The heart of influencer marketing is collaboration. And at the heart of collaboration are content creators. A slight change in how you see influencer marketing can have a significantly positive effect on how you can collaborate to help build your brand.
In this episode you will learn:
Key Highlights
[06:12] Introduction of Podcast Guest, Yash Chavan
[12:14] How Yash Started Into Influencer Marketing
[15:23] Yash's Experience With Pushbacks
[20:29] How Yash Found Developers and Promotion of his Tool
[24:55] Yash's 6 Steps System to Influencer Marketing Success
[30:22] Influencer VS Influencer Marketing
[35:24] Creator-Led Growth Concept by Yash
[38:19] What SARAL Tool Can Do for You
[39:36] SARAL Free Trial
Notable Quotes
Guest Links:
Learn More:
The heart of influencer marketing is collaboration. And at the heart of collaboration are content creators. A slight change in how you see influencer marketing can have a significantly positive effect on how you can collaborate to help build your brand.
In this episode you will learn:
Key Highlights
[06:12] Introduction of Podcast Guest, Yash Chavan
[12:14] How Yash Started Into Influencer Marketing
[15:23] Yash's Experience With Pushbacks
[20:29] How Yash Found Developers and Promotion of his Tool
[24:55] Yash's 6 Steps System to Influencer Marketing Success
[30:22] Influencer VS Influencer Marketing
[35:24] Creator-Led Growth Concept by Yash
[38:19] What SARAL Tool Can Do for You
[39:36] SARAL Free Trial
Notable Quotes
Guest Links:
Learn More:
Do you need some help with your influencer marketing strategy? This is Neal Schaffer, your digital marketing coach, I am beyond excited to announce that I will be launching my first digital course this will be a cohort, a live course over the course of a week. To help you develop more, revise and improve your influencer marketing strategy. This is a pre launch announcement. You'll hear more about this in November, but in October, if this interests you at all, I do have a pre launch survey that if you complete and get added to the waiting list, you will get a 10% discount coupon from yours truly, you'll also get the opportunity to have a free 15 minute consultation with me. Now this URL is going to be a little bit long. So when you're back in the office or at home, put it in your chrome or whatever browser you use, but go to Neal schaffer.com That's ne al sch FF er, hopefully you know how to spell my name by now. It is my hope, Neal schaffer.com/maven Because that's the platform it's going to be on m a VM. And then I m one for influencer marketing the number one and then survey ser ve y. If you can't remember it, just hit me up on the socials, fill out the contact form on my website, Neal schaffer.com/contact, or email me at Neal at Neal schaffer.com and I will get you hooked up with the survey form URL. Now it's back to today's episode. Yes, Neil, we know the Creator economy is real. We know that through collaborating with content creators. It will help us accelerate our brand building and social media. But how exactly do we go about doing that? Well, we're gonna talk all about how to build your brand by collaborating with content creators on this episode of The your digital marketing coach podcast. Digital social media content, influencer marketing, blogging, podcasting, blogging, tick talking LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, SEO, SEM, PPC, email marketing, who there's a lot to cover, whether you're a marketing professional entrepreneur, or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got Neil, on your side, because Neal Schaffer is your digital digital marketing marketing coach, helping you grow your business with digital first marketing one episode at a time. This is your digital marketing coach, and this is Neal Schaffer. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the your digital marketing coach podcast. My name is Neal Schaffer. Obviously, I am your digital marketing coach. Today we're going to be talking about a subject that is near and dear to my heart for a few reasons. Well, first of all, influencer marketing. For those of you that have subscribed long enough to remember that this podcast used to be called maximize your social influence podcast. I congratulate you. If you're still new here. I am the author of the age of influence the definitive book on influencer marketing. You can find it on Amazon just do a search for age of influence, and influencer marketing I believe of the six major types of digital marketing. Those being just having a website or app having a presence is number one. Number two is SEO organic or PPC paid. Number three is email marketing, marketing automation, text marketing, SMS, Facebook Messenger, what have you. Number four is content marketing, blogging, lead asset generation. Number five being social media marketing, organic or paid. Number six being influencer marketing in all of its implementations, whether it's your employee influencer program, formerly known as employer Advocacy Program, or your customer influencer program, formerly known as brand Advocacy Program, or influencer marketing, which is a broader term which encompasses people that might not be your employees. They might not be your customers, but there is a way to collaborate them and ideally convert them into becoming a brand advocate, ie an influencer, who is also a customer but that's the way I look at the digital marketing landscape. If you're brand new here if you've listened to a few episodes, or if this is your first episode, you're not sure if you want to subscribe or not. I really hope that you will. And just as a reminder for my listeners that as we get into this topic of influencer marketing, I want to remind you this is a subject that over the last year, I have covered several times. Today obviously is episode number 289. In episode number 278, I gave you a preview of my own class from UCLA Extension In this class I teach an influencer marketing I give you a snippet of that of how to easily find influencers for your business without using expensive tools. We had episode 274 A little bit different but my child wants to become an influencer. What should I do? Episode number 253 Tick Tock versus Instagram. What is the best platform for influencer marketing in 2022? How influencer marketing will change in 2022 was episode number 247 How influencer gifting can build your business episode number 242. What is the creator economy? And what is its relationship to influencer marketing? Very, very important topic. This is episode number 241. And then episode number 231, which was literally published one year ago how to measure success in influencer marketing. So it's a continuing narrative. My podcast is a continuing narrative of a lot of the six different elements that go into digital marketing. I try to bring in experts where I can I try to also do my own influencer marketing with my own customers. These are my fractional cmo clients, or perhaps they're part of my digital first mastermind community. Today I'm going to introduce you to Yash Chauvin, who is part of my digital first mastermind community. That is my disclaimer, he joined my mastermind, saying that he was developing an influencer marketing tool and wanted to get guidance from myself as well as from the community. It's been really exciting to see him grow over the last few months, and to actually launch his tool, which he's going to talk about today. And you're going to learn a little bit of Hindi today, because the name of its tool means in Hindi, easy, Sonata is one that's the first Hindi word I've ever known, but it's called Sinad. It's gets it all.com. Yes, Javon. We're going to talk about how to build your brand by collaborating with content creators. He's going to share his six step system for influencer marketing success, influencer versus influence marketing, ie how to actually influence your buyers, and just a more holistic approach to career driven growth, how to leverage influences beyond just social media posts, he speaks a language, that is exactly what I speak, it's almost as if you will hear me say amen. Several times during this interview, we're that much aligned. I also want to let you know that if you're listening to this live or near when this episode is available, I am launching my first digital course up until now my first digital product was the digital first mastermind community, which obviously you can still find at Neal schaffer.com/membership. But now I am also launching a digital course on a platform called maven.com. This is going to be a live course, where we together over a number of zoom calls, including office hours, are going to learn how to create an influencer marketing strategy in one week, I'm going to help you through the same concepts that I talked about in the age of influence, as well as my speaking consulting and the teaching that I do. I am putting it all in one product to maximize our time together to get you going on your influencer marketing the right way. In 2023 Now, it's gonna launch in about a week. But until that there's a survey if you go and fill out that survey, you'll join the waiting list you'll be the first to know and you will get a 10% discount as well as the opportunity to get a free 15 minute consult from me. Regardless of if you decide to take the class or not. You can go to Neal schaffer.com/maven. That's ma ve and Maven I am one influencer marketing one survey. Neal schaffer.com/maven I am one survey and may ve N I am the number one ser ve y if you're in your car, you're at the gym, you can't memorize this. ping me on social media or email me Neil ne al at Neal schaffer.com in the Al sch FF er.com. You can also go to Neal Schaffer comm slash contact let me know I will send you the survey form. And you can also get that 10% discount and a chance to get a free 15 minute consult with me. I also want to say, and I should have mentioned this beforehand. It's been a while since my last episode, I think you heard my last episode was or I should say what are my takeaways from Vid Summit? It was my longest episode ever. Even my podcast editor congratulated me on being able to do a one hour and 20 minute episode staring at a wall and know the reason why this one took so long is not because of that I have been very busy traveling. As I mentioned, things are really opening up this last week I was at the Adobe MAX summit in Los Angeles, California and Oh mg, I will never think of business the same going forward. It was that impactful. That's going to be the episode of an episode coming up very shortly. I did post the most about this on Twitter. If you're not following me go to twitter.com/neal. Schaffer, any al Sch, FF er, but hey, that's enough about me, I want to get to this interview because I think you're really going to enjoy it. And it's really going to get you in the right mindset for how to think about the Creator, economy influencers, and how they can contribute to your overall digital marketing. So without further ado, here's my interview with yas Javon. You're listening to your digital marketing coach, this is Neal Schaffer. Yash. Javon, welcome to the your digital marketing coach podcast.
Yash Chavan:Thanks, Neil. Thanks for having me
Neal Schaffer:on. Where in the world are you joining us from today?
Yash Chavan:I'm joining you from Mumbai, India. It's
10:45pm. I'm excited to record but I'm super pumped.
Neal Schaffer:You know, I know. And you know what, as Mumbai, there might be a few listeners who still know by its old name, when was the official change from the old name to the new name just out of curiosity.
Yash Chavan:So I'm not sure about the exact year when it changed. But the old name which was Bombay, was given by the British when the when India was a British colony. And then we kind of changed it to Mumbai, because it's named after the goddess Moomba mun BA. So it's actually named after a goddess in Hindu culture. So yeah.
Neal Schaffer:I have no idea. That's very cool. Thank you for always like to start on a different note before we get in. So So Yash obviously today, we're gonna be talking about influencer marketing. You are the founder and CEO of a really cool new tool that's emerging that's getting great reviews. I know that I've introduced it to people in my UCLA class, for instance, and got a lot of interest and we'll we'll get to that in a bit. But I first want to dig deeper into why Yosh why influencer marketing what, what brought you into the space, you're obviously still very young. So I don't think you have like 3040 years experience in marketing. So how did you get started with influencer marketing?
Yash Chavan:Yeah, so the story Long story short, I started off in sales, I got into growth and marketing, we did a few jobs was successful, that then started an agency, like a boutique small agency, and we were consulting with a brand that was losing money on Facebook ads, so and they were just mindlessly spending, they didn't know what to do. So I came in, I was like, Wait, they're losing money on Facebook. What else can we do to really help them grow? So I was like, Okay, well, influencer marketing seems like the right option for them, because they already got a lot of reviews and testimonials on Twitter, on Facebook and all these places. So I was like, they already have a strong model, word of mouth. And what influencer marketing does, it just it just works word of mouth on steroids, right? It's like, instead of one person telling five people, it's one person telling 50,000 people. So I was like, that's, that's the that's this out. And we had no idea I did not read, I did not buy our book. At this point. I did not take a course or anything of that. So it's like, let's just reach out to a few influencers and see what they think. And we did the outreach, and it worked. And here we are, in that scale that program to like 500 Plus creators promoting that brand. And then that's how I really got into it is just by doing it, I did it first. I did not read up on it. There wasn't like a proper like strategy behind it. I was like, well, they're losing on Facebook, they have good word of mouth. Let's do influencer and scale that. And that worked out. So yeah, they are now currently not spending much on Facebook ads, like fraction of what they were now spending most of their marketing budget is on influencers. So that's how I got started with
Neal Schaffer:it. That's the story. But what type of product was it? This was
Yash Chavan:particularly for SAS brand. Okay, so it was a bit of humor, ya know, it's a b2c SAS app.
Neal Schaffer:Okay, got it. Got it. Got it. Yeah. What I love Yash about, like you had reached out to me a while ago, when you launched your app, is that it's based on the same things that I teach. And, you know, I wrote the age of influence it got published in March of 2020. But obviously, a majority was written in 2019 because of the way that publishers work. But since then, my own thoughts have evolved and I will flat out in consulting and speeches say, Why are you still creating your own content for social media? It should all be you know, your your paid social media should be going to influencers and your organic content should be user generated content, ideally from those same influencers that you're investing your Facebook ad spend. And so will you talk about is exactly the challenge that I give to every client. And there are still some that think of influencer marketing as you know, they cringe when they hear the word. They think of vanity metrics, they think of fake influencers. I'm curious Yes. When You know, since then, and then obviously, there's still a story as to why you decided to start your own tool that I want to dig into. But just in general, with that client or internally at the agency, or as you promote your tool, have you found pushback from certain people about influence market, you've had to almost like, educate. And that's why I wrote my book, in all honesty is to educate to re educate people. But I'd love to hear your experience with that.
Yash Chavan:Yeah, there's a there is pushback, for sure, especially when I do a post about it on like a Facebook group or a Slack community or Reddit, especially. So there is a lot of pushback, and people like to say objecthood like there's fake influencers, influencer, marketing is a sham. There's like influencer marketing is used to push fake crypto coins that crash. So they all bring this up. And I think some of them are valid points. I think they have a valid basis. They're exaggerated out of proportion to think that influencer marketing in general just does not work. And I think like you said, it's like a, it's about re education. So I think people have just been misguided by I think stemming from all the way from the Kardashians to like now smaller influencers, just promoting any product that pays them money to say a certain thing. But yeah, I think there's a real education needed both from the brand side of things, and also, sometimes also from the Creator side of things. And I'm seeing that from both ends now kind of changing, where creators are more selective with the brands they work with. And they might charge a higher fee for that. But at least they're more selective and conservative with whom they work with. So I think I think the trend is changing
Neal Schaffer:Yash and I'm not I'm being 100% authentic when I say this, but I feel like when I talk to you, I'm talking to myself, because our fluids, it is so cool to find someone halfway across the world with very, very different experiences that it's come to the same conclusion. So at some point, you're like, wow, influencer marketing works. There's not a lot of role models. I know over the process, you bought a few books we were talking about. And then you decided, You know what, I'm going to start my own technology. So what was that about? I mean, that's a huge decision from sales to agency to becoming a full fledged entrepreneur.
Yash Chavan:Yeah. So I was always kind of, generally speaking, I was always into, like, entrepreneurship always had like side gigs, something going on, you know, always was building something, but never like a full fledged SAS app product like this one. So what prompted that decision? Mainly, was my personal experience going through scaling that program from zero to at that point, 300 creators? And it was like, tons of Google Sheets, or conversations in email, kinda a lot of work. Yeah. And I remember spending like, there were weeks when I audited my time using these tracking apps. And I was like, Well, I'm spending like four or five hours a day in email responding to all these because we're reaching out to hundreds of creators every week, and they're all responding. So it all piles up. And I'm like, wait, I cannot be doing this. There has to be a better way. Then I started looking for software. Because like I said, initially, I was just winging it. I didn't start with a strategy. I didn't start with like, you know, like, Okay, what's the marketing tech tool stack that we need? Just like when did Google Sheets email? That's it simple. Lame?
Neal Schaffer:I know the answer. The next question that software doesn't exist, does it because it's either these Falon tools that do everything for you at hundreds, if not 1000s of dollars, or it's nothing, right?
Yash Chavan:Exactly, until so several came into the future, I started looking for tools. And then they're like, well, minimum 15k a year or more, sometimes 30k a year or more, to get these users. That's not making any sense, because technically speaking, you could hire vs at that cost and still save money, right, save the time and get the same thing done. So I was like, there has to be and the brands that I was working with, even with the agency, because we started with the SAS, and then we consulted with a few other ecommerce and they were all smaller brands, they weren't making millions of 5 million 10 million in revenue, because it didn't make sense for them to spend so much money on just a tool up front annual just to try out a new channel, right? Because they couldn't go to Facebook. And they can be like, I just have $100 a day budget. Give me what you can write. So I was like, I want to do something that really changes it does democratizes the space so that everyone has access to it just like everyone can run a Facebook ad or a tick tock ad, there was like I really need to do something about this. And again, like so that was the tooling problem. And then again, I saw what you mentioned, the education problem is like people are just not, you know, that enthusiastic about this because it's not that simple. Which is why I also decided to call the tools URL because several in Sanskrit means simple. Yeah, so instead of complicating it and making it a month long onboarding process, like some other tools, it's just a simple free trial, they sign up, they start using it and they take it from there. So yeah, that's how the journey began.
Neal Schaffer:So I'm going to try on my My son's friend Ritvik, I'm going to try that set out. And I'll see what Docker but you know, having a concept because I have also gotten down the route of having a concept for a tool, and then actually starting to develop it. I went through two iterations. Actually, I never released it to the public. But that's just a whole different skill set. So how did you find, you know, developers? And obviously, you know, the promotion? I mean, how did you go about doing that?
Yash Chavan:Yeah, I think the hardest part for me was the product building side of things, and still is like the work in SAS, it's like constantly evolving. It's never like, Oh, now the product is built. Now you sell it. It's like a constant product process. So yeah, it was the most difficult but then again, I just like it most thing I like to just bring it to start, because I think a lot of people get caught up in like, reading and taking courses and, you know, figuring things out. And if you're like strategizing all the time, you're not I think a lot of learning just happens on the fly. For me at least that's how I learned. So yeah, so I just did that. And I was like, Well, cool. What do I need first and our market, I'm not a dev, I'm not, you know. So I'm like, wait, before I even write, I do not make the common mistake that most people make when they start is that they build something nobody needs. So before I even built the product, I started marketing it. So I put together a landing page that had an opt in form. And then I started reaching out to people with the title Influencer Marketing Manager at ecommerce companies sent them cold emails, ask them, Hey, this is a concept of a dual. What do you think? Is this useful? Some of them got back with a yes. Few of them said no, but they were like one off unique use cases. And the telephone, they're like, oh, yeah, I could use this all day. So I was like, okay, cool. There is some traction. I sold it to five people before we wrote a single line of code. So I basically said, you pay me one month's fee right now. And then I'll give you two months access when the tool is live. So that was the kind of barter deal that we did. And five grand signed up with me. I was like, Okay, if they're willing to pay for a tool that does not exist yet, people who pay for it, when did this exist? So that's when I started looking for developers. And we took it from there. So yeah, I mean, a lot of it is about product. But then I started with marketing, which is interesting. I flipped it on its head. So yeah.
Neal Schaffer:And then from the day that you accepted payment to, I know that you recently released the product. So was this like three to six months time then that those brands had to wait?
Yash Chavan:Correct? Yes. So I promised them three months, but they had to wait, I think five months for the first beta version to get our four to four and a half to five months. But yeah, I was constantly in touch with them. I was informing them. Some of them started doing influencer marketing, just because they were talking to me, they saw my LinkedIn post, they're like, We need to try this. And then now that the tool is live, they're now moving from their Google Sheets and email setup to several they're migrating. So yeah, it worked out well. Very cool. It looks a software just takes time to build because you estimate something then something goes wrong. And then you always have to add like, it's kind of like the Elon Musk dilemma, right? He says like self driving cars are two years away two years, I mean, every two years, it just keeps moving two years ahead. So kind of like that.
Neal Schaffer:And you now have the additional complexity of not just the needs of not just technical technology, innovation and innovation in the industry. But now you have different clients that are going to be making their own roadmap requests, and you need to decide what's important. What's not. It's a whole other
Yash Chavan:codec. Yeah. Now we've got now that the marketing engines are running and now that the to decide people are trying it. There's multiple support requests. Where can you add this? Can you add that extra? Who has this? You don't? Can you add this? And I'm like, we're not x two, we don't want to be x two. So yeah, it's a prioritization game, but I'm loving it. Yeah. Yeah.
Neal Schaffer:That just based on my own experiences, working with startups that that will literally make or break us. So hopefully, you're, you're sticking to your core. You understand the market you understand your ideal customers, I'm sure gonna be successful. So
Yash Chavan:yeah, and before that, I'm in your mastermind. So if I'm ever in a dilemma, I can There you
Neal Schaffer:go. Yes, my digital first mastermind community only 15 members Yash is one of those 15 Thank you, my friend. We are we're doing amazing things together and growing together. So yes, it is your your place to come should you have question but I think you're you're doing awesome. Let's continue on this road to set out the simple road. But I want to sort of pick your brain on behalf of my audience to get more advice on influencer marketing. So you mentioned that you have this we all have these little systems and processes for influencer marketing success, and you've created your own so I'd like you to just like walk through what that looks like. So our listeners can sort of visualize if they haven't done an influencer marketing strategy, or maybe they have one and they just want to make sure they're doing it right. Um, let's walk through each of those steps.
Yash Chavan:So yeah, I came up with the I actually did not chart with the system. So doing that. And then retroactively figure in retrospect, I figured out there Oh, there was like I put together a system behind this. So I distilled it into like six steps. And here they are, right. So step one is prospecting. And under that there's like coming up with your ideal hashtag looking for. So don't sign up for expensive tools yet, don't sign up for bulk database tools, just do a hashtag search. And Neil covers this, I think in a blog post on his website. So yeah, just do a keyword search on YouTube or a hashtag search on Insta, or tick tock, and find your people who are posting content about your niche. So let's say you're a skincare brand, just search for hashtag luxury skincare on Instagram and see who pops up, see who's already creating content around that niche, and reach out to them. So that's step two, is you reach out to them. And then in the outreach, again, the nuances and I'm kind of glancing over some of the nuances here. But going through outreach, focus on giving, not on taking, one of the main mistakes that brands make with outreach is like, hey, we want to work with you, we want to pay you 500 bucks for a post Do you want to post about us that can work, but it will attract all the wrong sorts of creators for you, because it will attract all the creators who just want to do a post for money. And those are not the kind of people you want to work with long term at least. So focus on giving focus on running like a seeding campaign or an ambassador campaign, where you're giving free product or you're giving some perks or a welcome kit or something in exchange for a poster, don't even ask for a poster. If you're starting out, just asked for feedback, a new brand looking for feedback, send you this product. And then come step three, which is like your offer. So what are you we kind of touch on that on this? So what are you offering? Is it a welcome kit? Is it a free product in exchange for a bush? What are you giving, and that will dictate how you have these conversations with with creators. Step four is shipping, which is kind of like it won't be a step because it's such like an obvious thing. But I found out that so as it is said right shipping is the only touch point with 100%. Open Rate, right, because everyone opens their boxes. So you've got to overwhelm them with the amount of love that you put into shipping them the product. And maybe I mean, ideally, you should be doing this for all your customers. But at least when you're shipping to creators, gift, wrap it add a personal note, add a QR code to it that takes them to like a video with like a personal introduction from the founder, for example. So yeah, just overwhelm them with your shipping experience and the unboxing experience, and they are more likely to post about you. So that's step four. Step five is tracking performance. So you can do this with either affiliate links or but then again, tools come into the play here. So when you start, just do it with simple Shopify discount codes or any discount code tacked on that you're using, so do that. And then finally, if you follow these five steps, you already have a pretty successful influencer program. But then to go from good to great, you need step six, which is actually building relationships. And this was like one of my key insights behind also building circle is that the creators that we had the best relationships with like one on one hopping on Zoom calls with them doing giveaways, doing like, like a multi layered, creator driven approach. creators were kind of like, you know, almost online friends, they generated the most ROI for the brand. And this was so hard to track in sheets, but then building that relationship was critical. So step six, will take you from good to great, which is building those relationships with creators and preserving them over the long term. So those are my six steps. And that's what I came up with.
Neal Schaffer:Awesome, I love this stuff about shipping which because unboxing is such a huge thing and just the whole customer experience. And you know, I just want to let people know that might not have seen me present on this. But I I present on this concept of an influencer marketing funnel. And the last two steps are actually post purchase. It's ideally they become a brand ambassador. And then ideally that long term relationship and then there's one beyond that where they talk about you without you're asking them to they're truly become a loyal advocate. And that's really where the ROI pays off. It's not always covered in spreadsheets, as you said, but that's really where the ROI is. So those are all really excellent best practices. I mean, the devils in the details, that's step one is influencer identification, we could go on and on but I preach the exact same thing my friend, there's, you know, if you want to be influenced by someone, it's you're going to find them through a search although I could argue with Tiktok it's going to be it's just going to show up in your for you page but But nevertheless, you know, people don't become influential because they're just naturally born influencers. They create content, it's normally around subjects people search they find so using those same techniques, you can easily find who's talking about your industry, your product, your competitors. So great reminders about that. I also wanted to talk about and this is something that I've seen a few people talk about you know this because influencer marketing gets a lot of pushback, this influencer versus influence influence marketing. And in fact, I talked to Rand Fishkin, who is the founder of Yeah, sort of founder Moz. And I think he said the same thing. It's not influence or, you know, to me, I just think there's so much negative pushback in influencer marketing, I get why people use a different term. But I wanted to hear the explanation of you, of influencing buyers, instead of what I believe you're gonna say, is just looking at influencers, just for influencers sake, because you forget the objective is to influence other people, right?
Yash Chavan:Yeah, I was kind of surprised, I kind of thought of just a natural understanding that you got to influence them. Because again, like I said, I came from a sales background. So it's all about influence, persuasion, Shalini, and all those principles. But then, in the marketing world, I came in the perception around influencer marketing was about working with some, like a guy in a six pack at the beach, or a girl in a bikini, he was like posing awkwardly with your product. And I was like, Wait, that's not really helping. And it all kind of, again, stems from the, let's say, for lack of a better term, the Kardashian influencer way of doing things. And then that didn't really sit well with me, I was kind of surprised that the market has still kind of thinks that way. So I was like, Okay, you need to influence them. Not, you know, do influencer marketing. And then that manifests. And that's a philosophical kind of, you know, strategic concept. But then that manifests itself into working with the right kind of advocates as opposed to, you know, doing payperpost deals to start, right and working with, say, your customers who are already famous on Instagram or Tik Tok, or YouTube instead of, you know, going and approaching some other random lifestyle creator that you've heard of. So it all manifests itself in these small ways and influence again, goes even beyond social media. And I think, Neil, you mentioned this at the beginning of the podcast. So you take the creative, you reuse it in your landing page, for example, really reuse it as a ad creative, you can reuse it in your email flows, you can reuse it to influence other creators to post about you. So it's like such a wide net. When you think of it from an influence perspective. You open up your like your third eye opens, your pineal gland opens up and it's like the world is much wider now on what you can do. So I also like to sometimes I switch it up between like influencer, I called Creator led growth, because it's like, it's a completely new strategy. It's a different paradigm altogether when you think of it from the influence standpoint. So yeah,
Neal Schaffer:yeah, it's really funny. Everyone's like influencer, marketing, bu and then creator. And I'm like, dude, yeah. Anyway, Apple oranges. They're both fruit. But anyway, you know, I realized, yes, probably what we have in common are prospective and influencer marketing. So what did you sell? Before you went to the agency? What sort of products and services?
Yash Chavan:I was in b2b SaaS, so I saw Yeah, so I come from the password.
Neal Schaffer:My background is also b2b. Nice. It was technology, like semiconductors, software, but I went direct to big companies like Sony's and Samsung's and Huawei and what have you. And I think that's what we have in common. Now, I don't know about the South scene. But in my scene, I had to work with ecosystem partners. There were system integrators, there were resellers. And in order to influence the final buyer, you often had to make a lot of relationships to make that happen. Right. So to me, the whole concept is very natural, probably to you as well, which other people don't understand. But yes, it is sales persuasion, exactly. When you are reaching out to 500 craters. It's a sale, that's 500 sales, you're trying to close. Right. That's it. That's the way I teach it to I think if you have that perspective, this all gets a little bit more manageable. Understandable.
Yash Chavan:Yeah, totally. I think having that sales background really helps with this stuff. Because someone who's just done marketing, they have a think, I think marketers tend to think I'm a marketer now. So but then marketers, digital marketers, they think kind of on mass by default. They're like, Oh, how do I reach 50,000 people, but then they forget about the one on one kind of sale. That happens, because you're reaching 50,000 people, but every from the person's perspective is one on one. So they forget about that. So they tend to go mass market by default, which does not tend to work. So yeah,
Neal Schaffer:yeah, totally. And, you know, it reminds me of I forgot who it was that I heard talk about this, but it's very true. For instance, if you're a podcaster, you want to get all these influences in your podcast, wait for them to publish a new book. So if they have nothing to talk about, and you reach out to them, you may not get an answer. But if they're about to publish or just published a new book, chances are they'd be more than happy because they want to promote it, right? So it's a sale, right? It's like, well, I want to get a good deal. I'm gonna wait to the last day of the quarter because normally salespeople are trying to hit their numbers last day, and I know I'm gonna get a good deal. Once you're a salesperson. You said I understand all this works, right?
Yash Chavan:Yeah. And it's, it's the bad framework, right? budget authority need timing, and then with the book publishing, you're hitting the timing bid correctly and then that's what's getting the sale. Right? Yeah, totally.
Neal Schaffer:Totally. Yeah. So I want to dig a little bit deeper on that concept of crater different growth. I love the holistic approach that you have, which is similar to mine, leveraging influencers beyond just social media posts. So can you talk a little bit more about this this crater driven growth concept that you haven't thrown what that means?
Yash Chavan:Sure. So mainly what we advise brands do is that three or four things primarily right now one of the most obvious ones that pretty much every great brand is doing is taking the creative, they're using it as a whitelisted ad on Facebook or on Tik Tok. Right, so they're just running those ads from those creators accounts, the creator gets a boost, the brand gets a more authentic ad. Because again, if you think of it as a good ad placement, then it does not work. I think, again, coming from the maybe from the old age advertising world POGIL we had this concept of an ad disguised as an editorial, right. So we should not think of working with influencers as okay, you know, he or she is going to post about us and it's going to be an ad on their feed, it has to be like a natural integration into the content that they're trying to create. So that's like a more holistic perspective towards creative lead growth in general. And again, tactically speaking, you reuse that as ads, you also reuse that in your email funnels. So let's say someone comes in through a creator, they add to cart they don't buy, you retarget them with a Klaviyo flow sending that same piece of creator generated content that influenced them to make that add to cart. So you can do you can go all fancy here, you can also use pretty much all if especially if you're in like, like a very dedicated kind of niche, let's say like veganism, for example. Pretty much all the top influencers are well known to everyone who's a vegan, you can use that their Creator generate content on the landing page as testimonials, Athletic Greens does this really well with influencers like Tim Ferriss and Joe Rogan? Because everyone knows them. And if they are on your landing page that really helps drive the conversion. So yeah, it's like, it's this whole holistic concept.
Neal Schaffer:I've seen 1000 Different companies use a quote from Neil Patel, even though he never personally, he never personally gave the quote, but the quote that he gives, helps generate demand for your product. So it's the same concept. That's really great advice. Yash. So, you know, those podcast listeners know that sometimes I have people on that also come from companies that provide tools, and I don't like the podcast to become, you know, just a place where people come and promote their tools. Um, that being said, you know, I co founded a conference back in the day called the social tools Summit. This was a marketing technology conference. So back in the day, we had, you know, coming as a tracker, you know, influence marketing tools that also came out and sponsored. And what I did realize was that my audience actually wants to know how these things work. Right. So we actually had a demo time that every attendee spend time engaging with the people that came the sponsors and the technologies, which was really refreshing, right, but I think that my audience as well is really invested in the technology really want to know, so I want to give you, I don't know, 60 seconds to sort of, I'm not gonna say Pitzer, all but tell us more about what exactly the tool does. Who's it for in the business model?
Yash Chavan:Go got it. So Sara, Sara is the only tool on the market that puts the relationship with the Creator, front and center. So we've got a very beautiful kind of CRM pipeline view of your creative relationships. And we put that front and center. That's like the main philosophical differentiator, from a features perspective, we've got a chrome companion that lives directly in your browser, as you're browsing Instagram, tick tock, and YouTube. So you can save them directly from the Chrome extension to your Serral account. So you don't have to, you know, copy paste anything into a sheet or anything of that sort, then we've got that we sought all of them into lists. And then what we have is an email drip feature, which is, again, uncommon in other apps. So what you can do is you can save these creators to list and then add these lists inside an email drip, we have all the templates inside the app. So you don't actually have to write the emails as well, you can just modify them for your brand, and then start sending these email campaigns to creators and all the emails are again tracked inside circle. So you can respond to emails, you can get back to them build those relationships. So it's like a one stop shop, from finding creators to saving them to reaching out to them to managing your long term relationships and actually owning that relationship. So yeah, that's what several is all about.
Neal Schaffer:And where can my listeners go to subscribe?
Yash Chavan:Sure, they can go to get several.com gtsal.com And it's a seven day free trial. So we don't even ask for your credit card upfront. No, if you have an optional demo, if you need a demo, you can book a call with me on the website. But if you know what you're doing, just sign up and it's a fairly again, like I said, Sir, l stands for Simple. So very simple tool. The onboarding is great. So you can just Get Started and repeat, repeat right from the get go.
Neal Schaffer:Yeah, what I love about what your tool does is it solves a problem that every influencer marketer has to deal with. And it's something that the big tools companies do not find sexy enough to create a solution around, right? They really focus on maybe they have the functionality, but it's almost like an afterthought. Where would you, you put that functionality really front and center? So really brilliant job on doing that. I've used Erol. It's great. I was one of the first users. So when I downloaded the Chrome extension, there was this like warning, but that's because there weren't enough people that have used it yet. So if you see the warning, don't worry, it works. I know when I introduced it to my, my students at my UCLA Extension class influence market, they were very excited. I know a few of them already reached out to you, and it becomes subscribers. So definitely check it out. I think the more experienced you're an influencer marketing, the more you see the value in the tool. So but Yash thank you so much. I mean, I think we covered the whole spectrum of influencer marketing. Was there anything that we might have missed that you wanted to cover? Or? Um,
Yash Chavan:no, I think so. I think we touched on the concept of ROI a little bit. And I'd like to quote legendary Gary Vee here. So I think he has this very interesting, quirky quote, and he asked, what's the ROI of your mother? Right? So you can't attribute it? Right? You can't say that, Oh, when I was five years old, and I really wanted to eat that cookie. And my mom was like, Don't eat that cookie until you eat the veggies that helped me become a disciplined adult at 45 years old. You can attribute that. But then, of course, it's very true that having your mother around having all her you know, principles imbibed into you really have to grow as an adult human being. So that's the that's my answer to anyone who asks, what's the ROI of influencer marketing. That's, of course, like having all these creators who are influential talk about you helps all your other channels, even if it's like, there is directly attributable ROI. But there's so much of this other creator lead ROI cause like Facebook ads, start working better your Google that start working better, people are searching for you more. So yeah, that's that's the one thing I always like to mention, like So stop thinking of ROI and start thinking of like, How can I leverage these creators generated assets everywhere that I possibly can and make the most out of it? So yeah,
Neal Schaffer:yeah, I should have known that we some of the quotes, so I don't use many Gary Vaynerchuk quotes. I used to end my classes at Rutgers business school, three and a half hour lecture on social media marketing. At the end, I would throw that up there. As I said, Well, the next time your boss asks you about the ROI, now you have a lot of ammunition. But I also like to share. It's not a direct quote, but it comes from a tool company that I've worked with. They're called Open influence. They're based out here in Los Angeles, and we co wrote an e book on AI, and influencer marketing. And the CEO said, there's going to be ROI. When you work with influencers, there's going to be ROI. The question is just how much you're going to spend and what the results are going to be. But when you work with people that have massive followings, or bigger followings, and you have, you're gonna get results, right, the question is, how do you funnel those results into the results that you want to see? So? Yep, either way, great way to end the conversation. Josh, thank you so much. I look forward to continuing these Conversations in the Digital First mastermind community, and watching, watching Sonata grow.
Yash Chavan:Awesome. Thanks for having me on the update. All right,
Neal Schaffer:I think that Josh really laid out a clear cut strategy for all of you. But if you need a little bit more handhold, he'd like I said, I'm gonna have this course coming up. And well, when it comes out, you will get notified on this podcast. If you want to stay in better touch with me, I do have an email list, I do have weekly or monthly emails, you can go to Neal schaffer.com, there's a number of contact forms. Any one of those should get you opted in to one of those newsletters if you want to be in the know, on all things, Neal Schaffer, but I want to thank you for being a listener for being a subscriber. And for those of you who have already reviewed the podcast, I really, really appreciate your support. This is a support driven podcast. It's really fueled by my passion for the subject and knowing that you're all subscribing, downloading and reviewing this podcast. So I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. And well, as always, I want to remind you to be an option. Be an option for your community, for your customers. For those that don't know about you, but should know about your business, your products, because we're all here to serve. And I know that you are listening to this podcast, to better serve your community. And I hope in somehow some way that this podcast helps you do a little bit of that. That's it for another episode of the digital marketing coach podcast. This is your digital marketing coach Neal Schaffer signing off. You've been listening to your digital marketing coach, questions, comments, requests, links. Go to podcast dot Neal schaffer.com get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes and Neal schaffer.com to tap into the 400 Plus blog posts that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's Digital First group coaching membership community if you or your business needs a little helping hand, see you next time on your digital marketing coach.