While we have covered a lot about influencer marketing on this podcast, there is one facet that we haven't looked at: The cost-effectiveness of influencer marketing.
As we head towards a potential recession in 2023 and marketing budgets are tight, this becomes even more important. That's why on this episode we will focus on why influencer marketing is such a great marketing investment when budgets are tight.
Topics we will cover include:
Key Highlights
[02:30] Introduction of Podcast Guest, Nisarg Shah
[04:30] How Nisarg Got Into Influencer Marketing
[06:22] The Gaps Nisarg Found In Influencer Marketing in 2017
[09:08] Influencer Marketing's Flexibility
[13:25] How Influencer Marketing Can Help Brands Into Recession
[19:22] Affiliate Marketing in Affable.ai Tool
[22:35] The Hybrid Structure of Influencers and Affiliates
[26:35] Reasons Why Third-Party Platforms Still Add Value
[29:33] Best Practices in Influencer Marketing Industry
[31:46] Connect with Nisarg
[32:21] Affable.ai Price Point
Notable Quotes
Guest Links:
Learn More:
While we have covered a lot about influencer marketing on this podcast, there is one facet that we haven't looked at: The cost-effectiveness of influencer marketing.
As we head towards a potential recession in 2023 and marketing budgets are tight, this becomes even more important. That's why on this episode we will focus on why influencer marketing is such a great marketing investment when budgets are tight.
Topics we will cover include:
Key Highlights
[02:30] Introduction of Podcast Guest, Nisarg Shah
[04:30] How Nisarg Got Into Influencer Marketing
[06:22] The Gaps Nisarg Found In Influencer Marketing in 2017
[09:08] Influencer Marketing's Flexibility
[13:25] How Influencer Marketing Can Help Brands Into Recession
[19:22] Affiliate Marketing in Affable.ai Tool
[22:35] The Hybrid Structure of Influencers and Affiliates
[26:35] Reasons Why Third-Party Platforms Still Add Value
[29:33] Best Practices in Influencer Marketing Industry
[31:46] Connect with Nisarg
[32:21] Affable.ai Price Point
Notable Quotes
Guest Links:
Learn More:
Some say we are entering a recession as we go into 2023. As you look at your marketing budget, your marketing spend might be reduced next year in this environment when you have little marketing budget. Influencer Marketing might be your best marketing investment yet. You'll learn more as to why this is the case. In this next 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 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, Neal Schaffer here, your digital marketing coach. Welcome to my podcast. If you are new here, I want to welcome you and let you know that once a week, I publish content about a variety of digital content influencer social media marketing advice, hoping to give you one little nugget of information advice, a tip that can help you get maximum ROI from what little time you might invest, listening to this podcast, half of my podcasts or solo half hour interviews. Today is an interview episode. Obviously, if you are one of my loyal subscribers, I want to thank you for tuning in. I know that you have a lot of choices when it comes to podcasts. And as you heard from my previous episode, when it comes to social media marketing, I am always trying to up the quality of every single piece of content that I publish, and make it impactful. Now, we have discussed influencer marketing many times on this podcast, as I wrote a book on the topic you can imagine, but this is something we have not talked about, which is when you have a little marketing budget. Why influencer marketing makes a lot of sense. Today, my special guest is nisarg Shah, he is the co founder and CEO of affable.ai, which is an influencer management platform, trusted by more than 100 leading global brands, and more than 4000 data driven marketers, so he's definitely an expert. In the field, he comes with a lot of experience. And well, he delivers that, from our conversation about all these things about, you know, the ROI of authentic and relatable content of during a recession that people will turn towards trusted voices, and really the massive ROI and massive reach when you leverage influencers as part of your partnership marketing, which is a fancy word for affiliate marketing that we do today. So I hope you'll enjoy this interview. I know that I did. So hey, without further ado, here is my interview with nisarg Shah of affable.ai. You're listening to your digital marketing coach, this is Neal Schaffer. nisarg Welcome to the your digital marketing coach podcast.
Nisarg Shah:Thank you so much, Neal for having me here. I'm super excited to discuss all things influencer marketing, especially with you who's written a book around it because thought leader and an influencer yourself in the space, I've learned a lot from your content and look forward to adding some of my own learnings.
Neal Schaffer:Oh, well, thank you. You know, I think a lot of the listeners here understand the benefits that influence marketing can have and I think, in this conversation, we're going to uncover some additional benefits that I've never spoken of on this podcast. So I'm really excited as well to learn from your perspective and what you're hearing in the market. I guess like with all of my other guests, you know, influencer marketing wasn't a buzzword when we were both born. So how did you get started with influencer marketing and then you are the co founder and CEO of audible. So how did that also lead into you're starting a new company?
Nisarg Shah:Yeah, we get this a lot, especially because me and my co founder, we don't come from an influencer marketing world in both software engineers. And that way we are kind of outsiders to the influencer industry back in 2017. We were noticing a lot of push in influencer space. I was in Singapore, and Asia and China with life commerce, and its growth in the last five years, Asia has been at the forefront of just working with celebrities and influencers As a way of word of mouth, and we had a hypothesis. Now our hypothesis was that the future of commerce is going to be driven by social rather than search. That means people would buy while scrolling on Instagram rather than searching on Google or Amazon. And if you think about it, in the last five years, a lot of that has come true. But if the future is social commerce and brands would need a way to, predictably grow their social commerce have micro and nano influencers, talk about them on an ongoing basis, the process was very manual, we spoke to a lot of trans figured that there is a big opportunity in a big white space to streamline processes. And that's what gave birth to Africa.
Neal Schaffer:So you come from an area and I wrote about this in the age of influence, but I do believe that China, Southeast Asia, those are the countries that are actually most advanced in influencer marketing. And would you say that when you started the company, it's funny because I consider myself an outsider to the industry as well, when I wrote the book. And I was trying to get case studies from companies who, you know, didn't respond, and now they're all responding. But I'm just curious back then, before you started the company, you talked about like streamlining processes, etc, etc. Were there other solutions in the market? And what were the gaps that you found in them that you're tried to cover with this new technology have developed?
Nisarg Shah:Yes, back in 2017. Most of the solutions in the market were either an agency offering an influencer management as a service or whatever marketplaces where influencers could sign up, brands could sign up and then connect with making themselves, they were not really integrating with the existing tech stack that the brand was already using, or they were not bringing in the transparency and authenticity in the influencer marketing space, which is, which was lacking back in 2017. So the solution we set out to build was kind of pillared around the fact that one, it should not be a solution. And silo, it should talk to the remaining systems that the marketing teams or the brands already used. And second, it should focus a lot on transparency and authenticity, while removing the black box from the whole influencer ecosystem, giving more insight to the brand of who's relevant influencer, how to find them, how to reach out to them, what's the conversion? Who's writing, what kind of sales for you, a lot of data driven decisions are not being taken back in 2017. Obviously, the industry has matured in the last five years. There's a lot of players in this space now building tools. And you know, it's like it's a gold rush once you realize where the gold is you're taking. And that's the hindsight we had back in 2016.
Neal Schaffer:Yeah, definitely, definitely seen a lot of gold.
Nisarg Shah:Yeah, exactly. And, you know, a lot of it is turning out to be true.
Neal Schaffer:Yeah, indeed, there's definitely been, I was just saying there, there's definitely been a lot of players in this gold rush. And there's also been a little bit of consolidation in the market, I just noticed, someone that was actually a guest on the show, maybe two years ago, is now Senior VP of influencer marketing at one of these other tools. So it's interesting to see how people move around and how tools evolve. But obviously, since you're both software engineers, that would explain a lot of this unique approach that you have this data driven approach, which I agree is sort of necessary in the market. So when we were discussing what we were going to talk about beforehand, you know, you hear a lot in the market about this upcoming recession. Now I'm, I'm, you know, the one who says when I talk about things that can influence the market, it should be always on. And it's not a campaign, it's and you know, when I think of like Apple, they're not going to delay the launch of iPhone 15. Because there's a recession, right? So there's certain things that as as brands and as marketers, we continue to do, but I know that you have, you have some insight into that. So I guess I want to start with one thing you talked about even in a recession, the flexibility that influencer marketing has, so why don't why don't we you know, leading up to this, this conversation about what to do in a recession and the benefits of influencer marketing. Why don't we start with this, this flexibility that you talked about?
Nisarg Shah:Right? So definitely, there's a lot of sentiment, a lot of talk about upcoming recession, some severe already in one, some say we are going to be in one in 2023. So there is a fine line in terms of where we are. But the truth is that the sentiment is in terms of preserving cash, preserving the sources that you have not overspending for the sake of growth. Now this is where a lot of brands are struggling to identify avenues to push and still grow. In this current climate, and a lot of the conversation we have with our clients. It seems like they're convinced that influencer marketing is not taking the hit. They might be lowering their ad spend, they might be lowering the out of home digital spends, but influencer marketing is something they do tend to continue investing on primarily because because it is one of the most flexible forms of advertisement, you can shift your strategy with an influencer marketing change from let's say paid collaborations to affiliate collaborations. You can change from macro celebrity influencers do a lot of micro influencers. But there are ways to optimize on your influencer strategy, which based on we see a lot of brands doing. But the very fact that they continue to work with influencers and on as you mentioned, it should be an always on strategy. It's not something where you turn it off, do it in during Black Friday, and then again, do it during Christmas. And then again, during during Mother's Day, you don't do that, but influencers that's not effective. And brands have realized that fans have learned over the last few years. And there are three main reasons why influencer marketing gives a flexible form. In terms of marketing investment, what is it allows you to do product gifting, which not other ad formats allow you to do, like you cannot give the product and to someone and expect a billboard advertisement come out of it. But you can do that with influencers. So the ability to find influencers, who would be willing to do product gifting campaigns, and continue your brand awareness campaigns is something that works very well. Second is flexible form of payments. We'll discuss this briefly. But you could pay upfront to some influencers. Or you could ask them to take a percentage in terms of affiliate commissions, obviously, you want to be respectful to the Creator. So if a creator has specific rate cards, you should respect that. And if they don't fit into your budget, now you have the option to work with other creators, which will be smaller, which may be more flexible. But now you have the opportunity to continue on your strategy. And finally, working with some creators in a very creative format, creators, as I say, you know, a blend of influencers are out there to create content for you on your behalf. So you could direct some of the production costs, some of the content agency costs to influencers, because they serve multiple purposes, they would create the content for you and publicize it on your behalf. So the value you get from a creator is much more. And in this in these uncertain times. Brands are definitely kind of going back to the creators they trust and the creators they have a long standing relationship with.
Neal Schaffer:Yeah, I mean, amen. And all friends, it's almost like influencer marketing, or these more recent trends that brands are finally starting to realize about the benefits really fit well with a potential recession, right, all this flexibility you're not locked in. And it's what's really interesting that what I found out over time, especially, you know, talking to a lot of YouTube influencers is that, depending on the influencer, it may take them time to actually create the content or do the campaign. And many of them, you know, they can't ask you for money until they actually finish a video series, what happens, there's actually companies out there that finance influencers, the influencers, will pay to get a an upfront fee from them and not from the brand. So it's a very interesting world with, as you said, lots of flexibility. So another point that I often talk about, but you know, we were discussing this beforehand, and you wanted to make sure was brought out today is the difference between your advertisement, and this content that is more authentic and relatable that comes from influencers. So how is this going to help brands as well going into this recession? So
Nisarg Shah:people typically tend to trust other people. And that's just our nature, that's word of mouth. I trust you because you talk about something. Entity pushing me a product. So just marketing works, because we trust people who are creating this content. And in these times, influencer, marketing works even better, because now, users are careful about who they trust, and they turn towards trusted advisors. They think about influencers. These are creators who are trusted for a specific niche audience. Now, if you combine these three things, brands, what they get as a creator will create content as we discussed, but they are now able to broadcast message to a trusted audience, which they don't necessarily get with the spray and pray if you put in a $20,000 ad budget, and target every mom in Texas, versus working with creators, maybe 20 of those targeting their audiences. You get a trusted voice here versus just a spray and pray method here. And especially in these times where even people are careful with their own buying patterns. I was reading a report where it's estimated that the Black Friday commerce sales may not be able to live up to the expectations as of last year because people are very control of their spend as well. And they will want to trust someone that they can relate with, rather than a brand which is going to try and push them a product to meet its quarterly builds.
Neal Schaffer:Yeah, I think you know, this is almost also something that's happened with COVID. I think who we trust online has really evolved. We've seen the emergence of tick tock as well. But at the end of the day, this raw and real content and the people behind it, those seem to be the ones that we trust more right? Than those shiny looking, whether they're an ad or they're like a shiny looking mega celebrity influencer. The trust isn't as there because it doesn't seem real. Right. And I think that this is a point that if maybe, maybe there's people or brands listening, and they did an influencer marketing campaign a few years ago wasn't successful. Well, chances are they weren't working with the right people or the people that we'd recommend they work with today. Right?
Nisarg Shah:Right. Right, it's very important to identify your ambassadors early on, and not get lured away by someone who is trending or hot in the market right now. Because their audience may not necessarily be your target audience as a brand. And you know, you mentioned COVID, influencer, marketing saw a big boost during COVID. Obviously, a factor of that was people were spending more time on their phones when they were at home. So a lot of the budgets were shifted towards channels that can influence people at home. But at the same time, people YouTubers tick tock started creating engaging content, talking about their lives, and people wanted to relate to that people were looking for inspiration. And influencer marketing grew as an industry during COVID. And is now standing as a pillar during upcoming recession, as an industry that can work through it rather than those where the spends would go down, as we are noticing, among other marketing channels right now.
Neal Schaffer:Yeah, you know, it's funny, we all talk about the crater economy, but people don't realize that, you know, probably a third of that creative economy, if not more comes from brand collaborations, ie influencer marketing. So I have to remind people when you know, when you think create our economy, think influencer marketing, because that's the backbone. And, and I think when we look back at this a few years ago, COVID really did did create this trigger that just increase that even more.
Nisarg Shah:Yeah. And a lot of a lot of content creators became influencers. And there's like a fine line, again, between these two concepts. But people started creating more content. They also started following their passion in terms of identifying a niche, starting creating more content, getting engagement and kind of building businesses around it. You said very well, now that 1/3 of the creative economy is influenced marketing. It started with influencer marketing, and then grew beyond that, you know, influencer marketing gave birth to a career that creators chose. And then there had to be an entire industry that was built to serve these creators, you know, financing these creators giving them money so that they can run campaign, credit cards for these creators, accounting solution for these creators, because their taxes are completely different than a normal business. So all of this will, all of these are built on the periphery and now web three and all the amazing solutions that can be built around it. It's very exciting time in general in the theater economy, but influencer marketing was the backbone and the pillar around which this entire economy is being built right now.
Neal Schaffer:Yeah, no, I couldn't agree with you more, I think, with the exception of maybe YouTube Partner Program, which was the only social I mean, we talked now about these crater funds, but it was really YouTube for many years ago that offered them but outside of that space, and even with that, YouTubers are trying to find growth beyond just that ad revenue. And guess what it a lot of it is going to come with collaborations with, with companies. So I want to talk about one more thing that we discussed, and it's something that I have a personal passion for, which is, you know, I believe in probably because you're an outsider to the industry as well, that marketers have really been mis educated on what influencer marketing is, and that a lot of the things have already existed. So one of those is affiliate marketing, right? You're typing into people that have influence, and you're signing up to be affiliates, right. So it's a type of influencer marketing. I know that this is something that as a platform sort of you built in, and you're a big evangelist for leveraging influencers as influence because it gives you measurable ROI and massive reads. So I wanted to sort of tap into that, you know, what you see and how your product has been built to sustain that.
Nisarg Shah:So when we started talking to marketers by A, we're excited about the potential of influencer marketing, there are two main things that we'll talk about. One is the brand awareness for influencers unable to provide and second is the uptick in sales. So, it is obvious that when a marketer is spending $1, they're expecting some sort of ROI out of it. It may be in whichever channel it is, with influencers that is either social ROI or performance driven ROI, what kind of sales are influencers are able to drive now? influencers are amazing affiliates because they give you both gives you an ability to reach massive, massive scale, even if people don't die, but at the same time, they give you an ability to convert. So if I'm as a brand as I'm wanting to work with influencers and I'm entering them products, I might as well create an affiliate program out of it. This could be links, which are trackable, this could be a discount code, which are trackable as well. And depending on the channel, you have different strategies. But it goes back to my point about connecting systems that brands are already using. Now a brand, let's say on Shopify is already tracking the daily sales, the source through with the sale came in, they have the Google Analytics to measure traffic. And in all sorts of this traffic as well, why not incentivize the creators to republish the content or to know have more authenticity in the content, because they will get a percentage of whatever sale they drive. If there is no affiliate component, a creator might treat it as a one off project, especially if the brand is working with the Creator on a one off campaign. So build your advocates. And one thing that we've seen work very well is converting customers as advocates, and identifying who is an influencer among your own customer base. So we connect with Shopify and Magento, other e commerce backends. We connect with the brands on social channels, and we help them identify who are people who are already talking about their brand or buying products from the brand, and have some sort of influence. They may be nano influencers, micro influencers, high engagement, low, low saturation, in terms of other brands to talk about. But trying to help them identify these ambassador is a big part of it. And we believe that affiliate, as a channel gives brands more control on their boss, they are able to actually track dollar to dollar the return on the investment they're making. And especially during these times, it becomes very important because they want to spend on performance based campaigns rather than just a reach based campaign.
Neal Schaffer:So you have built all this into your software, correct? Yes, that's right. So let me ask you do does every influencer wanting to become an affiliate? This is more of a theoretical question. I often find that you know, you and I, we can talk about this. But then, in reality, sometimes the direction we want to take relationships don't always go there. Because influences are people, right. And everybody is in it for different reasons. So I'm curious, just based on your experience in working with customers, you know, what sort of conversations happen after they introduce these affiliate or discount codes to influencers? What have you seen in the market?
Nisarg Shah:You're actually I think the the question leads to a very valid point that not all influencers are open to being affiliates, only. They are open to the idea of having a hybrid structure where you still have some sort of paid collaboration, and then you incentivize them with an affiliate strategy. Right now. What we are seeing in the market is brands and influencers. Typically, it's a binary brands, either pushing for your affiliates and influencers or asking for pure paid collaborations. Exactly. balance, the balance is where you merge it and hype. So one of the parts of our software is how do you push out a proposed collaboration fee to the influencers, and add a layer of affiliate on top of it. And you know, we've done a market research, you reach out to influencers, we asked them for the rate cards, and we provide certain estimates to brands that based on your budget, we feel that these influencers might be open to a paid collaboration, based on what information we've collected for surveys from influencers, but I didn't go in but I am a big proponent of paying influencers for what they deserve. If you're paying someone $500 the influencer has to pay tax on top of it. And the influencer has to create content and they may have certain support staff, they may be spending 10 hours and the end of the day the r&d revenue they make does not justify what you're paying them, especially because they're also giving you a leech rather than just content creation. So the brand should take into consideration that you are able to get multiple services from an influencer content creation reach ambassadorship, etc. So there should be a fair payout done for that person. The middle ground is a fixed pay plus an added incentive of commissions on top of it.
Neal Schaffer:Yeah, no, I couldn't agree with you more. And it's almost like if an hour of your time is worth more than a $50 amazon gift card. Why are you pitching an influencer? Exactly? You know, it's such a lowball offer. So I couldn't agree with you more. I do want to sort of close or come near the close of the conversation with once again, sort of the theoretical of the reality and then you know, the vision and then the reality. So I think over the last few months, we'll starting with tic tock. They've created their own influence marketplace, right. And we see that Instagram is also starting to move in this direction. I got you know, I got invited to the beta haven't released Seeing it evolve yet. On the other hand, I won't name the name. But there's one very, very famous influencer marketing tool company that was recently kicked out of the meta partner program and they no longer have access to Facebook and Instagram data I'm sure. This is this is what I heard from one of their competitors at Digital Marketing World Forum last week. And then another company actually did some cold outreach on LinkedIn saying, Hey, if you use them, then you don't get access to that data anymore. So I'm curious, have you seen any? Because I'm assuming that as software engineers, you are tapping into the API's of all these social networks? Do you see any changes coming? Or do you think that even if the Instagrams a tick tock, the Facebook's have their own influencer marketplace, that you're still going to be able to add additional value?
Nisarg Shah:That's a very good question. And it is top of the town right now. Especially with metal being more interested in the economy. Generally, what we believe is, as long as you're being respectful to matters or tiktoks API limitations, as long as you don't do something, which is not in the terms of service, you're generally fine. And matter doesn't have an issue with you if especially because you bring more business to them. If you think about it, this entire ecosystem of influencer marketing platforms, which is more than a billion dollar industry itself is adding to matters visibility adding to the content that is created there, a lot of the platforms like us, we are driving the influence of content that ends up on these platforms. Now, of course, meta would want to be protective of its and other channels want to protect its content and the kind of work that the creators are doing there. So without going into some specifics about what platform is, is about meta, I feel like in terms of the marketplace, and I wrote a long piece of content a couple of weeks ago, where do you believe that third party platforms like ours still add a lot of value for three main reasons one, brands would otherwise have to go on to each respective marketplace. So you would have to go on tick tock marketplace and the Facebook marketplace and then instead of Snapchat marketplace, that is troublesome. And it doesn't solve your campaign quirements because your campaigns across channels, so that's where third party platforms like ours would still make sense. Second, marketplaces only give you very limited data. They will not tell if if an influencer has fake followers, because it is not aligned with like, you know, the whole Elan Twitter battle, Twitter will never say how many bots exist on their account on the platform. The same thing with marketplaces, as a third party, we can tell you if the followers are real or not. So that becomes very critical. And third, which is the issue with any marketplace model scale, how many creators and there was an article which came out recently about creators not finding gigs on Instagrams create a marketplace because there is not enough volume on either sides. So how do you build out that volume, there's a critical mass after which marketplaces become useful. And right now, none of the Creator marketplaces have reached that critical mass. So for these three reasons, third party platforms like ours still make a lot of sense, we are able to integrate, we integrate with I mentioned Shopify Magento, Bigcommerce WooCommerce. On the other side, we also we can also integrate with E commerce tech stack, like Clavijo, Senlin, charges, etc, and build out one product, it talks to the entire tech stack, rather than them having to rely on 10 different products, three different marketplaces, which don't talk to each other.
Neal Schaffer:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I thank you for the candid answer. And yeah, I guess, I mean, it's taken you five years to develop what you have a Tiktok and Instagram, their, you know, it's going to be limited to their platform, and they're not going to build in all the analytics and everything else that you have. So I suppose it's almost like, Are you the type that goes into an ads manager and wants to control everything and have all your options? Or do you just want to press the boost button? And if you're just still pressing the boost button, maybe going into a marketplace, finding someone but yeah, one of my clients, he's in the Tiktok marketplace. And it's easy to find a limited number of people, but the results haven't really been that effective. It's, it's the marketplace model, right? You You get what you pay for, right? You don't have access to all the data that you're a platform show. So I think nisarg I mean, we talked about man, when I talk about influencer marketing, you know, all the best practices, we covered a great deal of them in your conversation. And you know, I just like to say congratulations, because you're it sounds like your technology really is based on a lot of these best practices today in influencer marketing. Are there any other areas that we missed that you want to, you know, tell my listeners about?
Nisarg Shah:I think generally we covered a lot of the best practices your listeners have already heard about your thoughts on the influencer marketing industry. One thing that we are a big proponent of that we discussed is fair pay, making sure the influencers are compensated for the time they invest. And just one more thing that we tend to talk about a lot to our customers and our partners is giving creative freedom to influencers. influencers are influencers because they are able to go out and create the content they know resonates with their followers, a lot of brands want to control what kind of content goes out. So generally, as a best practice, if you are a brand, and you're listening to this and planning to work with influencers, certain guidelines, but let them come up with the content, because they know what resonates with their followers, the best, and different influencers would have a different tone and message that they know works best. And it is very important and something we talk about a lot to our customers as well. And, you know, we've seen the results, brands come back and tell us that the influences where they tried to control a lot did not, did not get any kind of a conversion. But where they saw any form of vitality was when influencers were using their own creative juice and creative freedom. So I think with that, we pretty much covered everything your book is kind of like a Reese golden resource for everything influencer marketing, and your ongoing content that you put out on your own LinkedIn channel, and other forums is super useful. I look up to that a lot. I read that a lot. I shared it with my team members. So with this, I think we kind of covered a lot of what I feel is the current sentiment in the market around in
Neal Schaffer:your thinking, my friend, and you know, we didn't talk about this before, but I actually lived in Singapore for six months at one time a lot. And so when I hear your accent, I think, Oh, why LAO and all these like Singlish terms. And all the road de prata breakfast that I had with all the food courts in Singapore, so good memories. But hey, just as a final note, there's probably a lot of listeners that want to check out your tool. So the URL is affable.ai. Is that correct?
Nisarg Shah:That's right, Asha, blue, FF, AB Li affable.ai, you can request a free trial, someone from a team would get in touch and walk you through the platform and give you a trial to check it out. I am at macerich@apple.ai. So if you want to reach out to me directly, you can do that as well.
Neal Schaffer:And this or just you don't have to go into details. But I'm assuming that the business model is based on sort of a monthly fee that gives you access, what is like the price point that you start at? Is this really just for huge enterprises? Or is there a beginner price point that even small medium sized businesses can start using your platform?
Nisarg Shah:V actually, so across the spectrum, unlike a lot of the solutions in the space, which are primarily geared towards enterprises, we do have startup packages, which are designed and tailored specifically for SME mid market brands. We work with a lot of Shopify brands, less than 50 employees, less than 30 employees use our software to run the entire stack with a lot of agencies who manage their client campaigns to our platform. So typically, our starting point is around 10,000 A year ish. And then it is from their point onwards, depending on the requirements from the client side, which is much less compared to a lot of platforms in the space, which start at 25 to 30k, your annual fee, and you kind of like also locked into longer term contracts with them.
Neal Schaffer:Yeah, I mean, I've definitely seen a lot of inflation in the influencer marketing tool space, as many tools just want to serve the enterprise like, you know, call us for pricing. But it sounds like you have a tremendous amount of value add in, in what you're delivering. So congratulations on that. I know that you're no longer in Singapore here in the Bay Area. So hopefully next time, when I'm up there, we'll have a chance to meet and nisarg Thank you so much. And once again, everybody that's affable.ai and nisarg. If people want to, if people want to connect with you, LinkedIn,
Nisarg Shah:LinkedIn is the best way. I'm very active there and reach out and reply to all the messages I received there as well. So find me search on nisarg, SHA affable AI, LinkedIn, and you'll find me there. And Neil, it's great chatting with you. Thanks a lot for having me here. We bought outside industry, outsiders who kind of helped build openings around influencer marketing space. So a great chatting with you on that. And I look forward to meeting you in person when you're in the Bay Area next
Neal Schaffer:year. Thank you, my friend. I like to think that when industries grow industries that are growing need to grow out of themselves, and they require disruptors, they require outsiders with different perspectives to help them do that. So hopefully, we've both been playing that role in our own ways. And yeah, I look forward to continuing the conversation. And we'll make sure that these links in the show notes, but Nisar thank you once again for your time. Thank you so much. All right. I hope you enjoyed that interview as much as I did. There are so many facets to influencer marketing that I have yet to talk about because it is one of the most creative forms of marketing because you're dealing with people. And there are so many ways to think about it. I think I'm really drawn to influencer marketing. Those of you that might not know this, but originally in university, I was an art history major. And I loved this just not the art but the analysis of the art over the ages and how it depicts culture, but the creative ways in which we can revisits Art History I actually took a class on feminism and art history at Smith College back in the day and it was still very new, very revolutionary way of thinking, a different lens on our history that is much more mainstream today than it was back then when I was in university, so perhaps influencer marketing helps me tap into my own creative DNA. But I hope that this episode gives you one more piece of that puzzle if you're still trying to figure it out, and helps you along the way to delivery more with your influencer marketing. If you need help along the way, did you know that I offer fractional cmo consulting services, fractional CMO is just a fancy word for a marketing consultant that becomes almost like one of your employees. So we agree on X hours a week that I work for you we meet in person if you're in Southern California, or you want to fly me out to your premises, or we meet over zoom, and I am your employee, often a leader like a CMO, not always depending on the organization. But I am really giving you all of my knowledge and experience and advice applied to your company's unique situation. If that's of interest to you, I would love to help you go to Neal schaffer.com/cmo. And you can find out more information about that service. All right. Well, that's it for another episode of your digital marketing coach podcast. As always, keep your eye on the goal. Be an option, and we'll see you in the next episode. 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.