On today’s episode, Kunle is joined by Taylor Lagace, Partner, Co-Founder of Kynship – an Influencer Marketing Agency. Taylor started out his marketing journey with an NFL Agency before building out the influencer marketing department at Common Thread Collective.

Too many growing DTC and eCommerce brands leave influencer marketing out of their marketing strategy. And you can’t really fault them for doing so. The influencer ecosystem is complex in many ways. There are many “wanna-be” influencers with fake/unengaged followers, the “bikini-clad” influencers that have only one type of followers, and others still who quote astronomical figures for one-off posts. Influencers have gotten a bad rep and it’s easy to see why.

But at the same time you see brands that have cracked the code of influencer marketing and are using it to skyrocket their growth. How can brands with limited marketing spends leverage the potential of influencers? Our guest today lays out a simple process to get started with influencer marketing while getting your money’s worth.

In today’s episode, Kunle and Taylor discuss the nitty-gritties of influencer marketing and bust more than a few myths along the way. If you have questions like: how do I find the right influencers? Or Which social platform works best? Or How do you build a funnel with influencer content? Or even which tools should you use for your campaigns?, then this episode is an absolute goldmine for you!

Here is a summary of some of the most important points made,

• • Influencer generated content costs less than half of studio generated content
  • Attention-grabbing ability is a key criteria for choosing an influencer
  • Instagram stories are THE best medium for organic posts
  • Youtube is a good place to find the right influencers
  • TikTok has lower conversion revenue
  • Seeding helps you identify flag-bearers (and save you a lot of money!)
  • Whitelisting lets you control the targeting, audience and frequency of the content

Covered Topics:

On today’s interview Kunle and Taylor discuss,

• Studio generated content vs Influencer generated content
• Influencer selection criteria
• Instagram vs Youtube
• Influencer videos checklist
• The 3-pronged approach
• Communicating with Influencers
• Building a Funnel
• Action plan for <$5M companies

Timestamp:

• 11:50 – Taylor’s Journey:
  • Built up the influencer marketing unit of Common Thread collective
• 12:50 – Studio generated content vs Influencer generated content
  • Studio shoots cost upwards of $15,000
  • You get double user generated content at half the price
  • “User generated content is more native to the feed than studio generated content”
• 15:15 – Differences between influencer and user generated content
• 16:35 – Influencer selection criteria:
  • Persona and audience should align with the brand
  • Engagement requirements
  • Organic pay-for-post doesn’t work well usually
  • Attention-grabbing ability of the influencer
• 19:40 – Instagram vs Youtube for activation:
  • For organic posting – IG Stories
  • Youtube posts cost the most
  • Stories are cheaper and drives direct traffic to your website
• 21:40 – Youtube is a good place to find the right influencers (at least 5k followers)
• 23:30 – TikTok
  • Pay-for-posts are too expensive
  • Tik-tok has a lot of younger demographic (= lesser spending power)
  • TikTok has lower conversion revenue
• 23:55 – Mass Seeding:
  • Identify at least 300 influencers for giveaways every month to start off relationships
  • They may talk about your brand for free
  • Seeded Influencers end up costing half to work with
• 25:45 – Influencer videos checklist:
  • Get videos of 15-30 seconds so that they work everywhere
  • Get 3 videos at a time
  • Give them a creative brief as per the objectives of your campaign
• 28:25 – Communicating with Influencers:
  • Best to avoid adding them to groups
  • Email, Phone or DMs works best
• 32:25 – How to decide on a fair payment for content/posting?
  • 10-100k influencers – Max $500 for 3 assets
  • Identify a big pool and start at a low point
• 36:20 – What is Whitelisting?
  • Organic social has lesser organic reach
  • Average engagement are 1-3%
  • You source content from influencers w/out them posting to their handles
  • You control the targeting, copy,(lookalike) audience and frequency of the content
  • To serve ads of influencer content to their followers from your handles
• 39:50 – Defining influencers:
  • Micro – 10-100k followers
  • Mid-tier – 100-450k followers
  • Macro – 450-1M followers
  • Celebrity – 1M+ followers
• 41:30 – Building a funnel:
  • 1st touchpoint – (whitelisted) influencers engaged audience
  • Always optimise for conversion
  • 2nd touchpoint – Upto 95% of the people who saw the content in the 1st touchpoint
  • 3rd touchpoint – website traffic
  • 4th touchpoint – added to cart
  • Leading to a landing page using the influencer’s collection
• 44:30 – The 3-pronged approach to do monthly:
  • Seed influencers to identify the would-be flag bearers
  • Source content from these flag bearers (who make great video)
  • Use paid media to scale and maximise the content
• 46:10 – Case Study: GymShark
  • The 3-pronged approach + eventually onboarded these influencers on a robust affiliate program
• 50:15 – Action plan for <$5M companies with small budgets:
  • Use MightyScout in tandem with Seeding
    MightyScout tracks the posts automatically and can redirect to your channels
• 54:38 – Influencer marketing tech stack:
  • Facebook brand collabs manager (Influencer search engine)
  • Tagger (identification)
  • MightyScout
  • Facebook Ads manager
  • Refersion (Affiliates)
  • Kynship Seeding app (Shopify)
• 57:40 – Creator vs Influencer – is there any difference?
• 59:00 – Does Humor work for promoting a brand?

Takeaways:

• Instagram stories are THE best medium for organic posts
• Youtube is a good place to find the right influencers
• TikTok has lower conversion revenue
• Seeding helps you identify flag-bearers (and save you a lot of money!)
• Whitelisting lets you control the targeting, audience and frequency of the content

Links & Resources

• Facebook brand collabs manager
• Tagger
• MightyScout
• Refersion
• Kynship Seeding app for Spotify

Tweetable Quotes:

“Instagram stories are the cheapest and go the furthest.”

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