How SARAL Helped Gourmend Tap New Markets With Niche Influencers

Gourmend’s recipe for influencer success with SARAL

Meet Ketan Vakil, the founder of Gourmend Foods - a brand that offers delicious, gut-friendly, low in FODMAP products perfect for sensitive stomachs.

It all started with Ketan's battle with gut issues in his teenage years. After undergoing tests and trying a bunch of meds, the root cause remained a mystery. It wasn't until adulthood that Ketan researched and took a specific test and discovered the real culprit: FODMAPs.

Ketan soon realized he wasn't alone in this struggle, and this… this was a turning point for his personal and entrepreneurial journey.

‍Did you know stomach issues are one of the major reasons women in America visit the ER?

A Culinary Experiment Turns into a Business

Driven by his newfound knowledge, Ketan began experimenting in his kitchen. Being a foodie, he wanted flavorful food that wouldn’t upset his stomach.

Using organic, FODMAP-friendly ingredients, he created a bunch of recipes. But then he thought, “What if I package this?”

This idea led to the birth of Gourmend.

From Kitchen to Market

What began as a personal project turned into a business that could help tens of thousands of people. Soon, Ketan’s recipes found a niche audience with similar gut health issues.

The Beginning of Gourmend's E-commerce Journey

Gourmend’s ecommerce adventure kicked off in 2020. The first 100 orders came as a surprise when a certifying body in Australia posted about them to their 100k+ Instagram followers.

"It was summer of 2020, everybody's home with the lockdown situation. They announced it and they had 100,000 followers or something. And then we just got 100 orders for that just right off the rip. Over on the side, putting up a lot of great SEO content has been a huge driver for us. It's a constant learning process, but, early on, we had a lot of that stuff going."

Phase 1: Early Strategies

To generate awareness for Gourmend, Ketan’s marketing background came in handy. He tried different strategies to get the word out about Gourmend’s existence by:

• Leveraging Facebook groups to reach dedicated communities
• Content collaborations with bloggers
• Using lead generation magnets like ingredient lists

These early strategies involved what we call "sources of influence." While these groups and bloggers weren’t traditional influencers, they still had a lot of sway over their audiences. Ketan realized that these non-traditional sources were incredibly powerful. He decided to put a dedicated influencer marketing strategy in place.

Product Seeding

The relationships Ketan built helped with the second phase of Gourmend’s influencer marketing, which began with product seeding.

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🎁 They sent free products to bloggers who wrote about FODMAPs or related topics. These bloggers loved the products so much, they posted about Gourmend in their blogs and plugged the brand wherever they could.

🧑‍⚕️ The second interesting thing Gourmend did was partnering with tangentially-related brands and experts like dieticians who recommended them to their patients.
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📢 Fun fact: They later reached out to the same partners and upgraded them to commission-based partnerships.

An insight from these interactions was that smaller influencers, like a dietician found through SARAL, brought in more orders than those with a large following. This led to a strategy focusing on niche relevance and engagement over follower count.

"A couple admins in various Facebook groups were influencers for us. There's a really great article site full of recipes and content about FODMAPs. I sent them a lot of our product to get them used to it, and they would feature that in their recipes kind of in an organic way. The Facebook admin would organically mention us when someone asked about chicken broth. We had done a few little partnerships with other brands that were tangentially related to us, and they would have codes to drive traffic in.But it was limited.

A small handful of just the right themed people."

Ketan’s efforts, while sporadic, paid off.

Gourmend uses SARAL which has a search engine that helps them discover untapped, niche influencers across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Unlike a marketplace, SARAL’s search is not limited to a pool of top influencers. Millions of untapped creators are just a click away.

This helps Ketan and team stay true to their original “true sources of influence” philosophy. They want to avoid typical inauthentic influencer shoutouts and want to partner with creators that truly care about Gourmend’s ethos. SARAL helps them do that.

Phase 2: Chaos to Control

If you want to scale influencer marketing as a channel, manual methods just won’t cut it after a point. There’s only so many influencers you can find manually – you'll eventually run out. It's also a nightmare to manage them all on a spreadsheet. Multiple conversations at different stages with multiple offers – it quickly becomes chaotic and insane.

For Gourmend, SARAL was the game-changer. Let’s dive deeper into their approach.

Maximizing Impact with Limited Funds

‍Bootstrapped with limited marketing budget, the primary goal for Gourmend was to build awareness without spending excessively on ads. Influencer-generated content became their go-to strategy.

Content generated by creators can be used as social proof, ad creatives, website section making influencers a diverse and effective marketing channel.

"We don't have a ton of marketing money. I have some digital marketing background, but not so much in the influencer channel. I never did affiliate in any of my jobs before. But when people find us, they buy and they come back. Our recurring rate is in the 40%. But we have an awareness problem. Not enough people know about us. And this channel is a good way, not necessarily to drive sales, but to get people talking about us.

It's a way of doing that without spending a hundred thousand dollars on ads.That was really my goal going into it [influencer marketing]. It hasn’t generated tons of sales, but it's gotten us a lot of neat content. People are cooking with it. I can share that stuff. It helps feed the social beast. It makes the brand feel bigger than it is."

But, how does Gourmend decide which influencer(s) to partner with?

It’s a two-step process that can be replicated by brands across categories:

Step 1 : Decide your target categories

Gourmend’s target influencers (or as we like to put it, people who influence) can be divided into two buckets :

1. Medical experts (as discussed in the previous section)
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2. Creators in specific niches like vegan, keto, and even cooking reality show winners.

Step 2 : Experiment and observe

They run trial campaigns with each category to see which influencer persona is most receptive to their products, gives helpful feedback, and provides the best content for Gourmend.

Step 3: Replicate

Once they know which category is perfect for their brand, they double down on that persona and find more ‘lookalikes’ in the same category.

"SARAL is so easy to use. It's easy to find people in our niche with the hashtags or find people who are following head of brands or tangential brands."

With SARAL, you can find lookalikes once you have your ICP aka Ideal Creator Profile in place.
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With the “My customers follow the account” search feature in SARAL, you can get lookalikes in seconds.

Or let SARAL’s LookalikesAI find more creators on autopilot.

Find, Vet, Onboard, Campaign, Repeat

With over 100 influencers onboarded through SARAL, Gourmend runs repeat campaigns with creators.

They leverage their content for social proof, ad creatives, and more. This way, they manage relationships with influencers and grow their brand without spending much on traditional ads. It's like having a big team of friends helping to get the word out!

"I pay them to have rights to their video to use in our ads, potentially make other content for us. This is also a great way for us to find people who would be long-term partners to be content creators for ads. I found awesome people [through SARAL] that can help us do better marketing more broadly. And I think there's more of that to come."

SARAL is built for managing long-term relationships with creators. The CRM, Creator Relationship Management, never lets a single conversation slip through. You can see all conversations in one place, set reminders, make notes, and more.

Ready to discover influencers in your niche? Start your free trial with SARAL.

Tapping into New Markets with Influencers

Gourmend's journey with influencer marketing opened up new market for their products. Partnering with different influencers led to unexpected but exciting discoveries. Sometimes, you don't even know who could benefit from your product!

With SARAL, Ketan identified influencers outside the usual gut health niche. The result? A new customer niche: people suffering from migraines.

"Migraine issues are related to gut health, too; who knew?"

Using SARAL, Ketan could easily find and onboard these niche influencers, expanding Gourmend's message and customer base.

The ability to discover and engage with these influencers meant Gourmend could test new markets and refine its approach. This discovery boosted awareness and showed the versatility and effectiveness of Gourmend's products in addressing multiple health issues.

With new audiences and increased awareness, Gourmend is ready to take a big step!

Future Goals: Expanding to Retail

Gourmend is expanding from digital to retail. Their gut-friendly products are available in some local grocery stores, making it easier for customers to grab their favorites while shopping.

They will continue partnering with local influencers. Using SARAL's location filter, they can easily discover creators in specific cities who match their criteria. This means they can find influencers who not only love their products but also live in the same areas as the new retail locations.
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Ketan’s Advice for Other Brands: Start Organized, Stay Efficient

When he started, Ketan had little experience with influencers and needed a way to manage everything smoothly. His advice to brands new to influencer marketing? Use a tool to organize everything. By staying organized, you can focus on building strong relationships with influencers and growing your brand.

Ketan found SARAL to be the easiest tool in the market. It solved all his problems and helped him keep track of campaigns, conversations, and partnerships.

"Looking back, I think starting with a platform like this [SARAL] sooner for organization reasons would have been smarter because it's just easier because you forget who you've talked to and who's doing what. This helps collect all those things."

Bonus: Tracking Influencer Marketing ROI

Before we wrap up, let's tackle a question asked by almost every brand doing influencer marketing: How do you track your ROI?

Ketan’s take on this is refreshing. He views influencer marketing as a top-of-funnel, awareness-building channel. Ketan sees it as a way to let people know Gourmend is out there, not just to drive direct sales.

"It's just the cost of getting awareness out there. I don't even worry too much about the freebies."

Despite the challenges in tracking, Ketan trusts his gut (pun intended!) and focuses on overall ad spend versus results.

"It's a really important channel for awareness building. And even though some of the metrics are hard to track, it feels more real than getting awareness with banner ads and social ads that are coming from a brand, it just feels more organic."

And we couldn’t agree more.

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‍Gourmend Foods' journey shows how powerful influencer marketing can be. Ketan started with a personal quest to solve his gut health issues and turned it into a thriving business that helps many others. By leveraging influencer marketing, Gourmend reaches new customer niches, builds strong relationships with creators, and expands its loyal community.

As they move into retail stores, their story shows how important it is to stay organized and use the right tools.

With SARAL, you, too, can manage influencer partnerships easily and scale your marketing efforts.