Entrepreneur-ing In Public: Journey Log #11
The great TikTok experiment begins
I teach entrepreneurship at Duke and Iām publicly growing a company ā Autopest ā from $0 to $100k/year in revenue in order to help entrepreneurs better understanding the process of building startups. Learn more about my journey here.
Last weekās update explained that I was going to focus on marketing ā both inbound and outbound ā for the foreseeable future. Lots to share, so letās skip the pre-amble and jump straight into the learnings.
A few words on outbound marketingā¦
First, Iāll share some updates/ thoughts about an outbound marketing strategy.
In case you donāt remember, last week I wondered whether Autopestās price point is too low to reasonably sell it using a cold emailing outreach campaign. After a bit more thought, Iāve decided I will attempt a cold, outbound emailing campaign. At the very least, itāll be a fun opportunity to teach the process.
Unfortunately, launching cold emailing campaigns requires some basic infrastructure that literally just takes time. As-in, you canāt start sending cold marketing emails from brand new email addresses and expect them to avoid the SPAM filter, which means you have to āwarm upā new email accounts over the course of a month or two so email services like Gmail and Outlook donāt automatically block your messages.
Iāve started that process of warming up new email accounts. Once Iāve got good deliverability, Iāll be able to share more details and begin the process of executing a campaign.
Inbound marketing via TikTok: Week #1
As I wait for email accounts to warm up before launching any outbound, cold emailing campaigns, Iāve decided to experiment with TikTok. While Iām obviously not the first person to use TikTok for marketing purposes, most people will tell you TikTok isnāt known for marketing B2B, SaaS products like Autopest. However, Aa someone who spends lots of time teaching TikTok, I figure I should at least give it a shot.
As a reminder, last week I committed to posting one TikTok per day about Autopest for the entire week. Iām proud to announce that I did, indeed, achieve my goal. The results were, honestly, exactly what I expected, which is to say that they were, at best, inconclusive. Still, it was a fun experiment, so let me walk you through the videos, the logic, the results, and the learnings.
A caveat about evaluating value
One of the challenges with TikTok as a marketing platform is that the videos canāt link anywhere, so the videos are difficult to properly attribute in the funnel. My only real data comes from internal video metrics such as views, likes, comments, and shares within TikTok, and those things only tell me about the videos themselves as opposed to how many people they drove to Autopest.
That caveat aside, presumably a TikTok that gets 100,000 views is going to drive some traffic, and thatās my goal. I want to see if I can produce a TikTok about Autopest that crosses the 100,000 views threshold.
For the sake of comparison, the TikTok I posted to my personal account last week crossed 200k views, so, yes, I somewhat know what Iām doing on the platform. However, not surprisingly, none of my Autopest content managed the same level of traction.
Iām going to share what happened with each video, then Iām going to share my analysis and next steps.
Day 1: Monday, June 12th - āTalking Headā Video
I actually showed you the first video in last weekās issue. It was a ātalking headā video where I simply spoke to the camera to explain how I used Autopest to raise millions of dollars from venture capitalists.
Results:
Views: 677
Likes: 22
Comments: 7
Favorites: 10
Day 2: Tuesday, June 13th - āSecret Trickā Video
For this video, I took the approach of a ādid you know?ā or āsecret trickā video where I tried to explain Autopest as though thereās a cool hack people can use to exploit ChatGPT when sending emails. It probably wasnāt āsnappyā enough to catch peopleās attention, so I think Iāll re-use this tactic in a few more videos to see if I can get the timing right.
Results:
Views: 588
Likes: 51
Comments: 6
Favorites: 16
Day 3: Wednesday, June 14th - āResponseā Videos
I got a couple good comments on my first two videos, so, for Day #3, I decided to post responses. TikTok responses are rarely a great ways to drive new traffic, but they give the impression other people care about your videos (why else would people be leaving comments???), which is a useful way to make someone (or, in this case, something) seem more in-demand than it actually is.
Results (Response #1):
Views: 501
Likes: 11
Comments: 0
Favorites: 1
Results (Response #2):
Views: 445
Likes: 32
Comments: 2
Favorites: 5
Day 4: Thursday, June 15th - āTeachingā Video
People tend to like learning new things on TikTok (at least, the audience Iām targeting does), so I wanted to create a video where I taught something important/valuable about how to send good emails. Honestly, I thought this video was going to do great. Itās snappy. Itās informative. It looks decently polished. Unfortunately, as youāll see, the results werenāt so great.
Results:
Views: 64
Likes: 8
Comments: 3
Favorites: 3
Day 5: Friday, June 16th - āResponseā Video
After my āteachingā video bombed, I thought a quick return to a (somewhat informative) response video would push me back in the right direction. Clearly, I was wrong.
Results:
Views: 65
Likes: 5
Comments: 1
Favorites: 1
Day 6: Saturday, June 17th - āPOVā Video
It was Saturdayā¦ not a great day for viral, B2B SaaS TikToks anyway. I thought a ālight touch,ā POV-style video might get some eyeballs (though, admittedly, I didnāt have much hope).
Results:
Views: 72
Likes: 5
Comments: 1
Favorites: 0
Day 7: Sunday, June 18th - āSecret Trickā Video
Another āsecret trickā video. The quality isnāt great, which I did intentionally. I hoped maybe it could help the TikTok seem more ārealā and less like a piece of marketing content. But, again, it was a Sunday and, even worse, Fatherās Day.
Results:
Views: 65
Likes: 8
Comments: 1
Favorites: 2
Key takeaways and conclusionsā¦
It might be easy to look at the raw numbers above and think that my first tranche of videos with 500 - 600 views wildly outperformed my second tranche from later in the week because the ones later in the week couldnāt even crack 100 views. But, letās be clear: 677 views on a TikTok (which was my most viewed video this week) is nothing. On a platform with 1 billion+ users, 677 views is basically zero.
In other words, none of my TikToks this week got any sort of traction, and thatās the real story of my TikTok experiment. Like every social media marketing strategy, a new TikTok account doesnāt magically get millions of viewers and tons of new customers. It takes time. Lots and lots of time.
What youāre seeing in the numbers Iāve shared is roughly what you should expect if you launch a new TikTok account (personal or professional). I know this because I work with dozens of creators, and Iāve seen the same pattern play out over and over. On a new TikTok account, youāll only get trickles of views for a while. This happens for three main reasons:
Youāve only just launched, and you need to figure out the right type of content.
As a new account, you donāt have any baseline of followers to pull from for initial views/traction.
Because youāre a new account, TikTok doesnāt trust your account yet and isnāt going to spread it to the world. You have to build up reputation with the platform by consistently posting over time.
Does any of this mean you shouldnāt bother using TikTok as a marketing strategy? Of course not!
What Iām hoping you learn from my experiment is that thereās no such thing as a āmagic bulletā in marketing. Instead, getting good results from any strategy is going to take time and effort. Be prepared to keep trying for at least a month before even the slightest sign of success starts to appear.
Thatās what Iāll be doing. What youāve seen is Week 1 of my TikTok strategy. But letās call it Week 1 of many. I need to keep doing the same thing for at least a few more weeks before I have any real data about whether itās working.
This, friends, is why entrepreneurship is hard.