Ep. 67: How Influencer Marketing Can Help You Grow Your Business

00:00:01

Brittany Hennessy: Influencers are creators, but they have a different end game. Their end game is to convince you to do something, and that's usually to make a purchase. And so if you're a brand, what you do is you find an influencer who can reach your audience or creator whose content you really like. You hire them to create content around your product, and then depending on who you hired and what you hired them to do, you reap the benefits of having unlimited people at your disposal on the internet who can pretty much reach anyone, which is very cool, but very difficult to get right and very expensive when you get it wrong.

00:00:43

Andrea Marquez: Hi, I'm Andrea Marquez and This Is Small Business, a podcast brought to you by Amazon. You've probably heard that influencer marketing can be a game changer for your small business, but how do you actually make it work? Today we're talking to Brittany Hennessy, the best-selling author of Influencer: Building Your Personal Brand in the Age of social media. She's been called the Influencer Whisperer and the fairy godmother of influencer marketing because she knows how to turn your online buzz into real-world results. With over 15 years of experience, Brittany is here to share how you can partner with the right influencers to elevate your brand, reach new audiences, and boost your sales.

00:01:22

Brittany Hennessy: I do influencer marketing and then influencer strategy for creators in the creator economy, which is very cool because I get to help brands and small businesses and influencers and the platforms that serve them all figure out how everyone can work together and help them achieve their goals. I love helping small businesses because that's how we get a lot of innovation and a lot of new products. It's because of small business that I think I can do this better. And so I'm always happy to help small businesses hit whatever goals they need so they can stay in business and connect them to influencers who like working with small businesses because there are definitely a lot of them.

00:02:00

Andrea Marquez: Before Brittany entered the world of influencer marketing, she was trying to keep her writing sharp by starting a blog after she graduated from journalism school.

00:02:08

Brittany Hennessy: My blog was about New York nightlife and I didn't really think anyone was reading it, which just goes to show you, you never know. You only really need one person to be reading your stuff for anything to happen.

00:02:20

Andrea Marquez: Then she got an email that said-

00:02:22

Brittany Hennessy: Hey, we love your blog. We are putting together a list of people to go on this trip. It was for a major skincare brand and it was in Germany. I said, we're putting together this list and about five people have told us that we have to send you on this trip, so we are pretty sure that you need to go. They asked me, “Do you have a passport?” I had never left the country at this point. I did not have a passport, but instead of telling them that, I said, “Yeah, I have a passport.” They're like, “Great, we leave in two days.”

And so now I'm frantically Googling, can you get a passport in two days and you can, especially in New York. And so I ran down, got my passport, and then two days later I was on a flight to Germany and then they paid me just to post about it and I could not believe I was getting paid for this.  

And then I was an ambassador for the brand for an entire year, and so religious showcasing their products and telling everybody how much I liked them, and I think that was the first time I had seen anything like that. And I loved it, and I said, “As much as I enjoy going on the trips, who planned this and how can I do some of that?” And so then I got deeper into social, deeper into influencer, and I've been here ever since.

00:03:35

Andrea Marquez: From a last-minute passport dash to showing up in Germany, that's influencer marketing in action. But beyond the glitz and glamour, there's more to working with influencers that small businesses can think about. To make the most of it, you need to understand the different ways you can work with influencers and how these approaches align with your business goals. Brittany breaks down how you can work with influencers in three ways. The first is through their content.

00:03:58

Brittany Hennessy: If you're a small business, you probably spend most of your time running your business. You don't necessarily have time to do reels and TikToks and YouTube because you're running a business. You have other things to do, but you can hire creators just to create content for you. And you'll hear people call that UGC, but I would say that's not entirely correct. UGC is usually your customer.  

So someone who bought your product, received it, posted some content, and it's like, “Oh my God, I love this.” But it's not professionally done. This isn't what they do for a living. It's very natural. I probably would call it like IGC. So it's influencer generated content or creator generated content. So you can hire them to make content for you, you can buy the rights to it and then you can post it on your socials, you can put it in your shop, you can send it in your digital marketing, but you're essentially hiring them as a content studio.

00:04:49

Andrea Marquez: The second is through their community.

00:04:51

Brittany Hennessy: And this is when you want to find someone very specific. So it might be you need someone who owns a dog or you need a parent or you need someone who travels a lot or someone who drives or someone who's decorating their home. Whatever it is, you need someone who's doing that because the chances are their audience is also doing that. And then we will buy your product. And so that's community tapping into the people, the influencer or creator talks to on a regular basis.

00:05:18

Andrea Marquez: And the third is through conversions.

00:05:20

Brittany Hennessy: You need people who can actually sell your product. And so that is a very specific type of influencer. So lots of people follow creators or influencers because the content is nice to look at or they're funny or it makes them feel good. Not everyone follows them to shop, but there is an influencer who they are shopping mavens and it's like going to any popular shopping program. You open their feed and they're like, “This is what I have.” They're telling you the measurements, the texture, what material it's made of. They are walking, talking, copy for your product. So those are the three ways to look at it. Do you need content? Do you need access to a community or do you need conversions? And the best influencers can do all three, but they're like unicorns. They're very hard to find.

00:06:07

Andrea Marquez: All three sounds super useful and important for any business, but if you're working with a tighter budget, Brittany says that you might want to prioritize conversions.

00:06:15

Brittany Hennessy: You can tie it directly to revenue because you can see this is how much I'm selling. And influencers who like commission tend to really just enjoy that piece. They don't necessarily need you to pay them some large amount to do it, but they will negotiate their commission rate with you. So they might say, “Hey, I'll do this, but I want 35% or 55% of the product.” And so those are even harder to find, but they exist. They exist, they're around.  

After that, I would pick content creation because the creator doesn't necessarily need to be in the content, so it tends to be more affordable. And then the most expensive one is access to their community. Sometimes it's the most beneficial depending on who you are and what you're selling, but you are paying them for the years of hard work that they have put in to build this community that will listen to them, which is why it costs the most.  

So I would go for conversions first, content second, community third, because sometimes if they really like the product and you hire them from conversions, they'll send you the content and they'll post it anyway just because it's what they do. So you might get lucky and get all three for the price of one.

00:07:24

Andrea Marquez: After you've set your goals, make sure the influencers you choose are the right partners to help you achieve them.

00:07:30

Brittany Hennessy: I think where people run into a lot of trouble is they hire someone who can get their audience to feel very good about a product, but what they really wanted was conversions. And so when they don't get conversions, they're like, “This thing was a flop.” When in reality you picked the wrong person for what you are trying to achieve. So that's why the most important thing is how will I know this is successful? And then it's because X will happen. Okay, great. If I need X to happen, who do I hire who can do X? And it's totally fine to just ask an influencer like, “Hey, my goal for this campaign is X, Y, Z. Can you help me do that?”

Because an influencer might say, “I love this product, but to be honest, I can't help you do that. What I can help you do is this other thing.” And then you can decide. But if you don't tell them that you don't give the influencer a chance to let you know that maybe they're not the best partner. And sometimes if they're not the best partner, they'll say, “I can't help you with conversions. I can help you with content, but my friend also loves your product and she's a conversion queen.” And so enough influencers know each other that they can give you a recommendation if you know exactly what you're looking for.

00:08:40

Andrea Marquez: And that leads us to our next point. How do you find these influencers?

00:08:45

Brittany Hennessy: So if you're a small business and you have some social channel, the odds that someone who is an influencer who already likes your brand is high. So I would always comb through all your followers, go through your mailing list and see if anyone's got a domain. Look at their website. If they are already an influencer and they like your brand, that's your easiest because they'll be so honored that you reached out to them. They'll be like, “Oh my God, I love you. How did you know?” So I tell people, look through your current customers first.  

If you've combed through that and you are like, we don't have any influencers, or maybe you don't have a strong social media presence yet, I would then go look at your competitors and see who follows them. Because if you have a better feature or your version is waterproof or something like that, that's a good audience of people who like something and may also like yours.

So I would go through and then I would make a list of influencers, and then I would take a look at the content they create and just see do they talk about other products? Are they tagging them? Is it sponsored? Just so you get an idea of if you approach them, will they say yes or no? Because outreach is the most difficult part about working with influencers, but you can really cut down on a lot of fruitless work if you really look through their profile and see what are the odds that this person would say yes based on how much of their profile looks like what you're trying to get them to do.

00:10:18

Andrea Marquez: Once you've identified a few influencers who align with your goals, the next step is to reach out to them.

00:10:23

Brittany Hennessy: It can seem efficient to have one email and send it to lots and lots and lots and lots of influencers and hope something sticks, that fire hose method. That doesn't work because it looks very spammy and it's just a waste of time because the only people who will respond to that are people who like free stuff and that's not really who you want. So I would say it's much better for you to take the time and it's painful, but if you do it right, you only have to do it once and come up with a solid list of influencers that you want to work with and write them individual letters.

It's very similar to applying for a job. You wouldn't just send the same cover letter and resume to everyone. You would tweak it for the specific position. You can write a very large influencer and say, “Hey, I saw this post that you made with your kid and you were saying you wish you had X, Y, and Z because it would make your life so much easier. Well, guess what? I made that product and I'd love to send it to you. And if you like it, it would mean the world to me if you share it with your audience because the more of these I solve, the more these I can make and I can keep solving this problem for moms like you.”

If I'm a big influencer, I'm like, first of all, you saw my content. Second of all, you solved my problem. Third of all, you want to send me a free one, which is great, and if I like it, I want to be able to buy it from you now in five years, in 10 years. So I want you to stay in business, and influencers can help you stay in business if you point out to them that you know a post from you could change my business, because it's true. There are so many influencers who want to pay it forward, so they would be willing to help a small business because they built this platform and now they're in a position to do so. You always hear advice to small businesses that's like start small because of your budget. You can do that.  

If you find someone you like, you should hire them regardless of size. But don't be afraid if you find someone perfect and they have a million followers, it might take a while to get to them, but don't be afraid to pitch them if you really can find the fit and if you're really solving a problem for them, because at the end of the day, they're just a customer.  

They're just a customer who with a few social posts could change the course of your business, but they're still a customer. So you are solving a problem for them just like you're solving a problem for a customer with no followers. And if you remind them that they can help you and why you chose them, you can really have access to anybody you want.

00:12:45

Andrea Marquez: I love that reminder. Influencers are also customers that can change the course of your business. I feel like it makes approaching influencer marketing a little less intimidating. That was Brittany Hennessy, the bestselling author of Influencer: Building Your Personal Brand in The Age of Social Media. We covered a lot in this episode.  

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