Gracey Ryback, an A-List Amazon Influencer, began her journey on TikTok by talking about products she loved. Soon after, she started hosting Amazon Lives. To date, she has driven seven figures in new sales for various products on Amazon. 

I first met Gracey when we both spoke at SellerCon in Austin earlier this summer. Her presentation was amazing, and I immediately knew I had to get her on the show.

If you’re like most of the brands I know, then you’ve likely never tried Amazon Lives, or if you did, you did it as a brand and got little to no traction. 

The good news is that your competition likely isn’t using Amazon Lives or Amazon Influencers either... so you have a potential edge.

Here’s what Gracey and I discuss:

• Advantages of Amazon Live with an A-List Influencer vs. Live as a brand.
• How to show up on the Amazon home page with your Amazon Live.
• How to find Amazon Influencers to work with that fit your brand.
• TikTok Shop - how it works, how to leverage for growth on and off Amazon.
• How to fully leverage influencer content.
• What is the influencer marketing mindset, and why is it critical for success in influencer marketing?
• How creative control may be killing your results with influencer marketing.

Transcript

Gracey:

The more times you show up on an Amazon Live over time, the better results you're going to get. It's consistent and slow and just show up more often because every single time you go live, you're reaching more people. So don't expect a one-off huge spike success. That's not really how the platform works for Amazon Live more like small and steady and long-term.

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. And today we're talking about a topic we've never dove into on this podcast before. We're talking about Amazon influencers, Amazon Live, Amazon affiliate TikTok shop, and it's going to be amazing and inspiring, and you'll for sure get your money's worth from this podcast. Now I met today's guest when we were both speaking at Seller Con in Austin, Texas packed room, Amazon Sellers on the edge of their seat, ready to learn some tips and strategies for growing their business. And there was one speaker, one speaker when she wrapped up, people were chanting her name. They were like Gracey Gray c chanting for Encore. They were so excited about this content. I may be embellishing a little bit, but a lot of that is true. And so we connected in the green room. I spoke two, no one was chanting my name, but that's okay. We both met in the green room and decided, hey, we got to do a podcast together. So with that, Gracey Ryback is my guest. Gracey, what's up? How's it going? And welcome to the show. Hi

Gracey:

Brett. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here and get into a topic that you've never talked about before. I

Brett:

Know it's a brand new topic, which we talk about Amazon all the time. And for listeners that listen frequently, which I hope is all of you, you know that I'm passionate about building a brand on Amazon, not just selling stuff, not just being a good seller. That's fine if that's where you are, but when you can build a brand on Amazon, that's when the real power's there. That's when you got something you can sell later, something that's maximized in value, something you can start launching new products and benefit there too. And so I think what you do, Gracey, is perfect for those that are ready to build a brand on Amazon. And so as a quick backstory, just 60, 90 seconds, how did you become an Amazon influencer and how did you become an expert in this space?

Gracey:

Yeah, so let's flash back to 2020 when the world was going through what the world was going through. And I was actually just trying to create content on TikTok just as a passion project. It was just for fun. And at the time my mindset was like, I'll never make a penny from social media. I'm not that kind of person. I'm no influencer. I just want to help people save money on Amazon. And that was my intention behind my content. So I just started creating TikTok videos without expectation and not knowing what would happen. My contents started creating traction and I started growing in followers. Throughout that process, I started realizing that there was something happening on the other side, the A K V Amazon brand side for sellers that I didn't know about stuff was selling. So in the process, I met some Amazon sellers who introduced me into this world of what it's like selling on Amazon, what they're looking for to make a successful brand. And in turn, I realized what I do is very highly connected to them. So it only made sense that I started learning more about both sides of the industry. So that's kind of how we got into it. And throughout the past three years that I've been doing this, I've also expanded to seven different platforms. I do Amazon Live as well, and I live and breathe this. So,

Brett:

And driving multiple seven figures in sales as a power influencer, I would call you. And what's so cool, and the way you described that, it made me think of something that's I think a really important business principle. So you started not with the goal to make money, although that's great, that's where all entrepreneurs, but you started with the goal to how can I be helpful? How can I help people save money on Amazon? Lemme just create content with that as the goal. And then it took off. And one of my favorite stories comes from Jim Collins. I'm a huge Jim Collins fan, so good to great, great by choice must reads for anybody in business. But he's a big Peter Drucker fan, as am I one of the greatest management thinkers of all time. And Jim Collins tells a story about when he was a younger teacher at Stanford, he met Peter Drucker and Jim was like, how can I assure that I'm going to be successful?

And Peter Drucker said, you're asking the wrong question you shouldn't desire. You shouldn't try to be successful, try to be useful. If you're useful, you'll be successful. I just love that. I think that's so good. That's what we should do as brands, as managers, as leaders, as influencers, whatever. How can I be useful if I'm useful to other people that I'm going to be successful? And that's what you have done. So talk to us a little bit about Amazon lives, and I know we've all seen it. You log into Amazon on the homepage, you see it and it's on mobile and stuff like that. But what's the power there? What are some of the results you've seen just set the stage for somebody who maybe doesn't know much about Amazon Lives?

Gracey:

Sure. So Amazon lives started, I want to say right before 2020. And it was their take on trying to bring more personality to the products and trying to do more product demos, but on Amazon's platform. And so they have a bunch of creators and there's different tiers of creators that we can talk about, but basically you can talk about up to 40 products per stream. You can talk about anything that sells on Amazon. There's two types of streams, there's a regular stream and then there's a deal stream. And the viewership between these two streams can differ a lot. But the main point of it is basically to highlight products that shoppers may or may not be looking for on Amazon, and then bring somebody who is a creator, an influencer, potentially an expert on that product or a loving user of that product and just have somebody able to talk about it, show it, demo it, and be able to answer questions if buyers and customers have them.

So it's a really fun platform. I do streams about three times a week and I've highlighted countless products in all different niches and areas. And I think the real value from them is getting those traffic clicks to your product and of course the sales that come along with it, but also having somebody put personality behind your product and be like, this is how I use it, this is what I use it for, this is what I like about it. Here's all the questions I can answer about it, and here's my personal experience. And you don't get that from a product page or a listing.

Brett:

Yeah, I love it. I mean, it's really all about product discovery, isn't it? Because one shortcoming of Amazon, and I love Amazon, it's the largest retailer online by far. But still the vast majority of products that are discovered on Amazon are discovered through search, meaning someone has to be actively shopping for your product or your category anyway. And I really think that's one of the big reasons why Amazon created Amazon Live. They want it to be the Q vvc or little infomercials where, hey, maybe I'm bored and maybe I just want to look at stuff and see what's available. And now I'm going to be introduced to a product that I didn't even know I needed, but now I can't live without it and we all love to buy stuff. And that became very true, even more true during the pandemic. Retail therapy is a real thing. It's a real thing every day, but especially then where we're like, man, I got nothing else to do. I'm going to buy something that feels good. I get some endorphins or some dopamine release if I buy something. Yeah,

Gracey:

I do that too. Sometimes I'm on board. I'm like, well, lemme browse Amazon as my social media and try to find something I maybe need or probably don't

Brett:

At all. So let's do something really quickly, Gracey, this will be kind of fun. Let's do confession time. I'll confess something as well. When you're bored, what is a category? What is a shopping category you go to frequently where you're like, maybe I'll just kind of look at this category and see what I can find?

Gracey:

Not to be stereotypical, but it's always fashion and beauty for me. I always find some really cool beauty product that I maybe want to review or just want to try. And then fashion is also fun because there's a world of Amazon fashion that is kind of underbelly and there's a lot of good stuff there. And a lot of times people are like, where'd you get that? Where'd you wear that from? And I'm like, Amazon. And they're always shaken by that. They're always,

Brett:

Yeah, yeah, really Amazon, Amazon's like a boys for cheap stuff or whatever, which wasn't true, but that's a perception. So my confession, and I don't know how masculine this sounds, but I'm just going to say it anyway, it's not beauty. It's not beauty, but I like shopping for shoes, man. I just got some new Adidas. If I was a little more flexible, I could kick 'em up here and you can see. But it also also shirts. This is a relatively new shirt, so on occasion if I'm bored, I will buy a new shirt or I'll buy a new pair of shoes and I don't feel overly guilty about that. So

Gracey:

I love it. My last thing has been watches. I've been really into watches recently, so maybe you can

Brett:

Relate. So I like watches, but I love my Apple watch, so I'm like, I don't know that I would ever do anything different. So I watches are more of a fashion accessory I know for a lot of people. For me it's kind of functional, but I get that. I can see my dad was a huge watch guy, so he was always shopping for watches. But yeah, that's good. I like that. I like that. So yeah, so this is a way for people to discover our product. So what are you seeing most successful as Amazon lives? Are they most successful when it's someone like you hosting them where the platform inside and out, you're natural, you're like TV host or Q VVC host or whatever, or should a brand host a live themself or is that even possible? What do you recommend there?

Gracey:

So can stream themselves as long as they're brand registered on Amazon, they have the ability to go live and they would show up on their own brand storefront and they basically can either drive their own traffic if they have that external traffic or basically the only people that would see their streams are the people that are already shopping on their page listing storefront. There is pros and cons to this brands. It really depends on how much your brand has created a presence on Amazon already on your storefront, how many followers your storefront has, and basically that's going to be the audience that you're going to watch if you are streaming as a brand. The good thing is that the audience that you have is probably much more targeted and much more vertical than an influencer doing an Amazon live stream, which could be anybody and everybody watching their own audience or even Amazon's onsite audience. So the viewership numbers may be fully different, but you might get higher revenue if you are reaching a very vertical audience.

Brett:

And just to clarify Grace, just to make sure, this is new to me too, so I just want to make sure I'm following. So if I'm going live on Amazon as a brand, then that live is only visible if someone is on my storefront or on one of my product detail pages. Is that correct? And it's only visible while I'm live, or can you replay it later or how does that

Gracey:

Work? No, I'm less familiar with the brand side of things than I am with the creator side of things. I want to say that live streams do archive after a certain amount of time, and I do believe that they're only really highlighted while they're actually live similar to influencer streams. And the lifespan I would say is like 24 hours, 48 hours after I stream, and then it kind of goes away and makes room for the new live stuff. But influencer live streams are a bit different because in that sense, and I also want to mention time commitment as a brand, unless you want to hire a creator to do the livestream on your behalf for your brand, it may or may not be worth investing all that time into As a brand owner, if it's like you and a small team and you have much better things to do, that is very, very important to note.

But if you are working with a creator or an Amazon Live influencer, then obviously you have two A-list placements and a-list is the top tier of Amazon Live creator. And those streams have potential placement on either the Amazon deal page, daily deals page, which is a great placement, or the amazon.com homepage. If you kind of scroll to the middle of the amazon.com homepage, you can usually see a little live stream with the carousel of products in the middle. And so these streams are going to get a lot more viewership than a brand stream would just because of the placement. But the caveat here is that anybody and everybody can see this stream, so it may not be somebody interested in the products. So that is the difference,

Brett:

But it really makes sense. You made a great point. So if my brand isn't huge on Amazon and myself and my team, we've got to decide where do we invest our efforts? And so do I invest a little more time in running Facebook ads or Google ads or Amazon ads, or do I go live and if I don't have a huge following, then hardly anybody's going to see my live. And so it makes a lot of sense, I think in most cases for someone to partner with an influencer like yourself or somebody else and just say like, Hey, I want you to run this. It's going to have a much broader reach, and you'll probably find quality in the quantity, the larger the audience, the more likely you're going to find some people that are likely to buy. And so that makes a lot of sense. How is that structured? If I'm a brand and I'm selling, give me a product that

Gracey:

You like a mirror,

Brett:

A mirror, I'm selling mirrors and I am looking for an influencer. How am I doing that? Is there an influencer marketplace? Am I going to be paying an influencer like a commission of every deal that's closed? Is that trackable? Am I just paying a flat fee? What does that look like typically?

Gracey:

That is great question. So there are a couple ways to find Amazon influencers, and the way that I suggest is if you're going to invest in Amazon Live, the thing that's going to get you the most R O I possible is to work with an A-list Amazon influencer that frequently shows up on the Amazon deal page or the Amazon homepage. If you're doing a deal stream on the deals page, every product in the carousel has to fall under three types of deals, three and a half types of deals, a lightning deal, a deal of the day, a seven day deal, or a red limited time bar deal. So those four types of deals are eligible for a deal stream.

Brett:

So one more time, that was lightning deal deal today, the red bar, what was the other one? Seven

Gracey:

Day deal.

Brett:

Seven day deal.

Gracey:

Got it. And then homepage placement. It can be anything and everything doesn't necessarily have to be on deal.

Brett:

So how did somebody become an Alister? So I know you're an Alister, but how do you become an A-list influencer?

Gracey:

So everyone, part of the Amazon influencer program is eligible to start live streaming. You have to download a little app and then once everybody starts out as a rising star. So once you stream a certain amount of minutes and drive a certain amount of revenue, you can apply for insider level, which is mid-tier level, insider level. Once you get I think 2000 followers on your storefront, on your Amazon storefront and drive a certain amount of revenue, then you can apply for a-list. Now a-list is a bit more challenging because Amazon has to manually hand vet every A-list or they approve because obviously they want good quality on those highly viewed placements. And that's basically how you do it. You just stream a certain amount, drive a certain amount of revenue, and then you can apply and just make sure you have a good quality live stream where you're entertaining and you know what you're talking about. And another thing that's really important to Amazon is that us creators, we have the product in hand or at least experience with the products that we talk about so that we're not just reading off a page or talking willy-nilly about something we don't know about.

Brett:

Yeah, I love it. I've looked at just a couple of Amazon lives, not very many, and the few I looked at were kind of painfully boring. This was like the bad Q V C host or someone who's not really comfortable on camera. And so you got to get good. I am curious though, now I slip into podcast voice when I'm on the podcast. There's been a few times when I've gone back downstairs to the office and I'm talking to my assistant or something and you're like, who are you? Hey, you are still in podcast mode. I'm like, oh, sorry. Yeah. So do you get into Amazon live mode? And maybe you're there now because we're recording, but if you're not, can you give us a flavor of Gracey pitching a mirror on Amazon Live? What would that look like?

Gracey:

That is so funny you say that because whenever I'm on Amazon Live, it's just me. I don't have a co-host. It's me for at least one and a half to three hours at once.

Brett:

Dang, that's a long

Gracey:

Time. And I'm talking about 20 to 25 products normally, and I am just nonstop for two hours at a time. And when I'm with my Amazon friends in person, they're like, dang, Gracey, I watched your stream and you talk a lot, but in person you don't talk that much. I'm like

Brett:

Part of the game. That's how it's successful. Now I'm curious, are you, after a live, are you wiped? Are you energized? I

Gracey:

Am hyped up on energy. I usually stream very late at night because that just fits better with my schedule. I have just my schedule, my regulars, they come in late at night, and so I try to sleep at night, but it's normally like two or 3:00 AM

Brett:

I recommend it. Yeah,

Gracey:

Wired up and I can't fall asleep well after a stream.

Brett:

So funny. Yeah, I'm the same. Don't, we're not recording at night. I don't podcast at night, but I'm totally fired up after a day of podcast recording. I'm tired too sometimes if it's like three or four, but for the most part I'm like, yeah, a little bit, but I'm like, I'm feeling good, man. I'm like, this was a good day. This is what I love to do, so that's awesome. Okay, so talk about Amazon affiliate. So Amazon affiliate, how is that related to Amazon Live? I'm assuming the best influencers are also part of the Amazon affiliate program, but walk us through that.

Gracey:

So think of Amazon affiliate as the upper umbrella and think of Amazon Influencer as the STEM of the umbrella. So I guess you can technically apply for the influencer program by itself, but Amazon affiliate has been around since I believe the nineties, and that was Amazon's affiliate link program before social media became what it is today. It was more so websites and articles and blogs across the internet where people could share products and affiliate links. And then once social media became what it is, I think probably closer to 20 20, 20 19, Amazon started gearing the influencer program towards social media. So more of graphics, more of giving influencers Amazon storefronts so they can drive their traffic to Amazon storefronts, which they would get commissioned for any sales they drive off the storefront. And also the opportunity to live stream and also the opportunity to create little shoppable review videos, which we can talk about too. I think that's a really great topic to talk about. But yeah, this whole influencer program is like a STEM off the affiliate program that's more social media focused and gives influencers more opportunities of ways to earn while sharing their products.

Brett:

Nice. So most of the A-list influencers, they've got their own storefront. You've got your own storefront where you can list product. Got it. Okay. Everybody does. Makes sense. Yeah. So what is a shoppable review video? I'm assuming that's a video that has a longer shelf life. Maybe someone puts it on, you put it on your storefront, I assume. Could a brand put that on their storefront as well or on their P D P or something like that? So

Gracey:

This is a topic that I've been talking about for a bit, but I think it's a really crucial one for your topic of brand building and just making sure that your brand has people behind it and personalities behind it. And it's not just a random product. So little review videos, any influencer with a storefront. So any member of the influencer program can upload a little shoppable video, which could be a product review, it could be an unboxing, it could be a testimonial, it could be just like, here's how I use it on a normal day and upload it to their door front. They could tag a specific ASIN on the backend, put a little title on it, put a little thumbnail ally on it, and then that would then be potentially placed on the brand's product listing and it would show up right before the reviews and under the description in the middle section, sometimes it's at the bottom, sometimes it's in the middle, and it just helps shoppers just learn more about the product.

Maybe they want to see it being used, they want to see it in real life, they want to figure out how to assemble it or see how people use it, whatever. And whenever a buyer watches this video, then the creator or influencer, then we get commission for it, kind of like an affiliate link. So it pays off for the creator, it pays off for the brand, and Amazon controls the placement. So not every video places, not every places forever. Sometimes they rotate out, but it's important as a brand to have enough videos in this little line so that it's not empty because if it is empty and you don't have enough videos, they will place your competitors related product videos on your listing.

Brett:

Yeah, yeah, not good for sure. Okay, awesome. So then as you're creating these, so the way most influencers work out, are you just kind of deciding what products you want to talk about and you just do it because an influencer, or do you have to reach out to that brand and talk about the way your deal works or you, and then you don't have to answer necessarily just for you, you can answer for influencers in general, or are people just getting the commission through the affiliate program, or what does that typically look like?

Gracey:

So I mean, a lot of people when they're starting out are just recommended to talk about products they already have around the house, stuff that they use, stuff they have stuff they like, stuff they don't. And then once they kind of exhaust that, then they can reach out to brands, they can basically create those partnerships. And a lot of times because the creators are getting paid by viewership and by any buyers that click on the page, I do know a lot of creators that if it's a high value product, they want the product anyway. They'll do this review video for free. And of course if they want to do a small flat fee payment, they can do that too. But usually it's not because you never really know when it's going to place, when it's not going to place, how long it's going to place for. So if it's a flat fee, it's usually small.

Brett:

Makes sense. So as a brand, and I know you maybe kind of mentioned a few things around this, but I just want to get clarity. If I'm a brand that I want to work with an influencer, how do I find those influencers? I know it's possible that influencers are just going to reach out to me as a brand, but how can I go out and be proactive and find somebody? So

Gracey:

If you are leaning towards Amazon Live influencers, I always say just keep an eye on the homepage placement and the deal page placement throughout the day. You're going to find after a couple of days of looking at it, there's going to be the same people showing up all the time. These are the people that are going to frequent the deal page and the best people to work with to get that placement when you do work with them. There's not tons of people who do this. So that's one way to find Amazon Live influencers. And then there's two ways you can find influencer for other things. You can obviously look at your competitor products, related products to your brand and see what videos are showing up on their little shoppable video section. And then you can reach out to those, find their storefront and have them do a video for you, something like that. Or you can go on social media and there are different keywords and hashtags you can search up on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, whatever platform you're looking at. It could be Amazon finds, Amazon favorites, Amazon Hall, Amazon pet, Amazon home, whatever. And you'll find thousands of creators that are creating Amazon content if they're creating Amazon content safe to assume they have an Amazon storefront safe to assume they're in this Amazon world that you can work with them.

Brett:

Nice. Very, very cool. And so any case studies that you can mention, you don't have to mention specific brands or whatnot, but what kind of impact can this have, because I know I've heard people that get on Q V C and it sells a bazillion products or thousands of products. I know some people that have tried Amazon Live, again, not really anything out of it. So what does it typically look like or what are some examples you could share?

Gracey:

So based on the results that I have heard of, I would say that Amazon Live is not the kind of platform that's going to sell you out. For example, it's going to get you some clicks onto your listing. It's going to get you some sales as well. And the best strategy for Amazon Live,

Brett:

New reach, right? New discovery with new prospects that aren't actively searching for you. So there's some real benefit there too.

Gracey:

Yes. Yes. And it's more, I guess the more times you show up on an Amazon live over time, the better results you're going to get. It's consistent and slow and just show up more often because every single time you go live, you're reaching more people. So don't expect a one-off huge spike success. That's not really how the platform works for Amazon. Live more small and steady and long-term. If we're talking about TikTok and social media, then results can vary from nothing to everything. You can sell out, go viral, your brand will never be the same overnight, or you could get a couple thousand sales, you get a couple hundred sales, or you could get a small little bit of sales. It really so highly depends on who you work with, how well the video does, so many factors,

Brett:

So many factors, but I think that's a really good way to frame it. You're going to go live on Amazon, you're not going to sell through your whole inventory, but you're going to make some incremental lift in sales. You're going to reach new people. If you can do this consistently, it's going to build more exposure for your brand. And so it's worth doing for sure. You mentioned TikTok. Let's go there for a little bit. I know you do a lot on TikTok. I have a big following there. Talk a little bit about how you utilize TikTok for promotions and then I would love to get into TikTok shop as

Gracey:

Well. So I started out on TikTok. TikTok is still my favorite platform to this day, and my favorite part about it is that every single video that you make, every product that you talk about, it's a new chance to be reaching a new audience and millions of people. And my favorite thing is that you're not held back by your following. So TikTok has two feeds, the for you page feed and then the following feed, and I don't know anybody who stays on their following feed. So all the time people are just finding new creators, new products, discovering new things. It's like an app for discovery. So that's why you could work with a creator with 5,000 followers and go viral with 5 million views. You can also work with a creator with a million followers and get 5,000 views. So the possibilities and the potential is not determined by your following. It is on every other platform.

Brett:

It's really based on the quality of the content. And I don't mean just production quality, but how interesting is this, how much does it catch fire? Which is so cool because then that means I don't have to work with the biggest influencer, I just got to work with the right influencer. Exactly. And then the cool

Gracey:

Stuff could happen. Exactly.

Brett:

Yeah. So how do you use TikTok as an influencer and how does that tie into Amazon Live and Amazon affiliate?

Gracey:

So when I first started on TikTok, I was just linking Amazon products, no affiliate program knowledge at all. Then after that, after I learned more about it and I was like, wait a second, I didn't know that you could monetize this, then I started monetizing it through the Amazon affiliate program. And that actually led into my transition to Amazon Live, which I was invited to join, I believe early 2021. And that is how I got there, start on TikTok, got invited to Amazon Live. But with TikTok, it's really, really cool because TikTok actually wants to get into e-commerce themselves because they saw what a huge success was happening with users driving TikTok traffic to it. Totally. When I first started with Amazon's influencer program, they did not like TikTok traffic. They thought it was the wild, wild west. They did not support it. It was not a platform they talked of.

And to see how widely that's changed and how focused they are on TikTok now, it's just funny. I mean obviously because it worked and it did so much success, but you would think that they would be friends and partner up, but no, so TikTok actually wanted to create their own shopping platform called TikTok Shop, and basically there is a marketplace of products that sellers and brands can join. And then as creators, they're giving us all these incentives. They're giving us a really good commission cut or they're giving us coupons to buy product samples with, or they're giving free samples out to creators who are participating in TikTok shop a lot. Whenever I create a video, I can tag a product. It has a disclosure that says eligible for commission. That's how it's a TikTok shop video. And TikTok is actually boosting those videos right now and giving them more traffic so that it can run this program and get more traffic to it. And in turn, all these brands are doing so well, maybe not all of them, but a lot of brands are doing so well. New customers selling out, just getting their name out there, the brand awareness of it all. It's been a huge success so far.

Brett:

Interesting. So how does TikTok shop work? So again, if I'm a brand, what should I be thinking about? Am I going to have to find an influencer to help me with TikTok shop? Am I just going to get listed? Then influencers can run wild with it. What does that look like?

Gracey:

I would say if you are on Amazon and you have the ability to put your products on a Shopify site, do that and then join TikTok shop because this may not drive back to Amazon and really help your Amazon business, but it is going to create the brand awareness for your brand that they can then find on Amazon and they can also just create new customers. You can get amazing U G C videos that you can then reach out to the content creator and maybe buy the rights to or whitelist from their page. There's so much you could do from this that can also benefit Amazon, but you can find new creators that will just organically find your product in the marketplace, or you can kind of jumpstart it. You could work with a couple creators at first, get the product name out there and then other creators will follow suit. So there's so much to do with it, but there's just a way to join the TikTok shop marketplace. And I don't believe the requirements are too much because they're really looking for new brands and sellers to join.

Brett:

I was just trying to get it going, trying to hit critical mass, and they're very motivated there. Everybody, all the social platforms want to be shoppable and want to get into the e-commerce game to a certain degree. Same with Facebook and Instagram as well. And so to work with TikTok shop, you've got to be connected through Shopify probably primarily, which by the way, you should be doing that anyway. And I think the vast majority listeners already have their own.com, but if you don't exclusively Amazon, this is a great way to launch on Shopify and this is a great way to start getting traffic and just start building that brand off as Amazon start getting some traffic there, some traction. And so makes a ton of sense. But also to your point, often brands that are Amazon first brands, someone may see the live or the TikTok video or whatever, then they view your website and then they go buy on Amazon. Right,

Gracey:

Exactly. And that happens more often than you would think. I mean, people just love buying on Amazon. It's so seamless. So

Brett:

All my stuff is saved. I get fast shipping, I know it's guaranteed. There's just no friction there. So that's why a lot of people like it. Yeah, love it. So what have you seen brag a little bit, what are some of your success stories on TikTok? Are you getting, what's been some of your most successful promotions on TikTok?

Gracey:

So I find that whenever I create content about products that are trending or products that are being talked about a lot throughout the app, because TikTok is a very trend-based app. If one person's talking about something, your entire feed will be this one thing that everyone's jumping in on and everyone's talking about. So I personally just am a huge user of TikTok. I'm on the app hours every day, I'm working, but also scrolling. And I want to say it's for research purposes,

Brett:

Just entertainment, which is at least partially true and probably mostly true.

Gracey:

It's unhealthy. But in that way, I can see what people are talking about, what people are wanting, what the current trends are. And then what I do is, and this is something I do myself, so I literally just share what I do myself. I want the product, but I don't necessarily want to pay a huge price tag for the product. So I will go and find a cheaper alternative on Amazon. I'll find a deal, a promo code, a coupon, a way to find the same product but not break the bank to get it. And I post about the trendy products, and those are the ones that everyone's like, oh, I've been wanting this, but I didn't want to pay $300 for it. Thanks for finding a deal that's like half off now I'm going to get it. So there is a difference between doing deals and just doing fines and reviews because people can discover the product for the fines and review videos, but the price tag might be too much to pull the trigger on that product right away. But when there's a deal attached to it, they're like, okay, great, it's not going to break the bank. But also this is time sensitive. I know that the deal is not going to be forever. It might miss the opportunity. I've been wanting it, it's been my wishlist, now I'm going to get it. And that is what I love doing.

Brett:

That's awesome. So deal cheats, I know that's your Twitter slash x handle, the same handle. What is with that Elon Musk? So much admire there, brilliant guy, changing lots of industries. I don't get it, man. I don't get the X. Twitter got a lot of value in that name Twitter, and we're still tweeting and it's still called Twitter. But anyway,

Gracey:

I was talking to my friend about it and he's like a huge Twitter user. He gets all his social media and news from Twitter, and I was like, whatcha going to say now I'm going to go X about it. Let

Brett:

Me X you. What does that mean

Gracey:

We did on X Anyway,

Brett:

Yeah, I don't think anybody's going to start calling it X, but we will see. Time will tell. That'll be interesting to fall along for sure. So deal cheats, you're focused on deals. So when you're going live on Amazon or you're going live on TikTok, you are talking about deals. So here's a trending product, a trending category, but here's where you can find it for less

Gracey:

Type thing. Exactly, exactly.

Brett:

Cool, cool. Makes a lot of sense actually what you described, what you described. So interesting. There may be some brands out there selling a premium and they're like, I hate that. I want people to come buy my product for a premium. But here's the thing, I think there are people that are willing to pay a premium. There are people that are just willing, just want to do deals. And then I think there are people that they will pay a premium or they'll get a deal if they don't know there's a strong enough reason to pay a premium. And so I think what you're describing is what happens a lot on Amazon, someone who's wanting to sell out a premium, they run Facebook ads or on YouTube ads and they position their practice premium, but they don't do quite enough to make someone say, I want that product, that exact product.

All they do is they do enough to make someone say, I want a product like that, and then they'll go find something else. And so hey, deals are always going to exist. There's a part of the marketplace that wants that exclusively. But I think it's just a reminder, if you don't want to be a discount brand, you got to work extra hard to not be one. So really, really interesting. Okay, awesome. So any mistakes you see people make as they're getting into Facebook lives or mistakes you see people make when they're trying to get something to go viral on TikTok? What mistakes should we avoid in this process?

Gracey:

So there's two things I want to mention, and I think the first one is that sometimes when brands work with a new creator, they want to have a lot of creative control over how the video goes or what people say. Or a lot of times brands will say, oh, mention that it's vegan and that it's on all these buzzword terms that they may believe is important. They worked really hard to create an amazing product That is all these things, yes, but I as a creator know that that's not going to sell the product necessarily. Cool. I love that it's vegan and gluten-free, but these buzzwords aren't going to sell. And so giving the creator the creative control to say what they know works well and talk to their audience and in the way that they know is what they're looking for and what resonates. That's really important. And so that kind of goes back to just making sure that you look at the creator's other content, see how it performs, see how they come across on camera and make sure you like that and put that trust into them that they know what they're doing. That is one.

Brett:

Yeah, I love that. And just a quick thought on that and then keep going on mistakes is you want the influencer to sound authentic. You want their passion to come through. I want excited Gracey talking about my product. I don't want someone to be like, I'm just going to say what you told me to say. I want to get paid as a viewer, as a shopper. I can feel the difference. I can see the difference, I can feel it. I want passion to come through. And so yes, maybe there's some things you're restricted from saying than mention that, but otherwise let the creator create the results are going to be way

Gracey:

Better. Exactly. And then the second one would be their mindset around influencer marketing as well. So something that I've come across is that a lot of brands will compare influencer marketing to the mindset around paid ads. So when they do paid ads, wherever that may be, they put a certain amount of money behind it and they expect a certain r o i to come back to them. And that is not always the case with influencer marketing. There is a lot that you can't really determine or predict with influencer marketing. But also even if you don't get the sales that you're expecting, that doesn't mean that the campaign was a flop, that it was a failure, that it didn't get anything because maybe you got a bunch of external clicks, maybe you got higher ranking, maybe your product got a lot of external traffic. There's so many other things that happen with influencer marketing that is so much more than paid ads and so much more than just sheer sales. So I want the mindset to hopefully understand that not everything is about sales, and I'm getting so many other benefits from working with a creator than just r o i in sales. I

Brett:

Love that understanding. What's the nature of influencer marketing? How does it work? It's not the same as paid ads. And so if you want to be successful, you got to approach it with a creator, with an influencer mindset. And you mentioned this, you said this really well earlier, that when you go live on Amazon as an example, it gets better over time. The more people see your product, the more Amazon sees success, the more they're going to favor you and show you. I'm not a social media influencer, but I know the same is true on social media that the more we post consistently, the more we do things on social media, the better it's going to go. And sometimes things are going to really hit and take off, sometimes they won't. But yeah, you can't just have it, Hey, I did this, it should have this return. It's not as clear cut, but the benefits often do compound and you got to be patient and wait for those benefits. Love that, love that. Any other tips, ideas, strategies? What should Amazon sellers, and if someone's really, really interested in this, what should they do next? Where should they learn? Where should they go?

Gracey:

Yeah, so I mean there is thankfully so much more information and just education coming around this topic, which I love to see so much of what I love to do is just bridging the gap between creator and brand because I do know that there's a communication gap between both sides. So

Brett:

Influencers speak, influencer brands speak brand. Exactly. And they don't often connect with each other

Gracey:

And it should be mutually beneficial. Totally. That's the nature of it. And so I think if people want to get more involved with this or just start out and try and you don't have to put a huge budget behind it, that's always what I say. You don't have to throw thousands of dollars. You can start out with gifted campaigns, commission-based campaigns, start developing these relationships with influencers and then find people who it works with and then double down and then increase your budget over time. And I believe it should always be a slice of what you're doing with your brand's marketing. I don't think it's smart to fully depend on P P C fully depend on ads because I think there's an area of influence marketing that both of these things can't give. So I think everybody should start out, try, start small, learn as they go, and then increase once they start getting more experience with it and they will see all the benefits.

Brett:

I love it. And I really think this is for some brands, is going to be more of like an accelerant for other brands. This is core of what they do. But I totally agree with you. You can't be all P P C, right? And I'm a Google fan. I've been doing Google ads since the early two thousands, so love Google. But I would never recommend a brand only run paid search or Google Shopping or even Performance Max. I love YouTube, but I would never suggest you just do YouTube. All of these things work together. And so if I've got my strategies dialed in all the right places and then I've got influencer marketing cooking and I'm going on Amazon live, it can really help accelerate and spin that flywheel faster and get you where you want to go a little bit quicker. And so love that though. Start small, do commission based deals, do gift based deals, no reason to spend a fortune right out the gate. And so awesome, awesome stuff, Gracey right back, ladies and gentlemen. So Gracey, people should follow you online. They should pay attention to what you're doing because they can learn from it. So where can they find you? So at deal cheats on the Twitters and where else can they find you?

Gracey:

On X?

Brett:

On X? Yeah, exactly.

Gracey:

X on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Amazon, live everywhere. It is the same deal sheets. It's

Brett:

All deal sheets.

Gracey:

Okay. Yes, yes. Got it. And my email is contact@dealsheets.com,

Brett:

Contact@dealsheets.com. Don't abuse that. Ladies and gentlemen, Gracey is a very busy person, but if you got, so basically people have questions or whatever, they can reach out to you there.

Gracey:

Yes, yes. I'm open to questions and happy to help.

Brett:

Very gracious of you, Gracey. So with that, anything else you want to mention? Any fun fact, anything you are totally excited about right now could be related to this topic or not related to this topic?

Gracey:

Gosh, I don't know. I'm excited for the future of this industry. I'm excited to see more brands get involved with influencer marketing and that is what I'm excited about.

Brett:

Yeah, I am too. I think this is here to stay. It is not going anywhere. This is just fundamental, the way humans behave and shop and one kind of thing. One final thing, one final thought I'll put on here is, the other thing I love about this is I mentioned YouTube, big YouTube guy, we do a lot of scaling on YouTube for larger brands. What's really powerful is if you've got a collection of influencer videos that really are passionate and that resonate and that overcome objections and nail some sales points, if you get approval from the influencer, we can do a mashup. One of my favorite types of videos on YouTube is an influencer mashup or like a mashup for the beginning of a YouTube video and then kind of go into a product demo. But that's another way to leverage this. So use influencer marketing, it's going to pay dividends directly, but then if you get access to the footage, now teams like O M G or other agencies can help scale that on Facebook and on YouTube and on the places. And so lots of ways to leverage this content and to leverage this approach

Gracey:

That remind me of one last point I have. Yeah,

Brett:

Awesome. Please, if

Gracey:

You are a brand registered, obviously you have access to the brand referral bonus program as a seller. So you should definitely take advantage of that when working with creators because you can get so much more detailed tracking. And the way that you can have the creator use your attribution link is for the referral kickback that you get from Amazon, whatever that is, 10% depending on category. But you can then offer them that increased commission for whatever sales that they create from the attribution it. And then you benefit, they benefit, take

Brett:

Advantage, easier tracking. Yeah, you can use that to help fund or help pay for the influencer. So glad we stuck around for that tip, Gracey. That was a good one. So again, Gracey, thank you so much. Thanks for bringing the energy, super fun, super entertaining and really appreciate it.

Gracey:

Thank you Brett.

Brett:

And as always, thank you for tuning in and hey, we want to hear from you. I mentioned I'm on the socials, I'm not an influencer, but I am there. So check me out on LinkedIn. Lemme know what you'd like to see more of on the show. Let's connect outside of the podcast. Also leave us that review on iTunes. If you haven't done that, leave us. That five star review helps other people find the show. Makes my day. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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