Ampel
Hi there, welcome to the Ampel Audio Channel. We have a great interview to play for you today, which actually serves as a fantastic case study for the benefits of getting your brand into the audio world. Michelle Lomas, Ampel's GM talks to Zane McIntyre, the CEO, and co-founder of Affiliate Marketing Company Commission Factory about their decision to create the podcast and the journey that it's taken their brand on. In Flex Your Hustle, we hear from marketers who succeeded against the odds, who may not have had any training or experience in marketing whatsoever, but went with their gut and thrived, or from the marketers who were brave enough to try something a little different.
Michelle Lomas
Zane, thank you for joining us. So we wanted to have a little chat today about Flex Your Hustle, the wonderful podcast, which we are creating with you for Commission Factory. But before we do, why don't we start by talking a little bit about Commission Factory and what you guys do for the listeners who may not be familiar with you?
Zane McIntyre
Sure. Commission Factory is an affiliate network or partner marketing network. The term for us keeps sort of changing a little bit, but essentially we are a middleman that connects two different parties, so the online retailers and the affiliates and the technology providers, the content bloggers, and the influencers.
Michelle Lomas
And who is your customer?
Zane McIntyre
That's always been hard because we have a few different customers, and so it makes it difficult to really hone in on our marketing message at times.
Michelle Lomas
And how do you normally reach them?
Zane McIntyre
Generally, it's the word-of-mouth referrals, and creating ambassadors with our existing customers. So we don't spend any money on traditional marketing, so whether it be paid social or paid search, we don't do any of that. So we find other ways, and that is either through the retention of our customers, getting them to talk about us to colleagues, but also presenting ourselves as thought leaders and people that they, or a company they want to be aligned with. That's how we do a lot of our marketing and how we get more customers, so very much a word-of-mouth type company, and we are ever-present on social media but we don't pay for it.
Michelle Lomas
Excellent. I like to hear that, it's very on-brand with our podcast. Maybe we should do an interview about you guys on the podcast. I'm pretty sure I've been trying to do that one actually.
Zane McIntyre
Yeah, that's right.
Michelle Lomas
So you decided late last year that you guys wanted to add a podcast to the mix, to your marketing mix. How did that come about?
Zane McIntyre
I'd like to say there wasn't any FOMO, but there was a little bit of it there. I mean, we ourselves enjoyed listening to podcasts and we could see other people in related industries doing podcasts and we've always tried to position ourselves as thought leaders and thought, well, is this a different medium that we haven't really explored properly and that we should take advantage of?
Michelle Lomas
And when you made the decision to add that podcast as a channel that would allow you to tell that story did you find there was pushback at all? Were people very receptive internally? Was it an easy decision to make or did you have to kind of pitch it around and prove out the channel?
Zane McIntyre
I think for most of us who made the decision, it was an easy one. Sure, we put it out there to the rest of the company as well and to get their feedback and thoughts and then everybody wanted to be involved, everybody wanted to host it or be on it and have some involvement.
Michelle Lomas
Soon as you say we're doing a podcast in the company, like galvanises people, doesn't it?
Zane McIntyre
Absolutely. We had a lot of people putting their hand up like, oh, this is gonna get complicated really quickly. We made the decision to go ahead based on that thought leadership and continuing our brand awareness. It was a good investment, we could either go putting the money into traditional advertising, or we can go and do something new, something none of us have done before.
Michelle Lomas
We'll talk about results in a little bit, but let's talk about the journey in the production process because when you came to us at Ampel to talk about potentially taking it on from a production perspective, you had a couple of episodes in the bag.
Zane McIntyre
Sure. Well, we had the episodes or a couple of them recorded and we even reconfigured our office, we built a sound room, all these sorts of things.
Michelle Lomas
Yes. Yeah, we did.
Zane McIntyre
I think even with the name of the podcast and the direction we ended up taking, it was far more articulated and succinct than where we started from, where the name of it was quite broad and we were just looking at stories from people, but no real theme that was carrying it through. So I think during that process when we're working with you guys, we articulated much better the kind of stories we're interested in. Then also we were thinking about the Commission Factory story and where we are, and it's like, wait, we have a hustle story too. So that's where the name, Flex Your Hustle, came from as well. It's like there are hustle stories out there.
Michelle Lomas
It's really funny in the process of the strategy, I remember presenting the ideas and working on those things together and defining who the audience was. And there was one thing that we disagreed on, the only thing, you didn't want any commercial messaging at all. Do you remember this?
Zane McIntyre
I do. I do remember that, yes.
Michelle Lomas
Yeah, you didn't wanna put any commercial messaging in there.
Zane McIntyre
I feel okay about it now, maybe because I had the approval to do so.
Michelle Lomas
I think having, for the listeners who maybe haven't listened to an episode in general, our episodes are about 20 to 30 minutes long interview style. And sort of halfway through, we have a commercial message which we alert the listeners to, we're sort of cutting to an ad for Commission Factory.
Michelle Lomas
To have a really great, comfortable conversation that doesn't feel like a big old advertorial for Commission Factory, which is probably why it's doing so well.
Zane McIntyre
Yeah, that's right. Exactly. And so that was my compromise and I was very happy with that.
Michelle Lomas
So segue into how it's working, I pulled the latest numbers today.
Zane McIntyre
Okay, brilliant.
Michelle Lomas
To date, we've had 515 downloads, we've been active for a little bit over four weeks now, and four episodes. About 32% of those listens all up have actually been via video. So a strategy and a tactic that we did very early on was to include video in the mix and include YouTube as another distribution channel, which is working quite well for us. We've had a 13.5% clickthrough rate and 70% completion rate of episodes.
Zane McIntyre
It's not bad.
Michelle Lomas
It's very good.
Zane McIntyre
I'm very happy with that.
Michelle Lomas
And our top episode and all our favourites is with Rob Godwin at Lovehoney.
Zane McIntyre
No surprise. I still get comments.
Michelle Lomas
Yeah, the opener always gets people cracking up with that great review.
Michelle Lomas
But a very, very interesting episode as well from Rob in terms of how he's scaled his business. When, in the sexual wellness industry, you are very restricted by where you can advertise and what you can say.
Zane McIntyre
I think even with Rob's episode that he did, I feel that for our team as well, it was an opportunity for them to realise something that maybe they didn't know before, which was the struggle that adult toys and gifts and sexual wellness companies face, they can't use traditional mediums for advertising.
Michelle Lomas
Unbelievable.
Zane McIntyre
Yeah. Massive.
Zane McIntyre
I thought it was a mistake, until we looked into it further. No, no. That's right.
Michelle Lomas
Yeah. We did have a conversation before we launched. We had a very long meeting and we talked about all the different ways that this podcast had to be promoted to make it a success, and you guys jumped on board 100%. You've done all the best practice stuff. You've shared it with all your employees to share. You've got a space on the website, you know, using transcripts, thinking about SEO, all of those elements.
Zane McIntyre
The feedback internally has been great as well. We've had staff talking about it on our internal messaging. So we use Teams, we used to be Slack, but now we use the Aldi of Slack, which is Teams.
Michelle Lomas
I've never heard that before. That's excellent.
Zane McIntyre
So we use that and we announce whenever a new podcast is out. So it's like, a new one dropped this morning, make sure you go listen. It's great to hear staff giving feedback as well, like that was really great. And they also love that we have tried to keep the timing of each podcast relatively low. So it can just be, absorb this and then get on with your day. They loved it, and then I've had people at the gym come up to me and say, oh, listened to one of your episodes, it was really good. And it's like, was it the Lovehoney one?
Michelle Lomas
That's great.
Zane McIntyre
That was unexpected, at least so early. I thought maybe season two we would start getting that request. All round it's been really positive, but what we've loved is that it follows the ethos of Commission Factory as well, where maybe we didn't have millions of dollars to pour into something, but we still produced something that was really polished and high quality. And that's the standard that I've always tried to employ with the company as well. Something goes out, it must be good.
Michelle Lomas
And it's a touch point. If someone listens to that first episode and then they don't love it, they're not gonna come back. So you want that experience, whatever experience to be right.
Zane McIntyre
Yeah, that's right.
Michelle Lomas
And it doesn't take that much effort, maybe a little touch more money, to employ a team that can edit and polish and does all of those things. But it makes such a difference, and I think what we've seen with this series as well is people go back. All of that content is evergreen, so it's not like social where you pop something in a feed and it's live and you see a huge spike and then you see very minimal activity post a couple of days.
Zane McIntyre
That's right. We will improve things too as we go on, but first impressions last.
Michelle Lomas
They do. They really do. And we've got some new formats as well coming out in the next few weeks, which I think was great that you guys were open to utilising a lot of your existing content too.
Michelle Lomas
But we will soon find out.
Michelle Lomas
And we're four episodes in. What have you learned through this process? What have been some surprising tidbits?
Zane McIntyre
I've learned it is much harder to find the guests than we thought it would be.
Zane McIntyre
I think that if we had done this differently, I would definitely say have a list of maybe 30. Like, let's just write them all down. You know? And people that we think would have an interesting story.
Michelle Lomas
You've tried some things.
Zane McIntyre
That's right.
Michelle Lomas
A lot of things.
Zane McIntyre
Exactly. And weird stuff happens as well and those make interesting stories. I mean, I could write a book on the things that I've seen in the last 11 years in my growth story.
Michelle Lomas
I think we definitely took it and went, all right, we're gonna run with this. Let's do this. So if you are talking to a brand and a brand says, I love what you do, and I kind of wanna do it myself, what would you say to them?
Zane McIntyre
I would say it's maybe not going to happen as fast as you think it might happen. Get your ducks in a row, think about your story or the stories you want to tell, and what's the vision for it as well. There are a lot of podcasts out there, but some of them are so broad. So really think about, is there an audience that you really want to tap into here?
Michelle Lomas
I know in the early days before we decided that I would actually be the host, we tried so hard to champion you to be the host, and you were like, no, I'm just, no, I'm not doing it. Well, come on. You'd be great. You were like, no, no, I'm not doing it.
Zane McIntyre
I mean, maybe I'll come on as a guest for our own podcast in the future as well and talk about my hustle story. But in terms of hosting, I just don't know where I'm gonna find the time.
Michelle Lomas
Yes. Yeah. It is hard though. The host conversation was actually one of the hardest that we had. We had so much great conversation around the name, although actually, we did go back and forth about the name.
Zane McIntyre
Yeah, that's right. We did a little bit.
Michelle Lomas
Sometimes names click and other times it takes a while and I always say to brands, plan for that part of the process to be more than a couple of weeks, even though you want it to be a couple of weeks. Because I think for us, we went back and forth quite a few times till we landed on this one.
Michelle Lomas
Everything had to feel like you.
Michelle Lomas
We wanted to bring that fun energy that your company has, but coming back to the host conversation, we went back and forth on that one for so long as well, and I think we originally had someone in your company and then they had to take extended leave, and then it was like trying to find somebody else and would they have the right skill set. And it became quite a challenge, I think.
Michelle Lomas
And so I think that's also something maybe for brands to think about when they're thinking about a host. Don't always think that you have to have someone in your organisation, because sometimes it just doesn't work.
Michelle Lomas
It either doesn't work with the strategy or the requirements that you have for the host at that point in time, so yeah, that was definitely one of the other things that we sort of went back and forth on for a while, wasn't it?
Zane McIntyre
We did. We did. Yeah, and I guess that's something as well that didn't occur to us in the beginning, that it didn't have to be someone in the company hosting it. We thought that's what you had to do. So that was one of our assumptions and just a lack of knowledge in this area as well.
Michelle Lomas
All right, well, thank you for sharing a bit of your story with us. Hopefully the marketers listening have taken a little bit from that in terms of how to plan and think about what it's like to create a podcast. I'm excited to see where this goes. It's always interesting to see things like a 13.5% clickthrough rate on a podcast.
Zane McIntyre
Yes. Yes, we did. We didn't actually realise that it happened until we looked at our marketing campaign attribution like, oh wait, there's a deal connected to this podcast.
Zane McIntyre
That was our first bit of excitement, like, brilliant. Okay. We're a sixth of the way to making it pay for itself.
Michelle Lomas
It's a start. And it's a start and it's good. The podcasts are a marathon, not a sprint, and so they take time to build and grow, but the stats are already starting to prove themselves.
Michelle Lomas
We have some amazing guests coming up.
Zane McIntyre
We do, we do. The best is yet to come.
Michelle Lomas
The best is 100% yet to come, and hopefully will continue for years to come. So thank you, Zane. Thanks for having us. Thanks for trusting in Ampel too and me as the host.
Zane McIntyre
Not a problem. It's been a wonderful journey so far.
Michelle Lomas
Yeah, and it will continue to be.