0:00 – 0:27 – G&G eCommerce Podcast Theme
This is the Growth & Greatness eCommerce Podcast, powered by Right Hook Digital, with your hosts Scott Seward & Raymond Johnston. If you’re an eCommerce brand founder, entrepreneur, or marketer looking to accelerate profitable growth for your business, then listen in ‘cause this is the podcast for you.

0:27 – 3:38 – Introduction of guest Taylor Lagace
Scott (0:27 – 0:45) – Welcome to the Growth & Greatness eCommerce Podcast. Today, we are diving into, you know, a little bit of that black box area that’s a bit of a mystery to a lot of brands and a lot of founders. We’re talking influencer marketing today with Mr. Taylor Lagace from Kynship. Taylor, welcome, really pumped to have this discussion!

Taylor (0:46 – 0:55) – Yeah, I’m excited as well, excited for this one, guys! Ray, Scott, appreciate you guys for having me. Excited to chat all things influencer – the black box, the sexy channel, all of the above.

Scott (0:56 – 1:29) – It is, it is. It’s that mysterious world, and it is that sexy channel. You’re 100% right. I think it’s got a lot of appeal to a lot of brands, but the struggle is that brands really just don’t know how to crack or how to, I think, view it from an ROI perspective, and to value, you know, or I guess to find how they’re getting the value from that channel. I think that’s a really, a really good place to start. I guess, how did you get into this space and what drew you to it? What was the background behind Kynship and how that began?

Taylor (1:30 – 3:26) – Great question. I’ll give you my background. So my background, what drew me to where I am today, started in the influencer marketing space about 10 years ago. That started, typical college company, I played football at UCLA. They gave me a jersey and I stood on the sidelines majority of the time, but one of my teammates happened to be P. Diddy’s son, Justin Combs; P. Diddy’s obviously, like, the A-list celebrity, Justin Combs is still a celebrity, but B-list, nonetheless.  And so, we actually started an events company – your typical college party company pretty much, but all that to say, it basically served as my initial trigger and launched my intrigue of the influencer marketing space ‘cause literally every ticket sale to every party, every, you know, product placement sponsor, every dollar of revenue was generated off the back of posting on social media accounts. Now, the algorithms have changed where that’s probably not as possible as it was back then, outside of what we’ve seen on TikTok right now. That social algorithm is obviously going wild, but that was just my first touchpoint with the influencer marketing space. 10 years, that kind of set me off on my career path. From there, worked for an NFL marketing agency where we represented guys like Aaron Rodgers, Clay Matthews, did State Farm commercials for those kind of players, so very macro. Then transitioned to the paid media space where I built out the influencer marketing department at Common Thread Collective. From there, they actually C-funded us and launched, helped launch us 3 years ago to start Kynship. My partner, Cody Wittick, who built out the influencer program of QALO, prior to partnering with myself and Common Thread, and on to Kynship here. All throughout, long story short, influencer marketing in different capacities – micro, macro, celebrity, paid media, content – all of the above.

Scott (3:28 – 3:32) – Amazing, great team you’ve got over there. Backing you as well at CTC, very, very solid crew.

Taylor (3:34 – 3:35) – They’re awesome, yeah.

Scott (3:35 – 3:38) – Yeah. We’ve got a lot of respect for the guys over there – amazing, amazing group.

3:39 – 7:47 – The significant difference between micro- and macro-influencers
Scott (3:39 – 4:01) – Let’s look at where influencers are generally, sort of, viewed at the moment. You mentioned, like, the micro and the macro. If we’re looking at micro, it’s, maybe, more the product seeding side. How do you view the approach to those 2 categories, the differences between them, and just some of the strategies you’re using on either side?

Taylor (4:02 – 7:47) – Well, I’ll start with micro vs. macro. You brought up product seeding. Product seeding is just the foundation to any relationships you’re looking to build with any influencer at any level, honestly – micro, macro, mid-tier, celebrity. We would recommend starting a relationship with any of these tiers through seeding. It just lends itself to genuine relationships being built that ultimately leads to the most output from the influencers, which leads to what you want, which is revenue. We’ll break down what that means and how that looks, but micro versus macro. What I typically tell clients before entering into a partnership, and what I would tell any client looking to do this internally, or any company looking to do this internally – I would always recommend going with micro-influencers. How we define that, obviously, that’s a broad term, everyone has their own definition, is between 5K and 150,000. So, why do we specifically focus and hone in on this group? Variety of reasons here, but basically, in short, more niche audience; if you have a customer, if you have a target demographic, it’s easier to hone in on that audience when it’s a micro-influencer compared to a macro-influencer. Micro-influencers typically have followers that follow them for one reason, compared to a macro that these people follow for a variety of reasons. Then, on a per-follower basis, micro-influencers have greater reach, greater engagement, greater conversion rate, and in addition to all that, they just provide more content. And so, when we’re seeding influencers, we’re reaching out to them, and saying, ‘Hey, we wanna send you a product, no strings attached. You know, we just love your content, your profile, we think you’d love our product, we wanna send it to you. No expectations for you to post whatsoever.’ There’s greater opt-in from micro-influencers, there’s greater response from those influencers, and there’s greater likelihood that they actually post. And then, not only that, there’s greater likelihood that they give usage rights free of cost. You follow-up usage rights from a macro or a celebrity, asking for usage rights, they’ll immediately relay you to their agent or manager, and they ask for $10,000 dollars. There’s no drop-off in the quality of the content that’s actually being posted for you then to repurpose into paid media. So, for all of those reasons, I would recommend honing in on that micro-level. Again, on a per-follower basis, greater metrics across the board, more content, more free content, and there’s no drop-off in the quality. So, I would hone in on that. So that’s one part of your question – micro vs. macro, how we’re thinking about it. Regardless, if there’s an influencer that is macro or celebrity that they do wanna build a relationship with, though, this is the way to start the relationship, which is through seeding. Which leads us into what seeding is. The other problem in the space, and what makes it such a black box, is when everyone thinks about influencer marketing, outside of our space, they think of Kim Kardashian, posting a picture, you know, of her backside wearing Spanx or something and tagging it. That’s like, literally, not at all what it is we do or what influencer marketing is at large. It can be, you know, but how we recommend doing it is through influencer seeding which is building relationships with these people, sending out your products with messaging that lets them know you just love their content, your profile, and you wanna send them a product, no strings attached. Build a relationship in that way, it will lead to free posts, it will lead to you identifying authentic, genuine product adopters that can help you go into, you know, lanes of mass content creation on the pipeline, affiliate programs being built out, and then you identifying top product influencers that you can contractualize on an ongoing basis. A long-winded answer, I’ll stop there, yeah, would love to have a chat, though.

7:49 – 10:15 – Dealing with and using content posted by micro-influencers
Ray (7:49 – 8:14) – When you’re seeding like that, and you mentioned micro, and you mentioned that you try not to have any strings attached, but when they do post something and you like it, how do you recommend brands… what’s the social kindness of then trying to use that content for other platforms? Are there any, like, quid pro quo, essentially, you kind of recommend your brands of how you deal with that content that an influencer does post that they were micro?

Taylor (8:15 – 8:59) – Yes, so soon as they post, our team, so long as you build the foundations of no strings attached, right? After they post, that relationship has already been built at this point, so we’re reaching back out to them, saying, ‘Hey, Ray, so glad you love the product, so much so that you wanna share this content with your audience. Hey, we’d love to be able to share this content with our audiences as well. Can we have the rights to do so?’ And since we have built that relationship in the right way, since they are micro-influencers, there’s not agents in their ears, there’s not management in their ears, these people, 90% of the time, are like, ‘Yeah, Taylor! Yeah, Kynship!’ They’re not saying ‘please,’ but they’re like, ‘Yeah! I don’t care. Go ahead, repurpose this into Facebook ads. Use it at your own discretion across your distribution channels.’ They don’t mind.

Ray (9:00 – 9:24) – With a brand like QALO, I’ve followed their growth for years, and so, it’s really cool that you are part of that, especially everything they did on the influencer side. With a brand like QALO, for example, seeing the success that it took, how has it really framed your long-time partnerships with the brands you work with, ‘cause I’m sure you probably started micro, but then, like, how did your strategy change overtime to scale that brand?

Taylor (9:26 – 10:15) – So QALO is actually my partner, my partner’s background, where Cody used to work. They just spread, they basically just wanted to own the category across them. They actually seeded all the micro-influencers in the space. They seeded all the top-performing CrossFit influencers in the space who… if you, like, define micro as, like, a following, they’re all kind of micros at the end of the day, but they’re all micros within that community, quote unquote, just from how much influence they have on the community. They seeded all the non-profits within the community. They basically just made all their products feel like it was literally everywhere within that space. And, because they were able to, the cost of their products were like 10 cents, it’s a silicone wedding ring so they can literally send out thousands upon thousands of rings each month, to the point where their product literally was everywhere and in everyone’s hands.

10:19 – 14:04 – The fundamentals to building a successful influencer program
Ray (10:19 – 10:40) – I’d love to ask a question about, how can you build a successful influencer program? We’ve spoken to hundreds of brands, I’m sure you have as well, where they say that they’ve tried it, but obviously, they’re still missing key fundamentals that build the long-lasting influencer program. What will be your advice? What are the fundamentals they have to focus on to make it successful?

Taylor (10:41 – 13:10) – Depends what you want out of it, Ray. I think people aren’t looking at influencer marketing through the right lens a lot of the time. They are looking through the lens of, again, going back to what’s typical and standard, I pay this much for this person to post, which is already, please don’t do that, and how much that’d return on this feed post on Instagram or TikTok. That’s just altogether the wrong way to go about this. One, from the start of paying for that post and, two, strictly looking through the lens of the value immediately being returned on that post alone to gauge if this was successful or not. Within our process, we’re identifying reaching out to 500 influencers, and I’ll circle this back to how you can gauge if this was successful or not for you. Out of those 500, again, we’re reaching out with no strings attached messaging, saying we don’t have any expectation of them posting whatsoever. Typically, we see a minimum of 20% opt-in to receive products, and for those that are listening in, who want to try this internally, you may not be able to do that at this scale – scale it down to how many you’re identifying, but apply these percentages to gauge if it’s successful or not for you. Out of 500, sending out that message, we typically see a 100, minimum of 20%, 100 influencers opt-in to receive product. We then send them an unboxing experience with the product, make it look good, and this is another first impression, first touchpoint – if you make it look pretty, it’s an unboxing experience, it’s a greater impression. Not only that, but it also lends itself to higher post rates. We’re seeing that out of the 100 that receive the product, we typically see a minimum of 30% end up posting. So, 30 influencers on average, posting 2 – 3 pieces immediately each: 60 – 90 posts in total, we follow-up for usage rights for that content. Typically, 90% allow you to have usage rights to that to then repurpose into paid media. How do we gauge if this was successful? Again, if you’re doing this internally, just from the content alone, from the cost of the COGS, of sending out a 100 products, let’s say your COGS are $20. For the cost of $2,000, you just got 30 influencers posting 60 – 90 posts. If you ever go to any influencer marketing agency in the world to go get you 30 influencers posting 60 – 90 assets, you’re looking at a minimum fee of $30K. Going on the other side of the coin of, you go to any studio shoot for 60 – 90 unique assets, I mean you tell me. I mean, our partners at Common Thread, for 5 concepts, 30 – 40 iterations on it, that’s 15K minimum.

Scott (13:10 – 13:11) – Was gonna say, 5-figures.

Taylor (13:12 – 14:04) – Yeah, you know. So, from 60 – 90 unique assets, from top-performing, I don’t need top-performing, I don’t need to sell it. These are professional content creators that have proven to create content that works, and that goes viral, and that scales, on the exact platforms that you’re looking to advertise on. So what better content to repurpose into paid that’s worked really well on organic? On both sides of the coin, was it worth it? 60 – 90 unique assets, 30 influencers posting 60 – 90 posts organically, for $2,000 dollars – anybody that says that’s not worth it, I’m really interested in where they’re getting that organic traffic for that cost, and where they’re getting that amount of content for that cost, ‘cause I don’t see it anywhere else. I think there’s a massive arbitrage opportunity when it comes to influencer marketing, right now, within the landscape that exists.

14:05 – 18:55 – How should eCom brands view influencer marketing results in relation to their ROI?
Scott (14:05 – 14:35) – I agree, and it’s also, that type of content is the content that works the best with paid advertising, right? Because it is native to the platform, it’s not studio-shot content, which feels typically over-produced. I think it’s so hard to put a dollar value on it that I think that leads us to a good area of, when you’re having that discussion with brands, how do you communicate the ROI aspect and how they should be viewing it?

Taylor (14:36 – 17:21) – Yeah, great question. You read my mind, that’s what I was gonna say next. So, obviously, the biggest, you know, roadblock, per se, that we experience in these calls is exactly that because, and even moreso, probably within our strategy of no strings attached because, I’m not providing these influencers, we’re not providing these influencers with tracking links to get a gauge of what the sales were that came in from their post ‘cause the minute we do that is the minute our entire philosophy is a gimmick; like, wait, they said they don’t have any expectations for me to post, why did they send us a tracking link? We can’t do that. It negates the philosophy. And so, based on what we communicate to brands, okay, our process, when broken down, ends up with 30 influencers posting 60 – 90 assets. Okay, so let’s average out 60 – 90 at 75. 75 posts from 30 influencers with an average following of, say, between 5K and 150K; let’s say, you know, 50K. 50K x 75 posts, we’re looking at 3.75 million impressions. 1% click-through rate, or no, oh man, what was this math? We have 3.75 million impressions, then 1% click-through rate. We have 37,500 website visits, 1% conversion rate – 375 purchases. Sorry, I had a little brain fart right there real quick. But, those are pretty conservative, right? You know, 1% click-through rate, that’s actually a pretty decent average there. 1% conversion rate, if you have 1% conversion rate, you need some work. I think this entire model as well will work with the conservative. 375 purchases x your AOV, your LTV, whatever you’re most comfortable with, that’s what you’ll expect at a minimum from the return on the organic side alone. So ROI, on the organic side alone, I really would say that 3.75 million collective impressions, views, as incredibly conservative in of itself as well, because literally, on our last campaign… Our bread-and-butter client is, like, between 2 million and 30 million, but M&M’s is one of the household brands we work with, and literally one of their posts alone achieves 3.75 million impressions. So, especially on TikTok, there’s a very unique opportunity there where you’re activating 30 influencers posting on TikTok right now. One of those posts is bound to go viral, where it will far exceed that 3.75 million. That breakdown that I just gave, that leads to 375 purchases from the organic performance alone, is really conservative. And then, again, that’s half the value – what are 60 – 90 unique assets worth to your business?

Scott (17:21 – 17:39) – That’s the biggest part, I think, for us, right? One of the biggest  challenges we have, and brands coming to us, they don’t know what content to create. They’re asking for guidance on that. For $2,000 investments in COGS, you end up with 30 pieces of UGC. That’s a piece of content you can test everyday for a month.

Taylor (17:39 – 17:40) – You got 60 – 90 pieces of UGC!

Scott (17:44 – 17:55) – That’s huge, You get one of those right, and that’s scalable to 6-figures in return on ad spend. It’s the lateral side on the paid side that isn’t being considered strongly enough, I don’t think.

Taylor (17:55 – 18:55) – Right. I’m never going… The minute that I tell a client that I would be better at creating content than this person who has proven to do so on the platform we’re looking to advertise on, I’m lying, cold stone liar. These people have proven to do it, time and time again on a daily basis. Whether they’re literally posting 24/7 about their daily lives and how products seamlessly, organically integrate into them, which as you’ve already said is the most native content to the platform in and of itself so, yeah, we always try and lean into them. Basically, that’s actually what kind of led me to actually pursue Kynship 3 years ago from seeing how this type of content competed against studio shoots at Common Thread. You know, like, what are we doing? Studio shoots cost x amount for this, and I can get better performing content for cheaper from influencers like, okay, there’s a massive opportunity here. It probably won’t exist forever but, right now, it does, And so, it’s a massive opportunity.

18:56 – 22:43 – How can businesses approach usage rights negotiations with influencers?
Scott (18:56 – 18:59) – Why do you think that won’t exist? Where do you see it heading?

Taylor (19:01 – 20:09) – Nothing this good exists forever. So, I mean, that alone, leads me to believe that. I just believe that, you know, at some point, there’s just gonna be a learning curve that takes place where micro-influencers will become more savvy in their content being repurposed, at least in front of… I think seeding will always lead to free posts from influencers on social media platforms, I do think that. But, there will be a time where these influencers will become more savvy regardless of agents or managers, you know, being a part of their lives where they’ll understand, no, this is really valuable, and me giving you usage rights to reuse this on paid media. I think people will become, more, in -the-know of that, they’ll be less likely to share usage right to their content. We’re getting 90% now. I think, as time progresses, that would dwindle, and the amount that we’re actually getting usage rights to. I hope not, but you asked so I think that’s probably what it would be in the future.

Scott (20:09 – 20:28) – You mentioned a couple of things there, influencers becoming more, I guess, business-savvy and then the usage rights component of it. So, how, at the moment, what’s your recommendation in terms of how people approach those negotiations to get, you know, a deal that works for both sides?

Taylor (20:29 – 22:16) – Well, what I would recommend is start with seeding, ‘cause then, you’re starting the relationship by doing something for them. Though, it’s kind of, like, the theory of reciprocity, right? You do something for them, they feel like they owe you something. It’s obviously not being presented that way, but that’s obviously at play here. I would recommend starting that way. The last message they got from was us, right, was, ‘Hey, we just want to send this to you, no strings attached. We just love you and your content, what you’re all about. We think you’ll love our product. Send us your address, we’ll send this right out to you.’ That’s the last message they heard from us. The next message they get is, after they post, that we didn’t ask for, saying, ‘Hey, we love this! We’d love to use it, can we have the rights to do so?’ Something, like, very hands-off, not aggressive. If you can set yourself up in that way, that’s what I would recommend. Make sure you get that, though, because what I also think is gonna happen to the influencer marketing space is, I genuinely think more and more lawyers are gonna come in, sharks are gonna come in, and they’re going to understand the opportunity at play here around lawsuits. You know, at some point, that’s gonna be here. Like, I have a buddy that I actually played college ball with at UCLA who, he actually applied, I won’t name brands or people, he applied to be a part of this program that this brand had to be one of their influencers or ambassadors. They denied him, and then he saw, he got served an ad of him in it, you know, representing their product. He sent it to me, he’s like, ‘what is this?!’ and I went to their Ad Library, and I saw him in a bunch of their ads. I recorded it, sent it to him; he sued them for $500,000 dollars. They’re probably gonna settle at $250,000 dollars. He would’ve done it for $50 bucks. He probably would’ve done it for free if they just asked!

Scott (22:17 – 22:19) – They just killed a relationship.

Taylor (22:19 – 22:34) – Incredibly pertinent to ask for those usage rights, just because it’s gonna be more and more a thing for these influencers becoming more in-the-know, becoming more savvy. And you just don’t wanna, like you said, ruin that relationship and burn it.

Scott (22:34 – 22:43) – Yeah, all you’ve got as a brand, for your business, is your reputation. I think doing things that are under-handed like that, you’re not doing yourself any favors in the long-term. It’s very short-term thinking.

22:46 – 29:27 – Finding the right influencers for your brand
Scott (22:46 – 22:58) – What’s your advice for brands trying to find the right influencers? ‘Cause there’s, obviously, there’s so many micro-influencers out there. Finding the right ones that fit your brand, do you guys have a process for that and can you walk us through it?

Taylor (22:59 – 25:01) – Yeah, we use a search engine platform called Tagger. Again, for those looking to do this internally, maybe, as a test, this might not be the platform for you. It costs like $2,000 per month or right around there. If you want to do a test internally, what I’d recommend is getting on Facebook Brand Collabs Manager, and then use that to identify people on Instagram. They have a good platform, it’s for free. It’s not Tagger, but it’s free, and it will help you find the people based off the quantitative data you have. On TikTok, just go to Marketplace. Both are great platforms to identify the right people based off of, really, the quantitative data you have in mind. So basically, when we’re identifying influencers like that,  a list of 500 influencers on behalf of our partners, we have a kick-off call with them or we, basically, get in-the-know or we lean into them on all the information they have on their customers, ‘Okay, who influences those customers, and who is that customer?’ Those are the 2 ways that we think about it. Who is this customer, because we want to get content and post from those types of people that represent that community. And then, what type of person, what type of persona influences that community? We get aligned on all of that quantitative data, plug it into the system and then, from there, there’s a very white-glove approach that this entails where you have to go into all these profiles, go into their Instagram stories, go into their YouTube if they have on, go into their TikTok, and get a gauge of who’s posting a lot of video content? Because when we’re seeding them, that’s what we want to get out of this. We want to get video content consistently. We have to see who’s posting that consistently, and who’s doing that well? And that’s where you get a gauge of the qualitative tier, which is video content creation. Are they capturing my attention in the first 3 seconds? Are they thumb-stopping? Are they charismatic? Can they articulate, you know, our brand message, our product messaging? Long story short, if I put a product in their hand, and they created video content and posted it, would they sell me on it? That’s the most important, even above the quantitative metrics that we’re trying to get aligned on.

Ray (25:01 – 25:32) – I was gonna ask you, how much does the style that they make the content come into play, when you’re picking an influencer? ‘Cause there’s different styles and I wonder, like, for some brands, we will try to get creators to make, just, content for advertisement, a lot for our brands, but, like, style is a big part. I wonder, at the scale you guys go into for your brands, does style come into play, like how they make the content? For example, like, are they doing multiple shots, multiple cuts, anything like that?

Taylor (25:32 – 27:09) – Yeah, great question. The main thing that we’re looking for is, kinda, that checklist. Thumb-stopping, can they grab my attention? Are they articulate? Are they charismatic? Does their content jump out onscreen? Basically, or really, the lens we’re looking through is can they sell me on this product if I was to put it on their hands? Am I confident in that through their video content? It really comes down to the way that they speak, as well as, on TikTok, can they create those short, choppy videos, 15 seconds, long-form videos – kind of all of the above. One, that box needs to be checked for all those things. But then, two, again, their cadence and how often they put in that video content ‘cause, again, we want to make sure that if we are to put the product in their hands, transparently speaking, we do not want static imagery. Are we mad if that gets posted? No, it’s still a post, it still went live, it’s still free of cost, awesome. But what we’re really after is that video content that can achieve all those lines that I just alluded to. But style-wise, multiple styles, right? I don’t know if you’re going into the type of videos they put out, but seeding lends itself to a very diverse, giving a very diverse creative library. As long as we stick to making sure they check all those boxes, we’re gonna get those unboxing videos, we’re gonna get those use case videos, we’re gonna get those testimonials – we’re all gonna get all of the above, and that’s kind of what we’re after too, and then we can feed that to Facebook’s machine learning system to determine what type of content is gonna perform best within this given ad account, on behalf of this brand. I don’t know if that answers your question…

Ray (27:09 – 27:34) – Yeah, it definitely does ‘cause the next question was, obviously, different platforms – there’s probably, maybe, different levels of work. Maybe numbers as well, if you’re trying to get YouTube influencers, TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook, like, it’s gonna be different types of playing the numbers game to get them to respond. I’d love to hear, how is your approach different for, let’s say, YouTube versus TikTok influencers?

Taylor (27:35 – 29:27) – Great question, great question. So, for seeding, we typically tell brands, ‘Hey, if you love this YouTube influencer, we’re gonna seed them on Instagram or TikTok first. Why? Instagram and TikTok are the platforms where people are constantly posting 24/7 about their lives, like literally, it’s the most seamless platform – the post, what’s happening right now, and where most people frequently do it, in comparison to YouTube, about one video per week or something. So, how does this play into our strategy in who we should seed, and what platform should we seed them on? Free of cost post, more likely to happen on Instagram and TikTok. That’s why we seed them there first, and we seed them product, and they’re just a YouTuber, and we’re trying to get them to post on YouTube, very less likely just because, again, it’s not as seamless. They’re less likely to take it, you know, shoot it on their phone, ‘Okay, I’ll get to editing it later,’ and putting it into that long-form video post on YouTube, where a majority of that entire video is sponsored by a company and all paid for. It’s more of a pay for post platform. What we tell brands is, ‘Hey, let’s start…’ All of these YouTubers still have, you know, Instagrams and TikToks a lot of the time. Let’s start by seeding them and reaching out to them on their Instagram or TikTok. Get them to post there. If their content performs well – then they end up posting, they grant us usage rights, their content performs well organically, their content performs well on paid media. Hey, now let’s go back and contractualize them to where a YouTube post is actually a part of the agreement at that point. Once they prove to be a genuine product adopter, once they prove to be a top performer, now let’s engage in that type of deal structure and activate them on platforms outside Instagram and TikTok.

29:29 – 38:08 – Building a stronger relationship with influencers that work well with your brand
Ray (29:29 – 29:56) – When you work with a brand, and let’s say you’re working with a brand – a lot of influencers, and you’ve been seeding for a while, you start to be on your 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th round on, maybe, some of these influencers, and you start to find a group of them. You know, they’re very charismatic, they post very frequently, you’re forming a really great relationship. Where does your mind go to, to now take those core groups of people that just work really well with the brand, and what does that next level look like?

Taylor (29:57 – 31:43) – Yes, so, every month, just to break it down, leading to those 30 influencers posting 60 – 90 assets, as an immediate step with all 30 of them, ‘Hey, Ray, so glad you loved our product so much that you wanna share this content with your audience. We’d love to honor you for any and all future posts and get you compensated for those efforts, and get you onboarded in our referral program.’ At a minimum, get all 30 of them on-board your paid program. You might as well, why not? You know, if they make money by posting in the future, and you get a percentage of it, awesome, great. They’re sweeping up low-hanging fruit that you might as well incentivize them to post more by doing that in of itself. Now, we also recommend, there might be none that month, there might be 10 that month, there might be 30 that month. Who knows? We recommend contractualizing the top performers out of that bunch. A lot of the time, on average, there probably would be like 3 – 5, and then we recommend, ‘Hey, let’s go to the next level with these people.’ Each month, begin building out your paid brand ambassador program. I know, I might’ve said in the beginning, or we say it pretty often, that the pay for post model is dead. We only think it’s dead as the foundation of the relationship, but once you build the relationship through seeding, they proves to you, ‘post content for free,’ they prove to be a genuine product adopter, they prove to be easy to work with by granting you usage rights for free, like all of the above – when you go back to them and negotiate, like, a paid partnership, you guys know this, when someone genuinely loves the product, their price points get slashed in half too so it’s gonna be way more cost-effective. But we recommend, actually, playing the pay for post model at that point where you’re getting ongoing content from them, you’re getting ongoing organic activations from them, maybe you do some whitelisting – all of the above, right? That’s where a more expansive relationship comes into play.

Ray (31:44 – 31:45) – I appreciate that.

Scott (31:45 – 32:06) – You know, I was just gonna ask. When you get to that stage with the pay per person model, how are you assessing, I guess, the right price to be paying them per post? How are you making that decision? Is there a limit it’s based on? The amount of traffic? Their audience size? What factors are going into play there?

Taylor (32:07 – 33:36) – Transparently speaking,  the best deal we can give, and what we’ve seen, ‘cause it is still the wild, wild west – we’re probably paying people under their deserving value, which I’m just transparently speaking out loud. I don’t know how I feel about that, something that we might need to assess, honestly. But it’s something that will be corrected as time progresses as well, just by the market. What we’re just going after is market rates. I mean, what we’ve seen, what we’ve been able to get, we start typically between $150, between that group of people that I just suggested, you know 5K to 150K, $150 for 3 videos, an image, and organic post – we’ve been able to get it. If they say no, we go to $300. If they say no, we go to $500. After that, we just kind of like, honestly, we’ve never really seen anyone turn that down from seeding because you have started the relationship the right way. Now, if we didn’t seed them to begin with, would we get those rates? No, a lot of the time, a post, 3 videos, and an image would be like between $1,000 to $2,000, potentially. It could be way less from influencers that don’t understand their value, but because you start the relationship in the right way, $150 to $500 for those amount of assets is typically what we go for, especially after building the relationship with seeding.  Put that to the test, to anybody listening, after you seed, though.

Ray (33:38 – 34:30) – Yeah, I’m really loving your seeding model. We have a recent experience with one of the brands we work with where they actually got on the radar of the Jenners, of all people. And, for whatever reason, the Jenners did a free Instagram Story, so it wasn’t like a post, but it was an Instagram story of that brand. What’s really fascinating is, the brand was thinking about reaching out, see if they wanna do some kind of a real deal with the brand because they liked the product, but then, their frustration was that, it didn’t do anything to their business. Just posting on Instagram Story and tagging them – it didn’t do anything to their Instagram or to their business. I would love to get your thoughts on that, working with a really big influencer versus micro – how do you guys navigate that, especially the big influencers that, they do post a lot of products or a lot of other partnerships to where it may get drowned out?

Taylor (34:30 – 38:08) – Yeah, so I don’t know what this brand was, but kind of circling back to what we were, kind of, chatting about in the beginning. Like, macro vs. micro, like, my immediate thought was, like, ‘Yeah, it may not performed on Instagram Stories, but repurpose that into paid ads and this thing will take off and scale to the roof probably!’ But, the minute you fall for usage rights to whichever Jenner posted, it’s a $100,000, whatever it is, to be able to repurpose for 30-day usage rights, right? It just becomes absurd, and probably not worth it. That’s even without whitelisting, to where not everyone recognizes it’s Jenner, so on and so forth. Probably thinking about it, it doesn’t surprise me. You know, Instagram Stories, especially, we’d recommend seeding people on TikTok as well just because Instagram and all other social media platforms right now, their algorithm, pretty much, limits reach, 10% of your audience. So, you have a million followers, you’re probably reaching, you know, 100,000 of them and you’re only really getting 2 – 3% on engagement on that. It’s like 20,000 to 30,000 engagement on a million followers – hopefully that math was proper. And so, it’s not like the biggest deal, and then Stories only last 24 hours. Whereas, on TikTok, though, again, you have, like, the unlimited capacity to not only reach 10% of your audience, or your entire audience, but transcend that tenfold, so long as you continue to beat the algorithm. And, again, when you have 30 influencers posting on that platform, one is bound to do so. But micro to macro, let’s go back to your initial question there. Again, whatever that brand was, their product would be much easier to activate with micro-influencers, like, just because there’s a billion reasons why people follow, not billion, but there’s at least ten reasons why people follow Kris Jenner. Again, there’s only one reason why someone follows this person. If you can align that one reason with what this product’s after in this demographic, you’re gonna strike gold there. That’s why I’d recommend, basically, you know, you can get a 100 micros to post about your brand for free through product seeding, in comparison to, you know, Kris Jenner, I don’t know which Jenner you said, but let’s just say Kris Jenner for the purposes of this example. A lot of the times, they’re much less likely to post for free. Even comparing the two, this hundred versus the one, it’s probably the same aggregate following, you know, whatever it is, their total follower count. Probably the same aggregate following, but way greater reach within that following, way greater engagement within that following, way greater conversion rate, a 100x more content that was posted, and a 100x more content you can follow-up for usage rights to repurpose it, free of cost, without that $100,000 ticket price that agent or manager’s gonna get back to you with. Again, I would just highly recommend – micro, micro, micro – 5K to 150K ‘cause you’re always gonna get more bang for your buck. And especially if they’re on TikTok, they might get the same level of impressions as the macro, if not more. For sure, you have greater odds of getting, I will bet my bottom dollar that 30 influencers posting on TikTok as micro-influencers would get greater reach and engagement, more conversion, all of the above, than that post by Jenner on Instagram Stories.

Ray (38:08 – 38:12) – I just love the world we live in. That’s so cool.

38:14 – 44:10 – How has iOS14 affected brands Taylor works with?
Ray (38:14 – 38:39) – A topic I really wanna ask you about, as you were coming on today is, we all work with eCom brands. How have things really shifted for you recently, especially, hate to bring it up, but iOS14. People are having to shift, they’re having to shift to other traffic sources. I’d love to hear about what you’re seeing, really from the brands you work with. How has that shifted and impacted you & the brands you work with?

Taylor (38:39 – 40:11) – Transparently speaking, it’s benefitted us a ton. I mean, from what you just said, people are shifting budgets and to channels that will lend itself incredibly well to organic. A great channel to do that – influencer marketing. As Facebook faces iOS14 updates, it becomes, we don’t really see it as an effectiveness issue. We see it as an attribution issue and visibility in attribution, which is still an issue, but from an effectiveness standpoint, we haven’t seen it really impact that very much. If it does, it would be Pixel-related in the sense that the machine-learning system of Facebook will become less effective. When that becomes less effective, what becomes more important? Creative. And so, it kind of doubles down on our offering being more valuable. Not only trying to shift budgets outside of this to get more organic traffic going and not be as reliant on Facebook, but shit, man, our Facebook performance is dropping, and we didn’t even get better at this. The biggest variable of success to change that is creative and, I mean, like I said, our process kind of lends itself to 60 – 90 unique assets per month to supplement those efforts. So, organically, it’s helped our situation as an agency, but for our brands, this is how we’re able to help them with this issue they face and offset the challenge iOS updates bring.

Scott (40:11 – 40:27) – Yeah, I think, I agree 100% and the change for brand owners has to be thinking more multi-channel, omnichannel. You can’t just rely on Facebook like we used to be able to, run some ads, and scale. You’ve got to have it all, man.

Taylor (40:27 – 40:28) – We should’ve never, right?

Scott (40:29 – 40:31) – No, but it just got so easy, right? Didn’t it?

Taylor (40:31 – 42:20) – Oh, I mean, yeah. But what we do see, it’s still, again, the ecosystem that came from Common Thread, I don’t know how familiar you guys are with them, but they created a platform called StatList which is basically an analytical platform that brings all data from every single platform you’re on into one place. The most interesting metric that I’ve seen from that is basically their post-iOS14 report on all of their brands. Collectively, there’s over, like, 300 million dollars in ad spend on it, and basically it measures, and all these ad accounts with UTM links, so on and so forth – it measures MER, measures Facebook ROAS, it measures last of the ads, and it measures how 3 of those were impacted before and after iOS14 update. What’s been able to show is Facebook attribution across all the brands on there, across all 300M in ad spend, Facebook visibility into attribution has dropped 30%. Last click GA ROAS has remained the same, MER blended with ROAS has remained the same. And there is no difference in the allocation of spend on average. They didn’t freak out, they kept pushing within Facebook, they didn’t drop out – what does that mean? That just means it’s literally an attribution issue, not an effectiveness issue. So, basically, we just changed our CPA targets and cost cap targets within Facebook ad accounts by the amount that it was impacted by this iOS14 update. So, you know, if it was impacted by 20%, then we raised our cost cap by 20% and trusting that this is right, and then getting a gauge of MER from there and how that was impacted by it. We’re still trying to get the same, and we truly do believe that effectiveness has remained the same.

Scott (42:22 – 42:37) – And I think, Ray, you probably got more insight into this. I don’t, at the moment, but I think we saw a pretty similar drop across the board in terms of attribution from Facebook ROAS and MER was fairly stable, then it largely became an education piece with clients, right?

Taylor (42:37 – 42:38) – That was the biggest piece.

Scott (42:38 – 42:40) – That’s been the biggest challenge.

Taylor (42:40 – 42:41) – Yeah, for sure.

Ray (42:41 – 43:31) – Yeah. Especially, I can think of one brand, on top of our heads, last 5 months, they’ve been scaling, but with the attribution issue, they’re new, realistic, in-platform CPA and in-platform ROAS is actually, for like a $50 product, it’s nearly $50, and their in-platform return on ad spend is a 0.8/0.9. That’s reality, but MER has been really constant, they’ve been scaling, so it’s just, it’s an education issue and we did a statistical analysis internally just to show that, statistically, with correlations that Facebook ROAS, post-iOS14, has less of a meaningful change in your growth sales. It’s actually better just to focus on MER and ad spend, statistically, than focus on in-platform anyways.

Taylor (43:31 – 44:10) – I mean, we’re 100% aligned there. That’s the number everyone cares about at the end of the day, anyhow. It just becomes trickier when there’s a bunch of, you know, channels they’re spending on, and they’re getting the thought process of ‘we’re getting an 8x here, we’re getting a 0.78 or .8 on Facebook’ like should I be pulling back here and spending more there? It’s kind of like, wait, wait, wait! We’re actually hitting the numbers we wanna be hitting within Facebook because of, you know, XYZ, and the MER is actually improving. It’s cool to hear that you guys have seen similar results and you’re educating your clients in the same way.

44:12 – 48:02 – Final thoughts on product seeding and influencer marketing
Scott (44:12 – 44:22) – We’re just about coming up on time. You think there’s anything that we haven’t covered today that stands out in your mind that you think you could add to the conversation here?

Taylor (44:24 – 47:07) – Yeah. I would just challenge people to go try this. To give you a quick recap, playbook, per se, get on Facebook Brand Collabs Manager, identification tools, Step 1, get on TikTok Creator Marketplace, step 1, that’s an identification platform for TikTok and Instagram, respectively. That’s where you want to be starting relationships with influencers and seeding them. Identify 100, just start at 100 – it would take time to do 500 like I said – identify 100 that quantitatively align with who you wanna be representing your brand. But then again, it would take some time, don’t just do that. Have a white-glove approach. Go and get a gauge of video content creation ability because that is just as important, if not more important, than the quantitative data you’re trying to get aligned on. Send the message verbatim, ‘Hey Ray, Hey Scott, we think you’re a great brand fit. We absolutely love the content you consistently put out. We think you’d love our products. We wanna send it to you, no strings attached. What we mean by that is we have no expectation of you to post whatsoever. Just send us your address, we’ll send this right out to you.’ Follow-up a couple of times if you don’t hear from them, no more than 5, don’t be that person. You’ll probably see 20% opt-in to receive the products; if it’s a 100, you’ll see 20 of them opt-in to receive a product at a minimum. After that, get on to MightyScout, that’s something I actually did not talk about. Upload 20 of these profiles onto a platform called MightyScout – MightyScout costs like $2 per person you put on there. It’s incredibly inexpensive. What that allows you to do, in real-time, is see who’s posting what when ‘cause, again, we’re not asking them to post at any given time so we have no clue when that happens. So, instead of your team scouring the Internet 24/7 for who posted what out of those 20 people, just plug them into MightyScout and they collect that content in real-time for you where you can download it and get a gauge of the organic. And then, 30% of those 20 should end up, minimum, end up posting – what is that, 6 influencers? And then posting 2 – 3 pieces of media each, you wind up with 12 – 18 assets that are organically posted. I’d recommend doing on TIkTok, specifically, you get way more bang on the organic side of things. And then, that content really does well when repurposed in the paid media, on Facebook included. That content has just been crushing it. If you can do that, if you reach out and identify the 100 influencers, you end up with 6 influencers posting 12 – 18 assets on TikTok, I really do generally believe you will find yourself a big win and make yourself a believer in influencer marketing, see all those efforts from there.

Scott (47:08 – 47:29) – Man, that was pretty much everything you need to know to build up your own influencer program in-house. Super, super practical and useful information, man! Really appreciate you coming on. Just a gold mine of information, to be honest. Where can people find you if they wanna reach out, if they’ve got any questions? Take it away.

Taylor (47:29 – 47:54) – Yeah, Kynship.co, Kynship with a Y. K-Y-N-S-H-I-P.co is our website. My partner and I are both really active on Twitter. We’re constantly giving away the tools to equip your team to run an effective in-house influencer marketing program internally. But if it becomes too much work, obviously, your team does this really well at Right Hook, and our team at Kynship would love to be the ones to help you guys out too.

Scott (47:54 – 47:58) – Appreciate you coming on, man. Amazing chat. Taylor, thank you very much!

Taylor (47:58 – 48:02) – Appreciate you guys for having me! Thanks Scott, thanks Ray, great chat!

48:02 – 48:59 – Episode outro
Scott (48:02 – 48:59) – Thanks again for tuning to this episode of the Growth & Greatness eCommerce Podcast. I hope you got a ton of value out of this episode and if you did, we’d love for you to leave us a review on your platform of choice and help us reach as many people as we can. Now, if you’re a brand founder, an eCommerce entrepreneur, or an in-house marketing manager looking to accelerate your growth this year, reach out to us at Right Hook Digital. We’re a performance branding agency and we specialize in partnering with eCommerce brands to help them hit their growth goals with maximum ROI. Now, if this sounds like a solution that you need, then check us out at righthookdigital.com and schedule a call with our client partnerships team. They’d love to have a chat with you and see how we can help you grow in 2021.