TRANSCRIPTION BY DESCRIPT

It's the latest it job for millennials and gen Z. And it goes by many names, influencer, YouTube star, Insta, famous content creator. Today is all about influencers, what they are, how to find them and how companies can use their services to market their businesses on today's straight shot marketing podcast.

 

Welcome to a straight shot. Marketing is everywhere. It's around your life from what you eat to what you wear and where you go vital. Part of any and all business. Let's discuss the world of marketing and business, as it influences everyday life with a staff of Atlanta marketing agency, reformation production, and yes, as a human to a strict

 

It used to be that the young aspired to be rock stars or movie stars. But in this generation, it's social media star that has become the aspiration for many. So let's start this off with a definition. Zachary, what is an influencer? Well, when influencer first started becoming a thing on the internet, it was not.

 

Okay. Well, it is now tons of teens, all clamoring for that influencer paycheck. Well, it actually started with podcast. Well, technically I guess it started with pirate radio. That's what you thought I was talking to nobody. I imagined listening. Maybe I imagined that one person out there. Show's over. I'm done stick a fork in me.

 

It's been granted. This is hard Harry saying, sign out. All right. Now, come on. You can't do this. This is a joke, right? Come on, Harry baby dolls. Yeah, but podcasts were the first digital platforms that made a way for just about anyone to tell their stories, start a show, sing a song, whatever. Then. YouTube came out, then those podcasts could become video and you could put on a skit, produce a short film, show your music video.

 

So it all started as a way to kind of express yourself creatively. Or, you know, as a journalist, it used to be that, uh, you know, freelance journalists would go out and they would, um, you know, shoot a piece and then sell it to the local news station. Now they could have their own show on the YouTubes and, you know, sharing your point of view or expressing yourself creative.

 

That's kind of what this was born out of. It was an UN or a way for ordinary people to have a voice without, you know, being on the broadcast airwaves. So that's kind of where this whole thing started and what really the core of what it is is then as social media started becoming more and more popular, a phenomenon happened.

 

People began choosing their favorite content providers. Their favorite shows like you do. And these individuals started to grow their own audience. Then when companies started to see alignments between their target market and the social media personalities audience, they wanted to pay them to gain access to that audience and that birth to a whole new marketplace.

 

And with that marketplace came the opportunity for these individuals to make the Moolah, the role of influencer started to be viewed as a profession. Okay. So you just said viewed as a profession, are you saying that it's not well. No, not really. If you think about it, a profession is something that you can be educated in.

 

You can develop skill for and become qualified in order to make a living at it. Influencers fell into this opportunity, right? While being content creators for an entirely different purpose, the whole getting paid for it kind of fell into their lap. There's no college degree for wielding social media.

 

Well, there may be. Now that you've said it, someone will find a way to make money off of that, but don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that there's not a lot of work involved here. It can be a great deal of work, but many influencers are artists and many are supported by, you know, Patreon and donations from viewers that want to help them, you know, keep their favorite shows on air, so to speak.

 

We have a Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash straight shot. We do. We do. And, uh, Chris, Chris DOE, which is another person like me, he simply gives out his PayPal address to people so that they can donate. He doesn't, he, he bypasses Patreon even. That's a great idea. Well, ours is support@straightshot.net.

 

So if you like what you hear, see, and learn from our show, please help us by giving whatever you can to our PayPal at support@straightcshot.net. Yeah. Oh, you can also hit that like, and subscribe button that helps us too, but there's always the money. Nothing says you love someone louder than showing financial support.

 

And that's why parents do it for their children, all their lives. Yes, that is true. Uh, as a parent, that is very true. Uh, but some of the more successful podcast and YouTube shows also people like Kim Kardashian, they offer sponsorships as well as, you know, taking, uh, donations and contributions to keep them.

 

On the air. So this can be very similar to, you know, being a spokesperson for a brand where you're just being seen wearing something the way that celebrities, real celebrities like movie stars and pop stars. Hmm. So you don't think that social media stars are real celebrities? No, not really. Of course there's generational bias in, I recognize that maybe one day I will be able to consider them actual, real celebrities.

 

You know, there are some like Jojo Siwa that are making an awfully good run at being a bonafide celebrity. For sure. What do you, what do you think, do you think they're actually celebrity? Okay. So yeah, I do. I do. I wouldn't say that you tubers or, um, like, um, Social media influencers are actors. I wouldn't call them artists in that regard, but I would call them celebrities because they are drawing on public, um, support they're drawing on public interest.

 

And I think that's what makes us celebrity. I think when the general public finds somebody fascinating, no matter who it is, they end up becoming celebritized. Ooh, is that a word? I bet that's a word. That's also a sad condition for the American people. The whole idea behind celebrity is that you are celebrating someone's talent.

 

You are celebrating what the, you know, the, the way that they create this painting or you're celebrating the way that they, you know, write this song or create this album more, or even movie stars the way you see them up there on the screen, portraying something and making emotionally been themselves, a bubble.

 

That's a celebrity, someone that gets up and just. Talk it's like newscasters. They're not celebrities either. Okay. The fact that you just said that I need to jump in because that's all an actor does is reads lines. And I'm not saying that actor's job is easy and I'm not saying that they don't bring something to the table.

 

Well, considering the state of news nowadays, it may be. Yeah. I mean, okay. So back to influencers, I think that if you go onto tik-tok Instagram, especially tik-tok I think, um, and now Instagram reels, Facebook watch maybe less so, but especially in Instagram, you're seeing a bevy of really flipping talented people, doing some amazing crap that we would have never seen.

 

And these people are getting quote discovered everyday run of the mill people doing amazing things. And I think they are amazing. I think they are talented. I think they are, um, Uh, desired by the general public to see more like, wow, you that's really amazing. You're a great singer. You're, you know, you're great at, you know, balancing watermelons on your head or whatever it is, but they do it.

 

And so we tune in to see what the next installment is going to be like. And I think that we are celebrating every day people and their amazing talents. And here's what I will say about this is where I, cause I would have agreed with you. Um, in recent, I don't know, like last year maybe, or a couple of years ago, last year didn't count.

 

Right? Cause it was 2020, so we're just skipping that year. But I would have agreed with you, uh, earlier in this decade because I would have said, Oh, you know, everybody's Insta-famous. Nobody's really getting, you know, nobody's working on their talent. But I, I meant to change my opinion because the amount of content that these people create now there are varying levels.

 

And I'm sure you'll talk about that a little bit, but there are varying levels of influencer. You know, when you first become something that someone that people are interested in, you know? Yeah. Maybe you're not a celebrity yet. You're an influencer, but you're not a celebrity. But I do think that as they kind of progress through the food chain and their, you know, talent or their likeability or their personality, because that's really what it boils down to is their person.

 

Um, when they started becoming a certain strata that they do become celebrities. And, you know, I will say that these influencers have worked very hard at developing their own personal brand. And I would say that some of our business owners haven't even invested this much time into figuring out who their company brand is like these personal influencers have they have figured out, you know what, there's a myth, a billion of us out here.

 

How am I going to differentiate myself from everybody else? How am I going to stand out? How am I going to use what I got. To make money and how am I going to be consistent at it? And I think that is a skill that should be lauded. And I think that them doing, I mean, sometimes like I encourage you guys to go on to tik tok, find somebody that you like go, you know, that's got a lot of followers, lot of followers, someone that's maybe famous and scroll to the very first tik tok that they ever made.

 

You'll be scrolling for like three minutes, just straight scrolling because of all the amount of content that these people are making. And the fact that they come up with so many creative content ideas is it should be celebrated. I would say that they are, you know, they are definitely influencers that influence the public.

 

Some of them are very, very creative people. But stardom celebrity is just a bit far for me. And, and I've heard the same thing, you know about us. We have a podcast, I do speaking engagements all the time. I've had people come up to me. Oh, you're from, you know, the, the, the, the famous podcast show. Well, first off this not really a famous show.

 

We're not golden girls. You're not gonna see my sing our theme song. And, you know, while I go out, I, I am a personality in the business community. You know, I have this show, I have my other content. I have, um, you know, the speaking engagements that I do, that sort of thing. But, um, I wouldn't consider myself to be a, you know, a rock star, a pop star.

 

I am not a celebrity. I'm a personality. So let me ask you, do you consider Gary V a celebrity? Um, well, no, no, no. He's not. Or have you not purchased a pair of shoes with Gary V? Uh, yes. On that, that is, was not out of fandom that's to support his cause, because I think he's, if you're watching this, I think you're very smart, man.

 

I think you're very talented. I think people can learn a lot from you, but you're no Clark Gable. You're not, you're not sorry in the end, it can be only one, frankly. Am I here? I don't give a damn, those are celebrities. Now, do I? I can recognize his talent and his value and his influence over people without him being a star.

 

It's just, so I grew up with music. The music industry actually existed. There are days you have no idea. No nobody's made Michael Jackson money since Michael Jackson. Well, at least since kid rock anyway, it's not the same as it used to be. So the whole stardom factor, it's just, it's diminished so much. And it's kind of been replaced since reality TV kind of stripped away all of the pride from everybody.

 

It's not the same thing. It's, it's just not the same thing. I would challenge you to say. I would challenge you to say it hasn't been replaced. It's just changed. I think the landscape of what celebrity looks like has changed because never before today, have we celebrated common people like we do now with influencers and never before today, have we realized the, um, market marketing power that these common everyday people can, can generate?

 

Like all eyes are on these people. And, you know, we would pay Michael Jackson, all this money to light his hair on fire. I'm Pepsi. Just kidding. He didn't do that on purpose or did he, or is it too soon? It's too soon, but I mean, people would pay Michael Jackson, a lot of money or Brittany Spears to hack a Pepsi product, a lot of money, like ungodly amounts of money, but that's not where the eyes are anymore.

 

The eyes are on that girl that plays the keyboard that sings the songs about having drivers' life. Well, I do think that they are talented people. I do think that it's a lot of work. I do think that they are influencing our culture, but for me as a gen X person, they just started as pushing a little too, too far.

 

Right now it may develop into that. Maybe one day I could accept it. Yes. There is a such thing as a YouTube star, but right now when my children say, Oh, you know, he's a YouTube star. I look at them like they have three heads. One buy a three heads. I it's funny because you're, you, you did hit on something, the generation below us, or two below us, maybe, maybe it's the millennials.

 

Um, they, they don't, they know these stars names more than they know Sean Connery's name. They do like nobody. I challenge you to ask your 18 year old who Jim Carrey is. Get back to me on that one anyways, either way we can all agree that obviously this has all become very big business. So tell me why would businesses want to get in on this influence?

 

Well, the first reason that I've already mentioned, and that is direct reach into the influencers. Audience, like I've said before businesses trade on attention and the influencer RD has the attention of their fans. So if the demographics lineup, the business can use that attention to reach more prospective buyers for the business.

 

For example, straight shot marketing podcast is a video and audio show that is available through YouTube, the various podcast, distribution points, like, you know, Apple podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, all the places. And we have a presence on other social media, like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, et cetera.

 

Right. Right. Okay. Who is our audience who listens or watches this show? Everyone, all the peoples saw let's see small business owners, CEOs. Other C-level executives and possibly others in the marketing industry. Right? So if you were a business that wanted to reach the demographic of that, those people, right?

 

If that was your same demographic, that audience fit in with you. For example, if you were a, you know, a CPA or you sold business insurance, something like that, then you could sponsor this show to reach our audience. We've already gathered the audience together due to, you know, the content of our show and the value that we bring to our audience.

 

So you could, you know, kind of glom onto that and pair up almost like we do co-branding to make, to take advantage of the fact that your audience and our audience is the same. So it's kind of like a shortcut. Right. I mean, since we already have the audience, they don't have to try to find it on their own.

 

Correct. And if the product or the service is a good fit, and I believe in it in the case of, you know, this show, if I can get behind it, then I will let them sponsor the show because it helps financially support what we're doing here in the content that we're, we're putting out, you know, putting out something like this is, you know, like I said, it's a lot of work and it's not an inexpensive thing.

 

So, uh, one of the ways that people, you know, get, you know, the wherewithal, the financial support to do it, and they take donations another way is, you know, just like this with, uh, selling sponsorships. But, uh, that's not why we do it. We don't do it to sell sponsorships. That's just like, you know, advertising the difference between influencer marketing and advertising involves a very delicate, uh, difference.

 

Our audience trust us because of the value that we bring to them on a monthly bi-monthly or multiple times a week, if they are connected with us on our own social media channel, that trust comes a responsibility, right? Because I know that we can be an influence on our audience. I have a responsibility to make sure that we don't just Huck any product or service for money.

 

It has to be something that lines up with my thoughts, because part of the reason that they are, you know, buying into whatever it is that we're talking about. Is because they trust me. If I put something out there that's, I don't believe in then I've betrayed that trust. So you kind of have to, you know, um, watch over it and make sure that you're kind of protecting that trust.

 

If you will, that's different than straight advertising. If you were to buy an ad in rolling stone magazine, they don't care what you believe in that. That's, you know, that's a big, a big difference there with, you know, influencer type, you know, advertising. Now the next level. Right. So that's, that's two things that we talked about so far, as far as the business of influencers, one is contributions to the next one is, uh, you know, selling advertising sponsorships.

 

The next level involves product endorsement. Now you've seen, or at least heard of product endorsement before. It's where someone is seen using a product or talking about a product or service as an influencer we're being seen as personally or professionally endorsing that product or service. If I endorse something and it fails, that will upset my audience.

 

Right. And caused them to lose faith in what I say. And because of that, we protect that area of influence with great passion. Just like I talked about with, you know, having someone sponsor the show and that makes it even more valuable to companies that want to reach our audience. And because not every product or service will impress me because I can't get behind all of them companies will send products or, you know, samples to influencers to see if they can or will honestly endorse whatever they have to offer, which is why on YouTube.

 

You'll see a lot of times. Well, yeah, you know, so-and-so sent me this and I thought I would try it out, blah, blah. That's what they've done. They receive products from people all the time to see if it is a good fit. Right. That's why clothing manufacturers and designers as well. We'll send free clothing to influencers, hoping that they will like it enough to wear it or to talk about it on the air.

 

For example, I wear vegetable sport coats in insurance. It's something that I like. So a designer might send some to me, hoping that I would wear them on the show or when I do speaking engagements or maybe to the different photo shoots that I do for my articles in gray journal. Then if I liked them and want to wear them, they would then try to negotiate what my responsibility in the relationship is.

 

Right. They send me product. If I like it, then there might be some sort of compensation that goes along with whatever responsibilities they want me to Dole out on my side. Now often simply getting free clothing is enough. No additional compensation is involved, but if they also wanted me to say acknowledge them from the stage or in articles, that feature photos of my wearing the product that might be negotiated separately.

 

You've probably seen this before, where somebody is up on stage and they're like, Oh yeah, so-and-so I'm wearing blah, blah, blah. You know, that's, that's where that comes from. Right. I just want to thank our sponsor, who is suiting me here. And this is from scene's studio and they make travel suits and. So you guys, if you guys liked my suit, go visit scene studio...

 

If you guys use the code future, and also in the, in magazines, you can see, you know, wardrobe provided by that's that's the same. That's that's. This is one of the ways that they use, uh, influencers market, their audience, in order to, you know, market their, their own again, designer, community, you can email us info@istraightshot.net for any of it.

 

This is my personal brand manager. He is wearing today. Wardrobe provided by Stacy Adams, probably. I'm not sure who is that? Stacy Adams. This is a. Synergy synergy. Yes, he has. For those of you that are listening to the podcast, not able to watch, uh, Mr. B's Zachary Bennett is currently sporting a very sharp looking black blazer with, with metallic skulls on it and a red shirt.

 

Lovely red shirt. Sorry. So that's how it works. Influencer marketing strategy. Point of view. So same thing with drinks or restaurants. It's very similar to product placement like they do in Hollywood movies, but on a smaller social media sized scale, um, the, the energy drink. Bang just did a big campaign on tech talk, where they sought out influencers and content creators to make videos that included their drink featured in their video content for no, some of them were quite creative.

 

Let's play some of them here. All right. So we went to Walmart yesterday and we got us a bank. I've never had one of these before I told you I would try it on camera or mama used to tell me not to drink these things.

 

recognize my name. You might know me as a DIY fail prankster on boxer, professional pizza eater in lifestyle guide. I'm Nikki. And today I have a new roommate is obsessed with bang energy, and I'm not talking just a little bit like obsessed and I kind of forgot to get her a Christmas present. So. You can really see a lot of the creativity and creative freedom that people took with them.

 

And then it becomes a trend, particularly. Do you want to bang?

 

Oh yeah,

 

Let's watch:

 

Hey Maddie, you got a bang bang. Like, do you want to bang? Hell no, no. I meant to train. Why'd you drink it if you were offering it to me, cause you don't deserve it. If you want a bank, why do you want to be sitting in the car right now? Do you want to bang? Do you a bang or not? What's wrong, babe? You said we're going to bang, bang, bang.

 

Do you want a bang fun fact? Absolutely not. Okay. Why? Why tell me why right now. Cause I don't really know you. Okay. It's a bang energy. Oh, ha ha. Hey babe. Do you want to bang right now? Yeah.

 

Hey pretty. Hey, do you want to bang? Do you want to bang that wasn't talking to you? Tough guy. Do you want to bang? No. I mean like, do you want to bang? It's free. Yeah, well, you know, sex and then you window cells, what can I say? It always has. Um, particularly if the target audience is young college aged people.

 

Yes. They lined that up perfectly, you know, and it works, you know, I saw one of these ads on tick doctor somewhere. And then when I was in Walgreens, I saw the product and I actually bought it to see what the hype was. Oh, you did that. Got you. So now that you got the product, what do you think. Not for me. I am not a big energy drink fan.

 

I get the cotton candy flavor. Oh my gosh. You were a big cotton candy fan though. Yes, but not the energy drink, I guess. I'm not young college, Jason, but I did appreciate the marketing strategy that was behind it. Like I said, it worked, I found out what the hype is. I am not their target. So you have mentioned lots of ways that businesses can use influencers strategically.

 

So you said, uh, sponsorship advertising, um, doing a review or discussing something on video or audio. True. Uh, product placement, just in a scene like with clothing or even being in a specific restaurant, enjoying food, uh, giving the creators creative freedom to come up with something on their own. And then, uh, personal endorsements, no matter where the influencer goes or what they do.

 

And I talked about acknowledging whatever I was endorsing in, whatever the medium that I was in was like onstage giving a keynote or in an article is part of the photographer footnote. But this is all done on a much grander scale than me. I'm just using me as an example, you know, talking through it because I actually know what it's like on this side of the fence.

 

However, an actual celebrity again, I don't think I'm not, I'm not a celebrity. You're not, I'm not an influencer, not a celebrity though heavily influenced me, but Kevin Hart, who is an actual, he signed a deal with Nike, not. Not too awful long ago. And he agreed to basically live in Nike products for a certain amount of time.

 

Now in return, Nike gave him a bunch of product, obviously, so that he could live in it and they paid him an endorsement fee so that he could be, you know, photographed in their clothing and his social media videos and his movies if applicable his stand-up shows news clips where he was being interviewed, talk, shows all of that.

 

He lives in Nike. So this was a, is a new, you know, kind of, of platform agnostic, sort of, you know, endorsement that is a fairly new thing in the last year or so. Uh, usually they will endorse you on a specific platform. This platform doesn't matter. You are endorsing Kevin Hart period, no matter where he is.

 

And I think that's going to be a new thing that come up. Okay. Well, so that brings up another point of discussion. Influencer strategies can be done on multiple levels, right? I mean, it's not just for big companies with big celebrity influencers. That's that's that's right. You can be a local pizza shop or a small clothing designer, or maybe you just want to reach a smaller, more niche demographic like the business community, as opposed to, you know, Kevin Hart's big, huge audience.

 

That's actually global. It's, it's huge. It's very huge. So how would smaller companies or anyone really, I mean, make these connections with the influencers? I mean, how do you find them? Well, there, there are several ways, depending on what platform you are wanting to use and the size of the influencers audience, um, for us, like you mentioned, they can just reach out to the show directly.

 

(678) 825-8086 extension 300. Okay. But you could also call on any nice show if they are small enough. Um, so if you're looking for a very targetable, because our audience is very small, we're our audience is, you know, business owners and the business community marketing professionals watch us also. But in the global scheme of things, that's a very small audience specific.

 

I would prefer to use the word specific as opposed to, so if you're looking for a specific audience like that, you can likely just straight up contact the show. Now, if you are looking for something larger, it's going to be more difficult while you can call straight shot marketing podcast. Calling, keeping up with the Kardashians is going to be another story.

 

Now the show actually doesn't handle Kim Kardashians influencer business, but they might be able to let her know that you are interested, but she'll have actually personal managers that kind of handle all of that sort of stuff, uh, for her. Um, we pretend, you know, like you're my personal manager here, but she literally had someone on payroll for that.

 

You know, they probably handle product placement on the show itself, but not all of what Kim or any of the other sisters do. I mean that we'll have to go through them, not on the show. Correct. And if you want Kim Kardashians, you want her social media more than just the show. That's, that's kind of a difference here.

 

You could sponsor the show, but if you're going after Kim Kardashians, you want her Instagram or Snapchat, that's the stuff that you really want more than just, yeah. So you can contact the show or them personally, that's one way to do it depending on the size. Yes. But there are also influencer marketplaces.

 

Now this is a brain child of Tik Tok, and it's called the tik-tok creator marketplace. Slick and assuming name there. Yes. It's a pretty. It's spot on. It's pretty spot on. Um, yeah. Take talk has been fast to identify the influencer marketing space as a key part of their own business offerings. So they facilitate introductions and help manage campaigns much like an influencer marketing agency would through their recently launched Tik Tok creator marketplace.

 

Right. And as an official platform for brand and creator collaboration on their medium, they've been pretty successful at it. It's also a place where, uh, influencers can easily be promoted as in-feed ads for a little extra visibility. If you're, you know, Facebook's been doing the whole boost thing, this is it's also done in, you know, in the same place for content creators.

 

So the marketplace is a good way to reach some of the more popular and therefore more difficult to get in touch with influencers, but you can also find and reach out to them on your own. If they are smaller, smaller influencers are called micro influencers, micro influencers, like little tiny ones when you can put in your pockets.

 

Yes, yes. With my micro you remember micro machines. You probably remember the guy who sells micro machines. So micro machines, motor mouth, guy microbes. She met here with the mini micromanage, perfectly perfect pumps, amazing aircraft controls to the passenger terminal, the golden rule of influencer marketing.

 

However, is it numbers? The golden rule is that relevance is more important than reach. Don't simply approach the influencers with the largest account following. They may be incredibly expensive. Number one, expensive to work with, and many references to your brand could fall on deaf ears. If they're not also the right target.

 

So find out who the relevant influencers would be within your niche, right? You, so you have to know your target demographic. Okay. Then you can navigate the discover tab on Tik Tok by searching keywords that are related to your industry, your product, your services from there, make a list of, this is your how to make a list of user accounts with the most followers and the most popular videos within a specific topic.

 

Again, as specific as you can using those keywords, then watch the posts that they've put out to determine if they are a good fit for your brand. If they are not a good fit for your brand and do not do it. All right. Look for them on any of the other platforms that they might be on. You may have found them on Tik Tok, but then go look at their Snapchat, look at their Instagram, look at their YouTube, right.

 

To see what they're really all about and to discover what other methods they may have in their reach. Right? So maybe you found them on Tik Tok, but maybe their YouTube audience is even bigger. Right? So maybe that's what you want to pursue. So you have to kind of consider all of these things before you read, just reach out to them with the proposal, because what they don't want is for you to say, Hey, I have an idea and actually have no idea what you want them to do.

 

So, uh, you know, they're, these are busy business people, the same as you know, most of us. So don't, you know, don't waste their time either now on, uh, on Instagram, you can search for users with the largest following within a specific city. Or location, different platforms will have different search ways.

 

Instagram will let you target, you know, Sydney or location, which makes it great for targeting locally. You are basically looking for people that already have a substantial following, meaning that they are popular, right? And line up with your brand. You're just using different tools to investigate those people.

 

And in this case, relevance is usually more important than the number of followers that they have. It doesn't matter if they have 15 million in their audience, if they aren't going to be relative to your brand. So you have to be savvy Lauren Gray, who was at one time, the number one ranked influencer on Tik TOK costs $175,000 a post because she has 38.6 million followers.

 

She also has 2 billion likes and a net worth of $3 million. Wow. I'll take that. Jeez. All right. Now a lot of you probably never heard of her because she's very ticked. Hi, Zach King is another one and he actually started on, I think he's actually started as a vine, moved to YouTube Facebook and is now on tick-tock.

 

So Zach King is $135,000 a post. He has 27 million followers and a billion likes. That is an awful lot of money. If they don't share the same audio it's as you, ah, we call that wasteful. And if you're a local pizza shop, you don't need to reach 38 million people across the globe. Right. You can simply reach out to the most popular high school kid in your local school.

 

Maybe you pay them 500 bucks for an entire month's worth of content, as opposed to $175,000 for a single post. And, you know, they may be a better fit. They are local to your town that you were in, right? Maybe they're on the football team in load. No lots of other hungry teenagers. They can, you know, come into your shop.

 

You have to be smart about this. And not only that, the difference between working at these two levels, the professional influencers like baby Ariel, know what they're worth. However, if you go local with these micro influencers, a lot of them don't know what they worth, because they've never done it before.

 

And you might get them for a steal. Now we spend a lot of time, uh, here at the agency, building strategies for clients that determine, you know, this type of thing who, where, and how much for the company to engage in influencer marketing. Okay, well, this has been good conversations, but now it is time to wrap it all up.

 

And it's time for me, for you to give me the straight shot. So sum up the lessons that we learned today. Okay. Uh, first you have to understand what an influencer is so that you can know the best ways of utilizing them strategically in your marketing plan. Again, education, knowledge and wisdom are the secret keys to a savvy business owner.

 

Even if you have to hire out to experts to get access to that knowledge, those three things are key to really being successful. Influencers are basically the cool kids on the internet that already have an established following that you might want to tap into as a business. That's it? That's what they are.

 

That's who they are from a business. Standpoint as if you were, you know, in the school yard, they're the cool kids. Yeah. That's a really good analogy. Um, next you have to know what you were looking for and how to find them. So we've gone over all of these things. We discussed the need to line up their audience with your targeted customer profile, which means you have to know your targeted customer profile.

 

Right? Then we talked about the multiple ways for you to reach out to them, searching for the right people, contacting them directly through, you know, their show or a website or through their social media or through an influencer marketplace. Like tick-tock has, there's lots of these marketplaces. Also.

 

It's not only tic-tac podcasts have several marketplaces that are available to them. Keynote speakers have a marketplace. So you just have to do a little research to find, you know, how to get in touch with these people. Then you have to know how to utilize them. There are several ways. We've discussed some here today, but let me name a few more.

 

So these are the actual tactics that we're going to dive into of how you could utilize an influencer. All right. The first simplest thing that you can do is sponsor their content, right? So they are a content creator. You want them to do a post about you? So this would look like

 

this is boiling bottle company. It is Birch beer. Okay. If they contacted me to do a post about this product, he would gladly do it. That would be, that would be a post sponsorship. So what I would likely do is, you know, taking a picture, drinking it, whatever you've seen Kim Kardashian do this a million times and then.

 

Put it out there in my social media feed. And you would do it with the label facing out? Yes. That's one of the ways you can always notice this. Whenever you see that the label is perfectly facing the camera. It's a funnel like this. It's like this, that's how, you know, it's paid and videos and everything else.

 

If you, if it's actually a fun game to look at it in movies, if you look in movies and you go through and you see how many times is the label, amazingly facing them camera, my fingers are not obscuring the label at all. That means this product placement that's intentional. You can also sponsor a series of posts.

 

So that's not only are they doing one post, but they're doing several different posts over time. That feature your content. That's kind of like, you know, buying in bulk is really all that is. Then you have blogging. Now, blogging is still considered a social media activity and there are several people that have blogs.

 

Several influencers have blogs. I have a blog, um, you know, Seth Goden got his start with, you know, with a blog. So there's lots of people that have a blog as a way to, you know, put out written content, uh, because all of us put out a lot of content, but they put out written content through their blog on medium or on their website or wherever.

 

Um, and you can sponsor that blog. You can also, um, a lot of times be featured. Uh, in the blog, the article can literally be about you again, it really depends on, um, whatever it is that you're talking to them about. But again, these are the social media influencers are going to be honest about their opinion of you, which is something you have to realize.

 

If they're going to interview that doesn't mean this is going to be a spin piece. It means that you are wanting to talk to them to get their honest opinion, because their honest opinion is what's going to matter to their audience, not a spin piece, not a fluff piece. This is not a pay to play sort of thing.

 

Uh, but they were more likely to sit down and talk to you because it helps support what they do. Another thing, just like this is reviews. Everybody's seen reviews on YouTube. There's reviews all over the social media threat, the sphere what's up guys right behind me is the carnival. And I promise you're not ready for these features.

 

The carnival is actually a Kia and it may be hard to tell because they have a brand new logo. You have an led daytime running light here, your headlights there, and your high beams are hidden right here. All right. So you have a ton of room back here and watch this. And one of the things that I do before I buy anything, including this little unit right over here.

 

I will research the dog mess out of it. And that includes lots of reviews. So I will go through and I will find people have reviewed whatever that piece of equipment is. And I would do it for more than one content creator. Now, the way this works is maker of said, unit will send the equipment to that influencer in hopes that they will review the product.

 

Okay. Now, one of two things happens here either. They send them the equipment, hoping that they will review it. They agree to review it, and then they get to keep the equipment, right? That's their fee. Or if it's like, uh, you know, a car or something, cause this happens with cars too. They'll send the car back, but they'll get paid some sort of.

 

Fi to do, you know, to, to, to host it on their channel. Now, in most all cases, you will hear people say, though, this is sponsored. This is my honest opinion, because as an influencer, honest opinion is paramount. Again, just like I was talking about with, with blog. If you want to send me a microphone to test out it, to tell other people that might want to do a podcast, this is a good sounding microphone.

 

I can do that, but if it doesn't sound good, that's going to come out. So before you send it to me, you make sure that it's going to pass well and that you think I am going to, to like it. That's how this works. All right. So again, I cannot stress the fact that honest feedback is what you're going to hit any more than another.

 

Now, something that's a bit more than some of these basic things that I've been talking about. There's something called a channel takeover. So channel takeovers, this is something that I've seen done in the early stages of social media that you actually don't see as often anymore, which makes it even more unique now to other people.

 

But a channel takeover is when a brand will take over a, uh, influencers. Channel meaning that everything on the channel for that day, usually it's a day is branded for that company. For example, if Coca Cola was to take over the straight shot marketing podcast channel and they have it, but if they did everything that you see related to this show for whatever day it is that they are sponsoring would be Coca-Cola red.

 

You'd see Coca-Cola messaging everywhere. You'd see little creative things with Coca-Cola, whatever their campaign is going on with everything. So that's the content. That's the, the, uh, the platform of the content that they would probably have a webs. Our webpage would be, you know, completely rebranded Coca-Cola.

 

We'd be sitting here in Coca Cola clothing and we'd be drinking cocoa. So it's taking over that brand would take over the channel. Right. So that's something that you, you can see done a lot. Now that also goes the other way. You can have a influencer take over your brand's social media. This was done in I'm sorry, this is going to be a dated, um, Example, but Logan, Paul did a takeover with sour patch.

 

Kids. Not only was this done, you know, aesthetically in the background, but also, like I said, in the content of his videos because sour patch kids have these little guys running around in costumes and they literally came to his set and it was interacting with him. He'd go out on the street, playing with these guys, setting up different stunts, that sort of thing.

 

So again, it's any way that the, the brand can kind of work with the influencer in as creative a way as you can possibly think of. It's actually, it's very interesting. The, the types of things that you can do with this, another thing that's very creative is you can create short films. This is another again, very creative way to interact a brand with a, um, a content creator, content creators.

 

Most of them nowadays do video. Video is extremely popular when it comes to, uh, the internet and with people making content for all of these different platforms. So what they would do is they would make a specific video featuring your content. Now, something else that has to do with Hollywood is a product placement.

 

So you can do product placement in social media, internet, YouTube, TikTok, whatever type videos as well. For example, if, um, say boiling bottles company wanted to do product placement, what would happen is I would have this sitting right here on my table where you could see it. It's all nice and lovely.

 

Hopefully you can see it. And here you could sit in front of Jennifer as well. She would probably have a diet version or some other type of version.

 

And, and, uh, it would sit here as note that's endorsed, but that's too far. Uh, so it would be sitting here where's the camera as product placement and it would be something again, label would be facing you, right? And it's there in the shot for you to notice. Now product placement is usually less expensive if you don't talk about it.

 

So if that's just sitting there, it is going into your subconscious saying, Oh, this guy likes this product because it's there, but they're not having to pay for you to talk about it. So that's one of the things that happens. The same thing can happen subtly with, um, uh, on location, right? If, uh, the local restaurant was to pay a content creator to go shoot their show from their location, with the location in the background, it's not.

 

An overt, you know, uh, sponsorship of the show, it's kind of, kind of laid back kind of in the background where you would see, you know, B roll of the camera would be the, um, the waitress interacting with you so that you could see what the services like or the they're eating food, and you get to see if they liked the food.

 

So these are kind of subliminal things that can also be done by brands to interact with. Um, with influencers stores can do this too. You can do, if we were to do a show on, you know, merchandising, I could literally do it from a boutique shop. That would be in the background and knowing us we'd likely interview them, that sort of thing, but most on location doesn't have anything to do with talking to people it's simply in the background.

 

Therefore it's very low key and therefore a lot less expensive than literally featuring them on the show. So that's an option as well. Then of course, there's, you know, straight up sponsorship advertising that I talked about in the very beginning, that's also, you know, a fairly simple thing to do. Then there's the Kevin Hart deal, which is the living endorsement.

 

Okay. This is where you are wearing their clothes. You are living in their product, whatever it may be. That's the, where you are living in the product. Like Kevin Hart did not going to go over that anymore. Then there is acknowledgement. Like I talked about from the stage, right? If I am wearing said clothes, I will acknowledge that I'm wearing, said clothes in my program, whatever it is you see, that's done all the time as well.

 

You see that done on the red carpet a lot, um, where there were, Oh, I'm wearing blah, blah, blah. And they were literally talking about whatever they're wearing. That's, that's the same sort of thing that's acknowledgement. You'll also see, uh, you know, back in the day there was teen magazines that did this all the time, where they were literally highlight, you know, what they're wearing.

 

They would ask. They would interview Billy Joel and say, Billy, Joel, what is your favorite breakfast food? Why would they ask him that? Well, it's because they want you to buy whatever his favorite breakfast food is. All of that is, you know, um, that's an acknowledgement that somebody is doing, you know what, Oh, I see you're wearing such and such type of bracelet or, or, you know, necklace or whatever.

 

That's all there for, for a reason. It's a way that, uh, that influencer makes, um, additional money to support whatever it is that they're doing by partnering with brands. Yes. You know, the piano. Yeah. It seems like, you know, a lot of your examples lately have been very dated. I am gen X. Hear me roar. That's true.

 

That's true. But you know, in this again, um, endorsements, product placement, uh, acknowledgements, this stuff's been around for a long time. It's just now come into the digital, you know, relationship with, uh, with social media and you can see it done a lot more often now, but it's been done, you know, in Hollywood and in media for years.

 

Yeah. In Paris, Hilton's newest documentary. She was talking about how designers send her clothes and just pay her to wear their clothes and how they just, all these clothes that she gets to stack up in her closet, because there's just so many of them. So many of these opportunities that she usually only wears each piece one time, you know, to one event or whatever, check it out.

 

These brands are always sending me clothes because they want me to post about them or different outfit every couple hours of the day. That's a part of being an influencer. I've never been photographed in the same thing twice. Yes. And that's something that you might expect from Paris. She is, you know, a billboard, you know, a lot of, a lot of these people are where they, you know, what, they have people that seeking them to where like, you know, um, Kevin Hart, but Paris, Hilton's another one of those, you know, she gets tons of bags so that she can be, you know, shot by paparazzi carrying whatever name brand, you know, bag that is because that then gets put in star magazine or whatever it gets, all this inquiry press.

 

And so that's, you know, all of this is done. These celebrities get annoyed by paparazzi. But it makes opportunity for them. Yep. So bottom line influencers have audiences that may want to buy your product or service. So brands are partnering with set influencers to create influencer marketing campaigns, pay these influencers to use your products or services on camera or to some other way, you know, promote your product or brand in their videos.

 

And you'll get product brand in front of new eyes, their audience that's the whole reasoning behind this, but even more important than giving eyeballs is you'll earn some of their customers trust. To now, this is statistic one in three consumers trust and influencers opinion more than they would trust what the brand says on their own.

 

So you can use that to your advantage. It's one of the additional reasons why brands are using influencer marketing influencers have spent a lot of time respecting and engaging with their audience. Therefore, they are trustworthy and the brand can come in partner with said person use that relationship to their advantage, which they couldn't do on their own one out of three people trust the influencers opinion more than if you said it directly yourself as the business owner.

 

That's a heavy statistic. Actually, if you think about it anyway, Very good show. Great shows. Zachary. Great, good, good information. And I really hope that all of you guys enjoyed it. If you enjoyed it as much as we did, please, don't forget, hit that like and subscribe button. If you have a question or topic you'd like us to discuss on this show, please reach out to us nfo@istraightshot.net, or give us a ringing ding at (678) 825-8086 extension 300.

 

This has been the fourth installment to our social media series. We're not even halfway through with everything we have planned, but I think the next episode, we're going to be taking a break, a little break from this topic. If you remember, we promised to mix it up since this subject is so big and it will take a good amount of time to cover.

 

So. Next time. We're going to be talking about how to bring a product to retail. Yes. So looking forward to seeing you then until then have a great rest of the week straight shooters. Hi, thank you for listening. If you found this podcast informative, we hope you'll pass a longer, a web address, straight shot.net to your friends, colleagues, and business associates.

 

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