Marketing That Stands the F*ck Out: Louis Grenier on Positioning

How do you get remembered? And you need both, right? You need a unique positioning so that you give like rational compelling reasons, but you also need the distinctiveness um which is there to make people notice you um for reasons that are quite frankly sometimes just weird. Uh but that's the point. So, uh, and then once you have that, you want to reach as many of those people as possible within your means, including, means, including, uh, telling stories and and reaching people through ads or, uh, search

engine and finding your affiliate website and stuff like that. I'm John Wright and you're listening to AffiliateBI, the business intelligence and affiliate marketing podcast brought to you by Snapstrap. Snapstrap. Welcome to the AffiliateBI podcast. Today we're chatting with Louiesie Grenier who is a recovering Frenchman who's the author of Stand the [ __ ] Out which is a genius marketing book. Happen to have it right here. Um it's about branding and positioning and he was previously uh I think it's the content and product marketer at Hot Jar, which

is an amazing CRO tool and after a few years um he's also been the host of Everyone Hates Marketing Podcast. Louie, uh welcome to the show. Mojo and mercy very much for your invitation. Let's do this. Thank you. So, if you came over to my flat and you had to go to the bathroom for maybe number two, would you have those uh fragrance packets with you just in case you needed them?

No, I like to raw dog it. I like to keep it real. So, what you see is what you get. What you smell is what you get. Um I have no shame in my bodily functions. Brilliant. It's uh you know I just love the the stories you had in the book that talked about you know marketing positioning about products solving problems and things like that. Yeah. So so I mean for for for folks listening this is a nod to one of the example I use right

which is a a sand packet. It's a little thing that you open up and put in the toilet before you're going to to hide others. And I kind of reverse engineer the everything uh in ter of their positioning and whatnot. Um, I like to use weird examples because I think they they tend to be remembered better and I guess your question is a is a good testament of that, right?

Uh, I don't like to use big brands examples that everyone is using to to to to illustrate their stories like Apple and Harley-Davidson and Disney and Tesla, blah blah blah. I just hate that. I just can't [ __ ] stand it actually. Um, so yeah, I always try to find way of tiny real examples. Okay, so I wrote a whole bunch of questions down and the one I want to ask maybe I'll just kind of rephrase it a bit which is marketing is a struggle for most.

So how do you use data and insights into your marketing efforts and you know does data and marketing go together? Because I think a lot of people see sales and data as that's where data lives. But I think you're kind of saying like maybe no. It's kind of a bit of both rather than marketing as kind of like a concept like hey we're going to try some [ __ ] and if it doesn't work that's our data.

Well you can't do marketing without data. uh whether it's data that you have from customer interviews, data from your intuition, I would classify them as still data of some sort like your knowledge, past experience, it's still something that you use. So you can't do marketing without data. Okay. And would you say that like storytelling is like a good way to like do marketing and you know it's kind of like an extension of sales?

Um I mean storytelling is part of communication. Communication is is part of marketing but it's roughly 8%. So 8% of marketing is down to communication roughly. Uh and so trading is part of that. So it's a tiny percentage. Um the bigger picture if we take the distance uh from it like marketing is not an art or anything like that. that marketing is really there to help increase the chances that people would buy your stuff.

And by increase the chances, we're not talking about 50%. It's like a tiny minute percentage that we, you know, slightly more likely to be known, to be trusted, to be chosen in the supermarket aisle or whatever else. and or or for a salesperson to pick up the call and uh to pick up their phone and call call someone and that someone would say oh yeah I've heard about you right so it's a big discipline and product is part of it price is part of it promotion

is part of it like the traditional four piece so it's just bigger on communication and storytelling is such a tiny it's a tiny part it's crazy important because that's how you deliver a message that humans will will will interpret well because they'll understand they'll be they remember it better than than normal facts all of that. So it is a a scientific proof you know that storytelling is important but yeah it's there's way bigger levers you can pull.

Okay. I guess this is an issue of more of timing like when do you tell the story? It's kind of like well when is the user asking for it is uh the time right. Yeah. I mean you you you reach out to people once you have all the foundations covered. So in the book we talk about insight for aging which is essentially how to gather the right insight right data in order to build upon and create then a unique positioning which is essentially a the way

to offer a compelling reason for specific group of people to pick you over direct competitors or indirect competitors. Right? So that gives you this kind of line in the sand that gives you this this flag in the ground uh that says this is who we are. This is what we're for. Um and then once you have that you can build a distinctive brand which is the more less like rational part of of marketing which is about being how do you get noticed?

How do you get remembered and you need both right? You need a unique positioning so that you give like rational compelling reasons, but you also need the distinctiveness distinctiveness um which is there to make people notice you um for reasons that are quite frankly sometimes just weird. Uh but that's the point. So uh and then once you have that you will reach as many of those people as possible within your means including means including uh telling stories and and reaching people through ads or uh search

engine and finding your affiliate website and stuff like that. Okay. I've spent most of my career in the i gaming space which is known as kind of like a wealthy industry and there's a lot of similar industries like the finance personal finance space where there's a lot of money involved and in my LinkedIn post uh I talked about like you know why is I don't want to kind of accuse everyone of being [ __ ] but I'm like why is everyone [ __ ] at marketing in an industry when

there's so much money and I think my answer is because they have money to just burn and throw out the problem and think that it's part of the solution but no one's thinking about can I do this with a fraction of the budget or can I take a budget and make it a 10x yeah 10x yeah so it's I think there's a bit of that I would agree right where like if you have money you just use it all like if you have specific budgets you

couldn't use it all and you can do tests and stuff like that so that's I would agree with that I think the second part though is um I used to think like this as well especially like early in my career where I would judge people's well brands marketing and always feel like they're bad. Um, however, uh, what is bad for us because we think about those things a lot might not be bad for real, right?

Like they must be doing something right if they're that big and generating that much money. So their marketing, not just their communication, must be right. So yeah, maybe they communicate, maybe maybe there's like shitty ads, generic ads that sound like everyone else's, but maybe that's all they need in order to stay top of mind. People still notice them slightly and therefore slightly increases the chance they pick them over someone else.

So I think there's nuance there and the other part is the market share. So there are forces at play that are much much much bigger than any creative campaign uh and the effect it could have on people. uh one of the biggest levers is market share. So in any category uh the more a brand will have a high market share the more loyal their customers will be the less churn they will have and the more smaller brands will lose uh customers to them.

And that's just a force that exists in any market any across any decades anything uh that's been proven time and time again in any industry. And so as a small brand, you are way way like you're against the current. You're swimming against the current. And so a big eye gaming company like with maybe number one market share don't have to do as much to remain where they are because the force is like the wind is pushing them while anyone else has to play catchup.

So I think that's also explains it right like especially the bigger companies like massive companies tend to have this advantages that they just surf on and yeah if they don't do something good for a while it might not be as big of a deal as an increment um who's trying to catch up. Yeah, because I see some of these companies like ones that are at the top, you're right, they don't have to do as much.

Like they're kind of like a little bit of extra fuel makes them just go a bit further. But then there's other companies which they're giants. They they clearly have the money. They're making it, but you can kind of look at them and go, I think they're just wasting a lot of money and just it's kind of like a a playbook like paytoplay. So I'll give a quick example.

It's like at these conferences, it's the same booths over and over again. It's kind of like they're not inspirational. They don't make you talk about them. Uh sometimes you go up to the stands and you start asking questions and you got people that just don't care or you got like, you know, uh the pretty girls that just kind of like listen to you and they put you in contact with someone, but it's almost like there's no care.

Like there are some people that I think go out of their way to, you know, try to make an impact and actually measure the effectiveness of it. But we hear stories. I'm like, why are these people here if they're just basically walking around and talking with their friends, not doing anything, no strategy? Like, you must see this over and over again as a as a marketing person.

Yeah. But again, it's like it's part of a bigger I think it's part of a bigger grand strategy for them, which is uh distinctiveness, reach, making sure that people see them. So even though they might have a grand unique idea uh and their booths look like everyone else's, the fact that they invest in in that event and maybe hundred other events reaching the same people plus paid ads plus influencer plus all the other stuff means that you know the sum of it all is moving the

needle. And the issue then is yeah if you isolate one particular thing yeah it might be [ __ ] but it's extremely difficult to you can't really remove a specific portion of of of the sum of of it all because everything is interconnects with each other right so as I said at the start right like it's your aim as a big brand is to just raise the chances that someone will ever buy from you and I think that's what they're doing.

Um even though yeah if you isolate everything it makes no sense but together this huge momentum that they keep investing in helps them remaining where they are market share wise and stuff and it clearly must be right in some way or else they wouldn't throw that all that money. Yeah. So, I've changed my tune a bit on this, right? Like I used to be extremely like, ah, those stupid ads on TV, they don't even share an offer.

Like, they just put their logo after the weather. And now I've realized that, you know, I was a bit shortsighted because again, sometimes it's just about being seen. It's just about the logo is there, the logo is there. And in three years time when you have to pick between two brands to buy a [ __ ] dishwasher, you got to pick the one that you've seen more because you trust that more.

That's also a fundamental principle in how humans uh perceive the world. Like the more we see something, the more we trust it. The more we trust it, the more we're likely to remember it. Blah blah blah. So again, you know, it doesn't have for big brands in particular, you don't have to be that creative. You just have to be [ __ ] clear. Repeat your message over and over again.

clear logo, clear distinctive brand assets. So, color, uh, yeah, logo, mascots, uh, sounds, stuff like that. Like McDonald's, you know, like those massive brand, they can get away with that. Now, the question is, as a smaller company, as a smaller brand in that in big market with almost no market share, you can't do that. So, what do you do? Right? Maybe it's a a mix of like, you know, social media or, you know, I kind of think like, you know, using the the deepseek as an

analogy, like they wanted to compete against open AI, but they had a fraction of the budget. And it's like, how do you get creative? And their creativity kind of allowed them to do engineering in a different way. And I kind of think marketing could be the same. Like we have almost no budget for marketing as a startup that we're bootstrapped. We raised a bit of money to get off the ground, but like like we don't really have a big budget for marketing.

So everything we do is like kind of free like we do a podcast, spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. Uh we attend conferences which is our marketing budget but we don't really have a booth uh because we just think it's very expensive at least for for us and in relation to our revenue. So um yeah that's our short story. Yeah. So it it it's it's it's uh it's free moneywise, but resources invested to spend time on LinkedIn and doing things right and doing this podcast

and whatever is it's all costs at the end of the day, right? So it's all resources. So yeah, it's first of all like if you have a strong unique positioning be meaning you're able to say we are the only one in that category that solve those problems for that specific group of people that alternatives can't do or don't do well you are giving people a compelling reason to pick you uh against other alternatives.

Yeah. So once you have that, that's already a big part of of your marketing because in fact, some companies only need this because they're just in the right place. Uh they don't need to do like communicating about stuff to just get found. People understand quickly who they are, giving them a compelling reason to pick them. Boom, job done. So that is super important. And then and then yeah, you do need some sort of a especially as a small bootstrap brand, you do need to like really

up the ante when it comes to the distinctive part. So uh again, that's just the way humans are. Um we remember things better if it touches different part of our uh brain. So the visual part of it, but also the like sound, also smells, anything like that. So, neuro diverse distinctive assets work really well. Um, this is why mascots work really well, like anything that is a character.

And then you want to be consistent with that. So, you need to pick something that just stands the [ __ ] out in one way, shape, or form, right? That just is distinctive in the category you're in. And then doubling down on that. And then, yeah, keep reaching those people like conferences, whatever else, and just continuously reach them. Uh there's no other playbook. There's no secret. There's no other hacks.

There's nothing of the salt. It's it's just a grind. It takes a while. I appreciate that. I'm going to pivot into talking about some of your concepts in marketing and positioning. Apply it to affiliate marketing itself. So, what do you think about affiliate marketing today when you see these affiliate sites and they have their content and they've got the calls to action to click and it just seems like, you know, the old playbook was you build content sites, you rank them in Google.

Google gives you the traffic and you make money. But I think Google's uh starting to mess things up with uh search results today. And I think there's been a lot of um soulless affiliate sites out there. So I'm just kind of want to get your take on what do you think affiliate marketing needs today for innovation ideas and disruption. So I was uh in London last week uh to speak at an event and Ran Fishkin was also talking and he was sharing a few data points

about um Google and and how they're still very much the big big big search engine. They're not losing market share contrary to LinkedIn Bros would say. The big thing though is that they keep more of the traffic for themsel with the AI overview and stuff like that and they give traffic to big brands bigger and bigger. So it comes back to what I was saying earlier. They tend to favor more and more trusted brands, trusted sites because people click more on them because because they know

them because they've seen them over and over again. So the same thing is happening. There's a huge concentration of traffic going through big baronss. Um, so this is a trend that is just going to keep going, meaning that there is no such thing as free traffic. There's no such thing as taking for granted any sources of traffic. You're going to have to play the game of every platform.

So, uh, Google doesn't want you to actually go anywhere um, anymore. LinkedIn doesn't want you to go anywhere. Uh, Twitter or X or whatever the [ __ ] uh, it's called nowadays. Uh, they don't want you to go anywhere. Um, so you have to play the game. Um, now if we take distance from that and just think about an affiliate website in particular making money through like people clicking and then maybe 5% buy something and then you take a commission on that.

Well, is your affiliate site uh in a unique position? Meaning are you able to say we are the only one in that category of affiliate website or in the casino industry or whatever to offer to solve this particular problem for this group of people that alternatives could be other affiliate website but also anything else um can't offer and if you're not able to do that then you already don't have uh foundations and so if you don't have foundations everything might crumble um because affiliate website is

just a way to deliver that but that value which hopefully should be there meaning you're solving problems that others don't uh but could be anything right you essentially with a unique positioning you could be you need to be in a position to say even if Google stop sending traffic to us we'll be fine because we are actually valuable and so therefore we'll find new ways to reach people um but you know a lot of stuff that I've seen in the affiliate industry for a while is

is based on hacks and quick fixes or quick like trends that come and go. Um, so it's always something to be very careful of with auto foundations. Things might crumble. You actually answered part of my next question, which is like I don't really see people combining the concept of affiliate marketing websites with positioning. Like everything you just said about positioning, it's like, well, why is your site special?

you know, and if you're just another site and you're one of, let's say, a hundred or thousand of them, I mean, it's no wonder why Google's gonna actually make smarter decisions of how they're gonna actually literally position you in their search engine. So, um, yeah, it's like I I haven't seen anyone talk about this topic before, positioning and affiliate marketing, and I wanted to give an example.

Why not? Yeah, you know, like sorry to cut you, but like it's it's I think it's it's it's a classic case of um focusing on on a particular way to see this thing that people are doing. So, they're doing affiliate websites and whatever, but at the end of the day, it's always the same thing. It's it's it's serving people with stuff of value that they are happy to give money to you for and hopefully they remember you.

Hopefully talk about you with others. I mean, it doesn't change anything that this one way to deliver that is through a website, uh, making money through affiliate stuff. So, yeah, it's it's just crazy to me. I understand why, right? Like, you think about it, it's super easy to create an affiliate website. I mean, that's the point, right? The barrier to entry is the lowest of the law.

Anyone with an internet and a brain uh with internet on a brain can can create an affiliate website in the next 30 minutes. It's super easy to grab affiliate codes from any like Blue Host and GoDaddy and whatever. It's super easy. Super easy to create a website. I mean, what is what is there that you do that no one else can claim to be doing with just that with such a low barrier to entry?

So yeah, it's I think the days of doing that and getting money is over because yeah, Google doesn't like uh sending traffic to to to places where people are disappointed after. So what to do? I agree. I I think there's actually a lot of affiliates that not only are they losing their revenue and search traffic that they were used to getting, I think they're actually kind of frozen.

Like they're kind of like, I need more SEO to get out of it. And I think they they think SEO is the answer, but I think everything else on the other side is actually part of the answer. Like I think if you're a really good SEO, you'd actually start asking the questions that you're asking, which is like what are we doing about positioning and why are we even existing?

Yeah. Because I uh I was listening to uh your previous episodes. Uh I'm not going to remember the person who you interviewed, but he was saying at the start like treat like you should treat your affiliate website like a business. Yeah, you should. Absolutely. I mean it is and it's not because it's so easy to do and put up that you can't take it seriously. So I think a lot of folks in that space do see probably that as a game almost like it's a it's

a cat and mouse game, right? It's like trying to find the little loopholes that Google hasn't covered yet and trying to make money this way. There's a bit of that, right? So you can't be smarter than a multi-billion uh dollar uh company. And so I don't think you should be. instead of using your smarts to to serve people in in ways that haven't been uh done before.

before. before. So um one of the key stuff again talking about about about manif one of the key stuff that is important is traffic doesn't mean influence and it's not because 90% of your traffic comes from Google that this is you need to spend 90% of your resources because a lot of people research for your brand name because they've heard from you from other places. So you have social media, you have the the influencer, you have TV, radio, you have such an ecosystem of stuff.

So if I was an affiliate marketer having a bunch of websites with just basic links and nothing else, I would just think about which one is working the best. Let's get to know customers, those people who buy from me. Let's interview them or let's spend a day with them. Let's gather these six insights I cover in the book. So what is the job that they have? what is the not the job in term of position but what is the the goal that they want to achieve

what are the alternatives they might consider what are the struggles that they struggle with right now with those alternatives uh what information can you get about the segment they're part of and what triggers uh compel them to act so those are the six basic insight if you know the answers to those things then you can reverse engineer a unique positioning and it might take more than just a bunch of links on the ite you might have to do something that is different but it's not about

you right it's always about the customer so you need to start I think using those those neurons that you use to try to hack Google to understand people serve them something of value and you won't worry that much anymore about Google taking your lunch yeah it's kind of funny because like I've been in the affiliate marketing space a long time we're a SAS company now catering to affiliates and in the SAS face.

It's kind of like you would try to interview your customers and get to know them. So, you would do these surveys, but I can't recall a time when I've been on the like the the the buyer side on an affiliate site and going, "When are they asking me stuff?" And also, they're not always collecting my email. And if they are, that's great. But when they do, it's only sell.

It's not like, "Can we have a conversation? Can I ask you something? Can I ask you insights?" and who cares if they're actually going to put this into their CRM and use it to better market to me. Um, I just don't think they're doing it, but I know there's tools that actually exist for this purpose. purpose. Yeah. I mean, so, so there's plenty of ways you can get insight.

So, you don't have to interview people. You don't have to talk to people directly. There's plenty of ways. So, you can you can do customer interviews, but you can also do surveys. You can also do review uh review mining, right? Which is quite helpful, especially in online space. You can like mine reviews from direct competitors and identify the six insight I shared earlier, right? Uh you can go inside communities where your customer hang out whether it's online or offline and just listen and have conversations and

understand them at a deeper level. You can be a fly on the wall as well. Meaning you're literally um if you if you have the chance to spend time with customers in a setting where they just work or whatever, you can be a fly on the wall and and just understand what's going on. You can do method marketing. You can use meaning like like method acting. You use the products or to try to have empathy for folks using it.

Like there's plenty of ways. Uh but the key is always the same like you need to find out what is the goal that they're trying to achieve. What is the alternative they actually looking into? What are they struggling with related to those alternatives? Why can't they get the job done? Right? What what is stopping them to get where they want to be? Uh what's the category? Well, how do they call what you do and and what are the trigger events, right?

With that, you have such a strong a strong a strong foundation that enables you then to play and have fun with. But if you don't have those information, this information like it's again there's no foundation. Therefore, it's a house of cards and every time the wind blows a bit uh bit faster like Google change the algorithm and whatever then you you struggle. So yeah, you do need very strong foundation nowadays.

And you know the barrier to entry to pretty much everything online related to affiliate or not is getting lower and lower, right? Creating images, you don't need a designer anymore. Uh writing copy, you don't need a copyriter anymore. I mean, not necessarily good copy, but you don't need that necessarily. Um all of that is going away as an advantage. The only thing that is left is the real truth, the real foundation of marketing, like actually doing something worth doing for a group of people who care

about that thing and being remembered, being trusted and all of that. That's the only thing they have left. Everything else is is automated, done by [ __ ] like that. So, it's back to fundamentals. So, next question I've got is sometimes I like to ask self-serving questions. uh cuz sometimes uh you know our situation helps either other SAS companies or sometimes the ideas are clonable to affiliate marketing. So here's our situation.

We're a SAS company. We think we're a useful tool for our potential affiliates. We believe our our users are problem aware but not solution aware. And just wondering like when you hear these things if you were to deal with a SAS company, how do you help the this situation? I think marketing is part of the answer but no but let's go specific, right? I mean, how how long do we have?

We got u like at least half hour. Okay, so let's let's let's let me not give you a [ __ ] generic answer. Let's dive deeper. Right. So Right. So the first of all, problem aware, solution aware. I hate those phrases. It's not because we can name things and and explain them that they are right. I I I just don't connect with those this way way of thinking. Um because it's not as clear-cut.

It's not as linear. It's not as oh first I'm problem aware. I have a problem with this then now I'm looking for solution. It just doesn't happen organically this way. Anyway, I'm not a big fan of it. And particularly the first phase of that system of that framework which is problem unaware. Please, please try to find someone who's problem unaware who has a who has there is a big problem but they're not aware of it in a B2B setting or whatever like you if it's a

big problem they know about it like it's just anyway that's that's one thing so so how do you how um how to grow this right how to grow this brand so you're saying affiliate marketers that that's the first thing I would I would I would double down on okay but what why would they use your service? Like what's the what's the goal that they have? The the goals that um we do is like we help them get all their data like all their traffic and revenue

data from their affiliate programs. So if you try doing this yourself, you're like it's just not standard. And when you actually search for that as a concept, you don't really find us. You find like four different types of affiliate marketing products. So they kind of want their data, but they don't understand the benefits of like using a tool like ours to record the data and have it daily and automated.

So we don't really always push how much time it can save them. Okay. So So just so that I I I remember I I understand correctly. So you would aggregate data from all the different affiliate platforms. Exactly. Yeah. everything like their account, brand data, campaign data, and even click ID data if they have dynamic variables for like really deep stuff. So let's say for example, I don't know, I am an affiliate website like Kazino affiliate website and one of them I sent directly to affiliate program.

Another one is through a third party that manages the affiliate. So you aggregate everything. Okay. Okay. So the big alarm bell that I hear um you know if we think about the six insight is the category meaning what is the thing that you offer how what is what's the name of it and is it in demand is it something that people already search for the problem that I hear is the fact that yes there might very well be a job to be done for people meaning

like they want to aggregate their data there might very well be a clear alternative which is doing that manually uh there might very well be struggle when it comes to well they want to stop wasting their time doing it they want to uh feel good about their business feel like they're control of it they can see everything at once uh you have a clear segment like affiliate marketers we can go deeper but it's mainly like probably affiliate marketers who are like professional affiliate marketers who do

that day in day out to have lots of different tools connected okay now the problem is the category that you're mentioning you need to like quote unquote educate the market, right? You need to like move them from problem aware aware. That's one of the hardest things to do. Okay? And that's typically one of the biggest hurdle that folks trying to have a unique positioning struggle with is that they are not able to place themsel in a category that is clear, that is in demand in order

to serve the way it already exists. already exists. uh you cannot generate demand from scratch. You have to lean on something that exists whether it's like struggles that a lot of people have in common that are desperate for a solution or whether a category that is like you know something that is trendy that people are searching for. So you can't generate demand from scratch. So the problem is like it's like how would you define in a few words the the software like what's the category if

you had to place it somewhere? somewhere? category. I call it affiliate stats and I sometimes will describe to people I say we're like the QuickBooks for affiliates. We get all of your data. Okay. So, yeah, like to me I I would zero in on that that the big because you don't have a lot of folks searching for that right on Google, let's say. Correct. It's uh we got a lot of brand search, but that's from years of building the brand.

So, people are searching for us. we have that and we want more of it. Um yeah and so so that's the problem because you are working really hard to educate the market right to make sure that they know you exist to make sure to understand they have a problem to make sure they understand that there's a solution out there and then yeah you get branded search back but that sounds like swimming against the current a lot it sounds like a lot of effort right it's so

yeah I can I can empathize with that I used to have a marketing agency pretty much doing making the same mistake I'm going to call it a mistake just for the sake of it again I don't know your business inside out and whatever but just from an perspective that's how I perceive like I used to sell try to sell conversion rate optimization services to companies in Dublin uh Dublin Ireland who had no clue about what CRO was the category was not in demand and even though

they had a problem they didn't see it the same way meaning like their problem wasn't we need to convert more traffic their problem in their head was always we need more traffic. Yeah. Right. So I was desperate to try to like argue and educate them about no no that's not really a problem. That's very tiring. Right. And I burnt out within a year and a half. Right.

So so obviously I don't want that to happen. So my typically so I have a very pragmatic approach nowadays from from this this lesson and others. So I always try to find to lean on something that exists that is in demand and then you can always introduce them to more. So like it's like the Trojan horse. So first you give them what they think they need and then you give them what they actually need.

So if you think that they actually need affiliate stats aggregation but no one's searching for that then what can you give them that they actually need right? So I would use like a a two-part strategy like this, right? Where you need to find something that is currently in demand for affiliate marketers. Yeah. And the aggregation is almost the cherry on uh cherry on top the thing you introduce later, but you use the the first one as a way to channel that demand.

Um, if you don't do this, uh, because you're bootstrap and you don't have a lot of resources, it takes so much time and money to educate a market. I mean, it's one of the hardest things to do. People don't care about you. You need to reach a lot of people. You need to repeat the same message. You need to make them understand. It's it's it's it's an incredibly difficult endeavor, if not impossible, for companies of of your size.

So yeah, you're going to have to find a way to channel demand in some way, shape, or form. Um, and so we can find that out now if you want. Yeah. Uh, let me give you a bit of a background of some of the stuff we've been working on and what we think we've learned. So yeah, we have stats and it's like you said, it's almost like let's assume that's like the bare bones minimum like you're getting this as a service.

It's like of course we get our stats. All right, next. Um, exactly. Of course you get the stats. There are more people looking for CRM, but no one's actually created in my mind a CRM product for affiliates. So like what would a CRM be? Well, who are my affiliate managers? What are my deals? We actually have those two invoice. It's like can I manage them? We actually have an invoice generator.

So we have So you're not that you're definitely not. So it's a cut, but that's what is interesting to me. CRM is a category that is in demand. Now it's a big category that's you belong into a sub subcategory of that but there's demand there people know what CRM is right people do CRM on Google sheet Excel paper they do it already so there is something that they're already currently doing in order to manage their contacts or whatever so you're not trying to like make them

do something they haven't done before you're not trying to like do any of that so that's already way way way more interesting to me okay Um now so that's the big category. There might be a more specific category than just CRM but yeah I would agree that if you talk about invoicing if you talk about uh uh managing deals uh and then also some stats that's you know if a dog if a if an animal has a long neck and [ __ ] yellow with brown patches on

top you know it's a giraffe right? So it's like what is the most clear compelling in demand category that you would belong to that you can place yourself in? I would argue from what you just said yeah CRM seems like the obvious one. Yeah. Now it's a big category but yeah and a couple more things. So another thing that people want as affiliates is they want to be very advanced with their analytics.

They want business intelligence but they also don't know what it looks like. Um but when they get it they also don't know what to do with it. So we give them like like really advanced charts and it's kind of like there's insights inside of that and depending on who the user is, they're like, I know it's there, but they're not really spending time on it. So they they want education.

We've had a lot of people saying, you know, I I feel like I'm missing out. I feel like I I'm this company over here and we're like 50 places behind the first company. I I want everything in my arsenal to get there, but you know, if we make it too expensive, then it's not accessible. So we think there's a demand for it, but the search demand is if I had to rank this, it'd be CRM has the most searches, even though it's not a lot.

Then there's people searching for business intelligence, but we're also me and my competitors. We're kind of educating the users in this space as a differentiator. And then getting the data is kind of like it's almost like an afterthought. Like of course you get your data. If you need business intelligence, you expect to get your data. Like you're already past that point. Yeah. What what's what's like what triggers me or what I'm I'm thinking about as soon as you said that like people want they tell us

they want like the complex data the visualization the whatever but then they don't [ __ ] know what to do with it. It's like they like the idea of it. Yeah. They don't like the actual thing. So yeah, of course when you ask them would you like more data? Oh yeah, sure. But like so so then it goes back to the struggle. So let's back the category for a second.

Yeah. the the reason why niching down and the reason why it's so important to like really have a segment that is very specific um is is that the more you solve a painful painful painful problem that a specific group of people have that alternatives do not the more likely you are to gain marketer to gain customer because you're giving them a very strong compelling reason to pick you over a big CRM that is well known over just using Google sheets.

So the pull the pull the pull the attraction the grav like the the the the uh the gravitational force that comes to you is stronger when you are able to identify big problems that are completely underlooked and over undersolved by any alternatives. So the fact that you already have like a subset of people like affiliate marketers is helpful because then we can think about okay okay why why are they struggling to get the job done and to me would be like become number one or something

along those line like right to grow to to grow their ranking right so what's what's in the way right what's getting in the way yeah and actually I I think there's something I'm asking you oh what's getting in the way of that well I'm gonna Yeah, before they use you, right? Before like before before they become a power user and they have everything they need, whatever. But like let's forget about that.

Let's think about your best customer like the ones that you can imagine in your head like the ones that are spending loads and happy whatever before they wanted to do this. They wanted to reach number one spot just to summarize what prevented them from going there. Yeah, it's a good question. I think one of the answers and it's kind of like why did we create this app in the first place?

I think it has to do with my experience of identifying this concept of revenue leak. Like how do you lose money as an affiliate? So it's either stopping losing money or knowing that you can find it or the opposite which is optimizing. Like you have a campaign that's doing amazing, you send more traffic to it and you're going to get more money obvious. Well, the same happens in opposite when you've got a campaign that was doing well but actually is trending off and if you're going

to send more traffic to it, you're wasting money. So examples of how you can lose money in affiliate marketing is if a program changes the tracking link tech and you don't know this and it and it just getting zeros sometimes in in a table of data you can't see this even if you use our app it's just it's not visible. So we need tools that kind of are done for you as a service and do that.

And so to give you one more weird example of something we might have tapped into and this is literally a week ago. So I did a poll all over communities plus my LinkedIn. I said this is a thing in especially in the gambling space. There's a concept called shaving which is affiliate programs that kind of find clever ways either intentional or accidental of deleting commissions and there's a lot of ways it can happen.

So I did the poll and I had probably like something like 150 affiliates like almost all of them are saying yes. They're not saying no this isn't happening. I'm like how do you think you've you've experienced shaping at least once and it's just like 100% across the board. So it's it's almost like a triggered point. Yeah. We built a product that's actually using our app that exports the data into Excel sheet and we're like these are all the changes that have happened before and after.

So we just showed this to a very big company that actually does their stats in-house. They're like we hadn't even thought of this idea and we want this. So to give you another story, the the guy on our team, Joe Hatch, who actually was working on this, he actually did this for one of our customers and he found 150,000 euros in lost revenue that he recovered for the company.

So that's a substantial amount of money. Okay, so that's very interesting, right? So So again, this is why it's important to have like when you ask yourself or others good questions, you know, you get good answers and then you get insight and those insight can be super useful. So struggle is avoid losing, we could phrase it like avoid losing money you don't know you're losing in a sense, right?

It's like um it's like this idea of control. This idea of of feeling like you you've got everything Yeah. under control, you know what's going on. You're not losing any money. Like loss aversion is more much stronger than uh than the opposite, right? The fear of losing money is a strong incentive. So then what straight away what I was thinking about is okay CRM we talked about that as a category but are there there uh companies that do that for other industries right there is right

like there is um any uh like any s company you have like the charge B or whatever where they they the delinquent churn or whatever it's called like right stuff like that so it's like it's like a they identify customers to a credit card has failed and then they would recharge them, you know, they would message them so they recover potentially lost revenue. Uh the reason why I mentioned that is because if it already exists somewhere else, then there must be something that they're doing, right?

Okay. Are they able to capture demand for that or are they using a Trojan horse to do it? Well, Stripe has it. Stripe has a revenue recovering service, but Stripe is much bigger, right? So you can see how I I mean again I'm just shooting I'm just guessing but it feels like you could use the CRM part because the highest demand as the as the core category but you can say we are the only um CRM for affiliates that affiliates that identify a loss revenue and

let you know about it. Yeah. Blah blah. I I you know I I think there's something there right so it's like it's a CRM so people understand what it is right they can visualize it but it also has this it's it's again it's the Trojan horse it's what they think they need and then what they actually need because if as the the category of revenue let me see yeah I'm just checking my Stripe account I just want to see how they talk about it again that's

something I do all the time right just to reverse engineer our conversation I'm not trying to be too smart. I'm not trying to be fancy reinvent the wheel. I'm just trying to be extremely pragmatic. What are the things? Yeah. Right. I I study a lot of those SAS companies as well like uh uh ChargeB, Stripe, uh Profit Well that was acquired by Paddle like they give you your analytics for free and then they upsell you with consulting.

So you see it's I mean that that what what we talked about there the the the Trojan horse. You can see it everywhere. It's just you you start with what people think they need or and it start about mazas and then you give them what they actually need which is like deeper analysis of a pricing model or whatever. Um Um so actually you said uh profit well.

Yeah. Uh what's the name of the software? Um which one? Uh the one that the the the revenue recovering one. What's the charge B? Uh, Charge Feast, Stripe does it. Um, there's a lot of other analytics uh, tools for SAS like um, I'm mixing up all the names like Capchase does it. U, Founder Path, they give you analytics for free and then they basically upsell you a service.

Yeah. So like uh, Chargeb their particular feature would say recover failed payments and increase customer lifetime value. Now it's not exactly what you say what you do. they offer more more but you know they call it their tool they call it a revenue growth management so clearly that's struggling with that category right it's just becoming a bit fuzzy too big so anyway go back to you like yeah if the core ignore struggle is the fact that I I want to make sure I get all my

money worth of all my work that I don't I don't get [ __ ] over by affiliate programs or whatever through shaving and whatever then um then that's a very interesting thing but again it's not something they're aware of necessarily right so so then it's like okay if they're not aware of that that's what we can lead with once they are in but before they are in what do we lead with what is the thing that is the most in demand in demand um and yeah CRM is

the one that we've doubled down on that we talked about for the last few minutes but there might be something else right so it's like based on all the features you have based on all the things you What is the best way to categorize that, right? Yeah. What is the best way to categorize what you do? Yeah. I think CRM could be the home like the the thing that people can kind of like when they hear an affiliate serum, they like I think I've got an

idea of what it is. And I think they're more curious to to walk in the door rather than affiliate stats aggregation. That's a mouthful. No one's searching for it. And the ones that are searching for it, we're still going to rank for that keyword. That's not a problem. Exactly. But it's not a good position, I think. Yeah. It's not the beach head. It's not the core that you're leaning with.

Um like if you don't have the right competitors, you're in trouble as well, right? So I would almost think is there no CRM just for affiliates ever at all like or I can't find them. Okay. Like the the ones that actually have them are the very big companies like that have actually built this in-house and we've seen their their platforms. They show it to us. It's like this giant backend.

It's got all the brands, all the products, all the all their tracking links, all their deals, all the the user management. And we actually are kind of building out um like a foundation for this. So people can have this without having to invest like So that's good. 500,000. So that means that means that big companies that have this problem at a at a at a that feel this problem way more than a smaller affiliates, yes, have already tried to solve it.

Right. So, that's a good indication that something is going on. Uh, if I search for like CRM for affiliates, like a an actual direct quote, you do have articles talking about what is the best CRM for affiliate marketing, but they basically give you normal CRM like Pipe Drive, Zoho, whatever. So, again, that's interesting. That means you might have identified a subgroup, a niche, a segment, or whatever you want to call it that have problems that are not solved by any of those.

Meaning like if you go through pipe drive, it's not going to tell you this is how much you've lost through shaving. So this is what this is textbook definition of unique positioning. You're able to say this is a this is an ignore struggle meaning it's a it's a painful thing that affiliate marketers are struggling with that others are not solving and and that's their foundation then you know that you can build on.

Uh quick question. If you were in my position, would you offer a premium service to at least make it easy for people to walk in the door? the door? I don't know. Uh it depends on so many things. Again, it's like I would tend to say yes because affiliate marketers tend to be very like techsavvy and and and they want to see things for themselves and play with them and and see how it works, right?

So, but how to do that? I'm not a specialist in uh productled growth or whatever uh the fancy terms are being used right now. Yeah, PLC. Yeah, PLC. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, whatever. Uh, potato potato, right? It's all the same thing. Just reinventing the wheel every few years. But yeah, if you go back to the core of it, affiliate marketers are more techsavvy than the average. They probably are difficult to [ __ ] right?

Are like very prone to like they can spot a shady deal for a long time away. So yeah, I mean to me it would be obvious to I want to see how it looks like, how it feels and then I can pay for it. So yeah, sounds like a good plan to start with. Amazing. So last uh question. What do you see of the future of affiliate marketing as it intersects with business intelligence?

Well, we I think we talked about it. Yeah. You know, it's like the future. I mean I'm never I'm never really keen in those trendy what's the future X Y and Zed as you can tell I I I try to look at the past more which are like with primatism right what are the things that have happened and how can we lean on things that are already there to to move forward so I'm not very good at predictions um all I can say is yeah like

if you don't have strong foundations if you don't do the inside foraging part if you don't do the unique positioning particular you're not going to be able to face the future. Uh but we don't really know what's going to happen next. Yeah, I think the you know what you you what you said in practice and preached is uh try stuff. I mean that's that's the heart of conversion rate optimization right there.

Yeah, that's that's one thing. Yeah. Yeah. Uh Louie, uh thank you so much for doing this. Want to pass it back to you. How can people get a hold of you? And of course you can tell us the best way of buying your book. Yeah. Thanks. Uh just just Google, search wherever, stand the [ __ ] out and you'll find it. Um if you want the basic stuff, you can go to Amazon, you can buy the paperback, uh hard cover, Kindle if you want to.

I'm happy with that. Uh if you're extra generous and if you feel like uh that conversation was helpful, you can also get it on my website where there's things that you can't get anywhere else. Um it's obviously more expensive, but it's also that support the business. So, um, if it's easier through Amazon, you can buy it on Amazon. Okay. Awesome. Thanks a lot. You're very welcome. Thank you for tuning in to the AffiliateBI podcast.

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