Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to the Moon at Dawn podcast where we interview B2B marketing leaders to help understand how they think, plan and activate B2B influencer marketing campaigns.
Speaker: So let's get straight into it.
Speaker: Jay, welcome to the Moon at Dawn podcast.
Speaker: Nice to speak to you again.
Speaker: Yeah, thanks for having me, Chris.
Speaker: Super excited to chat about creator and influencer marketing today.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Well, before we jump into some of the questions that I had, do you mind just giving a quick overview to your experience and what you're up to now?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So a little bit about my experience.
Speaker: I am an early stage marketer.
Speaker: I guess I've kind of been typecast as that.
Speaker: Right now, full time, I'm working at a recruiting agency, leading marketing.
Speaker: over there as basically the first marketing hire coming in, setting everything up.
Speaker: Outside of that, I also help run a software company with my co-founder.
Speaker: We do AI for audio and video content.
Speaker: So like if you have a podcast and you're trying to turn it into like a LinkedIn post, pull out key quotes, all that stuff.
Speaker: That's what the product does.
Speaker: And yeah, just super excited to chat.
Speaker: I've worked with creators a lot.
Speaker: This is my second kind of software company that's working a lot better than my first one that I worked on.
Speaker: But yeah, I've tried to always figure out and leverage creators and all that stuff.
Speaker: So excited to chat about the topic today.
Speaker: Perfect.
Speaker: Well, so let's just jump into the first question I had, which is around how you think about, well, you said influencers.
Speaker: So you said creators, I referenced the term influencers.
Speaker: creators and influencers like how do you go into a specific uh how do you think about the strategy how do you think about the role of a creator for your specific problem or challenge or company that you're working at are you able to give us an example of a recent uh creator strategy that you had
Speaker: Yeah, so the big thing that I always lead off with, and I love to, I'm hoping maybe I can put my name around the term, I guess, since I coined it, but I always like to talk about creator product fit a lot.
Speaker: So everyone knows what product market fit is and all of that stuff, but there's this idea of creator product fit.
Speaker: And anytime I try and work with a creator, it's something that's probably sits right at the top of my program and my campaign.
Speaker: And that is that you have to find creators that can genuinely work with your product.
Speaker: I think that's super key.
Speaker: It has to come across as authentic.
Speaker: I think this goes back to
Speaker: B2C and influencer creator marketing, which is light years ahead still of B2B and influencer creator marketing and what creators found over there.
Speaker: So a little bit more context around my background too is before I'm working on the things that I'm working on right now, I spent about a little over a year working at a B2C direct-to-consumer kind of like influencer marketing platform.
Speaker: So I learned a lot about
Speaker: how those partnerships worked and what the kind of exchange was and saw a little bit of an evolution as well.
Speaker: And so the big evolution over there was, you know, instead of just, you know, paying creators for posting, it was really around, you know, having authentic relationships and finding creators that could authentically promote your product.
Speaker: just because if you're there and I, let's say, I live in the marketing space, right?
Speaker: So if someone comes to me and gives me like an engineering related product and asked me to plug it out, like sure, maybe I have people that are,
Speaker: engineers that I'm connected with and stuff like that, but that's going to feel very inauthentic.
Speaker: Or, you know, if I haven't used a product before, that's probably going to really show when, you know, someone messages, inevitably messages me and asked me like, Hey, like, what did you think about this feature?
Speaker: How does it work for this use case?
Speaker: And, and that kind of stuff.
Speaker: So I think, you know, where it really starts is you have to have creator product fit.
Speaker: And that means working with creators that can genuinely use your product.
Speaker: Maybe they're not using it right now necessarily, but they could become a user or customer of your product or they are already.
Speaker: So I think that's the biggest place to start at.
Speaker: Well, there's a good chance I'm going to steal that phrase in the future, create a product fit.
Speaker: So you said some stuff there that kind of,
Speaker: dovetails quite nicely into the next question I had.
Speaker: So you referenced that creator sits at kind of the top of the tree when thinking about your go-to-market strategy.
Speaker: So historically, with how you've thought about your go-to-market motion and with some of the brands and companies and working for yourself, do you have influencer marketing underpin an overarching strategy or has it complemented
Speaker: Like what kind of role does it fit within an overarching go to market motion for yourself and some of the companies that you worked at?
Speaker: Yeah, I think it depends what you're kind of working on and selling, honestly, and where you are in terms of how much that strategy plays into your overall strategy.
Speaker: For me, I think it's one of the, and that's like every strategy, right?
Speaker: It depends on like whatever you invest in it is what you're gonna get out of it.
Speaker: So I think it can become one of your top producing channels personally.
Speaker: But it's really having the right organization and system around it more than anything.
Speaker: So you have to set up that process.
Speaker: And what that process looks like is figuring out a way to identify those creators and influencers that you want to work with.
Speaker: Where do you find those?
Speaker: We could talk about that too a little bit.
Speaker: And then figuring out like a strategy, you really have to treat it as like the same way.
Speaker: I kind of say it's like very similar to how someone runs like paid ads essentially to an extent where like there is that constant testing motion that's going on and you're, you're working on generating new creative and stuff like that.
Speaker: It's very similar in that sense.
Speaker: But yeah, I think in terms of where it fits into your overall strategy, first of all, it depends on, you know, do I have creators in my space?
Speaker: How many creators are there?
Speaker: What are the people I can talk to?
Speaker: And then really figuring out like, how did it like our, what are they creating on our people following?
Speaker: Is it still too early?
Speaker: Is it the right time to engage this channel?
Speaker: But I do think like, in terms of impact, it depends on the product, but
Speaker: If there are creators in your space around it, like I live in the marketing world a lot, so there are a lot of marketing creators.
Speaker: Chris, I know you know a lot of marketing creators.
Speaker: I think at that point, it can be one of your top channels and at least also, if not this place that you're spending the most money on it, the place where you're probably finding the most ROI for dollars spent.
Speaker: Okay, so let's dive into some examples.
Speaker: Are you able to give us a recent example of a creator strategy that you led and maybe give some substance and meet behind kind of actually what led you to firstly identify a creator strategy as the right fit for your overall go-to-market motion and then perhaps just share a little bit on the
Speaker: The strategic approach, but actually the activation, what are these guys doing and how did you work with them?
Speaker: So it'd be good to get a bit more of an idea of an end-to-end practical example or something that you've done.
Speaker: Yeah, so I'll share like a little bit of the stuff that we do at Summarize for our creator program.
Speaker: So where we kind of start with it, I think it's really important to like, you have to, it's not like, yeah, yeah, we're all on social, like, obviously, like, that's where a lot of communication channels are going to go.
Speaker: But I think it's really important to have that structure in place.
Speaker: So a couple of things that we do is, you know, we have our own, we have a page to that kind of like outlines our creator program, I think it's really important to create like a creator brief, essentially.
Speaker: The creator brief should typically include information on what the creator program is, you know, how, if there's going to be any sort of compensation, whether that's monetary or whether that's free product or whatever, whatever you agree to over there, like there should be some of that stuff.
Speaker: You should include examples of what content is that you're looking for.
Speaker: What are some of the things that you want to focus on in terms of guidelines?
Speaker: Nothing super specific.
Speaker: Like I always recommend in terms of whenever you set up a creator program and you're going to go engage creators and ask them to make content for you, it's got to be a little bit like a loose guidelines.
Speaker: Like, you know, there are things, certain things that you want to hit on.
Speaker: So for instance, like for Summarize specifically, we do want to make sure, you know, they say like, hey, like Summarize does like...
Speaker: audio and video content repurposing, right?
Speaker: We're like built for like podcasts, webinars, interviews.
Speaker: We take your content, we turn it into text-based content, like, you know, turning into a LinkedIn post or creating a blog out of it or pulling out the key quotes.
Speaker: Like, so those are some of the like, kind of like non-negotiables in terms of like, you know, how the product works itself.
Speaker: But then in terms of the voice and how you organize that, that should ultimately be up to the creator.
Speaker: So I always like to make sure and include that in my creator brief as well.
Speaker: So I think that's a really key thing.
Speaker: And then in terms of getting really in the weeds over here on details, the other thing I like to set up is I like to set up a little bit of a CRM for my creators as well.
Speaker: So typically what I'll do is I'll make a list of, first of all, creators that maybe I'm interested in engaging with.
Speaker: And then once they're onboarded, obviously marking them as onboarded as well, once they kind of agree and say like, hey, I'm interested in this, I'm interested in working together.
Speaker: So having that, I think is really important with a little bit of data around it, like, you know, how many followers do they have?
Speaker: What audience are they targeting?
Speaker: Maybe a few recent post examples, all of that stuff.
Speaker: So I think that's a really important element of it.
Speaker: And then really having templates around like, hey, how are we going to reach out to creators?
Speaker: Also, you need to really have tools built around how are you going to collect this content and figure out and organize?
Speaker: If you are doing a payment strategy, that's what we've done at Summarize is we have this creator program where once we kind of identify those creators, we reach out and we engage with them.
Speaker: We do compensate them.
Speaker: with, with, with monetary compensation.
Speaker: And so it's about how do I collect that information?
Speaker: So we use you can either use like a type form or an air table.
Speaker: I like to use one of those to basically like
Speaker: hey, once you submit your post, this is where you're going to put that.
Speaker: And you can put that in your creator brief as well.
Speaker: You basically just need a way to collect that.
Speaker: And then also put that information and data together, right?
Speaker: It's not just about like, hey, they posted, cool.
Speaker: Like you really need to systemize this the same way that you'd systemize something like paid media.
Speaker: And that means, you know, asking them for impressions,
Speaker: the week after so that way you can record that data figure out what's working what's resonating and then figure out how to scale that right same thing with like
Speaker: I recently started doing Facebook ads for SummerEyes.
Speaker: And so a big part of that is once you figure out the ads that are working, it's like, okay, or the audience set that's working is like, okay, how do I make more creative for this audience set?
Speaker: And how do I figure out how to spend more money around this and kind of like mix and match that together?
Speaker: So those are some of the things that like, in terms of like the logistics side is like, you really want to make sure you have
Speaker: that tracking and analytics set up, build out any sort of automation that you can in terms of like managing the workflow.
Speaker: And then also just, you know, having that information there and like a creator brief and stuff like that.
Speaker: So those are some kind of like tactical things to kind of dive into.
Speaker: I hope that answered your question a little bit.
Speaker: It's exactly what I wanted.
Speaker: We want to get into the weeds.
Speaker: We want to get into logistics.
Speaker: So stay in put for now.
Speaker: So thinking about reaching out to creators,
Speaker: What message and themes have you seen work really well?
Speaker: Because presumably you've tested lots of different hooks and messages to try and entice people to get in touch, to avoid getting lost in inboxes, on LinkedIn.
Speaker: What message is standing out to get people enticed to work with you?
Speaker: Yeah, I think the best place to usually start, and this is like what I recommend as well, is if you have existing people, either A, that have posted about your product or have used your product, that's like the best place to start.
Speaker: So in terms of messaging over there, it's usually, hey, like, I know you've been actively like using the product.
Speaker: We just launched this creator program.
Speaker: Are you interested in participating?
Speaker: And, you know, I'll send them over the creator brief and things like that.
Speaker: Like I do mention that it is for us.
Speaker: Like I always mentioned that it's paid.
Speaker: There's a few other ways of compensation that we can kind of talk about as well outside of just cash payments.
Speaker: But yeah, so that's usually typically what I do is I'll kind of like intro and start with that.
Speaker: In terms of other messages that have worked, I've actually joined a couple of creator programs as well myself.
Speaker: And so one of the ones that has hooked me is usually if there's like
Speaker: you know, like I said, creator product fits the most important piece, right?
Speaker: So it's like, hey, you would you be interested in using this product and trying it out?
Speaker: And we have a paid creator program.
Speaker: So I think, especially the compensation piece, I think is pretty important.
Speaker: And it doesn't have to be like monetary compensation always, or like pay to post kind of thing.
Speaker: But yeah, I would say leading with that and kind of talking through that is a good way to kind of start just because it's also like, you know, what's in it for the creator as well.
Speaker: Like anytime you work together with someone, it's like you have to have like a mutual exchange of value, right?
Speaker: So, you know, you get the value that you're going to get is you're going to get in front of their audience and what's the value to them.
Speaker: So I think for any type of messaging,
Speaker: Regardless, that's what you kind of have to figure out is, you know, what is the value to the creator?
Speaker: Kind of lead with that on your message to really get them hooked in.
Speaker: Super interesting.
Speaker: So staying put still and thinking about the compensation that you referenced.
Speaker: So you talked about monetary values and paying someone to engage.
Speaker: How do you go about assessing how much to pay someone?
Speaker: Yeah, so I think ultimately, there's a few different ways.
Speaker: I personally like to lead with my own kind of rate.
Speaker: And the way that I get that is typically I'll work back from like my, my product price, essentially in my ACV.
Speaker: So, you know, a little bit of like, kind of like,
Speaker: paper napkin math essentially is how, how I'll figure out my rates is like, you know, if I, you know, it's summarized like our, our prices start at, you know, 20 bucks a month and we go all the way up to a, we have a hundred buck a month plan and stuff like that.
Speaker: And so I'll typically take like the, the average value of my customer and what I can kind of expect and how long I can kind of expect them to stick around and then work backwards from there and figure out.
Speaker: Usually I'll start with a rate typically like around four,
Speaker: 10k to 20k followers, which is where I typically like to play around in that space a lot more is I'll be closer to about like anywhere from like 100 to $200 per post.
Speaker: So typically like about like, essentially, we're talking about, you know, starting at 100 bucks and maybe like 10 bucks for every additional post.
Speaker: 1000 followers.
Speaker: So that's where I'll typically start.
Speaker: But you know, some creators have rates set already, because they've worked with other companies.
Speaker: Some other creators don't have rates set.
Speaker: And so it's really figuring that out.
Speaker: And sometimes so I think that's where like, that that mix of compensation or that mix of value can really come into play.
Speaker: And you've got to be like a good negotiator in that sense, as well as like, hey, like,
Speaker: you know maybe i said i want to do you know we'll pay you a 150 to post right every time you post and the creator comes back and says hey actually like uh you know my rates to do something like that or 250 or 300 or whatever 500 whatever that is i i think from there it like starts to sometimes you get that first offer accepted great if not it's really trying to figure out okay how do we get to that number like
Speaker: how are you arriving at that number?
Speaker: This is kind of how we're arriving at the number and what we're looking to do.
Speaker: And like, you know, we're just looking to maybe test this out first and see if we can get our investment back and then see if it makes sense to invest more.
Speaker: So, hey, can we do something, you know, down the line where if it works, we can do like a bigger rate or we can set like a target or maybe, you know, if, you know, we're too different on prices, like maybe we can do like an affiliate play as well with that.
Speaker: lots of different ways to kind of like think about compensation as well.
Speaker: Like, you know, can we do like a product discount, right?
Speaker: Like maybe, you know, like I said, create a product fit, right?
Speaker: So like the creators that you should be working with should be able to use your product.
Speaker: And so if I have a $50 a month product, like, can I get free access to this creator to be able to use it to help them on their workflow?
Speaker: Is there, we've, I've experimented not in for summarize specifically,
Speaker: but before like offering like super small amounts of equity as well for like early stage creators, like early creators to the process.
Speaker: Are there any co-marketing opportunities?
Speaker: Maybe you throw like a conference every year or like an event.
Speaker: Can you invite them over there?
Speaker: Can you potentially, you know, maybe I host a conference and I can get them a free ticket at this conference or stuff like that.
Speaker: So you just kind of get creative a little bit, but yeah, in terms of compensation and rates,
Speaker: That's how I'll figure it out is a little bit of paper napkin math, essentially, and start at, you know, what can I afford to pay for this creator?
Speaker: What am I expecting in terms of results and just being realistic?
Speaker: So when looking at that compensation piece, ultimately, you're looking at the ROI, but then thinking about that measurement and thinking about the 95 rule and actually how many people are going to see an influencer ad and immediately jump.
Speaker: jump on to buy your products.
Speaker: How are you measuring that effectively?
Speaker: So presumably you'll be looking at your overall kind of creator program, but how are you looking at specific creators and the value they're driving?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I think it ultimately does come down to revenue.
Speaker: Most of the times, I mean, and it depends too, right?
Speaker: What is your
Speaker: it depends as a business to what kind of runway you have, what kind of objectives you're kind of trying to reach as well, right?
Speaker: Like, if you're a company that, you know, just raised, I don't know, like a 10 $10 million round or $20 million round, and
Speaker: You're really like, hey, you had like a handful of customers and, you know, maybe you were at seven figure ARR, but like it was only like a handful of customers.
Speaker: And now you really want to expand that out and get that name out, right?
Speaker: Like you can afford to probably spend more so on creators on driving more of the top of the funnel, which is just the brand awareness piece.
Speaker: So it really depends on what your runway is and what your appetite for risk is, honestly, and what your appetite for risk.
Speaker: some of that stuff is like, do I need the, do I need to generate an ROI like immediately?
Speaker: Like, what am I looking at?
Speaker: Like a one month window, like payback, like three month payback.
Speaker: So, you know, even with that paper, Mac and math, that's, that's part of that equation is figuring out what your payback period is that you need to have for, for things to work.
Speaker: And then I think it kind of just starts out there.
Speaker: in terms of determining like, hey, what's the play over here?
Speaker: So ultimately, I think it has to connect back to revenue at the end of the day.
Speaker: It just kind of depends on what is the payback period that I'm willing to kind of go off of and what can I afford to pay?
Speaker: What's my appetite for risk over there?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And in thinking about some of these individual creators that you've worked with,
Speaker: Have you come across any particular challenges around going outside of brief misalignment on execution and payment terms, perhaps not delivering to a specific time in any challenges around any legal documents that you've, you've co-created and what, what kind of challenges have you come up with some of the programs that you've run?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, in terms of challenges,
Speaker: Me personally, I like to have, I, you know, we've talked about a lot of different elements that you can use to kind of put around frameworks.
Speaker: And ultimately it determines like what that process is.
Speaker: And so like, that's why when it comes to compensation and that value exchange, when I have my process, I do really like to focus in on, Hey, we agreed on what this rate or this is what our process is going to be.
Speaker: And once you submit that post, like that's when we'll try and work on that value exchange, like post, post that.
Speaker: So it really ultimately comes down to that.
Speaker: And, you know, if creators say that, you know, they, they want to be in the program and they sign up and, you know, we get them onboarded and stuff like that, and they don't end up doing the work, then for us, it's not like we're giving that, you know, compensation or value upfront.
Speaker: So it really doesn't become obviously like, yes, it's a little bit of a challenge in terms of like, we kind of expected and we're hoping to work with that creator.
Speaker: But ultimately, it gives us an opportunity to maybe invest more in another creator that, you know, we weren't interested in this first round as much, or a creator that's doing really well that we want to just spend more money on.
Speaker: So I would say that that might be like the biggest challenge.
Speaker: And I wouldn't even say that that is much of a challenge, because it's really like, hey, when you go into this process, and we talked about identifying and finding creators,
Speaker: I think of it the same way that I think of like a sales funnel, like you have to identify a longer list of people that you want to work with, then you're actually going to end up working with.
Speaker: Because same way, right?
Speaker: Like if I was hosting like a dinner or I was selling a product, I would reach out to X number of people knowing that people are going to kind of drop off as they kind of come through the funnel, essentially.
Speaker: So that's kind of the same process that I try and run.
Speaker: But yeah, the biggest challenge would probably be working with a creator, getting them onboarded and them not producing the post.
Speaker: But it usually doesn't happen too often because like once you align those incentives properly, and I think that's what it comes down to is, you know, aligning the incentives, having that mutual value exchange.
Speaker: The creator typically tends to deliver pretty well on that.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And so staying with the theme of compensation, if you didn't have a budget to pay,
Speaker: creators and influencers to work on your program, how would you apply thinking about developing a creative program in the absence of a mandatory compensation?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I think there's a few different ways to do it, right?
Speaker: Like the, the first place that I always recommend to
Speaker: where to look for for creators to work with is typically if someone's already posted about you and has already tagged your company page.
Speaker: So go into like your LinkedIn mentions for your company page, Twitter mentions, you know, wherever Instagram, wherever TikTok, wherever your creators are posting and see if anyone's mentioned you.
Speaker: if they're kind of promoting you and stuff like that already, those are good creators to reach out to and say, hey, we'd love to like do maybe like a further collaboration and we'll help cross promote you as well.
Speaker: Cross promotion is a great way to do it and kind of say like, hey, we'll expose you to our audience a little bit more.
Speaker: as well and just help you build your brand because you know, creators are interested in building their brand as well, right?
Speaker: That's the reason why they're doing it in the first place.
Speaker: So if you can help kind of push them through, make introductions as well.
Speaker: Um, those are really good.
Speaker: I, I also like, you know, we talked about, um,
Speaker: and I think I talked about this too on another talk I gave is, you know, if you're in the community and you're attending other events and things like that, or you're hosting your own events, maybe you don't have like as much budget on the creator side to like pay people.
Speaker: But like, let's say I'm going to this really cool conference, like, you know, in two months.
Speaker: And I know that the creator that I'm working with is probably interested, like they would love to go to something like that.
Speaker: And I get like,
Speaker: you know, a free ticket or something like that, I can I could pay for their ticket or give them a ticket, whatever that that case is.
Speaker: So I've done that before is, you know, sometimes my company is buying a booth and we get free tickets and we hand that out to a creator to come help kind of like promote and stuff like that as a value exchange.
Speaker: Um, some other things that you can do is you can do like that affiliate play as well as like, Hey, like maybe if you can't go out in the full, like, you know, upfront compensation, like figure out if you can do a little bit of an affiliate play.
Speaker: Maybe there's a kind of like a mix that you can do over there.
Speaker: You can even do, you know, I've even seen some companies do like equity for, or like creators and stuff like that at the, right at the beginning.
Speaker: and stuff like that, like super small equity amounts, just to kind of get incentives align and things like that.
Speaker: So it's like, hey, you help us grow our business, you're going to get paid out on this too, as things go and especially companies fundraising and stuff like that.
Speaker: So there's some ways that you can get creative on it if you don't have like a budget to pay up front.
Speaker: But yeah, you just got to kind of think through some of those things.
Speaker: Fascinating.
Speaker: And then just one final question.
Speaker: What do you think is next for the creator economy, influencer marketing?
Speaker: What do you think 2024 has in hold for influencers and creators?
Speaker: Yeah, I think we're starting to see it a lot right now.
Speaker: And, you know, that probably keyed into some of the questions that you had is I'm expecting to see a lot more structure around this kind of stuff, maybe some technology as well.
Speaker: I know there's a few agencies now that do kind of like manage work with influencers, creators and do some of that stuff on the
Speaker: the B2B side, we've already seen that for a long time on the B2C side.
Speaker: So I expect some of that stuff to come over.
Speaker: And I guess in terms of like, trends and predictions, I don't think I'm like the, the crazy predictor.
Speaker: But I guess like, if you had to like figure out how, like what it's going to come to is, I would look at personally, like what what is going on in
Speaker: B2C influencer and creator marketing right now.
Speaker: And you can probably expect a lot of those things to come over to the B2B side.
Speaker: So like if I had to make a prediction, I would say there would be continued spillover.
Speaker: So maybe some of those things will happen and people will say, I know how to predict things, but it's not really that.
Speaker: It's just that, you know, that space is a lot more mature than the B2B influencer, creator marketing world.
Speaker: And so I just truly expect a lot of those things to end up spilling over eventually.
Speaker: Agreed.
Speaker: Well, we'll leave it there.
Speaker: We'll leave it there, Jay.
Speaker: Thank you for coming on.
Speaker: This has been very insightful and I look forward to chatting again soon.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Thanks for having me.
Speaker: Thanks, Jay.
