TikTok and Amazon: A Deep Dive with Paul Harvey

Oleg: Hello everyone, welcome to a Navigator podcast. Today we're talking to Paul. He's an expert in TikTok and Amazon, and I believe it will be an amazing conversation, very valuable. But before we dive into all this subject, uh, would you mind introducing yourself and how you got in this space?

Paul: Yeah, thanks for that. Yeah, I've been around the Amazon game for a long time, and I do go off at tangents, so anything I say, just let me know, I'll bring it back in. But basically, the way I work is I've been on Amazon now for well over 10 years, and I've worn every single Amazon hat, from being a consultant seller to running my own Amazon software to running up multiple agencies. I've done pretty much everything, but it's all been based around external traffic to Amazon because the way I saw it is that every Amazon Seller, their biggest marketing strategy is Amazon ads. When I started, an expensive day on Amazon ads was about two, three dollars, and maybe like penny clicks. It was great. You couldn't actually spend a lot of money on Amazon ads because it wasn't known as running ads. But now, Amazon ads have gotten far more expensive, and every single day, the sad fact is today is the cheapest Amazon ads will be going forward. So the reason I like external traffic is because we always need Amazon ads, but if you know how to send traffic to your listing that converts, you won't be very reliant on Amazon ads. So that's what I want to discuss today and how to use TikTok to actually complement your Amazon ads and PPC campaigns.

Oleg: Yeah, sure. Yeah, thank you for the intro. And uh, you mentioned external traffic, and there are different rumors going around in the community. Some people say it's working, some people say it's a waste of your money because usually it's not easy to measure. You have the Amazon attributions, but it's not as simple and not precise as it is. So like, how do you measure the success of the external traffic in general and TikTok specifically?

Paul: That's a very good question, and I wish I had a better answer for you. The main problem is that with TikTok and Amazon, they don't play well together, meaning that reporting can't be trusted. Just about three weeks ago, Amazon actually booked a call with me to discuss external traffic. I was surprised. The first thing I said to them was, "Here's all my TikTok ad data, here's all my Amazon data. Why don't the two correlate?" And they really don't. For example, a few weeks back, we sent 10,000 clicks from TikTok to Amazon, and this listing had a 10% conversion rate, and we used attribution links. With a 10% conversion rate and 10,000 clicks, keep in mind the users are already pre-sold because they saw the video about the product on TikTok and then clicked on it to go to Amazon. But the problem is, 10,000 clicks, 10% conversion rate, we saw a huge increase in sales, but attribution reports zero, like nothing. Like 10,000 clicks, but that's all it reported, no sales, no add to carts, nothing. It really didn't make sense. When we dug deeper and looked at the daily traffic on Amazon, like the sessions, page views, all that stuff, it stayed the same, which doesn't make sense because I know for a fact 10,000 clicks went through the listing. I've seen this a whole bunch of times, and we confronted Amazon about that. They said, "Paul, we can't talk about that, this call is being recorded, we cannot discuss TikTok and Amazon
and how they play together." Essentially, they alluded to the fact that you can't trust the reports from Amazon or TikTok because they don't play well together. The sales are there, but it's really tough to track the true details.

So, the best KPI to measure is, it took me about a year to figure this out, we flood a whole bunch of listings with TikTok traffic. First, we look at attribution, seeing how many sales are reported, and it's always close to zero. We can't rely on attribution. So, we look at the next metric, and with TikTok, it's a product discovery platform. If you're trending on TikTok, you will do well on Amazon as a result. We send a bunch of traffic from TikTok to Amazon, but the weird thing with TikTok users is that they don't like ads. They won't click on an ad, but they will go search for it on Amazon. In all our videos, we say, "Go buy on Amazon now, just search brand name keyword." When the user goes to Amazon, they type in the brand name and the keyword. The next best metric to measure is the search query performance rank. If you're trending on TikTok, your branded search will increase on Amazon. For example, we had one client, we pushed about three weeks of TikTok ads, and we saw their search query performance rank go from about fifteen thousand to six thousand. That means on all of Amazon, that's the six thousandth most searched brand or product on Amazon. We improved them from fifteen thousand to six thousand by just flooding their listing with TikTok traffic. Most Amazon sellers look at attribution and raw sales and base that on the success of the campaign, but what's interesting about TikTok is that it takes a few weeks to maybe a month or two to really get long-term growth. Your branded search is increasing week on week and improving. If you can show to Amazon that more people are searching for your brand, the better you go.

Oleg: Yeah, it will also measure all the kind of DSP campaigns and other top-of-the-funnel campaigns with the branded source traffic.

Paul: Yeah, data science in Amazon, it really is. I work with a few aggregators, and they have whole data science teams, mathematicians, statisticians, looking at everything, trying to figure out what works, what doesn't work. In my previous role, I used to work in an aggregator, and they purchased some software. The software was so expensive, they wouldn't tell me how much they paid for it because they were too embarrassed. The software would measure the verticals across the brands, like this brand over here is performing at Walmart, Shopify, social signals, and so forth. Every time I ran a TikTok campaign, I'd see a minor spike on a few platforms like Walmart
, Amazon, but the software could not say why there was a spike because it cannot actually track the true effect of TikTok, which is problematic because it's very hard to actually see what is the true success. Most sellers I speak to think that TikTok is a test for a few days, but it has to be at least a few weeks to show to Amazon that your brand is special because you're getting traffic from TikTok.

Oleg: Okay, so basically, you need to craft the TikTok content specifically, right? So it makes sense to then go and search on Amazon. So you need to kind of bring the brand name to the heads, or like, do they have some kind of ideas what works?

Paul: Exactly, it's an entertainment platform, right? TikTok is not a shopping platform, so you need to do the trigger. People come to TikTok for entertainment, not sales. For example, we had this one brand that was a baby blanket, so I targeted all their moms because women in their mid-30s are one of the fastest-growing demographics on TikTok. We created content with mothers saying, "I just had the best night's sleep of my life because my newborn is using these baby blankets." We know all moms are sleep-deprived because of their newborns. We started the video saying, "I got the best night's sleep ever," and then they say in the video, "Actually, guys, this was recommended to me by a friend," so it doesn't come across as salesy, it comes across as a recommendation. Then they say, "Just search on Amazon, search baby grow baby blankets," and we do a whole bunch of variations of the video. Amazon sees a bunch of people coming to Amazon and searching for baby grow boys baby blankets or baby grow girls baby blankets. By doing this, you can use your PPC, you can use your TikTok content to complement your PPC campaigns. You will see the branded search increase in Amazon, and your PPC costs for those specific keywords diminish.

Oleg: Really, it's very insightful. So basically, you're saying you try to touch the pain of a potential customer, right? The buyer persona for the baby blanket is a sleep-deprived mom. And then you do like social engineering, like, "Yeah, my friend recommended me." Interesting. And do you have some kind of general ideas what type of products work better? Are there exceptions?

Paul: Everything works on TikTok, really. For example, we had this one product, a beach tent, and we thought their customer was a person in their mid-20s or 30s, a family. But when we launched on TikTok, the best demographic that clicked on the ad were men in their mid-50s (...)

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