How to Hack Influencer's As a Sustainable Growth Channel

Webinar Replay

May 7, 2024

Micah Whitehead

Co-Founder & CMO @ ZeroTo1

Micah is the co-founder and CMO at ZeroTo1— The performance creative agency behind some of the most iconic brands’ (like Instacart, Lowe's, and Huel) influencer marketing and UGC.

What you'll learn

The customer journey is also evolving, and the old method of using influencers as a tactic has been replaced with using them as an infinitely scalable channel. In this Fireside chat, Micah will be breaking down the 4 core pillars of building an influencer flywheel.

Key Takeaways:

The best way to seed products to influencers
Sourcing the right creators for each brand
Building an ever-growing creator community
Measuring Performance Influencer campaigns
Analyzing and iterating on UGC ad creatives

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:20:19
Unknown
What's going on, everybody? Welcome to another edition of Foreplay Fireside Chats. it's been a while since we've done one of these, and so, super stoked to see you all kind of rolling in here. I'm seeing people join in, and stuff like that. So, as always, what I want you to do is go in there and spam the chat where you're calling in from.

00:00:20:23 - 00:00:37:23
Unknown
It's always really cool, to see, you know, how global sort of this community has become. and where you guys, you know, are running your businesses. and where you're calling in from today. So everybody in the chat right now would love for you kind of just to go in there, you know, say where you're calling in from.

00:00:38:01 - 00:01:03:07
Unknown
it's always like, super cool. I'm seeing Madrid, Spain. I'm seeing New York, Atlanta from Cassidy. super, super cool. we got Georgia, Vancouver, another fellow Canadian, Uruguay. I think it's the first time we've seen it. Uruguay. India. Netherlands. India. Philippines. Awesome. Thailand. I was actually just in Thailand in December. It was like a super, super awesome time.

00:01:03:07 - 00:01:21:01
Unknown
Absolutely love the country. Canada. Philippines. Sweet guys. Well, feel free to keep spending that chat where you're calling in from. but I want to get into the content because we have something that's, like, super, super valuable for you. obviously everybody on this chat or on this, call right now, it's probably super, super in-depth with paid ads.

00:01:21:01 - 00:01:36:19
Unknown
It's how you're growing your business. It's what you're doing for clients. but there's like a ton of other channels. Paid ads is amazing. It can it can scale. but there's definitely limitations to it in terms of, like, the returns you can get. and I think, you know, any business that's growing at some point they need to look for new channels.

00:01:36:21 - 00:01:58:05
Unknown
and the content that we have today, I think is like an amazing new channel that a lot of people, if you're if you're crushing with paid ads, I think it'd be something that absolutely, you know, straps on for your business, and can make a huge difference. And we have an absolute expert kind of breaking down the entire process of how to hack, influencers to be, you know, repeatable flywheel, flywheel inside of your business.

00:01:58:07 - 00:02:15:12
Unknown
I think, you know, we talk about influencers. Everybody's heard about using influencers to grow your business. but the systems around it, I think, are all the magic is, and how you can actually use it to scale. and so without further ado, I'm going to introduce here, Mike, who's the co-founder and CMO at 0 to 1 ad agency.

00:02:15:12 - 00:02:35:21
Unknown
It's absolutely crushing it. for, you know, massive brands and helping run their influencer campaign along with all the systems. and so I'm going to bring him on to the stream right now. How's it going, man? Good. Hey, everyone. Appreciate it. Zach. and also, kudos to your background. I love the new set up. It's looking sick.

00:02:35:23 - 00:02:50:10
Unknown
cool. Dude, I appreciate it. I'm going to hop off the stream. This is all yours. Take it from here. and I'll see you in a little bit, for Q&A. And as always, guys, if you have questions along the way, drop them in the chat and we'll be fielding the questions. after the presentation.

00:02:50:12 - 00:03:07:00
Unknown
Good deal. All right, let me go ahead and bring up presentation to stage. All right. As we're just getting started here, let's, spam the chat one more time. I want to know, not just like where you're from, but particularly, like, if you're coming from an agency or a brand. I want to know who I'm talking to.

00:03:07:00 - 00:03:29:00
Unknown
I may be able to tailor this chat, like, one way or the other. So let me know if you're coming from the brand side or from the agency side. and then just to give you an overview, okay, of where we're at and what we're gonna be chatting with today. looking to dive deep on how to build influencer as a channel in 2024.

00:03:29:03 - 00:03:53:00
Unknown
So, really excited for this convo. and, go ahead and let's see. Presents slide show. just this quick intro and maybe additional background, context on who I am, what we do. So 021 spy agency. we are a full service growth agency powering some of the most category leading, disruptive brands in the game, like Instacart.

00:03:53:02 - 00:04:23:15
Unknown
hex plaid, Lowe's, home improvement, category Gnostic. But we have two sides of our business. One is social ads. So. UGC static graphics, motion ads, and then Mediavine and then the other half is influencer. So and more and more, these opportunities, these channels are kind of working in concert together. So today we're going to unpack how to build an influencer program, as well, like circling back, you know, obviously have an agency, but prior to 0 to 1, I was on the founding team of a company called Shipt.

00:04:23:15 - 00:04:44:21
Unknown
It was a on demand grocery delivery app and was the third hire, first head of marketing. really got to see that journey from idea like idea phase of a brand all the way to exiting and selling to target for 550 million and just like four and a half years, that was 2015, 2019. So this is like really early days of influencer as a performance channel.

00:04:44:23 - 00:05:03:11
Unknown
so I've been on the brand side, been on the agency side. Background is not an agency. So I understand kind of both point of views here. But after, shipped in, that exit launched 0 to 1 to be the agency that wish we had the whole time. we turned through a lot of agencies during that process and never really found a partner that could scale with us.

00:05:03:11 - 00:05:28:16
Unknown
And so that is, where we are today. So fast forward three years, we've got some big logos here, and building some really exciting influencer programs and helping scale brands, to the dream outcome through performance creative. So, and what I'm most excited about as, not just as an agency, you know, opportunity for, for us other agencies but also for brands is we are on the forefront.

00:05:28:16 - 00:06:07:22
Unknown
Right. the next tectonic shift, I would say, from e-commerce, which would be like a brand's digital storefront towards, the new evolution, which is social commerce, which is influencers, creators and even customers in many cases becoming the brand's digital storefront. And so like journey from, you know, omnichannel. So someone may see a billboard hitting Google, then a website and checking out to iOS 14 where, you know, maybe Facebook ad retargeting, check out to post iOS 14 or creative driven, you know, maybe maybe see an influencer post, get hit with a retargeting ad, and then checkout now.

00:06:07:22 - 00:06:27:18
Unknown
With the rise of social commerce, I think like TikTok shop, you know, even Amazon, all the major players are moving in that direction. But now that influencer is becoming, you know, the storefront. And so with that, we're seeing, a ton of investment in focus, particularly the last couple of years, into influencer as a channel. What you're gonna unpack, in detail.

00:06:27:18 - 00:06:55:17
Unknown
But this trend isn't going anywhere. I think with TikTok collectively, you know, in 2022, 725 billion, live shopping is growing insane. I mean, even over the last 60 days, live shopping is, growing exponentially, but with social commerce as a whole. So collectively looking at TikTok, meta shops, Amazon, etc., to $1.5 trillion market, in 2025.

00:06:55:17 - 00:07:18:06
Unknown
So it's here, it's growing faster than anything we've ever seen. And you have all the platforms who are fighting for that conversion outside of TikTok, Amazon, the biggest affiliate out there. We're seeing a lot of opportunity, even in Amazon with like Amazon finds, which is like curated list to to in platform like broadcast. All of these channels are fighting for this in platform conversion and are investing heavily into that right now.

00:07:18:06 - 00:07:48:23
Unknown
And for us we're seeing Amazon is huge opportunity. One of the fastest path to turning on revenue for influencer affiliate that exists today, seeing a lot of success. but this you know, this theme is, is not going anywhere. I think it's really the if I could I'm having these conversations with brands, which is shifting our mindset from influencer as a tactic, which I'm sure if you're on this webinar, you've you've tried, you know, one of the tactics, there's a lot of them, any one of them are difficult to really achieve.

00:07:48:23 - 00:08:12:11
Unknown
That dream outcome of unlocking a new customer acquisition channel that has lower cash and high Roas potential. Any one of these are difficult to achieve that you really, any good influencer program, it's got multiple tactics that work across the funnel. So I like to correlate this to media buying for you guys. You'll understand this on meta. not many are gonna argue that it should not be a foundational piece of your marketing mix.

00:08:12:11 - 00:08:36:13
Unknown
I mean, maybe, maybe some of you would. And maybe that's changing, but, it's the way you approach that is not with any particular tactic. But what's an approach of multiple tactics? Rapid experimentation, learning. improving really that for over a month of your performance, and improving the performance month over month. So it's iterative and same thing with influencer.

00:08:36:13 - 00:08:51:22
Unknown
You can even think about it like Amazon. So like you need to invest in Amazon as you're going to be boosting your SEO, you're gonna be working with Amazon creator connections. Like you have to kind of look at the broad scope of tactics, look at it from a full funnel perspective, and figure out how to optimize for each area of the funnel.

00:08:51:22 - 00:09:28:04
Unknown
So that's what I want to do today is talk about influencer the new way, which is as a channel. And the main benefit to building an influencer or affiliate community, which I think is the biggest opportunity we're seeing today, is really direct attributable revenue and with a high ROI potential. So in parallel to paid media, which is like a spend to earn, hopefully you can put a dollar in, get $1.50 out, for example, but you're spending and the growth and the cost are linear, maybe getting incrementally better every month.

00:09:28:06 - 00:09:52:14
Unknown
ideally. But with an influencer affiliate community, you're able to there's a little bit of an investment on the front end. So like building mechanics, building scaffolding. But the ROI potential there is really high because it's built off a performance basis. And oftentimes influencer, if they community and paid media, they work really well together. and influencer communities will help you lower your costs and improve your Roas on those efforts.

00:09:52:14 - 00:10:12:21
Unknown
And I'll kind of unpack as to why, but this is why, big brands like at the top end, you know, you look at target, Walmart, Amazon, traditional brick and mortar all the way to like disruptive E-com brands like hex Cloud or Sakara are investing a ton into building out their own branded influencer communities right now. And this is why.

00:10:12:22 - 00:10:45:09
Unknown
And I think one thing that's not talked about is the secondary benefit, which is my personal favorite and maybe applicable to the audience. Here is the content pipeline that you spin off, from an influencer channel, how that supports your, paid media efforts, as well as really driving successful whitelisting and spark campaigns. And so just to kind of like look at the numbers here with some assumptions, assuming you're doing mass influencer outreach, which is how you power these programs, it's a volume game at the end of the day.

00:10:45:11 - 00:11:06:05
Unknown
But doing outreach to 4 to 5000 influencers per month for your programs you're on TikTok shop, recommend a thousand outreaches per day. And those are sequences, to recruit influencers into your program. assuming you have a 10% opt in rate conservative, you know, that's enrolling 4 to 500 influencers if you're able to activate 10% of that group.

00:11:06:05 - 00:11:40:18
Unknown
So that would be an affiliate who is creating content activity for you, maybe even converting that's 40 to 50 active, influencers. And then I could spin off 400 plus pieces of tagged media, you know, over the course of a month. And we're seeing these programs incredibly competitive CPM. So like sub $0.50, sub $0.25 in some cases. and I think without a doubt like jury's still out on how we track this, you know, with like multi-channel attribution, like a North beam or a triple wale, but without a doubt that this taco funnel awareness does, in fact impact your entire funnel and improve conversion rates.

00:11:40:20 - 00:12:07:02
Unknown
We've even seen some clients that have tested this and have paused their campaigns for a period of a month and seen a like a 5% or so dip, even order on organic traffic or conversion from Google. So we're still trying to figure out what that customer journey looks like and how to measure that exactly. But I think point blank, these communities are a great top of funnel awareness channel that generates a ton of content while also a path to direct attributable revenue.

00:12:07:03 - 00:12:27:22
Unknown
And then from that, obviously it's a pipeline of ad creatives. you get to take a data first approach to that. So as opposed to partnering with influencers and contracting them, kind of blind for, you know, dark posts or ad creative and testing and hoping for the best, you're able to go then and look at the influencers that give you signal organically that resonate with your brand.

00:12:27:22 - 00:12:51:16
Unknown
That may drive great click through rate or even conversion and use that as a jumping off point for your whitelisting and spark strategy. And then finally building that roster of high converting influencers that you can extend relationships with. And so you can engage them for like integrated campaigns to support a product drop or to do, specific ad creative development or UGC.

00:12:51:16 - 00:13:13:05
Unknown
There's so many ways that you can extract value. Once you build and own that community of influencers, it's it's almost infinite. So the value of these programs is insane. and so today we are going to unpack how to build these communities, how we are helping brands, establish these today. And so it's really a seven step influencer flywheel.

00:13:13:07 - 00:13:34:22
Unknown
and so we'll unpack each of these steps. How to do it. Starting from branding community to the tech stack you're going to need and how to implement automations to the right. Offer an incentive strategy to help inspire, and empower your community. How to recruit influencers at scale, to community management. What do you do once you're in the community, and how do you, help them grow?

00:13:35:00 - 00:14:06:12
Unknown
in their journey with you? How do you create the tools they need to succeed and inspire and educate them on how to become, an influencer that converts for you? And then finally, what do you do with that output? How do you capture that content and those relationships to fuel your paid efforts? So, before we do that, though, just give you kind of a baseline of metrics, how we evaluate success in these programs and what a healthy program can look like.

00:14:06:14 - 00:14:31:01
Unknown
So diving into how we look at success here. So really it's a phase strategy in terms of how you measure these. We have ROI which is revenue plus envy mentioned that these spin off a ton of awareness that can affect your funnel. So phase one you're looking to build ROI positive. So revenue plus envy. You think there's lots of ways to calculate that over your fixed and variable cost.

00:14:31:03 - 00:14:53:07
Unknown
and then phase two is optimizing towards being Ro as positive role as being your revenue over your variable cost, which could be you know, commissions, product seating, etc.. And then finally tax the fixed plus variable cost over new customer acquisition. And so you're optimizing for phase one, phase two, phase three, phase four over different cycles. So design build you know these programs.

00:14:53:07 - 00:15:10:09
Unknown
Do you take a little bit of time to get stood up the mechanics to support them. And then you're gonna want to launch, with an alpha test. Usually this takes 1 or 2 months. It's not uncommon for these programs to be underwater during that phase, because it's a period of testing and learning. You're looking to figure out what offer is going to resonate, what influencers are going to show interest, how do you get them to opt in?

00:15:10:09 - 00:15:32:08
Unknown
How do you get them to post their first content? So all of these efforts, you're learning rapidly, you're testing everything from like subject lines in your messages all the way to like the DMs that you're sending it to for a weekly challenge. then moving into like beta cycle, which is where we are looking to be ROI in row as positive from a blended standpoint, this is where you're looking for a signal to scale.

00:15:32:11 - 00:15:50:08
Unknown
So you're taking learnings from that first phase implementing and you're starting to grow your community. Maybe turn on prospecting and outreach quite a bit here and then moving into the fourth or the third phase, which is like six months plus. goal here is you're really starting to scale profitably. You've got a sense of what works in your program.

00:15:50:08 - 00:16:11:04
Unknown
You're able to triple down in your winter as you found a subset of your community that's really converting highly. And ultimately, we're seeing brands can do 5 to 10% of their overall, revenue, from these programs. Sometimes it can even be higher. if you're spending a lot on meta on Amazon, you know, you can expect like a healthy program to be at that 5 to 10% mark.

00:16:11:06 - 00:16:34:15
Unknown
And then in terms of healthy program benchmarks, like we see if we're just averaging things out, a 30% opt in rate to your program. So for everybody, you're reaching out to 30% that are raising their hands and joining, is healthy. 10%. You know, our more converting influencers would be really solid. So if the people that join your community, how many of them are driving sale, and then four months or so to break even.

00:16:34:15 - 00:16:53:16
Unknown
This could be sooner, you know, depending on, how fast you're able to move, test and kind of grow the program. I mentioned 3 to 10% of total revenue. I think looking into that phase three, the growth phase easily be 2 to 4 and a half, zero hours on these efforts. And that's because it is, a performance channel.

00:16:53:18 - 00:17:18:17
Unknown
we're able to pay out on a performance basis as well as extract value to drive your paid media efforts, improved performance there, and then in five months onward, that's when you're really looking at that program, profitability minus your cost, whether that's through an agency or an internal headcount. And if you can get your influencers on average, your in your community by posting 3 to 6 times per month, you're in a good place.

00:17:18:19 - 00:17:45:22
Unknown
Okay. Diving into program pillars and how to establish these programs. first we'll define who is in the community. So we have this pyramid to the right at the kind of foundational level this is going to be the largest percentage of your community, driving the least conversions on like a per capita basis. But when looked at as a segment that is your biggest it can be quite powerful in terms of revenue.

00:17:45:22 - 00:18:06:17
Unknown
We have programs that, you know, half or more of the revenue is driven from this bucket. and this would be nano influencers and even customers or customer creators. One way we love to bring people in this through it, customer referral program. so some of you may have them, and they've become a natural kind of graduation step into a more robust and feel like community.

00:18:06:17 - 00:18:29:10
Unknown
If you don't have one, you can include these in the affiliate community structure, which we'll get to in a bit above that. Micro-influencers. So there's lots of ways to define these categories, by the way, doesn't really matter. But to give the kind of broad strokes here Micro-influencers 50 to 100,000 followers, the second largest category, followed by mid tier and celeb and macro mid tier is probably going to be the most in terms of revenue.

00:18:29:12 - 00:18:50:12
Unknown
We see the average follower count in these communities to be around 80,000 followers, averaged out across everyone in the community. celeb in macro like the fewest obviously in your community on a performance basis. we often find that brands will already have relationships in mid-tier and macro that they've been building for years, maybe as a part of other influencer programs.

00:18:50:12 - 00:19:12:13
Unknown
And so they will often kind of invite them into the community. And this allows them to really point to an attributable ROI performance from those efforts, not just engagement awareness, but really start to track the sales and give them an extra incentive layer. but also, it's a way to inspire the rest of the community who may look up to those influencers who are almost like influencers of influencers, so to speak.

00:19:12:15 - 00:19:43:16
Unknown
So it shows like they're in good company, and gives them a reason to kind of want to be a part, especially early on. So I love that as a tactic, as you're launching a community. all right. Getting started with the first pillar, which is brand and community. So with this, the idea is that by creating your own brand and community on channels that you own, giving it a name, you're able to create a sense of community, give a place that, you know, these creators feel like they belong in, you can build culture this way, and it builds brand equity.

00:19:43:16 - 00:20:13:23
Unknown
So you want to tailor this to your audience. So if you've got, for example, here, Instacart tastemakers, they're going after creators who are meal planners, recipe creators. They do food content in particular. And so tastemakers is appealing to that audience. it consists of bloggers and consists of TikTokers that are all building regular recipe content. And their program allows them to integrate, a one click like ingredient, add to cart functionality to the content they're already creating.

00:20:13:23 - 00:20:31:06
Unknown
So it's tailor made to that group. And so there's a lot of buzz and excitement. They're actually able to announce this from a PR perspective at the beginning, and get a lot of organic applicants into the community because of how tailored, and clear the messaging was. So I hope that's inspiring. on to so tech stack and automation.

00:20:31:06 - 00:20:53:07
Unknown
This is really important. And this is where we see a lot of brands, struggle because these communities are successful. Both like volume is important. So it's a volume game. You've got to be doing big numbers there to really see the impact. But also, 1 to 1 relationship. And it's feeling very tailored because at the end of the day, this is a relationship game.

00:20:53:09 - 00:21:16:06
Unknown
they're both important. So how do you support that at scale. And that is through tech we use this is our kind of recommended tech stack here. and I'm sure we'll provide this this document after. So you guys can really dive in deep to each of these platforms. But we're looking at software to support sourcing, outreach and community and as much automation, at least for the big milestones as possible.

00:21:16:08 - 00:21:43:08
Unknown
and so we'll get into kind of each of these more specifically in further slides. But the idea here is that we're looking to leverage whatever sort of APIs, webhooks, you know, automated emails through platforms like Klaviyo that we can, the majority of your community, you're going to want to have these automated communications that feel 1 to 1, 20% or so of your community is going to drive almost all the revenue.

00:21:43:08 - 00:22:02:04
Unknown
So that bottom 80%, how do you nurture them through the pipeline? without having that 1 to 1 touch so your team can focus their energy, really building relationships with the top affiliates in your community, but you want those automations to feel really personal and tailored to their experience, and you got to think about it also like a pipeline.

00:22:02:04 - 00:22:18:21
Unknown
So we've got at the beginning phases, we got the prospects like the lists and how you reach out to them with an outreach sequence. We've got people that have opted in and then from there it's like created content. Have they created content or not from their have they converted or not from there? Are they multiple convert or are they a top affiliate?

00:22:18:21 - 00:22:48:11
Unknown
So you look at that pipeline almost like a CRM. and how do you create automations at every stage that nurtures them through that pipeline? So your team can really focus on that, that latter category. Diving into influencer recruitment. So really I mentioned that it's a volume game. and so we want to implement software for pulling lists, for pulling high quality influencers that are going to convert and that are brand lined.

00:22:48:13 - 00:23:08:05
Unknown
And then how do we reach out to them at scale in a way that's going to be effective. So first thing to recommend here, you know, you've got there's lots of ways to, you know, pull influencer list, actually one that's not listed here that we love is a platform called sprawl. It's fairly new, really powerful from a list build standpoint.

00:23:08:05 - 00:23:27:10
Unknown
They can even facilitate some of the outreach, at maybe a smaller scale, but, other sources here. Incense like, is really great. It's paid, you know, so there's the paid platform fee, but also there is usually it's pay per influencer. So you could, you know, range anywhere from 20 to 50 bucks for an influencer post that.

00:23:27:10 - 00:23:54:00
Unknown
Then you can white list drive to even TikTok shop if you want. You can get pretty specific. We love to implement this the beginning phases of community, because it takes time to build the organic opt ins, and there's a lot of trial and error to getting that. And so by approaching influencers in the beginning in a capacity, you can kind of really expedite the momentum you're able to build in these communities, get some early content to help fuel your paid efforts, as well as inspiration content, to circulate back to the rest of the community.

00:23:54:00 - 00:24:08:22
Unknown
So incense is a good option if you want to go the paid route. And then Kayla Data specifically, you're on Tick Tock Shop. Fantastic resource. I won't get into too much detail here. but extremely powerful. You can find creators and sort them by category and also by GMV. So how much revenue they're actually driving through Tick tock shop.

00:24:09:00 - 00:24:26:11
Unknown
So but any of them work like if you've got Aspire or Creator IQ or it's lots of ways, doesn't matter as long as you can extract contact information. And then from there it's outreach. So instantly as well. When we love, really powerful cold outbound, you meet some of you, some of you may use this from a business development perspective.

00:24:26:11 - 00:24:44:22
Unknown
We leverage it for influencer outreach. The really the point being is that you need best practice. We found is a 4 to 5 part outreach sequence. You can't get, you know, one outreach messages out and expect anybody to respond to that. particularly with influencers like we find that it takes for follow ups to get them to raise their hand and people are busy.

00:24:44:22 - 00:24:59:15
Unknown
They got a lot of people that are in their DMs. and so you really got to kind of fight for that attention. And the goal here is really simple messaging. you're just looking for interest. And then once you have them, you got to follow up with it quickly. Take advantage of that momentum, and get them into your program.

00:24:59:15 - 00:25:19:00
Unknown
But 4 to 5 sequence follow ups in addition to instantly that would be email Instagram DM. We're finding to be really powerful, in terms of reply rates, opt in rates substantially higher than email. However, it's much harder to scale. So I've got a process here. We'll unpack in a second. And then finally you go around tick tock Shop, you guys.

00:25:19:00 - 00:25:40:04
Unknown
My favorite outreach bot. they also facilitate the outreach sequences so you can do up to five part outreach sequences that you pre. And so you're not just sending one message at a time, but you can set like a time delay. So follow up after one day two day three day. And so that is really effective, at getting your optin rate higher.

00:25:40:06 - 00:26:05:05
Unknown
Oh there it is. Strong. Okay. And then in terms of list building, there's the average stuff that I think everyone is familiar with, that are kind of cross-platform on sprawl in particular, looking at software and machine learning. A couple of my favorites are lookalike AI. So if you've got like an existing list of influencers, maybe you've worked with in the past, their top converting, you can upload a list and then leverage AI to go straight for lookalikes.

00:26:05:05 - 00:26:23:00
Unknown
And so it's really easy way to find people that are likely going to be a highly qualified for your brand. I think the sweet spot here like leveraging these tools. You don't want to spend too much time on the front end auditing your list. You're going to let them do that for you. So go a bit broader leveraging these tools.

00:26:23:00 - 00:26:39:01
Unknown
You can get 70% there. They're maybe like 30% garbage. That would never be a part of your program. But you don't know that until they respond and want to opt in. And so rather than spending the time at scale on the front end, kind of evaluating that, go broad, broad strokes. And then as they raise their hand, you can evaluate them then.

00:26:39:01 - 00:27:01:00
Unknown
So you save yourself a lot of time, by taking that approach a couple hours. I love reverse brand search. We've got a competitor you can actually install. Go in and, find people who talk about that brand. If they use a hashtag for another like influencer community and or if they follow that brand and extract influencers, that would be like already basically prevented by another brand.

00:27:01:00 - 00:27:24:06
Unknown
So if they have joined, say you know, another brand's Amazon program and you're building an Amazon community, it's a good chance that they've done all the work for you. And so your hit rate will be much higher. And then finally, in bio keyword search seems really powerful. It's one thing if you're creating content with the keyword and you're doing a post about fitness like they may or may not be qualified, but if you've got fitness in your bio, you know they're qualified.

00:27:24:06 - 00:27:48:22
Unknown
So it's a way to sort of like condense those list and get more, high quality list without doing the manual effort and then again, evaluating them on the front end once they show interest. This is, kind of a view of that lookalike feature. and then in your outreach messages, whether that's on raw or incense, you're going to want to test, it's initially all programs start with top of funnel message testing.

00:27:48:22 - 00:28:20:22
Unknown
So like what archetypes are going to be interested and resonate with your offer offering your product, what subject lines are going to get the best open rate? you know what call to action an offer is going to get them to sign up. So you kind of start sequentially and start testing in that like two month alpha phase on what's going to really move the needle and then optimize around open rates, reply rates, positive, sentiment, and then ultimately opt ins, which will then lead to, you know, the next phase, which is optimizing towards revenue.

00:28:21:00 - 00:28:40:18
Unknown
this is a screenshots of Yuka. So I mentioned the outreach box. So you can set those follow up messages at that cadence. I mentioned 3 to 4. Follow ups on TikTok. You can only send five messages before they respond. So and if you're sending a product card like you can only send four. So on TikTok in particular will have a 3 or 4 part outreach sequence.

00:28:40:18 - 00:29:02:21
Unknown
But the goal here is getting interest. Do not sell them the entire program in a long email. It's literally complimenting them, making it feel personal, and seeing if they're interested in more information or if they want to join your program. keep it simple. And then once they tell you, yeah, that's interesting, send me more. You can kind of unpack it, in more detail.

00:29:02:23 - 00:29:23:22
Unknown
And then this is a quick look at the Instagram outreach process. So I mentioned it's hard to scale. You can't send messages at volume or else you'll get like blocked for spam. And you'll you'll get your account shut down. So there's a couple tactics here. one would be on the left to where you actually set up branded Instagram handles.

00:29:24:00 - 00:29:46:19
Unknown
so if you have a coordinator who is doing outreach for you, you could set up five branded accounts. So this would have, you know, the brand name. One that's useful is having the brand actually follow that account. So it gives it that like validity checks, they don't think to think it's spam. And then you can have that coordinator send 20 to 50 outreach messages per account per day once it's warmed up.

00:29:46:19 - 00:30:07:22
Unknown
And you've kind of passed that like bot spam period of a new account, another, good tactic, especially, you know, if you don't have a big container team, you're not looking for scale, you're looking for higher quality top tier affiliates would be a founder approach. So if you have, you know, I recommend investing in the blue check here.

00:30:07:22 - 00:30:32:04
Unknown
That's that. First like subconscious check that this person is legit. This is not spam. And then put in your bio who you are, what you do and then who you're recruiting for. That way when people receive your DM, they can check that and there's kind of credibility. But oftentimes the response rate requires a opt in rate from like a founder account or a senior level team member will do really, really well.

00:30:32:06 - 00:30:47:07
Unknown
you just can't really hit that scale. So I would just recommend, if you're going to go that approach, a lot of times we will do that for top tier affiliates. So we'll look for affiliates that are driving a lot of sales or they have large followings. The goal with that is to get them on the phone to establish some sort of partnership.

00:30:47:07 - 00:31:16:08
Unknown
And so we'll use personal accounts to kind of go after the big fish. Another pathway into the community is I mentioned referral and loyalty. So this is also a nice way to spin the flywheel so that the more you invest in marketing as whole, even on paid channels, the more customers you acquire. If in your sales process you've got a purchase, opt in to the community with maybe a base tier that's more of a, referral mechanism.

00:31:16:10 - 00:31:46:06
Unknown
Typically we see about 5% of people making a purchase will opt in to that program, can even validate through social media. And then you can give them really simple mechanics on like, you know, get X, give Y, or like product seating at different tiers, like there's ways you can get creative with it. But that way as you're acquiring customers, always a percentage of them are joining your program, and then you have the opportunity to kind of enrich them and bring them into higher tiers and graduate in your program to more of affiliate capacity.

00:31:46:08 - 00:32:08:02
Unknown
So, that it's almost like a that flywheel effect of the more people that you acquire, the more the bigger your community gets and the more opportunities you have for for affiliates, we're often seeing that these types of programs, I mean, it could be half the revenue or more. And in your program, I know of, one brand is doing multiple six figures in just customer affiliates, not even doing anything with influencers.

00:32:08:02 - 00:32:38:08
Unknown
So great tactic, especially if you've already got a good customer base. You could launch this program and send out a mass email that people join like right away. If you've got like a quality list on on Klaviyo, would recommend post-purchase flow, you know, links in the bottom of your page to like an affiliate program or an ambassador community and then giving them clear communication on like how much they can earn with this program, what that means for them, along with like milestones that are easy to achieve, and give them kind of a path to success.

00:32:38:10 - 00:33:02:07
Unknown
we use for this, do you see Shopify Social Snowball and or super affiliate? they both have their own sort of like pros and cons. Both support a customer or creator or referral loyalty, type of operation. So, you know, already covered some of these offer mechanics if you're interested. Okay. So let's go into why scale works.

00:33:02:07 - 00:33:20:10
Unknown
This is the first success lever that you have to pull. And so assuming you've got a product that has an over 50 bucks and you've got a thousand prospects, you're reaching into, and then you've got that 10% optin rate. So 100 people join about a thousand person outreach, and then you've got a 10% conversion rate. So there's benchmarks be already set.

00:33:20:12 - 00:33:40:20
Unknown
That's ten converting creators with an average of three conversions, a creator that is approximately $1,500 in monthly revenue, and then the EMV generated from those 100 creators. So again, the beginning phases, you're looking at this, your program can be upside down. So how do we scale that. fixed costs being agency software and labor variable costs being seeding costs in commissions.

00:33:40:22 - 00:34:03:10
Unknown
So if you are able to do nothing else in your program but ten x your prospect size in your outreach sequences, then you could drive an extra $13,500 in additional monthly revenue and an additional EMV from 900 creators. So again, this is the first lever you have to pull to volume game. And that's where that tech implementation or tech enablement comes in.

00:34:03:12 - 00:34:21:14
Unknown
And that allows you to unlock the next phase of growth. The more you volume you do also the faster you learn. And so the faster you can figure out what your signal is like, what to double down on, what to cut. but this is kind of a sense of program growth. So redacted this client, they don't want to be mentioned specifically here.

00:34:21:16 - 00:34:48:01
Unknown
but as you can see, launch the program, we have the alpha cycle. That's for 60 days. October, November, scaling into that mid-cycle. and then finally, it's really till month five, month six, where the program just takes off. And it's not like snowball effect. This is really typical, because of the way you learn and implement, and you hit almost like a tipping point where you really start to get traction, towards that month, five month, six timeframe.

00:34:48:07 - 00:35:11:21
Unknown
So now that program, you know, six months in, is seeing a 30 day performance, five zero as it's got a 40% month over month growth rate. This actually outdated. We're now 50% this month over last month. This is from, March 3rd and $15 AOB. It's a really, really great product. we're beating KPIs across their cat targets, their AOB to cat ratio, and then those impressions are insane.

00:35:11:21 - 00:35:36:04
Unknown
48 million impressions over the course of 30 days. for them that as a sub $25 sub 25 cent CPM. So pretty nuts is the how powerful these communities can be with like you know what how many posts a 489 pieces of tag media. There. So okay, the secret sauce here is community management. So it's one thing to get someone to join your program and to create a piece of content.

00:35:36:04 - 00:35:57:06
Unknown
How do you take that influencer and nurture them so they create content on an ongoing basis and improve their performance over time. And so the goal here is to grow conversions, program engagement. How much revenue per member are you able to drive and that optimizing there is how you really unlock that like hero as potential and are able to hit your cash.

00:35:57:06 - 00:36:15:12
Unknown
Benchmarks. We do this through social listening and monitoring content, so as long as you can get them to post content, it gives you an opportunity to take a look at that content, build a better relationship with them by responding to it. showing them that you see what is being posted and that you guys are excited about it, but also recommending best practices.

00:36:15:12 - 00:36:33:10
Unknown
So you'll see pretty quickly influencer posted about it. You know, great. Love it. Love the content. Glad your favorite flavor is strawberry. But like they may not have shared a link with their code, they may not have done best practices like include a link in a bio. You know, there's follow up stories two days later after they share reel.

00:36:33:10 - 00:36:51:08
Unknown
Like there's all kinds of tips that you can give them and almost acting like their coach. That is a mentality you want to take. So you being on their team, wanting to help them find success and ultimately make as much money as they can. And so you do that. You can share tips from other people in the community.

00:36:51:08 - 00:37:09:22
Unknown
So love this content. Love your favorite flavors. Strawberry or other members in the company, or making a ton and seeing top sales are highlighting their stories or, hitting, you know, a piece of content or adding a link to bio or doing the follow up notes, like that's where you kind of get in and help coach them over time.

00:37:09:22 - 00:37:31:12
Unknown
So you'll see, as long as they're posting that content, you'll see those opportunities and your team should be able to jump on those quickly. I mentioned that 8020 rule, so you obviously can't do that 1 to 1 engagement across your entire community of thousands of creators. But like I mentioned, 20% are going to drive all your revenue. And of that really it's going to be a top 5 to 10 creators who are doing the majority of it.

00:37:31:12 - 00:37:49:10
Unknown
And so like looking for that and spending your time, your coordinator's time investing into those 1 to 1 DMs that coaching calls, we recommend with your top creators setting up a monthly touch base. We're able to collect feedback from them. So it's like, hey, how's it going? What do you love about the program? We wish you could change?

00:37:49:12 - 00:38:05:20
Unknown
you know, what do you feedback do you have in terms of the product? Like it's a great learning experience, but then it's how do we expand our partnership with you? What would you need to to basically for them to post more and to drive more revenue for the program and oftentimes just opening up that dialog in a like a human way?

00:38:05:20 - 00:38:22:20
Unknown
They will tell you and they may say, well, I'd love a paid opportunity, and you could say, okay, great. Well, here's this benchmark we want to hit. If you can hit that, we can invite you to like a collab or, sounds good. We want UDC ad creative. So like we'll get you a brief and some specific deliverables and a paid rate.

00:38:22:20 - 00:38:42:13
Unknown
So those are just other ways to kind of extract value out of your program that will pop up. We use there's lots of social listening tools out there, Mighty Scouts, it's great. It's kind of expensive, but like, you know, fairly powerful. Re funnel is probably my favorite. It's a newer, participant. They're like 150 bucks a month and you can do all your social listening.

00:38:42:13 - 00:39:04:05
Unknown
You can create campaigns, you can collect that content, download it right from re funnel if you want to use it for ads. You can also kind of seamlessly request licensed thing. They have like a one click licensing request process. So if you want to leverage for whitelisting or spark, that makes it easy. And then you can report on things like, earned media value, content impressions and media posted that way.

00:39:04:07 - 00:39:28:01
Unknown
And then there's Gatsby, which is a pretty cool tool. They do social listening as well. if you're on Shopify app, they also do automations. So, if you have people posting content about your brand already, you can automate, DM to them. That one bites into the program. So if you have people already talking on social media, it's a great way to like open up that type of funnel into your program as well as more mid funnel tactics.

00:39:28:01 - 00:39:53:05
Unknown
So you could every time someone post this content, you can automate a follow up that just like shows them that you are loving it, that you're just staying engaged, etc. and then from there there's klaviyo. So especially if you're on Shopify, it's a great way to automate that 80%. So setting up messaging flows, email, SMS triggers around key events they integrate directly with like a social snowball or a super affiliate, even Gatsby.

00:39:53:05 - 00:40:24:11
Unknown
So it's a great way to automate a lot of that communications, based on certain behavior, in the community and then mentioned Instagram again, hard to scale, but really good for that top kind of segment of the community. It's really powerful. We love using voice notes here. one, it's personal touch and the influencers love it. So it's a nice way for you to kind of differentiate yourself, tactically from other influencer or other brands doing influencer, but also it avoids, the spam kind of flags that are built into Instagram.

00:40:24:11 - 00:40:47:20
Unknown
So if you're doing like really templated copy and paste messages, that's a risk. And so voice notes totally kind of overcome that. okay. And then why community management and engagement matter. So again, to the numbers, assuming all the same kind of benchmarks here. $50, over 1000 prospects, 100 opt ins, ten converting creators and three average conversions per creator.

00:40:47:22 - 00:41:08:20
Unknown
If we just grow our opt in rate by 10% and our community conversion rate, that is the number of converting creators by 10%. that is an additional, you know, oh, oh, I left out one. So we're going to do all three. So forget what I just said. All three we're able to text list size increase by 2%, opt in rate and increase by 5% conversion rate.

00:41:08:23 - 00:41:46:03
Unknown
That is an additional $25,000 in monthly revenue from the program and EMV from 1100 additional creators. So you can kind of see how, over time, the opportunity to optimize different parts of your pipeline can really affect that attributable revenue. And then you can take this even further. So if you were to do like, say, a campaign where you're promoting a set of products or a bundle or a higher AOV product and add $15 to your AOF and then improve your average conversions from creator to five instead of three through coaching and DMs.

00:41:46:05 - 00:42:14:08
Unknown
sharing best practices, etc. the combined optimizations is $57,000 in additional revenue. and then that EMV from 1100 creators. So in terms of how you scale, you can kind of start to see the picture here. You can take a program that's got an 18 K baseline, which is where a lot of brands kind of like cap to a program that has over 700,000 in revenue, that is optimized over the course of, time.

00:42:14:10 - 00:42:35:12
Unknown
And example of engagement tactic that we love for that like top 20%. This is creators that are converting, you know, already multiple times will be to do a tactic like this. So this is mini chat. You guys have probably seen this, if you follow like recipe content creators, for example, they'll say, hey, comment below with keyword recipe and I'll shoot you, a link to the to the full recipe.

00:42:35:14 - 00:42:52:09
Unknown
pretty popular tactic, I think if you're doing this with your top tier creators, then you can really hand-hold them into this process. You can even pay for their mini chat like it'd be a nice value add. It's not that expensive and really see a massive bump in conversion for you. And then that is potential payout for the creator by implementing this.

00:42:52:09 - 00:43:12:11
Unknown
And so like one we love this because it drives engagement. So people will be dropping comments on the post which is algorithm friendly. It will help the reach of that post. it supports additional commissions. It make sure that everybody is receiving a link in a code that is engaging with that post. and it really drives a ton more revenue if you go through tactics like this.

00:43:12:17 - 00:43:30:07
Unknown
And so then you can take that, case study, if you will, from the top 20% of your creators that you're doing this on a hands on basis with, and then build a process with a loom and SOP and then circulate that back to the rest of your community and hopefully inspire them with the potential of how much they could make, along with all the tools they need to succeed.

00:43:30:07 - 00:43:51:09
Unknown
So you kind of start to see how this community starts to feed itself. Fourth pillar creative strategy and content production. So goal here, obviously you're looking to set them up with the tools they need to succeed and the inspiration to go do the thing. So one great way to do this is set up a resource hub or a creator portal.

00:43:51:11 - 00:44:11:03
Unknown
Lots of places you could do this, I would say I would just recommend, like asking where your target persona is likely to hang out on a daily basis, and then based on what your brand and your product is, that can help determine. So there's different platform school we've built in there. cool platform, especially for like info products or things along those lines.

00:44:11:03 - 00:44:28:12
Unknown
It's the community. They've got like a, like a chat feature that's like a, you know, anyone can go in and communicate, they can support modules and education and they have a leaderboard baked in. So that really makes that like giving a place for someone to go hang out really seamless. discord, especially if you're on TikTok, like there's a lot of activity around discord.

00:44:28:12 - 00:44:52:04
Unknown
We love building out discord communities. You can even automate some of this with your pipeline. So if you're working with something like Airtable for, your CRM, you can set certain triggers and like integrate with discord, to additionally kind of take some of that stuff off the manual coordination. meta. Like this is a Facebook group, especially if you have a product that is geared towards, like, you know, mommy influencers like this can be really powerful.

00:44:52:04 - 00:45:08:02
Unknown
One there's some Facebook groups that do a ton of revenue. and the benefit here is that you're kind of at the top of their newsfeed. So if they're in Facebook every day, like they're always getting notifications about like, communications and things that are happening inside of the group. you can even start to over time deputize admins.

00:45:08:02 - 00:45:28:22
Unknown
So like top performing creators, you can give them a role and like celebrate them in like a deeper capacity in the community. last one being notion. I'm sure there are more, but notion is great for, you know, things that need more robust training in education. So if you're like a B2B product or it's a great place to kind of customize that portal, if you want to embed like how tos, training resources, etc..

00:45:28:22 - 00:45:58:07
Unknown
So we like to have a basic set of like onboarding materials. so oftentimes we'll build out like a welcome video, like a, community 101, how to create and share your link, how to optimize your profile, best practices for posting like things like that, where you can build out like video resources to help them. and then from there, I think another great tactic is to share examples of top performing content.

00:45:58:07 - 00:46:15:15
Unknown
So this is easy to pull from a platform like keyword data, where you can literally find top videos by revenue. You can filter by category. So you're sharing back relevant content types and giving them a sense of one how much money they can make if they do it right, and two, like, what are the best practices and why we love it?

00:46:15:17 - 00:46:46:20
Unknown
really easy to pull. This can be content from your branded library. Like if it's fast influencer content that you've known to convert really well, or previous piece of ad creative, you can start there. You can also pull kind of category level, even if it's a competitor brand or a similar brand, like it's still really useful, because it inspires them and gives them a sense of like what is possible, you know, is to use for place a nice little plug here, like looking at a competitor brand, you can find top performing creative and use that to kind of build a case study or even a creative brief.

00:46:46:20 - 00:47:11:05
Unknown
I know with for Play, they've got the AI creative generation tool. So really easy and seamless with these tools to kind of start to create content that's going to inspire and equip the community to do better. Really powerful tool, especially as you kind of evolve or mature. Your community is building case studies around either creators and or pieces of content, that you can then share back to the rest of the community.

00:47:11:05 - 00:47:35:11
Unknown
So either on your message board or even through email or SMS, like here is an example of, content from X creator. They've driven 22 sales and generated X amount of dollars in revenue. Here's why we love this post. And so it gives people inspiration education on how to kind of replicate that success grab and go content. This would be like a brand kit, not just like brand guidelines, but, a lot of times, content can be created without even having the products.

00:47:35:11 - 00:47:56:09
Unknown
So think about like green screen creative, for example. So if you want to give creators a library of ready to use content, this could be screen recording your website, product imagery, UGC, B-roll, etc. creators will often be able to pull from that and create a ton of different variety of content without even having to receive your product.

00:47:56:09 - 00:48:15:06
Unknown
So this is a great tactic if you've got like a higher AOV product that you don't just want to seed out to hundreds of people, you can give people a starting place and maybe like a threshold of conversions or content post in order to receive that seated product. We do this successfully for one brand. Now that's got an area of like $400 plus, and it is half the revenue in their program.

00:48:15:06 - 00:48:40:21
Unknown
So you don't necessarily need to seed all the time if you've got a really expensive product, but it's a good idea. and then additionally, if you wanna take that step further, you can create inspiration. So you could have someone on your team or another creator in the community build an example piece of content using creative that is in that library, and then share that alongside that library to give people kind of a pathway to success and inspire them on how to leverage that creative in the best way.

00:48:40:23 - 00:49:02:03
Unknown
It's you want to go really deep. Live recordings, live broadcasts, webinars are a great angle. Discord actually supports this, like in the platform. Lots of ways you can do that though. Like we're using software here to do that. I think it's a good touch point to like bring in creators from your community that are top performing and help maybe unpack like how they succeed.

00:49:02:05 - 00:49:26:16
Unknown
could also be a great place to involve, like your founder. the best programs do have a presence from their founders. If you think like the TikTok shop darling right now, Guru Ananda, their founder, is very involved on, engaging with their community through WhatsApp. So that's another opportunity for building community if you're involved in TikTok. But they're going deep, like speaking 1 to 1, so that level involvement can go a long way.

00:49:26:16 - 00:49:43:09
Unknown
And it's very much appreciated by the community themselves. This is an example of one that we worked with Instacart on. So they this is a custom kind of build. They didn't use any of the platforms. They kind of built on their own ecosystem. They're powered by tune. So it's a little bit nuanced here with the way their tech is set up.

00:49:43:10 - 00:50:20:11
Unknown
but they built like a resource library, you know, housed videos, FAQs, etc. all to help kind of make that onboarding and activation process more seamless, more streamlined, more clear. Okay. And then finally, my favorites extensions for paid and pay, social whitelisting and spark. So outside of, boosting awareness, organic, influencer generated content, a lot of this can be great spark ads or whitelisting ads so you can secure licensing to use it even if you're not running whitelisting or spark ads, you can secure licensing for your brand page.

00:50:20:13 - 00:50:39:02
Unknown
using re funnel. It's pretty affordable. Pretty. Oftentimes we'll do it just because you you are excited, to share the content. They'll give you that permission. Other times you can negotiate like a monthly licensing fee. So like 50 bucks a month, month to month, as long as you want to leverage that content on the paid side, you're on TikTok.

00:50:39:02 - 00:50:57:04
Unknown
It's really simple, like the, you know, if they're creating content for you in the collab, that commission is baked in. and so the if you are running spark ad creative, they are earning commission on that. So it's actually a really great way to incentivize your community. You can say something along the lines of spend $1,000 in GMV or not spend.

00:50:57:04 - 00:51:13:04
Unknown
If you see $1,000 in GMV organically from one of your videos, we'll match dollar for dollar on Spark Ads. And so they will be incentivized to create more content to test different angles that work to really hit that threshold, because they know that you're going to put the power of your brand behind the reach, which is ultimately, you know, the leverage for conversions.

00:51:13:05 - 00:51:30:16
Unknown
So lots of ways you can slice this, but, you can even take content from the library and do mash ups, you know, if you want. variety of different creative you can get out of a extension of like a strategy like this mentioned that signal. definitely recommend that. Like one can GMV early on to you may not have that.

00:51:30:16 - 00:51:53:13
Unknown
You may just be looking for other signal like click through rates. If you have these created that has a great click through rates. Not doing the sales yet. It may be worth testing, in a pay capacity as well. You're getting that massive content pipeline, mentioned hundreds of posts a month that you could potentially, turn into ads if you're on TikTok shop, something we're investing heavily into as an agency right now.

00:51:53:15 - 00:52:18:16
Unknown
We're seeing especially brands that are winning today, not just back in November. 90% of your revenue there can be driven by paid. And so we're seeing that the paid flywheel or the investing into paid feeds, the flywheel and organic performance follows a paid investment. so definitely if you are on TikTok shop highly recommend integrating your paid strategy, really bringing to the forefront of your organic TikTok shop strategy.

00:52:18:16 - 00:52:39:02
Unknown
Because it's a three legged stool, it requires investment into paid, organic and affiliate to really find success there. And then, for you growth teams, media buyers like I think one additional benefit is that you're going to be able to pull insights that really start to inform and improve your marketing efforts and your ad creative as a whole.

00:52:39:04 - 00:52:57:22
Unknown
So if we use motion, to view analytics, I mentioned the other half of our business is running social ads. And so if we are doing whitelisted creative or spark ads, plug in that into motion. Starting to look at thumbs up ratio, view through rate, click through rate, etc. you can start to extract insights on new hooks.

00:52:58:00 - 00:53:35:19
Unknown
that can inform maybe your UGC efforts or even that you can feed back to the community itself. to help improve that performance. On the whole, you'll also get new trends. So if you have creative that your team is developing, there's only so many ideas you're going to have around brand messaging points, around hooks, etc. so by opening it up to the organic community at scale, you will find that things that resonate with the community, the hooks they create, the different favorite talking points that they have, like all of that will start to inform new angles for your ad creative, and so you'll learn a lot faster, which you can take then and

00:53:35:19 - 00:53:59:13
Unknown
implement in your creative briefs for the rest, of your of your paid social. So just the speed to learning, the speed to unlocking new, avenues for growth is really fast. Once you implement a community like this. And I think that that will do it. I'm sure that there's questions in the chat. Zak, if you want to go ahead and pop back in, happy to dive into that.

00:53:59:15 - 00:54:16:16
Unknown
and guys, if you want to find me, I'm happy to go deep. I know that this chat was really high level. And so, if you want to go deeper, you want to chat. I'm happy you do. So find me on LinkedIn. Hit me up. I've also got if you want access in these platforms, I've got referral links, etc. so, happy to continue the convo.

00:54:16:18 - 00:54:41:18
Unknown
Sweet. Awesome man. Appreciate. I appreciate that. That was like super interesting for me to kind of like sit in, and watch and I like, really appreciate how tactical that was. and yeah, there's a, there's a bunch of, questions here that I've got in the chat. if anybody still has any questions, make sure to get them in sort of right now, over the next two minutes, as we're going through, the questions that are in there, and we'll try to get them, but if you do have a question, put it in now.

00:54:41:20 - 00:54:57:11
Unknown
and hopefully we'll get to them. But I'll, I'll kind of just load up some of the ones, that I, that I collected, during a presentation. So, the first one from Peter, I'm super interested here, but this is like in terms of, like doing massive. Obviously there's like the technical limitations and all of that kind of stuff.

00:54:57:13 - 00:55:20:20
Unknown
But are there any, like, very specific mistakes that you see other brands make when they're doing mass outreach? I know you had mentioned, you know, doing like, like two super canned messages, but from like a content point of view, like, is there anything that I should avoid? Yeah. I mean, the first mistake that people make is reaching out once and evaluating success.

00:55:20:20 - 00:55:43:02
Unknown
That way, if you're only reaching out one time, you're never going to get that activation rate. Like, you really have to be doing that 4 to 5 part outreach sequence to get that that first, yes, that first indication of interest. So I would start there in terms of messaging. yeah. I mean, keep it simple. Like I mentioned, you don't want to sell the entire program.

00:55:43:02 - 00:56:00:23
Unknown
So like email copy should not unpack all the details, what the commission structure is like, blah blah, blah. Just forget that. Have it be high level. Make your first line personalized. So like give them a compliment on like why you love their content. And then from there, just at a high level, say, I think you'd be a great fit for our program.

00:56:00:23 - 00:56:19:00
Unknown
I'd love to explore how to partner and collaborate with you. Are you interested? Because you're just trying to get them to give you that indication of interest? Once you have that you can follow up, you can give them additional detail. They may say yes, it may say no, I'm not interested, but any response is value for you because you can kind of triage what they're saying and then it gives you another angle.

00:56:19:00 - 00:56:38:15
Unknown
And so even if you're getting a no you can figure out why and kind of troubleshoot from there. Good feedback. Just treat you know treat it like cold email. All you're trying to do is get a reply and then go from there. Make sense? Exactly. the next one from Mohammed, he said, you know, what are some effective strategies for collaborating with influencers to achieve sustainable business growth?

00:56:38:19 - 00:57:03:15
Unknown
And so I'm assuming he's like, you know, talking about formatting the actual programs. is there anything you've seen, like if someone's like just starting out, like a tried and true sort of like, you know, format to the program that they're building? let's see. Yeah, I would say at a baseline tier, you can have that like referral customer referral program as like a pipeline then.

00:57:03:15 - 00:57:33:12
Unknown
So like make sure you have that like post-purchase opt in. You've got a basic simple referral mechanics. So like give X, get Y to get that like foundation. And even if you're sending like an email to invite to your entire list, that's momentum right away into your program and help you speed up the learning process. Like within like a tighter group of people that already love your brand so you can start to collect feedback, etc. from there, like you're going to want to be pretty aggressive with incentives, and offer strategy.

00:57:33:17 - 00:57:50:07
Unknown
Don't be stingy there. I think think about it like this. Like you're going to pay either pay it to Zuck or another channel. So look at your cat, your average cat, and have that be the starting place for how you, incentivize a creator. So don't just stick a flat ten, 15% and think it's going to do anything for you.

00:57:50:11 - 00:58:15:07
Unknown
Like try to be aggressive here because there's a lot more value beyond the direct your career bill conversions, in top of funnel awareness in the content that you're going to generate, which is going to like lower your creative costs, etc.. So try to be aggressive. That's only going to invest in the community and build that relationship. and then have tiers that you can almost gamify the experience, give people a baseline commission that's like still aggressive, but something that people are going to start with.

00:58:15:09 - 00:58:31:19
Unknown
You're going to want to reward them early and often, in the beginning to kind of create that habit. Otherwise you'll have them post once and kind of fall off. So keep it simple. In the beginning, it could be like a simple incentive around posting like post for the first time and unlock X. Once they do that, you have that opportunity to coach them.

00:58:31:19 - 00:59:00:20
Unknown
So first tier, very simple. and then from there threshold. So like hit X conversions this month on month one. And you can receive an incentive bump from 30% to 35%. and have that ladder up to like a top tier affiliate structure. And so you could do custom product drops like at a top. There's so many ways you can get creative with, like, what that incentive ladder looks like, but try to gamify it and then really celebrate them at each milestone so they stay engaged with your program.

00:59:00:22 - 00:59:15:22
Unknown
Cool, cool. Yeah. So I mean, you know, what I'm hearing there is like, if you want this to perform like, you know, a scalable paid acquisition channel, it's like, you know, delegate the same amount of budget as you would to like Facebook or Google. And it's like, you know, treat it as, as you want it to perform and it should.

00:59:15:22 - 00:59:41:04
Unknown
So that makes that makes a lot of sense. the next one is from Curtis wondering, you know, outside of like, just, you know, affiliate, and discount codes. Are there any other metrics that you use to back into success potentially early on, when managing a new program? or are you kind of just like, really focused in on, you know, directly attribute of revenue is that that is what you're trying to drive and, yeah.

00:59:41:06 - 01:00:02:20
Unknown
that is always the North Star, especially for brands. They want to see that direct attributable revenue. the first thing I would say there is have a longer attribution window because influencer is certainly more top of funnel. And so like if you have like a one click zero day attribution, like it's going to be hard to see success there, at least open it up to 24 hours, if not seven day.

01:00:02:20 - 01:00:20:11
Unknown
The average for influencers 14 day. Some aggressive programs need 30 days, so open that up. you'll get a clearer path to how it's actually affecting overall. your acquisition. But outside of that, like initially, you're not going to be looking at attribute revenue because like it's a pipeline. So like you have to start with the top of funnel metrics.

01:00:20:13 - 01:00:40:00
Unknown
So early on it's like content posted. What percent of your, creators are activating and creating content for you? If you can get them to activate and create content for you, then at that point it's like step one. It gives you another way to like, work with them and educate them, because most creators in your program are not going to be social affiliates, like people who know how to drive sales.

01:00:40:00 - 01:01:06:11
Unknown
There are top affiliates who that is their game. You know, they are social sellers. They can drive EMV for you. Oftentimes they want a paid relationship in the beginning. So yeah, you're going to go after those people and be measuring their success by revenue. But you're also going to be wanting to coach the bottom tier of your community on how to actually convert, but you're never going to get there if you if you start right out of the gates optimizing for revenue first, it's content posted.

01:01:06:13 - 01:01:27:09
Unknown
Got it. Could it that no, that that totally makes sense. smiling from Andrews. Just wondering if you have any kind of updated metrics on, for the Instagram outreach piece, like what are the limitations if they are setting up any automations or they're doing it manually? is there like a stop kind of like loss that you have on right now where it's like we're sending ten message a day, 20 what are you guys doing right now?

01:01:27:10 - 01:01:45:07
Unknown
I mean, I can tell you what we do. I don't know that there is a a official playbook on this, at least that I haven't found. So if anybody knows, let me know. But the way we do it is we'll set up five accounts per coordinator, dedicated accounts. And we'll do 20 per day outreaches, from each account.

01:01:45:07 - 01:02:07:16
Unknown
So not wanting to go past that, I think we in the beginning we struggled with new accounts getting shut down, like automatically from like bot activity. So you're looking to avoid anything that sniffs and smells like a bot. So you want low frequency of messages. We cap it at 20. You want things like voice notes to keep it engaging and kind of avoid those flags.

01:02:07:21 - 01:02:26:17
Unknown
And then you want human behavior. So I wouldn't just do it all at once, like back to back where you're just blasting through your 20 on all five accounts, like kind of spread it out throughout the day and then make sure you're doing, like warm up tactics. So like, each account we spend a week to two weeks ahead of time starting to follow people starting small.

01:02:26:17 - 01:02:41:08
Unknown
Like we'll follow one account a day that's in our target ICP. And then the next day we'll ramp it up to two and then three, and then just gradually grow that activity, but in a very humanized way so it doesn't feel like bot. And then we'll start to once that feed starts to populate, we can start to engage in the content.

01:02:41:08 - 01:03:04:08
Unknown
So we'll like a post. Leave a thoughtful comment. you're just kind of priming that audience for when you start outreach, but we'll give that like a two week period. And then we want to scale accounts is just additional coordinators and additional, accounts that you stand up for them. Cool. Alex is wondering if you running any influencer affiliate programs on any other platforms except for, you know, TikTok, meta, Amazon.

01:03:04:10 - 01:03:22:17
Unknown
is there any other, you know, sort of more like niche, platforms that you guys are seeing a lot of success on? Obviously, you know, depends on the product that you're selling. But, anything else that stands out in terms of, you know, platforms. Yeah, it's fairly there's lots of different programs that we've built on a variety, different platforms.

01:03:22:17 - 01:03:41:16
Unknown
A lot of it is due to the brand in their tech stack. So a lot of times we inherit a brand. It'll be inheriting a program for, say, like an Aspire or Creator IQ, and they may have an existing influencer program they've built there. And so it's like they want to build on top of that. you can do it like the the difficult piece with other platforms.

01:03:41:17 - 01:04:05:23
Unknown
not the super affiliate social snowball on the Shopify side or TikTok shop, which has that messaging fairly. You're able to automate a lot of that, with a program like Aspire creator Q or some of these other traditional influencer platforms that at scale, once you get past hundreds of creators into thousands, managing that community and the communications required to see success becomes really clunky and really difficult.

01:04:05:23 - 01:04:28:20
Unknown
And you'll have to lean into, like, you know, spreadsheet type of management and just bodies. so doable for sure. but you want to find as many ways as you can to, to automate that. So I would say pull them off platform and find, like a home for them, an ability for you to do kind of automated or in mass communications based on certain events that happen inside your community.

01:04:28:22 - 01:04:47:14
Unknown
Got it? Got it. and so last one here. So Maria wants to know, like how you're managing leads, discount codes. Like obviously it's a problem across like influencers but also like everything. Right. So how are you guys managing that. is there like a playbook for making sure? I mean, I'm sure it's one of those things where you can't, you know, completely avoid it.

01:04:47:16 - 01:05:09:10
Unknown
but how do you, like, mitigate the risk of leak discount codes? Yeah. really, there's not an incredible way to do that. the brands that are really concern about that will just not have discount code supported. They'll just straight use links. and so depending on what platform it is on, it's determined determine the type of link that you're going to share.

01:05:09:12 - 01:05:26:09
Unknown
but that would be really the only way to cut that out entirely. So if your risk tolerance is not like if you care about that, then just go links. But it doesn't really affect the program. It does cut off some application of like podcasters or things along those lines where like a code will be helpful, but even in that scenario you can cut the links in the description, etc..

01:05:26:09 - 01:05:42:01
Unknown
So as long as the community is trained up on best practices and really pointing towards a link instead of a code, like you can get around it that way. Cool, cool. Awesome. Well thanks man, I appreciate you taking the time to kind of like drop all this knowledge. I know you guys are like scaling some like really incredible, you know, programs at 0 to 1.

01:05:42:03 - 01:05:56:15
Unknown
before we let you go, if people have any other questions or they want to reach out and they want to launch, you know, a program with you guys working, they reach out to you, I'll let you plug what you want to plug. And, I'll go from there. Yeah. LinkedIn, like I mentioned, is we're very, very active as a company.

01:05:56:15 - 01:06:20:15
Unknown
On LinkedIn. You can find me. My name is Michael Whitehead. company 021. I'm there all the time, along with everybody in our team. So please reach out. And I'd love to jam further. go deeper on any specific tactics, questions, look at your program, etc.. Cool, guys. Well, again, thank you for taking the time, to do this and know because like a really in-depth presentation, I know everybody that watches these always like really enjoys the super tactical ones.

01:06:20:15 - 01:06:34:07
Unknown
But sure as was thank you. and everybody that's watching, if you came here a little bit late, there will be a replay available on our YouTube channel that get emailed out. and we have a bunch of other fireside chats, planned, so I can't wait to see you guys. Short for those ones. but yeah, thanks for your time.

01:06:34:07 - 01:06:38:08
Unknown
Thanks for everybody watching. And I'll see you guys in the next one. Thanks, everyone. Yep.

How to Hack Influencer's As a Sustainable Growth Channel

Micah Whitehead

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