Episode Transcript
Don Mock 0:19
Alright everybody, Episode 110
Rob Broadfoot 0:21
110 110
Don Mock 0:23
110 Yeah, it’s like binary code.
Rob Broadfoot 0:25
It’s like summer in Phoenix.
Don Mock 0:28
Yeah, summer in Phoenix. That’s more like 120
Rob Broadfoot 0:31
Yeah, like it’s higher than that Yeah
Don Mock 0:33
hotter than that weren’t people’s shoes like melting on the sidewalk and I feel like people were literally burning their feet.
Rob Broadfoot 0:39
It’s getting colder though. It’s getting cold. We’re getting colder. My
Don Mock 0:43
my cousin lives out there. So I got the report on just how hot it is out there.
Rob Broadfoot 0:46
I’ve only been there once.
Don Mock 0:48
What What time of year Were you out there?
Rob Broadfoot 0:49
July.
Don Mock 0:50
Oh, really? Okay. Wow. Okay.
Rob Broadfoot 0:52
And route to Mexico.
Don Mock 0:57
But were you there at night? Because because that’s What shocks me the most is you’re out there. And you’re like, Oh, well, the sun just went down. It’s going to start to cool off now. Oh no.
Rob Broadfoot 1:06
it may get hotter
Don Mock 1:08
Like the the misters those are still going at like 11:30 at night. And you’re, you’re like, man, is it hot I mean, it’s just like, how is it that hot? I mean, it’s crazy.
Rob Broadfoot 1:20
Yeah we were only there for like a day it was literally a stopover. So it’s like we were there for half a day and then the night. So I didn’t get to do much or see much.
Don Mock 1:31
Yeah, every time I’m out there, which is not often but I’ll always ask the Uber driver, hey, you’re starting. Are you ending? Or you know, because they’ll be like, Oh, take me to the airport or whatever? Oh, no, no, I’ve been going since like three o’clock in the morning. Because that’s when everybody gets up to go like exercise like, Oh, everybody goes out hiking and running or doing all these crazy odd hours.
Rob Broadfoot 1:51
You can’t go during the day.
Don Mock 1:53
Yeah, it’s super hot. So 110 I’m glad it’s not 110 degrees right now.
Rob Broadfoot 1:57
Yeah, feels good outside now.
Don Mock 1:59
All right, what’s on topic for today?
Rob Broadfoot 2:03
I thought, you know, I know on episode 109. We talked about some social media stuff and this sort of ties into that. And we’ll get into that but I thought today we might talk about influencer marketing.
Don Mock 2:17
influencer marketing, Interesting. Interesting topic.
Rob Broadfoot 2:22
I chose that because I’m kind of in the thick of it right now with with a client that we’re working on. It’s and it’s a really interesting exercise and proving to be great. And I think it’s a really good opportunity for a number of different companies of all shapes and sizes and products and services and offerings and things. So a lot of learnings happening around here. And so let me start by asking you when when you think of when you hear that, when I say influencer marketing, you say, Yay, What do you What do you think?
Don Mock 2:55
What do I think of? Well, I think it’s initially I probably think a little bit more along the celebrity lines, which is What we’ve talked about in the past in pods, you know, many, many moons ago. So you think about more celebrity endorsements, but I don’t think that that’s necessarily What we’re talking about today or What we’re talking about in regards to influencer, right. So I don’t want to steal the thunder but it’s kind of the microtargeting
Rob Broadfoot 3:21
micro influencers is absolutely a term and that’s kind of What we’re going to talk about today.
Don Mock 3:29
What was your initial impression?
Rob Broadfoot 3:31
Same for me. I mean, for a long, long time, and I think the majority of people out there in the industry or not, probably thought or think of influencer marketing is Oh, Kim Kardashian.
Don Mock 3:43
Yeah, I was just gonna say Kardashian.
Rob Broadfoot 3:44
$250,000 to post a perfume on Instagram.
Don Mock 3:49
Yeah. And I don’t know that if if they kind of started it or whatever, but it feels like that sort of reality celebrity stuff kind of started a little bit of the influencer marketing, which was a derivative, you could you could argue of product placement in tv shows
Rob Broadfoot 4:06
yeah it’s just celebrity endorsement. Digital style, social media style.
Don Mock 4:11
Quick random side note. Product placement. I know we’re not talking about product placement. But I always think about the example of m&ms versus Reese’s Pieces. Right in E.T, that was the big that’s What kind of catapulted Reese’s Pieces
Rob Broadfoot 4:26
Put Reese’s on the map.
Don Mock 4:27
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Now, do you remember why m&ms was not why the why they pass on that or why they?
Rob Broadfoot 4:34
I don’t know. And it’s probably like, oh, you know, so and so like
Don Mock 4:40
there’s no great story there.
Rob Broadfoot 4:41
yeah I don’t know.
Don Mock 4:44
I do remember the castaway. The Tom Hanks, I know UPS passed on that one.
Rob Broadfoot 4:50
And It was the FedEx
Don Mock 4:51
Yeah. And then ended up being FedEx and I can understand that because it’s Hey, I mean, like, the plane goes down.
Rob Broadfoot 4:56
Yeah, well arguably the Wilson volleyball you know. I wonder if there was fighting between 2 volleyball brands it became a central character
Don Mock 5:05
yeah. Anyway, I totally derailed the entire conversation.
Rob Broadfoot 5:08
No, We’ll do another pod about that
Don Mock 5:11
but you kind of in my mind, I don’t know if this is accurate but my mind you go product placement, then you go to weird celebrity endorsement with television commercials, you know, and things like that, right? And then it starts to drill down into this weird reality show Kardashian What spawned this whole thing. Oh my god, okay, she paid a million dollars to put a beer in or whatever, you know, and like, bad Photoshop and stuff. And in like, Instagram posts back in the day, it was pretty funny. It wasn’t even like, Oh, we did a photoshoot of this product. It was just we shoved that which was funny so
Rob Broadfoot 5:40
So this, the whole project in particular and I won’t give away client names or anything but but it’s a it’s a client of ours. It’s in sort of the flooring industry, we’ll we’ll call it that and we’ve been working with him for a couple of years now and doing a lot of different things. We’re doing some SEO work with him. Now we’ve done some website work and some social media management, that kind of thing. And so we were sort of talking around and sort of pitch them the idea about looking into influencer marketing. They have a product that is very unique. I would suggest
Don Mock 5:43
I would agree
Rob Broadfoot 5:49
but it’s probably easily copied. Okay.
Don Mock 6:19
Okay. I haven’t considered that.
Rob Broadfoot 6:21
I think they’ve been on the market for a couple of years. I don’t want to say under the radar. But we’ve started to see some imposters sort of pop up. So we were talking about, well, how do we accelerate awareness, and all of these things? So we’ve done a few different things with them. And they don’t have big budgets, because they’re not a huge company. They’re a growing company. They have a tangible product. They sell all of it online. So it’s all retail. They do big business on Amazon as we know, Amazon takes a hefty, hefty cut of the business. And so the idea was, let’s try and move sales away from Amazon or towards direct from their site to improve our margins and make some more money. So we started kicking around the idea of influencer marketing. And again, they don’t have big budgets. And so
Don Mock 7:10
well, just as an additional tool to the ongoing SEO and the ongoing like, like, it’s not the only thing happening, but another tool, another tool
Rob Broadfoot 7:18
in the in the toolbox. And as we sort of take over the, you know, for them and expand their digital ecosystem. It’s important that everything worked together, meaning the site and the SEO and all the social media posts and management and the boosted posts and the paid social. And then we add layer on this component of influencer marketing. Yeah.
Don Mock 7:38
Left hand talking to right hand. Yeah. So
Rob Broadfoot 7:40
so just, you know, going back and starting to come up with a plan for it. We found a tool that we really liked because the first question obviously is
Don Mock 7:50
how do you find these people
Rob Broadfoot 7:51
how do we find these people? Yeah,
Don Mock 7:52
yeah. And weird niche, little, little business units. How do you find
Rob Broadfoot 7:56
how do you find them? So there are several platforms out there that are aggregators for influencers
Don Mock 8:03
Which makes sense,
Rob Broadfoot 8:03
which makes perfect sense and so we’ve sort of found one that we liked. And you go by niche, you go by category, you can do DIY projects, you can do home improvement, you can do fashion, you can do all these things. They aggregate everything for you across the different platforms, be it Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook, whatever. And they’re all micro influencers, meaning it kind of ranges from Oh, you have 100,000 followers, down to Oh, you have 2000 followers.
Don Mock 8:33
Ok my question for you is going to be What defines micro
Rob Broadfoot 8:36
I think micro influencers technically speaking, are anything under 10,000 followers Ok
Don Mock 8:42
Okay. Got it.
Rob Broadfoot 8:43
So we’re kind of dealing in, I would say a little bit above that. But we’ve got a few with that element as well. But but we’re not going after Eminem to post on his thing for $3 million. And so a lot of these influencers, these micro influencers and smaller influencers, it’s you give them just to tell people how it works, you give them your product and then you, I would say, half and half rely on them to generate the content versus you giving them the content, it just depends on their abilities and their page and how it works. And whatever.
Don Mock 9:20
Well, and you got to do the research on each individual. Do you like the type of content that they’re putting out? You know, obviously, it helps to familiarize them with the product by giving them some talking points about What it is, but again, you kind of gotta let them do What they do best
Rob Broadfoot 9:34
let them do their thing. Yeah. Let people do their thing. So So then it’s yeah, you take a look at the audiences and you try and figure it out. Obviously, which one’s align with your brand and your style and aesthetic and tone and all of those things. But there’s a couple of different things that you can try out of the gate, there’s, hey, we’ve got we’re going for a numbers play, right? We’re going for awareness at the end of day, we always want sales but yeah, we’ve got an influencer who’s got, call it a million followers. We have to pay him a little bit more we have to gift him something and their page is really good. Is it 100% DIY home decor? probably not, you’re gonna get some, right. It’s a little bit broader than that. But it’s a numbers play, right? You’re paying for not a lot of bang for your, I’m sorry, not a lot of investment upfront, you’re gonna get a huge reach, which for brand awareness purposes is great.
Don Mock 10:27
Totally.
Rob Broadfoot 10:28
Everybody, every influencer then gets their own promo code And then they also get a link, right to provide so that we can for tracking purposes know exactly where everything is coming from which is great, because then when we start to run all the metrics on the entire digital ecosystem, we know everything.
Don Mock 10:50
Yeah Well, it’s not only we know, you know, as you mentioned earlier, Amazon versus direct. Now we’ve got social referrals, What channel but then also, What specific individual Right, if there was an individual or you know, What was the point of entry things like that
Rob Broadfoot 11:07
Yeah, down to the individual influencer, we can go this person drove X amount of traffic to the site. Which is really that’s kind of their only job is to drive people to the site. And then conversion rates from there and literally, exactly. Okay. Our X spent, delivered X amount of dollars. Which is amazing for clients and agencies alike to be able to have that information. And then it’s just kind of a matter of figuring out as you go down the road with different influencers trying to figure out okay, are we better off with the, you know, 26,000 followers that are exactly in alignment With you know, then you starting to get to get into the percentages of conversion rates based on total audience. And you can really go down a metrics rabbit hole of nerdiness, which is great.
Don Mock 11:08
The problem with data is that there’s almost too much data now.
Rob Broadfoot 11:30
There’s a lot of data and that’s part of our job is going through and going. Okay, Here’s 78 pages of data. How do we present the top line?
Don Mock 12:06
Yeah, it’s it’s, it’s not only like, hey, this code generated X sales, it’s like, oh, at 11:53pm in racing, Wisconsin someone did this, then they did that, then it’s like, you can track the entire shopper journey. It’s incredible, it’s almost overwhelming. It is overwhelming. I shouldn’t say almost, it is overwhelming.
Rob Broadfoot 12:25
And even further than that, even even, even
Don Mock 12:29
I think I know What you’re gonna say
Rob Broadfoot 12:30
further than the past tense, we can look at the present tense, we can look at you and I were looking at this yesterday, we’re looking at Oh, here are the people that are on the site right Now.
Don Mock 12:38
Here’s real time mapping.
Rob Broadfoot 12:39
real time location data mapping. Where they are on the site, we can see Oh, who’s currently in the checkout line
Don Mock 12:47
Yeah, it’s unbelievable.
Rob Broadfoot 12:47
I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s pretty amazing. And it’s a great tool. So anyway, it’s all just about figuring out What types of you know, maybe you have a depending on your budget, maybe you have a handful of sort of more micros that are that are more directly in alignment with What you’re doing. Right? Meaning I’m doing DIY flooring in my house something as micro targeted as that. And then you kind of broaden it out to so you have some layers, right? And then you brought it out to home projects.
Don Mock 13:17
Well, I think I recommend and correct me if I’m wrong here. But I think I recommend and I recommend for anybody listening to this is don’t put it all into one basket. But we’re talking about influencer marketing right now. But that as we mentioned earlier, that’s just one part of the full digital tool set. And then so even within this one part, it’s okay, well, don’t put all your eggs in the one
Rob Broadfoot 13:38
Don’t blow your budget on one influencer and hope that it works.
Don Mock 13:40
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Spread that around, you know, to see What happens. And then, hey, if you do have additional funds, if you do have additional budget and things like that, hey, maybe you go back to that? Well, you refine based on the data
Rob Broadfoot 13:51
Yeah. And then you figure out as you go down the road, hey, you know, What if we if we go for a broader region, we’re a little bit broader in our targeting, but we still yield the same results, if not better, than that kind of shapes What we do. Yeah, we always say to clients, advertising is not an exact science, because if it were we would be podcasting from the Caribbean somewhere on our own island.
Don Mock 14:12
Well, I always say that there’d be no such thing as a stock market. I mean, which I know is not a true statement. But it’s trying to drive the point home that you can say all the right things, do all the right things, have the greatest product in the world lead everybody right to the checkout aisle, but it’s not a guarantee
Rob Broadfoot 14:29
guarantee returns are impossible, they do not exist But it’s a really good way again, too. And the other thing too, is not only is it driving awareness and driving all of these things, it’s great for SEO purposes. So we think about SEO being Hey, the sort of outward expansion of our brand across search engines in the internet, but backlinks we always talk about other people talking about us, that’s just as important to a traffic so it’s a great way to help build that too.
Don Mock 15:00
and if those sites are valuable sites that are linking out, right, that’s only going to give you more juice across, you know, the entire spectrum, right. And your social referral traffic, that’s important traffic,
Rob Broadfoot 15:14
it’s very important traffic. And it helps validate you from a brand standpoint, and then helps it effect search and how everybody finds you and all and all of these things. Yeah,
Don Mock 15:21
and Google is gonna go, Okay, people came in, they interacted with your site, they put things in a cart, and they checked out. I mean, that’s, you know, a valuable user.
Rob Broadfoot 15:30
And it’s different for different, you know, types of businesses, meaning, influencer marketing is kind of a no brainer, if you’re selling a widget. A good quality widget, right, that you believe in and you believe is a good product that’s a no brainer for influencer marketing, because that’s going to lead to direct sales directly. Yeah, like it’s a little bit more difficult or challenging. I would say, when you offer a service first, depending on if you’re a consultant, let’s say then it’s going to be a little bit more difficult to do.
Don Mock 16:03
there’s no immediate it’s not like buying airline tickets, or having something you put in a cart to your point with a widget immediately. Right. Right. When there’s a longer selling cycle. And there’s more, you know, consultative services, it’s a longer conversation. It’s not just there isn’t a straight line, if that makes sense. Right.
Rob Broadfoot 16:22
That’s right, it’s a no brainer for, you know, direct to consumer selling of products, and all those good things. But it’s been a really cool lesson. It’s a it’s a very effective tool. It’s very successful so far.
Don Mock 16:41
Yeah. Which has been awesome.
Rob Broadfoot 16:42
which has been great. And I think It’s super fun. And it’s it’s one of those things where I think clients need to think about it in terms of and I mean this for smaller or growing client. Influencer marketing isn’t something that’s out of reach of the budget. It’s not oh, I’ve I’ve made a $100 million company. And I have the budget to do that. You can do it on a small budget and it’s a effective way, I think to drive
Don Mock 17:08
I think the budget mostly might be in to sort of the time associated with managing all of the moving pieces and parts versus the fees themselves.
Rob Broadfoot 17:17
It’s true. It’s very true. And again, just I go back to that idea that if you are, you know, you’re thinking about SEO, on one hand, you’re thinking about social media. On the other hand, you’re thinking about your site, you’re thinking about all of these other things, boosting posts, and paid social and search engine marketing and all this stuff. It’s important to think about it holistically and make sure that all the pieces and parts are working together. It’s your hub. Yeah,
Don Mock 17:50
I would say, just to complicate matters even more, and I’d love to get your take on this too. I would say that authenticity is something to add into the mix as well. I mean, we don’t need to spend any time talking about it. But we’re all aware of big brands, you’re talking about $100 million companies that don’t need to do it that are doing it anyway, and not doing it successful and having it come back around and, you know, bite him on the keister, right, versus just making sure that you’re partnering with someone that does have an authentic approach to it. And it’s, it doesn’t feel like I don’t know What I’m trying to say here. Like, it doesn’t feel like it’s forced upon everybody, if that makes sense. Like oh, we paid to be in a Kardashian post, you know What I mean? versus just having that groundswell authenticity of like, Hey, Here’s a product that absolutely fits this micro target you know, and it’s an awareness play is what I’m trying to say.
Rob Broadfoot 18:43
If I’m selling press on nails and I go pay Kim Kardashian. $250,000 To do an Instagram post for the press on nails. That doesn’t feel very authentic. Pretty sure she’s not pressing on her own nails.
Don Mock 18:57
Right. Yeah.
Rob Broadfoot 18:58
And so I agree that and that’s why you go to your point, the management of it and the creation of the campaign and the research that you got to do to find the right people, and make sure too that their content is authentic. It feels right for your brand and is aligned to your brand is critical as well. And scene.
So when you’re ready
Don Mock 19:24
Will you steal my thunder? So when people are ready, Rob to sign up with influencer marketing where should they find us?
Rob Broadfoot 19:33
Well, you can go on our site use promo code. Rob said so 2023, of course everybody
Don Mock 19:43
That’s for our Patreon. we record extra podcasts, you know, for paid, right. That’s where the good stuff you know, the good stuff is
Rob Broadfoot 19:50
No but everybody, of course, can find us on the interwebs at www.mocktheagency.com and on the socials @mocktheagency And yeah, we’d love to hear from you and yeah and get your influencer campaign started today
Don Mock 20:04
Or maybe you’re an influencer.
Rob Broadfoot 20:06
Maybe you are an influencer and we would love to be influenced.
Don Mock 20:09
Yeah. Sounds good. All right. Thanks everybody.
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