Working with Influencers to grow your brand – with Tomer Hen, Switch Supplements

Welcome to the Bring Your Product Idea to Life podcast. This is the podcast for you if you're getting started selling products or if you'd like to create your own product to sell.

I'm Vicki Weinberg, a product creation coach and Amazon expert. Every week I share friendly practical advice as well as inspirational stories from small businesses. Let's get started. Hi.

So today on the podcast I'm speaking to Tomer Hen. Tomer helps brands grow by building authentic and meaningful relationships with advocates an influencers who didn't trust not trends.

Tomer is also the co founder of Switch Supplements. So we had a really fascinating conversation today.

Tomer speaks about how when he started his business, he spent an awful lot of money on ads, but his business didn't grow. And how by switching to working with influencers and affiliates really changed his business model.

We also spoke about how to sort of drive relationships with your customers, keep your customers loyal to you, and create raving fans. This was a really genuinely interesting and informative episode. I certainly learned a lot from Toma. I hope that you do too.

And I hope you're really inspired to try some of the things that he speaks about. So I would love now to introduce you to Tomer. So hi Tomer. Thank you so much for being here.

Hi Vicky. Thank you for having me.

So can we start? If you please give an introduction to yourself, your business and what you sell.

Yes. So my name is Tomer Hen. I'm the co founder of a brand called Switch. It's a supplement brand. Our flagship product is called Kin Kill Switch.

It's a hot cocoa sleep formula that helps you sleep like you're dead. And I also help fellow brand founders grow their brands with influencers and affiliates and without being dependent on ads.

Amazing. And we're going to talk about both of those today. But first off, let's tell me a bit more about Switch Supplements.

Tell me a bit more about Kill Switch. What inspired you to launch this product in the first place?

So I always wanted to launch my own physical product brand and I knew that when I would, I I want this brand to be built around me as the ideal customer. I didn't want to follow trends, I didn't want to do any market research. I just wanted to create a brand where I'm the ideal customer.

So I've been an entrepreneur ever since I remember and with being an entrepreneur comes stress and bad sleep and, and the willingness to always perform at your best. And I was really into biohacking and supplements and what I call Human optimization. So I decided to launch Switch and Switch.

The first product was, it's called On Switch. It worked really well. It's a morning nootropic for focus and flow. It worked great, but it tasted horrible.

So we decided to launch our second product, which is called Killswitch. And that was that. That was a really, really good product. It is. It is a really good product. And we decided to go all in on that product.

I've had terrible sleep and I really wanted to create a product that I could finally.

That could finally help me fall asleep and stay asleep and just wake up refreshed without the usual grogginess that you get from Melatonin as an example.

So did you decide to drop your first product completely? The one you said tasted awful? Did you decide just to drop that from your range?

We're reformulating it, so we'd probably launch it, relaunch it next year. But right now we have so much momentum with Kill Switch that we decided to go all in on that.

Yeah, I was. What I was kind of leading towards.

I think it's great to say I'm going to go all in in one product, one really good product, than feeling like you have to have a range. Because sometimes people will say to me, oh, I've only have.

They only have one product and it might be a great product, but they feel like they need to have more. But I'm with you in that I think if you have one really, really good product, that can be enough.

I agree. I agree that anything that you do, just one off. If you have a sales channel that works, double down on it.

If you have a product that works, double down on it. If you have any business model that works, just double down on it.

People tend to, and I've been there for so long, entrepreneurs tend to look for the shiny objects, for the exciting things. I think that the reason why many entrepreneurs started their businesses was because they got bored. They wanted to create a change.

So starting something new always feels exciting. And then it gets boring.

And then you look for the other things that might look more exciting, but then you don't really build momentum in one direction. So for almost every product out there, there's infinite amount, virtually infinite amount of people who could use it, who could buy it.

So if you want to launch a second product, you have to ask yourself, why is that? Maybe it's because you're platforming with your first product, but then it doesn't mean that the solution is to start all over with a second product.

So we are interested in launching product number two and product number three, and maybe more, but not before we create real momentum or we double down on the momentum that we've already created. Because it's much easier to grow when you do the same thing over and over and over.

It's less sexy, it's more boring, it's not as exciting, but it works.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think that you're right. It's really easy to jump from thing to thing and not really see, stay the course of anything.

Because if you don't see results quickly, people can very easily say, oh, this isn't working. I'll try this new thing over here. And yeah, so I think that what you're saying makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, I've been there for a year. For a year I was looking for the trends for TikTok shop when it just got started for all sorts of new platforms, ad, platform, you name it.

Because I wanted to get results fast.

And that in fact what caused us to spend a year still stuck below or on 10k a month and over 100k that we spent on ads and agencies and shiny objects.

But we realized that instead of thinking how can we 5x our business in one year or look for the thing that would 5x our business in one year or in three months, we should just look at how can we grow 10% next month and then 20% next month? And the answer to that or the solution is much simpler than looking for those things that would 5x your business.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

And you've been really open about your struggles when you first started the business you just mentioned, then the 100k you spent on ads, you spoke about doing things that didn't work. So what do you think went wrong at that stage and what have you learned from that?

So for years, I've helped brand founders and big businesses scale their businesses with influencers and affiliates.

But those brands usually started or they launched with ads, and then they realized they were being too dependent on Those ads when iOS14 came into launched and the algorithm changed. So they realized that they needed to create another channel that is not dependent on ads.

So when I grew my brand, I thought, okay, the playbook or the common advice is to launch with ads, grow with ads to a certain point, and then I can do all the other things. So even though I had my own system, I thought that my brand was too small to launch with it, to grow with it. And that was the mistake.

So I hired agencies and we ran ads and I tried to follow the common advice.

But launching a brand with ads, now that I see it, and I see it with so many other brand founders nowadays, launching a brand with ads is the most inefficient way to grow because you don't really have any momentum, you don't have any social proof. There's a ton of competition. So you don't know what the angles that are working.

So you basically have to, if you're bootstrapping, you basically have to test unlimited variables with limited bullets. And that's what we tried.

We tried this angle and that agency and that creative and that strategy and pricing to a point where we lost 100k in a year trying to chase for those things. And then TikTok shop came into place, like, okay, maybe that's the next thing that we should go after.

So we hired creators and we hired agencies and consultants and we realized that it just didn't work. So we were left with no money in the bank and just little inventory.

And we had no choice but to figure out how can we grow without spending our own money on growing.

Thank you. So at that point, is that when you moved to working with advocates and influencers?

Right.

I said let's just follow the playbook that I've helped brand make millions with bigger brands and let's test if it can help my brand get from 10k to 15k and 20k and 30k. So we had, we only had some inventory, we didn't have any cash. So we started looking for the influencers that our ideal customers truly trust.

And we built relationships with them and we send them our product. And through those relationships, many of them loved our product and posted about it.

They haven't charged us anything because we build a non transactional relationship with them. We haven't asked them to promote us, so they just wanted to add more value to their audience. And in this case, our product was that value.

It was, hey, I found this product, it helped me with my sleep, maybe it would help you as well. And that drove new customers. We got more followers, we got more leads.

And speaking of compounding, we instead of thinking, how can we just get more, we looked at the customers that we already had and the leads that we already got and the followers. Even though we had 142 followers and we had just a few customers, we doubled down on these relationships.

We collected reviews and then we posted those reviews and then more influencers saw those reviews. And it helps us attract more and more influencers.

And that's how after being stuck at 10k for a year, within three months we grew to over 30k and then three months later more than 60k. And we haven't spent a dime on ads at that time.

That's amazing. So let's talk about influencers first. So how do you go about finding influencers and what is it you do to build such a good relationship with them?

Because you mention relationships a lot and that seems to be key. So what are some of the. So first let's start with how you find them and then what are some things you do to make a real connection with them?

So first, I always say that there are two types of influencers. We have entertainers, which is the vast majority of influencers, and we have advocates. Entertainers care about growing their audience.

They create entertaining content that people love to consume and engage on. This is why you see them. They usually pop up in the algorithm because that's what they do best. They get a lot.

They get many likes to have the biggest accounts, they get many comments. But then advocates create content that's advice based. That's the content that people love to take action on.

They follow them to get real advice on problems in their lives or reaching their goals.

So they create, even though they have small account, they usually don't have the most polished content, the most viral content, but they have an audience that truly trusts them. They would not talk about products simply because they pay them. They would talk about products that they believe can help their audience.

They would post about things that could really help their audience whether they get paid or not. And their audience knows it. And because they know it, they trust them. And because they trust them, they buy the product they recommend.

So finding those advocates, if you can see an advocate with 12k followers, then you might think, okay, they're too small. Or you might think you might see an entertainer with 700,000 followers and you think, okay, that that's a winner, so let's pay that one. That's.

If they post about me, then I probably get a ton of sales. But then you get the content they post about you. And I've seen it over and over and over again.

I'm not saying that big influencers never drive sales, but what I'm saying is that the size of that influencer does not matter, not even the number of likes or the comments. What really matters is the trust level that they have with their audience.

And it takes more than just looking at the raw numbers, like the number of comments and likes and followers. It takes looking at their content From a different perspective, looking at the comments and reading the comments and seeing.

So, for example, if you see 100 comments on a post that talks about a product, but then all of the comments say, you're so gorgeous, it looks pretty, you know, emojis and all of that. This is not a piece of content that people pay attention to the product. They pay attention to the influencer who posted the content.

But when you see 50 comments and all of them talk about the colors and which color did you choose? And where can I get it? And I bought it, and they're talking about the product, this is just one example.

But you can see the purchasing intent of that audience.

So to find them, you have to understand what your audience or what your ideal customers really care for, what they really care about, what they're looking for, what kind of content they would consume to solve the problem that your product solves. And for us, we do it in two ways. The technical aspect of it, of finding them. We created an AI agent that basically automates the entire funnel.

It basically takes the system, the methodology that we have done for years manually with virtual assistants or just doing it ourselves, and we put it into a AI agent that finds the influencers, reaches out to them, follows up and activates them, so builds these relationships. But it can be done manually, just takes a bit more time.

I would say that half of my clients use the AI agent, half of them use virtual assistant in order to do it by themselves, but it does take some legwork. But once you found 20, 30, 40 advocates that are ideal for your brand, it's much easier to find hundreds and thousands of them, really.

Okay, so it sounds like it makes more sense to work with a small number of really trusted advocates who are going to be good ambassadors for your brand, who have an audience who trusts them, who engage with them, they engage back.

Actually, something that I've seen with some people that I follow is there are those who might post something and get lots of comments, but then there are those who post something and they're in the comments, so they're replying and they're giving feedback and they're answering people's questions. I guess those are the kind of people that you're looking for, the ones where it feels like they've got an actual connection with their followers.

Correct? Correct.

That they actually have a community that follows them, trust their Advice, they're not there to consume the content, they're there to take action from that content. This is why they don't really care if their videos are not as edited.

Some of our best performing posts are simple, are simply text based posts with an image that they took from a website.

But when, when that advocate says, hey, I tried it, I liked it, maybe you like it as well, that's enough for your audience to say, let me check this out, let me look at it, let me look at their website. They follow your page, they go on Amazon, they search for you on Google and they buy the product.

So for a founder listening, let's say they're going to be doing this all manually and they find some influencers and they think, yes, these look like people I'd like to work with. What's the next steps then? What would you then do in terms of how to approach them and how to start that relationship?

So my approach is that we always build non transactional relationships first. Because when you start with, hey, I have a product, would you like to promote it? Then it feels like you're trying to sell them on that opportunity.

So influencers try to sell their product and they reply with I only do paid promotions and they send you their rate cards. This is why we don't ask for anything, but we offer them to try our product for free.

So we show them we position our product as the added value that they can add to their audience. And if they like it, then we nurture that relationship.

We ask for feedback, we follow up, we check in in a way that doesn't seem like we try to get the post from them. Because we know that when you choose the right advocates, they will post about it even without you asking for it. Because this is what they do.

They're looking for more ways to help their audience. So when you position your product as one of those ways, they simply do it.

So once they posted about us, this is where we offer them to join our affiliate army. So we say, hey, you already posted about us. Why won't you get compensated and get compensated and your audience can also get a discount.

But we don't start with it. This is where most brands start with. They start with, hey, I have a product, would you like to promote it as an affiliate or.

Or get my free product and post about it.

But then think about it, if your product costs $100 or $50, then what kind of influencer would post about a product that they've never tried or agree to post about a product that they haven't tried or just to get it for free if it costs 50 or $60. These are not the influencers that really value their audience because the trust is not really there.

So offering a free product in exchange for a post would get you guaranteed post.

But if sales are what you're looking for, then you don't want the influencers who would post about any product just to get it for free or not even product just to get paid 2, 3, $500 or any amount really. When my number one rule is that we do not negotiate with influencers.

So when I reach out to an influencer and they reply back with a rate card, it shows me that they would talk about any product for the right amount. And these are not the influencers that I want.

I want influencers who would talk about products simply because they believe in them and they believe that it can help their audience as well.

That makes a lot of sense.

And I guess by sending them the product to try, first of all, if they choose to post about it, then you know that they, they like the product, they're happy to endorse the product for no fee.

So therefore, presumably when they join the affiliate program, if they join that, you know they're going to work hard because one, they like the product and two, now they're getting compensated for it.

Correct.

And how does your affiliate program work? That might be useful for people to hear because I don't know of many brands that have them. Maybe lots of brands do have them and I just don't know.

But how does, how does that work for the, for you and for the influencers?

So we created an affiliate offer that's a win, win, win. It's a win for the affiliate or the influencer. They got a cut off the sale.

It's a win for us because we get customers that have predictable CPA that works for us and it's a win for their audience because they heard about a new product and they can also get it at a slight, at a small discount.

That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Like you say, so everyone's winning there.

So for anyone listening who's maybe running ads and they're listening to us chatting and they're thinking, o, maybe this is something I could try. How much time and effort should they expect to put into starting and building these kinds of relationships with influencers?

I would say no more than one hour a day at max. I always like to start doing things myself before I delegate it to someone else.

So my recommendations, if you're, if you're the founder of the brand, you know your product better than anyone else. You know your audience better than anyone else. So I'd highly encourage you to build those relationships with enfroncers for the first week or two.

Once you get a grip on it. This is where you can delegate it to a virtual assistant for 7, 8, $9 an hour and scale it up so it doesn't take a lot of effort.

I think the main thing that people need to remember that this is not a sales funnel. This is not a performance channel where you get a post and then you can track exactly how many sales you're getting. This is a relationship funnel.

It's a relationship funnel that compounds because one influencer that posted about you today and drove 12 sales is another relationship that you now have.

So now if they're your affiliate, you can activate them and get them to post when you, when you have your Black Friday offer, when you have your, when you launch product number two. So it's not about, hey, I need to reach out to certain amount of influencers to get certain amount of sales.

It's how many relationships I can build and then how do I double down on these relationships?

So the, the effort is really just being okay with the fact that for the first few weeks you would not expect any results because it feels like at first it feels like nothing is happening for a while because they need to reply and then they need to try the product and then they post about it. But then a lot happens at once when you plant those seeds and then all of a sudden you have advocates talking about you before you even know it.

That's really, really reassuring.

I think for people to hear that you might not see results instantly because I think so much now, particularly if you're used to running ads, which I know are still not instant, but often can start to work a bit quicker. If they work, maybe they're not profitable straight away, but you can. Sometimes you can see the sales coming through quicker.

So that's a really good reminder. Now, speaking of ads, a lot of people do feel pressure to run ads just to stay visible, especially on social media where there's so much noise.

What would you say to someone who's listened to us and still feels like paid traffic is the only option, is the only way to get seen?

I think ads are great. We run ads as well. I just don't think that a brand should be dependent on ads because one day that algorithm can change.

One day you have something in the algorithm or a new policy. Just look at what happened in January for many health and wellness brands in Meta.

So if you're, if 70% or 80% of your sales come from one entity, you're basically dependent on that entity. So I think that ads are great to supplement the organic flywheel that you're building.

So just to give you an example, when you work with influencers and they post about you and they tag your account and people are checking your profile and they visit your website, then ads can be a great tool to retarget or to remarket to those people so you're not starting from scratch.

Or when even if you run ads and then people check out your Instagram profile and they see all these people raving about your product and all these influencers raving about your product. And the beauty of it is that it doesn't look like sponsored posts, it doesn't look like scripted video.

So people can sense that These testimonials are 100% authentic because they look, they are 100% authentic. So when, when you run ads, it helps elevate the organic flywheel that you have and vice versa.

That makes a lot of sense.

And I think for a lot of us, particularly if it's something that's more considered purchase, perhaps, perhaps slightly higher priced, you do need to see something more than once in more than one place before you make a purchase. I think very few of us now just see one post or one ad and go, oh, I'll buy that. I think you often need more touch points than that, don't you?

Right. So creating that awareness, that first awareness is very expensive with ads.

But if you create awareness for cheap or for free, for the cost of just free products, then converting that audience into customers is much easier and more efficient when you have ads. And I can also tell you that our most profitable ads nowadays are influencer, are pieces of content that our influencers created that we run as ads.

So our ads don't even look like ads.

They look like pieces of content that random people posted and it even shows as the influencer has posted it, so it looks 100% authentic and it doesn't look like an ad. And this is why it works. So we don't need to figure out what pieces of content would work or coming up with a ton of creatives.

Once we have an influencer video or a story or a post that worked well and drove sales, we simply put some ad budget behind it so it gets more reach. So now we only spend money on creatives that are proven to drive sales.

Oh, that makes a lot of sense. So I know you've helped a lot of brands replicate the same approach that you've taken now.

So what, are there any common patterns or traits you see in ones that succeed and the brands that follow your advice and do really well?

Yeah. Again, the. The number one thing is the. My most successful clients understood that this is not. Which.

Which sounds counterintuitive, but this is not a performance channel. You don't track. I sent X number of packages this month and I got X number of sales this month.

I always say that if Kim Kardashian posts about your product tomorrow, you would see the uptick in sales, even if she doesn't use an affiliate link. Right. Because people are looking for your product.

They heard your name, they search on Google, on Amazon, they go to retailers, and they buy the product. It works the same way with an influencer who's got 10,000 followers. The principles of social proof and word of mouth are universal.

But it's very hard to measure when you have 10 influencers with 10, 20, 50,000 followers. If you're. If you're a bigger brand, if you're a brand that has zero sales, you would see the uptick in sales.

You suddenly see sales coming up out of nowhere.

But my most successful clients understand that the more people say good things about your products to more people, the more people want to buy it, even if you can't track it. This is how humans are buying and this is how they've been buying for forever. So influencers really help you hack word of mouth.

And then when we sprinkle that with an affiliate offer, this is where, A, we can track the sales. B, we can incentivize all parties to keep building that flywheel for us. But we win.

The moment they posted about us and said, hey, I like this product. Here is their Instagram, or even not that, that's their name. So we know that more people now have a positive opinion about our product. That's enough.

That makes a lot of sense. Thank you. And of course, thank you so much for everything that you've shared.

I'm going to put links to everywhere people can find you in the show notes for the episode. I've got one final question before we finish, if that's okay.

And that would be, what would your number one piece of advice be for other product founders?

Ooh. I would say that the fastest way to get results is to stop chasing the fastest way to get results. Just start doing the boring things over and over.

It feels exciting at first. If you start anything new it will get boring. And that's okay. Just keep compounding that.

You don't need to go from one shiny object to another, one strategy to another. If you already have some momentum, even if it feels small and slow, it will compound over time.

Every customer, every lead, every follower, every like and comment can become the next piece that will help you get more customers. And every customer can become your raving fan. That would leave a review, and that review can become your next best ad.

And that review can attract more influencers. So you see how that all compounds. But it's not sexy. It's boring. But it can be systematized.

You don't have to do it all yourself, but just that mentality of doubling down on the small wins that you have and get every day. This is how you compound it as fast as possible.

That makes a lot of sense. Thank you. And I think you're right.

I think lots of, as you said this right at the beginning, chase the next shiny thing, the next idea, the next thing everyone's doing. So I think that's a really good reminder because I think as soon as we get bored, it can get uncomfortable.

Especially if we're not seeing the growth or the changes that we'd like. If we're not seeing it quickly, it can be really hard to stay the course.

Correct. I believe that what you appreciate, appreciates.

So instead of looking at how we only had X sales, but we wanted to get this amount of sales, just look at the sales that you've had and think, how can I. How can I compound that? How can I reach out to the customers? How can I what worked here so we can do more of.

Instead of thinking what else should I be doing that I'm not doing and how can I grow faster by doing other things and starting from scratch? It's just your. Your. I believe that it just your brain tricks you into thinking that things are not working because they.

Because it wants the rewarded dopamine hit of starting something new. So when you were able to absorb to. To observe it, then you realize, okay, I just need to do better at this. I just need to do more of that.

But not necessarily just doing a completely different thing.

That makes sense. And I appreciate. I said that was the last question, so hopefully you'll forgive me, but you've spoken a lot about compounding on what you have.

Is there anything that you do for your customers to keep your customers coming back to you? Because of course, once someone's bought from you, once they're in the, in your ecosystem or however you want to word it.

Is there anything you do there to just keep them coming back to you?

Absolutely. So obviously a good product is the number one thing. Nothing would help a bad product. But we treat our customers like most brands want.

So we always surprise our subscribers with free gifts. We always email each and every customer individually.

We have someone who emails all of our customers when they purchase once and twice and we thank them and we ask for their feedback. We don't ask for reviews. We just show our gratitude, we show our appreciation and we ask if they need any help, if they have any questions.

And that goes a long way with our customers. We every day we get customers who reply and they say, it's not every day that a CEO of a company or a company reaches out personally.

And I believe that in the world of AI and automations and scale, scale, scale, personal gets all the attention. People really remember that. So the next time they think about replacing your product or looking at a competitor, they already feel something for you.

Not just for the product, but for the brand and the people behind it.

Yeah, that makes sense. And that is really rare. I mean, I can't remember the last time I got a personalized note or an email unless it was from a very small.

But you know, you buy on Etsy, you expect maybe you get a little note of the package or something or personalized email. But bigger companies, they just don't do that. And I think you're right.

It's a nice way to make people loyal to you, to care about you, to feel like there's a connection with your brand. I think that's really nice.

Yeah. And then, and then they talk about it with other people and then you build that flywheel and get more word of mouth.

It's not just so most brands are looking at, I need to get customers to buy more. I think that there's beyond just repeat customers. And there are raving fans.

Raving fans not only buy more, but they leave raving reviews and they talk about your product with other people. And naturally, if you have a good product, you'll have some raving fans, but you can really create a system around it.

And a raving fan is worth 100 customers because if you, if they post a review online, if they talk, talk about you with three, four, five friends and they just rave about you, that's, that's how the flywheel builds. It's basically free marketing. But most brands live it up to a chance. They just think that it either happens or it doesn't.

But there are ways where you can make it happen and create word of mouth by design.

I really like that. I really like what you said, particularly about asking for feedback rather than asking for reviews.

Because I think it feels much more personal to reply to an email and say I like this or I like that. Because leaving a review somehow feels like more effort than clicking reply to an email.

I know it's not many more steps, but it, there's something psychological there. I'm not sure what it is. It is a difference.

Absolutely. Just go for the easiest yes. Don't ask for anything besides showing that you really care for their opinion.

And if it's positive, then you can ask for a review. But first just show that you truly care about them. And that's. That's the essence of every business and brand.

Just taking care of, taking good care of your customers and they will take care of you.

Well, thank you so so much for everything you shared. I have learned a lot from you. I'm sure that everyone else has as well.

Hopefully people are also inspired to try doing something new in their business and perhaps try some of the things that you're doing to sort of engage with their customers and get some influencers on board. So thank you so much again for being here.

Thank you so much, Vicky for having me. And thank you everyone who listened or watched the video.

Thank you so much for listening. Right to the end of this episode.

Do remember that you can get the full back catalogue and lots of free resources on my website, vickyweinberg.com Please do remember to rate and review this episode if you've enjoyed it and also share it with a friend who you think might find it useful. Thank you again and see you next week.