Lessons - Why Paid Advertising Doesn’t Work | Swish Goswami - CEO and Founder of TruFan

If influencers, if there could be like one lesson for people that are trying to sort of take their brand, their influencer brand into the next, I guess, you know, to the future of marketing, it would be to truly build out and be authentic with their community. That's really the only way to win. I really think it is. I really think it is. I think three things, you know, building a brand, the three things that comes down to is content, community, and collaboration. Collaboration is something some people can do, some people can't. It depends where you are. If you're in L.A., you're probably going to be able to find other influencers to collaborate with, do videos with take photos with the right articles with whatever. If you're in, I don't know, Missouri or whatever, like they're in St. Louis, it might be a little more difficult compared to L.A., to be able to find those people. Content is something that can differentiate you as well, but the way that we're, you know, we're inundated again with so many pieces of content every single day, you know, and the consumer, we're bombarded with sponsored posts on top of sponsored posts. It's really hard these days to stick out unless you're Mr. Beast and you're able to put $500,000 into a video doing a crazy stunt that nobody's ever done before. That's a really hard way to differentiate yourself with yourself. I do think that the golden egg then is community. I think the way to be able to differentiate yourself is to have a very strong focus to where my top fans, how do I mobilize them, activate them, and make them feel valued for their loyalty. That's what I think, building a brand, community, building, and even true fan really comes down to. Now, do you have, because I would love to, I would love to understand like some of like case studies, a true fan has worked on that has shown measurable success. Can you speak to some things like that that could really drive the point home for people that, first of all, are they may not be comfortable with influencer marketing yet, or if they are, they don't understand, or have ever been, have any experience with doubling down on marketing to like their own following. Yeah, so I'll give you some examples. Some of these examples were also examples of how customers in the last three or four years were using social right, the platform that we bought out in November. So the first is the Red Cross, about two, three years ago the Red Cross used their platform to be able to find volunteers that could come out and help them with their initiative. They went online, they found people that were using the hashtag, or were mentioning the Red Cross and posts, and they were reaching out to those people and asking them to join their volunteer base. The second example, this is the current client of ours, is Netflix. Netflix is currently using our platform, not even for marketing, but just to make strategic business decisions by understanding, all right, what is the main audience that is watching oranges and new black, what is the main audience that's watching stranger things, and let's understand what sort of programming we can put out next that might be able to either cater to these audiences or cater to an entirely different audience that we haven't tapped into. And this is very vital, especially because of the fact that platforms like Netflix are also trying to cater to an international audience now. They're trying to build original programming, not just North America, but in other places like India, where the entire cultural paradigm is very different in those countries. The third example I'd bring up is the United Talent Agency, still an existing customer, and they use it for being able to find brand affinities between their talent and brands that they're trying to work with. So one of their key talent is Chris Pratt. If Chris Pratt tomorrow wanted to work with a watch brand, they could come on to our platform, they could run Hublot watches, they could run Chris Pratt's account, find the brand overlap very easily, and see, all right, is there a big overlap? It is a big overlap, but let's go to Hublot and tell them that this is a seamless partnership. If there isn't a big overlap, that still could be spun in a good way, because we could go to Hublot and say, hey, do you want to reach out to an audience that genuinely doesn't follow Hublot right now. It's kind of a win-win for them, if there's a big similarity, even if there isn't a big similarity, they can spin it using data in a way that makes that deal happen a lot quicker. I liked that a lot. It makes a lot of sense, and I understand what you're doing. I wanted to sort of tee this up with a couple like insight questions through your experience, but before I get into that, I just wanted to open the floor for anything in terms of like future of marketing or what true fans doing is running that we didn't cover. I think, honestly, I'm very impressed with myself. Normally, I'm not very good at describing what we do at that level, but I'm pretty happy. I appreciate it. No, my pleasure. It was really good. It makes a ton of sense, and I've never heard of a tech that does what true fans does, and I don't like to be so evangelistic about products or specific companies on the podcast, but I think it's very relevant because it's so different from everything else that I've seen out there. There's a lot of influencer marketing firms, agencies, but not at this level. Really, in all seriousness, they do what you do, so it's very cool to hear how companies are actually using it. You've been a six-time entrepreneur, or is it more? You've done a six? Yeah. Again, as I said at the very beginning, some of those did not work out, but very happy with the work that I've done in the last three years with a wearable company being able to deal with DUNK with my roommate in New York, who had started the account in 2013, and then now it's true fans. My question to you is sometimes I ask a question, like, would you do it again, but you've done it six times, that's a stupid question to ask, so. But I would ask... Do it again. Yeah, I know. What's the next venture? Give it another year or two of them, but I'll ask another question. This is a very vanilla question, but I like asking it because everyone interprets a question differently, and they really lay into it, so it's good to get some good insight for people that are sort of younger in their career. One lesson, that you would tell yourself, younger self, a professional lesson that would help you get to where you are a little bit quicker. Yeah. So are you looking for, like, my main? Yeah. Let's do it. You have some advice? Yeah. Some advice. Some advice you tell your younger self? Yeah, I think, I mean, if I was looking back at, like, the 18-year-old switch. Yeah, I know, you're not old, so it's like, yeah. Four years ago, I would tell him, first of all, don't sweat the small stuff. I think this is something that my brother told me, and his words are still kind of rung a bell in my ear because a lot of times, I think, I freak out by being like, oh my god, there's so much to do, and I need to do this quickly, and, like, you feel like you're in a race with not only yourself, maybe your friends, maybe society, maybe what people are telling you to do, just don't sweat the small stuff. You know, I think every single person is on their own path. Every single person hopefully will find success at their own given time. Don't rush that process, enjoy that process, and take away as much as you can from it. I think number two is, the piece of advice that my brother gave me is don't eat the marshmallow. And what that means is there are going to be a lot of distractions that come up, and this is something that I faced two years ago, and something I faced last year, something I even faced right now, but I think I've become better now at putting the distractions aside and really trying to focus in. So when you get to a certain level, when you start making moves, you're always going to have opportunities around you that you can capitalize upon. So it's worth noting that there's always a time to say no, there's always a time to say yes, and being able to prioritize the current project you're working on, especially if you really believe in them, is a skill that you will need to develop. And then the third and final thing is an advice that I think has very much affected my life, which is your net worth is your network. Focus as much of your time, not just on building your business, but on trying to build up a strong network, the most organic way in my opinion of doing that is by interviewing people. So if you want to start a podcast, record it even on GarageBand and Export SoundCloud, do it in the most crappy way it need be. You don't need to go out and buy $200 mics right off the bat. If you want to write articles, go on to Medium, go on to LinkedIn, and find time to interview other people. I think 99% of people love talking about themselves. I am exhibit A. It is very easier, I think, to be able to reach out to someone and get them to say yes to an interview, then get them to say yes to a coffee. So instead of taking time away from someone, I think it's always great being able to create the foundation of a relationship upon you giving value to them by interviewing them. So that's definitely something I would do if I was looking to grow my network is interview people, follow up with people, make sure you value your network, make sure you're not just trying to reach the next person, the next person, the next person, invest time and really carry through your network. I love it. Those are all very good takeaways. Thank you. I appreciate that. I like that. Yeah, there was no limit on the amount of advice, so I'm glad you went to all those.