TikTok Seems to Have Cracked the Code on Social Shopping, with Ben Rey, Chief Revenue Officer at Teikametrics

Peter Crosby:

Welcome to unpacking the Digital Shelf where we explore brand manufacturing in the digital age.

Peter Crosby:

Hey everyone. Peter Crosby here from the Digital Shelf Institute. Did you know that of the users who have engaged with TikTok shop, 71.2% of them have bought a product, smells like social shopping to me. Their advancements at TikTok from getting in the fulfillment game to an affiliate program are driving some really impressive results with Gen Z, with acquisition costs still lower than other channels. Are you playing? Should you be? What's working? What's not here? Lauren Livak Gilbert and I interrogate Ben Rey, chief Revenue Officer at teikametrics to get all the answers for you to refresh or create your TikTok shop strategy. Welcome to the show, Ben Rey, we are so delighted to have you here. Thanks so much for coming on.

Ben Rey:

Thank you. Glad to be here.

Peter Crosby:

It seems like every day on the digital shelf, there's a new shoppable channel, and that's of course not only retailer or branded sites popping up everywhere, but social selling. And since many consumers are doing discovery all the way through buying on anywhere they choose to be, social channels are really trying to make those moments super shoppable and as friction free as possible, our listeners are always trying to understand how to best support those, when to test and learn what they can drive for their business. So I just love you to give a sense of how does social selling differ from core retail today, and what are the challenges and opportunities for brands over there?

Ben Rey:

Yeah, great question. And I would say social selling as well as also undergoing a pretty significant change based on the way that TikTok shops is unveiling its approach to social selling. So when I think about social selling, I think about, similar to how you mentioned Peter with the funnels, I like to think of a couple different ways to approach it. And so I think first of all, these obvious social media channels, things like meta, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, whatever it may be. And on that channel, there's a couple of different ways to classify them. So the first would be an advertising channel. This is where you might just see an ad to go click somewhere else, or brand awareness, a content channel where you're putting out owned pieces of content in a community channel. Think about Reddit, where maybe you have someone who is out there as an influencer talking about and engaging in the community.

Ben Rey:

Then you have direct influencer channel, you've actually paid someone to talk on your behalf. And lastly, what I think you're getting to is the shopping or commerce channel. And this is where you can actually click purchase. And so not every social channel allows you to actually make the purchase, but what I would call a shopping or commerce channel does. And so I think that's one thing to be distinct about. And the other piece that I think is really important is to think about fulfillment. So where is it being fulfilled? And so all this is where TikTok is distinct in that TikTok shops has its own fulfillment mechanism. And so just like on Amazon or on Walmart, you have fulfilled by Amazon or fulfilled by Walmart. TikTok now has the ability to be fulfilled through TikTok. So again, that is a differentiator and a step forward in the world of social selling.

Lauren Livak Gilbert:

I feel like the first social selling that I really saw a brands experiment with was the Instacart, or not. Oh my gosh, Instagram. Wow, too many instance, Instagram shop. And that was not a fulfillment model fulfilled by Instagram. It was really challenging, right? Correct. Because especially when you have these big brands that are trying to move product and they have all these distribution centers, all these different channels, creating a customized experience for an Instagram campaign that maybe is not even 1% of the business that they're driving was really challenging. But I feel like it's easier maybe for brands, correct me if I'm wrong, to get into something like a TikTok shop because they're doing the fulfillment for them.

Ben Rey:

Absolutely. Yeah. And I think a lot of very large companies have over the last five to seven years. I think if we were to go back in time to Amazon, there was kind of a distinction where it was like, okay, the enterprise companies, they did their own fulfilling and then the small sellers were fulfilled by Amazon, and that was really the difference. And I think over the past five to seven years, that isn't necessarily the case. I think these large enterprises do some simple math and say, okay, where's the best bank for my buck? Where, what channels am I mostly selling on? And where is it cheaper? And with a better profit margin to have the fulfillment occur. And with a lot of larger companies going to fulfillment by Amazon or fulfillment by Walmart, it makes sense. They don't have to have their own warehousing or not as much of it.

Ben Rey:

Anyway, so that's an improvement by TikTok shops. The other one is for these smaller sellers. So if you think about the Amazon ecosystem, the reason it's so delightful is because you don't have to do anything yourself. You can be a mom and pop seller, you create your own product, you get it manufactured, you don't even have to warehouse anything. You just have it shipped right from the manufacturer and Amazon boom. And so a lot of these smaller sellers, they have a hard time getting beyond Amazon because they don't have their own fulfillment systems. And so this is why Walmart has been having some success, and this is why I think TikTok is very attractive for these smaller sellers as well.

Peter Crosby:

They really are looking for, or the frictionless environment, and so they can focus on their brand, their product, their marketing within that channel, but leave the details to somebody else and willing to take the cut that they cut the check that they have to write to do that. Yeah.

Ben Rey:

And so I think that's a key part of TikTok Shops strategy is one is to go after these sellers who don't have their own fulfillment centers. And I think second is to go after the enterprises who have switched over to a fulfilled by Amazon or Walmart model.

Lauren Livak Gilbert:

So Ben, for those that have not yet ventured into TikTok shop space, tell us about it. Give us some numbers. What are we talking about in terms of people using it and engaging with it?

Ben Rey:

Yeah, absolutely. So the numbers that I have to be clear all from the end of Q1, they haven't yet released their Q2 numbers, so it's a little bit outdated as this is July damn sharing these numbers. I know, I know. But the growth rate is pretty astounding, so it's probably going to be even more ridiculous. So currently TikTok is over 1.5 billion monthly active users, so not just someone who signed up once upon a time, but are using it on a monthly basis. And the expectation is that by 2026, the user base will reach 2.2 billion. There is a market cap, and that is the number of adults on the earth, which is pretty ridiculous human

Lauren Livak Gilbert:

Being on the

Ben Rey:

Planet. Yes, exactly. But I think it's really impressive. The United States alone has over 150 million active TikTok users, which if we're counting, that's about 23% of all internet users, which is pretty astounding. Here's my other favorite fact is that adults, US adults spend an average of 54 minutes per day on TikTok, seven days a week, 54 minutes per day. A couple business stats, and I'll let you guys jump in. So there's over 5 million business accounts that are active on TikTok, and 30% of tiktoks daily active users have engaged with TikTok shop. So 30% of the 1.5 billion active users have engaged. I think Engaged is probably not purchased obviously, but engaged in some way. And 71.2% of TikTok shop users have made a single purchase at some time in their time on TikTok, which is pretty incredible.

Peter Crosby:

That seems like a big number. Wow.

Ben Rey:

Yeah, I think some of the questions that I have about this data, what I would ask is really where is the purchase happening? Which I think is an interesting question. And obviously the way it started was a lot of people were advertising on TikTok before TikTok shops launched. They would advertise on TikTok, but then they would find the product on their phone and their feed, then they'd go to Amazon, they'd go to Walmart or Shopify and they'd complete the purchase. And so TikTok was like, aha, here's an opportunity for us. And I don't think TikTok shops has been totally successful in stopping that omnichannel or cross channel or outside of TikTok purchase. So in these statistics, I'd really like to know, and I don't have the data, but what percent of those purchases are on TikTok shops versus actually they just found the company or they found the product and searched it on the Amazon search bar and made the purchase there. That'd be interesting dataset. I don't think TikTok is ever or Amazon either ever likely to release that data, but interesting part of the ecosystem for sure.

Peter Crosby:

And what are sort of the downsides from a brand perspective of doing business this way on TikTok?

Ben Rey:

Yeah, great question. So I think there's a couple downsides. So one is, I think we can get to this later, but the whole speculation as to what is going to happen with TikTok in the future.

Peter Crosby:

There's that, right?

Ben Rey:

The little thing, right? No big deal. Yeah. My perspective on this is that TikTok user base is still growing and it's not going to stop, and we're going to be tied up in the courts for a while. So I think we can get to this later, but that's one challenge is if you are a brand who doesn't like to take risks and you have a conservative brand, maybe you're worried that going on TikTok and then it getting shut down is challenging. So I think that's one risk. I think one of the other challenges of being on TikTok shops is the model in which you buy products or sell products as a brand. And so I do want to take a second to explain this. It is very, very unique to TikTok. So when you're on TikTok shops or TikTok in general, there's essentially three ways you can think about putting out content.

Ben Rey:

The first way is you can put out the content that you own yourself. And so you may put out a post, let's pretend you are a large brand and you do an unboxing of one of your products. Very, very popular as a short form video on TikTok or Instagram or anywhere you unbox the products, say how great it is, and then you can put a link to your TikTok shops to purchase there. That's like option one. You control the whole thing. Option two is you. And so maybe you're not even posting, you're not even doing any advertisements, you're just pushing it on your feed. Option two is to do that same thing, but with an advertisement, it'll be seen by more people and very similar to other channels. The third option, which is entirely unique to TikTok shops is what's called affiliates. And so in this affiliate model, what happens is a third party, someone who doesn't work for the company, will create their own video and post it on TikTok with a link to your shop. And so that is an entirely new dynamic for TikTok shops where you have these affiliates, it's not quite an influencer. You don't necessarily pick who it is. So that's the difference between an influencer and affiliate, but you have an affiliate who would actually be selling the product on your behalf.

Peter Crosby:

And so for TikTok to approve an affiliate, what burdens do they need to meet to be improved affiliate?

Ben Rey:

So this is the part that is very, very different and may cause certain brands some concern or some hesitation for others who are aggressive. This is like, it's great. So quick and fast and low barrier to entry. So if you want to be an affiliate on TikTok, there's basically two criteria. The easiest criteria is you are a TikTok user who has at least 5,000 followers. If you have at least 5,000 followers, you can go onto your TikTok account and you go to your homepage, there's a little shopping icon, you click it and it will say, do you want to be an affiliate? And you say, yes, you be an affiliate. And at that point, what you do is you pick a category you want to sell, you have to actually have the product in your house. So you probably go look through your closet or your kitchen, whatever, and find a product. You can find it on TikTok and you can literally create a video and sell it the other ways. You can actually do it if you have zero followers, which is even crazier. But if you have zero followers, you can still become an affiliate. You just have to be approved by TikTok shops. Now, I have never done this, but I believe the barrier to entry is pretty low, even if you have zero followers. But it is pretty interesting how that works.

Lauren Livak Gilbert:

So then the brand doesn't have the ability to review any content that affiliate makes. So I can go buy a water bottle and then make a video and say, I hate it, or I love it, or whatever I want, right?

Ben Rey:

Yeah, correct. So yes, correct. So it is essentially like an auction. So what you would do is if say you're a brand and you have a product, let's say you make an iPhone case and you want it to be sold on TikTok shops, what you would do is you'd say, I have this iPhone case and I'm willing to pay 15 to 20% based on your follower account per of commission for our units sold. And so you'd kind of put that out there in the universe. And so anyone who's an affiliate can search for your product, and when they find your product, they would then see what the commission rate is. They would see some other things like what your inventory level is, number of goods sold over the past month. It is a two-way marketplace. So the affiliates don't want to waste their time making videos for products that don't have good reviews or products that aren't moving, or products that have never had a video made before.

Ben Rey:

They don't really want to be the first one. So it is a bit of a two-way marketplace. And so they're looking for that in the brands. Someone could pick it up. And a quick story is the most successful video in the history of Take A Metrics. We have a TikTok shops offering where we help find affiliates, which I'll get to as kind of a unique differentiator for us, it was someone selling a watch, and the video was literally a guy holding his iPhone above his watch. He had his wrist kind of parallel to the ground, and you could see his shoes underneath his watch. And he filmed this video and it went viral, and it was the most successful video in the history of TikTok shops. And it was simply because it was the way this guy was talking about the watch, and it was kind of like a live styl livestream was stylish and it was stylish, and they moved a ton of product and it was great. But it's hard on TikTok shops. You never know what video is going to be viral all.

Peter Crosby:

Yeah. Wow, that's fascinating and scary. So a brand can decide whether or not they want to participate in the affiliate program from their end,

Ben Rey:

Correct? Correct. And they can pick which products are in the affiliate program, et cetera. Got it. And so this is really where, from our perspective at Teme, there is some low hanging fruit for brands because it is a two-way marketplace. If you are a very successful influencer or affiliate and you get a lot of sales, you pretty much have your pick at the litter. You can choose any product you want to do, and you probably think, well, this company is lucky to have me as an affiliate. And so what we do at Take A Metrics is that we actually have a matchmaking service essentially, where we have a whole host of influencers who are already well connected with te ame, and these affiliates know that we only represent great products. And so we'll actually work on behalf of our brand customers, our sellers. We'll reach out to these affiliates and say, we want to send you a sample product.

Ben Rey:

We believe this is a really great opportunity for you to make money. You should work with this company. Or we may do research with Amazon audiences and Walmart audiences and TikTok audiences and find an affiliate in that market who connects well with that audience and connect them that way. And so if you are a brand or whether small or large, and you want to get on TikTok shops, this is really the barrier to entries. How do you find the right influencers and affiliates? And if you can find the right ones, man, your sales can skyrocket. If you find the wrong ones, you're kind of like, oh my God, I hope this video, I hope there's zero views on this thing. This thing is crazy. So yeah,

Peter Crosby:

It sounds like a little bit of a wild west, but you're trying to make it a little less wild is

Ben Rey:

Hard. Yeah, we're trying to make it a little less wild and really capitalize. I think the other challenge here is that the TikTok shops is really, although there are obviously boomers and Gen X and millennials all ages on TikTok, everyone's buying things. It is really geared the medium towards Gen Z. And if you think about who the decision makers are at a large Fortune 500 enterprise, it is no one in Gen Z

Peter Crosby:

Not so much.

Ben Rey:

And so you have this challenge, which you have in every era of the people who have the budget, who are in charge of strategy are not aligned to the next generation. And so you would say, this is total insanity. Why is someone buying this watch with this? Whereas someone in Gen Z would say, well, this was an authentic articulation of the value props here. I really resonated with this, and this influencer has a lifestyle that I wish I had, and by making this purchase, I'm aligning to their lifestyle and give me five of these. And so I think that's a particular challenge as well, and why you need an intermediary to bridge those gaps.

Peter Crosby:

I'd love to dig in on that then and give us an example of a brand that you think is using the TikTok shop successfully.

Ben Rey:

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. And I think part of the challenge here is that you have to really know what is the right medium for your brand. And not every category works best on TikTok shops. One of the categories that is successful time and time again is the beauty and health categories, whether it's supplements or whether it's makeup. So we have a particular customer who makes a variety of makeup, and we've been very successful with them in sort of this influencer affiliate matchmaking. We also create videos as well, and so we can help you with your own content also. And so for this particular customer, we did both. We did some matchmaking with influencers. We also helped them create and edit some of these unboxing videos that were wildly successful as their organic content. And so we saw sales go through the roof for two different types of categories, which was really interesting for us.

Ben Rey:

So one was a lip product, kind of like a chapstick, but it had some color to it and it was fairly cheap, sold it like three to five packs, like a pretty transactional sale. And they also had a more expensive product that was related to foundation and some other types of makeup. And what was so surprising to us was we had a theory that the viral videos and velocity of sales would be connected to the smaller item transactional sales, but it actually wasn't the case. Both performed very, very well and changed our perspective on what deal size, what average size sales price, excuse me, you could sell on TikTok. So for us, we found, okay, beauty, great category and the cost of the product, it doesn't matter. People will buy on TikTok either way if they believe there's high quality. The other thing we realized too was that people, while they do treat it a little bit differently because there's a video and there's an affiliate and there's an influencer, at the end of the day, a lot of the core e-commerce still at play because there is ratings and reviews, there are listings on TikTok shops.

Ben Rey:

And so you have to make sure your PDP has the best content. You have to make sure it is aligned with all the standards. For TikTok shops, you have to make sure your pricing is competitive. You have to make sure your reviews are strong. There's enough reviews. So all of the basics you'd apply to any other channel. You still have to apply to TikTok shops. You just also have to do the affiliate and video making too.

Peter Crosby:

And is this profitable? It just seems like with all of the fulfillment costs and then you're paying the affiliate there 20%, and is it working? Is it because it's so skyrocketing that it becomes profitable? Or how does it work from a business perspective?

Ben Rey:

That's a great question. So what we like to do is when we have a new customer who's onboarding with our TikTok shop services is we encourage 'em to think about it in three ways. So one is to think about it from an omnichannel perspective. So often what you'll see is you'll see a fairly significant increase in your TikTok shop sales, but you'll also simultaneously see an increase in your Amazon sales. And so we encourage people to make sure that they're making notes of their TikTok shop promotions of when the videos are live, of any of those types of activities. And then to look omnichannel, particularly Amazon and Walmart, to make sure that they are tracking increase in sales too. And so the challenging part, of course, with attribution, which is the main challenge in Omni is if you did all the things, all the channels all at the same time, you're really in trouble.

Ben Rey:

But if you are saying, okay, we're only going to promote on TikTok shops, let's not do a promotion or increase in ad spend on Amazon, helpful for you to track that. So that's one look at omnichannel results. Second is cost of acquisition. And so this is particularly helpful if you have a repeat product or you have something where you can subscribe to later after the first purchase. So what we are finding is that the cost of acquisition through TikTok is a fairly reasonable cost. You get someone, you may have them for a long time, it's less crowded, there are less sellers, there are less brands on TikTok. And so you're often able to get through the noise if you have effective marketing and acquire those customers at a cheaper rate because you're not paying the competitive ad numbers you might be paying on an Amazon or a Walmart. So that is helpful. Look at the cost of acquisition. Yeah, please. Lauren,

Lauren Livak Gilbert:

Did you have another one? I don't want to cut you off. The

Ben Rey:

Third one was simply just, it was related to that was just in a smaller, less crowded marketplace, the CPCs, all that cost is a lot less. And so you don't have to worry. It may feel like there's a lot of people getting paid, but they're all getting paid a smaller amount, a novel in new marketplace without as much competition.

Lauren Livak Gilbert:

And how do returns and shipping work for that? And the only reason I ask that is because I got a text message from a friend yesterday and she's like, I ordered these shoes on TikTok and I can't return them. Do they fit you? Because they don't fit me. So it kind of sparked a question for me like, oh, can you return it? And also, how long does it take to get it because they're not the Amazons of the world, so it's not going to be next day delivery. So can you talk about that a bit from the aspect of TikTok

Ben Rey:

Shop? That's a great question. And this is the hard part. When all these consumer questions, we know we work in the industry, you have to ask them, well, was it fulfilled by the merchant? Was it fulfilled by the marketplace? Who fulfilled it? And so that's the challenge is because one of the challenges with TikTok shops is that unlike Amazon, Amazon has an omnichannel fulfillment so that you can have fulfilled through your e-commerce store, your D two C store fulfilled by Amazon. One of the challenges on TikTok is they don't have that omnichannel yet. And so if you put something into the TikTok warehouse, it can only be fulfilled through TikTok shops. And so a lot of brands, merchants, whatever you want to call them, are hesitant to put products into TikTok shops like, well, the only way I can get it out is if it's I actually sell it on TikTok.

Ben Rey:

And so because of that, they'll often choose the fulfilled by merchant category, which is through often Shopify or you can kind of pick TikTok shops, sports, a whole host of fulfillment options. And so one is fulfilled by that third party, not TikTok shops. That's Lauren to your point, where you start to get some of these challenges around, well, how long did it take to arrive at my house and what's the return policy? And so TikTok shops is aware of that, which is why they have the fulfillment piece. So they're trying to have this very similar to Amazon and Walmart distributed warehousing all around the country. We can get it very quickly. So I know their goal is to be at the same speed and the same efficiency as Amazon. They just need to get more momentum there. I know maybe not this year, someday they just need to get more momentum there. And I would not be surprised. It's not an official prediction. I don't have anything from TikTok shops, but I wouldn't be surprised if they down the road offer an ability to also fulfill omnichannel just like Amazon does.

Lauren Livak Gilbert:

That's a lofty goal to be like Amazon.

Peter Crosby:

I think the critical question is here, Lauren, could you use the shoes?

Lauren Livak Gilbert:

Oh, I don't know yet. She's going to bring them to me later this week. I was like, they look great. I'll try 'em on. Why not?

Peter Crosby:

I can't let a story go once I hear the

Ben Rey:

Question. Absolutely. I We'll need a follow a pick.

Peter Crosby:

I know. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, we'll have to post that.

Lauren Livak Gilbert:

They were a viral sneaker that she's like, I wanted to get on board and I bought them and they don't fit. So I'll let you know, please. So Ben, can we crystal ball for a second? I know you have a prediction around the future of TikTok. We hinted about it a bit in the beginning, but ban no band. What's going to happen? What's the future? Brands are really trying to get a sense of this, right? Because they have limited resources, limited dollars, should they spend their time on it? If it's going to go away, what are your thoughts?

Ben Rey:

Yeah. Oh, crystal ball on whether it's going to go away or not. What I think future is then I do have some thoughts as to what brands should do immediately on TikTok. So I think Crystal Ball, it's going to wind its way through the courts in a very prolonged court case. TikTok by Dance has a ton of money. They're going to deploy it. This is a major market for them. They put a lot of effort into the US market. And so this thing's not going to go quick. It's going to go through many iterations. I think it will likely end up in the Supreme Court where it'll be a question of constitutionality, right? Of free speech, all these different things. So I think that's going to be interesting to see. Well, also, who knows the makeup of the Supreme Court could change by the time it gets there. Oh my god. Thousand and one things could happen. So who knows. I'm not going to get into those details. That's a different podcast.

Peter Crosby:

Yes, it's a different podcast. I have thought thoughts, but go ahead.

Ben Rey:

So I think that part's going to take a long time. A B is, I do know that TikTok has been working on a sanitized algorithm that is a US algorithm only. And so I think they may argue that, and if that is unsuccessful, I don't think an acquisition by a large player is outside of the realm of possibility. And so when we get into those conversations, there's essentially two possibilities out there. So one is a very large tech company who plays somewhere in commerce can make an acquisition. I know that there's like an Oracle or a Salesforce like company technically has because a lot of this is like, do you have the cash to do it right? It's a very expensive purchase. So a company like that technically has the cash to do it. They do have some e-commerce business on the backend, so there could be something interesting there.

Ben Rey:

I think the more interesting option could be an Amazon or a Walmart, particularly Walmart, because Amazon has its own kind of social shopping embedded within the.com. Walmart doesn't today, they don't have any sort of social shopping, and we know that they are going as aggressively as they can with their loads and loads of revenue after Amazon. And so this could be a very interesting move for Walmart to try and beat Amazon in its own game, but that would be extremely expensive. There'd be all sorts of anti-regulation laws and Monopoly and all that kind of stuff. So I really think that the options are pretty broad. I don't think tiktoks going away either in its current form, in a future form. I just think we'll probably have to wait two to three years to see what that is going to look like.

Peter Crosby:

Well, we'll have you back.

Lauren Livak Gilbert:

Yes, we can look at the crystal ball and see if you were right in your

Peter Crosby:

Predictions. We'll slot in the three year podcast recording right now.

Lauren Livak Gilbert:

But Ben, you also teased there's a few things that you think brands should be doing right now. So what are those things?

Ben Rey:

Yes, so I think my perspective is brands should go where the consumers are, right? That's absolutely what they should do. And brand loyalty is big. I think the pandemic taught us a lot about brand loyalty. People were fiercely loyal until it was too expensive. Then they switched pretty quickly. And so I think if you get a consumer young and you get them loyal, all these studies have shown that there's a good chance that they'll become a lifelong purchaser. I've purchased the same toilet paper and paper towel brand for decades, and so with the fact that you have all these Gen Z consumers and consumers of all ages on TikTok, for you to not be doing anything on TikTok, I think is a huge miss. Whether it's advertisement, whether it's TikTok shops, I think that's a huge miss. So I definitely feel like everyone should be examining, is there a part of my consumer base who's on TikTok?

Ben Rey:

The answer is yes. What can I be doing on TikTok? Second is I don't think you should go at it alone because it is so new. It is very unique in that it takes all the components of social. It also adds a commerce portion, and so you can't do this by yourself. There's a few different options out there. Obviously, take a metrics is one of them, but I think to try and do it by yourself would be very challenging. And second or third I should say is test and learn. Absolutely, test and learn. You don't have to do your entire catalog, you don't have to do a large budget, but I don't think there's any reason that you should resist a test and learn phase in 2024 on TikTok shops.

Peter Crosby:

Ben, earlier you were talking about the categories and maybe even the price points that work on TikTok. Is there some guidance around, because you said if your consumers there go there, but is it sort of that simple? In other words, if you have consumers that are Gen Z and they're buying your product somewhere else, then they should buy them on TikTok as well. So that's an easy decision. Is there, but are people selling large furniture on, what are sort of the categories that are either a non-starter or sort of must-dos?

Ben Rey:

Yeah, great question. So the interesting thing about TikTok in general is it does cut across all the demographics, particularly the income demographics. And so there some other channels you may think, oh, well this is really for a price conscious shopper. That's not the case for TikTok. There isn't necessarily exclusive to price conscious shopper, and I bring that up because a product like Solo Stove performs quite well on TikTok shops. It is fairly expensive, but it also is more of a like, Hey, this thing's really cool. Now I see a video. I didn't realize how cool it is. I'm going to make this purchase something that is maybe a little less research kind of spontaneous, but you have to obviously be in a certain income bracket for solo stove to be a more spontaneous purchase. But that is an example of something that performs well. So I would say that the criteria is if it is able to be a spontaneous purchase, that's a huge plus.

Ben Rey:

So any kind of purchases like that. Great. The second one is visually appealing, right? It is a visual video platform, and so if it is visually appealing, that's another one. And then third is if it would resonate with the Gen Z audience, that is also a huge plus. So that's kind of my criteria. And this be a spontaneous purchase, is it going to be visually appealing and is it going to be attractive to a Gen Z audience? I think something like a shelf stable food or something that you use every day like toothpaste, probably not your best bet unless of course the exception is we don't know how these viral trends work. I could wake up tomorrow and some sort of random toothpaste brand can be the hottest thing in the planet. That's the case, get on it. But other than that, those are my three criteria.

Peter Crosby:

Those are very helpful criteria. Thank you. So your website has a ton of great content on it around this. I'll just tell my folks, my listeners, that they should go to take a metrics, that's T-E-I-K-A, metrics.com/ebooks. And you lot particularly you have across a bunch of channels, but certainly the TikTok stuff, a lot of it's near the top. Is that a fair way of putting it? Yeah,

Ben Rey:

Exactly. So we have an ebook that we put out in July, so earlier this month called How to Attract A Billion Plus Shoppers on TikTok. It even covers one of the questions and it says, I've heard TikTok is getting banned. What should I do? And so we try and cover all of the top questions you may have. This is especially great if you work inside a company and your boss or someone has said, Hey, what's the strategy for TikTok? How do I think about this? And you have to come up with something like, this is a great ebook to cover all those different questions. That's the first one. The second one is some of our top downloaded content is our different benchmark reports. And so these benchmark across categories, toys and games, baby products, sports and outdoors. And these typically benchmark primarily in Amazon and Walmart.

Ben Rey:

We look at ROAS benchmarks, CPC benchmarks, a lot of ads and ad metrics, benchmarks. Those are really popular. The last thing I would say that's a great resource is, so we have a podcast called Human the Loop, which Lauren has been a guest on and on this Human the Loop podcast, we add an episode that ran back in March called the SUD Scrub Sensation, and it's about two guys who have a shower product and their product went viral on TikTok and what that meant as it upended their world in a great way, in a crazy way, but what a viral video on TikTok means for their business and their lives. So that's a great episode to listen to as well.

Peter Crosby:

Well, I heard this podcast thing's going to take off. So good for you for being a first mover

Ben Rey:

There. Absolutely.

Peter Crosby:

Ben, thank you so much for bringing all this brilliant stuff to us in social shopping. It feels kind of like over the last years we've been doing this podcast and been in the business, there's been like three or four false starts on social selling, and it feels like finally all the pieces are coming into place to make it something that is more transparent, enjoyable, and it sounds like hopefully profitable for the brands as well. That makes it an exciting time to be getting your toes or entire body in there.

Ben Rey:

Absolutely. I think TikTok has cracked the code on social commerce. I'm excited to see where it goes. The last offer I did want to say too is I'd be willing, any of your listeners, if they want to learn more, I would be happy to have a conversation with them. They can reach out to me on LinkedIn and I'd be happy to say, no pressure. We're not selling you anything. Let's just shop about TikTok and see if it could be helpful to you. So I'd like to offer that to your listeners too. But thank you both Peter. Lauren, thank you for having me on. It's been really great.

Peter Crosby:

Oh, pleasure. Thank you. Thanks again to Ben for all the data and the directives. We have all the links to his research and the show notes, or head over to their resources section for all the ebooks at teikeametrics.com/eBooks. Thanks for being part of our community.