Taryn Williams - The Power Of Influencer Marketing - Co Founder #gifted

Ever wished you could peer into the mind of a successful online business entrepreneur? 

Now's your chance. 

Today, we get upfront and personal with Taryn Williams, founder of The Right Fit and #Gifted, as she unveils her journey of building successful online brands while navigating through price pressure and a shift to digital business. 

We delve into the importance of structuring your day, and Taryn shares how she uses her mornings to fuel her creativity and reflection, leading to game-changing business ideas. 

Get ready for an insightful exploration on the evolution of influencer marketing. Through Taryn's lens, we uncover the shift from focusing on vanity metrics to engaging micro-influencers who tell authentic stories. 

If you've wondered how to manage micro-influencers or understand the earning potential in this space, Taryn has you covered. She'll also share her thoughts on the rising popularity of TikTok and the challenges that come along with it.

And for the e-commerce enthusiasts, get your pen and paper ready! 

Brace yourself for a deep dive into how user-generated content can amplify your brand. 

Our discussion with Taryn includes an introduction to contra gifting with #gifted, and how easy it is for brands to connect to their Shopify stores, select products to gift, and track all user-generated content. 

We wrap up the session with a Q&A where Taryn shares practical advice on influencer campaign building, tracking success, and finding the perfect influencers for your brand. Get ready to learn, grow, and revolutionise your online business strategy with this compelling chat with Taryn Williams!

Join 'A Remarkable Newsletter' for weekly high performance marketing and content actionable tips.

Transcript

Ryan Martin : 0:01

Welcome to the Ecommerce Australia Podcast. Welcome to Ecommerce Australia. I'm your host, Ryan Martin, founder of Remarkable Digital. This podcast is aimed at those who have their own online business, e-commerce professionals looking to keep current on the trends, and for anyone interested in learning more about the world of Ecom. For those of you seeking direct assistance, remarkable Digital is just a call away. Our mission is to be remarkable, doing great things for great people and great businesses, and I understand how much choice you have and how many podcasts are out there, so I'm truly grateful you've tuned in. Please let me know if you have any questions, comments or topics you'd like covered. Let's get started.

Ryan Martin : 0:42

Welcome to another episode of Ecommerce Australia. We're very lucky to be joined by an absolute weapon of a founder in the space of business and influence. Recently she exited her business, the Right Fit, which was a marketplace for booking models and influences, and a current new venture called Hash Gifted, which we'll talk about, which helps brands build out their user-generated content in a more strategic and targeted fashion. I know personally on this show, we get a lot of questions around how to work with influences and how to get more content from our customers. So we have the best in the business joining us. Taryn Williams, welcome to the podcast.

Taryn Williams : 1:18

Thank you so much. Thanks for the glowing introduction. It's great to be here.

Ryan Martin : 1:23

Fantastic Look. Your business journey is really impressive, and we'll touch on that to start with and then get into more of the e-commerce side of things, and that influence of space is something that we do get asked for a lot, so it's great to have someone of your expertise on the program. But maybe let's start off before your founder journey. What does a typical day look like for you?

Taryn Williams : 1:45

Oh my gosh, I wish there was such thing as a typical day. It would honestly make my life so much easier. I've been travelling a lot for the last 18 months, really mainly due to the exit of my last business, and a couple of the potential acquirers were international, so I've had a lot of international meetings for that and we also had a lot of international clients and talent, so spending a lot of time back and forth between Australia and, predominantly, the US and Asia. So I would love a typical day that involves me waking up in my own bed. When I'm here in Australia and I am back for a while now, ideally I like to wake up early. I can't really tell you what it is, but I do like to do it and I have a lot of experience with it, and it's not just about my day, but it's about my size, because it's the only part of my day that is really in my control.

Taryn Williams : 2:35

After that, it can really all go sideways. You never know and I'm sure you can attest to this as an entrepreneur you never really know what's going to happen after that. My days can be pretty varied, from board meetings to meeting interviews. It can go from very high level to very granular very quickly and it can involve lots of really interesting meetings and lots of really dry, dull meetings and can finish at any time of the day. Or it might be flying interstate for meetings, because that's a thing back again actually flying to face-to-face meetings as opposed to doing it on Zoom.

Taryn Williams : 3:08

So after that it can really go all a bit sideways. So, controlling that morning piece is really important for me.

Ryan Martin : 3:15

Perfect and Sydney Local? Is that right? I am, yes. I just imagine people in Sydney all flock down to the beach and go for a ride along the beach. Is that an accurate representation?

Taryn Williams : 3:27

I very rarely leave my little bubble of Pots Point, Darlinghurst. Everything is walking distance. My office is walking distance from my apartment, my Pilates studio, my yoga studio. So getting me to Bondi, even though it's only probably a 20-minute drive from Pots Point, just doesn't happen during the week. So I'm very much a creature of comfort in my little bubble.

Ryan Martin : 3:48

And when you're out for a run or doing yoga or whatever it is that you do to keep fit, is that where a lot of your business idea, do you have some of your best ideas that come from that, or can you completely switch off and not think about anything?

Taryn Williams : 4:01

Yoga is probably the only place I completely switch off and it's also probably the only place I breathe during the work there my tiny little shallow breath. So I'm constantly in that flight-of-flight response, never healthy. I actually have a lot of my best ideas through conversations with other people. It's so often that I'll meet someone just at an event or a function or whatever it might be, and we'll just be shooting some ideas or they'll be talking through a particular business problem that they're overcoming and I have so many little aha moments through those interactions.

Taryn Williams : 4:33

I think it's often hearing other people's problems or hearing how they're thinking about the world. That kind of triggers these potential solutions or ways of attacking something. I often say the part of business I love the most is trying to put those problems and people and resources together and I love those little aha moments that come from that, when you hear someone's problem and you think, oh, I just know that if I could get this person and that person around a table together and I could put this kind of tech around it, I could totally solve that and that's a business. So that's where most of my best ideas come from.

Ryan Martin : 5:06

Yeah, fantastic. So I know you scheduled time to think. I know you said your days are completely random, but is there a part of that sort of time where you just lock yourself away and can think about stuff, or is it just too hectic day to day?

Taryn Williams : 5:20

I don't, and I should know I've got every reason why I can't. It's those moments of self-reflection. My mentor has been nagging at me about this for years. You know. Not meditation, just having quiet time to process your thoughts and think and reflect, and I certainly am very guilty of not doing it and of feeling every single moment of my day. So I don't have to do any self-reflection. So it's definitely a KPI post-business sale to find space in my day and make space in my day to do that, because I think it's invaluable, the ability to stop and pause and self-reflect.

Ryan Martin : 5:54

Yeah, 100%. And you mentioned your mentor there. Just a question without notice how did you find that mentor? And, as I mentioned off the top, you've been involved in a number of really successful businesses. You've changed mentors the whole way. How do you seek out mentors? I guess there's a few questions in there, but I'm just interested to learn, absolutely.

Taryn Williams : 6:14

So. I have had a number of different mentors over the course of my career, some that started with me got to my first mentor I met at a work event when I was probably 19, and someone I was speaking to who I found really, really interesting and I just said look, would it be okay, can I get your business card? This is a back-of-day business card. Can I get your business card? Maybe I could take you out for lunch or buy you a coffee to pick your brains. I just love some advice on these particular areas.

Taryn Williams : 6:40

This is where I'm feeling stuck in my career at the moment, and that sort of first initial coffee meeting turned into, yeah, probably five or six year mentoring relationship. They were always all of my mentors have been people that I met first face-to-face through either a networking event or a function. One came from LinkedIn, someone that I had reached out to on LinkedIn to say, hey, I was trying to solve a very particular problem in my business, and this is always my advice to people that are looking to either find a mentor or to, I suppose, do some networking in their career. If you can't go to someone and be like will you be my mentor, that's so awkward.

Ryan Martin : 7:16

It's like will you be my boyfriend?

Taryn Williams : 7:17

And you're like no, it's not how relationships start. They evolve organically over time. And so I always say go on to the very specific request. And in my business at the time I was trying to build a payment gateway and I needed some advice. Specifically, I've already gone and done all of the research about what's the differences between Stripe and Braintree and PayPal and Pay-in-the-Air and all the different options out there in the market, and I've got down to a pretty granular set of problems that I was trying to solve. And so I reached out to this particular person and said look, I'm trying to solve this particular problem in my business. This is where I've got to. Can I please just pick your brain? Can I come and buy you coffee? Pick your brains for 30 minutes about how you solve this in your organization next way. So from there it evolved into a mentoring relationship, and I think those relationships evolve really well.

Taryn Williams : 8:04

I always say when you, as the mentee, do a lot of follow-up, and so I would always close the loop and say from the advice you gave me, these are the steps that I've taken, this is what I've done, these are the outcomes.

Taryn Williams : 8:15

It's going to take me this long to deploy this payment tool. Can I touch base again in two months' time and catch up on X, y and Z things that we discussed and so really documenting it, following up, taking on board the feedback that they'd given me? So often People ask me for a coffee meeting or whatever and they're sort of just generally like oh, you know, I'm just sort of wanting some advice on what to do in my career and I'm like come to me with something that I can tangibly help with. Like, come to me with the question, show me the research that you've done ahead of this meeting, show me what you're looking to achieve out of this meeting and then, after the meeting, you know, come to me with some practical steps that you've taken off the back of the advice I've given you. I think it's my biggest takeaway for people who are looking to get a mentor.

Ryan Martin : 8:54

Yeah, interesting, yeah, and with that, sorry, just one more question before we start to dive into this, before we start to dive into it. When you're thinking about mentors, like I, always feel like you're trying to provide them with value as well. So it's two way, but a lot of the time there's just no way that you can really provide them value, because they're already a step ahead or two steps ahead of where you want to be. So that's what I've always struggled with, that as well. So, probably to touch on your point, being really specific and showing that you've done a lot of the work and that you're not there to waste their time and just flip flop around a little bit. It probably gets around that a little bit.

Taryn Williams : 9:29

Yeah, and I also think that people really like giving back. I do believe that they like being consulted, they like adding value. A number of my mentors had said how much they enjoyed the process of staying connected to the startup ecosystem and that working on this project with me gave them exposure to, because it was a completely unpaid capacity gave them exposure to what else was happening in market when we're raising capital.

Taryn Williams : 9:53

They were heavily involved in that process and getting to see what other deals were happening and what the different venture capital firms are looking at and potential investors, and so I do think that it can be really beneficial for an advisor or a mentor as well, if managed well. And, of course, you can incentivize them depending on your position in the company. You can incentivize them with equity as well, which is something that we did in the end with some of our mentors and gave them equity in the business so that there's an upside for them when the business exits.

Ryan Martin : 10:22

Yeah, brilliant. All right, I'll start. I'll get back on topic again now. Where did the founder journey start for you? What was your first job out of school?

Taryn Williams : 10:31

Well, technically, my first job was modeling. I mean, I had a handful of like cafe jobs and I worked in a clothing store and things like that. But the first sort of real job I had was modeling. And then I never really had a job job after that. I didn't go and work somewhere at an advertising agency or anything like that. I kind of launched my first business with models when I was 21. I was so young.

Ryan Martin : 10:55

Wow.

Taryn Williams : 10:56

Yeah, and I certainly freelanced a lot as well, like I worked as a freelance producer and I did freelance representation of a fashion photographer and things like that. But I've pretty much kind of always been self-employed since I was like, yeah, 17, 18. So, I'm a little bit jealous of people that have had time to have a bit more of a corporate career and learn some of those basic systems and processes, I guess, and be mentored by a great boss. But ideally they had a great boss, but yeah.

Ryan Martin : 11:24

Yeah, okay, I don't think you're missing too much with not having a job. But I guess it just depends on your risk tolerance and your ambitions and what you want to do and what you want to get out of it. I guess there's no right or wrong answer.

Taryn Williams : 11:37

Well now I always joke that it's too late. Now I'm unemployable, so it's like I'm stuck with this forever, because now I just don't think anyone would hire me. That's right.

Ryan Martin : 11:46

That's right. I could imagine that to be the case in a good way. And then how did you navigate through COVID? What were some of the challenges that you were faced? Because you would have been in the right fit business. Yeah, Is that correct? So yeah, before we get onto influencer marketing and the evolution of that, maybe just talk to us about the challenges that presented through COVID and the right fit.

Taryn Williams : 12:09

Yeah, it was really challenging. I had wink models as well, which was obviously hugely exposed. We couldn't send models to photoshoot because of COVID. And then, with the right fit, I was so fortunate that I had made the decision pre-COVID to get the business to cash flow positive, because prior to that obviously high growth tech company, we were relying on venture capital funding. We'd raised two rounds of capital and we're seeing amazing growth and everyone was like just go out and raise more capital.

Taryn Williams : 12:35

And I was like you know what, at some point I need to prove out the uniconomics of this business and I want to prove that I can get it to cash flow positive. And people thought I was crazy which, to be fair, maybe I was. I think, thankfully, the market now would smile on me and be like yes, all businesses have got to get to cash flow positive and there's been a huge shift in the value of that. So I was like look, I want to get the business cash flow positive. I think I can do that. I really think that, with investing in the right areas and trimming out some of our team and focusing on purely the growth areas that we know are having an impact on the bottom line, I think I can do this, so I absolutely killed myself to do it.

Taryn Williams : 13:12

It was a brutal, probably 10 month journey of all hands on deck. I was really transparent with the team and said, like you know, we need to sit down and do this and this is what it's going to look like and you know it's going to be everyone getting the trenches. But it meant that the business got to cash flow positive just before COVID. And then I was. I really thought COVID was going to decimate the business because it was probably 40% influencer revenue or influencer related revenue so content creators, influencers, event appearances, things like that and then 60% sort of model actor, photographer bookings, and so we were still really exposed in that business to jobs that couldn't go head face to face.

Taryn Williams : 13:51

But it was actually incredibly beneficial for that business because what we saw was a huge number of brands who previously hadn't been price sensitive who were happy to go to a you know top tier agency and book their influencers or their models or their actors All of a sudden had so much price pressure put on them and they had to go and look for new, innovative ways to find talent. And also everyone shifted to online.

Taryn Williams : 14:13

So, all of a sudden, people who had previously picked up the phone and called an agency one, they had time to learn new tools and two, everything else shifted to online. So they were like oh, I guess there's no reason that I can't book my talent online like I do everything else in my life. So it actually really expedited our growth and it also meant that a lot of brands who maybe hadn't done influence marketing or content creation or UGC before had to, and literally in many cases they couldn't have their big campaign shoots or they weren't spending as much money on big TVC campaigns. So they're like gosh, you know, if anything, now is the time we're going to have to dip our toes in the water. So we saw a huge spike in revenue from that as well.

Ryan Martin : 14:53

Yeah, brilliant, and yeah, that's nothing like a pandemic. I guess to change people's perceptions and behavior is there. It's crazy. But even just the foresight, you know. I guess sometimes it just pays to be proactive and get to a point where you are cash flow positive and then a pandemic hits. I mean, you know, who was to know that that was all going to happen? And we were where we were. So, yeah, fortunate or whatever you want to call it.

Taryn Williams : 15:20

Yeah, truly blessed. I wish I could say I had some sort of amazing, you know glass ball to say I knew what was coming down the pipeline, but it was purely by luck. And I'm just so, so fortunate because so many companies obviously had to close during that time because they couldn't raise more capital. And you know, and are in a similar situation now. With the markets as they are, it's just impossible for so many companies to raise more capital. So, yeah, it was an incredibly fortunate time.

Ryan Martin : 15:45

Yeah, exactly, although I do subscribe to the fortune favors the brave a little bit. So I think, get out there and make it happen if you can. As I said, things are quite, quite different at the moment. Ecommerce has just come off a little bit, but I think it's probably just more finding a sustainable kind of model for the next 12 to 24 months. But how have you seen the evolution and we touched on that a little bit in your answer before but how have you seen the evolution of influence over the last 10 years? Obviously, you know, 10 years ago to today, the marketplaces changed dramatically and there's a lot more. I don't know, I guess I'll get your take on it, but it seems to me there's a lot more micro influences that are getting some really good traction, as well as the big ones are still commanding dollars. How have you sort of seen the shift over the last sort of five years even?

Taryn Williams : 16:33

Oh my gosh. Yeah, there's been so many changes and it's been so fascinating to watch and be a part of, because I think to start, there was really all of the big name influences and it was very much vanity metrics, right.

Taryn Williams : 16:45

It was all like quite broad lifestyle channels. People didn't have very specific niches. Now you know, there's like book talk. You know where it's people who just purely post about the books that they've read on on Tiktok. Back in the good old days, it was predominantly sort of general lifestyle accounts generally on Instagram and all brands were looking for those vanity metrics like how many followers does this person have? And it was all about working with the person with the biggest number of followers that they could find.

Ryan Martin : 17:11

Yeah.

Taryn Williams : 17:12

And there wasn't really much deeper analysis than that they weren't really aware of looking at. Okay, well, how much of that audience is in Australia if you're only Australian brand, or how much? What is the gender breakdown? How much is the gender that you're actually trying to target with your product? What's the engagement rate? All of those things that we know now to look for.

Taryn Williams : 17:30

And then I think there was and so you know there was a lot of excitement, I think, around the industry. And then I think we saw a lot of brands being burned, not because there's anything wrong with influencer marketing, but purely because there wasn't that sort of strategic thinking and analysis. There wasn't a deep understanding about how to track where to use influencers in the funnel and then also how to track sort of awareness and conversions from influencer campaigns. And so then I think brands shifted to being a little bit more strategic and thinking about the type of creators that they were working with and looking for people who had a more aligned audience, thinking more about the different places for types of creators in the funnel as well. So sure, maybe they still work with, you know, top tier, like a King Kailashian or whoever, purely for reach and brand awareness. But then they're thinking okay, now I need to have influencers all the way through my funnel and what am I using them for? Like, am I using them for testimonials towards the bottom of the funnel to help with conversions? Am I working with very particular influencers for particular niches? You know vegan mummy bloggers to talk about a particular product in our range, and so I think there are a lot more strategic, which is fantastic, and I think that's where we've seen the rise of the, the nano influencer and micro influencer, where brands have realized that they can find these highly engaged, trusted voices of authority and the followers of these people, you know, really do trust every single thing that this person talks about, which is hugely beneficial for a brand.

Taryn Williams : 18:56

I think, as the, as the industry had developed, people were much more aware that you know potentially someone with huge following.

Taryn Williams : 19:02

This is a paid post and obviously, with disclosure rules, they were very aware of going okay, this is a paid post, maybe it's not as authentic as I thought it was, whereas if it's a micro influencer and it's hopefully working with a brand they really love, it can feel a lot more authentic, and so we saw a huge spike in that.

Taryn Williams : 19:18

But obviously that's also really challenging for brands to manage a plethora of micro creators you know, people under 15,000 followers or whatever. To go from working with maybe one or two top tier creators to working with 50 or 60 micro influencers per month is a real logistical challenge. So I think all of it comes with its pros and cons, but there's certainly been, you know, a lot of developments and that obviously the big one that I should mention is the growth of TikTok. That's obviously changed so many brands approach to how they work with creators and allowing them having to allow them a little bit more flexibility with the storytelling and creative aspect, because you know what would perform on Instagram which is a little bit more contrived per se and aligns maybe more with a brand's traditional view of marketing and advertising.

Taryn Williams : 20:08

Tiktok obviously just is not that. You know you really have to allow creators to lead the conversation there and guide you on what to do with your content types.

Ryan Martin : 20:17

Yeah, yeah, perfect, and it's a really great point. I've had some conversations with luxury homewares brands I won't say any more than that, but they are very curated in their messaging and they want to control their messaging, which is completely fine. But then when we talk about TikTok, they still want to try and control that narrative and it's just. It's not the platform and they're not having the cut through that they would have on Instagram, because they still want to kind of control that polished brand language and tone of voice and it just, yeah, it's really interesting to see to see brands that are have been so successful try and grapple with that idea of being less polished and more authentic on TikTok.

Taryn Williams : 21:00

It's so scary for them, right, they're so used to having a final brand sign off on everything and saying this is, this is our tone of voice, is our brand guidelines, this is what it needs to look like To all of a sudden, you know handing over the keys and saying to a creator okay, you're the expert, this is your channel, your audience, you know what you're doing. You bring it to life in a way that feels, you know, meaningful and real to your audience.

Ryan Martin : 21:21

Yeah, let's go for some shock value. I'm keen to understand what are some of the figures that influencers are making, like the bigger ones per post or, you know, per campaign, and then the micro ones, like where's the sort of range from an influencer earnings point of view?

Taryn Williams : 21:39

Yeah. So anything from like purely Contra, like where they might get some beautiful tableware or whatever, or, you know, $100 per post, right, you know, down this sort of end for micro influences and also just in times where there's a product or service that really aligns with someone. So you know whether it's a, you know it might be a celebrity, but they absolutely love the product and they're happy to work with the brand in a Contra only capacity or for a very low amount of treesome, right through to probably $20,000, $30,000 a post in the higher end in Australia it doesn't. I haven't met many influencers in Australia earning above that. There certainly are. Of course, internationally, yeah, and of course there are longer term retainer deals where someone might be on a larger sum for yearly retainer, where they have multiple touch points with the brand, they might have to be in a brand campaign and they share a certain number of posts, attend a certain number of events and things like that. So those deals where there's sort of exclusivity and ongoing retainer can be much larger.

Ryan Martin : 22:40

Okay, yeah, nice. And do you mainly deal with Instagram, TikTok, or do you sort of do YouTube and a whole range of any sort of any kind of media that has influenced your? The right fit was involved with.

Taryn Williams : 22:53

Yeah, so the right fit and hash gifted are predominantly Instagram and TikTok. We do have some YouTube influences and a handful of like bloggers, facebook communities, like there's some really engaged mums Facebook groups and things like that, but predominantly most brands are really only interested in Instagram and TikTok. The only reason I but from my point of view, I think that YouTube is a sort of heavier investment from a time and capacity point of view in scripting and thinking what that's going to look like, and I think in Australia that level of creative involvement usually falls to an advertising agency, who would then turn it into an ad or a sort of broader social campaign, online ad campaign, as opposed to just working one on one with one YouTuber.

Ryan Martin : 23:38

Yeah.

Taryn Williams : 23:39

Yeah, so predominantly so. The TikTok and Instagram are the biggest channels here.

Ryan Martin : 23:42

Okay, and how do brands set themselves up to win when using influencers? I know that's a broad and a big question, but, in your experience, what would be your advice to brands that are looking to maybe explore influencer marketing for the first time?

Taryn Williams : 23:58

Yeah, absolutely so I think first of all think about, like, what it is that you're trying to achieve and getting really clear about that, and don't have a complicated be like we're really trying to reach new audiences or we really want to reposition our brand.

Taryn Williams : 24:10

Maybe it's perceived as a little bit more conservative and we want to make it a little bit more fun, or whatever it is. And then, who is your target audience? And you can't just say you know all women between the age of 20 and 50, no, like, get really granular, who is? Who is the target audience? And if you can't figure it out, then think about, for that specific campaign, so for this particular campaign and maybe this particular product within our range, who is the target audience? Who are we trying to talk to? And like, if we just use the homewares brand that you're talking about, is it people doing a renovation, who are maybe, you know, a more mature audience, maybe own their own homes, or is it the person moving out of home for the first time and buying their first, you know, dining set or whatever it might be?

Taryn Williams : 24:50

So just getting really granular on the home and then working out where those people I always call them watering holes, like where would those people go for information? So, is it YouTube, is it Instagram, is it TikTok? You know where, the more mature person who maybe owns their own home, they're probably getting their information from a different place than the you know first time moving out of home person. So that really helps you then work out which channel is going to be relevant. So you might go okay, well, we're going to do TikTok then, because we want this younger audience, and then from there you can work out okay, well, who is going to be the right sort of most persuasive person to speak to that target audience? So that way it's much easier to go. Okay, well, then we need someone on TikTok who gives a lot of advice on, you know, homewares, interior styling, or is just someone that our target audience looks up to. Maybe they're a great fashion influencer or they're a I don't know, you know beauty, or a TikTok, a book talk influencer. But we know that their target audience are the right age, they're going through these right periods of life moving out of home for the first time, and so we want to come up with a campaign that showcases our product in an authentic way with that creator, and then I think the best thing to do is like be clear but don't be dictatorial, is what I always say.

Taryn Williams : 26:05

So the more information you can give a creator, the better job they can do for your brand. So if you can go to them and say, look, this is what we're trying to achieve, we're trying to achieve newsletter signups, or reposition our brand or whatever it might be. This is a bit about our product. This is a bit about our brand, our history, our brand guidelines, all of those things. You know your audience best. What could we do together? And often you'll find they have fantastic ideas. You know they might come back to you and say, oh my gosh, you know my friend's actually moving house and we could do a whole, you know makeover of their new apartment. Or we could run a fantastic giveaway. I just did one last month and it performed so well for the brand and they got 5000 new signups to their newsletter. So involve them in the creative process, ask for their input, find some ideas that work best for you both, because I think that mutually beneficial pieces is what you know really creates the magic.

Ryan Martin : 26:53

Yeah, brilliant. That's, yeah, really good advice and I guess it actually needs to be a partnership and the creators or the, the influencer, they know their audience the best. So you've got to sort of, you know, trust them as well. How do how to brand, sort of track the success of the campaign? Is that something that you would have the conversation with each influencer ahead of time, saying this is what we're trying to achieve out of it? You know, when do you raise budgets? Yeah, can you take us behind the scenes a little bit about those conversations?

Taryn Williams : 27:22

Yeah, absolutely so. Tracking is very hard, in the sense of it's not, like, you know, facebook, where you can track your cost per click and then straight through the funnel, because you're also paying for their creative ideation and all the other pieces that creators doing. So they're the talent, they're the editor, they're the voiceover artist, they're the script writer, they're all of those things. But you can. You can definitely track acquisition costs from influence marketing campaigns, so there's a couple of ways to do it. Obviously, you can use discount codes so you would all have seen these. You know, taren 20 gets you 20% off, and then the brand could go okay, how many people use that? Redeem that coupon? Depending on your product, though? So, for example, if it is a sofa, I'm probably not going to go out today and buy a sofa just because I saw someone advertise it on social media, but I probably am going to go to that brand's page and I might have a look at some other products, on their Instagram page, for example, and I might stick a tap and save some of them, and I might also save the post that the influencer did. I might go to their website so you'd be able to track how many clicks throughs from the influences link if they had the link in buyer or if they put a link in the stories. Because obviously you can't put links on the in feed post or how many people came from their profile to your Instagram profile and then click the link in your buyer.

Taryn Williams : 28:37

And I always say to brands you don't need to over complicate it. Just think about what your behavior is when you're a customer. So when I'm scrolling through Instagram or TikTok, what behavior do I do? When I see a top I like on an influencer, I'm going to click straight through to the brand's page. I'm going to have a look at what else there is that they, and then I'm going to click the link in their bio to go through the website and have a look at things. Or I'm going to click on their view, their shop. So just don't over complicate it and think about that and go okay. Well then, what I want to see while I'm running an influencer campaign have I seen the link in bio? Number of clicks has increased during the period of campaign and whilst you can't attribute that specifically to that one influencer, you can say okay, during this campaign we did see an increase in clicks. And then, of course, you can use like tracking links. You can link in stories or link in bio as well. It really helps.

Ryan Martin : 29:23

Yeah, and I think to. Just because you can't quite track it doesn't mean it's not valuable or not worth doing. You know, like it's the same thing as, as you know how putting a billboard up like it's all based on averages and CPMs and all that sort of thing. I think the influencer market, you know he's only going to get more and more nuanced. And it was interesting to hear your point earlier about using different influences at different stages of the buying process or the funnel as well. That's not something I've ever really thought about. So that was, yeah, really interesting to hear you say that you know you can start to use different influences for different parts of the equation as well.

Taryn Williams : 30:00

Yeah, and especially if you know like your customers have got common questions around things you know, then you can use influences to really talk to those different touchpoints around. You know, I don't know what it might be, how to use the product, or you know, is it suitable for particular types of skin or whatever it might be? You can craft all of these pieces of content using specific influences and then I always say you should, just never.

Taryn Williams : 30:22

You shouldn't leave influencer content just to die on their feed, Like that's definitely a part of the process, but after that you want to be thinking where else can I be using this content Like?

Ryan Martin : 30:31

am I using it?

Taryn Williams : 30:32

for my online ads. You know, have I got that set up? Am I using it in my newsletters? Can I use it in my onboarding funnel for a new customer? Can I use it on my ecom store Like, can I have it there as testimonials or reviews showing or photos showing? You know, here's how the product looks on on real people like. Think about all of those other touch points. So you're really maximizing the use of that budget.

Ryan Martin : 30:52

That's fantastic takeaways that our audience can use. So that's fantastic and also a great segue into hash gifted as well. So one of the things that we do here a lot is brands that we work, that I work with in my agency, but more so that our listening audience. They struggle to get user generated content or they struggle to get people that are using their product to actually care enough to really do a video and send it in and and that's the two way conversation. So obviously you've launched hash gifted in. When was that? Like three months ago?

Taryn Williams : 31:25

Yeah, nearly three months ago, so it's brand new. We were in beta for probably nine months before that, testing with quite a few brands, making sure that all of the Shopify integration worked and all of the pieces of the puzzle were coming together. But yes, it's been officially live for people to sign up to for about three months.

Ryan Martin : 31:42

Fantastic, and so, yeah, looking to hear a bit more about how you partner with e-commerce businesses, how they use the platform, some case studies that you've got early, early doors it's only been going three months, but, yeah, how does that help e-commerce businesses to generate some of that UGC that we've talked about has such great cut through because people can relate to it?

Taryn Williams : 32:04

Yeah. So there was a couple of common pain points I was seeing with the e-com brands and one was that they were either doing unsolicited gifting to creators or influencers, sending product out and crossing their fingers and hope that they might get a social post or they might get some UGC and it was very awkward or they were receiving inbound requests from people saying you know, can I, if you give me some product, I'll do some social posts. And then they were also struggling with getting written reviews on their websites, so Star reviews and testimonials and they were struggling to get user-generated content. And they knew the value of user-generated content and they were constantly reading all of these articles about how reviews are so powerful. And you've got to get more 15 second UGCs to empower your ads team. But getting those, as we all know, it's really really hard and obviously the last thing you can do is have your staff do it or you get these really contrived advertising looking ones which doesn't resonate with anyone.

Taryn Williams : 33:02

So I thought okay, there's a pain point here that I can solve and I wanted to make it purely about contra gifting. So not paid endorsements, not paid influencer work. I wanted to make it really fun for creators to just easily be able to. For them it's like a dating app, so they open their app every day and they can swipe left or right on gifts that they want to receive. So it's super easy and, from a brand side, we can connect straight into your Shopify store. If you don't have a Shopify store, you can still use Ashgifted, but if you don't have Shopify, it's so much easier. You can just go, connect and pick the products that you want to gift. So you don't have to do any of that awkward back and forth on like, can I have this top in a size six? And you're like, oh, that's out of stock. Okay, what about the blue shoes? No, sorry, don't have those in your size. So we can keep all of your inventory up to date. So you don't have to do all the back and forth. They can only pick from things that are in stock and only the products that you've selected to gift, and then creators can go. You can select what you want. So if you want UGC or if you want a social post, you can choose all of that or blog or written reviews and then creator goes and does the collaboration and then anytime they post about your product on social media, if you've booked them through Ashgifted, we suck the content into the platform for you. So if they do an Instagram story two months down the track, we'll capture that, pull it into the platform, so you never have to worry about missing anything and you both get to leave each other ratings and reviews as well. So you know, just trying to keep that whole marketplace vibe keeping it safe.

Taryn Williams : 34:26

Yeah, so we just saw so many brands needing great testimonial and I think the really key thing with used generator content is that you want it to be real and authentic and honest. You don't want it to be like I bought this product and I absolutely love that. It was just the most amazing thing that you know. You don't want 20 of those. You want people to say I used this for three days. I didn't see anything for the first three days, but then, after day five, I really noticed a change in my scene, like really authentic content that you know doesn't feel salesy, that really feels and that showcases lots of different ages and skin types or ethnicities, backgrounds, you know, whatever's relevant to your product. So we're trying to unlock the ability to do that at scale for brands.

Ryan Martin : 35:06

Yeah, brilliant, it's such a great idea. Thank you. Now that we're sort of thinking about obviously you'll convert it as well, because you started it, but I think it really meets a need for that. I can think of quite a few brands that need to jump on this. So what's the conversation like then? So if we go a step further and sort of dial into that UX a little bit a brand, they sell handbags, they have some products that they want that they put onto the app that they've selected through Shopify, then an influencer matches with them. What is the next step for them? Do they say we want X, y and Z, or does the influencer know that already ahead of time, before they swipe on it?

Taryn Williams : 35:46

Either either. So the brand can add a list in their onboarding gift what they'd like like we're specifically looking for Instagram reels or we really, if they tick like we only want TikTok influencers, it will only be matched to TikTok influencers, for example, and then they basically have an inbox on the Hash Gifted platform that will show all of the new matches they've received that day and they'll be able to see their engagement rate, their total number of followers, their ratings and reviews from other brands they've collabed with, and they'll also be able to see each person's Hash Gifted profile. So there's other information in there, like how old they are or how many children they have or if they're vegan. So if you're like a leather brand, you might be like, okay, we don't want to collab with vegans on this one. So it just gives them all of that information to be able to make the right decision, and then they can click straight out to their social profiles and see the type of content they make.

Taryn Williams : 36:33

And then they might go oh my gosh, we love Belinda's I don't know Flat Lay's. So, belinda, we love you, we're going to send you three handbags, but we want 10 Flat Lay images from you. Is that cool? And they can discuss back and forth With another creator. They might go oh my gosh, you make such cool TikTok videos. We love that Get Ready With Me video you did. If we send you three handbags, can you do a Get Ready With Me Incorporating Three Handbags, so you can really get super granular with each person, find a relationship that works and then, once you've agreed, you just book them in.

Ryan Martin : 37:02

Yeah, perfect, and is that all done through your platform?

Taryn Williams : 37:05

Yeah, there's inbuilt chat.

Taryn Williams : 37:07

So pings the creator on their app and they'll say that you've got a new little message and you guys just chat back and forth and you can send them attachments or anything like that.

Taryn Williams : 37:15

So if you want to say, pick anything from this catalogue, or, and if the order is through Shopify, so you use the Shopify integration. Once the creator picks the items that they're looking for in your Shopify account, it will create the order, decrement the inventory, send it straight through to your Shopify store and it'll pass it through with the hashtag gifted mark on it so you can really easily see okay, here's the 20 orders from gifted, and then you just need to go fulfill. It'll come through with their email address, their postal address, phone number and everything like that, and it will put all the tracking details straight into the app so you can see the parcel's been dispatched. You can see when it's arrived as well. So you both party, as the creator and the brand will see in the chat like parcel's been received. So it makes it really easy to know yes, she's got the product safe, all good to go.

Taryn Williams : 38:00

you know, I'll allow her a week or so from now to do the post, or create the user.

Ryan Martin : 38:05

Yeah, brilliant. And then I guess there'd be a question that people are asking me to ask you in terms of pricing how does that pricing work for the brands and for the influencers?

Taryn Williams : 38:15

Totally so. It's completely free for influencers to sign up. There's no fees on their sign for a brand. We have three different plans 99, 149 and 349 a month. There's no lock in contract. So if you can upgrade, downgrade anytime, you don't have to be on forever. So you can upgrade, pay $99, do your gifting downgrade and never come back. We were not hassle you. The differences between the plans are just depending on the content usage, the number of gifts that you want to run per month and the number of creators that you want to gift. So, but of course, we'd also love to give all of your listeners a month free.

Taryn Williams : 38:49

So if you're listening to this, just email me you heard about it here and we'll hook you up with a with a month free trial so you can give a play.

Ryan Martin : 38:57

Yeah, easy there's. That's very generous of you, thank you. But yeah, I'm sure I can think of five or six brands already just through talking to you that need to be on this platform, so I'm sure it's going to get quite a lot of uptake really quickly. Two more questions for you one around the upcoming sales period, like Friday, cyber Monday and how brands could use influences, and then the second actually will stick with that. I won't ask all the questions at once.

Taryn Williams : 39:22

How do brands set themselves up to to look to use influences for the upcoming sales period into Christmas and, and which is obviously such a hard one at the moment because obviously we are probably tipping into a little bit of a tough time economically and people are going to have tighter, tighter purse strings to spend with. Obviously depends on what category you're in. So I do think there will be a lot of consumers who are waiting for these sales. The double edge sword is that there's also a lot of consumer pushback, depending on the category that you're in, around the waste of, you know fast turnaround consumer goods and, and you know, shopping more ethically and thinking more about the waste. So it really does depend, I think, on the category that you're in. Obviously, if you know that it's something that's going to be jarring for your audience, you know, maybe you're a small fashion brand and you speak to a particular type of target demographic that you know that they are very much about mindful consumption and would be a giant message. Maybe it's not the sales period for you, but there's other things that you can do during that time. If you don't want to do you know these huge sale periods, you can still do other things. You know, maybe it's a beautiful gift with purchase, or maybe it's a shopping experience where they can come to a pop up, meet the founders, get to know, you try the items on. You know there's other ways that you can tie into these periods. If you are doing, obviously, like you know, large sale periods, it's really hard to get cut through during that time, and so some things that we saw last year were brands doing their own, like breakout, doing it a week early and saying you know what, cutting through the crowd, doing it early the hard thing with that obviously is some consumers will be waiting to see what other brands do. Some brands were extending and starting a day early and finishing a day late so they could try and capture, you know, as much traffic as possible.

Taryn Williams : 41:12

But I do think, especially in this economic climate, it's going to be a really large time for brands to dedicate time and resources to running, you know, marketing initiatives, and I think it's all about thinking about how you can get really clever and cut through the noise, because every brand's going to have digital ads running.

Taryn Williams : 41:29

Every brand's going to be working. Most brands will be working with the influencers. How can you do something and I always say, with influencer marketing campaigns especially, but ideally any kind of advertising is this adding value to my customer? So if it's literally just a social media influencer doing a post saying you know, this jacket's going to be on sale by 50% off tomorrow, probably not adding that much value, but something maybe like a get ready with me video showing here's how to style a blazer, here's three different ways you can wear it and, by the way, it's going to be on sale in the boxing day sales or in the black Friday sales, probably adding a little bit more value to your customers life. So just trying to think about ways that you can get cut through in a little bit more of a meaningful way.

Ryan Martin : 42:08

Yeah, perfect. And another question that leads on from that is around live shopping. Have you had much experience with influencers doing live shopping campaigns? Do you feel like that? That live shopping component is on the rise with influencers and retail brands.

Taryn Williams : 42:25

Yeah, look, it hasn't really hit our shores yet, but certainly internationally.

Taryn Williams : 42:29

We see a huge amount of it in Asia and it's starting to become a little bit more prevalent in the US and UK now as well, but there aren't many brands really, you know, making it as part of their marketing mix yet here in Australia.

Taryn Williams : 42:42

I'll be fascinated to see if any brands really do tackle that, because it's a fascinating concept and the metrics are absolutely insane. If it's done well, the sales and conversion rates that a brand can see from engaging the right influencer with the right narrative, with experience and doing live selling, it can be incredibly powerful. So at the moment, the only campaigns that I've seen or that we've worked on have been Australian brands who are looking to target an international audience so predominantly in Asia. So they've sort of used predominantly used those WeChat to execute those campaigns. So I definitely think it's something that brands should look into. Especially if you're a brand that is looking to target that kind of demographic, then absolutely it can be hugely powerful. And there are sort of agencies out there that advise purely on targeting international audience and using some of those other platforms like WeChat or Redbook that have a much more sort of nuanced audience. So I'm excited about it because I think another sort of tool in our arsenal as marketers is really powerful and new ways to reach audiences.

Taryn Williams : 43:47

So just be interesting to see if there's adoption.

Ryan Martin : 43:50

Exactly you made me think of that with your answer around sort of standing out from the crowd in terms of that sales period, but then also getting ready with me and how to put on that blazer and how to style things. It's probably something that they could build a bit of a campaign around, get a live influencer to do some of that. And then, yeah, there's plenty of ways to do it differently, and I think that's sort of what we've learned over the last couple of years. You've got to do things differently because if you're just doing the same as everyone else, well you're obviously getting the same result.

Taryn Williams : 44:24

I've heard some brands doing live shopping events where they've had a combination of brands, so where they might have like my makeup look and it's sponsored by three or four different brands.

Taryn Williams : 44:35

And so, you know, whilst the brands would traditionally go, oh my God, no, that's competitive. You know, we don't want to do that the influencer can really speak with authority and it can seem really authentic because they're saying, OK, well, for the foundation, this is the foundation I use and this is why I use it, but now for the mascara, I'm using this different brand, and so the conversion rates can be really high. So if there's a way that you can work collaboratively with other brands in your industry, then you know it's worth exploring too.

Ryan Martin : 44:58

Yeah, perfect, and that ties in nicely with the Shopify collaboration collaborative feature that they rolled out just not too long ago in the US. You could sell their products on your store, even if you so choose, yeah, yeah. So one last question, just around a case study that is there a brand that has jumped on the platform early on to, sorry, hash Gifted, hash Gifted, yeah, is there a brand that sort of jumped on and really done well with that in the first three months and that you can kind of walk us through how that sort of execution sort of took place?

Taryn Williams : 45:32

Yeah, absolutely. There's been a few in the I mean, we've had some amazing hotels and restaurants and things like that, but in the Ecom space there's a few that I can speak to, so lovely. Lvly, the online florist boutique, and edible blooms were both early adopters of Hash Gifted and they've gifted, you know, thousands of different products through the platform now and they've seen incredible results. Obviously, their products are really very visually appealing and easy to share, and they also came up with some really beautiful campaign ideas. So it wasn't just about oh, I'm a creator and I've received this beautiful bunch of flowers, or this amazing chocolate, you know, or donut tower or whatever. They also had really beautiful campaigns of like nominate a friend or nominate someone in your community who you think should be gifted something really beautiful and will send something to them as well as something to you, and so they were making these really beautiful content pieces that I think really resonated with consumers. So they built up a huge bank of content that was really like, really unique, you know, from reels, videos, stories and then just some straight great UGC and showcasing a huge different variety of products in their ranges, because obviously they both both lovely and edible blooms had a lot of different products to showcase, which was challenging for their marketing teams. They did incredibly well. We also had Estee Lauder, who have a lot of brands underneath their umbrella, so Bobby Brown, obviously, estee Lauder, clinique themselves so they did an amazing job as well.

Taryn Williams : 47:02

Their biggest pain point was UGC. Being able to showcase fantastic different types of makeup looks and products in use and even just beautiful flat lay images, was something that they really struggled to get because, as an international company, they would get sent. You know, here's a folder of brand approved images that were very advertising images and they're like this doesn't work for us. This doesn't resonate on social. This is not what people want to see. They don't want to see this glossy advertising shop that is, you know, from North American summer when it's winter in Australia, like that's not going to resonate at all. So it really allowed them to be able to make on brand content that was, you know, country suitable and also, you know, showcasing ethnic diversity, which is incredibly important to them as a brand.

Ryan Martin : 47:46

Yeah, okay, brilliant. Well, that's all my questions for today. I really appreciate you coming on. As I said, we have a lot of questions around it, so to be able to spend sort of 45, 50 minutes with yourself and just try and get some of those questions answered, it's really appreciated, and looking forward to following the hash gifted journey from here on. I'm excited for what it can do for my clients and our listening audience as well. So, yeah, all the best and yeah, hopefully the year ahead is a great one.

Taryn Williams : 48:18

Thanks so much, and you too.

Ryan Martin : 48:20

Cheers Todd.