All right. Well, Talyan, this is what you get. Thanks for joining. It's great to have you on the show.
Carl. How you doing? Doing good. Ready to rock.
Sided about today. All right. So, Talyan, influencer marketing. It was funny.
I went back and I listened to our last podcast, which was almost exactly two years ago on a different podcast, my last company. We talked about experimentation at that time. I'm like, listen, I want to get Talyan back on and talk about experimentation again. You're like, Oh, it's talking to Mark.
It's a lot more interesting to Carl and I, but she's Carl is a budding influencer himself. So hopefully he gets followers. You know, I'm almost up there with some of the NFL players that you work with. I don't know.
They better watch out. No, that's so tall. You start with a little bit of an intro on your side. So you're VP of strategy, analytics, that influential.
Why don't you get a little background on that? Totally. Yeah. So I mostly work with Fortune 500 and then separately consult for a lot of early and growth stage companies.
And in terms of like what I do, a lot of the most common challenges that you see businesses face. I'm sure you guys are, you know, very in tune with this rate. It's like that revenue problem. And so the way that I've broken that out in my mind, like revenues, just like this big number, but a lot of times it tells a story around like three things like number of customers you have, how often they're buying from you and how much they're buying from you.
And so, what I do in terms of the strategy analytics function, I do it specifically for influencer marketing now, but essentially it's like how like creating acquisition, retention, monetization frameworks to helping companies be able to achieve just that. And so we want to get into what this means specifically for our audience and B2B. But I'd love you to start with just what's the world look like and be to see what your company does. Like, because I assume, I mean, this is kind of influencer marketing with a capital I, capital I think, you know, anything that we talk about the B2B space will be a little I, a little I, a little I, at least for now.
So maybe educate just the audience on how does this actually really work in kind of big brands and kind of the consumer space, you don't mind. Yeah, totally. So I mean, in terms of influencer marketing, I should have done this other way around, but when I started working at influential, I was basically like, okay, cool, I'm an influencer marketing. And then I was like, but wait, like, is there more than just people selling product, like posing with a product or anything like that.
That sent me down into this rabbit hole of truly understanding like the neurobiology and the neuroscience behind influencer marketing and what it means for consumers specifically. So it's all really rooted in this premise of like, memetic theory, which a guy by the name of René Girard came up with a theory 1950s, I did not invent this theory. And all it is, is it's basically that people don't make decisions in silos. A lot of times they're influenced or they're impacted by what's going on around them.
And in many ways, that's just how we create social norms, it creates safety for us, but then it also creates efficiency. And so I was like, okay, got that. Like, I understand that this goes deeper than a celebrity posing with a product and consumer marketing. That sent me down into this other rabbit hole of truly like understanding how do you drive influence for consumers specifically.
There's like basically, you know, three things you need, right? There's the emotional side of things of what type of emotion do you evoke in a consumer. There's the cognitive side of it of like, what information might they need to pull the trigger to take a specific action. And then there's of course the influence side of it, which is like, how is the delivery being made and who is it coming from?
And so the way that I like to think about like influencer marketing for consumers, and I think it's very much similar to like the B2B space too, is like, imagine the jet rocket or rocket jet, whatever you want to call it. That's basically what you say. And then the rocket fuel is how you say it and who says it, that's really what gives it the fuel to propose like a jet. So that's how I boil it down in terms of what the consumer space really looks like.
What does your company actually then specifically do with in the space, you don't mind just for people who don't know? Absolutely. So we mostly work with Fortune 500s and there's two sides to influential. There is the proprietary tech side.
So there's the SaaS solution, which a lot of brands use in terms of finding managing, betting influencers. And then there's also the managed service side of things. So we're pretty much like an influencer marketing agency where, you know, you share the goals, you share the business objectives. We formulate a strategy that specifically what my team does in terms of formulating a strategy of how are we actually going to go to market with influencers?
Who's audience that we should be talking to? What type of creative should we be putting in front of them? And how do we actually reach them? And then from everything from that to the measurement piece of like what worked, what didn't work and why?
Can you give us a case study of like a brand? How do they identify the influencer? We always see it at the end of the kimke or the somebody famous, like doing a Pepsi commercial or whatever. Like, how does this actually start from the beginning and kind of walk us through that?
And then I want to reason I'm asking because it feels like we talk about this in the B2B landscape, but we're completely different terminology. So it'd be great to kind of understand a little bit more on the B2C side and less just pivot to talk about like B2B and what does it mean and how does it work? Yeah, and just to tack on to that question, it's a fascinating question because it's like, yeah, how does Pepsi decide I want to use like a male NFL player versus because that's like one target audience, presumably? And then how do I again, bring Kim Kardashian or Kardashian to come and do something that's more glamorized or like, it feels like a difficult decision unless Pepsi's like, no, just do both of them, right?
And maybe that's a play as well. So yeah, really curious on how like that these decisions get made and what are some of the factors that contribute to them. Yeah, I love that. So essentially, there's two types of decisions that come into play.
The first is a lot of times there's more of that qualitative feel of like, I like this influencer where typically someone on the brand side is like, I follow this influencer. I like their content. I want to be able to work with them. And that's essentially what fuels the types of influencers that they work with.
Nothing wrong with that. It's definitely more qualitative. There's a time and place for that. There's also the quantitative, right, which is what influential like companies like, you know, we do, right?
Which is, okay, let's take a step back. Let's understand who your audience is. So if we're using the Pepsi example specifically, who are the consumers of Pepsi or who are the consumers of essentially competitive products that might not be consuming Pepsi, but we maybe want them to consume Pepsi. So it's understanding those audiences and really diving into their interests.
So we essentially have a tool where we're able to ingest the social profiles and be able to like, understand what types of content are those audiences engaging with and how can we like infer their interests? You know, are they interested in sports or are they interested in fashion and beauty? When all that is said and done, you essentially come up with this output that there's a ton of interest all over the place. But you tend to come up with like these like macro themes of interest where the majority of that audience is really interested in, let's just say, you know, sports or business or whatever that may be or even like fitness.
And based on that, like based on the majority. So a lot of the times it's like what percent of the audience is interested in that thing and how intense is that interest because the more intense it is, like the more of an emotional connection they'll feel with the content. And so using those two insights that essentially informs, okay, well, what types of verticals of influencers should we be looking at? Should it be the athletes or should it be the people who do fitness or what might that really look like?
And then from there, we get into understanding what kind of creators are in the space, who is our audience, you know, already following, you know, they see as taste makers, whatever that be. And we structure the goal just based on the business objective that we had when the client briefed us. So I'll pause right there before maybe going into other parts, but want to make sure, like, does that make sense? Yeah, it makes perfect sense.
It's fascinating because when I think about this from the frame that you've now like developed for us, you brought up, you know, kind of this lens of the interests and I might be interested in sports or fitness and you kind of see that maybe from like, whatever I'm digesting on Instagram, etc. But also, I guess, like, that's why maybe I get delivered certain advertising that is nostalgic because it is maybe somebody like you on the other side of your team that is like, okay, Carl is like a middle millennial or something like mid to early 30s. And he grew up with these shows and there's a lot of people in that audience. So we're going to bring some actors like back to life from shows that they loved when they were young.
And it's going to create this like nostalgic like effect. And I totally just make that up or is that like a process that like your company would go through? No, it's definitely the thought process. And it actually goes into nicely within like that phase two of the development of like, what kinds of influencers do brands, you know, work with and what does that work well look like?
Because the next step literally after finding the talent is like, I want to say, you know, five years ago, it was very easy for brands to tell the creator what kind of content they wanted. But now it's the relationship is the other way around the influencer or the creator because they have such a solid understanding of their audience. They're like, okay, I get it. I get that this is your brief.
And if this is your goal, here's creatively how you should go about it. So the actual execution piece, in other words, like the example that you just provided of how do you put content in front of someone that really resonates with them where it makes them feel sort of like, same, like, oh, this person gets me like, I should be paying attention. That piece, a lot of times like, yes, it could come from like an insight in the audience stages. But a lot of times it's the influencer.
It's the creator who understands the audience so, so well that they're able to like infuse that nugget to create that vibe to the content or that like nostalgia feel. Man, there's so many good nuggets here. When I'm taking away, I'm taking away too many things for like a short conversation, but your industry cares, the companies you work with care so deeply about the evoking, you had like a three part paradigm, right, where it was like evoking like an emotion, cognitive information, what information do they need, et cetera. But like, you all seem to care so much more prioritize the emotional layer of this framework, whereas I don't know if we're if Cassidy were ready to go to B2B, but it's like on the B2B side, we really deprioritize that like to where I don't even know if there's any even consideration given to the emotional aspect of a buyer, right?
It's all cognitive. It's just let's transfer information to them like an ebook or webinar or something like that. Why is a huge question about the ask you so get ready? But like, why has like B2C like figured this out and like we're going to use like tried and true human psychology and B2B.
It's just like, yeah, we're going to keep doing ebooks, you know, we're going to keep just transferring information about our product to our audience. By the way, which we only measure firmographically, you know, it's like other job title and you know, the industry that they work in and how big a company is like the criteria that we use to target them. Whereas you all are like getting weird, deep with it, trans and talking to people who deeply know these audiences. Why is there such a disparity in like the prioritization, you think, I guess, what's your hypothesis there?
Yeah. So I mean, I'll caveat by saying like, I have way more B2C experience than B2B. So what I'm about to share is just a hypothesis. But like I'm curious to hear your guys thoughts on that too, specifically for B2B because you guys are living and breathing it.
My hypothesis is that with B2C, you don't have a sales person. There is no middleman. Your salesperson is literally your copy, your creative, your website, you get the point, right? With B2B, you do have, I don't want to call it a luxury, but you do have someone that is adding color to things, right?
Like they're following up with you, you know, they're trying to get a call, like maybe if they're lucky enough, you might hop on a call with them and they're able to say that one thing that can convince you and get you to the next stage. And a lot of it is like spray and pray because it's about like revenue is very much becoming like a volume game. Unfortunately, like with B2B versus like a quality game of like, okay, is this person truly qualified to have this conversation with me and are they a right fit for what I'm trying to sell? That's one hypothesis that I have, but I'd be curious on, you know, since you guys live and breathe B2B, what do you guys think about that?
Carl, why don't you go first, man? You said something that is important, but also I'm going to challenge it. You said a luxury to have a salesperson. I actually think the way it's framed in this conversation is it's a crutch.
It says, oh, our marketing doesn't have to be that good or evoke emotion. Like if we can just get them on the phone with a salesperson, then the salesperson is the crutch that then has to do all the emotional evoking and all that actual selling. But you're saying in B2C, we don't have that luxury to have a human being get you to buy a 24 pack of Pepsi's, right? That would be not be like economically legitimate.
And so, yeah, it's like a crutch. It's like marketing isn't put your marketing, your copy, your landing pages have to do 100% of the selling. And so you take it much more seriously. And really, you've injected sales psychology, what I might use in a sales process, just straight in to your copy, to your influencer marketing, to your campaigns, to your website.
So, yeah, that's a really interesting insight that you brought up there. It's the salesperson really is the crutch that now marketing is like, yeah, we don't have to carry that much weight of the sale here because the sales team will take it the rest of the way. What do you think, Cassidy? That's how I kind of understand.
Yeah, that was a good one. I would say there's maybe three things. One is, I think B2C marketers are just more sophisticated and have more experience in kind of the art of marketing than B2C. I think too, despite what you read in here, we still treat B2B buyers very unemotionally.
Like, that's product wins. Like, it's a rational decision by a buyer group. It's never been decisions are made on emotion, which we know is not true. And I think the third thing is kind of the structure of measurement is completely flawed in B2B.
Like, the goal of the marketing team is to get a lead to get to the salesperson. It's not to drive a transaction that you see in B2B, which is like, I need something to buy the Pepsi to your point. Here, it's, I just need to get a lead and I'll give it to Carl and he'll take care of it. Maybe, but probably not.
But even in addition to that, Cassidy, like, it's like, it's almost that the goal of the B2C marketing is to evoke an emotion that then we know leads to a transaction. They're like just thinking so much deeper, I feel like, than B2B to where you're exactly right. It's like, what bare minimum activity can we do to capture an email address that we probably already have in our CRM to send it to sales? I mean, just like the example, Colleen walked through with her company, like, that's a level of data about buyers that B2B has no clue.
We don't even talk like that. This idea that you have these buyers and open further their habits or behaviors or wants and their desires. Like, that is not a conversation. It never happens in B2B or do we have access to the data to even address that?
We can do that if we want it to. But it sounds like the technology exists to do that. So, yeah, it's really interesting just how, yeah, your marketing strategies are just so far beyond. It's, you just plumb so much deeper in the human psychology side and B2B is still way, way behind anywhere.
When it comes to tech and also just when it comes to like, what is the goal of marketing? It's not in B2B to sell someone, create an emotion, usher them all the way through a transaction. It's really just again to capture a little bit of information and hand them off, you know, to a person. I think one other thing too that's fascinating about what you described was like that the company acknowledges that they don't know everything about the customer and actually are paying the influencer.
It's more than just like, oh, we've got, you know, some gal walking down a beach and this is a Royal Caribbean ad, right? It's actually like that gal also like deeply understands the audience. So, it's almost like, would this be correct that these companies are also not just paying for like product placement, but also paying for that audience and that deep subject matter expertise. It's not just like a pretty face or like a super ripped like NFL dude throwing a ball and drinking Pepsi when he's tired.
It's also like they deeply understand and know something that we don't as a company. We're paying for that as well. Would that be accurate or am I continuing to make things up here? No, no, I mean, there's definitely a lot of validity to that.
And a lot of the clients that I work with, you know, I tell them you're not just paying for the campaign. You're also paying for the learnings and the insights, which is what you just touched on. And so I think there's like two sort of stages that brands can be in, right? Because I also have experience working with like early stage companies where it's harder for them to get a handle on the data side of things and to get those audience insights.
So depending on what stage you're in, you could be a company where you don't have a ton of data insights. And so the question is now, how do I make noise to get enough signal to then use that to generate, you know, learnings and experimentation and things like that. You could be a fortune 500 and have a ton of data but be absolutely overwhelmed by what singular insight should I be focused on to generate the majority of my results? And that's also like, you know, their challenge, right?
So you have like, I guess, like being in my role, you have to like learn how to navigate those two challenges because they're very different and they require a different level of data fluency. But I also loved what you know, you touched on, which is like that collaboration and those like learnings that like the influencers able to provide in the B2C space. And you're also now seeing that with specifically in the B2C space product collaborations between a creator and a brand where they're collectively coming together and they're saying, okay, I want to put out this singular product because here's what I know about my audience. Here's what you're able to offer.
Let's connect and create this new level of synergy. You're seeing that a lot more these days with B2C because of what you mentioned. One of the things that you mentioned on the B2C side, which I thought was interesting is kind of a leading to it here again, the power where the shift in power to the creator. And so I was my kids watch Mr Beast.
I'm listening to Mr Beast on podcasts. And he was mentioning the story about how in the early days, you know, big brands would come to him and they would tell him what to do and how to place their product and all that. And now it's like, no, no, no, thank you, brand. I got it.
It's my audience. I will tell you how we're going to build the content and how we're going to work your brand into my videos in a way that's, you know, good for the audience. And it's just interesting the power shift and maybe that's just because he's a massive influencer. And like he has the power.
He actually has the audience. And, you know, the brands are not, you know, kind of being dictated by him in terms of what happens versus the other way around, which I seen for years, it was always the other way around. We want to hire the influencer, but we're going to tell them what to do and how to hold the key in and all this other stuff. Is that just a one off thing?
Because like, there's only a few influencers that are that big or is this kind of a you see this shift happening in kind of B2C space where it's the brands getting up some control of creative license to the influencer. Totally. I think it's more definitely more common, the larger the following size of the influencer, right? Because they technically have more leverage.
They have more essentially like access to like an audience that they're not easily willing to give up because they know how valuable it is. And you touched on something interesting, which is the power dynamic that they're able to create just by simply having a better understanding of the audience that they have access to better than the brand does. So that immediately creates a lot of that power dynamic where I am seeing more influencers, you know, being able to say like, okay, I get it like here, I know this is the creative brief. And while there are things that I need to adhere to from a brand safety standpoint, they definitely abide by those as long as there's some management around that.
But the other negotiable parts, they're able to say it and to show it and do it in their own voice, which I think adds an additional layer of more so like that brand safety standpoint where it's like, it comes off as credible and it comes off as authentic because they are able to control that process and know what's going to resonate with our audience better than the brand. So how do we then take all this in your expertise and apply to B2B? So how do we help and help all of us figure out how to take baby steps into B2B space in terms of doing this? There seems to be a lot of conversation around doing this.
Arnold's kind of an aren't you a pseudo influencer for chili piper or something like that? I don't know if they pay you some money to do something over there, but like they don't pay me money. They send me swag and running and stuff like that. But before we jump into B2B, if it's okay, one more question that's fascinating to me about the B2C side is the measurement piece, which I think is really relevant for B2B.
It's so direct response, right? I need to see like this ad did not work unless somebody clicked it and then like clicked to talk to sales right after, right? It's very binary. You click a Google ad, you go in, you convert, you talk to sales.
It's really elementary. But like it'd be impossible to do like a Venmo campaign with an influencer and be like, oh, we have this much incremental new revenue or usage or whatever the goal is this month or this quarter, this half of this year, because of that one campaign. It seems like B2C cares less about that maybe or are there really good tech? Like maybe what you have that actually helps them to measure these trends at a really granular level.
So back to the measurement side and how you treat these to revenue. Yeah, absolutely. That's a great question. So essentially with influencer marketing, a lot of what you see agencies, you, they're very focused on like awareness, upper funnel types of.
So a lot of the like the measurement pieces that you're alluding to that they fix it on are things like, you know, how many video views or how many likes sort of like those vanity type metrics. And yes, those metrics do essentially provide some sense of scale right around things like it helps you wrap your head around it. But I wouldn't say that they are the thing that essentially results in like a successful campaign. It just gives you a sense of like maybe the volume, how it might compare to a benchmark, that sort of thing.
But how it's typically done with influencers, especially if like the goal is sales and I'm using sales as an example, because like that's probably the biggest focus for B2B is the self-reported attribution piece, which I know that like refine labs talks about that like a lot in terms of like including like self-reported attribution and using that data as leverage to understand like channel effectiveness. That's been happening within the B2C world for years, like essentially when Shopify, you know, definitely like started like they had integrated that self-reported attribution piece very, very early on. So there's that data, right, that helps us understand like if the goal is sales, there's data like that that helps us understand what's really like moving the needle from, and I think helps brands also look at the channel effectiveness between like the different partners because it is very, very unlikely, especially as the cost of the purchase increases that that one at is going to produce this direct response where it's going to like generate like the sale, especially if the price point for something is a lot higher, that's very unlikely, you know, they might need a little bit of a time to meditate, they might need to see content from different sources read product reviews to eventually like pull the trigger on that purchase. So we look at self-reported attribution data, but then there's also different types of data vendors within the space that allow us to understand test versus control what's happening and to be able to like understanding criminality.
So for example, for, you know, there's brands that we work with where foot traffic is super important to them. So we have established data partnerships where it's like, okay, so from a foot traffic standpoint, this is my control group, I'm not going to serve them an ad, and this is my test group and I am going to serve them an ad and then let's see what their foot traffic behavior was and understand incrementality, like because the biggest question I think in marketing is, was someone going to take that action whether or not they saw your ad, and so there's methods like incrementality type stuff that we can do for measurement, same point to Man, again, it's just to highlight again that it's so like so much more sophisticated than any mechanisms for measurement we haven't been to be. I mean, how much more challenging is it made you can speak to this tall like Pepsi again to go back to that example, like it's one thing to have like an e-commerce transaction where I'm like, I saw these nikies and I bought them from the Nike store transactionally on the Nike website. Okay, that's pretty like simple to attribute.
But like Pepsi, it's like, I see it in a super bowl ad I saw that drive to the store next time I get groceries, and then I buy them from, you know, like Walmart or somewhere, and then they have to wait for the data to come through Walmart who's just one of their like suppliers. It feels like it's an impossible task, but it can't be right. I mean, how's your industry like crap that nut? Yeah, that's very difficult and specifically like within the industry, there's like a lot of people who argue, oh, if you have a multi mix model, like media model, you'll be able to answer that question.
But a lot of that data is biased too. Like there's things like the reporting lag, there's just things around data quality, especially if you're like pulling in like social ads data like ever since iOS 14 changes, like you have to be skeptical with the data that it's not clean and it's not perfect. So yes, there are those different types of modeling that you can do to basically say, okay, there might be a correlation. It's not like the thing where it's like, okay, you know, influencer marketing was what worked better than the TV ad that you might have been running.
The best way to figure it out is like, and I know this isn't always feasible for brands. So again, this is also what muddies up the data is, you know, that on off thinking of like, okay, let's experiment, like let's pick a moment in time where we basically understand and analyze what lift might have resulted if it was just influencer marketing. Okay, now let's power influencer marketing off and turn on TV ads. What changed if we potentially seen the data?
And again, even that's not perfect because there could be a lot of bias that's coming through. So it all goes back to like again, like the audience insights piece of like what is it for them? What touch points do they value and what touch points do we need to experiment with to find that ideal blend because each touch point plays a valuable role, you know, in that consumer journey. So it's just continued experimentation and learning something new each time that you can integrate into the next tactic.
It's just such a different mindset. Castiel handed back over to you, but it just seems like a culture around the points and the value of marketing is just so much more than direct revenue, right? This is a totally different mindset. Like we're experimenting, we're learning, we're not going to have full visibility into this.
That's fine. We know we need to be doing brand awareness anyways, right? It's just like that is people just think I think rightly, if that's even a word using this context, but there's just a more sophisticated and kind of evolved mindset around marketing than in B2B where it's like, if it didn't work in this exact way and where we can't measure it, then it's not good enough. And you just kind of go back to tactics that are usually not very good, but you can measure them, right?
You can measure their poor results, but at least we can measure them, right? So that's what I'm taking away from, kind of what you just described as a different mindset around marketing and what its goals are in general. Yeah, I would say even one thing in B2B that we often overlook is the notion of awareness. So we usually think that you're giving examples like Pepsi and so forth, which are everybody knows what Pepsi is.
And so they're trying to move the needle in a fraction of a percentage point, but like in the B2B space, not only are we focused on kind of that, that mere term lead, but we're also not even thinking in terms of like nobody knows who the fuck you are to most of these brands, right? Like nobody knows that you have a product or some small group of people are. There's no strategy to build awareness in your market. What are like affinity to your brand and all the other things that happen downstream?
Most of the time in B2B, like people just don't know who you are. That's your number one issue. Yeah, it's really interesting, right? Like I contrast, like I've been going deep into the rabbit hole of B2B and trying to understand it because I think there's parts to it that are interesting where I want to be able to like see, okay, what can be changing B2B because we started to also get like increased demand from B2B clients.
I don't know what the hell of that expertise, but I think one of the things that's like super interesting that I've been getting down into that like rabbit hole around is also what about B2B? Like, are there things that are being done in B2B that aren't that I'm not seeing in B2C? And if we look at influencer marketing, like just black and white compared B2C versus B2B influencer marketing in the traditional term? Yeah, of course B2B is far behind.
You know, you're not seeing influencer marketing as much, but one thing I am seeing about around B2B is the community factor that I don't see in B2C. So in B2C, right? It's a little bit, and I know this is it's not like as like tangible and I don't have hard data to show this, but this is just what I observe in C is around like a B2C influencer marketing is very much like it feels very one directional. There's very few campaigns where it's a bidirectional relationship between the consumer and the creator.
Some creators are better at it than others. But when I look at a community like what Refine Labs has done, that's a bidirectional relationship, right? Like you guys have built a two-way conversation between buyers and marketers, and you are using their questions to fuel the next type of content that should be created. And by the time they've consumed all those pieces of content and they're ready to have a conversation with you, the caliber of questions is a lot different than someone who might have been like reached from a cold kind of way.
So I find that really interesting that I think that B2C can catch up on. And would you call that influencer marketing in the B2B landscape, or would you call that something else? I think influencer marketing is technically going at one day. It might not be today, but in a few years, that's the direction it's moving where it's moving towards community.
So I wouldn't call it the traditional influencer marketing sense, but I do think it's just community. But most influencer marketing, I do believe in the next few years, is moving towards that community direction regardless. Maybe I'll ask it, do you think there's a room in B2B for traditional influencer marketing? Where do you think this is just how we should think about applying it in the B2B space, which is more subject matter experts, community driven.
Like, this is a lot of what we get into with our customers, helping them figure this out. You think there's a place where there's the celebrity in the B2B space. And maybe the example of this would be Salesforce tried this at the Super Bowl was that two years ago with Matthew McConnie. And I kept wondering, was that going to work or not for the B2B space?
Is somebody going to be like, hey, I got a better brand affinity to Salesforce because I like Matthew McConnie. Does that work in the space or? If I could add to that, I mean, you see HubSpot as an example, I think they're doing, what's the campaign? They're now, what's the gal's name?
She was the evil witch in the show, Wanda, Catherine, totally blank on her name. But they did a big campaign with that major actress, which was like a pirate, like trying to conquer the seven seas with her CRM. And now there's, they're doing like a Western version, but they're like the first brand that I've seen, like, do an ongoing campaign with a celebrity, like a very well known actress, who is so well known. I can't remember her name.
Yeah, I don't even remember the Salesforce. I'm going to actually jump in right here. Anytime I give a Salesforce example, Carl's going to have a HubSpot example because he's the word to HubSpot. So this is like, I'm actually like, hey, like, come on.
I don't even remember that commercial. I don't even remember that. Salesforce, who's that? Who's that?
Are they a company that you know about? Yeah, but I do see that more. I think B2B still catching up with some of the influencer marketing. It's still like small time creators.
You might even call myself one of those, right? Like really small time. We're like, well, eight can it's a micro micro. Micro micro.
Not small time. I want to be politically correct here. I might use a micro influencer, but still like largely because of subject matter expertise and not really because of a celebrity status or massive audience. You know, these are super good questions.
The way that I think about it as it pertains to influencer marketing. I think the value of content is being able to basically say or show something a hundred different ways, right? Because at least one of those ways is going to resonate with someone from the audience or someone from the community and not everyone understands or not everyone receives information in the same way that you and I might. So knowing that, like having observed that throughout this man in my career, like that's just been like the game changer for me for what caused me to be, you know, different in my approach and really dive deeper into like the branding and the creative side of things because I used to ignore that when I first started my career on the strategy and analytics side.
I was like, okay, I don't need to know that. Like, let me just go straight into the numbers and understanding that has been super key. You look at like the personal development industry. It's close to a $50 billion industry.
You look at what Tony Robbins says and what someone like Gary Bain or Chuck might say, right? Like they might be talking about personal development themes. They're essentially saying the same thing. They're just saying it in different ways.
And one thing resonates with different people and it just causes a community to like flock towards that specific thought leader or subject matter expert, whatever you want to call them. I think like going back to the question, right? Like, is it effective whether, you know, it's a celebrity or is it more effective when it's an employee or a subject matter expert, whatever you want to call them. I think they all have value depending on what the audience values.
If they're coming up with a unique way to communicate what it is that they want to communicate and they're finding a way to like say the same thing that ladders back up to the key content for the brand and the founder vision, then I do believe that they have room to play within the field. That's fascinating. It's really, um, it's got me thinking like maybe smaller brain, you know, B2B brands should actually make this play as far like building awareness around what they do. If nobody knows who you are and you attach yourself to an influencer or celebrity, maybe that's an interesting strategy.
But I digress how for B2B listeners, how do you suggest they go about thinking through this? Is there like a framework or follow these five steps or I think they should go from, oh, this is an interesting conversation. Like, what do I do about it? If anything?
Yeah, totally. So for me, the framework that I use is it starts with audience, right? So the first step is to understanding who is your audience. So in the case of like B2B, what does that ideal customer profile look like?
And not just, you know, like the demographics of it, but really diving deep into where do they get their information? What do they care about? What is their mindset? Like maybe what you're trying to sell them is a completely like earth shattering concept for them where they need a little bit more education.
They need to be primed in order to be in the state to actually like receive that information. So understanding their mindset, understanding their knowledge, right? So this is specifically, I imagine this is very key on the B2B side where you have technical and non technical decision makers. So how do you sort of like lower that entry for, you know, when I say knowledge, it's around your audience understand what knowledge base do they have?
What do you need to build, especially with the non technical stakeholders where they're a key decision maker? And then the expectation. So what are their exact expectations? The more granular that you can get with that, the more you can think about structuring the content in a way where it phases because like the other thing that I've learned when it comes to like B2C marketing is that one content is not the silver bullet to be able to drive results.
So it's like the orchestration of multiple pieces of content throughout the consumer journey. So it's like, if I understand their expectations and like I can figure out, okay, how many steps is it going to take me with my content to get there or what like, how can I phase this out in such a way where it doesn't cognitively overload the person. It doesn't cognitively overload the body. So that would be like step one.
As part of that, now that you've identified that the audience, their mindset, their knowledge, their expectations. Because I think though demographics are like lower hanging fruit, they're lower hanging fruit because they're easy to target from a media standpoint. And yes, eventually you do need to think about a way of how do all of these insights translate into something that I can like do and scale, but we're not quite there yet. So understanding mindset knowledge expectations also allows you to understand where they're getting their information from.
And so by understanding where they're getting their information from, you can understand is there a diversity of who they get information from, or is there like a single type of person that they're used to getting it. So what I mean by that is like specifically like when I'm buying, I'm looking at, you know, peers, right, like what might my peers be saying and they don't need to be influential at all like they don't need to have a high following size like I'm looking to them to be able to understand what might they have experienced, but I'm also looking at subject matter experts, or if that company has employees or who are super active, right, like I might be following them. And that might be another way that I'm educating myself around, you know, content so it's really understanding, okay, is there diversity in where they're getting their information from and what type of information, because it's not just about what you say it's also who's delivering the message that I think creates and you want some conversation so it's very important to like get these insights from your audience. The second piece is like okay, all these things right like lead to the type of talent that you should be working with, especially if you're a smaller brand, you might see them pop up on your feet, keeping notes of like how like looking in the comments and saying like okay, how is the audience responding to their content that gives you clues around, are they going to be an effective creator for my offering.
Now you go into that conversation, you know with the creator, and you have to sort of like approach that person with like a very clear relevant business reason on like why you're approaching them it's like okay like this is my audience insight here's what I see you doing super well with your community. This is why I think it would be a match more so that type of outreach versus I think a lot of creators get annoyed when people reach out and they're like, you know, why are you even contacting me clearly you copied and pasted this to 100 different other creators this is over my time. But by making it very customized, you're now building a relationship with a creator who's more likely to help you and collaborate with you and that part I think is key to a very synergistic relationship. So now you leverage their understanding of like the audience that you're trying to reach, what do they know does their audience value data does their audience value creativity does their audience value simplicity all of the above.
It's understanding that right and they can help you understand that and then it's basically seeing how the audience responds to the content which holds the clue of should we work with this person again, or should we take their piece of content and you know put media behind it to reach other audiences like them. So that's my three part sort of framework for how you know a smaller business could do this. So audience talent and the third was content creative collaboration and then fourth one is distribution. Well, it was going through my mind when you went through this which is an excellent list and your explanation even better was the amount of time you spent on breaking down what you need to know about the audience and just thinking about what Carl said earlier which is we don't know any of those things about our audience.
It was it shows the importance of what you're trying to say that is it all comes down to like how much do you know about the audience, then from there it becomes very intuitive. Okay, to reach them what is the type of talent you need where do you find that internal external etc etc how do you test the content to see the resonates if it resonates in you know how do you distribute it and amplify it makes a lot of sense it's just might take away with man that the audience is priceless and most B2B marketers don't do anything close that level detail. Yeah, it's so intentional I mean I wrote down what you said mindset knowledge expectations I mean we don't even use those words and be to be you know it's like you're so much more intentional about how you describe audiences radically different than how like a traditional B2B market would describe audience you know or ICP you use a word ICP right and that's just such a just badger word in B2B and it just means something so shallow most all right it usually just means like okay VPs of data in ops at companies with 500 employees in Texas and it's just like that's it I'm going to start targeting them no intentionality really given to mindset knowledge expectations you said something that was really important to I think a lot of times in B2B we think of campaigns as like these short things and they're not really connected to other campaigns right I can be wrong I've worked with every marketing team in the world but most of its very short term thinking we want to run a campaign this quarter around this upsell opportunity or this new product there's not like a longer window of time that's like what are we trying to do an educated audience over a longer period of time right and you alluded to the fact that that is something that's important to see what is that period of time typically in your experience look like are they planning out campaigns for 12 months 18 months longer shorter what is that the time horizon I guess in this cycle of contents tied to the customer journey yeah that's a great question so most the default is typically like most marketers still to the same approach it on a campaign by campaign basis there's nothing wrong with that if you're again there's nothing wrong with that if you are intentional with what that specific campaign or temple moment is going to serve for you as long as you're clear on that and you know what you're getting and you know it's sort of like that short burst there might be nothing wrong with that if there's a goal or intentionality behind it the better way to approach it is how do I create like a seamless sort of like ongoing conversation typically the brands that do that look at it from a 12 to a 16 month time period where they call it like what is that always on strategy that evergreen strategy and there's really like two ways that like I think of it there's the reflexive approach which is what's going on within the space within the specific like community in the audience that there maybe that's top of mind to them so like an example of that might be like chat GPT like is there may be like key questions that are coming up for how this is going to be on the screen or the questions that are coming up for how this might intersect with my product or my service offering right there's the reflexive approach for as we're going through that specific time period there's going to be questions time with questions that come up that we're going to need to tackle there's also the reflective approach which is the polar opposite of that it's like okay we've got 12 to 16 months what types like we don't want to cognitively overload the consumer so how do we create this like storyline where we move the consumer along in the consumer journey and what does that exactly look like instead of thinking of content as a silver bullet what types of content needs to be set up in a frequent way to be able to move them just one step closer along in the consumer journey and let's measure how quickly maybe we could be moving consumers through that consumer journey or let's measure the amount of advocacy that we're able to drive if we leave consumers longer in that consumer journey so that's another way to approach it I'd say like yeah the time thing you know definitely of course longer is better because it creates more of that seamless comprehensive evergreen approach but even with a longer time horizon you're going to want to have both a reflective approach as well as a reflective approach. Carl those are two more words that you're listening to.
Man I so many words they're awesome like these are the words that B2B needs right these are the concepts that B2B has yet to adopt and it prevents us from taking our marketing to the next level you know again I mean if I take anything away from this tall it's that like I have no idea what I'm doing you know like with my career largely and with marketing you know so thank you for that that's a compliment but yes fascinating got that down. Carl wanted me to ask a question of you from a friend of his. Sure. And that is how does Carl's friend become an influencer and B2B any tips for that friend.
For B2B specifically. For B2B specifically I don't think Carl's friend has a hoop. I think Carl's friend is ready for B2C I think. Go for it you know.
Well okay so the first step is becoming like what everything that you guys are doing like refine labs has the playbook for essentially like being able to become subject matter experts and like expressing that in a very consistent way so I'd say like the first step is like for that person for your friend Carl. Unless it's you and you're just asking this question but. I mean I'm not going to quit anytime soon on Cassidy and go be a B2B creator for sure it's not a dream of mine at all. I'm going to do it as a side hustle.
Yeah you can do both it's doable. So it's I think step one just immerse yourself in whatever it is that like you feel like you can come up with at least two to three key content pillars to be able to like talk about in a knowledgeable and educational entertaining way like how can you not just like get attention but sustain attention. So the more that you can take these really complex pieces of knowledge and simplify for people that actually creates approachability and when you create approachability there's more people that are willing to like engage with you and say hey that's like a really interesting way to look at things. So the second piece is then implementing different like you're going to have to find your own voice basically because you could have a really really good piece of like a mental model right that you might be willing to share with your audience that really positions you as a subject matter expertise.
But if your delivery is you know flawed like and by delivery what I really mean is your tone the way you're expressing it how you take pauses the speed at which you're talking like all those things could be the things that are like blocking you from actually creating a connection with your audience. So being able to like find I know it sounds cheesy but the delivery aspect finding your authentic voice is super key. The third piece is like how do you best communicate right like so some people are great at video other people are great at like writing simplified pieces of text especially on like LinkedIn to capture attention. Again it's connected to the finding your voice thing.
And then I'd say the last thing is just do whatever you need to do to create consistency but don't just be consistent about the things that are essentially like that you can be consistent about like be intentional with what's working so be consistent about the things that are working and drop the things that aren't working and over time essentially if you want to be proactive and there's like B2B companies that you want to be able to work with. You could be the one to like reach out to them and share the insights that you have around the audience just by like making noise and listening for signal by how your audience has responded to content. And then you can go to the right position to reach out to B2B companies and say, Hey, this is why I think it would be a fit. Here's what I know about your audience.
Here's why I am sitting on top of like a highly important and relevant audience for your brand and here's how you can work together. I'd say those be my suggestions. A million dollar playbook right there. Yeah, that's really good.
You could go start like a $10 million consulting agency for B2B tomorrow. Carl be your first client. I'll be your first client. Client number two is Carl's friends.
So I'm going to let him know too that this is on the table but you know we'll see. I do have one more question. I know we're going to be mindful of time. And maybe this is more than the B2B space.
I'm sure the B2B space like with well known influencers is kind of a maybe a more clear market in terms of like what the pricing is and so forth. But if you're trying to do, you're trying to be an early adopter in the B2B space. How do you figure out how much you're going to pay an influencer or what even that arrangement looks like? Any thoughts on that?
I was dying to figure out how much I should start charging for this. I'm looking out for you, Carl. I'm looking out for you. But end of this podcast, Carl would have heard.
I'm going to get an LSE that I've been starting while you guys were talking about. I'm ready to go. Yeah. Pay is a very interesting thing.
I will say that it's easier on the B2C side because it's pretty much like followers here's make the pay predictable, but there's also a lot of pay gaps and inequity with diverse creators specifically. And so that's also the thing to be like cognizant of like if you're working with, you know, maybe like communities that have access to like diverse communities or their diverse creator, making sure that I mean this should be across but definitely into the B2C space like we try to do this, you know, very differently and mindful of how do we not make that pay gap worse and you know, just basically pay diverse creators what they deserve to be paid on the B2B side because there's not a lot of at least we don't see a ton of like outward examples of B2B creators being utilized. The cost for creating content is a lot lower than what you actually see in the B2C space. So it's a very highly opportunistic time to really like get involved with creators.
What we see specifically with B2B is it's less about here is your rate and it's more around here is what you know we're thinking of what would you charge for this and typically the B2B creator in that instance is coming up with. So the time commitment is this is this aligned with you know the knowledge I already have or does this involve me to think about my time in a little bit of a different way to be able to accomplish the end goal. So a lot of times they're factoring in their time for like what the rate is but eventually when B2B catches up to the scale that B2C is at, it's going to be much more predictable rates right now it's just based on like time, hours, that sort of thing. But if a brand is you know really wants to work with creators that's in demand, they can pretty much you know justify a rate, especially if like that creator is key to being able to connect to their audience.
On the B2C side are we talking like hundreds of thousands of dollars millions of dollars I mean really like throw a dart at the dartboard from here on like a creator on Instagram that has like a modest amount of followers to be like they're an influencer but they're not like Kim Kardashian either like what really is like some of the what is the range I guess. We could range anywhere from like like specifically within the US to range anywhere from like $2,000 to 50,000 for a piece or two pieces of content. That's like the range that we're talking about now for celebrities that's a totally you know different story. But essentially like sometimes they do have that leverage to demand higher rates and it's really just about like the brand sort of thinking about okay do we want to is this really worth it and because a lot of times like with the brands that we work with especially too.
It's not just about that one influencer being the only influencer to create content for that time period it's also about like okay we got to be paying other creators so do we want to put our eggs all in one basket or do we want to diversify the mix of creators the mix of followers sizes that sort of thing but it could be a very wide range for sure. Yeah it sounds like it could be super lucrative. That's fascinating. $2,000 on the low end for a piece of content and you would describe a piece of content not as like a full fledged commercial but even just like an Instagram post or I'm vacuuming my house with a shark vacuum and it's sponsored by shark right.
Yeah 30 second like video content piece and sometimes it could even just be like a static like you're capitalizing that you can justify the creator at least can and you Carl you too I put you in that bucket to justify that cost because of your name your likeness the people who are already following you and the people who are already like sort of looking you know to you for information so. I mean you know what Carl's gonna do after this he's calling up chili piper and he's raising his rate. Like yo I thought that I was gonna deal by getting a beanie once a quarter but I feel like I'm getting under salt here chili piper so it's up. You can be better Carl.
I'll be your rep Kyle we'll go. I need it. I need it. Maybe you can help me to boost my rate to three beanies a quarter and then I can share with my daughters.
Maybe they can get you what's that thing you wear the short sleeve sweater what do you call that thing maybe you're gonna show me. You shouldn't it pull a can of city I don't know why you have to give us such a hard time all right. You wear a sweater but it has short sleeves not like I've never seen this before but I guess that's what you wear in Southern California. I mean it's like when you want to vibe and like you want to go out to dinner and it's like okay it's gonna be a little like crisp at night but you're not gonna wear like a long sleeve or a jacket.
It's like swivel man. Nick Pola. Is that what you're doing? Okay I've never seen this I'm gonna be honest but they probably got it from the discount section I hate to tell you that.
Yes. And wow this podcast went just a whole totally other direction here. Tall is in Los Angeles Carl so like. You're in near Nellie County.
I'm just up for you. I'm in Temecula right here Riverside County just down a little bit down the 15. I have to point that out because we're calling you out just means this is like some weird ass thing that you do. I'm just more irrelevant than ever.
It's like you guys think I'm an influencer and irrelevant. I don't know what to take away. We'll bring the sweater pull of back. I'm gonna bring it back.
If I was ever here to begin with but. Was here Cassidy. One more question and I promise wrap up this will be quick one. Some of the conversation in the B2B space I've heard and this makes sense to me is like you should be a user or an advocate of the product.
Do you see that in the B2C space as well meaning like I think there's a belief maybe Carl has a micro influencer like if you never use the product like would you endorse it in the B2B space versus maybe that's the case in the B2C space that's kind of a two part question you see that in the B2C space where an influencer is like yeah I'll just take your money and I'll pretend I'm using the shark vacuum or do they have to really admire the product and do you see that changing it all in the B2B space where the purchase prices are obviously a lot bigger. And so are you a user of the product or does somebody's being paid to hook it before. And I'm going to call you answer that I'm going to guess and we'll see if I'm right or not but like I can't imagine that a B2C influencer is like a power user of everything they advertise I mean some of these Instagram videos like using a vacuum and one and then it's like maybe makeup and another and then it's some other makeup brand and then it's like some clothing or whatever right and so it's like it would have to be an advocate for so many things and a lot of times during the same category right it might be two different types of makeup and it's like can you really be a power user of both of them all of them. And you have the barrier to using tools on the B2B side very expensive but that's what I think I think no so you clarify.
So I think that's Carl. You could do B2C influencer marketing but we won't poachy we won't poachy but essentially yeah it's like well it's interesting because as part of the proprietary tool that we built at influential you can actually like basically scan the timelines of a lot of like the creators that we ingest and be able to see have they organically without paid promotion talked about a product and a lot of times those are the best influencers because they already have like an affinity for that specific brand and product and you can tell like the content is just immediately elevated when you're able to find those influencers because they're they have already been talking about you know the product and you don't really have to like they know the product you don't have to really coach them on the product. I will say separate from that there is value of working with influencers who have a propensity for a category but are open to a brand so for example if you're a mom influencer right and like you definitely have a propensity for like cleaning products and you know cleaning up after your kids and all that stuff and so yes like they're a good fit because like they also have a similar access to an audience that tends to gravitate towards those specific categories. Depending on the strength of the content you can definitely create like brand differentiation just by the effectiveness of the content but it's very difficult to your point like you brought up an example of like there's influencers where you know three months from now they might be working with a totally different brand same category.
It's hard to control for that because that piece is basically you know referred to as exclusivity it's an exclusivity clause and it's like it's hard to control for that and if you do try to control the influencer for that then the rate is going to go up. Again this is why it's also important to like diversify the different types of creators that you work with there's value in the users there's value in the creators that have access to audiences with a propensity for that category or that product. There's also value in you know in certain instances celebrities it goes back to what is the goal and how do we orchestrate all these different pieces in such a way where they all lead to the same overall goal. I imagine that an influencer probably wants to actually avoid too much of that anyways because it could harm sort of the authenticity of their brand with their audience like okay Carl's he's peddling chili piper in the spring and then he's peddling a competitor's product in the fall.
It feels now like I follow him and it's sort of commercialized now like what I followed Carl to begin with is different now feel like he's just like he's wearing this makeup on one day and now he's promoting this makeup on another day and it's just like well I bought the other makeup because you said you loved it but now you're on the Mac makeup or whatever right. And so I imagine influencers are careful as well which brands that they work with because they want to make sure like the goldmine is the audience and they don't want to lose audience or harm their audience because you know it feels a little bit too salesy or marketing z or yeah totally totally they don't want to be like a walking NASCAR hood with all of like a lot of examples like they it's definitely a balance for them in the way that we're able to detect that specifically from a technical standpoint too is like a lot of times you see the higher the amount of brands that they work with in an X amount of time whether it's six months or 12 months. You also see a negative impact to their engagements. So it is a balance and I would say that most creators try to be careful about that because they're very they don't want to be called out by their audience for life.
Exactly the example you know. Fascinating. What I liked about your example is it applies to be a B is just the way you talked about the segmentation the mom example I mean you can see this in the B to B space like I'm going after a given industry given type of persona maybe the non technical buyer the type of person I'm going to work with will be different than maybe the technical buyer in a different industry so I think it's a for us to understand the mom example what moms might be driving or hocking as far as influence they could apply that to be to be as well as you break down your strategy there so it's good. Carl what else you have on your mind.
Tall is there anything that you are just like I'm a burning passion about that you wish we would have led you into and we are just terrible at asking questions because I know that you all have been working on a lot of B to be frameworks etc. Is there anything you want to share that you're like man we didn't talk about this but this is like near and dear to me in my heart did we miss anything. No I mean I think just based on how organically the conversation when we really covered it all in just in terms of like even the framework for like when we touched on like how that could apply for B to be really to touch on also. If anybody wants to get in touch with you and pay you money or in beanies for your time to get some help get some consulting get some ideas on standing up maybe their first you know be to be kind of influenced how to be in touch with you.
Yeah they can connect with me on LinkedIn so yeah there's a lot of letters my name so assuming they spell it right I should be able to come up on the link in the show. So people can link directly to it but no this has been amazing so thank you so much I'm sure we're gonna have a part two because I think that this space is really blowing up like I think it'd be decided people calling it like you got like Nick Bennett and stuff from companies like. Air me air me that is like starting up this whole like kind of because like this creator not sponsored here not sponsored here. Send to hoodie if you want to be sponsored here but like there's a lot of people thinking about this and I think it's going to evolve very quickly.
I still don't think it's going to get anywhere near you described and I'm interested to see where the tech goes that's the part I'm interested in I'm like do I need to go be a SaaS founder right now and get tall in on this company now because there's no analytics for this kind of there's no way to scrape or pull in all of this great data that you described it's just no mechanism for actually doing this at scale you know and I think that there's going to be a whole category of tools that are billion dollar companies doing this in the very near future. So that's something I think we should talk about part two depending on how kind of this evolves over the coming quarters. Yeah let's do it we definitely need a part two because we definitely need to go deeper into the tech side of things and just look at the space for creator marketing which is just blown up so love that. Yeah there's two things I'll put on the plug with here at the end one is as influential moves into the B2B space Carl's cheap you know you only need to give a beanie this as influential.
You'll be hocking your products in no time. He's hoping you add up you add his name to the database for the net polo so there's any brands out there looking for net polo influencers. Carl's your guy it's been two years since I posted on Instagram but I can jump back in that game if there's a net polo brand out there that wants to be Abercrombie and Fitch if you're listening I wear your stuff okay so you know have your people contact my people so good Carl this is the first thing I'm going to do as soon as we hang out. And I am convinced that the goal for 2023 is to get you a brand deal even if it's the beanie it's to get you a brand new a box of shirts and I will bet success to me so.
There's a lot of brands looking for a scruffy scary looking dude out there to wear their stuff. It's almost vibe man it's coming I'm playing the long game here. Alright well I think we better cut it there probably and it's been great we'll definitely get a part two on the books thanks for your time it's been awesome. Thank you thanks guys.
Alright Carl we're out we're out at the start of a stacking growths done. See everybody.