The marketing movement by Refine Labs. All right, hey guys, so excited to be doing, I think, all of our first marketing movement podcast on the incredibly popular topic right now, TikTok. So I've rounded myself. I am Allison Lomond, Director of Demand Gen here at Refine Labs, my colleague Ashley and my colleague Todd.
So let's have Todd introduce himself, probably doesn't need an introduction here. You guys probably know him already on the subject of TikTok, but let's hear a little bit about what you do here at Refine. Yeah. I'm Todd Clouser.
I'm here marketing, brand marketing manager here at Refine Labs and I was brought on to help expand the social platforms that Refine Labs is using, the main to being YouTube and TikTok. And then Ashley, let's hear from you. Of course, it's going to be a tough one to follow, but Ashley is in here and I am a Director of Demand Gen at Refine Labs. Super excited to start this conversation.
Yeah, so let's get right into it. I wanted to sort of bring us all together and just sort of start by talking about why the time is now for TikTok. I think as marketers, it can be difficult to know when to explore a new channel and how to do it strategically, but not so slow that we're over analyzing every step and not taking advantage. So I thought we could sort of talk about that.
Let's start with Todd. Maybe orient us in the conversation here. So I think the time is now on TikTok for a couple of reasons. One is I think the people that go into this platform now are setting themselves up for success later, but even more importantly than that, because I think that's a long-term mindset that a lot of people won't have, I think that and what I'm trying to prove is like TikTok content performs so well on LinkedIn that even if you don't care about creating a massive TikTok audience right now, you're probably already playing in the LinkedIn space.
And by taking advantage of TikTok, you can do so much better on LinkedIn. I think it's as simple as for me personally, when I'm scrolling through LinkedIn, I almost get this fatigue because it's like generally it's like text post, text post, text post, and I'll read the first three maybe. And then after that, I may read the first couple of lines and you get this decay rate of how long through a post I actually get through. I'll like different posts from people that I know I like their content, but I don't always get through the entire piece of content.
Whereas with a TikTok post, if I'm scrolling through the feet and I see this vertical video, I think one of two things. Either A, this is a TikTok and it's going to be good or like at the very least, it's like this is like a it's very authentic because like someone just whipped out their phone and like started talking and like there's so I think it has the ability to stop the scroll better than anything else. And then at that point, it's just it's as the creator, it's your job to be able to keep the person engaged. Well, I love that like taking up the vertical space like Ashley knows with our clients, we're always encouraging them to with ads with paid ads to take up the most space possible.
Feel constrained by a horizontal image, go for that square image. And now we've got an even another like medium option in that vertical video. So I think that's a really good point too. And Ashley, I know you've had some conversations with people in your network about TikTok.
What is your perspective on the channel? Yeah, so TikTok is fun. Like Todd alluded to now is the time to really jump on. I think there's many brands and companies who really kind of made a name for themselves when Facebook pre algorithm was out, they really mastered it and they saw success there.
Same thing is happening on TikTok right now. The algorithm is still in favor of organically showcasing creators and brands and whomever is really nailing their content. So I think above and be all, just remember that now is the time to really get the reach that you would love on a new platform. And like anything in marketing, the world, business, et cetera, it's constantly evolving and this is a channel that has proven it's here to stay.
It's not going anywhere. It's been here for a while now. So I think just making sure that you were evolving with the landscape is a huge thing. So there's a space for everyone on TikTok.
I think that there's this misconception that it's only a certain demographic or a certain topic and that's not true. There is literally a niche for every single person there. And a lot of times people are going to TikTok for consumption and that's a huge thing to know is that they want to consume. They're not trying to aimlessly scroll like they're there for really taking in what you're putting out there.
So I think it's a really cool time to really take advantage of these pieces of TikTok. Actually, that's so funny. It's like typical B2B. We're talking about this channel like it just dropped yesterday and it's been out for years.
Like that is so like could not be more B2B marketing. And that's like what we try to do here at Refine is like really lean into the unknown and kind of like trailblaze the unknown. Which I think like so for me personally, I think this will lead into kind of our next topic but if I can wrap up this one like as a marketer and someone who is trying to grow in my career and I have very vocal aspirations of being a CMO one day. Like whether that's five years, 10 years from now, there's a very high probability that I'll be leading a team that includes a full time person dedicated to TikTok.
And so my objective of getting on the platform now is to learn it to experiment so that I can pitch it to my clients or if I ever go back in house, I can pitch it to my executives, my team, I can lead a team and understand what it takes. So I think the barrier to entry to explore and really understand is a personal reason why I've kind of like put myself out there and jumped into the space. And I think what I want to talk about now, we get this question a lot. How can we get started on TikTok?
How does a brand, so not necessarily a personal brand which we're all very kind of comfortable with already but how does an employer brand become an advocate for using the channel on TikTok? And so I want to talk if you could just talk about how we kicked it off at Refine Labs. And then Ashley and I can give our perspective of the employee side of things. So how we got started.
Yeah, for sure. And I think TikTok is an uphill battle, like when you're trying to get it launched just because of the nature of the content you're creating. People like by nature are not comfortable on camera. So when you ask people to, especially in B2B when it's like a professional space, like nobody wants to put themselves out there, I think what you have to do is find the people internally that are willing to do that.
And the way we did that here was we basically, we ran a competition that had some pretty good prizes. There were gift cards that were not an insignificant amount. And basically the reason for that, like we knew not every single person was just going to go out and like crush TikTok for a gift card. But what we were trying to do is find these like champions internally that will take that on.
And then once we found those people, it's about kind of cultivating it and helping them grow. So they can use their influence with internal members on their teams and show the people that they interact with on a regular basis inside the company that yes, this platform can help you on your LinkedIn game or you can grow a big audience on TikTok, the platform itself. Or by doing this, you'll be able to have better conversations with your clients. So like for us, that was the goal.
And obviously you two were two of those champions that rose to the top. But like that's an ongoing thing though. So like it's not just like find who's going to do it and let them go. Like the purpose of finding those people is so that you can help them to continue to grow, not just now, but like into the future so that they can they can help move the whole company forward.
Exactly. And I did not want to spoil the surprise, but yes, that's why we're all three together because Ashley and I were the winners of the contest. And Ashley, I thought your approach to the contest was really, we actually had different approaches. You really experimented with the variety of content you leaned into trends, trending sounds.
I tried to do more mine like more just like me talking to a camera and you had a really good LinkedIn post about it, which we can drop links to in this. But I thought maybe you could share some of your learnings. I thought it was fascinating. Yeah, I think when you're starting off on TikTok, you need to come to it with an experimental mindset because you're not going to know what hits well with your audience.
So there's different ways you can approach TikTok, just like there is many different ways to approach creative. You can take it as Allison as you were saying more kind of like that educational talking to the camera angle, which a lot of people are doing on TikTok. I think that's super powerful. And then there's also on the other flip side, there's a lot of people who are taking more of the trending sounds kind of like fun play to TikTok and really leaning into that.
I don't think that there's a great like one or the other until you test it. You need to test it with your message, your brand and your audience. And you'll figure out what works. Like you'll find your sweet spot.
I think it's a constant testing and hypothesis and gathering results to figure out what works. For some people, I've seen something where trending sounds you overlay for seven seconds and then you overlay your content. People have seen huge results with that. That's the next experiment I want to try.
And then also pair it with a very similar content that would be me just talking to the camera, take back those results, see what works and also see what feels good as your brand, like what feels like a good brand fit. And I think you'll figure out which element to take. I love that. And then, of course, you're kind of pioneering.
I think unofficially trying to grow B2D talk as a legitimate hashtag, but also a legitimate form of educational entertainment. We haven't found the right word as it in vocation, entertainment. We don't know. But I thought you could talk about the inspiration for things like the remote office or sales and marketing where a married couple, what's your objective behind that type of content?
Well first, I'll tell you the inspiration for it because the inspiration and the objective are two different things. I think the big mistake that a lot of people make specifically in B2B when they go on to TikTok is they try to find every other B2B person on TikTok and stay within that lane. Like a lot of people will tell you, and I may have been guilty of even saying this at one point in time, is like, find the people in your niche and resist any urge to watch anything else until you train the algorithm that's what you want. And I think that's a bad advice because the inspiration for everything that I've done has come outside of B2B.
There's so many good creators on TikTok that you can learn from that you would never, if you followed those best practices, you would never get those learnings. So that's where the inspiration came from. And the reason I chose two pillars was for the same reason. When you go and you look at these really good people that are doing really well on the platform, and then you actually look at the entire library of what they do, you'll find that most of them have between two and four content themes or pillars, but you don't get served all of those.
But for example, there's an account that a lot of people are probably familiar with. She's one of the biggest ones on there called Call Me Chris. And she does these oldest child, middle child, youngest child, etches, which is what gets served to me. So that's what I know her for.
But if you go and you look at her, the entire library, you see that she's got three or four different pillars. And TikTok, the algorithm is so good, not just at serving you on an account level, but the actual type of content that you enjoy from a specific account, which is why it's important to have different pillars. Because the remote office might get served to you, but you don't really like that. You've never really engaged with the if-marketing-did stuff.
But Ashley might like the if-marketing-did stuff, but doesn't really like the remote office. It's a way to diversify your audience with these different content pillars. So that's where the inspiration came for the content that I'm creating and how I've attacked the strategy behind it. And I forget part two of the question.
I really liked how you mentioned going into it, you're going to be tempted to look up your competitors or anyone else that's in your space and copy and paste that into your strategy. But I think something very important to remember for all social media channels is you need to consume it first. You need to be good at consuming the channel and understanding the channel. And then using those findings and those insights to form your own creation.
So knowing how people are using TikTok personally, because ultimately you want your content to be consumed. So knowing those kind of hits or however you want to say, I think, is super critical. So making sure you don't do a copy and paste and just see what's resonating on the channel in general. Yeah, for sure.
A couple other things to hit on from the How Refined Labs sort of championed this foray into TikTok and really empowered their employees to try this channel. It's really no different if you've been following our content, chances are you're listening to that you have. And you know that we're very big proponents of giving employees the space and the freedom to use these channels as part of their job. And I think one of the other things that Todd and the larger marketing team here did really well is they didn't put these massive constraints on us.
There was no like, you need to share refined lab content. You need to talk about these five topics that are the refined labs kind of content pillars. It really gave us the space to talk about why we're experts. And I think brands can do this too.
Your employees don't have to be talking about your company. They need to be establishing themselves as experts. And that's what's going to get them a following which will naturally sort of tie back to your brand. The other thing too that the company did well, I think, is we have Todd who's really dedicated to this.
This is his project of refined labs, what his day to day is. So we have him to go to as a resource if we have questions or need advice. But he's also leading by example in creating this content himself. And then our executives are also creating content.
And so I think when the leadership can do it from the top down, you feel as an employee less afraid to take that jump or take that risk. So those are just some tips I think I learned as being the employee that I felt like I could enter the space and be supported by my colleagues in doing so. And I think that's a good point to make. A couple of people have actually asked me like, how do you get people to create content for you?
And then like, how do you collect that and post it? I think what's going to make a brand successful on, this is just TikTok, but any corporate brand on social media is not using your employees as like the, how do I say this? Instead of me coming to you and saying, Alison, or Ashley, I need you to film a video for me, drop it in the Google Drive, send it to me, and then I'm going to post on refined labs. You're using the Refine Labs channel to help build the personal brand of all of our employees.
So it's like, it's more of an aggregate of all of your personal content. And the beauty of TikTok is like, I don't need to go and you don't need to go and drop it in a Google Drive for me or anything. I can literally like go to your account, save the video. It has your watermark on it and I can tag you.
So you know, as a, as a creator, as an employee, like the goal of the company is to like empower you to continue to create content and then like, yes, we will benefit from it as a company. Like you're, you're getting that same benefit as the employee. It's kind of a win win for both. Absolutely.
And I think like that can be a great, like employer perk and benefit to offer their employees is like, we will support your personal brand building. Like we are your biggest champion in rising to a successful place in your career, especially in like today's recruiting market is so challenging. I think brands that, that innovate and they're not afraid, like they trust their employees. They're not afraid that their employees are going to misuse this channel or any channel and they empower them.
That's just a great way to flip it. So I thought we could kind of end today. I'm a big fan of like just talking about like where we see the future of this channel, like the future of TikTok, especially, you know, when it comes to like B2B brands or content creators that are in like the B2B marketing sales space. I mean, like crazy, we'll call them predictions, kind of like things that you've seen or you think might be sort of up and coming.
Let's go with Ashley first here or talk. Yeah, go ahead. So I'm you take it away. I was going to.
OK. I was going to say, I think in like the next six months to a year, you're going to start seeing a lot of companies. You're going to see a new role open up in companies, which is specifically going to be like a creator role, whereas like, you know, before we may have had like a social media manager or something like that, and then their job was to go out and find subject matter experts. I really think like companies are going to either go on the platform and find someone who is really good and hire that person or they're going to find a creator in some other industry or whatever that's just really good at TikTok.
And then they're going to hire them specifically for that. Somebody that can actually like stay on top of trends and is proficient with using all the features on the platform. I think that's going to be something that we're going to start seeing a lot more of. So probably something consumers brand have already done, right?
Yeah, for sure. It's almost like the internal influencer rather than like before as a creator, like if you wanted to actually make money, you pretty much had to like go off on your own and you know, either try to, you know, do the influencer thing or make a YouTube channel or something like that, whereas now companies are actually like starting to pay creators what, what they're worth because they're seeing the value that they bring. I'm here for it. What about you, Ashley?
I'm here for it too. One thing that I am seeing and I think we'll continue to see is a lot of other social platforms are really set up nicely for advertising to make it feel natural and impactful. TikTok is unique. And I think that in order to really see results from TikTok, you need to invest organically above paid, especially the way that advertising platform is set up right now.
So I think that's going to be a bit of a mind-shoe for a lot of me to be marketers is to have to rely on the organic side a lot heavier than other platforms. So I think that's something just to keep in mind is and it also just needs to feel natural to and it's something that you would enjoy seeing on the platform. That's why people are going to TikTok. You know, are they looking for education?
Are they looking for, you know, fun things like that? So I think that's just something to keep in mind as, you know, the future of TikTok keeps growing. I'll round it up here. I think this goes really nicely to Todd's prediction.
I think that this is if I were in college right now, this is something that I would consider if I'm interested in content creation, marrying a blend of like business with performance arts, like there's so much you can learn about script writing, comedy, drama, you know, just having that like solid foundation and performance arts and marrying it with like a business or a marketing background. Like in my opinion, if this is like the future is like what Todd is saying, like these open roles will be these full-time content creators. Like that's a path I would really consider because so much of it is knowing how to tell a compelling story, knowing how to like play different characters and really like transform yourself into, you know, a true personality. So I think for all those people that are like interested in maybe they have that passion and like didn't see a potential career path with a straight performance arts degree, like this is something that could be useful or we might maybe see more of or see like that college curriculum change a little bit.
I mean, I have a five-year-old and I feel like, you know, she's going to be a content creator one day, she already wants to do YouTube channels and she's made some guest appearances. So I'm always like, as a mom, thinking like what's next in the next like 15 years. And that's my sort of like big picture. I love that.
I think you can even take advantage of that today. You know, if you're really wanting to make a splash as a brand on TikTok, hire someone with those talents, you know, it might not look like the normal candidate, you know, on paper, but you could really see some results with those skillsets right there. So I really like that you called that out. Yeah.
100%. Yeah. Diversity too. And hiring like you're getting, you're bringing all sorts of skills to the table and blending that are in science together, which is the best part of marketing, you know, agreed.
Well, I know we could talk about this for for hours. We're all really passionate. We'll probably regroup in the future. But I want to thank you both for jumping on here with me and look forward to the feedback on this topic from everyone.
Awesome. Thank you so much. Thanks for sending out. Awesome.
Bye.