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A practical masterclass in B2B influencer marketing
8 Plays3 months ago
I spoke to Casey Hill who shared so much actionable insight into conducting different types of B2B influencer campaigns.
This episode is jam-packed with real-life learnings, so if you’re looking for inspiration on how to conduct B2B Influencer marketing campaigns, here are key takeaways you’re going to get from our conversation.
- The consideration for your product and how your influencer strategy should reflect the accessibility to using your product
- His learning on using a hybrid compensation model
- The core challenges and benefits of his different payment structures
- How to make your influencer program a win-win
- Why he is bullish on long-form content creation with influencers
- His focus on asset promotion
- How to use bundling when negotiating with an influencer
- Caution around a full commission model
- He spoke about influencer marketing’s nemesis, tracking
- How B2B influencer marketing is in a transition phase
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Podcast & Guest Welcome
00:00:01
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. So let's get straight into it.
00:00:16
Speaker
Casey, welcome to the Moon Act Dawn podcast. I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me, Chris. Yeah, it's great to finally get you on.
Guest's Role & Responsibilities
00:00:24
Speaker
um As we were just discussing on our debrief, I've been following you and your content for the last kind of few years and I first come across you actually on Facebook. So really keen to kind of jump into your views on B2B influencer marketing and you've shared some ton of insight, particularly over the last kind of few months. So keen to kind of get into it.
00:00:46
Speaker
But before we do, it'd be great just to get a quick summary of you and what you're up to now. Yeah, for sure. So um I'm a senior growth head over an active campaign. We're like a marketing automation and email marketing tool. And I sit across kind of a handful of different functions. So one of those is around the influencer side. So managing those deals, finding the right opportunities and kind of seeing where we can test new things out. I also sit across our social strategy. So building a footprint on LinkedIn and in these other kind of core social areas.
00:01:15
Speaker
I also work on the earned media side. So we do a lot of podcast guesting just like this. We also run our own podcast and our own video shows. So it helps that kind of organize some of that internal video work. So a couple of different buckets, but kind of all in that overall content realm.
B2B Influencer Marketing Strategies
00:01:31
Speaker
Interesting. So I wanted to kick off with a nice broad question. So it'd be great just to get your general approach and thinking to B2B influencer marketing for active campaign.
00:01:45
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. So I think the first thing with influencer marketing is to think about kind of what the core objective is, right? So I think that at the top we can say there is performance oriented influencer deals. So these tend to work best where you can easily plug in an affiliate link. So something like YouTube or a webinar or a podcast appearance where there's going to be show notes, an affiliate link can easily be incorporated.
00:02:06
Speaker
it's a little bit harder to do that on some of the short form or even something like a sponsored LinkedIn post where you have to kind of nest it in the comments, or it often gets hidden. So the first thing is you're going to do something that's performance oriented. The second category is what I would call like asset promotion. So you have a new show launching. or you have a big feature launch going to happen, or you have an event and you're working with influencers to promote a specific thing. So when we got our podcast ranked top 3% globally, we had a ton of folks that helped amplify that motion, right? So that would be in the asset promotion category.
00:02:40
Speaker
The third category of influencer marketing is kind of what's most common. I call it kind of the brand awareness layer. This is you reach out to someone who's relevant to your ICP. They put together a monthly post and you pay them 123K depending on that following right for that post to get put out.
00:02:57
Speaker
That one is the most common, although we can kind of deconstruct it has some of the most challenges, potentially, right, depending on what the focus of the organization is, especially if you're a smaller organization, that oftentimes might be the least enticing of the three options.
Aligning Influencer Strategies with Goals
00:03:13
Speaker
The other thing I think it's um really important when you're thinking about in the influencer motion is to understand the nature of your product. So when we were implementing this, I talked to tons of other brands. And one of the things I quickly realized it was important to make a distinction between was when I talked to a notion or I talked to a Calendly or I talked to an Opus clip or a Vidyard or a Bonjoro. These are relatively cheap tools that you can very quickly hear about and go test, right? You go spend 20, 30 bucks, you grab it, you go test.
00:03:43
Speaker
That is different from a platform like active campaign where I work. You can't just uproot your core CRM, your core email marketing, move it over one day. It's a much more involved process. And so because of that, your influencer strategy is going to need to reflect a much longer timeline.
00:03:59
Speaker
right and that longer building of trust. It's not just like a, oh yeah, I heard about this thing once, that sounds interesting, I'll go check it out. So you wanna also make sure that you're adapting your influence strategy and your timetables to the nature of your product. So at a high level, that's where I would start. It's like, what's your focus? What category does it fall into? And what type of product do you have?
00:04:20
Speaker
That is a fantastic answer. so So let's just dive into it for active.
Performance-Oriented Influencer Deals
00:04:27
Speaker
So you had those three layers, those three routes to market with how you can broadly think about B2B influencer marketing, thinking about active campaign and talking about the nuances of that particular business.
00:04:41
Speaker
seemingly that that performance element, is that something that would work particularly well? Like how are you thinking it about it specifically for them or do you incorporate all three at different variety um or at different stages?
00:04:53
Speaker
Yeah. So we do incorporate all three, and I can give you kind of examples of when we've leveraged all three of those levers to start out with. We had a focus that was very performance oriented. So essentially the way that we structured our initial deals and we had, I can tell you kind of what worked and what didn't work, but the way that we structured our initial deals was we basically said, there's going to be a fixed cash component. There's going to be a comp account component.
00:05:16
Speaker
And then there's going to be an affiliate component. And then I would kind of bundle it all together for like a value package for the influencer. So the way that we did it is we thought about what is a one year payback period. So let's say that the average person that comes through is spends $1,500 a year at active campaign. So then we would go and we'd create a target account number with that specific influencer. So let's say it was 10. So the fixed cash component would match Basically that one-year payback period so we'd pay them fifteen thousand cash Right split fifty percent upfront fifty percent upon completion of the of the periods we were doing quarterly deals So you'd get fifteen K ten account target which means they need to bring ten paid people through the door using their affiliate link and they get half up front half after but they're also collecting the affiliate commission. So on top of that, they're still getting a 20% month over month recurring. And they're getting
Challenges in Measuring Impact
00:06:13
Speaker
a comp account, which we typically were giving them a pretty high end accounts like $1,000 a month account. So we would kind of bundle all those pieces together into our overall comp package.
00:06:22
Speaker
So that's kind of how we structured those deals and what were some of the major learnings. So the first was we went really really broad and I think there was a lot of kind of challenges or detriment to that. So what I mean by broad is we figured initially the best approach is to go super omni-channel.
00:06:38
Speaker
So we want to be in your newsletter. We want you to post about us on LinkedIn. We want you to mention us when you do talks. We want like we had all these different deliverables. The problem with it is sometimes those audiences weren't completely aligned. The people they have as part of their email list and their social following on LinkedIn and the event that they did in Memphis aren't necessarily the same people. So the fundamental problem is, remember, our product requires more touch points. It's not a hear about it once and go buy it. So if you're spread across 20 different areas where that audience is not completely overlapping, the problem was we were often only getting one drop in the bucket when we thought we were going to be getting like 10. And so because of that, I think that is what often led to not hitting as many of those paid targets.
00:07:20
Speaker
A second challenge is it set us up the paid model set us up for some very challenging situations. You take an influencer, right? This is someone who has a fairly substantial following and they migrate off of their core systems on active campaign. That's a big like they have to go take time and of course we help them white glove service but they made this big transition now let's say the end of the term comes and they only got seven paid accounts their target was 10 so number one they don't get the other 50% but number two the way we had it structured is they get a comped account as long as they keep renewing but that's a really tough setup they spent a month and a half migrating all their stuff over and then in another month and a half you're like sorry you didn't hit your target we're kicking you off
00:08:00
Speaker
That's not a great relationship and it also didn't incorporate in what if their content drew in a million eyes. That wasn't part of the target it was just paid account so if they they could have had amazing reach amazing brand impact we weren't really looking at that because the metric was can you bring paid to accounts yes or no.
Collaborating with Influencer Agencies
00:08:16
Speaker
So I think that those were some of the the core challenges. The last one I'll say is I was talking with Brianna, who runs a verbatim, which is an influencer agency. And she said something I thought really stuck with me, which is she said you should focus on trials.
00:08:33
Speaker
the metric that they can control driving in, the paid part has a big reliance on your team, your onboarding, your kind of like product journey. So it's better to target generating qualified trials than it is paid, which is interesting. We haven't fully kind of adapted that model, but I thought that was an interesting data point.
00:08:51
Speaker
I'll tell you the thing that worked the best. The thing that worked the best is one of our influencers did an email accelerator. The email accelerator was a five week program and you had to actually sign up for an active campaign account to be part of it. And the first three weeks were all content oriented. We didn't touch the product at all. What was super important was that this, to me, when I started, I said the only way I'm interested in helping with this accelerator, because me and the influencer kind of ran it together, is i need it to provide value around what actually matters which is the writing the course substance system is one piece that delivers value and obviously i think active campaign is a great tool for that but it is entirely disingenuous to focus all on the platform layer because of your content isn't great you will fail no matter what tool you use.
00:09:39
Speaker
So that's exactly what we did. We focused all around refining their value proposition, talked about different styles of newsletters. And the whole thing culminated in someone actually launching a successful newsletter with the guidance of me and Raj from startup hype man who ran this together. And that was great. And we drove, you know, 30 plus paid and and you know, I don't know what the exact conversion maybe 30 40% of those people converted into paid accounts. And so that was a big learning about sometimes with those more complicated platforms really handholding and taking them through the whole journey
Long-Form Video Content & SEO
00:10:12
Speaker
was a smart move. And we learned many things on the accelerator on like how we would do it better next time. But in a very kind of quick run through, that's what we ran for our performance program. And that was the specific kind of takeaways from that.
00:10:26
Speaker
So that is fascinating. So think about this evolution that you've gone on and thinking about the different tactics you deploy. it Do you still incorporate a performance element? And if you do, how has that evolved with the new learners? Because I think this is super interesting.
00:10:40
Speaker
yeah so i've shifted We've shifted gears a little bit. And so right now, the thing that I'm most interested in, kind of going back to that problem that I had with how do I make this a win-win? So I've seen a lot of changes happening on the content side where you see a lot of video ranking, right? There's a dedicated video section now since the hidden gems update that it that lives on um any kind of Google search. And so I'm actually really bullish on long form video.
00:11:07
Speaker
So one of the big focus areas that I have right now is to work with influencers to make a long form video that potentially has SEO ranking capability, and it sticks around, it's not gone, like, you know, a lot of social posts or your shorts or your tiktoks or Instagram reels, you post them, they might drive some impact, and then they're gone. So I'm looking for what is going to stick around and provide that long tail impact.
00:11:29
Speaker
um and live on that channel and in some ways almost be tied to the influencers success. If they grow their channel 5X, 10X, we continue to be a part of that journey.
Bundling Approach in Influencer Deals
00:11:39
Speaker
That is actually what really worked well for me on the podcasting front, right? i We guessed it when I started at backup on Joro in 2020.
00:11:47
Speaker
I guess it on like 200 shows in that first year. And I would say yes to every show. I didn't care how small it was. But one of the cool benefits is because I was one of the first few episodes on a lot of those shows as they grew, as those shows got more popular, people would go back and say, Oh, I want to watch more of the stuff. Where do they start? They went back to the beginning. And so I had a great long tail that drove a lot of revenue um from that.
00:12:11
Speaker
So that is one area that I'm incredibly interested in is long form. The other area that I've kind of shifted my focus from the performance side is around the asset promotion. I've heard again and again from companies that I talk with, that they've had a lot of success around a very targeted like new show launching, new event, new feature. And so we've started to think about that more purposely, right? Like, oh, we just launched a LinkedIn ad integration.
00:12:36
Speaker
at active campaign. Let's so find all the agencies that use active campaign and also use LinkedIn and let's have them talk about that story. Let's have them share some data from testing. That to me is again, a very focused application where we know that that content, those views have that kind of direct impact. I'm absolutely not against performance. I do very much like one thing I'll tell folks is that the bundling approach can absolutely help you get substantially better deals as a company.
00:13:06
Speaker
Right? Because I've had situations where an influencer is like, I want 15 K. And I say, okay, what we're going to do is we'll give you nine K, but it's actually a 30 K bundle. I counter them and say, we're going to pay you double what you want, but it's only nine K cash. The other is affiliate side. The other. And so I also think that bundling approach can, can help you create some win wins. And it's something that I always lead with not every influencer wants it. Some people say, no, forget that. Like I want all cash side.
00:13:36
Speaker
but we find a lot of people actually do a lot of people are using like email tools so if you give someone like a premium thousand two thousand dollars a month account like that actually is real value they're literally paying for a tool you know right now eight hundred dollars a month on their mail chimp account and so there is value that an end dollar saved in that process. So I think my focus is on asset promotion and long form video, but I'm absolutely open to performance oriented programs. I just saw some of the shortcomings from my first round. And so I think I would be cautious about purely performance oriented programs in the future.
Identifying Suitable Influencers
00:14:14
Speaker
So that's interesting interesting. So, so thinking about you'll need a variety of different influences to work with.
00:14:21
Speaker
Like how are you going about finding these different folks? Is it manual searches? Is it software? Is it source recommendations? How are you finding these guys? Yeah, for sure. So it it all started with network, right? Like I have a fairly wide social network. We have some people on the team and we started to do outreach and an initial process there. But to be candid, that ran out pretty fast, right? Even someone who has a fairly wide network like me, there's only so many folks and it also depends on who you're trying to target. So my audience is B2B SAS. The vast majority of the people who follow me are in some way connected to that. They're a practitioner, they're an operator, they're a senior marketer, et cetera.
00:14:56
Speaker
So if we're like, we want to target creators, we want to target e commerce, then obviously we need to go outside of of Casey's bubble. So the first thing that I do, though, is I try to leverage partnerships. So even though my network isn't in those spaces, active campaign has tons of integration. So I would go to all of my integration partners, I would talk to tight forums, I would talk to Calendly, I would talk to send Oh, so I'd talk to all the people that are in our ecosystem and say,
00:15:21
Speaker
Hey, are you guys running influencer motions? Like, who are you working with? Who's profitable? Like, who are you renewing with? That's the one question I would love to ask people. Who did you actually renew with? Such an important question to see, like, that is where you really decide if they actually thought it was valuable. Did they renew the contract? One of the problems you're gonna find, so many of these one-off posting contracts don't get renewed.
00:15:42
Speaker
and i think the challenge is they're incredibly hard to track the impact of and we can get into some ways that you can kind of cluster lots of influencers in a set very specific kind of topical area during a set period of time to see more noticeable changes in your google analytics but it's kind of a tough problem so Number one, your network. Number two, the network of anyone that you're kind of connected with. And then we started to play around with a handful of outside tools. We did demos, a tagger. We looked at passion fruit. We've looked at a handful of others. um We've looked at like, I think favicon was another one for LinkedIn, but we haven't landed on one that really kind of met all of our needs. One of the things I'll be candid with is we said this in a lot of demos. so um They had all these amazing features. They wanted to show us all these amazing features, but
00:16:28
Speaker
One of the things is, we did some manual research. We compiled a list of like 20 influencers just from our own team going through YouTube, going through these things. We're like, these people are great fit. They speak to our audience. When we type in keywords, they're the videos that are always showing up or the people's content is always showing up. So I said, find us more people like these 20. We have a list. Find us lookalikes. And none of the tools, none of the platforms that we were working with were able to do that. They always pulled up lists where because I know this space pretty well,
00:16:57
Speaker
I would look at them and I'd be like, that person's not relevant. That doesn't really quite make sense. Or sometimes it was just like completely off. It was like a wheat farmer. And I was like, you guys said that this is ordered by relevance. And the third highest review for AI email marketing is a wheat farmer. This channel does not talk about that at all. Like, so sometimes it literally just looked like bad data. And so because of that,
00:17:20
Speaker
we were reluctant to use those platforms. It wasn't a cost
Challenges in Adoption & Buy-In
00:17:25
Speaker
standpoint. if it if it would ah If they would have made it easier for us, manually researching is a headache, right? So if they gave us an amazing list based on that and we could go and move forward, awesome. We'll pay whatever you guys want us to pay. But that that barrier was there for at least a handful of platforms that we tested.
00:17:44
Speaker
interesting Interesting, but so so shifting gears somewhat, there's lots of momentum, there's lots of appetite around B2B influencer marketing at the moment in the space, but not it's not covered wildly by lots of different folks across various different categories. What is it do you think that's holding back different B2B marketing teams from adopting more influencer strategies? I think it's a couple of fold.
00:18:12
Speaker
um The first major problem with influencer strategies is I have already kind of mentioned it, but it's hard to track, right? Teams struggle when you like go put a bunch of posts out and they're like, we got 30,000 views, a hundred thousand views, 300,000 views. And the question is always, why don't I see it?
00:18:28
Speaker
In our revenue data, you said, Oh, you did this big launch. You did a big post. It got 280,000 views. I look at our numbers. I don't see a huge spike in trials. I don't see a huge spike in paid. Right. And so the first major challenge, I think that's holding people back is it's challenging to attribute. The second, I think is this sense of how long do we need to commit to this? What does that timeframe look like? Like there's, there's just like a ambiguity or a lack of knowledge.
00:18:53
Speaker
A third component is people have no idea what to pay. I'll be honest. We didn't, when we were getting in, we're talking to everyone and we're like trying to gather. And since then we've had a handful of teams that have helped us and been like, okay, for short form target a CPM between 30 and $50 for long form, it might be a hundred to $200 CPA. Like we've started to compile these data and statistics, but when we started.
00:19:15
Speaker
We didn't have any of that. So if you're purely performance based, you kind of in some ways needed a little bit less because the economics is like you need to drive us this many customers that pay X amount. But if you're not doing that, if you're doing any of the other stuff, which is most common, it's what the majority of people do. That's something that a lot of teams just don't know. And so that can become kind of hard to solve for. The last component is I think there's just There's a lot of changes in how consumers buy products. It is fundamentally shifting. Like we have way too much information to process. Our socials are flooded, our inbox are flooded. And so people are now finding individuals that they trust and they're saying, you be my guide. Tell me what your experience is. they We create short hands.
00:20:02
Speaker
right And so that is a shift that is happening that a lot of executives that have been in the game for 10, 20 years, they're still kind of uneasy about that. It's not conventional. And so I think that shift is also requiring a bit of an adoption or transition phase for folks to understand. It's like, well, why don't I just pump this into SEO? Why don't I just create another comparison article? Why don't I do the conventional things that I was doing before?
00:20:30
Speaker
So I realized that's not one neat answer, but many answers, but I think those are some of the blockers that folks are running into. So what do you think marketers can do to help appease CFOs, those sign off the checks, their CD manager, their team, to start thinking about influencer marketing? How do you, how do you start? How do you pilot and how do you build trust and confidence in a program?
00:20:54
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. So it's so funny, like I've changed so much on this. ah when i When I, a while back, because the same thing with LinkedIn, people have always ask me like, Casey, you're so bullish about LinkedIn, how do you sell it? And I used to say, oh, you sell the system and it's all about like, it's not just about one person, it's about everyone and like all the benefits and here's the impact on hiring and all these different things. I don't do that anymore. I've shifted. So for influencers, for LinkedIn, it's all about introductions to me. If someone says, why should, as an executive, why should I post on LinkedIn?
00:21:23
Speaker
Go talk to Adam Robinson. Go talk to Chris Walker. Go talk to Rand Fishkin. Go talk to the people that are doing the thing that I'm talking about. Get them to tell you, right? Because that's ultimately what they need. So similarly with influencer marketing, if someone's like, I think it's kind of interesting, but I'm a little bit skeptical.
00:21:39
Speaker
Right? I don't know if the ah ROI is actually there. Go have them talk to Casey. Casey's doing it. He's spending the budget. He's testing it right now. tell He'll tell you what works, what doesn't work. Find someone who serves your ICP and just make an introduction and allow them to have the conversation. I think that will dramatically outperform any benefits that you can sell. You can go in and be like, oh, this is that like, but instead if you just talk to someone and also like, again, if it serves the same ICP, Hey Casey, same question. Who did you renew with?
00:22:09
Speaker
who are you continuing to pay who is an effective like that's exactly what we do we go to the calendly we go to wicks we go to notion we go to all these tools who do you renew with who's killing it in brazil who's killing it for your european audience who's like we want to know those kind of details and so i think that's the absolute best thing you can do introduction to a real person doing it let them have that conversation okay and if he was starting at a new company, earlier stage, smaller team, less budget, maybe no budget, right?
Strategies for Smaller Companies
00:22:47
Speaker
So you've got, you know, where where would you start with an influencer program?
00:22:52
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. So again, I'm in the early stages. So I have to be a little bit cautious about being too, um, prescriptive about long-form video, but I really do have a lot of conviction. Like to me, it checks all the boxes of making sense for a win-win relationship. Like if I was a company and I typed in like me versus a competitor.
00:23:13
Speaker
And I looked at what ranked and I found one of those, maybe a little bit more on the micro side of those top page one results. And I could go reach out to that person and say, Hey, look, I'll pay you $3,000 if you make a five minute video breaking down my tool. Right. And a couple of things. Number one, ideal if that platform is already doing those kinds of breakdowns. And so people are coming to that channel with that expectation.
00:23:37
Speaker
But you do something like that. It's a pretty relatively inexpensive test for you to gain an asset to kind of see like, Hey, can we validate that specific thing? If I was a very small team, I would much rather make that one video investment that had that long form, then go and pay for two posts on LinkedIn.
00:23:56
Speaker
I just would have more conviction that I was going to be successful. um It also bleeds into a larger argument about how big should a brand be before they invest in brand specifically. like I think that's a very important thing. I want to be careful on how I word this because I think every company, whether you're a super small startup, your brand matters. But there's a difference between your brand matters and you should invest in brand awareness campaigns specifically.
00:24:23
Speaker
Smaller teams typically have to be more performance-oriented. You need to drive direct revenue, and it's going to be incredibly hard for you to win against the big incumbents in the brand game. But if you're a company like Active Campaign that has 20% of the market in marketing automation, then it makes more sense for you to say, hey, if I bring them up to 25%,
00:24:42
Speaker
I'm just going to be top of mind when people go, I want to get a marketing automation solution. They're going to go HubSpot, MailChimp, and now active campaign that enters into the conversation. So that is materially valuable. So a larger organization, I'm much more bullish about brand awareness oriented investments, because I see that that impact layer makes more sense. If you're smaller, I would be leaning more towards performance oriented or specific asset promotion. um And I would be in kind of cognizant of those variables.
Future Trends in Influencer Marketing
00:25:12
Speaker
So last question, I could keep going, but I'll just stick to one. um So, and and I think you've kind of alluded to ahuded to some of your your Buddhist points, but really keen to understand that where do you think influencer marketing is going? in So there's there's various various like tactics and elements that you kind of reference, but where do you think it's going in the next kind of 24, 18, 24 months?
00:25:41
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think there's gonna be a lot of changes. I'd say the first thing is I'm very bullish on what I call like natural and corporations wherever you can do it. So even myself, I've been starting to think like I have a pretty big platform like hey, maybe I should be doing influencer style relationships. The way that I would do it is I would do a couple things. Number one, natural and corporations mean the first people I would talk to would be the tools I actually use.
00:26:03
Speaker
Right. Like, let me go talk to Riverside or Opus clip or whatever, insert whatever platforms hockey stack that I'm already using because then the focal point, this is a big mistake. I think people make influencers often want to pay for like a product promo.
00:26:19
Speaker
Right? What I think is way more effective is discussing an exact problem. And then the tool is just part of the equation. So for example, Opus clip, right? I'm not sponsored by Opus clip, but if I was right, I launched a new series called impromptu chats. I go take long form video. I throw it into Opus clip. It gives me these clips that I then share on LinkedIn and have gotten 400,000 plus impressions in the last month. If I write a post and describe that exact process, and then I tag in Opus.
00:26:48
Speaker
what a great way to showcase their product with third party authority that's gonna be way more effective it's like tangible specific thing that i'm doing than me doing a post in like opus clip is so great for short form video. Right that just reads as an advert so i think that that natural incorporation is gonna be.
00:27:05
Speaker
um ah transition as we talked to a little bit of before the show I think obviously you're gonna have a lot of people trying to build tech in this space they're gonna be trying to build software platforms they're gonna be trying to build agencies I think a huge component of success is gonna be specialization this is always the problem with agencies this is always the problem is like do you really know a core market well and B2B sass versus e-commerce versus nonprofit mean they're just massively different So I think that specialization component will be huge. And I think also you're going to see a huge growth. I mean, this is already a major area right now, but I think it's going to even expand third party community and video.
00:27:46
Speaker
So since the hidden gems update that happened at the end of last year, you now have dedicated sections on Google for discussions and forums, i.e. third-party community and for video. And you also see lots of tests that are happening that are bringing in things like TikToks, bringing in things like Instagram Reels, which was never seen before. This is like a novel and incorporation. So I think there's this push into that creator economy and this idea of like, in a world of AI, how do we get like opinions and real kind of thoughts that people can connect with. And Google is heavily experimenting around those areas. Now, anyone who follows those knows that it's imperfect. There's a lot of weird stuff that gets generated and misalignments. And we can all kind of poke fun at those. so But the directionality I think is absolutely going to happen. Right. So I think you're going to see people that are going to go deeper into those pockets.
00:28:36
Speaker
And I do not see it changing anytime soon. The transition of the dynamic that I talked about where people are going to lean into people they trust and use that as a shorthand to make
Trust as Core Currency in Relationships
00:28:46
Speaker
decisions. So I see more and more conventional ad budget that is becoming less and less effective, getting shifted into these influencer motions. And the word of caution across all of this.
00:28:58
Speaker
is that trust is your currency. Trust is the fundamental most important thing that you have. So if you jeopardize that, that's why I said if I was to do it, I would talk about natural incorporation for the tools I'm already using. It's good for them, but it's also critical for me because my trust matters profoundly to my audience. if I start talking about stuff I don't use, I have no relationship with.
00:29:21
Speaker
it it jeopardizes the most important asset that I have. And I think that on places like LinkedIn, building trust with your ICP is the core number one purpose of the channel. So those are some thoughts about where we're going. Casey, I think you gave me about 20 sound bites, about 20 new learnings, and about five different ideas for things that I'm going to be looking to do after this. So Thank you for coming on. Lots of actionable insights shared. It'd be lots of value for people to listen in and we'll speak soon. Yeah. Pleasure, Chris. Thank you. Thanks, Casey.