Does social media have an impact on your sales on Amazon?
Maybe not if you aren’t actively building your brand’s presence….right?
Unless…your product goes viral completely by accident. Talk about every Amazon seller’s dream. This is exactly what happened to an Amazon seller who sells a 3D filament pen on the platform.
As a result of a post by a prominent influencer on the social platform Tiktok, a product she decided to promote ended up selling 10,000 units in a single day!
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Going Viral
If you watch this video posted by @smartseller on Tiktok, you will see that their Cyber Monday was a spectacular success thanks to a completely unexpected post by influencer @rachel_meaders.
@smartestseller #duet with @rachel_meaders Cyber Monday is one for the books. #cybermonday #amazon #ecommerce #business
♬ original sound – Rachel Hutchens Meaders
So, how did this happen?
Well, as of this writing that post has gotten over 2.5 million LIKES (so, many many more views than even that!…)
And as you can see from this BSR chart that product’s sales shot through the roof directly after the post.
The question is, why did this happen?
As I mentioned earlier, this was unexpected. That means that @smartseller didn’t commission a paid promotion from @rachel_meaders. So why did she make this post?
The answer is simple, but also promising. See, Rachel is an Amazon affiliate. That means she gets paid a percentage of sales when she promotes products on the Amazon platform and people make purchases.
She also participates in the Amazon Influencer program, so she gets what amounts to a storefront of her own that she can promote whatever products she wants on. Every product listing link is connected to her affiliate account.
In the screenshot I’ve circled the section where she features products she’s specifically talked about in her Tiktok series “Things You Didn’t Know You Needed On Amazon.”
The reason she made the post for the 3D filament pen was because she was looking for affiliate commissions (and likely she made a pretty penny from that promotion). However, not every viral product post needs to be an accident.
Why Is Tiktok An Important Platform For Ecommerce Sellers
First, let’s discuss why you should even consider a platform like Tiktok. Once you see it’s impact on today’s purchase decisions, perhaps you’ll see why this is NOT a one-off fluke story.
Tiktok has over a BILLION monthly active users worldwide. One hundred million of that is in the US.
Many entrepreneurs stateside are still not phased by this number because, well, they’re all just kids….right?
Not quite. In fact, about 40 million of those are over the age of eighteen (making them legal adults, capable of having bank accounts and making purchases online).
What’s more is, these users spend an average of 52 minutes per day on the platform and check the app at least eight times a day. Now, 52 minutes may not seem like a lot, but it is actually more than almost any other social platform in existence.
But let’s focus on the numbers that really matter to ecommerce sellers.
Tiktok ranks sixth in the world among apps for consumer spending.
Tiktok also averages a whopping 52.1% in terms of engagement. What does that mean? It means that on average over HALF of all people that watch a video interact with it in some way (rather than just passive scrolling).
Also, there was a 500% increase in in-app spending from March 2018 to April 2019. Now, this is a worldwide statistic since there is no means of in-app purchase on the American version of Tiktok….YET. But this is a strong indicator of what we can soon expect, and the types of users already on the app.
Other Profitable Examples of Virality
While we obviously don’t have access to sales dashboards to see the impact on revenue these viral campaigns had, we can take a look at increases in interest across the web to draw conclusions about how impactful viral posts were on Ocean Spray and Twisted Tea.
First we’ll look at the ever-so authentic and adored Ocean Spray Cranberry/ Fleetwood Mac post innocently published to the Tiktok platform by user @420doggface208 back in September 2020.
At the time of this writing, you can see it has amassed over 12 million likes!
But within a couple short weeks of posting, it went mega-viral and while the consequences have clearly been very beneficial for @420doggface208, they appear to likely have been pretty kind to Ocean Spray as well.
You can see that in October, “Ocean Spray” the branded keyword saw unprecedented growth in search interest across Google users in the US, with slightly renewed vigor a few months later as well.
Large brands have very different objectives than small business owners, believe it or not, and this is evidenced by the massive amount of money they spend on advertising strictly for the purpose of brand awareness. Yet, this innocent post drove absurd amounts of brand awareness in an unscripted, unpromoted and unadvertised user-generated post.
Ocean Spray is not the only brand to see this kind of happy accident.
The controversial “Twisted Tea Smack” that featured an altercation which involved the smashing of a can of Twisted Tea into someone’s face also had similar consequences. Unlike doggface’s post, this wasn’t received by the masses with warm-hearted praise, but instead with righteous vindication.
The video, reposted by many random users all over the internet, garnered hashtags that were searched, viewed and used in the millions.
As a result, search interest skyrocketed.
The moral of the story here is, Tiktok and it’s user-base clearly have the power to influence interest and consumption across all industries.
How Smaller Ecommerce Sellers Can Win With Tiktok
If the first example of the 3D filament pen wasn’t enough, let’s look at micro-scale examples that represent the current opportunity for sellers like you and me.
First, let’s take a look at this recent post from a user on Tiktok promoting an automatic door locking mechanism. This is a higher-priced item, which many sellers are concerned would do poorly on a platform dominated by younger people with arguably less money than their target market.
However….
As you can see the video garnered over 35,000 likes. But what importance do likes and views have when the goal is sales? That’s a good question.
You can see in the screenshot above the average BSR for this over $100 product went from 30,000 to under 6,000 before likely running out of stock. In the Tools and Home Improvement category that represents the difference between roughly 270 sales per month and 1380 sales per month!
On a $100+ product, you can do the math on that revenue increase.
Here’s another example. A “bed of nails,” or pressure point mat.
This product demonstration post got almost 100,000 likes as of this writing, and the impact on sales is pretty staggering.
While a jump from around 700 BSR to 200 BSR seems small, it represents a difference in the Health and Household category between around 18,000 units sold per month, and 36,000. That means, for the period of time this video was viral, it pushed sales to DOUBLE!
Ok, now that I’m sure you are convinced of the power of Tiktok to help grow your business on Amazon, the last question remains, how do YOU take advantage of this?
You can search for them manually.
By looking in the Tiktok search bar, using keywords like “deals” or “coupons” or even “amazon” you can find both hashtags and usernames that will alert you to content creators that are featuring products sold on the Amazon platform.
See, these users are Amazon affiliates (part of the “associates” program). As such, they make a commission from sales made on the platform through URLs they promote with their affiliate tag in them.
So these content creators make content on Amazon products because they benefit from the sale of those products. This also means they have cultivated an audience of people who are looking for products to buy.
This gives you, the brand owner, a perfect storm opportunity:
Motivated promoter + Interested buyers = Great partnership opportunity.
You can search and identify these influencers and then reach out to them through their contact information in their bio and ask one simple question: “Do you do promoted posts?”
The majority will say yes (because it just means they make more money on top of their commission) and will give you a pricing schedule for their content. Easy peasy.
Alternatively, you can use a service (like Signalytics) who has cultivated a relationship with these influencers and can circumvent the hard work of establishing that rapport by simply facilitating your influencer campaign for you.
If you are interested in taking the plunge and seeing what Tiktok influencers can do for you, contact us at [email protected] and put “Influencer Marketing” in the subject line.