TIKTOK
“It’s over. It’s done”
Those were Frodo’s words when the One Ring was finally destroyed, but they’re also ours now that the news has become official: TikTok has finally come to a deal, and Trump has approved it.
Here are the details:
- TikTok has come to a deal with Oracle and Walmart, but it’s not a comprehensive sale. Although TikTok has agreed to a deal with both Oracle and Walmart, it’s more of a partnership than a sale – and it’s certainly not the sale of global operations that had been rumored. Oracle will handle all US user data, while Walmart will work as a commercial partner.
- Trump has approved the deal, ‘in concept’, avoiding the ban planned for Sunday. The final deal isn’t quite what Trump had been demanding, but he’s given it his seal of approval all the same. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, the looming threat of a TikTok ban in the U.S. is over.
- Everything’s bigger in Texas. It’s being reported that TikTok’s U.S. headquarters will be in Texas, and it may have up to 25k employees.
The Crew’s take: We’re guessing (and hoping) that this is the last TikTok-ban news we’ll be giving you for a while. But, it’s 2020 – who knows, Facebook could buy TikTok tomorrow and Trump could ban them both.
The craziest part about this whole process? Through all the ups and downs, rumors and sketchy reporting, not much really changed for marketers. TikTok was always there, and it looks like – for the time being – it always will be.
INFLUENCER MARKETING
Are you overpaying influencers?
Influencer marketing is becoming increasingly important as user-generated content is the new norm for many marketers. As fun as it can be, influencer marketing is just like any other kind of advertising – it’s not easy, and you’ll have plenty of questions along the way.
One of the biggest questions: how much should you be paying influencers?
Like freelancers, influencers set their own rates – and different influencers will charge drastically different rates. If you don’t already have your own guidelines in place, it can be easy to end up overpaying. Here’s what Cody Wittick had to say about it:
For one IG story with a swipe up option:
- 10k to 100k followers – Free products
- 100k to 300k followers – $350
- 500k to 1M followers – $750
- 1M followers or more – $1.75k
30 to 90-day usage rights – being able to use the influencer’s content on your marketing channels:
10k to 100k followers – $50 to $150
100k to 300k followers – $100 to $500
500k to 1M followers – $500 to $1k
1M followers or more – $2.5k to $5k
These are just some of the most relevant examples from Cody’s thread, but you can check out the rest of his advice here.
Do you agree with Cody? If you don’t, it’s good to remember that these prices aren’t hard-and-fast rules – everything will depend on the influencer, your product, and the type of campaign you want to run. But, these numbers are a good place to start if you’re new to the wild west of influencer marketing.
SPONSORED BY MATCHA
Unlock the revenues trapped in your store’s blog
In case you haven’t heard…
Blogging is the most underleveraged tool for sustainable ecommerce growth. So if that’s the case, why isn’t everyone blogging?
Because blogging for ecommerce is frustrating. No platform is built for conversion optimization, a beautiful creation experience, and performance tracking against revenue goals. Until now.
Meet Matcha! It’s an all-in-one blogging tool created exclusively for the goals of online stores. It’s the only technology on the market that helps ecomm marketers turn their blogs into revenue-machines and track the impact of their blog on revenue.
With Matcha, Everly, a fast-growing CPG brand, uses blog content to grow their email list 20x, and their blog now influences 22% of their sales. And that’s just one example.
Matcha comes as a simple Shopify or WordPress plugin, but it can help you in many ways:
- Instantly feature your products in your content with a single click.
- Create and publish new blog posts or optimize the content already on your blog.
- Capture more email addresses with customizable subscriber forms.
- Measure the impact of your blog posts on revenue and subscriber generation with intuitive full-funnel analytics.
- Segment your email list based on the content they engage with and send tailored campaigns.
- Create engaging content faster with guided templates.
- Increase publishing frequency by instantly publishing from Matcha’s library of thousands of customizable articles.
Try Matcha for free here and get 25% off up to 12 months by using the code “STACKED” when you upgrade from to a paid plan.
BUSINESS
Dissecting a 10-figure blog
What’s a blog to you?
Even though blogs have generated millions (and billions) of dollars – which we’re about to talk about – the word ‘blog’ still conjures up images of home cooks creating blogs about their grandma’s favorite pie recipe and tech junkies writing about their favorite products, often with little to no profit.
It’s easy to miss the fact that many blogs are generating a ridiculous amount of revenue, and Nathan Barry just put together a Twitter thread explaining how building an audience can turn into more than $1B of revenue.
The first example he reports is his own company, ConvertKit. He started with a marketing and design blog. And later used his blog’s audience to launch a SaaS company that now makes $24M/year.
Whatever type of creator you are, if you want to build a legacy out of your audience, here are four principles you should follow:
+ Personal brands are great to start, but build also a brand that can stand on its own: Back in 2006, Mark Sisson started Mark’s Daily Apple, a fitness and food blog. He primarily monetized it by selling courses and sponsorships.
But his real success came from Primal Kitchen, a paleo sauce and dressing company that was sold to Kraft for $200M, 2 years after its start.
+ Sell products, not attention: In her early beginnings, Kylie Jenner was the least famous Kardashian. Plot twist: she’s now the wealthiest. Rather than chasing more followers and fame, she channeled what she already had. Instead of getting paid by brands to funnel her audience toward other products, she built her own.
Ryan Renolds is another example. He channeled his influence into his own brand, Aviation Gin, sold for $610M.
+ Drive high customer value with recurring purchases: WellnessMama built one of the most successful blogs in the world through affiliate marketing, selling courses and digital products. They then used the blog to sell Wellnesse, a cosmetic product that customers buy frequently.
+ Trade average quality revenue for high-quality revenues: Let’s take Dr. Dre. His music career was wildly successful, but it alone wouldn’t have given him a $3B exit. But, take a look at what he did with Beats by Dre and you’ll see how he capitalized.
Van Hari pivoted from her blog, Food Babe, to her own health food brand, Truvani.
Wanna build a 10 figure company? This post makes it look pretty damn easy.
Build an audience. Monetize it with a product. Make sure the product has recurring purchases. Exit. Go to Mauritius.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
TWITTER: It appears that Twitter’s testing an option to request verification – and if you think we’re not going to chase that blue checkmark the minute we can, you’re dead wrong.
INSTAGRAM: The Stories bar on Instagram just got bigger for some users. How do you feel about it?
MARKETING: Cloudflare and Wayback Machine have teamed up in what should be a useful partnership for marketers and SEO specialists.
FACEBOOK: If you’re a video creator, you might want to check out this new 14-page guide from Facebook – it’s a useful one.
SNAPCHAT: We’ve talked a lot about the return of sports lately and what it means for marketers. If you’re looking to dive even deeper, check out this new report from Snapchat on user trends about sports topics.
TWITTER: Alessandro Paluzzi leaked a preview of what audio rooms might look like on Twitter. It’s not much yet, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
GOOGLE: Everyone’s going crazy about widgets in iOS 14, and Google’s just updated their app to allow for widget customization on iPhones.
BRAIN TEASER
It’s Monday, and you know what that means – more subject lines! Which one from last week do you think captured the highest open rate?
👀 Oracle is Tok-ing
🖼 Caption this.
🏃♂️ Ready, set…
👔 It’s here.
Go vote on our Twitter poll! We’ll be back with the results on Wednesday.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Rolling down a hill = driving, right?
In case you didn’t know, Tesla is named after Nikola Tesla – one of the pioneers of modern electricity. And, in case you also didn’t know, one of Tesla’s main competitors is named Nikola (the humor isn’t lost on us).
If you’re wondering why you might not have heard of Nikola, that’s because its success is nowhere near that of Tesla’s – and some claims that came out recently might explain why.
A report from short selling investment firm Hindenburg Research made a lot of dramatic claims about the company, which are being disputed as false by Nikola.
We won’t dive into all of the drama, but there’s an entertaining line in a followup press release from Nikola that drew some attention. The company has been accused of rolling a truck down a hill to trick people into believing it could drive.
In response, the company stated:
“Nikola never stated its truck was driving under its own propulsion in the video, although the truck was designed to do just that.”
Go ahead and interpret that however you want… But, we think it’s safe to say that a truck rolling down a road isn’t quite the same as driving.