It's Marketing's Fault

Eric Rutherford [0:00 - 0:19]: 40% of existing TikTok users have made a purchase through TikTok. I just had to repeat that and say that again for everybody listening, because this is not something that can be ignored. If you want your business to succeed.

Eitan Koter [0:19 - 0:20]: You want more exciting data.

Eric Rutherford [0:21 - 0:22]: Yeah, hit me with it.

Eitan Koter [0:22 - 0:33]: Okay. 70% of TikTok users admit that they purchase something they just stumbled upon in one of the videos without even planning to purchase it.

Eric Rutherford [0:33 - 1:01]: Welcome to it's marketing's fault, the podcast where we discuss how to do marketing the right way. I'm your host, Eric Rutherford, and I'm thrilled today because I have with me Eitan Coter. He is the co founder and co CEO of Vimmi, a shoppable video SaaS company enhancing e commerce. He also hosts the ecom Pulse podcast Eitzan. Welcome to the show.

Eitan Koter [1:01 - 1:05]: Hey, Eric. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. Finally, we've done it.

Eric Rutherford [1:05 - 1:20]: I know, I was excited. I know we had to reschedule once, but really excited to get into Vimmi and this idea of shoppable videos. So for people listening, what is shoppable video?

Eitan Koter [1:20 - 4:50]: Yeah. So video is a very, very important aspect of any marketing activities of any business out there. And usually companies create videos for showcasing the products or trying to provide some more information about themselves, whether they use internal team or creators or influencers. Shoppable video is a special version of video that is primarily used to create conversions and actually in video checkout experiences from within the video player. So think about a scenario where you just doing this endless scrolling, or on TikTok or Instagram reels or YouTube shorts, and suddenly there is one of the videos is showcasing a product, and there is a buy now button or a link that redirects you to check out on a product page or in app checkout. So those experiences are different from platform to platform within the social media networks. But it's part of a big trend that is happening right now. And this is the social commerce trend, which actually enables companies to provide their solutions, products, services, not just on their own amazingbrand.com website, but also on other platform, primarily social platforms, giving them the ability to check at. Obviously those platforms take some commission, but the idea is that acquisition is becoming so difficult these days. And why not serve videos of product where potential shoppers are spending their time, right? And it's all started like probably four or five years ago in China with live shopping, which is a special version of Shoppable video. So we can have like, in terms of definition, like a master header for all these concepts. And it's video commerce. And video commerce is divided into shoppable videos, which are primarily those short phone videos that we see on socials. Obviously triggered by the TikTokification effect of becoming everything becomes shoppable. Now on TikTok and another department is the live shopping. Live shopping started in China. In China, it's like a booming industry, right? You have like sellers who are spending. This is the day job. All they do is just standing in front of camera and selling products. And the volume of live shopping in China is bigger than probably the two or three countries in Europe that are the largest in Europe for the entire ecommerce business. So live shopping started in China in the major big applications that usually people are spending most of their time, like these super apps. And the western world is adapting. It takes more time for it to be adopted. Obviously. TikTok shop in the US is like pushing hard. You know, it started as an entertainment platform, then as a search platform, and now it's a shopping platform. So they're providing so much incentives for brands to build and launch TikTok shop within. Within TikTok. And TikTok Shop obviously is only video, right? And so you create videos to showcase, you know, variety of functionalities and products, probably to build awareness. But that special video that triggers purchase, that impulse purchase, is that shoppable video that we are totally focusing and has a live component and a non live component.

Eric Rutherford [4:50 - 5:22]: Okay, that is just fascinating. That idea of live shopping, of that live video and how that is moving and shifting into the us economy and moving out of China, moving into the us economy and with the video commerce, the social commerce, that's fascinating. So primarily you're seeing this on TikTok or is it on the other platforms as well, whether Instagram, YouTube, just kind of curious, the split or where you see it?

Eitan Koter [5:22 - 9:49]: Yeah, it's all over. So first, it's on the brand's own website, right? In the Vimi platform. The way it works that we sync product pages from your existing ecommerce platform, doesn't matter which one can be shopify platform, it can be woocommerce, bigcommerce. Doesn't matter which one. So we are fully integrated with all of we sync product pages. Those videos are created by content creators or by influencers or by the brands employees themselves, uploaded to our platform where we host them and match them professionally. But then you can associate those product pages to videos, right? And once those product pages are associated with the right videos in one click, you can deploy these interactive and shoppable videos across your own website. Obviously, you can place this in an interactive video player, the hero banner of the main page, or it automatically syncs to your product pages. So now you have shoppable video in product pages, which takes the product pages to a whole new level in terms of interactivity and enrichment. And what we see is a great improvement in conversion rates and reduction of shop abandonment rates, which is probably one of the biggest problems in e commerce. Right? So those videos are very, very important for just pushing the last steps of the buyers to click to purchase. And then, of course, in our platform, we are fully integrated with all the social networks. So TikTok and Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, also marketplaces with Amazon and Walmart. Like we have also Amazon Live, right? So we publish those videos, not live or non live, in one click to all these channels. And we are enabling shopability or enabling the ability to shop on all these platforms. Again, each one of those platforms are providing a different type of experience, like, for example, in TikTok. Because you have TikTok shop, you need to check out in TikTok, by the way, this month they also announced an integration or a cooperation with Amazon. So, for example, you can watch a TikTok video, you can click to purchase, you can create a transaction within the TikTok shop product page, or you can use your Amazon prime account to check out within TikTok. So this is very, very nice. And they've done this also with YouTube. In YouTube, for example, you have the digital shelf concept. So think about the regular video player that you know for TikTok. But on that video player, you have overlays. You see like a thumbnails of the product. And when you click, it redirects you to probably a Shopify page, or it redirects you to a different page where you can check out from within that video player and Instagram. Again, it's a different type of experience in Instagram, for example, you have stories. So if you have more than 1000 followers, that influencer or that brands can insert a link, actually a link to immediately take you to a product page for checkout. So you can do a story. That story can have a link for conversion. So that's the shoppable aspect of things. It can be a regular video that is built and scripted and produced for maybe brand awareness impressions, but if you want conversion, then it's shoppable video and gives you the option to check out through this link. Instagram reels is a different scenario whether you do it through advertising, yes or no. And obviously YouTube short. So each one of those platform, and again, Pinterest is another ecosystem and community. We integrated all those APIs from all the different platforms, including marketplaces, and integrate them into the Vimi platform. So all you need to do when you start onboarding is just create that product sync. As we talked before, it's a one click product sync and then you configure a destination so you can configure all the social accounts, the credentials, and then you work with videos live and online. You add them to shows, you add them to videos and in one click they are deployed on all this big list of channels in a very, very simple and easy way. You don't need any engineering capabilities, you don't need specialized agencies or specialized team to manage any of these channels. We just make it like we resolve this. It's like a holistic solution for all those shoppable media and live shopping activities.

Eric Rutherford [9:49 - 10:13]: Wow. So you've made it easy, wherever you are, wherever you're doing business, wherever your people are, to really make that part of the experience and making it as seamless as possible, really very much unique to the platform.

Eitan Koter [10:13 - 13:11]: Correct, correct. It gives you the ability to do shoppable videos, I mean, making them clickable to check out. Live shopping studio where you can invite co host moderators, very powerful system, including the condo delivery network. So for example, this video player, when you stream on your website, we are providing the streaming technology and the capacity, which is endless. We deliver video today, every day to millions of users all over the world. You can have a live event with millions of users. We manage that scalability and that performance. Right. And the third big component is that social commerce aspects where we've integrated all the APIs and we enable shopability and then you can manage all your videos in a very professional media asset management aspect of the, of our platform. Over, over the years, you might have thousands and tens of thousands of videos, you know, like terabytes of content. It's an archive of video that you need to manage professionally. So you can pull, retrieve videos, search for videos. Those videos are professionally archived and encrypted in terms of content protection and usage rights. And it's a very professional media asset management where you keep all your videos and you can enable the streaming of these videos and the publishing of them to many, many channels. By the way, if you have an affiliate network like publishers or any other affiliate, you can embed this video player also on their website. For example, there is a live show right now, you just copy the embed code, it's JavaScript, send it to your affiliate, you just put it on the back end. And we stream to many, many affiliates, not just our brand as a customer, but to all these affiliates and channel partners, just to making sure that this snowball keep growing and that video is available in many, many, many channels. And there is an hierarchy of affiliates. So for example, if someone watching a show now in Facebook, okay, and he's sharing that show with all his network, okay, his personal network, and someone from his personal network made a purchase, we have the mechanism that we provide for the brand to pay a commission for that specific viewer that shared the video with all his friends, right. And they made a purchase and he deserved a commission. Right. So it's kind of this built in affiliate management that helps brand accelerate and expand the reach, making the viewers the partners and the sellers of this event. And this makes the whole event much more powerful. We are like an extension of their sales team or their marketing team. This is why we call ourselves a video acceleration platform, like a sales acceleration platform. That's the reason because we're providing a lot of sales incentive tools which are built in, into the platform.

Eric Rutherford [13:11 - 14:17]: Okay, that's just fascinating from a, I mean, from the hosting and management aspect of it, because that's massive for anybody who is trying to manage assets. I've worked at enterprise level companies and one of the biggest challenges in marketing is how do we archive and manage all the assets that we've created, whether it's print, whether it's video, how do you keep them in order, how do you make it searchable? So the fact that you're doing that from this video perspective is massive. But then that affiliate, the back end data that you're able to give these companies from a, who purchased and handling affiliates because so many of those are, it's just, it's so challenging on the data aspect usually. I mean, honestly, there are a lot of that are just handled in spreadsheets and it's just manual and horrendous. The fact that you can do easy attribution, you take so much pain out of this for everybody.

Eitan Koter [14:17 - 17:21]: Yeah. And just, I tell you why we have that as a built in functionality. Bimi is already more than ten years in the business. Right. We are, by the way, we are a bootstrap company, profitable and growing for ten years already. And video commerce is new. It wasn't there ten years ago. Right. So we started on the over the top or online video platform business. We started in media and entertainment when Netflix started to grow. And a lot of mobile operators and content providers, media houses wanted to launch their own app direct to consumer video services, whether it's a subscription service or kind of a transactional vod type of service. So this is where we started. We have huge mobile operators like telco customers that are using our platform for their white label Netflix like activities that they're distributing to customers. So think we, we are just maintaining massive catalogs of hundreds of thousands of hours of tv series and movies and, and we stream that to tens of millions of users every day. This is where we started. Okay, so video commerce is an opportunity that we've identified about four years ago because we saw what's happening in China and I said, okay, it's going to move. And I'm in the video business for like 20 years. I started when it was called broadcast, right? Tv stations, satellite, cable. Remember those days? Then ip and public Internet is used for streaming videos. I saw all these trends and then we always, throughout the whole years, spoke about the convergence of media and commerce. Okay? And we see this happening like in front of our eyes. I mean, just this year, the amount of announcement, for example, Walmart acquiring, acquiring visio, right? What's for a retailer and a tv service? Entertainment company, right? We see JP Morgan launching chase Media solution, Instacart partners with YouTube on Shoppable ads, Costco. I mean, all those retailers regret all media trying to utilize their inventory for advertising and for increase in income, like Best Buy and CNET. And we saw that, like, Instacart are now launching shoppable videos. So media, what we used to know is media entertainment is merging into commerce. So we see these big commerce companies are becoming content providers and media companies and the traditional media companies are becoming commerce companies. So we see this happening in front of our eyes. And this is the beauty. I mean, video is already like 85% of the worldwide Internet, right? And it will continue to grow. And it's such a powerful way to engage with users, create more emotional type of connection, definitely the live aspect of things. And it's a very, very powerful tool to differentiate today from competition that we know it's getting so difficult to create those differentiations. And video is, I think, the best tool to do that.

Eric Rutherford [17:22 - 17:57]: It is. And it's fascinating as you go through those relationships and those companies that are investing so much in honestly being able to have control over that whole purchasing pipeline, the whole funnel, to be able to deliver that as the brands you're seeing, is this primarily like d to c, direct to consumer? Is it more b, two c? Are you seeing any in the b two b space. I'd love to hear your perspective.

Eitan Koter [17:57 - 22:59]: Yes, we see it all over. Right. So obviously video is everywhere. It's also in health and education and training and customer support. But we are now discussing on the marketing and sales aspect of things. And it definitely works for b two b and b two c. But it's important, and this is what we try to teach brands, is to try to understand what type of content you create in each one of these marketing funnel stages, right? So if we can just, you know, just to simplify things, we talk about awareness stage, consideration stage and decision stage. So usually in awareness, if you're just launching a new brand or just launching an existing brand, launching a new collection, a new product, on that first awareness day, just focus on educational content. Don't stop, don't push product features and prices yet. Try to establish some foundation of a thought leader, someone who is providing value. Try to build a relationship first before you talk business, right. This is the way to do business these days. Provide whatever checklist or marketing information or like industry trends that are relevant for the industry. And when you move to consideration and people are starting to compare you with other alternatives. Yeah, provide all these comparison tools. Don't be afraid to compare yourself with competition, you know, like few years ago. I mean, you see all these versus blogs, right? Were produced by the affiliates, right? So they, they said, okay, here are the top 20 whatever video, live shopping platforms. And, but what we see now is the brands themselves or the vendors themselves are creating this listicle or this comparison tables because customers, they know everything, right? Like 85% of the sales process is done before even talking to the brand or even talking to the vendors. I mean, there's so much information out there, right? So during that consideration stage, don't be afraid to mention the competition. Talk about your unique perspectives, explain how you do things, provide some case studies. And when you are at the decision stage of the, of the funnel, this is where you need to just pitch prices, some product reviews, testimonials, right, just to create that final conversion step. And if you follow this process in a very structured way, you've built the foundation for, I mean, the psychological foundation for shoppers having the right sentiment towards your brand, because you started in a foundational phase, one where you're providing value created content, provided knowledge building trust, and then you move to provide all this other information that is just, you are helping them consolidate that information instead of them going to find for the other alternatives. So when you do that, it's provide huge value to them. And they respect that, right? Everybody knows that each one of the alternatives has different advantages and different features and capabilities. But if you consolidate all the information, is it true? And you're very honest about it, then it's really very powerful for that trust and loyalty to your brand. And then when they need to make the decision, they remember that and your conversion rates are going like really up. If you create content consistently on a daily basis, primarily around video, probably this is the, I would say the most efficient way to launch product these days. Like on social commerce, on your website, through video. Because launching on Amazon is going to be very, very difficult. It's not what it used to be ten years ago. It's so expensive, so competitive. It's very, very difficult. So if you want to launch, definitely start launch organically through videos. And don't be afraid. You don't always tell brands, you know, it needs to have and focus on this high end, polished, you know, high production value. It takes three months to prepare. No, what works working today is, is authenticity is differentiating. Is your true value that you provide short form videos. And I usually say, okay, create a list of 50 customer pains that you have. Any brand owner or marketeer should know how to do that in 30 minutes. If you don't know to write 50 customer pains, then you're in the wrong business. So once you have this 50 list of 50 panes, create videos from this 50. Just put yourself in front of a camera, good lighting, nice microphone. That's it. No one cares about the background. No one cares if you are beautiful or not beautiful. All they care is the value that they provide. Follow these steps around awareness, consideration, decision, and see what happens within two, three months. It's like crazy, crazy amazing. The results that customers are seeing, you know, sometime like 30%, 50% growth. And they can attribute, even if you create content on TikTok and there is zero business on TikTok, your business will grow on your own shopify. And you can attribute that because people watch your TikTok videos, right?

Eric Rutherford [22:59 - 23:00]: Wow.

Eitan Koter [23:00 - 23:01]: Yeah.

Eric Rutherford [23:01 - 23:28]: And I appreciate that perspective too, because again, it's depending, you know, as you're listening to this, depending on how long you've been in the marketplace, you know, it's, this is very different from, like you said, even five years ago, especially ten years ago, where it's moving into more, not as polished. It's. And that's, that's a, not only acceptable, that that's almost preferable.

Eitan Koter [23:28 - 23:28]: Yeah.

Eric Rutherford [23:28 - 23:48]: And the, and the other thing that I think is fascinating is it's now, based on what you're saying, like, this social aspect, this idea of social commerce seems like it's like foundational for businesses if they want to survive. Is that kind of what you're seeing?

Eitan Koter [23:48 - 25:56]: Yes. It's much more difficult to acquire a new customer to your own amazingbrand.com than just to find them on TikTok or Instagram or YouTube or Pinterest and just execute a transaction over there. Right. So just to give you some numbers, social commerce, $2,036.2 trillion business, right? It's up from 1.3 trillion in 2023. And this is worldwide numbers on a worldwide scale, it's only 13% of e commerce, but it's $6.2 trillion. Right. Like the US surpassed $1 trillion, like last year, I think. Right. And we are talking about 6.2 only on social commerce, like probably, you know, six years from now. So. And this is like a mega opportunity, obviously makes a lot of sense with competition is increasing and people are spending hours every day on social. And anyhow, e commerce is all about impulse purchase. So this is like next level of impulse purchase, right? You watch a video, you're intrigued and, and you make a purchase. And by the way, these videos needs to be exciting. It needs to have the right hook. Like people are making decision if you have to stay, continue watch to watch that video after like 2 seconds, right? Or 3 seconds. So this is why the hook is very, very powerful. I mean, all these best practices we teach, but they're obviously available, you know, over the web. So just using the right hook, making sure that you speak to the right, the right language, understand your customer language, like that word bank that your customers are using, make sure you create a video on that specific stage of the funnel. And I think that's the only way to grow organically today. And by the way, if one of those videos is performing really, really well, then yes, now take your advertising budget and PPC and now invest that money. But you know that the return on ad spend is going to be really, really good because that video is already performing, performing very, very well. That's the best way now to launch new products, organic video consistency, short form and push with advertising those videos that are working really, really well.

Eric Rutherford [25:56 - 26:34]: I like that in terms of especially like that idea, because it's easy, easier to create these short form videos, to be able to get this information out there, to be able to talk about the awareness, consideration and decision. But like you said, once you find the ones that are doing well, that's when you can really put the money into more in depth SEO pay per click. So it gives you a very low cost market research tool while you're building your brand awareness and trying to grow conversion.

Eitan Koter [26:35 - 27:44]: And we are providing all this data in the Vimi platform. We aggregate all the data from all the social channels in your own website and affiliates into one holistic dashboard. You see everything. Because video is such a powerful data input tool, right? I mean, the insights, we know so much when viewers start, when they stop from which device, you know, we have so much information, whether they check out yes or no. We can provide all these data to as dashboards. But also our AI is providing variety of recommendations about content, time of the day scripts, creating all these messaging campaigns or brands can reach out to users based on real data, real time data of what's really happened during the event. And then they can reach out with the very specialized offer, whether providing like an incentive for the loyalty program or for the discount, just to make sure to continue the discussion and the conversion activities that they do with customers. So this data is plugged in into the platform. It's really critical aspect of improving all these KPI's that we measure all the time.

Eric Rutherford [27:44 - 28:03]: That's huge, because again, it's, trying to aggregate the data on your own from multiple platforms is incredibly hard. It's just, it's a mess. Like, for everybody who's ever tried this, like, just, it's. It's like trying to deal with databases that don't like each other.

Eitan Koter [28:04 - 28:07]: Like, I call it the sad siloed. Right?

Eric Rutherford [28:07 - 28:58]: Yeah, it is, because all the data siloed. So if you're providing a bridge or a translator, in many cases in between those, then that takes a ton of work out of it. Let me ask you just a little bit more about TikTok. Because you talk about TikTok shop, talk about that purchasing through TikTok, I know there are many people who, who just know what that is like. They're very familiar with it. There are others who are like, you know, still think TikTok is all about weird dance videos. And so what, what are some, like, best practices, this idea of managing a successful TikTok shop? Because I know for some people, they have never heard tick tock shop.

Eitan Koter [28:59 - 33:26]: Yeah. So just to give some foundational numbers and data about TikTok. Right. So TikTok are planning this year, just in the US, to hit $17.5 billion in terms of GMV in 2024. Okay. 2023, it was eleven. Okay. So, like a substantial growth. Right? So the amount of TikTok shops that are opening every day is huge, right? There's a lot of focus. I mean, look at those agencies that are working with TikTok. You can't even schedule a call with them. They are so busy because people understand that this is where organically they can make substantial progress, which is difficult to do in any of the other platforms. TikTok us has the highest number of users worldwide. And then of course, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico. But in terms of the US, that's the major focus that they have, obviously. And they are creating a lot of activities in the market, like providing incentives for brands, helping them with onboarding, helping them with contacting. Like there is a built in affiliate marketplace. Like an influencer creator, you can search for influencers in your niche, within the TikTok environment, and which you just ship the product and they can create videos from you and just, you pay them commission, right? So these are like certified inferences where brands can immediately source a and start creating videos. And of course, the TikTok shop aspect of it, it means that you need to create product pages inside TikTok, right? You have a full shop, like inside TikTok product pages. Influencers are creating content. You as a brand can create content, whether you have in house creators or you use your internal team as sellers. And if you're using influencers, they are creating those videos and product explanations and obviously on their own account, on the influencer account, promoting that video to their audience. But they are adding a link. When you, when you click that link during the, when you watch the video, it will redirect you to the product page within that brand's TikTok shop account. Okay? And this is where you can create full checkout. You just, whether you use your Amazon pay or Google Pay or credit card, TikTok will take 6%. Now it's growing to eight. It will grow to twelve again, depending on different niches, but they will take their shares. And from the brand perspective, you can define fulfillment in few ways. So there is like fulfilled by TikTok. Okay? Like FBT, so similar to Amazon, like fulfilled by Amazon. So you can have a full fulfillment, like warehousing shipping done by TikTok. That's the first priority. First option. Sorry. The second option is whether you're with any of the three pls or any of the warehousing shipping companies, you can connect them to the platform or use any other shipping. So there is no obligation in terms of how TikTok wants you to ship products. But you must check out in TikTok right. That's, they will not redirect you back to your shopify. It's not allowed. You must check, I mean, users must check out in, within TikTok or through the Amazon partnership that they just announced. And this is how you, you manage it. It takes a while to open that shop on TikTok because they will ask you a lot of cash questions, a lot of documentation that you need to send. But once that shop is available, then you have full access to it and you have the ability to launch these product pages and create all these activities and work with the affiliates and everything. So anyone out there who is listening and needs help, we have a department within Vimmi that is helping with all the TikTok shop setup and ongoing management. And of course, they reach out to influencers and creating all this influencer content. So in addition to our technology platform, we hear a lot from customers that they say, okay, we know that video works, we want to do TikTok, we want to do Instagram reels, we know it's fine, but how do we do that? The technology platform is great. We need help with the content creation. This is why we've developed this widely of professional services where we help you with setting up and launching your TikTok shop and managing it, and also managing the outreach and campaigns to influencers. So we can provide a full package, content plus tech in kind of a winning combo.

Eric Rutherford [33:27 - 34:39]: That's huge because with so many social platforms, you know, they, their goal is to keep you on platform, right. And so when you introduce things, whether it's links, whether it's whatever, that in order to get people off platform, like all of the socials, like, that doesn't help you. Like, that's really hard. So in this case, with the TikTok shop, since it's all on TikTok, they are happy to let you do that and build that because they know you're staying on platform, right. You're staying within the TikTok sphere. It sounds like then a big difference in some ways with TikTok and with like, Facebook, Instagram is where Facebook, Instagram, like, they seem to be pushing more of just straight advertising and it's harder to get in front of people. TikTok seems to be taking a very different approach very much. It's more organic growth, but then we're not going to fill your feed with ads. We're going to actually, we'll make our money from a transaction, but we're happy to bring all those people together.

Eitan Koter [34:39 - 35:32]: Yeah. And like meta, I'm hearing they're going to announce also something big in terms of shoppable, by the way, the. That still, I think TikTok is not the largest out there. In terms of total gmv. I think total gmv is still on Instagram side and YouTube, just on YouTube. People are providing those links. Right. And the notes. Right. So this is credited to YouTube. And with Instagram is just tagging products, putting links on stories. Obviously, we have the Facebook shop. Right? And the marketplace, which is, again, number one, the US. But yeah, I mean, TikTok is, is moving forward. So, like, already 55 million TikTok users in the US shop for something on the platform. That's like 37%. Like 40% of existing TikTok user already made a purchase on ticks. Okay.

Eric Rutherford [35:33 - 35:52]: 40% of existing TikTok users have made a purchase through TikTok. I just had to repeat that and say that again for everybody listening, because this is not something that can be ignored. If you want your business to succeed.

Eitan Koter [35:52 - 35:54]: You want more exciting data.

Eric Rutherford [35:54 - 35:55]: Yeah. Hit me with it.

Eitan Koter [35:55 - 36:20]: Okay. 70% of TikTok users admit they purchase something they just stumbled upon in one of the videos without even planning to purchase it. 70% of TikTok users. Right. So that's. That's crazy, right? That's the impulse purchase I told you about. Next generation impulse purchase through video. This is what I mean. Okay, wow.

Eric Rutherford [36:20 - 36:36]: So you get the. You get the impulse purchase. Do you know if. Are these like, hey, this video just popped into my feed. I've never seen this person before. And suddenly, oh, okay, that looks good. I'm gonna watch it or I'm gonna buy it.

Eitan Koter [36:36 - 37:39]: I want to buy it. And this is primarily Gen Z's. Right? They make purchase decision probably different than the other generations. Right? So TikTok today is primarily Gen Zs and millennials. Right? So. And more generation coming into the platform. But Gen Zs, first, they see this as a recommendation platform, because if they see some influencers, some friends, I mean, the purchase, they most likely going to purchase it, right. That social commerce that we talked before has another definition. The first definition is brands placing their products on social. For shoppers to purchase on social. Right? That's social commerce. But there's another aspect to social commerce, and that's you as a shopper is aware that your friend has purchased something on a platform and they gave a recommendation. So there is high intent that you will make that purchase as well. Okay. Because that's the other social commerce aspect definition, right?

Eric Rutherford [37:39 - 38:10]: Yeah. So you get that social metric, the approval, the recommendation, it's a game changer in terms of how purchases are being made. And I thought that was important, though, that you brought up the Gen Z, where it's primarily Gen Z, and yet every day, more and more Gen Z. Like, they have the purchasing power.

Eitan Koter [38:10 - 38:19]: Yeah. I think they already surpassed 30% of the purchasing power. Right. I mean, they're getting bigger and bigger in terms of the total pie of entire purchase.

Eric Rutherford [38:19 - 38:38]: Yeah. So, like, this is where it's going. Like, this is the direction. We're not going backwards. This is the direction it's going. So really, for brands to, to succeed, they really need to embrace this, whether. I know some don't want to, but it doesn't matter. Like, this is where it's at.

Eitan Koter [38:38 - 39:36]: Yeah. And it's all influencer based. So if you follow, they know those influencers. Okay. They know them. And they saw that. They see them in one of the videos recommending products. So they make a purchase. It's a different decision. I mean, the decision process to make a purchase is totally different than what we, what we are used to. And you see that. Like stormy steel, we've analyzed, we created a case study. She sold $1 million in 1 hour of TikTok live products. And I think since then, the record has broken. I think there was another one, I don't remember the name right now. Already sold $2 million in 1 hour of TikTok Live. Right. So the numbers are starting to grow substantially. I mean, the amount of business volume you can generate within 1 hour of live show. And if you do that. Right, and if you do the right planning, pre event, during the event, and post event, you can hit millions of dollars in one event if you do try again. Influencer.

Eric Rutherford [39:37 - 39:40]: Yeah. Like companies. No. You haven't been able to do that before.

Eitan Koter [39:41 - 39:54]: No. Only maybe just a fire sale or some crazy discount or something of that sort, which doesn't make a lot of sense anymore. Right. But then you have this new way of doing business, which is why it's so powerful.

Eric Rutherford [39:54 - 40:11]: It is. And in doing these things, it's not like even you're, like you say, this isn't necessarily even doing sales. This is just like, we're going live for an hour and we're talking about this. And it could be limited time offers. It could just be a big promotion. It could be any.

Eitan Koter [40:11 - 42:01]: And the beauty is that what we see, that the most successful events are hosted by the brand employees or owner. If you bring someone to, like a celebrity or some influencer or some creator to host a live event, it's very difficult, because it's very difficult to captivate the audience for half an hour, 20 minutes. Think about it. It's very difficult to make it interesting. And sometimes you don't know how to answer the question. And they can figure this out in like ten milliseconds that you're not authentic and you're not for real and it's finished. But if the brand owner is doing this event and maybe he's executive and what we call EGC, employee generated content, this is very, very powerful, because then you can see the company culture, you can see that are obviously very strong in understanding the product, can answer question very, very fast. And that has a huge impact in conversion rates. Right? And like, 50% of TikTok users already made a purchase in TikTok Live because these are very powerful type of events. And what happens, the TikTok encourage you to keep those live sessions for at least 2 hours for the algorithm to work in your favor. So this is how they encourage you to start doing TikTok live. And just not just 15 minutes or 20 minutes, 2 hours. So if you, if you go in there, like spending 2 hours again in 2 hours, you can sell a lot of products, you can replace different people, you can plan it very, very nicely, and you don't have to be, every event should be 2 hours. But as long as you are going to be on TikTok Live, they're going to expose you to more and more markets and more and more audiences. So why not? It's, it's worth it.

Eric Rutherford [42:01 - 42:27]: It is. And it's because in this case, it is, it's beneficial to TikTok because people are staying on platform. People are going to make purchases through the platform, which helps TikTok. So they are happy to promote you and make, and the algorithm will keep your brand out there. So the longer you go, the more engaged people will be. So that's, that's huge.

Eitan Koter [42:27 - 43:28]: By the way, I can, I can just give you, like, the other parts of the world, we work in Asia, and in Asia, the majority of e commerce is not on your amazingbrand.com, it's on marketplaces and social. Okay, so, for example, if you're a brand and you go, want to go online, you don't launch a Shopify store, you open a TikTok shop. That's the first thing that you do, right? So, like in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, when, when people are talking about e commerce, they talk about TikTok, right? And maybe Facebook shop. This is like, by far, like 80% of the ecommerce volume is on these platforms. Why? Because they bring you customers. You can build an amazing Shopify plus, you know, storefront and invest in storefront, but who knows about it? You need to start doing marketing in TikTok. You launch your shop. Right? You start doing these shoppable videos and doing event, and TikTok are bringing you the audiences. That's. That's a really interesting proposition, which you cannot find anywhere out there.

Eric Rutherford [43:29 - 43:40]: No. And, like, I'm just kind of thinking back, like, there is no channel platform, even network, that does that.

Eitan Koter [43:40 - 43:40]: Yeah.

Eric Rutherford [43:40 - 44:08]: I mean, because it's always, I mean, even, even when you think of something as sort of as traditional as network television, like, it's all about advertising and then, oh, well, whatever the viewer, you know, it's up to them. Whereas this, like, the goal of TikTok sounds like they want you to succeed and they're going to help you succeed, whereas everybody else's. We just want your money.

Eitan Koter [44:08 - 44:34]: Exactly. And, you know, TikTok is on the number one priority, and this is what they do. The platform today is a shopping platform and everything is aligned to that. And we know, like, Facebook is social network, it's something else. They have other priorities and definitely Instagram and, you know, YouTube is. They're not shopping platform as a first priority. Right. They're doing many, many other things and this is why it's really different. And this is how they're capturing big chunks of the market all over the world.

Eric Rutherford [44:34 - 44:57]: That's huge. And that's a big paradigm shift, especially for a lot of people in the US who don't think of TikTok that way. But it sounds like that's where it's at. And so, especially if you're doing b, two, c, if you're doing direct to consumer, you're doing any of those, and it sounds like this is the place you need to be. And if you're not, your competition is.

Eitan Koter [44:57 - 45:27]: Yeah. I mean, I think that people are smart and well educated. I mean, they know everything that we've just discussed. Right. But they have other priorities. They need to allocate some time. There is a less room for innovation and opening new channels these days to just focus on making the strong stronger because of the focus on profitability. Right. So this is what we see. Right. Not a question of if they want to do that, it's probably when they're going to do that. Just a matter of other priorities.

Eric Rutherford [45:27 - 45:39]: Wow, this is fascinating. Let me just ask, any last takeaway you want to leave people before we wrap up? Just, it could be anything in this space. Any takeaways?

Eitan Koter [45:39 - 47:29]: Yeah, I mean, just don't be afraid of video, because video today needs to be authentic, needs to be fast, and needs to be consistent. So posting daily, creators video don't spend too much time on high production studios. And it's not the issue these days. The issue these days is short form videos answering customer pains. Make sure to provide the right content on these different stages of the marketing funnel and you'll be very, very much surprised. It's so worth it. I mean, the amount of effort versus the income and the revenues and the customer loyalty and the whole brand perception is going to change so much. So go for authenticity. I mean, TikTok help us a lot understand that authenticity and short form, using hooks and creating opportunity for impulse purchases is the right way to go organically. Probably the only place that you can scale. And yeah, I mean, anything that we at Vimi can help you in terms of brainstorming or trying to understand how to work with our platform, it's very easy. Just go to vimi.net, that's vitamin.net. you can open an account. We have a free package as well. And the basic package starts at $149. So it's, I think, a reasonable price for all and you get all the functionalities. Shoppable video, live shopping, social commerce. The only difference in our packages is just the volume of videos within, within each and every one of them. I also post daily on LinkedIn, so a lot of video commerce, video marketing, social commerce topics. So you can find me on LinkedIn at ethancotter eitanter. And yes, we would love to speak, we'd love to to work with you and helping you during the transition to video commerce.

Eric Rutherford [47:29 - 47:57]: I love it. So if you're listening, we're going to drop all those links in the show notes. Make sure you reach out to aten, make sure you check out Vimmi. Hey Aten. This has been incredibly informative and just helping me personally understand kind of the marketplace and understand Vimmi. So I know if it's helping me, it is definitely helping our audience. So thanks for joining me today. This has been fun.

Eitan Koter [47:57 - 47:59]: Yes, Eric, thank you so much.