Marketing with Podcasts with Zane McIntyre, Commission Factory

Ampel: Hi there, welcome to the Ampel Audio Channel. We have a great interview to play for you today, which actually serves as a fantastic case study for the benefits of getting your brand into the audio world. Michelle Lomas, Ampel's GM talks to Zane McIntyre, the CEO, and co-founder of Affiliate Marketing Company Commission Factory about their decision to create the podcast and the journey that it's taken their brand on. In Flex Your Hustle, we hear from marketers who succeeded against the odds, who may not have had any training or experience in marketing whatsoever, but went with their gut and thrived, or from the marketers who were brave enough to try something a little different.

Ampel: Both Zane and Michelle speak with authority on the subject because if you didn't know already, Michelle is actually also the host of the podcast, putting her years of marketing and agency experience to good use. If you are on the fence about whether audio is right for your brand, listen to Zane's experience and hopefully it helps you see the value in getting your company's name into people's ears.

Michelle Lomas: Zane, thank you for joining us. So we wanted to have a little chat today about Flex Your Hustle, the wonderful podcast, which we are creating with you for Commission Factory. But before we do, why don't we start by talking a little bit about Commission Factory and what you guys do for the listeners who may not be familiar with you?

Zane McIntyre: Sure. Commission Factory is an affiliate network or partner marketing network. The term for us keeps sort of changing a little bit, but essentially we are a middleman that connects two different parties, so the online retailers and the affiliates and the technology providers, the content bloggers, and the influencers.

Zane McIntyre: We connect all these parties and we are software developers as well. So we have software or MarTech that sits in the middle, and it's tracking these relationships between the two parties. So we're very much a mechanism that connects two different parties.

Michelle Lomas: And who is your customer?

Zane McIntyre: That's always been hard because we have a few different customers, and so it makes it difficult to really hone in on our marketing message at times.

Zane McIntyre: On one side, we have the online retailers and service providers and so we work with about 700 of those across Asia Pacific, and then on the other side we have the affiliates or partners, and so these guys are content bloggers, influencers, they are cashback sites, coupon sites, loyalty type things, and even some of the, um, the largest superannuation funds and banks utilise us for, you know, filling out their rewards systems.

Michelle Lomas: Mm. And how do you normally reach them?

Zane McIntyre: Generally, it's the word-of-mouth referrals, and creating ambassadors with our existing customers. So we don't spend any money on traditional marketing, so whether it be paid social or paid search, we don't do any of that. So we find other ways, and that is either through the retention of our customers, getting them to talk about us to colleagues, but also presenting ourselves as thought leaders and you know, people that they, or a company they want to be aligned with. That's how we do a lot of our marketing and how we get more customers, so very much a word-of-mouth type company, and we are ever-present on social media but we don't pay for it.

Michelle Lomas: Excellent. I like to hear that, it's very on-brand with our podcast. Maybe we should do an interview about you guys on the podcast. I'm pretty sure I've been trying to do that one actually.

Zane McIntyre: Yeah, that's right.

Michelle Lomas: So you decided late last year that you guys wanted to add a podcast to the mix, to your marketing mix. How did that come about?

Zane McIntyre: I'd like to say there wasn't any FOMO, but there was a little bit of it there I mean, we ourselves enjoyed listening to podcasts and we could see other people in related industries doing podcasts and we've always tried to position ourselves as I have mentioned as thought leaders and thought Well, is this a different medium that we haven't really explored properly and that we should take advantage of?

Zane McIntyre: So we set about sort of looking into, you know, what it would take and why would we do one, is there a good, you know, story for us, or is there a potential of return for this as well? So our exploration, you know, took us down many, many paths, but also overwhelming as well because it was new for us and so having to learn everything from scratch, what do we need?

Zane McIntyre: What are the tools that we need? Became really overwhelming and daunting as well. But ultimately, we did want to continue down the path of thought leadership and brand awareness, but we've always tried to present ourselves as very authentic and genuine so we wanted to tell stories and tell our story the way that we normally do, which is generally quite casual and informal and fun.

Zane McIntyre: But authentic always.

Michelle Lomas: And when you made the decision to add that podcast as a channel that would allow you to tell that story did you find there was pushback at all? Were people very receptive internally? Was it an easy decision to make or did you have to kind of pitch it around and, and prove out the channel?

Zane McIntyre: I think for most of us who made the decision, it was an easy one. Sure, we put it out there to the rest of the company as well and to get their feedback and thoughts and then everybody wanted to be involved, everybody wanted to host it or be on it and, and have some involvement.

Michelle Lomas: Soon as you say we're doing a podcast in the company, like galvanises people, doesn't it?

Michelle Lomas: Can I host it? Can I do something?

Zane McIntyre: Absolutely. We had a lot of people putting their hand up like, Oh, this is gonna get complicated really quickly. We made the decision to go ahead based on that thought leadership and continuing our brand awareness. It was a good investment, we could either go putting the money into traditional advertising, or we can go and do something new, something none of us have done before.

Zane McIntyre: So for us internally as well, it enthused us in ways that paid search or paid social never could because this was new, it was fun, we actually had a product at the end of it as well, something that we could be proud of. So it was an easy decision. Sure, I had to move some funds around and, and budgets because it was something we didn't budget for when we set our budgets last year.

Zane McIntyre: But we felt it was important enough, we'll make this work.

Michelle Lomas: We'll talk about results in a little bit, but let's talk about the journey in the production process because when you came to us to Ampel to talk to us about potentially taking it on from a production perspective, you had a couple of episodes in the bag.

Michelle Lomas: So how did you kind of make that decision? You kind of recorded a few and then you realised, maybe, let's bring an Ampel. How did that come about?

Zane McIntyre: Sure. Well, we had the episodes or a couple of them recorded and we even, you know, we reconfigured our office, we built a sound room, all these sorts of things.

Michelle Lomas: Yeah.

Zane McIntyre: We thought we're gonna do this well. I mean, have no fear that the sound room will still go to good use now. But those few episodes, whilst good, we weren't the experts in this field to either say, yes, the elements of it are all there, but overall is it crap?

Zane McIntyre: To be honest, we're there thinking like, I think this is right.

Michelle Lomas: Yeah.

Zane McIntyre: Um, but we, we really needed some professional help there to sort of guide us as well, and is it crap? And I think we ultimately made a decision let's re-record.

Michelle Lomas: Yes. Yeah, we did.

Michelle Lomas: Not to follow what was done, but I think there's a challenge when you start to create before you fully define what you're building. And I think we realised when we started going through that strategy process, that some of those things hadn't quite clearly been defined, right. So we did do quite a lengthy strategy process.

Michelle Lomas: I think by the time, you know, you guys came to us in December, it took us about three or four months to get to the strategy stage before we were ready to produce. Were there elements in that strategy process that surprised you or some things that you learned or things that you hadn't really considered before?

Zane McIntyre: I think that either, even with the name of the podcast and the direction we ended up taking. Far more articulated and succinct than where we started from, where the name of it was quite broad and we were just looking at stories from people, but no real theme that was carrying it through. So I think during that process that when we're working with you guys, we articulated much better the kind of stories we're interested in. Then also we were thinking about the Commission Factory story and where we are, and it's like, wait, we have a hustle story too. So that's where, I guess the name with, you know, Flex Your Hustle came from as well. It's like there are hustle stories out there.

Zane McIntyre: People who achieved great things with limited resources or no knowledge and had to learn on the job. I mean, 'cause that was our story so therefore it felt personal and then ties back again to that sort of genuine, authentic brand that we've tried to build.

Michelle Lomas: Mm-hmm. It's really funny in the process of the strategy, I remember presenting the ideas and working on those things together and, and defining who the audience was. And there was one thing that we disagreed on, the only thing, you didn't want any commercial messaging at all. Do you remember this?

Zane McIntyre: I do.

Michelle Lomas: Yeah.

Zane McIntyre: I do. I do remember that, yes.

Michelle Lomas: Yeah, you didn't wanna put any commercial messaging in there.

Michelle Lomas: You're like, no. This is just about featuring our customers and our publishers, and we actually really pushed hard and said, No, no, it's okay. It's actually okay to have your commercial messaging in there because listeners and podcasts understand it's being, you know, paid for, that content is being paid for and produced by a brand, and that's how you get all this great content.

Michelle Lomas: So there's like permission in a lot of ways. How do you feel about that now?

Zane McIntyre: I feel okay about it now, maybe because I had the approval to do so.

Michelle Lomas: Yeah.

Zane McIntyre: I mean, it stemmed from our industry. We have either a lot of players or competitors in this industry where so much of their messaging and the content they put out there is extremely self-gratuitous.

Zane McIntyre: We really wanted, you know, to make sure that this was about the customers, the people out there who are hustling, who are building their empires and you know, who want to work with us because our focus should have been always on them and you know how we can benefit them. And whilst the software that we build, we always have to consider like, how is benefiting the customers?

Zane McIntyre: This, in and of itself was almost an extension of that, where it's like, well, how can this content benefit the customers? So I was mindful of not making this a gratuitous exercise where all we did was talk about how wonderful we are.

Michelle Lomas: Yeah.

Zane McIntyre: Some other players in the industry definitely do that and we didn't want to be that, but I was happy to compromise a little here as long as it wasn't too much and too in your face, and it just felt like the podcast was purely an advertisement for us. But really, I feel that we do focus on the customers or, you know, these entrepreneurs that are out there mixed with a little bit of commercial messaging.

Michelle Lomas: Mm. I think having, you know, for the listeners who maybe haven't listened to an episode in general, our episodes are about 20 to 30 minutes long interview style. And sort of halfway through, we have a commercial message which we alert the listeners to that, you know, we're sort of cutting to an ad for Commission Factory.

Michelle Lomas: But what it does that 60-second gap, which we're very open about to listeners, is it almost gives us permission to not have to talk about it in the content, we always make an effort to ask a question, you know, with our guests around how are you using affiliate marketing? Is it working for you? But you know, the rest of the 20, 30 minutes is their story and getting to the other pieces of their hustle and getting that kind of out.

Michelle Lomas: So I almost feel as though that commercial messaging again gives us that sort of permission and freedom.

Zane McIntyre: Yeah,

Michelle Lomas: To have a really great, comfortable conversation that doesn't feel like a big old advertorial for Commission Factory, which is probably why it's doing so well.

Zane McIntyre: Yeah, that's right. Exactly. And so that was my compromise and I was very happy with that.

Michelle Lomas: Yes. Yeah.

Michelle Lomas: So segue into how it's working, I pulled the latest numbers today.

Zane McIntyre: Okay, brilliant.

Michelle Lomas: To date, we've had 515 downloads, we've been active for a little bit over four weeks now, um, and four episodes, about 32% of those listens all up, have actually been via video. So a strategy and a tactic that we did very early on was to include video in the mix and include YouTube as another distribution channel, which is working quite well for us. We've had 13.5% clickthrough rate and 70% completion rate of episodes.

Zane McIntyre: It's not bad.

Michelle Lomas: It's very good.

Zane McIntyre: I'm very happy with that.

Michelle Lomas: And our top episode and our, all our favorites is with Rob Godwin at Lovehoney.

Michelle Lomas: No surprise

Zane McIntyre: there.

Michelle Lomas: No surprise.

Zane McIntyre: I still get comments.

Michelle Lomas: Yeah, the opener always gets people cracking up with that great review.

Zane McIntyre: Yes.

Michelle Lomas: But a very, very interesting episode as well from Rob in terms of how he's scaled his business. When, you know, in the sexual wellness industry, you are very, um, restricted by where and where you can advertise and what you can say.

Michelle Lomas: So that was actually unsurprising. So those are the stats, which are pretty good, but how's it actually working for you and the business?

Zane McIntyre: I think even like, let's say even with Rob's episode that he did, I feel that for our team as well, it, it was an opportunity for them to realise something that maybe they didn't know before, which was the struggle that, let's say adult toys and gifts and sexual wellness companies, they can't use traditional mediums for advertising.

Zane McIntyre: Cause there's just so many restrictions and censorship on that. Some of my staff even said, Oh, I didn't realise that they weren't able to actually use Facebook and all that sort of thing. Like, No, no, they can't. Yeah. And so it gives us a deeper understanding of our customers and the people we work with, but also by producing this podcast and, and the sort of marketing we can do around it, it's opening up more conversations with people as well.

Zane McIntyre: My goal now is to ensure that I have a level of correlation and causation because the amount of inbound leads we started getting when we launched increased, or, well, actually I saw them increase and what, when did this happen?

Zane McIntyre: And it's about when the podcast started. Well, I can't necessarily correlate this at this moment, but the timing is interesting. So we are seeing more interest in us, but it's also the conversations and engagement levels that we've received on social media as well, by sharing our podcasts, talking about it, talking about our guests. So much so that even this year compared to last year, we have had a 400% increase in engagement on our social media.

Michelle Lomas: Unbelievable.

Zane McIntyre: Yeah.

Michelle Lomas: Huge.

Zane McIntyre: Yeah. Massive.

Michelle Lomas: Massive.

Zane McIntyre: I thought it was a mistake, until we looked into it further like, no, no. That's right.

Michelle Lomas: Yeah. We did have a conversation before we launched. We had a very long meeting and we talked about all the different ways that this podcast had to be promoted to make it a success, and you guys jumped on board 100%. You've done all the best practice stuff. You've shared it with all your employees to share. You've got a space on the website, you know, using transcripts, thinking about SEO, all of those elements.

Michelle Lomas: So it's unsurprising, I think, that we've seen success so far that we've seen. What's the feedback been like internally and externally?

Zane McIntyre: The feedback, let's say internally has been great as well. We've had staff talking about it on our internal messaging, so we use teams, we used to be Slack, but now we use the Aldi of Slack, which is Teams.

Michelle Lomas: I've never heard that before. That's excellent.

Zane McIntyre: So we use that and we announce whenever a new podcast is out. So it's like, a new one dropped this morning, make sure you go listen. It's great to hear staff giving feedback as well, like that was really great and, and they also love that we have tried to keep, let's say the timing of each podcast, you know, relatively low. So it can just be, absorb this and then get on with your day. They loved it, and then, you know, I've had, um, people at the gym come up to me and say, oh, listened to one of your episodes, it was really good. And it's like was it the Lovehoney one? 

Michelle Lomas: Yeah, yeah.

Zane McIntyre: They are listening to it, you know, even, even have had my mom and my sister, oh, that was so much fun. They really enjoyed it too, so everyone is saying that they're enjoying it. And now even the podcast with only what? Four? Four episodes? Four or five.

Michelle Lomas: Four episodes. Yeah.

Zane McIntyre: Yeah. Four. We're even getting interest from people who are asking to be a guest.

Michelle Lomas: That's great.

Zane McIntyre: You know that that was unexpected at least so early. Anyways, I thought maybe season two, you know, we would start getting that request. All round it's been really positive, but what we've loved is that it follows the ethos of Commission Factory as well, where maybe we didn't have millions of dollars to pour into something, but we still produced something that was really polished and high quality. And that's kind of standard that I've always tried to employ with the company as well. I know they say, you know, it doesn't have to be fully fleshed out or finished and you can release something, it's just not my way. Something goes out it must be good.

Michelle Lomas: And it's a touch point, you know, it's if someone listens to that first episode and then they don't love it, they're not gonna come back. So you want that experience, whatever experience to be.

Zane McIntyre: Yeah, that's right.

Michelle Lomas: And it doesn't take that much effort, maybe a little touch more money.

Zane McIntyre: Mm-hmm.

Michelle Lomas: To employ a team that can edit and polish and does all of those things. But it makes such a difference, and I think what we've seen with this series as well is people go back. All of that content is evergreen, so it's not like social where, you know, you pop something in a feed and it's live and you see a huge spike and then you see very minimal activity post a couple of days.

Michelle Lomas: We continue to see those episodes listened to, you know, in some of our series, we've got some series that have been running for six years and those first season episodes are still listened to six years later. So it's always important, I think to choose exactly to your point. Put the effort in the beginning and make sure it's right, because people will continue to listen to that. We still get better.

 Zane McIntyre: That's right. That's right. We will improve things too as we go on, but you know, first impressions last.

Michelle Lomas: They do. They really do. And we've got some new formats as well coming out in the next few weeks, which I think was great that you guys were open to sort of utilising a lot of your existing content too.

Michelle Lomas: We sort of think about audio channels as just that, it's a channel so it doesn't always have to be recorded. So we're using some of the previous webinars that you guys have had posted up and edited into podcasts. We're yet to see the results.

Zane McIntyre: Yeah. Yeah.

Michelle Lomas: But we will soon find out.

Michelle Lomas: It's very exciting. It's all part of the journey. I guess a question for you is, you know, still early days for us, but it's been a long journey actually, from the first time we started talking in December. It's now August.

Zane McIntyre: Yeah.

Michelle Lomas: And we're four episodes in. What have you learned through this process?

Michelle Lomas: What have been some surprising tidbits?

Zane McIntyre: I've learned it is much harder to find the guests than we thought it would be.

Michelle Lomas: Yes.

Zane McIntyre: I think that if we had done this differently, I would definitely say have a list of maybe 30. Like, let's just write 'em all down. You know? Yeah. And, you know, people that we think would have an interesting story.

Zane McIntyre: We have some guests that just ignore our communications outright only because, you know, we're not looking to just talk to an account manager. We're trying to get to a founder or someone higher up, someone who has that, that dirt, you know? Because as founders, you've seen some things.

Zane McIntyre: You know, over, over the years.

Michelle Lomas: You've tried some things.

Zane McIntyre: That's right.

Michelle Lomas: A lot of things.

Zane McIntyre: Exactly. And weird stuff happens as well and those make interesting stories. I mean, I could write a book on the things that I've seen in the last 11 years in, in my growth story.

Michelle Lomas: Yeah.

Zane McIntyre: So I would definitely make sure that we, uh, had more.

Zane McIntyre: But we have also learned that there are things we know and there are things we don't know as well, and so this one, there were a lot of elements to a podcast that we really did not know and it's been great to have that guidance for us as well to sort of point us in the right direction too.

Zane McIntyre: Otherwise, we'd probably still be talking about it and not having actually produced an episode by now so, yeah.

Michelle Lomas: I think we definitely took it and went, all right, we're gonna run with this. Yes, let, let's do this. So if you are talking to a brand and a brand says, I love what you do, and I kind of wanna do it myself, what would you say to them?

Zane McIntyre: I would say, It's maybe not going to happen as fast as you think it might happen. Get your, um, ducks in a row, think about your story or the stories you want to tell, and what's the vision for it as well. There are a lot of podcasts out there, but some of them are so broad. So really think about, you know, is there an audience that you really want to tap into here?

Zane McIntyre: And for us, we decided ours was those who were growing, the entrepreneurs, people who have these stories. I guess this would be a plug for Ampel, but get some help if you haven't done it before. I truly believe that we wouldn't be where we are now if we didn't have some assistance. And also, you know, just the pure amount of content that we would've had to sort of come up with on our own was really daunting.

Zane McIntyre: And I'm thinking I already do 1,001 things in a day.

Michelle Lomas: Yes.

Zane McIntyre: Whilst, you know, at my level, you know, as CEO and co-founder. Normally I wouldn't be doing these sorts of things, but this is something I took a personal interest in and also wanted to make sure it was right. Yeah. Cause it was gonna have our name on it.

Zane McIntyre: And so yeah, that thinking, look, where am I going to fit this in? Then it's the usual thought process with my team at times is, you know, when there's something with public speaking or whatever, it's like just wheel Zane out again.

Michelle Lomas: I did, I, I know in the early days before we decided that I would actually be the host, we tried so hard to champion you to be the host, and you were like, no, I'm just, no, I'm not doing it. Well, come on. You'd be great. You were like, no, no, I'm not doing it.

Zane McIntyre: I mean, maybe I'll come on as a guest for our own podcast in the future as well and talk about my hustle story. But in terms of hosting, like I just don't know where I'm gonna find the time.

Zane McIntyre: And also, I mean, I was championing somebody in the company. Yes. You know, one of my team to host because I've been the face of the company for so long but I'm very much ready to sort of hand the torch to others in the company and let them have the spotlight. I've had it for 11 years, I'm ready to step outta the spotlight a little bit more now.

Michelle Lomas: Yes. Yeah. It is hard though. The host conversation was actually one of the hardest that we had. We had so much great conversation around the name, although actually, we did go back and forth about the name.

Zane McIntyre: Yeah, that's right. We did a little bit.

Michelle Lomas: Sometimes names click and other times it takes a while and I always say to brands, plan for that part of the process to be more than a couple of weeks even though you want it to be a couple of weeks 'cause I think like for us, we went back and forth quite a few times till we landed on this one.

Zane McIntyre: Yeah. Yeah.

Zane McIntyre: Well we wanted a pun because so much of our company is about jokes and puns and we share all of them on our internal socials all the time. It's just, once someone starts it's just, it goes on and on with people coming up with puns like I think cheese theme the other day.

Zane McIntyre: And so it was all cheese puns and it was just ridiculous. But yeah, that's why we thought, no, the name had to feel like us too.

Michelle Lomas: Everything had to feel like you.

Zane McIntyre: Yeah,

Michelle Lomas: We wanted to bring that fun energy that your company has, but coming back to, I guess coming back to the host conversation, we went back and forth on that one for so long as well, and I think we, we originally had someone in your company and then they, something happened and then they either, you know, had to take extended leave, and then it was like trying to find somebody else and would they have the right skill set. And it became quite a challenge, I think.

Zane McIntyre: Yeah.

Michelle Lomas: And so that I, I think that's also something maybe for brands to think about when they're thinking about a host.

Michelle Lomas: Don't always think that you have to have someone in your organisation, 'cause sometimes it just doesn't work.

Zane McIntyre: Yeah.

Michelle Lomas: It either doesn't work with the strategy or the requirements that you have for the host at that point in time, so yeah, that was, I think, definitely one of the other things that, um, we sort of went back and forth on for a while, didn't we?

Zane McIntyre: We did. We did. Yeah, and I guess that's something as well that didn't occur to us, in the beginning, that it didn't have to be someone in the company hosting it. We thought that's what you had to do. So that was one of our assumptions and just a lack of knowledge in this area as well.

Michelle Lomas: All right, well, thank you for sharing a bit of your story with us. Hopefully, the marketers listening have taken a little bit from that in terms of how to plan and think about what's it like to create a podcast. I'm excited to see where this goes. It's always interesting to see things like a 13.5% clickthrough rate on a podcast.

Michelle Lomas: Because most people oh, will they action it? Yeah, they do, they really do. Yeah. When they hear something and they like it and they action it, and I think we actually think, didn't you say you got your first actual signed-off contract from a client within the first four weeks?

Zane McIntyre: Yes. Yes, we did. We didn't actually realise that it happened until we looked at our marketing campaign attribution like, oh wait, there's a deal connected to this podcast.

Michelle Lomas: Amazing.

Zane McIntyre: That was our first bit of excitement, like, brilliant. Okay. We're a sixth of the way and making a pay for itself.

Michelle Lomas: It's a start. And it's a start and it's good. As like I say, the podcasts are a marathon, not a sprint, and so they take time to build and grow, but the stats are already starting to prove themselves.

Michelle Lomas: And some of the results in the halo effect you're seeing in social is just phenomenal. We're so excited.

Zane McIntyre: Yeah.

Michelle Lomas: We have some amazing guests coming up.

Zane McIntyre: We do, we do. The best is yet to come.

Michelle Lomas: The best is 100% yet to come, and hopefully will continue for years to come. So thank you, Zane. Thanks for having us.

Michelle Lomas: Thanks for trusting in Ampel too and me as the host.

Zane McIntyre: Not a problem.

Michelle Lomas: Appreciate it.

Zane McIntyre: It's been a wonderful journey so far.

Michelle Lomas: Yeah, and it will continue to be. Yay.