The Best SEO Podcast: Unlocking the Unknown Secrets of AI, Search Rankings & Digital Marketing

From Posts to Profits: Maximizing Your Influencer Marketing Strategy with Ishveen Jolly

• bestseopodcast.com • Episode 636

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The influencer marketing landscape has transformed dramatically, with Open Sponsorship evolving from a platform connecting pro athletes with brands to a tech-enabled agency helping businesses maximize content across all marketing channels. Athletes and influencers now provide exceptional ROI when their content is strategically amplified beyond social media posts.

• Influencer partnerships work best when integrated across your existing marketing channels (email, website, paid ads)
• Athlete content can be repurposed for 6 months in your marketing with proper rights agreements
• College athletes now represent a massive opportunity for local business partnerships
• Female athletes and WNBA players have seen exponential growth in influencer value
• Service-based and B2B businesses see surprising success using athletes for humanizing technical offerings
• Testing multiple smaller influencer partnerships helps identify which personalities truly resonate with your audience
• Even "mundane" industries benefit from influencer partnerships that add storytelling elements
• Internal employee engagement represents an overlooked opportunity for influencer collaborations
• Micro-influencers with highly engaged communities often outperform celebrities for specific target audiences

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Guest Contact Information: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ishveenjolly/

https://opensponsorship.com/

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The Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing podcast is a podcast hosted by Internet marketing expert Matthew Bertram. The show provides insights and advice on digital marketing, SEO, and online business. 

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Speaker 1:

This is the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. Your insider guide to the strategies top marketers use to crush the competition. Ready to unlock your business full potential, let's get started.

Speaker 2:

Alright, welcome back to the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. I am your host, matt Bertram, having some technical issues again, I don't know, but I have Ishveen Jolly with me with open sponsorship. It's a influencer marketing company from across the pond and wanted to talk about some advanced strategies to incorporate into your marketing strategy, as it has to do with thought leadership, reputation management and influencer marketing. It's a huge topic. So, ishveen, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2:

All right. Well, we tried to do this again when we were having snow vid here in Houston, so I appreciate your patience For all of you local listeners. You know what I'm talking about. We're based in Houston, texas, and we don't get snow very often. But let's talk a little bit about your origin story. I know we did that previously, but I thought it'd be good for the listenership to understand how you got to this point.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely so, I suppose, even though I'm British. Our company is based in America, so we started in New York. Really, it was about sports sponsorship, a 60 billion dollar industry, a wonderful form of marketing that's super inefficient. And then, with the rise of influencer marketing, we saw this opportunity to have a really easy way and effective way for brands to partner with athletes in their social media and their content marketing, user generation, all of that stuff. So we basically combine influencer marketing and sports sponsorship.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. So when you talk about the different industries, just to kind of set the table a little bit more, what are you working across all industries? Are there specific industries you're focused on? And also, what is the market landscape look like with different influencers in different you know, basketball, baseball, that sort of thing?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so we kind of work across the whole range of industries, everything from I I mean obviously we do very well with like supplements, vitamins, health and wellness apparel anything that's like very organic to athletes, um, but we also have like western union as a client and, um, you know, like fintech or crypto or kind of all these other brands as well, and then, in terms of athletes, we have over 19,000. So everyone from like, as you mentioned, like top NFL NBA players all the way down to kind of peloton instructors, yogis, olympians and kind of everything in between.

Speaker 2:

And open sponsorship. Is it basically a network where you're connecting influencers with different brands and different industries and they can kind of negotiate those terms and you broker that through the platform? Is that kind of the setup?

Speaker 1:

Yeah well, we started off 10 years ago as a platform like self-service, a bit like a LinkedIn or like an Elance or Airbnb. Come in, put up your campaign a bit like a job posting Athletes agents, airbnb. Come in, put up your campaign a bit like a job posting athletes agents will apply and you manage everything contracts, payments through us. What we realized about three years ago was um, the match is just one part of it. What you do with the athlete, the influencer is, is so much more like and that could be within the deal. So like, are you asking them to post on Instagram or YouTube a reel or a story? But then also, what do you do? Post right, so athletes are super effective. Um, in pr on your website, even on your amazon site. So really the the main thing. It was essentially just like um, let's help our brands be more successful, and so we essentially parlayed on top of our marketplace, we, we added in a services business, so some of our clients would see as more of a tech enabled agency today.

Speaker 2:

I think that that's a much better setup from what I'm seeing. You got to really like I've seen with the influencer space and affiliate marketing and stuff like that someone posts on Instagram, right, and the reel lasts for 24 hours or whatever it is, and then it's gone and they spent a bunch of money, right, and that's all they got, and then the brands are going. Well, that wasn't great, like we didn't see a bump right.

Speaker 2:

So even when we do like podcast pitching and stuff like that, there's a lot of like pre-promotion, post-promotion, like there's things that have to happen for it to be effective and engage. I've seen a lot of times people try new things, experimental marketing, and then they don't work. And so it's maybe that it does work, but they implemented it in a way that might not be as effective. So can you maybe talk through what typically goes on in the marketplace and then what you've seen work more effectively, maybe in a little bit more detail?

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So I'd say that kind of what you're saying, like the biggest thing is how do you use these benefits? So, of course, like the Instagram or the TikTok is very effective in terms of, well, that's how you create the association, that's what the athlete puts out there, it gets in front of their organic followership. So that's great. But really, you as a brand probably have know thousands, tens of thousands of emails in your email list.

Speaker 1:

Now, when you use that athlete's content, their name, their image in your email and say you know, let's say it's a college campaign, and you're saying, like what march madness? And so it's like, hey, we're running our march special in collaboration with this athlete who's in march madness. Like it just adds cachet, it adds, adds a story, it's cool. And anyway, as brands you're spending so much money on like content creation and storytelling and PR, why not just use this deal that we're doing with you inside of those channels? So, whether that's MMS or, as I said, website PR, whatever it may be, so I'd say, like what you get the athlete to do is important, but what you do with that to do is important, but what you do with that, then content is even more important.

Speaker 2:

So with with the agreements you're making, and especially, I think, in the college realm, um, that's that's really opened up recently. But the name, image and likeness type deals, um, is that more commonplace than just the posts? And so they become de facto. They could be your spokesperson, for I don't know how are the contracts negotiated for X amount of time? Or if you were to put them on your website, you're like, hey, we did this. There's probably a time clause or a relevancy of that person anyway that you might not want to keep them on if you're not continuously engaging with them, or something like that. Like, how do you frame that up if you're a business?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's actually like one of the best things about doing this stuff is like you will pay them pay an athlete, influencer the rate for like a social media deal, but then you get the rights for, let's say, six months, typically to use an organic and paid, and so you have got a six month partnership, but essentially it's costed out like a one month partnership. So it is a very, very good deal.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so I, I understand like, yeah, let's, let's like use, like maybe a case study or something like that. So I work with some supplement brands um as well. Um, the former co-host, actually, of this show, uh started a supplement company that's doing quite well and he uses a lot of influencers and that's where I get a lot of um, my experience. We, we work with some specific e-commerce brands as well. Um, but like, okay, uh, we talk back and forth a lot about what he's doing and he's getting on a lot of podcasts. He's engaging with a lot of people.

Speaker 2:

People are posting, but there, where's the line, especially like with supplements, right Of you just paid this person to do this thing, right? So, like how, when you're looking at it to find the right partner, that it it aligns with your brand and it aligns with, like, their belief structure, like because just someone saying something is great, um, you know they may not do it one right Cause they got to agree to it too. Um, you know they may not do it one right Cause they got to agree to it too. And so how do you find that brand match? I guess?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think, um, it's tough because there's so many factors right? One is like the supplement space is really competitive with influencers as as beauty as is fashion, I mean. So there's everything nearly nowadays. Um, I really we like the model of doing many one-off deals and seeing who resonates and that resonate. That like resonance. It's many things it's.

Speaker 1:

One is like well, did you like the content? Two, like, did you like working with them? Like, did they deliver on time? Were they easy to work with? Like did they get you? Um?

Speaker 1:

Three is how was the performance like in terms of sales traffic generation? Like you can have great content, but that person could have all fake followers. Now, that's okay if what you want to do is the content, um, and you can have shit content, but actually people click through because you know they're influential. They don't post a lot. So we really like the idea of like doing lots of like one offs, maybe one offs, or like one month partnerships, two different deliverables, whatever, and then deciding who worked and then turning those into like your little family of influencers, long term, potentially doing royalty deals with them, like having them continuously.

Speaker 1:

Like create content for you but continue to pick up new people and the big thing, for that is also like, as as brands evolve, um, who's your target? Demo, like I don't think anyone ever really knows anymore. Like, is it male, is it female? Is it young? Is it old? Is it college, is it high net worth individuals, is it this, um? And so I think it's like nice to have like different people appealing to different things, and I'm sure your former co-founder, like you know, he'd say, well, my supplements are great for this persona and this persona, and I think influencer marketing is a great way to have having. You know, back in the day, your website could only really speak to one person, but now, with influencers, you can have, like, the pro athlete who needs supplements, plus the, the, the mom that you know, the young mom who needs supplements, and you can get them both.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, definitely the different target audiences and and I I call it internally I don't know how appropriate it is, but I call it kissing frogs when we're talking and you wouldn't do that with the influencers, but, like when we're hiring different contractors, we're engaging different people you have to A B test, you have to try out a lot and, and some people look good on paper. You know some people, the metrics look great, and then you just have to see, like you don't know until you work with that person, uh, if they're going to be a Prince, I guess right, like you, you, you don't know, um, uh, what's going to happen, and you have to try out a lot. One of our workarounds was, uh and we do this with our podcast network as well is we target different target personas for each brand. So we um DBA, a bunch of different brands, that kind of speak to that different target audience or that consumer, maybe with a similar customer journey, but it is a different message, it's a different pain point that we're going after, and so then everything for that brand, which might have the same key ingredients, speak in this way to that person. We do that also with our oil and gas podcast network. We build a storyline and topics around what the sponsor wants to see. So it's not blatant advertising, it's like here's people that are interested in this type of thing, let's create that content. And oh, by the way, this is who's kind of sponsoring the curation of this content that you might be interested in.

Speaker 2:

And I can totally see, you know, trying out so many different things, like what are the metrics? I guess, when you're trying to evaluate for the first time, who should I engage with? Right, because there's a lot of different metrics to look at. As you spoke before, I think that fake reviews, fake sponsors, you don't know what's real today, right, and I've seen also that like, okay, yes, the millions of dollars for a Kim Kardashian post or whatever reach a lot of people, but how the algorithms work, they kind of find the right content. Now, on social media and you know, a smaller like micro influencer with a really engaged network could be a great opportunity to engage with people. That would very much connect with your brand and, like you said, kind of bring them under the tent of what you're trying to do. So how do you evaluate that? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

I think, obviously, like, there are data points like engagement rates a big one. Now again, everything can be like, fake and whatever else, but engagement rate is a good one, obviously. Follower size, like, even if it is like but like, and I think that's why we also like the athlete space. You tend to less um, fake following. Um, they're legit, you know, representative of their following, um, but that's, I think, where, like, the vibe of their content comes into play a lot. And that's like going back to the amplification, so you know what they put out on their channel is just going to be a small part of like the deal.

Speaker 1:

And so, do you like their content? Do you like who they are? Do you like their, their look? Are they overly glossy? Are they overly this way or that way? And obviously today it's all about videos. So how is their video? How do they come across and whatever else. So I think it's a combination of a bit of data and we also have demographic following, so that's really good. We also have a social listening tool so we can see like, well, who has actually talked about your brand or your segment beforehand, like who's talked about crypto, who's talked about supplements, what have they said? What was the engagement of those posts? So I think there is a lot of data to lean on. And then, plus, do you actually just like their feed?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and, and you know, one of the things that I get asked a lot when, when companies come to us and they just want to start posting on social media or they want to be active online, um, and they're like, well, we've tried it before, they've posted a bunch of stuff, depending on the size of the business, um, there might not even be like a mood board or a brand guide, and they're just kind of like posting all over the place. Where I've seen companies fail is when they pick something out, they say, oh, this is awesome, this is new, this is shiny, I'm going to do this. And then they do it within a vacuum and and then, and then it might fall, fall, fall on its face a little bit. So, like, when you look at the overall marketing strategy of a company, there's a right time, I feel like to add on influencer marketing in that kind of PR category, because it does get that attention.

Speaker 2:

But, like, what are the things that you feel a company needs to have in place? Maybe it's an email list, maybe it's you know a great SEO, I don't know. Maybe it's you know a great SEO, I don't know. They have some paid campaigns, but, like, this is a additional step or integration into what they're already doing. So when you evaluate companies on your service side of the business, when do you decide or what do you recommend to a company when they're kind of quote unquote, ready to add this component?

Speaker 1:

quote unquote ready to add this component. I think I think it can honestly be as early as launch. If this is what your need is, I mean it comes back to need right. So like, let's say, you've launched a new F&B brand and you want customer feedback, user feedback, taste testimonials for your Amazon page, for your website, great Inf, great influencer marketing is a very cheap way to go get it's like it's. You know, it's like the new school user research kind of thing.

Speaker 1:

Right, send people your um products and and get feedback and if they like it, they can make a post. If they don't, then you know you can cancel the deal. Um, so it could be as early as product launch. Obviously, the most effective is when you've got all your channels lined up and this like one deal can slot across them all. But often at that time everything's quite siloed and so it's quite hard for, like, the influencer person to get the paid guy to use this in the paid ads and the email has already been scheduled out. So there is something like very nice about working with very small companies where you like they'll do they'll really amplify it. Um, but of course, like there's less of a base there.

Speaker 2:

Interesting. Can you provide maybe a couple examples of like really good success stories or setups where you've just seen influencer marketing work?

Speaker 1:

Fantastic One is we're seeing a lot of this at the moment where brands have launched with retail. So I've just got into Target or Whole Foods, 7-eleven and I need to drive eyeballs to that partnership. If everyone on my feed knows that we're now in Whole Foods, then that's good for my brand. But also I want to drive those sales. Influencers are a great way for that because they can go in, they can pick up the product, they can take some video. You can promote that in your paid ads and, like you, there's only so many times you can say we're in target, but there's a lot of times an influencer, very like different influencers, can say hey, they're, they're in target. Right, I've gone, bought them. So I think that is a a key. I love that.

Speaker 1:

One like so brands in retail, um, and that could even be like in starbucks, it could be. You know, we've done all sorts. It could be, you know, wherever it may be. That's one, um. I'd say two is when you find people who are very aligned, kind of what you were saying. So you've gone through the pain of having like a few mistakes and um like not found your person, and then you find someone who just really resonates like they are your, you know they're an extension of your brand. Their followership is an extension of your customer base. We did that with one of our brands, kachava and Sean White. It was brilliant, and often that's if they're already a customer. So that's always really nice, like hey, I'm already a customer and now you're going to turn me into a brand ambassador, and it's just super authentic. So I love that.

Speaker 1:

Um, another one we do is we do a lot of smaller deals. I mean, obviously the team loves doing our big deals but, like we do, 20 of the deals we do are just product and probably another 20 are like 200, 300 bucks, um, which I think is fair because you're comping them for their time and those are also great because you know, if, like we've done stuff with mattress companies, obviously food and beverage kind of across the board, and if you're like, hey, I'm a college athlete, I'm a smaller athlete, I'm a micro influencer and like that supply of like collagen that's expensive, and like if I'm going to produce great content and I'm just getting free product, like that's awesome. And I think that's really where the tech comes in, because we can do hundreds of those deals in one go in a way that an agency can't.

Speaker 2:

So I think that's like a point of differentiation on our part. No, I love that. So one of to jump kind of back to something that we mentioned earlier that I would love to kind of go into a little bit more detail on. Can you just talk about the market dynamics where college athletes can now do those kind of deals and what's developed in the marketplace around that, because I think a lot of people have interest in their different college teams.

Speaker 1:

So the thing that's really interesting is just like the way that the world has gone of athletes and influencers. So we first started we were very focused on the pro space has gone of athletes and influencers. So we first started we were very focused on the pro space, um, and then college was college athletes in 2021, july were allowed to monetize themselves. Um, there was a lot of like what will happen? How does it work, and it's just the same as the pros, um, the big difference is there's so many of them one and therefore you're getting kind of what I was saying those smaller deals as well, like the 200 300 bucks, um, so that's been really interesting, I'd say.

Speaker 1:

In the last few years, we've really seen a rise of the female athlete. So WNBA today is, I mean, it's, it's pricey, uh, compared to what it was like if you'd worked with us five years ago on that, um, so that, and then the. The last thing that we've really been seeing is we've actually extended way beyond athletes, because our brands were saying to us cool, we love doing athletes, but it's the intersection of being able to do that plus foodies, plus finfluencers, plus diy influencers, plus authors and everything else, and so I think that's been really interesting, which is I, you, you don't like beauty is its own category, but like, mostly, where do you go if you want just good influence, like if you're launching in Target?

Speaker 2:

great athletes are great, but I could also use like a mommy blogger, but I could also use like a local recipe person, and so I think that's been really key for us as, like, being cross-sectional across lots of influencer categories speaking of mommy bloggers, um, we do the marketing for the boy scouts of america, which is now scouting america, but, um, we started incorporating two years ago, mommy bloggers uh into, uh, our strategies and we saw a lot more traction, um, across the board, uh, in different areas, because they're very connected into the community, and it turned into a lot more engagement and then even like long-term followership, right, because we were reaching the people that were really reaching the moms, and that was, you know, we started to test out just let's test out every channel and set like a new baseline based on the new branding and based on like what we're, what we're trying to communicate now, and kind of revamping the brand message.

Speaker 2:

And it was. It was really fascinating to see the uplift that we were getting on different campaigns. It was really fascinating to see the uplift that we were getting on different campaigns and these were how are you tracking that success, like what was the metric you were looking at for uplift?

Speaker 2:

Well, we were checking the year previous, okay, where we weren't using it first, and then we were doing it in the Houston area. So it was a fall recruitment campaign and the mommy bloggers there was even like different groups that this was like pretty built out, that there's like almost every neighborhood Okay Like on the neighborhood level has a mommy blogger. And so, like on the North side of Houston, for example, we engaged a mommy blogger where we were advertising on her website, in her email and also in her newsletter, in her email, and then she was doing some social posts, right. So we were like, okay, we're going to advertise here and then in this area we're going to run the same paid campaign but we're not going to use the mommy blogger. And we were looking at the conversion rates, okay, from the previous year, and so it wasn't like a perfect metric on attribution, but it was saying, okay, well, if these paid rates are consistent of what they were last year, we added this component Are we getting a higher conversion rate of new people raising their hand saying hey, I would like to sign up for Boy Scouts than we did the previous year? So we were just adding that variable to it. That was kind of one of the first tests that we were doing, and we saw click-through rates go up, the average costs go down and we saw more conversions in that area, and so we were also testing in different markets, different influencers we had access to. So it was kind of hard to see this influencer versus this influencer. But going back to what we talked about, like how quick did they respond? Like what were they willing to do? You know, looking at how well the emails that they sent out were engagements and the posts they did, and like what we could just see on the surface level was was certainly helpful, and that decided the refined list that we would use for the next year. And also each mommy blogger um, you know, if, if they were like really talked about sports or talked about recipes, right, like they're talking about raising kids versus rest, like, so we started to get an idea of of what that, um, that mommy blogger that we wanted looked like. So, just to provide some detail in that, sorry, I love this stuff, so I go down these rabbit holes.

Speaker 2:

One of the things that I'm thinking about let's talk about crypto, for example. We have a client in the crypto space that's launching a new service and there's a lot of like trust issues, like with crypto in general, right, and they want to be viewed in the financial traditional space as well as the crypto space, right. So it's kind of two different audiences that that overlap as well as the crypto space, right. So it's kind of two different audiences that overlap. And you know, we're doing a lot of foundational work for them. We're doing some press releases, we're doing some authority posts, we're building out the content that people would find, and then the next layer that we're going to be adding is that influencer base right. Chatting is that influencer base right. And so you know, what are some case studies that you've seen where influencers or what type of influencers match.

Speaker 2:

This is more of a, I guess, a personal question for a client, but I would love to hear that. I know a lot of people would too. And crypto is heating up. We just had the Trump administration announce strategic reserves and everything kind of whiplashed with the pricing, and I just think that there's probably another cycle coming shortly in crypto and it'll be the thing that nobody wanted to talk about and now everybody's going to want to talk about. So this might uh good, uh, this might age well.

Speaker 1:

So I think. So there's a few different things again, like tying it back to need so, um, are you wanting new audiences? In which case, like, okay, who speaks to that audience? So let's say, you're a completely new brand and you just need to get in front of people, right? So therefore, you might pick like athletes with majority male followers in the us in your age range of 24 to 35, um, and maybe you're focused on, like the miami market or like texas or, you know, california, wherever crypto is trending more, so are you going for their demographic and their following? Because you just need eyeballs one, maybe you're already have that, but actually you need credibility, great. So then I would be picking credible names.

Speaker 1:

So I probably go for, like financial influencers, like people who talk about money, markets and stocks and shares and, you know, doing an evaluation, you could go for an athlete who's very well regarded in the space. Maybe they're an investor, maybe they are just smart, so those two would be there. Maybe you have the validation and you have the eyeballs and actually what you need is you want to do a big event and you just want someone to turn up and speak and do like a meet and greet, because you know you're going to sell loads of crypto on like at that point. So then you want to have someone who's like can make it to la on the 5th of march or whatever else. So I think like there's different use cases. So I think like there's different use cases and different ways to think about well, who slots into that? But that's like that's the beauty of the space.

Speaker 2:

I love that. Ok, so let's keep on that kind of thought process and talk about service based industries, for example. What are the thought processes that you would think through when you're building a campaign for, I don't know, a service based business?

Speaker 1:

that may be more mundane.

Speaker 2:

You could say home services, or you could say financial services, or you know, just something like the average business right Of of a local small business. How would they incorporate influencership?

Speaker 1:

No, I love that. So we worked with like a lawn mowing service once Um so one. I love athletes for that, because I kind of always joke that if you're very famous, the chances are you move to like LA or New York, um, but if you're an athlete, you uh, because you have to, and so, like you know the most famous person in like a Pittsburgh or a Cleveland or Indiana, wherever is an athlete, and then parlaying onto that college because they're in like small towns that even they might not be a pro team. So I really like athletes for local businesses, um, so kind of the same thing as what we just said, right, so like. And also the other bit is like a lot of like local businesses or service businesses. They already have their marketing going.

Speaker 1:

So you probably do a bit of radio, maybe you take out a couple of flyers and you post them through the door. Maybe you and like you advertise in your local paper and then you probably do a bit on social, but social probably not your primary driver, it's maybe other things and then you might do some paid ads through a local marketing agency. So you need a bit of content for that. I mean, I love the idea of like whether it's a small athlete or big athlete, and now that's up to you. You know, obviously, if you can afford a bigger, go for it. If can't, then go smaller, that's fine.

Speaker 1:

And it's like, you know, cleveland native. We chop his lawn right and it could be just a cheesy photo or a voiceover of the athlete that goes in your radio ads. You know, like um, we forget when we live in big cities at how powerful like local radio can be. Um on the. You know like hey, I, you know I'm part of the um, the steelers, and like these are my guys took up my lawn in pittsburgh, blah, blah, blah and so, um, I really love the idea of like. There I would say it's less about scale. Like you might be in DTC, there I'd say it's like picking one or two people and like going deep on that relationship with them.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I can see that. Okay, let's switch to B&B now. Like, so there's. There's a lot of big companies that have budgets that are trying to spice up their marketing, maybe with digital transformation, maybe since COVID. They're like okay, there's a lot of opportunity online. I have a lot of conversations with sales directors that are like they thought marketing was just like graphic design for events, right, and then when events got shut down, they started exploring all these other levels. And there's this merge between a sales qualified lead and a marketing qualified lead, and I even have a podcast where I kind of talk about that integration of comms and that area.

Speaker 2:

I think that those businesses that are like you're selling something again mundane, maybe a valve or something like that, I think adding personality to the brand can really be helpful. Maybe what's your view on a B2B business that's maybe not a sales force or something like that that's not well known, but to use it in their marketing? Certainly, I can see the sports teams angle, for sure If it's a male dominated industry, but, like, I don't know, how would you, how would you approach that?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think it's all like there is different. It's all about like getting your story out in a way that people actually want to receive it. So one of my favorite deals that we did years and years ago when we've kind of like first started, was a deal between Glassdoor and Draymond Green. You know, glassdoor was a Silicon Valley based company, tech company, but quite disruptive, and they had a Draymond Green, essentially like ghost, write an article, a blog, and it was like draymond green's like eight tips to keep your workplace fired up and obviously very on brand for him and um, it had like a 900 percent open rate increase in like share rates and all of this because obviously even everyone at glass door was like this is so cool. Draymond Green knows who we are and they shared it on their LinkedIn and the emails were great.

Speaker 1:

So I think that's just such a good example, like not to tie it always back to need, but it is like what's your need? Right? If you're a software company, maybe you're doing this as employee engagement, maybe that's the most important thing, um, maybe it is because you need to get in front of your cios and they never pick up the phone. Well then, you know, we, we did a an event it was a virtual event with a security uh sas company and neil degrasse tyson, and you know, of course, like that's exciting.

Speaker 1:

It was half an hour zoom in the middle of covid and so I'd say I think athletes are perfect for b2b companies because you almost want, you're all, like there's only so much you can talk about what you do. Um, it's not like a product where it's like check out this flavor, it's like we know what you do, but why should I show up? And like athletes and influencers could be a great reason to show up, or that story that they tell could be a great one for, like the email, and then at the bottom it's like hey, by the way, book a call with us, kind of thing.

Speaker 2:

Wow, so that's something that I I haven't thought about much, if not at all, um using it from an internal channel, um.

Speaker 2:

I think, uh, we we've talked, uh, with a number of companies about a lot like large companies, about setting up internal podcasts to communicate from the top down what's going on at the company. If you have a company and you're trying to energize the company, that could turn into a lot of user-generated content because it's so cool. You're speaking internally and and I think that the pendulum in my mind from from a branding standpoint is, with all the AI right Is is shifting back to who are we as a brand, what is our brand story and and how do we communicate that. So when you're looking at it from a B2B standpoint, you're really looking at, like if you're an internal marketing team, you're looking at your brand as a whole and say, how do we develop our brand more, how do we grow our brand more, how do we build additional layers? And to focus on that internal component will have an outward effect, right, Because they'll be sharing it in that kind of cool factor. I love that.

Speaker 2:

I think that that's a great example about how people are not using influencers. When I think influencer marketing, I think of a lot of affiliate partnerships and stuff like that, just based on previous experience. But I think that there's a lot more refinement and development of it. I've even seen the marketplace go from uh like with content marketing, from kind of authority posts and stuff like that, to really bleed more into the social media and then that kind of brand mention is is not coming from a publication as much as it coming from a trusted person or individuals. I've seen that kind of trajectory happen, very interesting. So what are some other things that maybe businesses should consider when they're looking at influencer marketing? Because you really opened my eyes to how you could use it internally. Is there other things like that that might be helpful for the audience?

Speaker 1:

I think one is just like it doesn't have to be expensive, but it can. Also, you know, it can be a channel you can spend millions on, but it can be a channel that you can just spend 5k a month on. And so I think, like that variability is unique and it's quite cool, um. And the the ability to scale up, like if it's working, great, if it's, if you're able to figure out internally how to put it into all your channels, great. So I think that flexibility, that's what you know. We've seen brands come in spending 5-10k and they scale up and up and up from that. Or they could be just doing product and you can flex up and down. Like you know, if, if you're, if it's thanksgiving or amazon prime day, you spend more, great. If it's like another time you could just do product only deals, but you can have an always-on approach. So I think that's quite key is just like the flexibility of the budget, um. And then I do think like there's something about like just the word of mouth marketing like you are essentially getting your product like fine, whatever they post on social, but you are getting your product into the hands of like influential people within their communities and like that in itself is a benefit that I think gets missed. Um, like it's pretty cool, like that you might be being used in the locker room by an NBA player and like that. Like, like you know that that's key.

Speaker 1:

And then I think third is like for brands to think about, like what is the message you put out there? Um, and there should be a lot of testing around that, like recently we were working with Western Union and like at first, what we were thinking about doing, the messaging, the first round of deals we was, it was more like the app and it was like Western Union, this is an app to do this. And now we're going for a different track and we're going to be a bit more emotive. Like this is what sending money abroad to my family means for me. Like I've made it and my family's back home.

Speaker 1:

And so I think like and also I've definitely seen, even like something I've pitched recently to someone back to that internal is like having influencers talk about the founder story, like why did they start this company? Who are they? So I think like it's kind of cool to think about like the creative, not just being like here's a phone, buy it $3.99. It's like what's the connection? And there's so many things that you can have that person say and do for you. It doesn't have to be like an infomercial.

Speaker 2:

No, I love that. So you know. One of my last questions is is around um well, the biggest barrier that we run against is if somebody hasn't done it before, right Any kind of marketing. They haven't done it before. They're not like a believer yet Maybe they've heard a mixed stories from different people. We get that a lot with SEO and our marketing packages. Hey, I've been, I've tried this before. It doesn't work, I've been burned, whatever you know, influencer marketing, I think, is probably a mixed bag from that standpoint as well and it and it.

Speaker 2:

it's a kind of a a new thing to incorporate. And for people that are gun shy I don't know lack of a better word on spending budget a lot of times, I believe you need to test, like I look at things from a quarterly standpoint and like we need to get enough testing that we get to some kind of statistical like baseline to know if this is working or not, and that I think it's good to cycle through a lot of different people to see that. But when someone's doing a pilot or someone's doing, you know, trying to spend some money and they haven't done it before right Influencer marketing there's probably a lot of people that you talk to that haven't done it before. And then we're talking, okay, a 5k price point where they're just getting comfortable spending online as it is.

Speaker 2:

How do you navigate that conversation and what are the things that you tell them? Because there's probably people listening going, hey, like I want to do this, it sounds great, I don't know if I'm ready to spend that kind of budget. And then they end up saying, okay, I'm going to try it, I'm going to try it for 300 bucks or 500 bucks or whatever. And they try it once and they're like oh, it didn't work. Like you know what I mean, like, so how, how do you navigate that conversation? And what would you say to somebody that's listening, that's on the fence and has been considering it and they're just not over that line yet?

Speaker 1:

I think um, I think you have to be really realistic about like your objective. So if we definitely run into this, so you know you spent 400 bucks and you wanted sales, you wanted content, you wanted the biggest name, you wanted all of it.

Speaker 2:

And it's just like well, that's not right. I wanted this to be a magical right?

Speaker 1:

Exactly so. I think we do try and do a bit of a good job of saying now we do, before we probably didn't, but also because we understand it now even better. But we say, like you're not, you're not going to get sales for. Like, unless you're spending thousands of dollars, you're not going to get sales. You will get content that you can put in your paid ads. And if you're like, yeah, but that's an extra expense, well, that's what you've got. And like do you spend a couple of hundred dollars at least today producing content for your paid ads? Well, see it as that cost.

Speaker 1:

Um, you will get someone. Like you know, if you want someone who has 100k plus followers, it's going to cost you. If you want someone who has less than 10k, you're going to get it cheaper. But then when they post, very few people are going to see it. So again, like, what are you going here for? Eyeballs, impressions, comments, likes. So I think it's just like about being kind of realistic with what you can get and being clear on like well, what's your goal? And then hit that goal and then scale up. Like, don't change the goal once you've got oh, I wanted good content, I got it, but they didn't have any followers and they got five likes. It's like, well, that's not why we put that person. So I think that that's the main thing is like expectations being realistic and not changing the goal. Yeah, I think that that's. That's is like expectations being realistic and not changing the goal.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think that that's. That's great. It's part of your marketing strategy. It's not your full marketing strategy, right? This person?

Speaker 2:

is not your salesperson. This person is going to help get your name out there, it's going to help get you recognition, it's going to help give you great content, and I think you said that at the beginning of the podcast. It's what you do with it, right, Once you have engaged that partnership, what do you do? So we're about to wrap up my last question for you, just to squeeze out any more value out of this podcast that we can. Um, if there's anything that we didn't talk about, what is, and it could be something you you've said before, but let's prepackage it, Um, and we'll use this as a short. What is one unknown secret of internet marketing that, uh, maybe we've talked about or we haven't talked about. That, you think is um worth sharing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think we did talk about it, but I will reiterate it that like the ability to do a deal and I'm not going to say through everyone, but I know that what we do with our deals the ability to do a deal for one Instagram post or one TikTok or one YouTube and get the rights to repurpose that for six months on your feed, on your website, in your email marketing, in your MMS, in your page, typically in your Amazon site, literally on your founder's LinkedIn or your CMO's LinkedIn it's like the best hack for me out there.

Speaker 2:

I love that. No, I think social is so powerful, I think a lot of people are waking up to that that people are driving business just on social alone, and this is another tool in the tool belt to communicate that storytelling. So, ishveen, with opensponsorshipcom, what is the best way for people to find you, to engage with you? Where are you posting content? Where can they find out more?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so, um, obviously, check us out Open sponsorshipcom. Sign up for free. We'll get in touch, we'll do like a strategy session and tell you how you can use us and athletes and influencers. Um, find me on LinkedIn. Uh, drop me a note. Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. So, uh, everyone, hopefully you enjoyed this podcast. If you are looking to build a online lead gen marketing channel where it's managed for you, so that's really what we're focused on. Building for clients is a managed service where you can focus on growing your business and we can focus on growing your marketing and bringing you in the right customers. Reach out to EWR Digital for more revenue in your business. Set up a free consultation online and until the next time, my name is Matt Bertram. Bye-bye for now.

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