– Introduction: Salena introduces guest Tom Moult from Butter Marketing and discusses how she initially saw their eye-catching ads which led her to investigate them further. She notes how their strategies align well with what she teaches retailers.
– Overcoming Skepticism of TikTok: Tom discusses why some retailers may be skeptical of TikTok and how platforms like it are constantly evolving. He emphasizes the importance of authentic, educational content over flashy ads.
– Starting Organically: Tom recommends retailers begin on TikTok organically to allow the algorithm to learn about their customers/products before spending money. He cautions against blasting cold traffic as on other platforms.
– The Cascading Ad Strategy: Tom outlines Butter’s approach of starting broad with video views and moving to more targeted metrics like carts/follows over 2-4 weeks before optimizing for conversions. This structured process yields better results than platforms like Facebook/Instagram.
– Knowing Your Numbers: Salena stresses the importance of understanding metrics like customer lifetime value before working with an agency. Tom agrees clear communication of goals/KPIs leads to the best client relationships.
– Edutainment Content: Tom uses the example of teaching different scarf tying techniques to illustrate the educational, value-adding style of content that engages TikTok users.

Salena Knight 0:02
Hey there, and welcome to the bringing business to retail podcast. If you’re looking to get more sales, more customers, master your marketing, and ultimately take control of your retail or E commerce business, then you’re in the right place. I’m Celina Knight, a retail growth strategist and multi award winning store owner whose superpower is uncovering exactly what your business requires. To move to the next level. I’ll provide you with the strategies, the tools and the insight you need to scale your store. All you need to do is take action, ready to get started?

Salena Knight 0:52
Hey there, and welcome to today’s episode of The bringing visitors to retail Podcast. Today. I’ve got Thomas malt, who is the co founder and CEO of butter marketing now, Thomas, welcome to the show. And can I start off by saying you guys run some seriously sexy ads. And that is how you caught my attention. I remember seeing your ads in my feed and just going who’s running these because they’re really good. That was how I started my little adventure to find out who butter were. And then once we had that conversation we were so on the same page when it came to marketing for retail and E commerce brands. We developed a very quick friendship in terms of business. Just business guys. So welcome to the show, Thomas. Thanks. So Thomas. Oh, Tom. Thomas, is

Tom Moult 1:43
what my mother calls me by I can go I can go by Tom.

Salena Knight 1:46
I’ll just go with Tom.

Tom Moult 1:47
Yeah, we’ll go. We’ll go with Tom. But I appreciate I appreciate the intro. I appreciate the comment about the sexiness of our ads, as well. I haven’t we haven’t had anyone that has called our ad sexy before. So that’s like a huge a huge compliment. People have said beautiful. I think they’ve used more toned down words, but I love I love the enthusiasm. And yeah, I really appreciate you having me on. And by sexy.

Salena Knight 2:11
I don’t mean like overtly sticks you all what I mean is you’re looking at them going, these are smooth. Like these are sexy ads like I like them, I would, I would stop the scroll. And I actually watched the ad and if somebody is saying that they are watching the ad because it’s great content or the visuals are fantastic. That is what you want a marketing agency to do. And honestly, that is somehow I find some of the best people to work with is because if you can make me like I am so highly skeptical. If you can make me stop and actually do some research about who you are, then that’s it. We need to be friends.

Tom Moult 2:45
Yeah, for sure. I mean, yeah, I mean, you know, I think, yeah, I’ll be the first to say that marketing agencies, I think in Australia, across the board. You have the good, the bad, the hot, the cold. And I think they have a, I guess a diverse rap is probably a way to put it. And I think there’s good ones. And there’s bad ones, like any industry, but I think yeah, at the same time, obviously the market has changed a lot over the past couple of years. And I guess our approach to advertising probably speak a little bit about today. But I mean, I guess our approach to advertising, we like to think that we’ve evolved in line with consumer expectations, what’s working for brands, the changing market changing times, obviously, it is a tough, tough time for EECOM. In general, at the moment, probably the toughest has been for a little while. But I mean, at the same time, you know, when we first met up, we first spoke, I think, you know, personally, I think it was a huge alignment between what you’re doing, I guess what we’re doing, and I think highly complementary as well. You know, we’re first to say we’re not EECOM consultants, that’s the first really, really important thing. We are advertising specialists. So thinking about how we can actually do said get people to stop scrolling, get them watching, cut through and actually get the person through to purchasing a product. That’s really what we do. But at the same time, like obviously the E commerce side of things, paid media side of things. They’re codependent on one another. And understanding both I think is really, really important to getting good outcomes as well.

Salena Knight 4:01
So have you always been creative? No, I haven’t. And that’s

Tom Moult 4:05
the really interesting thing, right? So I have a very, very odd background. And when I tell people what my background is they go, how are you doing? What you’re doing? How in hell you hear? By the I was a lawyer. So my background? Yeah, so my background was in our law as a commercial lawyer, and I worked in consumer markets. So I had a lot of subject matter crossover there. But my move into advertising that was sort of a could you call it like a an early career choice but a pretty quick career choice coming from where I came from. I basically worked with large direct consumer brands as a lawyer, I did a lot of their commercial work, they did a lot of their like advertising regulation, that sort of side of things. And what I sort of found as I was working in there was I was actually not very interested in the law at all and I was very, very interested in the advertising the creativity and the way these brands sort of got their product in front of people as well you know, got eyes on the product. out. And I mean, it’s a bit of a problem when your sole job is to work in the legal side of things, but you are talking to the client about all the other things that aren’t really relevant to what you’re doing. And then basically, from there, I have a business partner will. So Will has always worked in the economy in the advertising space, he had that background, but a very, very different sort of leg of experience in terms of being inside a lot of businesses working with them seeing the worst in businesses, and I guess also seeing the best and seeing what works. We brought very sort of different skill sets to the table, in a lot of ways. And I guess from there, we started the business, just the two of us. And then from there, we’ve grown vertically, scale quite quickly. And for what is quite actually quite a young agency and quite a modern agency structure as well. So we sort of made pretty good inroads, I’d say over the past two to three years or so. Okay, so how do you know we’ll? Yeah, so that’s an interesting one as well, because will wasn’t actually what I didn’t actually meet will directly. So I met well through my partner, and he met me through his partner. So they work together, they’re our partners, they worked in retail together, this is very, very early days, we met through them, we had very similar sort of, I guess, work directions in a lot of ways. But we actually became really, really good friends to begin with. And then from there, we went off, while I sort of got to a point, I guess, around the beginning of COVID, maybe prior to that, I sort of said, this is the direction I want to go in, it’s something I’m very, very interested in, he said, is the direction obviously, that I am in already, but at the same time, I think we can sort of come together and bring different skill sets to the table. We started the agency from there. And then we sort of started as well with the, I guess the goal and goal in mind to not be like and I know everyone says this, but to not be like other agencies in the market. I think digital agencies in Australia, in particular, over the past maybe five to 10 years, have become very, very complacent. It’s a smaller market, what you get in a smaller market generally is like a few larger players that sort of work through all the brands in the market or all the businesses in the market. And because advertising was so easy for so long, and you could slap a Facebook ad off, you could get a 10 times return on adspend COVID

Salena Knight 7:02
weren’t running ads, you were silly, because if money was just flowing your way. Exactly,

Tom Moult 7:08
exactly. And I think like what what that did is it was almost like this is this has become too easy in a lot of ways. And then what’s happened over time is the markets become more saturated. It has become busier to come noisier. Obviously, platforms have evolved very quickly, the way people consume content has changed really, really extensively. And then it became harder. And a lot of businesses were very much digital focused. And I guess that’s where for us, we sort of saw a large opening in the sense that the E commerce, the digital market, I should say was evolving to become more visual and more creative focus with the rise of platforms like tick tock Instagram, trying to keep up through video content. Obviously YouTube evolving its platform, people generally these days if they’re sitting down, and they’re scrolling social media, or a media platform or consuming video, but the reality was that agencies weren’t really evolving in line with that they were still button pushing, they’ll still looking at the analytics, they weren’t really thinking creatively about what was going on.

Salena Knight 8:01
They were just media buyers, weren’t they that was that was all they were doing is just buying the space rather than crafting the copy, you know, the the entire customer journey? Exactly. That’s exactly right.

Tom Moult 8:12
And I think that the point you make about the client, the consumer customer journey is so important, because it’s longer, it’s more extensive. I mean, it’s not linear anymore. People don’t just see the Facebook ad, they don’t just go straight to the website, they don’t just buy a you know, it’s a flywheel or hitting a Facebook ad, or going to a Google ad, they’re going on to a piece of PR that’s been written, they’re then going on to tick tock, this was all these sorts of things, all these different touch points which are going on and being able to cover them was really, really important. So the visual aspect, though, and the creative aspect, though, is just something that agencies in the States I actually think of have evolved and got on top of much faster. But in Australia, you know, you still have agencies that are working one day with an accounting firm, and the next day, they’re working with a fashion brand. And it just makes complete zero sense to me.

Salena Knight 9:01
People listening are all around the world. And but I have to say my agency is in America, because exactly what you said they’re just more on the ball. Like we have creators being tested every single day. Like what you said, I find that the Australian people and this is very generic, you know, we’re just saying from our experience, there’s a lot of complacency there. So when you find someone great you stick to them. When you start working with an agency doesn’t matter who it is, you’re really taking a chance that this is going to work I have a quick question for you before we get into that stuff is booty you think that took the chance on who did you take the chance on? Well, or did he take the chance on you?

Tom Moult 9:39
I’m gonna I’m going to be the I’m gonna be the nice guy here. And I’m gonna say that we all took a chance on me. I mean, I actually very transparently had very, I had an understanding of business process. I didn’t have a whole lot of understanding though of like technical advertising process and when I started and I think that’s the the interesting thing is like, a lot of that technical advertising process, I sort of picked up and I’ll be slowly evolved and developed over time through extensive reading and seeing it firsthand. But I think we’ll have definitely had the better technical skills at the point at which we started working together. We brought different things to the table, but I do think I’m gonna give will the biscuit there, I think will he put his money on me in that situation.

Salena Knight 10:18
But it’s working. I didn’t realize you guys were so young in terms of as as a business, you’re talking just pre COVID, which is only like three years ago? Yes, it really is. I mean, kudos to you guys. Because what you have created has, it really aligns with everything that we we say everything we do everything we teach the retailers that we work with. So can we just maybe jump in and talk about that I really want to talk to you about tick tock, you mentioned tick tock just before I am old, clearly. And don’t go on to the Tick Tock The Tick tock, tick tock. Yeah, that was a joke, guys. I have claimed my name on tick tock, and I posted one video just to make sure that if I ever want to use it, it is there. Yeah, I want to get on to tick tock. But before we do, I have to ask you this, because it’s something that comes up over and over again, with, like the retail and ecommerce store owners that we ask that we talk to, which is when you see a level of success, you can really struggle with this feeling as if you’re an imposter. It’s like, you know, you look around, it’s like, how did I get here? You came in to the situation? With, let’s be honest, no experience compared to will. You’ve built a successful agency that does awesome 60 ads? Do you ever feel like you’re an imposter? Yeah, I think everyone

Tom Moult 11:44
feels like they’re an impostor. At some point, I think it’s only natural to feel that way. Like because I mean, you don’t know everything. I think that’s the thing is like you don’t fundamentally know everything. And I think that’s the thing is that with E commerce with any form of digital advertising, modern digital advertising, I think this applies to, you know, a lot of the people who would be listening brand owners in particular, like the actual technical process, in an ad account, they’re becoming more simple, because you know, you’ve got artificial intelligence, you’ve got things that are actually going and searching for your customers, for you, in a lot of ways, media buyers are still very important. Don’t get me wrong, but having a good media buyer will get you good results, but the actual processes in that ad account are becoming more simple. So being able to get across the technicals. It’s yeah, being able to understand things, you know, get up to speed with things, everything like that. But I actually think like, it’s one of those areas, ecommerce is one of those areas where if you understand e commerce, then I think you and you have a fundamental understanding of what the objectives are, what you need, you know, being across your numbers, having clarity in certain aspects. If you understand those processes, it sets you up to understand advertising, it does set you up to understand growth marketing, because fundamentally growth marketing, yeah, sure, you need to think about the the people call them tricks, but the strategy is to actually get in front of people and cut through, but you can you can cut through, and you can do that in an unprofitable way you can cut through and you can do that in a way it’s going to diminish your brand, you know, you can cut through and you can do all these things. And I think that’s where in my experience, as an agency, we’ve actually brought the most value to our clients and a lot of ways it’s being able to advertise in a way that’s gonna achieve their goals and a lot of ways but at the same time, do so with performance in mind, and being able to balance those two things. So that we, we call it balancing brand and performance or aesthetics and performance and a lot of ways to, to be able to sort of get out of the advertising process what the client wants. And then also, at the same time, be able to bring in those performance aspects which are going to give the client what it needs. And that’s actually sales. But I think for me, like going back to your question, yeah, 100% I probably I still feel like honest, I feel I still feel like an impostor a lot of the time. But I think I think, you know, I think my career because I did see, like so many businesses, I saw the workings of really, really good businesses as well, big businesses, global businesses, that was sort of even evolving or transitioning into E commerce at that point in time. And I think what they gave me is just really, really good fundamental understanding of business objectives. And I think that’s where the alignment for us. And I guess maybe our success as well as businesses calm is because we work towards what our clients objectives are, what their numbers look like, all those sorts of things and work within that, rather than saying, let’s get a 1.5 times return on adspend. And let’s spend $200,000 to get that when it’s just not going to be, you know, commercially viable for the client to deal with. So, so yeah, so I mean, I think I Yeah, well, I understand, I think everyone feels like an impostor. I mean, no one comes from a calm, that’s the other thing. So I would say that, like E commerce is still so young. So for me, it’s like most people who are going into E commerce, they’re going into it from a different era, either an old school practice, or they’ve got experience left the field or whatever it might be. But you know, fundamentally speaking, there are very few people who come from EECOM even now on 2023. Obviously, that will change over time, but it’s new. So we’re all newbies, in a lot

Salena Knight 14:53
of say I’ve been around since 2007. So I feel like I’m an OG at this point.

Tom Moult 14:59
You’re not Ajay, you’re you’re like, you’re when you’re 2007 EECOM, then you’ve got some years under your belt. Like

Salena Knight 15:05
I know what I’m doing with my first website was built with flash and I had to learn how to code. So yeah, I feel like I have some experience. But you’re right. And you said a couple of times there about learning. And I think if you are not constantly learning, it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking marketing, it doesn’t matter if we’re talking growth, if you aren’t constantly learning, you will be left behind because everything is changing what customers want is changing products are changing. Ai. Oh my god, how much do I love AI, like, we actually have a team member called Sarah, who is an AI person. I remember changing, changing the face of business and making it much quicker, much cheaper, much easier. So the other thing that you said quite a few times there, I think I clocked it three times already, is I mentioned retailers looking after looking at their numbers. So can we just branch into that because I think one of the reasons personally speaking and feel free to correct me, one of the biggest reasons that I see agencies and your business owners, where the disconnect is, is often because the retailer or the e commerce Store owner doesn’t actually know what they want. All they want to do is abdicate all responsibility and say, I just need you to make me money. But if they’re not coming to you, and this is why I’m so passionate about showing people how to work this out is you know, if they don’t know how long their customer sticks around for how often they’re buying, it is really easy to kind of do a bit of a, you know, a homer simpson and do the lalalalala at this point, because you you probably think Excel, Would you just shut up about that stuff? I don’t really care. But do you care about making money? Do you care about wasting money? Do you care about making your customers happy? If you care about these things, continue listening. If you don’t, if you’re not taking those things into account, and this is this is what you said earlier on about media buyer versus kind of the end to end agency, which is where you fit in. If you’re not looking at how often people are buying, what are they buying? What are they buying together? What’s their average order value? Are you doing upsells? Are you doing post purchase? Are you doing email marketing, all those bits and pieces together, then you can put a generic, this is what your return on adspend should be. But if you don’t know those numbers, you are really just pulling numbers out of your butt. Like you just hope crossing your fingers and running on the hamster wheel of hope and hoping that these numbers that you’re giving your agency, if you’re giving them any are correct. And even if they hit those numbers, will you make any money? No,

Tom Moult 17:44
I wholeheartedly agree. I mean, I think that the like E commerce, e commerce, obviously, once you’ve got product market fit, you’ve got a product that work, you develop that product, or a range of different products. And you know what you are as a business, like, in a lot of ways ecommerce can be. Some people shouldn’t be saying this, but it can’t be reduced to a numbers game. Because I mean, you’re selling product, and you need to be able to sell that product at margin, and you need to be able to sell that product in a way that’s going to keep your cash flow healthy if you don’t have cash flow, especially in this current climate, you know, raising capital is is pretty much bordering on impossible, like you don’t have good cash flow management, then as a business, you’re not gonna end up in a great position. I think like, it’s probably a bit serendipitous, because we’re talking a couple of days out from Black Friday, although most Black Friday sales have already gone. Gone live for a lot of brands started starting earlier. And earlier.

Salena Knight 18:34
It was just quickly as an aside, what was the earliest that you saw something? I’m going with 23rd of October, I got my first Black Friday,

Tom Moult 18:42
late October. Yeah, it would have been the last week of October, I was baffled. But I mean, I’ve seen I’ve been seeing some of the this is a different conversation. But some of the tactics this year, you know, shutting down websites really taking off overly aggressive. And that’s the thing is like, if you’re going to do it, you gotta do it. Well, as I may answer, that’s a separate conversation, different

Salena Knight 19:02
conversation difficult. But if you’re in our programs, we teach you how to do that stuff. Really? Exactly.

Tom Moult 19:07
And that’s the thing is we’re sort of talking to a lot of our clients at the moment about, you know, what their offer should look well, not now, but we were should look like. And I think it’s difficult because as the market has become more competitive, and you’ve got brands, like your clients that are taking very, very considered strategic approaches to the way that they’re engaging in this period, they’re across their numbers, they’re discounting in accordance with those numbers and then they’re also strategizing around it so they get the most out of the period like shutting down your website or whatever it may be. If you’re not getting that sort of guidance, then you start to look out into the market and you start basically considering your offer on the back of what other people are doing. And I would say that is probably the biggest and most risky thing in my experience in terms of where I’ve seen it go wrong. Is basing your offer your consideration around numbers based off other people’s numbers. They’re not the same. Well, you don’t know the numbers as

Salena Knight 19:59
you can be replicating a failing business model.

Tom Moult 20:02
Exactly. And that’s the thing, it’s like, you know, we I’ve spoken to this action or this year, but a while ago, I spoke to a client and, you know, they were wanting to run ads like 40% 50% off, which is fine if you’ve got the numbers to do that, but they didn’t. And that’s the thing is like, if you don’t control your, you know, your, you don’t have control of your numbers, you don’t have control over your, your discounting behavior, whatever it may be during this period, and you actually come out of it worse off. And that’s

Salena Knight 20:29
all you’re going to do is attract people who don’t want to buy your full price stuff.

Tom Moult 20:32
Exactly. And you’re doing it at a rate where you’re, you’re not able to deliver or get a high enough return on adspend to actually it’s like

Salena Knight 20:39
a loss leader, but it’s a loss leader for the worst, because those those customers aren’t going to hang around. Exactly.

Tom Moult 20:45
So I think like, it’s one example of it. But I think that that is the thing is like, I would say the best client relationships we have are brands, which do know the numbers, they do know what not necessarily an optimal return on adspend would look like for them, but they at least have a threshold there that they know they can work out a profitable rate for and we can then you know, obviously regulate spend, we can help them with offers, we can sort of move their strategy around in a way that’s going to align for those business goals are, I would say probably the worst relationships, and there’s not many of them. But I would say like where we have had relationships that haven’t gone? Well, it is normally because we have either worked on the back of numbers which aren’t correct. Or alternatively, we’ve given advice on the basis that, you know, we think this is where the position they’re in, when in reality, it isn’t actually the best position for them. And I think that’s where the delineation between sort of the growth agency and sort of E commerce consultancy needs to come in is that we can definitely bring you offers, we can bring you the latest, you know, strategy, a lot of ways to be able to Yeah, to be able to get caught through what that actually looks like, numerically, we don’t know that without you opening the box and actually showing us what your margins look like what your business looks like, and all those things. And I mean, I understand why most businesses wouldn’t want an agency sort of sitting around in those through those numbers. So

Salena Knight 22:06
through those numbers, but I think there is, there’s definitely a like I know, with my agency, they put forward what they expected there. When you work with a specialist agency, and you guys work with retail, and E commerce brands, the people I would work with businesses like mine that do consulting, so by their own default, they can actually say across our customers, this is what we’re seeing works, but also at this rate. So let’s just say customer acquisition cost is somewhere between 40 and $60 at the moment, and then you can go back and say, just 40 to $60 work for me. But even just having that range and having some having the agency tell you what they feel their KPIs are and then you going back and saying, Well, does this work for me? Or does this fit in with my numbers? means immediately, you can see whether it’s on the same page, and you might say, You know what? It doesn’t $40 doesn’t work for me. Like I need it to be down at 20. And then it’s realization. It’s like, okay, well, can we actually do this? Are we the right people for you? Maybe this is what you would have to do, or you want to build your email list rather than doing a directory conversion. Like there’s other things, but not knowing any numbers, in my opinion, is just a recipe for success, because you can’t make any financial decisions. Like, yeah, I’ve been in that situation where before where the agencies just like, give us more money? And I’m like, no, because the numbers don’t worry if I give you more money at the current rate. I’m just wasting money. Yeah, for sure.

Tom Moult 23:43
And I mean, it has to be to like you said, I think it has to be a two way discussion where you sit down you say like this is we can say like you said, this realistic we we work a lot for instance, in beauty, skincare, lifestyle, wellness, we work a lot in fragrance, that sort of space, fashion, as well, we have a pretty strong understanding of like, we’re like we have a pretty good understanding of what these businesses are working on generally, from a margin perspective, and I guess also an understanding of what’s working. But having a two way discussion, I think is really, really important. I think that goes to the point as well like having the ability as well as an agency to be able to sit there and say, Okay, well, how are our email automations looking? What does it actually looking like? That is because that is very, very important to the efficiency of your paid media don’t

Salena Knight 24:25
even don’t even get me started.

Tom Moult 24:30
Well, I’m so bullish on email, but that’s the thing is like, Yeah, I’m bullish on it because it saves you so much money. And I when I look at it, I’m like, you don’t have any informations there that you can either do them yourself like you know, you’ve got templates there. You don’t need even anyone to go in and set them up.

Salena Knight 24:46
Right if you click the button that says, start this.

Tom Moult 24:52
I know I know. And that is a thing though, is like I think going to your point around spending more money. I think a lot of agencies because they are just media banks. Still, and we don’t live in a medieval world, and you might think that’s a really important thing to know, we live in a very, very complicated digital world now far more visual, digital world. And media buying definitely has a place in that world. But it isn’t the be all and end all. And I think what you end up seeing is because of that, a lot of brands, or a lot of agencies will go to brands, and they’ll say, spend more, because that’s the lever they have to pull. And I think that’s, that’s the problem. That’s the problem. It’s like, they’re, it’s a transactional relationship in the end. And if that’s the only lever you have to pull, then you’re always going to lean on that lever, you’re never going to think, horizontally. And I know, you know, the psychology behind it. If I send them to this agency, I might lose the client. If I send them over here, I might not be able to do this, like this is I think, where the mindset goes. And then you just get this situation where it’s just digging deeper and deeper and deeper. And there’s been more than not getting the return. But they’re not actually addressing the issues in why they’re not getting that return. And I think that’s where having more scope to capability, being able to pull a creative lever being at a pull an email lever, being able to think platform diversification and having the capabilities to look at that. I think that, you know, when you’re working with agency that can do that. It just means things aren’t as linear is a bit more horizontally

Salena Knight 26:10
thinking. Yep. Love it. Okay, you talking about things differently. We don’t work in the linear world anymore. We are very much about creative. Which brings us all the way back to the beginning where I said, I saw your sexy ads, which were not sexual, just really good. So let’s talk now about tick tock, because you and I were chatting the other day at CEO club, and you were trying to sell me, he did a very good job on the importance of tick tock. And I’ve been thinking about it and thinking about it. I’m not quite there yet, because I do work with an agency who has a very distinctive strategy that we’ve got in play. But I’ve been thinking about it for 2024. So can you tell me in terms of retail and E commerce stores and brands? Why would they diversify to Tik Tok? Yeah, for sure.

Tom Moult 27:07
All my talk now is on this. So if you guys verify I’m going along, then it’s cut me off, because I think so. So to give you a bit of an idea around why we do so much work on tick tock to begin with, because I think it’s important to sort of being able to set the scene. So because we have a creative team and a performance team built out in house, basically the way that we’re structured within those teams, we have a range of different people, we can obviously see, especially from an advertising perspective, your entire advertising process end to end through. So creative production, creative briefing, design, and editing all the way through to distributing those ads and actually writing the ad strategy for you a key focus for us though, because of the platforms we generally work on, our primary focus is met on tick tock, and we do work on Google as well. It’s very complementary. We focus very much on what we like to call native content formats. So formats which feel native to the platform that you’re actually advertising on for a long time, that can be considered as something like user generated content, which does still work out in the market at the moment. But thinking more now about like, sort of shifting creative expectations around things like edutainment. So we say entertainment. It’s like educational and entertainment driven content. So content, which adds value to your customers, they’re watching it because it’s a value to them, not because it’s a sponsored post or it’s been put in front of them.

Salena Knight 28:22
Is that kind of a lonely I always pull out the scarf because I can’t I can’t tie a scarf is that like, you know, three ways to tie a scarf for winter? Is that Is that are you talking about when you’re talking about edutainment? Yeah,

Tom Moult 28:32
for sure. And that’s a that’s a that is an example of that. It’s like it’s being able to give the customer value and give being able to give the customer I know I said native people using this word native but a native experience on the platform. You I always say you don’t want to offend the customers eyes on the platform. And what that means is you don’t want to be putting something on the platform, which is inconsistent with what they’re consuming on a day to day basis. It’s gonna cause a version that don’t watch it. It’s not in line with what their expectations are. So going to the point on tick tock like we’re working because of that hands and capacity and we have for a while now quite extensively on tick tock working both creative production and even full scope management on the platform organically and actually paid as well. But the reason why Tik Tok is becoming so powerful isn’t only because obviously it’s a growing platform. There are a lot of people on their starters and Gen Z platform obviously but has actually aged and matured and you know, the fastest growing age group now is between 35 Plus to 35 Possibly growing age group on the on the platform so it’s no longer like the Gen Z dance platform that everyone had hesitations about it is a platform which is age matured and evolved. But the reason why is it is causing I guess such a so much cut through and I guess such a ripple in the overall advertising space is because of that native experience. So it is a native platform, the content is raw, the content is real. It speaks to the customer from a value prospect. It doesn’t speak to the customer because you know now Australia you have nice packaging or you’ve paid $30,000 for a video shoot. It’s highly accessible. And it’s what we call a counter cyclical platform. So it’s got that video consumption function, much like Instagram or Facebook, where you can scroll for days death scroll, and you can view videos and everything like that. But it also has a search engine. And that search engine is becoming more and more readily used. But it’s actually now the choice of search engine for people aged between 18 and 30. So more people between eight and eight and 30 are using that Search Engine and Google to actually learn new things, find new products, solve ailments or issues. And what you get for that reason is a one size, not a one size fits all, I should say an all in one platform where you have a customer and you’re able to not only engage a community, but you’re also able to get that customer actually searching for your product on that will not necessarily a product by the searching for something on the platform. We’re seeing, really from an advertising perspective, it was a bit slow going to begin with tick tock to be completely honest, on the platform. So algorithm just not as developed. But we you know, it’s it’s aging now it’s been you know, people have been or brands have been advertising on it now for probably around you know, a lot of them for a good like two years now. And a lot of new entrants obviously, coming into the market. But

Salena Knight 31:19
it is cheap, very, very cheap. Is it still cheap, relatively speaking, like relative

Tom Moult 31:27
to Facebook, we still see and we’ve run quite a few case studies for brands where we’re running ads on Facebook, and then running ads on Tik Tok. And you’re still seeing for a lot of brands, you know, around 50%, the CPM, so 50%, the cost to get in front of the 1000 people on Tik Tok as opposed to Facebook. So it’s it’s cheap. But the thing about it is that the return on adspend that we’re now seeing on tick tock is comparable, if not better, than what we’re seeing on Facebook and Instagram and a lot of ways that’s

Salena Knight 31:54
cheaper than the reasonable,

Tom Moult 31:57
cheaper but more profitable. And the reason being is because it is one, it’s not as busy. So there are still brands, obviously, they’re sitting back and watching the platform for understandable reasons. But at the same time, it is that native experience, which is I think driving so much consumer behavior on the platform, it’s speaking to the customers in the way they want to be spoken to, like we have a saying it’s making tic TOCs not ads, the organic and the paid process between the organic and paid process are closer together than they ever have been on any platform. So what you run from an advertiser advertising perspective, it’s very similar normally to what you run from an organic media perspective on the platforms and what you’re posting on the platform. And for that reason, like the the ability for a brand to be able to engage the community, but then actually actually drive really good returns on the platform is there. And I would say it’s in a position at the moment tick tock is what we’re seeing on our end, where you know that Instagram was probably in 2016. By 2015 2016.

Salena Knight 32:52
Yeah, so a lot of people are probably thinking, especially people who are 35 Plus, that this is just another channel, get another channel I need to advertise on. Would you be so kind and I didn’t ask you this before we jumped on. So hopefully, he says, Yes, guys. Would you be so kind as to walk me through what using tick tock would be like, if my ultimate goal was to make sales off of it? So I’m a retailer, I, let’s just say I’m reselling other people, like, I own a fashion store selling other people’s stuff. What could I do? Like end to end? What could I do to use Tik Tok to get sales? Yeah, so the first point

Tom Moult 33:38
of call is always starting with organic. And the reason being is because I mentioned before about that sort of intersection between paid and organic on the platform, very, very close together, very, very difficult to run, pay me on the platform without having an organic presence to begin with. So starting organically on the platform is always a recommendation. And the thing, the reason being, as well as because it is an algorithmic platform. So it relies very, very heavily on heavily on the algorithm. It’s less interest based targeting and more sort of machine learning let to say ways in which you get in front of customers, it requires data touchpoints, to learn about your customer, as well. So the organic processes, it’s going to allow your the algorithm to actually learn about your customer in a quite an effective way. But when we’re talking about paid media, not to get too technical, but we actually run like what we call a cascading paid media approach. So it’s very different to Facebook and Instagram, where you’ve got your organic social media operating over here. So you’ve got your Instagram page, then you’ve got your ads operating over here in the ad account. When we’re talking about tick tock, those two things, as I mentioned, are close together. And what we’re doing in the early days is in a lot of ways actually just running engagement on on the advertising side of things, not necessarily conversions. I know it may seem a bit counterintuitive, but the reason why we do that is because you actually have to Estelle publish a database before or data touchpoint days before you start going after conversions and sales, then we found in the past, this

Salena Knight 35:08
is super helpful because some people might be thinking, Oh, Thomas sounds cool. I’m gonna go, Tom, Tom sounds cool. When his mom calls on Thomas, he sounds cool, I’m gonna go through the TIC tock and start running ads. But what you’re actually saying is well hold up what you do to make this an effective platform, what you really need to be doing is getting the system getting the the algorithm to know who the people are. First, it’s not a, I can go out and blast to cold traffic like I can on Facebook and Instagram and Google, this is actually a platform where you kinda got to let the system do its thing first. So thank you very much for sharing that. Yeah, no worries,

Tom Moult 35:50
then that’s the thing is you do need that, because otherwise, it’s gonna become very expensive. And that’s the thing we want to avoid, obviously, is not spending unnecessarily on paid media, where it’s not going to convert for you spending where you need to spend building that base, and then transitioning to that. But back to

Salena Knight 36:06
your cascading ad strategy, which I quite rudely interrupted.

Tom Moult 36:10
Yeah, so what we call cascading because it basically goes from the broadest objectives on the platform through to the most targeted. And by the broadest, what I mean is we start with video views, we then move to add to cart, and we do this in quite a short period of time. So we’re looking at about two, two to four week period here, we’re not running this for months, we move to add carts, we move to follows followers, and then what we do is we slowly move through, I should say remove followers, then add to cart. And then what we do is we slowly move through to conversions from there, after we’ve established a presence on the platform. And then after we’ve established those data touch points, and what we find is that when we do go through that process, it puts the ad account in a position where when you do shifts conversions, it sort of goes pop is able to find your customers far more efficiently, you’re able to you don’t have that sort of like long drawn out testing period that you generally see on Facebook and Instagram, where you’re in learning limited. And then you’ve got to like through budget here and through budget there. And then after three months, you feel like you haven’t really got out of the testing process at all. It’s very sort of structured, which I actually really like, because the way we can communicate it to clients is quite linear, it’s like this is what we actually need to do, we’ve run tests on a lot of accounts to very specific way in which we go about doing it. And then what we do from there is, we run this for you, you know the timelines, you know, when we’re going to switch over, there aren’t sort of those like free radicals flying around like Facebook and Instagram, where it’s like, we made a test here for like a couple of months. And then we’ll find what’s going on here. And we can extract that and move this into the new campaign, because that’s sort of how the actual platform works. So it’s nice having that structure in a lot of ways, and from an agency perspective, being able to communicate that and be transparent with client about that, in a lot of ways, but I think also for the client, because they’re like, Okay, well, this

Salena Knight 37:50
is the structure. And this is how the structure works. Like it’s reasonably quick, too. So if that’s the case, if you’re just starting out on tick tock, you said that edutainment videos are a great place to start, like say somebody says, I’m gonna give this a go. I’m saying just go and talk to Thomas and his team, because it’s what they’re good at. But if someone wants to give it a go first, how many videos are they looking to put out? Like per day per week, because you just kind of gave me like a within three or four weeks. So my market ahead simply goes to, that must be a crap ton of content that you guys are sticking out there in that short period of time to try and get the machine to learn. What are people interested in? What should we post more of?

Tom Moult 38:35
Yeah, so it’s, it’s, it’s actually still a point of controversy, how much content you should be posting on tick tock? There’s actually there’s definitely no right answer, I actually would go as far to say in our experience, that the quality of the content that you’re producing is still more important on tick tock there and the volume, like you’re better still producing one or two videos a week and those videos being absolutely killer videos, then you are producing 30 videos a week, and then just not being up to scratch. And when I say about quality, I’m not talking about visual quality, so refinement quality, I’m talking about value quality, like what are we actually conveying to the customer? What sort of value are we passing off to them? When we think about content on the platform, like the easiest way to think about the creative strategy is to split it up into what we call reactive, and proactive or reactive and brand centric content. On one hand, you’ve got proactive content, and proactive content is the content that you are turning out at the beginning of the month. It’s generally more in line with the normal advertising format that you are putting out on possibly Instagram now video format, and it’s more curated, more brand centric and more direct response in a lot of ways as well. Reactive content, on the other hand is content which is based on trends and reactivity throughout the course of the month. And that’s where tick tock becomes a difficult platform because it’s not only about producing enough content, it’s also being able to identify a trend that aligns to your brand, and then being able to actually You ride on the back of that trend to get viral viral, basically, to reach virality. So you really need a combination of both of those content formats to make it work. We have clients who are producing, you know, 12 pieces of creative a month, and they’re killing it, they’re doing really, really well. We have other clients who are producing 30 Plus pieces of creative per month, and they’re doing very, very well as well. I would say probably the primary consideration for the amount of content though that you need to produce is your ad spend. Because the one thing I would say about tick tock, whether you see it as a plus or a minus is that creative does burn out very quickly on the platform, which

Salena Knight 40:36
makes sense because it is the kind of like I’ve run out, I’ve run the same ad for seven months on Facebook. And people say I’m literally people go, I’m so sick of saying this, you should switch it off. And I’m like, it’s making me money. I would be stupid to switch. But tick tock is not like that. Like even I know that which is, it’s it is about being fresh. So it sounds like you before you jump in and just start posting stuff. It is really just sit down and have a bit of a strategy. So I have a quick question about the edutainment you so know that I’m just like asking you these questions for my own personal consumption for sure. So in the edutainment videos, are you doing a call to action to buy a thing? Or like say we’re doing the scout? Here’s three ways to tie a scarf. Are we then saying shop scarves now? Link? Can you put a link in a tick tock? It says that this is okay,

Tom Moult 41:33
you so you can so from an ad perspective, like the best way to run it is like a Facebook ad in the sense that you have a CTA, which is built into the actual platform, which takes you to the landing page. But generally speaking, being less direct response is better. And what I mean by that, though, is actually it’s probably not the right way to put it being less, being less structured in your ad format is better, because what we’re looking for with any payment, and I’m throwing around a lot of like sort of phrases here. But like this idea of like situationally, starting your content, that’s really what entertainment is, is what’s really important. And what I mean by that is not selling the product, but actually selling the use case of the product, selling the context in which the product can be used, selling the lifestyle that the product is going to be used in, so that you’ve got an alignment there between your customer and that lifestyle. So like I think we do your point, like when we’re talking about the staff situation, for instance, that that would be definitely an edutainment format, but what we’d be looking to do is we’d be looking to take that creative format and think about ways in which we can tick tock eyes. So like, how can we make it feel even more native to the, to the platform? It’s like, do we use a green screen? Like Do we like do we use a green screen? Do we use these sort of like different methods to be able to get to a new stitches do we use like different tick tock methods to actually get the customer there? The stitches, I’ll give you a stitches where you’ve got like a video and you’ve got someone talking? They take that video, and then they basically commentate on the other video. So yeah,

Salena Knight 43:02
got it. Got it. Oh my God, I feel so old right now for someone who has been in marketing for so long. I really

Tom Moult 43:10
see I’m not see I’m not playing I’m not a Gen Z. I’m a millennial. So I am I even sometimes feel old. Like we have a team of Gen Z ‘s who are like on top of this in terms of the picking up trends. Yeah, they live it because it isn’t digital natives who started in a lot of ways, you know, using social media, in their late teens, even on the platform. So it’s like, it’s that I which I think is what’s really difficult. And that’s why I sympathize with brands. I mean, most brand owners aren’t, you know, 25 years old, most brand owners older than that. And, you know, if it’s not a platform, you use day to day, how do you fall in the trends? How do you keep up with it? And I think that’s where a lot of the difficulty does come

Salena Knight 43:47
in the brands. And this is why just having someone look if you give it a good my my whole thought process here would be given a go yourself. And if you see some kind of positive response, then you bring in the experts to do it for you. If you you may not be perfect, you may not get the right edutainment, but if you can go you know what, I posted some some detox, I posted some two talks, I was gonna say real videos a little bit confused there. I posted some tic TOCs I got some good engagement. Maybe this thing might work for me. And then I am all for give it a go yourself. Short, small budget, short period of time. If you see some kind of result, get the expertise, because realistically, as the business owner, Founder, CEO, you got other things that you should be spending your time on. Then sitting there trying to learn a whole new platform because like you said, your kid, I’m gonna call them kids, your kids who are doing this, have been doing it for years and know that live and breathe that platform and there is no way that even if I sat there every single day, I would have the brain space to even understand Like, how the Gen Z does the thinking? Right? So it’s, uh, yeah, I feel like this is one of those things where you go, you know what I’m going to take the opportunity, I’m going to give it a go. And if I see that it works, I’m going to hand it over to somebody else. And realistically, that’s kind of my whole premise, really, in terms of business.

Tom Moult 45:16
Yeah, I agree, because it’s complicated. But you know, the other thing as well as is that you were talking about paid media before and like cascading structures and stuff like that, you can get value out of the platform without spending a cent, unlike that, that search engine functionality I was talking about that is, in my opinion, the sleeper and all this, I think that that is going to be where brands who are optimizing for SEO on the platform, they are going to see huge returns, and really, really sustained returns long term, because the way that people are engaging in that intent based journey on the internet to, you know, whether it is to find brands, whether it is to find answers, it’s that’s evolving as well, like the people know that Google has been SEO to an inch of its life, people know that you can pay to get into publications, you can pay to get into whatever it may be. And for that reason, you’re ranking yourself, and you’re putting yourself in a position through brute force, some brands, not all brands, but brute force to get yourself there. And it goes to that point, again, that people are yearning for authentic experiences. And if they can go on to tick tock, and they can see that there is a real person, person that looks like them, that speaks like them, that shot a video actually accounting for, you know, what their experience was like with the product, what the delivery was, like, why they bought the product, the ailment they’ve been experiencing, and how they resolved it. It just is that one step deeper again, in our visual experience, and more people are going to or how people going to feel about a brand, when there are advocates for that brand, who are giving authentic recounts of how the products working, not necessarily a written Google review, or you know, even a written article, which very easily

Salena Knight 46:51
could just be made just yesterday. And I think the, the, I’m just gonna say that like the UGC, the user generated content, the you know, the influencer, like, it’s always going to be there. And it’s always going to work. But even now, I am so highly skeptical of seeing these ads, which show me you know, the foundation or the shape where it clearly you can tell it, but I get targeted by. But generally, the first thing I do is go and review like a search product, and then review. And then I see all these people who go I got sucked into by the thing and it was crap. So I think we’re a little bit smarter these days, when it comes to get stuff that looks like it’s clearly be made to be an ad, if that makes sense.

Tom Moult 47:44
That’s right. And that and that, like you’re so that is exactly right. Because and that that, um, that Maca is moving constantly, you know, it started as like the out of home billboard ad, which was obviously curated to an inch of its life. And it’s put out there for everyone to see. And when we move to digital, and then what we had with digital was obviously people trying to replicate that out of home experience on online. So putting really flashy, high production imagery and everything like that. But over time, because of the disconnect you have on the internet, especially, you know, especially for your retailers, you know, when you’re in store, you can speak to the person, you can speak to a shop attendant you can you can get a feel for what the brand is like. And normally that shop attendant will be somewhat of a reflection of the brand. You can feel the product, there’s so many points touch points there that are physical and very important to the buyer journey. And you don’t get that online. And I think what’s happened over time is people have understood, as you mentioned that not everything that you see on the internet is real. There’s a lot of there’s a lot of show. Crazy, but there’s a lot of fakeness. And I think that that’s the thing is like that’s why the more authentic and the more stripped down you can be obviously you need to still be on brand, I think there’s a difference between being on brand and authentic and high production. You don’t need necessarily high production. But I think balancing those two elements, which are really important because it overcomes the point that you just mentioned there where we are smarter, we are all digital natives to varying degrees now. And we can see through the crowd to put to put it really simply you need something which is at least feels real, even if it’s not really at least it needs to feel real. And if you can get a real experience and that’s even better, but it at least needs to feel real and sort of meet expectations in that way.

Salena Knight 49:27
This is one of those one of those places where I think bricks and mortar stores never leverage it often enough is they put pictures of product up but they never do. I’m just going back to reels because we hang out on Instagram, you know, do a real in the store people because automatically I can see you’ve got a store with people I buy from you because you’re real like if something goes wrong. I could actually call you or I could hunt you down or come into your store. So but yeah, and that’s it’s

Tom Moult 49:57
a good point because the Tick Tock the landscape Instagram landscape as well because I mean, Instagram, Trump has tried to keep up with Tik Tok. That’s really where you’ve seen the evolution of reels pushing that more. That’s why you don’t see as many you know, your friends posts on the platform anymore. And you’re seeing more videos that you may not even like to be honest, but they’re just pushing videos. But you know, like, it’s such a good point, because as much to a founder as for a brand’s dismay, always say this is that the modern landscape, the modern media landscape lends to under centric content, and it lands to brand centric content. So not just user generated content, it can’t just be used as anymore. Some of the best creators we’ve seen on the Tiktok platform and on the Instagram platform, have been founders in their natural setting, speaking through the product speaking through as the, you know, the mind child of the product has been through the design, why they created it, why they we know what they had in mind when they created it, why the customer was in mind, like all these things. Again, it just gives that level of depth, which is going to speak to the customer, it’s going to authenticate the buying experience, I think to your point, like we call it brand centric, brand generated content, I should say, but data shoot in that retail setting, getting your team involved, getting like all those things, bringing life lifting the veil on what’s actually going on in the business can be very, very fruitful

Salena Knight 51:17
as well. All right, Tom, you and I could clearly talk about this for hours, but I am going to wrap it up there because that was the perfect stopping point. We can carry on this conversation over a glass of wine at CCO club another day. If people think that you’re super cool, just like I do, and they’re reaching out and they’re going, I want to talk to butter. And it’s butter with no II. How can they find you? And can I just point out because I know a lot of you listening are in the UK or in the US. Tom charges in AUD. So realistically, his agency is like ridiculously cheap with the current exchange rate. Yeah,

Tom Moult 51:58
that’s true. Yeah. So the US US brands love us for that. Because they get they know I like to say get good experience for often a fraction of the price what you pay in the US because some of those fees are crazy. But yeah, no. So I mean, if obviously, we’ve got we’ve got our websites we are bought out without any webmasters that dropping a letter but we are butter bu Double T r.com. And we also obviously have our Instagram we are but we’re on Tik Tok, obviously, as I’ve spoken about, or, you know, you can obviously reach out to Sal even and I’m sure Sal will be able to pass on some details.

Salena Knight 52:38
I would say check out your Instagram, we are butter with no eating butter, and eat in the way to see those 60 pieces of content that I’m talking about. Because they really are. They’re just, I guess, slick, but in a way that for me was kind of like wow, this is the kind of people I would like to like hang out with. It’s just slick enough to look like it was good quality, but not so bad that it was like, ah, you know, that’s, that’s clearly over produced. So kudos to you and your creative team because you’ve done an amazing job. Big up big love for me because I love that where you’re into and you’re just as much in the numbers and the strategy and getting your customers results as much as we are. Check out we are butter with no eating butter on Instagram, Tik Tok or your Facebook. Are you like, oh, we

Tom Moult 53:31
are we are but we don’t spend much time on it to be honest. We avatar we advertise on Facebook, we posted where you cross post and stuff like that. So you know, you got to find us on there, though.

Salena Knight 53:42
Okay, no problems. Any parting last words before we wrap this up? I don’t think so. I

Tom Moult 53:48
was gonna say I mean, Big ups to you as well. Because I think that you feel the gap and the void for us as well. And I think that’s the thing is like, you know, obviously, I think there’s always mutual, beneficial relationships. But I think in the sense of what you do, you do give clarity to brands, and that clarity helps us. So the more clarity that can be given, the better we can do. And I think that’s really the thing is like, we obviously always want to work towards our business goals. And I guess you are able to actually align that in a way that makes sense for them as a business. But apart from that, I really appreciate you having me on. Hopefully, everyone got a bit of value. But I’m always open to talk shop as well just sort of, you know, off offline as well with people if they’re interested in Tik Tok just in general need tips. So

Salena Knight 54:36
yeah, I always find time to do that. Cool. Thank you, Tom. This has been awesome. And we will have to get you on again to talk about a whole bunch of other stuff. Sounds great. Thanks. So that’s a wrap. I’d love to hear what insight you’ve gotten from this episode, and how you’re going to put it into action. If you’re a social kind of person, follow me at the Selena Night. And make sure to leave a comment. And let me know. And if this episode made you think a little bit differently, or gave you some inspiration, or perhaps gave you the kick that you needed to take action, then please take a couple of minutes to leave me a review on your platform of choice. Because the more reviews the show gets, the more independent retail and E commerce stores just like yours, that we can help to scale. And when that happens, it’s a win for you, a win for your community, and a win for your customers. I’ll see you on the next episode.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai