After his presentation, Xenon Tan,  the founder and CEO of FameUp, sat down with Benjamin Yong at Affiliate World Asia in Bangkok to discuss Instagram, influencer marketing, and more.

This post, “Xenon Tan Discusses Instagram And Influencer Marketing” was first posted on AWC’s Facebook page.

AWasia Interview with Xenon Tan, Founder & CEO of FameUp

Introduction

Benjamin Yong:
?️ Hey Xenon, thank you so much for being here with us today. Would you mind to let all our audience know about you?
Xenon Tan:
Alright, so I’m from Singapore and actually what I do is that I actually own an Instagram marketing agency, which helps you grow followers, find influencers, and businesses.
Benjamin Yong:
?️ Okay so it’s strictly on Instagram?
Xenon Tan:
Yeah, that’s right.
Benjamin Yong:
?️ Okay, and how long have you been doing this?
Xenon Tan:
It’s been 2014. So that’s about four years.
Benjamin Yong:
?️ Four years. Okay and what actually inspired you to get into this business?
Xenon Tan:
Okay so it was really a funny moment because I used to have this like, young dream of wanting to be an influencer. So I was like finding ways on how can I actually be like an influencer, so one day, I had a friend who actually runs like a tailoring shop. He was like asking me, “hey can you help me grow my Instagram account?” back then Instagram was like really new and nobody really talked about it.

Instagram Pain-Points

Benjamin Yong:
?️ Do you also mind to share with us like what you have shared, just a brief summary. What have you shared on the stage with all the audience at AWA?
Xenon Tan:
So it was more on like, seeing the true pain-point, what is the emotional pain-point of the customers or the clients itself and actually tapping, being laser-focused on the true pain-point so you can really set yourself apart from like 80-90% of competitors. I think we also touched a little bit on how to actually combine premium prices.

The importance of charging premium prices is not just because you know, you have high profit margins, but because when you charge premium prices, customers and clients will actually respect you in this industry. If you charge low, people will just forget about you. People are just going to give you a lot of customer service problems. They will doubt whether you’re able to perform up to standards, you know, if you are like really just like, cheapening your prices and all.

So how to actually be an authority, be very focused on targeting each demographic one at a time and each industry one at a time, instead of like going places, like you don’t want to be like, telling everyone that you actually have clients from all kinds of industry at the start because people are not going to see you as an authority. They want to know that you are actually very familiar with what they have and that you understand them so it’s very important to actually focus on one demographic at a time for either a product or a service.

Challenges To Entering The Market

Benjamin Yong:
?️ Okay, so you talk about finding the customer’s pain-point, and then charging a premium price, and also becoming the authority. Out of these three things, what are the things that, you know, that you find most challenging in and also, how — let’s just say, if I were to get into this, what would be the challenges that I’m going to face and how would you help people to get past them?
Xenon Tan:
I think the greatest challenge is definitely in the part where you have to identify a true pain-point because honestly speaking, there’s no fixed formula or fixed way to actually find out like, hey what’s the actual pain-point but of course, I shared a little bit about some of the possible guidelines that you can think about to actually think about what the true pain-point for customers is by asking questions to yourself like, what is important in my industry or my vertical or my niche, but it’s forgotten in the market itself, like people don’t talk about but it’s really important. So identifying this or it can be focusing on a unique technology you might have.
So again, I was sharing about like, how even moon-cake, people can talk about the technology behind it. So technology doesn’t mean you have to patent the technology, it doesn’t mean it has to be very advanced or that kind of thing before you call it a technology, but it can be how you actually phrase your product, how you can bring out the beauty of that product and technology. It can be also selling a personal story, a brand, like maybe for example, for myself, like I did this because I wanted to be an influencer back then and also like, when customers and clients hear personal stories that feel very close to their heart, they actually buy product or your services itself.
And our cause is also a little bit about building a tribe and building a community, letting your customers and clients know that when you’re with us, you will be with us one year later what you’ll be doing with us, two years later what you’ll be doing with us so that you know, they will see a path with you. They won’t jump to another competitor because they feel like, “hey, after 3-6 months of doing agency work with you, okay maybe now I’ll just try another agency”. You want to give them so much value, so much intangible value, that —
Benjamin Yong:
?️ They just can’t leave you.
Xenon Tan:
Yeah, they just can’t leave you. It’s like a relationship, you know, you’re so good that other people can’t replace you.