Julia Rubien is the Founder and CEO of Amie, a TikTok agency dedicated to helping beauty brands grow and thrive in one of the fastest-moving platforms today. Under Julia’s leadership, Amie has become both a TikTok Marketing Partner and a TikTok Shop Partner, making them one of the go-to agencies for brands that want to convert attention into real revenue. She and her team specialize in creating original and trending content, running highly effective TikTok ad campaigns, and building engaged communities that feel authentic and connected. Her work has helped beauty brands not only showcase their products but also turn TikTok into a true virtual storefront, driving measurable growth.

Highlight Bullets

> Here’s a glimpse of what you would learn….

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley interviews Julia Rubien, founder and CEO of Amie, a TikTok agency for beauty brands. Julia shares expert strategies for succeeding on TikTok Shop, emphasizing the importance of optimized shop operations, high-volume affiliate marketing, original brand content, and robust ad campaigns. She highlights the need for significant investment, tailored promotions, and a holistic, coordinated approach. Julia also offers actionable tips for brands to build momentum and scale effectively on TikTok Shop, while sharing insights from her own experience and agency work.

Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:

Special Mention(s):

Related Episode(s):

Episode Sponsor

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures.

I started Hadley Designs in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.

I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.

If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then go to www.EcommBreakthrough.com (that’s Ecomm with two M’s) to learn more.

Julia Rubien 00:00:00  These are the moving parts we need to work on, and we need to work on them all at the same time. So I would say that, you know, every client’s shop strategy is going to be a little bit different depending on the product, the price point, the brand, the where they’re at in their growth journey. But the advice that I could give every listener and every single brand is that.

Intro 00:00:27  Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast. Are you ready to unlock the full potential and growth in your business? You’ve already crossed seven figures in sales, but the challenge is knowing how to take your business to the next level.

Josh Hadley 00:00:41  Do you want to know how to generate more sales on TikTok shop and increase the number of views that your videos get on TikTok? Well, today’s guest has mastered turning TikTok into a community driven sales machine. Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley. I scaled my own brand from 0 to 8 figures in sales, and now my mission is to take it to over nine figures on my journey to nine figures.

Josh Hadley 00:01:07  I bring you the unfiltered conversations with the smartest minds in eCommerce. Past guests include Kevin King, Michael E Gerber, author of The Myth and Aaron Cordova’s. Today. I am excited to welcome a guest who is truly shaping the future of e-commerce through the power of TikTok. Julia Rubien is the founder and CEO of Amie, a TikTok agency dedicated to helping beauty brands grow and thrive in one of the fastest moving platforms today. Under Julia’s leadership, Amy has become both a TikTok marketing partner and a TikTok shop partner, making them one of the go to agencies for brands that want to convert attention into real revenue. She and her team specialize in creating original and trending content running highly effective TikTok ad campaigns and building engage communities that feel authentic and connected. Her work has truly helped beauty brands not only showcase their products, but also turn TikTok into a true virtual storefront, driving measurable growth. With that introduction, welcome to the show, Julia.

Julia Rubien 00:02:15  Hi. It’s so good to see you.

Julia Rubien 00:02:17  Thank you for having me.

Josh Hadley 00:02:19  It’s a pleasure to have you on the show. TikTok is obviously on everybody’s mind right now, so having an expert like yourself on the show is always very valuable to the listeners. And I know the listeners are super excited to get to know you and the strategies that you’re employing on TikTok as we push into a more social commerce driven world, into a more agent commerce driven world. Suffice it to say, e-commerce as we know it is going to drastically change over the next 3 to 5 years. And I feel like you were at the forefront of that right now, and I look forward to diving into all things social commerce with you today.

Julia Rubien 00:03:01  Yeah, TikTok shop is really taking off. And I think social commerce is it’s the big theme of of 2025. And then especially going into 2026, I feel like that’s what everybody is working on talking about. And everyone’s favorite brands, whether you see them on TikTok shop now or not. They’re all gearing up right now to make a big push on shop in 2026.

Josh Hadley 00:03:26  So with that being said, Julia, you’ve got a bunch of listeners who already have successful e-commerce brands, whether they’re on Shopify or Amazon, but for most of them, TikTok shop is brand new. You’re also having a lot of clients that come to your agency to say, hey, I want to succeed on TikTok shop. So with that being the question, hey, how do I help my brand scale on TikTok shop? How do you answer that question?

Julia Rubien 00:03:53  It’s it’s a huge question. And I think brands are often like underprepared for how many facets go into TikTok shop. so we get this a lot in our consults. TikTok shop is so new that there’s not. I wouldn’t say the knowledge is common to have in-house, and so that’s why brands right now are outsourcing to an agency, because the knowledge is quite niche. And, you know, to put it bluntly, no one really not a lot of people know what they’re doing on shop. And I think there’s this expectation that you turn on your shop and you immediately just get this flood of sales that come in, you know, that you’re immediately going to have this million dollar a month revenue channel.

Julia Rubien 00:04:34  And that’s just not the case. There are so many facets to shop, and I think some of them, some of them are expected, some of them are unexpected. And shock really works when all of those things come together. So what we do in consults, when we have a client come to us who is just starting out on shop, is one of the first things is to sit down and say, these are the moving parts we need to work on, and we need to work on them all at the same time. So I would say that, you know, every client’s shop strategy is going to be a little bit different depending on the product, the price point, the brand, the where they’re at in their growth journey. But the advice that I could give every listener and every single brand is that you need these four pillars, no matter who you are, no matter what you’re doing, you need these four pillars to be successful in shop. And we can we can dive into those together.

Josh Hadley 00:05:26  I love it. Well, I look forward to diving into those four pillars. So with that being said, Julia, what are the four pillars that you need to have on TikTok shop in order to succeed as a new brand there?

Julia Rubien 00:05:38  Yeah, so the first one and we call this cleaning house is shop operations or shop merchandising. So kind of intuitively right. You’re setting up a brand new storefront. It’s similar. If you were to set up a brand new website, you don’t want to put the cart before the horse, right? You’re not going to go out and do all these marketing campaigns if your website is not even optimized for a purchase. So everything starts with that foundation of shop operations. The misconception, though, is that shop operations is just connecting your Shopify to your TikTok shop. And it’s it’s so much more than that, right? There’s a merchandising strategy that’s involved. It’s how are we bundling? How are we doing TikTok shop exclusives? Are we offering GW s what is the promotional strategy, the discount strategy? Even something as seemingly simple as jazzing up your homepage just the same way that somebody would land on your DTC site and they would see all kinds of call outs that would compel them to purchase or look further into your shop.

Julia Rubien 00:06:41  Same thing as with TikTok shop. You want to have a really strong homepage that calls out all your most exclusive bundles your best sellers. So it’s so much more than. Of course, you know, you’d want to make sure you don’t have violations, but it’s so much more than that. Your shop health is really, really important, and it really sets the foundation for the algorithm to pick up on your shop. And it sets the foundation for all the other work we’re going to do. but if you really want to go above and beyond, it’s, it’s even more than shop health. It’s making your shop an attractive offering to somebody who lands on it.

Josh Hadley 00:07:17  Love it. So really it’s there’s there’s a lot that goes into it. And I think those that started their brands on Amazon, they’re familiar with that aspect where it’s like, what are you doing with your main images? What are you doing with your bullet points, your title? You also have to be, you know, you have to be compliant on Amazon and your account health score on Amazon.

Josh Hadley 00:07:38  And how are you fulfilling everything. So really like I, I love what you said there. It’s kind of it’s not necessarily new. It’s a new platform, but the role that’s required to kind of like get it established is very similar to what you probably already had on Amazon, maybe a Shopify, but like a Walmart as well. It’s just kind of like general ops and merchandising strategy. So I would say, tell me if I’m wrong. I think this is one where you could go grab somebody that did a good job over at Amazon merchandising, strategy, account ops, and almost bring them in here and say, hey, we’re going to figure this one out, too. It’s just a new marketplace, but apply a lot of those same best principles and practices over there. But now to TikTok, would you agree with that?

Julia Rubien 00:08:27  Yeah, I would say I would say that’s pretty accurate. I think the the knowledge is quite similar. And it’s the same thing. It’s optimizing your product page. It’s making sure that the algorithm is picking up on your listing.

Julia Rubien 00:08:39  I would say the other important thing here that we’ve noticed is so we work with beauty brands. And beauty brands as you know, have a lot of shades of one. of one product and a mistake that we see often in shop operations that affects the outcome is they’ll make a different listing for every single shade. And it’s really hard for us to drive all the traffic to one listing, which is what we want to do, because we want the algorithm to look at that listing and say this, for whatever reason, is a really popular listing, and we want to serve it to the TikTok users. Now, if you have every single shade or every single iteration, in a different listing, the problem is you’re fracturing that traffic. So that’s another thing that we want to do, is we want to put different variations on. And I think this is very common on Amazon, which is why I bring it up. You want to take those different variations and put it on one listing to make sure that you have the most favorable chance with the algorithm that’s possible.

Julia Rubien 00:09:37  And you want to also minimize your catalog on TikTok shop, and you want it to feel more like a curation. And I think that’s the other mistake is brands will put the whole catalog on when they start shop. And it’s oftentimes more advantageous to just choose, you know, we say maybe 3 to 5 and maybe, you know, really lean in to 2 to 3 hero products and really make it feel curated. But focusing more on the offer, like those bundles, the GWP, the TikTok shop exclusive shades, the early launches, rather than just putting your whole your whole catalog on shop and crossing your fingers and hoping for the best.

Josh Hadley 00:10:21  Talk to me a little bit more. You mentioned you threw out some words. So GWP, let’s talk about what that is. Let’s also talk about bundle strategy. Let’s also talk about like TikTok exclusives or early launches. So talk to me about maybe there’s a brand that they’re already successful on Amazon. But they want to come over here to Tik Tok shop? How do you recommend they they bridge that gap of new platform.

Josh Hadley 00:10:47  But TikTok wants its own uniqueness and originality. So talk to me about like best practices, bundles, exclusives, etc..

Julia Rubien 00:10:57  Yeah. And this is this is really top of mind for us because we work with, beauty brands at Sephora and Ulta and in particular, those beauty brands are quite, discount shy. and, you know, they would rather drive value in other ways. And so bundles in GWP, which is gift with purchase is a tool that we leverage instead of being so discount driven. Because a lot of these beauty brands, they want to hold on to this sort of prestige, and they don’t want that to be chipped away by the discounts and the pricing. So just offering extra added value. So we might bundle two best sellers together to increase the AOV. we might launch an exclusive shade of something on TikTok shop. We might launch a new product early, just even by a couple of days on TikTok shop. GWP is really popular if you can do. I mean, in our case with beauty brands, it could be a piece of merch, like a makeup pouch.

Julia Rubien 00:11:57  It could also be a mini travel size or a sample so that they get it, and it compels them to buy something else and continue on that journey with the brand. So I think there’s a number of ways that we can drive added value while still increasing the AOV, while not necessarily being so discount and promotion heavy.

Josh Hadley 00:12:19  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So I’m curious though, if you bundle something together, what once was maybe a $30 product and now you’re bundling it $230 products together, maybe you could offer it for $50. It’s a better value now, but how does that impact the customer or the virality of it. Right? Because I would argue the higher the price point on TikTok shop, probably the less impulse purchases you’re going to get. so how do you kind of navigate that? Do you see any correlation? Or maybe I’m just that high off the sizing, something that doesn’t exist? Are you saying? Actually, no. The bundles work great, even though it’s $50 instead of 30 on its own.

Josh Hadley 00:13:02  We’re seeing, like, things take off really quickly.

Julia Rubien 00:13:06  Well, I think the bundles are great because what brands are then able to do with the bundle is whereas they couldn’t maybe have put a discount on the single SKU, they can put a discount on the bundle. And then the algorithm picks up that this is a this is a on flash sale. This is a discounted product. And I think that’s why there’s a strategy to that bundle. Right. We’re not just bundling random things, but we’re looking at historically. What are your best sellers on TikTok? What are the most popular products? What are your hero SKUs? And we’re strategically bundling those hero SKUs. I would say that bundling is one of those things that it it really. We see a about a 30 to $50 range is like that sweet spot on TikTok shop. There are brands and that’s why I’m hesitating. There are brands that we’ve worked with that are higher than that, that we’ve made successful. But generally for most people, listening like you want to hit in that 30 to 50 range and that counts with your bundles as well.

Julia Rubien 00:14:06  So your example is great that if you bundle two things that go to $60 and you can discount to 50, then you are within that price range and you’re using a discount that. Then the algorithm says, you know what, this is a product that we want to push out because the TikTok shop user, there’s ways around it, but they are to some extent still always primed to get some sort of value or deal off the platform, just like the Amazon customer is.

Josh Hadley 00:14:34  So do you think that as part of your strategy and the merchandising strategy, like implementing flash sales, right. And joining all of TikTok’s like sale campaigns is like essential, an essential component of like being able to go viral and get like noticed by the by the platform.

Julia Rubien 00:14:54  Yeah. So I think participating in as many promos as possible in the flash sales, of course, is going to help the brand’s chances of getting picked up algorithmically. The tricky part is when you in in real life, have a client who doesn’t want to do all the flash sales and promotions.

Julia Rubien 00:15:10  I think that’s where it is possible to participate in the promotions and not necessarily discount. So you can sign up and participate, but not necessarily discount or discount very, very, very small and just take a couple of dollars off. So that’s usually what we recommend in that case is, you know, you don’t have to go crazy and do a 40% off discount to participate in every promotion. You can sign up and participate for every promotion just to show up and get picked up, but not necessarily give the craziest discount. We can just take a little bit off.

Josh Hadley 00:15:45  Yeah. Awesome. Makes a lot of sense. All right. Anything else to add Julia to operations side. Pillar number one. Operations. Merchandising.

Julia Rubien 00:15:55  Yeah, I think I think from there, you’re ready for pillar number two. Which two and three can kind of they work together. So imagine pillar number one shop merchandising as the foundation. The next two pillars are kind of side by side, which is you’re going to need to become a content engine.

Julia Rubien 00:16:13  You’re going to need content velocity. because you’re going to also have to drive sales velocity. Velocity. You’re also going to need content recency. And that’s something that we also talk about with clients that you need a constant influx of new content. So a lot of brands are overwhelmed by? Where am I possibly going to get all of this content? And really, content is what drives the TikTok shop machine forward. Everything is done off of the content. I think it’s something like 85% of all TikTok shop sales come from that short video content, and you just need so much of it. So there’s two separate sources our agency assists with in generating that content, the first one being affiliate marketing, and that’s the one that everyone goes to first, of course. And that’s where you want to scale your affiliate community, make sure affiliates keep being incentivized to post for you, and that you’re also getting more than just like one piece of content, that you’re generating several pieces of content from each affiliate, and you just have a lot of volume that will funnel directly into your ad campaigns.

Julia Rubien 00:17:22  The other way that you can get content and this is kind of underrated, is your brand makes shoppable content, and I don’t think the answer is either or. I think the answer is both. I think both are important to have because you need to have the affiliate. But what we do on the affiliate side is so much stronger when the brand is also generating its own original shoppable content. So I’ll let you pick which one you want to dive into first, the affiliate or the brand own content.

Josh Hadley 00:17:51  Yeah, let’s dive into the affiliate content, because I think that’s what people are most familiar with. And I think you’re your point about like, hey, you have to have a lot of content, and it also needs to be recent content just because you got a lot of videos three months ago. That’s not overly helpful, right? Because like, TikTok is like a content like beast. Like it feeds off of new content being uploaded there. So I’m curious, Julia, how do you incentivize these affiliates that you’re giving out a sample to to post more than just one video?

Julia Rubien 00:18:23  You do contests, you can do flat fees.

Julia Rubien 00:18:26  I think flat fees also is something we can. We can dive into because there’s also a misconception commonly on consoles that we get. Which is I can just sample my product out to the affiliate and they will post for me, and all will be well. And I think as affiliate marketing evolves and it matures on TikTok, shop affiliates are being reached by hundreds of sellers and DM’d. And when we’ve spoken to affiliates in our community one on one, they’re often overwhelmed by just how many sellers reach out to them, and they couldn’t possibly service everyone who’s reaching out, because every brand, to some extent, is expected to outreach thousands of affiliates a month. And so there’s a ton of overlap between everyone outreaching the same affiliates, and then those affiliates just have an overwhelming amount of DMs. So flat fees is it brings in a tool of traditional influencer marketing, right? Like how do you get an influencer to post guarantee you give them a flat fee and then they’ll post on their account. I think with affiliate marketing, it doesn’t have to be as crazy large as influencer marketing is.

Julia Rubien 00:19:35  Sometimes it is. There are some affiliates who have gotten so popular on TikTok shop that now they do charge influencer rates in addition to commission. But generally, when we’re talking about affiliates, you can get away with maybe 5000 a month at the beginning when you’re getting out of cold start, just to help affiliates start to spin the flywheel and generate that first batch of momentum and content so it can be, you know, $50 a TikTok, $100 a TikTok, plus the commission. So I think flat fees are a great tool. Maybe not. When you’re in the mature stage, you don’t necessarily need it unless you want one of those superstar affiliates. But if you’re thinking about launching shop in 2026 and you’re just starting out, flat fees can be a really effective tool to get that flywheel moving.

Josh Hadley 00:20:23  And are you saying like you’re paying per video. Like, what are the flat fees? Look like? I’ve heard people charge as little as like, hey, it’s it’s 100 or $200 for, you know, 30 videos for the month.

Josh Hadley 00:20:36  Are you saying, like, I’m seeing that be a lot more expensive? What’s the going rate right now that you would have people budget for?

Julia Rubien 00:20:43  Well, you’d have to ask our affiliate manager. She manages all of that directly. But I would say I would say you definitely want to ask for multiple pieces from that flat rate, whatever you’re offering, you know, and I give it a shot. I think it could be like 100, 200. And I think you can get at least like three videos from that. But, you know, you and I both know there have been we’ve run experiments where we’ve tried to see how much content can we get at what pricing. And I think that’s the thing is, there’s nothing really super established on shop. There’s not a an industry wide rate per se. I think it’s just you try and find the right affiliates and those affiliates want to work with you, and then you go from there and then you see what what rates work for both of you, what works within your budget and what works for them.

Julia Rubien 00:21:33  But I think definitely you want to be getting multiple videos to test from them. You want to be getting a batch. And you can also do that through contests and other different incentives. I think the name of the game too, which is lesser talked about, but it’s becoming increasingly more prevalent, is looking at the content quality of those affiliates. So I think a year ago it used to be let’s just, you know, sample everybody and whatever content we get and we get in. And I think now there’s this added element and that’s where the flat fee comes into play too. There’s this added element of content quality that you don’t want the affiliate to just make any video. You actually want them to make a quality branded video that you can run as an ad. So the flat fee also helps in that regard, that not only does it secure that you might get 3 to 5 videos from that affiliate? But also we’re now able to brief them. We’re now able to give them direction the same way we would give an influencer direction and let them know, you know, what should you wear? What should you say? How should you film this product? and they appreciate it because at the end of the day, the affiliates are trying to make sales, so they don’t always necessarily know the best content format that drives the most conversions.

Julia Rubien 00:22:50  So us on the back end, we have that information and we can share it with them and tell them that when you take this lip gloss and you shine a flashlight at it and you show the shimmer for whatever reason, that always drives the highest conversion, and there you go. And so they don’t waste time trying different things. You can just go straight to the content format and concept that’s going to drive purchase.

Josh Hadley 00:23:12  Awesome. And what’s the best way you do that? Just in like a simple creative brief, like it’s a one page document type of thing that you share with them then?

Julia Rubien 00:23:20  Yes.

Josh Hadley 00:23:21  So we have one on one calls with the creators. What? What does it look like at scale?

Julia Rubien 00:23:26  Honestly, all of the above. So definitely everybody’s getting a creative brief and the interesting I’ll give you a little secret that we do. But basically I think everybody sends these big PDF documents and that’s fine. And we still do that as well. But what we found really effective is if you can make just like a one, like one page image, maybe it’s like a little bit long, you just design these things in Canva that you can put into the DM, so they don’t even have to click to see the brief.

Julia Rubien 00:23:58  They open the DM and they already have the brief and all the information without having to open a PDF or download something, or click another link or click into a notion or whatever it is, they can just see it right in the message. We just want to eliminate friction as much as possible for affiliates to help them. So yeah, you can do a PDF. There’s nothing wrong with that. We still make big PDFs with a lot of information for affiliates who just crave a little bit more. But we also make these digestible, bite sized briefs. If you don’t want to spend a lot of time digging through all the information, and then I think when it comes to calls, that’s important as well. Like you want to engage your affiliate community. So we do brand to create our trainings, where we get our client brands to actually sit on a call with our creators and share about their brand and get them excited. And you would be surprised how engaged that makes the creators. You think it’s simple to just get on a zoom and talk about your brand, but it’s so meaningful to them to connect with the founders or the people leading the brand and to learn more from the brand itself.

Julia Rubien 00:25:04  And then we do agency to create our trainings. So the agency to create our trainings, those are great because we’re giving real learnings to the affiliates about what’s converting hooks to use much more specific than the brand. I think the brand is just giving the overarching brand story the agency we’re telling you the camera settings to film on. We’re telling you how long it should be. We’re telling you what the background should look like. We’re giving you examples of content. We’ve seen work really well in the past, so I think you want to do this 360 approach to affiliates, where you engage them on calls, you engage them in discord, you engage them through DMs. You send them a ton of resources, big and small. and you really forge a partnership with this community.

Josh Hadley 00:25:51  Yeah. No, I love that. And I think my final question here is if you have a lot of people reaching out to sample your product, do you feel like you need to be selective and say, like, I only work with creators that have produced over $10,000 in GMV over the last month? Or do you feel like, actually, we’re willing to take on people that are maybe new to TikTok shop or new affiliates? How do you manage that? And saying, hey, how many samples do we want to give out? What creators do we want to work with? Do you exclusively work with like, nope, only proven creators? Or do you give some people a shot at the same time?

Julia Rubien 00:26:29  I think that really depends on the brand where I will say everybody, there’s such a strength in creators who have not had historical GMV yet because like we all know, like it’s a lottery that we play every day.

Julia Rubien 00:26:45  And I think you can get really good rates off of creators who make really good content but just haven’t hit the lottery yet. And you might be the person to hit the lottery with them, and then they become one of your brand’s best advocates. So for sure, I think everybody should. Maybe instead of looking at GMV purely as the only metric as to whether or not I’m going to sample this creator, also look at is this is this creator a fit? That’s the other thing we want to look at. Is this creator a fit for the brand? So GMV is one component, but also is this someone that we could partner with. And in that regards, maybe somebody doesn’t have the historical GMB, but they have quality content and you know that they fit your audience and your demographic. On the flip side, there are brands where they’re at a place where they do need a really big affiliate with historical. They need somebody who just sells to put them on the map. And so there’s a time and a place for that strategy to when you might be spending more to get into a partnership with a bigger TikTok shop affiliate.

Julia Rubien 00:27:49  So I think the answer is both depending on where you are in your brand situation, maybe if you’re starting out, it’s obviously more affordable to try those micro creators than those creators who have not had a ton of historical GMV to date. But if you’re really stuck in cold start and you’re like, I really need to get out and move to the growth and the maturity stages. That might be the time to look at getting just one big, you know, hard selling affiliate to help you out and take you to that next level.

Josh Hadley 00:28:25  Awesome, I love that. And what are those like brand deals typically look like if you’re working with a big creator, I know they probably vary quite a bit, but like in general, is it like flat fee plus commission? Like, how much are you looking at?

Julia Rubien 00:28:39  I would say flat flat.

Julia Rubien 00:28:40  Fee plus commission. And you definitely want many assets. It goes without saying. If you’re going to spend upwards of 15,000 on one single affiliate to do this, you’re going to want a lot of assets.

Julia Rubien 00:28:52  You might even want to live stream. You’ll want story posts. You might even if the person’s big enough, want multi-platform posts, even though really our goal is on shop. But that’s when you start to get into more traditional influencer marketing with those types of partnerships, just with the commission element that makes it affiliate marketing.

Josh Hadley 00:29:15  Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. All right. Julia, that was great about the affiliate. Now let’s talk about our own content.

Julia Rubien 00:29:22  So brand content.

Julia Rubien 00:29:24  Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:29:24  Brand content.

Julia Rubien 00:29:26  So the brand content is so underrated. I think lots of brands neglect to this. They ignore this. And I think partially because they actually don’t know how to do it or how to source it. And you know, you can hire a social media manager in-house who’s cranking out TikToks in the office, but it’s not really what you’re looking for. Right? Because what you want on a brand page is you want to see a bunch of different people using your product. You want to see, different scenarios.

Julia Rubien 00:29:56  You want to see people in different locations. You want a variety, you maybe want some product content, some face content, some lifestyle content. And one intern in your office is like not going to cut it for this type of content. So I think that’s why brands have gone to affiliate marketing, because it feels somehow easier to source content than to make it themselves. So that’s where we as an agency come in, as we help our clients generate a significant amount of brand content every month. So about 30 TikToks a month, we want to make sure that you’re posting original content every single day on your page. And what this is great for is when we, as the agency are making content, we’re getting learnings in real time. We are also a creator by your side. And so we’re learning what works, what doesn’t. And we just have a lot more tools to measure impact. And we can take those learnings and then feed them to affiliates. So we’re not driving blind with affiliates. We’re testing content every day on the brand page, and we’re actively taking learnings that then go right into those creative briefs that we’re sending out.

Julia Rubien 00:31:06  So I think with brand owned content, you also want to create a world that affiliates can land on. Right. Like let’s say they’ve been sampled, the product, they want to learn more. They want to drive their followers somewhere. Everything is a journey. So the journey from affiliate to your brand page to your shop homepage, you want to make sure that every touchpoint with the customer is solid. And so brand owned content is where they miss that touchpoint. They might get the affiliate right. They might even have a good merchandising strategy on shop, and they might get that right. But there’s a big gap on their brand page where we’re not really teaching the community how to talk about our product, educating them about it, what to do with it, how to use it, showing it with different people and scenarios. So I think brand owned content is what takes a shop from average to incredible and great. And that shoppable content, by the way, also gets funneled into GMV max. So it’s playing alongside all the other affiliate content and getting tested alongside it.

Julia Rubien 00:32:13  So both channels, whether it’s the affiliate or the brand own content, they’re both learning and growing and getting more sophisticated over time.

Josh Hadley 00:32:23  I love that. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Now, my question is, you had mentioned like, hey, you want different people, places, scenarios. I think on the onset, people are going to say, hey, well, this is like founder lead content, but it sounds like you’re also saying like, no, you want like some of your creators and you want to post some of your creator’s content on there, but it needs to be unique, right? Because you don’t want to like, take one of their videos they’ve already posted and posted onto yours. So how are you managing that?

Julia Rubien 00:32:53  And also, that’s a great callout. And I’m so glad you said that because a lot of brands are like, okay, cool, then I’ll just repost the affiliate content. And that’s not what we’re talking about here, because TikTok doesn’t love a repost.

Julia Rubien 00:33:05  We’re talking about true original content. And I think to your point, a lot of founders think, well, then I need to make the content. So typically a brand will think one of three things. They’ll think, I need to have the intern do it. I need to do it as the founder or I need to repost affiliate content. And it’s none of the above. It’s you should contract micro creators who fit your brief to create that original content for you. So the way that we work at a me is that the brand comes to us. We work very closely, creatively, hand in hand with that brand. We understand their creative strategy through and through, and then we have our own network of UGC creators. And by the way, everybody within our agency is a creator, myself included. I still create a batch of content every month for clients. so we take their creative strategy, we take what’s happening on their marketing calendar. We condense that into a big master document of creative briefs, and then it’s on us as the agency to go out to source that content, to get it created, to edit it to perfection.

Julia Rubien 00:34:13  And the brand just gets a batch of 30 TikToks delivered on a rolling basis through the month, that then we put in a content calendar and they’re able to post. So it’s easy when when they work with us, it’s easy for the brand in the sense that they can just come to us, be like, here, here’s who we are, here’s what’s coming up in our world, here’s a new launch, here’s a sale, and we take all of that. And we do the heavy lifting of matching the right brief that we created with the right UGC creator, and getting it executed and bringing it back and editing and delivering the thing with the bow to the to the client. So I think when you work with an agency, it becomes a little more streamlined. But let’s say that you’re not ready yet to work with an agency. I think even just scrolling TikTok and reaching out to micro creators and finding maybe 5 to 10 that you want to keep on a roster every month and every month. Ask them to make 1 or 2 videos for you that you can post to your brand page.

Julia Rubien 00:35:15  It doesn’t have to be this crazy, complicated thing, but just making sure you have a solid, consistent influx of brand owned content that’s original.

Josh Hadley 00:35:26  Yeah, awesome, I love that. And then would you also say though, like it is nice to have founder lead content as well?

Julia Rubien 00:35:33  For sure.

Julia Rubien 00:35:33  For sure. I think the founder should definitely participate. the thing I’ll say with founder content is oftentimes founders will film themselves and they’ll set up their phone in front of them and they’ll look at themselves talking, and all of a sudden it becomes a little bit less authentic. We do founder content differently and that we show up. Our team shows up to wherever the founder is and we don’t let them see themselves on camera. It’s truly like an iPhone interview. And so all of a sudden you get these really funny moments and authentic moments because the founder isn’t hyper focused on the sales pitch they have to give and they’re looking at themselves talking. So they kind of tend to forget that the camera is even there when we’re filming, and then they really drop into their personality.

Julia Rubien 00:36:21  And that’s when you get really fun. Founder content. So I would say if you’re a founder wanting to participate on TikTok, that’s when you should have somebody else film you talking and kind of just ping pong back and forth and have a conversation and then go through the raw footage and find those little digestible moments that are fun for TikTok. Instead of sitting there in an empty room trying to film yourself with a script that you made off of ChatGPT. I think that that never really comes across the way you want it to come across on TikTok.

Josh Hadley 00:36:52  Yeah, makes a lot of sense. great. All right. So you said that pillar number two was closely associated to pillar number three. So what’s the third pillar that you need to have in your TikTok strategy to have success as a new brand on TikTok?

Julia Rubien 00:37:07  Well, those are the two.

Julia Rubien 00:37:08  So affiliate marketing and brand owner two and three shop.

Julia Rubien 00:37:11  Ops is one.

Julia Rubien 00:37:12  Affiliate marketing and brand owned content is two and three. And then the fourth one is the ads, which nothing runs without the ads.

Julia Rubien 00:37:21  The ads is so crucial that we don’t even consider a brand to have legitimately tested TikTok shop as a platform, unless they’ve turned on GMV max, because I think you can do all of the above. You can do the shop merchandising, you can get the content, and you can still find yourself stuck to some extent in Cold Start. And that’s where brands are like, why are we not scaling? Well, you’re not scaling because you haven’t turned on an intelligent, robust ad buying strategy. And that is the thing that completes the entire TikTok shop ecosystem. And that’s the thing that really gets that flywheel into motion.

Josh Hadley 00:38:04  And the nice part is GMV max is pretty darn easy. Like it literally is like give it some budget, set your ROI target and say which product it’s for and let it do its thing. I think the most important thing to optimize your ads is like it just wants content. If you want better ad performance. Give it more content. I mean, how complex is your guys’s like ad strategy then? Is it as simple as just like turn on ads or like what? Is there more to it than just that?

Julia Rubien 00:38:34  Yeah, it gets a.

Julia Rubien 00:38:35  Little bit more complex because the clients that we have, we’re dealing with just, I think bigger budgets and we’re dealing with clients that are doing full funnel. So they’re doing, you know, upper funnel like video views, followers. They’re also doing GMV max. They also might be running a DTC at the same time, and we’re really trying to figure out what combination of upper funnel, lower funnel, you know, where DTC, TikTok shop, wherever we’re sending the traffic. what combination of ad campaigns is giving them the best return? So that’s where it becomes a little bit more complicated. And we’re making growth plans and we’re backing into, you know, if they’re trying to hit certain sales goals every month on TikTok shop. how much ad spend do we need to put in to achieve that goal and to achieve it as quickly as possible? so I would say it is fairly automated. Yes. And so I would encourage every founder, if they can’t afford an agency to at least go in and try it.

Julia Rubien 00:39:34  but I would say that our role as strategists like it goes beyond just clicking the campaign on. We’re doing a lot more like long term growth planning with clients and a lot more financial planning and and planning around their campaigns and different targeting strategies. And I think one of the things that we’ve really been honing in on recently is taking your products, like really separating your products by cold start versus mature. So we know that brands as a whole can be in a cold start phase or a mature phase, but within one brand’s catalog, you can have different products in different phases. And that’s where we might make multiple GMV campaigns. And one GMV campaign is for cold start products, and it’s going to perform differently than a GMV campaign for mature products. And that’s where you really want a media buyer to, like work on that, unless you yourself really want to deep dive those numbers. So yeah, I would say that the more ad budget we’re working with, it gets a little bit more complicated. And the more more catalog SKUs we’re working with, it gets more complicated.

Josh Hadley 00:40:39  Yeah. Yep. Totally understand. So, Julia, I’m curious, like for the brands that don’t succeed on TikTok shop. Why? Because I’ve also known lots of brands that have said, like, yeah, I worked with this agency. They promised me we would we would crush it. And then like, it didn’t work. Like, I’m sure you’ve had those experiences. So like, what’s the difference? Why are some brands finding success right out of the gate and then others aren’t like. Is it because they’re giving more aggressive discounts? Is it just like a volume game? Like they gave out a thousand samples. The other brand only gave out 100 samples. Like, what’s the difference between those that are winning and losing on TikTok?

Julia Rubien 00:41:18  I love this question. It’s so multifaceted. We started in our consults, putting together a checklist for clients, and the checklist is literally called are You the Right Fit for TikTok shop? And the client has to go through and check everything because foundationally right, you need to have a product market fit.

Julia Rubien 00:41:37  So it needs to be a product that is within the price range. That makes sense for TikTok shop. but beyond that, I would say because a lot of brands are like, I want to try TikTok shop regardless, I’m going to get on shop and and that seems to be the trend. if you’re going to go into shop, though, the difference between a successful brand and a not successful brand is how aggressive you are at the start, and then how many of these four facets are you doing right? Because we have done it with clients on their request. Where we’ve done one facet, we’ve done just the affiliate marketing, or we’ve done just the merchandising, we’ve done just the brand owned content and all of those examples. It never really took off. It never really brought them where they wanted to go. On the flip side, we have clients where they came into the conversation ready to invest in the platform. Their leadership was prepared. They had spreadsheets of all the different, fees and costs associated with TikTok shop.

Julia Rubien 00:42:42  They were ready to give it a good six months. They didn’t get cold feet. You know, two months in. They pulled every single lever and they 100% always get to the end, pretty much if they’re a good product market fit. so I would say that you those pillars. You can’t just. And that’s the thing too, I want to say here, crawl, walk, run is like the death of TikTok shop. Like I will give the four pillars to clients and they’ll be like, can we crawl, walk, run? Can we do just the affiliate? And if if the affiliate works, then we’ll do the ads. And that that is almost 90% of the time where TikTok shop goes wrong for brands is they want they want to test one pillar before moving to the next pillar. But they don’t realize that every pillar affects the success of every other pillar. And so even GMV max, you know, brands look at it like, oh, we’re just running ads. Like we would run ads to see, but what they don’t realize is that directly affects their affiliate marketing, because affiliates want to promote a product where they see that the brand is spending behind that product, and they can make more commission if their if their content gets sparked.

Julia Rubien 00:43:58  So affiliates are, pretty transactional, and they want to know at the end of the day that they’re going to make money. If they have a huge choice of products they can promote, they want to know that they’re going to make money off your product. So GMV max and putting ad spend behind their content signals to the affiliate that you’re in it with them. And then you’re also trying to make money and together you’re trying to partner to drive sales. And so, you know, it’s it doesn’t work to say I’m going to do affiliate marketing. And if that works, I will I will put ad spend behind it. It’s a flywheel. It’s a true flywheel. And it all works together. And same thing with shop merchandising. It’s not enough to turn on your shop and say, oh, if I get sales from turning on my shop, then I’ll invest in affiliate marketing. That doesn’t work either. Or, we had a client who, you know, was convinced that they would make a huge channel just from brand owned, shoppable content.

Julia Rubien 00:44:58  They did not want to do affiliate. They did not want to do shop operations. They did not want to do GMV max. They were absolutely convinced that if only the brand creative was so strong, and it was linked to TikTok shop, that their whole shop would take off. and that’s also unrealistic. And of course, that also very, very quickly, within a probably two weeks, we understood that that didn’t work, even though, you know, we gave them the best creative based off of all the data. It was incredible creative. Our team, you know, put their heart and soul into it, but it just you need all the pillars for TikTok success and you need them all at the same time. So crawl, walk, run is like the worst approach possible in my opinion, when it comes to Tik Tok shop.

Josh Hadley 00:45:43  I love that that is such great advice. And like, you have to be willing to, like you’re stepping into the dark, right? You have to be willing to say, like, I’m investing $10,000 into, like, shipping and samples to get this out to a thousand affiliates, right.

Josh Hadley 00:45:57  And be okay with like, not knowing like this is an unknown ROI right now. Right. I think that from what I’ve heard from other people, it could be a great ROI. But like, we’ve got to test this thing out. And you’re right. Like, you also need to light up some GMV max ads from day one so that when those affiliates start creating videos, they can be pushed. And then you also need to have a discount or promotion strategy. So that TikTok little gives a little love to those products that are new as soon as they’re out of the gate. And then you should be posting your own content right at the same time. So I love that. Like comprehensive, like TikTok is one of those things like, you got to go all in. It’s not one that you could, like, just dip your toe in the water and see what works.

Julia Rubien 00:46:45  No. And then sample volume is is another one you touched on that we didn’t go into. But same thing you.

Julia Rubien 00:46:50  We have brands and I tell them you have to do a high sample volume and they’re like oh high like 100. And I’m like no, no high like 1000. Which again, we have to work within the parameters of what the brand is able to do. But then I also say, you know, if you’re not able to invest into shop yet, maybe wait, like there’s no rush. Like if you can’t, if you don’t have the resources right now, I would rather you consolidate your resources and do it right, then burn small amounts of resources over a long period of time. So when I come to them and I say I want 500 to 1000 samples a month and they’re like, oh, we were only prepared for 100. Every piece of the puzzle is so important that even something as seemingly small as the sample volume, in context of everything else we talked about can have a huge impact on the results, and then it might not even be worth it to endeavor into TikTok shop right now.

Julia Rubien 00:47:51  So we’ve seen brands that have increased their sample volume and their ROI goes way up, and then that same brand will decrease their sample volume and the ROI goes down. So there’s a direct correlation between sample volume and the outcome you get from shop. And so it truly is every singular tiny piece of the puzzle. Even the commission rate you’re choosing it all has an impact. So that’s why I say unless you’re really into it as a founder and you enjoy the the adventure of doing it yourself to get an agency to support you because the agency just has all of this niche expertise. If this feels like very overwhelming at first.

Josh Hadley 00:48:32  Yeah, I love that. And that’s everything in life, right? It’s all a volume game. And I think that we have far surpassed the time where it’s like, oh, I could just dabble in this, right? It’s like it’s too competitive. There’s no dabbling. I would argue like, you know, maybe early 2024, I think you could have dabbled in TikTok shop and then like, I’m going to send out to like 100 creators and just see what happens.

Josh Hadley 00:48:58  Right. TikTok was running a lot of aggressive promos at the time on your behalf. Right. And GMV Max wasn’t necessarily a thing. And so like there was more organic virality just happening. But in 2026, I think you’re exactly right. I think TikTok shop as a platform has quickly matured. And there’s it’s still got a long ways to go. Don’t get me wrong. But like it’s it’s a much more mature platform now and it’s competitive. So I love like I would 100% agree. If you’re going to go into TikTok shop, you need to go all in with all four of those pillars and say, like, I’m going to execute on all four of these things, and I’m also going to put up the money like you’re going to you’re talking tens of thousands of dollars up front before you can see an ROI. which means like my recommendation for most brands is like first get $1 million a month in revenue on a single channel. Once you get to that point, then you can maybe take your eye off the ball, assuming you have your Ops and your team set up to keep keep that one going, then you can add on another platform.

Josh Hadley 00:50:09  But I think a lot of seven figure brands that are like three, $4 million, they’re like, oh, I’m on Amazon now. I need to get on TikTok shop now. I need to go to Shopify. Yeah, I need to go to Walmart. And I think they get spread so thin that they end up just becoming a master of none of them. And then they struggle to actually grow and get really frustrated and say, like, TikTok shop doesn’t work. And it’s like, well, you don’t have the resources to like, do TikTok shop the way it needs to be done.

Julia Rubien 00:50:38  Actually, such a good point because I see that a lot now that you’re saying it, like they are spread too thin, because I think there’s investor pressure to do all of the things. And of course, TikTok shop is the hot, buzzy thing right now. But to your point, you become master of none. And we say the same thing to clients. If if they come to us with limited ad spend, we ask them, where do you want to drive this ad spend on your DTC, on shop on a retailer? But we can’t do all of them with this amount.

Julia Rubien 00:51:07  We would need more than this to sufficiently service all of these different channels, so helping them not fracture their spend because then again, you just you’re burning small amounts of resources over a long period of time. So I love what you’re saying about mastering one channel. And then when you’re ready and the time is right and you have the resources to invest, then you can move on to the next channel. I’m curious too. In light of everything we’re talking about, what is your experience been on shop with with your brand? in light of all these pillars and everything.

Josh Hadley 00:51:43  You know, I think what’s what’s funny is, like, as you noted, as you wrote all of those things down, it’s the exact team that we’ve had to build out accordingly. So like number one, like, and and we were one of the ones that like got started early in TikTok shops so early 2024. And at that time it was just like purely affiliate strategy, right? And me kind of like sampling out a bunch of products.

Josh Hadley 00:52:06  But now as it’s evolved, is like now I need to have an affiliate manager that is interacting with our affiliates, providing them with briefs, hosting a lot of calls, giving them feedback, encouraging them to create more content, running stretch running contests, running an email newsletter, running the, you know, WhatsApp or discord for our creators, just like keeping us top of mind. the other role is like having somebody that is truly like our we’ve combined two roles. So like, our ads manager is our kind of like shop operations manager, just because the ads are not as like on Amazon. Like you’re constantly like making changes. CPC changes bid up and down. But like on TikTok shop, the ads aren’t that complicated. Now, if you’re doing full funnel that you’re talking about, definitely more complicated. But like for TikTok shop ads specifically just GMV max, you just kind of said it and you need to let it run and then you can make some small optimizations. But every week. Exactly. But it’s it’s on the merchandising side in the shop operations.

Josh Hadley 00:53:14  It’s like what promotions are we getting into? When are we doing those promotions? Are we applying to every single opportunity that TikTok’s giving us? Are we keeping our account health score in check? Are we making sure that the products are being delivered on time and so that we keep that high score? So it’s all of that that’s being combined. And then yeah, we have you know, it’s my wife and I creating founder lead content that’s actually new for us. It’s like creating the like the content that goes on the brand page. Now, we have not been doing much of that.

Outro 00:53:50  And so how’s it going? I was going to ask, how’s it going with the brand owned content?

Josh Hadley 00:53:55  Okay. Like we’re like literally weeks in. That’s it. like we’re getting a few hundred views per video, so it’s not like. Oh, yeah, I mean, we went viral. We’re just like printing money. It’s like it’s we have a few thousand followers on the brand page, right? We’ve sold a lot on TikTok shop, but a few thousand followers and we’re getting a few hundred views.

Josh Hadley 00:54:20  Some can get into the thousands, but like, nothing viral at this point. So I’m curious, like what would be your feedback to us where right now, all of our content on our brand page is just founder led right now, and we have not yet taken creator content, putting it on our own brand page.

Julia Rubien 00:54:38  So I mean, the obvious is you can always and even for us, I’ve been a creator for like five years and you can always improve content. But that’s like that’s a boring recommendation. What I will say though, is this is how you end up getting into a full funnel ad strategy, because what the full funnel does is those video views, those follower campaigns, those are sparking the brand content from the brand channel. And that’s where you get follower growth. You’re getting that brand awareness, that exposure. And I actually have a really cool story about this and how it feeds into TikTok shop, because, again, all of these marketers, they write off upper funnel because they just straight to sale and they write off the brand content because it’s not the direct revenue driving affiliate content, but we had a brand where we made a growth plan before we ever started with them, and it was a they they were ready for lots of investment, but we made a full funnel ad strategy and we told them, while we’re doing your shop merchandising and your shop operations, and while we’re starting up your affiliate sampling and your affiliate strategy, we are going to turn on upper funnel, you know, video view follower campaign.

Julia Rubien 00:55:53  yeah. Video views and follower campaigns on, on TikTok. And then when we’re ready, when we start to get that affiliate content in, that’s when we’re going to turn on GMV max, because obviously GMV Max needs that content volume and what ended up happening by accident, but it ended up being really strategic was there was a bunch of delays on the brands end where they couldn’t really get their shop operations in order. They were trying to figure out issues with their, three people and with their fulfillment. So they have to push back the date of the affiliate program starting. And so everything got pushed. But we kept that upper because we had budgeted for it. We kept that upper funnel running anyway. And so it ended up it was supposed to be like one month of upper funnel ended up being like, I think it was like 2 to 3 months of upper funnel before we could even like open and launch the shop. So we were basically sending video views and followers to their account, and they didn’t even have a shop up and running.

Julia Rubien 00:56:52  But what ended up happening was people got so hungry for a product that they couldn’t have, and they got so much brand awareness from the millions and millions of impressions that they got and and the thousands and thousands of followers, because all that budget was driving there, that when they opened their shop, they got five figures like a good, healthy, solid five figures of GMV in two weeks. And like the sample requests were coming in at a rate that we couldn’t even keep up with. And so I think brand awareness and upper funnel as a tool is such an underrated lever that brands have, and they ignore it to go straight to the bottom of the funnel. And I think in your journey, that’s where you might find yourself at some point. You know, looking at the videos you’re putting on your brand page. We’re always improving creative strategy, but creative strategy alone is not enough, and you might decide to turn on an upper funnel campaign that drives video views and followers to start to build up that brand page and then build this appetite that’s even bigger for your products and for your shop.

Julia Rubien 00:58:00  So never, ever discount the full funnel. I think it’s so powerful. And that client, after that happened, we actually started to recommend it as a real strategy. Like you might want to build some brand awareness before you go into shop so that there’s a place for affiliates to land. There’s a community, there’s buzz. People know you, there’s some virality happening, and it doesn’t just feel like a random brand coming out of the blue, approaching the affiliate, asking for a promotion.

Josh Hadley 00:58:30  Yeah, I love that. And I think that’s so good because I think you’re right. Like, I think the people that are going to find success, even in e-commerce as a whole, is like, you’ve got to have a mission. You got to have a vision. You got to have part of like, it’s it’s people buy from people, right? And it’s like the mission that sits behind that. And so those founder stories at the very beginning, you’re right, can like build your community, build the audience so that the affiliates know who you are, what your brand stands for.

Josh Hadley 00:59:00  They they jive with kind of the vision and mission that you have for the brand as well. So. Well, well spoken there.

Outro 00:59:08  Yeah.

Julia Rubien 00:59:09  Yeah. You had to let me know.

Outro 00:59:10  Keep me.

Julia Rubien 00:59:10  Updated. If in a month from like turning on full funnel.

Josh Hadley 00:59:15  We will. Well, Julia, this has been probably one of the best, like breakdowns that I’ve had of like TikTok shop of like the four pillars. Like I think you’ve given like the listeners like a really good understanding of like what it takes to succeed on TikTok. I think too many times people just get caught up with like affiliate, affiliate, affiliate, and it’s like it is a component of it. Yes, there’s so much more involved and I think you did a great job.

Julia Rubien 00:59:41  Thank you so much. Yeah. Next time you got to have my actual my head of paid media and my affiliate manager on it, they can give you really nitty gritty technical details about what they do.

Josh Hadley 00:59:51  That’s that’s what we’ll do. We’ll have to do a 2.0 version of this.

Julia Rubien 00:59:54  We’ll do a part two for sure.

Josh Hadley 00:59:56  So, Julia, as we wrap things up, I’d love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from every episode. So here are the three actionable takeaways that I noted. You let me know if I’m missing something. Action item number one is get started in this social commerce Journey. So and again, with the caveat of assuming that you already have an established brand or if you’re brand new, right? I do think TikTok can be a great place to start a new brand, but you got to do so with the understanding that, like, you’ve got to invest 10 to $50,000 to actually build some serious momentum to actually get the success that you’re seeing, some of these bigger brands. I do believe that social commerce is the future. And so by leaning into it, I would recommend, like if you’re not at the stage to invest 10 to $50,000, then get to the stage. That’s actually I’m number one, get to the stage so that you can so that you can jump in with both feet, into TikTok shops.

Josh Hadley 01:01:03  So that’s action item number one. Action item number two. As soon as you get into TikTok shop, I think it is creating a promotion strategy that is unique to TikTok. I think that that’s one of the unspoken things that the top brands do really well with is that they are able to communicate to affiliates and also to their customers like, hey, this is only available on TikTok shop. Hey, this discount is only on TikTok shop and leveraging that. So I think the the merchandising aspect of TikTok shop is easily overlooked right now. And there’s a lot of like bells and whistles within TikTok shop Seller center that you could leverage. So are you doing enough to take advantage? They even have like the bots. What’s cool? They will have messaging bots that will go to people’s TikTok, like the TikTok users accounts to say, hey, you bought from this brand, here’s an extra coupon code to go back and buy from this brand like Amazon doesn’t have that right? We would all love Amazon to send emails on our behalf.

Josh Hadley 01:02:10  That said, you bought this. Now try why TikTok has that feature, so why not leverage that feature? So again, the merchandising strategy I think is very overlooked. And then my third and final action item is like, you have to lean into this in a volume game. So when it comes to affiliates, you need to be sampling a thousand a month. Definitely. And a thousand out the door for the first 2 to 3 months. Like, that’s kind of what’s going to be needed in order for you to gain any serious momentum. It’s not that, hey, I sent out a thousand samples last week. I should be crushing it next week. It’s no, it’s it’s going to take time. And the strategies that we’re employing is like email, newsletter, discord channels, WhatsApp communities so that you can get these people to continue to repost content about those same products that they got samples for over and over and over again. Exactly. And that’s where, you know, some magic can happen.

Josh Hadley 01:03:11  So those are my three action items. There’s a lot in there. But, which you had anything else, Julia?

Julia Rubien 01:03:17  No, I think I think that kind of summarized it. I think those are great action items. I have nothing to add on.

Josh Hadley 01:03:24  Awesome. All right, so my final three questions for you. Number one, what’s the been the most influential book that you’ve read and why?

Julia Rubien 01:03:30  Okay, so I don’t don’t do a lot of reading only because I’m so busy, running our agency and all of our dozens and dozens of brands. but I do spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, and I love LinkedIn as a way to just connect with the community and in real time, learn, you know, all the new things happening with shop and within beauty and just within our general ecosystem. And I think there’s so much great, like grassroots knowledge on LinkedIn when you follow the right people.

Josh Hadley 01:03:59  I love it, unconventional answer to that question. But I like know. All right. Question number two.

Josh Hadley 01:04:06  What’s your favorite software tool or AI tool that you’ve been using and why?

Julia Rubien 01:04:11  Okay, my favorite I live and die by this tiny little undiscovered app. Maybe it’s not as tiny as I think, but it’s called Time finder. And time finder helps me time block my whole day. And I love it because I think I wouldn’t be nearly as productive if I if I didn’t have it. But every half hour in my day, I have time block for a different task to make sure I get everything done. And it’s truly the only thing keeping me sane and organized and like on track, juggling all these different clients and projects and agency initiatives.

Josh Hadley 01:04:44  I love that those are the productivity aspect is very understated. So I love that tool. All right. Third and final question here. Who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space?

Julia Rubien 01:04:58  Yeah, I think this is where I have to shout out, she was our agency partner manager on the TikTok shop side, Kate Youngman and I really appreciate that.

Julia Rubien 01:05:09  You know, I think it was about two years ago when maybe shop was not as much on everyone’s radar, and we were doing mostly creative and ad buying, and I didn’t really have shop that much on my radar. And she really urged us to build out these services for clients and really explained to me the value of it for beauty brands and why social commerce would become the future. And she supported us in the process of building out our team and our capabilities and everything that we’re able to offer clients now, which is incredible. So I really have to credit her with seeing the potential. Seeing where the puck was moving and helping us get there and really cheering us on. And I’ll always give her credit for that because I just think she’s amazing.

Josh Hadley 01:05:54  Awesome. Well, Julia, this has been a fantastic episode. If people want to learn more about you, follow you or your agency, where’s the best place to do so?

Julia Rubien 01:06:04  Our website is Amazon. Com so it’s. Am I social. Com.

Julia Rubien 01:06:09  And then they can always follow me on LinkedIn. I post a lot about what our agency is up to on LinkedIn. So just search my name Julia Rubien on LinkedIn. And then actually a bunch of team members at the agency also post quite frequently on LinkedIn, depending on what you’re interested in, whether it’s the creative aspect, the ad buying aspect, or the TikTok shop aspect of our work. You can also go ahead and just search up people who work at our agency and follow them as well. And they have a lot of knowledge too, that they they share quite frequently.

Josh Hadley 01:06:41  Fantastic. Well, Julie, thanks again for your time today and we’ll have to follow up with a part two.

Julia Rubien 01:06:47  Thank you. Talk to you soon.

Intro 01:06:49  Thank you for listening. Visit Ecomm breakthrough com for more information. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, the best way you can show your appreciation is by clicking the subscribe button and quickly leaving a review. See you again next time!