Turn Influencers into Revenue Machines: Yash Chavan's Proven Strategy | Founder of Saral

Yash Chavan, founder and CEO of Saral, breaks down a smarter way to approach influencer marketing and why brands are shifting from paid media to earned media.

This is a must-listen for e-commerce brands looking to scale influencer partnerships as he explores:

• The pyramid approach to influencer marketing and how it helps brands scale effectively
• Why seeding products to influencers is the best way to find top-performing creators
• The power of earned media and why brands are moving away from paid ads
• Why Instagram Stories are one of the most effective content types for influencers
• How to identify the ideal creator persona for your brand
• Why revenue should be seen as a side effect of strong influencer relationships
• How brands can use influencer feedback to improve products and marketing

If you’re looking to turn influencers into affiliates, ambassadors, and long-term partners, this episode is packed with insights! 

Brands and products mentioned during this episode:

• Araku coffee
• Relentless by Tim Grover
• Ridge
• Hexclad
• Nooe
• Bacha Coffee

Timeline:

00:00
Introduction to Influencer Marketing and Saral

02:15
The Genesis of Saral: Simplifying Influencer Marketing

04:15
Understanding the Influencer Marketing Landscape

05:51
Successful Strategies in Influencer Marketing

09:11
The Pyramid Approach to Influencer Engagement

10:36
Selecting the Right Influencers for Your Brand

12:34
The Importance of Feedback from Influencers

15:50
Content Types and Their Effectiveness

18:15
Comparing Influencer Platforms: TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube

22:40
Maximizing Influencer Relationships

30:25
Understanding Influencer Motivations

37:29
Key Performance Indicators in Influencer Marketing

42:09
Building a Brand from Scratch with Influencers

45:21
Speed Round Insights

Transcript

TRANSCRIPT

Dan (00:02)

Welcome to the Shopify happy hour. On this show, you'll hear from Shopify founders, operators, and experts on growth marketing strategies, lessons learned from the trenches, and other nuggets of e-commerce wisdom shared over a different drink each episode. Today, I'd like to welcome Yash Chavan, founder and CEO of Saral, which claims to be the simplest and fastest way for brands to get started with influencer marketing, which is a hot topic for all e-commerce brands. So, Yash, welcome.

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (00:31)

Yeah, I'm excited to be here and share all the influencer marketing secret sauce with everybody because I believe it's super important to build your own influencer communities and I can't wait to dive deep.

Dan (00:43)

I love it. love it. Anything marketing related, I'm all about nerding out on an influencer is like a special level of nerd because there's so many different nuances. So super excited to have you on. But let's get things started. So what are what are you drinking today?

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (00:46)

Yeah.

Yep.

I'm drinking a nice black americano coffee. Keep me alert. Yeah, that's my go-to coffee. How about you?

Dan (01:06)

Good stuff. So I'm drinking coffee as well. So.

I definitely like Americanos. What I usually do at home is, so I've got different kind of more exotic coffees, but my go-to on the daily is Charleston coffee roasters. So Charleston is a few hours from where we are, which is Wilmington, North Carolina. Charleston is a few hours away and they're in Costco. So it's sort of like a bulk purchase. That's just good for an everyday organic dark roast coffee. And it's solid. It's nothing like the most exotic coffee in the world, but for a daily.

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (01:23)

huh.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah?

Dan (01:40)

every day, kind of get

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (01:41)

Yeah.

Dan (01:42)

you going, tastes good, works great in a French press, that's my go-to.

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (01:45)

Yeah,

I like it. Have you heard of this brand called Araku? A-R-A-K-U? I think they're a...

Dan (01:49)

I've not.

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (01:52)

Parisian brand they opened up here in India a few years ago. That's the coffee I'm drinking. They have some really good coffee. They manufacture here in the south of India. So really good, really good. They have some plantations there. So yeah, it's really good coffee and they have this whole giving back thing. So they give back to the farmers and their families and so on. always love when a brand has a mission like that. yeah.

Dan (02:15)

Fantastic, I'm have to see

if there's any way to get that over here in the US. Okay, nice, I will definitely check that out. And sounds like you've got a long day ahead, so coffee is the right move right now. So let's make sure we're both caffeinated for this, because there's gonna be a lot to run through. So let's kick things off. So you founded and run an influencer marketing platform called Saral. Why did you start it?

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (02:18)

I think you can, yeah, you can.

Yeah.

done. Yes.

Correct.

I started because I was running a boutique agency where we built influencer programs for brands and we were doing it all in.

very ad hoc ways like it was in Notion and Trello boards and spreadsheets and all these influencers, you're very successful at scaling programs to 500 at times, even 1000 influencers promoting brands actively. But then it was all done in this weird manual sort of way. And then we had a bunch of automations running in the background using Zapier and so on. we decided, hey, there has to be something that streamline this streamlines this otherwise I can't scale the agency beyond a certain point. Turns out there was nothing that really fit the type of model that

we were operating under and then it's like okay you know what let's build something because there is scope here because our system works our SOPs work but there's no like scalable way to do this right so it's not very easy for a brand to do what we're doing so that's why we built Saral to give brands an easy way to build their own influencer communities

Dan (03:37)

Fantastic, and what does Sir Al stand for or mean by the name?

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (03:40)

Yeah, good question. Saral actually in Sanskrit means, which is an old ancient Indian language, it means simple. It's a direct translation to that. So that's kind of our ethos because we, when I was at the agency, ran, we hopped on calls and demos and we tried a lot of other platforms, but they were very complicated, hard to onboard, hard to train the team on them. And they kept changing things. The UX was not good. So we wanted something that was simple at its core. So that's what

That's what we started off with, and then that's the idea that we preserve in the name as well.

Dan (04:15)

love it.

Tech platforms can be complicated when they're built to manage different marketing strategies like influencer marketing, which is a very complicated channel because it's still a little bit wild west out there. There's influencers that...

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (04:26)

Yeah.

Dan (04:33)

are very high quality. They've got a really nice following and they're used to working with brands and they charge reasonable pricing. And then you've got other influencers who will charge 10 times what they should be. they're, know, some, you know, a lot of times influencers will get product and they'll never do anything with it. So it's a little bit wild west out there. So I love that you are working to simplify a complicated channel. So what are you seeing? So you've been in the influencer marketing game for a while and now you've got this platform. So you've got insight into what lots of different

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (04:42)

Yeah.

Yep.

Dan (05:03)

brands are doing. So what are you seeing brands do that the ones that are successful with influencer marketing, what are they doing differently than those who are just doing okay or have tried it and have not succeeded?

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (05:04)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, good question. one of the things we maybe

Take a step back and on a macro level, a lot of brands are looking to move away from or at least reduce their dependency on paid media channels. So as you know, Facebook ads, there's always, know, it's very, sometimes it's working, it's working, it's really working, but it's not working. The raw ass dishes isn't there, the performance isn't there, and you're trying different things to optimize it. And if you as a business rely on paying always to get customers, you're in a tough spot, especially if it's a channel like Facebook, it's big tech, anything can happen. TikTok can get banned in a year from now.

You don't know if you're reliant on ads a lot of fans are realizing this that hey, I need some other channel I need to go from paid media to earned and owned media and influencers and owned media. We call it not just owning your

group or your community of influencers, but you have to hedge against paid media and the fluctuations of all these channels, by building your own community and by owning Mindshare in your customer base, right? You have to be, you're a coffee company, you can't always just show and add and sell. You have to be something unique. You have to show up. You have to get mentioned on a podcast and then something happens and you build a brand, right? Because you now have Mindshare, right? So that's what on the macro level brands are looking to do is to get

Mindshare and to build more owned channels and influencers I think are a great way to do that. Now I'll answer your actual questions question tactically. Tactically what brands are doing is what we call this pyramid strategy of influencers so not a pyramid scheme but then

What you have is three layers to the pyramid. the bottom of the pyramid, there is this almost like a very high volume seeding approach. So you're seeding out 100, 200 influencers every month, depending on the brand. So you're sending all these products out. Some of those people end up posting. So whoever likes the product really well, they end up posting about it. Whoever posts, they would then elevate them into the second layer of the pyramid, which is usually some sort of a ambassador affiliate program where they have some commissions going on, their audience

gets a discount, they get some sort of perks like they get some swag or they get recurring products every month if it's a supplement or something like that. That's the middle layer which is more embedded, more ambassador relationships. And then the beautiful thing that happens is...

in three, four months of running your affiliate ambassador program, what you would find is 80 to 90 % of your influencers don't really drive that much revenue, but your top 10 to 20 % make up for a bulk of your revenue. So what you do then is you take that top 10 % and then elevate them to the tip of the pyramid, which can be any sort of custom partnerships, can be paid deals, can be equity deals, can be like product collaborations, can even be something simple like higher commission percentage.

everybody else gets a 20%, you get a 45 % at that top level. So this is kind of the structure that a lot of brands are following and a lot of successful brands are actually building their communities like this because it then becomes this self-fulfilling ecosystem almost of people flowing in at the base of the pyramid with the seeding program and elevating themselves into affiliates and then elevating themselves from there into paid creators. And this also limits downside at every step because at the base you're only

because a lot of brands complain that, hey, I can't, I paid.

10 influencers and none of them got us any sales. This flips it on its head because you're only losing your cost of goods when you're seeding, right? You're only giving up your commissions. So you're only paying in the middle layer when they're making sales for you. And then whoever makes sales, whoever has proven themselves already, only then you're taking and elevating to a more paid or some sort of a custom bespoke partnership. So you're reducing downside every step of the way, playing it really smartly. And this is the typical model that I'm seeing.

most of our brands are doing right now.

Dan (09:11)

that's a very different strategy than what we hear when we speak with founders and they say influencer marketing doesn't work. I often will have follow up questions and say, okay, cool, well, why don't you tell me about this? What do you do you try for influencer marketing? And every time, I can't think of any exceptions, the story is, we sent, you we paid an influencer $1,000 and we sent them some product and they posted once and we didn't make any sales off of it.

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (09:21)

Yep.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Hmm. Yeah.

Dan (09:40)

And my response is, you you put all your eggs in one basket and there's so many things that determine whether an influencer brand relationship or partnership is going to work. There's audience size, there's audience fit, there's the type of content, there's the messaging, there's so many different things. And if you just go with one influencer, it's really hard to make that work. Can you get lucky? Sure. But repeating that time and time again, it's going to be really hard. So I like the pyramid approach because you're able to

kind of test wide and then allow the, you know, allow the best performers to rise to the top. Are you seeing that brands, I guess, how can brand owners, because the other thing that we often hear is from brand owners is, you know, they're, they're nervous to send hundreds of products out to people and then have nothing happen. So what suggestions or advice do you have to combat that that would allow brands to have some

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (10:10)

Yes.

correct.

.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Dan (10:36)

assurance that the people they're sending their products to for the product product seeding part of the pyramid that those people or at least enough of them are going to post content and make it worthwhile.

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (10:37)

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, a lot of them.

I think it comes down to selecting the right influencers. If you're sending your, let's say, let's take an example, right? If you're a, let's say you're a vegan supplement brand, right? Don't go after fitness influencers. A lot of brands make this mistake is they just go super broad with their targeting. So they're just like, find the first 10 bodybuilders that they find on Instagram and DM them and send them product. Like, well, maybe they're not vegan. Maybe they're not aligned with your values. Maybe they don't like your product. Maybe they get bloating or something like, you know,

can be all of these variables. So really first thing hone in on what I call your ICP or ideal creator persona, like dive into on a mission level who's aligned with you on a product level who's already using products like yours, who's already fitting your actual customer persona, like who are these people, like make a crystallize that on a spreadsheet and then go out and find these people and then if you send 100 product to your ICP,

It's very hard. I've never seen people not posting about it. Like it's just never happened across. We work with over 250 brands. We have the data and we have worked with probably spoken to thousands of brands at this stage. Nobody has said, hey, I found the perfect influencers and sent them product and they never posted about us. It never happens unless your product sucks.

That's a different conversation though. So if you have the right product, you have product market fit, you have scaled to a million or so in revenue, you have proven out one paid media channel, it's a good time to diversify and then test something like this because you find the right creators and they are aligned with your brand and your product, they are going to post about you. That's what they do. They like posting content. So if your product gives them an excuse to make content, they're going to make content about you.

Dan (12:34)

That's great. I like what you said about sending product out to lots of influencers and if they don't post that it means something about the product.

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (12:43)

Yes.

Dan (12:44)

We, know, influencer marketing for me, there's a lot of different benefits to it for e-commerce brands, right? One, you can get content. Two, you can get awareness. Three, you can get conversions if the influencer has enough followers and the messaging is right. But another thing that I think a lot of people don't necessarily think about when they're working with influencers is product and brand feedback. And influencers, know, they're depending on the level of who they are, they're mini or like macro,

in their niche and they're perfect for getting feedback from products. So let's take that example of a vegan protein supplement. If you're sending that to vegan bodybuilders who that's what they do all day every day, they're posting content and they're in the gym working out and they're living the vegan lifestyle and they're testing lots of different supplements. And if they're not posting or like,

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (13:23)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Dan (13:38)

That's when you need as a brand owner, need to say, okay, we sent this product out to 50 people who were the perfect fit and we didn't get much back. When you get much return, let's find out why. And it can be a little bit, the ego gets in the way for people, for all of us, right? And you wanna think that what you created is the best thing in the world. But if you're just getting started and you're getting product out to influencers, ask them for feedback on everything. Like, what can we do to make it better? What do you think about the packaging? How are we positioned to,

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (13:48)

correct.

Hmm. Yeah.

Yep.

Dan (14:08)

compared to other brands that you like. How can we do things differently or better than what you're seeing in the marketplace? And I think that can be more valuable than anything else because product dev and if you hear the right feedback and you actually make changes to your product or your brand based on that and you're hearing consistently that you need to make a certain change, if you do that, all of sudden, sales can go through the roof because now you know what the market is looking for. yeah, that's it.

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (14:09)

Yeah.

Yeah.

implemented.

Yeah, correct. Yeah. 100%. And to your

point, just to maybe illustrate that a little bit more, if someone's an influencer, like they have, let's say, even 15,000 followers, they know what resonates with their audience. They know how to get attention. They know what to say, what people like, what people dislike. They have a...

almost an internal sense of these things. So if you're sending them product and they're giving you feedback, you should listen to that with more weight because their feedback almost echoes the feedback of the following that they've gathered. They almost say things and you'd be lucky if they give you feedback because there's another thing called de-influencing where if an influencer gets a product and they don't like it, they post about it and they say they don't like it. So if they don't like your product, you don't even want them to post about you. You want them to give feedback.

give you feedback. So after a few follow ups, if they're not posting, just ask them for for candid feedback and see how it goes. You'd be surprised to learn some lessons.

Dan (15:32)

I love it. Yeah, I think in any relationship and any partnership, there's always things to give and always things to get. And if you're working with an influencer and they are not posting, there's probably a reason why, right? And it could be the product, it could be the brand, whatever it is, figure out what that is and use that to move your business forward.

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (15:42)

Yep.

Correct.

Dan (15:50)

Okay, so in terms of content, I know you're focusing on the tech and the strategy and matching influencers to brands, but I'm also sure that you're seeing lots of different types of content that is flowing through the platform. So do you see any specific types of content that is working well or not working well right now?

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (16:01)

Mm-hmm.

really depends on the brand and what their vibe is. If I were to, one of the answers that surprises people that I can share here is stories do really well for that middle layer of your influencer affiliates because you can add a link in your stories which you cannot necessarily add in your on your reels or on your TikToks. You have to add it.

in your stories. Stories do surprisingly well even if they disappear in 24 hours. Stories are usually only shown to followers that are the most engaged that are really following that influencer. So you're really getting like the top maybe 10 or 15 percent of their most true engaged follower base and you're getting an asset that's clickable so there's a direct click through over to your website. Stories work surprisingly well as an asset class of content plus they're

Usually if you're paying influencers stories are surprisingly also the cheapest to buy so you could get three or five stories for the price of one reel and stories are really good. So we usually recommend brands actually tell their influencers hey all I need from you is a story. It's easy to post a story from the influencers side. They receive a free product. They snap a picture or they record like a quick 30 second. Hey just got this product. Tried it. It's great. You should get it. Here's my link.

very quick, 30 seconds to a minute. They don't have to put in that much effort because they just got a free product and then they work surprisingly well for brands. think it's a stories are a real win-win. So if you're new and getting started, I recommend focusing on on stories instead of paying a lot for reels or TikToks or YouTube videos. And I can dive into which platform to go after and which pros and cons of each. But Instagram stories is a really safe bet when you're getting started.

Dan (17:57)

love that easy for influencers to create. They charge less for that because they are, they're limited, right? They're gone in 24 hours. So they don't have to put as much work into the aesthetic to make sure it's on brand for what they're doing. They charge less for it and.

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (18:05)

Yep. Yep.

Correct. Yep.

Dan (18:15)

Yeah, it's the super loyal followers of that influencer watching those stories. So I love that tip. Yes, let's go to what you were talking about. So different platforms. There's TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, lots of different places and platforms for brands to connect with influencers. And there's a lot more than those three. What are you, how would you kind of compare, I guess, those three platforms? And what are you seeing? Are you seeing really nice results across anywhere

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (18:31)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Dan (18:45)

else besides those?

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (18:46)

Yeah, good

question. think fundamentally again, I could give one platform is like, hey, here's the best. Cause everybody expects like, yeah, go with Instagram, like go to TikTok. Everybody expects that. But I think it's really about where is your audience? Like if you're selling to young college going girls, like probably on TikTok, but if you're selling to moms, they're probably on Pinterest more than any three of these platforms. You really have to hone in on.

again, who your ideal creator persona is because, and that'll come from who your actual ideal customer persona is. And then once you understand your customers, a lot of this becomes clear and that's the platform you should focus on. But I can give you the pros and cons of each because even if your audience is on TikTok, you should know the downsides and the upsides. So the way I position it is TikTok and YouTube are like two ends of a spectrum and Instagram somewhere in the middle. So TikTok is super...

short content, very click-baity, very like attention grabbing and so on and very like high volatility. So it can, it's like cryptocurrency. Like it can, it can get you a million views or it can get 10 views, right? It's just like up and down. Like anything can happen. Like sometimes we see, we're evaluating influencers with our brands and there we are on TikTok and we see like, hey, they have 3000 views, 5,000 views, 4.5 thousand views, 1.1 million views.

2 million views, 4,000 views, 3,000 views. that's how it goes on Instagram. On the other hand, if you go evaluate a YouTube creator, if they're good, the views are fairly consistent depending on the video. it's like if they get a hundred K views on average, they are going to get somewhere around a hundred K views, hopefully increasing over time with a more higher subscriber base and so on. But YouTube's very stable. TikTok's very short term. It's like you get a spike for a day or so, but then nobody sees your content again. Like if you go viral.

you go viral for a day or two, like that content just keeps working and then it stops. Like nobody sees that again. There's so many trends. There's like seven trends a week on TikTok. everybody, there's a new trend every day, but then it dies down just as quick. YouTube is more evergreen. It's kind of like SEO, right? Cause if you're, let's say you're, let's stick to the same example. If your vegan protein supplement is featured in a day in my life as a vegan bodybuilder video, like that's...

Like that's evergreen content. That's that content is going to be watched now. That's content is going to be watched five years from now, 10 years from now even. Right. So that content is always going to be there. Your product is always going to be there. YouTube, it's very hard to get a spike off of someone. But you get a steady trickle. Like almost we've seen content that's been performing for years for some of our brands. Like literally two years in, you're working with the creator. A two year old video is just getting us consistent customers. That never happens on TikTok.

And so those are sort of like the yin and the yang of the space and then Instagram somewhere in the middle, maybe leaning a little bit more towards the TikTok side where stories, like I said, are really good assets. Reels are really good, can last for at least a week if done right. So reels are really nice. And then Instagram is just generally a very versatile platform. think TikTok especially leans one way or the other. YouTube is also more focused, more like long form and so on. So you have a more focused audience.

Instagram is more evergreen. Like you can probably get any every everyone's on Instagram. It's kind of like Facebook in, you know, 2012, like everyone's on there. Right. So Instagram is generally a very safe place to start your program. So no matter who's on the brand, unless they're very specifically targeting TikTok or YouTube creators for ICP reasons, we recommend, go with Instagram, see where your audience is leaning and then pick either one of TikTok or YouTube to invest as your secondary channel. So that's the, those are some of the pros and the cons and the

where these platforms are different.

Dan (22:40)

love the breakdown. After brands are working with influencers on any of these platforms, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or any others, how are you seeing them?

get as much value as possible from those influencer relationships, whether it's leveraging content or doing whitelisting, like what else are they doing so that once they have sent product and then they're working with those influencers on a paid or an affiliate basis, what else are they doing? How are they leveraging those relationships to succeed?

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (23:10)

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. One of the best ways to get the most value is make sure everyone's proving themselves before you're taking a bet on them. So make sure you have a version of this ascension, seeding pyramid seeding, affiliate ambassador, paid partnership sort of pyramid model going on. So your bases are covered, like you're taking the least risk possible for the highest upside. So that's fundamentally that. Second, do as much as possible with the creator. If you know somebody's on an

affiliate tier and they're just crushing it for you. Their audience loves you and the comments are positive. We've seen brands do giveaways. We've seen brands do collaborative products like with the creators branding on them. Kind of like what on a larger scale, what Hexclad is doing with Gordon Ramsay, what Ridge.com is doing with MKBHD, the tech YouTuber, right? So do such like more complex, more involved deals or do simple giveaways. Give them a higher commission. Get their content.

for whitelisted access and run ads to their content. Usually we've seen ads that are even less polished than your typical UGC content. If they're done by an influencer who actually understands their audience, resonate better as ad creative and get a higher performance even on your paid media. So that's like one, go all in on your influencer and leverage different ways of collaborating with them. That's one. Two, take the content and don't just whitelist it.

Add it to your website. Add it to your website. Re-repost it. Add it to your story. Give a shout out to the creator. Some of our, like I think one of our brand did this. They took the content and they had three SKUs and whoever had an abandoned cart, they would retarget them with an email flow with the creator content embedded. Like, hey, here's what other people are saying about this product that you just left in your cart. And then it's just implied social proof. Well, if that famous person's using it.

I better go buy that product. Plus I get a 10 % off. Why not? So leveraging it across not just on ads, but on your website for improved conversions, but in your email campaigns, everywhere else on your social, your own organic social media, can always repost the content. Leverage it as much as possible and repurpose it intelligently to get the most out of these relationships.

Dan (25:30)

Fantastic. Yeah, I think successful influencer relationships when influencers get the product and create the content. The work is kind of just starting then right because yeah, there's a lot of effort between, you know, sourcing creators or influencers negotiating with them getting product to them making sure they understand any sort of brand guidelines. If there's any scripts or guidelines for the content making sure they have that.

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (25:41)

Yes, correct.

Yep. Yep.

Dan (26:00)

But once they create that, then the work isn't done, right? It's repurposing that content and squeezing as much out of that relationship as possible so that you can maximize the results because the more value you can get from those influencers means that you can onboard more influencers, you can pay bigger and better influencers because you're getting more value out of it. It's almost like with Facebook ads, if you get a higher ROAS, you can push more budget into the platform. So with influencers, and typically you can get a higher

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (26:21)

Yep.

Dan (26:30)

as if you're selling higher price products, if you're increasing your AOV through bundling and upselling. So it benefits everybody with influencers if you can get more value out of those relationships because then you can just expand your influencer marketing program even more.

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (26:40)

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I agree.

think that's to that point also. That's one of my problems with gifting or seeding as a strategy. A lot of brands say things like, we just want to gift some product. We just want to build a seeding program. And I'm like,

Why would you build an entire seeding program, go through all of that. If your seeding program has to be successful, you have to make sure ICP is on point, make sure outreach emails are on point. You're finding the right creators consistently every single week, sending them product, making sure they receive it, follow up with them for post, track their posts and so on, only for you to stop after you get the first piece of content. Like that doesn't make sense. That's like stopping after they just keep doing more with them. Like, hey, elevate them into affiliate or send them another product, seed more, one more product.

get we have we actually show this metric. It was so important to me that we used to track this at the agency. So I just put it in the platform. We track show this metric called PPI or posts per influencer. So hey, maximize that like why is your if your PPI is less than two, like got work to do like just make sure that your creators are posting again and again, because otherwise then you're consistently behind this treadmill of acquiring more and more influencers and then they just post once and they leave again.

Kind of like customers also, why would you want customers who just buy from you once and then never talk about you or buy from you again or look in your direction again? I would rather take a thousand customers who just keep buying from me every single week than a thousand customers every week who just buy once and then never hear from us again. So I think even from an influencer perspective, the retention and the activation game is much more critical after a point once you have enough influencers.

than the acquisition of creators. So yeah, totally agree with that.

Dan (28:27)

are you seeing brands do to increase the PPI?

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (28:32)

Just very good relationship building. You need to stay on top of all of your like to know their birthdays, hop on calls with them, make sure that you're sending them like if you're sending a free product, for example, make sure it's packaged well, maybe send a QR code in there with like a video from the founder. It can be like a common video that you send to everyone, but make sure it's as personalized as possible. Make sure you're maybe even add a personal note for the creator like, really happy to be working with you, something like anything that can make their day.

is a good way to make a really good first impression. And when you do that, then they just like your brand. A first impression is created and then they can keep posting about you. then let's say you're again to increase PPI again, make sure you keep going back to the same point, but then make sure you're building that ascension model because at every step of the way, not only is your own risk reduced, they have an incentive to do more for you. If you're just upfront with them like, hey, I'm not seeding with a no strings attached mindset.

I'm seething with because I want to make you an ambassador and I want to do a custom deal with you in six months from now. So you post about us. I'm going to reward that behavior by giving you affiliate commissions. You keep posting about us. I'm going to reward that behavior by giving you affiliate payouts and giving your audience a discount that's that they only get if they buy from you. And if you keep doing that over the three months, I'm going to do a custom deal with you. Like if you show them that model that some brands do a really good job of first form.

is really again, fitness supplements. First form does a really good job where they have like three tiers of their program. It's on their website. They just show here, here's where you get in. Here's where you go next. Here's what you go, where you go after that. And then here's everything you get, right? And then it gives them incentives to keep working and posting about the brand. So like just have all of this in order. It's very simple. It's just incentive creation. And once you do that, they just keep, it just naturally happens if you have the right incentives. So yeah.

Dan (30:25)

think that there are brands and marketers out there that forget that influencers are people. and, know, influencers are, they can be unique, right? Because they're on social media a ton more than the average person throughout the day. And they're getting constant dopamine hits every time they open up their platform of choice. So because of that, you know, there are some unique attributes with influencers, but brands that, you know, if you understand

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (30:32)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Dan (30:56)

what an influencer's motivation is and what their incentive is, they want a few things, right? They want to grow their audience.

They want to generate revenue and they want to partner with brands that they believe in that will help improve their reputation. So, you know, and then there's all sorts of other stuff. Some, some, you know, some influencers want free products and influencers want shout outs. but for brands that can understand the incentive of those influencers and then work with them to make it a win-win relationship. Those are the ones that are going to do the best as opposed to brands that, you know, just send mass market products out to thousands of

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (31:32)

Yeah.

Dan (31:32)

of

people with no note from the founder and just send the product that's not packaged well, it's gonna fall flat. what's great about everything you're talking about, it's not that different than growing a D to C brand where, yeah, you wanna have good product packaging for your customers. Ideally, you wanna have a note or some type of message from the founder thanking them. You wanna make it personal. You wanna match the customer's incentives and make sure that you are aligning with their aspirations

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (31:33)

Correct. Yeah.

Yeah.

click yeah

Dan (32:02)

view of themselves. So there's a lot of similarities with Influencer and just grown a D2C brand and how to treat customers. One thing you mentioned that I think is great is PPI, Postpart Influencer. What other KPIs are important for brands to track when they're doing Influencer marketing?

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (32:04)

Yep.

Correct.

Hmm.

Yeah, good question. We get this a lot and it depends on the stage that you're in. A lot of brands make the mistake again, like you said, of treating, because I think we're all spoiled in the DTC world because everyone almost comes from a performance marketing background. Like the first channel you would ever run is like a Facebook ad. Like there's no other channel. You would just run Facebook ads to get your first customers, right? Everyone's biased towards this having this

performance mindset to things like, I an ad for three days. If it doesn't work, I'm going to shut it off. Right. That same mindset does not work with influencers because an influencer might have to post five times about you for their audience to actually buy. Cause every post is like a step in that awareness journey. We're like post one, they're just hearing about you. They're still skeptical. Post two, they're okay. They're like, okay, I see this brand all the time. Post three, they're like, huh, they know what they're talking about. I'm going to save this post and revisit.

post four, post five is when they're actually buying, right? So like this whole journey happens. If you're judging somebody in like month one of them being in your program, like you're already throwing the people part out of the window. You're not understanding the influencer. You're not understanding your customers because you come from a performance mindset. So one of the things that we have to re or like unprogram in our customers is like, hey, if you're a performance marketer, just

Drop that when you're thinking about influencers. Like this is a people game, this is building a community, this is creating that halo effect where hundreds of people talk about you and the conversions will happen eventually. So the KPI that you track should not be revenue. A lot of brands come in and they're like, hey, I just want to make $100,000 with my affiliate program. And I always tell my customers, revenue is a side effect. You cannot optimize for revenue.

I don't think that ever happens. You can optimize for other things and the revenue happens as a result, right? It's a symptom. It's not the root cause. So what are the root KPIs to look at? So I would split it into maybe three phases, kind of like aligned with the pyramid. First phase, you're mostly tracking your input metrics. So your KPI should be how many products are we seeing every month? How many, even at a higher level, how many influencers are we finding every week? How many emails are we sending? How many DMs are we doing?

How many products are we seeing and so on. So input metrics, like are you doing enough volume? Because one of the things that brands again get wrong is they do very little volume. They would send like a 10 or 15 products and they would think that, this is going to change my brand. It's never going to happen. You have to send at least 50 products every single month, right? For it to create something meaningful. And you cannot spend $50 on Facebook ads and expect it to change your business. Similarly, you have to do enough volume, even with influencers.

So you do that track your input metrics that stage one. Stage two is what I would call pre-revenue or early signs. So I would say track things like what's our post rate? If I'm seeding a hundred products, how many people are actually posting? Let's try to optimize that because if you optimize that, your post rate is 20%, like don't forget about revenue, like fix that bottleneck. If you could literally, if you could change some things, like change, customize your unboxing, maybe change who you're reaching out to.

you can double your post rate. That will double the number of posts you get, which can then potentially double revenue as well. So if you focus on revenue, it's never gonna happen. Focus on this metric. So what's our post rate from sending free product? Then what's our PPI? Once the first post happens, what's our PPI from there? If they post once, do they post the second time? Do they post the third time? And where is the drop off happening? And track this cohort wise. So in Serral, we have this thing called lists. So you would segment your influencers into different lists. Say for example,

Vegan moms and then vegan bodybuilders, vegan crossfit athletes, vegan bikers, right? Like all of these. And some of them are gonna resonate with your product more, which means they're gonna post about you more. So segment all of your KPIs, buy your lists, and then say, hey, okay, vegan moms tend to post about us more than bodybuilders, but I actually thought like my product was for bodybuilders, but no, maybe like casual vegan moms find it difficult to have.

you know, breakfast and everything. So maybe we should focus, go all in on that niche and discover more there. So stuff like that to track your these like almost pre-revenue KPIs and then segment them by list to optimize. So that's that. And then finally, obviously track revenue and then other KPIs like how many posts are people, are we getting overall? Are we getting at least one post a day? That's a really good metric. Are you getting one post a day? Because if you're getting one post a day, level of brand awareness in your market is just going to increase.

And even if your influencer program does not drive direct attributable revenue, it's going to give you enough content which you can reuse for your ads and then your ads perform better and more people, awareness is more so more people are going to search about your brand. They're more likely to pick up your product when they're at a Walmart nearby, right? They're more likely to search Google search, click on the Google ad and buy from the Google ad. So the attribution goes to the Google ad, but then the demand was driven by the creators.

And so get to get to one post today and then eventually start tracking some revenue as well. So that's how I would split all the KPIs and split by segment and then finally look at revenue.

Dan (37:29)

Nice, I like that you're talking about those kind of lagging indicators of revenue because we've been, know, as marketers, I think we've been spoiled over the past decade because there's so many metrics we can track and we've been living in this performance world where, you know, for years you put a dollar in the Facebook machine and then you get three or $4 back, but things have gotten more complicated and challenging over the past couple of years. And I think a lot of people have forgotten about awareness and about brands.

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (37:33)

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yup.

Top of funnel. Yeah.

Dan (37:59)

And brand matters, right? It

matters how people are thinking about your business. It matters how many people are talking about that because the more you can increase your brand awareness, the more, let's say, free traffic you're gonna get in terms of organic social posting, engagement on content, word of mouth referrals that are really hard to track if somebody's at a party and, you know, they just lost some weight and they're feeling good and somebody says, hey, what have you been doing? I've been taking this new...

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (38:13)

Yes.

Yep. Hehe. Yeah.

Dan (38:28)

I've been working out a bunch and I'm taking this new vegan bodybuilding supplement. what's it called? And you know, those conversations are hard to track, but they happen every day. And it's important to, you know, I think as marketers and brand owners and everybody else in the e-commerce ecosystem to remember that brand is important. And it's not just about last click attribution and trying to get somebody on an offer for buy now for 30 % off in the next 24 hours. Otherwise, you know, you can never buy this product again.

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (38:31)

Yep. Yep. Yes.

correct.

Yeah. Yep. Correct.

Yeah. It's gone forever.

Yeah. Yup. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan (38:56)

Yeah, there's a lot more to it than that. you mentioned post rate. What

is a target post rate that brands should be shooting for?

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (39:05)

Usually a brand that's doing the volume that we would get do once at all, they tend to get anywhere between 40 to 60 percent post rate. So that's a healthy, healthy measure. We have some brands that have 90 percent post rate, but their ICP is really clear. They're just like a really purest type of a brand that just strikes, that just stands out from the noise. But typical brands would get a 40 to 60 percent post rate from their influencers.

Dan (39:32)

Gotcha, okay, so let's take an example of a brand where if they are sending product out, let's say to 100 influencers, you're saying a good post rate would be 40 to 60 of those influencers will post at least one time, right? And then can you talk me through a typical pyramid from there? So 40 to 60 people post, then how many move to the next ascension level?

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (39:39)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. We'll post. Correct. Correct.

Yeah.

Yeah,

let's let's take an average, let's say 50 people post right off of your brand about your brand. That's hopefully every month. If you're sending 100 products a month, you're getting 50 posts or 50 stories. Usually typically a bulk of these are stories right for the first time. So you get 50 stories. You can depends on the brand really, but you can choose to turn all of these into ambassadors or affiliates because they've posted they've expressed interest if you make all of them.

affiliates, maybe they post again, maybe they post a reel or a YouTube video, something like that. So some brands choose to do that. Some brands who are more particular about the type of content they want out there, they would filter from here as well. So they would, let's say, have another 50 % reduction from here saying, hey, I'm going to take the 25 people who created the best content and turn them into ambassadors for us. So they take that 25, take that like half of that. So let's say 25 influencers and they're getting 25 new ambassadors every month.

And those 25 is where they focus for that PPI metric. So like, hey, all these 25 have posted once, let's get them posting again. And usually when you make them an affiliate, a bulk of like 90 % or more of them tend to post again. So then now you have, let's say 20 posts a month coming in from this. So now you see this is almost like an engine that's created. Now you have 20 posts a month here that are running. Now you reach out to see the 100 more creators next month. And then those...

become 20. So now you have 40 posts a month. Now you're at that one post a day metric. So now you've hit that and then now you do another 100 and now you have 60 posts that are coming in. Obviously there's some attrition, some people fall off. So let's just say you're again at that 50, 55 posts per month that are happening. And once you have that, then you would have, let's say you take 10 % of that. So let's say at the end of the third month, you have enough data where you can say, hey, of these 55 to 60 people, these top 10,

do the best and they make a bulk of their revenue or you could take a more qualitative approach to it as well. Like, hey, these five make the most money. These five make the best content. Let's do some custom deals with them. And then you would then have like a 10 percent from there at the top. So those are the typical conversion rates and how that whole ecosystem then keeps working in your favor.

Dan (42:09)

I love it. So if you were starting an e-commerce business from zero, if you're going to launch a new brand and you wanted to grow to your first seven figures, so your first million dollars in revenue on a shoestring budget, how would you do it? What would your playbook be?

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (42:23)

huh.

I would do what exactly James, who's one of our customers did. He launched with influencers. So he actually made $30,000 in sales in his first week, all profit, because all he did pre-launch, like two months before launch, he got on the platform. And this guy's like a straight shooter. He's just like, he knows what he's doing. He just got the platform. He needed minimal help from us. And he was like, I just know what I'm doing. We found the right ICP for his brand.

He on boarded, he hopped on calls with every single person. And this is again, one of the traits that we see a lot of successful influencer marketers and founders do is they actually speak with their influencers, like on a zoom quick five minute phone call, something like that. Early days really matters. And we've studied programs of Pura Vida, of Sephora, of Gymshark. You go study like Ben from Gymshark was in the gyms of these influencers while he was giving them his apparel. Like he's really like into it. It's all these founders, they're always

very intimately familiar with what their influencers are up to. So that's that. But basically what I would do is I would get all these influencers and build a community of 50 people, put them on a Facebook group or a WhatsApp group or an Instagram common DM, something like that, and keep sending them updates like, hey, here's this production. My suppliers just, you know, delayed a little bit. So you'll get the products eventually. Blah, blah, blah. Be honest with them. Almost make them partners in your journey. Make them root for you in a way.

Send them product, tell them, hey, we're not launching until the 1st of March. Keep this product private until then. Use it, see if you like it. And whoever likes it, I want you to post on the 1st of March when we launch. And then everybody posted on, not everybody, but like he had made a community of about, I think, 55 influencers, about 35 of them actually ended up posting in launch week. Created this halo effect. Now this brand just came out of nowhere. Like it's a new brand. But then now everybody...

Everybody it's only 30 people but in that niche if 30 vegan bodybuilders post about you tomorrow The vegan community thinks everyone's talking about you, right? Because that's those are like the six people they follow on Instagram for their vegan like protein fitness stuff And they now wait, everyone's talking about them. I need to buy them That's what happened with this brand the James's brand. So I'd do something similar keep scaling from there and then Obviously, I'll supplement that with paid media because influencers are a great channel

not just to drive direct sales, but also drive indirect impact. So influencers will again get me UGC. I can whitelist it. I can run ads to it. I can put it on my website. I can repost it on my social media. I can do so many other things with influencers. I can run Google ads so I can take advantage of the higher levels of awareness about me, all of that. leverage some of these complimentary channels and build this stack of paid and owned media to get to that seven figure mark.

Dan (45:21)

You're bringing the heat with influencer marketing. I love it. I love it, Yosh. Awesome. All right, well, let's move to the speed round. So each answer about 30 or 60 seconds. So what is one of your most recommended books?

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (45:23)

Yep.

Let's do it. Let's do it.

Hmm, I would say Generally if there is one book I would recommend it would be Relentless by Tim Grover It's this book. It's a Tim Grover. Are you familiar with him? Yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, really good book. I love it. I think I read it when I was in eighth grade or something like that It was a very serious book for like an eighth grader to read, but I think it really made me so I love that book

Dan (45:49)

Yeah, that's an amazing book.

Fantastic. Yeah, that's

that's that's high quality. If you're if you feel like you're slacking off in life or if you feel like you're doing well, it doesn't matter. You read that book and you will move to the next level. Great. What's an under the radar product or brand you have used and like, but most people don't know about?

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (46:07)

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't know where it is, but I like this brand called NOOE.co NOOE.co really good. make, I don't know how you would categorize them, but they make accessories, work accessories. So I have their wallet. I have a desk mat. I have like a razor, like a elevated desk thing for my computer. I use a lot of design is just one of the things we pride ourselves on at Serral.

is really good design, really simple design. That's why the name also, Saral, means simple. So their design is really world class and they're building in India, which I like and they're selling to the world. So think they're in Harrods in London. think they're in some, I think they're trying to enter the US retail market as far as I know, but this brand is really good. You should check it out. think you'll like it.

Dan (47:12)

Awesome.

What's one thing in life, what's one thing in life you do better than most people and how do you do it?

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (47:15)

Ambulance or...

I would say time management. I'm pretty good at splitting my week, planning my week, making sure that I do enough things. I've had, I've had an intentional, it's been an intentional process over the last maybe five, six years of being in business, especially that I've gotten really good at time management. I think if there is one thing that I can share with everyone is just try to wake up early.

and get as much of your focused work done in that early two to three, even if it's like an hour in the morning that you get before work, before everybody else comes online, I get your main sort of creative work done in the morning. That really helps. Once I do that, I feel like I've already done enough for the day and I don't have to work and then everything else is just bonus. So I think I've gotten really good at that over the years. And if there's one tip that I can give, it'll be that wake up earlier and get some work done.

Dan (48:18)

Tell me about your favorite shopping experience online or offline.

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (48:23)

Yeah, this one's a, this one was a tough one, but, and I'm a, I'm a watch guy. So I really like watches and the whole ecosystem. But if there is one that I had to pick, I would pick that off. Okay. Going back to the start of the podcast, there's this coffee place called Bacha Coffee, B A C H A. I think they're based there out in Singapore or something like that. But I went to Kuala Lumpur recently and then they had their outlet there and it's like a, it's a coffee lovers.

paradise. They have all these equipment. They have all these different flavors of coffee that's naturally flavored. So they would have like orange flavored coffee and strawberry coffee and it's all naturally flavored and they have these big orange like aluminum boxes of coffee that are just kept inside of these shelves and they just take that whole box out. They make you smell it and they're like, hey, do you want this? And then you buy like 250 grams of it or whatever. It's like a perfect

coffee lovers experience. So I really found that really exciting and a very immersive sensory way to buy things. So I really enjoyed that and that really stands out and I recommend Bacha Coffee is another good coffee brand aside from Araku.

Dan (49:38)

So that's one channel where they've got to leg up on e-commerce, right? When you have that in-the-throw experience and you can touch and feel and experience the product, those moments are just much more impactful than looking at a website, right? So that's always a challenge for e-commerce brands, but I always talk to brand owners and...

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (49:43)

Yeah,

Correct. 100%.

Dan (49:57)

to kick around ideas of how can they mimic that offline experience online to have a better connection with customers. Awesome. Where can people connect with you to learn more?

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (50:03)

Yeah. Yeah. I like it.

Yeah, find me on LinkedIn, search for my name. I keep posting stuff there so I should pop up. And if you're interested in finding out a simple way to build this pyramid for yourself, go to getzerel.com. That's our website. And say you heard me on Dan's podcast and happy to set you up with something. So yeah.

Dan (50:27)

Awesome. Yash, thank you so much for bringing Soral to the marketplace and helping e-commerce brands work with influencers, sharing your expertise and all of the insights about influencer marketing with our audience and for joining us on the Shopify happy hour.

Yash Chavan (getsaral.com) (50:43)

Of

course, always, always happy to talk about this topic. This is what I do all day. This is what I love. So thanks for giving me this opportunity and having me on. Awesome.

Dan (50:52)

Thanks, Yash.