The Startup CPG Podcast

Myriah Castillo
I think it's easier for brands to understand the value when you think about the creators as a content engine. I think when you compare to video shoot or a photo shoot or graphic design or even AI, like when you compare those content vehicles to explain your brand to others, like, creators have a tremendous amount of value that is very clearly tracked. The advantage of the creators is that they can also get a conversion instantaneously from their content. They can also drive geo targeted traffic to retailers. They can also get traffic to the website. They can also help with PDP pages. All the stuff that Val was talking about, like, I think those are the sprinkles on the cake.

00:57
Daniel Scharff
Welcome to the Startup CPG podcast. It feels like every year influencers become more and more integral to brand strategies. So I'm really happy that today's episode is a deep dive into influencer marketing. It's how early stage brands can plan and execute creator campaigns and how to make the most use out of the content that they're able to generate. Today's episode features our partners at Joybite. They do this for a living. They have tons of experience working with so many brands like Jackson's Chips, Eglund's Best and Baja Gold. They work with micro creators at scale to generate authentic content, real audience signals and social proof, building smarter creative, stronger paid performance and demand across channels. We cover a ton in this episode, but there's so much more. You can download their creator led growth playbook for free.

01:44
Daniel Scharff
The link is in the show notes and definitely reach out to the Joybite team if you'd like to learn more about working with them. I was super excited to hear that they work on a retainer basis and then pass along to you the true cost of the creators. I like that a lot better than some of the opaque high overhead models I've seen in the past. Okay, let's get into it. Here we go. All right, welcome everybody to the podcast. I'm really excited about today's topic on influencer marketing because this comes up all the time in the Slack channel. I think brands are so interested in figuring out how they can really break through all the clutter and get in front of consumers these days. And as we all know, it's all about the influencer game.

02:27
Daniel Scharff
So we're going to talk today about how does it really work and not just paying somebody for a random post, but how can you actually integrate them and drive meaningful growth for your brand? So today I'm really excited. We've got the team from Joybite. They Work with a lot of brands like Idahoan, Eglin's, Best Jacksons. And so we are getting into it today. So first, can I ask both of you ladies to do an intro, please? Mariah, let's start with you.

02:55
Myriah Castillo
Hi, everyone, I'm Mariah. I'm the president of Joy Bite and I'm super excited to talk today. This is our favorite subject.

03:03
Daniel Scharff
All right, cool. Val coming to you.

03:05
Val Ponce De Leon
Yeah. Hi, guys, I'm Val. I'm the head of our influencer department here. And I'm really excited to chat about it today with some examples and just some things that we've learned over the year. So very excited to bring that today's conversation.

03:17
Daniel Scharff
All right, let's just get right into it. So I think the first thing I'd like to talk about is people throw this term around a lot, influencer marketing. And there are celebrities out there, they're influencers, they're involved in businesses in different ways. So maybe we could just level set with definition of what are we talking about here? What is influencer marketing? Mariah, can you help us out?

03:37
Myriah Castillo
Yeah. I mean, influencer marketing really just means that somebody has built an established command or influence over a specific target audience. And so that can be really big and they can have a huge command nationally. Or it can also mean from our micro and nano influencers that they have a really strong niche or really strong pocket of people that they can influence to make decisions.

04:06
Daniel Scharff
Okay, that makes sense. And a lot of people when we're talking about influencer marketing, they're like, yeah, that's where you pay somebody to do a post or something like that. Is that a good way to think about it? What would you say?

04:17
Myriah Castillo
Yes, usually it's people that you would pay to create a post. Some people will also work for product trade or if they're very fond of the brand, they'll do it for some other type of community engagement. But most often it's somebody that you pay for their content.

04:36
Daniel Scharff
Okay. And I know if you talk to a lot of marketers, yeah. You don't necessarily want to just pay some random influencer for a post, like a one off thing, because it's like a flash in the pan. They don't really get behind it. Like, you can't really track that. And I don't know, consumers need to see something a lot of times consistently before they actually take the plunge and buy something. So how do you see it now? How do you see actual influencers or creators really getting involved in things? How is it working in Practice.

05:05
Myriah Castillo
These days the best influencer relationships are the ones that are long term engagements. You want to keep that influencer as part of your community and part of your brand. You want your brand to show up in their feeds and their channels as if they were really lovers of the brand and the products. So we always want to go for that longer term engagement. But oftentimes you have to do some first round tests in order to make sure it's a good fit on the brand side and on the creator side. And that usually will de risk situations with influencers. We're in the dating stages, we're just getting started, we're making sure it's a good fit for both sides. And then a long term commitment is usually the goal, but doesn't always end up that way.

05:50
Myriah Castillo
And so it's a better opportunity for brands to create systems where they can really test, intro the brand to an influencer's audience and then see if they'll be a long term partner. And then I think the biggest thing is community. Right. Like influencers that get that extra touch and that extra love from brands, they will usually do more for you. They'll usually give you some extra posts. At times we've even had situations where they'll become fully immersed into the brand. We've had certain scenarios where the influencer becomes part owner of the brand. And so we're setting it up for that, we're making sure that it works and then usually it will blossom into a really nice relationship long term.

06:34
Daniel Scharff
So the test and learn, that makes sense. What does that actually look like for both parties for the brand as well as for the influencer?

06:42
Myriah Castillo
Yeah, so usually it starts with the brand first, what the brand is really looking for in their outreach and their influence. What target audiences do we really want to be a part of? And also what is the brand story. And then what we do is we go out, we try and find creators that would be storytelling first, with close attachment to what the brand wants. And then we would develop a first piece of content for that influencer to create post to their channels. And then we would track both performance metrics from the social accounts, so your impressions, your engagements. But then we also run audience sentiment reports to see if conversation has changed, if the audience just engaged in like liking the influencer's outfit or if the audience was really interested in the brand and what the influencer was actually saying.

07:35
Myriah Castillo
And then if that is all kosher, then we would set them up for a second post. And when you have an influencer that's posted A couple of times, then we can start to say, okay, brand, do you want to shift target audience? Do you have a new product coming out? Do you have an event that we'd like to send an influencer to? And then we have that army of people that have already been tested and vetted that we can then call upon for those types of things.

07:58
Daniel Scharff
So what is a dream outcome in those kind of metrics? Because I've been in that scenario before where we have been engaged with somebody and then they do a post and it's kind of in their own way, it's in their style. And what we would have wanted was like, hey, here's this product, it's so good and I love it and you should buy it. And here's their website. But they're cool, so they don't do it that way. It's more like subtle and integrated and the kind of content that they would do. And so the post can perform well, but we didn't see a lot of impact from it. And we're like, well, what even just happened? So I suspect that there are some metrics that could have really popped off that we should have been paying attention to see our dream result.

08:38
Daniel Scharff
What are those?

08:39
Myriah Castillo
Yeah, I think I kind of bring it back to the influencer selection. Not to disregard influencers or anything like that, but any system that you're building, it's a garbage in, garbage out situation. Right? Influencers are awesome because you can look and see their resume in a public forum. And so I think it comes down to can you select creators that can build a story that you would want to see. So if the brand is really wanting it to be super product promotional and maybe we're using that for like a paid ad or putting it on social channels, then you would want to go find influencers that are already doing that. We also use systems where we can track performance for a creator before we even reach out to them. So you kind of de risk it that way.

09:25
Myriah Castillo
And then something that I tell the team all the time, that is something I don't know if a lot of people do, because when we do reach out to creators, they are surprised that we're asking these questions. But you can actually ask a creator to give you examples of a similar brand that they've gotten conversion metrics from or they've gotten high UTM link clicks from and they're selling themselves. Right? This is a job for them. So they should be pitching to the brand as well. And that all happens prior to even getting under contract with a creator. One other thing I think that's important is having a creator led system. So it's not just what happens with that first influencer post. You can also get usage rights over that content that can then be used and paid.

10:07
Myriah Castillo
We always get usage rights to be able to cut and manipulate the creator content so we can make it into more like product selling centric posts. And sometimes it might not work with the influencer's audience, but you still have a really valuable piece of content that you can then put in other channels. Maybe that just wasn't the channel for us at the first jump.

10:27
Daniel Scharff
Uhhuh. And then if you put yourself in the shoes of the influencer, are they all just really happy and excited for one off posts like that? Because I also have, I could understand from some of them they're thinking like, I don't want to give this gift of my influence to just everybody all the time because then it doesn't mean anything. I want long term partners and for me to do a true authentic post that first time, I need that long term commitment to make sure that we're in this together for the long run. So do you ever see situations where you maybe just that test and learn approach has some kind of downsides like that sometimes.

11:02
Myriah Castillo
I mean I think every creator wants a long term engagement. It's just like when we sell our services or when a brand goes into like a retail store, like obviously you don't want a finite thing, you want a long term consistent income thing. And I think influencers are also very aware that people don't like to be sold to on social. And so when they're selecting products, it needs to be very authentic to them and it needs to be something that they don't just look like they have a new product every day because that discredits them. And sometimes a negotiation tactic can be a bundle of posts or maybe it's not just a one off. If they're very into having those long term partnerships, maybe we can do like a set of posts.

11:45
Myriah Castillo
But I think that again like getting them to focus on the fact that we're in this together, you know, we're in this symbiotic relationship and it has to work for both sides. I think they understand that at this stage, you know, this is a career usually they're very aware of how the processes work at this point. And so we can manipulate and negotiate into. Let's do a first test, maybe a first test set and then that can bridge into a longer opportunity.

12:13
Daniel Scharff
Okay, cool.

12:14
Val Ponce De Leon
I'll piggyback off of that. Just to say, in practice, I think influencers, they do enjoy that longer term relationship, but they also don't want to go into anything blindly. They also kind of want to test out the product, see if their audience even cares if it ends up being a product that they didn't care about as much as they thought or maybe just wasn't a good fit. They also want to know that ahead of time. So the testing phase, like Mariah said, where we're seeing how it works, what the audience response is, what the influencer's feedback is, that's really important before you launch into a longer term contract with anyone.

12:46
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, that makes sense. I'm just thinking about sometimes when you have a really strong paired influencer with a brand and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And it does feel like there is that question of is there actually really strong natural alignment here? And you kind of know when people are faking the funk and it just doesn't quite sit. You're like, it doesn't. I don't know why they would behind that product. And then they're probably not going to be truly behind it. They're just going to do the things that they have to do. So, Val, I wonder, could you take us through a little bit more of what is the life cycle of these kind of relationships and campaigns? Like, what are the different ways that they can start and the different structures that they can take form of?

13:21
Val Ponce De Leon
Yeah, I would say the healthiest approach is always, like Mariah was saying, kind of a testing first approach. So as you're reaching out to the influencers, the goal is a long term relationship always. But you want to have that testing round to make sure that it's a good fit for everybody involved, to make sure that the audience is also not just seeing this as like something totally inauthentic and unrelated. So that testing round is really important. And based on those initial numbers and the feedback that you're getting from their audience, the numbers that you're getting from the algorithm, even the algorithm will tell you if it was a good partnership or not, and if socials are liking it or not. So based on those numbers, then try a second, maybe a third post with them.

14:01
Val Ponce De Leon
And if everything has gone well, like I said, the goal is that long term relationship. So from there you can start to plan out. Okay, we want this person to post once a month or twice a month, and they're going to be involved in these launches, they're going to be involved in these new Product colorways, something like that. We even had some brands that have gotten to a point with their partnerships where they start to pull the influencer in and seek their feedback on what should our next flavor be? What should our next color be? What do you think? Based on all this work that we've done together, we'd love to know what your audience thinks. Maybe we can poll your audience so it can really turn into a very nice feedback loop as that relationship grows.

14:41
Val Ponce De Leon
And like I said, that's always going to be the goal. But we start with a test model and then we scale from there based on how it works.

14:47
Daniel Scharff
So give me an example. Okay, I'm going to test and learn with an influencer. Just take me through a scenario of like, okay, here's the kind of brand you might be, here's the kind of size influencer you might be talking about. Here's how much you might end up paying for something like that. And here is what you should be looking at to say it was successful based off some metrics like, yes, it's a go. Let's keep going.

15:08
Val Ponce De Leon
Yeah. So I'll try to keep this relevant to our current audience. So, startup cpg. So a brand that may have just started their business in the last few years probably is going to be looking for influencers in the nano and micro space. We're probably not at a celebrity level yet. Everybody wants to be there, but we're probably not at that level yet. So we would be looking for influencers that have anywhere from 5,000 followers up to 40, 50,000 followers. These groups are really great for engagement. They have a small enough audience that they're able to really still interact with them. You'll probably see these influencers even commenting back to their audience and kind of continuing conversations in real time with their community. So that's going to be the sweet spot that we probably want to start with.

15:53
Val Ponce De Leon
If it's a great match, you may find people who are willing to work just for product exchange. More than likely, you'll find people who are requesting a small payment just because of the time involved. They have to pay for their own editing tools and their gadgets that they use for content creation if they're really doing it full time. So there may be a small cost involved. At this point, we're not in the thousands of dollars. We're probably thinking, depending on their engagement and their recent performance, anywhere from a hundred dollars, maybe up to $500 if it's a really good fit and they've got really good numbers. So somewhere in that range, it is usually kind of custom, you have to work that out with the influencers. But that would probably be kind of the tactical approach of getting a payment set up.

16:36
Val Ponce De Leon
You would want that to include usage rights as well. So it doesn't just go on their Instagram, but can also be used in your organic social, can also be used in your paid media plan. And then I think it's really important to have expectations from the get go. I have seen this happen a few times where brands just request a post, can you talk about our product? But there weren't very clear expectations about when that would post would be going live and how many posts would be going live. So just getting those expectations set from the get go, whether that's formal agreement that you have with the influencer or at least an email thread that clearly lays out what you're expecting from them and when it comes time for them to post, you would want to see what the engagement looks like.

17:20
Val Ponce De Leon
That's kind of the number one thing that we're looking at is what did that engagement look like? Did people stop scrolling? Did they pay attention, did they react some way? Did they leave comments? Was there positive sentiment there? Was there curiosity? If we start to see curiosity, that kind of gives us a jumping point for our next posts or our next marketing plans. If there's a lot of people asking the same question, we better start some kind of campaign that can address that question because it seems like something that's pretty common. So beyond the numbers of what kind of awareness did the influencer get, we really are looking at those engagement numbers. How many people went to the website after they saw this?

17:58
Val Ponce De Leon
So those are the numbers that we really care about because it's showing that people went from the discovery phase into the consideration phase, which is really the sweet spot for these influencers.

18:06
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so that makes sense to me. Obviously you may have specific campaign metrics. You might be going for awareness, like impressions, you might be actually trying to drive trial for your D2C business. But the qualitative stuff makes sense as well. Like is this really just an interesting post to people? Is this a good, high quality effort that they put out there, which is a little more intangible, I would say, than just some of the metrics. So, okay, backing up for a second. So some brands do this and some brands don't and it's at different stages that they would look at this. There are many marketing tools at their disposal, some that are focused on drugs driving, like purchase at retail, like on the point of purchase and others that are higher level, let's say, marketing efforts for influencer marketing.

18:55
Daniel Scharff
When and where does this really make sense for brands? When should they be getting started and how should this fit into their overall marketing plan?

19:06
Myriah Castillo
Usually I recommend that brands, especially if they're starting out, will start with creators. And mostly it's because people now don't want brands talking to them. And so what I usually see in a startup scenario is that we'll have this extreme effort put into the website and the brand and the product packaging and the retail plan and then it just sits, then it just kind of stays. And you have some paid efforts that might get it to have a little bit of an awareness in your target audience. But there's a plateau moment and creators have worked years and years to develop their audience and their influence. And so tapping into that is almost like what OTV was 10 years ago or what billboards were or commercials. You don't have that launchpad or that traffic manager guiding people back to your brand pages.

20:05
Myriah Castillo
And so I usually say like, start with creators and listen to the audience. Like they will give you instantaneous, real time feedback. And it's actually a very cost effective way to do that when you're just getting started. And then you're also getting that content that you can then use in your paid channels to get a lot more influence and traction and demand in your paid channels. And it really lists all ships. And then the other thing too is that with the changes with meta and with LLMs, you need to be getting your digital footprint built up really quickly. And creators are a great way to be able to do that, especially if you walk into things like whitelisting or allow listing with creators channels.

20:48
Myriah Castillo
Like it's a launchpad for brands and there's really no other system that can do that as cost effectively and as quickly as working with creators can. And so I think it's untapped resource for some brands that are not as understanding of how people discover and how you create demand. Like right now in our current climate and social ecosystem.

21:11
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, it's important to think about because I mean, if you take something like field marketing, right. A lot of people are fans of field marketing, but it's also kind of commonly accepted by a lot of marketers that kind of stuff doesn't make sense until you have a very high distribution penetration in a certain region where you're doing the field marketing. Because otherwise you're giving people a delicious sample of your product and there's actually nowhere for them to buy it. They don't go. It's not in the stores near them. And most people do not have a habit of actually buying products, especially food and beverage, consistently online. So I hear what you're saying, but also I think it's important for people to think about, like, what is their holistic overall strategy?

21:49
Daniel Scharff
Are they actually really going to be investing in a lot of money overall and building their brand online, let's say, which is a huge asset for people if you have it. Right. Like when you go in, even if you're like talking more about retail, if you can go and talk to the buyer and say, look at this big following that I have, they're going to be coming into your store. There's no bigger weapon than that. When you're talking to a buyer, they want incremental traffic coming into your store. Right. But there are also like, certain kinds of products that are naturally a better fit for selling online in general. Right. Where it's going to be more effective to have creators working on it. Right. There are the kinds of products that can do well on TikTok and then there are a lot that can't.

22:27
Daniel Scharff
And whether it's the nature of the product, like if there's some really cool thing about it that's going to appeal to Gen Z or there's not, and then it also has to do with the actual dimensions of the product as well. Is it heavy? Is it going to be expensive? Is it going to be too expensive to acquire people versus how much it costs to ship it and the low price point of the product? Right. So that definitely makes sense. Okay, let's just put ourselves in the shoes of a brand sitting at home listening to this, they're like, okay, I need to just kind of get started with creators. How could they even start to think about, does my brand really work with creators?

23:03
Daniel Scharff
And if so, how am I going to find the kind of creators that could really be a hit for my brand?

23:09
Val Ponce De Leon
I'll jump in and say, to date, I've never known a category or a vertical that couldn't work with creators. I think definitely there's some niches within there that are stronger than others. But whether it's service, whether it's cpg, whether it's something big, bulky, heavy, expensive, whether it's apps, I think there's ways to connect to influencer across all of those. If it's online, that's great. We kind of keep that same ecosystem going where the people discover it digitally through influencers and then they purchase it digitally. But I think in retail there's also just a huge need for influencers because when people are walking into a retail space before they're going to pick your product off the shelf, they need to feel kind of familiar with it. They need to have heard about it.

23:54
Val Ponce De Leon
You've got competitors right next to you on the space, so why is someone going to pick your brand versus the competitor that's right next to it or the generic brand that's cheaper, that's underneath it? Because we've kind of built up that fomo. We've built up that familiarity, that credibility by talking about it multiple times through multiple different people on social. So I think there's room for influencers to support just about any category that is looking for more exposure, depending on where they are in their brand journey. Maybe the starting point is gifting at first, just to kind of get that initial feedback. I know the example were using is brands that are just kind of getting started and they want to know where to bring an influencer if they are truly just getting started. Influencer is a great feedback loop, like Mariah said.

24:40
Val Ponce De Leon
So there's a lot of opportunity to start with a gifting campaign and just see what people are saying when they get the product in their hands. And influencers are not shy, they will give you feedback. So that's a great opportunity to start to learn about, does this work in the market? Is there interest? What are some of the motivators that people loved about it? What are some of the detractors that maybe we should work on with our product team? So in the very beginning stages, Minimum Influencer can really give you a great feedback loop as you're gifting and you're getting that feedback from them in real time.

25:12
Daniel Scharff
So to get into gifting, let's say, okay, I'm starting out, I'm figuring out who my product really appeals to, and then I'm trying to figure out some influencers that also have good influence with that demographic or maybe the region that I'm focusing on. And let's say now I'm going to approach them with some gifting. Is it just as easy as sending them a DM and saying, you're great, I would love to send you some product. Could I have your address? Is that cool? Is that how you do it?

25:36
Val Ponce De Leon
A lot of brands start there. It is very manual if you're just doing it one by one with DMs, which is why it is nice to have some support behind that, maybe some resources, an online platform that can help you find people, but it can be just as simple as reaching out through dm. We'd love to send you some free product. The caveat there that brands have to understand is that it has to be a kind of no strings attached. If you are gifting, you can't necessarily expect that they're going to turn their Instagram feed into a big battle cry for your brand. Probably you'll get some feedback from them and you'll hear whether they liked it, any things they could change about it.

26:13
Val Ponce De Leon
You may see some social integration, but we do need to understand that if it's just free gifting, it is just free gifting and there's no necessary content attached to that.

26:25
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, it's funny, I've definitely seen examples of brands being like, I'd love to send you product, provided that you guarantee that you're going to post about this for years. Like, just get out of here. Don't contact me. You're going to do that.

26:36
Val Ponce De Leon
That's probably not going to fly.

26:38
Daniel Scharff
Most of the time when you do gifting, obviously the brand still is hoping, like, I'm going to send this to them. Like, yeah, I'm not asking for anything, but it'd be great if they did happen to post about us. I wonder what percent of the time they actually do, if that's done well. Is it like a third of the time that they might end up just kind of doing a story or something organically about it?

26:58
Val Ponce De Leon
I would say it really does depend on the brand. It really does depend on the product. There are some products that you can tell really early that just are amazing quality. People love it and almost kind of that response rate of how much content you're seeing is a direct indication of how much is the market going to like this product later on. So in some brands, we've seen that it's really low. In other brands, immediately people loved it and we started to see a lot of story coverage for it. So it's hard to put a specific number on it, but it is a really good indicator of how the market feels about the product.

27:34
Daniel Scharff
Okay. So in some instances, you maybe could just keep gifting them product. I know. And sometimes even an influencer who just organically happens upon your product. Right. And then if you're working with a PR person or someone, they might tell you, yeah, just make sure that they're always stocked with product. That's the first move. Don't even, like, start talking about paying them for things because then they'll stop what they're doing organically. Just offer to send them a truckload of product and see what happens. But yeah, maybe in other instances they're going to reach out and see if there is some kind of a formal arrangement that you could have there.

28:06
Val Ponce De Leon
Yeah, you're literally talking about the dream situation where you already have somebody who's big, who loves your product and is talking about. You already love to see that, of course. But when it comes to a more tiered approach or you want like consistent, again, if it's gifted, you don't have any say in what the content says, what it looks like when it's posted, usage rights for those things. So if you're okay with just letting that person talk about your tips or your drink brand whenever they feel like it, then that's a great arrangement. But if you do want some consistency where you need someone talking about X launch, you need someone talking about Black Friday, that's when you're probably going to want to introduce the budget into it.

28:49
Val Ponce De Leon
Same goes if you need content for your paid media or you need content for your organic social page, you're going to want to make sure there's some kind of an agreement there so that you have usage rights to use the content in other places.

29:00
Daniel Scharff
So, okay, speaking of leveraging the content, let's say in some instances, let's say you get that high quality piece of content from an influencer and it's still maybe they only have 30,000 followers, something like that, so it doesn't get as many impressions as you would like, but it is high quality. So you would think about maybe boosting the post in that instance or doing it as a collaborative boosted post, or just trying to repurpose the content where you would then post it on your own and try to get a little bit more visibility around it.

29:30
Val Ponce De Leon
Repurposing is one of my favorite things to talk about. So here we go. When we have a piece of content from an influencer that is high quality and it's got the right messaging, not only do we want to first make sure that post is shared to the brand's organic social, ideally as a collaborator post. So that way, step one, we started to capture the influencer's audience. We started to capture those eyes, bring them across the divide and bring them into our brand audience so they can start to follow us and learn more about us and eventually hopefully become a customer of ours. That's step one. We would want to use it in paid media as well. So you mentioned boosting, specifically whitelisting is something that we really love.

30:12
Val Ponce De Leon
That's when the Influencer's content is turned into an ad, but it's not necessarily coming from the brand's handle, it's coming from the influencer's handle. And Mariah had mentioned a few minutes ago that people don't like to hear from brands. They like to hear from other real people. They don't like to be talked at, they don't like to be sold, they don't like to feel like they're constantly seeing promotions and advertising. They like to feel more of a connection. So that's where we take the influencer's content. We run it as an ad as if it's coming directly from the influencer so it feels more organic and authentic when people are seeing it. A lot of people will use those two things and that's already an amazing start. But you can also take influencer content and put it into email marketing.

30:55
Val Ponce De Leon
If you have photos from the influencer or even just like clips that of their video as a gif, that can go into your email marketing, putting it on the product page almost like a product review. Here it is in real time how people are using it. That's proven to show that there's better click rates on your website. There are so many places that piece of content can go to. As long as you've got that agreement with the influencer that you can use it. There are so many places that it can be placed and just about every single one of them, there are studies showing that it improves the performance of those places.

31:27
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, it makes sense to me because I feel like that stuff is just the most interesting, the most organic. When it feels like a friend telling you about something that's cool, like, yeah, I want to hear that, you know, anytime. I think every brand probably has experienced this out there where they've tried to post something on their own channels that is what they want everyone to know about their brand. And it's a beautiful product shot and it just says what's so good about it and nobody likes it and no one sees it because it's just not that interesting to people. And I think like you said, it feels like they're being sold or feel like. Feels like they're just being told about something.

32:01
Daniel Scharff
Whereas something that's organic of someone trying the product and saying, well, this is good and you know me, you trust me, like, you should try this. That would perform pretty well potentially. So, yeah, that makes sense to me. And speaking of. Or going back to repurposing the content, do you feel like influencers are typically Pretty protective about that, about the whitelisting and the promoting. And because, I mean me as an influencer, I probably would feel that way of like, well, wait a minute, I'm just doing this one thing for you and then now you're going to promote it for like years and with like billions of dollars. Shouldn't I have a taste of that? Or, you know, do you find that they typically are on guard or that you can just, hey, it's in the contract.

32:42
Daniel Scharff
It says I can use it and that's it.

32:44
Val Ponce De Leon
Yeah, that's a great question. Definitely within that nano and micro space that I was talking about, there's a lot more liberty there. If you're trying to work with larger influencers or celebrity influencers, they're going to be super strict with their public image and how you're using it. So anything, any usage you get from them is going to have to be paid for sure. But within the microspace there's still a little bit more flexibility to be able to use it and there's a lot more open to it. I will say it's hard to get one piece of content and then use it in your paid media forever and ever. Algorithm doesn't usually like that. Most paid media teams will tell you that it needs to be refreshed so you can use it for a little while.

33:25
Val Ponce De Leon
But there's probably not a great chance that one piece of content is going to serve your paid strategy for the next two or three years. Probably looking more at two to three months. Which is why it's important to have more influencers in your pipeline, to have kind of an always on approach to it so that you're not just stuck with the one influencer, but you've got a group of influencers who are consistently posting for you. And that one influencer who did really well with that one post, we have a relationship with them now and they're going to be posting again in a month or in two months. So we've got already kind of that content engine in the works.

33:59
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so Mariah, let me ask you another question. So when I've been on the brand side before, I know in one instance like we kind of had a certain amount of money that were going to put towards influencers, which was not, I mean, not enormous, but like, okay, so we should have a couple influencers and I think generally our goal was, I mean more to kind of have them on the team and have them associated and hopefully convert some of their following into fans, all of that and I think, you know, we just ended up picking a few people who fit really well with the brand and were available to be influencers and they were interested in the project. And then we ended up, I think, having mainly annual contracts. And I would, I think you would call these micro or nano influencers.

34:45
Daniel Scharff
And maybe with one or two, it was just kind of a three to five post type relationship as well. But you know, looking back on it's just, it's so hard to go back and quantify like what did that actually do overall for the brand? Would I have been better off working with fewer and then really figuring out how to just leverage their content better? Like, okay, I don't need these like four or five different people just kind of posting a little bit to their, let's say not even overlapping audiences that are just kind of separate. What I need is one who's great and they do some awesome content and I promote the heck out of that and put some real paid budget behind it.

35:21
Daniel Scharff
So Mariah, basically what I'm asking is like, how do you figure out what that balance is and how much you're going to put toward it and how to really like get the most out of this investment that you're putting into the influencer ecosystem?

35:33
Myriah Castillo
Yeah, I mean, it's the question we've dealt with for the last 15 years as an agency and I think it's changed a lot over time. And I think it's easier for brands to understand the value when you think about the creators as a content engine. I think when you compare to video shoot or a photo shoot or graphic design or even AI, like when you compare those content vehicles to explain your brand to others, like creators have a tremendous amount of value that is very clearly tracked. The advantage of the creators is that they can also get a conversion instantaneously from their content. They can also drive GEO targeted traffic to retailers. They can also get traffic to the website. They can also help with PDP pages.

36:25
Myriah Castillo
All the stuff that Val was talking about, like, I think those are the sprinkles on the cake. And so when we're thinking about your scenario where you're working with three creators throughout the course of the year, that's just not enough content from enough people to make decisions or to get diversity. And I kind of go back to. And this has changed. I would say like two or three years ago you wanted a promo code conversion and a UTM link conversion and you needed that to say that the creators were valuable.

36:55
Myriah Castillo
But I think now there's so much demand on brands to get a diversity of content and that social proof at scale and creative that doesn't cost an arm and a leg, that it's almost the content is the roi and then everything else is just expanded signals that tell us how to use that content elsewhere.

37:16
Daniel Scharff
That's very interesting to hear you say it that way because that is sort of how it makes sense, the most sense, at least for an early brand in my head of like, yeah, you shouldn't expect, hey, I found this micro influencer and I'm going to do a post with them and then all of a sudden I'm going to be the top brand at Whole Foods. It's like, yeah, it's not really how their influence works. But yeah, like what you're getting is a really great set or pieces of content. And that along with some other things you can spin up into a really great content machine of people who have their own influence that they've built up and are trusted in different ways. And also our content experts, it's a tough one to balance of.

37:58
Daniel Scharff
You know, people just, they follow an influencer because they like their style and how they present things and they're authentic. And then as a brand, you work with them, but you kind of want to meld them into your own style. Like, no, no, but just tell people how much you love my thing and it doesn't. Forget all the other stuff you do and just be really straight up and tell them they must buy it. But like, yeah, that also wouldn't work so well as well. So you really are, you're hiring them for a lot of things. It's their influence, it's their content expertise, their take on things that they. I would love to hear actually, like, what is your approach to when you're working with content creators?

38:31
Daniel Scharff
How much direction do you think you should be giving them about the kind of content you want? Should it be. Yeah, like a full brief of, here's exactly what I want you to do. Here are the things I want you to say. Here's a script versus like, hey, here are a couple of things we want people to know about our products or even the full extreme of just, hey, here's my product, do what you're going to do. I bet it'll be cool because, you know, you're a cool influencer and you do cool content.

38:54
Myriah Castillo
Yeah. After the influencer discovery and who are actually contracting, the brief is the second most important thing. And I think this is another thing that we talk a lot about with brands because there's so much preciousness put on what the influencer is actually going to say, especially if you have products that have specific things that we can and cannot say. And there's, you know, logistics and legal with that. But what I like to do and what I coach the team on doing and Valet does such a good job of this is I will actually go through the creator's content and see what makes their audience tick. And then I'll try and like manipulate it into what the brand wants. Which is best shown by like an example. We had this really amazing product that was very similar to like RX Bar.

39:42
Myriah Castillo
It was an all natural protein bar. One of the most competitive spaces out there to like make a dent. And they were working with this creator and they were going to take her off the roster and she just was not converting. She just wasn't getting any engagement. And so I looked through her content and noticed that the content that got the most engagement was when she was making fun of her husband. The audience just loved it. And so she talked about her husband's like, dietary restrictions and all this stuff all the time. And she just would talk about how she had three kids, but her husband was the hardest to take care of in the household. And so we made this storyline about how early morning breakfast was so easy because she just gave him this bar and she felt really good about it.

40:26
Myriah Castillo
And then we did some pieces of content where she would like serve him in a really nice, you know, breakfast in bed type of situation. It was instantaneous, overnight that content did significantly better. I think she made $10,000 in one weekend. And this is a creator that never converted for the brand before. And the audience was super engaged. They thought it was hilarious. And the brand ended up being able to use it because she did call out the USPs throughout that storyline. But it was just interesting, you know, and it just takes a little bit of extra time to figure out what does the creator actually do and like, why are they influential and what's the. That little X factor that makes them interesting and how can the brand, like, fit into that story.

41:09
Myriah Castillo
But when it comes to the brief, like, we also want to bring the creator into that topic as well. Like, we're reaching out to the creators and we're having conversations with them, which takes a little bit of extra time. But we're also like, what do you want to do? Well, let's collaborate on this. Let's make a piece of content that's both of us together, and that usually does a lot better.

41:27
Daniel Scharff
That's pretty interesting because it almost goes way beyond a brief. Where in my mind a brief is going to be. Here is all about my product. Here's the kind of stuff we want you to do. Here's what fits with our brand. All of that where you actually have almost done what you would hope the influencer would do, which is I really know what of my content hits in the best way, and here is how I'm going to integrate your product into that so it does the best. Right. So that's pretty interesting that you would go as far as analyzing their content to figure out exactly which of their content styles even you would ask for and then figuring out how to tie the product in a way that would feel organic with people, but also be really high performing content.

42:10
Daniel Scharff
So that's like not just the extra mile, it's the extra mile. That's pretty awesome though. Okay, so in this, let's say scrappy early brand world, like, okay, for my brand, we did not have a big budget for this stuff, so were being pretty scrappy. We had people on the team who kind of knew the world that were going after and so they could go and kind of research influencers on their own and reach out and kind of knew more or less what a fair price to pay for things would be and we could negotiate that way and do our contracts.

42:41
Daniel Scharff
But boy, I wish we had a lot of money to pay an agency to make all of that easy for us and probably go that extra mile like you're talking about, because definitely there are things that did not hit when we did it that way. And I don't. Maybe it would have done better. I don't know. So can you just, like, obviously you guys do this for a living. Can you tell me what it is like for brands to get to work with you if they have the budget for this? And what are campaigns typically like and what do they typically get for results? Stuff like that.

43:04
Myriah Castillo
Yeah, usually it takes a little bit for us to grow the creator army. Usually it's a month of strategic work which is getting familiarized with the brand as if were a part of the brand team so that we can build those storylines. And then also doing a lot of research on who that first round of creator outreach would be. Competitive analysis, all of these metrics and everything everyone else has done is publicly available with influencers too. So it's like we can learn from everybody else as well. So we pull that into a strategy. We have our first month, which is pitching the Brand to creators, negotiating contracts, getting them into a good place to create that first piece of content. And then usually month three is like, okay, what do we need to pivot on? And then from there we pivot.

43:56
Myriah Castillo
Every single month we align with like new things that are happening in the brand story, but also what's happening in the creator's world. Do we need to bring on a new audience? Do we need to take somebody out of the group? What are we missing? What are the gaps and how do we fill them? And so we have a flat rate management budget. Because of that we just have a very clear, proven process of how we handle the influencer timeline. The fluctuation on price comes down to the influencer compensation, which is totally up to the brand and we can help them make good decisions on that. But when somebody's just starting out, like Val said, we can get people for really cost effective, you know, sometimes no additional budget.

44:37
Myriah Castillo
And I think that negotiation process is sometimes hard for a brand because we have this thing called the 50k threshold of followers where anybody who has over 50k, sometimes now people under 50k, but definitely anyone over 50k has a management team. So if we have a brand that like really wants those bigger creators, we have to factor in that management team price and that it's going to be an additional compensation and we're going to have to change our strategy to accommodate that. But really we just try and maximize that influencer compensation budget and we can change that month over month if things change for the brand.

45:12
Daniel Scharff
So okay, so you typically when you're working with brands you just have almost like a retainer, it would be that you're charging and then they're going to pay a variable amount that is, it's like a pass through cost on actually what you have to pay the influencers for the content. Yeah, well that sounds amazing, honestly, because when I looked at this, I mean I'm like, I've been out of the game for a while but when I looked at it and had been talking to agencies about it, I just had I think such a sour taste in my mouth about it because they would like give me a quote for what they would be doing and then I would talk to someone who knew how much the influencers charged and they're like, yeah, they're putting an 80% overhead on the actual costs of this.

45:50
Daniel Scharff
I'm like, well that's ridiculous. Like I could never even if we had the money justify that. So that makes me very happy to hear about. You talk about just kind of the Pass through stuff on the actual costs that way. And also makes me feel like you can actually truly go out and get the right creators, not just the ones who are willing to let an agency mark them way up. They have them on their roster of kind of people who they can pay a little and mark and charge a lot for. You must get that feedback from brands a lot.

46:21
Myriah Castillo
We do, yeah, we get that feedback a lot. And that's why we don't have an influencer roster. We don't have a set. I mean, we've had years of experience working with creators. We know the top dogs out there, but we don't have a roster. We don't have any engagement with the creators themselves. And so we did that intentionally so that we're not fixed to something that's not going to work for the brand. We really go out and find the creators that make sense. And I think people really like that feels a lot more custom and a lot more approachable.

46:51
Daniel Scharff
So if I'm a brand and I start working with you guys, then we do the strategy part and then you actually start reaching out to creators on our behalf and you understand what we're going for. And you basically are like, you have a wide net of people that you're interested in. You start reaching out to them and you're then seeing if they're interested. And then like, probably pretty quickly from there, just trying to get a sense of how much they charge for stuff and if they'd even be interested in the product. Like, are you often actually then just trying to send them a sample at that point so they can, you can see like, hey, does this really align?

47:20
Daniel Scharff
Or like, how does that actually go with you and the influencer to the point of having them actually get on board and start working with the brand?

47:26
Myriah Castillo
Most often we go through a contract process with them. We use an amazing tool called Grin, which we work very closely with the creators of that platform. And it's really systematized using that tool where we have a discovery team that is finding and sourcing creators and elevating them to our strategists as opportunities. Then the strategist reaches out to those creators. If they have a management team, it's a little bit of a different workflow, but most of the time reaching out to them, pitching the brand, getting them under contract and then facilitating product delivery and then their first post. And so it's pretty regimented and we've got a really good system of how we get that done.

48:08
Daniel Scharff
Okay, that makes sense. So let me One thing I think I've honestly just kind of neglected to ask you about so far is TikTok? Because I don't, like, use TikTok personally. I'm behind the times. I'm like, hitting boomer status, I guess. I'm more of an Instagram person. And so how are you thinking about TikTok versus the other platforms? How are you typically thinking about the influencers who might be stronger on TikTok to influence TikTok shop, that kind of stuff versus some of the other platforms out there?

48:38
Myriah Castillo
Yeah, I mean, TikTok has changed the game completely over the last two and a half years since TikTok Shop has been established, we have separated the TikTok Shop affiliate program from the influencer program within our business. So influencers for us are really what we've been talking about today. They're omnichannel. We usually have them posting to what channel they have the most engagement on. And sometimes we get cross posts from them, too, if it's cost effective enough. But when we think about TikTok shop, like, we've been certified as a preferred partner within TikTok Shop. I meet with TikTok Shop regularly, and I think that they have found a perfect blend between E. Com and creator content where the response really does happen in real time from creator videos. But those are separate people to us. Those creators are working within the TikTok ecosystem.

49:37
Myriah Castillo
They are TikTok affiliates. They are trained and partnered with TikTok. And so there's a lot more factors and there's a lot less control brands have when they're working in the TikTok affiliate program. It's all about gamification. It's all about sales and promotions and quick and lives. And it's not a content engine. It's more of its own separate ecosystem that has considerations that might eventually fade into influencer. You might eventually own that content. But it's a system that works and runs that TikTok has designed. And so you have to play ball with them a little bit more than if you're just working with influencers.

50:17
Daniel Scharff
I gotcha. Okay. All right. As we're wrapping here, I would love. Because you've worked with so many brands, just tell us about a time when it went so well. So, Mariah, I'll start with you, but if you could just highlight it. Here's a specific instance. And we got to do the thing that we love to do with them. And the results were just awesome. And here's why. Or here's how it went.

50:35
Myriah Castillo
Yeah, we worked with A brand called Ice Barrel, which they sell rotomolded ice baths and use the WIM HOF method for that. And we really dove pretty headfirst into the biohacking space at a time when cryotherapy and ice plunges were like the talk of the town, which I feel like they still a little bit are. And we worked with a small group of creators in the biohacking space that were just about to take off. They were really very prominent within a small ice bath community and they had everything it took from like a looks perspective, a storytelling perspective to really go far. And what we did was a completely product seeding campaign. We sent them ice barrels and a couple of them did fantastic on their first post.

51:25
Myriah Castillo
We then eventually put those creators on a retainer and they would just film their daily routine with the ice bath. And it caught on like wildfire, to be honest. One of the creators eventually started to do in person engagements where they would do like ice bath workshops at different locations all around the US they started a podcast with the owner and now they own part of the ice barrel business. And so I think what really worked in that scenario was that went very niche and at a time when it was trending and did it in a way that was very easy for people to understand. It was a repetition play every single day. You saw the Ice Barrel on those creators feeds and then we found some creators that really loved the brand and wanted to see it succeed.

52:14
Myriah Castillo
And they have done fantastically well ever since then.

52:18
Daniel Scharff
And I know what you're talking about of that. There was a moment, and I mean, I think it's still very popular, but there was a moment in time where it's all anyone was talking about. And I think I lived in LA in that time and that's just what people wanted to do. And that was their, like, weekend plans hitting up a different ice bath. So at the time, were there a lot of. Because the Ice Barrel, I just looked it up online, like, yeah, I've seen that it looks, you know, very beautiful and everything. Were there a lot of people going after that space, though? Was there a specific way that you were advertising it that was differentiated or was it really first to market? And so it was really just a game of getting as many eyeballs in on it as possible.

52:52
Myriah Castillo
I mean, it was one of the first. I think there were two that were in market at that time and the other one was significantly more expensive. And so that was a key advantage. And it was at a time when no one was really talking. I Mean, you would have to be part of, like, a yoga type of community to, like, know that ice baths were of real value at that time. But it kind of caught the wave. It was magic. It was like catching lightning in a bottle. And that could happen at any time, you know, And a niche is so, so powerful when you can find it and really own it.

53:23
Daniel Scharff
That definitely makes sense. Okay, Val, story time. What you got?

53:28
Val Ponce De Leon
Yeah. So I was going touch one of our brands that is in the CPG space. That's Jackson's chips. We've been working with them for a while and just following that same best practices of building up their roster, building up their ambassadors, the people who love the brand and the influencers who are loyal to the brand. And we got to a point where they were looking to launch a new product. So our approach for it was to activate all of these, literally every single one of our brand ambassadors that we had, bring them into this launch, get it to them ahead of time so they could try it. So they had the product in hand for launch day. They were launching on E. Com, but also specifically in retail. So what we wanted to do, which is really create this fomo.

54:08
Val Ponce De Leon
Like, this product is everywhere, everyone is talking about it, so that obviously you get into your retail space and those shoppers already know what this product is because they've seen it a thousand times on social media from so many different people. So we activated their entire existing influencer roster. We also used their budget they had for influencers to contract a really big wellness influencer in the space. And his post went live as well on launch day. Hundreds of thousands of views. So kind of using the budget more for the novelty big name and then complementing that with hundreds of other people just posting naturally to their feeds. And it worked really well because the people that had been posting many different times about the brand were coming up with this new product, showing off this new product. So it felt really natural.

54:58
Val Ponce De Leon
It didn't feel like overly promotional. It felt like something that just kind of fit in with what they'd already been talking about, created a lot of buzz, a lot of excitement. And because of that, the new product that they launched ended up outselling their existing product. It became their new hero product, and it outperformed other competitors that had been in the space for years and years. So it was really a huge success across the board. And of note is that it was in retail like it wasn't in the digital world. It was all of these voices coming together to create that buzz that Hype, that credibility, that familiarity, so that when people were shopping, they were making their decisions based on everything that they had heard online. So a really cool moment for CPG on that one.

55:38
Daniel Scharff
I love it. I love to hear that. And I was just thinking about how sometimes when you really do create a nice moment around that, around the launch, then even it can get picked up by news outlets and just, you know, you can see a lot of compounding impacts on the investment that you're making. Okay, I know I said that was kind of the last one, but I actually have one final question to ask both of you, because I think just if you're on the brand side, you don't necessarily know a lot of influencers and you might have different ideas in your head of what they're like and who they are. So I guess, finally, what is one thing that you would love for brands to really understand about influencers and who they are and their perspective?

56:15
Daniel Scharff
And I'll go first, which is I think maybe at the later stage, you're not like, it could be sometimes that it can be more transactional. I don't know, just my thought on it, but especially at the earlier stage, people maybe who are under that 50k plateau that you talked about, they really do want to do a good job for you. They will probably, many of them want to be able to do this for a living. Probably at that level, they're not at the point where they could, but they want to do a good job. They want you to like it, they want it to be impactful, they want to get to keep working with you.

56:46
Daniel Scharff
And so I think at that level especially, it's good to know that and tap into it and get the best ideas that they have and, you know, really just make sure you're getting their full, best effort. I think when people have more to lose than to gain, then it's a little bit of a different game. And they may be way more protective about their image and the contract and that kind of stuff. That's my impression. But you guys have way more experience in this. But do you have something that you think it's really good just for everyone to know about influencers?

57:16
Val Ponce De Leon
Mine is a little bit cliche, but I'm going to say the good that you put out into the world comes back to you. So the better that you treat those influencers and the more that you can customize your approach to them. Like Mariah was saying earlier, look at the content that they're already making, pay attention to what they're already talking about rather than just copy and paste a template all the time to everybody, that's really going to come back and strengthen that relationship, make them much more likely to work with you if they feel like you've paid attention and you really are a fan of their page and you want to collaborate with them because you like them, not just because you're trying to tick a box to get certain numbers of influencers onboarded.

57:54
Val Ponce De Leon
That's going to help your approach and your relationship and your long term performance with that influencer a lot.

58:00
Daniel Scharff
That makes a lot of sense. It really does. That really resonates.

58:03
Myriah Castillo
Okay, Mariah, I would love for brands to know that it's a strategy when you're thinking about your army of creators. You can have different creators for different objectives. We can negotiate, we can manipulate things. It's not this blanket that you have heard about. I think a lot of people have misconceptions about the word influencer and thoughts in their head of who those influencers are. But it's actually much more controllable now. And there's a lot of strategy that goes into what that creator framework might be without and it might go against what you initially think that influencers actually are. And so I think there's a lot more opportunity than you might think just from what we see very publicly from the term influencer.

58:52
Daniel Scharff
Yeah. And I really like this overall idea just about the thoughtfulness of everything, how important it is and how it can turn up a lot of unexpected stuff as well. When you really go the extra mile and try to make like find things that are going to hit much better because you put more effort into it, which you should because this is expensive stuff for people to invest in and might as well really figure out how to sharpen the idea so that it goes really well. And then when it goes really well, the influencer is going to like it even more and they're going to feel good because they did a good job for you. You're going to feel good about them and then who knows what that can lead to.

59:24
Daniel Scharff
But definitely those, probably those freebie posts and them actually then telling their friends about it who might help you out even more. So I really like that line of thought around it. Okay, Mariah, Val, I really want to thank you guys. This has been a really fun discussion for me. I think just especially because I don't know so much about this wide world of influencers other than it seems to be the job that all of my nieces and nephews want to have when they grow up is to be influencers. So I'll also have them listen to this episode.

59:55
Daniel Scharff
But thank you guys so much and thank you for also just having a service that is, I would say, right sized for brands as they're growing on their journey as well that lets them get access to this world of influential people without just having to pay almost all 100 overhead, which can happen. There's some agencies out there. So thank you, guys.

01:00:15
Myriah Castillo
Thank you.

01:00:15
Val Ponce De Leon
Thanks, Daniel.

01:00:17
Daniel Scharff
All right, thank you, everybody. Hope you enjoyed. Well, my friends, we've now arrived together at the end of another episode of the Startup CPG podcast, the top globally ranked podcast in cpg. As you may know, we're not just a podcast. We're a community of brands and experts and you should join. You can sign up @startupcpg.com you'll then get an invite to our online Slack community. You're going to hear about amazing events near you, all of our special opportunities to get you in front of buyers, investors, brands and more. It's a free community. So what are you waiting for? I will see you there or on our next episode. Bye bye.