How can you use TikTok to expand your email list? And can you get genuine leads by making content on TikTok? Tune in to hear Shannon Smith’s exclusive tips on using TikTok to create a highly effective email list.
Guest: Shannon Smith is an online fitness entrepreneur who massively scaled her business after stumbling onto a video on email list building.
What attracted you to affiliate marketing in the first place?
[03:25] How was Shannon introduced to the world of email marketing?
- I was scrolling through my Tiktok feed one day and affiliate marketing popped up from another affiliate promoting one of her products.
- The main thing that kind of reeled me in with that was her saying I only have to work a few hours a day. I make largely passive income online, and she gets all her traffic organically via TikTok.
- I know that I need another form of income. So I might as well just try this out and see what happens with it. And then for me, it took off and I want to say about two months and so once the ball started rolling with that and never really stopped.
[04:41] One TikTok video exploded Shannon’s business:
- I got very lucky in my first week on Tik Tok, I want to say it was like my fifth day of posting online. I had a video that went super viral. I think it has like over 500,000 views now it’s still to this day, and it’s still growing.
- I gained like 20,000 followers overnight by the next week I was at 40,000. So it really was the power of that one video that blew up my business overnight.
[05:25] What made Shannon Smith blow up on TikTok?
- It’s always the TikToks that you don’t expect to do well, that do the best.
- It was just a really quick and easy tutorial. And I think because it was so straightforward and so simple. That’s why it blew up.
[06:03] Building an email list via TikTok:
- I always say “the what” without exactly the house so that way I can then add them to my email list, add them to my offers, or introduce them to my offers, which will show them the how.
- I’ll walk them through step by step what to do, but the implementation of all of it and the little, like tips and tricks.
- [Igor] I first heard about it from Dan Kennedy or Joe Polish, where they spoke about you needing to be very specific about what to do, but not exactly how to do it. Because it’s the how that will make people come to you and, you know, perhaps buy something from you now.
[09:11] Why is TikTok the best platform to grow?
- Facebook and Instagram only will show your posts to your friends or your followers. It doesn’t really get pushed out to everybody.
- With TikTok, it’s really easy to kind of capitalize on that organic traffic because if you learn the strategy of posting videos that are gonna go viral. TikTok will push them out in front of millions and millions of eyes so that way you can get that free traffic without having to follow a lot of people.
Have you found a way to use TikTok to build an audience that you control?
[11:25] The NEED to build an email list:
- I actually kind of experienced it being taken away from me when my main TikTok page got shut down. I did get it back. But that was kind of a big wake-up call that I do need to start kind of building my own email list and followings on other platforms.
- My main priority with Tik Tok is utilizing it to get people to sign up for my email list and to get people to go follow my Instagram or my Pinterest.
[13:43] Community Guideline Violations:
- I got a lot of community guidelines violations, and they ended up banning my account, which I did get back, but it’s still under heavy surveillance.
- Since my niche is how to make money online, and I give different side hustles and business and financial tips online, I’ve kind of learned how to say what I need to say without hitting the keywords. So for my kind of personal niche, like things that you definitely want to stay away from talking about our lives, profits, or using the word money, or like five figures, six figures, anything like that.
- If you try to direct people to check out the link in your bio or to leave TikTok, they’ll flag you as well.
- I’ve learned to stay away from that and how to kind of say things in a different way. So that way I won’t get flagged for those specific things.
- I think that the algorithm with TikTok can be very frustrating because 90% of it is automatic.
- Videos are often flagged for reasons that aren’t exactly correct.
[17:00] The art of indirect marketing:
- Nobody wants that product thrown in their face. So I always do my marketing very discreetly, I’ll do it on maybe every other post, or every second other posts that I do. And the way that I do it is I’ll either do like a tutorial on affiliate marketing, or I’ll talk about my experience.
- And then at the end of the video, I’ll just do a call to action and say, “Hey, if you’re interested in learning the business that allows me to do XYZ, check out the free training on my page”.
- I like to keep it chill and then I always direct them to my one-man sales funnel. And have them sign up for my email list there.
[20:03] Tracking TikTok conversions:
- I don’t really track it. So often I think that something that I need to get better at doing is really tracking my conversion rates and seeing what performs best.
- I want to say it’s probably like a 1% conversion or 2% conversion because I think I have about 16 to 18,000 people on my email list, and I have about 100,000 followers on my main TikTok.
[21:16] How often do you mail and what do you tend to promote?
- That is actually something that I have been working on improving because I realized that that is something that I haven’t really been capitalizing on.
- Right now I send them emails every day. And I go through all of my different offers. I probably have about five emails in every offer, series.
- I have one major campaign that gets sent out when they sign up for my initial affiliate offer. And then I keep sending them offers every day of different affiliate programs to either make money online or to grow and monetize your Tiktok.
[25:06] The Pareto Principle:
- The Pareto principle or the 80/20 rule states that 80% of your income will result from 20% of the affiliate programs you’re promoting.
- It’s a very common thing if you study anyone’s numbers.
[28:01] The Dark Side Of Social Media Marketing:
- I find that I get burnt out if I’m constantly having to be on my phone, create content, and try to stay up to date with everything.
- There are two kinds of aspects of how I do it: I delegate tasks, and then I batch everything.
- I have my assistant go through and respond to all of those questions and comments for me. And then I focus on just doing the front end, which is the content creation part of it.
- I’ve realized as well that if I’m constantly having to be creating content every single day editing it and posting it, I get really stressed out and burnt out from it.
- It can be really stressful when at the moment, you have to come up with an idea for content, and then carry that through, record it, edit it, and post it.
- I always batch my content on Mondays I do my market research, see what’s trending that week, and what topics are being asked about, and then I’ll create and edit all of my content for the week.
[33:17] Follow Shannon Smith on TikTok:
- You guys can check out my Tik Tok. My new account is Shan X X X Smith. And then my Instagram is Hustle Wu Shan.