Why There Has Never Been A Better Opportunity Than Tik Tok, with Brandon Doyle of Wallaroo Media

TIkTok is where the people are — over 1 billion users across 150 countries and downloaded over 175 in the US alone. 

But it’s not just eyeballs — Tik Tok users are engaged, and that engagement translates into sales for ecommerce brands. 

Brandon Doyle, CEO and Founder of Wallaroo Media, is deep in the Tik Tok game, creating organic and paid content to help ecommerce brands scale. 

But Brandon is adamant about the growth opportunities of new platforms like TikTok and Snapchat right now, where CPMs are far cheaper than Facebook and Instagram, and the Cost Per Acquisition even lower. 

If you’ve been toying with the idea of posting organic or paid ads on TikTok or Snap, then you’ll definitely want to hear how Brandon recommends testing the channel with simple content that DOES NOT require dancing or high production quality video.

Why Tik Tok is An Incredibly Unique Opportunity Right Now

The first client we got on TikTok was Spike Ball, and they’ve just done an amazing job on there. if you sell something online, you should be on TikTok.

The organic distribution that you can get on that platform right now is just unlike anything that we’ve ever seen. Their algorithm is so good at serving up videos and content to what people want to see. When I go on there, their algorithm is so good, every video is exactly what I want to see. 

So if you run an apparel company, a shoe company, a houseplant company, whatever, you don’t have to do dances. Just go on there and just do content that you feel like someone who loves houseplants would enjoy watching.

For the house plant example, it could be like a time-lapse of a plant growing. It could be different tips on taking care of house plants. It could be the benefits of different types of houseplants, whether it be different types of smells that they produce and stuff like that.

And TikTok will find people who already watched that type of stuff, show them and you’ll have zero followers and you’ll be getting views and then you’ll gradually get more followers. 

You’ll get more traffic to your website. 

For example, we just, we ran this test that I shared a little bit about a few weeks ago, but we have a client who’s spending over $200k a month on Instagram ads.

And they’re spending $10k a month on TikTok ads. 

There is one downside to TikTok, which is that the pixel isn’t great. Therefore, the only true way to know what drove the conversion is from post-purchase surveys. 

So this client, who also posts organically on Instagram and on TikTok…but according to the post-purchase survey on their website, TikTok and Instagram are the same. 

The same number of conversions came from TikTok as Instagram, but they are spending 20 times the amount on Instagram ads. 

The Takeaway is that sure, TikTok can drive traffic and views, but it also drives revenue and you can make a lot of money from it. 

How Do You Maximize Lifetime Value from Low-Priced or One-Time Purchase Products? 

For like higher price stuff, like mattresses, maybe some higher end home gym or a connected bike that’s going to be more of a one-time purchase, we want to obviously get that initial Customer Acquisition Cost as low as possible.

And then post-purchase, drive referral campaigns if it is a truly like a one-time purchase. Turn those people into brand ambassadors and, and help them love these products as much as possible and spread the word on social or via just texts to their friends or just word of mouth. 

And then you have the instances where maybe the Customer Acquisition Costs are initially a break even because they have an ongoing subscription that is the true revenue and profit driver. 

Spikeball is a great example because If someone buys a Spikeball set, that’s probably going to be the only one. I mean, the thing doesn’t really break, so they’re not going to need another one for themselves. but it is a great gift, and it’s in the sweet spot as far as gifts go.

So we can we still do a lot of marketing to customers to try to get them to buy gifts for friends or family, and basically turning that person into a brand ambassador as well, just in a different way.

And then with clients that are more like apparel or accessories or shoes, then it’s more like the Nike model where you want to get them in the door, and perhaps be willing to break even or even lose money, if you can stomach that initially–if you feel like you’re the quality of your products or the, and, or the quality of your brand is strong enough to win them over and over and over as, as time goes on.

A Tik Tok Ad Strategy (And How It Differs from Facebook and Instagram)

TikTok right now has decent targeting, like just as far as interest goes, age, gender, location. variety of interests. you can do lookalikes and like retargeting type stuff too, if you get the pixel installed.

To get started, I would just go for just a traffic or conversion campaign. 

We’ve actually seen some great results with, with both. You can get good results with traffic campaigns from TikToK, and then obviously you could focus on conversion too. but the downside again is the tracking isn’t great. And like Tik TOK will only count a conversion as an official purchase conversion If the person sees the ad in TikTok, clicks through to the website from that app and then purchases right there within the TikTok app, basically.

When people are on TikTok, they’re definitely not in shopping mode. I just want to chill and watch some funny or interesting videos. 

In contrast, Instagram is at the point where partly is mindlessly browsing and mindlessly double tapping. But once in a while I’ll see an ad that might intrigue me and I might double tap it or actually click through and purchase. So Instagram has like trained that in our subconscious to where shopping through that platform.

TikTok we’ll get there eventually, but it’s just not there right now. 

Brandon is Founder & CEO of Wallaroo Media, and can be reached found on Twitter at @travelintweeter