TikTok for B2B: Advice for CMOs Considering Experimenting

Intro VO  00:06

Welcome to revenue rehab, your one stop destination for collective solutions to the biggest challenges faced by marketing leaders today. Now head on over to the couch, make yourself comfortable and get ready to change the way you approach revenue. Leading your recovery is modern marketer, author, speaker and Chief Operating Officer at Tegrita Brandi Starr

Brandi Starr  00:34

Hello, hello hello and welcome to another episode of revenue rehab. I am your host Brandi Starr and we have another amazing episode for you today. I am joined by Lacey Miller Lacey is an accomplished marketing professional with over 10 years of experience in the startup industry. With a passion for data driven marketing and social media analytics. Lacey has established herself as a foundational marketer who has helped numerous startups achieve their growth goals. Throughout her career. Lacey has worked with startups of varying sizes and industries, and has a proven track record of delivering successful marketing strategies that have delivered or that have driven growth and revenue. She has a deep understanding of consumer behavior and a keen ability to analyze data, allowing her to develop effective marketing campaigns that resonate with target audiences. Lacey, welcome to revenue rehab, your session begins now.

Lacey Miller  01:35

Hello, hello. Thanks for having me. Brandy. This is exciting. It's fun.

Brandi Starr  01:40

Yes, I am. So so excited to talk to you. I've wanted to have you on the show for a while but had to find the right topic. And I think we have found it. But before we get into that, I like to break the ice with a little Woosah moments that I call buzzword. banishment. So tell me what industry buzzword would you like to get rid of forever?

Lacey Miller  02:06

So for this, I'm choosing growth marketing, you could even say revenue marketing? Um, why do we keep trying to reinvent what we're calling what we're doing? It's just it's marketing. Everything I do is about growth and revenue, both of those things, all of those things, right. And sometimes will say traditional marketing, but we're also doing that too. Every now and then it helps us in that a postcard. Right. So even the mailers came back for a little bit. So that's what I'm banishing growth, marketing. We're all trying to grow. That's just, that's the point.

Brandi Starr  02:39

I will take it and yeah, it does seem like every few years, like someone tries to come out with a new term for the things that we've always done. And it's like, it's just, it's marketing, like marketing. We're always trying to grow trying to retain trying to drive revenue, like, no one does marketing. And it's like, Man, I really, really hope this company shrinks, like, I'm gonna do my darndest to revenue like that. That doesn't, that doesn't happen. So we will take growth marketing, we'll put it in box, we'll throw away the key and at least for this conversation, it is banished. So now tell me what brings you to revenue rehab.

Lacey Miller  03:28

So I'm really excited to kind of talk about and unlock, tick tock for b2b. Um, you know, social media has kind of been a bit of an interesting beast since it came out, right? We handed it to the intern pretty early on. And now it's grown all the way to it's got revenue numbers, like this thing is driving some really incredible traffic conversations, buyers. And so you know, now we're diving into tick tock, what does that look like? And, you know, it's not something to just approach easily. This is no more the give it to the intern than it has ever been. It is it's time to really take it seriously and see how we can make a huge impact there.

Brandi Starr  04:11

I so agree. And tick tock, you know, I just had a conversation with my daughters who were 2121 and 20. And literally, we were talking about something and it was like, oh, yeah, tick tock is the new Google like before I you know, go search something on Google. I can totally find it on tick tock. And, you know, even though like, you know, she's more as a consumer, but it definitely really drove home a point to me in that like, it really is a key source for information. So we're gonna dive deep into that, but before we do so, I believe in setting intentions, it gives us focus, it gives us purpose, and most important, it gives our audience an understanding of what they should expect from our conversation today. So For those that are listening, that are heading marketing who haven't dipped their toes in the b2b Tiktok waters, what would you like them to take away from our discussion.

Lacey Miller  05:10

So we're in kind of a strange time of uncertainty. And Mehta just came out and announced some more shake up. And Mark Zuckerberg said, It's the Year of efficiency. And I thought, yeah, always, once again, it's always about efficiency, I would love to be paid to be extra AF on a daily basis, that would be incredible. But instead, my job is to be effectively efficient, right. And so, because I think that that's just part of what we do every day, I want to go to maybe the year of authenticity, I think that we that is the intention here, whether it's authenticity and how we hire, or authenticity on marketing strategies, how we present our brand to the market. We're a tool like tick tock is gonna give us a little more perspective and a little break down some of those barriers and give us the opportunity to be more authentic with our end user.

Brandi Starr  06:08

Awesome. And I think that's a great place to start. Because that authenticity is the biggest pushback that I hear from b2b brands that, you know, it's really hard for a brand to put forth tick tock style content, because, you know, tick tock came out, it's the fun place, you know, it's where people are very natural. It's, you know, very, you know, it's not polished, which is what brands are used to being. And so it was very much how do we be an authentic brand, and leverage this as a revenue channel, because obviously, that's what we're all here for, and still maintain authenticity and not like piss off the Tick Tock users who, you know, don't want to be sold to while they're scrolling, you know, looking at funny dances and cat videos. So, like, how to how do you be authentic as a brand on Tik Tok, and still drive revenue.

Lacey Miller  07:15

So I think that you kind of hit on it and talking about how your kiddos use the app as a search tool, right? Um, that gives the well in Tik Tok is for creators, it's not brands, like let's just go ahead and put that there. And so if you think about those two things, a creator and then it being a search tool, it's creating the information, creating the educational piece, creating kind of something that maybe is mundane, but doing it in the fun way. I know there's a quantum physics startup here in Austin that wrote a book that was quantum physics for our five year old or something kind of funny like that. Because they thought like, if I can explain it to a kindergartener, then I can explain it to an investor, buyer or whoever it may be. And so that is where the opportunity lies and creating and getting out good educational information and becoming that resource. I mean, we talk about thought leadership all the time, right. And I think for a long time, thought leadership has been getting on Forbes or getting in TechCrunch, or whatever publication and it's morphed so much, even now we're doing podcast, which is so much more fun, so much more engaging, so much more easily approachable. And so take, take it even further. And I've got tick tock, I mean, what have you treated? Your tick tock is 30 to 92nd. Podcast. I mean, you could have an entire series of just kind of like cool tidbits. Easy to digest, informative. And that's what people are looking for. They're searching for that. It's the next YouTube, right. And so I think as long as brands really consider, this is about information, this is about thought leadership, this is about giving somebody something. You can come at it from an authentic way you can come at it from a way that's, you know, a little bit fun. I got to have some fun. Remember the Hootsuite animal, like, say that thing running around doing all kinds of crazy stuff, but we all understood the message and it was or not HootSuite. Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry. Duolingo going yeah, the message was like, get on Duolingo like learn your language, using you know, on trend things.

Brandi Starr  09:47

Okay, so there are ways to be an authentic Creator. The second sort of pushback that I hear about tick tock is who are we putting out there? Um, And that becomes this debate, because a lot of times it is the more senior leaders who serve as the face of the organization. And a lot of people are not comfortable doing that, you know, type of content. And then, you know, with turnover, you know, you think about you have more, you've turnover at all levels, but you tend to have more turnover a little lower in the organization. So then it's, if we put these people out here, and then they're no longer here, then what? And, you know, if we put a character, then we have to spend the money to like craft this character. So it becomes this, like, yeah, what do we do? Okay, we're just not gonna do anything. So how do you tackle that?

Lacey Miller  10:47

So, um, this is going to be one of those tough things, right? There are some hurdles with any new strategy. And I, you know, I I have talked to somebody who, who said, verbatim, I am 57 years old, nobody wants to see my face and tick tock. Okay. I get it. So how do we do something different? And so we've talked about short videos, different pieces of his product, different kind of motion stop things like there are other ways to use some of these sounds, filters, funny pieces. Now, it is a personal kind of presence. And so it would will be hard not to have people on there. And I think I mean, I've seen it, plenty of people have seen it, where you come in and you've got kind of, we had a new hire come in who said, I feel like I'm meeting a famous person Lacey, because I see you on all the tick tock, like, I just became the face of my previous companies tick tock, and it was uncomfortable, and I was doing such silly things. But you know, it happened and it was a moment in time, and you just kind of figure out, like, that's just the natural, that's the authenticity, that's just the natural wave of things. And I know it's scary, but it's gonna happen and you got to think about it. Got to think about who that face is for sure.

Brandi Starr  12:20

And, you know, it's like, I would also argue the point of the person that you said, like, um, you know, 57 No one wants to see my face. And that's what I think I love most about Tik Tok is, it's not your stereotypical faces, you know, it's not all the really young, pretty blah, you know, it's not that that what society feeds into, you know, one of my favorite tick talkers is tick tock mama seven, who, you know, is a white haired, grandmotherly type woman who is always like rapping and dancing around her kitchen. And following. Oh, yeah, she is the best, like she is hilarious. And but she's definitely not your typical social media personality. And that's one of the reasons why I love her. And I do think you know that there are certain personalities that lend well to it. We just started our tic toc. Other than we post some of the revenue rehab clips there, and we made for national Margarita day I did a margarita Tiktok. You know, definitely would not say it was the highest quality Tiktok but we did it. And you know, most people were like, oh, yeah, I can see that you totally have a tic tock personality. And I'm like, I don't know what that that means.

Lacey Miller  13:47

Oh, my gosh, terrified about that.

Brandi Starr  13:48

But okay. Um, so yeah, I do think you do have to get creative. And I think especially for senior leaders, to your point, it is gonna be a bit uncomfortable. Because you know, you're most you think about the typical C suite is 55 plus, did not grow up with social media still, you know, kind of put off by it in many ways. So it is a little bit of almost like just to get over yourself and figure out who's the best person or people to put out there.

Lacey Miller  14:26

That's the thing and I think it's a huge opportunity. I mean, even if you have zero Tiktok followers, and all you're doing is going there using some of the filters using some of the sounds using the trending sounds, um, we can you, you put it on LinkedIn, some of our my last company, our highest performing LinkedIn post, or some of the funny tiktoks We did. I mean, people want to see that so we engage with video I hear you know, LinkedIn is not Facebook. You can say that all day long, but the video posts are the most high like that highest engaging post. So people do they absorb information in that way. And so even if you just open up Tik Tok to help you post videos and other places, I've embedded in videos and emails that worked really well, short snippets, they're practically like little gifts. I've done it, you know, repost on other social media sites, but LinkedIn, text messaging, there's so many opportunities and ways to use it. And then back on kind of the C suite. I've also had my CEO just do a run through of like, our clients. And it was a really short and sweet use case video. But he got to talk about what he was passionate about, which is our client base, which is growing our company. And we didn't have I think we had a maybe a song, but we didn't have any big production behind it, it was just giving him the floor. And you know, we have to do speaking ups, podcast, videos, YouTube, like there's all these opportunities to be face to face kind of like that. So tic TOCs, just another one of those. And the opportunity is now because it it was it started with this wave of Gen Z. Now we've got Millennials now like you said, like grandma's you're gonna have a rap and get a following. I mean, it's, if you want to be one of the first businesses that really figures out tick tock, like, get on there now start talking about things that people need to understand and know about. And you can be at the forefront to like bringing b2b into Tik Tok.

Brandi Starr  16:48

I love it. So for those that are listening, let's say I'm fully bought in the time is now I need to do this. Where do I start? What is your advice? If you know we're not fully fully committed, but we at least want to experiment with it? Where How do I advise my team? What should I be thinking about? Do I come out with metrics and goals? Like how do I get started in this tic tock world in helping my brand to be an effective creator.

Lacey Miller  17:20

So this is the biggest deal of the whole thing, like, you know, set it up, get on there. What's funny is when I opened my business, tic tock account, it's a bunch of trending videos how to do this how to use tick tock like the algorithm is really incredible, because it knows like, she's trying to learn how to use tick tock in a better way. Perfect, that's exactly what I need. But I mean, back to setting your intentions, you have to be intentional about it. So there's three things, theme, audience, and consistency. If you if your company may sell 20 products across 80, verticals, and every country and all kinds of things, but you need one thing, you really have to go strong on one thing, you gotta be the expert on one thing, that's kind of hard to figure out. Or maybe it's really easy to figure out. But every one of your videos needs to have a theme that's pretty consistent across the board. Then audience I mean, this is just like marketing. This is just persona based, right? Who is the audience. And the thing is your audience could be 65 year old retirees, and maybe they're not there yet. But you've started making tiktoks You start dropping in in the emails where they are responding to you. And then all of a sudden they're on Tik Tok, right? You can bring your audience there, you can build an audience there. That's what's great about it. Now is the opportunity to do that. Then the third one consistency, you got to do it every week. I mean, if you can do it every day, that's incredible. But there's a calendar. This is just like any other social media, advertising, digital ads, whatever that space, maybe you have a calendar and you've got a schedule, and you have concepts that you want to publish and get out there and you've got somebody committed to it. I think the difference is here. I'm not going to say you should attach any kind of goals to it. We use it as a traffic driver. And the traffic that came from it was more engaged in our website. They stuck around longer. They went to more pages. It was valuable traffic, was it a lot? No, but it was still valuable. And so we did have that it's kind of the cherry on top. But really, it was just a smart way for us to make content that we could use in a lot of other ways. And then there's a goal attached to that email or to that. Prospecting email or marketing email or the LinkedIn and Now we're running out there. And so you can make it part of those goal revenue oriented pieces without attaching one directly to detect doc.

Brandi Starr  20:08

Okay, so what I'm hearing is, I love the thought of having one theme. And because I mean, you are right, there are a lot of companies that sell a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And, you know, it can get all over the place. But if you look at all the really popular tick talkers, they do have a thing. And you know, they may have something, you know, other kinds of content scattered here or there. But for the most part, you know, exactly what to expect from them. And so I do think that that's a really good lesson. Because, I mean, in any b2b brand, you're producing so much stuff, like the heavier long form content, the product, video, you know, all these different things. It's like, what is your tick tock thing. So I really liked that I want to dig into the audience some more, because this is the place where tick tock seems to not be as easy as certain other platforms, because if you think about LinkedIn, which is most common b2b platform, you can very easily if you're running ads, you know, there's all the filters for companies eyes and title and change the job and all these different things. And people are on tick tock as themselves. So even though they are, you know, I am a buyer, you know, as a CEO for a consulting firm, I'm a target buyer for somebody, but I'm on tick tock, just as brandy. And so how do you really you know, I know you talked about bringing your own audience, which makes sense. But how do you build an audience? How do you get in front of the people who are on Tik Tok, that may not already know you that are the people that you want to see your content.

Lacey Miller  22:07

So the biggest point here, if there's only one takeaway everyone takes away from this is that tick tock is not Instagram, and you can not do an Instagram thing on tick tock and vice versa, they really are a different beast. And if you think about the first Instagram ad was in November of 2013, it was a Michael Kors watch ad. And so they are already a decade ahead when it comes to advertising. So they have that figured out, right, they have all that the different segmentations and the understanding and I think that if you have social media ad dollars, it may still stick around there for a while, right? We watched Twitter struggle with how are we going to bring in ad dollars, think Tik Tok is still in the same place. But there are some just original things that tick tock is still doing really well. And to be completely honest, it's the hashtag. Um, the hashtags are really, I you know, there's a rule there, you're only supposed to do like three or four, if you start doing a whole mess of them, it, it does get lost, it will kind of turn off the algorithm. But if you're strong there, you're going to find digital marketing strategies, marketing CMO, like you're going to find these really business focused personal finance, like, you'll find a business focus stuff. And it's, you know, sometimes it's a little bit of a slow burn, where you have to have that consistency, and you'll start to get people and you'll start to see better and more engagement. Sometimes you have that viral hit. But I've also had brands come to me and say we had a viral hit, how do we do it again, and it's just, it's luck of the draw right now. So that's why I say it's important to be committed to tick tock before you even get into it, because the results aren't going to be seen the same way that they have been seen in Instagram, or that they have been still kind of played with on Twitter. They're still trying to figure out what their strategy is. And it's one thing that we've seen interesting with both Instagram and Tiktok is them both focus more on the Creator. At the end of the day, these platforms do not exist without organic, Creator content. So they are focused on organic Creator content. And so if that's how you approach Tik Tok is wanting to be part of that. You're gonna see the success that you want. But like I said, sharpen those hashtags, make those consistent, make sure you see them other places. You know, follow Are the people who are potentially talking about the same things or tangential things that you are? Don't be afraid to find a competitor and go, how are they doing it? Can we do it the same way. And don't be afraid to be the first one to do it. Because at the end of the day, I don't know brand new, if you remember, I remember when this became cool, maybe it was 10 years ago, but it was B to me selling. Yes, it's person to person. And so no matter if you're b2b, b2c, whatever it is, you're still selling to a human. And this is just kind of a fun way to approach it. And, you know, there are serious concepts on there, too. So they're, you know, you can, that's kind of what's great about it, too, you can talk about, I don't know, banking is not a good word right now. But retirement finance, just how to, like let's anything people need to learn about, it's on there. So be at the forefront of it.

Brandi Starr  25:59

Awesome. So one other thing that I want to ask is, because this is something that you see, you talked about the return is very incremental, you know, you're not going to see it show up the same way that, you know, other efforts do. The other challenge is, you know, we are people are short staffed, there's turnover, they have smaller budgets, like based on where we are, economically right now, that efficiency that we talked about at the beginning, is so important. And being able to be consistent and posting weekly and having someone devote effort, you know, to finding the hashtags, and following the people and making the content. How do you justify the effort, when we know we're not going to be able to draw the same clear lines of success?

Lacey Miller  26:55

Oh, man, this is so hard. And I think we're all dealing with this right now. And depending on where your company is, in its journey, I, you know, my background is startup. So everything has been a little more scrappy, and everything is we're gonna do X campaign that has to 15 pieces that have to be used across the board, right? There's always kind of this thought process. And so if tick tock can work for you, it's a really great piece to add per blog post, per email campaign, right, you're already doing something, you're already going to be creating some piece and sales enablement, Persona documentation. So how can you take that? I mean, the best part is tick tock should be 30 to 60 seconds. So how can you take that and maybe just set aside a little bit of time to turn it into this engaging video piece, I think that's the other thing. Consider tick tock, a bit of your video strategy. I am trying to think I know YouTube has been mentioned in my my professional life, I may have done three YouTube videos, but nothing like I've ever been able to create with Tik Tok. And we've been able to do kind of a fun side piece with the press release, right press releases that are not our favorite things to read. They're not exactly our favorite things to write. But if you can do kind of a fun video alongside, that's probably what people are going to look at and listen to. And so it's don't attach too much to it. It is fun. Um, but yeah, it's kind of working to kind of the campaign, it's got to work into what you're already doing. And then of course, that dives into like, who's going to be behind the camera. Sometimes I we've done it with products, screenshots. Like, there's some fun stuff that you can do, you know, moving around and leading people down a bit of a journey. So just think of it as you know, an easy way to put an image, a moving image in front of somebody a video. And I will say, if you set the intention, if you set your theme. If you know your audience, once again, they may or not be there yet, but if you know your audience, then the consistency part will come. Because it's a little bit easier.

Brandi Starr  29:28

Yeah, I love it. And I really liked the idea of press releases, which it made me just think of something like we didn't actually issue a press release for this, but when our book hit the bestseller list in US and Canada, I made a fun thank you. I made a fun tic tock just on my personal tic tock because this was a year or two ago. And it was a CRS level up and so I did it was back when everybody was doing the transitions. So like I started like in my bathrobe or whatever Were and then you know, you touch the camera and then you know, I had the book and I dance with that. And although it got like no visits on Tik Tok, because I think I had like 14 people following me, but I put it on LinkedIn. And I'm pretty sure that that is still my highest viewed and engaged with LinkedIn post. And that is that same kind of press release type content, which as many eyes You know, we're on the LinkedIn, the Tick Tock on LinkedIn. I know, had we actually issued a press release, it would have never gotten that, you know, many eyes it would have like been picked up by like the Tallahassee Tribune. You know, it's always something

Lacey Miller  30:43

random. I love those PR reports.

Brandi Starr  30:48

Like a slow news day, hmm. But, um, but yeah, like, so that is a really great idea. Because I know, I mean, most CMOS hate having to do press releases, like, you know, there's only a few scenarios where you're really excited about it, you know, because it truly is like, newsworthy, but that's a different conversation for Yeah, so talking about our challenges is just the first step and nothing changes, if nothing changes. And so, in traditional therapy, the therapist gives the client some homework, but here at revenue rehab, we like to flip that on its head and ask you to give us some homework. So I always like to have a takeaway, something that, you know, if you're listening to this, and you're now jazzed about giving Tiktok a shot? What's that one thing? What's your recommendation as the first next step for our listeners?

Lacey Miller  31:48

I mean, get in there, look at that, you go through the hashtags, you, you know, you search the hashtags. And once again, it can be as specific as personal finance, or digital marketing, or, you know, cosmetics, um, but go go look at what people are saying. And, you know, talk about ease of use, you're just going to flip through, and something could hit and I think that's the thing. I mean, that's how we start. Every we do tick tock happy hour, once every other week, and we just kind of get on and we go, okay, what's what's going to hit? What's a little what's inspirational today, sometimes, the younger crew is doing a tick tock dance. And sometimes it's me, you know, doing something with our product. But um, I think the big thing is just get on there. Just see what's going on.

Brandi Starr  32:46

I love it, you know, tick tock happy hour. For me, the struggle would be limiting it to an hour and staying focused. But that's, you know, whole difference. But I really liked that, like just taking the time to go in there and figure out where you may fit. And I think for those that are considering experimenting, that's a great place to start is figuring out where you would fit and your three things were a single theme, find your audience or bring them with you. And then the consistency. So I really like those three points as well. Well, Lacey, I have enjoyed our discussion so much. But that's our time for today. And before we go, how can our audience connect with you? Tick tock. That was like, you know, that was the easy door opener for your Tiktok

Lacey Miller  33:47

which is, you know, my own personal brand LVM e l l VIUM. And I've got that on Instagram as well. But I mean, LinkedIn is a great place. You know, what do they say those who can't teach? My tic toc is not going to be this phenomenal, mind blowing thing. But I can tell you about all the brands that I've worked with and the people I'm working with behind the scenes. So yeah, LinkedIn at linkedin.com/lacey Miller.

Brandi Starr  34:16

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me Lacey. And thanks, everyone, for joining us today. I hope that you have enjoyed my conversation with Lacey. I can't believe we're at the end. See you next time.

Outro VO  34:31

You've been listening to Revenue Rehab with your host Brandi Starr. Your session is now over but the learning has just begun. join our mailing list and catch up on all our shows at revenue rehab dot live. We're also on Twitter and Instagram at revenue rehab. This concludes this week's session. We'll see you next week.