What E-commerce Sellers can Learn from Walmart Buying into TikTok

On the 56th episode of Marketing Interruption, Andrew Maff discusses the news of Oracle and Walmart buying 20% of TikTok and what that could mean for e-commerce sellers in the future. He also goes over why they did it and how sellers could take a page out of their book.

Tune in and enjoy today's interruption!

TODAY'S EPISODE:

00:35

Hello, and welcome to episode number 56 of marketing interruption. I'm your host, Andrew Maff. And today I'm going to talk to you about the fact that TikTok was purchased by Walmart and what ecommerce sellers. Well, let me rephrase TikTok wasn't purchased by Walmart, Walmart and Oracle bought 20% of TikTok. So we've been talking about TikTok's purchase for a while. I'm sure a lot of e commerce sellers are probably tired of hearing about it. So I know most sellers off the top of my head aren't using TikTok that much. But Oracle's basically their technology partner, whatever that may mean. And I'm sure they're probably going to move most of TikTok servers over to Oracle. And then Walmart is somehow currently involved. And it's a brilliant move on Walmart's part. So the A lot of people are like, why would Walmart get involved that doesn't make a lot of sense, especially a lot of Amazon sellers who can't stand Walmart. But really what happened here was Walmart is doing a great job at investing into their future. So they're investing 2030 years down the road. Now Walmart is not great at purchasing companies they've purchased. So I was article the other day, it was hilarious. they've purchased like 10 to 15 companies over a billion dollars in the past, I think, eight years or 10 years or something like that. And like most of them have turned out to be nothing like Skype was obviously one of them. But the interesting thing was, and if you hear my dog chewing his bone in the background, and forgive me, he chooses to do it on the tile while I'm working from home. So the nice thing they've done here is they've actually taken the idea of, there's a bunch of kids, and there's a bunch of data in this one platform. And if we invest in these kids and start to brand in front of them and leverage that branding, and basically own that data now 1015 years from now, we're going to be Amazon. And they're going to start doing a lot more competing with Amazon they just released plus, they're doing their I heard they're getting into some tech stuff. So they're a little bit behind the mark now. But 10 years from now, I wouldn't be surprised if all of a sudden Walmart is now a much bigger name. Because if you think about the younger generation, they weren't really around during during my time as a yes millennial and I apologize. But they they weren't really around when Walmart was kind of known for like having really shoddy products and not being like the nicest place to go to in most places for the most part. So they've actually been able to kind of slowly get rid of that, that that brand awareness and that negativity towards their brand and are actually able to leverage it and start to twist the way that that wording is being played towards a younger audience. It's a brilliant move. And it really is currently a branding play there. I don't really foresee them doing too much in terms of maybe leveraging some influencers and stuff like that for getting sales now. But I see this as a move that they did for 1015 years from now. And I think the thing that most sellers can learn about from this is that not a lot of companies do stuff like that not a lot of companies are investing in 510 years from now, everyone's a short term investor, especially ecommerce sellers, I find that most sellers are investing into what they can get in the next six months to a year. Some of the bigger guys who've been doing this for a while they usually do it in the next like one to three years when they can start to see a return. Very few companies invest in something that they're only going to see five to 10 years from now. However, of course, you still have to have like some serious capital in order to be able to do that. But it is very interesting to see Walmart do that I'm sure they're gonna come out some tech and find other ways to leverage it. But I think that the one thing that most companies especially sellers can learn is that sometimes if you're expecting your company to be here, five or 10 years from now, you're gonna want future you to thank past you for doing whatever it is you did. So if there's a situation you're in, where you can invest in something now because you think 10 years from now it's going to make you a ton of money, it's going to be great for your brand, then you really should try to find a way to do it. Obviously be cost conscious and find a way to do it smart, but it's definitely something interesting that I find most sellers don't look into. And that's definitely something I would suggest that you do for the future but it's interesting. I will probably not talk a lot about TikTok anymore now that the purchases finally happen. And unless something crazy happens so consider this probably my last conversation about tic toc for a very long time. So you're all probably very lucky. But per usual rate review, subscribe and I will talk to you all tomorrow.