Podcast transcript
Introduction
Hi, and welcome back to Marketplace Masters, the Agency Best Practice Edition.
Paul Sonneveld
I'm your host, Paul Sonneveld, ahd today we're diving into one of the hottest topics in e-commerce right now, TikTok shop in the U.S., We know that many of you come from really strong Amazon backgrounds, but with TikTok's massive growth and influence, the question is, how can Amazon sellers and their agency successfully make the leap into TikTok shop? Now, before we jump into that topic, just a couple of quick updates.
First of all, Amazon Unboxed is next week. Luke and I will be jumping on a plane this weekend to attend the event in Nashville. We'd love to catch up with as many of you as possible while we're there. So if you are attending, send me a quick message on LinkedIn and connect in person. After that, in December, we have the Amazon Vendor Summit coming up. It's a two-day virtual event featuring fifteen speakers and over a thousand registrants. And of course, tons of practical insights to help vendors win in 2026. Registration is open now and is completely free for vendors and MerchantSpring clients. Just scan the QR code right there on the screen or head to merchantspring.io to grab your ticket.
All right. Now let's head back to today's topic. I am thrilled to be joined by Kristen Kurowski, the Director of Client Growth and Partnerships at Emplicit. She'll be sharing what works, what doesn't, and how to think strategically about expanding from Amazon into TikTok. And this is going to be a very practical, best practice session full of actionable insights you can take back to your clients. And of course, we're going to leave plenty of time for Q&A. So this is definitely a cue for you to use that comment section on LinkedIn or on YouTube and get your questions out in front of myself and Kristen. All right, without further ado, Kristen, thank you so much for being on today's show. It's absolutely wonderful to have you here.
Kristen Kurowski
Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to today's conversation and answering tons of questions.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, it's certainly a big topic. And the reason I know, I see a lot of our clients connecting TikTok shop accounts as well as TikTok advertising to our platform. And we've had the connector for a while, but it really, certainly in the last three to four months, I can really kind of I see a lot of people getting into this. So let me tee up the first question, which is, from your perspective, and you know, for the listeners there, we're really talking about TikTok today from the context of coming at it from an Amazon brand point of view or an agency point of view. You know, why should Amazon-focused agencies like yourself or brands really consider TikTok shop now? Why now?
Kristen Kurowski
That's such a great question. And it primarily draws from top of funnel and just generalised brand awareness that it provides to the consumer marketplace. So it really does create a powerful halo effect that as we're seeing on Amazon, but it's also driving off-brand recognition that Amazon actually rewards your rankings and its rankings for. So it's particularly unique because it just seems as though it can be a fairly inexpensive investment or almost like a break-even investment early on, offering a lot of higher revenue potential than a traditional Meta or Google Ads once have, once your flywheel is really turning.
However, I do want to kind of preface that there, there is an initial investment typically within the first six months. But it's new, it's rapidly evolving marketplace, meaning the levels of acceleration growth and rapid growth are just incredible. And then that's type of growth that you don't necessarily see on the Amazon platform anymore. So it's kind of rare to find that. And in e-commerce, TikTok shop right now is that marketplace that you can find it for some of these successful shops that are doing everything to successfully promote their brands.
Paul Sonneveld
That's a very interesting comment about like the early ROI as well and the outlay not being too too great I mean I think we're always having discussions here with i'm based in australia as many of you know and you know australian sellers wanted to go to the u.s and you know when you when you talk about budgets and outlay you know their interests uh just evaporates uh within five minutes great to see that's not the case there. So tell me, Kristen, what are the biggest differences between selling on Amazon and selling on TikTok shop? It sounds like a basic question, but the platforms are not the same. So can you lay out the biggest differences between those platforms?
Kristen Kurowski
Yeah. So Amazon itself is it's a keyword-based detail page conversion engine. Right. So that's typically where the funnel ends. A TikTok shop, however, it's that social awareness and creative first channel. So it's more of a marketing-type channel where content is digestible in more of a video-type format. And then the goal there is really to leverage the different hooks and angles to attract various audiences to get in front of customers more rapidly. So we see Amazon as more of a bottom-of-funnel marketplace, where TikTok Shop is very much more of a top or mid-tier funnel marketplace.
Paul Sonneveld
I wanted to just ask you, you were like, you were trying to lip-read
Kristen Kurowski
I was like, what were you saying
Paul Sonneveld
Let's talk about TikTok algorithm, right? I kind of, I don't really understand it. I know it's got an amazing ability to have me glued to that screen, like for hours on end and burning up lots of time. But you know, in the concept product is really about, how do you get your products found? Right. I mean, how does the TikTok algorithm really influence that product discovery really compared to Amazon's kind of search-driven model?
Kristen Kurowski
Great question. And there's so many different levers I would say on TikTok shop. So Amazon itself is really driven by search queries and search. TikTok shop and that algorithm is driven by content and community. So the algorithm. The algorithm really leverages the different people, the angles, the hooks, and communities to push creator videos and users to where they feel they're going to convert. So, depending upon how many seconds you're spending on a video to hearts on a video, etc., it's really dependent on what you're seeing within your community and feel of each day and how that algorithm transpires over time. So, as a seller, you're set in budget and targets. And in TikTok shop, you have to let the algorithm control that for a while. So understanding that you can simultaneously play in many different hooks and marketing strategies on the same marketplace is what's so enticing about this TikTok shop algorithm.
Paul Sonneveld
And can I just ask you a quick follow-up question just to dig a bit deeper there? When it comes to content, and we'll go a bit deeper on that, but are these sort of one-off content shots or, you know, obviously in Amazon, you know, you create your product display page once you finally got your content right. And it sort of lives there for a while, right? Maybe until some other seller, you know, tries to interfere. On TikTok, what's the level of permanency? I mean, is it sort of, you know, you're in there once, you rank once, it's great, but then you're really pushed down and, you know, visibility sort of disappears for that particular content. I mean, what's the permanency like there?
Kristen Kurowski
So the permanency for TikTok shop itself, it changes on a daily, hourly basis. It's really dependent upon how involved you are with creators, within your shop, within lives, and being able to do live selling as almost you're on a QVC yourself, things along those lines. There's so many different angles and takes that adjust your algorithm for your brand awareness and for searchability exceptions, where on the Amazon side, it really is search and query your best seller ranking and visibility on more of a category-based area, where TikTok Shop has adapted some of those, but there's still so many different angles and ways to leverage the algorithm. And TikTok Shop rewards shops for doing specific items, such as live presentations of that QVC mindset, which will leverage your algorithm and your searchability on that platform as well.
Paul Sonneveld
That makes sense. Thanks for clarifying that. So you know you've spoken about the differences around the role the budgets, the discoverability, content and the like. And there are, of course, ticked off, what are they called, native TikTok brands or TikTok first, or whatever you call them, but what about the brands that have lived on Amazon that have tried to launch on TikTok shop? I'm particularly interested in helping our audience avoid the most common mistakes, right? So what are those, and which ones should they try and avoid?
Kristen Kurowski
Definitely. So common mistakes. I think if I could focus on, three most common mistakes, the first being just underestimating the financial investment and coming in desiring to grow profitability instead of growing rapidly first. So, rapid growth is how you prioritise the algorithm. You get that flywheel spinning, which eventually would result in profitability, but you have to be willing to make the investment first for a good, I would say almost six months to a break-even or in the red type of investment to get into the TikTok shop atmosphere and algorithm to start turning over.
And then the second would be picking one angle. So success of course requires a broad strategy that does utilise three pillars. So shoppable videos, lives, and then creator and affiliate marketing. So ideally, sales should be balanced roughly between 30/30/30. And that's where you're seeing thirty from video content, thirty percent from your lives, and actually doing more of that QVC TikTok shop live, and then thirty percent from actual product detail page, your landing page of the shop. So, making sure that you're focusing on a specific angle, but you're also curating that broad strategy through all those, all three of those pillars.
And then the third mistake I would arguably state is failing to be a creator first. So brands often view creators as just more of a transaction, dollar per video, instead of humans, relationships, that community that's actually there to help you succeed and build that brand. So building that loyal network of creators is essential for that long-term impact that will have success within that TikTok shop and that community.
Paul Sonneveld
There are three great points there. Interesting to see that balance between the three. I forgot them already, but the one that was live, the other was the shoppable content, and then the kind of creating the product pages there.
Kristen Kurowski
Yep.
Paul Sonneveld
Where does advertising fit into this? And maybe we can start with just distinguishing between sort of TikTok shop and TikTok Ads. Are they the same? Are they different? How do they work together? And then we can talk about a little bit how that works.
Kristen Kurowski
Definitely. So Amazon Ads, as many of you know, are pay-per-click campaigns where you have more control and you can target at a finer level, the direct recipient of those Ads. Where TikTok shop campaigns differ, and they rely heavily on that TikTok shop or the TikTok algorithm is they do GMV Max campaigns. So they pick from what is converting, what is being seen, and then they would put that into a larger bracket of a campaign. Where it spits out heavily dependent upon the algorithm and who is searching within your specific category or community, or people.
So that is really, you're kind of investing in and you want to get aggressive with your ROI targets initially, but as an Ad spend, it just depends on the success of a creator video or the live studio and the success of the GMV created within the live. So, It's giving you less immediate and granular control than Amazon, but it does have a larger ROI depending upon how quickly you can get that flywheel going, as well as the algorithm to snap into effect to support the branding.
Paul Sonneveld
Is there a rule of thumb that you work towards around sort of organic versus advertising sales from TikTok or performance, just like you broke them out into the sort of the three different types of revenue or where the revenue originates from? Are there any rule of thumb that you have at the back of your mind as you're talking to your clients about TikTok performance?
Kristen Kurowski
So with TikTok performance, you can slice a pie in many ways. I would just arguably state, however you decide to do more of the organic video, the organic production, you want to ensure that there's consistency within that. So, ideally, you would be looking for maybe a 60/40 split, depending upon your heavy relationships within the creator community, whoever is doing potential lives and then your product detail page.
And then you again just want organic content creation for brand awareness, to not even necessarily showcase the product, but to just achieve the answer to some of the pain points that people may be looking for. And that's where TikTok Shop really succeeds is it's a number game at the end of the day. You might have ten videos out there, but it's the tenth one that hits, and that's the converting video that works versus the first nine, which were more of just get in front of consumers for the first three seconds, seven seconds, eight seconds, and then they hit on that last tenth video, things along those lines.
Paul Sonneveld
Makes sense. I want to go back to the thing that you mentioned right at the start of this podcast, which is you mentioned the word sort of halo effect, TikTok shop halo effect on your Amazon sales. I'd love to hear an example, you know, just to sort of make it real for us. Are you able to share an example of how TikTok creates that halo effect, specifically on Amazon sales?
Kristen Kurowski
So with the halo effect, while people are TikTok shop users, they often remain Amazon loyalists. So they'll discover product visibility within that TikTok shop space. You'll see the engagement. And then when they migrate over to Amazon, they'll purchase and convert. And that's where we see majority of the massive wins. And it still drives Amazon ranking, which signals that you're seeing success. And it helps you avoid paying out the commissions on the TikTok shop creator side for that specific purchase. Don't tell the creators I said that.
But we are seeing a halo effect while even though at a small degree, it definitely is showing that the ecosystems of consumers still lie where they shop. So for example, Amazon, you have a lot of the subscribe and savers. And so on a monthly basis, they have their subscribe and save orders by discovering product on TikTok shop. They still may come and convert on the Amazon side because it's just convenient to them, because they are already a part of that ecosystem, versus on TikTok shop. So there's definitely overflow and halo effect that we've seen across various different clients and brands.
Paul Sonneveld
That's great. Influencers we haven't, I mean, obviously it's such a big part of the whole ecosystem there. I'm not too familiar with it. You know, I'm sort of showing my ignorance here, but talk to me about the role of an influencer or creator. I think that's what they call, you know, I sound so old when I talk, I really feel like I'm starting to sound like my grandparents in my ear. Talk to me, what role does an influencer or creator really play in the success of a client's TikTok shop?
Kristen Kurowski
Definitely. That's so funny, Paul, because sometimes I get on some of these creator meetings and I'm like, oh my, this is a whole different ballgame. But the creators actually play a huge role to your success. So success is going to be driven through that relationship management component and which that's about building the community of creators. So you have live creators, you have shop creators, you also just have creators that can help support your organic side of the business. So you definitely want to approach it on a relationship viewpoint, dollar per video plus a relationship. And that's really how the network has been leveraging even Amazon affiliates for their handles and things along those lines.
So it is a huge opportunity to build out Discord channels or email sources or even having in-person type events. That's where you're building more of a brand loyalties that are being published through TikTok shop. But we've also seen a lot of brands utilise creators that also are influencers across other marketplaces. And so it expands just out of the TikTok shop bubble. And now you're really having more of an ambassador role and you're building out the entirety of brand visibility and growth at an extreme level that captures all different ecosystems and marketplaces across the world.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Beyond TikTok shop. Yeah. It strikes me like you mentioned sort of a dollar per video. That's obviously like monetary considerations is one evaluation criteria, but are there other things that you look for? I mean, there's probably millions of influencers and creators out there. How do you find the right ones for your particular brand? I mean, what are the practical criteria that you look at?
Kristen Kurowski
So there's many ways to look at creators that are going to be successful for your branding. One is creators are categorised based on their preference of videos that they do. So, for example, if you're beauty, they have a beauty categorisation for creators. And then within that, majority of the creators and their communities at, so a creator and then their followers and their communities are all beauty followers, which makes sense that you can target specific categories to help kind of specify your demographic.
However, there's a lot of blending of categories as well. And it's really just dependent upon the hooks and the angles and a lot of different tests to go through, depending upon how you initially start creator outreach and what type of creators you have as part of that community and buy in into the branding. So there's a lot of different angles and ways to kind of support that, but you can break it based on categorisation.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah. I want to sort of take it back to kind of the agency landscape piece here. Obviously, you know, we do have a lot of agencies, Amazon agencies, tuning in here. I know, Emplicit, you know, there was a time when, you know, Emplicit wasn't doing a TikTok shop, right?, And a lot of agencies are busy. I mean, you and I sort of had a quick chat before we started this podcast about how crazy this season is. Right. Of course, it's Q4. It's probably the busiest time of the year, but I'm yet to talk to an Amazon agency. Who's not busy, like all the time, right?.
How, when you're already stretched, what is the best way to get into this TikTok shop? Cause I think the reality is clients are asking for it. And as an agency, if you don't sort of put your feet in and at least try and offer a service here, they may go elsewhere, and that might put the rest of your business at risk as an agency. Obviously, I'm talking particularly from an agency point of view here is, from your point of view, maybe from your experience at Implicit, you know, what is the best way to operationalise TikTok shop services as an agency?
Kristen Kurowski
Yeah, definitely. So at first, I just want to preface, if you're already stretched really thin, you probably should not dive in just because you don't want to afford to drop the ball on your core revenue stream. However, if you do proceed and you want to operationalise TikTok shop and those types of services, you do need a dedicated person or a specialised team who can really spend time learning and playing within this ecosystem and staying ingrained in the rapidly changing environment. It really does change on a weekly basis, and we get updates all the time on a daily basis of new levers and campaigns and protocols.
So this person really does need to kind of monitor more of the sales, the platform glitches, ensuring that they are focused. without detracting, obviously, from securing your Amazon resources. So you want to ensure that there is the best of both worlds, but having someone who has the flexibility to really dive in and find and focus in on all the changes and developments that are constantly occurring would be the best approach, in my opinion.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, I can certainly resonate with that. Certainly, I know the agencies, you know, like yourselves, who are really into this, who are giving this a real serious go in terms of setting up another product line. They have all gone out and hired people with TikTok experience or with a different kind of mindset. Yeah, I think it's hard to do both just because the differences and even the audiences and all of that. Absolutely.
Okay. You know, one thing we haven't spoken about at all, which is KPIs. Right. So lots of great info up to this point. But how do you actually measure success on TikTok shop? I guess, both in terms of selling on TikTok, what does good look like? What are the metrics look like? But also maybe we talk a little bit about the kind of attribution back to Amazon sales as well. Both topics. Maybe let's start with maybe the easier one in terms of what is how do you measure success on TikTok shop?
Kristen Kurowski
Yeah, that's a great question. So the way that we like to focus on it is not to solely look at GMV revenue right away. It does come later as the shop matures. So, focusing on more of the leading indicators is where we focus KPIs. So, on a phase one generalised outreach, it's the number of creator outreaches to quickly exceed the platform's initial account thresholds that you're given as a new seller on the shop or if you're within a certain plat threshold to exceed that. So you have unlimited. Then a phase two. Oh, go ahead.
Paul Sonneveld
Sorry. Do you mind just explaining to me what does that mean in terms of exceeding the threshold? Yeah.
Kristen Kurowski
So as a new seller, you actually have a limited amount of outreaches that you're allowed. within the first X amount of days until you hit a specific GMV or sales target within TikTok Shop. And then you go into their second-tier threshold, and then the third being unlimited. I believe it's a thousand creators at a week, seven, and then unlimited. Don't quote me, that might've changed. But you do have limited amount of outreaches that you can do when just starting on the platform. But there's ways around that that we can support on. So focusing on just number of creator outreaches is kind of your first initial go.
And then once you have more of that creator network and you're on that growth trajectory, focusing on the amount of videos posted per month. So that's your creator relationship-driven videos that are posted on a monthly basis. The amount of number of lives that you're doing on a monthly basis is also one of the indicators. And then we want to focus on that GMV and that profitability is almost like a phase three. So once you're starting GMV to trend up and it hits around that 50K, you want to start focusing on more of that profitability. So aiming to a two-to-one ratio, eventually one-to-one and continue investing. So you're continuing to see that flywheel in that.
But also starting metrics could be on the organic side, such as follower count, ensuring that your shop creator count and organic count have that social proof that you need to one, attract your creators themselves, but also attract the customers because they believe in you. That follower count is also very similar to almost an Amazon review rating or review count. They're looking for how many people have purchased or followed because they want that social proof that they're purchasing from a core foundational company. So there's a lot of different KPIs depending upon where you're starting on TikTok shop.
Paul Sonneveld
Although I do hear you clearly articulate at least two different phases, maybe more around, you know, there's a build phase and an activity phase and just doing the doing, laying the groundwork and then, adding on the financial component around GMV profitability. Really from that, and I want to make sure I got this right, from the sort of six-month mark onwards or, you know, when you're starting to hit that fifty thousand dollar threshold. Have I got that right? I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I just wanted to make sure I paraphrase you correctly.
Kristen Kurowski
No, that's definitely correct. You're starting to see more of GMV hit typically within that six-month mark. When you get to that profitability, we're starting to look more at an actual target of GMV around that 50K. So they might be two separate, not necessarily guaranteed. You'll be hitting that fifty K at your six-month mark, but you'll start seeing that ROI within the investment component of TikTok shop. And then you're definitely looking at profitability as you scale.
Paul Sonneveld
Gotcha. Okay. We are over the thirty-minute mark, so I need to get into my wrap-up mode. But we do have a great question here from our audience. So I wanted to just throw that in there. I think it's quite relevant to today's session and what we're talking about now. It comes from Pam. So, Pam, first of all, thank you for raising your question here. And this is just to prove to everyone that this is a live show.
In terms of setting up a TikTok shop, is it better to have the shop be from the original seller than from a publisher? Or would a shop perform better if it's kind of shipped and sold by us or set up to direct to Amazon even as an affiliate? Which one of these is better practice than the other? So in other words, setting up a shop or more of a sales funnel to Amazon? And I guess there's a profitability question in there as well, but maybe just from the top line, what's your steer here? And thanks for your question, Pam. Really appreciate it.
Kristen Kurowski
Great question, Pam. So perspective, the best way to set up a TikTok shop is to be from the original seller, just because of the amount of social proof and creator buy-in that you want to have within the creator community. to secure their investment and that relationship component within the TikTok shop side.
So as that algorithm produces more and more, you're going to start seeing the branding of the actual seller expand across the TikTok shop community. And TikTok shop even did a study where they, I think, four out of five TikTok shop purchasers, even if they didn't purchase on TikTok shop, eventually went to other marketplaces to purchase because they saw the product through the seller on the TikTok shop side. So I would highly recommend if you are starting to start from the original seller account, and then I would see majority of the shop perform better because of that.
Paul Sonneveld
That's great. Yeah, that's a great answer. Thanks, Kristen. And thanks, Pam, for your question. All right. Well, final question from me as we wrap up. Looking ahead, obviously, there has been a lot of uncertainty around TikTok shops' role, particularly in the US. Looks like the uncertainty is being removed or slowly kind of disappearing. Looking ahead, right, where do you see the TikTok shop role in the US? How do you see it evolve, really, over the next two to three years? I mean, this is my crystal ball question, right? Two to three years from now, what does TikTok look like? What is the role of TikTok within the Amazon ecosystem?
Kristen Kurowski
Definitely. So I know there's a lot of uncertainty around the platform in general. And it's pretty clear that some form of TikTok shop will always, or TikTok will always be around. The marketplace will continue to evolve rapidly similar to how Amazon grew in its early days, we're seeing a very similar new marketplace presence through consumerism and video-type creative assets. So the crucial takeaway that I would leave with everyone is the cost of entry is going to continue to climb. And the longer an agency or a seller sits on the sidelines, the more expensive and the more difficult it will be to get into the game.
Paul Sonneveld
Great way to finish today's session. Thank you so much, Kristen. It has been an absolute pleasure to have you on today's episode. Thank you for sharing your knowledge. Thank you for all the tips and helping us demystify TikTok shop a little bit more. I think a lot of us have been kind of ignoring TikTok shop for a while. We just see it as something our kids do. But it certainly can no longer be ignored. I think you've been really clear on that. So, really appreciate you coming on today, and a really big thank you from me.
Kristen Kurowski
Thank you for having me. Looking forward to following up with any questions.
Paul Sonneveld
Thank you. All right. That is it for today's episode of Marketplace Masters. If you found today's discussion valuable, don't forget to check your inbox for the recording. We'll make sure that all registrants get access. And of course, if you'd like to continue the conversation, reach out to Kristen on LinkedIn or join us for future Marketplace Masters sessions. Until next time, my name is Paul Sonneveld and thanks for being part of Marketplace Masters today. Take care.
