How to Go Viral on TikTok: Black Friday Secrets from Top Brand Marketers
1st episode of this new podcast. We've had some technical difficulties getting this started, but hopefully, this is the one new podcast because we want to start sharing more of what we are doing behind the scenes on TikTok, sharing, some of the things we're learning, what our clients are are succeeding with. And, yeah, let me start by doing a quick intro as to who we are. So the company is called Young With Solutions. We provide TikTok education and services for direct to consumer brands.
Speaker 1:We've been in the game since 2019. And over over the years, we've been fortunate to work with major brands like Gymshark, Duolingo, Amazon, Converse, Olaplex, and that is amongst 400 other brands that we've helped in total. And we have been fortunate to help in a number of verticals, content creation, influencer marketing, TikTok shop, which is more new, and, media buying. So, yeah, this is a new podcast. We wanna share what we've learned.
Speaker 1:We're calling it Diary of Campaigns and Tactics. I am joined with my co host Pedro. And in this podcast, which we will keep, short and easy, we're gonna hit on a number of topics. The trends that we are currently seeing on TikTok, we're shooting this 4 days before Black Friday. For d two c, this is the time to be marketing.
Speaker 1:So we're gonna talk about how you can capitalize on on Black Friday, what are the current trends that we're seeing on social media, and how brands can apply them, as well as what are some of the latest success stories that we're seeing internally.
Speaker 2:You're here. Let's go. Episode 1, baby. Let's make it to episode 2.
Speaker 1:I know. We need 20 episodes will be, like, in the 1% of all podcasts.
Speaker 2:Wild. This has been we've been theorizing on this on this moment for months, guys. So this is hopefully, let's not add too much pressure on our shoulders, but hopefully, this is something special. We're semi special. I'm good with semi special.
Speaker 1:I think keeping it casual and not overthinking it is the key to being consistent here. So so, yeah, exciting new venture though. And hopefully, these are clips we can repurpose for all of our social media platforms. So that's also the goal here is to have an omnipresence from long form to short form. Alrighty.
Speaker 1:So let's hop into the 1st section, which is trends and news on TikTok. Now, at the time of recording this, one of the big trends that we're seeing across social media is the chill dude meme. Probably seen this, but let me share my screen so we're all having eyes on the Okay. Can you see the screen? Beautiful.
Speaker 1:Okay. So this is one of the brands that we always, like to, look into because they are so in touch with that community and with their current social media, dynamics. And the chill dude is, this guy that you've probably seen all over. Now the beauty is that this is dead simple. This is just the chill guy.
Speaker 1:And what I love is how easy it is for these brands to to use this trend to be relevant in culture and just, yeah, capitalize on that momentum. And as you can see, this has tremendous engagement compared to the other posts, you know, 9,000 likes, and that was posted 5 days ago.
Speaker 2:This is this is one of those trends where I think, one, a part of the charm is it's so simple that any industry, any niche of brand can adapt it to them. It isn't something where you could see this you could see this being applicable to a beauty or a supplement or a personal development or a a consumer electronics brand very easily. It's probably one of my favorite memes of the year, actually.
Speaker 1:It's Yeah. Me too.
Speaker 2:Well done.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I actually relate to that quite a lot. I'm just I'm just a chill dude. But, yeah, they they use that in so many other ways. And, and I'm just showing this one brand, as an example, going from a meme to posting it as jewelry.
Speaker 1:They're going super viral with it. And, yeah, sometimes, you know, social media is really not that complicated. So that's one great example. Now let's see. Do we have more trends?
Speaker 2:We've got the we've got the, there's the that trend. I think Gordon Ramsay Gordon Ramsay did it. Everyone's doing it where it's you voice a very strong opinion, and then it's the opposite that is you voice an opinion that favors a party, and it's actually that party filming it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Let me pull it up here as well.
Speaker 2:I love this.
Speaker 1:So this is the trend. This is kind of the trend that started it all from, Tyler Lautner, and it goes like this. Can you hear this?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I Here's this one though. We get get the gist though.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And hold on. Let me see if I can oh, wait. It's not working. Critical difficulties.
Speaker 1:Have been used by quite a lot of other brands. So this is one of the I forget his name, the guy from One Direction, Joe Jonas. Guys, we need to start recognizing that our younger siblings are basically always right.
Speaker 2:And,
Speaker 1:yeah, they just switched the camera. So this is, like, really cool if you just want to voice, like a controversial opinion, but then not put the blame completely on you. And, yeah, it's gotten really popular with, Golden Ramsey featuring it, Joe Jonas, like I just said. And, and it's also something that a lot of brands can capitalize on easily.
Speaker 2:I think the underlying theme, and it's something that we definitely see with a lot of trends day in, day out, is say keyword is versatility, where I think a lot of brands shy away from taking advantages of these moments because they're so caught up in protecting this image, protecting this angel like presence that they've they've developed for themselves where it's just you just gotta let go. Just gotta be you just gotta be a chill guy. You just need to to go up the flow sometimes, not overthink, especially around Black Friday. I think everyone gets very cynical with what they're putting out. It gets very a lot of pressure is built up internally very quickly for sometimes rightly so, most of the times, for no reason or for a reason that isn't justified.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. No. People want the brands that they follow to be funny, man. This is why we see Duolingo do so well.
Speaker 1:All the brand that I was just showing, Sanucci, that just being satirical. They're having fun with it, and the the audience relates to that. So it's put particularly with something like black Black Friday. Like, you wanna lean into this unhinged persona. And, and, yeah, just have fun with your audience.
Speaker 1:Ultimately, people are on social media to be entertained, not to be sold to. So meet them with those expectations and entertain them just through funny content. Or for a guy that has
Speaker 2:yeah. No. Totally. I mean, for a guy that has I mean, you have 3,000,000 followers of your own. I think you're one of those people who people will stop you on the street and ask you a question about TikTok and ask you for the one thing that they need to do right on TikTok if they were to grow their own channel or grow their own platform.
Speaker 2:Why do you think brands, even brands that have perhaps more sensitive products or talk about issues that are perhaps a bit more flagrant, Why do you think there's such a difficulty with brands just letting go? Just going with the flow sometimes or realizing it's not that serious all the time.
Speaker 1:Well, most of the brand owners that we talk to at least are not Gen z. And, historically, they have had to build their brand through retail or perhaps Instagram, which is a platform where you wanna be more polished. TikTok is really flipping that on its head where authenticity thrives. And we're seeing, yeah, the pendulum switch back from high production to now just low production, filming on the spot, capturing raw human reactions, that's what people want. And the millennials and the generations before that are just having a hard time to let go of what they know has worked for them historically.
Speaker 1:Adapting is always, I think it's Elon Musk that said that one of the signs to one of the signs that you're getting old is your reluctance to change. And, this is why he doesn't want people to be immortal because people don't change their mind, they just die, which is quite brutal, but I think there's a lot of truth to that. Just in the sense that, you know, you're used to certain ways and you think that they are right indefinitely, which frankly is not the case. And and, yeah, it's either you adapt or you die.
Speaker 2:It's so interesting because we see the difference even just with how teams operate around launch, when videos start going out on the account, when, say, the contrast of behavior before a viral moment and after a viral moment where before the viral moment, we cannot test anything. We cannot change. Right? We cannot tarnish this even if only even if a very limited amount of people on this planet in this day know about the brand. There's just this reluctance of expanding and going out and actually learning on what does attract views and what does your audience wanna see, where the moment something goes viral, that paradigm flips very easily where it's okay.
Speaker 2:Let's test as many things as possible that that shell, if you will, to change evaporates for for lack of a better way of putting it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I I always say this, but it's always the videos you expect to underperform that ends up going viral and vice versa. The videos you put a lot of effort in usually flop. So this is why you wanna prioritize quantity fast before putting in quality. Like, quality will come as a consequence of doing so many videos that you understand exactly what works. So this is also why we're doing this podcast kind of just free, studying it because we'll get better by just doing more of it, not trying to get it perfect on the Costco.
Speaker 2:Do you think of do you think people care if the brand like, again, to a certain extent, I I say this with a certain degree where you can't there's a certain limit to this. But assuming that the brand is operating within every realm of ethical behavior, Do you think their audience cares if they mess up on a video? Whether it's, I don't know, an idea that flops or spelling mistake or maybe a joke doesn't land properly. Again, operating within the realms of of ethical behavior is the question.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think this is called the spotlight syndrome, where you think that everybody is meticulously watching your every move, and they always think about you. But really, no one thinks of no one thinks about you just as much as you do, if that makes sense. And so if you make a grammatical error or if you post at the wrong time or your brand colors is slightly off, no one is gonna notice that apart from you. I would actually argue that especially if you're small and still testing out, these are ways in which you can increase engagement.
Speaker 1:I know this one, TikToker that that would would pronounce countries the wrong way. So he would say, like, Italy instead of Italy. And his only reason for doing that is so that people would comment, you know, making fun of him. But that is more engagement, and the algorithm pushed his videos. So obviously, this is not a standard that everyone at the brands can probably take, but it it just shows that, at times, you can have these little, almost intentional mistake or intentional ways to, get the audience to react and engage in conversations.
Speaker 1:It's interesting because when we are speaking,
Speaker 2:we are filming this first episode right before Black Friday, delayed by delayed by 4 months because we you know, the whole team has been all hands on deck this whole year, almost in anticipation to Black Friday. And it's it's interesting how these pockets of space come up, but even even more so during a period like the holidays or Black Friday where if people by default aren't necessarily meticulous and watching your every move, that becomes even more so accurate during these times of the year where a million more things are happening. Whether you're a consumer or whether you're a brand, there's Christmas shopping that's happening. Everybody wants to get work done before they go on vacation. The kids are getting off of school.
Speaker 2:We don't know how we're gonna be keeping the kids at home for 2 weeks while they're out of school. There's just so many different things. People are almost looking for that more vibrant or colorful message or colorful piece of content to look at rather than, I don't know, discriminate every single detail of a
Speaker 1:video. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, again, yeah, I think even if some of the brands that are doing well right now, like Surreal is a serial brand that's doing really good in the UK, and their whole marketing angle is to be super direct about the fact that they are selling their audience something.
Speaker 1:Like, literally, their headlines are like, we sell you these serials or something along along those lines. And so I think that we have gone to one end on end of the spectrum in trying to be super careful about the messaging and and and so on. And this is, I think, what the millennial what walked in the millennial era, which was a couple years ago. But now with Gen z, they just want brands that are funny, more bold, more direct, even if it's messy at times. And, yeah, even another example that I can think of is Liquid Death, where what they do as their advertisements is literally hateful comments.
Speaker 1:They take hateful comments about their brand, which is like basically, how can you sell cans of water for like $6? And then it's a bunch of hate hateful context. And they literally use that as a screenshot and post it as their ad. So it's kind of like this anti best practice that that, you know, just people have fun with and they they like that Liquid Death is has this unhinged persona. So so yeah.
Speaker 2:Definitely. Do you do you envision that staying in 2025? That unhinged sort of persona, do you think it's that's a long term do you think that's a long term inflection in in behavior? Or do you believe it's it's a fad that's gonna evaporate tomorrow, if you will?
Speaker 1:No. I think this is a market dynamic that is here to stay for the next few years. Obviously, different generations and different platforms will probably drive change. But right now, the consumer market is driven by, Gen z trends, which initiate on TikTok, hence the relevance of of this conversation. Yeah.
Speaker 1:What what we're talking about here are not just, like, what's gonna happen tomorrow or the the wave to ride for the next week. It's more so consumer behavior, for the months to come I mean, for the years to come. Yeah. But in other news, have you seen the Jake Paul, Mike Tyson fight?
Speaker 2:That was crazy. That was nuts.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Honestly yeah. Did you watch it on Netflix? Yeah. I watched it on Netflix, and that was that was crazy in and of itself just to see Netflix posting a live event. I don't know if that's a new thing from Netflix, but that was the first ever live event that I saw from them.
Speaker 2:But I think content wise, notably on TikTok, it's just you want if you want to talk about a successful prelaunch, wow. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because how long how long was that fight being advertised directly and indirectly? It must have been a year, if not 6 months, at least.
Speaker 1:At least. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think they got a it it was funny because for me, it was early morning my time, so I was able to try and watch it live.
Speaker 1:I I don't know why. I have the paid Netflix, but I didn't watch it through Netflix. So I tried to watch it on YouTube. You know how you can watch, like, these US UFC fights, like, these streamers that go live and try to stream the fight on YouTube. So I went on that, and, funnily enough, the streamers had, like, a 1,000,000 of viewers at a time.
Speaker 1:It like, the numbers were insane. But then everyone started to complain. And this is one of the big criticism that net Netflix got, is that their streaming service was basically so laggy. And, like, half of the fights was pretty much, like, chopped out or or just super laggy because they couldn't handle the amount of viewers that they had. But and and also, I I tried to watch the fight on YouTube, and, ultimately, the streams get taken down, which is kind of, like, expected because these companies obviously don't want viewers to watch for free.
Speaker 1:They wanna have a pay per view, etcetera. And so I start I I try to look for alternatives. And, this is the first first time I do this, but I had to TikTok I had to TikTok live, and there were countless of I mean, everyone was just streaming it, and the flow was perfect. Like, no latency. Again, like, millions of viewers on every stream.
Speaker 1:But otherwise, like, it was the last time I looked at, like, a live event on TikTok. Yeah. And these didn't didn't get shut down. So so, yeah, pro tip for the next UFC fight. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know?
Speaker 2:Funny the funny thing in all of that is that you've had Netflix paid. That's what makes the story. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Percent. I mean, for anyone that anyone that was I was going through those legs, like, there was no tomorrow. And after round 2, nobody really missed much going through the legs either way. Yeah. I think yeah.
Speaker 2:The the TikTok lives I mean, that's that's probably gonna merit a podcast episode or none of them themselves, just TikTok lives. But I think the build up, TikTok being a big proponent of that, the build up to the fight was insane. Even the aftermath, when we talk about hate, we talk about just reacting to things. I think the feedback loop for Netflix after that fight must have been so intense. I would not want to be somebody on the team having to shuffle through all of the feedback from I know.
Speaker 2:From TikTok and and YouTube.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. But I I still like, the amount of demand that that was on the fight I think it itself is, like, proof of concept that they need to do more of these of these kind of events. Yeah. But who who did you think was gonna win that fight?
Speaker 2:Honestly, I think I was a part of those wishful bunch that just discredited human biology. And and, you know, I thought Mike stood a chance. And, honestly, 1st 2 rounds he did, I remember looking at my phone on the feed, and everyone was going great. TikTok included, everyone was going crazy after the 1st and second round. And then after that, it was somebody skipping around a 60 year old guy for for the next, I don't know how many rounds.
Speaker 2:But Yeah. Yeah. What about you?
Speaker 1:I honestly thought that Jake had it. I was actually pretty surprised also by the first two rounds. I'm like, man, Mike Tyson is really pulling up on this. He's here. But I would also I I should also say that I'm not the biggest Jake Paul guy.
Speaker 1:It's just I remember his era with, team 10 and all of that, and, it was pretty unethical. I think unlike Logan Paul, like, his reputation is not as has not embellished as much. Although, though now he's really seen just as a boxing guy. I think Jake Paul I mean, I think we should talk about these 2 characters in, like, the full podcast really, because what they did was really interesting.
Speaker 2:That prime in and of itself. I mean, you wanna talk about a brand just juicing social media. It's when we speak about organic organic social media notably be being done properly, it's money on tap whenever they post.
Speaker 1:Yeah. 100%. 100%.
Speaker 2:Because I went to Black Friday.
Speaker 1:What's that?
Speaker 2:Get to Black Friday, man. We haven't talked about black we've been shooting the shit, talking about fights, talking about memes, having a grand old time. There's a lot of I'd be worried to see the bounce rate so far.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But let me actually because I think a great segue into starting to talk about Black Friday and also some tactics for TikTok right now is to continue dying down the live stream path because Kai, is, like, the biggest Twitch one of the biggest Twitch streamer after speed right now has blown up with his collaboration with Jabawoukis, I think his name is. He won the American Scott Talent dance. He was a dancer. And the reason I'm breaking this up is because collaborations on live are doing so well right now, and a missed opportunity that we see with brands trying to do TikTok shop is going live.
Speaker 1:But most importantly, as opposed to just having your affiliate go live, for the brand and the affiliate to go live simultaneously, while we can see, like, a an authentic interaction between the 2, they can talk about the product, the problems that it solves. And like I like we were mentioning before, people are on these I mean, what works right now is just capturing raw emotions. And the reason that Kai and, you know, like, the whole Twitch is on fire right now is because with live streams, you can't really hide or edit, what you're saying. And so I think as opposed to trying to make scripted videos and so on, just go live with your affiliates or even if you're gonna have target collaboration with people that might have a higher following base. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Something that we don't see brands do enough of is doing collab lives to sell their products on TikTok.
Speaker 2:Most definitely. I think it it ties back to the people just wanna see something unhinged, something raw. At the same time, it eliminates a lot of gray matter. If you're looking at this from just a an educational lens, if you see somebody manipulating your product, manipulating a product, smelling it, feeling it, showing you the what it looks like in real time, that builds a lot of trust very, very quickly. I cannot think and, again, we're surprised by some of the arguments against doing stuff like this on the front end when we're speaking to to potential partners and even on the back end when we're speaking to teams where it's at the end of the day, if you can just show your product in an original way, in a way that allows people to trust you.
Speaker 2:You've done the bulk of the work needed for the conversion. Yeah. And lives are I think lives are changing the game. Twitch is a great example of that where I'd be very I'd be very excited if Kai ever I don't know if he does this already, but if he did ecom drops of merch or stuff like that, I'd be very excited to be on the back end of that just to look at the Shopify numbers or whatever checkout platform for that matter he's he's leveraging. Because it's just once you have trust and once you're driving that traffic, it's really hard to fail.
Speaker 1:Because there's also a difference between being influential and having just attention. And having attention through your videos is great, but one of the ways to be influential is to sorry. Let me say that again. There's a difference between getting attention and being influential. And the difference between the 2 is that when you are influential, people trust you.
Speaker 1:One of the ways to build that trust is to engage in genuine, interactions with your audience. And going live, you can't really hide yourself between fancy edits and, you know, chop out the things that makes you look bad. So this is why, again, like, going live is a great way for both brands and influencers to build trust with their audience and thus to be more influential.
Speaker 2:Totally. It's very much he doesn't go live per se, but I think that's probably one of the reasons why Joe Rogan has seen so much success over such a long period of time. It's regardless of your opinion of him or whatever. What you can't take away from him is what you're watching, that's him. Any guess that helps on it's if you want to get a if you want to see somebody in their true light, just see if they were on Joe Rogan and just watch the episode with Joe Rogan, and you'll get a very accurate or a perceived accurate picture of what they're like.
Speaker 2:I think it yeah. It flows back.
Speaker 1:Go ahead. People I think it was also one of the great blunders of the Kamala Harris campaign because she she declined the Joe Rogan podcast. And that gave Trump a platform where he could be genuine and express himself, just like you said. And Camilla refused to to do that Yeah. Which is unfortunate because I think a lot of people, like, probably the both of us, would have liked to see what she's like behind the scenes and to see her train of thought on a prolonged, platform.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, actually, funnily enough, like, podcasts a lot of people say that podcasts kinda made this, election, which is in that insane to think about.
Speaker 2:Wild. Yeah. Trump and JD Vance because JD Vance jumped on too for 3 hours. It's insane. I think they were trying to when we speak about curated and watered down versus unhinged, in your face, funny, whatever whatever.
Speaker 2:I think her administration, her team reached out to Joe Rogan's team, and they proposed he fly to wherever they were advertising or campaigning. And she only wanted to do 45 minutes. Yep. Yep. Yep.
Speaker 2:And it's But I think,
Speaker 1:I think it just shows the importance and the power that media social media has. And Exactly. It's probably a tipping point for the next elections where we're gonna see so much more. Yeah. A digital footprint of these politicians.
Speaker 1:But we digress. What other tips do we have? Another cool thing that I see some brands doing is, you know, how you can pin videos at the top of your TikTok feed? I've seen a number of brands make particular videos to their Black Friday, announcements and pin those at the top of the, profile, which means that any if you're gonna start a challenge or if you're gonna push a certain narrative, you can one ways one way to amplify that push is to pin them at the top. And, and, and, yeah, I thought that was pretty cool.
Speaker 1:So another quick tip right now.
Speaker 2:Definitely. I think that a huge thing too for Black Friday is and it ties to being unhinged and creative. Making make a story around your Black Friday. Everybody is running discount codes. Everybody has the sale going on.
Speaker 2:That's standard. But if you can make a story or make an event out of your Black Friday, Gymshark is doing this extremely well with their teasers and and switching up their brand image. I think they changed their profile picture to an orange I don't know, hue or an orange color, and they did this whole countdown thing. Yeah. High Smile.
Speaker 2:Yeah. High Smile, though. I mean, in general, for any founder or team out there looking to study a brand doing a lot of things properly on on TikTok, High Smile is a great brand. But with Hi Smile, they made this entire narrative on their Black Friday sale where they opened up a clearance section on their website called The Vault. So everything is $5 on that vault, and they've pumped a lot of TikToks out with an angle of everyone thinks they're getting scammed or people think we're they're scamming us because stuff is $5.
Speaker 2:They're even hiring creators to tell people or show people how to scam the brand by buying certain products for $5 from the vault. And so it's this entire narrative of how to cheat the system manufactured by the brand. I think it's genius. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think being creative like that, again, unhinged having fun with it.
Speaker 1:So yeah.
Speaker 2:I again, that's another brand where I'd be very curious to see the the effect that that has on their back end. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, with things like Black Friday, it's really like an opportunity for you to create this, like, a crazy narrative. And I find that teams spend more time in the structure of that paid ads as opposed to that organic, I mean, like, organic campaigns that they could push. And, really, if you go viral, your outcomes through organic are going to be exponentially better than what you could get on ads.
Speaker 1:Obviously, ads are also great, but, or or you could you you're never gonna get, like, a 1 to 100 return on investment on ads. If you go viral organically, sky is the limit.
Speaker 2:Definitely. And it feeds into ads too. I mean, this is one of the main things that we push with any partner that we're working with. And it's a few from a creative strategy perspective, if you have something that consistently makes you money for free and generates healthy engagement, That right there is your creative flow on the paid side. All of that insight can be used to cut the learning curve and the money that you're gonna spend on ads anyways to test before pushing for conversion.
Speaker 2:But I think that's a, yeah, a paradigm that's in its early stages, but there's a clear discrepancy in between the partners that we see succeeding with us and the partners that perhaps either take a longer time or or don't succeed at all in their own right. It's it's that thing of how can this feed into that rather than this versus that. 100%. Prevailing theme.
Speaker 1:Any other points about Black Friday before we move on?
Speaker 2:Oh, Black Friday, Black Friday, Black Friday. Post more. I think that that's one that I think that's one thing that a lot of brands probably there's that point of a lot of people put a huge emphasis on their paid ads and not organic. I think a lot of people put a huge emphasis on trying to make the perfect video versus just putting more videos out there. And, I mean, Duolingo, great example of this, posting I don't know.
Speaker 2:When when they were ramping up, you said they were posting 6 to 7 times a day or more.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think they still are, actually. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Volume is is the answer. Especially, like, you you gotta think that if if you have a viral hit rate of, let's say, 1 in 10. So 1 in 10 videos goes viral. How do you ensure that you go viral more often? You post more.
Speaker 1:It's it's much easier to post more than to increase. I mean, there's only it's it's only there's only a finite amount that you can do to increase your viral hit rate, but you can always post more.
Speaker 2:Is there
Speaker 1:And and again, like TikTok videos, it's 15 seconds. You can shoot it on your phone. If you have a dedicated content creator, you can make 5 videos a day with 1 person and not even full time. That's probably, like, half a day of work. So so, yeah, just do more.
Speaker 2:Do you think, this is more so an inference on my part? Just given, again, a media buyer a media buyer and a social media star walk into a bar, and this is what you get, this podcast. Very much, do you think that there's a by posting more, you actually are able to somehow increase your hit rate even though you're just posting more? You're not changing the videos, but somehow Yeah. Because you have more traffic, more of those videos go spiral.
Speaker 2:Don't know if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No. But the more you post, the better your results are gonna get regardless. Because the more you post, the faster you figure out what people like. And and as you post more, you continue to figure out what people and so it's kind of like a flying wheel effect.
Speaker 1:So so, yeah, volume is always the the name of the game. And it's the key differentiator between winning accounts and the ones that end up up doing so well. That's actually, like, kind of a good segue to talk about one of the clients that we've helped that was a little bit skeptical about making content on TikTok, circling back to Okvubus conversation, where they have very polished brand and, you know, came from a world of meta and Instagram where every piece of content, you know, is super aesthetic, etcetera. But they came to us because their results were stagnating, and they saw their competitors crush it on TikTok. So they, you know, kinda wanted to capitalize on this gold mine.
Speaker 1:And, you know, with the track record that we had, they thought that we they wanted to give us a shot. This is a brand for context called, Golden Now. They sell, straps for Apple Watch. Yeah. They had a hard time understanding I mean, they had no idea of what the content strategy would be or what the audience would resonate with.
Speaker 1:So what we started with was really just posting as much as we could, trying different formats, different content types. We did street interviews. We had people do outfit of the day. We did trending sounds, etcetera, etcetera. And at the beginning, we were just broad, just posting as much as we could.
Speaker 1:And, we've picked up a lot of momentum just out of that. And over time, we've seen certain content types that were outperforming others, and so we kind of doubled down on that and, and just now narrowed down to one format that we are known for. And this account, yeah, we started completely from scratch. They have several videos over a 1000000 views, and, they were I mean, I think we tripled the follower rates on the account. But most importantly, they were actually recognized by Forbes as one of the best brands in, fashion accessories.
Speaker 1:So that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:100%. And it's for for people, it's perhaps a misconception that a lot of brands do have. Do you need do you need a 1,000,000 followers to make a $100,000,000,000 on TikTok?
Speaker 1:No. Actually, you'll be hard to find I mean, you'll be surprised to find that some of the bigger accounts make less, if you have a target audience. And, also, like, the unique selling point of TikTok is that you can start from scratch and still go viral, unlike Instagram. On Instagram, it's or YouTube. You really have to grind your way through more views.
Speaker 1:Whereas on TikTok, overnight, you could get a video with a a 1000000 views. And, and that's why, you know, it's such an appeal for new brands to get on the platform.
Speaker 2:And it's I mean, we see these inflection points. We have the privilege of not only manufacture seeing these inflection points, but also, you know, manufacturing these inflection points. And we see it day in, day out where literally in 24 hours, a brand goes from no one knows us, we're just starting out crawling for lack of a better way of putting it. Then all of a sudden you're crawling, but you're now on an Olympic racetrack, and sales are spiking. And now how are you gonna fulfill these orders just from one video?
Speaker 2:So it's very much what for a brand that probably has gone viral recently, and it's the 1st Black Friday that they go through, as a brand that's, again, in that upwards momentum, if you will, what are the things that they need to look out for to not screw up or to continue pushing on that momentum?
Speaker 1:I think there's a lot to think about when it comes to, retargeting. And and just thinking that TikTok is on retargeting and attribution, I wanna say, because TikTok is generally just going to be one of the touch points that a consumer needs to convert. And so when you look at TikTok as a marketing venture, you need to consider that it's going to raise your Amazon sales, retail, your website sales, so on and so forth. Because the consumer is actually pretty, a wah that you can find that, you know, you can quickly Google things to see if there's a better price, for it. So one of, actually, really cool features that TikTok released recently is a post purchase survey, which basically asks the consumer where where did they where did they hear about the brand fast.
Speaker 1:And this is something that we did internally, that we built out for most of our clients. But now TikTok just released it as their own feature, and I'm super excited about it because it has been historically a struggle to attribute where the traffic was coming from. Because, again, like, people would find us would find out about us on TikTok, but only, you know, a month later would would they purchase through Amazon. And so there's no real way to track that data. But now with the post purchase survey, you can have a much better sense of the impact that your social media O one has.
Speaker 1:And it's not negligible. So so yeah. And the and and also, because they find out about you, you wanna retarget your, viewers, you can build look alike audiences and custom audiences to retarget the engagement that you've had from TikTok and we target them on Meta, Google, etcetera, etcetera, which is something that almost no one does. And it's such a low hanging fruit with high ROAS that, I mean, I think everyone should should look into that.
Speaker 2:It's we touch on meta. And, again, on on the front end, when we're speaking to new brands who either have I don't wanna say messed up, but perhaps haven't tracked TikTok as a platform yet, but have meta built out as an example, or they haven't started on TikTok, but they have meta built out. It's it's very interesting just seeing how many brands aren't aware of the fact of just how versatile TikTok videos can be leveraged, where the point of a TikTok video isn't just to stay on TikTok. If you're looking to really squeeze a creative to its fullest, you can put that thing different in 6 different placements across various different channels and essentially multiply your exposure and and your vitality 1 by 1.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:It's something where, again, we talk about partners who triple their following, or overnight, they they see a huge inflection point in sales or in orders or at least in in opt ins. It's one of those paradigms that, yeah, hasn't been or isn't executed on enough and that we envision or perhaps hope starts to be applied more so in 2025. Price points. Everyone's curious. Do you need a $10 product to succeed quarter 4 on on TikTok?
Speaker 2:Because we've seen some interesting stuff.
Speaker 1:One of our most recent case study is, a brand called 77 Diamonds, and they sell engagement rings. So you're looking at an average order value of 2,000 to $5,000. And, one of the most recurring objection that we hear from potential partners is, oh, my brand is too expensive to be on TikTok. To, kind of prove that point wrong, we have this case study of 77 diamonds that sells these engagement rings, and that funnel is to push people to book an appointment because, obviously, people no one is going to buy a $5,000 ring from a 15 second video. However, we've been able to get that brand so much exposure.
Speaker 1:We have over 12,000,000 views, with our account to, like, from 0 to 30,000 followers. And, yeah, we got the appointments or that calendar booked out from TikTok. And so the point that I'm trying to make here is that you can use TikTok as a way to get exposure and then lead your audience to take baby steps within your within your customer journey and funnel so so that they eventually become a customer. So you don't wanna necessarily always push for just a sale. You can push them to sign up to a newsletter or to watch long form content, in this case, make an appointment so that they can check out the wings in real life.
Speaker 1:And now their level of engagement has significantly increased, which as a consequence increases their likelihood of purchasing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, TikTok offers you this platform where you can reach 1,000,000 and millions of eyeballs essentially for free. And then the question is is how do you funnel these people down so that they are more engaged and, increase, yeah, increase the likelihood of punches.
Speaker 2:Definitely.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, I'm I'm so excited to have to have this to have this case study, and I hope that we can, kind of brag about it every time we hear that objection because it's probably, like, the most recurring thing that we hear. And there are so many cases of it proving wrong. I I think the other day, it was a barking bag for, I think, $50 that was sold on TikTok live. So we're just seeing a shift and increase buying power through TikTok. You know, although the fastest growing demographic is 55 and above, more purchase power, so on and so forth.
Speaker 1:So, it's just limiting beliefs that brands can't sell high ticket items. But, I'm happy that we have more and more proof that this is wrong.
Speaker 2:Definitely. 77 diamonds, I'd say, is such a great example. We have another partner. Not sure if we're at liberty to say their name or not. I'm I don't wanna get served before Christmas, so I'm not gonna risk it.
Speaker 2:But, I mean, they're selling Rolexes through TikTok, doing, like, 10 k a day through lives and and posting, I think, 4 times a day. What do you think of that ROI? I mean, it's a bit of a no brainer. Again, everything's a no brainer when you see the success story, but it's 4 videos a day, each shot 30 seconds, and then going live for, let's say, 2 hours Yeah. To sell Yeah.
Speaker 2:A Rolex or the equivalent of a Rolex, that's it's not a bad equation.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Totally. So I think as a wrap up, the, like, volume comes it's the the fast domino in the the chain. Then you wanna be influenced, not just get attention. The way you do that is by building trust, and you do that by through authentic content, whether that is live or just the quality the production of your content needs to be authentic.
Speaker 1:We can talk about that in more depth. And then, you know, just be funny, meet your audience where they are. They wanna be entertained, so entertain them. And, yeah, if you do these things right, honestly, success is inevitable. Just like this crazy statistic that we were talking about, how 98% of podcasts don't make it past episode 20.
Speaker 1:If you just remain consistent, it is, you know, almost certain that you will, succeed sooner or later.
Speaker 2:And, with that, I think that's that's a good wrap. I think that's a good first rep. That's odd.
Speaker 1:Episode 1. Let's see how this goes, man. We'll do it again, you know, maybe better next week. Maybe. Maybe.
Speaker 1:We'll see. We'll see.
Speaker 2:Valley disappointment, boys. Exponential returns. Exactly.
Speaker 1:We don't expect to get results in the near term. We just need to get good
Speaker 2:at this fast. We're, we're here for the process, not the outcome, not the destination.
Speaker 1:That's right. Alright, man. I'll see you in the next one.
Speaker 2:Cheers. Bye.
