Who is Yash Chavan?

Yash Chavan is a Mumbai-based marketer who has experience working with many SAAS and e-commerce companies. He has helped many companies with growth marketing. During his work, he realized there were many gaps in the influencer marketing space, especially when it came to a lack of automation. 

“So it was like, I’m going to solve this myself.” 

Later on, he created Saral, which means simple in Sanskrit. 

What is Saral?

“Our mission is to make marketing simple for early to mid-sized companies.. [because] the price of 20 grand a year … when you’re a smaller brand with you know maybe ten employees, 15 employees, you don’t have that kind of money.”

Saral eliminates the need for expensive agencies, so that small and mid-sized company can use influencer marketing to grow at more affordable rates. 

“It kind of simplifies the whole influencer marketing process and we get the simplification is then manifested in a tool and then we give it to e-commerce founders or marketers and then they can run their own influencer programs without any fancy agencies or any other expenses.”

Many influencer marketing agencies require expensive annual contracts. In contrast, Saral has a less costly monthly subscription option, allowing companies to try the service out at a more affordable price. 

In reference to other influencer marketing companies, “there are a bunch of customers complaining about “Hey, we just used this for four months, but we are tied into it with a contract.”

Saral’s biggest goal is “to enable founders and marketers to try influencer marketing and see if it works” at a lower price point. Then, companies can decide whether or not they want to stick with the service rather than being tied into a complicated, expensive annual contract like many other influencer marketing companies. 

Influencer Management

A unique feature of Saral is its Chrome extension, which allows you to scroll through social media platforms and instantly look at the influencer’s analytics without leaving the page. Analytics like engagement rate, authentic fan percentages, growth charts, and even a recommended fair fee are immediately visible for the Saral extension users. 

In addition to this, you can easily save the influencer to your Saral account list for future reference. 

“Another interesting feature that I don’t think is on the page is you can find lookalikes. So this kind of speeds up the whole process.”

Yash also shares, “I guess like people look at influencer marketing a lot like they look at buying ads.. They basically look at them as broadcasters for their message, but they don’t end up building like a long-term, deeper relationship with them.”

This list option helps companies track their outreach and build long-term relationships with key influencers in their industry, which is fundamental to growth and influencer relationship management. 

Within the Saral website, you can easily send an email with Saral templates to any influencers you’ve saved to your list. This feature saves brands time and money and helps them have a higher return for influencer responses. 

Another key Saral feature is hashtag monitoring. 

“Every brand has their own hashtag right? So whenever they [influencers] post with that hashtag, you can track them. So continue, we can pick a date, name, start… and gather all the [APIs]…. This is exactly what Google ads campaign dashboards looks like… but this is your campaign overview.”

The Impact of Influencer Marketing

 When asked about how much he thinks it takes brands to finally realize the impact of influencer marketing, Yash shares, “I think if they do it right, they can realize the impact in a couple of weeks… It’s all about going after the right influencers because I think brands think a lot about “oh, what’s the tactic? What do I write? What do I do? … All of these tactical approaches.”

While Yash says these approaches matter, he also says, “I think what really matters, especially, I mean, all of these things matter. I’m not saying they don’t matter, but … [I recommend] go after micro-influencers and start working on a really intimate basis. One on one with each of them and then, you know, take it from there.”

He also advises brands against working with more shady creators who will talk about any products for money. This doesn’t reflect well on your company and is likely to be less effective because their followers are used to products being pushed, which ultimately lacks authenticity and impact. 

Yash’s Advice for Small Brands

Yash recommends “start with nano and micro-influencers or so… There’s like a lot of buzz around this space.” 

He defines nano influencers as anyone with less than 20,000 followers and micro-influencers as anyone with less than 100,000 followers. Yash also recommends sending the influencer your product and giving them a couple of weeks to really get to know and like the product before you even bring up working with them. 

Then, “[try] to get your first 15 to 20 influencers on board and get them to post either on an affiliate basis or just them your product and only pay them to post if they liked your product.”

Influencer Marketing on Different Platforms

When asked about the most dynamic platforms and trends he sees, Yash shares that “Always do long-term collaborations with TikTok influencers it talks to the algorithm and is very variable.”

When asked about Instagram, he shares, “I think Instagram is good for exposure, not so much for conversions because there’s no. I guess if you [do] stories, then there’s the link.” 

For Instagram, he says that’s it’s great for brand awareness, but other platforms are more ideal for instant sale conversions. 

He shares that YouTube is his personal favorite because there is a spike when the video goes live, but it doesn’t just fall back down like Instagram. 

However, “I would say YouTube because I’m the… convergence guy. I want the sales right? I don’t want the fancy likes and all of that. I want.. At the end of the day… the sales will enable you later on to the awareness and exposure stuff, but if you don’t have sales and you’ve got to do the rest… so YouTube is the best.. Because it’s also more long-term.”

Future Plans

Yash shares that he is excited about the future of influencer marketing and more brands realizing the importance of influencer marketing. He thinks marketing will be less transactional, and there will be a heavy shift toward relationship-based marketing. 

In terms of Saral, he is excited to launch this coming month. Their pilot program is limited to 25 companies, and he is thrilled to get the ball rolling and see how Saral can help companies grow and see massive improvements in their influencer marketing campaigns.