Jake Bjorseth’s Post

I've spoken to 200+ brands over the last year. Usually, on TikTok Shop. I've heard every theory and hypothesis imaginable. But I could fit them all into one of three buckets for why brands are considering TikTok Shop: 1) You Need to Build a New Customer Base Your current customer base is aging out; you see an obvious opportunity to innovate into younger audiences. 2) Diversifying Media Spend Perhaps the most common from D2C brands is an over reliance on current media channels. Whether it be FB, Amazon, or Google - you've got far too great a % of revenue stemming from just one ecosystem. 3) You're Launching New Products or Sub-Brands The most exciting of the bunch is the opportunity to test with new products or sub-brands in an awareness + conversion channel. Before you launch full force you see an opportunity to test in TikTok Shop. -- While TikTok Shop can become your primary revenue channel, its truly best suited as just another sales channel in your arsenal. As you consider here in Q3 what initiatives you'll explore before EOY, I couldn't recommend at least running a pilot in TikTok Shop enough. Simply carve a small percentage of your overall marketing spend and put it to work in a platform with potentially outsized returns. Do not be the person that puts this off to 2025...

I’ve led our sales forever. It’s the thing I truly love most in business. But the thing I know I’ve needed to let go. A warm welcome to our new partnerships manager Joseantonio Guillen An immigrant from Peru and better known as “Juice”, he radiates nothing but positivity. He’s run an agency of his own and has breezed through our internal course material. Oh, and he’s a phenomenal quarterback to our pickup touch football games.

I know nothing about the beauty and cosmetics industry. Like most non-put-together guys, a splash of cold water on my face is the extent of my cosmetic routine. And for our entire agency history we've been consumer first, category second. Whether is was selling t-shirts or a government job, if the end demographic was the same we knew how to reach them. But beauty/cosmetics is for whatever reason just wildly different. In conversations with industry experts Mimi Banks & Stephen Blazick, it only further confirmed this point. We are not looking for a man in finance, with a trust fund and blue eyes. But we are looking for the category expert that can guide our beauty partners to the next level in TikTok Shop! If you know of anyone, please refer them :)

Success on TikTok Shop comes down to one thing: AOV, Product Margin, Existing Brand Awareness, TikTok Followers, etc... These are all great data-driven markers. But the one thing we assess above all others is far more subjective: We call it the "Bobby" test. (Named after my youngest brother, a senior in high school) "If we gave this product to a teenager randomly with no information provided, would they be able to make a decent TikTok video with it?" If the answer is yes, you're set. And can do serious revenue in platform. If the answer is no, the best strategies and tactics will all fall short. Metrics and data points simply can't fully project what is a platform driven by affiliates and the creativity of the content. Creative is the variable of success; this is what you should optimize for.

The incentive will determine the outcome. A year ago we decided to tailor our business model for TikTok Shop. Moving away from set scopes and retainers to a cost + rev share model. Instead of baking our margin into retainers, we'd eliminate our margin entirely providing services at cost. With all of our profit as a company reliant on client rev share. For the first nine months, it was the dumbest financial decision imaginable. We were bleeding cash. I was having to support cash flow from my personal savings. But if we wanted to become the best TikTok Shop agency, our only chance would be allocating every last dollar toward it. So we followed the plan. Even when our rev shares were kicking, we continued to reinvest these into growth. It was a handful of enterprise clients (retainer only) that kept us afloat. We will close out Q1 and Q2 posting a -$50k+ loss on our TikTok Shop Retainers. But will net our highest profit total and % in company history thanks to our rev share deals. We bet on our great brand partners. We bet on ourselves. And it paid off. Our incentive wasn't to do good for clients for a cool case study. Our incentive was doing great or having our company go under. The plan for our TikTok Shop Division Q3 and Q4 is simple: - Invest 100% of Retainers into Services - Invest 50% of our Rev Shares into growth per client (so if clients nets us a $10k rev share, reinvest $5k back into that client) - Save the other 50% of our Rev Shares to drive EBITDA Put simply: If we do great for our clients, we will make plenty of money. If we do poor for our clients, we won't.

I value education more than anything else. But I dropped out of school before I got my marketing degree. So I built the best marketing education content in the world. "The CMO Podcast Series" I interviewed 100 marketing executives over the course of two years: The CMO of North Face. The CMO of Coca Cola. The CMO of Nissan. The CMO of ADT. The Head of Marketing at 3M. VP of Marketing at NASA. The CMO of Century Link. The Head of Marketing at One Brands. The CMO of FIS Global. The CEO of Red Robin. The VP of Marketing at Facebook. The Head of Strategy at Riot Games. I'd take the information in those interviews over any marketing program in the world. Education is everywhere and infinite in supply. It's your job to find it.

8.6 Billion Impressions. The reach we garnered for PACSUN in just four weeks of our TikTok campaign. All organic. The driving force behind it all: A custom audio track we produced with a music artist and TikTok influencer, Jay-O. Jay-O is the man. Within hours of his creative brief, he sent me five different audio tracks back. Even included voice memos explaining his thinking and strategy. Thinking we had a hit, we knew we needed to document it all. So we invited Jay-O over to our content house to film a “behind the lyrics” This is the never before seen breakdown of the most viewed brand audio in TikTok history:

Meet Jake Levy The founder of “Jacob Bar” protein bars. What isn’t close yet, but what will be the best selling protein bar in TikTok shop by the end of the year. And this video summarizes exactly why: 1. Founder-First Content Here’s the brand founder literally in the content. Creating green-screen TikTok native videos; something you’ll never see from larger competitors. 2. Showing Production Do you have any idea what ingredients go into most protein bars? What those ingredients look like? Their facility? Jake shows it all here. 3. Transparency Throughout the video Jake shares all of the common production problems that take place. “This can go wrong and mess up the packaging!” When have you ever seen a brand highlight their production flaws? Assuming he can get the financing and production scaled, it’s just a matter of time before you see Jacob Bar at the top!

TikTok Shop is transforming influencer marketing. The affiliate marketing renaissance is here. So we sat down with Pearl Lamborn, a long-time content creator and top TikTok affiliate. We get Pearl’s perspective on: - The best way to partner with affiliates - Why she chooses her brand partners - What the best brands are doing in TikTok shop Listen up 👂🏻, class is in session!