w/ Tomer Hen, Switch Supplements
Ever wondered how to make the most of influencer partnerships without breaking the bank? Tomer Hen, founder of Switch Supplements and a recognized Forbes 30 Under 30 entrepreneur, has the answers. Uncover the power of product seeding and how to build authentic partnerships with influencers, even on a budget. Learn the art of engaging influencers with value-driven offerings, rather than cash payments. Tomer's expert advice will guide you through the process of identifying the right influencers for your brand and fostering lasting connections. Discover the secrets behind turning influencer love into real revenue, and get ready to revolutionize your approach to influencer marketing. For more tips and strategies from industry leaders, subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast today.
The Unofficial Shopify Podcast
8/1/2023
Kurt Elster: My friends, welcome back to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, the show that gives you insider access to real people and projects in the eCom world, providing you with unbeatable eCom recon.
Sound Board:
Kurt Elster: I’m your host, Kurt Elster.
Ezra Firestone Sound Board Clip: Tech Nasty!
Kurt Elster: And today, we’re gonna explore the power of influencer relationships with Tomer Hen, founder of Switch Supplements. Toner is a digital marketing veteran, a recognized Forbes 30 Under 30 entrepreneur. I am not, but it seems like a lot of the people on this show are, and for me, I’m 40. It’s too late for me. But Tomer’s made a career of building authentic influencer relationships helping eCom brands add huge revenue numbers to their bottom line. Six and seven figures, I’m told. We’re gonna dive into his strategies for acquiring customers through influencer partnerships.
And here’s the claim, that his process, zero up-front budget. He’s got a system. You get social proof for any brand. But he didn’t get there… It wasn’t all roses. Wasn’t easy. He’s got some mistakes that he’s gonna share with us so you can avoid them. And I’m also told… This is true, I do not know what the big reveal is here. I’m told that there’s a big arbitrage opportunity in eCommerce. I like that. I don’t know what it is and I’m told it’s not what we’re expecting, so hopefully it lives up to the hype, but all right, Tomer, thank you for joining us. I’m thrilled I get a chance to learn from your expertise here.
Tomer Hen: Yeah.. Thank you so much, Kurt. That was a great introduction. Thank you. I’m excited.
Kurt Elster: How long you been doing this?
Tomer Hen: So, I’ve been doing digital marketing for about 17 years, and I started working with influencers I want to say about three years ago. I didn’t want to be relying on ads. I was doing it for 17 years with my other businesses, and this time I was like, “I’m going into eCommerce just so I won’t need to be reliant on Facebook and Instagram and Google.” And then this is where I started working with influencers, or at least tried working with influencers, and yeah, and then it led to be my main business and what I do most of the day today.
Kurt Elster: So, all right, how many years digital marketing experience did you have? When did you start with this?
Tomer Hen: So, I started selling on eBay when I was 13.
Kurt Elster: Me too. Yeah. That’s how I started.
Tomer Hen: That’s really cool. On my school breaks, I just went to the post office, and I just shipped all these products, and this is where I fell in love with internet marketing, and just the internet lifestyle in general. I saw my parents and I saw how hard they work in their 9:00 to 5:00 jobs, or their small businesses, and I was like, “I don’t want to be like that. I want to go to the beach with my friends and I just want to do whatever I want.” So, internet also allowed me to kind of hide my age, because no one actually knew that I was 13 when I was selling on eBay, so that was pretty comfortable. I figured that if I want to work with a serious business, they may not want to work with 13-year-olds, so that was pretty convenient.
Yeah, and then it led to where I am today, so I think that was about 16 and a half years ago.
Kurt Elster: Today, you’ve got… You have a Shopify store. You have a brand. It’s Switch Supplements. Tell me about it.
Tomer Hen: Yeah, so Switch Supplements is a brand that I work with with my business partner, Ryan Moran, and we founded this brand because we are both entrepreneurs and we figured that we always need to feel at our best. We always need to be at our A level game, and we always need to accomplish more. We have higher goals. And then you’re drinking more coffee, you’re taking more supplements, and then you can’t sleep at night, and your mind is racing, and then you wake up really groggy. That’s the vicious cycle.
So, we both read a lot of supplements, and nootropics, and bio hacks in general, so why wouldn’t we just take everything that we love about supplements, take all of the best ingredients that we know, and just combine them into one product? And this is where we launched On Switch, which is our morning focus and flow product, but our flagship product right now, actually, is called Kill Switch, which is our nighttime sugar-free hot chocolate that really knocks you out. Our tagline is, “Sleep like you’re dead.”
Kurt Elster: This is some dangerous marketing. We’re leaning into this. All right, it’s a supplement that helps you sleep with kill in the title.
Tomer Hen: Exactly. And that’s exactly why we decided on this name. So, we were debating between Off Switch or Kill Switch, and then we want to go all in, and our tagline is, “Sleep like you’re dead,” so you have on the package… You have kill and you have dead. Obviously, you can imagine that it was not easy to get into Amazon, and we were marked immediately as a dangerous product, but then once they realized it’s just our name, they let us go.
Kurt Elster: Well, so you had all this digital marketing experience, and then you’re starting a supplement brand. Supplements, a popular space, but also it has its own difficulties with marketing, right? It can sometimes be a restricted or sensitive good depending on the platform, especially when you put kill in the title. Tell me about your experience. What lessons from that immediate digital marketing experience were like immediately applying to you growing your own eCommerce business?
Tomer Hen: I think the immediate thing is that everything is around the numbers. And I know it’s kind of a cliché, but everything that I’ve done in the last 17 years was performance marketing, so I want to see $1 in. I’m sorry, I want to see $1 out and $2 in, right? Everything else is just noise that I need to avoid. And sometimes it was good to use this approach, but sometimes when you’re talking about building a real brand versus just selling products, you understand that you need to plant some seeds, and some of them will not back up as immediate revenue right now, especially in the supplement space, by the way, when your goal is to acquire customers. It’s not just to make sales. Because you may lose money on the front end purchase, but if you have a customer for life with a great product, then you make money for years.
So, I think that was the main takeaway, is like everything is not performing well, especially you’re coming into this branding world where everyone is around brand awareness, views, and likes, and engagement, and like, “Yeah, but where is the revenue?” I mean, we’re going to run out of cash if we’re not going to look at how many dollars are we spending and how much are we bringing in. So, I think it took me about probably 18 months or so to mitigate both of these approaches. So, coming from my hard performance marketing, direct response experience, all the way into building a real, long, sustained brand, and understanding that this is a long-term game, so finding this middle ground took me a while, cost me a lot of money, a lot of energy, a lot of frustration, but I believe… I’m carefully saying this. I will say it. I believe that I found the middle ground and the sweet spot.
Kurt Elster: So, when did you launch Switch Supplements?
Tomer Hen: We launched Switch Supplements about 18 months ago.
Kurt Elster: How’s it performing? What does, in broad strokes, that trajectory look like from zero 18 months ago to today?
Tomer Hen: So, I’m very happy that we speak today and not three months ago, just because in the last three months we had this breakthrough. So, we first started with On Switch, which is our morning supplement, and we had Kill Switch and Off Switch in our product roadmap, and we always thought that since On Switch was our first product we will lead with customer acquisition for On Switch, people will love it, and then we’ll be able to upsell or cross sell with Kill Switch and later on Off Switch, which is our evening wind down product yet to be released.
And we had a very hard time on acquiring customers profitably with On Switch for the first year or so. So, Ryan has a big audience, so they helped us get some momentum. We also work with a few influencers who loved our product. We also worked with a few really small retail stores that loved our product. But when we went into cold traffic and acquiring customers on Facebook, we were really, really, really struggling.
So, our product was about… The average, it was sold for around $45, and our CPA was way above $90 or so. So, that was really not sustainable, and just maybe two and a half months ago we decided, “Hey, why wouldn’t we just…” I mean, people love Kill Switch. They are absolutely obsessed with Kill Switch. We had one customer who wanted to pay $100 for express shipping to Canada because he was about to run out. So, that was crazy.
So, we’re like, “Why are we just looking at it as a backend offer or a cross-sell product? Let’s try and send direct traffic directly to Kill Switch.” And within just a few days it was absolutely outperforming On Switch, so we were profitable from day one on customer acquisition. Now, since we scaled up, obviously we couldn’t keep these nice profit margins, but we really scaled up, and now we break even on customer acquisition. So, since we know that people love Kill Switch, we are now… We are under the theory that people will buy Kill Switch again and again, right? The critical mass of people who bought Kill Switch were actually in the last two months, but people before that really, really loved it, so now we are seeing… Okay, let’s see if those people who we acquired with cold traffic, let’s see if they buy again and again, and this will help us scale up, raise more capital, get more influencers on board, get more momentum, et cetera.
So, right now we break even, which is a huge win for us in the supplement space. That’s where you want to get on front end customer acquisition, right? You want to break even on first-time purchases. If you have a good product, you have average of 25, 30 people who will rebuy again, or set up a subscription, or buy a second product, and that’s where you make all your profit.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. I mean, the magic and the attraction of consumable goods, whether it’s food, supplements, is it’s not one and done. That person’s gonna come back if they liked the experience, if they liked your product, and ideally you can get them into some kind of continuity, like a subscription, or maybe they’re just making large, 90-day supply purchases manually, and then you just have to preempt it with reminder emails. And so, you think it’s like typically 25% of people will come back and rebuy?
Tomer Hen: If you have a good product and a good retention program.
Kurt Elster: We’ve got two products, they do similar but do opposite things, right? We got like get up and go and then we’ve got go to sleep. And so, there’s an advantage to this, it’s like you’re essentially selling a system here, which is great when they complement each other like that. So, once you’ve got that system, things start to take off about three, four months ago. The way you talked about it, it sounded like the traffic acquisition was break-even but PPC was Facebook?
Tomer Hen: Yes. Exactly. So, we only do Facebook and Instagram.
Kurt Elster: I thought your whole deal was influencers, building micro influencer relationships.
Tomer Hen: Right. Yeah. So, let’s go back to influencers. So, again, I told you my background is with performance marketing, and working with influencers, I think for me that was the exact opposite of performance marketing. It was… When I first started with influencers, and that’s where I lost almost… I think it was over $50,000. It’s because I was taught on YouTube and Google like, “You need to pay influencer for a post, and then suddenly you’re getting this huge amount of sales.” And that’s what I did. I’d just reach out to influencers, pay them whatever they asked for, sponsored podcasts, did all of that, and then nothing happened. We received less than 2% ROI on all of our spend, and like, what’s going on here? We can’t continue running like that.
But I didn’t want to be reliant on Facebook and Google, so I did want to work with influencers, because I knew that I was buying so many products after I saw influencers posting about it. But for some reason, it doesn’t work for us, so since we already spent all of our money, I had to build relationships with influencers who were not based on monetary exchange or paying them, but were built on long-lasting relationships, which started as with just five influencers who loved our product. And it was before Switch Supplements, by the way. It was another supplement brand that I migrated into Switch.
And they loved our product. They loved our product. And that’s how we started a relationship. I started texting them. I sent them more product. We were working on a collaboration, affiliate program, all of that. I never paid them a dime outside of the commissions for sales they generated. But those five influencers really, really, really loved our product, and that’s how it started.
Kurt Elster: Did you recognize them up front as influencers? Or did you just say like, “Hey, I’ve got these VIP customers that I’m close to.”
Tomer Hen: No. They were influencers. They were influencers that I sourced on YouTube. Mostly YouTube at that time when I just got started because I was not super active on Instagram and TikTok, so YouTube was easier for me. The thing is although it was very, very… I saw how it will turn out into creating more momentum for my brand. But the thing is that it took so much time to source them, to communicate with them, to nurture those relationships. It’s kind of like dating with someone, right? So, I understand that if I can get even five sales a week out of each influencer, that’s a huge win. The thing is that I need probably 100 influencers to really get some traction to my brand when just getting started.
I can’t manage 100 relationships like that. I can’t even find 100 relationships like that. So, I figured there must be a way, and that’s where my performance marketer mind comes into play, like there must be a way to systemize it. There must be a way that I can take relationship building that I’m doing one on one as Tomar, the founder, talking to individuals, but in a systemized way. Kind of like systemizing everything in your business. But I couldn’t find anyplace where you can have a system that you can outsource, that you can have a very clear SOP to someone else, that will not be looked at as just a simple virtual assistant who is sending out mass reach out. But it will be perceived as the founder or someone on the brand’s internal team that’s speaking with brand values to many influencers and creating those deep relationships with them, and some of them will bear fruit. That was my thesis. That was my theory. That’s what I wanted to create.
So, I started working with and hiring seven and eight-figure brand founders who I recognized who had success with those same strategies. They were building their business, their entire businesses, based on influencer relationships. So, I hired them to go on one-on-one calls, to do some mentoring. They’re not like agency owners or anything like that. They were just founders like me that were just 10 steps ahead of me. So, I said, “I want to know what you know.”
Kurt Elster: So, you sought out mentors like you, people who you’re like, “They’re where I want to go.”
Tomer Hen: Yes. Exactly.
Kurt Elster: Okay.
Tomer Hen: They already built seven, eight, some of them nine-figure brands. I wanted to be there. And my mentor said, “You know, if you want to go somewhere, just find the people who have already done it.” And then work with them, hire them, communicate with them, and just learn from them. So, that’s what I did, and I took all of their advice. You know, they all had different strategies and different approaches to influencer relationships, because at the end of the day it’s just relationships. It’s kind of like getting dating advice. It’s not like there is one size fits all. There’s many ways to get to the same result.
So, I started taking these bits of information from all of them to craft it into a system that I can then pass onto my team. I had a team of about 35 people, so it’s like let’s just find a few of them who will be the right people to start taking what I started doing with five influencers and doing it with 500 influencers so we can create more, and more, and more momentum.
And our number one rule, we didn’t call it that at that time, but it was we did not negotiate with influencers. I don’t want to hear anything about paying an influencer to post about our brand. I was traumatized with paying over $50,000.
Kurt Elster: Whoa!
Tomer Hen: Yes. And you know, at first you’re like, “Oh my God, that’s the best deal ever.” You have 2 million followers. You only want $8,000 to get a post about whatever it is, right? And you know, if I only got 0.1% of people to buy, that’s the math that everyone’s doing. But in reality, it just doesn’t work like that.
Kurt Elster: So, your early experience you discovered what I learned, I think what a lot of people learn, is the super high end people that you’re gonna pay the most to don’t get the same engagement that the micro influencers do.
Tomer Hen: Oh yeah. For sure. And even if you’re talking about paying $500 to a micro influencer who’s got 50,000 followers, or 70,000 followers, the thing is that it turns the entire relationship into a transactional relationship. Let’s even put ROI aside. I always like… Even my grandma can now spot an influencer post that says #paid and recognize it as an ad versus a testimonial. If we were in 2020 or 2019, my opinion would probably be different. But nowadays, audiences are so educated. They’ve seen all these influencer posts which are potentially ads, and you know, you have to say #paid, or in collaboration with, or paid by, or whatever. And people can recognize it. People can smell from a mile away that the influencer likes this brand’s money and not this brand’s product. Just like they see an ad on TV.
So, I wanted to eliminate this completely. I wanted to work with… Because we knew we had a really good product. We knew that if people are trying our product, many of them would love it. So, we wanted to build those relationships only with those who loved our product and then were willing to share it with their audience because it does them a favor. They’re not doing us a favor. They just found out about this product and now they want to share it with their audience. It’s a content opportunity for them.
And again, it’s not easy to find them, but what most brands are doing is they send out 50 messages a month to influencers and then five of them respond and say, “Yeah, we want $1,000 for a post.” So, they either pay them or they don’t do anything, and like, “Yeah, influencer marketing doesn’t work.” When in reality you need to send out 50 messages every single day if you want to get those three who would love your product. But the reality is that you only need those three. You don’t need so many. But it’s just a volume game. I always say that influencer relationships is more of a quality game than a quantity game. But in order to get the quality, you need the quantity, right? You need to go out on so many first dates. Some of them will end up after the first one. Some of them will last a few months. But you only need one to have a beautiful family, right?
And most brands are trying to shortcut their way and pay influencers because these are the first ones who responded to their DMs, or they just make it like a… They look at it just like a marketing channel, right? I’m just sending out messages to influencers and see what sticks. But you can’t… It’s kind of like treating your customer service as just a side hustle. It can’t be. It’s a vital part of your brand, relationship building, and I think the smart brands that are really, really, really nailing it with influencer relationships are really getting it. And this is why I don’t believe that influencer relationships should be outsourced to an agency or should be outsourced to any outside team. You need to own a system that you can scale up as much as you’d like because you know your brand’s nuances better than anybody else.
And if you want to control your business’s relationships, you need to have that in house. And that’s what we decided to do. We worked with agencies. We tried doing that. And it just never backed up. But we had to work so hard to get everything that we know about our brand and how we want to communicate, and you know, people sign off messages with my name on it, like emails sign off with my name. I’m freaking out when they say things that I would never, I would never, ever say or write. So, this is why we had to build everything internally.
Kurt Elster: All right, I had a client with a similar experience, where they’re like, “Oh yeah, we’re gonna hire an influencer outreach agency, and they promised they’re gonna get us 30 influencers and X number of sales,” and the product and the influencers completely didn’t make sense. The fit was not there even from the handful who said yes. And so, immediately that’s a red flag. And then, of course, they never produce sales. They never produced results. They struggled to get influencers because they didn’t understand it. And they still kept charging that client’s credit card until they’re like, “Look, we’re done here.”
And that’s not-
Tomer Hen: Classic agency move. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. That’s a not uncommon story in this space. So, I’m inclined to believe you when you say, “Hey, you can’t… This is one of those things you really shouldn’t outsource.” But still, you’re like, “It’s gotta be authentic. It’s gotta be for me.” Also, I got people on my team who aren’t me who are gonna do the outreach. And then you gotta do 50 a day. That still sounds like I’m going copy/paste, copy/paste. What’s different about you doing it internally like this versus the agencies that aren’t getting results? Why does your approach work?
Tomer Hen: Yeah. That’s a great question. So, first, I think that’s a common question among brand founders because they think that the end result would be an influencer saying yes, or even posting about you once, so they look at the outreach as a very, very, very important part. And it is an important part. But really, it’s just the beginning of a relationship.
So, the outreach first, we’re talking about rules of thumb. They should be 100% personalized. So, yes, it will take you way longer to write every single message if you look at their content and you say, “Hey, congratulations on the newborn, or we love your new house,” or whatever it is, right? Just commenting to show them that this is not AI, and this is not just a VA that’s copying and pasting every message to everyone. It was sent directly to them. And we always get those messages back with all the brands that I work with, every single week, of influencers responding and saying, “You know, thank you so much for actually looking at my content. I receive so many messages and it’s clearly that they’re not even looking at my content.”
Kurt Elster: Yeah. We get them constantly, like with pitches for this show, and it’s like half the time they won’t even get the name right. They’re like, “Hi, Kurt Paul Julie.” You’re like, “What?” They’re like, “I love your show about,” and it’s just like it’s a different font, and then they make reference to something, we don’t even know what they’re talking about. And those messages, they don’t get replied to. They just get marked as spam and we move on with our lives.
Tomer Hen: Yeah. Of course.
Kurt Elster: Now, if someone gets it right and it’s clear they spent 5 to 10 minutes to include something actually personal and get the host of the show correct, even if I know it’s like you only spent 15 minutes on this, that still puts you head and shoulders above everybody else. That’s the one I’m going to consider and probably reply to.
Tomer Hen: So, I liked how you said they spent 5 to 10 minutes, so let’s take this exercise. So, if they spent five minutes on every personalized reach out that you, I would consider an influencer, would actually respond to. So, if we send 50 of those a day, that’s 250 minutes every day that you need to spend on reaching out to 50 influencers. If you have a VA in the Philippines, or Latin America, that you pay $7 an hour, $10 an hour, that means that they need to work for 4.5 hours to send 50 outreach messages, and that’s about… I don’t know, $40 tops. Maybe.
So, at $40 a day, you have a system that sends 50 personalized outreach messages to influencers. And I think that most brands are not getting it and they feel like they need to hire an agency because they need this labor. They need their manpower because they don’t have time to do all of that. But in reality, what they need is just the knowhow, like, “How do I personalize those messages? How do I keep communicating with them? How do I make sure that they actually post about me?” That’s what you need. Once you have that knowledge once and for all you can implement it and you can skill it up with a VA that will cost you $500 a month, or $1,000 a month, and that’s it. Versus paying an influencer agency $4,000, $5,000, $8,000 a month, and then once you reach a certain threshold, they’re like, “Yeah, you need to pay more than that.”
So, you really don’t need anybody else’s manpower, because nowadays when you can find VAs, and interns, and almost every brand that I speak to, they already have VAs and interns. They know how to work with them. So, it’s just about training them to take those nuances, just like they train them on customer service, or customer support. Train them on influencer relationships. And once you have that system, it’s very, very, very, very easy to scale, and it’s very efficient to scale.
Kurt Elster: So, what’s the process for identifying the right people to reach out to? I get that reach out and have a personal pitch, so now the piece, and systematize it, and outsource it to someone within your team who understands your product and your brand. This all makes sense. The pieces I’m missing are how am I identifying the correct people to reach out to, what am I offering them, and what’s the call to action here? What’s the next step? Because it certainly does not seem like, “Hey, how much for a post?” That’s the wrong answer.
Tomer Hen: Yeah. Yeah. So, let’s start from the first question, so identifying them. We’ve tried… I don’t know, 12,000 different tools to identify influencers, and I can tell you that nothing beats manual search on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, whatever platform you work on. Because those platforms have a lot of data on their accounts and their followers, so they know how to suggest to you with more accounts that will fit what you’re looking for. So, let’s say that I have… You know, every brand founder can think of one influencer that they wish that they would work with. Go to their profile, and again, that’s the exact SOP that you can provide to your VA. Go to their profile and then look at a section that’s called suggested accounts. Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, all of those platforms will suggest accounts that have similar characteristics and similar follower base to this account. And you can find dozens of these accounts that Instagram will recommend.
You go to each of those profiles, you check them out, and I’ll talk about how you evaluate them in a second. But then, again, you click on suggested accounts, and then you see 50 other accounts, and this is how you can do this for days without running out of relevant influencers. And all you need is just those first three to five influencers that you can pop up out of your head and say, “These are influencers that I wish would promote me.” And then you just go down the rabbit hole of finding more, and more, and more suggested accounts.
Now, how do you vet whether they are the right influencers or not? So, most people are looking at the numbers, when in reality numbers are the least important in this space. Because again, our number one rule of thumb is we do not negotiate with influencers, which means that we need to provide them value that is outside of hard cash in order for them to potentially post about us. And how would we do that? We would do that by offering them a free product without asking them for anything. And why don’t we ask them for anything? Because most of the brands are asking them for something. They say, “I will send you a free product in exchange for your review.”
Now, think about it. They are an influencer. They have 200,000 followers. And they’re getting approached by so many brands offering them a ridiculous amount of money. Now, you reach out to them with your $50 product and you say, “Hey, this product that you never tried before, I’m going to send you, and in exchange you’re going to post about it and recommend it to your 200,000 followers.” Right? Obviously, they will say no if they don’t know you, and most of the chances they don’t know you.
So, the way to go about it is to do the exact opposite of what everyone is doing. So, you say, “Hey, I love your content. I love how you talk about X, Y and Z. We would love to send you this product of ours. We think you’d love it. We don’t ask for anything in return. We just want your honest feedback about it. That’s it. What’s your address?” That’s pretty much it. Very, very, very straightforward.
Kurt Elster: Product seeding.
Tomer Hen: Product seeding. Exactly. And again, it’s product seeding but without asking for anything. Very, very important. Because people sometimes get confused with it, so sometimes with influencers you say influencer gifting, or influencer seeding. At the end of the day, you offer something without expecting anything in return.
Now, again, this is just the beginning of a relationship, right? It’s just a swipe right on Tinder. Now, it’s about building and nurturing that relationship. Once they have received the product and they liked it, this is where you start deepening the relationship with them to turn them into actual partners, affiliates, promoters, et cetera. From our experience, if you spot the right influencers, with the right approach, when you don’t ask for anything really, you will have anything between 15 to 35% of influencers who will voluntarily post about your product if they liked it.
And that’s a really, really big number, because we are seeing every single day with all of the brands that I work with, influencers with 2, 3, 400,000 followers who are posting about those brands voluntarily. They were never asked to, they never got paid to do that, but they love the product so much, and for them that was another content opportunity to their audience.
Kurt Elster: I was gonna say, that’s the catch with being an influencer is the content hole must be filled, and it’s a sinkhole. It’s just continuous. There is no end to its gaping maw. And so, if you’re like, “Hey, we’re gonna send you some product,” and they like it, they’re like, “Oh, thank God. Content.”
Tomer Hen: Exactly. So, that’s another little hack that we use since we are using this strategy. So, we always look at their content and see if there is a high chance that they would share something about our product if they liked it. Meaning if they only promote inspirational quotes, or if they only promote their business, or if they don’t share about their lives, they don’t share their morning routine, their night routines, their products they use, the food they cook, all of that. If they don’t have so many dots on their story line, sharing everything about their life, most chances is that they would never post about us. They are not looking for more content to post. They have a very clear agenda of which content they’re posting about.
So, looking at their content, not just about… Obviously, they need to be the right fit in terms of the audience, and that’s pretty straightforward and obvious, and the question we always ask and tell all the brands that we work with to ask is do I think that that would be the perfect customer for me? Did I build this product for that person? If the answer is yes, it’s probably that they have a lot of followers that look like them, and they will be a great candidate for you as an influencer. But then the next stage is to ask, okay, is there a chance that they will post about me? So, this is where you need to actually look at their content and recognize whether they will post content about product that they found, food they eat, routines, habits, all of that. And that means that they will post about their product if they liked it.
Kurt Elster: All right, so I start with who’s the influencer I want to work with, and maybe there’s a few, and these… I don’t need a special tool because increasingly these social media platforms realize the value of their data and they don’t want to give it up, and they’re gonna limit access to it. But at the same time, the platform wants to show relevant content to its users, so you as a user go to the person that you want to work with and then see who it suggests to you and see… The other one I’ve done is like, “Well, who do they follow?” And sometimes that can elicit some good ones. And then go through that, make that list, and of them, okay, who are they talking to? Does the audience seem like the right fit? Yes? All right, we’ve now passed check two.
Now, check three is of the types of content they’re posting, do they post product reviews? Do they talk about products? And if they do, and it’s in a similar category, okay, now we definitely have someone like A+ candidate. And so, I’m gonna reach out to them. Personal message that makes it clear I put in some kind of effort to pay attention to them, and then offer, “Hey, this is what we sell. Can we send it to you?” Free, no strings attached, and then I’m not gonna ask them for anything no matter what. Just their address to where I’m sending this product.
Tomer Hen: Beautifully articulated. Thank you. And one little hack that I always like to see is… Influencers, especially the bigger ones, they’re like… When you send out a message like that, and many of them will respond with something like, “What do you expect in return?” And this is where most brands, they’re just dying to say, “Just post about us if you like it.” And this is exactly where it’s your time to shine over all of the other brands and say, “Hey, we really don’t expect anything in return. We just want to get your feedback.” They’re like, “Oh, I’m not used to that.” And this is how you build your relationship.
Kurt Elster: And we don’t need an agency. We can do this internally, which I think is like the A, huge savings, but I think also it sounds like a better result.
Tomer Hen: Yep. Exactly.
Kurt Elster: And so, from there, what do we do next? Do we just say like, “Okay, great,” and just keep churning through influencers with product seeding? Or is there a next step there?
Tomer Hen: Yeah, so great point, so again, as I said, this is just the beginning of a relationship. The next point of momentum, as we call it, is where an influencer sends you some positive feedback about your product. If they didn’t like it, there’s nothing much that you can do about it. Maybe you can send them a different product if you feel like it. Maybe you can just ask for their feedback so you can improve your product. But you know, if they liked it, this is where you want to climb up what we call the value ladder.
It's like, “How can I give more to that relationship so I can also get more out of this relationship?” Again, you go on a first date, you may take them to a nice restaurant, but now let’s take them to a fancy restaurant. Why? Because they showed interest. They showed that they’re interested and I want that relationship, so let’s impress them even more. And this is where things are getting interesting, and what does impressing them mean?
First, this point, if they liked it, there are two options. Whether they posted about you or they didn’t. And in both options, if they pass all of the criteria that we talked about a few minutes ago, it means that you still want to work with them, right? Even if they haven’t paid you back with a post, they might do it later on. Because again, you’re identifying… You know that they create content. You know that if you add more value to them they probably would do it. And this is where you want to add the more value to the relationship.
So, for example, if you sent them one product so far, you may want to send them a care package with five of your products, or a refill if that’s a supplement, for example, or a food brand, or a consumable. You have the opportunity to keep sending them more and more product, either to them, their loved ones, and just nurture that relationship so they will be like, “Hey, I’m getting a lot out of this relationship. I want to preserve it. What is my way of paying back to the brand?” And you know, they are aware of it, that they have the power to just flip their phones for 30 seconds, shoot a video to their audience. This will give you a ton of value. It costs them, again, a minute of their time. And they also add great content for the audience.
So, they would be very willing to do that. Again, it’s not 100% certain. It’s a funnel. But this is why you need to filter your way, just like you acquire customers, you acquire leads, you have impressions, and clicks, and leads, and conversions, and sales, and repeat buyers, and referrals, and all that. This is where you want to build that funnel. But the nice part about it is that you build intangible value. What do I mean by that?
So, at this point you don’t want to pay. You have the option to pay them with cash for their post, but you have the opportunity to create intangible value for them. For example, if you send them a VIP package of your product with beautiful… You know, you have your brand swag, and you have a handwritten note, and you have this beautiful box that just screams like, “Share me. Take a video. Make a reel about me.” It’s intangible value for them. If you hold a giveaway, you offer them for example a giveaway to their audience, and you’re like, “You know what? I want to give out 10 units of my product. Since you really loved it, let’s give out 10 units of this product to your audience.” For them, their audience is their most valuable asset, so they’re like… They would love to make this with you. You provide value to their audience. It means that you provide value to them. They will want to pump up this post because it’s creating more value to them. And this is how you build that flywheel.
You don’t want to start with that. You want to build your way up to it.
Kurt Elster: Oh, yeah. I mean, automatic… They’d just be like, “No. Get out. No.” I think the thing that… Where people get in trouble is… Well, two things. A, they’re not taking that relationship approach, because it is, and you used the dating metaphor. I’ve used that for discussing marketing and that customer relationship building. But absolutely it applies. And so, first you need… You know, before the influencer introduces you to their children, you need to earn their trust, right?
Tomer Hen: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: And so, that’s what you’re doing, is just trying to first find them, and then earn their trust. Once you have that, all right, provide even more value to them, so like, “Here’s a care package.” And if that’s still going well, okay, now we’re on date three. Now, let’s ask for can we do this giveaway. And I think what people would be surprised about with influencers is they care about the audience because that is their value. The audience is their value. They care about the audience. They will try to protect them. They are protective of that relationship. And so, that’s why you have to go through this.
And then, but at the same time, if it’s a thing that they trust, then they are willing to share it with the audience because they’re like, “Well, it provided value to me. It can provide value to them. And this giveaway helps me look like a hero and provide value to them.” It’s brilliant. Okay. I love it.
Tomer Hen: Yeah, so the giveaway, just one example for a third date, right? There are so many other things that you can do. You can have, for example, let’s talk about Kill Switch. So, we can have a sleep expert coming and talking to 20 of your followers, talking about sleep habits, and sleep hygiene, or having a community of entrepreneurs who are biohackers, and you know, you can do so many things with influencers. You just don’t start with it.
One other thing that you can do, and what many brands are doing completely wrong, is affiliate partnerships, right? And affiliate partnerships are huge nowadays. And affiliates, influencers are affiliates, but what most brands are doing is they send out a message and say, “Hey, would you become my affiliate?” And what is an affiliate partnership, really? It’s zero risk for the brand, right? You only pay if you get sales. And it’s 100% risk on the influencer. They create content. They post about it. They lose their audience’s trust because they can just do it for a number of times. And they may receive nothing out of it, or very low value out of it, so why would someone do that for a brand they never heard about, they never tried a product, and they don’t know you. You’re just a random person on the internet that reached out to them.
So, if you build your trust over a few weeks, or a month, and then you say, “Hey, you know what? You posted about us twice. We love that. But we’d really love to compensate you for that moving forward. We’d love to add you to our affiliate program. Here is a link. You get 35%. Do you think that they will agree to it? Please give it a try.” Obviously, if they already received product, they liked it, they saw that you’re a good person, they liked your team, they saw that you are not asking them for anything, and then you offer a business partnership, they’re like, “You know what? I’ll give it a try.”
Kurt Elster: Yes. Well, because we have an agency, I get people constantly like, “Oh, we have an agency partner program. You should join.” From someone I’ve never heard of and I know 100% it’s, “Hey, you’re just gonna hit me up for referrals and then I get an affiliate payout.” However, my experience with those things is there’s always reasons you don’t get the payouts, or it’s like, “Well, that one didn’t count.” There’s always that nonsense. When it’s someone who you don’t trust, like for me, the answer is an automatic no.
Tomer Hen: Of course. Yeah, just like any business partnership. And this is why people, and this is why I really like that… You know, I always say influencer relationships, because I really, really don’t like the term influencer marketing, because you don’t market to influencers. If you tried to market to influencers, you’ll just lose. And this is why most brands say, “Yeah, influencer marketing is dead,” and they’re asking for a huge amount of money, but in reality, again, these are just normal people who have-
Kurt Elster: Yeah. They’re just people.
Tomer Hen: … an asset that you can ask, you want to get access to, and you just need to build their trust, right? You can build your trust with a multibillionaire if you want. You don’t have to pay them for that. You can just build your way until you become their friends, right? It’s just about understanding what is the value that they need or that you can provide as a brand founder, and how to systemize that in a way that you can shoot in so many directions and then pick the ones that you really, really like and that will-
Kurt Elster: I’m all in on this. We still have… You have not told me what this biggest arbitrage opportunity in eCom is.
Tomer Hen: Essentially, you are exchanging a free product that is perceived… Usually, with eCom margins today, it is perceived about four to six times than what it actually costs you to deliver to an influencer, and in exchange you’re getting an intangible amount of value for a product that may cost you a fifth of what it’s actually perceived to an influencer. So, if you have an option to pay $100 or $1,000 for an influencer post, or pay $1,000 in free product, those $1,000 that you spent on the free products are perceived at maybe $5,000 to $7,000, depending on your margins, to those influencers.
So, in exchange, you’re going to get a post that costs them 30 to 60 seconds of their time. For you, it may be worth tens of thousands of dollars over the next few months. From direct sales, affiliate partnerships, and then using that content as ads that may turn into your most profitable ad for the next few months. We just last week, for example… I’ll give you an example.
So, last week I had one of the brands that I work with, they reached out to an Amazon influencer, and this influencer only had 3,500 followers, and their product is… To the consumer, it’s around $30. Their cost is maybe $8. So, they delivered an $8 product to that influencer with 3,500 followers, which is way lower than what we recommended to do, but they did it anyway. And they had one internet troll that commented something on this post and then there were so many of their followers just slashing him and sending that influencer about what they said, and that post became viral. Within 48 hours, it had over 3 million views and they sold out completely on Amazon with that product with over $25,000 in sales. And the beauty of it is that that influencer was never even an affiliate for that brand. They just posted about it because they tried it, liked it, and they just posted their review. And they sold out, sold $25,000, and they just exchanged an $8 product to $25,000 in sales. That’s something that you can never, never, never achieve.
If that influencer, just as an example to everything that we just talked about, if that influencer would have posted this review and said, “#paid,” or, “In collaboration with,” it would never get that amount of attention, and traction, and authenticity that it actually received, and generate these sales.
Kurt Elster: So, let’s reflect here. Looking back, now that you’ve done this a while, you’ve had success with it, what’s one thing you wish you knew when you started?
Tomer Hen: So, obviously I would want to save those $50,000, so understanding that big numbers mean nothing, and engagement and the ability to drive product is everything at the end of the day. I mean, you know, we can talk about all this fuss of engagement, and likes, and views, and all that, but at the end of the day if you want to have a sustainable business, you need to have more revenue and sales, so that’s the number one metric that you should track your influencer efforts towards.
Now, the way to get there may lead with engagement, and likes, and relationships, and calls, and posts, and content, but at the end of the day you need to track how many sales was this driving to me, because again, my performance marketer mind always thinks, “How can I justify tripling down on that path that I just decided to take?” And it’s very hard to convince me, or my finance guys, or my investors, or whoever it is, to triple down on something that is very, very arbitrary, and something that you’re not able to track with actual results and revenue.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. The ephemeral nature of it, everyone wants to be able to attribute all of their dollars spent on marketing, and with some things it just isn’t realistic or practical. And so, I think that’s also part of people’s resistance to trying this, but the approach you’ve laid out, because essentially it costs me zero dollars to try it up front, just to try and get people who are willing to let me send them free product, and you’ll be surprised at how many people say no to that. But then when you do get one, it depends on what your cost of goods sold is, but it very likely is worthwhile and certainly will be cheaper than hiring an agency to do it for you.
Tomer Hen: Yeah. Or paying an influencer to post about it.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Also true. If you could share one key piece of advice, what would it be?
Tomer Hen: Just do it, right? Just send out those messages. I know there’s so much doubt that comes into your mind. When I speak to brand founders, they have like 10 different excuses of why things will not work, but they don’t respond, and they don’t do this, and they ask for so much money. I say, “Just send out those 50 messages.” As you said, you’ll be surprised, but how many will agree to that with great accounts and followers, and people that you never thought would agree to receive a free product and then post about you. The dopamine hit that you will get out of one influencer who loved your product and posted about you, even if they have 30,000 followers, will get you the drive and the energy to send out 50 more messages. Or at least work on hiring a VA that will do that for you.
So, just give it a try, right? As you said, it doesn’t cost you anything. Just give it a try. See very, very, very, very little results and then build up from there.
Kurt Elster: I agree with that advice and here, let me rephrase it this way. If you are listening and you go, “Well, that sounds fine and good, but it’s just not right for my brand.” If that’s your objection, and I already knew that that was your objection, okay, maybe just give it a shot. And also, consider how much time do you already spend on social media, right? And that’s probably mostly procrastinating. You can turn that into a productive feeling activity because now it’s research, and outreach, and community building. That sounds much more positive. That is a better way to approach social media than the endless gazing pool that they want it to be for impressions.
And so, Tomer, where can we go to learn more about you? You’ve shared so much value with us.
Tomer Hen: I’m glad. I’m glad it was valuable. So, one free resource that I would love to give out is the influencer relationship profits checklist that me and my team use every single day and every single week, and it’s very straightforward for people to just go through that checklist and within less than an hour a day, they will go through all of the different paths that will get them the momentum they need. If they follow this checklist for a month, I guarantee that they will see some results, that it will get them what they need in order to move forward and scale that up.
So, you can just go to influencerschecklist dot com and download that free resource. I’m pretty active on Twitter, so if someone wants to follow, or just DM, or ask a question, feel free. Just lookup for my name. You’ll find it. And yeah, that’s pretty much it.
Kurt Elster: Beautiful. I will include those in the show notes. Hold on, what did you say your Twitter handle was?
Tomer Hen: TomerHen. Just my name.
Kurt Elster: Oh. Well, that’s easy. Tomer, this has been inspiring and insightful. And I love checklists. Oh, I live and die by checklists. That’s like my standard operating procedures, even for when I end this show. I have a checklist I go through for like, “Okay, here’s what you gotta do now.” And so, I love that that is our giveaway. Thrilling. Okay, if you’re listening and you found this valuable, oh my gosh, please consider subscribing and leaving a review if you haven’t, and check out our Facebook group, The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Insiders, so we can get some feedback. And thank you for listening. Keep selling.
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