Influencer Marketing Strategies You Need (To Start or Scale) with Chase Dimond & Cody Wittick

Hey guys, we're here for episode 7 of the e-commerce opportunity podcast. Cody my friend. How are you? Good, man How are you doing? Well, I just need one of those lights above my head. What was that? I just need that e-comm Cody instead of to match your e-comm chase behind me. Yeah, come copy me in shack We got it going all day Well, dude, thank you for being here. Do you mind starting with kind of what you're working on right now? Yeah, we're gonna I'm building kinship our influence of marketing agency me and my when I say are me and my business partner Yeah, I'm trying to build that as big as possible help as many people with influence marketing Amazing. How did you get into influencer marketing? Yeah, so my journey is kind of unique. I kind of just fell into it I played college hoops. So I've just been an athlete like all my life and stuff like that When I worked at a company called Kalo It was a brand that was fast growing kind of created the silicone wedding ring industry And I kind of got grandfathered in and I worked under a guy named Jordan Palmer He was kind of like a quarterback guru now. He's training all like the top draft picks And we were working with a lot of macros like big bigger time influencers celebrity type athletes But that's kind of my first start and introduction into what was called influencer marketing I didn't really think of it that way, but I just got to I was like sweet This is a gig that I get to still be in like the athletic world and you know, hit up and talk to athletes And then pretty soon Jordan kind of left it to me to build the program there so we started working in like a ton of different categories from You know mommy bloggers of the world to you know Influencers military like obviously you have everybody that's married in every category, right? Like so the use case was wide-ranging. So that made like the influencer community all the more wide-ranging as well It wasn't just like oh, we're a running shoe and we're just kind of in running So it gave me a lot of experience with so many different categories And so I got to see kind of like how influencer marketing worked within each of those categories But yeah, that was kind of my journey just being there three or four five years And building that program there and so I kind of just fell into it. Yes Dude, that's that's awesome. I think one or two things actually might be helpful before we continue What is your definition of like a macro influencer and like how do you define a micro influencer? Yeah, so I mean there's so many different definitions out there if you google like macro influencer, you're gonna get a different definition But how we would how we would define it is basically just any probably anyone above 500,000 of following and then especially like once you get into people that like Oh, I recognize their name because they're either on The Bachelor or they play a pro sport Like those sorts of things that would be like considered a macro influencer and how we define micro is like 10 to 150 K Or 5 to 150 K some people define it as like even smaller than that So that's kind of the problem, right? Like there's so many different definitions out there It's why it's still kind of a wild west of influence remarking. Everybody has kind of like their own Terminology behind it, but that's how we define it In terms of identification people Yeah, right. There's there's no like classification that everyone agrees upon that Also, I there's like no standardization of price like an influencer with a hundred thousand followers My charge, you know a thousand dollars with another hundred thousand influence or my charge twenty five hundred, right? So it's kind of interesting which makes it kind of fun. You've got to get creative with deal structure. I'd imagine Yep. Yeah, absolutely You bring up the reason why I would say the number one reason why it still is the wild wild west Because there is no standard across the industry to your point Like it's not like every person with 50,000 followers only charges on her bucks for a story post It's just like they charge what they get paid Or their agent, you know drives a markup for that. So yeah, it makes it difficult and I think that's why like we want to be as educational as possible and helpful, you know, whether it be on Twitter or just doing stuff like this and trying to educate people and there's more than enough to go around and trying to help navigate the Influence marketing world just because more than any other channel, it's so human, you know It's not like, you know your attribution window or like on Facebook ads or even probably as technical as email You're dealing with humans at the end of the day. So Yeah, it makes it makes it tricky Yeah, that's interesting. So question for you Why influencer marketing and kind of to elaborate basically in other words, I'm asking you say I have an e-commerce brand, right? Can you sell me on why I should be leveraging influencer marketing? What does it mean to you? Yeah, I love this question One of the things I would think about is just the need I think influencer marketing one has always been around We just the term became popular in like 2014 But like Michael Jordan on a commercial back in like the 1980s that was influencer marketing It's just like what's changed is the access to these people, right? So Michael Jordan on an Air Jordan commercial in the 1980s I was probably the only way that you were seeing him outside of just watching his games Versus like now you have Steph Curry and he's taking stories of like him in his house playing with his dog or like LeBron James You know like those things like that access has changed so that makes those people all the more influential not only to their audience So that's kind of at a macro level but at a micro level when you're working with like smaller tier influencers The power of UGC becomes more and more important And so I would say that's the number one reason that you can be leveraging influence marketing for your business Is the content creation ability of these people because a lot of them have built their callings off of their YouTube channel them having a great Personality being able to convince an audience not only to follow themselves, but like anything that they love such as products or brands So I think that's what makes it incredibly powerful not only on their channels as distribution But being able to work with creators to take their content repurpose it There's huge opportunities for brands To leverage it in that way Yeah, do I think you just see right is is universal in the fact that you could use it on email You could use it on top of the funnel on your ad you could use it on your website, right? One great content to your point you made up repurposing could live in three or four and five places in a way That's unique to each channel. So I appreciate that in terms of like working with influencers Do you have any platforms that you you love like what are your favorite platforms for working with influencers? And are there any social platforms that you try to avoid None that I would try to avoid I think the only hesitation when you try to go to on the channel like all at once like we need to do influence for Campaigns with on tick-tock snapchat Instagram Facebook Twitter like you're running into a problem Just in the same way as if you're a brand if you're trying to go on the channel too quickly, I would say as well same thing there, but I would say that the Continue to be the market leaders Instagram tick-tock. It obviously is very interesting and you see and hear stories of you know Making a ton of money on that platform organically I would still say that those things are outliers like those things aren't the norm of like making a hundred grand off one organic Tick-tock post but those two become very very interesting With influencers per se especially since even just tick-tock the content I think a lot of things are going that route of short form video content creative So I would focus on those two if you are gonna pick any Sweet. So lasering in then on let's say tick-tock in an Instagram when you think about working with an influencer Do you think about a deal structure in the same way on? You know an Instagram influencer versus a tick-off influencer Like if they're one of the same or two different people like is the deal structure all the fundamentals the same Are you taking like a platform by platform approach? Yeah there it can be definitely some things specific to that platform The way that we structure deals is definitely more focused on the content production Versus like the distribution to their own social channels So I would think about it in that way like for Instagram like maybe they produce four videos But they only post one of them But you get four videos in return to be able to repurpose that would be a way to think about creating a deal structure with an influencer rather than just Viewing that as like hey Can you do the traditional pay-per-post model where it's like we're gonna pay you you post on your social channel and we're hoping for sales Across your fingers pray to God and hope like type of thing so that those are some of the ways that Like would be helpful for people to think about a deal structure with an influencer is like more so unlike the content production Then even focusing on the channel specifically Because if the channel if if it raises the price and I'll just try to switch to a different channel Just because the focus should be on the content in itself. Not necessarily what they're posting on Right because the content allows you to repurpose it, right? So it's great for them to post it and be organic and get their distribution But it's also great for you to be able to put some spend over and really control like who's gonna see it Outside just that single influencers audience. This is great One question I haven't and I know you've kind of talked about this on Twitter and some other platforms Can you kind of walk me through like at a high level like how you build an influencer community and you know tips on? Identifying you know the outreach and kind of collecting the content. I know you had a pretty cool right on this recently. Yeah Yeah, I would say that this strategy like just talking through it applies to one influencer or a thousand But real simply like just going through the process is Identification like right so you have to be able to identify the right influencers on behalf of your brand that goes into Them analyzing their content creation ability Looking obviously I like an active profile something that has decent engagement rate and stuff like that But more so especially when you're trying to build an influence community The way that I think about it is there's a overlying philosophy in terms of building the relationship on giving and not asking And so the standard in the industry is hey Chase like I'm gonna send you my product, but can you post white? So it's very transactional right away Even if they do even if you were to post that two things That relationship started out transactional and so like that this goes into messaging The way that we believe the best way to start a community how to start relationship So if chase you're the influencer I want to start that relationship in the right way to where like I really value you as the influencer So I'm not gonna ask for anything up front because I'd really value you using my product so One being able to identify the right influencers to the messaging needs to be very no strings attached built on getting not asking Three getting them the product obviously can take a ton of time I'll say kinship. We have a we have a Shopify app that able to sync the store so you can do that Really effectively. I won't really go into that. That's a shameless plug there and then for being able to track after you like after I send you my product the variable is And what we see oftentimes even without asking for anything up front these influencers end up posting regardless Just because there is like sort of this law of reciprocation there But also to like we just started the right way and if they are an organic lover of your brand or product It's very easy especially with Instagram stories to just throw it up on a story or talk about it to your audience people naturally talk about things that they love And especially without the fact that you're not asking for anything up front There is that variable but what we do see is people post and so There's softwares out there one of which is called mighty scout that you're able to track whether they post or not And so us in an agency, we're doing this all the time for on behalf of our clients But we're able to track the organic content that's posted and then we're able to take that content Manipulate it and give it back to you so that you can get it right into your ad account Barring we have content, right? So we are following up to that as well. So That's a very quick like five-step process So in the short term you can get you just be especially doing this strategy But in the long term you're gonna have a relationship that you get to tap on and that's the real compounding value that you have as a brand Because even if you chase, you know You have a stock brand that you send out 100 influencers you reach out to them only 10 come back and you're like huge fans Those are 10 relationships that you have long term that you can trust and count on to be like, hey Would you want to work together on a you know, consistent UGC contract? Would you want to be a part of my affiliate program? Like these are people that are saying yes to like signing up and representing your brand Which is really really powerful like like basically you have a pool of people that you just can tap on at any time so I think that's where we do a lot of the education for brands is like trying to think about it in that way like Try to not be so ROI. Like I must see dollars come in right away, but think about this in a more long-term way Amazing dude, and then the last question I have and I want to go to the questions from Twitter because there's a lot of good Questions is around tools. I know you just mentioned one. I didn't catch it all the way was mighty My scouts one what are other tools that you're using either to Contact or reach influencers or even to run your agency, right? Whether it be this project management system. Yeah this that tool Yeah, so one of which is called tagger. It's a influencer discovery tool and platform That would be one of the biggest ones Yeah, so tagger is a big one for influencer discovery That would be a huge tool for people to use but honestly for influencers I always try to get people like Away from trying to think that they have to spend thousands of dollars on all these fancy discovery tools or platforms or CRM's when especially when like for brands are just getting into influencer marketing like there's great free tools at your disposal such as like Facebook Facebook owns a influencer discovery tool called brands co-ops manager, which is free It's not super robust, but it's still like it's Facebook and Instagram that you can discover influencers There's even Instagram itself like the drop-down arrow It's a great way That's like all based on the algorithm to like if I go to you and your profile and I click the drop-down menu It's gonna show similar people to chase that All based on Instagram just feeding this So those are some of the tools that I would recommend That are free at your disposal compared to like even if you pay for tiger, for example So tiger my scout those free ones that I just mentioned would be great starters Amazing dude. Appreciate that. We have a lot of questions from Twitter. I'm gonna try to get to as many of them as possible So let's start with the first one And I think you maybe mentioned this so if there's anything of these that I ask you that you feel like you already mentioned Keep long-term relationships with influencers Yeah, I'll just real quickly. I'll just go back to what I was just saying about like building Starting the relationship on giving not asking will help keep you long-term relationships with influencers So it just goes back to how you start. Maybe you start transaction will be very transactional long way But if you start on giving you're you're setting yourself up to or the potential to have a long-term relationship And then it's also like I could tie that back into how do you keep long-term relationships with anybody? Because it's human at the end of the day Like there is gonna be a give-and-take there like as you see these influencers be attracted to your brand There is like something to be said about okay continue to send them product continue to provide value to them Just as if like our friendship, how do we maintain a long-term friendship? Like it's the same thing These are human beings at the end of the day So I would just think of it like the more that you can remove like the influencer off The better in terms of like trying to maintain long-term relationships with them, you know, I love that. That's that's great some common mistakes to avoid Mistakes to avoid I would say number one The transactional piece reaching out to them asking for things up front Also putting a lot of stock and follower count like those are like the vanity metrics I would try to like if Instagram got rid of follower count tomorrow the way that I think about influencer would not change so like if If I went to a profile and saw zero like followers like it was completely removed I would still be looking at the type of content that they're creating and whether that I can gauge them on whether they Can produce really quality video content? We only use video or follower count as guide rails meant to like pick people But that is it is supposed to like narrow down like your search But that's about it. So that's a definitely a trap that people still get caught up into of like How much fault how many followers does this person have? What's their engagement rate? You know, like how many likes is this person on average get those things are just continue to be more and more meaningless Yeah, and I understand why like it's an easy thing to fall into which makes sense of why it's common, right totally Another question is how do you normally reach out to influencers? Are you reaching out via email? Are you reaching out via DM? Are you doing that? Great question. I was actually on a previous podcast where he was off He was like making a bigger deal about like how I was sending like back in the day at Kayla I was sending so many DMS to like these big-time athletes and he was just like you make it sound so easy And I'm like it is man. Like the worst thing is like they don't respond or they say no But I get it is it can kind of be intimidating at first but to answer your question I would say just DMS emails are the ways that you can get a hold of them the better and it begins to be a numbers game at that point, but Email can be a little bit more professional if you're wanting to work with them right away DM is a little bit more casual if you're maybe just for example wanting to just send them product So I'll just think about it in those two ways Sweet one follow-up question. I just thought about so if you're DM'ing someone are you being DM'ing them as Cody? Are you DM'ing them as the brand? Profile, right? So if it's someone asked about ASOS, right? So are you among them as ASOS or Cody? Definitely from the brand like the more you want to try to eliminate any hurdle that this person would not respond So if I've never heard of you before like from a you know If it's Cody compared to like oh ASOS, I've heard of them or even if it's just a brand It's a little bit more like inviting Versus just like you could just be some Joe Schmoe off the street So I definitely like recommend shooting them DMS from the brand itself Especially at first until you can get to a point where like they know you at the brand Like for me at Kalo like I definitely shot DMS from my personal account and stuff like that But that was after we had like a clear relationship at that point Well, that makes sense. I'm gonna ask this question. I'm not in your world such as we don't know exactly what this is asking So hopefully you do Permanent deals like branded Instagram accounts and dedicated influencers for brands similar to how ASOS does it Yeah, what I think this question is asking is like more so to influence our whitelisting or boosting posts through Instagram handles like such as influencers handles So I'm not familiar with what ASOS does but this sounds like what they would do if they work with an influencer They might boost the post or run ads through that individuals handle. And yes, we do that all the time The only thing I would say on that is the biggest variable to success because we've seen Influencers crush with whitelisting or page access is another term for it And we've seen an influence or brands that have not been successful with it. And the biggest variable is creative You know your boy Nick Shaq would say that at the end of the day as well like the biggest Variable to success within Facebook ads is the creative and so it doesn't matter if you have Conor McGregor or some influencer you've never heard of like the best performing ones through Running page access through their handle is gonna be the type of creative that they are running Awesome. That's fantastic. One more question from Twitter and then I just wanted to ask questions that I was thinking about Do you have any experience building an affiliate empire of influencers? No personal experience of doing that and that was never anything that I did personally at brands Obviously or with the brand that I worked at Obviously brands are continually interested because they see The Gymsharks of the world that have built out a very robust affiliate program But I would just say like they didn't start with okay We want to build a huge affiliate program and we're gonna ask, you know to give them Give them products so that they can post and you know run discount codes or anything like that It's actually it starts with product seeding It starts with getting the product out there to as many people as possible See the genuine adopters adopt the product and brand and fall in love with it and then things like an affiliate empire to use that phrase Starts to build itself so that's it goes back to my point earlier of saying like It just sets you up for success of anything else that you want to do because you have this pool of people that are generally lovers of your brand and product If that isn't an interest to you Sweet and the final question that I have is what would you say is the most valuable skill that you've personally learned? And how does that serve you today? I would be a broken record here but honestly that the valuable skill of and this is just for me personally, but also in the influence of marketing world is that phrase build relationships on giving not asking I think a lot of people and I think you and I have talked about this a little bit is a lot of people have a scarcity mindset of even just knowledge or Being able to educate and like you put out a ton of content you who always are trying to you know Educate people give people, you know advice tools Things that they can use to help their email campaigns. You're not like hoarding it and so like in the same way That's been a huge value that I've seen just not only like come back and return for me personally but just building relationships with people like yourself or People in the network. So I would just think about it even outside of just building relationships with influencers think about the community that you want to get into think about the people that you want to have access to and think about what Would be valuable to them so that you can provide valuable information tools knowledge whether it be physical products and to them that you can start the relationship in that way rather than like coming in and asking of Something of them I would say that's a huge huge skill in terms of just business, but also within the influencer marketing world Dude, fantastic way to end it Thank you so much for being here for anyone that wants to connect with you to work with you to pick your brain just to Follow along your content. What's the best place or places for people to follow you email you whatever it might be? Yeah Twitter and Instagram just at Cody Wittek for those those are the two platforms that I'm putting out content a ton about obviously mostly influencer marketing But those are the ways that you can connect with me personally and therefore my agency But yeah, cool, I will drop your handles below and buddy, thank you for being here and thank you guys for listening Thanks, Chase. All right. Cheers. Bye