You're listening to cubicle to CEO episode 266, did you know there's a link between flossing habits and cognitive diseases like Alzheimer's and dementia? Learning this from Brynn Snyder, cofounder and CEO of Slate Flosser, literally had me reaching for a floss post interview.
Today's case study is a real time example of how prioritizing problem education over product education can drive action and sales much faster through a three pronged education. First marketing approach of trade shows, organic content and influencer campaigns with dental professionals, Slate philosophers, sales have increased by 20% going from 10k months to experiencing 10k sales days. Here's Brynn's take on how problem awareness changes user behavior and drives purchasing power.
Welcome to cubicle to CEO, the podcast where we ask successful founders and CEOs the business questions you can't google. I'm your host. Ellen Yin, every Monday, go behind the business in a case study style interview with a leading entrepreneur who shares one specific growth strategy they've tested in their own business, exactly how they implemented it and what the results and revenue were. You'll also hear financially transparent insights from my own journey bootstrapping our media company from a $300 freelance project into millions in revenue.
Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. Today we have with us Brynn Snyder, who is the founder of Slate Electric Flosser. She has one with us if you want to show it, yes, if you're watching this on YouTube, you'll see it. And there is a really interesting case study that we're going to share with you all on how influencer marketing has propelled their growth. So Brynn, before we get into that case study, I would love to know your cubicle to CEO story, or maybe if you, you know worked with a dental background, maybe it's not quite a cubicle. But what was that catalyst that officially launched you into entrepreneurship?
So I was an entrepreneur. Actually my very first job. I just became my own boss as a 13 year old, wow, my siblings started a bounce house company, and that was so fun. But then I went to school to become a product designer. I went to Brigham Young University, and I studied product design. I worked for Johnson and Johnson. I interned with them in their breast division at Ethicon, and that's when I had this major passion to make products that help people's health.
Then I married someone who decided to go to dental school, and along the way, I had a lot of children, and when we moved to Spokane for him to start being a dentist, he bought his own dental practice, and his front desk person had a health issue. She had placenta previa, and all of a sudden I became the office manager until we could find someone new. And that's when I learned so much about dental that I was like, if people knew, they would do things differently, but people are not understanding how important flossing is.
So that's kind of my background. I so I worked in product design, and then I have five children, and then I held my husband with the dental office till we decided to launch slate. And that's where we're at.
That's incredible. I love first of all that your first venture into entrepreneurship was a bounce house that is so creative. I mean, you hear all the time, you know people who did entrepreneurial things as as a teenager, I did myself, but I certainly was not as creative as that. And so that's really cool. I don't think I've heard that before, and I love how you know, just your series of life events kind of led you to apply your product design skills in this way to benefit people's oral health.
And you kind of perfectly brought up the segue of the issue that kind of plagues this industry, specifically in terms of flossing adoption by consumers, is that people don't floss as often as they should, even though they know they should, but they usually don't know why. So this is actually a great introduction for our listeners about how brynn's case study really focuses on the power of making your customers problem aware, and how your company specifically made that the strategic messaging over a product first marketing strategy.
So making that flossing education the forefront of how you were communicating with new customers versus talking about your product first, and specifically how you saw a 20% lift in sales in the months after these educational campaigns. So you've said before that many people know they should floss, but they don't understand why. And actually, when I was reading your pre interview materials that you submitted, Bryn, this really stood out to me. So I just have to say this on air, I have been going to the dentist twice a year pretty much my whole life, right since I was a child. And the worst I've heard about not flossing from my dentist is, you know, plaque buildup and potential for gum disease, which, of course, is not good.
But I was truly shocked when I was reading your pre interview materials, and again, my attention was immediately captured that flossing has correlation with, you know, cognitive diseases like dementia or Alzheimer's, as well as other conditions like heart disease, menopause, even pregnancy related issues, things I had never, ever heard about. So I can clearly see how knowing this would move people to take action and actually start flossing more regularly.
But naturally, it kind of made me wonder if these correlations exist and they're so powerful in getting consumers to take action. Why do dentists and big oral health companies not talk about this like it seems like a huge missed opportunity for them?
So sometimes, when the problem is so close to you, you can't see what we realized was the hygienist knows all these things, the dentist knows all these things, but what they kind of forget sometimes is like, if patients knew that heart disease is caused by not flossing, they probably would floss, right? But the hygienist is like, I tell them every single time they need to floss, but there's that little connector of, why do I need to do it? And so what we decided our hygienists are amazing at our dental office, and they were doing a better job.
Like, a lot of people don't know they're supposed to do what's called the C shape. So they're supposed to, like, wrap the floss around their teeth. We would get new patients, and they would be like, I'm 35 years old, and I've never done that. And so Dr Snyder was like, Okay, I need to make something so easy that people realize that flossing like, oh, I can do that. Instead of being like, the last time I flossed was when I was at the dentist, or a week before I went to the dentist,
It's always the week before, or sometimes the day before, and you're like frantically trying to catch up on years of years of neglect.
Yes, exactly. And so the hygienists and dentists know that, but what we realized at our office when we were talking about this product was the education. We all know we need to floss, but we don't know why. If slate could tell them why, then they would probably do it. And we've seen that in the skincare industry, like a really big insurgent of I will do this big step now. And I was like, okay, if people are willing to do a skin care routine, we can get them to floss when it's less than a minute.
Right, right? And I think you brought up a great point about, you know, being an expert in your field, things that, again, seem obvious to you may not, and often is not obvious to your consumers, but it's so easy to forget or to miss that blind spot.
When did you personally realize you and and your husband, when you were creating slate and selling slate, when did you realize that making your target audience problem aware was the right strategy for your content? Had you tried product first marketing before that, and it just didn't quite land or or did you go out the gate making education your your mission?
So part of Slate's mission is actually education, and so that has been a pretty big focus of ours. I think we also knew, because we were in the dental industry, like, there's string floss everywhere, yeah, and no one's using it. So why? Like, we give them string floss to use and they don't use it. So he was like, okay, for his patient base, they were they were well off, they were educated. There was no reason they shouldn't be flossing, right? And so to us, that was an education issue, not a money or circumstance issue.
That is a really excellent distinction. And of course, you have the benefit of real time customer feedback and market research, if you will, through the practice. And now that you have decided, well, I guess have always decided, but even more so, to really hone in on the educational campaigns, you have a three prong approach for driving new people into your ecosystem. So I just wanted to quickly overview those for our listeners, and then we'll get into each one. Specifically, first, dental trade shows.
Second, leveraging other people's audiences via dental influencers, so hygienists and dentists like you mentioned, as well as general health and wellness influencers. And then, thirdly, organic marketing channels of your own, of Slate's own? I should say, yeah. So let's start with the trade shows. You said you go to four a year to engage directly with dental professionals. Is your main priority at these trade shows, to grow your wholesale accounts, like dental practices around the country who are selling slate to their patients.
Or are you more so focused on using these trade shows? As a way to identify and source, potentially connect with those dental influencers that you then want to utilize in your in your influencer campaigns.
So it's actually both. So for us, there's a lot of dental products that dentists do not back, and so sometimes a dentist will get an ad for this, and wonder, is this a gimmick? Is it something that I wouldn't recommend to my patients? If we can get them to hold it and touch it and see the gum sweeps, they're like, convinced. They're like, I'm having this in my practice. What we've seen is, is there's two types of dentists.
There's the dentists who are very business savvy, and they sell all the things. And then there's the other dentists who don't like to have product in their office. They're just gonna tell their patients, go to Amazon and buy this. So if you've noticed, like Costco has a ton of toothbrushes, it's because dentists just say, go to Costco and buy it. I see. So we have both things, we have a wholesale program. And if dentists want to do that, we do that, and then we also have a dental and hygienist program.
What we've seen is our dental and hygienist program is more easily adoptable for the early adopters, and then once they've been doing it for a while, they're like, oh, I'll carry this in my office.
Interesting. And so with with those early adopters who maybe weren't ready upon your first meeting to carry the product. And then they started in that program first, what was their outside of obviously improving their own patient outcomes? What was their monetary incentive for sharing the product? Did they receive any or was it all about like, let's just improve our patient results.
So believe it or not, I would say 99% of people in the health field, they just want their patients to be healthier. That's amazing. So we have two programs. We have a 10% back where they get money, and then we have 10% towards product. So the hygienists who don't like to make money, which is a lot of them, actually, they they want their patients to know I'm providing you options. I'm not getting a kickback, right? So those hygienists just get money towards more flossers and floss heads so that they can floss their patient's teeth if they want with this awesome.
So they're utilizing that to essentially demonstrate, in real time, the power of the product, and if they choose to actually take the kickback, then they don't, don't receive the product credit. Am I understanding that correctly?
Correct. So they either get 10% back in money, or 10% back towards product.
That's actually really interesting. I think we've had another case study a couple years back about an ambassador program that also didn't necessarily hyper focus on on a monetary gain for their ambassadors, but the product piece, the option actually that you're providing, I think, is really interesting, and it kind of makes me think how even myself or other people in different industries can apply that reward system.
You can either get this percent in commission or this percent in product. So thank you for bringing up that, that that new idea that just sparked an aha moment for me. Just to clarify, it, is slate currently in retail anywhere, like at a Costco or whatnot, or is it purely direct to consumer or through dental offices?
Yes. So the only two options right now are our website and Amazon, so direct to consumer or a dental office that carries it.
Okay, amazing. And do you have any interest in expanding into retail? Or is that not you do okay?
So our goal is to really be at Costco and target. And we actually would love to be in like a Sephora or Ulta, because we know, we know people who care about their body care about flossing, and so we just need to show them that this product exists.
Hmm, okay, that's a really interesting insight and so smart too, of course, to attach to a like minded consumer, even if they exist in maybe a different industry. Have you ever thought about going to a beauty trade show? For that reason?
We have that hopefully happening in 2025 so if you have any recommendations, I'm like, What beauty trade shows are good.
That's so exciting. Well, unfortunately, I am not a beauty industry expert, but I'm sure there are many in our in our audience who are. So if you're listening to this right now and you have attended a beauty trade show before, or you know of a really good one, slide into Brynn's inbox or DMS, and let her know that's amazing.
Okay, to further expand on your actual approach, though, at these trade shows, how do you approach selling at these trade shows? Are you actively, like, Do you have a booth that you are actively when people come up, you're saying, Hey, we have this amazing product, and here's how you know, here's how that works. Or what's your strategy at this trade show?
So we've actually learned so much. At first, we just had a booth. The cool thing is, is people are so excited about our product, our booth is like, always busy. That's amazing. But what we learned was, to make the trade show even better, we should have someone that is a key industry leader that is speaking at the conference talk about our product.
So we look at all the speakers, and we see who does perio, which is gum disease, or is more like a general dentist, someone who can connect with our people or like if they're talking about saliva or gum disease or new technology, those are people who would love our product. So we'll send them our product and say we would love for you to learn about slate, and if you want to share it you can.
Very cool. So you don't necessarily form a formal partnership with them where you're, let's say, sponsoring part of their talk and saying, you know, XYZ, need to be including your talk. It's really kind of an open ended offer or option that you give them, and what percentage of speakers that you offer that to do you see, actually end up mentioning slate in their presentation?
So we do both. We weren't able to do that before because we didn't have the funds, but now we have a few larger KOLs who we do a small stipend. There's no way we could do their full stipend at this point, right? So we, we don't dictate what they say, because we're only doing part of it. We aren't paying them enough to control, I guess, what they say. So we just say, here's this. We'd like you to talk about slate for one to two minutes. And what we've seen is is if people are organically telling them about our product, it's way better than if we tell them what to say.
Yeah, 100% it really comes across much more authentically. Oh my gosh, I'm having so many marketing light bulbs. Brynn as I'm talking to you, sorry. I have to keep interjecting this for our listeners, because I'm like, again, it's one of those things where it's like, sometimes you're so close to the thing that you don't think about, you know, these other ideas.
But I speak at conferences all the time, but I have never thought about, what if I, like our company sponsor just a small portion of speakers at conferences that I don't speak at, because obviously I'm not at every single one. And how do we get them to integrate our podcast into their chat, or something like that? That's so, so fascinating. Thank you. I'd have to verbalize that before I forget it, because it's brilliant. So I love that.
Thank you. It would be so nice, you know, if we had more funds. But I also I want them talking about all dental products. Some big dental companies will say, you cannot talk about anyone else. But I'm like, our goal is to get people flossing. Our goal isn't that they use our flosser. We would love it if they do, but our goal is to get people to floss. And so if people use another product, I'm okay. If the speaker talks about two flossing products, what we've seen is, is the product they use is the best product.
Yeah, and I think that's actually really smart, that you do allow that, because if anything, I think it come it makes the endorsement or the recommendation come across more genuine, because they are educating on on several products, whereas if you're hyper focused on just one, it doesn't feel as well researched in a manner.
So I think that's actually working in your favor. And speaking of these types of situations where you're primarily surrounded by your peers, right? Other dental professionals, how do you educate peers differently about your product than you would consumers on the benefits.
Oh, it's so, so different. Because if you're talking to a dentist, you're gonna say this helps stimulate the embrasure area, like, what, right? So like our normal consumer, we say this helps where the teeth and gums touch and things like, you don't think of a hygienist is going to care about the papilla, and a general person doesn't even know what a papilla is, right? So we just talk about it more in detail and more scientific at dental trade shows.
And what we really try to do is get patients, the consumer, to understand that it's bacteria that we're trying to disrupt, it's stimulation that we're trying to do. So a lot of people in their minds are like, I have to use a new piece of floss on every single tooth, because that's kind of what you've been told, like the bacteria is going to go from one tooth to the other. So I think, like, thinking about it like that makes them almost stop.
And we're like, no, our goal is to disrupt plaque and bacteria. What you're going to do is you're going to move it, disrupt all that plaque and bacteria. With our product, it's going to go on your tongue. So then on the back of our product is a tongue scraper to remove the rest of the plaque and bacteria. Okay, interesting. So we tried to make it super easy.
Yeah, no, that that makes a ton of sense. Also learning something new again, like, okay, scrape your tongue after flossing. I usually do that after brushing, but I don't think about it after flossing. So learning, learning new things.
So if you ask most dentists, they would say, floss, brush, then tongue scrape.
And is that the order that you would recommend, too?
That's what my husband, who's a dentist, recommends, yeah, I personally brush, floss, tongue scrape. I think it's easier. And if you're doing those three, it doesn't really matter what order you're doing them in.
More important that they get done, right? Yeah, exactly. So with your peers, you're using more detailed language, like you said, more scientific explanations. Do you also like at these trade shows? Do you spend time showcasing how it actually impacts patient adoption of flossing? I know you have some really impressive results there from people who use slate. Or is it more so really focused on on the health outcomes rather than the than the usage outcomes, if you will?
Yes. So we always tell hygienists they like don't sometimes even believe us, the results are so good at our dental office before slate, if we could get 30% of our patients to floss, that is like a major success, usually less than 5% of the patient based loss.
Wow, wow.
And so with our product, we tell hygienists we see 85% compliance for five to seven days a week, and 99 compliance for once a week. And they're like, No way. And and then we tell them the pockets I do. You know what pocket depths are? I don't. Okay? So when you go to a dentist, they read numbers out that are, like, 2, 3.
yes, I've always wondered about that. Yeah, what does that mean?
I'm like, a good hygienist would tell you what these numbers mean. So I always like to say, it's like a turtleneck, and they're going to put this in, and the farther they can put it in, the higher the number. And the goal is, the bacteria can sit in the neck of the turtleneck if they are not being disrupted. And the longer they're down there, they eat more and more of your bone, and we want to not have it eat your bone, so they're going to read it.
And if it's a two or a three, that's that's normal. That means your sweater is normal. If it's a four, it means your turtleneck needs to be washed so it can get tight again, I see. And so anything five and worse means that you have active gum disease. And so the sad part about gum disease is you can retighten the gums, but you can never build back the bone. And so we want the pocket depth to be at a two or a three, not a four. Once it gets to a five it's like, you should be going to the hygienist every three months to get it to hopefully improve that.
This is so fascinating. Brynn, I'm like, nerding out, and I apologize that I took you on this tangent, but I just, I'm so interested you know.
I think that this is actually kind of important. Is, is, this is my one of the missions is educating people, right? So you have a five, usually, before slate, people would not change. They would stay at a five for the rest of their life, wow. And they would sometimes go to six and sevens and like, once you're there, your teeth are gonna start getting wiggly and fall out, wow.
And so like, sometimes people's teeth are only being held in by the calculus that like tartar, and you remove that, and your teeth are all of a sudden wiggly. It's very scary. But anyways, we see that people go from a five to a three by their next visit when they use our product.
Wow, that is really impressive. Okay, sold. And you guys, this is not a sponsored episode. I just want to put that out there. This is just our, like, our regular case study interview, but I am sold. Friend. I will buy this thing, especially for me and my husband. I actually do enjoy flossing. So I floss pretty semi regularly, I would say, maybe not every single day, but at least a couple times a week. But I feel like this. I mean, game changer. So done.
We see that husbands are actually flossing, and I flossed probably five to seven days a week before, yeah, but I like floss twice a day with this, because I love it so much.
That's amazing. I mean, hey, when you can make something fun or enjoyable. It's obviously the the retention is much, much higher. Let's talk a little bit about your second channel for marketing, which is actually your most impactful, your influencer campaigns, right? So you work with, like we mentioned previously, dental influencers or general health and wellness influence. Influencers through social media, blogs and email campaigns to drive new people into the slate world, and then also, of course, to buy the products.
So how do you choose your influencers? You know, as someone who works a lot on the other side, partnering with brands through cubicle to CEO, but also someone who has worked on the recruitment side of influencer marketing for some of my clients in the past, I always am very curious, how other people select the influencers they work with. Are you looking for certain metrics or audience sizes, or do you really diversify across the spectrum, working with everyone from Super nano influencers all the way up to mega celebrity influencers?
So we have learned so much. What I've learned with this is you don't know until you try, but we've lost lots of money at the same time as making lots of money. And so you have to go into it knowing that some campaigns are going to be great and some are going to flop. So you have to say it's almost like investing money. You're like, I could get something back, and I might not. And so if you cannot afford to not get anything back, do not do it.
Very sage advice. Very sage advice.
So what we've seen with slate is we tried a few different people. We thought moms would be great. So when we were very new and we didn't have funds, we tried just gifting it to a lot of people and saying, If you like this, share it and we'll give you an affiliate code. Influencers don't love that. They want to be paid to make creation.
But what we've learned is is, if someone tries our product and they love it, they'll usually post a story about it, and if it gets good engagement for us, then we usually will reach out to them and say, Hey, your story got us a lot of feedback. We'd like to work with you.
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And you're saying this based on like someone who received your product as a gift, just organically sharing it. And you're just kind of keeping track of all the people you've sent to and kind of watching their content and and when you say your story sent us a lot of engagement. Can you expand on what you mean by that? Is it like you have people showing up in Slate DMS saying, Hey, I heard about this from so and so, or because obviously you can't see their metrics in terms of story views or link clicks if you're not partnering with them officially yet. So what do you mean by that engagement?
So it's interesting, some people can have 1000 followers and get us more traffic than someone who has a million I believe it.
Yeah.
Crazy. And so we don't base it on how many people they have now. Like when we first started, we paid someone $5,000 to do a post because they had a million followers. We thought they were a good fit, yeah, and we, we didn't make any sales. So I think you need to realize like that that's gonna happen. Our best case scenario was ask the dentist. We sent him a flosser. He loved it. He shared it.
We saw an increase of people following us. And then we said to him, like, hey, could we try something with you? He's actually usually costs a lot, but he was like, I love your product. And I was like, Would you be willing to do a smaller thing because I couldn't afford his rates, right? And he was like, Sure. So I super love. Doubt that he was willing to do that, but he loved our product, and he had already shared it, so I thought it would be successful, and it was phenomenal. So at the time, we were lucky if we would do $10,000 a month, because we were still really little.
10,000 each total, or 10,000 from influencer campaigns, specifically?
No total like, yeah. Then the day he posted, we made $10,000 that day. And I was like, Oh my gosh, this is so exciting. And so that's when we started seeing when you find the right people with the right audience, yeah, it works so well, but you have to do trial and error to get to that spot. So now we thought, okay, so we we pay him. He did an organic post and it and people loved it. So we actually then said, Hey, can we use that organic post and do a paid white listing behind it? And so I do think that if you can find things that people created that worked pay whitelisting ads. It's very worth it. We've seen it to work really well.
And for our listeners who are not familiar with whitelisting, I do this in our brand partnerships, but I'd love for you to explain to them what that means.
Okay, so you have your Instagram account, they have their Instagram account, your followers love you. Their followers love them. When you pay them to whitelist it, the ad is actually going to go from you through their channel, so their followers are going to see the ad. So if you know their their followers resonate, then it's really great,
Absolutely. It makes it again, feel just much more genuine. For our listeners, a huge spender in this market is better help. So if you've ever like seen an ad come across your feed from maybe a creator, you follow or like a influencer, and you notice it's them sharing their like mental health journey, and then you notice that they're promoting better help, but it's not coming through better help social account. That's exactly what Brynn is describing here.
So I know as a consumer, I personally enjoy those ads more as well, and so I think it's a better experience, honestly, on both sides. Thank you for bringing that up. By the way, how much of your marketing budget these days? Like, what if you had a guess what percentage of your marketing budget is allocated specifically to sponsored content and brand partnerships like this each year?
So we have a $30 CAC that we usually assign to be for marketing.
CAC customer acquisition cost, correct?
And so thank you. I should explain.
No, it's okay. I just, I always want to double check, because sometimes, you know, different industries use different terminology, so I like to double check.
And because for us, you know, there's companies that are willing to spend a lot more to acquire a customer, sure, but at this time, that's what we're willing to spend, and we a lot, 10% of that month, like, if we're trying to acquire, let's say, 5000 customers. Then we do that times 30, and then we take 10% out of our marketing budget just for influencers.
Okay, can you sorry, I'm not sure if I'm quite following that method. Do you mind using an example number? It doesn't have to be what your number actually is, but we can just run through the calculation one more time.
So we have $1,000 towards marketing. We're gonna give 900 to meta and Google and 100 to influencers. Now, there are times when we decide to do special things. So like for Black Friday, we're actually increasing our influencer marketing over meta because of the election season and because ads cost more. So we're like influencers are better for us to spend more money on in q4.
Okay, very interesting. So if I'm understanding correctly, because your customer acquisition cost that you like, the max you're willing to spend to get a new person to buy slate is $30 so if you're like, I want 100 new customers this month, and your total paid marketing budget is $30 times 100 people. So $3,000 and then you're saying, of that 3000 you would take 10% normally, so like $300 towards influencer marketing, unless it's a high spend season, like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, etc,
Yes. So that $300 is going towards paying an influencer to do something. We also have affiliate kickbacks. They get 10% back if they are not being paid. So we also have a bucket of money for the influencers that are getting affiliate only.
Got it. And is that coming from the same influencer bucket, or is the affiliate only. People are, are they getting paid from a different-
They're getting paid from a different bucket? Because that means someone actually bought slaves, yes. And so that that bucket is, I guess it's just different for us.
No, it's more renewable, right? Because, I mean, if they're getting paid, it's only because you got paid first. So exactly that totally, totally makes sense. So you kind of already mentioned how you start approaching a lot of these relationships through giftings, and then kind of seeing where it naturally takes you based on organic engagement or whatnot.
Do you ever come out the gate with a paid proposal for someone you haven't worked with before and you haven't necessarily gifted them product first, you're just like, I know I want to work with this person. So you out the gate. You're emailing them saying, hey, like, this is what we want to do with you?
Yes, what I've noticed is, is most of those people I can't afford, and so I feel like anyone over 40,000 followers, they start getting to the point where I don't know if it's worth the cost, right to have them do it. So I try, I try more with micro influencers. I'll pay them like $500 to do something or $1,000 but when it starts getting to the $10,000. It's hard.
Yeah, as a small business. yeah, totally.
If they're willing, what I usually do with someone who's more than $1,000 I'll say, try the product. If you love it, let me know, and then we'll move forward. Because if someone can't organically speak about how much they like it, it's not going to be a good fit.
Makes sense with measuring the success of these campaigns. You know, this is always it's been a long contested topic of debate, if you will, in influencer marketing, right? Because, on the one hand, like you mentioned, you're a business, and you have to see returns to continue to sustain spending in a certain area, like influencer marketing, but at the same time, on the influencer or creator side, oftentimes they're like, we're just top of funnel. We're brand awareness, depending on the budget and sales may not be immediate.
So how do you kind of delineate or come to terms with what you consider a successful campaign? Like, if you're paying someone, let's say, a couple $100 and they're driving brand awareness, but it doesn't immediate. Immediately translate to sales. Is that okay for you, or do you need the immediate return of sales in order to work with them again? How else do you measure success, if you will.
So if they're willing to do an affiliate code, and I can see something that I usually will maybe continue to work with them, but what we've learned is, if someone doesn't post about slate three or more times, their followers are not going to connect with it. The chances of someone seeing it in a story when they post once is pretty slim. Like story engagement is a lot lower than it used to be, right? And so I don't feel like brand awareness is enough for you, right? For me, yeah. For me, yes. And just, I'm a too young of a company to have funds that don't show results, and so I will continue to work with people if they break even.
So if I spent $4,000 working with you, and you brought $4,000 worth of sales, then I'll try it again. So I had found this podcaster who was a doctor. He he was a little bit of a different demographic. He wasn't a dentist, but he talked about health and his people. I felt like really followed him. I thought for sure they would convert. I was so excited, and I paid him, what to me was a large sum, and I got maybe five sales, and I just couldn't, I couldn't understand how that happened.
And were you able to get any insight into, perhaps why that performance was that way or, or is it still kind of a mystery?
It's still a mystery because they were awesome. They actually added more ads to other podcasts to see if it if maybe that would help. I like, I really like the company that is his podcasting company. I felt like they were great to work with, but I I was like, what? Why didn't this one work? And I think it's because there wasn't enough education. Like, sometimes people turn off their brains when they hear like, you need a floss.
Because they're like, duh, I know that. Yeah. But it's like, your baby could have lower birth weight. You could have preterm labor because you didn't floss when you were pregnant. Wild, any mom's gonna be like, I'm gonna floss.
Yeah, right. No. It really is just shocking. I mean that this information isn't more prevalent. Or well known. So thank you for sharing transparently. You know, stories of quote, unquote failure. I don't, I don't necessarily think it's a failure, but just like something that didn't go as you had hoped, versus the success stories, because I think it is really important for our listeners and other other business owners to kind of understand, like you mentioned at the very beginning, the risk of investing in a paid channel like influencer marketing and being okay with you know, you have to know that the money might not come back and having that mindset going in, rather than banking on needing this in order for your business to survive that month, or whatever it is.
Yeah, I just, I think that going into it with the right attitude makes you happier, and being like this is for brand awareness, and if I make money, then I'll continue to work with them.
Yes, Yep, absolutely. And speaking of podcasts that didn't work, there actually was a podcast that worked really well for you, and I would love for you to just share any learnings you had from that. I believe it was how I built this, which is one of the most widely known business podcasts hosted by Guy Raz. So tell us how that came about, and what do you think worked exceptionally well with that particular campaign.
So I love, loved how I built this. I started listening like when it was the very, very beginning. And so I got my husband hooked on to it, and he has become, like, every single week he listens to the new one that comes out. It's his like, ride to and from work podcast. So if you've listened, at the end, they sometimes, or they used to say, like, here's a small business, and they get to tell about it. So he was hoping, like, okay, I'm gonna try and get on the little snippet at the end, try to get slayed on. So we emailed them, didn't hear back, so we sent them a package, and then we found out that 500 packages go to Guy Raz, what?
Oh my gosh, wow, I can't imagine his. I was gonna say mailbox. Not even a mailbox or mailroom looks like yeah.
Seriously. And then they had sent out an in one of their podcasts, they said we're gonna do a new series called the advice line. You can call and leave a message and you'll get picked if we like you. And my husband called that day and then sent an email out, and we found out that they picked us to be one of them. Amazing. So we were so excited, but then we found out that they actually interviewed four people for every single one, and only three get put on.
Oh, wow.
So there was still a chance that we wouldn't get on, but we were lucky enough to be there. And the thing that really helped me is they paired you up with really great entrepreneurs. So they paired me up with Andrew Abram from Orgain, and it was like a really great pairing, but knowing that he was who I was going to get to ask a question to, I really asked him, because he used to be a doctor, and then he invented his product. I was like, you only have a few seconds to talk to your consumers. So how do you communicate quickly? Because I'm like, how do I communicate quickly that flossing matters, like telling people about dementia, heart disease, pregnancy issues, that takes a few minutes.
So he gave me some great advice, things I'm working on his a bunch of his takeaways was create a referral and loyalty program, do a funny ad, trust and test and try different meta ads. And so I took that advice, but because I had 19 million listeners from it, and I was telling people how passionate I am about flossing and how our product does a better job than string floss, at stimulating the gums. They bought the product, and I was it was so fun because Guy Raz said, I own this product and I love it.
Oh, that's, that's an endorsement. Wow, that's incredible. And I love how the way you ended up on their podcast was not in a way that you would think in terms of traditional advertising. It wasn't you paying for an ad slot for them to talk about, you know, slate. It wasn't, it wasn't even an interview about your company or anything of the nature it was. It was you asking for advice, but through, like you said, through the context of the question and the obvious passion that you have for helping people with their health, I love that.
It drove so much back to your business. I think that's so smart. Again, another great takeaway for our listeners, another aha for myself, how can you enter the conversation on the channels that your ideal customers are tuning into in a way that's maybe a little bit outside of the box, like Brynn, just like the example Bryn just shared. So be thinking on that, because that's, that's definitely, I think, a key takeaway here from our conversation, moving into the final channel that you're focused on your organic marketing.
On your own, you know, website and socials and whatnot. I just wanted to know, what does a week in the life of your own organic content look like? What's the volume of output? Do you focus on one channel more than another? Do you have, like, a primary one? How big is your marketing team? I asked that question because I think a lot of times, you know, we hear about these amazing organic marketing strategies that different businesses employ, but without the context of, what does it take to actually sustainably fuel that sometimes it can feel unachievable, right for people who may be doing this themselves or only have limited staff and resources. So anything you want to share in that realm of how you're doing it, right? We'd love to hear.
Yes, there's so much social media can be so overwhelming. So what you need to do is almost put like a hard stop on it, and be like, I am only allotting this much energy towards this. So I have a graphic designer on our team and a marketing strategist, and we're pretty much the only w2 employees. Everyone else is a contractor, other than we have a fulfillment team, right? But we have someone we pay to do our social media. She's awesome. Her name's Megan, and she's her company is the locally known. She is great. She helps a lot of women, small businesses. She does email marketing as well.
So we have a social person email marketing. So we create a content calendar, and we do posts and reels and stories and carousels. We only really do Instagram. We will repost to Tiktok. But what we've learned is that Tiktok doesn't convert for us, our main people are over the age of 35 and so Instagram is a much better platform for us, and they take so much energy. So we only have enough energy for Instagram. We also will post more things to YouTube, but we don't focus on that channel, so anything that we have from Instagram will repost to YouTube and tick tock.
So those, those are kind of our platforms, like we have x, but we don't do anything with it, but we do actually post on LinkedIn, but that's completely different. It's not social. We just post our blog posts on LinkedIn, and I will then post if we do cool things in our business on LinkedIn. But what we do, what our point is on Instagram is to educate. We're like, why would someone want to follow a flossing company?
Very fair point.
I mean, I wouldn't unless I was getting something out of it. So we are like, how are we going to educate you? How are we going to teach you about Xylitol and gum and toothpastes and flossers and toothbrushes. So we try to educate all about the dentist, all about different tools you could use. So like, sometimes people will say, Oh, my kid, hit their mouth and knocked out a tooth. What should I do? And so we tell them, Okay, you want to put the tooth and milk. But we're not giving medical advice. We're just trying to, like, educate people on options, right?
And what if you know this number? What percentage would you estimate of your total revenue, total sales come from your own organic marketing efforts, versus the other two like wholesale being that first bucket. We described influencer campaigns, educational campaigns being that second bucket. And then, of course, your own, your own content. How do you think that spread looks?
Well, what we know is, is the biggest money maker for us as influencers. And then the second would be organic social, and then the third would be dental trade shows. Okay, it's so hard to know in a organic social what really drives what we've seen is, is when we do giveaways, people share it, then they see it, then we acquire more followers.
So we've been lucky enough, we just hit 20,000 followers. But it's like, what does that mean if they're not engaged with you? And so our goal is is to be engaged with our followers and provide them content that makes them want to follow us.
And that perfectly ties into my final question to wrap up this case study, which is that you've noted before, you know, you're not just selling a rechargeable flosser. You're really building a health conscious community. So you've talked about, you know, offering affiliate commissions to to people who help refer your product that you're maybe not working with in a otherwise paid capacity. But how else do you really activate your community? Of customers to drive further growth for Slate
that is actually like a focus of ours. We're trying to really figure that out. We feel like, if we can build a community that is our goal, and so what we've seen is usually when we ask questions or ask them, like, how can we help you? And they respond that builds community. Just telling them about slate doesn't build community. So they like slate, but that's like a side aside, yeah.
Well, keep us updated as you're as you're continuing to evolve that side of your marketing strategy. Thank you so much, Brynn for coming on today and just sharing so honestly about your own experiences. Got a ton of aha moments from our conversation, so I personally appreciate that as well. And where can our listeners continue to connect with you and slate online.
So you can find slate at Slate Flossor on Instagram, or slatefosser.com for our website. If you want to connect with me, I have a business Instagram, which is Brynn Max Snyder. I also am on LinkedIn. I love helping people, so if I have the time, I'd love to give you advice. I've learned so much from mentors.
So thank you for paying it forward that way, and this is completely optional, but since you mentioned it earlier, do you have a discount code or anything you want to share with your community for if they want to give it a try?
Well, I I'm gonna go make you a code that is that CEO 10, and we'll have it up there so that people can get it. We love helping people floss, and it's a 30 day money back guarantee. So if you don't like it, you can just return it.
That's the best. No risk there. Awesome. Well, you heard it here, folks. CEO 10, if you want to go save some money, we'll make sure all of the links that Brynn mentioned are below in the show notes, and if you're watching this on YouTube, below in the video description. So go check it out. Go say thank you over on LinkedIn or Instagram, and we will catch you all in next week's episode.
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