DTC POD: How The Best Brands Are Built

In this episode, Jay discusses how you can use user-generated content to help provide social proof and grow your brand.We’ve said it over and over on Trend (and so have others!), social proof is king!What better way to show social proof than through user-generated content. If you have paid for creating user-generated content, or just have a big library of, you may be wondering how you can leverage this powerful content even more to grow your brand.We’ll discuss 8 channels you can use user-generated content on to amplify your message and convince consumers.We’ll also talk about different strategies you can use on these 8 channels to maximize average ticket price and sway buyers into an upsell. If you’d like to learn more about Trend and our influencer marketing platform for users and brands visit trend.io. You can also follow us for tips on growing your following and running successful campaigns on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

In this episode, Jay is joined by guest Michael Cole, VP of Marketing at Everflow.Everflow is a partner marketing platform that helps businesses track results from partnerships through clickless tracking and offers real-time analytics.Businesses doing influencer marketing are receiving a 6x ROI.Ever heard that before?Many businesses have, and haven’t found quite the success they expected when trying influencer and affiliate marketing on their own.One of the biggest reasons why is because of failed attribution.Although influencer and affiliate marketing can help thrust your brand into the spotlight, having good tracking can help ensure a successful campaign.We’ll discuss why influencer and affiliate marketing should be a part of your marketing spend.We’ll also talk about how to properly attribute influencer and affiliate marketing, and how you can do it on your own. To learn more about Michael’s company, Everflow, visit: https://www.everflow.io/If you’d like to learn more about Trend and our influencer marketing platform for users and brands visit trend.io. You can also follow us for tips on growing your following and running successful campaigns on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

In this episode, Jay and Ramon are joined by guest Evan Rallis, Marketing Product Manager at MarketerHire.MarketerHire is a premium marketer network that helps connect expert freelance marketers with businesses quickly and seamlessly.Finding success in marketing, especially ad campaigns can be a daunting task for eCommerce brands.As a result, some brands are turning to freelance marketers who are experts in paid social to help make their ads overperform, scale, and generate a ton of revenue for their business.But what type of person should you use to run your ads?Should it be in-house, should it be a freelancer, should it be an agency or should you hire someone fulltime? Also, should the person in charge of ads change depending on the stage of your business?We’ll discuss who would be the best person to run your ads depending on which stage of the business you are in.We’ll also go in-depth on how you can get your ads to perform better and what you can do to scale ads and revenue with a small budget. To learn more about Evan’s company, MarketerHire, visit: https://marketerhire.com/If you’d like to learn more about Trend and our influencer marketing platform for users and brands visit trend.io. You can also follow us for tips on growing your following and running successful campaigns on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

In this episode, Ramon discusses how to grow as a creator, along with some of the challenges you may face.In the old days, creators only had a few digital outlets to share their content. Now, there are dozens of ways to grow a creator’s brand.From videos on YouTube, to Instagram, to podcasts, to blogs, to maybe even selling your own product line online, options for creators today are endless.But, how do you manage your time and your challenges so that you can grow as a creator?Through differentiation and leaning on the skills of others.Ramon will discuss how you can tackle the challenges of limited time, and free up your time to work on new projects. He will also look at ways you can grow your personal brand and build a powerful audience across multiple channels.If you’d like to learn more about Trend and our influencer marketing platform for users and brands visit trend.io. You can also follow us for tips on growing your following and running successful campaigns on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

In this episode, Jay discusses how influencers are starting to gain more power over monetizing their content.In the early days of influencers, creators were left to fend for themselves to monetize their content. Social platforms ran ads but none of that money went to creators. So influencers had to sell themselves to brands, or create their way to monetize using tools like Patreon, their own merch, etc.Now we are starting to see a shift in the creator economy with platforms starting to share some of their revenue with creators.YouTube was the first to do so and now Instagram says it will share revenue through IGTV ads.We’re also seeing Instagram look into post embeds and discussing whether publishers will need to seek approval from creators before embedding content.We’ll discuss how these changes will impact the creator economy for both influencers and brands. We’ll also look at why it’s going to be more important than ever for brands to acquire licensing rights to content, and how they can do so.If you’d like to learn more about Trend and our influencer marketing platform for users and brands visit trend.io. You can also follow us for tips on growing your following and running successful campaigns on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

In this episode, Jay discusses what you can do if you need to create more content.If you need to scale your content production or don’t have enough content right now, we have some suggestions on where you can get it.With so many platforms for brands to be active on, it can be a huge challenge to produce the content you need to be effective on each channel. Plus, once you start producing engaging content, consumers expect you to continue to deliver the same amount of content on a regular basis.As content studios stay closed and new brands continue to be created, there is a growing need for content.We’ll go through a proven strategy to determine how much content you need. We will also go through different solutions you can use to start creating on-brand content now, for any budget.If you’d like to learn more about Trend and our influencer marketing platform for users and brands visit trend.io. You can also follow us for tips on growing your following and running successful campaigns on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

In this episode, Jay and Ramon are joined by guest Arnold Ma, CEO and Founder of Qumin.Quim is a people and experience business focused on China.With Qumin’s experience in ecommerce and marketing in China, Jay and Ramon join forces with Arnold to discuss why marketing in China is so different than the approach brands take in the US.eCommerce and influencer marketing has developed very differently in China than it has in the West. A focus on digital payments, livestream selling, and an increased value on peer opinions are just some of the major differences that exist in China vs the West.Are these trends that will transfer over to the West, or are there other factors that will create a different evolution of eCommerce here?We’ll take a look at social commerce in China, and how China’s lack of infrastructure for the desktop-era pushed brands and consumers to mobile.We’ll also go in-depth on specific campaigns that Arnold and his team have completed, and why they had to take a different approach than what would work in the West. To learn more about Arnold’s company, Qumin, visit: https://qumin.co.uk/If you’d like to learn more about Trend and our influencer marketing platform for users and brands visit trend.io. You can also follow us for tips on growing your following and running successful campaigns on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

In this episode, Jay discusses Facebook’s newest feature, Facebook Shops, and how it will impact eCommerce and influencer marketing.Facebook has been slowly creeping into the eCommerce world with features like Marketplace and Instagram Shopping. Now they are launching arguably their biggest step into the eCommerce universe, Shops.It comes at a time when small businesses are reeling due to the COVID-19 pandemic and as Facebook continues to add offerings to help small businesses.This free feature will allow any brand or business to set up an online storefront on Facebook and Instagram for free, and customize it to their brand.We’ll discuss the top reasons for why you will want to set up a Facebook Shop. We’ll also dive into what are all of the available features for Facebook Shops.For more information on this topic, check out:https://trend.io/blog/facebook-shopsIf you’d like to learn more about Trend and our influencer marketing platform for users and brands visit trend.io. You can also follow us for tips on growing your following and running successful campaigns on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

In this episode, Ramon discusses how brands can still grow without ads, and why it’s important to be not fully reliant on them.Social ads have become a powerful tool to grow brands.For many brands, adding a Facebook pixel and creating retargeting campaigns is the next step after building your website.While this can be an effective way to grow your brand, it’s expensive and puts your business at the mercy of platforms like Facebook.Positioning yourself as a thought leader, and a master of your space can be a more effective way to grow your business long-term, and build brand value.Ramon will discuss how you can position yourself as a brand leader and create a brand that consumers keep on coming back to, not just because of Facebook ads.If you’d like to learn more about Trend and our influencer marketing platform for users and brands visit trend.io. You can also follow us for tips on growing your following and running successful campaigns on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

In this episode, Jay and Ramon are joined by guest Raphael Paulin-Daigle, Founder & CEO of SplitBase.SplitBase specializes in building high-converting landing pages and strong on-site experiences for eCommerce brands.With SplitBase’s experience in landing page optimization, Jay and Ramon join forces with Raphael to discuss how brands can get even more for their influencer marketing efforts using personas.One-to-one marketing, or at least the idea of it, has become increasingly important as consumers have become tired of catch-all traditional advertising. Thus, brands have turned to user-generated content to break through stale advertising.How do you dial in your marketing efforts even more?By segmenting consumers into personas, and using that user-generated content to create an even push to the one-to-one marketing consumers are asking for.We’ll discuss why traditional product pages aren’t the best place to send audiences and offer some suggested tools you can use to improve your conversion rate. We’ll also dive into why brands need to continue to optimize and how not doing so could result in you missing your maximum potential ROI.If you’d like to learn more about Trend and our influencer marketing platform for users and brands visit trend.io. You can also follow us for tips on growing your following and running successful campaigns on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.If you are interested in using the tools that Raphael mentioned during the podcast, here are the links:Unbounce: https://unbounce.com/Instapage: https://instapage.com/Shogun (Shopify app): https://apps.shopify.com/shogunFor more information on Raphael's company, SplitBase, visit: https://splitbase.com/