Disrupting Social Media Marketing with Digital Word of Mouth

In the world of social media and digital marketing, it can be hard for brands to find new ways to stand out, however, Mohamed Wahid believes that his new platform, Impactyn, will provide a distinct advantage using “digital word of mouth”.

As Impactyn’s founder and CEO, Wahid sat down with BT to discuss how his platform works, what sets it apart from other digital marketing methods, and how it protects both brands and users, giving us key insights on how Impactyn could revolutionize how brands interact and connect with consumers.

Let’s start with your elevator pitch. In brief, how do you position your company to a brand?

Mohamed Wahid - Foudner and CEO, Impactyn

Impactyn is here to establish a global ecosystem that will positively disrupt social media marketing. We aim to empower both Impactyrs [micro- and relatively small influencers that are viewed as authentic and genuine] and enterprises all over the world through the power of digital word of mouth.

Negative reviews dominate social media platforms, with users often hesitant about sharing positive experiences with brands. Currently, the ratio of positive ratings and reviews is extremely low; around eight out of ten customers with a negative experience post about it online, while only one out of ten are willing to upload their positive feedback.

Not only does Impactyn make it easy for businesses to connect with their consumers, but we encourage consumers to spread positive digital word of mouth, sharing their feedback through photo posts, reels, or stories on their personal accounts, and get rewarded.

We don’t limit ourselves to products either, we provide for a comprehensive portfolio of businesses including experiences, events, destinations and services, and much more.

You say Impactyn strives to disrupt social media marketing through “digital word of mouth,” could you describe what is it and how that works? What does it mean for brands?

In a nutshell, we want people to see more of their friends and family’s positive experiences, highlighting the amazing services, products, and experiences created by great businesses in Egypt.

What we call “Impactyrs" are people within your own close circle of friends and family or people whom you believe to be genuine and authentic; people that you believe are trustworthy and provide real feedback that inspires and influences you to try things for yourself.

We offer users the chance to share and monetize their stories and opinions on their personal accounts over several social media platforms in order to promote goodwill and positive digital word of mouth for brands.

For businesses, Impactyn enables brands to obtain real and genuine user-generated content (UGC) that provides organic reach, engagement, and tangible ROI, optimizing exposure through digital word of mouth.

Through our dashboard, brands can see instant results regarding their return on investments and performance metrics and goals, fueling future decision-making with accurate data to better optimize future collaborations.

How influential do you think the Impactyn model is in comparison to other digital marketing and advertising methods? What separates Impactyn from the competition?

Impactyn partners with two types of businesses. One is with well-established corporations including national and multinational companies.

These use Impactyn as an additional safeguard and resource to verify and strengthen their brand’s authenticity, giving real users the opportunity to share their experiences with the brand online in parallel with other ongoing marketing campaigns. So, there actually isn’t any kind of competition with other marketing tools or models.

We also work with startups and small businesses. For small and medium enterprises (SMEs), I wouldn’t consider Impactyn to be the only solution.

SMEs tend to invest their budgets in tools that are more likely to achieve higher rates of tangible ROI, whether it is directly reflected in sales of products and services, or in attracting potential clients. However, we consider our service as the most optimum and convenient solution when it comes to conservative spending budgets and certain target audiences.

When matching Impactyrs with brands, what are the key factors that Impactyn considers?

As a platform, Impactyn does not directly match specific Impactyrs with brands.

Companies create a campaign from their side of the platform, assigning specific criteria for their targeted audience including gender, age range, geographical location, etc. The more filters or data the company provides, the more our platform is able to narrow the list to relevant Impactyrs.

Depending on the data filled in, our technologically advanced algorithm will match brands with Impactyr according to their interests and target audience, only showing the campaign to appropriate Impactyrs.

Simply, not all Impactyrs can see the same campaigns on their app interface.

Once the campaign is created from the brand’s side, Impactyrs are given the opportunity to decide which campaigns they’d like to join. In brief, Impactyn acts as a shortcut for brands to connect with social media users with similar interests on a very segmented scale.

How does your company protect brands or mitigate the risks of possible pushback from the collaboration? Do you have brand protection and/or user protocols, and how are they implemented?

Our application is tech-powered and very technologically advanced in that context. The guidelines provided by campaign creators are our main compass here. Our AI smart tools can detect whether Impactyrs’ posts are meeting the campaign guidelines, and will automatically accept or reject posts accordingly.

On Impactyrs’ side, how does your compensation model work?

For Impactyrs, we give them the opportunity to monetize their content on social media without changing anything in their lifestyle.

Our application does not aim, nor encourage, users to share something they don’t genuinely believe in. We only motivate them to not be hesitant about sharing genuine and positive word of mouth with what they already do or buy in real life.

Earning money through Impactyn works only as an incentive that can improve users’ income alongside their ongoing careers. For instance, we do not encourage people to quit their jobs and make Impactyn their full-time job.

In order to achieve this, and promote an ethical and conscious model, we limit users’ interactions on the application by allowing only four frequencies per month for a single user.

As for our compensation model, Impactyrs get rewarded in cash or credit based on the number of views on their stories or the likes they receive on their posts, however, Impactyrs can view the estimated rewards prior to joining a campaign.

How has the business grown since its launch? And what is your predicted growth rate for 2023 and 2024?

Impactyn was introduced in July 2022. [At the time] our expectations were that our first official partner or company collaboration would kick off in Q1 2023.

However, we were amazed by the market need for our service. Many brands and companies chose to put their trust in us, even during our pre-launch phase. This included notable local and multinational companies like Amazon, Juhanyna, P&G, Unilever, Tradeline, and many more. This undoubtedly pushed us forward to continuously develop our app’s technology and software to always meet both brands and Impactyrs’ expectations.

We proudly closed a pre-seed round with $2 million, and Impactyn was accepted as one of the 14 participants out of 500 applicants for the 500 MENA Seed Accelerator Program.

We're currently working with 10 of the most reputable brands and companies from different industries, and the number of our Impactyrs is growing rapidly.

[On future plans] we're planning a new Ramadan campaign called Impactyn for charity (اتبرع بصورتك). Through this campaign, Impactyn will be raising donations for NGOs through the brand campaigns on Impactyn.

Impactyrs’ content will be rewarded [as usual under] the normal process for any campaign, except with these campaigns, their rewards will be donated to charity.

These campaigns will be positioned as charity campaigns during the month of Ramadan; businesses will consider it part of their annual CSR budget while at the same time gaining marketing through Impactyn. On the other side, Impactyrs will have fun creating content for a good cause and get to donate their rewards to charity during the holy month.

As for our expansion plans, we already established Impactyn’s presence in Dubai, which will be operating our activities in the UAE and KSA. We aim to launch our first regional campaign after Ramadan and move forward with expanding our operations to cover the MENA region in the upcoming 2 years.