Permanently Closed Marketplace Sales Thread

[Intellifluence]

Interested. Give me more info.

Jitesh, please read the above thread; there is a lot of information shared. The initial post is probably the best place to start.

 

[Jitesh Shah]

If I can get that 14days + 1month free trial which you mentioned. Is it available, anymore?

 

[Intellifluence]

If I can get that 14days + 1month free trial which you mentioned. Is it available, anymore?

All plans currently come with 14-day free trials; only VIP members and above were eligible for the review codes -- those have been gone for a while though. If you check us out, use BHW50 as the code so you can get the 14 day free trial and 50% off your first bill.

 

[b1step-ahead]

Hi everyone; all the review copies have been claimed. I've PMed everyone in the thread up to this message.



Great question. I know I answered you privately, but it is worth explaining to the rest of BHW.

The subscription fee is for access to the network and the backend operations. You could think of it as similar to subscribing to Ninja Outreach in that regard, except they have a database that you send cold emails to and we have opt-in influencers that not only want to receive products/cash in exchange for reviews/links, but because the messaging happens within the internal system they are psychologically more receptive to receiving requests via us than an external email.

Each influencer will have his or her own rates and requests. This is a lot like when you're sending out cold pitches for guest posts or manually hitting up people on Instagram, Twitter, Amazon *cough* etc.

I could write another book just as a reply of the various ways to make it work. Since this subforum is primarily people doing SEO, I'll embed an interview I recently did with the guys at Lionzeal PBN; if you like videos then it might help to shed a bit more light on the thought process behind how to use a SaaS like us, as well as general SEO advice and evolution of blackhat. I'm obviously biased, as this is in a sales thread, but it is working extremely well.

Also, I got some requests for joining the affiliate program. We teamed up with Offer Stream Digital; their CEO Rob Adler you might know as Bof2U from various IM forums. He's a quality dude. Thus, if you are looking to be an affiliate, I'd like to ask that you use this link so that Blackhatworld gets some extra revenue: http://www.osdtrk.com/rd/r.php?sid=784&pub=790541 -- it is set to give you 10% commissions and 5% commissions for the affiliates you refer to the network (i.e. this helps Blackhatworld).

Have a great weekend everyone; I'll try to get to all questions via PM. Our support through our site is also very receptive if something comes up.

Pretty good video. Good advice for newbies and all. Good pointers on scaling and client acquisition.

 

[Luminousvelo]

Hey there! I'll take a review.

 

[Intellifluence]

Pretty good video. Good advice for newbies and all. Good pointers on scaling and client acquisition.

Thank you for the kind words.

One issue I see coming up frequently from those new to influencer marketing is influencer selection; sure, some just try to send their offer to everyone (that won't work very well on a pure blast basis) but some are genuine in their approach and simply run into struggles on picking the best influencers to start with. Let's solve that.


Time to Pick the Right Product Influencers

In order for this to make sense we’re going to need to assume four things:

1. You have a defined goal for campaign success.
2. You have a strong understanding of who your intended buyer is.
3. You know which social channels you want to target.
4. You understand the type of influencer you are targeting.

Probability of Influence

It’s ok. I’m not a mathematician and during my MBA program I often left early in my statistics class, so we’ll not develop true probabilistic models. Instead, let’s treat this like some simple algebra.

Outcome = (Reach * Engagement * Relevance) — Cost

Yes, this is overly simplified, but really not by much. Let’s discuss.

Reach — reach in this definition is just the primary reach. There are ways to measure secondary reach on how many people are seeing a message when it is shared/retweeted/re-pinned, but for the sake of our simple calculations we’re using audience size as a measurement of reach, and of course that audience size is based on a single social channel. Otherwise, comparing someone’s Instagram reach to someone else’s YouTube reach would be to enter the apples and oranges conundrum. Raw audience size as a number can be used here.

Engagement — engagement is a measurement to show what percentage of posts receive some degree of liking, sharing, comments, etc. The reason it is important is because it is possible to find an influencer with an extremely large audience of followers that have largely tuned out, effectively ad blind; also, it helps to identify which audiences are fake — it isn’t hard nor expensive to buy 100,000 Twitter followers; it is, however, more expensive to buy 100,000 twitter followers and purchase daily engagement from all of them. Since there can be varying degrees of engagement, for simplicity reasons we are going to use engagement as a percentage, looking at a random sampling of posts and seeing how many of those posts had any engagement. For your own calculations you could choose to assign different values for different levels of engagement, though we find this is a rough filter that effectively provides the same answer with less calculation.

Relevance — similar to engagement, this is also a percentage, and is going to be different for every single product/channel combination you can think of. How can you calculate this? It is a guesstimate; there are some analytics companies that provide sentiment analysis and are attempting to crack relevancy, however they are not quite to the level where we feel comfortable using them inside of Intellifluence’s influencer discovery tool. Assign a relevancy percentage based on profile page, on recent posts, whatever you want — but be reasonable; if I mention “yoga” once every few months on Twitter I’m not 100% relevant to yoga, but I might be 20% based on my perceived expertise and what I share with my audience.

Cost — Cost is cost. In most cases at Intellifluence, the cost for the brand is just the product cost + shipping; in some cases when negotiating with an influencer you might need to offer money as well, but this is rarer than it is common. The reason I like to show cost here is because it is the biggest balancer on audience reach; typically much larger audiences charge a lot more money.

Let’s see this in action!

Two, non-randomly chosen examples: Joe S and Damien T

I hope you don't mind the comparison @Diamond Damien

Who should you choose, if you were picking between Damien and me? It depends.

Example 1: selling deadlift bars on Twitter

Joe S Outcome = (Audience (3636) * Engagement (80%) * Relevance (20%) — $250 [cost of product + shipping guess])

Joe S Outcome = 331.76

Damien T Outcome = (Audience (41400) * Engagement (90%) * Relevance (2%) — $250 [cost of product + shipping])

Damien T Outcome = 495.2

Even though I might be more relevant than Damien on matters related to deadlifts, because he has such a large audience that engages with him, it might make more sense to have him review the product. This is a prime example of using peer influencers with large audiences for generalized products.

Example 2: influencer marketing SaaS toolset

Joe S Outcome = (Audience (3636) * Engagement (80%) * Relevance (100%) — $0 [digital products!])

Joe S Outcome = 2908.8

Damien T Outcome = (Audience (41400) * Engagement (90%) * Relevance (7%) — $0)

Damien T Outcome = 2608.2

Damien is probably more relevant than 7%, but I wanted to highlight an example of where relevance is going to win out over raw audience size. Had I assumed a 10% for Damien, he’d have once again placed ahead of me and I’d be crying into my beer.

Why Choose?

The conundrum of the above scenario is based on a potentially faulty assumption of having to choose. Feasibly, so long as the outcome is a positive number, there is a benefit to engaging with both Joe and Damien. This is true for both examples but particularly on matters of influencer marketing. If you had 20 sample products that could be provided and found 20 somewhat relevant influencers with decent audience sizes, it’d most likely be in your best interest to engage with all of them. This is doubly true for those of you selling digital products; if there’s no real cost associated by offering a free version, then you almost want to engage with as many influencers as you possibly can, provided you are offering them real value and not some affiliate scheme which no one wants — the reality is any positive review will be beneficial, of course not accounting for the time investment.

 

[Intellifluence]

72 hour bump.

Hey all, I'd like to show you a bit of the behind-the-scenes dev occurring ahead of our late September code push. It's a complete system rewrite, which was necessary so we will be able to layer on additional functionality later this year and through mid-2018 without too much extra difficulty. It's an interesting lesson on bootstrapping because the product evolved from launch through it's first year and now that we are able to see where Intellifluence needs to go, it was necessary to redevelop vs modify existing code; it's a phenomenon that occurs with a lot of SaaS businesses around the end of year 1.

Keep in mind this isn't meant to be a marketing video; I just want you to be able to see how the new brand and influencer interactions will look -- especially with cleaned up messaging and easier filtering on that.

 

[b1step-ahead]

72 hour bump.

Hey all, I'd like to show you a bit of the behind-the-scenes dev occurring ahead of our late September code push. It's a complete system rewrite, which was necessary so we will be able to layer on additional functionality later this year and through mid-2018 without too much extra difficulty. It's an interesting lesson on bootstrapping because the product evolved from launch through it's first year and now that we are able to see where Intellifluence needs to go, it was necessary to redevelop vs modify existing code; it's a phenomenon that occurs with a lot of SaaS businesses around the end of year 1.

Keep in mind this isn't meant to be a marketing video; I just want you to be able to see how the new brand and influencer interactions will look -- especially with cleaned up messaging and easier filtering on that.

Pretty impressive man. I'm signing up for the trial now. Just wondering, how much does it cost to make the platform you did? I'm talking about outsourcing the entire project, would it be realistic to be at around 150k?

 

[Geasy]

Just signed up. This is very impressive and pretty sure where the SEO game will evolve to.

P.s watched your interview on Lion Zeal - Obey The Joe, right?

 

[Intellifluence]

Pretty impressive man. I'm signing up for the trial now. Just wondering, how much does it cost to make the platform you did? I'm talking about outsourcing the entire project, would it be realistic to be at around 150k?

Yeah it costs a lot; I think so far we're maybe 500k into it with all the development and marketing; it'll be probably 1m by early next year with all the other features and considerations we need to implement.

Just signed up. This is very impressive and pretty sure where the SEO game will evolve to.

P.s watched your interview on Lion Zeal - Obey The Joe, right?

Obeying the Joe is just a prudent idea; yeah, I feel pretty strongly about a few worlds merging. Public relations is already in a solve merge with SEO (it would happen faster but PR is an old industry); influencer marketing and broader social marketing will merge with SEO as well -- I foresee digital marketing being a beast with a thousand tentacles, where you can use one tactic and method to apply pressure on another.

 

[AmeliaG]

I think I just read all the pages of this. Did the reviewers not review or did I just scroll by and miss it?

 

[Intellifluence]

I think I just read all the pages of this. Did the reviewers not review or did I just scroll by and miss it?

You scrolled past them; the feedback has been honest though -- most in this thread found it useful more for getting blog links due to asymmetries between market rate and offer + relevance for certain niches. Lower level affiliate offers being pushed through the network won't perform as well, but even those types of offers will have a place in our network in a couple weeks when you can set something as a public offer and have influencers pitch you directly. Like most tools, your mileage may vary depending on need and creativity.

 

[hippo123]

any idea when will the new interface be ready?

 

[Schindler]

Signed up & subscribed! Contacted 9 infulencers & waiting their response! Will post a review once I start my first campaign!

 

[Schindler]

Response rate of the influencers is so bad! I only got response for one of my 20+ messages until now! Looks like they have just listed them & they are not quiet interactive..

 

[Intellifluence]

Response rate of the influencers is so bad! I only got response for one of my 20+ messages until now! Looks like they have just listed them & they are not quiet interactive..

Interesting. What did you pitch, and was it to a very relevant group of people? That impacts response rates significantly. Also, it from your two messages it looks like you signed up and managed to receive a response in 8 hours, so please give it a little bit of time as that means you pitched on a Friday and not everyone is a marketer like us, responding to emails within minutes.

any idea when will the new interface be ready?

Soon. It was ~2-3 weeks away when I went to Germany for SEOktoberfest, and I just got back to the states. I need to catch up with my devs and head of product but my assumption at the moment is now 1-2 weeks. I'll update the thread when we have a nailed down date.

 

[Schindler]

Interesting. What did you pitch, and was it to a very relevant group of people? That impacts response rates significantly. Also, it from your two messages it looks like you signed up and managed to receive a response in 8 hours, so please give it a little bit of time as that means you pitched on a Friday and not everyone is a marketer like us, responding to emails within minutes.


Soon. It was ~2-3 weeks away when I went to Germany for SEOktoberfest, and I just got back to the states. I need to catch up with my devs and head of product but my assumption at the moment is now 1-2 weeks. I'll update the thread when we have a nailed down date.

Yeah I realized it! I like the way the network works & pitching to more influencers!

 

[Jiung]

Yeah I realized it! I like the way the network works & pitching to more influencers!

Did you receive any new replies?

OP, this would work for finding influencers for dropshipping stores right?

 

[Schindler]

Did you receive any new replies?

OP, this would work for finding influencers for dropshipping stores right?

Yes, out of 23 I received response from four! & my intention was to find influencers for dropshipping..

 

[Intellifluence]

**72 hour bump**

I spoke with our dev and product teams yesterday; it'll be 2 more weeks to the next version -- we don't want to release until we fix what we intended to fix. This release is going to be designed to take us through the end of the year, when we layer on some more exciting capabilities.

With that out of the way, let's return to our educational series so you can get the most out of influencer marketing.


So You Got Your First Review; Now What?

No matter if you followed any specific targeting advice on picking the right influencer based on buyer personas, social channel selection, or influencer type needs, here you are. If you have a review, you apparently nailed the pitch.

Now What?

First, let’s look into the basics of the review before moving any further.

1. Does your product or brand URL exist? I would hope this is obvious, but having thumbed through way more social reviews that I can count at this point, it is important to point out — branded experiences are fine, but for the love of your bottom line, you should be getting some direct traffic benefit from this. In other words, a link should exist. For those platforms that make embedding links difficult in the post itself, a link should exist in the first available comment by the reviewer.
2. Is the review factual? Note that I’m not asking on whether the review is “good” or “positive” — just the facts, ma’am. This would include imagery of the product, how it is described, described features…you don’t want a situation where your paid review could be construed as false advertising. The FTC pays close attention to this sort of practice when significant sales volume is associated with the tactic, so if someone is misled, it can come back to hurt you.
3. Is the review tagged (where applicable)? While this isn’t nearly as important as having your URL in an accurate review, it still matters, especially for discovery purposes on platforms like Twitter and Instagram, where a significant portion of the traffic occurs via hashtag queries, and is important for discovery purposes.

If everything looks great, you can skip to what to do next from a promotional point-of-view. However, what if it isn’t? What’s your recourse?

When to Ask For Revisions

In our platform, brands have the ability to request modifications on reviews, however it is important to point out that modifications should only be used in certain cases.

1. If the review is missing information (i.e. your link) then you’d have an obvious reason to request a change, a change that 99% of influential reviews aren’t going to have a problem with. Don’t try to force the issue of ******** vs nofollow links though; technically, if the link is paid for in product and/or compensation then a nofollow link is appropriate -- yeah, I know, you want ********. Don't press the matter though; some bloggers get crazy when that happens.
   
2. If the review is not factual, you definitely need to get it fixed. If the reviewer used imagery for the wrong product, said that it has capabilities that it does not, or is quoting an inaccurate price, request for a fix. Sadly, this usually occurs due to laziness or rushed timelines, but if you’re straightforward and honest in your intentions on why you’re requesting a change, the reviewer will most likely do it.
3. If what was agreed to isn’t completed. If you and negotiated with one of our influencers on the length/depth of a review, what type of review it is (shout out vs product review vs background use), or social channel selection then you have a valid reason to request a change. This is especially true if you are providing more product or compensation than the initial pitch in exchange for an above-and-beyond experience. We have a granular option to request changes on a URL post level rather than having to reject an entire campaign, but regardless of which platform you’re getting reviews through, it is important for both buyer and seller to fulfill their obligations. If this ever not the case, please contact support.
4. Don’t ask for revision just because you aren’t happy the opinion expressed by an influencer. Honesty and transparency is extremely important; don’t try to suppress it. The best way to treat such reviews is to acknowledge whatever shortcomings may exist and iterate on the product, then reach out again in the future to get an updated review.

Assuming now that you’ve made it through the needed revisions, it is time to make the review work for you.

Promote it!

One thing I’ve learned in my couple decades of SEO and content marketing is that no single piece of promotion or content should exist in a vacuum. Since you’ve worked so hard to get your first review, you try to amplify your outcome as best as possible, borrowing from some compulsion marketing techniques [I presented on this at Ungagged last year].

Co-opt — with permission of the reviewer, what can you transfer to your own blog and/or social channels? For example:

1. If you received an in-depth YouTube review, embed it into your blog and promote your blog post to give both you and your reviewer more exposure.
2. Consider posting in multiple mediums. In that video, slice it into multiple postings for Instagram stories or snaps, take still images from the video to be used as social proof on your landing pages and in Pinterest, repost the video into Facebook and Twitter native formats.
3. If the video didn’t have a transcription, add it for your blog to increase the value of the content.
4. Build out mega content; in other words, if you were to get 5 different video reviews, you could incorporate them into a blog series that you could later circulate to your prospects via email.

Engage — it goes without saying that you should like, favorite, retweet, share, comment and show your support for your reviewers.

Amplify — there are three ways to think about amplifying, and I’ll use Twitter as the social channel example:

1. Amplify the review via advertising to your audience [what most brands tend to do]
2. Amplify the review via advertising to your reviewers’ audience [this is what smarter brands do]
3. Amplify the review to an expanded lookalike audience to your reviewers’ audience [this is what even smarter brands do]
4. All of the above [this is what I do]

Retarget — this topic can get quite a bit complicated, but there are a variety of ways to think about this.

1. You can upload visitor cookies into a variety of uptake channels, like Google via an extended audience targeting.
2. You can iterate on the amplification strategy above and export the list if you can slip in a pixel, to target on channels that you haven’t even yet focused on.
3. Hire an agency like Tony Adam’s Visible Factors to handle the paid targeting.

Native — one of the benefits of co-opting great reviews as content on your own site is that native advertising networks will generally only allow content-rich pages as approved landing pages. You can thinking of native as a mashup between display advertising and retargeting because you can do the following:

1. Only target to a retargeting list.
2. Expand to target your buyer persona demographic for more top of sales funnel expansion.

Email — I absolutely love email. If you have a great review, wouldn’t you want to share it with your list of prospects that haven’t yet decided to purchase from you? One of your secondary goals in selling products needs to be to build an email list. I cannot emphasize this enough — nothing is more effective to get the word out when you’re launching new products, having a sale, or wishing to communicate to your base. There are two main options here:

1. Use a segmenting email tool like Customer.io or Getdrip.com to manage your prospecting list, relying on logic to determine how to push a person from initial desire/awareness down into purchasing mode. Another new tool that shows promise is Sujan Patel’s Mailshake.
2. Use a managed email service like FireDrum.

Next?

After you get a great review and promote it, you’ll likely see the benefits in terms of an increase in sales attributed to your social channels. After you do this, keep going! The beauty of peer-level product reviews is when compared to other marketing activities, they are very affordable. The more, the merrier.