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How to Send Product to Influencers: A Complete Guide

Nicole P. Dunford — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 17:37:27 +0000

Want to get your products in front of the right audience? Influencers can help. But before they can promote your brand, they need to try your products first. That’s where influencer gifting comes in.

Sending products to influencers is a smart way to build relationships, create buzz, and grow your brand. The best part? If you’re using Shopify, the process is easier than ever. With Afluencer, you can ship products directly to influencers in just a few clicks—no back-and-forth emails, no complicated logistics.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to send product to influencers the right way. From finding the perfect influencers to setting up shipments through Shopify, we’ve got every step covered. Let’s get gifting!

1. Finding the Right Influencers

Not all influencers are the right fit for your brand. Sending products to the wrong people is a waste of time and resources. You need influencers who truly connect with your target audience.

So, how do you find them?

Use Afluencer to Discover Top Influencers

Afluencer makes sending products to influencers easy. With built-in search tools, you can browse influencers by category, location, engagement rate, and more. Instead of sifting through endless profiles, you can quickly find creators who match your brand.

Check Engagement, Not Just Followers

A high follower count doesn’t always mean high influence. Look for influencers with strong engagement—likes, comments, and shares. These interactions show that their audience is active and interested in what they post. It also means their followers trust their recommendations, which increases the chances of them trying your product.

Match Your Brand’s Aesthetic and Values

An influencer’s content should align with your brand’s style and messaging. If you sell handmade jewelry, an influencer who showcases unique, artisanal pieces is a better fit than one who focuses on fast fashion. The right match ensures that your product feels natural in their content, making their audience more likely to pay attention.

Taking the time to research influencers before reaching out will help you get the best results. Once you’ve found the right influencers, it’s time to start the conversation.

2. Reaching Out and Securing Collaborations

Now that you’ve found the right influencers, it’s time to make your move. Reaching out to influencers can feel intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. The key is crafting a clear and engaging pitch that shows them why they should collaborate with you.

Craft a Personalized Message

Influencers receive tons of messages, so make sure yours stands out. Personalize your pitch by mentioning something specific about their content that you admire. This shows that you’ve done your research and aren’t just sending a generic message to dozens of influencers.

For example, if you’re reaching out to a beauty influencer, you might mention how you love their recent makeup tutorial and how your product would be a perfect fit for their audience. The more genuine and specific, the better.

Set Clear Expectations

Be upfront about what you’re offering and what you’re hoping to get in return. Do you want them to post about your product on Instagram? Or perhaps create a YouTube video reviewing it? Be specific about deliverables.

This will help both you and the influencer understand what’s expected and ensure there are no misunderstandings later on. Clear communication leads to smoother collaborations.

Incentivize the Collaboration

Influencers are often more likely to agree to a collaboration if there’s something in it for them. Beyond free products, consider offering exclusive discounts for their followers, affiliate commissions, or even a long-term partnership. Offering something extra can make the difference between a “yes” and a “maybe.”

Using Afluencer to Secure Collaborations

Afluencer streamlines the collaboration process. It allows you to set up your collabs and let the right influencers come to you. Instead of hunting down the perfect influencer, Afluencer matches you with influencers who are a good fit, saving you time and effort. Once an influencer is interested, you can easily track and manage applications, ensuring everything runs smoothly.

Once your pitch is accepted, it’s time to move on to the fun part: sending the products!

3. Sending Products to Influencers via Afluencer

Now that you’ve secured your collaborations, it’s time to send your products to influencers! With Shopify and Afluencer, this process is smooth and simple. Here’s how you can send your products directly through Afluencer, making the process easy for you and your influencers.

Step 1: Go to My Collabs – Applications

The first thing you need to do is head to the “My Collabs” section. Click on “Applications,” and you’ll see a number to the right that indicates how many influencer applications you have.

Step 2: Use the Filter to Find “Accepted” Applications

Next, use the filter options to search for “Accepted” applications. These are influencers who have agreed to collaborate with your brand. Select a “Ship To” location so you can choose where to send the products.

Step 3: Select the Influencers to Send Products To

You can select up to 10 influencers to send products to at a time. Once you’ve chosen your influencers, click the “Send Products” button. If you don’t see a specific influencer, you can request them to add and verify their address before sending the product.

Step 4: Select the Destination for Free Shipping

Now, select the destination for shipping. Make sure that it’s a location where you can offer free shipping, which must be valid under your Shopify store settings. You can find this option under “Settings” and then “Shipping and Delivery” in your Shopify dashboard.

Step 5: Choose the Products to Send

After that, it’s time to choose which products you’d like to send to influencers. You can select up to 10 products to send to 10 influencers, and when you’re ready, click the “Send” button. You will receive an email with the request details and a confirmation link, which is valid for one hour.

Step 6: Confirm and Send

Once you’ve reviewed everything, click the confirmation link within the email. After confirmation, the influencers will receive two discount codes: one for a free product and one for free shipping. These codes are valid for two weeks, so make sure the influencers use them within that period.

A Few Important Things to Keep in Mind

There are a few things to note to ensure everything runs smoothly. If you delete or modify the discount codes, or uninstall the app before leaving a review, you won’t be able to leave a review later on. However, the influencer can still leave their review. Also, remember that after the discount codes expire, you have four weeks to leave your review.

Sending products to influencers has never been easier. Afluencer and Shopify make the process quick, simple, and seamless. Once your products are sent, it’s time to watch the magic happen as influencers begin to share your products with their audiences!

4. Managing Influencer Reviews and Feedback

Once the influencers have received their products and shared them with their audiences, it’s time to manage the reviews and feedback. This is a crucial part of the process, as reviews help build trust and credibility for your brand. Here’s how to handle the reviews and get the most out of the feedback from your influencers.

Encourage Honest Reviews

While you’ve already given influencers the codes to get your products for free, you want to make sure they leave an honest review. Whether positive or negative, honest reviews will help your brand grow and improve. Encourage influencers to share their real thoughts and opinions on the product, as this transparency builds trust with their followers.

Track Influencer Reviews

With Afluencer, you can easily track reviews. Once the influencer has posted their review, you can see it within the app. Keep an eye on how your product is being received and whether the influencer’s audience is engaging with the post. A good review can help boost your product’s credibility, while any constructive criticism can help you improve for future campaigns.

Respond to Reviews

Engaging with reviews, whether good or bad, shows that you care about customer feedback. Responding to positive reviews with gratitude makes the influencer feel appreciated. And if a review isn’t as glowing as you hoped, addressing concerns with professionalism can turn a negative experience into a positive one.

Use Feedback for Future Campaigns

The reviews you receive can be incredibly valuable. Use the feedback to improve your products or to fine-tune your influencer selection process for future campaigns. Influencers may offer valuable insights into product design, packaging, or marketing strategies that you wouldn’t have thought of on your own.

Leverage Positive Reviews in Your Marketing

Don’t let those glowing reviews go unnoticed! With the influencer’s permission, use positive feedback in your marketing materials, whether on your website, social media pages, or product listings. Social proof is one of the most powerful tools in marketing, and reviews from trusted influencers can convince potential customers to try your product.

Managing reviews effectively is just as important as sending the products in the first place. It not only provides you with valuable insights but also helps build your brand’s reputation, increase trust with your audience, and lay the groundwork for future collaborations.

How to Send Product to Influencers and Make Magic Happen

Sending products to influencers is just the beginning of a powerful partnership. With the right strategies, you can turn a simple collaboration into a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship. By using Afluencer and Shopify, you can easily streamline your efforts and let influencers showcase your products in their own unique style.

But don’t stop there. Maximize your collaborations by repurposing content, tracking results, and offering incentives to keep influencers motivated. Remember, influencer marketing is all about connection. The more you invest in these partnerships, the more your brand will grow and shine.

So, go ahead, hit that “send” button, and watch your brand flourish as influencers help you spread the word in ways that only they can!

The post How to Send Product to Influencers: A Complete Guide appeared first on AFLUENCER.

What is Afluencer?

Nicole P. Dunford — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 22:40:46 +0000

Welcome to Afluencer, your one-stop shop for all things influencer marketing! If you’ve ever wondered how brands find those perfect influencers who make you want to buy everything they recommend, or if you’re an influencer dreaming of landing epic brand deals, you’ve come to the right place. Afluencer is here to make those connections happen, and we’re about to dive into everything you need to know. Think of this article as your go-to answer to the question of what is Afluencer and why it’s the magic ingredient in the influencer marketing world.

The Only Free Influencer Marketing Platform

Afluencer is an innovative influencer marketing platform that connects brands with influencers to create impactful marketing campaigns. Founded with the mission to simplify the influencer collaboration process, Afluencer offers a user-friendly interface and a whole bunch of tools to help both brands and influencers thrive. The platform acts as a comprehensive marketplace where brands can discover, connect with, and manage influencer partnerships efficiently. By offering advanced search filters, detailed analytics, and robust campaign management tools, Afluencer ensures that both brands and influencers can find the perfect match to achieve their marketing goals. This platform is like a matchmaker, but for brands and influencers, ensuring that both parties find the perfect fit for their needs.

Features and Benefits of Afluencer

Afluencer is packed with features that make it stand out from other platforms. Let’s dive into what makes Afluencer so special.

1. Easy-to-Use Platform: Afluencer is designed with simplicity in mind. Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or a small business owner, navigating the platform is a breeze. The intuitive interface ensures that you can find what you need quickly, without getting bogged down by unnecessary complexity. This means you spend less time figuring out how things work and more time making impactful connections.

2. Diverse Range of Influencers: With access to a wide variety of influencers across different niches and follower counts, brands can find the perfect match for their specific needs. Whether you’re looking for a fitness guru like Kryss Desandre, a beauty expert like Tendai Ngorima, or a tech enthusiast such as Deven Butler, Afluencer has got you covered. The platform caters to nano, micro, macro, and mega-influencers, ensuring that there’s someone for every campaign. This diversity means you can tailor your marketing strategy to different audiences and goals.

3. Advanced Search and Filtering Options: Afluencer’s robust search and filtering capabilities allow brands to narrow down their influencer search based on criteria such as location, engagement rate, follower count, and more. This means you can find influencers who are not only popular but also align with your brand values and target audience. Imagine being able to pinpoint influencers who resonate with your brand ethos and can deliver your message authentically.

4. Campaign Management Tools: From setting up campaigns to managing communications and collaborations, Afluencer provides all the tools needed to run a successful influencer marketing campaign. You can track progress, set goals, and ensure that everyone is on the same page. These tools simplify the process, making it easy to coordinate efforts and achieve your marketing objectives efficiently.

5. Analytics and Performance Tracking: Monitor the success of your campaigns with Afluencer’s analytics and performance tracking tools. These features help you understand what works and what doesn’t, allowing you to tweak your strategy for maximum impact. You can gain insights into influencer performance, campaign effectiveness, and overall engagement. This data-driven approach ensures that you can optimize your efforts and get the best return on investment.

How Afluencer Works

We can’t answer, “What is Afluencer?” without looking at how it works. Afluencer makes the influencer marketing process straightforward and efficient. Here’s how it works for both brands and influencers:

For Brands:

Sign Up: Create an account and set up your brand profile. Include details about your brand, your target audience, and what you’re looking for in an influencer. This step is crucial as it sets the stage for finding the perfect influencer match.
Search for Influencers: Use the advanced search filters to find influencers that match your criteria. You can search by niche, follower count, engagement rate, and more. The platform’s powerful search engine ensures that you find influencers who are the right fit for your campaign.
Connect and Collaborate: Reach out to influencers, discuss collaboration details, and manage your campaign through the platform. Afluencer provides messaging tools to make communication easy. This streamlined process helps you build strong, productive relationships with influencers.
Track Performance: Use Afluencer’s analytics tools to measure the success of your campaigns. You can track metrics like reach, engagement, and conversions to see how well your campaign is performing. This feedback loop allows you to refine your approach and achieve better results over time.

For Influencers:

Sign Up: Create an influencer profile highlighting your niche and audience. Include information about your followers, your engagement rate, and the types of collaborations you’re interested in. A well-crafted profile increases your chances of attracting the right brands.
Get Matched: Receive collaboration opportunities from brands that fit your profile. Afluencer’s matching algorithm ensures that you get connected with brands that align with your interests and audience. This means you get to work with brands that you genuinely care about, making collabs more authentic and effective.
Collaborate: Work with brands to create authentic content. You can discuss details, set expectations, and create content that resonates with your followers. This collaborative approach ensures that both you and the brand benefit from the partnership.
Get Paid: Manage your collaborations and payments through Afluencer. The platform provides tools to ensure that you get paid on time and keep track of your earnings. This transparency and reliability make it easier for you to focus on creating great content.

Why Choose Afluencer? Afluencer’s Impact on Influencer Marketing

When compared to other influencer marketing platforms, Afluencer stands out for its ease of use, comprehensive features, and commitment to supporting both brands and influencers. Here are a few reasons why Afluencer should be your go-to platform:

User-Friendly Experience: Afluencer’s platform is designed to be intuitive and easy to navigate. Whether you’re new to influencer marketing or a seasoned pro, you’ll find it easy to use. This user-centric design ensures that you can focus on what matters most – building successful campaigns.

Wide Range of Influencers: Afluencer offers access to a diverse pool of influencers. This means you can find the perfect match for your brand, regardless of your niche or target audience. The variety of influencers available ensures that you can reach different demographics and achieve your marketing goals.

Advanced Tools: Afluencer provides all the tools you need to run a successful influencer marketing campaign. From search filters to analytics, the platform has everything you need to make informed decisions and track your success. These tools empower you to create data-driven strategies that maximize your impact.

Community Support: Afluencer is more than just a platform; it’s a community. Both brands and influencers can benefit from the support and resources available on the platform. Whether you need help with your campaign or advice on best practices, Afluencer has got you covered. We even have our own podcast, where industry experts share insights, tips, and success stories. This sense of community fosters collaboration and growth, helping everyone succeed.

Success Stories: Many brands and influencers have found success using Afluencer. The platform has facilitated countless collaborations, helping brands reach new audiences and influencers grow their following. These success stories are a testament to the platform’s effectiveness and reliability.

Afluencer is not just a platform; it’s a community where brands and influencers come together to create magic. With numerous success stories and testimonials, Afluencer has proven its ability to drive results and make a lasting impact on the influencer marketing landscape. Our commitment to innovation and excellence helps ensure that this platform remains at the forefront of the industry, continually adapting to meet the evolving needs of its users.

What is Afluencer? The Key to Influencer Marketing

Digital marketing is ever-evolving and Afluencer is a key player for brands and influencers looking to collaborate and create meaningful connections. Whether you’re a brand looking to expand your reach or an influencer seeking new opportunities, Afluencer is your go-to platform for all things influencer marketing. Ready to elevate your marketing game? Sign up with Afluencer today and start making impactful connections.

The post What is Afluencer? appeared first on AFLUENCER.

Podcast Episode 28 – SEO or PPC: Which is Better? | Nick Trueman – Winning With Shopify

Zeljko Nemet — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 15:04:40 +0000

We’re thrilled to present the latest addition to Afluencer’s content lineup – our podcast series featuring insightful conversations with influential brand owners. In this inaugural article, we have the privilege of introducing Nick Trueman, the visionary founder of Winning With Shopify, as our esteemed guest.

Meet Nick Trueman: The Mind Behind Winning With Shopify

Nick Trueman, the innovative mind driving Winning With Shopify, takes center stage in the Afluencer podcast series. With a wealth of experience in the world of influencer marketing, Nick shares captivating insights, challenges, and triumphs that have shaped his brand’s journey.

Podcast Premiere: Delving into the Winning With Shopify Universe

Join us in exploring the enchanting world of Winning With Shopify through the eyes of Nick Trueman himself. We’ve embedded the riveting YouTube podcast video below, offering an exclusive glimpse into the transformative power of influencer marketing.

Also, listen to the Afluencer Podcast on:

Key Takeaways

00:42 🎙️ Nick Trueman shares his background, including starting in PPC advertising at 17 and eventually founding a successful PPC/SEO consultancy.

02:22 🚪 Nick’s journey included initially quitting his first job in sales but was persuaded to stay and transitioned to working with Google Ads.

03:47 📉 Facing financial struggles, Nick persisted, started a business, and eventually found success without external investment, highlighting the value of perseverance and bootstrap financing.

05:42 🎤 Taking over the Winning with Shopify podcast unexpectedly, Nick found his passion for podcasting and has been hosting it for almost three years.

08:34 🏦 Nick discusses the nuances of raising capital and emphasizes the value of self-sufficiency, especially in service-based industries.

10:11 🛒 Nick’s interest in Shopify began after attending events and witnessing its potential, leading to his immersion in the platform and its capabilities.

13:01 📦 Nick highlights the automation and efficiency of Shopify’s ecosystem, particularly in handling orders and streamlining processes for entrepreneurs.

14:49 🌐 When seeking traffic for a Shopify store, Nick stresses the importance of a multifaceted approach, noting that the effectiveness of marketing strategies varies depending on various factors.

15:31 🛍️ Identify your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) by focusing on what makes your product different and valuable.

16:28 📢 Emphasize benefits over features in marketing to connect with your audience on a deeper level.

18:33 💰 Manage your expectations and budget realistically when launching a product or business.

20:51 🔍 Experiment with different marketing channels to determine which ones work best for your brand.

22:59 🔄 Take a long-term perspective on customer value and retention to make informed decisions about advertising spend.

26:43 🚀 Invest aggressively in PPC advertising only if you have a truly unique product or proposition.

28:52 💡 Prioritize understanding your target audience’s needs and behaviors to inform your marketing strategy.

29:47 📉 PPC bidding against large brands like Walmart can quickly deplete budgets without immediate returns.

30:43 🕰️ SEO efforts often require patience, as it’s a long-term strategy that may take years to yield significant results.

31:25 💰 SEO can be a chicken-and-egg scenario, where investment is needed for results, but results are needed for investment.

32:48 📊 Choose SEO battles wisely by focusing on unique selling points and creating evergreen content like FAQs or buying guides.

33:45 🔍 Identify niche keywords and topics that align with your product to stand out in SEO and avoid competing directly with established brands.

35:10 📱 Collaborate with influencers strategically by offering unique content opportunities that align with your brand and target audience.

38:25 📌 Ensure that influencer collaborations contribute to SEO efforts by generating relevant, long-lasting content that drives traffic and conversions.

42:22 💡 Leverage influencer collaborations for SEO by obtaining guest posts on their blogs, which can enhance brand visibility and credibility.

44:31 💼 Collaborate with travel companies to jointly pay for influencer trips, maximizing exposure and minimizing costs.

45:13 📸 Incorporate influencer-submitted product images into your marketing materials to add authenticity and credibility.

45:42 💰 Negotiate collaborations with influencers by leaving the terms open-ended, allowing for flexibility and creativity.

46:11 🎥 Repurpose influencer content for long-term benefits by posting it on YouTube, leveraging its search engine capabilities.

47:05 🔍 Access the “Winning with Shopify” podcast on various platforms such as iTunes, Spotify, and the official website.

Transcription Insight: A Peek into the Conversation

Gain an insider’s perspective as we burrow into the transcription of our engaging conversation with Nick Trueman. Discover the strategies, anecdotes, and wisdom that have fueled Winning With Shopify’ success, all captured in this in-depth transcription.

In Conversation with Nick Trueman, Founder of Winning With Shopify:

Brett:

Welcome to our Afluencer podcast. This is a special episode for you. Shopify store owners. We have the host of the Winning with Shopify podcast, Nick Sherman here with us, my good friend Nick, I know we talked about this when I was on your show last year when we trace our origin story back to 2017 on the.

Nick:

I mean of that, yeah, it was Caroline used to run my podcast, which is now it’s now my podcast. It was her podcast back then, but I remember we were both on a panel years ago and we had such a good conversation and it all kind of went quiet and I’ll see you then start at eight fluence there in a whole range of other things.

I think 2017 sounds about right to me. About six years ago.

Brett:

There we go. And here we are starting 2024 already. So welcome, Nick. And can you tell us a little bit about your background, maybe even before we connected the first time back in 17? And also what led you to ultimately start take the reins on the winning one Shopify podcast?

Nick:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I, I studied music at college, which is totally unrelated to marketing or anything we doing today on the face of it. But what it, what it did tie into is it tied it into numbers quite a lot. Anything musical. And I still play a bit of music but very not professionally or anything, but college was like a bit of fun.

My parents said, You got to go and study one more thing before you start in the working world. And while I was at college, I got a job. Ironically, actually, in the building, two doors down from where I am today. I’ve gone completely full circle in my career and I started I was 17. You were working in PPC advertising, so I was clicking buttons, Google ads, campaigns.

It was a completely different game back then, like complete different what we did today that wasn’t even conversion tracking. But all of you like attribution heads like myself who just love to track everything that was none of that. I remember the day that Google Analytics Universal got launched. The guy for was just another Rhodes right road stop for me, but that would have been 2007.

Brett:

I would I was going to say what year was? A okay, yeah. My very fast I think my little.

Nick:

Bit older than I look.

Brett:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick:

So that was my first first row, which was, oh.

Brett:

You know, I was impressed because I think my dad was campaign was 2005 when my boss at the time.

Nick:

You beat me.

Brett:

And yeah, he just, well he just handed it to me and shrugged and I had no idea what I was doing either. But I knew it was better than cold calling. So I opened up an account and I was gonna say I did not remember conversion tracking, but I also had no idea what I was doing.

Nick:

It’s funny you mentioned cold calling. So my first day I was cold calling and I quit. On my first day I was working for a friend of mine had one guy, he was on the phones. It was rubbish. This guy, he ended up lasting, I think no more than a week. And I just I just he wasn’t even in the room at the time.

I texted him, I think, saying like, I’m not Dennis, this is not for me. I hate phoning people like I’m done. And he said, he said, Well, come back tomorrow. I got an idea. And he let you just gave me the Google ads help Center and he said, Right, you got a week, learn as much as you can and that next week you’re going to start running campaigns looking after our clients.

It’s like, what? So the next week I started clicking buttons. It made little mistakes and I kind of learned quite quickly. And he was a really kind of he’s a really good guy. He’s no friend of mine. That’s a he was a real salesman, so he could keep the clients. Keeton Sway In terms of delivering results. I did that for two years and got quite good at it, became technical director of the business.

And at that point I, I kind of lost faith in where he wanted to take things and I was like, you know what? I’m just going to leave and see what happens and I’m going to quit. So I left and I quit and then I go back to 94 and it will be I’m doing contract work later on.

Right. I moved around the UK quite a lot, which is quite nice. Got to be quite a traveling, got paid for a lot of that, Grew up a little bit and then the guy I was actually working for, he ended up being the director of my company initially with myself and we was trying to start like PPC SEO agency and he didn’t really know what he was doing.

He ran an ICE company. I didn’t know a thing. I’d never run a business before, and after about eight or nine months, we decided to part ways. So he handed his shares back to me and I just I thought, You know what? I’m just going to get on the phones and see what happens. And I got I got to that point.

I think we’ve all reached it. And I think certainly about Shopify today, a lot of success with Shopify stores I took to reach this point as well. I was basically desperate. I was completely penniless. I had a credit card debt and I phoned my mum and dad and was like, I’m moving back home guys. I’m a failure. And mum was like, No, no, you’re not fine.

Your uncle is in her brother. He was an accountant. He’d been running businesses for years himself as well. And he basically said to me like, right, just get a phone, get on the phones, you’ll be good at this, but you just need to put through that pain barrier. And I think I of him on my mum, they paid my rent that month.

I got a hamster to keep me company in my bedroom and I just same edge making phone calls. Two weeks later I had to salary like a 20 £20,000 a year salary and we’re clients. And it was I was working for free for the first six weeks, but my mum and my uncle were very impressed. They were like, Right, you’ve done it.

And they kind of kept growing from there. I sold that business in 2013. We were doing a lot of PPC and quite a bit of SCA, but much more on the PBC side. I then worked for a big integrated agency. They did a you might have heard of the Shard biggest, biggest building in Europe in central London. Yeah, yeah.

They did the laser show for The Shard and we worked with ITV, Sony and loads of big epic brands. We launched Kate Spade, New York in the UK. That was one of my biggest kind of e-comm at first time. I worked with Google Shopping and I they didn’t know that when we did the pitch, the first time I touch Google shopping and striking out and I was like, This is quite fun.

And after about another year or two, I left that and about 20, 2015 I started them. I still was contract to hang on to the same show as before, and B, I started what’s is known today as spec SPC, which she’s been by nickname spec, which I won’t get into today. But the name, the official thing is it works for like perspective and specialized in words like that.

And Spec is a CSIRO consultancy. I run it, I’ve got amazing teams in the other end of this, this room now we’re about to move into a new office currently the site in the middle of Renovate team, which is quite exciting but yeah, going amazing team. We work with high street retailers all over the world and quite lovely Jen companies as well.

Let’s talk about Shopify today and then your final point as well, Brett, to kind of end the story in a real high is I’m a good friend Caroline kind of call me up and a mutual friend. Caroline called me up at one point and said to see Nick. I don’t want to run the podcast anymore. And I was like, Oh, okay.

And I don’t run the business anymore. So we made some agreements on some paper and I took over the business and became CEO of Justus Parker, and that came with the winning show five podcast. And I was not ready for podcasting at all. I didn’t even think about it. And about a month after I’d kind of come in, Caroline was like, Why haven’t you done a podcast?

Nick? And if anyone you ever heard Caroline, you know Caroline? Brett she’s Australian, She is like, she’s a mean machine when she’s on a mission and she basically pinned me to the corner. It was like, here is a microphone. We’re going to do an episode on the podcast, buckle it and let’s get this done. And I just got it hooked immediately.

So I’ve been running it for two and a half, maybe three years, and June 24. So yeah, it’s been it’s been a wild ride. And honestly, Brett, you’ve been on it as a sponsor twice, which is cool. So we’ve spoken quite a few times from there. We’ve been on panels that Caroline’s around before and I have to say it’s just sort of you guys listening as well.

I’m going to try and tailor all the questions about ask me today to you guys as much as I can, because I think meeting so many of my listeners over the last year or so and hearing the different problems and challenges, whether they’ve got a $200 million a year business or they’ve got like a, you know, $200 a month business, you know.

Right. A kind of starting point is amazing hearing where you guys are coming from in the products you’re creating. Shopify is a great enabler, but I think we’ve all come to the realization now that you don’t just start Shopify and everything else is easy. Actually, the products becomes almost like 5% of your attention trying to run it and become business.

See, I will see what we can uncover today, but that’s my story. So far in in the work world.

Brett:

Yeah, that’s awesome. I never got the full story. That’s really great too. Really cool to hear. We’ve had a lot.

Nick:

Of probably interviewing. You say.

Brett:

Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. To the credit card. That really got to my heart. That was my first company. Before I leave Dana, where I had the, I had all the credit cards up because as you know, I mean, you’ve been through it. If you’re trying to get money from the outside and it’s your first company or even your second or third, like, good luck, right?

You’re better off. Just kind of. And that’s what I would do. I would just kind of advanced up on the credit card 0% for a year and then you’re off to the races, Right? But you have a year to try to get there before the juice starts ticking against you.

Nick:

So it’s an interesting topic, actually. I never wanted to take and never have taken any investment, any working capital. My my thing is the service based companies, I was always, always like, well, if I had to provide my services like a raise, an invoice, they’ll pay me some money for my time. I’ve already got the time. I you guys listening, looking at Shopify, for example, you probably got products now.

You can’t manufacture products up without cash. That’s either got to come out of your bank account or someone else’s back then that’s the reality and it’s totally accept that. But I think sending the service based industries, I would say if you were looking at hiring an agency, I’d be very cautious of taking one. It’s like we’re the fastest growing, we’ve got the most V.C. cap.

So this is like, why do you need that? If you’re good enough doing what you do, surely clients just come to you and you start working with them. That’s what we do. So I think it’s it’s quite an interesting point actually, from, you know, whether you’re doing Kickstarter or trying to get VC caps away. And I mean, it’s an interesting point and some people get mad about it on their Shopify store saying, you know, we were like, you know, we did the biggest crowdfunding campaign ever.

We’ve got the most VC capital ever. And it’s like, Well, are you going to be bankrupt? Am I going to get this warranty that you’re offering me? You know, I always it’s I think it’s always kind of like play devil’s advocate a bit with us pays in the site them to.

Brett:

Centralize I guess for raising such you know I’m in the software world where capital raising it is a big thing I’ve been like I’ve bootstrapped every company and now I’m too old and jaded to do anything different. Right? The nice thing is though, you own it and then you have control over what you want to do. And we don’t have a milestone to hit where if we don’t hit our Q1 numbers, we’re not all of a sudden you’re not talking to someone else because I’m out right?

That’s where I want to keep keep on our mission. I did not realize I was such a big deal on the Shopify site, which is interesting because like you said, it is. Yes, Capital helps you get the product manufactured, but then you don’t necessarily have you do lose control. I mean, whether you think you do or not, you now have to add certain milestones and and you’ve got to get certain places.

So let’s talk about those early days of Shopify. Nic, what did you into? Hey, this is where I want to be. Or was it Caroline saying taking it by the collar and say, Nick, this is this is where you need to be. Shopify is No, I think this over.

Nick:

Yeah, I think I met Caroline because I was in the Shopify space rather than her. She didn’t she drag me into the podcast, but it was the I went to an event in London is an agency in the UK that I really highly regarded, where we make websites, they become really good friends of ours. I’ve spoken at our events up into our events.

We’ve done joint staff and is a guy and to like another podcast coming the name of his politics team. If you’re listening. Tim Richardson, he used to be there. He should be that head of sales like he runs his own podcast. Now we’re both part of this like podcasting e-commerce group here in the UK and which you probably know all of them, if I’m honest, and Bowie’s in there as well.

I’m sure you’ve crossed paths with over the years. And so the see, yeah, I went to one of their meetups that he was hosting and I was like, This Shopify thing sounds amazing and I spent £5,000 on my credit card that night after a few beers on the train home and bought tons of bamboo sunglasses from China on Alibaba and just check them out from the store.

And I ran that business about to obtain a half years and learn a lot lessons. And we made a bit of money, but not a lot of money. And it was just a bit of a distraction in the end. So I got rid of it. But. Sam Yeah, we that’s what kind of hooked me in initially. And then and then clients of course, started asking it and we were working loads on this platform called Vendor that got bought by Net Suite that then got bought by and well, they called Oracle.

Oracle bought the whole thing. So we used to work on vendor a lot and we became a bit of a niche. Like the only PBC agency that any vendor and that was quite coins about 200 stores in the UK on it, but they were all big stores, Max being one of them. And then we moved to came accept a few other people.

Of course the Hybris and Max is still in hybrid today. We don’t work with them anymore, but we did work with them for about four, maybe five years. I’m still connected a lot. The guys that used to be there are also clients of ours now at New Brands. They’re building their own tools and stuff, but it was, it was around, yeah, probably around Aachen 2015, 2016.

I really kind of dived into Shopify, I think, and back then and it was very much like just this cheap and cheerful, very badly spoken about platform. And the reason it was barely spoken about is there’s nothing wrong with that. It was just too good to be true. And then Natura and Shopify just kind of sat there and said nothing.

And the more people started using it, the more they were like, This is amazing. And initially to me it felt a bit more like a sort of Squarespace type. You know, you click a button and bang, you’ve got a store and that is exactly what it is. And then, of course, you must have you must have seen it at the Ben Francis Gymshark story of how they built Shopify Plus and how they kind of had said they built an emergency store launch.

They had to roll back the old site didn’t work properly and having to do everything manually that highlight loads of people to do stuff manually because they would store the Oh, is that right?

Brett:

No, I didn’t know the story, Nick. I knew I remember the Shopify Plus origins. There was only nine days where that was a thing and then we kind of looked at it and Shopify made a big deal about the announcement at United. But no, that’s funny. I didn’t know the story.

Nick:

It was from from what I understand, it was all Gymshark who were driving it because because Gymshark phoned Shopify and were like, Magento just killed our business, completely killed it. We’re going to quickly. And Shopify went, Well, we want to launch a premium products to come with us. We’ll build a product for you and then they went, Right now it’s ready.

We could put anybody on this show five plus products and that’s where it came from. Say we won’t work with Gymshark at the time, but I remember hearing about that and they were the first big like I was. I think that’s when I sort of woke up one morning. I looked to the news on that LinkedIn and was like, Hang on a minute, I need to I need to look at Shopify more, more seriously.

We were using it ourselves and loved it. And even back in the early days, it was an app for everything. Like as soon as an order came in, I basically at 5 p.m. every day, which is nearly 5 p.m. here in the UK. Which way? Brett’s in daylight. We’re in darkness. I’m better than 5 p.m. every day. I would just click a button and this printer would just print out the labels and tell me what product and the label itself said what product to put any.

It put that one in a bag and stick this label on it, put that one in the bag and stick this label on it. And I would just carry them to the post office outside and they would post them. It was not already paid, it was all automatic, nothing. And so I could just focus on the marketing. So that’s when we kind of first, where were they really?

And it’s just it’s obviously completely exploded since they’re one of the biggest tech companies in the world now and deservingly so. I think they’re fantastic.

Brett:

Let me pick your brain from a Shopify beginner or not not pure beginner standpoint, but this scenario we were talking about before we got on the call, let’s say I’ve got a Shopify store, I’ve got a skin care product. It’s a fitness product. It’s a whatever product, right? So I’ve got Shopify is great for this. Now, you’re right, 20, 24, I’ve got my store set up, I’ve got my product.

I figured out everything in terms of fulfillment. I’m going to go from an operations standpoint. What I don’t have is sales. So I’ve got a trickle of traffic and maybe I’ve got some sales trickling in, maybe not, but you know, the whole marketing landscape from these days before AdWords had conversion tracking, right? So it current day today, what am I looking at in terms of ways that I can potentially get traffic in my Shopify store.

Nick:

That I mean, that is the million dollar question I’ll answer it as best I can. And the thing I’ll say first, which everybody says to almost every question I’ve ever ask them on my podcast, is it depends on everything. And what I would say, though, is I if I wrote a book today, it would have my catch phrase on the column.

I’d be the title, which is marketing has been lost from digital marketing. That’s the biggest drama I’ve been banging for the last, probably three or four years now. And and let me unpack that and we’ll kind of go from what it means in terms of what you need to do on a piece of paper three to what you’re going do on the website.

So let’s assume you’ve got all the back end stuff like you say in in line. I know it’s a lie, but we’ll go with it. Hypothetically. The more it starts to grow, the more the marketing works, the more you find this. How is it all of that? And that’s just part of evolution. He’s got to accept that. So the first thing you need to come up with is why buy from you compared to someone else?

The USP. And I would always emphasize the use of USP unique because we ask clients all the time, what’s up? And you, anyone who sees it now is going and don’t worry about my USP sorted like it comes in some cool colors so other people’s we can do it for free delivery. So does everybody else. So does Amazon negotiate free next day delivery.

Don’t compete where you can’t compete. So I think the first thing to do is look at the products. And hopefully you did this when you invented or procured the product initially is look at what’s different about that product. What problem does it? So what you going to do with that? And then the and that’s the easy bit, that’s the bit of paper.

The hard bear is how do you get that across? Because I’ve always I’ve always stuck by this thing I learned when I was about 18, 19 and I’m on a marketing and I think it’s on a marketing, an account management by agency account management course. I went on and it’s a famous saying and it says Features tell benefits self.

And the problem is so many people go down the route of the features and they don’t get around done the the benefits or they go too far down the route the benefits And sometimes I mean, we’ve all done this right, You turn the telly on where you go to YouTube or you’re on Facebook anyway, wherever you are you see a video and you get really and captured by this emotive video and you’re like, Wow, I might cry, This is incredible.

Like, and then you suddenly realize that it’s something completely unrelated. It’s everything you just been watching, you know, it’s a new toothpaste and what you’ve just seen is someone climbing a mountain smiling a lot, and you’re like, Wow, how do I get that happiness? And the reality is, it’s obvious that it’s the mountain. You’re there with your significant other or some close friends or your family, and you’ve conquered something and you’re all having a big hug over the top and you’re like, Wow, look at this view.

And actually that is an advert, in my opinion, for a travel company or something. What’s unique where the only people that fly to fly to this airport or we’ve got two of our own hotels on the side of Machu Picchu or near there, and you can go in Peru and go and play them out together. So the problem I think with marketing is again, like that’s gone to a motive.

It’s to benefit focused. Whereas I would say actually most toothpaste adverts are too feature focused going like, did you know most people can’t clean the rubbish between their teeth? That’s the classic one we get in the UK and I have one in America’s Perfect Teeth and we don’t. In the UK we’ve got very healthy but very unpleasantly, you know, appealing teeth when you look at them.

And but like I remember reading a survey recently and listening to talk shows I was watching and this guy basically said, like we did a survey for one of the big toothpaste brands in the UK. How many people care about dirt in their teeth? And like dentists care and it’s important and you should care if the reality is nobody does people just what they care about.

So what am I going to look like? Why use your toothpaste? What I’m going to like and what taste am I going to get? And no toothpaste advert really has ever said, What taste are you going to have from the toothpaste? And I think that’s a really important point to hammer home my point, which is look at what makes you unique.

Why should somebody buy the products? And if you’re launching, go back to your question, Bret. If you’re launching, you don’t know yet. And that’s an expensive thing. Not to know, but you don’t know what you don’t know. So my view actually is just get something like chuck it out there and expect it to be awful than your expectations managed.

I mean, go back to what we talk about investment wherever your money, your spending on that don’t go in. We say new brands approach us. Don’t go into like Google advertising or SEO or matter or advertising or anything paid. Don’t go into it expecting it to work. You’re going to have to run it 50 or 100 200 times before you start to get some data in to decide what’s going to work.

And what you don’t know is what people really like about your products. And if you ask even slightly the wrong questions on a survey or focus group, you’re going to get the wrong answers. Like this is where this is, where the whole e-commerce sphere, the whole Shopify world, this is where most people fall apart, in my experience, is that you get paid, why buy from us?

And then the real challenge is how do you bring that across on a web page where you need to know what the US first is? So actually people are buying our trainers because they’re made of recycled plastic bottles and they really care about that. Then we kick off all the the first image you see, the first thing you read talks about recycled bottles.

Where do our bottles come from? How do we recycle them? Why should you care? Whereas actually a brand we worked with that did make trainers from recyclable bottles when we did the focus groups in the surveys and say they did them. And at the end outputs to us, people were like, You know what is really nice between seeing this lovely shoe, how comfortable it is if you wear this shoe underwater and then get out, it drains itself.

That was all great and it was just a lovely feeling at the checkout, knowing when it told me about how many plastic bottles I just purchased. That was a lovely feeling at the end. So they got their lead with that. They lead with adventure, they lead with their climbing the mountain. They lead with your fits coming out of the water.

And suddenly it pauses and there’s all these diagrams going like, you know, 80% of the fluid in this shoe disappear in the first 10 seconds once it’s come out of the water. Great. Well, I’m going waterfall jumping. That’s perfect. That’s the shoe for me. Or I don’t even do that. I like to think I’d like to feel like I’m that kind of person.

Say, that’s what I’m going to go after. But does that make sense? Brett I’d start with that up because without that you just wasting your time, I think.

Brett:

Yeah, it does. And I like what you said there, Nick, about the focus groups also because that’s different It just doesn’t is nothing’s the same in having a product out there in the wild and seeing what people will actually throw down money for and buy. And like you said, there’s no way to know without just turning it live and maybe having product hiccups or operational hiccups or I mean, who knows what’s going to go wrong, right?

But just do it now and have it go wrong so you can fix it and figure it out. And I like what you said on the cycles, too. On the paperclip side. So let me dive into that a little more is I assume then our goal here, right, is, is we get the product out, we learn what our actual USP is because we’re actually selling it right.

And we’re able to now discern from like real customers, not just asking our mom and asking like my kids friends or parents or what have you in terms of what they think, Right? People just tell you something versus people are actually putting their money out there and buying it. So let’s say we get a few sales in. Are we looking then looking and tracing that back and saying, hey, looks like maybe Facebook’s the way to go or maybe Google’s the way to go or we’ve got some organic stuff working.

How do you tease that out for, again, this brand that maybe starting with a budget and we know it’s kind of it’s not an endless budget, it’s limited. So we’re trying to be smart about it, but we do have to we got to burn a lot of money. I mean, just being honest about it, right, in terms of figuring out what’s a potential channel for us.

So how do you tease that out? In the early days.

Nick:

You guys, it really it’s another million dollar question. It’s a very good question. I think the the thing to do is expectation first. So like, as you say, you’re going to burn through cash. I think the next thing is to be realistic about your financials. And where I’m going with this is not the obvious, like wash your margin.

I think you need to be realistic about your financials in terms of working out how much a customer we think is going to be worth over time. And you almost got to draw a line and go on this day we are going to decide if this business is viable or no. We’re going to have to make a hard decision.

Either we’ve got the evidence to suggest yes, and we’re not there yet because you never actually going to be there. By the way, you make profit, be never going to be at the point where you where there’s no end game. Right. It’s a constantly moving, evolving thing and one day it might fall apart. And that’s that could be a good thing.

Could be merchant into another product. It could fall apart because the market’s changed and you’re launching a new thing. So there could be good reasons why it stops obvious. That’s the opposite of your question is how did you get started? But I think you need to look long term on this and go, is it like a trainer, like a product example I gave because a trainer, how often are you going to buy a pair trainers?

How else are you going to buy them from the same brands? Now you get brand advocates. You also get people like me who every time a buy trainer, I try to find a new brand I really like, like variety is the spice of life to me. But to you it might not be. You might always go, I’m always going to buy from that brand.

So, you know, I like she chalk and cheese to the shoe brand because it’s the shoe brand. If you’re loyal, they’re going to want you in every time. I’m going to factor that in and say, Actually, we don’t mind making a lot of baby break even, so we’re going to make any profit. That first order, which is a problem because we’re not paying back the debts.

As we said earlier, they were cropped up before, but we think that 50% of our audience are going to buy a second time. So we’re going to do days, we’re going to get our first 500 customers in. Once we’ve got our first 500 customers in, we’re going to split them into five groups, 100 each and each group, and we’re going to send a different sequence of emails out to these people.

So actually we’re going to sprint to get these 500 orders in. We don’t mind making a fat loss on them. So if the trainers cost $50 and we spend $200 per customer, that’s fine. And actually someone like me will be able to give you the maths to say if you’re just going to throw money at this thing and burn it, that’s the way to do it.

But if you could then answer their what sequence of emails or how frequently or when do I need to tell that person? How do I need to tell them through email or through SMS message or through retargeting, whatever medium you’re going to use If you’re going to test these five groups differently to get to that? I know say those 500 customers, phone all of them, no email, not send a survey out, phone them and ask them questions.

Do not write out a pre-scripted questionnaire and just go through them all. Just have a conversation with the first 20 to 40 and ask them what? Ask them what is? Why did you come to us? Now I’m going to come back to the paid media question now because I know I’m not talking about that. If we don’t have this information, the paid media bear, which is chucking stuff at the wall and see what sticks and the annoying thing is the things that stick initially on a limited budget.

This is the worst bit and the most painful bit that we’re very open with our clients because the stakes will be random. So if you’re spending like on a $50 a day because that’s what you can afford at the moment, firstly, there’s a problem that you can only afford. $50 a day is not enough, is better areas to spend that in.

But if you’re only spending that, it’s costing you a dollar a click. You’ve only got 50 people a day that are coming into the site. And what you’ll find is say you’ve got a product range of 50 products, you’ll sell one of those this day and then you’ll you’ll put all your eggs in one basket. Just throw everything at that one and you don’t sell any more for the next five, ten days.

And Google’s algorithm will start doing that or Metters algorithm start pushing people into that product. And the worst thing is we’ve got a client at the moment here. We’ve been including variants and countries who end up with two point something million product lines in a merchant center, and our budget is 5000 dollars and let’s get this thing started.

So we’ve gone right. Not all of that. We you sell more of this type of products than any others. They only have one of every product. And once you’ve bought it that product’s not there anymore. So you have to look at collections of ranges. So to even get the data because they’re all handmade individual products. So to get the data on those 2 million, we’ve had to see some row number crunching, which took a lot of time.

But that’s where, again, someone like us, we’re taking an investment in that client initially to keep them in five years and to have some tough conversations. They said with we’re done with burning from agency to agency, what he knows he can actually solve this problem and we get related problems we can’t solve. But that will that when we were like, yeah, we can solve this.

And we’re working on that at the moment. December was their best month ever, but they then had a tracking issue because there are web developers locked down. Tag manager says that there’s problems like that start coming out and you just you don’t have salaciousness, you don’t have the enough people and capacity and structure and process and everything else.

So when it comes to the advertising Day, I think as much as I love PPC and i.e. 50% of my current career is doing PPC and the other 50% zero, I’m, I don’t think pbks for most people when they first launch unless and I can’t tell you what it is because not launched yet, but we are launching a product to UK only in the next few weeks and it is the first of its kind and it’s for women and it’s for a medical problem that I think it’s like one in three women in the UK is struggling with any one moment and it’s the first thing that can solve that.

And we can’t say that because medical and all the other stuff kind of starts for advertising laws and whatever. But they go back to my point about USP. We’re going to we’re going to pump five, maybe £10,000 a month straight into PPC just in the UK market initially and just go absolutely mad on air. The initial product you can order I think costs about £1 and it’s a test kit for a pound, which it costs them £5 to produce one of these things.

So you buy one for £1, it tells you where you are on a scale and then how much you’re going to need of this stuff. And then you can click a button and buy it. It’s not cheap, but it’s also not super expensive. It’s cheap enough that almost everybody be able to afford it. And we’re hoping that the the beloved NHS of the UK will actually provide at some point as well on the NHS to people who can’t afford to pay for it.

So you see how amazing and unique that product is when you talk in ten years to someone to copy it. And we’re there in the painting in the UK, so even if someone copies it, we’re going to say that’s a US pay and we’re going to go to market. Now, I think most brands, if you come up with like I have work in, one company’s got they’ve got a dog blade and it’s made of a unique material for dog leads.

It has a bit of elastic in it, but not too much. It’s actually better for the dog around the dog’s neck, so that’s not going to hurt the dog. It’s got a bit of the up is not completely unique. There are other dog leaves out there that you could buy. So they’ve sort of started small and got themselves to a point, but they’ve had to do so much work in PR SEO to get to a point where running a PPC ads about 30% of people that see the PPC, I’d have heard of them before and they’re all going to be locally based to a shop you can go to to buy the product initially as well. So it’s like a local saying, I’m going to branch out from there. So yeah, if you think you can just turn on PPC ads and go, I’ve got a 4 to 1 ROI, it’s a £4 or $4 for every one that I spend. It doesn’t work. It just doesn’t work unless you’ve got that kind of really strong US pay.

We are expecting that. But they know that they’re going to be on BBC and Sky News and stuff the day we launch product so we can have all this awareness going up. We’re going to be looking for it. And if we’re not going be an SEO because a brand new website. So we’re going to rely on PPC to have it initially.

So I think again, I’m trying to be a bit more big picture than just telling you like, this is magic button and Google ads. He does exist and people, they tell you it does. A as I’m afraid now I’ve got I’ve pulled them out publicly before. So we’ll have that conversation if anybody wants to vet them. Yeah, I think you’ve got to be really realistic about this.

It’s again, marketing has been lost in digital marketing, like why buy it? What’s the reason behind it? Therefore, what’s the key, what they look for to find this product? The guys I’ve got this problem or this keeps breaking. Oh great. We’ve got a blog post about if it keeps breaking by. One of us is guaranteed for life. And if you can break it, we’ll give you £1,000 because it’s unbreakable.

You know that. That’s a good USP.

Brett:

That’s great. I love that break down because I don’t think that gets talked about enough. And perhaps it is the people that you’re calling out on that side in terms of like AdWords working out of the gate and Facebook and PPC working out of the gate, because in my experience, it never works out of the gate. The only thing you hope is that to your point, you’re not going to put £1 in and get four out or a dollar and get for it at $4.

I my thing is, hey, if you put $10 in and get $1 out, you’re probably lucky because at least is giving you something, right? And then you try to make that less bad over time and maybe that gives you some information. But there is no way you are going. I mean, you’ve got giants here in the US. Just think you’re bidding against Wal-Mart.

You’re betting against these huge brands who are also, by the way.

Nick:

Sell everything.

Brett:

Right And there and they’re happy to lose money on BBC because they’re just bringing in the customer. They got a million things to sell them. So we don’t generally want to be there, not that we can’t get information, but just that notion that, hey, I can open up an account is going to work for me out of the gate, like, No, it’s going to take your money out of the gate.

We’re just hoping to get my experience opinion a little bit information. So, Nick, I don’t want to keep you forever because I know, you know, I’m taking my coffee here, and I know we got to get you a pint over there this time, but I do want to get into SEO just because you’re such an expert at it.

And we got a teaser. But from that perspective, again, let’s go to that initial store because I kind of talked through it a lot with people through my experience. But again, my experience is basically like three websites versus yours, which is you can tell me, but I know it’s probably in the hundreds in terms of how long it takes for sites to get traction from an SEO standpoint, in my experience is one of these days it’s a multi-year thing.

You might as well keep doing it, you might as well start on it now because you want that SEO in 2025, 20, 26, 2027, if you’re still in business, but hopefully you are. But what do you tell people who are getting started out from the SEO side of things? What’s a reasonable expectation and what do you advise them to do?

Because I know it takes effort, but again, we’ve got lots of battles to fight here on the marketing side.

Nick:

Now, SCA is a few ways I could describe it. I think chicken and egg is a good analogy for this and the chicken and the egg, one of them is money and one of them is doing so. You can’t do SEO if you haven’t got the cash to do it. So it’s not, as you say, it takes a long time.

It’s not getting anything invested immediately. But also you can’t invest in it unless you’ve got money, but you need the done to get the money. And so it’s a chicken and egg situation where it’s a bit of a catch 22. I think the thing with SEO is you got to choose your battles. And when I talk about battles, in other words, for battles, I would say keywords.

So you’ve got to think where I think there’s tools you can use. Google keyword planning is fantastic and it’s completely free because guess what? Google want people spending stuff on PPC and if the same numbers apply in PPC, in SCA, so you search for something, you get PPC and you get SEO. Normally PPC ends up on the knees, you get them by showing.

So they’re both in the same sphere. So Google keyword plans are a good place to start, but pick your battles. So if you’ve just launched this brand new revolutionary trainer and you’ve got a USP, which is also important for SEO because you wouldn’t want boring websites up in number one and they the site might look and function in a boring way and still be a number one because that means people like it.

So it’s going to have an entertainment factor which might actually not be the design in the UK. And all those things are important. We optimize all of that and SEO, but I think the thing to think about is what makes you different, what problem solving and actually start probably with what I would call evergreen content. I like blog posts, but they’re not blog post.

It might be a buying guide. It might be in fact, you might be some clients. We’ve actually built an entire sort of like almost like a kind of collections and products structure on the website. But for us, so we’re not using the collections and products part of Shopify, we’re using pages. But your one page, it says like welcome to our frequently asked questions, or you could come up with a better name that ideally a name that people Google.

So it’s like if people constantly put the word help or treatment, I need a treatment. So you call it the treatment zone and it’s like a treat treatment zone and then subtitle is like, find the thing that you need, see if somebody is looking up. So you say like you create a I mean, I got a new bag and I can’t remember the brand of it.

Unfortunately, I would give them a shout because it’s really cold. A body bags Christmas, right? And the top rose up. It’s completely waterproof. And I was out in the pouring rain and I put a newspaper in this. How sad I am. I put a newspaper in the bag, went out in the rain, was out in the rain about 2 hours.

I was at a place, like doing stuff. I wasn’t I didn’t just stand in the rain in my head, but I went out and then I got back and opened it and the newspaper was completely dry and I was like, This is my life. So I had to make a well, I should have made a video. This is perfect content for them.

It’s a good bag. I want to help promote it and maybe I’ll get now the OPEC countries have it was say, but the point is somebody might search out full backpack but I’m sorry Wal-Mart, Amazon, eBay, they’re already selling backpacks and they’re already number one. And they’ve been there for years. And you’re not going to compete with them on the way.

Backpacks, waterproof backpacks. You might be a bit of an edge and guaranteed waterproof backpacks. So actually, people have bought water resistant backpacks, but not waterproof backpacks. Now you’ve got an edge. So from an SEO point of view, now you found a and again, this is marketing in the digital marketing space, this is marketing. You’ve actually come up with an edge, something that your customers and here’s the key word may they may care about.

We don’t like you said brand to a focus group we don’t know but they might care about that. And if they do care about that, you’ve hit the nail on the head. So do 20 or 30 things like that, where you create some fake news, like is there a backpack that is guaranteed waterproof? If that’s the keywords where you create an essay cue about that link that to like a buying guide about how to buy the right backpack that’s waterproof for you because there’s different grades of waterproof link that some blog post says in blog post linking back to that and then link it all up with your products, your collections.

So like, this is all grade one, grade two, and grade three waterproof backpacks. So you see how look, I’ve done some research, people are all Googling. Like, is that actually a backpack, this waterproof? Why not? Look easy with keyword planner to find all the backpacks people are moaning about? We’ll find that the top ten waterproof backpacks on a blogger list done a post by that bringing influencers in because influencers are so important to our SEO.

But I think they used completely wrong most of the time for SEO and and the right way to do it for SEO is to get get leads and traffic and content generation from the influencer as well. But it’s like if you could say to an influencer like you, you regularly have a blog post saying that the top ten travel whatevers we go to travel products, we would like you to review it please, but try and do something that the other brands haven’t done with that person to get out to, number one.

And we would. We also want to send you a jet wash and we want you to stand with the backpack on to get some to fire a jet wash at you. And we send you the jet wash and try on as many backpacks as you want. We bet ours will be the best. You know, we’ve already tested it has a video of it or there was a phone case company called Mouse US we work with.

But then if they’re in the US, they’re definitely the massive here in the UK, but they like every time a new iPhone comes out they put it one of the new cases, they drop it from a tower or something and see if it smashes. They drive a tank over it. Does it smash like they do crate They let you put one in in a They were blowing up a bridge, I think the army here in the UK and they put a lot of phones in their cases on the bridge.

The army blew the bridge out and they found the phones after they were working. None of the screens are smashed till like that’s a really cool advert because they realized the reason people buy a phone case is because the phones really expensive, you know? Thanks, Apple. You’ve made us all invest more in phones than cars these days and and it’s but it’s so you want it to be indestructible and there lies actually the reason people want to buy from these guys they didn’t do that on a whim.

They probably tried like three things and that’s the one that works. So if you want to rank well on SCA, the place to start is to find these niche things. The caveat to all of that is to be really, really careful. And what you want to be careful of is talking about something that’s a too much of a sidestep from the products.

We we met with a company years ago that sold they actually sold hinges. So if you’ve got like a gate on your garden, you open the gate, The hinge is the bit that makes the gate kind of move on a post or whatever I assume they call them hinges in in the US. But they did a blog post about like the different materials for hinges and everybody went and read that blog post.

They went it bought a competitor’s products and as much as we tried get in to buy their products, no one bought their product cause it wasn’t relevant for the problem. People were actually searching up that the blog post solved. We also did it with a hosting company, the host of WordPress Magento websites, and they write a thing about how to fix an email inbox problem.

And the issue with that was everyone was coming on getting the answer on how to fix their email inbox problem. Weren’t very interested in hosting, they weren’t buying hosting, so it wasn’t relevant enough. So I think you’ve got to keep it relevant and using Google Keyword Planner, you can find some keywords of problems. People are searching issues, people have them.

What you can do is go on Google and search them in and see who’s already ranking for those things and come to a conclusion yourself. Okay, are we going to rank for this? If yes, how town can we go on this? Can we create some cool video content and link all of that back into this blog post or embed that in the page, Get some traffic on YouTube, YouTube’s search engine.

So you’ve got to be really tactical initially. And as you say, Bre SEO for the first however long you’re doing it, I do want to say a year or a month or whatever, because one brand that do all of that alongside some commercial stuff with a ton of PR. So Google’s seen all this great trust and awareness. They’ll get 10,000 reviews and trust products that pbks match, or actually they’ve just done a linkup where the massive car brands like you can buy a hi fi system.

This also in this lovely Mercedes or Jaguar or something and you can buy the same hi fi for your house and waiting a link ups everyone’s going to saw. I was going to see that and whack you up the rankings, which is just about everything. So those things are really good. But let’s face it, we can’t do that.

There’s only so much shop window space in that space. I think it’s finding those niches, picking your battles, but keep it associated to your product because we don’t. It is drive traffic that doesn’t convert because then it’s all been a waste of time and that’s what the bad marketing managers get. Your web traffic is up 400%. How much is sales up that down 10% because now the traffic is irrelevant.

Thank God. I’ve got to pick your battles.

Brett:

I love I love so much of that. That is excellent. In terms of the landscape, the trust zone instead of the fake news or the treatment service treatments are that fixed. That’s a real smart, subtle point that most people who are writing for websites don’t think of, right? You think of, Hey, what is that? And user What is the potential customer typing into Google?

That’s where I want to be. Let’s keep on that thread. This would be the last one for me here, Nick, but I can’t let you get out of here. And we kind of tease it a little bit with the influencer side. So how would you use the influencer side? I like how you said the blog post. We’ve actually only had one user and that was a friend of mine who’s savvy kind of business owner like yourself, where he was most interested in looking for a full interview with blogs where they could then create the content.

But we’re talking really web based content, write stuff that sticks versus the real versus the post. And you know, my head’s in it all day and I’m kind of biased because we get the Shopify store on us. We’re looking for this and then we try to match them up and provide them with this, right? Whether it’s a static post or a real I mean, you guide them a bit on this side, but I’m in it on the influencer side.

You’re looking from the digital marketing side, like you said, an emphasis on marketing. So from your perspective, what’s happening? Where do you see these trends with influencers? What are you looking at today? You know, what’s up? They’re getting into your head on the influencer, creator, micro, whatever the heck we want to call them. What are you thinking there?

Nick:

Yeah, and what we call them is always been a topic on the podcast is like we, we will call them influences on the kind of industry sides. A lot of them are like, I’m not, I do influence, but I’m a content creator and they’re quite precious about their content and some of them have really, really cool content to have been precious about.

So I say from my size, but I think in terms of the site and blog posts are great for SEO. So think about this for a second. You say you pay a nano influencer, a micro influencer like $100 for a post. Those are what goes into it. It’s great post, but they put it out there. How long does that last on Instagram take to, you know, like a day, a week?

If he’s really, really good to the guys like Bay Borrow, people might come back and check it later if they’ve got enough followers but you’re talking like that’s just little bits of water that didn’t make it into the cup. It just kind of falling out your blog post if you imagine the traffic flow that water and so that that doesn’t really stick.

How often have you booked a travel is a really good example this he booked a holiday and like I’m going to let you booked a hotel today for what trip we’re going on. And I Googled back. Let’s see about the book. I turn. I thought, I’m going to Google it. I Google the hotel when on TripAdvisor, check the reviews on an Instagram.

But the fact that his own a TripAdvisor TripAdvisor told me what the reviews were. I found a and I always go on YouTube as well and look at YouTube videos and this is where I think YouTube and blogs last a lot longer is I won’t be able to necessarily find I mean, I think go on Instagram, but I’m only looking at the last ten, 20 posts, most of which weren’t influencers.

It was just like when I’m there, I might go, you know, here’s a selfie. Nice dinner with the wife at this lovely hotel and you know, the work trip. It might be a if they ask me to leave a review, I might say, Yeah, the WiFi was amazing. I went for 2 hours when I got there on my laptop.

A really good environment was a quiet place is actually you can go. It does work. Great hotel, five stars, that’s all good user generated content. But if you’re going get an influencer to see some of that, you know in two days, you don’t want that to disappear overnight. So if you had a if you find an influencer who’s done like the top eight hotels in New York and your hotel in New York, you can go, Hey, come, stay, stay.

Make it the top nine hotels especially. It’s a blog post that you can see is already ranking well or it’s like 2023. You could message. You mean like August, September and say, are you doing month 24? Because if you are, we’d love you to come stay in our hotel before then, you know, when would you like to come and you see how much do you see, Bret, how much more traction you’ve certainly got from that.

And then from the outside, we’d make sure we get what’s called a guest post, so we’d ask them to actually write a blog post, to go on our blog, to say like, then we can send out to all of our customers and also people that might find that of like somebody’s search is staying at the brand New York hotel if that’s such a thing.

Staying at the Grand New York Hotel, they find the New York Grand New York hotel, own blog post done by X-Y-Z travel blogger. And the beauty is they don’t even need to be these massive, like A-list celebrities. This could be anyone. And you be like, Oh, I wonder who that is. Check out their Instagram. Oh, they’re quite cool, actually.

And they criticize quite a few things. They’ve been really comprehensive about this. That’s even more authentic to me now.

Brett:

So yeah, and then you’re using their profile for the author. So they’re they’re on your site, but you’re using their profile within WordPress.

Nick:

And you’re now linking back to them, which from their own SEO on their blog, that one so becomes a reciprocal thing. So they peplow questionnaires, you put up log in and you could even write then another blog later saying like, these are all these are the, you know, snapshot of people that stayed in the hotel recently. And you can list the ten influencers that you’ve worked with on this thing and be honest, saying this one didn’t like the décor because they don’t like red.

And our hotel is features a lot of red. But if it’s Christmas, red is the color. Come to our hotel and you can say that without saying anything rude to them. They can be authentic and real and say wasn’t my cup of tea in terms of the color, but the food was fantastic, The bed was comfortable and actually the parking was nice and easy.

It’s interesting you say there’s lots of good and easy things you can do without without it costing a million $1,000,000. And I think on the CEO side, you’ve got to think of like this where I love it so much more than like just an Instagram post is still Coke talking about. And I lots influencers do that and I just love because you can do multiple contacts.

You can have like three or four blog posts. All of those can rank, they can have something on on Instagram and that links back or whatever, but their own blog post can rank as well as is five things now. They’re evergreen. They can post a YouTube video, which means in YouTube videos they still get found years after they were created.

And every hotel I’ve been to, I’ll always find some have been there. Watch the videos. He’s now watching someone walking around vlogging on a camera guy like, Hey, check me out. I’m at this hotel and they’re so influencers. You can find an influencer as well. I think it’s fantastic because they’re not going to cost tons of money, but they’re going to be really good.

And like we said on the series you did on, on our podcast as well. Brett like make it more than a single thing. So actually if you’ve got multiple products, you could say to him, like, we want to send you on a trip with our products every three months, you could even link up with a travel company like a local travel agent is trying to themselves out there, Why don’t we join pay this, you cover the cost, The holiday will pay for the influencer and they’ll take our product with them so they get paid.

You only pay for the holiday. That’s the influencer now, but they’ll promote two or three things in one guy and we’ll come up with this campaign. In fact, let’s send five of them on a trip. Now one of us can go on the trip and I’ve actually been on trips like that, was speaking at like a small conference in Antigua years ago.

I was there with about 60 or 70 bloggers, YouTubers, content creators, and some of the content guys, they don’t have their own channels. They were just really cool photographers and stuff like that. So I think there’s so much more you can do with it. And how much more exciting is it if you look at like five product images and two of them were submitted by an influencer as well.

It’s another amazing angle to use and you can also like click through from there, opens in a new tab, keep your website open and open it in a tab and goes to that post on their Instagram. So you’re going to see like this is a real person. They’ve got 200,000 followers now and they’re only 10,000 when you work with them, but they look much bigger than they were when you see you didn’t have to pay the same.

Right. You know, it’s not just based on the followers, but I think it’s I think this is a lot of multi-pronged stuff you can do on SCA.

Brett:

Yeah, very cool. I love that. I love all those ideas. And I think from a mechanics standpoint, when you’re negotiating that and on the influencer platform or where you’re talking with the influencers, both what I like to kind of coach our brands to do and in the light of everything that you should ask for, according to Nick, that’s one of those things you can say, Hey, here’s what I got for the collab offering $200.

Let me know what you can do. I’d like to kind of leave it open ended so that they can come back with their list of things and then that’s where you can kind of tweak. And if they’re going to do a real on Instagram. Well, to your point, Nick, YouTube blasts Facebook forever. It’s a great search engine. So it’s the same effort to produce a real post on Instagram.

They can post the same thing to YouTube to their channel, or maybe they’ll give you the video to post on yours if they don’t have a channel. So you can still get that out there, but it’s now forever something that’s helping you out instead of just temporary. Yeah.

Nick:

Nice.

Brett:

Yeah, well, I could talk to you forever, Nick, but we got to send people to the winning with Shopify podcast platform. There are tons of recorded episodes, including the series that we’ve done a couple of times, and the influencer and affiliate marketing side of things. We will get the links under our video here so people can listen to and subscribe to winning with Shopify.

But how can they find the podcast?

Nick:

Yeah, if you search winning with Shopify, it comes up all over the place. I’m told we yeah, we got a not an award, but three bloggers reached out to us recently about our own influencers saying that they put us as the top podcast above Shopify Masters, which is run by Shopify.

Brett:

So very cool.

Nick:

And asked for a link back. I mean, yeah, sure, because go because they featured us. So it’s another good way influencers but yeah winning we Shopify podcast where mostly makes me listen on on iTunes most are based in the U.S. so though I’ve got a very posh British accent, it’s mostly us Yeah, us listeners, which is cool and B etc. on Spotify, Apple, iTunes we get away with Shopify dot com, find us on there we are all say if this is of use to anybody we’re posting more and more on YouTube at the moment.

I’m actually posting the full episodes as well. So if there is a video, if you want to watch it and see Bret myself having to come say I personally prefer watching stuff, I find it much more engaging. I am, although I shouldn’t say it to anyone, but I watch everything a 1.2 times spate because I find you can still understand it all perfectly, but you get through a bit quicker.

So yeah, we post an episode every Friday. So yeah, please come check it out and, and also reach out to us. We’d love to know what sort of stuff you want to cover, and I’m sure you’re the same as well.

Brett:

Brown Yes, that’s I love chatting with you because you talk naturally in one point too, so we can cover a lot of ground, a shorter period of time here. There’s there is no time wasted. Yes, I like the videos also. So that’s what I usually post while we chat is is a full video. But you guys are on all the platforms, iTunes and all that stuff.

So we get those out there with. Well, Nick, thanks so much for joining Nick Jeremy with the winning with Shopify podcast. Look it up. We’ll get the links here. YouTube, Apple, Spotify, all that good stuff. Thanks again for joining next.

Nick:

Thank you, Brett and FC. Pleasure. Lovely touch again.

Brett:

Yeah, always fun to talk with you. Appreciate it.

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Reflecting on a Journey of Innovation and Influence

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Podcast Episode 25 – Inspire Positivity with Faith-Based Clothing | Don Smith – Inspire Wear

Zeljko Nemet — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 14:50:40 +0000

We’re thrilled to present the latest addition to Afluencer’s content lineup – our podcast series featuring insightful conversations with influential brand owners. In this inaugural article, we have the privilege of introducing Don Smith, the visionary founder of Inspire Wear, as our esteemed guest.

Meet Don Smith: The Mind Behind Inspire Wear

Don Smith, the innovative mind driving Inspire Wear, takes center stage in the Afluencer podcast series. With a wealth of experience in the world of influencer marketing, Don shares captivating insights, challenges, and triumphs that have shaped his brand’s journey.

Podcast Premiere: Delving into the Inspire Wear Universe

Join us in exploring the enchanting world of Inspire Wear through the eyes of Don Smith himself. We’ve embedded the riveting YouTube podcast video below, offering an exclusive glimpse into the transformative power of influencer marketing.

Also, listen to the Afluencer Podcast on:

Key Takeaways

00:00 🎵 Introduction to the podcast

– Introduction to the podcast discussing influencer marketing and new collaborations in the industry.

00:29 👕 Don Smith’s background and Inspire Wear

– Don Smith introduces himself and shares his background, discussing the inspiration behind Inspire Wear and its mission.

02:30 🚀 Starting his own business and the learning experience

– Don talks about the experience of starting Inspire Wear, the challenges he faced, and his plans for the future.

04:36 ✝️ Faith-based concept and transferring positivity through clothing

– Don explains the faith-based nature of Inspire Wear and how it aims to transfer positivity to customers through its clothing.

06:37 💼 Ideal influencer partnerships and their characteristics

– Don discusses the qualities he looks for in ideal influencer partners, including belief in the product and openness to new ideas.

09:20 🧥 Specific products for influencer promotion

– Details on the specific products Don is looking for influencers to promote, including hoodies, sweatshirts, and active wear.

11:54 📩 How to reach out to Don for collaboration

– Don provides contact information for influencers interested in collaborating with Inspire Wear.

13:00 🌐 Social media presence

– Information about Inspire Wear’s presence on Facebook and Instagram for further engagement.

Transcription Insight: A Peek into the Conversation

Gain an insider’s perspective as we burrow into the transcription of our engaging conversation with Don Smith. Discover the strategies, anecdotes, and wisdom that have fueled Inspire Wear’ success, all captured in this in-depth transcription.

In Conversation with Don Smith, Founder of Inspire Wear:

Brett:

Welcome to our Influence, your podcast, where brands, influencers and creators come together. We talk to influencer marketing. We also talk about the latest new collabs in the industry that are available to influencers and creators. So we’re excited to welcome Dom Smith today, founder and CEO of a new clothing and apparel company called Inspire Wear. That’s going to tell us about his story and specifically what he’s looking for in terms of influencer.

So Don, welcome to swag and representative representing there. Can you introduce yourself, Don, and tell us a little bit about your background?

Don Smith:

Well, first off, I want to just thank you for inviting me on to the podcast. It’s a great honor and a privilege.

Brett:

Yeah. Excited to have you. Excited to hear more about Inspire, where you and I spoke. Was it last week that we spoke kind of went through the dynamics of your collab and you’ve got a great story.

So excited to share that with everyone.

Don Smith:

Oh yeah, absolutely. Just a little byline. Me, Don Smith, a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and a recent graduate of Columbus State, where I got my degree and digital design and graphics. The story behind Inspire was kind of it was inspired by my experiences in college and up to adulthood. I was always one to be one for causes, whether it’s highway cleanup or working security for homecoming parade.

Just being involved in a community. What’s one of the things that one is one of my passions. So I kind of took it from there and kind of had to conspire, one, to reflect the things that I wanted to do most, like helping the community any way possible that I can and just do things for different causes. So that’s what the basis, the basis of inspired, where is just bringing out inspirational clothing to not only inspire but to motivate people, just to take them to that next level, just to have them have a sense of identity, of who they are and where they can go.

Brett:

Very cool. How did it feel to start your own business? I assume that probably is a boost of energy yourself. I know from doing it a few times myself, you get that adrenaline rush. So how are you feeling right now from that launch? I mean, it’s the 2023 launch. How are you feeling now and what are the plans looking ahead to next year?

Don Smith:

Well, it’s it’s like any experience where you dip your feet into the pool and then you kind of start to go out into the deeper water and then it’s either sink or swim from that point. So for me, it’s been like a really, really great learning experience. You know, just from the business aspect of the business to the not just the art aspect of the business.

So whether or not, you know, the business should be a limited liability company is sole proprietorship all the way up to how do you market this thing? How do you bring it into the community? How do you send it up to the forefront and that’s the space that I’m in right now is how can I take inspired where to that next level?

Brett:

Yep, I hear you. It’s something you don’t quite experience.

Until you do it. As you said. Where we’re used to, everyone kind of starts out with a regular job and you have that focus and your job is defined or well defined to a degree, and you don’t really do stuff outside of that scope. And then here you are done with Inspire where and there’s no end to, like you said, your your own setting up the end of the day from a legal standpoint.

But oh, by the way, you’ve got to do the marketing and figure that out. And we’ve talked to that a little bit. Oh, by the way, you’ve also had to create the products and the artwork that go into this. So you’re head of.

Everything, right? You’re CEO founder, but really you’re doing a sea level of marketing design, product development, you name it. So there’s there’s.

Nothing that nothing they can’t do. Let’s talk about the specifics on the product creation there. From the product development standpoint, a cool concept insight, I guess I should say that you have in terms of transferring positivity to customers through the clothing. Give me walk us through that a bit in terms of, hey, I’m putting this on and let’s go.

We’re starting our own company. I’m going to wear ten hats today, but I’m going to get through it.

And this is this is how I’m setting the tone for my day and my week here.

Don Smith:

Okay. Well, as I had mentioned to you earlier, this is a faith based business, So it is always going to be inspired by the word of the Lord, which is the basis of all of the graphics, all the basis of the tools that I have also, the artwork is influenced by it as well. So it all combines itself and it meshes together well because whatever you kind of stray and deviate from the plan, then things have a way of becoming too chaotic and hectic.

If you just kind of follow that single plan, then it makes things a lot easier for you to move forward with designing product because, you know, these aren’t the actual words that from your own mouth that they’re divinely inspired, but they’re already written. So you can just take that piece of knowledge and if you can just make it into something that’s positive and then market it, then you have something that you can bring to people, not just your own opinion or not just, you know, just this is how I feel about things.

There is the backing behind the words that are on the apparel.

Brett:

And as we get into the marketing. Then as you and I were talking last week and this is something that kind of goes beyond the software, right? From our standpoint as a platform, the influencer app, we don’t necessarily have, you know. A segment, so to speak.

On faith based. So that’s why we want to do this podcast. So you and I could talk and we could reach out to faith based influencers and let them know about this opportunity, about Inspire, where.

So on the influencer front, in terms of ideal partners for you, can you talk about the work that you’ve done so far? And I know we’re kind of getting the ball rolling here. On the influencer side in terms of looking for faith based influencers.

What have you done so far and then where. Are we heading into the New Year and beyond in terms of influencer partnerships for Inspire, where.

Don Smith:

So far as influencer marketing is concerned, I’m looking for a person that actually believes in a product. That’s the first thing you know, Influencers are known to also create content, but also just Mase majorly, just hype up the product to their followers so that it may in turn turn into revenue in the short term. But the fingers as at first you have to believe in the product, you have to believe and what you’re selling to or to your constituency or people that you that follow.

So in order to be believable, that’s the first thing that I would ask for, is that you would actually believe in the product, believe in what you’re selling, because it seems more authentic and genuine. So that’s one thing that I’m looking for. And secondly is an idea to be more open to new things, new areas, to new new fronts, so to speak.

So that will probably be the second thing that I’m looking for. And the final thing that I’m looking for is just to have fun. I mean, because products that sell the most are the ones that give you positive feelings, you know? So if you open up a can of Coke, you’re not going to be angry. It’s because it inspires those joyous feelings.

And you see people dancing around and enjoying people’s company while sharing a Coca-Cola, because that’s what the marketing was to, is that this product creates positive feelings. And that’s one thing that I wanted to inspire, was to create positive feelings. So the influencer that I connect with has to be able to create that positive feeling to motivate you to want to be able to, in turn seek out the product.

And in the short term, purchase it.

Brett:

That’s great. That’s on a next level. Marketing insight there that we’re not just selling product per say. It’s an experience, right? It’s positivity. It’s an experience like you said.

That said, done. Do we have specific products that we.

Are looking for the influencers to help promote in terms of the apparel, the product line today?

Don Smith:

Okay. Well, since winter is coming upon us, I do have a line of hoodies and sweatshirts and long sleeved shirts that yeah, there we go. That’s been will be something that I would want the influencer to promote. Also, I do have a line of activewear as well because, you know, in during these winter months you’re not going to stay dormant.

You want to stay focused, you want to stay active. So people are going to go to the gym more in the winter months because, you know, they kind of want to keep the activity going. So I do have activewear and that’s definitely something that I’m looking to market as well.

Brett:

Oh, that’s great. Yeah. The that’s I. Think one lasting positive from the pandemic was that it made activewear wearing activewear all day being okay, right. Because you had people.

Working from home work and life blended like you said, maybe you’re going to the. Gym. That’s that’s my excuse these days. I’m going to physical therapy, to rehab an injury. And, you know, it’s in a gym. So I wear the activewear, right? And then I can have my zoom collar shirt in the office. But the activewear pants and it’s it’s now in 2023, perfectly acceptable. That’s kind of like the going rate, right?

You might be coming or going from the gym at any time. And that’s kind of the way things are now. So that’s great to have that line of activewear. That’s what I kind of live on in the winter myself here is that that stuff because y you know, you work for yourself. Well, I get all dressed up and be uncomfortable right this day.

You might sneak out, go to the gym halfway through. So it’s good to have that line of clothing. So that’s Great. So maybe a fitness based, faith based fitness faith based. Influencer, I should say, could work for the Activewear.

Don Smith:

Oh, absolutely. That’s definitely something that would be of great interest to my company and to my business as well. Excellent.

Brett:

Yeah, go ahead.

Don Smith:

Just to have that opportunity to be able to stretch forward and stretch out word and reach further.

Brett:

Love that stretch far stretch our that’s my ears are my kind of activewear pants talking.

Don Smith:

Oh yeah.

Brett:

That’s great. That is perfect. So that’s what we will get a link to your collab here so that people can apply to it. So let’s go through that ways that influencers can reach out to. Work with you. We’ve got your collab right, it’s active and influencer, so.

We’ll get that up. How would you like to. Hear from people in terms of, Hey, I’m a I’m a faith based influencer creator. I want to help promote the Activewear line, the hoodies for Inspire wear. How can I reach how can I reach down to connect?

Don Smith:

Well, you can reach me on the affluence or website. I do have a link there where you can contact me. That’s the way to do it is by email because I check my emails daily or I also do have my personal email inspire where in 2023 at gmail dot com you can also reach me there. So those are the two that you can reach me that will get the fastest response.

Brett:

Perfect. That’s great. Get all of the founder. CEO and any socials that we should share for inspire wear as well.

Don Smith:

Yes I inspire where is actually on Facebook as well as Instagram. The Instagram account is under the parent company Majestic Multimedia. So that would be done as well as well as our Facebook is just it’s inspire aware so you can find us on Facebook that as well.

Brett:

Excellent. Excellent. Well, thank you, Don. I appreciate you coming on talking about the the winter line for Inspire, where it sounds really timely. So we’ll send some influencers your way here and influencers of your listen and we’ll get the links below. And Don give you all that.

Great resources in terms of being able to reach them personally, which is awesome when you’re working with a company. Can’t do better than talking with the CEO founder himself.

Don, thanks so much for joining us.

Don Smith:

Thank you. It’s a great pleasure.

JOIN THE ULTIMATE INFLUENCER MARKETING NETWORK!

Discover the art of influencer marketing with Afluencer’s newsletter. From savvy strategies to HOT COLLAB tips, we’ve got something for everyone. Don’t miss out—sign up today!

Reflecting on a Journey of Innovation and Influence

As we wrap up this enlightening podcast experience with Don Smith, we invite you to consider the valuable takeaways and inspiration has has shared. Looking to harness the power of influencer marketing? Afluencer is here to guide you on that transformative path.

Explore a World of Possibilities with Afluencer

Unlock exclusive insights and strategies by signing up for Afluencer’s bimonthly newsletter.
Catapult your brand’s presence through the captivating prowess of influencer marketing.

Become a Guest on the Afluencer Podcast

Join us in celebrating the launch of this captivating podcast series and continue to empower your brand’s influencer marketing journey with Afluencer.

The post Podcast Episode 25 – Inspire Positivity with Faith-Based Clothing | Don Smith – Inspire Wear appeared first on AFLUENCER.

Podcast Episode 24 – Stepping Up And Scaling Homeschooling | Paul Bennett – Cicero Learning

Zeljko Nemet — Tue, 16 Jan 2024 14:07:38 +0000

We’re thrilled to present the latest addition to Afluencer’s content lineup – our podcast series featuring insightful conversations with influential brand owners. In this inaugural article, we have the privilege of introducing Paul Bennett, the visionary founder of Cicero Learning, as our esteemed guest.

Meet Paul Bennett: The Mind Behind Cicero Learning

Paul Bennett, the innovative mind driving Cicero Learning, takes center stage in the Afluencer podcast series. With a wealth of experience in the world of influencer marketing, Paul shares captivating insights, challenges, and triumphs that have shaped his brand’s journey.

Podcast Premiere: Delving into the Cicero Learning Universe

Join us in exploring the enchanting world of Cicero Learning through the eyes of Paul Bennett himself. We’ve embedded the riveting YouTube podcast video below, offering an exclusive glimpse into the transformative power of influencer marketing.

Also, listen to the Afluencer Podcast on:

Key Takeaways

00:00 🎶 Introduction to Podcast

– The podcast discusses homeschooling and features Paul Bennett, the founder of Cicero Learning, a company that helps families hire private teachers for one-on-one education.

00:29 👨‍🏫 Paul Bennett’s Background

– Paul Bennett shares his entrepreneurial journey, including founding three different companies, his family’s 11-year sailing trip around the world, and how Cicero Learning was born out of their homeschooling experiences.

02:06 📚 One-on-One Learning Benefits

– Research on one-to-one instruction shows that students who learn one-on-one perform significantly better academically compared to traditional classroom settings.

– Studies have shown that one-on-one teaching can lead to students being two years ahead academically.

05:07 📝 Cicero Learning’s Personalized Curriculum

– Cicero Learning provides personalized and bespoke curricula for each student based on their individual needs and goals.

– The curriculum is designed to scaffold and level up the student’s education, whether they are homeschooling or looking for supplementary support in a traditional school setting.

07:56 🌍 Homeschooling Trends and Triggers

– Families are turning to homeschooling due to various triggers, including disruptions caused by the pandemic, neurodiverse children, bullying, and dissatisfaction with traditional schools.

– Some families choose homeschooling to align with a flexible and personalized lifestyle, enabling them to travel and learn simultaneously.

10:29 👩‍👦 Influencers and Audience

– Cicero Learning collaborates with influencers who have audiences interested in Worldschooling, homeschooling, or seeking educational alternatives.

– They work with influencers who are passionate about children’s development and education.

15:08 📣 How to Connect with Cicero Learning

– Interested influencers and parents can connect with Cicero Learning through their website at cicerolearning.com or via Afluencer

Transcription Insight: A Peek into the Conversation

Gain an insider’s perspective as we burrow into the transcription of our engaging conversation with Paul Bennett. Discover the strategies, anecdotes, and wisdom that have fueled Cicero Learning’ success, all captured in this in-depth transcription.

In Conversation with Paul Bennett, Founder of Cicero Learning:

Brett:

Welcome to our Influencers podcast. We’ve got an episode for our mom influencers, parent influencers. It’s fellow parents like myself looking for ways to better educate our children. We’ve got Paul Bennett here with us. He’s the founder of Cicero, a learning company that helps families hire private teachers so that their children, students, our children can get more that one on one type education that we’re all looking for.

So we’ll talk about some influencer opportunities in a moment. First, we want to bring Paul on and welcome Paul. And I was wondering if you could start us off telling us a little bit about yourself and your journey before you started Cicero Learning Store.

Paul:

Thanks, Brett. I’m happy to be here again. Sorry about the light. I am a serial entrepreneur of three different companies with my life and business partner Lanie, to travel businesses and then this education business which really came out of our life, living on the road or on the water. So I live on a sailboat and about 11 years ago my wife and I set off on a round the world journey with our three daughters who were between the ages of five and ten at the time, and we raised them on a sailboat.

We sailed all the way around the planet, and in those 11 years, we raised them through middle school, through high school. My two oldest daughters are also at college now, and we tried everything as homeschoolers or old schoolers. And then we tried hiring private teachers to design courses and then lead those courses 1 to 1 with our daughters.

And it was a complete life changing experience. And so Cicero was founded out of that.

Brett:

Yeah. So firsthand knowledge then, and experience. Do you have either from your experience or I guess studies or information that you have in terms of how much faster do children learn when they’re coached? One on one versus being divided into groups or the classical classroom?

Paul:

Yeah, there are two studies. One, a classical study that was done in the eighties by an educational psychologist at the University of Chicago named Benjamin Bloom, kind of famous. He study kids in a traditional classroom and then he took those kids out for 1 to 1 instruction. And he demonstrated that kids who get who learn 1 to 1 learn their educational results are two standard deviations above the norm.

So if that kid was getting a C in that classroom, they’re getting an A when they taught them to want some more recent work is at the Stanford University. This is very recent. Just this past year they were studying tutoring. So Turing’s a little bit different than what we do. You know, that’s where a kid is in normal school.

And then they meet with a tutor who’s normally like a college aged kid who’s earning a little extra on the side to get some support in the subjects they’re studying in school. And the results there were not quite as dramatic as what Blume observed when he was studying 1 to 1 teaching, where basically the classroom gets dissolved down to just one student, but still pretty significant.

Like the the instruction was about 2.1 times greater. So kids were like one year ahead when they’re getting tutoring support, whereas in our model, when they’re getting taught 1 to 1, they end up two years ahead, actually.

Brett:

Oh, gotcha. Yeah. Okay. So it’s kind of a progression then in terms of how far you are ahead, where you’re doing the classroom plus tutoring, that’s some one on one, but you’re still in the class during the day versus. Yeah, all one on one. And I assume I don’t know if that’s addressed in the study, but maybe some of it is that and I kind of can relate to this from our own COVID days of trying to pile the school through Zoom for that period of time.

Right? Is that you only get a certain amount of time in which you can teach the student effectively. And then I ask, it’s almost like working out, I guess, where you’ve got that that sweet spot. And then there’s diminishing returns after a certain period of time. So you find that that if you can use sort of that fresh mind, the fresh brain and teach it and then use that one on one time, that that’s really the way to go versus, you know, having them sit in the classroom and kind of teacher maybe drones on and then they’re using up their brainpower their attention span that way.

Paul:

Yeah. I mean, it really comes down to the like focus and attention that a teacher can can put into a student. So when that’s 1 to 1, there’s no place to hide. And it’s just a rapport between student and teacher. And, you know, in a couple of sessions that, that builds over months, it really builds over a year.

It’s like it’s incredible. So and the Stanford study really, really showed that even not with teachers, but with these tutors, you know, college kids, basically, if they kept the same college tutor coming in and working with the kids week in, week out, they built a rapport. And those tutoring sessions were more successful then than the others. So you can imagine now.

So take the college kid, get rid of them, bring in a teacher with 20 years of experience, take away the classroom and just have them teach 1 to 1 for a year. The results are staggering. I mean, we just have nothing like it in in our society today. So it’s it’s pretty game changing.

Brett:

Yeah. Interesting. And then with your own experience in your own company now with Cicero, are we talking one on one instruction, same teacher all day going through the subjects or are you bringing in a new teacher, a new subject matter expert, I guess, if you will, for a different subject. The math is maybe going to one teacher where sciences might be another.

Paul:

Yeah, I mean, once you get to sort of sixth grade and beyond. So middle school, high school teachers specialize. So, you know, a good a great math teacher is not necessarily a great English language arts teacher. And that’s certainly true once you get to be sort of nine, ten to 11th grade. So our model is an ala carte model.

You come in and we design a course for you. So if you want to do all school with us, you’re doing five courses and we’re designing each individual course or getting a specific teacher for that course. And then it’s personally built for the student interaction.

Brett:

So I see you do the curriculum design as well. I’m curious about that because my wife actually just manned the farmer’s market booth for our our school this week in a small school and they had a lots of homeschool parents came out and asked about that question curriculum. Right. Do you provide curriculum? So that’s something that Cicero provides to these parents that are, you know, sort of thumbing the farmer’s market for these curriculums?

Paul:

We do. But it’s a little bit surprising because when you say curriculum, a lot of times people mean that there’s something that’s highly structured and homeschool is usually think, oh, I buy this curriculum off the shelf and then I teach this curriculum. That’s not what we do. Every single course is bespoke and personalized to the students. So for example, a student will come in, let’s say they’re an eighth grader and they want to study mass.

And the first question we have of the parents is, okay, well, are you a home schooler who is heading to college and you want to level up and be prepared for algebra and then algebra two and or do you live in a community or a school district where you plan to go back to school? And we have to make sure that whatever we do so we figure out the landscape and then we meet the student to figure out what is your relationship to mass?

How is what’s your experience been? What does she know so far? And then we build that curriculum to her. So then scaffold and level her up. So it’s a it’s a very personalized curriculum. Every student’s curriculum is slightly different now. We do have standards internally that we adhere to, and we’re becoming an accredited educational institution. So you have to have those standards.

But our standards are really a framework for ensuring that each kid gets that specialized, personalized education geared to them.

Brett:

Interesting. So you’re actually kind of custom building these plans for each student that comes on board with you. Yep.

Paul:

Every student has their own curriculum.

Brett:

Yeah. Wow. Very cool. Very cool. So how does that work from a mechanics standpoint then? If I’m a parent and I decide this, we’ve got the winter break coming up, maybe that’s the breaking point. Or next year, right? I decide, hey, or my wife and I decide, of course, hey, this is we’re going to we’re going to try this.

How does that work in terms of working with Cicero to build out the plan and execute it as well?

Paul:

Yeah, I mean, the first thing is a conversation, figuring out where you are. I wish it was as neat bread as you just laid it out, but it never is, right? We have a lot of families coming in, you know, four weeks into school and they’re like, Oh, this isn’t working. And so we figure out where the student is and then where they want to get to.

At the end of the year, we have an idea of what good looks like, and we usually are ahead, right? So if you you know, if it was sort of May-June, you were thinking, hey, in September we want to go with Cicero for, you know, math and English language arts. We would meet your son or daughter, we’d meet you would figure out, you know, what your goals are as a family, where the student is.

And then we would build a course for the following year that would probably take them through well, through ninth grade and probably up to 10th grade level. Most of our our students, when they graduate in 12th grade, are like two or three years ahead. They’re doing college level work at that point.

Brett:

That’s awesome. Yeah, that’s funny. I guess that makes sense from a marketing standpoint. We’ll get into the influencer side here from a campaign, then maybe those September, like you said, three weeks in four weeks in and you get a lot of the parents looking for something else, right? That’s the moment where it’s it’s good to be in front of them on social media.

Is that fair? Yeah. Who are can you give us a little more information on who you’re working with today from an influencer standpoint in terms of where do they follow, what you know, what do they do in their lives, What, you know, as we were talking, mom influenced theirs. Are they are they homeschool parents? And then how are you working with them currently?

Paul:

Yeah. Sort of fit into into three categories. So we have a couple of influencers we work with who are world schoolers. So they are traveling all the time. They’re like digital nomads, but they have kids and so they’re traveling for education and the kids are moving all the time. And our model is beautiful. I am a world scholar we live on.

Brett:

I was going to say, you okay on the boat? It would be and speak that language, right? Gotcha.

Paul:

Exactly. So so we have a couple of influencers that we work with who are world schoolers, and they have audiences of people who are either our world schoolers or aspire to be world schoolers. Then we have a couple of influencers we work with who are home schoolers, so they’re in one location back home, but they know everything there is to know about the landscape of home schooling from, you know, legal restrictions to curriculum to ways of learning and supporting moms and dads.

In that journey. We work with a lot of homeschooling families and we talk to that audience a lot. And then sort of the third group that we talk to are in terms of customers, are people who are in traditional school, but it’s not working for them. And so some influencers that we work with who speak to that audience are mommy bloggers, right?

So they’re they’re interested in parenting issues. Education is a huge issue right now. Homeschooling is growing 51%, public enrollments dropping almost 5%. That a big Washington Post study on this. So great parenting bloggers are sort of focused on that issue and talking about it. And we play really well in that area.

Brett:

Yeah, interesting. And are these longer term relationships that are there, there’s the potential for that with these.

Paul:

Absolutely.

Brett:

Influencers if you find they’ve got the audience that is lined up with the potential Cicero clientele.

Paul:

Yep. Yeah, we have an influencer right now who is working really well. She has a daughter and that daughter is doing some courses with us and we’re doing a little short movie about that experience.

Brett:

That’s great. So one of the, I guess the core issues, well, I don’t want to keep you on all day here, but from the school, obviously, the public, even the private school, they kind of you know, they’re they’ve got constraints, shall we say. Right. So they can’t necessarily do the one on one. So what kind of what do you see now that is driving this?

Let me phrase it that way. This trend into the homeschool, is it the parent who says, gee, I would like to see a little more. I’d like to see my child challenged a bit more, or is it may maybe reactive? We’re falling behind, but we shouldn’t be. So now we’re going to look at this, right? I guess what do you see in terms of the trends and then also the triggers when people come in and consider, call you up and say, hey, Paul, tell me about Cicero.

Paul:

It sort of falls into two camps. So there’s the people who are leaving traditional school and there are a lot of triggers for that. We have kids who were disrupted by the pandemic and just never got their mojo back. We have kids who are neurodiverse and they just a classroom doesn’t work for them because in a classroom the teacher is teaching to the mean and they’re not the mean, they’re not an average kid.

All seeing, you know, failing schools, all politics, right? There’s a whole lot of sort of triggers that are driving people away from school. And we are an amazing option for them. And sorry, another trigger is lifestyle, right? So we live in an age of remote everything and personalization of everything. So there’s a lot of parents who are like, wait, I want I don’t I don’t want to live in Minnesota or Florida where I’ve been living.

I want to travel, I want to live in Bali, Vietnam. I want to go and we enable that. The other group are people who are in traditional school, but it’s not working for them and they don’t want to make a radical change. So they want supplement to that school. I mean, usually it’s because the schools are just not capable of addressing their needs or kids want to kind of rocket ahead and they want to support them.

And up until now, there are options where tutoring will hire a tutor, get a college kid support, do some homework support. We offer something different. We offer an actual course with a teacher designed to that. So it’s a sort of a leveling up of that kind of support that parents are looking for.

Brett:

Yeah, very cool. And then are these lessons I assume they’re delivered their meeting via Zoom is that. Yeah. Platform. Yeah. Okay.

Paul:

Yep yep. Our students are all over the world. All time zones and so are our teachers. So it’s a global customer base, global supply base. And we do the matching.

Brett:

Yeah. Excellent. Sounds good. Cool. We’ve got another brand product, Koala Go. They’re kind of a Zoom competitor for teaching. I do. I’ll send you the link so you can take a look at that one.

Paul:

Oh great.

Brett:

As well. That might be an interesting one for the tutors. Cool. So I’ll let you go on this one, Paul. We’ll get your work with you and we’ll get the collab posted to that. You know, as you said, this is I mean, it’s very focused what we’re looking for in terms of influencers here. It makes perfect sense in terms of home schooling and parenting, but can you just kind of talk to that again in terms of the types of influencers that you would like to reach out to you?

And then also, just as importantly, how can they reach out to you and learn more about this or learning?

Paul:

Well, I think the best fit for us is somebody who’s passionate about learning and their kids. They’re really invested in kids development. They think about it. They’re this is like what their brand is about. And we solve a very specific problem and we do it in a very unique way. So I think the best influencers for us are ones who are like, Oh my God, this is amazing.

You know, they have that kind of reaction and then we can work with them in myriad different ways. How to Reach me. I mean, Cicero learned income via affluence or like I am, I’m gregarious and always looking to connect people.

Brett:

Excellent. I appreciate that. We’ll get your links below the podcast here when we get it out so that everyone can just click and connect with Paul and and give you a call. Paul, thanks for the rundown. It’s very interesting. This from the studies on the one on one learning to the Cicero solution. Really interesting and very cool how you’re able to turn your lifestyle.

What I admire you to keep it going. A lot of us travel before kids and then we kind of shut it down, have to go on all time. So that is awesome. And then being able to turn a company into that is really great. So thanks again, Paul, Really appreciate you joining us and talking about Cicero.

Paul:

Thanks a lot, Brett. Thanks for having me.

JOIN THE ULTIMATE INFLUENCER MARKETING NETWORK!

Discover the art of influencer marketing with Afluencer’s newsletter. From savvy strategies to HOT COLLAB tips, we’ve got something for everyone. Don’t miss out—sign up today!

Reflecting on a Journey of Innovation and Influence

As we wrap up this enlightening podcast experience with Paul Bennett, we invite you to consider the valuable takeaways and inspiration has has shared. Looking to harness the power of influencer marketing? Afluencer is here to guide you on that transformative path.

Explore a World of Possibilities with Afluencer

Unlock exclusive insights and strategies by signing up for Afluencer’s bimonthly newsletter.
Catapult your brand’s presence through the captivating prowess of influencer marketing.

Become a Guest on the Afluencer Podcast

Join us in celebrating the launch of this captivating podcast series and continue to empower your brand’s influencer marketing journey with Afluencer.

The post Podcast Episode 24 – Stepping Up And Scaling Homeschooling | Paul Bennett – Cicero Learning appeared first on AFLUENCER.

Podcast Episode 22 – Merging UGC With Shopping Experience | Miguel Schalk – Swyper

Zeljko Nemet — Fri, 12 Jan 2024 22:48:00 +0000

We’re thrilled to present the latest addition to Afluencer’s content lineup – our podcast series featuring insightful conversations with influential brand owners. In this inaugural article, we have the privilege of introducing Miguel Schalk, the visionary founder of Swyper, as our esteemed guest.

Meet Miguel Schalk: The Mind Behind Swyper

Miguel Schalk, the innovative mind driving Swyper, takes center stage in the Afluencer podcast series. With a wealth of experience in the world of influencer marketing, Miguel shares captivating insights, challenges, and triumphs that have shaped his brand’s journey.

Podcast Premiere: Delving into the Swyper Universe

Join us in exploring the enchanting world of Swyper through the eyes of Miguel Schalk himself. We’ve embedded the riveting YouTube podcast video below, offering an exclusive glimpse into the transformative power of influencer marketing.

Also, listen to the Afluencer Podcast on:

Key Takeaways

00:00 🎵 Introduction to the podcast and guest, Miguel Schalk.

– Miguel Schalk’s background and introduction.

– His journey into building the Swyper app.

– Balancing college, work, and app development.

03:37 📱 Swyper’s Evolution and Vision.

– The initial concept of Swyper as “Tinder for shopping.”

– Focusing on the fashion and beauty niche.

– Transition from the like/dislike feature to swiping and the rationale behind it.

– Current features of the Swyper app and the influencer section.

– Influencer collaboration and their role in Swyper’s growth.

07:01 💼 Collaborating with Influencers on Swyper.

– Influencer collaboration process and profile management.

– The role of affiliate links and product promotion by influencers.

– Swyper’s approach to working with influencers and gathering feedback.

11:55 🚀 Future Plans and Enhancements for Swyper.

– Improving the shopping experience, including testing products through filters.

– Integrating user-generated content seamlessly with shopping.

– Enhancing the influencer experience and providing a unique platform for content monetization.

16:46 📢 Collaborating with Swyper as an Influencer.

– Criteria for influencers interested in collaborating with Swyper.

– Benefits of having an app profile for influencers to showcase products.

– Opportunities for influencers in the Beauty and Fashion niche.

18:34 🇵🇹 Closing Remarks and Timezone.

– Wrapping up the podcast with Miguel Schalk.

– Brief discussion about Portugal and Lisbon.

– Miguel’s upcoming exam and work schedule.

19:45 📚 Managing College and App Development.

– Miguel discusses his balancing act between college, work, and app development.

– The importance of keeping things moving forward in the development process.

– The early response to influencer collaboration applications.

20:13 💬 Personalizing the Influencer Experience.

– The value of personalizing influencer collaborations.

– Brett Owens highlights the benefits of having Miguel on the podcast to connect with potential collaborators.

– Miguel emphasizes the importance of user engagement and feature suggestions in product development.

21:34 🌐 Finding Swyper and Miguel on Social Media.

– Information on how to find Swyper on social media platforms.

– Mention of Swyper’s presence on Cora.

– Encouragement for users to follow Swyper on Instagram and engage with the app.

22:02 📱 Closing Remarks and Contact Information.

– Wrapping up the podcast and providing contact information.

– Mention of the Swyper app’s spelling (with a Y) for clarity.

– Emphasis on reaching out through Instagram for inquiries and messages.

Transcription Insight: A Peek into the Conversation

Gain an insider’s perspective as we burrow into the transcription of our engaging conversation with Miguel Schalk. Discover the strategies, anecdotes, and wisdom that have fueled Swyper’ success, all captured in this in-depth transcription.

In Conversation with Miguel Schalk, Founder of Swyper:

Brett:

Welcome to our influencer podcast where we talk influencer and creator marketing. Especially the latest collab so that our influencer in April and her friends can apply know about them. Today we’ve got a special treat fellow founder and fellow bootstrap. So we’ve got Miguel Schoch, who is the founder at Swiper, a new app with some collab and influencer type opportunities that we’re excited to talk about here. So Miguel, welcome. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came up with the idea for Swiper or.

Miguel:

Hybrids by everyone? And first of all, thank you so much for having me on. It’s a really nice opportunity. So thank you for taking the time as well and going on about myself. So pretty much I’m. My name is Miguel. I currently live in Portugal. I’m Portuguese as well as German, and I was born and raised here. I’m 23 and yeah, basically, I mean, I started about three, three or four years ago to get into Swiper, the app that we’re building.

And pretty much since a young age, I always try to find something to do on my own. In this case that I found some people to to help me along the way as well. But that’s pretty much it. I mean, I’m I’m currently studying for my bachelors in business management as well. At the same time while trying to to build the app as well and and working at the same time as a customer advisor at the moment.

Brett:

Oh, there you go. Yeah. You got all the habits going on. Is this you know, that’s something I always wish I would have done. My goal is to start something in college. I didn’t start until after, and then I went back to my school and I noticed I just saw the resources that some of the students had. And I wish I would have started sooner.

Is this your first app or have you been at it for a while? I mean, three or four years. That’s a nice track record already with Swiper.

Miguel:

Yeah, well, I mean, and it’s definitely like that, let’s say maybe too long of a time, but just from the point of view of like, I mean, I also tried some other stuff at the beginning, but mainly I was like trying, you know, the reading books and trying to learn stuff. And the app was like three or four years ago and it just took us like longer than supposed, let’s say, to build it out.

Because also at the same time, we’re trying to, you know, doing the regular, let’s call it life right work and college as well. So so that’s why it’s just taking us a bit longer than usual. But our focus is to learn as much as possible with the process as well as a team. So it’s me and two guys at the same time.

So yeah, I mean, yeah, that’s great.

Brett:

No, I think and honestly, I would maybe ignore some of the kind of tech crunch press and stuff in terms of timelines, because in my experience it always takes four years no matter what. I don’t think that gets reported a lot. I think you hear about like these success stories where they start like last year and raise a ton of money.

But I don’t know my experience. I was talking with another founder at a networking event down in San Francisco, which is not too far from us, and he was in year four of his current company and we were in year four of April and saw that point and we just kind of were like, Have you ever had something to work with for the fourth year?

And no, like we had and and I think the main we’d had five or six companies. So yeah, I think you’re doing great and that’s usually it’s that year for where it starts to go. So I think just kind of hanging in there is awesome. And it sounds like you’re right on track in terms of like perfect timing, looking at the influencers, getting ready to go.

So can you tell us with that a little bit more about the app, how it’s evolved, what it does today, how it works?

Miguel:

Right? So basically also to give a bit of a backstory on that. So in terms of the idea itself, which again for us building this throughout four years, it’s not really our main focus of like the idea of being something crazy. We just started with something basically, and the first thing was like I was just typing in brainstorming ideas on my own and I believe I was at the movie theater, Earth Theater at that point, and I just wrote down like randomly Tinder for shopping, you know, like just and my idea was like trying to mix that with shopping.

So we started out with like the swiping right and left to say if you like or dislike a product. So we started with that. We started to draw out like the basic concept and in my, my CTO, in this case, my technical co-founder said, okay, this is doable or not. And we adjusted with that and then we had to decide as well of like where we wanted to go.

And in terms of like the products, right, that we wanted to to build on. And we went for fashion at the beginning because for us it was like, okay, we want to capture as many people as possible. But and we quickly understood that maybe going a bit more specific would definitely benefit us, you know, in the perspective of like branding of, you know, talking to the customers.

So we decided to go with like mainly woman fashion and beauty in that sense. And of course, mainly from the point of view of, you know, it’s an audience that probably is usually more hyped about fashion and beauty in that sense, you know, so so that’s why we went for that specifically. And again, at the moment we changed that like and did like feature to like a more swiping motion, just like Tik Tok or Instagram reels, which is definitely working in those areas.

So we, we said, why not? Let’s try to implement that because it’s a really fast paced way of using an app, right? And as we know nowadays, people are used to things going really fast. The attention span is really short as well. So we we thought that should be our way of going through the app as well. At the moment, again, the app is live, we build it out the last years and around like one month ago we got to the version of the app that we have at the moment, which is like has the features of like, you know, swiping through thousands of products from different brands between fashion and beauty.

And we’re at the moment trying to implement the influencer section, which is also live at the moment. So again, that’s why we’re we signed up for, for influencer to try and see if we can organically as well in some way start chatting with some influencers and see what their feedback is as well and hopefully as well onboarding some of them to the Yeah, we’re basically going on that as well.

They will be able to display up to eight products, their favorite products in the fashion and beauty scene and earn commissions on on those products as well. So, so that’s basically the goal there.

Brett:

Yeah. Very cool. So is that a separate user log in, if you will, for influencers or do they just have their own way that they can use it and that anyone could use the app as an influencer? What are your thoughts or plans or current use case?

Miguel:

Yeah, right now. So it’s a good question. That would definitely be the the best way to do it. I mean, we definitely wanted to go there where they can actually log in and manage the entire profile on their own or even through the app at the moment being because we wanted to deploy it like as fast as possible to just see what happens.

We’re basically managing that on our end. So basically, once we connect with an influencer, we just ask for the products and the respective affiliate links they might have already or not, or if they just wanted to, you know, promote those products, they don’t have to have those affiliate links. And at the moment they just provide us that and we will build out the profile for them and also adjust and update the profiles as we go as influencers ask us because it’s not a scalable thing at the moment, but since we’re like at the beginning, I feel like it’s a good way for us to to get to get it moving, you know?

Brett:

Yeah, makes sense, right? You can get the you can get it going now and then you can always automate that. Yeah. So that’s cool. Are you actually hooking them up with the specific affiliate A referral links for each of the products. So like you’re going and chasing down pay for this product that’s through this brand. And here’s the affiliate link.

Miguel:

No, no, it’s totally up to them. So basically, they’re the ones that decide which ones, as long as, of course, they’re fashion or beauty products. Right. Because I mean that’s that’s the concept of. Yeah, right. Yeah. So yeah, that’s the audience that we’re trying to bring on the and, and so basically as long as it’s within that range it’s totally up to them.

They can promote, we can put the image and we can change everything. That’s not a problem at all.

Brett:

Yeah, got it. Very cool. Very cool. Yeah. Yeah. So how do you see that in terms of the evolution? Then we’ll get back to the influencers in a moment. But in terms of that shopping and consumer experience, I thought it was interesting that you mentioned the swipe. I mean, it’s funny how our attention spans, I guess they are what they are these days, right?

Everything’s lightning fast where I mean, I thought it’s funny, swiping is faster than just hitting a light button. Right? That’s so like doing this is too slow. You got to do this, right? Swipe up or swiped. So do you see that heading that way in terms of the end user experience, in terms of shopping, are we looking at, hey, I want to buy that hat and I’m swiping, it’s in the cart and it’s gone.

What where do you see that in terms of trends? Yeah.

Miguel:

So, so here basically what we’re trying to do from a general concept of like also attached to our vision for the future of the app, because again, since we’re bootstrapping, of course what we have is basically what we’re capable of building out at the moment, right? For the last years it’s mainly focus on like bringing together the user generated content together with the whole shopping experience as well.

So there’s basically one side to it, which is like we definitely want to improve and revamp, let’s call it the shopping experience itself. This could be, as you mentioned, just stuff like this, the mechanism and how fast it is to actually go through products and then to your wish list, send them to friends. Adam Directly buy them even.

And then also an interesting part, which is definitely also actually the present already in the future for sure, which is like being able to test products as a filter, right? Because we’re also already seeing that’s mainly with, for example, shoes that you can just open up your camera and test those shoes on, on, on yourself. Right. And that would be a really cool thing to do as well, for sure.

With beauty products mainly, for example, like makeup and all that. And as time goes and those filters and also now with a of course it gets better and better, it would be definitely something that we will love to implement on the app as well, because if you can just swipe through products and instantly test them out on the app with your camera, I feel like that would be a change in the way people shop, right?

And give brands a whole different opportunity in that sense. So that’s the part of like the shopping experience and of course some other stuff that might come. And then from the user generated content part of things, it’s again, it’s that thing of like being able to, you know, just at the same time as you’re entertaining your, your viewers, right.

And people that decide to follow you, you can also monetize it how it’s been done in other platforms. But here we also want to try to get more of the approach, like it’s just a regular thing, like just ask people, watch influencer stories. They just always have some way of going through the products that the influencer was using on that story.

You know, instead of being like that too much pushy way of doing it through like ads and having to say, this is an ad and this is that, you know, so we’re also trying to touch on that side as well as the spectrum. Yeah.

Brett:

Yeah, very cool. Yeah, I know there’s always a there’s always a million things to do and want to build. Right. And sounds like you’re doing the right thing. You just prioritize and you focus on that early use case, right user base of fashion beauty in your case. And you just kind of go and I think you’ll be surprised also with bootstrapping because yeah, it feels a little slow at first, but within a few years you’ve got the advantage of being able to kind of stay lean and you logically think through things and sounds like you’re making pretty good progress today.

And I think that’ll that’ll continue to accelerate for you. And then you see some of some of the venture funded companies as they get a little mocked up where you don’t know who’s making the decisions. That’s right. So, you know, I think it’ll I think it’ll continue to pay dividends for you being bootstrapped. I think that’s yeah, that’s.

Miguel:

That’s that was Yeah. Sorry to interrupt you there. That was totally like what you said was like our vision from the beginning. It was like, look, we’re young, right? I mean, we still have so much to learn. Why not, like, just start building this out, right? Since we do have, like, let’s say, the advantage of time in some way and see what happens from there.

You know, we will never lose whatever we build because we learned with it as well. And working mainly as a team as well. So now we’re at the point as well, as you mentioned, of looking into as well, like, you know, starting our pitch deck and see what we can do there since we have the more decent and clearer vision of where we want to go.

And now in the next few months, hopefully next few years, as you mentioned, we can also have maybe hopefully some better and more robust infrastructure to actually build on that vision, you know?

Brett:

Yeah. So yeah, honored. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Just you doing it on your own as long as you can. Sometimes you find that as you keep going and you start to monetize it and then you don’t need investors, which is when they’ll really be knocking on your door because it’ll drive them nuts that they can’t invest and swiper right.

Or you don’t, you know, you don’t need them at that point. And there’s nothing that drives an angel or DC more crazy than when you say, Hey, thank you, we’re not looking for signing right now. Keep in touch then I really want to talk to you. And I said, with all this action on the influencer side of things.

So then so tiny things back like that on the use case. So we’re looking specifically for beauty and fashion influencers. Sounds like maybe the micro or even nano influencer, just the high engagement, right? The people are hustling out today, great content and they’re really focused on the beauty, maybe skin care, fashion, clothing. Is that fair to say in terms of that, what you’re looking for?

Miguel:

Yes, for sure. I mean, again, since we’re at a pretty early stage, right. In the sense of traction and, you know, engagement and downloads themselves as well, it’s like we’re mainly the most value we can get even from collaborations at this point is really even the feedback that these people can give us. And we’ve had that experience as well, right?

Of like connecting with an influencer. And even though if maybe they’re not down to collab with us at the moment, at least they always kind of, some of them give some very decent feedback that we can also then implement, right? And so from that point of view, again, we’re really looking you mentioned it well known, no micro-influencers of course that just think the vision for the app as well as something interesting and they would like to have some other place than Instagram or TikTok for example the usual places to you know have their own profile and maybe start bringing people on there and update that profile on regular basis.

And yeah, that’s that’s pretty much exactly what you said. Yeah.

Brett:

Yeah, that’s awesome. Gotcha. So yeah, for our beauty and fashion micros and nano influencers and all influencers really, I mean, that’s a great advantage because in Instagram is, you know, right, you get the one link and maybe they can update it and sounds like this is a great potential use of that link to send them out to their profile with Swiper.

And there’s the other opportunities for them to show off their content monetized and all of all of that good stuff. So I have to remind Miguel, it’s been kind of a crazy morning before I hopped on air quality. I didn’t get a chance to look up your collab, but you do have a collab poster with us, right? Yeah.

Okay, awesome. Cool. So we will, we’ll get a link there underneath the show so that everyone can apply and in the newsletter really promote the podcast. Any specifics you want to add in terms of details, the criteria that you’re looking for in terms of that ideal partner, I mean it sounds like there’s kind of a nice wide opportunity here and like a nice unique kind of ground floor opportunity like you’re saying as well.

It’s not just there’s not just the Amazon Associates program where everyone has an Amazon link and it doesn’t pay anything. This is a really kind of unique way to promote yourself, content, ground floor or anything else you’d like to add in terms of who should apply.

Miguel:

So, I mean, again, we’re we’re really looking open to work with anyone at all, again, within the fashion and beauty space that they would like. They feel like I would like to have a specific place because maybe it also feels a bit more personal when you actually have an app profile, right, in a different space than just your usual Instagram story where you promote products right?

You actually have, let’s call it, I don’t know, like a board of products where you actually update them on a regular basis with us and and users and people that follow you, even if you’re, let’s call it a nano micro influencer, you can always like on a regular basis have people check on those products that you might change from season to season, from summer to winter, for example.

So maybe it’s it’s basically like your wish list, let’s call it for your followers, let’s say, and I’m sure there are other options out there, but if if the app like feels like something you definitely like, we would love to to work with, with, with all of you.

Brett:

Yeah, that’s great. Well, the focus I mean, there’s others, of course, but they tend to be, you know, generic, right? Where this is opportunities, especially now, like for beauty and fashion. So that’s definitely a really great advantage. And again, we’ll work with you and even tailor the app and experience as you go. You know, be very responsive with the with the product feedback.

And I know you get a ton of it because we all do some running app and software companies of sorts. So I’ll I’ll let you go on this one. Go I know it’s late over there. What time is it, Portugal, right?

Miguel:

Yes. So it’s correct. It’s 721 at the moment. So seven.

Brett:

21. Where again? In Portugal are you? Lisbon? Oh, Lisbon. Okay, cool, cool. Yeah, I’ve been over twice. Really enjoyed it. Last was 2016. I had a friend from New York from college she lives in, and he’s in D.C. now, but grew up in New York, and they got married in Lisbon, and it was a destination wedding and they didn’t think anyone would go and everyone went.

It was such a beautiful destination. Everyone gets a trip out of it and it was great. And then I was out. What’s it called over on the castle, like you can get to from.

Miguel:

A coastal soldiers here in Lisbon.

Brett:

And I think so, yeah. I was outside. It was like 25 minutes outside towards the coast. I’m like, I’ll look it up. Yeah.

Miguel:

It’s. But it’s definitely a cool place and the weather as well is amazing.

Brett:

So yeah, weather is awesome. Yeah. Yeah. It’s kind of like a hidden, hidden secret. The first time I was over is definitely like a hidden secret. Now it seems like you’ve got especially, you know, it’s not as I figured it out. It’s not.

Miguel:

Anymore. Yeah, it’s not a secret.

Brett:

So I didn’t know if any of Europe, right? Yeah.

Miguel:

Yeah, kind of. Yeah, that’s right.

Brett:

So what’s, what’s next then? Here? You got stuff to study with your.

Miguel:

Well, right, exactly. So basic. I actually have an exam tomorrow. I’ve been so basically I always have like the day off before and the day of the exam I have off from work. So I get like, you know, study and gets up because it’s kind of hard to to keep stuff working at the same time. But of course, again, I’m just trying to keep stuff moving forward at least and see what happens.

Brett:

So that’s yeah, that’s the key, right? Yeah. You just always you always just kind of keep it moving forward and you see the progress you make over months and years and yeah, that’s really awesome. And the product, the market and have your focus and have it going out and we’ll get this collab out there, get some beauty and fashion influencers.

Sounds good. Yeah.

Miguel:

Then I think some applications as well already. Actually. Like we just posted the collab like I think like two days ago or Oh yeah, and I mean we’ve had some people at least two message here and there and see where we will go from now. But, but it’s something interesting. We’re really, we, we really appreciate this opportunity in the space to actually even post a collab like this.

So that’s really nice.

Brett:

Oh that’s awesome. Very cool, Very cool. That’s great to hear. And like you were saying, in terms of personalizing the experience and the influencer side, I mean, it’s great to have you on the podcast because this helps us personalize your collab. Also writing in the collab will give you the page and you can put your criteria and you describe Swiper and it’s great to be.

I’ll get on the horn and meet the person and the founder and get to know the company and, and also your plans. I mean, I think users and customers, they always like to hear that also that they’re part of something that’s kind of dynamic and growing. Yeah, that’s nice. It’s nice to be a part of that. And they can give you a feature suggestion and you’ll listen.

I mean, obviously I know we, we can’t implement any everything. You can’t, we hear a lot of stuff, but you listen to everything, right? And you kind of take it all in and figure it out in your product development, of course. So let me let you go with this. But how can people find you other than in April and Sarah, give us your socials and all that good stuff website?

Miguel:

Yeah, I mean, in terms of like the app you can you can find us under at Swiper underscore app. So if you want to follow us on there, we’re also trying to pull some like educational kind of fashion and beauty stuff on there. It’s being a bit slow, but we’re trying to and and also I mean yeah I mean the Instagram would be the best place to go and definitely also check the app out.

And if anything, you can always shoot us a message under the Instagram account as well and we’ll reply as fast as possible. So yeah, that’s pretty much it.

Brett:

Great. Sounds good. We’ll get that link to the collab again and then Swiper with a wire on. So if you’re just listening S.W. y PR and then swipe our app and we’ll get the link to the collab post again. All right, we got to let you go so you can get back to studying. You’re joining us. Thank you.

Miguel:

So much. Yeah, thank you so much for the opportunity. It was a pleasure.

Brett:

Yeah. Great to chat with you. A great to get to know you.

Miguel:

Thank you. Bye bye.

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