This UGC Strategy Saves You 100+ Hours a Month | Liz Saunders

This UGC Strategy Saves You 100+ Hours a Month | Liz Saunders Speaker 3: Everybody wants to scale fast, but most don't realize it's not their ad budget holding them back, it's their content. The problem isn't reach, it's resonance. In this episode, Liz Saunders shares how the smartest brands are moving past flashy creative and focusing on what actually sells, content, the content that's built around the product. She breaks down the one testing strategy that completely flipped a failing campaign into a seven-figure winner. Our guest is the president of the creator division of WayWord. She leads a trusted creator brand community platform, bridging the gap between authentic content and meaningful brand partnerships. Previously, as the founder of Fluencer Fruit, she built a thriving ecosystem for creators and a successful UGC agency serving numerous active brand relationships. This is a returning guest, one of my favorites, please, well, not quite please welcome, but Liz Saunders. I'd like to thank the sponsors for the podcast. We just started doing this, but Cellar Board, Sophie Society, Titan, and Connect Cash. Now, I guess you just sit back, relax, enjoy the show, and let's bring on Liz. Speaker 1: Hi. Speaker 3: Hello. You look like you're tanned. Are you in Miami? Speaker 1: I am in Miami and just got back from a cruise. I'm like rested, tanned. Speaker 3: Just call me Carmack. You know what? Most people wouldn't even know who Carmack is. I guarantee you 90% have no clue who Carmack is. Speaker 1: No idea. Speaker 3: Okay. You had a few changes since you've been on the podcast last. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 3: You want to get into that? Speaker 1: Let's do it. Speaker 3: Last time I talked to you, well, last time on the podcast I talked to you, it was Fruit Fluence. Speaker 1: Fluencer Fruit. You got it. Yeah. Speaker 3: I'm dyslexic. I can get away with that. But you, you're now with Wayword. Speaker 1: Yep. Speaker 3: What happened there? Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it was really a combination of like all the right things at the right time sort of deal, you know, when those doors just kind of open. So I met the WayWord head of growth through a LinkedIn conversation and then he and I hopped on a call and then I met their CEO, really liked the team and WayWord has been focused on Brand relationships and Amazon affiliate traffic for brands using the referral bonus links and all of those attribution things. And so when we started talking, we just saw a very natural fit for the community of creators that I had built with the tools and with their brands. And so, you know, one thing led to another and now here we are. They acquired Fluencer Fruit and I am now running the creator division over there. Speaker 3: You know, what's interesting is that example That could be any brand, any brand selling on Amazon. You could be talking on LinkedIn. You could be at an event and you never know where that lands. Like the opportunities are out there. For Amazon, you already had it. And you know what, if I say this again and it's backwards, just virtually slap me. But Fluencer Fruit, you had a brand. You had a great looking brand. You were consistent. Everything was already there. And that's what we preach here for other brands to do. So I know what our topic is today is a little bit different, but I just think it's important that brands really, think through the opportunities that they might be missing out on. And it happens. Speaker 1: Yeah. It happens on LinkedIn, but then also, you know, you and I ran back into each other at Prosper. I think it's one of the, like the relationships, the network, whether it's online or in person are just really critical to being able to show up consistently and to have those results because you just never know, right? Like you and I have worked in and around each other for years now. I mean, we just, and it's like, oh yeah, we just, when we see each other, we catch up, we, and there's always, you know, I love our community, but just a solid plug to be active on LinkedIn and show up in person from time to time at different events. Speaker 3: Absolutely. And by the way, thank you for coming out to our Marketing Misfits live event. Oh, and by the way, so I'm sitting there with you. I don't know if you remember this. And first time I was introduced to your CEO. So we're talking, you know, we're just kind of talking about life. Tim Jordan comes up. Do you remember this? Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 3: Comes up, grabs my hand and kisses it. And all I saw was your CEO go, uh oh. That's a great introduction. Thank you, Tim. Speaker 1: Well, you know what's funny is I have wanted to meet Tim for a really long time because also same space, whatever, and Prosper at your event was the first time I met him face-to-face. Speaker 3: Oh, sorry. Speaker 1: Well, I just walked over to him. I was like, hey, wanted to meet you for a long time. I was at Jungle Scout. You were at Helium 10 and a bunch of others, and so it was fun to finally meet him. Speaker 3: Oh, just wait. Okay, so let's talk about just influencers, investing in creators. I want to start there because one of the things that a lot of, it's not just Amazon sellers, it's just brands in general, it could be service companies, but they're wasting a ton of money. They're just throwing money because somebody said that it's good to get an influencer or a creator. And so they'll throw away money. Paul Barron told me a story. Do you know Paul? Speaker 1: I don't think I've met him. Speaker 3: Okay. So he's a good buddy of mine and he has a very successful swim diaper product. And so he spent $7,500 and he won't mind me telling you this, but he spent $7,500 on this influencer on YouTube. And so he was really disappointed when it was about 1.5 seconds that the product was shown and gone. You know, it was just kind of panned over. It was a waste, everything was wasted, but it was, hey, spend big bucks, bigger celebrity, or more of a macro influencer. It was a waste of time. So let's talk about that. Where should you be looking when you're looking for a creator? And how do you know if the investment's good or not? Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great question. So I think first, the thing that you want to be doing to look for is, We're all on social media, presumably, especially if you're running a brand, you should be on social media, right? Start watching people who naturally engage with you. Listen, I know we're in the era of AI and auto matching and all these things and so I'm going to sound like the boomer in this conversation, but I'm going to tell you that the amount of time that you put into matching with good creators is going to pay off in spades on the back end of your ROI, right? So the first thing is like to be engaging with people who would be your natural audience. So for Paul, You know, creators who have kids that wear diapers, you know, and who are, you know, not shy about talking about their kids, whether or not they feature their kids on their channel or not, but that talk about like different things with their kids. There's also kind of like two sides to like, what kind of content are you looking for? Right? So if you are just starting a brand, you're just starting whatever, You're looking for probably brand awareness campaigns as opposed to selling campaigns. The sales will come, but I just heard Neil Patel speak at a conference and he said something, I can't remember the exact number, it was like, people need to see the name of your brand, like 12 and a half different touch points, right? And it's like, so if you think about that, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, your own channel, your ad, whatever you're doing, Like before it even starts to like jog in that possible buyer's mind that you're a brand, they have to see you 12 and a half times. So the hard thing is, is brand awareness campaigns are tough to measure, right? Because it's like, okay, well now people have seen me there three to five times, you know, not converting sales yet. But I really think we're moving into an era of longevity and way of relationships with creators. So going back to like being involved on social media as the brand, You want to see people who talk about products regularly as part of their content. You want to see people who talk about the same products over and over and over again and aren't just promoting deal of the day, like way of, you know, this week their favorite swim diaper is this one, but next week their favorite swim diaper ever is another one, you know. Just looking for those authentic creators. And I think inherently we all know who those people are, right? Because we engage with humans in our real life and they show up similarly online. But people get so caught up in how many followers do they have? Are they doing promotions? How much are they? Well, they must be worth that if they told me that they are, right? And so just going out and looking for people who you would want to represent your brand is basically your first step. Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly. When I went through school, it was seven points. You had to hit people up seven different ways. Now, Neil was just on our Marketing Misfits podcast. Speaker 1: Was he? Speaker 3: Yeah, and he said the exact same thing. It's so important. So this is brand awareness. It's one of these things that goes over most people's heads. So when I was selling press releases, I would say that you'd spend more money on a premium quality press release if you have something really important to get out there and it would stick. Every week put out something and that way your brand is always out there. And now Google is recognizing that's original content and it's gone full circle, but nobody did it. All my business around press releases for the most part were other types of companies, not eCom focused. Now we're talking about influencers and it's the same thing. So, This this whole brand awareness you got to get it out there like just go back to our sponsors. Well our sponsors You might have brand awareness. This podcast is gonna get downloaded quite a bit. You'll have your social media. You'll have the Apple podcast, but then they might go to a road sign or whatever. You have to do this sort of blitz marketing for brand awareness, or guess what? Your brand is going to be a micro micro brand. Nobody is gonna be searching for it. It's really important. Now, one of the things that Paul did With his content creators, which I thought was incredible did a great job with this was convert so he went from Okay, we're gonna find an influencer. It's gonna be a creator We're gonna reach out If they really love our product, we're going to reach out and they're going to become even a brand ambassador because they love the product so much. So his, uh, the beauty of his product and his brand was he had a huge team of brand ambassadors, which he treated very well. He'd take them to events. He gave them incredible discounts and in return, he got a lot of content. Now, are you seeing that as well, that these creators can, Become a brand ambassador. Speaker 1: Absolutely. So, and the, What he's doing is actually what we're starting to see people push into and one of the things that I talk to people about a lot, which is, it's probably a smaller group of brand ambassadors than maybe when people are like, build your affiliate program and all these things, right? When you have that group of trusted creators and you are a brand that they trust, it just goes so much farther. So we're seeing people, Basically, one of the clothing brands, I was on a podcast with her a couple years ago and she was like, we are doing a children's clothing brand. She was like, we find mid-sized creators who have really engaged audiences. She was like, and we put them on a retainer basically. And she was talking about how You know, then they're with them for a long period of time. And then she was like, we just send them every piece of clothing that we make in the size of their kids. She was like, because it's about people seeing us over and over and over again, because we're not a big box store, right? The Gap, whoever. If they pay one of the Jenners a bunch of money for one post, that goes far for them because they're somebody that people already know about, right? And it's like, oh, they're launching their fall line. Like those can be impactful at that level. But for those of us who are running smaller brands, getting launched, all those things, we need to be showing up over and over and over again. And working with a creator who talks to your audience all the time and you're showing up organically, you know, though closed, We're always on those kids when they were in videos and pictures and everything else. And it's like, then people would ask about it. So in and above the content that was technically on Retainer, their products were always showing up. And we're seeing a lot more of that, right? Like deeper relationships, longer relationships with brands that have meaning to the creator's audience and provide real value. Speaker 3: We, a lot of the times you hear about the nightmare of actually finding creators. So, you know, you're sending out hundreds, if not thousands of requests. A few people, a few creators are responding and we'll get into that in a sec, but the just nourishing and evolving those hundreds or thousands of emails with that small amount What are your expectations with this? Speaker 1: I would love to see people scale back from sending hundreds and thousands, right? Because on both sides of this relationship, the brands are getting burned by no responses, by low quality responses, by low quality content, right? And then they also get, the brands get a million requests a day for like, can you send me a free sample so I can create content? Because my mom watches all my content, I promise, right? And then on the creator side, we get a million emails a day. Any inbox that we have is flooded with, let me just send you this and we'll give you a strong discount and you can create 78 pieces of content in seven days for us and for free, right? So like both sides are having this pretty terrible experience, honestly. With like interacting with the other side of the coin. And so what I actually recommend people do is that you spend some time interacting with that creator as your brand organically like as an actual human. So for example, my my Instagram that I play with and TikTok is Liz on a journey. I do Olympic weightlifting right as an example. Like if I want to develop a brand relationship with Jim Reapers, as an example, I use their wrist wraps every day. The approach that I would take is I would go to their socials And interact normally as myself for a couple weeks or a month. And then when I send them a DM and say, hey, I really like the products and this is what I would like to do, they already know me, right? And so from the brand perspective, same thing, like interact with, let's pick a handful, five to 10 creators, watch how they engage with their audience. Is that how you would want a customer service rep to speak to your customer? Do they engage with you? Are they human? Is their content in line? Does the people that show up in their comments in line with your audience? And it takes more work that way than scattershot, right? Like in just sending thousands. But the quality of the relationship is going to pay off. Speaker 3: Now, you said something there about, we'll send you all our product, do 78 pieces and we're not gonna pay you. Speaker 1: Right. Speaker 3: Let's talk about that because there seems to be a trend with a lot of people or sellers that people will just, it might be an ego thing, but people are going to do this for me for free and because my product is so great. What are you seeing commission wise that will get the interest or at least the creator to perk up and take a look at your product? Speaker 1: So it depends on where you are in your life cycle. Right? So if your product is selling, you know, 10,000 a day on Amazon and you're like, Hey, listen, we'll give you 20% commission for this. Then yeah, they'll probably be like, all right, I would consider that without a flat fee upfront. If you're launching and you're like, this is going to be a long tail play additional commission. You're probably going to need to invest in a flat fee payment for a creator anywhere, depending on what type of content, if you're just looking for onsite Amazon Influencer content, $500 to $1,000 for a video. If you're looking at offsite and they're going to drive traffic, probably some sort of combination of, you know, a couple hundred bucks or more, depending on how closely they're audience is tied to your target market and those sorts of things. Speaker 3: But you really have to look at that creator who's asking, because I've seen, I've explored the whole creator side, influencer side, and I've had people reach out and they said, oh, you know, they'll do a video for one of my products. And they were going to charge me 500 bucks. I said, oh, let's take a look. Very little followers. And I've also seen the, oh, I've got 100,000 followers, but there's no engagement at all. Just emoji, emoji, emojis. Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, exactly. Speaker 3: So you have to, if you're getting a lot of content back from these creators, what are some of the signs that you should look for from their account? To make sure that it's actually a quality influencer or creator. Speaker 1: Absolutely. So I'll split this into two pieces of the conversation because your audience is a lot of FBA and Amazon sellers. So there's really an on-site conversation and an off-site conversation. And what I mean by that is Amazon Influencer is the on-site program where creators are approved in and they can create those videos that live on your product listing, right? So if you're looking for that, it's a UGC, unboxing, point-of-sale type content. It's a little bit different. You know, we charge $500 a video for those. If you're looking at that type of a creator, you can look at their storefront and see how many other videos they have. Go look through some of their other stuff. See if their vibe matches with yours, right? That is not a follower play. Or even an engagement play that you can pull metrics on. It's just do you like how they would appear on your product listing showing your content, right? That's full stop. Now, if you want to ask them more questions about their on-site numbers, there's pretty limited metrics that Amazon gets us, but you can ask a couple questions about like what their average watch time is, how many likes they have on a certain video, like some of those, very basic. For off-site, so we're thinking Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, where somebody is driving traffic from their audience to your product listing. There's, at least for Instagram, and you can Google this, the one that I really liked closed down, but if you Google like Instagram fake follower audit or whatever, there's a couple platforms that you can plug in handles for, and it will tell you like how many of their followers are fake, what their engagement rates are, what their demographics of their followers are, and those are interesting metrics. Follower count is a pretty outdated metric at this point, because as you noted, like, yeah, they've got a million followers and everybody comments emojis, like that's not actual engagement, right? But the things that I would ask for are engagement rates, See how much you can pull on your own from one of those. But then I would also when you're talking to the creator and this is I would ask them for what their ROI from other campaigns are and they may not know exactly how to pull all of those. So sometimes we have to kind of guide people who are new in the like metrics analytics space, right? But you know, what were their click-through rates? What were their, well, you know, on TikTok, what was their GMV, which you can basically pull, like that they sold off of their last campaign? So some of those things, like I really want to know more, like what's your audience usually respond to? What types of content on your Instagram account do you see people really engage with? What kind of driving, like how much success does that person have driving people from their Instagram account to a sales page? Whatever those things are, are more important than like follower count. Speaker 3: When I first introduced this episode, I was talking about commission stacking. So let's talk about that and what is commission stacking and is there a way to scale using commission stacking? Speaker 1: Absolutely. So this is, I think, where the product focused content side of this is. So this is for the creators who are spending all this time creating really good b-roll and unboxings and putting everything together. My goal for creators is for them to make as much money as possible off of the same piece of content, which For those of us in the product space, it's a win for everyone, right? Because the more money the creator makes means the more sales are being driven for the brand and so on and so forth. Amazon makes more money, everybody's happy, right? So when you look at all of the places, the first piece of it is repurposing content, right? So if somebody creates something for on-site Amazon, I'm repurposing it to a YouTube channel, possibly a TikTok channel. You know, there's a couple other places and you can make not just the on-site commission, but also the off-site commission for affiliate attribution, all of those things. But the other thing is, is commission stacking with different types of commission on the same piece of content. So for example, An on-site video for Amazon Influencer for a coffee mug. I can make money through Creator Connections if they're running a campaign, right? I can make money off of the original commission for the video on the page. Creator Connections if that brand is running a campaign. I can repurpose it to YouTube and if they've got a brand relationship with WayWord as an example, And they've got attribution and I'm pushing, you know, content there or pushing traffic from there. You've got another, you know, stream of commission. So you've got in way of like repurposing and being able to stack. It's like, okay, you create the content one time and then you push it out in different places to drive traffic and to convert traffic on those different locations with different Commission Streams. Speaker 3: All right. Okay. It is the bottom of the hour and at the bottom of the hour, if this is the first time listening to the podcast, we do something a little bit different, which ends up at the top of the hour. That's called the Wheel of Kelsey. What this is is a giveaway usually provided by the guest. And today I believe we do have a giveaway. What is it? Speaker 1: We are giving away a free month of the Fluencer Fruit extension. Speaker 3: Alright, very good. And we haven't talked about the app. We'll get to it, but it is amazing. I've used it. Kelsey's used it. And it really helps you kind of clear the muddy waters and get exactly what you want. So whoever wins that, that's a little piece of gold for you for a month. So to get that, it's hashtag WheelOfKelsey, tag two people, you'll get a second entry. And there is a third way now, and that is to enter through the newsletter each week. So just to be a little confusing, this week's giveaway will be actually spun next week. And the one this week was from last week. So we just get a few more entries in there and we make it a bit more exciting. So, the other thing is if you have any questions about creators, influencers, commissions, please ask. Brand ambassadors, we'll get to those at the top of the hour. But now it's time for a sponsor. Did you know Amazon profit is more than revenue minus ads? Seller Board calculates your true profitability, factoring in every fee, return, shipping cost, and even cost of goods using FIFO logic. That's first in, first out logic. Plus, they automate your PPC, forecast inventory and avoid stockouts, reclaim money with Amazon reimbursements, set FBM shipping by period, and track Walmart profits with the same dashboard. And you don't even have to have an Amazon account. You can try it for free for two months. CellarBoard, know your numbers, scale your business. Huh, that was me. All right, let's talk about the future 2025. What do you think about product-focused content like the trends in 2025? What's changed the most from even a year ago? Speaker 1: So on TikTok, we're seeing the product-focused content really shift in way of A year ago, TikTok Shop was very new and it was very blue ocean. TikTok was underwriting a lot of the brand coupons, underwriting a lot of the commissions, and they've, as part of the growth of any program, they've pulled back on that. Obviously, that's to drive that initial bump. So we've seen that shift. And at the same time, TikTok Shop Product, you know, affiliate content is still also incredibly new. So we're seeing that program kind of like shift and grow on the Amazon side. We're seeing a real shift from for the on-site content. You know, three years ago you could post anything and make a bunch of money off of it. And we're seeing some shifts there where the bulk of what people is making is in the stacking, is in creator connections, is on the third-party platforms like Wayword, is indirect brand deals as opposed to that direct on-site commission that they were making prior to this. So I think we're just seeing that, like I talk about this pretty regularly, like when Amazon affiliate, which has now been around for years and years and years, right? Early days, people were making, you know, boo coodles of money and then Amazon shift the structure. Stabilize it for the long term. And so I think in both Amazon OnSite and also in TikTok Shop, we're seeing that shift. They're both building infrastructure for what the long term looks like. And, you know, yet to be seen where they'll land on some of these things. But I don't think product focused content is going away because we have really good data around how well specifically user generated content, so influencer generated content, user generated content, how much more Potential buyers trust it, as well as how much better it converts than when a brand tries to create their own content in that same way. There's still a place for brand content. That's never going to go away. But that UGC, that Influencer Generated Content, I think is here to stay. Speaker 3: Can we talk a little bit more about Creator Connections? What is it? What does the average brand get the most out of it? Speaker 1: So Creator Connections is Amazon's foray into helping brands and content creators and publishers Connect directly, right? So I'll go ahead and call out the one, in my opinion, the one con to Creator Connections, which is the messaging is kind of difficult. So like actually having conversations in there can be time-consuming because we don't get notifications from the seller side or from the creator side. You just have to log in every day and see if you have a little red dot on the message. So that piece. But the beauty of it is it gives brands an opportunity to better incentivize creators to create more content and publishers to push more content. Because when I talk to brands, you know, Amazon Affiliate Commission is between for on-site 1 and 4% and for off-site between 2 and 8% depending on the category. Most brands would happily pay a higher acquisition commission to a creator or a publisher Who's exposing a new buyer to their brand and so this kind of helps clear that gap It's like well listen if you're sending me I would pay you 20% Commission for this sale because you know that once people know who you are make their first buy They get it. They'll come back right, so it's a good way within it's in the Amazon ecosystem So you know it's terms of service compliant. They're regulating all of it and But it gives you that direct ability to connect. People don't love when I say this, so unpopular opinion, but here we go. The thing that I think Creator Connections is maybe not quite fully fleshed out is for the onsite and the content creation timing. And what I mean by that is if you as a brand create a new campaign, And you are asking for people to submit content for it. As a creator, I can submit an onsite video that I created two years ago. And if I make a sale, you will pay me the higher commission. Well, all right. In the future, I think probably Amazon should make it for the seller side of things because for the seller, there's not a real upside to the same video that I've had up there for two years to pay me an additional commission, right? So I think at some point, they'll probably make it so that it has to be new on-site content or Content that's pushing new traffic, whatever that looks like. So like most things with Amazon, it's a great beginning. And I think they've got some cool ways to kind of like flesh it out and continue building. Yeah. Speaker 3: I think that giveaway, a lot of, maybe a lot of people, I don't know, but I think a lot of people think, Oh, they're giving away too much. They might be losing money, but this has been going on forever. And you give away, it could be for the launch, like you said, and that gets your sales going. It gets some motivation going. And then you've got the side where it's brand awareness. And why not? I know I did a, I was working with an underwear company. I've worked with a lot of different brands on this, but one that comes to mind is, Hey, it's a new type of boxer short and just fill out the application. You get the email, you get the boxer shorts. I think they gave away probably a quarter million of these boxes, but they got the word out that this is what they're doing now and the people that got them tried them out and went back and bought more. It's pretty simple. Okay, so let's talk about mistakes. What kind of mistakes are you seeing from both sides, the seller and the creator? Speaker 1: Yeah, well, we talked about one earlier, which is spamming each other with just one of the spray and pray shots of email where you just send a bajillion and you hope somebody responds and you hope that they're great. So I think that's probably my number one is that people are not taking the time to personalize the social piece of social media, right? Like it's just we've kind of lost some of that. Pulling that thread back in, that's probably the top mistake that I see people make. The other mistake that I see people make is they don't ask the right questions. So from a brand side, knowing that you need to ask the creator what their engagement rates are, if they have a media kit, what is the ROI from some of their past stuff. And on the creator side, not having that ready. I'm the Executive Producer for the brands, right? Less and less, but a lot of content creators kind of like stumbled into it at some point, right? And didn't necessarily have like the business aspect of it in mind. And so I think building out like a media kit or something that shows what kind of results you can drive, even early days when you're just getting started with product focused content. So from the brands, making sure you know what questions to ask, and then from the creator side, making sure that you have answers ready And or helping educate brands if they are not asking the right questions. Speaker 3: You can go to your platform or you could just go and hire influencer or creator. Who owns the content? Speaker 1: Oh, good question. The creator always owns the content unless you have additionally discussed and purchased the copyright or licensing to that content. Speaker 3: What happens if you just go ahead and either you're ignorant of it, you're naive, you start posting all over the place, What can happen? Speaker 1: So assuming that somebody sees it and flags it for the content creator, which happens pretty often, especially on Amazon, the creator will reach out and say something along the lines of, hey, I own that copyright. You either need to pay me for it or take it down and we have brands choose both directions honestly. I've talked recently to people on the publisher side and we've got a lot of educating to do because people assume that a creator whose stuff is being reposted or whatever like is totally fine as long as you're reposting and they're still the original poster but when you like record something, integrate it with yours, record something And just post it as your own, like that's not actually legal. So I think the usual thing is, is most brands will be like, wait, what do you mean? That's not, you're talking about my brand. I should be able to post that. But truly that creator owns that. And so you can either pay them for it or you can take it down. Speaker 3: Back in the nineties, I was doing websites and I, I had all these different contractors building them for us. Uh, And then I started getting the cease and desist order, and they ranged anywhere from $300,000 to, they were big money. And so we settled most of them. You know, we settled on pennies on the dollar. But even now, just yesterday, I think I, or no, it was the day before, I talked to Kelsey and I said, hey, look, I use Google Lens on one of my websites. And I said, there's a photo, you know, I just found this photo that we're using. Do we have the rights to use it? And it turns out we do. It was royalty free. But even if it's royalty free, like let's say you go to any of these places, like Getty is one of them that everybody goes to, it doesn't mean it's royalty free. It's royalty free for non-commercial use. Once you start either printing it on a box or it has X number of impressions, all of a sudden you've got to buy a commercial license that a lot of people skip over and it's just a matter of time, especially now where you're going to get those letters. So I guess the reason I kind of went down that rabbit hole is you gotta really check. You gotta ask questions. And I hope on the influencer side is that people, they bring up the topic rather than the seller, because a lot of times the seller doesn't know. And, you know, they learn the hard way. But, you know, it's got a long way to go. That's what I think. Speaker 1: A lot of educating that we all need to be doing, right? Speaker 3: Yeah. Now, let's talk about when a We've got the video, now it goes live. You talked about this at the very beginning about repurposing. What's repurposing and how can we optimize it? Speaker 1: So for the creators, repurposing is taking that same piece of content and putting it on different platforms. So if I've picked out, I've used Fluencer Fruit, I've picked a really great on-site product to create content for, and then I'm going to repurpose that content and also post it to YouTube. And also post it to a review channel on Instagram, my review channel on Instagram and also on TikTok, right? So you're literally repurposing the content. The other thing that I, I'm going to say this and people are going to be like, really? I like when people will build out a blog where they're taking the transcript, embedding the video, right? Because as we see Google push back towards More organic content and more trying to find real information about products. I do think that we're going to start to see them pulling in that type of information in a way in the AI results that could be pushing people to your content on other platforms. I can't prove that. We're all trying to utilize and fight AI in the same moments and so that is an area where I could see them using AI to find more human like content in a way that like could help. So those are just some of the ways that repurposing your content, posting it in different places can be helpful. Speaker 3: When we were talking with Neil Patel, he was saying that there's a shift going on in SEO and it's more AEO which is answer. You know, not, yeah, not search engine, but answer engine. The easiest way to see it is if you were to go to, uh, people also ask when you do a Google search. Now I'm wondering with the influencers. So you talked about, you know, getting them to shoot a video, but what do they shoot a video of? Can you get them to do like, I'm thinking, all right, We know that there's features. We know that there's benefits. What questions would be asked? You know, so the AEO side of it comes through. So if you do put it on to any of your social media channels or embed it into a blog article, It might pick up and also if you create transcripts. So I think there is a new way of generating content and I guess in a long-winded way, I'm saying, do we ask creators to do multiple or ask multiple creators to take different segments and to publish that? Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's the way to go. So like when I do on-site campaigns, one of the things that we do is we'll go look through the questions that people have asked on the product listing and we'll try to answer as many of those as we can organically in our videos talking about that. If you as a brand know what your FAQs are, definitely send them to a creator and say, as you're creating your content, if you observe the answers to some of these, could you include them in it? And I say it that way because I don't like to script for product post guest creators because you want it to be authentic. You want it to feel like it's very much their experience with your product. But if you know that one of the number one reasons people return your product is because they think it's going to be an overnight fix and it really takes about three months of using your product, having a creator speak to that can be very powerful. And so giving them like, hey, this is something people want to ask questions about a lot. Speaker 2: Can you observe it? Speaker 1: And then letting them speak to their experience. But queuing it for them totally, I think, falls within, like, do that. Speaker 3: How do creators think about the seller micromanaging? Speaker 1: Well, I think micromanaging in general is irritating as anybody. Nobody likes to be micromanaged. I think this is probably one of the areas where talking about things openly and honestly at the beginning and then trusting that what you have agreed to is in process, right? And I'm not saying like, listen, six months later and they haven't sent you anything. They need to have a timeline, but put that into the contract, right? Because if your expectation is two weeks and they've got six weeks worth of backlog that they're working through in products, That's something you should talk about. So I would say make sure that you are voicing all of your expectations on the front end so that you don't feel the need to micromanage them. It's frustrating as a creator to be halfway through my process and have somebody reach out and be like, oh yeah, and also make sure, make sure. You want us to do what we're good at and you're spending the time on the front end like we talked about vetting those creators. So you're choosing somebody you trust, trust. Speaker 3: I think a lot of, you have to remember that these creators are individuals. If you were to go and ask Van Gogh to paint some sunflowers and you went to Picasso and you went to Dali and you went to Gauguin, they would always, they'd be painting sunflowers, but they'd be different. And each creator has their own different style and it's up to the seller to see that style, make sure that your personality matches that creator before you complain that, oh, I didn't like Dally's style. I wanted Picasso. Hey, that's my thought. Anything else before we get to the questions? Speaker 1: No, I'm ready. Let's do this. Speaker 3: Are you ready? Are you sure? Speaker 1: I love questions. Speaker 3: Because they're difficult. I know Simon's difficult, so all right. Speaker 1: How dare he? I don't buy that. Speaker 2: All right, we have a few comments from Simon and a question. So the first two comments are customers absolutely need at least 12 touches. Omnichannel business today means we're juggling way more than just PR and print like in the old days. Speaker 3: I want to comment on that too. So, those 12 touches. People forget about old school marketing. Old school marketing, like the press releases, simple content. You can think outside of the box too. What about buying remnant advertising on billboards for $35 a month? Going back to radio. You know, there's all sorts of different ways. If you want, put it into ChatGPT and say, what are some Old school methods and you'll be shocked at something and they're usually fairly inexpensive and you want to check them out, but there's your 12 touch points right there. So there's a lot of different ways that you can do it. You just have to explore it. When we're talking about 12 touch points, we're not talking about 12 creators on TikTok. Speaker 2: Could you negotiate with creators to get permission to use the copyright before sending products? I also want to add on a new issue that I think creators are dealing with, but AI. Brands are taking the video and using content stretched with AI from the same creator. Where do the AI rights of those videos happen? Speaker 1: Absolutely. So you can definitely, Simon, negotiate with the creator for the entire package, really, like all of it before sending the product. And actually, I recommend that because I'm a big believer in over-communicate on the front end to prevent miscommunication on the back end, right? So everything that you think you want out of this, Before you send the product. Absolutely. Actually, creators really hate when you add something after you've sent the product because it feels like a bait and switch. So this is absolutely the best way to do it for everybody involved. And for Kelsey's man, I haven't seen that yet. And that is so frustrating. All content created by the content creator is owned by them unless otherwise specified, even running it through AI. Yeah, it'll be much. Speaker 3: bigger in the next even few months when you start to see this happening. But at the end of the day, the content creator created it. It got picked up and it'll probably get picked up anyways by AI. But here's the big question. Here's the legal question that I'm not getting. It's really gray. Who owns the content on AI? And what I've heard is AI, ChatGPT or whatever LLM you're using owns that and there hasn't been any rulings on it. But if that's the case, do you have the legal ability to republish it? Now I've talked like Steve Wiedemann's been on. There's been some great SEO guys that have come on and had different answers for it, but most just say gray area, we'll deal with it when the first court case comes up. Speaker 1: That's brutal. Speaker 3: Yeah. And if you talk to any of the AI people out there, the ones that are really into it, they'll all say the same thing. Why are you publishing 100% AI? You should be publishing original material, like mixed in with the AI. You know, that way you're delivering original, and that's part of the old EEAT policy compliance that Google's looking for. So if you give, including the creator, so the creator's video is unique, if it's picked up by the AI and regenerated, it's not original material. I mean, that's how my mind's thinking about it. Speaker 1: Oh man, it's a good question. Speaker 3: Yeah, how long is a piece of string? Speaker 2: Going back to that AI question that I had, one of the things that I've seen recently on TikTok, I'm not sure how big of an issue and how far spread this is, but I guess one of the AI softwares like 11 Labs or one of those types of companies, creators are going and uploading their content, creating AI avatars for themselves. And I guess Either one of these softwares has terms and service where they can then use whatever person uses the software and use their avatar and sell them to other companies. So creators are finding themselves on brands, social media, with AI as an AI avatar and they're contacting the brands and the brands are saying we've We've used this we bought this from this AI company like this is commercially ours Oh my god, you have to deal with the AI company. And so I'm not sure how big this issue is But that's I've heard this happen on tick-tock at least did you see the. Speaker 3: The creator from China last week, it was last week or the week before, they duplicated themselves within AI and they published and sold, I forget, Kevin King had it in his newsletter last week. They sold through AI, like this is just them talking, $7.5 million in sales in China, duplicating themselves, answering the questions, selling the product, $7.5 million. Speaker 1: Dang. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 2: All right, so Simon says lawyers get in line Paint brush and canvas make maker owns the artist painting and the final comments Now it's social media PPC shopping meta Google tick-tock ads ecom marketplaces brick-and-mortar Wholesale and a million digital levers. It's overwhelming trying to cover every base and it's that's very true. Speaker 3: Okay, let's go to a sponsor and then we'll come back with the wheel. Unknown Speaker: Start, scale, exit, repeat. I'm Colin C. Campbell and I've started over a dozen multi-million dollar companies in the last 30 years. I spent the last 10 years writing the book, Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat, to figure out what it is that these serial entrepreneurs do over and over again. We interviewed over 200 people. We created 58 chapters over 30 illustrations 180 call outs and we quite frankly made this book. For the ADHD entrepreneur, it's been number one on Amazon in 15 categories and has won 12 awards globally. Get your book today either on ebook, paperback, hardcover or audible on Amazon or your favorite bookstore. Speaker 3: Liz, how do we get a hold of you? Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm Liz at FluencerFruit.com. Shoot me an email or you can hit the site. Speaker 3: All right, and Kelsey, let's go to the wheel. Speaker 2: Today's giveaway is for the consultation from Exnerta for the AI agents and learning more about how to implement AI agents into your company. So let me shuffle these up, give this a spin, and thank you everyone for entering today's wheel. Kelsey, if you're the winner, please Contact us at kate.lunchwithnorm.com. Speaker 3: Okay, Joseph S. Speaker 2: Alright, congratulations. Speaker 3: I think that's a first-time winner. Alright, everybody. Well, first of all, thank you, Liz, for coming on. I hope everybody learned something about creators and what to do, what not to do, mistakes that people are making. How to stack your commission. But anyway, thank you so much for coming on today. Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. It's always fun to catch up and chat. Speaker 3: Yes. Okay. Thank you everybody for listening to the podcast today. Don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter, LWN.News, not Lunch With Norm. It's LWN.News. All right, everybody have a good day and we'll see you next week. Unknown Speaker: Lunch With Norm. Mm hmm.