How To Grow A Niche Brand with Ashley Neidert

Andréa Jones [00:00:00]:
One of the most interesting things about my favorite accounts is that they're not run by who you think they are. The cats and dogs and cute little critters that are blowing up and are absolutely famous on social media are run by their pet parents, and it's a whole momager situation. I'm very excited to dive into that and more in today's episode with Ashley Neidert, but first, a word from our sponsor. Riverside is the all-in-one podcast recording editing tool that I use for this right here show. I use it to edit not only the audio and the video. It is like chef's kiss magical, making the entire process so, so easy. Plus, I love their magic AI clips. Their little AI robot in the background pulls out the most impactful moments of the episodes without me having to comb through and do it myself, resizes them for social media.

Andréa Jones [00:00:58]:
So those vertical videos you see on TikTok and Reels Those all come from Magic AI inside of Riverside.

Andréa Jones [00:01:04]:
It's literally one click.

Andréa Jones [00:01:05]:
It spits out 10 clips. I pick the best one and away I go. Saves me so much time. If you want to get on the Riverside train, check it out today. The link's in the show notes and make sure to use my code DREA at checkout to get 15% off your membership. Ashley, welcome to the show.

Ashley Neidert [00:01:24]:
Yes, girl, I'm so excited to be here. This is going to be awesome.

Andréa Jones [00:01:27]:
I'm excited to talk about this because I have a dog, his name is Gibson, and I created an Instagram account for Gibson way back in the day and quickly gave it up because it is a whole thing. It's a whole thing. Even though he had a personality, people loved him, I was like, I am managing a lot over here. So I know that's what you do, okay? But I want to, I want to go back to the origins of like, what was the catalyst for starting your Instagram for your cat?

Ashley Neidert [00:01:55]:
Okay, there's a lot of layers to this because a lot of people ask me like, did you just start posting videos and then all of a sudden, you know, it blow up? But there actually was a lot of intention behind. So I'll give a really quick, um, behind the scenes of kind of like my life of how I got to the point of making my cat like his own 6-figure business. Um, so back in like 2014 era, I don't know if that's when you, for Gibson or whatever, was making your attempt at the Instagram, but I had some family cats, and I was like, I just want to showcase them. They're just unique and everyone says they're fun and whatever. So I started making an Instagram and I thought back then, and you probably remember this, if you had 1,000 followers on Instagram, you were famous. Like everyone thought like, oh my gosh, you're famous. So I had like 1,000 followers, whatever. Um, and then I got really busy cause I actually got into graduate school and while I was in grad school, um, I, it was a 3-year program.

Ashley Neidert [00:02:55]:
And I learned very quickly that school can be very expensive and I had to find some sort of side hustle to make some money. So I actually began blogging back then and I was able to make some money, but that's what really sparked my desire to do something more entrepreneurial, sparked my desire to, or at least I realized back then, um, during school, I was like, wow, my life doesn't have to be necessarily a W-2 job. Like I can do something by myself. So I got this cat. So we fast forward just a little bit. I was finishing school and I got my first cat, Chip. And both between my history of having my channels with my other cats in the past and my just deep, deep desire to make something more than just, again, doing this W-2 job for the next 45 years of my life, I started posting videos. Like, this was the era of TikTok, okay? We're talking like 2019.

Ashley Neidert [00:03:54]:
And I started posting videos. It— by no means at the time did I actually have any idea that it could be where it is today. But start posting, and then I remember it was like my first video at like 10,000 views. I thought, because of my perspective, like I thought I was just— I was like, this is it, I'm gonna be a pet influencer. Now obviously it has transformed massively since then, but yeah, so there, there still was a lot to it rather than just like, oh, one day I just decided to post a photo and video of my cat. So yeah, we can unbox anything in regard to that origin, but it's not just that. So I started Chip's channel. So his channel is called Chip the Manx, and he's the most famous Manx cat in the world.

Ashley Neidert [00:04:40]:
And I started his channel, of course. But I also, about 2 years later, I realized very quickly that for my little niche in the pet creator space, there just isn't any, or there wasn't any good marketing tips. There were no good tips on anything in our niche. And all the tips that I was trying to get from your classic YouTubers or, you know, your big gurus on Instagram just weren't working for my niche. So that's when I actually created Petfluencer Secrets so that I could literally be a home for pet creators who are struggling to grow, who want to grow, but don't have access to, you know, where again, the, the resources that are readily available just aren't applicable to our little niche.

Andréa Jones [00:05:27]:
Yeah. Oh my gosh. I have so many follow-up questions. This is so fascinating to me because no, this is great because I feel like some people think something is too niche. And even though we know the riches are in— is it niche or niche? The riches are in the niches. The riches, the riches are in the niches, whatever it is.

Ashley Neidert [00:05:44]:
Yes, yes, yes.

Andréa Jones [00:05:44]:
People know that you're supposed to niche down, right? And, and, and we still try to like reach everybody and everything. But the fact that you can say your cat is the most popular minx cat on the internet, like, come on, like, mic drop moment. So I want to go back to some of those early days videos when you're still trying to figure it out. How could you replicate the instances where, you know, you got that first video, got 10,000 views, and you're like, man, I'm on to something. How then do you go replicate that?

Ashley Neidert [00:06:16]:
Okay, this is everything. So this is something I actually preach on for the people within, say, my group coaching and my coaching clients, because in our niche, everything has to be— well, not that absolutely has to be, but we have to be extremely intentional about emotional appeal and being very relatable to pet parents. And when you have a video, Again, this is what I preach, but when you have any video that outperforms in any way, so let's say you normally get, I'll say, 800 to 2,000 views per video, and all of a sudden you have one that hits 10,000 views, you have to dissect this. Your own data is gold. You have a gold mine sitting there. Thankfully, over the years, the analytics have become a little bit more robust, especially say on TikTok and Instagram. YouTube, I always praise YouTube because they do have a lot more robust advanced analytics. But if you're able to look at that video and actually determine who is my audience, is my audience male or female? What age are they? We can talk later, Von.

Ashley Neidert [00:07:21]:
It blows my mind who my audience is, like who in this world actually, mostly surprisingly males. I actually, mostly is males who watch my cat videos. Anyway, But knowing who your audience is, and then from there you have to figure out within my first 3 seconds, what did I do different? Was it the on-screen text? Was it the sudden movement you may have had? You have to dissect it because what I tell people is that I want you to find at least one aspect of a video that was different, or again, that one that did better, figure out what was slightly different, and then just apply that to your next video. Because over time, if you simply just try to get 1% better with every video and try to actually dissect it, then you actually are going to over time be able to have consistently performing content. So many people, they'll post, and I truly, this is, I feel like this is the absolute common with what happens, but people just post, they see the views, and then they're either happy or sad. Like, and it just stops there. Like they, they don't dissect and your, your analytics do tell you sometimes what people searched to find your content. Um, on YouTube, it'll show you like what other videos they watched, what was suggested.

Ashley Neidert [00:08:40]:
There's so much data that you could have, uh, or that is accessible to you that you can utilize to be able to figure out how to improve your content going forward.

Andréa Jones [00:08:49]:
Okay. That's so good because we don't like looking at the data. Like, I don't know what it is about humans. I feel like it's, um, it feels like, like weighing yourself, where you're like, I don't want to really get on the scale right now. But you know, like, if you have goals, you kind of have to measure what those goals are. So I like that you, you pointed that out and a few different ways people can kind of look at those videos and see if they're working. Um, I'm also very curious around the monetization of these pet accounts, because me being a viewer having, uh, a dog, I still be watching all the cat videos because they're cute. And I'm like, well, I'm never gonna buy anything they're recommending, but I hope They get something, something from me watching these videos.

Andréa Jones [00:09:30]:
So can you break down the monetization of being a pet influencer?

Ashley Neidert [00:09:36]:
Oh yes. Okay. So we have two different pools of monetization options. You have your active income and you have your passive income opportunities, we'll call it. Um, there are so many different opportunities, so I'll just kind of list a few examples. So under your active income, so that'd be where you do one thing and you just get paid for it. Brand collaborations and user-generated content, the UGC collaborations, are the biggest active income opportunities. So I will say one thing I love about the pet niche is that brands across every, I don't know, we can call it every niche out there, love to collaborate with pets because we are more relatable.

Ashley Neidert [00:10:17]:
People just have a more positive feeling. And I've seen people talk about research that has shown that in, in the marketing space, that content that has pets in it tends to perform better compared to humans because people just naturally have a more positive— like, people judge humans, unfortunately, you know? And so having a pet is actually a really sought-after thing. So brand collaborations, that is my absolute wheelhouse. I've been doing it for 7 years now. Um, man, I've collaborated with definitely over 100 brands, big to, you know, mom-and-pop ones. And so that is, that is definitely the biggest opportunity for monetization. And then from there, passive, there are other like active income opportunities where a brand may say, hey, put this link in your LinkedIn bio, or we'll pay you to just, I don't know, small, small different things we could talk about if you're interested, but the passive income from there, TikTok Shop's really big for pet influencers. So that's where you can get a free sample and then you make a video and then you can earn commission off of views.

Ashley Neidert [00:11:22]:
And then Amazon Influencing, that's a big one. I know one content creator who truly makes $10,000 a month just doing Amazon Influencing as a pet. Well, another one that is popular but also frustrating are all the different ways to earn money off the views of your videos. So one thing that is a huge misconception for non-creators is that people think that if you just have a video go viral, you're going to make a ton of money off of it, which is absolutely not the reality. So I have had countless videos get millions upon tens of millions of views. And if that happens on a Meta platform, you're likely making $0, which blows some people's minds. They're like, you got 10 million views. How did you not make like, I don't know, you know, whatever you may think that that is equivalent for.

Ashley Neidert [00:12:13]:
TikTok does have a way for you to make money off of content that is 1 minute or more. And then YouTube has their YouTube Partner Program where you can make money off of your videos you post on there, but Instagram doesn't. So all of those viral videos that you see on Instagram, unless you have a strategy behind it to point people to affiliate opportunities, affiliate links, or your own products, they're actually not making money off of that. So all that to say, really the biggest thing is brand deals for pet creators.

Andréa Jones [00:12:44]:
Mm. Yeah. So I wanna talk about the other side of that cuz I know some people listening are like, okay, I think my product would work great for a pet creator. Um, what are some of the things they should think about, like looking for creators who are legit and even negotiating a price and making sure that the end result is something that they want?

Ashley Neidert [00:13:04]:
Yes. Now that's huge cuz I've actually had the awesome opportunity through my, I guess, my work through Petfluencer Secrets to talk to a lot of marketing agencies and better understand how they search out pet content creators and then how they determine how much to charge. So yeah, we can talk about any, as much of this as you want. So it is very, very common right now, and I'm going to say this unfortunately, for affiliate deals to just be the thing for all these businesses. So It's really easy for small business to sign up for an affiliate. I don't know what it's necessarily called, but affiliate system, we could say, where they will, let's say, give a creator their free product and then they'll say, oh, in exchange for this, if you, you know, if anyone clicks your link and buys through us, then you will get, say, 2%, 8%, 10% commission off of that product sale. Now that is again across the board becoming so, so common. I mean, I see it in my emails every single day.

Ashley Neidert [00:14:07]:
And the unfortunate side of this are, as a creator, we hate this because as you literally said just a little bit ago, Andrea, the chance or likelihood that someone is going to convert into a buyer is insanely small. I've been doing this for 7 years and I've had many different affiliate opportunities, whatever, different links in my links and bios and using ManyChat to convert get people the links and it's horrendous. It is so bad. So a lot of creators, whenever that opportunity is offered to us, I just say, no, just pay me. It is so much easier to pay a creator. However, there's a lot of marketing out there that I'm seeing as ads and, you know, as guides and whatnot from marketing agencies that are saying, you don't have— don't— there's no good return on investment if you're paying the creator, just give them a free product, just give them an affiliate code. And so there's almost this like, back and forth frustration where, yes, brands want a good return on their investment, obviously. The creators want a good payment for their time investment because it can take hours and hours to be able to make good content, revisions back and forth, and all this, all exchange for the possibility of making money is just not incentivizing for us.

Ashley Neidert [00:15:27]:
So, um, I know in my group creator, um, coaching, we talk all the time of if a brand actually just says, no, we don't pay, we just have a 4% commission. We say push back. You need to push back because our time is so worth it. Um, cause I know we can potentially even talk later about the realities of being a content creator and the time investment is massive. And so, yeah. So yeah.

Andréa Jones [00:15:55]:
Yeah, it is massive. And I've been on both sides of it too, and there's no good answer, but I think I think ultimately we, we're all trying to create an experience for the people consuming the content, and that experience sometimes isn't like commenting a word to get a link to then click to then maybe buy later, right? Like sometimes that's not the experience. But on the brand side, I totally understand, you know, we are trying to meet our numbers, we're trying to make our clients happy. So it is a bit of a push and pull, but it's an interesting, interesting conundrum that I think, you know, hopefully with modern technology, I mean, come on, we can probably come up with some better tracking and stuff.

Ashley Neidert [00:16:34]:
Sure.

Andréa Jones [00:16:34]:
Um, to make everyone happy. But anyways, that's neither here nor there. I'm very curious about some of the, um, interesting content strategies that you've seen either work for yourself or for some of your clients, especially now in 2026. We're finding that there's a strange shift in attention. I'm not gonna call it an attention deficit because we're all still on these apps. We're all still consuming content like wild. But it's not what it used to be, right? So what are some of the content styles that you're seeing work really well for you and your clients?

Ashley Neidert [00:17:10]:
Mm, yes. Okay. So this is truly something, man, this is something I taught on like back in January. So this is, this is very relevant and especially huge on YouTube. So I've seen, first off, I have personally seen a big shift from TikTok to Instagram, obviously in the past few years. And then now there's a big shift from Instagram over onto YouTube. So you may have heard of this, but I am seeing videos and people talk all about cozy content right now. So hyper-authentic content.

Ashley Neidert [00:17:41]:
Now I want to talk about the pet niche just a little bit because this is also very applicable for any other niche, I definitely believe. But at least in our niche, when I had begun as a content creator, everything had to be very intentionally scripted, filtered, edited. And then now, by far, the content that I continue to see perform best over and over and over is the content that I put least amount of effort into. And just, there's, I guess I put the effort into the intention, but I don't put the effort into the editing. So making the content extremely authentic. And what that also looks like in our niche, at least, is having a very, very strong intention towards storytelling. So I mentioned earlier that the pet niche is a very emotional niche because why do people follow follow cats and dogs. I mean, they do it because they want to feel good and it makes them smile and it makes them laugh, or it helps them emotionally connect to either a dog that was passed or you can't have a cat in your apartment, so you want to follow these cats online, right? It's very emotional.

Ashley Neidert [00:18:44]:
And so on our side, our skill of storytelling is like the number one thing that I even tell new pet content creators that you have to master right away, because we have to get people sold onto an emotional connection with our pet. And it's not just posting to post. Like, I'm sure you see all of these, especially it's very popular on Facebook. I see on like the Facebook Reels, but these videos that are 8 seconds long and all the value that you get out of it is just reading the caption because they may have on-screen text that just says like, I don't know, some sort of hook thing. And then you read the text and then it's like, oh, just comment this. I was like, what on earth? That type of content does not perform well for pet content creators. For us, it is truly about mastering storytelling and mastering the hyper-authenticity right now. Like, I know your question was like, how have things shifted? And that really is everything, is just trying to almost— I tell people, you want it to be almost like the person watching is right there alongside of your pet, right there alongside of you and your dog or your cat, because that's how we're going to increase increase that engagement and that emotional connection with our audience.

Andréa Jones [00:19:59]:
100%.

Ashley Neidert [00:20:01]:
I—

Andréa Jones [00:20:01]:
so one of my friends, I haven't talked to her in probably like 20 years now. Um, we were in, uh, we worked at the movie theater together. Shout out Caitlin. Anyways, she has two little Frenchies, and when I tell you I don't miss a TikTok video— I don't miss a TikTok video. And it's just her and her Frenchies, but every video has such a specific theme to it. Like, the last one that I watched, if I can remember it correctly, it was like how she takes them out in the rain. And there are probably product placements in there I didn't even know. She put them like little booties on, they both had raincoats on, and they have different personalities.

Andréa Jones [00:20:40]:
So she spent like 2 to 3 minutes talking through like how she does this. She takes them out in the rain, we got to see the whole process, see them come back in, get all dried up. I'm like right there with her, like watching the whole thing, and I love every second of it. And so I love that you talked about like the storytelling element there, because I do think that is, you have to create the moment, right? Um, do you have any, any other examples of what that could look like?

Ashley Neidert [00:21:07]:
There's so, so many. And I think it's just because of the opportunity that I have to be able to work with so many pet content creators that I've seen this done so many different ways. But I will say actually one thing within our niche, I know we talked just very, very, very briefly way at the beginning about this idea of like being such a micro niche, but being able to actually like make it a full-time business and everything. With this niche, it's not just again posting just videos or photos of your pet, but it is trying to find your own super unique way to tell your story. So in the example you gave, of course it's like almost like you are experiencing the life with that pet, with those dogs. But something that I've done that's actually worked out incredibly well is I've mixed in an informational educational side and made it comedic to relate to pets. And I do a ton of cat facts, but I call them mostly meme facts because I talk a lot about like the facts of a cat or whatever it be. There's so many examples, hundreds of examples, but then I twist it into being something meme-like, something kind of like takes you off guard, and then it, um, really increases the engagement.

Andréa Jones [00:22:23]:
Hold on, I need an example of the meme. Like, what do you mean by a meme? Like, turning a cat fact into a meme? Okay.

Ashley Neidert [00:22:31]:
Oh man, I literally was creating some just like yesterday. So for example, I could say something like, how to make your cat love you. So people are like, oh well, I think my cat loves me, so I want— let me watch this video. So I always hook them in by making them feel like they're missing something, like they're doing something wrong with their cat. And then, you know, I'm like, oh, you know, make sure your cat feels loved, make sure, or whatever, you know, give them the treats, do this. And then I twist it, and through my voiceovers I typically say something like, oh, and like, then enter a staring contest with your cat, and then if your cat, you know, beats you in the staring contest, then, you know, they have ownership over you. I don't know, I'm making this up off the top of my head. Um, but I always, I tend to twist those and Oh my gosh, brands.

Ashley Neidert [00:23:17]:
I have had many brands who have actually found that content to be so unique that they just want to be part of my cat fact series, which is really fun. I know this is a little deterrent from what we were talking about. Um, but yeah, I guess it does kind of go back a little bit into what I was saying of even though the pet niche is a very small niche of its own, you actually have to then become even more niched within your niche to stand out and be different and be unique. With compared to what everyone else is doing.

Andréa Jones [00:23:49]:
Okay, so this is the part where a lot of people struggle with, right? It's like, we know the storytelling, we understand what hooks are, we understand what works, but then how do we make it unique? So I'm, I'm so curious, like, how do we then find that angle, that thing that we do differently that no one else is quite doing? Um, what are some of the ways that you kind of like encourage your clients to find that? Like, is there an exercise we can do? Like, how do we know? How do we know?

Ashley Neidert [00:24:16]:
It's a good question because this is literally something that gets talked about all the time. So at least the advice that I give for people, and this seems to work, so we'll talk about it. Uh, the advice that I give to clients, the very first thing to do is at least to study the greats. So I say, okay, if you started your new channel, don't go following all these random small channels. Don't go following your friends. I say make your home feed your research feed. So yes, say like on Instagram we have the Explore tab. But to be honest, I tell people we need to have your research feed first before you decide the type of content you're making.

Ashley Neidert [00:24:50]:
Make your channel and then go find content or channels that is not only content that really appeals to you emotionally and is something that you would like to potentially replicate. Now, obviously, I'd never ever say we should copy anyone else, but there are many little aspects of other people's content that could inspire you. And then You're going to build up the people in which you follow. So make it so your home feed becomes, again, your research feed. So obviously Instagram is going to, or TikTok is going to start giving you other similar, like, content compared to what you're already following. And this is like the first step, because if you want to be unique, first off, you have to figure out what's out there. I mean, I feel like that kind of would make sense before you just try to reinvent the wheel. So what I tell clients, okay, so after a little bit, you followed all these creators that inspire you.

Ashley Neidert [00:25:44]:
Now from there, you have to be extremely honest with yourself and realize, what is my actual video editing experience? What is my experience with sales and marketing? Which, to be honest, obviously in the pet niche, the people I work with have no experience with any of this type of stuff. They don't know what graphic design is. They don't have experience with marketing and copywriting, et cetera. And so I'm like, okay, you have to be honest with yourself. There are so many creators who have access to incredible video editing programs, who have access to assistants, who have access to so many things beyond what you have access to. So you have to be honest based off of this research of all these creators, all this content that you're seeing, what is realistic for you and what type of time commitment is realistic to you? So I know we haven't even gotten to the point of like, how, how do you stand out and be unique? But it's almost like we have to lay this foundation of not setting unrealistic expectations upon yourself and then setting realistic time and skill expectations on yourself. Yes, we can always grow and we can always develop and learn. But for most people who are brand new, it just, I believe it doesn't make sense to be like, oh, I'm going to go make this, all these videos of skits of my dogs that take 2 hours each time when I have a full-time job.

Ashley Neidert [00:26:54]:
Like, it just doesn't make sense. And then from there, I have created this timeline that I teach my clients. Um, with the first phase being just truly an experimentation phase where I just tell people, try making content that takes you essentially less than 10 minutes to edit and just start putting it out there and find what aligns with you emotionally. So you have to find what aligns with your technical skills, aligns with your time availability, and aligns with you emotionally, in which you know that I could make this type of content for the next 6, 12, 36 months in the future. Now, I know that doesn't necessarily help anyone be like, oh, this is exactly what I'm going to— how to find that I'm unique. But those foundational things have helped so much with pet creators that I've worked with, because again, so many people either think I'm just going to copy— like, so many people just copy what someone else, someone else who is successful, what they do. I've seen this so many times with my own content. where people, I'm like, oh my gosh, that channel is exactly my channel.

Ashley Neidert [00:27:57]:
But finding a good healthy combination of other things that you like, that you see, and making it so that it's realistic for you is typically just the formula that works out for my clients.

Andréa Jones [00:28:10]:
Beautiful. I love that. Ashley, thank you so much for being on the show today. This is a wealth of information. If someone's like, okay, I have a pet, I think I wanna be a pet influencer. Tell them how they can find out more and get into your world. Yeah.

Ashley Neidert [00:28:24]:
So to start with my own pet creator or my pet channels, I am a full-time pet content creator myself, obviously. So I have Chip the Manx and Biscuit the Calico. Those are my two channels. And that again is how I even showcase through Petfluencer Secrets that what I talk about works. And then Petfluencer Secrets, you can find me on Instagram, but mostly where I do provide the most value is over on YouTube, where every week I do post videos about How to be all the basics, all the foundations of how to be a pet content creator and how to make money. And potentially, as I hope for so many people, how to be able to go part-time or full-time as a pet content creator.

Andréa Jones [00:29:03]:
Beautiful. I love that. I'm gonna put all those links in the show notes, y'all. Thank you so much, Ashley, for being on the show today.

Ashley Neidert [00:29:09]:
Yes, this has been great. I appreciate it. Thank you. Yay.

Andréa Jones [00:29:12]:
And thanks to your listener for tuning into another episode of the Mindful Marketing Podcast. Stay tuned for more episodes coming at you soon. And in the meantime, make sure you give us a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts. Apple Podcasts and Spotify. It helps keep us in the top 100 marketing podcasts, and that's all because of your support. I'll be back soon. That's all for today. Bye for now.