Actually, I don't know. Is that not true? I'm just using an average. I'm just using $25 because that's what Triple Whale had on their uh on the webinar that I did recently for Tik Tok. I've seen way higher CPMs on Tik Tok by the way. I don't see that as far as ads are concerned. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I I mean I think I think the the other thing that you're getting out here that's interesting is just sort of like the general ability to create if you're if you were a brand and you wanted to go create more content on Tik Tok, would you go hire good Tik Tok creators to do it?

Like essentially like is that is that the actual answer for that next step? So, like if you just make what the thing you said more actionable, like okay, the starting place, the third way is to just start making content on TikTok. Um, brands I've watched brand I've watched clients of mine do that and just see all their content immediately die um and just just have no reach. Is is that because they just have the wrong creators?

Like, should they be going and doing a creator first strategy for that? Yes, I still think so. Yes. So, but you're going to just need to make a ton of creative. And so what you need to do then is actually get those creat literally 10 to 20 per day. You mentioned that number earlier. I wanted to come back to that. 10 to 20 pieces of creative per there is no amount of creative that you can make on Tik Tok that is going to be too much.

That's so there's no like algorithmic penalty for overposting. No. No. It's not it's not like other platforms like that, right? All that they want is good content that goes out there and so they don't care if you make a bajillion pieces. Huh? Just go ahead. Just make as much content as you as you want for your brand. That's the important thing to remember here, right? And that's why this is such an incredible opportunity for brands.

So, let's talk about this creator first like idea, right? And this creator centric idea. So, here's what I think that the brand of the future looks like. They go they first go to Tik Tok into Tik Tok shop. They find their people over there. And what that's going to take is it's going to take a lot of 8020s, right? You're going to go 100 creators. 20 of them are going to be decent. 20% of those are going to be incredible.

So now you've got four creators. That's going to be part of your pool. And you're just going to keep doing that over and over again. And when you find those four people, you're going to take those and you're going to say, "Hey, I'd love to give you like we love your content. I'd love for you to do 30 videos. I want to give you a retainer plus some sort of rev share. How much would that cost do you think? Just ballpark it.

You've seen a lot of these deals. Just help people understand that. 3K for 30 videos." Cool. Great. Right. So that and then you're going to make sure this is the biggest thing. make sure before they post a single video that you are getting rights to use those videos across platform. Now, one of the like sort of Jedi moves right now is that what you need to be doing is actually taking those um uh those videos and running them through a platform.

Um you can use Social Snowball for this. You can use Refunnel for this. Refundel actually has a really great like one-click whitelisting tool. So, really like that. And they'll also pay out based on either CPMs or CPAs. And so you can actually run and they they plug into the Facebook API. So you can actually see based on attributed revenue through Facebook, which I I I think I'd still rather take that than I would take the affiliate link.

Yeah. Um so I'd rather do that. Or what you can do too is you can then take those creators and say, "Hey, we just want to start like do you have a following on Facebook? Do you have a following on Instagram?" If you do, we just So, let me just walk that back so I understand what you just suggested correctly because I want to make sure I was clear. We're clear about that. We're opening. This is good. This is very good for watch time.

I also just want to make it really actionable for people. I'm the worst content creator cuz I never think about stuff like that. I just kind of talk. Um I probably would have a lot more downloads if I was smarter about organic content, but I'm terrible at it. Um so, just to make this really actionable. You pay, let's just take your example. You pay three grand. You you go you you seed to 100 creators, whatever. You started relationships.

You end up with four that are good. You pay each of them three grand. You you pay uh that three grand for 30 posts. Now you've got 120 posts. Okay. Um and hopefully over time you're doing even more than that. But we'll start with those 120 posts you on four creators. Now if you're paying three grand, you probably actually don't need to pay them a percentage. So you could even go as low as like this is bucks plus a percentage.

Okay. So, so this is exactly what I was going to ask. So, you think if you're paying three grand, you probably automatically get the rights to that content for your other channels as part of the deal because three grand is enough upfront to do that. Okay, great. Um, so in that case then, or you could try and do $1,000 upfront and then you can do some kind of like an affiliate deal or whatever where they actually get a bunch of upside on the ad.

Which one of those would you do if you had the brand? Would you pay somebody the three grand or would you pay somebody a,000 with the upside? I would do a thousand with the upside because I love win-win. Like it's like the way that I that I do like sales contracts with people at my agency. Like I want you to stick around as long as possible. I want you to be part of this brand. I want you to win when I win. I don't want to go back to the old way of us trying to arbitrage each other, right?

That's like that's the old way of doing things, right? Like I want it to be win-win. I want there to be like unlimited upside. Are creators motivated by that? Because one of the things I've always found in sort of influencer creator relationships is that they just sometimes don't really get it. It's hard for them to track the metrics, etc. Like, shop has changed all that, Andrew. Yeah. Right. That might be the answer.

Yeah. Right. Because it's so much clearer to them now that they have the upside in the deal. So, yeah. Okay. Totally. The old the old way was awesome for influencers, right? Build up this big this big following. It's all like very murky, right? And they don't really have to like there's no skin in the game, right? That's a really important concept constantly. If you're like looking at like what way does a system work really well?

Everyone go read Hassim TB's skin in the game. Great book. Um it's it's really like this concept is incredibly um uh like incredibly sticky when it comes to the way that you work with people because unless they actually like if you're just paying them straight up, they're just not going to care in the same way. And it's just human nature. It doesn't matter how good of a person they are, they're just not going to do well for you in the same sort of way.

Yeah. And and so even if that does cut off some creator relationships who just want the money up front who actually would be decent, that's okay because that's actually inherent in the method. This is another place I see I see uh brands get frustrated is that like what we just talked about was finding four really good creators out of a hundred. And what I regularly see brands do is like I don't know, I took 10 shots out of this.

I took 10 shots of this and it didn't work and like it just is too big of a headache. But what we're talking about is like, well, yeah, you didn't take enough shots yet, you know, like totally like and and I think brands do get frustrated with this. But so brands need to enter this this um this channel and this approach with the assumption that the vast vast vast majority are going to fail and therefore not get discouraged when that happens because you're actually trying to find just those three or four or whatever it is who really do a great job.

Um and and and then incentivize them with upside and make sure to pay them and don't resent paying them a lot of money when they make you a lot of money. Totally. Because they are going to make you a lot of money and then they're going to make a lot of money as well, right? And that's incredible. Like we have creators in our network who have like paid their houses off in a year. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It's wild. It is absolutely wild.

They just hate writing big checks. They get so annoyed by especially when they when they when they do the math on how much time went into it versus uh something else. like they they they I think brands have a very hard time with this idea that like that uh that like oh the video only took them like 5 minutes to make or whatever you know they just picked up their phone like why should I pay them this much money for it and it's like so don't do that calculation don't do that that's not what that's not what you're paying for you're paying for brains right I I was going to say so I um when people come to me and there's software that I really like and I'm going to talk about it um I always prefer there to be some sort of like incentive deal.

And so I did this recently with a with a software company. Blew it up. Like they I they had so so many users their checks to me were so massive they just stopped paying. They're like no like we know your newsletter rates way lower. And I'm like so you did like this is what you wanted to do. I don't want to call them out. They're lovely people. Lovely people. But it's it is totally that where it's like well you just sent an email.

It's like yes I'm also putting my trust on the line. Yeah. And actually it's this the old Picasso illustration. Not to say that we're Picasso or or that a Tik Tok creator is Picasso, right? But the old thing is like you know there's some anecdote about somebody says oh meets Pablo Picasso and says can you paint a picture of me? He takes 15 minutes he paints the picture hands it to her and says that'll be $30,000 or whatever.

And she goes well wait that only took 15 minutes and he says no that took a lifetime. Right? And again so there's something to that which is the idea that you're not actually paying for the widget. You got to stop making a widget calculation with these things that have outsized opportunity in your brand. You have to make a calculation instead of like, okay, the people who are strategically good and who are making content that makes money for me are the most valuable thing I can get in my business.

If I can get relationships with those people who can create ads at scale for me, pay them, let them make money. And people also do this with Facebook all the time. This is a rant now. People do this with Facebook all the time where they'll be like, "Hey, we'll take a we'll take a Facebook rorowass of two to one." But then on their other channels, they're like, "I'm going to pay an affiliate commission of 10%." So you want a 10 to one on affiliate, but you but you're taking a 2 to1 on Facebook.

Like what? Yeah. Makes no when you go into Tik Tok shop, think about that exact same thing, right? We tell people, we're like, "Hey, at first give them 40% commission cuz nobody's doing 40%." They're like, "Well, that's way too much." I'm like, "That's like 2.3 or 2.2 or something." 2.5. Yeah. Oh, 2.5. Perfect. Yeah. Perfect. the amount of brands that would be dying at scale for a 2.5 rorowaz, right? And we know that the majority of this is net new revenue you wouldn't have had anyway.

A net new eyeballs. That's right. Yeah. Does that work spending on TikTok? Does offering does offering a bigger commission work or do you just end up attracting like sort of lazy people who want a big number? 100%. No, no. It works with high GMBB creators because they know if they look go and look at the product, they're like, "Oh, wow. Okay, I can make 40% on this." Um, now generally now go and uh make sure that your ad uh um uh commission is is a lot lower, right?

So don't run your ad commission at 40%. That's too much because then you're going to be spending on ads and them. Um and that's fine. They're just looking at the top number, the the organic number anyway. So do like I would do like 10% on ads because you are going to still need I mean like we've we've gotten some CPAs down to like four bucks. That's not normal, but like imagine you're still going to have a fairly decent chunk of of CPA uh in amongst there as well.

I think I have one more major question for you, Jordan. Help me think about identifying creators a little bit more. Uh you know, in your worldview here. I mean, you've fully transitioned your agency away from being meta ads focused into Tik Tok focused. You are you are as allin on this as anyone possible, which is why I like talking to you about it. Like you have really put your money where your mouth is on this on on this thesis.

Um in fact, I remember kind of. Yes, I I I have, but yet we still spend millions of dollars a month on Facebook. Yeah, I know. But it's not how you talk about yourselves. Like, you know, you changed Yeah. And and I remember talking to you at uh when we met at e-commerce round table in San Diego and and I said, "Well, what happens if Tik Tok goes away?" And you said, "It doesn't really matter because like first of all, I don't think it will, but secondly, this is the future of how all these platforms are going to work.

It's not really about an individual platform. It's about creator relationships with brands, which is the thing that is going to matter. That's that is the way you framed it to me at the time. I thought that was really insightful and and a and a good bet. I mean, I thought again it reflected integrity and the bet you're making. So So help me though think about like the starting place in terms of finding these creator relationships.

This is a place where I see a lot of brands get stuck. Um like like how should I go about starting to try to find the right creators for for myself? If I'm if I'm a younger brand, let's just say I put it whatever number you want, but a younger brand. So, this is where I really think that Tik Tok shop comes in whether or not you are going to be successful on Tik Tok shop, right? And actually sell a lot on Tik Tok shop.

It is the easiest place to get into right now and find creators, right? There's over a million creators now that are active there. Now, a vast majority of them have no revenue. So, I would just start right there. Make sure that they've actually made revenue before. Reach out to those creators. So, use use one of the bots that are out there. I recommend Reacher. I love those guys. I've consulted with them and advised them for a long time.

Um, I think they're building some really cool stuff. Use one of those tools to reach out to to people. Um, also take advantage of some of these bigger creator networks that you can tap into, right? So, off the start, you can pay a little bit of money and then access these bigger creator networks. I would highly recommend doing that and then have some sort of compelling offer to be able to do that. Okay, that makes sense.

So, okay. So, Tik Tok shop and then have your offer be compelling, which is like the thing we talked about, right? Like 40% commission or whatever it is, right? Where where you're offering a bigger amount upfront, right? But, uh, let's talk about that middle one you talked about, which is creator networks. Just again, be really specific for people who are not as familiar with this. Like what creator networks are you talking about?

How do people find that? Yeah. So, there's a there's a bunch of them out there. Social commerce club has one. So, a lot of brands work with us just on our creator network. So, they come in and tap into our creator network. They're called Tik Tok Shop affiliate partners or taps. So, if you ever hear anyone use the term tap, that's what they are. Social Army is one of them um that you guys can go check out. Um essentially they're the ones that facilitate the relationship between a big amount of creators and a brand, right?

And so you can go and and do that. Some are great, some are not. Um Outlandish has a good one. Uh there's there's a bunch of them out there. So if you start searching Tik Tok shop affiliate partner, that's where you're going to be able to find the right one. Some of them are like in certain areas, you know, like Mom Goods, right? There's some that are like just for for moms. Um that's where I would kind of start your search.

Uh, and even just put it out on Twitter, right? See, like there's there's a lot of agencies out there who are accumulating these kinds of of creators and trying to like we have a huge amount of staff that just cares for our creators. It's crazy like because we really do believe that they're they're at the center of all of this. Yeah. Did we not talk about anything that you wanted to talk about? Let me just give you a space for where I didn't ask the right questions.

What what did I miss that you wanted to hit? So, I don't think that the CPMs on Tik Tok We're going to come back here. Okay, let's do it. I don't think that the CPMs on Tik Tok are reflective of the efficacy of Tik Tok. I think that they're reflective of You're talking about ads, right? Tik Tok ads. Tik Tok ads. Yeah. Of the market's view of Tik Tok, not the actual efficacy of finding products and blowing brands up and being the actual top of funnel for brands.

I think it's actually the the opposite. I think that it is like I'll Garyve vs here. I think that it is the most underpriced attention that is still on the internet right now. That's because people aren't measuring it correctly. Basically, you're saying it's more incremental than it looks based on something like triple oil or whatever. Yes, exactly. And the first place that people go after TikTok is Amazon. Again, tell me how you can somehow measure that.

Yeah. Well, with an incrementality study is the way you do it. But the Yeah. Um the That's interesting. I um it it is it does sound like an argument for more incrementality studies for Tik Tok Tik Tok and to and to work with an incrementality partner or something like that to to give that a closer look because I think that's look at the proliferation of MM right now, right? They're everywhere, right? Like yeah, and I they're not going to tell you the answer to this question very well.

I I mean, you probably don't know this about me, Jordan, but I'm skeptical of MTAs and MMs as a general rule and think that they're they're one of the most over invested in things in all of e-commerce. I just don't think that they're that that useful across the board. Incrementality studies are much more interesting to me. Um, and MM as a way to guide incrementality studies, that is interesting to me. But, uh, but on their own, I think they're things telling you that they are telling you the truth, but they're not really necessarily telling you the truth.

They're like going to a doctor for 99% of things. Like the same sort of idea. I forget what that word is, but Hashim Talb actually uses that in another book, Antifragile. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's the same thing. And so, yeah. I mean either way that would be the reason that they're that they would be underpriced in the truest sense which is that they actually is the market's view of it is is not in keeping with the actual true value of it.

So uh I accept that argument. I don't I don't know enough about that. Uh I I think it's probably wrong uh in the sense that like like I think Tik Tok has been here long enough now to where that that if that was really true it would have been solved by now. But uh it's it's a I I accept that as a reasonable pathway to how you could be right about this. Like I I just want to tell you makes sense like yeah anecdotally um this is again all data is made of stories.

Okay. Anecdotally I have had between seven and 10 Amazon agencies try to acquire us because of Tik Tok shop because they see every single one of their brands that is on Amazon go to Tik Tok and blow up like goalies agency for instance. No, no question in the world that the thing that people like are terrible at measuring is your DTOC your quote unquote DTOC ad channels impact on your Amazon business. Everybody sucks at measuring this.

I everybody they all suck at it. And then you add the retail element of that and they're even worse at it. And uh and so yeah, that that would be a really good argument for why you're right about this. I think is that like essentially especially if you have Amazon, it's going to have so much impact there that people are just sleeping on it. So, uh, Jordan West, it's great to talk again, man. Thanks for doing this. Thanks for letting me argue with you a little bit here.

Uh, are we still friends? Are we even better friends? Even better friends. I I I loved this. Thanks for having me on. Um, I had a bunch of people in your audience reach out last time, by the way. So, thanks everyone. I'm so glad. Good. Reach out again. Let's That's a good segue. Where should people reach out to you? Obviously, socialcommerceclub.com is the is the website. I mentioned that. uh or it's in the show notes as well.

But um tell people again uh anything else about where to follow you, where to listen to you, where to come to YouTube. I I'm really active on YouTube these days. If you find Jordan West something Jordan West e-commerce, search me there. It'll be like a pink background. Pink or purple, something like that. Um isn't that my fault? Is that what you told me before that I helped you get on YouTube? Is that not true? Well, I just saw I I like I had my I've had my podcast, guys.

I have like close to 700 episodes and I was never on YouTube. And then I realized I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I'm getting like thousands of views on YouTube when I started to put it out." And it's so easy and I love being on camera. Great. Well, when you look that good. Um, okay. So, um, thanks. Thanks, Jordan. Appreciate your time so much. Follow up with Jordan, uh, on YouTube, on socialcommerceclub.com. Go work out go work with Social Commerce Club to do this work for you, to tap into their creator network, all the things that we just talked about.

He really knows his stuff. Uh, as you can tell, he has done this a lot for a lot of brands that are very big. Uh, having done Tik Tok shops for over 100 brands is is nothing to sneeze at. That's like a real thing. It means you've seen what hasn't worked and you've seen what worked. And seeing what hasn't worked is as important as seeing what works. So, um, so go give Jordan a follow in all the relevant places. Jordan, thanks again for your time, man.

Thanks, Andrew. Before you turn this podcast off, go subscribe wherever you're watching or listening. I have all kinds of great episodes coming up. If you like this conversation, you'll like more of them. But big thanks to Jordan for letting me argue with him and push back on him. and we were talking about how it was fun, fun to argue a little bit. Um, and I really learned a lot from that conversation, so I hope you did, too.

Uh, I'll for sure have Jordan on again in the future. So, like I said, subscribe wherever you are watching or listening. Uh, also big thanks to More Staffing and to Vermont. I'm a big fan of both of those organizations. Go check them out for all of the needs that you have around staffing your e-commerce business with great talent from the Philippines with more staffing and uh go to formatcommerce.com af uh to to get uh best-in-class funnel building software.

Um you should follow up with everything I'm doing at afgrowth.com. You can uh reach out if you want to try and work with me and afgrowth for your business. You can take fill in the uh intake form there. It probably says right now still that I'm not taking on any clients, but I might be at some point. So um so reach out to me. Let's start a conversation. and then email me podcastfgrowth.com. I'd love to hear from you there.

Thanks so much for watching or listening. We'll see you next time. [Music]