Social Commerce & How Creators are Influencing the Way We Shop, with Scrunch

Michelle Lomas: Hey there, hustlers. This week's episode is a little different to our normal programming. We like to call these a Podinar. It's basically a webinar in a podcast format. This episode was recorded from a recent life panel discussion on the growth of influencer marketing and how creators are impacting change in the way we shop and the way we market our products.

This panel was hosted by Danielle Lewis from Scrunch, and she was joined by guest, Isabella Cavallaro, Key Account Manager at Commission Factory, and Jye Beckett, the Chief Marketing Officer at Elite Supplements. Listen on as this expert panel discusses the ways to navigate the new influencer marketing landscape, best ways to identify influencers that will work for you, and also how to leverage the benefits of affiliate marketing to drive sales.

Danielle Lewis: So excited to get into this chat. It's great. Obviously scrunch, we talk about creators and influencers every day of the week, but it's so good to hear from people on the ground who are actually making it work and seeing real marketing results with affiliates, creators, and influencers. So before we get into it, just gonna do some quick introductions. My name is Danielle, I'm the CEO and Co-founder here at Scrunch. Scrunch is an influencer marketing platform and creator economy membership. So we educate people about the fabulous world of influencers and creators, help them find them, and of course, run campaigns as well.

On our expert panel today, we have two. Fabulous marketers. Firstly, Isabella Cavallaro, the Key Account Manager at Commission Factory. Isabella is a seasoned marketing professional with over five years of affiliate marketing experience in both developing and executing successful marketing strategies. And currently Key Account Manager at Commission Factory.

What is Commission Factory? It is a global performance marketing platform. The key focus is Asia Pacific, and they are both innovative and disruptive when it comes to performance marketing. They offer publishers and advertisers the best products and services to boost their online business on a performance basis.

So cannot wait to hear from you, Isabella. Um, and of course, Jye Beckett is a highly experienced marketing professional and the chief marketing officer over at Elite Supplements. Elite Supplements is the leading Australian provider of sports, nutrition and supplements. Thank you both so much for being here.

So Isabella, let's kick things off. Can you just give us a brief overview on how you actually work with brands and creators?

Isabella Cavallaro: So typically a brand would come to you with a specific strategy, and then from there you'll develop a campaign accordingly. What we tend to do is source and present a brand with a range of different content creators based on their wants and needs.

So typically they'll come to us and say, we want X, and then we'll show them X amount of content creators that they can select from. On the other side of things, for creators themselves, we at Commission Factory offer them a range of tools and resources that they can use to help promote the best products and services that they believe in as well.

So it's very important to provide that distinction that the content creators should promote a brand that they believe in themselves and that they typically use themselves as well, like on a daily or weekly basis. Our platform, in addition to that, allows these creators to easily integrate affiliate links, it could be a Clickless Coupon, it could be the actual link itself into their promotional efforts on their social media platform, and from there they'll be able to track their performance and essentially earn commissions for any sales that they generate for the brand that they're working with for their advertising efforts.

I think it's also really important to note that these partnerships between brand and content creator need to be treated as of equal value. The brand will need to work with the creator as much as the creator needs to work for the brand, so they can't be one that's like more dominating than the other.

This is also important when it comes to discussing the spend, the budget, and the commission sort of expectations as well. And that should all be done prior to any sort of campaign going live, just due to like transparency reasons as well. And then in addition to that, at Commission Factory, we also provide like post-campaign analysis, whether that may be a report, both brand and content creator can access that via our platform in real time as well.

Danielle Lewis: I love it. And in that description, you said the words affiliate marketing. And I know in this space, everything's starting to get a little confusing. Yeah. You know, we were calling them bloggers and then influencers. Yeah. And creators. And then we have sponsored posts and affiliate marketing.

Yeah. Could you give us a bit of a, an idea on what the difference is between say, affiliate marketing and influencer marketing?

Isabella Cavallaro: Yeah, so influencer marketing or content creation as it's like more commonly known as, as well, is a type of affiliate marketing. So when you look at affiliate marketing, it's this huge sort of definition with many different. Items in that definition. So an affiliate can really range from someone that operates in the online space, and even in more recent times in store.

So that obviously varies. So there's cashback sites, there's loyalty, there's specialised tech, there's even student portals. It just keeps on going on and on, and nowadays you'll see that all these new different types of people and companies are becoming affiliates with their specialised solution.

Content creation falls under that umbrella of affiliate marketing. So it is a type of marketing where someone will use their social media account to promote a brand, whether that may be TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, to promote a product or service in turn for a commission if they make a sale.

Danielle Lewis: Amazing. And do you think that's one of the key distinctions is that they make commission on the sale rather than influencers who tend just to be remunerated more on just a post per basis.

Isabella Cavallaro: Yeah. So affiliate marketing is that sort of cost effective CPA, so cost per acquisition business model where nine times outta 10 you'll be, um, paying essentially the affiliate on a commission basis. So they'll need to make a sale for you for them to be awarded commission. If, for example, they generate, you know, someone to visit your website, but then that customer doesn't make a sale, there'll be no commission awarded there.

Danielle Lewis: Love it.

I think that's a recurring theme in this space as well. How long is a piece of string? There's so many different ways that you can work with different influencers or creators or affiliates, so many different ways that you can set up your programs. It's very cool. Isabella, I've got one for you. So the title of today's event was called Social Commerce.

Yes. And how creators are reshaping the way consumers shop. What exactly is social commerce?

Isabella Cavallaro: So social commerce is still evolving and it's about using social media platforms to facilitate the buying and selling of a product or service. Nowadays, it's more instrumental than ever for a brand to use a range of different social media platforms to promote their products and also to sell their products to customers as well.

I think that's really important to note, because of the tech and tracking capabilities that come into that. It's advanced so much that, for example, when you're scrolling on Instagram these days, you'll be able to find those black leggings they appear on your feed, and then you can click through and be redirected to the brand's website all in the one session.

Whereas in the past, what would happen there is that you'll find these black leggings that then instead of being just redirected straight away, you would need to exit the app, go to the website, try your best to find these products, and more often than not, you may be like sidetracked to go to a competitor or you might just give up altogether.

So I guess, the whole social commerce concept of being able to be redirected from a social media platform to a brand's website to make a purchase is so important in terms of customer retention especially, and just getting your brand more recognised in the social media space as well.

Redirect process, it's become so seamless these days, as you said, sponsored posts as well, so the tech and tracking, once again from social media apps have become so advanced that they know what you're engaging with, what you're liking, and then, whoops, that product will come up on your social media platform, and then you'll be able to be redirected accordingly.

Again, it is really important to engage in that sort of activity, just to get that retention, those eyeballs, and essentially those conversions from those popular social media apps to your website.

Danielle Lewis: Yeah, it's definitely hurting my credit card.

Isabella Cavallaro: Yes, me too.

Danielle Lewis: This, uh, seamless experience from social media.

Isabella Cavallaro: Very easy. You know, more screenshots to save for later, so, yeah.

Danielle Lewis: Oh, I know. So we're painting a picture here, so I've got one for the both of you. Now we'll start with Jye this time, as I kind of alluded to, this space is changing really quickly. We used to call them bloggers, then influencers, then creators. How have you seen influencers, affiliates, creators, all the above. How have you actually seen them evolve over the last few years?

Jye Beckett: It's an interesting question, and I think our industry in particular, we've really required the assistance of influencers to really drive sales. Everything regarding weight loss, fitness and health.

It is very influencer driven, and so we've seen a really big change, especially because of the pandemic, as people sort of realised that there were people making pretty significant sums of money and why making posts amongst the brands, I think more and more people we started but to build a, a bit of following to really try and join that and make money that way as well.

And I think with a lot of people had to work over the pandemic for really slight excel. I think, you know, over that period as a company we had extraordinary growth and we did get reached out to, by quite a lot of people, like smaller accounts, just wanting to work with a slight influencer bases. So I think the entry to get in is, is really easy and it's become a lot easier with our, easily, with TikTok, for example, to be able to grow an audience so quickly.

I think the competition that was so much bigger, and so as a brand, we actually have to work a lot harder and to provide a lot more authentic now than what we used to to actually retain or get influencers. I see four or five years ago when I was working in the financial services space and I was working with influencers in that space, it was easy to get the influencer or a creator or an affiliate and hold onto them for two, three years at time and they be exclusive to you, whereas nowadays because there's so much more competition, you can have an influencer or a creator working with you, and then two weeks later they're working with someone else on an exclusive basis because they're being offered twice the incentive. So I think that the pandemic really drove the abilities of people to get started in that, and there is just so much more competition now that it really has changed the way that brands do need to actually engage with these thoughts and work with them.

Danielle Lewis: Yeah, really interesting. You mentioned having to compete financially, so pay influencers more to retain them. Are there any other things that you see that works to keep influencers or creators excited about working with your brand?

Jye Beckett: The money incentive is always the biggest one. And, and regardless of what else we try, it is very money driven.

However, in terms of trying to engage them in other ways, I mean, we're lucky being that we, we stock thousands of different brands. It's relatively easy for us to provide products, a bit of an incentive as well. However, that also does lead into a few additional issues in regards to things like, uh, ACCC and TGA and, and promoter posts.

Also found that events, you know, which we're actually hosting events or we're creating some sort of way to these creators to get involved and be a part of the company in some way. It really doesn't surprise them to stick around because they see so much more value in the long run. And I think their audience, for any influencer or creator that is really dialed in and really wants to support their audience and make sure that their audience fits with them and grows with them, they are really included into making sure that they're establishing longer term relationships with brands so that they're just sort of hopping around and providing a different thing every day to that audience.

So it's, yeah, I think in advance being able to aspire to the products as a bit of an incentive helps on top of just the monetary side of things.

Danielle Lewis: That's awesome. I love that. Events is such a good idea. I mean, we've gotta kind of remember we're all humans and we love a bit of real life connection. That's awesome.

What about you, Isabella? How have you seen influencers or creators evolve over the past few years?

Isabella Cavallaro: So I think the type of content being released has definitely changed and evolved. So five years ago, for example, it was very much like the static Instagram post, the static Facebook post. It was often very polished, it was edited. Was it natural? I don't think so, but that was what it was, and it was very much aesthetically pleasing. Whereas nowadays, and I think once again, due to the introduction of TikTok especially, as well as updates to Instagram, given their stories and rules, features, and then YouTube, the ongoing popularity there, it's all about video content.

You'll see on. Instagram and TikTok, for example. It's a lot of short and snappy videos, it's often like a day in my life, and then, then they'll show what they've done in the day. And often it'll be like subtle product placements of the protein shake or the makeup product, like on the table, for example. So that's how they tend to show product.

And then obviously YouTube is a little bit of a different story where it's like a longer video. You sort of have to sit there and watch it, and it's often a lot more descriptive in what they're trying to sell or promote. I think video content has become the biggest thing, and you also get to know the content creator as well.

So they tend to give you a snapshot of their life and you feel like you're getting to know them, and likewise, they feel like that they're getting to know their followers and it becomes this like relationship. I think that's how they sort of grasp the attention of people and how essentially the brand, when they choose to partner with these content creators, they look for people that, uh, represent their brand well.

Then likewise, the content creator will find someone that fits into their life, and then it sort of works from there as a good synergy. So I feel like the actual content being produced has definitely changed, and then on top of that, the term influencer has also changed. So unfortunately, that term influencer does have like negative connotations.

People often have a certain perception of what that means. So I show that nowadays they're known as content creators and it's become a bit more of an employment. So people use that as a full-time sort of source of income, and then likewise, whether you're working brand side or agency side, they hire content creator managers to like manage content creators full-time.

So it's become this full-time type of employment and it shows the importance and significance of having this type of marketing part  of your overall marketing strategy for a company. So yeah, definitely the terms and just the way the content's being produced has certainly evolved since I started working in this space anyway.

Danielle Lewis: Yeah, it's really interesting and I'm just relating what you both said as well, and I mean obviously increase in financial want from the creators, but it also is interesting how that's correlated to the rise in video production as well. We always see video costs so much more because it takes so much effort to actually produce and influencers are asking for more.

So it is really interesting and I love that you had mentioned that the now there are even content creator managers. Yeah. It's like that job role didn't even exist five years ago.

Isabella Cavallaro: Five years ago, exactly. Now it's like instrumental to like a company. It's Yeah.

Danielle Lewis: Yeah. It's like a full-time,

Isabella Cavallaro: it's like a team.

Danielle Lewis: Yeah.

Yeah. It's, it's crazy. It's very cool though. So, Jye, you just started touching on this in your last answer about TGA approvals and all that kind of stuff. When we think about influencers promoting products, how do we think this actually impacts the way consumers shop? And what are some of maybe the risks associated with that?

Jye Beckett: Yeah, I don't think it's had that much of an impact yet. I think it probably will over the next few years as there's a lot more. But yeah, I mean if we looked at ACCC in general, I mean the last two years now they've released new regulations in regards to how brands and and creators work together. So it's like two years ago when the first one was released, 'cause it was targeted towards brands and how brands are allowed to incentivise creators.

So there was no sort of downside to the creators. But from a brand point of view, if a creator was promoting something directly, or they were disclosing a promoted post, for example, or, or a promoted article or whatever it might be. Uh, brands were being impacted by that. And then last year they released a second, um, set of that, that, that regulation that's touched directly on creatives and the fact that they can now be liable for misleading advertisements, not disclosing partnerships and stuff like that.

Very early days, lows and just because of the rise of creators and that influencer world, those have really come into play. So far, they haven't made much of a difference. I mean, we haven't seen any changes, to be honest so far. I mean, obviously we're a bit more careful with how we make make sure our creators are actually publishing content.

But I think over the next sort of two to three years since those regulations continue to change a little bit more, we will see more of the population sort of becoming aware that those are actually in place, and you'll start seeing people that are on social media that are seeing an undisclosed advertisement begin to report them.

I think that's just starting now. We're probably seeing a few cases of that, um, for coming into this year. So, as people get clue in more, I think it's definitely gonna affect it, and it's probably gonna mean that there is gonna be the need to really shift in the way Grant and creators are working to get us to really disclose that partnership and try and build an partnership, rather promotions and then, on the other side, and it's probably more so in our space, you know, in food related space, is the TGA crackdowns as well?

There aren't actually that many health and supplement branded products in Australia that are actually TGA approved. That doesn't mean that they're, you know, illegal to sell or have illegal ingredients or anything like that. But there's only a few that you can actually make specific health claims about without getting in any,  we run the risk of an influencer of making a claim about a product.

So it might even be something simple as taking this will help you lose weight. I don't think there's a single list of TGA products that actually has the claim attached to it. So if the creator goes and actually makes that claim, we can essentially be held liable for that claim being made. So it does change the way that we actually work with the creators a little bit and just really tightening down recruitment process, which is making sure content is, is approved before it actually goes out.

Yeah, I think over the next two or three years, especially on the ACCC side of things will also be that really come into effect and, and be a bit more of an issue.

Danielle Lewis: I'm glad you said the words that you are tightening the approval process. People talk to me all the time about should you just let a creator be creative 'cause that's what they're amazing at.

Or should you brief them, contract them, approve their content. I kind of feel like you need to land somewhere in the middle, like let them do their thing, but make sure it ticks all of the boxes.

Jye Beckett: Yeah, correct. I'd agree with that. I think in the middle, I think again, in sort of, two years, it might be a little bit more towards the way of controlling over a bit more and the content reduce, but at the time being definitely sort of sit in the middle there, let them be a bit creative, but get a rough brief to run off and a few, you know, things to try and avoid.

Danielle Lewis: Yeah, I love that. Guide rails are always good with creators.

Michelle Lomas: The Flex Your Hustle Podcast is made possible by the team at Commission Factory. Commission Factory is the largest performance and partner marketing network in Asia Pacific, pairing tens of thousands of meaningful and scalable partnerships. If you are listening to this show, you might be looking for ways to find and activate successful connections that drive revenue for your business.

Well, Commission Factory works with everyone from e-commerce brands to influencers, big digital editorial titles and cashback communities, right through to the latest apps and software that help customers convert, and they aggregate all those partnerships in the one place. You'll love how easy that makes managing it if you're tired of paying for clicks and impressions.

Commission Factory is a pay on performance marketing platform where you pay only when tangible sales are generated, not just eyes on the page, so it's low risk and easy to manage your bottom line. So to all you digital publishers, influencers, online retailer and marketing agency folks out there. Come see what Commission Factory can do for you.

Visit commissionfactory.com where infinite partnerships are simply enabled.

Danielle Lewis: Another one for the both of you, but we'll start with Isabella this time. So what are some of the challenges and learnings you've seen working with creators? I know that the media loves to shine a light sometimes on the horror stories, but we like to see them as learnings so that we can implement processes.

Love to get some thoughts on what you've seen over the last few years.

Isabella Cavallaro: Sure. I think definitely deadlines and timelines can definitely be seen as a challenge. So obviously working in an office, you're a nine to five, five days a week. Content creators, they're their own boss, essentially, so they work to their own schedule.

So just making sure that deadlines and timelines are provided in the most transparent way possible. For example, it's good to use a content creator when perhaps you've got a new product going live, and if that product goes live and then the content creator's, content doesn't go live, then it goes live late and the product sold out.

It just causes problems. So I think just making sure that timing and deadlines all just clearly communicated, like embargo dates, and all of that is controlled from the get go. And I also think that contracts in general are important. Just making sure that everyone's aligned in terms of what's expected.

We sort of touched on that before about having that creativity, but then also just making sure that there's brand guidelines that are being abided by and things like that. And just finding that middle ground between the two. And on top of that, just making sure that everyone's aligned branding wise because you don't want a content creator to work with your brand, and then next week they're working with a competitor.

So just making sure that everything's super transparent in that regard as well, and that they're on board as like a loyal brand partner, and likewise, the content creator also feels that they fall in well with the brand as well in terms of the look and feel and things like that. So that's definitely really important.

That leads into my next point as well about content creators declining jobs, and I think this is really important. It's something that content creators shouldn't be worried about if they feel that there's a misalignment there that they don't really resonate well with the brand, then it's okay to say no.

It's once again finding that middle ground and being of equal value, like the brand shouldn't overpower the content creator and vice versa as well. We often see if there is a misalignment between brand and content creator, it can lead into like media sort of pitfalls where it's like negative publicity for both the brand and the content creator.

So just making sure that there is clear synergy there, that it will work essentially once the campaign goes live. And I guess from a marketing perspective to sort of end my piece, brand awareness first return on investment. So I guess this is really important for both brand and content creators. So the brand needs to understand that oftentimes when working with a content creator, it is considered like upper funnel marketing activity. So they may be great for educating their audience on your product, but we may not see the revenue you might expect from a different sort of affiliate, for example, that's lower funnel. So just making sure that the brand is aware of the expectation when it comes to return on investment.

And then likewise, the content creator if they're doing this in the affiliates space, what the CPA model means, how much commission they're to expect, its performance based. So just making sure that's very clear in terms of the return for both content creator and brand.

Danielle Lewis: Yeah, I love that because I think you're right.

Sometimes people just think about influencers and they think they can solve all of the end-to-end funnel issues. Yeah. So create lots of awareness, do lots of education. Yeah. Sell lots of product. And you can't do that with one post.

Isabella Cavallaro: Exactly. Yeah. Setting expectations is probably the right way to put it, so, yeah.

Danielle Lewis: Yeah. Oh, I love that. Awesome. What about you Jye? Any challenges, learnings that you've seen in the space?

Jye Beckett: I see this a lot. What Isabella said is, is really true and, and pretty accurate. It probably echoes a lot of my own thoughts. I think to add to that, is touching on sort of, you mentioned about, you know, a single post, not, not doing what you want it to do.

Working with influencers, it's not just a one post sort of thing. I mean, you know, if they've got a larger audience, um, but a large following, whether they're on social media or a website based stuff, their audience is generally dialed in and used to specific schedules and seeing certain things. And so a single post generally won't data much awareness or, or even return on investment, it's generally a long term thing.

So for us, we generally decide two to three months it takes to perform where we actually really see their audience actually get used to it. Fact, we've been now promoting us as a brand and I've seen that across multiple other influencers as well. So I'd say just having that stakeholder and management internally to really make sure that expectations are set around the timings of that and the fact that probably gonna be looking at two to three months before you start really seeing, not necessarily return on the investment, but at least some engagement on those influencers.

That'd be good to start seeing some traffic and slow awareness and some growth through those channels. What I've learn to, to expect as well, I mean influencer managers, all those influencer positions, to really be managing that expectation is that, whether it be sell other parts of the business, you know, again, people that aren't necessarily doing it day in and day out and just sort of hear about these creative, a sponsored post and then all of a sudden they're making $20 million.

That's what I think the part that made that harder is, I look back probably seven or eight years ago when I guess social media answers are really. Really just sort of keeping me back then it was a case of just a single post. You could find someone that had 10, 20 thousand followers that all do post and then would see instant return on investment, whereas that's not so much the case now.

So yeah, that's definitely the biggest thing I think is just setting expectations around timing of return.

Danielle Lewis: It does take months to actually build up something, get that new audience, get the engagement. So it makes perfect sense when we're thinking about influencers that we need to work with them over an extended period to actually see that kind of return.

So it's a good point. So Isabella, let's think about affiliates more specifically. Are there some important tips that brands or agencies should think about when they're creating an affiliate program?

Isabella Cavallaro: I think it's really important to work with a range of different affiliates. You don't wanna just focus on one vertical or limit yourself too much.

We call it affiliate diversification or a holistic program where you do work with a range of different kinds that support the customer on each of the steps of their customer journey. It's important to have that upper funnel activity with the likes of content creators and using them to educate their followers on your product.

And as Jye said as well, that long process of audience to get to know the brands you're working with. And then slowly you'll see conversions come in, but let alone it's awareness for your brand regardless and the reach that you need. And then on top of that, you do work with the lower funnel partners that do drive revenue, which essentially is what you need for your brand to succeed.

So it's good to have that mix of different kinds of publishers or affiliates onto your program to capture the customer at each point of the customer journey and just making it holistic in that regard. And then for content creators in particular for your affiliate program, it's important to find content creators that best depict your brand.

So, as I sort of said already, making sure that they align strategically and there's a synergy there. You don't want someone that doesn't represent your brand well. Also distinguishing whether the campaign is more of a brand awareness piece or a revenue driving one. So it's really important to jump on trends that sort of can be implemented into your affiliate.

Strategy. So whether that may be a specialised tech or a certain type of campaigning, whether that may be video content, for example, just working that way into your affiliate program via the correct affiliates that can help do that. I also think it's important when it comes to your affiliate program to work with affiliates that you can't necessarily implement in-house.

So say for example, you wanna target students and that's really difficult to implement in-house, perhaps consider a student partner that has access to do that. Likewise. We work with a range of specialised tech partners that specialise in things like cart abandonment. And if you can't do that in-house again, why not do it by the affiliate space?

And I think we always say as well that the cost per acquisition model is really cost effective to do that as well, rather than looking at that in-house and getting that implemented in-house, you can always use the third party provider to help you do that. Having a healthy program, trying to use the affiliate channel in ways that, when you can't do things in-house, use the channel to assist you in in crossing that path as well.

Danielle Lewis: I really like your point about the trends as well. Like it just kind of reinforces the point that setting up any kind of marketing program isn't just a set and forget. Yeah. Like actually making sure that you're consistently optimising it, reviewing your affiliates, keeping up to trends and working with them in other ways.

I think that's really clever. Jye, do you think it is too late to work with or get started with affiliates and creators?

Jye Beckett: In short answer no, it's definitely not. It's a kind of a thing in the marketing world, right? I mean, especially digital marketing. Every three or four months there's a new thing that people were saying it's too late to start and you know what I mean?

SEO people will say it's still late to do Facebook ads, and, and influencers is still a huge channel. There's still a lot of untapped potential and there's a lot of growth to be had through it.

Danielle Lewis: Yeah. Awesome. One of the questions that I always get asked about in influencer marketing is, does it work?

And when I think people say, does it work, they mean bottom of the funnel, actual dollars. And it's so interesting because yes, it is hard to get right. Yes. You've gotta actually put the strategy behind a program when you do get it right. Yeah. It's, it can be pretty wild, the results that people see.

Jye Beckett: Oh, exactly. Yeah. A hundred percent.

Danielle Lewis: So good. I love it. Okay. Let's switch gears a little bit. This is actually a question that came in. Isabella, keen to get your perspective on the appetite of influencers and creators to be paid on commission only.

Isabella Cavallaro: Yeah, so I think it's very common to see a hybrid sort of approach.

So taking the best of both worlds and putting it together, that's what we tend to see a lot in the affiliate space and what brands tend to sort of accept and likewise content creators as well. There is interest there on a CPA only sort of model, but I do believe that the hybrid approach is probably the most popular option where brands need to sort of negotiate with the content creator regarding fees.

They may lower their fees if there is that commission's model being introduced to their marketing campaign as well. So I do believe that people are sort of following that hybrid model. It also depends how big the content creator is as well. So we do tend to work with micro influencers, which may be happier to promote a brand on a commission only basis, or then if they are macro, there may be fees involved.

So the bigger you are, it depends on what the expectation is there, but I think just being transparent and working towards the best solution is the best way to go. But I do think, because content creators do understand how affiliate marketing works, they may be a bit more happy to negotiate in terms of commission, but we do tend to see nowadays the hybrid model is coming in as number one in terms of the most popular choice.

Danielle Lewis: That's so good. And while I've got you, Isabella, we've talked about about different layers of the funnel, and we've talked about performance. How do you actually measure success across different types of influencer or affiliate campaigns?

Isabella Cavallaro: Yeah, so once again, it depends on how you're using the campaign.

Whether it's brand awareness or uh, uh, big revenue driving campaign, we tend to use return on ad spend to determine, from a brand sort of perspective, how well a program or a campaign performed in terms of take home money for that advertiser or brand. However, other metrics such as conversion rate, average order value, this all helps in determining how successful a campaign was.

Even click traffic as well to your website. It just comes down to how you treat the campaign and what you want out of it, and then you look at the right reporting accordingly based off that.

Danielle Lewis: Awesome. And I love that idea too, that the strategy is going to change and what you actually do, what kind of creators you work with is gonna change depending on the outcome that you're actually after.

Last one. For you, Jye, we've talked a lot about various elements of a campaign. How do you actually set up a campaign in the beginning for success?

Jye Beckett: I guess the, the easiest way to look at it is, is I feel that probably most marketers still look at it as that, people winning sort of thing. So it, it is very rushed together as sort of, here's the influencer we want to use.

Here's the product we want to create. Let's give it to them and get them to create something and hope for sales. In general, you really need to look at it like a regular marketing campaign. If you've got any new product driven service coming, probably spend three or four weeks building out campaign strategy, the audience you want to target what your goals are, and you really need to look at creators, and working with creators in that way. So I think the very first thing to do is really figure around what the point of the actual campaign is. I mean, why do you wanna engage with these traders and what do you wanna get out of it?

Do you want direct sales, which I'm sure every, everyone does, but is it purely to get sales? Is it to build engagement around the brand? Is it to build awareness for the product of the brand or the service. So I think they really need to identify what the actual goal is and that will essentially determine how the rest of that campaign is gonna run.

Figuring out that goal will help you identify what creator or what influence are will actually invest to work with. So, If you do choose that you wanna run something because you want brand awareness, then the creator you work with is gonna be someone that creates amazing content but isn't necessarily selling or creating content that sells.

Whereas you want direct sales or you wanna work with a creator who does a tel and go and buy products, and that can show proof. So it's, I think that's sort of where you need to start. And then once you've actually done that big tailored type of content they're actually gonna make and the creators you're gonna use.

And then I think that's probably one of the most important things is the creator and making sure that their audience will sell the lines with your brand or your service or your product and what your actually goals as well. So I think if you do those three things before actually dive into creating any sort of briefs, or choosing any creators, that will really set you up for success.

Danielle Lewis: That's the best advice. We do see so many people who say, I wanna work with this influencer. I'm like, why? You know? And it's, it's like what? You really have to start from the start, setting that strategy, understanding your goals, because that does make such a big impact. You're right. You set it earlier, um, that there are so many influencers to choose from now. Like we really, brands are actually really lucky in some sense that, you know, if somebody isn't the right fit or charges too much, there's probably gonna be somebody else out there for you. So actually understanding what your goal is first is fantastic advice.

Jye Beckett: And to add to that too, just because you did mention about there being so many creators and influencers, what the point of that campaign is.

If it's brand or product awareness, yeah. you'd actually be better working with a creator or an influencer and then working with, than other creators or influencers who are in that same group as them. So, you know, finding the influencers or creators that actually work together or follow each other 'cause they're all gonna share same audience.

Danielle Lewis: Yeah, that's right.

Jye Beckett: Audience is gonna see the same message across 10, 11 different people, which is great for awareness. Where as if your point is direct sales, you don't really want to be working with influencers or creators that are in that same circle 'cause you've then got them competing with each other. But you're right, being at that segment, that same audience as well.

Danielle Lewis: Yeah, that's such a good point because people often say that, what about duplicate audiences? And that's a really good distinction about the awareness versus their direct sales because there is some kind of stat that consumers need to see a brand 16 times now before they actually make that purchase decision.

So if you're kind of doing that work upfront in the awareness piece, then working with influencers who can kind of reshare and tag each other and comment and drive engagement and brand awareness is a really positive thing I think. So what's your predictions for how influencer marketing will change?

Jye Beckett: I mentioned it before about the amount of restrictions that are getting put into place around influencer marketing.

I think that's really gonna change the way that we do work with influencers and the fact that there are gonna be so much more stricter rules on, on what they can actually do and how they do it. And it doesn't even probably see a lot more demands for the influencer management based positions across brands.

You can probably find that you'll maybe need one influencer manager for every X amount of creators that you have. There's a lot more demands for those positions and a lot more one-to-one interaction between brands and influencers rather than simple email communication could be a lot more proactive work involved.

Isabella Cavallaro: I think it'll be more important than ever before to engage with these type of creators. What I'm sort of seeing in the news at the moment are like high profile celebrities are no longer relatable, like coincidentally, sorry to bring them up, but the Kardashians, like they were reality stars that everyone watched and related to, but nowadays they're so out of touch with reality and what and how we live versus how they live is so different that people are no longer seeing them as like relevant.

And now they turn to people like content creators. You wanna take like Logan Paul for example, or someone a lot smaller, the local from Sydney for example, and they tend to follow these people and trust their opinions because essentially content creation is listening to someone give a trusted review on a product and then going to buy that product.

And if you go listen to Kim Kardashian talk about something, perhaps that's not relatable anymore compared to so and so from Sydney, and you're gonna listen to that person from Sydney and go buy that product. And that's what brands want in the end. So I think it's really important for brands to engage with these content creators rather than resorting to like high profile celebrities, for example, and using them to promote your products compared to the content creator.

So I think that's definitely something that would definitely take charge this year anyway. In terms of who you want to work with.

Danielle Lewis: That is actually such a good point. One of the kind of, I don't wanna call it a mistake. One of the things that I see brands do is they sent out saying, I wanna work with influencers and creators because I want it to be relatable content.

Because their content for their brand on their socials or their website is, super high quality, high branded. But then when they get the influencer content back, they're a little disappointed. 'cause it is not super professional. But I'm like, no, that's actually the stuff that works. You know? Yeah. And this is the everyday people that can access your product.

So yeah, it's, I really love that point. Thank you Isabella and Jye for your time today, um, and sharing the, that wisdom. It's been absolutely phenomenal. Really appreciate your time.

Isabella Cavallaro: Thank you for having me.

Jye Beckett: No worries. Thanks so much for having me as well.

Michelle Lomas: Thanks for listening to this special episode, featuring compelling conversations on the future of influencer marketing. Next week we're back to our regular programming and have an awesome guest for you. Here's a sneak peek.

Matthew Lloyd: I believe it's, it's almost like a bowl of pasta, spaghetti, whatever you want to call it. And if you are not in that bowl, you're not gonna get eaten by that user. Mm. And the top of the funnel, as people like to call it, is also the bottom now.

Now we're seeing that now with influencers now and vice versa. You know, things that were, were at the bottom and now possibly more towards the top.

Michelle Lomas: Thanks for listening to this Flex Hustle Podinar. Give us a rate or review on your pod app when you have a moment and make sure you hit follow so you don't miss any episodes.

I'm Michelle Lomas, see you next time and keep hustling because no one else is gonna hustle for you.