Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the Advocacy Channel, a customer marketing podcast brought to you by impact.com in today's episode, our host Will Fraser chats with Mal Chia, an E commerce growth expert and former head of marketing at Uber Australia.
As the current co founder and Managing director of Ecomm Nation, Mel helps ecommerce brands grow through performance marketing solutions spanning across affiliate marketing, CRM and loyalty, and more.
With experience advising top online retailers, Mal joins us to share valuable insights on how e commerce brands can turn loyal customers into powerful advocates. In this episode, you'll learn strategies for building authentic referral programs, how to balance different reward types, and practical tips for scaling customer advocacy in e commerce. Enjoy.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Welcome Mal. Thank you so much for joining us here today.
[00:01:00] Speaker C: Thanks for having me. Will. It's a pleasure.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: I'm really excited to kind of dig in here and have a chance to talk about this for our listeners to kind of hear some of the really cool stuff that you've been up to. Now I'm really excited and they've heard a little bit of a blurb about you in the intro, but perhaps we could kind of just get a quick rundown of your background. I know you've been involved in all sorts of different companies and different channels, so it'd be great to just kind of help share with our audience a little bit of your performance professional background.
[00:01:26] Speaker C: Yeah, look, I'm in from a digital marketing standpoint. I really got started in Digital over 20 years ago. I know some people tell me I look like I'm 27 or maybe 30 something, but I'm 44 years old. I started building websites. That occurred to me 30 years ago. So back in 1994 when I was still in high school and I was just hacking the code, I was fascinated by the Internet. I was looking at these websites and I realized that if I looked at the source code, copied it into a text editor and then changed a few variables, I could completely change the look and feel of a site. So I used to do that, I used to export the HTML, load it into a text editor, change a few things like the color, border width, things like that, upload and blew my mind just how you could just manipulate all these things so easily online. So that kind of was my awakening to digital marketing. And then from there I started building more websites, getting more involved into the marketing side of things. I used to be a dj, so I ran a few different businesses as a, as a mobile DJ business, running events, you know, running nightclubs. And it was through that I started building websites for for my companies and doing email marketing. And because we had no money, it was this really scrappy way of doing marketing just by doing it all myself, just by sending out my own emails, by copying pasting emails into the email addresses, into like my whatever mail client I was using at the time, building my own website and then learning Google Ads on top of that and then doing Facebook marketing, but also in forums. Early days of the Internet, when it was before social media, we were in, we were in forums, you know, and different chat groups. And it was through that that I started moving throughout my career and have pretty much at some point another done everything in the digital marketing space from running ads to email campaigns, building websites like I said before, and strategy. So I'm very much a digital generalist. And over my career I've done various things like it used to be the first head of digital actually for the University of Adelaide, which is one of the big sandstone universities in Australia. Then after that, soon after that, I end up at, at Uber. I was the first head of marketing for Uber in Australia before moving into Riderware, which is an activewear brand in Australia, as their chief marketing officer. But after that, since then I've been in consulting, working as a fractional CMO to retail brands and also as a owner of an e commerce digital marketing agency as well. Ecom Nation.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: Wow, I learned a lot about you there. That's pretty exciting. Like really early days of the Internet there and just kind of got a chance to maybe grow up with, with a to of that kind of ad tech and performance marketing tech you're talking with there. So that's super cool. But I do have an important question.
Did you have a DJ name?
[00:04:02] Speaker C: Do you know? I didn't actually. I lie. For most of my professional career I just djed as Mal Cheer. But at the start, my best friend Nathan, because we always used to play back to back with each other, which means like he would play a track, then I would play a track, then he would play, then I'll play. He was DJ Cross and I was DJ Fade. So we were Crossfade.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: Oh, I love it. I love it. On brand. I love it, I love it. Wonderful. You know you're kind of talking about when you were working that your time as head of digital for Uber there and right away. And I think this is really kind of like the crux of where our conversation is going to live tonight because you had that chance to see a bit of a different understanding of what customer referral and brand ambassador programs can be like as well, as, of course, having your background with performance marketing through paid ads and through. Through performance. And I guess, you know, I kind of just start by, by touching on how do you kind of define the differences in these programs, right? Like, where do you kind of see the important lines between a customer referral program and an affiliate program and kind of, you know, the steps in between that you might, you might think about.
[00:05:07] Speaker C: I think I'll take a step back even further than that and look at, you know, from a performance marketing standpoint. You've got digital ads, you've got things like that. Then you've also got like your affiliate program and then your customer referral programs. And the difference between all of them is really the old thing about if I tell you I' you may or may not believe me, but if someone, you know, tells you that I'm great, you're more likely to believe them because you have a stronger relationship there. And that's really the big distinction here about where who is the actual messenger. There's a. There's an old Marshall McLuhan book which I read early in my career. The medium is the message. Where the medium of who's actually delivering the message is just as important as the message. Like, we could have the same message, but if the medium comes through someone who you're very closely connected to, you are much more likely to believe and trust that message. So for me, that's kind of like how I look at the difference between them. You kind of need all levels. And early in my career, when I was, when I was DJing and running nightclubs, I realized the importance of actually building a community. Building a community of not just customers, but true advocates for the brand who are going to bring in more and more friends to my nightclub each and every week, you know, come to come out and see me play. That was much more powerful than me trying to do advertising and print media and things like that, which a lot of my competitors at the time, in the late 90s, early 2000s were doing. We found so much more value in actually activating these groups of advocates, you know, who, who were passionate about the brand and, and would want to. And were motivated to want to introduce more and more people to it.
[00:06:40] Speaker B: Wow, that's. That's some pretty aware marketing for, for a young DJ in the world. I, I love that. Yeah. Then I think as we, as you step into that, you know, like, when you look at like that, that difference, right, that, that message that comes from a trusted source, you know, you've been able to see like the Uber referral program and other referral programs, you know, how do you see the, the effectiveness of that message compare to that, you know, telling them, you know, telling everyone that you are great or maybe even from an affiliate, you know, what do you see that, that difference look like?
[00:07:09] Speaker C: I started working at Uber 2014, so it was very, very, very different time. It was before Uber was regulated around the, around the world. So we were very much operating in an unregulated market. I joined right before, before we launched UberX, which is the ride sharing service in Australia. I think it had already been in parts of the US for a while before that. And Uber, by the nature of being a big tech company, there was a lot of data out there and we were encouraged to be very, very scrappy in terms of our marketing. And before that I'd come from the University of Adelaide. I'd been working in agencies for a little while, working with fairly large budgets with people who are not afraid to spend quite a lot. But then when I got to Uber, I very quickly realized that spending a lot on ads was actually frowned upon. That while there was some spend on ads, it wasn't significant amount. And when I dug into that a little bit more, it was because the data really didn't bear it out that, that the people we were acquiring through advertising, the writers we were acquiring for advertising, were actually turning into good writers. And also by that same token as well, with the drivers which we were acquiring through advertising on different platforms, didn't convert as well. Like they may have converted, but they didn't then actually go on to become good drivers or good riders for us. So one of the first things we realized was that when we were acquiring customers through our advocacy program, which was essentially we had this program called Give GXGY. So give, give 20, get 20 or give 10, get 10, whatever you want it to be. So what we found was that the customers who we were acquiring through our gxgy program were significantly more engaged than customers who we were acquiring through other channels, except for potentially like organic search, you know, or things like that, where they were coming directly and downloading the app. We found that those other customers, particularly ones who, and we did do some performance marketing through Facebook, Google and the likes of that, and they were fine. We got good acquisition numbers, like good sign up numbers through that, but the conversion for then going on to an engaged rider wasn't there. Whereas with customers who were being referred to us because they had a friend who was then sharing their code with them, we found that they were not just signing up, but then they were going on to take the first ride for Uber. It was really important that you didn't just take one ride, but you took three rides. Because we knew that after you reached this tipping point of a certain number of rides, you were much more stickier. So your LTV obviously goes up to a certain point. There's a certain point where you become profitable for us and then we obviously want to, want to retain you. So how do we find more of those customers? And we found overwhelmingly that the customers acquired through our referral program was significantly more valuable to Uber than any other channel. So we not quite doubled down on it, but that became a real focus of ours and that actually became a whole role in itself. Our CRM and loyalty manager, who then oversaw that program to like test different variables. And we did a lot of testing with that to figure out what was going to be the most attractive offer, which was going to keep people coming back to, to. To which was going to incentivize people to continue to share their, their code. And often with that as well. We used to run different promotions so like, for, for certain weekends, we would up that value to like, you know, Instead of a give 10, get 10 or give 20, get 20 would up it to like a give 50, get 50 so you can get a ride up to $50 and get one return, which would be like an Uber black ride, right? So, you know, and who doesn't want to ball a ride, you know, on the weekend in a black Town Car up at every now and then to see what that would do. And we found that testing that would actually look at how we change different people's behavior, whether people will be more likely to refer or less likely to refer. And rather than being a blanket, we found that there were a lot of nuance in that. So there was a cohort of customers who were more likely to refer when it was a higher value because they wanted to get that black, that Uber black ride. But then with others it wouldn't. That would still continue to refer at the same amount. And what we found was that they ended up being a bit of a sweet spot, particularly with a group of customers who were like our most die hard loyal Uber writers who were just happy with like you know, a give 20, get 20. I think it might have been able to give 25, get 25. And at that amount they were happy just continue referring. At a certain point, if we dropped it to something like a give 10, the behavior would slow down. But around a 20, 25 meant it was optimized for the amount of times they would share it and what the take up would be of that and also what our path to profitability was, I guess, on the writers who were required through, through that particular code.
[00:11:31] Speaker B: You know, it's interesting that I think that what you're talking there with that kind of sweet spot, that's something that we've seen a bunch too, where people can have a tendency to think like, I must give the maximum largest amount, or they think about their incentive structure as like a comparable to their affiliate program. And it is very different intentions. Right. And so you can have these different behaviors that emerge there. And yeah, like you said, we often find that it's actually not the highest reward value that gets the most desired behavior.
[00:11:58] Speaker C: And we were talking about that before with Black Friday sales, you know, with some people who are just ramping up to like 30%, 40%, 50%. But there's a point where that actually stops becoming profitable for a business and it becomes like a point of diminishing returns because all of that just continues to eat into your margin. So having that understanding of your unit economics was so critical at Uber to understand what are our unit economics with every first ride, second ride, third ride. So we can actually understand how to optimize the levers which we can pull to ensure that we were. That we were able to get as profitable to balance out that piece between growth and profitability.
[00:12:34] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And I think what's interesting is as you, as you go into these referral programs, we start to notice, you know, we start with the customer and it is credit based, but then we start to see, you know, some of those customers growing up into different types of advocates for us. Right. No, they might still be more like a brand ambassador or they might even grow up into a proper affiliate. Right. But I know that you did some work at your next company, company around that kind of more brand ambassador program that whatever you may want to call, but that. That customer that where cash makes more sense as an incentive. And I think this is just such really cool things you discovered in this program. But I love you kind of just tell our audience a little bit about the next program that you were running and how that worked.
[00:13:16] Speaker C: So that was at Riderwear and Riderware, like most activewear brands back in like 2017, 2018. Gymshark obviously started it with using a lot of influencers. We kind of piggied back, piggybacked off the back of that and started using a lot of influence as well. And we Grew a gigantic influencer marketing program. So we had roughly about three to 400 influences across three different tiers. So our micro, our mid and our. And our. And micro, mid and macro influences. I can't remember what the actual classification for the number of followers was to qualify for each group. But that used to be how it was. It was structured. And one thing which I always found really interesting with that was that the micros would actually outperform a lot of the mid and the macros. But there was this belief which we had in the business that the bigger the better, that we only wanted people who were over a certain size. But the numbers didn't really bear that out in terms of how many of them, because they all had their own referral codes at the time in terms of which codes were used the most. It didn't actually balance it out that way. Matter of fact, we were getting a lot more per influencer around our micro. And I've been a macro, which then led me to think, okay, well, what is the actual value of an influencer? Is there role there to convert or is there a role there for brand awareness? So that kind of led into a different conversation around that. But what I found really interesting was that when I started diving into the data and it started with, first of all, looking at what's the correlation between influencers and where we're acquiring customers. Because the theory which, the hypothesis which I had going into it was that a local influencer, like a, like a micro influencer is, is more influential, can actually influence more behavior because there's someone who is in their community and people can touch and feel them and this is more visible within that community. So I wanted to actually validate that hypothesis. What I did was then actually overlay in the US where our customers were and where our influences were. And you know, lo and behold, there was some correlation there. And there was actually a pretty good correlation between, you know, where. Where there were clusters of. Of customers and where there was an influencer. But what actually struck me was that there was in Ohio, there was a town in Ohio where we just had this massive group of customers and that were really loyal customers. I couldn't believe it. So I dug a little bit into there to find out what was motivating the behavior, why they were purchasing so much. And where we kind of brought everything back to was that there was a particular influencer there, an athlete bodybuilder, Michael Whittig there, who was just a huge fan of the brand. He'd been buying the brand for many, many years and was posting regularly about it. So he would wear the shoes, he would wear the clothes. He would rave about how this was like the best clothes for bodybuilding. And he was super, super influential in his community. He competed at the local bodybuilding championships. I think he was over 40. So he was like with the Masters champion. But then also he was a personal trainer as well. He did a lot of work in the community with other fitness communities, and as a result, he was a bit of a personality there. He was someone who people in that community really trusted, but he wasn't an influencer by our definition. So we looked at it and went, okay, well why is he able to drive this sort of behavior? And then we reached out to him and just said, hey, like, we can see that, that people in your community are really resonating with what you're doing. Would you like to be a part of it? And then we, we went to that and offered him initially just the opportunity to actually just like, to credit, to earn credit for, for, for every, for every purchase. So we gave him his own code. Every time his code was used, we would, we would issue him credit. And this is back before I even knew that there were influencer management platforms. So we were doing everything very manually through Zapier and Shopify integration, which would drop all the discount codes which were used into a Google sheet with another sheet which then do an index match to look at every month how many times that code was used and then calculate, okay, well, based on the number of times that code were used and what the, what the purchase value was. This is how much the gift card or the, the commission we need to pay was. It was, it was pretty wild. Like that, that, that Google sheet was, was crazy. But that's kind of how we found that. And then that changed our whole thinking about how influencers or ambassadors could be used, that they didn't actually need to be someone with a huge following on Instagram, who we were scouting per se, but people in the community who were just talking about us. So from there we then went on to start looking up who was actually talking about right away, who are the people sharing content about, like, hey, look how cute I am in my right away outfit. You know, these shoes are the best shoes I can imagine for like deadlifting and squats. And we started reaching out to those customers and actually reaching out to just customers and just saying, hey, do you want to be part of our program? You know, do you, do you want to actually join our customer ambassador program team right Away we called it and offer them an incentive and initially just started off just as a credit. So it was a gift card. So we issue them gift card every month so they could buy more gear. We would also gift them stuff as well. Like when we had a big collection, we would give them some items, but it kind of grew that way from there.
[00:18:14] Speaker B: You know, this is interesting because I think it's like the blurring of lines between customer ambassadors, customer advocates and influencers has been happening for a very long time. But we actually are just kind of just seeing it really get recognized today. You know, I think it's interesting. You find these people that are massive fans out there. They have real world contact with people. I think that's something that's like we kind of forget about a little bit. Like you're talking about, like maybe they don't have massive followings, but they actually talked to people like, what a wild idea. Someone, you know in your community is recommending a product and you actually buy it. Right? Like it's happening. Right. And I think we're seeing this as an interesting way right now. We're seeing this with groups like dentists, chiropractors, veterinarians, community leaders, where you're like, yeah, they talk to 20, 30 people a day, right. And they have like very meaningful one on one conversations. So it's just interesting. Like we kind of forget sometimes that these people who we can't measure in a social following way or even maybe in like an algorithmic impact way, they're just having this like wild idea of a real world conversation and they, they make things happen for us. Right? So I think that's just like an interesting space to see.
You did mention you kind of started with credit and then, you know, I know you, you moved to cash at some point. And I'm kind of curious, like what prompted that transition? What kind of different behaviors did you see when you moved to paying these people? Certainly kind of, you know, some more context on that I think would be interesting.
[00:19:41] Speaker C: Yeah, look, great question. And that was again just like another hypothesis we had where we looked at how do we amplify. Amplify what they're doing. Is this something which, if we actually went from being credit, which we positioned it differently as well with credit, we position it as a thank you, as a, hey, thanks for helping, being part of the community and helping to grow the community. Here's your, your gift from us.
[00:20:03] Speaker B: Right?
[00:20:03] Speaker C: Again, the hypothesis around that was that, okay, if we make this more of, you know, actually put like a cash incentive to it, are they going to be more likely to refer us? So when we offered that, an interesting thing happened is that not everyone took us up on that offer because there were some people who are still really happy to be just referred because I just love the brand. But when we introduced cash to the equation, it went from being a gift and a thank you to being something which was very transactional. And we had actually had a few people who declined and said, actually we don't want a part of that. We're happy with the gift card, you don't need to use cash. And look, we were fine with that. And then we had some people who were just completely turned off and actually left the program. But then we had some people who took up cash and said, great, excellent. And then we kind of promoted them into our affiliates tier where they were, we would offer, they would get like a percentage commission based on how many sales they made over that period. But that was really interesting for us to see the fact that some people valued the fact that it was, it was a bit of reciprocity, you know, that they were happy to refer it because they felt they were getting so much back from the brand. The brand was a recognizing them. And I should also mention that with a lot of these guys, we actually started to reuse their content as well. So when they posted content about right away and we saw it, we would generally repurpose it. We would use it in our campaigns, we would use it in organic socials, we will use it in emails. And they love that. They love the fact that we were recognizing them. But when it became transactional, some of them dropped off and said, we actually don't like it didn't feel right for us. And then they declined. They just wanted to say on the gift cards. But like I said, some people actually took that and ran. And actually some of them have then turned it into a whole business now. And that was kind of their first foray back in like 2019, 2020 into, into becoming affiliates. And now when I, I'm still connected with quite a few of them online in Instagram, you can see that they've got so many sponsors now. They've got like a beauty sponsor, they've got a women's fashion sponsor, they've got this, they've got a that, and that's the whole career.
[00:21:57] Speaker B: Really fascinating what you're saying there, because I think that there's people come from the performance marketing world maybe have a tendency to believe that kind of like everyone wants to be the affiliate. You know, you See so many applications that you have to deny regularly, right. You see people that are applying that you're regularly kind of being like you're not right for this program for maybe not for like, you know, the type of content you create or the person you are, but it's just like you're just not One of the 100, you know, people we're looking to, or partners looking to work with or you don't meet our scale requirements or whatever it might be, but to, you know, kind of identify that you had a full continuum. You had some customers that really just wanted the credit, you know, they just wanted like the gift cards, they want to promote the brand, share with a friend. And that made them really happy. And you had some that thought, hey, you know, I could go into some kind of a cash kind of component here. Maybe they become more like a customer advocate, like a nano type influencer even. And then you grew that all the way up into people that are full blown affiliate influencers. And, and I think that that continuum is something that at least I'm starting to see even more and more out there, is just like, you know, it's not one size fits all. It's not one program that everyone wants to be in. It's really trying to meet your customers and your advocates where, where they are in their, their kind of journey of, of sharing or the journey of advocacy.
[00:23:08] Speaker C: Yeah, I think it's all about, like you said, just understanding the customer, understanding what is for, for their particular segment, their Persona, what is value to them. Yeah. And value is going to be different to everyone. And you know, as, as a, as a business owner, as a marketer, you know, if, if I can avoid paying someone cash and instead have them, you know, using a voucher to come back and buy from me, magic, that's that I would much prefer that sort of relationship. But the interesting thing was the fact that for me anyway, was realizing that of that, okay, well, there are people who just generally really, really like love the brand. So let's figure out how we can activate them. How can we, how can we do more to, you know, to have them more involved in what we do, like coming along to events, you know, being more present in our socials and actually becoming advocates, like really advocates for us. Because the thought as well was that, you know, when you think about a flywheel, right. Like a flywheel, by its nature, the more you put in, it gets faster and faster and faster. And with other marketing channels on, let's say paid media, it doesn't necessarily get that because you put more money in and actually get slower and slower and slower. So you kind of reach a saturation point with, with paid media. But with something like a referral program or an advocacy program, like a true advocacy program, you have that full funnel from awareness to consideration to conversion to retention and then advocacy again, which then leads into more. So hopefully, if you can, from, from a group of 10, if I can convert 2 and then they refer another 10 who then referred 4 and then it can amplify that way. So that was always the, the thought which I had around this of like, well, if you, if you just make your customers is really, really happy, find out what makes them so happy and extremely happy that they just can't help but talk about your brand and bring more people into it. That's, that's where I think the real gold is. And that's where you know, you got great brands who, who just scowled to the moon, like truly scale to the moon, which, which have that, you know, I love that.
[00:25:00] Speaker B: I love just this like Flywheel and the Continuum. And we're talking about different reward types and we're talking about, I say there's so much of. So many different levers to pull to activate each type of customer. But I guess, you know, if you had to kind of say like this is the way I would think about looking at rewards for your customers versus these, you know, these ambassadors versus your affiliates. Are there some kind of rules of thumb that you would look at that you kind of think people should think about God?
[00:25:26] Speaker C: Rules of thumb.
Look, like you said before, there's no one size fits all look. I think at the customer level, I'd be looking at what the customer values first of all. And I've done a lot of testing with this with, with a lot of the different brands who I work with. Yeah. And we've tested different things. Like, is it just like a gift with purchase? Like a not for sale gift with purchase which they get after X amount of purchases, which encourages them to take a certain behavior. So on your fifth referral, you get xyz. Yeah. So we've tested some things like that before. All the way up to at the end of a period.
If you reach this tier, we will name a collection after you. Which we have done with one of my sleepwear clients. And it's really cool because we actually had one. We didn't think anyone would make it, but lo and behold they did. They referred some obscene amount of new customers to us and they just post about us constantly.
So but like I said, and it could be something like a gift, it could be free shipping, but it's, it's whatever that is which is going to be of value to that particular customer. Then when you move into that more ambassador, you know, type level, you know, then it's that, that's where it can get, perhaps get a little bit more monetary. Where you then are thinking like, okay, well maybe we do start offering, you know, like a gift card or, or some sor. Other reward, like more monetary reward for that. So let's kind of think of where, of where it scales. But I don't think there's like rules of thumb. I would probably just be like more at the customer level rather than jumping straight to cash. Like, really think about testing a few different things to find out what works for your customers. Because like I said before, the big learning from the right of our example was that we jumped the cash far too quickly, you know, because we saw it work and after a few months it was like, great, well let's accelerate it. Like, surely if we offer people cash, this is going to go great guns. And like we didn't really do any really rigorous analysis of that. But I wonder how much we actually burned through that period unnecessarily by offering cash rather than something a little bit smaller and less monetary, less hard.
[00:27:23] Speaker B: I guess this is an interesting bridge that goes right to kind of where my, my next question was, which is, you know, this idea of authenticity is so important in marketing. And you know, we started this, this conversation today kind of talking about like the medium is the message, right? And how as we start to mix in more financial rewards, you know, do we start to lose some of that authenticity? And you know, I'm kind of curious, like, how do you think about trying to balance that authenticity versus that financial reward in these kind of programs?
[00:27:53] Speaker C: Well, as I think, as you can see, like, I think a lot of people don't trust influencers anymore. You know, I think if you go back about three, four, five years ago, influencers were a lot more trustworthy source source than others. But in the last couple of years, and I think there was a report done recently, I can't remember who did the report, that influences were no longer trustworthy, considered trustworthy, that actually fallen quite far down the list. What influences are great for now is discovery.
So it's understanding the fact that an influencer will talk about a product. They're them talking about it is more about an awareness play now, which is what we were doing back with our macro tier at right away that we had these guys who were just they're purely for awareness. And we actually stopped measuring them based on how many times the codes got used because it didn't really matter. What we actually started kpiing our macro influences on was actually their reach and impressions. Like when they posted organically, how many times, how many people reached, how many impressions do they get? So they were. And I looked at them purely as a media buy. So I actually gave them a CPM that became the measure for our, for our macros. Like what is cpm? What's the cpm? This one versus that one. Simple as that.
But now with the way things are going and particularly around trust that people are realizing like everyone knows that Kim Kardashian when she hawks a certain product, she's getting paid a million dollars for it. Right. It's so why would you trust what she says about the quality of the product? Instead you're then going to be looking at the next tier and one trend which we're seeing quite a lot of. Particularly when I analyze a lot of the creative in the performance marketing space which is working nowadays, it is more that review helpful type video which is just done by, by someone who looks like you or I, which doesn't really have much of a profile, but someone who you think you could trust. And even employee generated content is also starting to pick up a little bit because there's a degree of trust there because you just think that okay, this person, yes, they work there, but they're just like you and me because I work somewhere as well. So. And it's more relatable than someone with 50,000 followers or a million followers who you know is getting paid for it. So I find that from a trust level there's so much more trust now which is being pushed down and we're almost retaining, turning back to that, you know that that town square or your neighbor across the fence and asking their opinion of is of something. Yeah. Because there's someone just like you hopefully.
[00:30:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I think that's. That works in both ways. One, you know, when brands get their best customers to recommend their products, they are recommending people that are very similar to them quite often which typically looks like best customers. But it also, you know, like you said, like getting that authentic response, that authentic referral from someone you actually know. I think is, is very huge when you're already trusting. So whether that's like good friend that you're already going to trust on something or whether that's your chiropractor, you have like this inherent trust level inside of it. And it is interesting though that you mentioned that, that kind of, that change as we kind of go like, you know, my, my nephew, right, who's you know, 14, he is very aware of influencers and I just think like that generation's growing up knowing full well the model. Right. But they still want to make their own referrals and they still want to get their own rewards. And so it's kind of an interesting dance of that, that authenticity of like, you know, they are not going to burn their social credit, their brand, but that they know that they should be getting something when they go ahead and make a referral or make a recommendation. So it's very interesting times I think there.
[00:31:06] Speaker C: Yeah, I think people like fundamentally you want to be acknowledged in some way. Right. So. And people still feel really good when the brand actually knowledge of them and actually says that, hey, you know, thanks for xyz, thanks for being part of our community. And you can see the results. And when I analyze, you know, klaviyo, when I look at different data to see what people are engaging with, they do engage with that because there is a sense of reciprocity, like I've done something for you, I've bought your thing from, from you and then now you're doing something for me. I feel good, which means I'm more likely to do something again for you, which could be that referral piece. Yeah. And so much of it is storytelling and really understanding the role which brands play in their lives. And it's been said time and time again. But I think it's really important now, especially when you see so much competition coming in from brand from, from retailers like Temu and Shein, that you need to have a brand. You need to have a brand, you need to have a narrative and you need to have a narrative which really speaks to who your customer is, can really bring them along with, with that story so they feel like they're part of something and are more likely to refer you. And there's great brands now which spring up, you know, like dark sport in the U.S. who I, who I love, GDUP, which is one of my clients here in Australia who've do this amazing, amazing job of building a community, you know, of people who just love and live and breathe the brand so that their mates just want to be part of that as well because they can see like, you know, how inspired these guys feel these, these people feel when they put on their jeed up hoodie. Yeah, it's like A coat of armor. Right? So they're like great. I want to feel like that as well. So I want to have that coat, armor and, and it's a club. Yeah, it's a club. It's inclusive. You're being part of something and that's all what we want now. We want to feel connected, we want to feel included and part of things.
[00:32:46] Speaker B: You know, it's interesting, interesting. You've kind of talked about this evolution from the influencer being trusted more and, and, and those kind of people being more of an acquisition focused drive, you know, seeing that maybe come down the stream talking about these brands that are now having to develop to kind of fight against, against some more, you know, low cost providers. What do you think the next 10 years or the next, the future of these kind of brand ambassador and affiliate and influencer programs go like what, what do you see the, the future looking like for you and your clients?
[00:33:15] Speaker C: I, I wish I could look at Crystal Ball and see what's going to happen in the next five to 10 years. But I would say that in the next year though, I think it's going to get pushed down even more. And you see particularly in TikTok, you know, people talking about, and you can see my, my, my, my degree there behind me, I've got some awards behind me as well. They're there for credibility. So people are saying this is why you should trust me. So more and more people looking to people who have that capital to put in their, in their content, saying, hey, I'm xyz, I'm a naturopath and this is why I recommend this particular product. But someone who's local, who's relatable and you believe in their credentials. So I think you're going to see a lot more of that content of people using, like you said, the chiropractor, the physio, the personal trainer for their content because it's someone who's believable. Right now I'm working with one of my clients who's about to release a running collection and we're partnering with Australia's largest run club at the moment, which is actually led by two Olympians to release this, to get them to trial the product, to road test it and then to then use them in the content. Not because these guys have particularly huge profiles despite being Olympians, but because they're trustworthy. Because when you see that this person loves the product and says it's amazing for road running, you know, for doing your mileage and you're, you're going to trust them, you know, that's more likely to resonate than just something which looks really pretty. It's like, oh, that looks nice. But when you've actually got an Olympian saying to you, I love these shorts, like, it's fantastic to run like a marathon in these shorts, you're like, I wouldn't mind trying those shorts as well.
[00:34:40] Speaker B: Right, Exactly. Wow. I think that that makes sense and I love that trend. I just, I love that we're. We're still chasing authenticity. The consumer is getting more and more intelligent, but we still find ways to make partnerships important in that. You know, we do realize that partnership partnerships are really just the. The sharing of trust. Right. You know, how do you get your best customers, your biggest supporters, to. To share the message and kind of help share their trust as part of your story? And it's amazing to see that it just keeps. Just keeps working, you know, different methods, different looks and feel, but definitely keeps. Keeps on working out there.
[00:35:12] Speaker C: Yeah, look, I think that just the whole attitude as well, towards the space, you know, I remember back, going back about 10 years ago, like, things like affiliates was like a dirty word, because you always viewed affiliates as. As being the super bottom of the funnel channel. You're never quite sure if it's just cannibalizing your organic sales and you're paying commission for something. But now that whole attitude is changing now where people are starting to recognize that these channels can actually unlock new audiences for you, you know, but new trustworthy audiences for you. But you need to do the homework. You can't just saturate the market. You've got to figure out who's actually going to be a good fit. In the same way, like with all the brands I've worked with before, when we do these programs, we're really careful with who we actually want to reach out to. It's not just like any customer who's talking about us, it's got to be the right customer. It's got to be the right customer who's trustworthy, influential, and who we actually want to align ourselves with.
[00:36:00] Speaker B: Absolutely. I think that's a great place for us to. To end off today's episode. I mean, pretty. Pretty powerful statement there. So, Mal, just thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you so much for sharing all of your insights and experiences with me and the audience. Audience, we've had this conversation a couple times, and I still managed to learn more this time. So just thank you very, very much. Before I say goodbye, is there anywhere that people can follow you or connect with you or continue to read your thoughts that they could find?
[00:36:29] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. You can check out my podcast this week in E Commerce available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts as well as LinkedIn. So just look me up LinkedIn.comins/malchia. I'm everywhere using that name so you can find me wherever I am and read and hear more of my thoughts. But would love to connect with anyone listening to this podcast if anything I said was of interest.
[00:36:53] Speaker B: Wonderful. Well thank you so much Mal. I'm sure there was a ton of interest to the audience today. Just thank you very much.
[00:36:59] Speaker C: My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Will.
[00:37:05] Speaker A: Thank you for tuning in to another great episode of the Advocacy Channel brought to you by impact.com join us next time as we bring on more expert guests like Mel. If you enjoyed the episode, please review rate and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.
Want to hear more from Mel? Check out his podcast this week in Ecommerce on Spotify and Apple Podcasts or connect with him on LinkedIn. The links are in the show Notes.
If you're looking to build powerful referral marketing programs that transform your customers into revenue driving advocates, head over to impact.com to learn more about our platform. That wraps up another great episode of the Advocacy Channel. We'll see you real soon.
