Marketing Happy Hour - A Must Have All-In-One Tool for Creators and Brands | Joy Tang of Markable AI

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi Joy, how are you doing? Good, how was your holidays? So, so nice. Before we get started, I do have an important question for you that we ask all of our guests and that is what is in your glass right now? I'm having the boring but essential water. Yeah. Filter spring water though, because I read that 70% of your body is made of water and then you should fill it with good water. Yeah, absolutely. I also just have water. So we are on the same wavelength here.

Starting point is 00:00:36 What about you, Cassie? Same, same. I do have it. I finally joined the Stanley train. So I do have it in my Stanley. So very excited about that. But yes, good old water over here as well. Joy, we're super excited just to learn from you and you have an amazing platform that we've had the honor to use here for a little bit and just collaborate with you, which has been so fun. So thank you for that. But before we dive into the conversation,

Starting point is 00:01:03 do you mind just telling us a little bit about your background and why you started Markable AI? Sure. My background is very nerdy. So I graduated from MIT undergrad. And before that, I actually got a gold medal in math, mathematics Olympics in China. I was like the only girl and i actually got it when i was 16 when all the other boys are 17 so so i'm a big nerd and um when i was at mit i started another startup that's my first taste of startup. It was actually almost like a Facebook, but for overseas international students, because they tend to connect with other international students who speak the same language. That was a niche international student platform.

Starting point is 00:01:58 And we actually monopolized the whole world, actually. We're the first one in that space and then we got like over 20,000 users within a year and then it was sold to another big social media platform after that I felt like I have like a big nerdy part of me but the other part of me is like really social so I'm like one of the most social nerds I know and I have a lot of friends who are in social media platform and initially I actually build a AI technology just for social media platform we work with you know Instagram and we work with TikTok and we even like talked about acquisition with like Google, with Amazon and then we eventually launched it with Asia's social media platform. But during that process,

Starting point is 00:02:56 I learned a lot of lessons. I realized the people who are actually driving social commerce are influencers. So in the past, I was using this technology to mostly serve big platforms. And then they also always try to say, hey, can I acquire you? Which we're not ready to be acquired. We want to have more fun, of course. And then I realized actually social media influencer, if you add their traffic together,

Starting point is 00:03:25 they're almost as big as a platformer. And they really need a lot of help. They're not the one to acquire you, but they're the one who, you know, constantly, they're entrepreneurs, and they create their own social media accounts. And there's a lot of tedious thing to do. So it was really interesting, two of my neighbors we become really good friends and then they are the top social media uh influencers they're one of them is number one for ltk the other one is like number one for amazon creators you know they sells over

Starting point is 00:03:59 10 million dollar worth of products um and i'm approaching 20 million. So they both come to me and say, hey, you know, I know you've been building all these technology for big platforms, but have you thought about for influencer, because I have all these pain points that, you know, for creators, it's really hard to hire really good assistants. And once you hire them, and they can be expensive, there are a lot of things that are actually quite tedious that automations can do. So they come to me and say, hey, can you help me with this and that?

Starting point is 00:04:34 Like, for example, updating my website automatically and then having this comment bot. And initially we started with just a few features, being a nerd, but then we realized the opportunity is actually huge. And once we launched with just two top creators, and then we got like increase, like hundreds of other creators are messaging us, they say, Hey, are you guys the one built this for her? Like I want it too. So then we end up making this

Starting point is 00:05:03 a real platform. So just really interesting timing. Oh, so awesome. And we're going to dive into the features of the platform a little bit more here in a second. But I have to ask because we have a lot of people here listening that are in the corporate space, but they have these aspirations and ideas of creating something of their own of launching a business. So curious if you have any quick tips or even just one word of encouragement to those that want to create something for themselves. Before you do something, be prepared.

Starting point is 00:05:37 Like try to find your friends who are experts in the field that you're doing and go to them get advice or even you know pay advisors some money or some shares at the beginning to really finalize your idea first because I noticed a lot of time entrepreneur like I made the same mistake many times myself like I go into this one direction that I think is cool and sexy I think everybody's gonna want it but then once you end up go through all the hurdles that people don't really want it because it's not like a it's like a nice to have it's not like a biggest pain point to have so I think now I do a lot more listening I I listen to the content creators, like what feature they want, even though I think something is cool,

Starting point is 00:06:28 but they might not think it's actually super neat, super needed. So, so yeah. So we nowadays, you know, we're a software company and we basically rank the priorities based on what we hear

Starting point is 00:06:41 from the creators, not like what I think is cool. Yeah, I know that's great advice. And we always love to hear from founders, you know, when they think through the products that they're launching into the world, you know, it's a lot of behind the scenes of, you know, trying to figure out what's right for your company and your brand. But we want to chat through some of the features that Markable AI offers so there's a lot of different things and very exciting things but first things first deep links is a big thing on Markable AI what exactly are deep links and why are they important for creators yeah it's interesting

Starting point is 00:07:20 because we didn't discover deep links we didn't invent deep links. We didn't invent deep links. Deep link has been there, but we noticed like only the top 1% creators are utilizing deep links and the rest are not even aware. So what is deep link is basically, let's say you share Amazon product link. If you're, you know, making, you know, you have an Amazon storefront, you're making commissions for Amazon. You share the Amazon link on your stories and then someone click on it, but you're actually still inside the Instagram browser. And then before your followers end up hit the checkout button, they have to log in to their Amazon account before they can buy anything. They have to manually put in their password and username, which I don't even remember because normally my phone just remembers it.

Starting point is 00:08:13 So over 70% of people will actually get stuck on that step and they will give up. So most creators, if you're not using DeepLink, you are actually losing 70% of the commission. So DeepLink is basically that when you click on the link, it actually calls up the Amazon app with, you know, that product page. So you're immediately inside Amazon app and you're on that product and you can check out right away without having to log in. And we also make sure every deep link has the creator's affiliate information so they guarantee to get paid the commission. The other thing interesting is that Amazon treat deep links differently.

Starting point is 00:08:56 They favor deep link because they count like the moment when the followers opens up the app, then afterward there's like, you know, a 90 days window, like when they check out this product, it still comes towards the creators. But imagine if the, you know, if the user click on a link that's a regular link, they open up in the Instagram browser,

Starting point is 00:09:20 let's just say they end up add this product to their cart. And later this user click on someone else to fill the link. Then Amazon will count someone else. So you actually don't make commission at all. But DeepLink kind of reinforces like, I'm the one who caught up the app. They added this product. So we guarantee that purchase goes to your commission.

Starting point is 00:09:43 Oh, that is so cool. And I did not even know that, you know, I see now what you say about like, if you click on the link, it pulls up in the actual Instagram browser, and then it doesn't go right to the app. But then people have to log in. That's crazy. That's so cool to know. No one wants to log in these days. Yeah, yeah I know it's so true um okay many of our listeners are probably really familiar with some link in bio tools um but how does markable ai's shoppable bio link differ yeah so there's a couple tools we didn't invent them we basically um recreated them to make them better. Linking Bio is one of them.

Starting point is 00:10:32 So a lot of our top 1% creators use Linking Bio and they are actually, they're not just artists, they're also scientists. They keep track of exactly where their income is coming from. And they have seen data that Linking Bio, that feature is generating around 30% to 40% of the commission. Because like if you use link tree, right, you just have a few buttons. And then it's kind of boring, your website always look the same. A linking bio and link tree, they're competitors. So linking bio, they have something more they have like the session where you can actually shop their posts

Starting point is 00:11:05 you can revisit the post you just looked at and find it again so that's um that just make it easier for people to find the product they just saw right um and improve sales by 30 so we combine both what linktree have and linking bio has and we added our own elements because after interviewing with the creators they actually said even though sometimes their followers like to click on the linking bio like but linking bio shows the cover image of the content they just posted but sometimes the cover image can looks kind of funny you know it doesn't really look like the product they just saw it just like the first frame of the first of the video right so so um so we their followers still have a struggling with yeah wait where is that product

Starting point is 00:11:51 again because they see a bunch of cover images of their reels on linking bio so we ended at at another session above linking bio that shows exactly the product they just saw they click on so whenever the creators added products to their content the product will ultimately pops up with the nice product images you know on their website so make it even easier so we actually think that you know our website or linking bio version generate like around 60% more doubled of what linking bio can create. Yeah, so we learn from the best and we make it better. I love that so much. Okay, I'm also curious how the DM comment automation works with Markable AI. Could you give us an inside look at that? Yeah. So a lot of creators probably heard

Starting point is 00:12:48 of ManyChat. It's a really good tool that allow the creators can engage with their followers. A lot of people are already using it. So name my strike. But we end up having a lot of creator coming to us and say, hey, my Instagram is getting shut down because of many chat. And we're like, what happened? Because they use one of the many chats feature that they comment to a comment, response to comment with another comment. But Instagram actually see that as engagement manipulations. So a lot of the creators come to us and say, because they see us almost like their CTO, like their part-time CTO.

Starting point is 00:13:34 Like they know that we're the tech guys. So a lot of creators, once they use our feature, because we have excellent customer service, they tend to ask us questions from DM on Instagram or through emails. And we learned that a lot of people coming to us and say their Instagram account got flagged. They lost their account for over 10 days. Some of them, we even had to go to our Facebook network to help them get their account unflagged. It's a very common problem. Like Instagram now has like an AI flagging system. They automatically flag a lot of people

Starting point is 00:14:08 based on a certain threshold. So if they see your comments a lot on your own comments area, responding to many messages, they see that as a manipulation and they will flag your account. The other thing is recently, a couple of our top affiliate creators who are making money from Amazon storefront came to us and say, hey, I was using ManyChat and now I got my Amazon storefront shut down, account shut down. Amazon says I violated the Amazon operating agreement.

Starting point is 00:14:47 And we're looking into it and turns out like Amazon actually have an operating agreement saying that you cannot share Amazon affiliate links in DMs, even though the top creators are doing it. So, but it's a little bit discrimination in there because the top creators don't get into it, don't get into trouble with Amazon, but the medium and small size creator, if they're not in the managed program, they will get in trouble and they get their storefront shut down. So we realized, okay, this auto response bot,

Starting point is 00:15:25 DM bot is really helpful, but they come with big risk. So we ended up reinventing this whole system and create our own comment bot to avoid these problems. For example, we don't even offer the feature that you can response the comment with another comment because we know that's doomed to get to our account flagged by Instagram. And also, when the creator is sharing the affiliate links in the comment bar, we encourage them to share a link from their website that we

Starting point is 00:15:58 automatically created with our system so they can create the landing page to the products that from their website, because that's what actually Amazon storefront, Target storefront, Walmart storefront, that's what they want. They don't want DM because they cannot monitor what people say in DMs. They feel like it's a black box. They want to be in control, but they like it when you share it on the sharing a public link from your website. They want you to talk about the links on your own website. So that's kind of how we dance through it. And it was interesting because some people say, well, if I go through another click,

Starting point is 00:16:37 am I going to lose sales? Actually, no, nobody lost any sales when we convert this affiliate link to a landing page link that shows the product image and you can click and still go to Amazon, for example. Because these people made the effort to make a comment on your post. They're not the one who will give up just with one extra click. They already made the effort to make a comment. So they actually didn't lose anything. And then they avoid the

Starting point is 00:17:05 situation of getting flagged, getting their account shut down. Super interesting. Yeah, that is one fact that I did not know. And so it's super helpful to use this platform to avoid some of those conflicts you can run into with these applications. So that's great to know. I want to know how to get set up as a creator on the platform. What's kind of the process or the steps just in a nutshell, Erica and I have loved getting set up on the platform ourselves. And you can see an example of that on our in our bios on Instagram. So be sure to check those out. But Joy would love to kind of know what that process is to getting started with Markable AI. Yeah, it's super simple. You just need to go to App Store and search Markable

Starting point is 00:17:47 AI. And Markable is like remarkable without the re. So you will find it immediately and then you can download it. And once you download, you can just log in with your Facebook login. logging um that's it then follow the steps yeah so everything is made super simple you know in the app people will see that we have a couple really fun feature like they can select what category they are in and then when they go to the viral product they can see all the viral products within their categories um one thing we noticed, like 90% of the creators are wasting time with products they're not going to sell. And so we come up with a viral product list in different categories to give you ideas.

Starting point is 00:18:36 Like these products are almost guaranteed that they have enough inventory to support your traffic. And also they have super high click support your traffic. And also, they have super high click to purchase rate. So these are the products actually push that recommended by these big retailers. And they only recommend things that are well stocked, and also have a high click to purchase rate. Yeah. That is so cool. And it also gives you inspiration too as a creator you know maybe

Starting point is 00:19:06 you're thinking through you know upcoming content and you're like oh you know what should I be you know posting about or whatever and then you scroll through those viral products and you say oh I actually really love this product I'll make a video about it put it out there people can click on my link of bio and go get that right away. I think that's so brilliant. And it is just to echo Cassie. It is super, super easy to get set up on the app. You know, you were like, all you have to do is log in. And yeah, that's it. But it's so true.

Starting point is 00:19:36 It's like the easiest thing ever to set up. So, yeah. And I do want to add that, you know, everybody listening to the podcast, we are, you know know giving like a new year special so you have seven days free trial so if you're logging now you don't even need to put in your credit card you automatically get a seven day free trial so you can see utilize all of our features besides the ones we just talked about and we also have like ai collage like a lot

Starting point is 00:20:06 of creators like pay other a system 20 per image i was like that's crazy you can get it for free in the app and also ai caption a lot of people don't know what to write in their caption to help sell the product so we have all those feature ready and the AI caption is actually using like a chat GPT similar technology so um so yeah we are at the state of technology state of art technology and we combine them for you um the reason we use the app is because a lot of the creators told us that they've been using other, you know, creator workflow automation software, but a lot of them are on desktop. They're not really invented for creators. Like for example, ManyChat is invented for the brands.

Starting point is 00:20:54 So as many other, you know, features, but creators are, a lot of them are busy moms, right? And they're like traveling, they're doing grocery shopping on the side. So we want to give them a easy to use app that they can operate everything. They can even see the analytics, the dashboards, know what product gets sold the most, get the most click down, all these things in their palm. That is so great. And it's so good to have that all in one platform, like you were saying, with everything that you could possibly need as a creator. It's almost like a get started being a creator um application so I love that

Starting point is 00:21:31 it's like getting started but with the top one percent creators exactly yeah right is there like a follower requirement to uh use mark's tools or not really? Not really. I will say that we only market ourselves to like mostly top 1% equators. So those top 1% have heard of us, but we don't actually have a limit for the, you know, the number of sites following you can join. So anyone can download the app and log in and see the tools. So yeah, so maybe you haven't heard about us, but we are actually already pretty famous in the top 1%. I love that. That is so great. Okay, so moving on just from Markable, we'll have everything linked out in the show notes so people can check you out and figure out where they can find Markable AI and download the app and all of that. But I wanted to just hear from you really quickly. We love to ask this question on the show. And that is, what do you know now that you wish you

Starting point is 00:22:33 knew a little earlier on in your career? One thing I mentioned earlier is I definitely listening to people's pain point. Don't create something that you think is cool, but create something that other people actually say that's really solved their big problem. And that will make your life a lot more rewarding as well. Because I think I wasted many, many years of my entrepreneur life earlier when I was serving these big platform to figure out

Starting point is 00:23:00 they're just gonna try to buy us for cheap, right? And that was kind of painful. And that was like, almost makes you a little bit cynical, because you don't see the rewarding experience of other people saying how helpful they are, you are. And then when I switched to working with creators, we actually felt the whole team like felt so much more rewarding, because like, we constantly getting creators saying, Oh, this, this this is so cool this really solved my problem and someone will give us a suggestion say hey if you add this feature we'll make it even better like these kind of feedback as you're so valuable directly from our customers um that's one thing and then the other thing is like you know be picky who your teammates are be very picky like I would say hire slow but fire

Starting point is 00:23:50 fire fast so it's kind of like um I made a lot of mistakes like you know if I like someone I think they're cool I bring them on the team and then and then if you're friends with them then it become harder to let them go so I think the other thing is be more picky and then say the ugly things up front like you know if you don't hit this target then you know we'll just remain friends not you know nothing personal like yeah so mental health absolutely that's so good It reminds me of a book that's actually sitting on my desk right now. It's called the myth of the nice girl. And it talks a lot about that. Like just having, you can be nice while also standing up for what you need in your business or in your career or whatever. So I think it's incredibly important. So thank you for that. Well, joy, as we close out, do you mind sharing with us the best way to get in contact

Starting point is 00:24:45 with you and also Markable AI, just so we can stay in touch with you personally and everything that you guys have going on with the brand? Yeah. Oh, by the way, I realizing a lot of the brands in your audience are actually, you know, potentially user of our system too. Like we, our feature are not just made for creators it's for anyone who have a social media account like including brands so you guys are all welcome to use our feature and actually the deep link does help brands for brand campaign to improve their sales by minimum three times imagine you know when you come to a creators they're using a regular link and then most of their followers and that you come to a creators, they're using a regular link and then most of their followers

Starting point is 00:25:26 and that didn't buy your products because they're using a regular link. Like, so we actually, currently we have a bunch of brand customers are just using the deep link to do social campaigns with creators as well. So it's easiest to reach me at joy at markable.ai, remarkable without the re.ai

Starting point is 00:25:49 because we're actually an AI company. And the other way to reach us, like if I don't respond to you fast enough, that please DM us on our Instagram account. We also have our Instagram account, markable.ai and we actually have two teammates watching over the DMs like 24 hours. So if I miss anything, they will pass it to me for sure.

Starting point is 00:26:12 Awesome. Thank you so much for being here with us today, sharing all things Markable AI. And we're excited, like we said, to continue using the application and stoked to continue watching out what's coming up for you guys. So thanks so much. Thank you so much, guys. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Marketing Happy Hour podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to subscribe, rate, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. If you want more of Marketing Happy Hour but don't know where to start, we invite you to download our free Marketing Happy Hour Starter Kit at marketinghappyhr.com forward slash

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Marketing Happy Hour - A Must Have All-In-One Tool for Creators and Brands | Joy Tang of Markable AI

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