Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Wytpod. My name is Harshit, and I’m the Director of Business Alliance at Wytlabs, where a digital agency that specializes in SaaS and e-commerce SEO. I’ve got Jorge Hoth with me today. He’s the Head of Marketing and Sales at Creatify. It’s a SaaS platform democratizing the influence of marketing, which is an interesting niche to be in right now. Most of the SaaS companies are anyways focusing on this trend. A big welcome to you, Jorge. I’m so happy to have you with me today.

Oh, thanks. Thanks, Harshit, for the time to be here with you, with your audience, it’s going to be pretty cool this talk we’re going to be having.

That is awesome, man. Now, before we start, I would love to understand, can you please share about your journey from being a barista at Starbucks to your current role at Creatify?

It has been quite a journey. Being a barista, it’s when I decided to switch it up to start this journey in marketing. At the beginning of my career, I was doing another bachelor’s. When I was working at Starbucks, I decided to jump into the marketing world. That being said, that wasn’t like 20 years ago. So yeah, it’s been quite a journey, especially in digital marketing and in growth. I’ve been moving around on different startups from really early-stage startups to defining products to market feeds. We’re also doing a lot of strategies. And in between, I have good and bad. No, but it has been quite a really big journey working with not only Mexican companies but also with companies outside Mexico. It’s been pretty cool. Now doing this democratizes the influence of your marketing world, now with this SaaS we’re in the head.

That’s awesome, man. Now, let’s talk about Creatify. It is described as a platform democratizing your influence on marketing. Could you elaborate on how Creatify is achieving this and making influence on marketing accessible for brands of almost every size?

We’re making it accessible for everyone. Now, because here, how does it work? How does the platform work? Most of all the influencer agencies have this fee in the back. Normally a fee could go around between 30-35% of the budget. If you’re a small company or a mid-company and you go with an agency and you’re going to be reduced 30% because it’s not beyond the fees, your direct average percentage to your investment would be really low. It’s 70% in trying to find some influencers. That being said, Within the platform, you have four different packages or four different models you can choose. The first one is that it’s part of the part that within $17, you’re going to have access to all the pack. Now, what we’re doing and why we say that we’re democratizing influencer marketing is because it’s affordable for everyone. If you’re a small company, you can be paying $17 for the second package. It’s going to be $47. Or if you’re a big company, you can be paying $3,000, but you’re going to have 10 access.

No. So in the end, it’s not so expensive. How does it work? You enter, and you do a login. Once you’re on the platform, you can do this search on all the influencers. We have a database of around 10 million influencers around not only Latin America but also the US and Europe. So you can find whatever influencer you want. So you search, and we provide you with the contact from the influencer you want to reach. And the best part is that we can give you this data. The data we can be providing you, it’s not only the followers or the type of content they’re doing, but we give you these different hashtags that the influencer has been doing in the past. Or if you want to do it, for example, I don’t know, you’re going to be doing or you want to do a campaign with caps. No, okay, I’m going to be launching something with New Era. But in the past, this influencer did something with Patagonia Caps, you can do this following the hashtags. But the most important thing that we’re going to be doing or you can be doing as a user, the data that is based on AI throws up if this is the potential influencers engage with your brand.

Note that if their content is engaging with your brand or with the objectives that you previously defined of the search. One. And the other thing, we give you the average of really actual people that they’re following. There are tons of bots, there are tons of fake followers. So I can give you a case. Jorge has 10,000 followers, but 50% of their followers are fake or not active. That gives you a reasoning debate that helps you out and says it could be a good one or not a good profit. The last part that we’re launching recently is a part of IGC. This influencer-generated content platform. Now, despite Doing this campaign and tackling many influencers and searching which one would help you out. With the IGC campaign, you just throw a message. For example, I want to follow the CAB example. I’m going to do a campaign for CABs. It’s going to be an exchange campaign and we want a video that says, I don’t know, a product video. No, you say it’s cool this product or not cool, it fits or not. We want this review. Okay, so you set up this idea of your campaign and with artificial intelligence, we throw up this with this type of potential influence that you want to reach.

Usually, you should be defining if it’s going to be a nano-influencer or meet influencer, a meat influencer, or a meat call, depending on the size of the market you want to reach out to, and we deliver the message to the different influencers. Then you’re going to be receiving some videos. If you want to do it, you’re approved and you just pay. The part here is that we’re not only democratizing the part of influencer marketing, but we’re also doing two main things, lowering costs of an influencer campaign, but also lowering time, and timing an influencer and maybe frictions you can be having within the influencer. That’s a part of the biggest benefits we’re going to be having.

That’s brilliant. I would love to know, to market your SaaS to Creatify, what geography are you mainly targeting? Because I understand it’s not a very useful tool out there. I understand that you might have picked some of the markets, to begin with and then later expanded. I understand it’s a SaaS tool, so can we expand it globally? But what are your main focus areas right now?

As for now, we have two main targets. I’m going to be dividing the targets not only geographically, but also the main targets on top of the size of companies. We’re focusing on small and mid companies due to the budget because normally big companies have tons of big budgets, and they should have these brand ambassadors on their own or different types of companies. We’re focusing on small and mid-media companies. On the other side, the regions that we’re facing off, it’s all this Spanish-speaking LATAM, and also this Spanish-speaking base in Latin American target in the US. This is Spanish-speaking US people, and small companies in the lower US in the South, for example, Texas, California, Florida, and all those lower states that have a big Spanish-speaking population. These, as for now, we’re open. If there’s a company from Europe, it’s okay. It’s a we. But the market, right now as a marketing strategy, we’re mainly focusing on these. We’re targeting these companies in this region.

Now, let’s talk about the marketing channels. What channels are you actively leveraging for your traffic generation, increasing your visibility, and brand visibility, and getting for your lead generation as well? What are those?

I’m talking about targets. I’m going to be mentioning all social networks. Now we’re doing these campaigns in three main channels. One is LinkedIn. We’re pushing on LinkedIn without doing these sales navigator strategies back, no. But we’re doing some paid ads. But obviously, I’m also pushing out into my one-on-one conversations within the channel. No, this has helped me a lot because I, myself being a top voice on LinkedIn has helped also me to reach out to some content and to deliver new conversations. But that’s one part of it. No, because we are SaaS. No, we’re the decision-makers on LinkedIn, so we’re targeting them. The second one, it’s a TikTok for business. No, TikTok. Even though our potential user is not there, we have to get there. No, we’re up on an influencer platform. We need to be on the most iconic, for now, influencer platform. No? Yeah. So we’re generating different types of content. We’re converting them into leads. No, we haven’t had these really big amounts of leads, but it’s a good platform that has helped us a lot, especially with brand awareness. No, because a motor that I have on myself is to convert leads, people need to know about who you are.

If I just paid for a campaign on the web and no one knows about me, my acquisition cost would be higher. We’re working more in terms of brand awareness and trying to reduce our costs. The third and last social network is Instagram. We’re doing some paid ads, especially on reels and also on static posts, to try to convert directly to our website. That’s what we’re doing. We’re also working on SEO. We have a bluff, and we’re about to launch World. We recently launched an influencer marketing workshop. It’s going to be happening on the third week of February, 13th and 15th of February. It’s going to be a workshop. We’re going to be having all the do’s and don’ts from an influencer campaign, all those things so people can target us and say, Okay, they’re the influencers. No, we’re good at talking to really young people who are starting their campaigns as influencers, trying to let them know how to do it, and where to do it. In the end, they’re going to be having a trial for three months within the platform. Those are mainly the different types of strategies we’re doing.

That’s awesome, man. Any notable campaign, that could be organic, could be paid, that you would like to highlight, and the results that you have achieved through that campaign? I would love to hear that, please.

Here with Creatify, I have an organic campaign. No talking about it. We are just talking into it. No, it’s a SaaS. No, it’s more complicated to have this boom strategy. No, because It’s a software. No, it’s not like this, I don’t know, this Coke, you’re going to be drinking that for now. No, but yeah, on my side, I’m doing it. In some posts, I talk about the influence of marketing on LinkedIn. I was talking about all the data and rough data that influencer marketing had passed in 2023. All this type of how many companies use it, top influencers, and all for that. It became organically boosted with more than 5,000 likes. And many of them were targeting, Hey, I’m going to try out the platform. And also, Let me give you a hint. Give me a call. So without selling, it becomes a really good post to sell. I didn’t intend to sell at the end because I felt it was more personal. But it helped us a lot. And it’s funny because I think if you ask me why you’re right now in influencer marketing, if you tell me these five or six years ago, I was the hater number one of influencers.

I was saying it. I hate working with influencers. Influencers do not work. And this was because I was working at that time on an airline. All the influencers that we reached out to, were asking, Okay, I’ll do it. But they wanted tickets. Also, they were just doing it because they wanted tickets. They want to buy it for free. And you start seeing the first one or the first influencer talking shit about your product and becoming this viral. I didn’t want to work with influencers. No, because I was saying, Okay, yeah, they’re divas. No, it’s complicated to work with them. They’re the only ones because of the product. If our product wasn’t that appealing, they wouldn’t be working with us. And now I’m on the other side. I was saying, Yeah, it’s really useful. But I had a post yesterday about influencers, and someone told me that. I think influencers don’t work. No, and I answered him with what I was saying to you. Five, or six years ago, I would have been okay with you. But now the thing is your strategy may not work if you don’t have this objective, what you want to achieve, where I’m going to go from an influencer.

Do you want to achieve awareness? Okay, it’s pretty cool. If you want to achieve sales, you need to think about how an influencer could deliver sales to your product. If it’s a product review, if the influencer is using What you need, if your product is really expensive, you need to think about what’s your main objective, and what strategy you should follow to do it. Now, influencer marketing by itself, has to be a company with paid ads or content creation. It’s not only one piece. Sorry, influencer marketing, it’s only one piece of the 360 marketing company.

It’s interesting. I agree with you. You have to be clear about the objective, to be for any marketing campaign. Then you can try to fabricate what exactly is needed to achieve those objectives. I think that makes perfect sense. I would love to know, since you’re doing so much on your lead generation and stuff, what are the activities that you’re trying to do to increase customer retention for Creatify?

That’s a great point. Now, first, I’m focused on this growth funnel. For me, the retention part is most important. In the startup world, everyone will say, An acquisition, user acquisition. Yeah, it’s pretty cool, user acquisition. But if you start losing them, it will be more expensive. Here is what I’m doing, we have two strategies. First, to acquire them, we’re giving them seven days of free trials for them to have it. To retain them or to stay on these platforms. We have this 24/7 success, successful campaigns. If you have any doubts, we answer you fast. If you want to try it out or if you have any doubts about how to use the platform, we have this team that will help you learn to use the platform. We’re going to teach you to use it. Okay, this is a search part, how you use it, how you contact it. What’s the data you’re going to be receiving? What are the user reports you’re going to be having? All these parts of the SaaS, so it’s going to be much easier for you to understand how to use it.

Even though it’s made for dummies, it’s really easy to use. In the back, we need to have this success or this customer success approach to retain. Because if they find it difficult to use it or if they do not have support in the back, it’s going to be the next customer leaving. We need to be with them to help them achieve their results. That’s one of the parts of what we’re doing. We’re pretty new, I would say, in the market, so it’s something we’re going to be doing as for now. No, and be part of them and help them in our launch into our campaign.

Can you highlight some of the hurdles, big hurdles that you have faced in the recent past, and through your digital marketing efforts or anything that resonates with marketing? How exactly did you overcome those?

If I mention just for this Especially for those, especially for 385, there are many platforms outside. We need to have this core value or this added value clear why we’re different and why we’re making that difference for users outside. On that side, we have this price. Price tag, it’s our added value that we are our biggest differentiator. Also, we’re helping out with this AI. We are an AI power tool, so this helps people leave Excel in the back and use it to have all this data. You’re going to be having a bot at the end. As I mentioned, the most difficult hurdle we’re going to be facing or we’re facing is there are many platforms in the back where there are many platforms out like. And the other could also be on a budget. Now, in the end, many platforms have a really big team, tons of budget, and love to spend. It’s complicated while facing them. That’s why we’re also facing or looking up to the bottom of the pyramid on our target, facing the small and medium companies. Rather, it starts fighting against price.

It makes sense. Can you tell us about your bi-weekly newsletter on marketing from Starbucks to CMO? What inspired you to start this newsletter and what can your subscribers gain from it?

The first thing is why I started it, it’s because I love to share not only my journey but also what I have been living throughout my career, all my do’s and don’ts that I can personally share. Right now, they can find out three or four, I think four newsletters I have read for blog posts. Most of them are comparing, for example, what I did in the past on Volaris, where a campaign and where it could be the learnings that I have in those parts. So it’s just something they got to be learning. They can be facing up and reading the part. It’s reading on a personal side. Where did I dig wrong? Where did I do good? And why? And also comparing with a strategy that they can do as for now. I imagine that that campaign began in 2010, 14 years ago. Okay, it has changed a lot in marketing. So if you want to do this, start doing it with this example. It’s better to do it. So it’s something they could be reading. And despite that, on my profile, they could be seeing tons of tips on marketing also.

I normally post one a day, one type a day on day-to-day marketing. It’s part of the things they’re going to be finding out in my profit, not on a special day.

You’re building your brands. One day per day, it does make sense. I’m sure it must be propelling that.

Sometimes it’s complicated because my creative mind explodes. But yeah, it’s been a funny ride. It started, I think, in the past year. So as for now, it has been pretty cool.

Yeah, awesome, man. Good luck with it. I would love to know, what trends you foresee in the marketing landscape especially when it comes to influencer marketing. And how should marketers prepare for them?

Okay, I think there are many trends. I think I have 10 trends that would be important for people to notice. One, it’s influencer marketing, but not influencer marketing that’s going with Taylor Swift and all these trends at the end of these really expensive products. It’s going to be into micro and nano influencers, the ones with a lower number of followers because it’s the ones that people feel most real. No, the ones that you’re going to be feeling more real. Right now, people want to. People don’t want to buy from a brand. They want to buy from an experience. They want to buy from people, from the other people saying it was good, it was not good. That’s one of the trends. The second I found out is AI. No, AI. It’s been a trend six, seven months ago. But this 2024, we’re going to find tons of tools, and tons of different ways to generate content. But in the end, yes, it’s going to be a trend. Yeah, you need to be there, but you still need to show authenticity. You just don’t go to ChatGPT, Hey, give me a copy for this, copy-paste it, and put it on your profile.

Because in the end, it still sends us an AI tool. You need to move it on to that part. Then another trend, I think, would be authenticity. Not only with AI but also with this part of authenticity. People need to be real. I want to buy something real. Even though it’s an influencer, even though it’s not from an AI, or even though it comes from you, Harshit, if you’re telling me your real experience, it’s something that I’m going to love. Another one is a part of tools or social networks. TikTok will continue rising. No, especially with these TikTok stores, you can buy directly by typing TikTok. No, it would be a good trend to follow in terms of tools. One other email marketing is going to be continuing. Not a trend, but it will continue to be needed.

But email marketing is very tricky now, to be honest.

Really Tricky. Yeah. Not everyone is through email marketing. The open rates, the conversations are That’s all.

The rules are getting more and more strict. Gmail launched its update, Yahoo, followed by even Bing. So yeah, it’s becoming, especially for the cold emailing bit.

Sure. Another one, I think it’s a more challenging brand. No? These challenging microbrands start to open up the target and challenge the big players. We’re going to find out. I think this will be the year where they can raise because you see TikTok. You can be a new brand. The best cap is done by hand, and you can be challenging Monster. That’s the thing that would be hard. I think also what could be more on the other one on sustainability. Sustainability would be a really good trend for this ’24. Now we’re facing tons of it. We have seen in the past year, really big brands, especially Patagonia. Now another one is an example of sustainability. I think this year will kick off. We’re going to be seeing more. The last one, is the necessity of premium, this being this premium. Even though we have tons of premium sites on all the sites, everything’s going to be this free trial or this for free, and then it has this or this upsell into the premium.

I think for SaaS, even the way the SaaS business has been pricing themselves. I’m seeing a trend now in that sense as well. People have now started to move on to usability. Then depending on maybe billing people based on tons of offerings or combining it in a package and stuff like that. This is making it much more Usability-focused than feature-focused and stuff like that.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, it’s also useful. I remember I think it was yesterday, I don’t remember the name of that startup. I find it tricky but funny what they’re doing. It’s like sharing is scary, but imagine I don’t know you or her, I don’t know another guy, but I’m going to be doing a premium on a term from Spotify, but I’m going to be sharing it with you and with others. So instead of paying $10, you’re going to be paying three. I’m going to be paying three. So it’s funny, but it has this tricky part because at the end, okay, you have to start up, you’re going to be gaining low. No, your raw yield is going to be low. It’s funny because as for now, you have tons of tools that you’re paying for. So it could have this good part, but in the end, I don’t know if it’s going to be reliable or not.

There are challenges.

Yeah, there are challenges.

It has its own set of challenges. There are smart tools out there in the market that are going to block those things, and even that happens. It’s not scalable for sure.

Yeah. Because in the end, Netflix. Netflix is going to ban it because they want money. Instead of one, having three different people using and paying the total, they have three paid for one. I agree. It’s not scalable.

Yeah. Netflix, even Netflix How do you operate this, no, ma’am? From your home WiFi, you can connect multiple devices and run Netflix, whatever number of screens you operate for. But when the IP changes, Netflix is going to warn you about it or buy you. Even earlier, people used to save passwords with their friends. It was supposed to be fine because three devices at a time is not a problem. But now that’s not possible. Companies are getting smarter. These tools that offer that shareability option have existed for quite a long time. And especially SaaS businesses hated that platform because eventually, they reduced the number of new potential users. That’s a loss.

I think they’re facing or they’re looking up to, for example, we’re moving into a couple of Netflix. They’re moving. Okay, I don’t want more user acquisition. I’m going to be facing the ones who are paying. I want to be more reliable. I want to be scalable. I want to have more earnings. More revenue. Yeah.

Yeah, definitely. All right, Jorge, we’re coming to an end, and I would love to have a quick rapid-fire with you. Are you ready for that?

Yeah. Yeah? Let’s do it.

Okay. If given a superpower, what would you choose? Would you rather be able to speak every language in the world or be able to talk to animals?

Wow. It’s complicated because I do love languages. I do love them, but I think I should talk to an animal.

Do you have any pets?

Right now here at home, no. But I used to have three dogs with my parents. So yeah, I love pets.

Nice. If you could travel back in time, what period would you go to?

What period would I go to? Maybe, I don’t know. It’s a tricky question. Maybe back to college again. Yeah.

Why?

Because or maybe into choosing a college. No, Maybe I have this freaky point that I would have loved in the past when we started in the US. No, because all the opportunities are given, even though I’m not complaining about that, but probably that one will be good. That time, I didn’t know about another one. It just came up and blocked my mind. But yeah, that’s fine.

Okay. How many hours of sleep do you need?

I’m not going to sleep at the time, but maybe 6-5. It’s okay for me.

That’s pretty low. Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. If you could ask God one question, what would it be?

What am I doing here? What’s my mission?

Okay. All right. Now, coming to my very last question, what’s your last Google search?

What’s my last Google search? Let me check it.

Yeah, please go.

Let me look at it. Okay, it was the result of a soccer game. Okay.

Of the African club. Okay. Thank you so much for sharing your experiences here and some of your strategies and about your SaaS business. It was amazing speaking with you. I appreciate your time here with me. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Harshit, for the invite.

Inside Creatify's Engine: A Peek into the AI-Powered World of Influencer Marketing

Jorge Hoth, Head of Marketing and Sales at Creatify

Jorge Hoth

Head of Marketing and Sales at Creatify