Have you seen TikTok or maybe tried it? Have you wondered how you might be able to monetize TikTok for you business? If you have this episode is for you. Our guest today is Mark Lachance, and his firm is one of the largest media buyers of TikTok ads in North America. Mark shares specific examples and how to make TikTok advertising work for your business to generate revenue.
Mark also wrote a book called The Lucky Formula that we will talk about in the next episode. So this is a first for us on the Multiply Your Success Podcast. We have never broken an interview up into two separate podcasts, but the content was so fantastic that it justified two different episodes.
LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
- Learn more about Mark Lechance and his book: https://marklachance.com/
- Check out Mark’s company website: https://maxy.media/
- If you are ready to franchise your business or take it to the next level: CLICK HERE.
ABOUT OUR GUEST:
Mark Lachance is a serial entrepreneur, strategic thinker, and investor. He is a renowned figure in the business world, one who possesses a deep understanding of blitz scaling companies. Having owned and operated several businesses that have experienced hyper growth through creative business development and lead generation, he is a master of sales and marketing and continues to apply and grow his expertise through current projects.
ABOUT BIG SKY FRANCHISE TEAM:
This episode is powered by Big Sky Franchise Team. If you are ready to talk about franchising your business you can schedule your free, no-obligation, franchise consultation online at: https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/ or by calling Big Sky Franchise Team at: 855-824-4759.
f you are interested in being a guest on our podcast, please complete this request form or email podcast@bigskyfranchise.com and a team member will be in touch.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:00):
Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where each week we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I’m your host, Tom DuFore, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team. And on today’s episode, we actually have a first with our guest, Mark Lachance, today. And Mark’s content that he shared with us was so excellent on two different subject areas that we decided to actually break his content into two different episodes. So this is Episode One, and Episode One is all about TikTok. And have you maybe tried advertising or maybe thought about advertising and promoting your business on TikTok, but didn’t know where to start or maybe even if it would work for your company. And Mark Lachance, our guest, his company is one of the largest media buyers of TikTok ads in North America. And he shares with us specific examples and different ways on how to make TikTok advertising work for your business and to generate revenue. So let’s go ahead and jump right into my interview with Mark Lachance.
Mark Lachance, Maxy Media Inc. (01:05):
Thank you for having me, Tom. Name is Mark Lachance; and if you’re in the US, it’s Lachance; if you’re in Canada or around the world, it’s Lachance. And I’ll get back to why the name means something, as it pertains to my book, in a second. But anyway, so I’m the CEO of a company called Maxy Media, Inc. And we’re performance marketing agency and really focused on social for marketing and with a specific focus on TikTok, in particular.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (01:33):
Great. Well, thank you for that intro, Mark. And really you, one of the reasons I was so interested in having you on the show is your focus and emphasis on TikTok. And in the business community, I don’t know if you run into this, I venture to guess you probably do every day. I’ve noticed there’s a lot of trepidation from business owners and business leaders about how to use TikTok in a marketing fashion. They know it’s a medium, they know there’s something there much like back in the days when Facebook was first coming along and then Instagram and so on, and now here’s TikTok. So I’d love your opinion on what you see and how you’re seeing your clients utilize it.
Mark Lachance, Maxy Media Inc. (02:15):
Well, we’re in the paid ad space. So we drive traffic via paid ads and we’ve selected four or five different verticals. So we don’t have, let’s say, specific clients. We drive traffic to different verticals. So for example, education, right? So we’ve got about 10 different universities that we drive traffic to and along with the aggregators, so the lead aggregators as well. So we’ve selected … we’ve got education, we’ve got personal finance, we’ve got auto insurance, health insurance, and dental, to be quite honest with you, which is crazy. But Tom, if I can give you a story of how we fell into TikTok, that might help some of your listeners.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (02:54):
Yeah, that’d be great.
Mark Lachance, Maxy Media Inc. (02:56):
So we started Maxy Media back in 2017, and we are a Facebook only shop, so Facebook and Instagram. And then as probably many people here know, if you’ve tried to use Facebook ads, it’s not that easy in a sense that Facebook is a difficult, let’s say, partner to have. So back in the summer of 2020, we had those difficult periods where they were rejecting pretty much 100% of our ads. So our revenue went from here to basically nothing. And we had to make a move. Obviously, we had, payroll at the time had about 30 employees and we were burning something like $150,000 a month, payroll rent, blah, blah, blah. This is before COVID. Actually, it’s just after COVID. Sorry about that. So we were burning, we were back in the office at the time, we were burning tons of cash.
Mark Lachance, Maxy Media Inc. (03:47):
So we had to come up with a solution, and the solution was TikTok was literally in Beta. So we were one of the first, we were one of the top 10 Beta testers of the ad platform on TikTok. And so, it took us a long time to figure it out. But so some of the nuances of that versus, let’s say, using Facebook or Instagram to advertise is the fact that your media buyer or the person that’s buying the ads is not necessarily the person that’s going to do the creative. So on Facebook, let’s say, Tom, let’s say you’re advertising your Big Sky franchise business, there’s a chance that you’re going to do the creative and write the ad copy. Right? But on TikTok, it’s totally different. I don’t know if … You’re not going to see me dancing around on a TikTok video doing the ads. Do you dance around on TikTok Tom or what?
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (04:39):
I do not. No, no, I have not. I do not. Yeah.
Mark Lachance, Maxy Media Inc. (04:45):
But anyway, so the big difference is that your creator or your video creator is not your media buyer. So that might be one of the problems where one of your franchisees comes into it, they look at the TikTok platform and they feel that it’s unreachable because they don’t want to be the talent on the platform. Which is, look, I’ve got the biggest TikTok agency throughout Canada. We’re in the top 15 in the United States. And I haven’t done a single video once. So that might allay some fears from some of your franchisees.
Mark Lachance, Maxy Media Inc. (05:18):
You don’t need to be the talent. You just need to find some good talented people out there, which there are millions of them out there because we’re able to find creators by the bushels. And a joke that I like to make is that there’s a problem with hiring people because they’re probably working for companies like mine, where they’d rather make videos than full at burgers. If you know what I mean? So you could find them. That’s not that difficult.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (05:48):
Interesting, interesting. So it, so it sounds like what I’m picking up is you find the creative folks to actually create and put together the videos or content or whatever’s happening. And then an organization like yours helps run the marketing or advertising that’s behind that to make it go?
Mark Lachance, Maxy Media Inc. (06:08):
Exactly. Now, and here’s another thing. I would assume that a lot of your clients, Tom, have the ability to buy ads on Facebook. It’s very, very similar on TikTok.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (06:19):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mark Lachance, Maxy Media Inc. (06:19):
It’s a very similar platform. So don’t be afraid of the ad buying part. It’s just the creative part, which is different. But you can find these on platforms like Upwork of Fiverr, a lot of these platforms, where you could hire gig workers and it’s not that difficult.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (06:35):
Okay. Interesting. Well, and certainly the next question, I know that I’m thinking … someone who’s probably going to listen to this is thinking, well, Mark, that sounds great. I can spend some money. I can get this going. But does anyone buy anything off of this? Are people buying things or engaging with these advertisements on this platform?
Mark Lachance, Maxy Media Inc. (06:55):
Well, I could just tell you that our costs to buy ads on TikTok is far less than Facebook. I could also tell you that our traffics or our eyeballs are far greater. Now here’s the one nuance is the attention span of a Facebook user is much greater than the attention span of a TikTok user, right? So let’s say, if you’re doing lead generation and it’s a click, click, click to name, email, phone number, you could do that. That’s pretty easy. But if it’s a long funnel, it’s going to be more difficult on TikTok. But if it’s as short lead generation form or even as short sale, it’s pretty quick. But make it as seamless and as frictionless as possible on TikTok as it’s much different, the attention span is far different.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (07:43):
Interesting. And you mentioned earlier, some of the clients and industries, you, or not clients, but industries that you work in at, on TikTok. And are you finding that it’s primarily a B2C type of a platform, do you of B2B for services or maybe even clients who might be listening in? Franchise organizations, I was thinking, well, maybe there’s an opportunity for franchise sales on TikTok.
Mark Lachance, Maxy Media Inc. (08:10):
So what we found is on the paid side, again, there’s a distinction between paid and creator. So we do paid advertising. We’re not an influencer network. So we hire creators to make videos for us so that we can post them, so we could buy traffic against those. So let me, I can answer that in two ways. So on the paid side, it’s more, we’ve seen, it’s more of a B2C play, right? But on the creative … Let’s say, for example, your personality, Tom, and you want to be the creative or the influencer for your brand, it can become a B2B. So let’s say you’ve got a franchisee, or you’ve got a business that has a creative person in the organization, or maybe the owner, the CEO, is creative, then it can become a B2B, I believe. So for example, if I wanted to make TikTok videos and dance and sing and do all these crazy things in TikTok, I could do it and it could become a B2B play, but that’s just not my thing. So …
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (09:08):
Sure. Well, that to me, that’s a little reassuring to think, okay, well, here’s this opportunity. If I’m in a B2C type of a business, a lot of times, and myself included, it’s just easier to buy the space. It’s just easier to pay for the ads and go that approach. Work with an organization like you to help in purchasing and making sure that we’re being effective and efficient as possible in going through that. So I think that’s really, for me, maybe comforting, I guess, to see that the platform is a viable use for you outside of just some fun, entertaining venue to escape into. Well, great. And for someone that’s maybe looking to get started or to go that direct, how would they go about that? Whether they worked with a group like yours, is there a budget range that they would need to plan on coming into at least at a minimum starting point?
Mark Lachance, Maxy Media Inc. (10:06):
So you have to figure that there’s the video creation and then there is the media buying. So I would suggest … I would probably project that a small to medium sized business is anywhere between two to $5,000 a month, if they want to do that. Because you have to create the videos, that’s a cost. And here’s another difference, by the way, I forgot to mention earlier. Is that on Facebook, you could post an ad, Tom, and the ad could sit there for months and months and months, but on TikTok, the ad burns off much quicker. So the ad will, it’s called, “ad fatigue.” And the ad will fatigue within 48 hours to four days. So you’ve got to continually create new creatives. That’s the nuance. And that’s the difference, right?
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (10:49):
So interesting.
Mark Lachance, Maxy Media Inc. (10:51):
We had a division that we’re actually phasing out. We had a video development division. It was a lot of fun. It was slightly profitable. But it was just chewing too much of our effort, but we were selling videos at about $90 a pop. So, and these videos would last … If you think about it, you can find … there’s other organizations out there that have these available, but they’ll create on-demand videos for you. And you can do the media buying. So you could find them out there. It’s not a problem.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (11:20):
Okay. Interesting. So the creative and I guess that makes sense. I hadn’t thought of it that way. But you have to constantly be doing something new and updating. That’s really interesting. Plus your advertising budget to get that moving.
Mark Lachance, Maxy Media Inc. (11:35):
Exactly. So there’s the ad budget or the media buy budget, and then there’s the creative budget.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (11:41):
Well, Mark, thank you so much for a great first half of the interview, and we’re actually going to do three key takeaways and our win-win on the first half, and we’ll do it for the second half in next week’s episode. So takeaway number one is when Mark talked about TikTok ad fatigue, which occurs within two to four days. And so that means it’s very different from Facebook and other advertising venues, where you have to constantly be producing new material and new ads. And he also shared that when you’re producing those ads and contact forms that you need to make the TikTok contact forms as frictionless and seamless as possible.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (12:23):
Takeaway number two is he gave an idea or a recommendation for a budget to start with for a small to medium sized business. And he said that you need to start with somewhere between two to $5,000 per month. And that includes your ad spend and your content creation because of the content that has to constantly be developed due to that ad fatigue.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (12:48):
And take away number three is that he shared that TikTok ads are actually less expense than Facebook today. I thought that was just a great little nugget. So in terms of media spend, it’s probably going to be less than Facebook.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (13:01):
And now it’s time for today’s win-win. And so today’s win-win is that your video creator is not your media buyer. So if you thought about TikTok and that you have to be that person, that influencer, dancing and doing videos and creating that content all the time, that’s not necessarily correct. And if you’re looking to build ads and build brand recognition for your company, this does not mean that you, as the owner, or that a key stake holder, a key employee at your business has to be the face of the company on TikTok. You’re able to hire content creators that can create the ads and create the material that you’re going to publish to talk about your business. So I think that’s the win-win out of this. I know in speaking with clients that we’ve worked with, there’s some trepidation in terms of spending on TikTok, and they’re worried that they have to be the person dancing and doing videos.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (14:03):
And I thought Mark said it extremely well that he does. His firm is one of the largest buyers of TikTok ads in North America. And he’s never done one video. I thought that was a great takeaway. So that’s the episode today folks. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review. And remember, if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise your business or take their franchise company to the next level, please connect with us at: bigskyfranchiseteam.com. Thanks for tuning in. And we look forward to having you back next week.
