Growing Faster With Influencer Marketing – Taylor Lagace (Kynship)
In this episode, we talk to Taylor Lagace to get his best advice for testing the waters with influencer marketing. This can be a polarizing topic, but Taylor did a great job helping us set realistic expectations and build a field-tested playbook to help you get started.
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About this episode:
In this episode, we talk to Taylor Lagace, a Managing Partner at a fast-growing influencer marketing agency called Kynship.
We start off by talking about the polarizing nature of influencer marketing. Many people think that partnering with influencers is a great way to waste your marketing budget, while others have found it to be a fundamental source of traffic generation and conversions.
Taylor does a great job presenting a balanced case for why influencer marketing can be a great addition to your existing strategy, when it is done effectively. He also shares a ton of actionable advice for finding the right influencers to work with, setting up a test campaign to see if they are a good fit for your brand, and structuring a deal with the ones that you’re interested in partnering with long-term.
This interview is packed with field-tested tactics and tool suggestions to help you stand up a high-functioning influencer marketing campaign in the next 90 days. So, if you’re interested in a one-hour consulting session from one of the most notable experts in the space, you’re going to want to make time for this episode.
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Episode transcript:
James Sowers: [00:00:00] All right. So hopefully you see the blinking red button there. Yep. Okay, cool. Um, all right, well, Taylor, thanks so much for coming on the show. Really excited to have you, and have you dive into all of the specifics around influencer marketing. I know our audience is chomping at the bit to learn about that in my mind, it’s a bit of a polarizing topic.
[00:00:18] Like people have either tried it and seen great results and so they love it and they’re advocates of it, or they’ve tried it and it didn’t work out and they feel like they got burned or lost a lot of money. And so they hate it and they’re staunch opponents of it. So with you being the expert in the field, I’d love to get some insights from you throughout the conversation, but first maybe we’ll start with like, how do you even land on influencer marketing as something that you want to call, like your life’s work or what you want to focus on right now?
[00:00:41] Like, where’d you, how’d you get where you’re at today.
[00:00:43] Taylor Lagace: [00:00:43] Yeah. So I tried to be an influencer myself. The travel blogger didn’t work out. So I thought, you know, maybe I’ll just work in influence marketing.
[00:00:50] James Sowers: [00:00:50] Yeah. Who hasn’t right. Who hasn’t started a travel blog and kind of had a false start.
[00:00:54] Taylor Lagace: [00:00:54] Yeah. You know, it didn’t, it didn’t work out the way I wanted it to, but no, in all actuality, My influencer journey goes back to college.
[00:01:02] I started a company with a couple of teammates who played football, UCLA. Well, they gave me a Jersey. I didn’t really play, but I was on the sideline with a couple of guys. We just started a events company. One of the teammates was PDB son, Justin Combs. So he was kind of like the face of the company, the influencer, uh, of sorts, uh, you’d say, um, and basically the events company was just, you know, we’d hosted.
[00:01:22] Events parties we’d have product placements with companies. They pay us for that ticket sales, et cetera, et cetera. But literally the only thing that drove all this is just income, social media. And so right off the jump, just seeing the power of leveraging influencer marketing and using an influencer to really build a business, um, was very intriguing to me from there after college.
[00:01:42] Uh, when I graduated, I went to work at the NFL marketing agency athletes first representing guys like clay Matthews, Aaron Rodgers, Deshaun Watson. So sourcing deals on behalf of those guys, like Aaron Rogers with state farm, you know, was a very interesting world to me as well. Seeing how these top athletes can be integrated into very big, uh, name, brand, house name, brand campaigns, and how that worked on behalf of them.
[00:02:06] And what was the objective there. But. The end of the day athletes first, I was more so looking to go a little bit deeper into the attribution model of everything. Where can I see a deeper insights into what’s attributable to these influencers? And for me, that was going to common thread, collective, a paid media growth agency, where, you know, everything’s attributable on the backend.
[00:02:26] So really gauging and seeing what works when putting out influencer content, influencer campaigns and seeing the dashboard on Facebook, um, and seeing what really went. Uh, viral or what really converted on behalf of the brand. And from there seen influencer content doing a really phenomenal job with an ad accounts and across other organic campaigns.
[00:02:46] We went out on our own and started kinship God two years ago. So that’s the full fledged path. I didn’t want to go all the way back to birth, but didn’t want to give you the influence of journey here.
[00:02:55] James Sowers: [00:02:55] No, that’s awesome. And that’s such a cool story and not something that a lot of people can say about how they landed, where whatever they’re doing for, for work.
[00:03:03] Um, I really love that you mentioned the focus on the data and kind of measuring the impact of influencer marketing. And I think that a lot of people listening are going to appreciate hearing that too, because it does kind of feel like. I don’t know some kind of secret sauce or like black magic or like, nobody really knows how it works.
[00:03:17] It’s just like, sometimes you put a product in the right person’s hand that takes off, and sometimes you put a bunch of products and a bunch of people’s hands and you don’t see any results from it. And nobody really knows what makes the difference between one or the other, if this stuff’s even working.
[00:03:28] I’m so interested to dig into that a little bit more with you. I’m curious. So, um, You’ve worked at common thread. They had this data centric mindset around all of the types of marketing that they do for their clients. I think if I heard on a previous interview or read somewhere correctly, like you helped to build the influencer campaign or the team inside of common thread, is that right?
[00:03:48] Or is that given mis-characterizing, um, the work that you did there.
[00:03:52] Taylor Lagace: [00:03:52] No, no, no. That’s exactly right. Yeah. They hired me to build up their influencer department there. Um, and then from there on, uh, they seed funded us just to start our own agency, uh, instead of internal seed funded us to start our own business two years ago.
[00:04:03] And so we still handle all their influencer marketing. They outsource that to us. Um, and we work with alongside a lot of agencies that are similar to common thread as a digital growth agency. Um, so yeah, they’ll tell their influence department then about a year later, outsource that to our business and help launched us.
[00:04:19] Yeah.
[00:04:19] James Sowers: [00:04:19] Awesome. Uh, what a really cool opportunity to have, to get seed funding from basically your current employer to go do your own thing, and then continue to serve them as a client and an agency representative. That’s really awesome. And who doesn’t want to hang out with like athletes and celebrities all day, right?
[00:04:33] Cause that’s all your life is, you’re just only hanging out with the famous people, right? That’s that’s all that you do. Um,
[00:04:37] Taylor Lagace: [00:04:37] I
[00:04:38] don’t really hang out with too many of them, but we work with a decent amount of them. And a lot of the time actually we work and actually. Recommend people start their influencer programs a lot of the time with micro-influencers.
[00:04:49] So, yes, we want to scale up to working with those celebrities or those macro influencers before, you know, swinging for the fences. We like to hit a lot of singles. I’d have to make sure that that investment is a good one. Yeah.
[00:05:00] James Sowers: [00:05:00] Yeah. We’ll hold that thought because we’re going to come back to those micro-influencers.
[00:05:03] But, um, before we get into that, I’m curious. So it makes sense being a collegiate athlete yourself with NFL aspirations, I’m sure. Cause every collegiate athlete wants to go to the, whatever the pro equivalent of what they’re doing is, um, then you go to common thread, which is, uh, I know founded or has a lot of professional athletes or former professional athletes on staff.
[00:05:21] So this is all kind of like. A story that keeps telling itself over and over again. And now, from what I gather for the marketing material that you have out there in the wild, you still work with a lot of professional athletes, but do you work with other types of influencers too? Like, I don’t know. You tubers or bloggers or anything like celebrities, whatever the case may be like, or do you primarily just focus on product placement with professional athletes or aspiring professional athletes, something like that.
[00:05:46]Folks with followings.
[00:05:46] Taylor Lagace: [00:05:46] We only work with athletes when it makes sense, to be honest, it’s a marginal piece of our business, working with athletes and product placement with athletes. Um, majority of the time, our main focus and work with influencers and how to identify them is their content creation ability.
[00:06:01] And that’s what I really came to understand at common thread. Right. So when you’re implementing this type of content to ad accounts, You’re really getting a gauge of what kind of content works. Does it work well when serving the ads from the brands page instead of the influencers page, does it matter about that copy and the headline?
[00:06:16] All of these things do matter, but if you look at a heat chart, when you look at an ad, the main thing that people look at is the content itself. And so what kind of content was really working. Influencers that could sell. And when I say sell, they’re creating video content that hits the value props of the product at prospecting or selling a discount or a promo code, or some sort of remarketing tactic to get the next customer, the next step of the customer journey sold.
[00:06:43] So people that could really articulate that and messaging that we wanted to equip them to do. Those are the influencers where they identifying and working with. Yeah.
[00:06:52] James Sowers: [00:06:52] And so that makes a lot of sense,
[00:06:53] Taylor Lagace: [00:06:53] full circle, full circle there that can be athletes, but a lot of the time athletes or people that I have their following for baseball or
[00:07:01] for basketball, or these celebrities that are
[00:07:03] singers, they have their following because they’re a great singer.
[00:07:06] They’re not, they don’t have their following because they’re great content creators per se. You know, so a lot of these social media people that built their falling on their ability to create content, thumb, stopping content in the same line of thought that they can do that organically to build their own following.
[00:07:20] Our hypothesis, we can do that. Repurpose that in our own distribution channels, such as paid media on Facebook and they’ll win there as well. Yeah.
[00:07:27] James Sowers: [00:07:27] Yeah. Okay. So I think that’s good to know, because I think the next question I want to ask you is about common misconceptions around influencer marketing. I think one of them is that you always have to work with a celebrity, or you always have to work with somebody with a massive following or some kind of big public profile, but that’s not necessarily the case.
[00:07:42] As you touched on previously, like you can work with micro influencers who I’m guessing are people who have slightly smaller followings. Like we’re not talking about millions. Maybe we’re talking about tens of thousands or a few thousand or whatever. Probably more than hundreds, I’m guessing. Um, because you need a certain volume or a certain size of audience to get enough touch points to actually sell some products.
[00:08:00] Right. So you need something around that, but, um, how do you, like, what are some of the most common misconceptions you see people come into your doors, potential leads, you start having a sales conversation. You say, ah, well, you’re really thinking about it this way, but, um, the way that kinship approaches it, or the way that Taylor approaches, it looks a little bit more like this.
[00:08:14] Like what are some of those things you have to reeducate folks on.
[00:08:18] Taylor Lagace: [00:08:18] Well, it’s a, it’s a industry with not much education, right? And so a lot of the time right away off the bat, common misconception is very bluntly influenced the market. Doesn’t work. And it’s just like, I feel like I’m against the ropes at times.
[00:08:31] I’m like, well, why are we having this conversation? Um, but regardless, I think a lot of the time people again, will swing for the fences, make that large investment, especially if they have the money. Um, they’ll say, okay, we’re going to go after X person with no sort of, um, An educated decision being had. So we’d like to think about it.
[00:08:51] Like what kind of, I said, micro to macro spread the net. Why that across a lot of different influencers with audiences and personas that you think would work, like what makes up that macro that you were very inclined or tempted to invest in? Like what audiences does that person consist of? What persona does that person represent?
[00:09:09] Let’s break that down into four different categories here. Okay. Let’s identify three to four to five micro-influencers. And on behalf of each of those audiences and categories, And invest in them. What you’re going to see is your reach probably is going to be a little bit more than that. Macro would have.
[00:09:24] Your engagement would be more micro-influencers on average, have greater engagement. You’re going to test and reach more different audiences and personas. You’re going to get greater amounts of content, greater amount of posts. And it’s probably going to be one fourth of the cost. So all in all, you’re getting a lot more value out of this.
[00:09:42] And that’s not to say like a macro investment. I’m not sitting here and saying macro investments, aren’t worthwhile. It’s just not where you start things. Right. So that’s very a misconception. I would say the power of seeding, the lack thereof, uh, is a common misconception. Asking, uh, right away for something in return for your product is something that I think a lot of people make the mistake of doing.
[00:10:04] For example, like the mass BMA will send you this product. If you send a, if you give us two posts this week, or, and then every week thereafter, that is probably one of the most repulsive messages to receive from anybody, you know, influencer or not, you’re just automatically, it’s kind of like. Black black, for lack of better words like prostitution, like here’s this give me that.
[00:10:25] And it’s very transactional. Um, so we are firm believers, starting relationships through giving hands down saying our palms down approach. Just, Hey, we think you’re a great representation of our brand. You embody everything we believe in. And we think you’re going to absolutely love our product. If you send us your shipping address, we’d love to get this in your hand.
[00:10:45] And so take it with a grain of salt, but like we’re starting that. With, you know, just giving we’re going to follow up in two weeks time after they received the product and say, Hey, and engage, who posted organically. Once everyone receives the product to see who became that brand advocate and ambassador for no cost and then follow up with them and see all of them.
[00:11:04] See, would you want him to hop on some sort of affiliate program, something more official, but I would say those are two misconceptions. Like. The lack of knowledge around the power of seating and starting a relationship on giving and not asking and to starting to right away off the bat with some maca from investment, instead of started with micros and the power of leveraging micro influencers.
[00:11:22] James Sowers: [00:11:22] Right? Yeah. I mean, I can imagine how disorienting it would be to have a realtor come to you and say, yeah, I’ll help you sell your house, but only if you promise to give me a referral for two more customers after we’re done, right. Like how would you feel about that realtor and people are out there basically doing the same thing.
[00:11:36] Trying to find influencers for their product. They’re saying, Hey, I’ll send you a free product. That’s probably worth 50 to 100 bucks maybe. And it’s like, but you have to post for me two times. It’s like, is it really worth coming in and trying to start a relationship with a, what’s basically a demand versus starting a relationship with something that’s more gratuitous and saying like, Here have this for free.
[00:11:55] We think it’s a good product. We’re confident in it. We think you’re going to like it because it aligns with something that, you know, you put out there as a value of yours and we just want to send it to you and see what you think. And maybe get some feedback from me and just start it that way and then let it kind of blossom into something more.
[00:12:09] If it’s a good fit.
[00:12:10] Taylor Lagace: [00:12:10] 100%. I mean, you’re tapping into the psyche of people, right? Like when you start a relationship I’m giving these people are going to want to do so naturally a lot of the time these people are going to want to do something in return for you, or they have some, they owe you something.
[00:12:23] So instead of starting a relationship by asking, and then they’re in this place of like in a mindset right away. Okay. I gotta put my negotiation cap on. It’s like, Oh wow. How time? You know, that was really sweet of them to think of me for this. And then you start the relationship in that way. It’s so different.
[00:12:36] And what we’ve seen. Is even if you end up having to pay these people, we’ve seen that you actually get that person’s costs broken out at least half when you actually want to really revisit conversations with them and tap on them for something more official.
[00:12:49] James Sowers: [00:12:49] Right.
[00:12:50] I think it’s called the law of reciprocity where it’s basically like, if you want somebody to do something for you, this is counterintuitive, but do them a favor first, right?
[00:12:57] Do them and no obligations favorite first. And then they feel because they’re a good person morally obligated to come back and do something in return for you to kind of like balance things out. But I think the research that I saw it says that they often like. Overachieve in terms of repaying that favor.
[00:13:13] So instead of like, if you offer to wash their car, when they come back, instead of just washing your car and they like pressure wash your whole house, right. Or something like that, or like they wash it and feel it up or something. And it’s like, it’s, it’s this cognitive bias that we have where it’s like, somebody did me a favor.
[00:13:27] So I don’t want to do something equivalent back. I want to do something a little bit more because I’m so thankful that they came out of nowhere and did something positive for me, without me asking for it or anything like that. Um, so I think that kind of applies here, right? It’s like you’re coming out of the blue.
[00:13:39] You’re saying, I know that you’re going to like my product because I’ve been following you and I’m actually paying attention to what you say and actually care about who you are as a person. So I’d love to send it for you. No strings attached. And all I want to know is like what you think about it in a few days after you’ve had a chance to try it out.
[00:13:50] And then that person organically might feel like, Oh, this is very kind to them. I actually do like the product. Maybe I’ll come back and see if there’s anything I can do to work more closely with this company because this person and this brand have both treated me really well to start this relationship off.
[00:14:04] Taylor Lagace: [00:14:04] 100%. I mean, you’re now luckily exactly what I believe in. I think the last misconception that I would definitely have to voice here is influencers main value add is being their audience
[00:14:14] as a distribution channel for
[00:14:16] our brand. Um, that is valuable 100%, for sure if you find that niche audience, but at the end of the day, it’s a very limited audience and.
[00:14:23] Uh, brands, own distribution channels are much more vast. And with greater opportunity, the main value out of an influencer is their content creation ability. The, the assets that they’re delivering to your brand to be able to use and repurpose across your own distribution channels. Yes. Tap in and leverage, you know, um, their audience on behalf of your brand.
[00:14:44] But at the end of the day, the main value of influencers are themselves as creators. Um, and then repurposing that video content that they’re able to give you again within your own channels,
[00:14:53] especially
[00:14:54] on Facebook, those audiences, that Facebook is able to create across all their different placements. Is going to, especially when you optimize for conversions, that is going to be much better placement at the end of day, with their content, then having them post on organic social media and a lot of the time what you see, and this is just kind of the freaky nature of how advanced and sophisticated Facebook’s pixel is.
[00:15:18] Is these people that follow these individuals. All receive these ads when running it, when running this content. So it’s pretty wild at their ability to target at the end of the day, but you’re also going to get all the other people in the world that don’t necessarily follow this person. But when they receive this content, they’re likely to purchase or take whatever action that you’re looking for them to take.
[00:15:38] Um, so I think that’s another point. Misconception people get hung up and what’s my immediate return on this organic post though. And it’s like, Pause. Well, we can calculate that, but here let’s redistribute this content into these channels as well. And see what kind of lift and performance you get in comparison to the rest of your ad account library.
[00:15:58] And then I’ll also take into consideration. What did you pay in that studio shoot for the other content that you’re using within the ad account? Okay. Let’s compare it against that influencer comp you just repurpose here and then you’re getting. Know, two sticks, one stone here, organic and paid. So there’s a lot of value that I feel as though that’s not being recognized when working with influencers are not even being leveraged because a lot of times people don’t even use it in these other channels where that’s the most value where that’s, where that is, where the most value lies.
[00:16:26] James Sowers: [00:16:26] I think a lot of people get hung up on reach, reach, reach, right? Like, and when you have these algorithms for Facebook, Instagram, whatever platform we’re talking about, it sounds like you’re reaching fewer and fewer of your organic followership on posts that you’re just putting out on your profile. But I think what a lot of people overlook is engagement, right.
[00:16:42] And not just the level of engagement. So like. Aaron Rogers probably gets thousands of likes on everything that he posts. I don’t even know if he’s on social media, but we use him as an example. Like he posts something on Instagram, he’s going to get thousands of likes. Whereas like a micro influencer might get 300, 500, but like, what else are people doing to engage with that post?
[00:16:59] And Roger’s post might just like and say first, right? Like people just say first I’m the first comment. And it’s just a hundred people saying they were first because it came out. But then if you work with a micro-influencer, the comments might be like, Tell me more about this product. Like what’s the material like, like it’s more, it’s more engaged too.
[00:17:14] It’s more interested, right? It’s like they want to go to a deeper level with the person they follow because of the nature of the relationship. Whereas like, if you’re going for that macro influencer, that celebrity, that person who isn’t a content creator first is a something else first who just happens to put content out into the world, then there’s a different value there.
[00:17:32] Right? Outside of just the numbers, right? Like there’s this intangible, like more subjective value in how people are interacting with the materials, getting put out in the
[00:17:41] Taylor Lagace: [00:17:41] now you’re, you’re now in it, like you’re able to go much, much deeper with micro influencers at the end of the day, people fall Aaron Rodgers and macro influencers for a variety of different reasons.
[00:17:50] Right? When it comes to micro influencers, their audience is so dense. Um, and so deep, like, I love that word. You used people follow these people for typically one reason, maybe two. And so you can get really specific in leveraging certain micro influencers on behalf of a brand campaign that you’re running.
[00:18:08] And so if it’s fitness or. Fitness specifically within the yoga space, you can find those micro influencers that are specifically filled with that type of audience and speaking to them on a day to day basis with relevant content specific exactly to that point. And so leveraging those people are much more effective to get across a specific message and it just use a lot of them as well.
[00:18:30] And then ultimately when you add all that together, the aggregate reach, the aggregate engagement, the aggregate, everything. Ultimately it outperforms the macro, but again, this is not a case for one or the other, because there is power to having your name and your brand tied to Aaron Rogers for validity, credibility, brand of, you know, brand lift, et cetera, but from a convert, if you, if you’re looking for results right away, which literally everyone in this day and age seems to want those immediate results, right.
[00:18:58] Um, micros will typically outperform. Yeah.
[00:19:02] James Sowers: [00:19:02] Um, okay. So we’ve tackled like kind of the profile of the influencer that you might want to work with. The next thing I’m curious about is the actual content that’s being put out there, right? So like what types of formats in terms of videos, photos, user generated content like reviews versus just.
[00:19:19] Product photos type of stuff. What has worked well in the past and maybe what’s working well now, like, has that changed over the last year or two, or even down to the channel? Like when I think influencer marketing, I think product photo on Instagram with a long description, the influencer puts it out there for 10 hours and then takes it down, you know, like just weird stuff.
[00:19:36] And I think that’s where a lot of the stigma around this comes from. But I imagine you guys are taking a more. Holistic approach to it. And it’s more, um, thoughtful and intentional and personalized. And to the degree that like you’re switching platforms from Instagram to a video based platform like YouTube or Tik TOK, or, you know, Instagram stories or something like that, like how has this stuff changed over the last year or two or however long you guys have been working on it at kinship?
[00:20:00]Yeah.
[00:20:00] Taylor Lagace: [00:20:00] Great question. So a lot of the time we’re sourcing video condoms, that’s predominantly what we’re doing. Again, just going back to the common thread days, paid me a video content far out performs, uh, and it’s still imagery and static imagery on organic and paid. So we’re heavily focused on video content.
[00:20:15] If the brand has a need for imagery, say for emails or landing pages, we’ll definitely source imagery, but we’re definitely most focused on. Video content. So that’s unboxings product tutorials, product reviews, sale discount, promos testimonials, really flexible to the brand needs. But how we think about it to give you a kind of a framework is when we sourced a variety of influencers on their behalf of brand, any given month, we’re thinking, okay.
[00:20:42] Right off the jump. We do a deep dive into their ad account and just see what kind of copywriting, what type of language is being used, what type of contents really working and converting. And so if there’s still imagery in their ad account, that’s really working. Okay. How can we bring this to life through video content?
[00:20:56] That’s another way we’ll think about it, but the framework that we are sourcing content is okay, what type of content do they need at the prospecting level? What type of content do they need that retargeting all the way down to DPA? Right? And so. Is it the prospecting kind of content that’s educational entertaining.
[00:21:12] Is it the retargeting type of content where you want to offer them some sort of discount deal? Um, okay. How can we piece together a Mashable ad, a quote-unquote where we’re taking bits and pieces of different influencers, content, and putting it all together to make your product look like it’s everywhere.
[00:21:27] So you have this funnel where you have an individual giving educational, entertaining type content. You have that retargeting, whether it’s a sale discount. Another level down for retargeting where there’s a mash will make your product look like it’s everywhere. And what this is doing is just generating a sense of FOMO to people that are seeing this content like, Oh my goodness, everyone has this.
[00:21:45] How do I not have it yet? And that’s really what we’re trying to create. Um, and so that’s how we’re thinking about content when we’re sourcing it. All of this contents obviously distributed on organic social as well, but we’re also taking into account. How are we going to be able to repurpose this through a full customer journey and a funnel using all these people that we’re ultimately tapping on to create content on the organic side of things for organic activations, we’ve seen Instagram stories be the most effective, just because you have a swipe up action directly to the website.
[00:22:13] And that’s ultimately, we’re trying to do right. We’re trying to get them as close as possible to make an appeal. Purchase. And so Instagram stories has created that they have greater levels of impressions, greater levels of engagement across the board, uh, of any other activation, YouTube, Tik, TOK, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:22:28] But in identification of people, YouTube is a great place to identify influencers. So a lot of the time we’ll go to YouTube or whatever search engine platform you’re using and which just right there, I’ll recommend Facebook brands, clouds, manager, free of cost platform. Get on there. It’s a great place to actually find influencers, but YouTube is a great place to identify who are the best content creators.
[00:22:52] And then if they have an Instagram profile, that’s where we’ve leveraged them organically on a story, but that’s all in all how we, you know, Identify how we think about identifying them, why in the content that we’re creating, that’s kind of the framework that we are thinking with them.
[00:23:09] James Sowers: [00:23:09] That’s awesome.
[00:23:10] That’s really insightful. So I’m curious, have you seen any influencers use, like Facebook live, like live streaming, almost like a live on boxing or product review or something like that versus posting something that’s more permanent or evergreen or like a snapshot in time? You know what I mean? Like. Hey followers, join me at 2:00 PM.
[00:23:11] Today. I’m going to open up something from chubby shorts. I’m going to show you their new product line for the summer or whatever. Like, are you seeing stuff like that out
[00:23:11] there yet?
[00:23:11] Taylor Lagace: [00:23:11] Yeah. So we used to do a lot of Facebook lives. We did like, so two years ago we did a lot of like giveaway. Um, or what is it called?
[00:23:11] Just gifting, um, like a gifting collection, Christmas, like this is my shopping hall for the year. And it’s just a bunch of. Couple of different gifts that they would run through. And those were always good. They did pretty well, but again, it’s just Instagram stories allows you to click out right from there and there’s a call to action that you can have.
[00:23:11] Um, and again, it just had greater engagement, greater impressions, but the Facebook lives were great. You gave you a long form piece of content to be able to, again, repurpose cut up in a variety of different ways and then use on your end in your own distribution channels. But Facebook lives are fun. Um, Just less impressions, less reach, less engagement there.
[00:23:11] And if we see organic as the cherry on top, and we just want to make sure we get the most bang for our buck, if we are going to leverage the content on organic. So that’s why I keep going back to it. So we’ve tested all of them at the end of the day, but yeah, we’ve done Facebook lives. Um, haven’t done it in quite some time just because we haven’t seen it to be as effective, but that’s kind of how we think about it.
[00:23:11] James Sowers: [00:23:11] Cool. Um, are there any like specific product types that tend to work better with influencers? Like, I feel like a lot of time when I see a blatant influencer posts, it’s always makeup, apparel, you know, something like that, some kind of like consumer good. That is kind of high turnover. Like you buy it frequently or it’s perishable, like you use it and you have to replace it, stuff like that.
[00:23:30] I don’t see a whole lot of. Durable goods out there. Um, like, I don’t know. I mean, I’ll see the occasional wallet, which a guy probably buys a wallet and keeps it for years and years until it tears apart. But like, is there anything that really lends itself to influencer marketing and anything that tends to be a bad fit or tends to be harder to make work?
[00:23:48]Maybe that’s price point, maybe that’s category, anything that you got
[00:23:48] there.
[00:23:48]Taylor Lagace: [00:23:48] No. That’s a good question though. Um, I think right at the jump, what I’ll say, it sounds like you seen predominantly low AOV products being pushed by influencers. Is that correct?
[00:23:58] James Sowers: [00:23:58] Yeah, I think so. And I understand that a lot of this is probably like stuff that I’ve looked at recently.
[00:24:02] Right. So if I’m shopping for my wife, I’m going to see makeup. If I’m shopping for a new wallet, I’m going to see wallets. Right.
[00:24:07] Taylor Lagace: [00:24:07] Y’all got our tailored feeds the social dilemma on Netflix, right? So we all have the algorithm.
[00:24:12] Yeah, see eating this
[00:24:14] content or whatever it may be, but what I would say in response to that, just pile high AOV.
[00:24:20] I think there’s, it’s ripe for opportunity for influencers, right? One of the biggest struggles of Ohio V. Product is how do we get these customers convert, obviously with a low wave Oh AOV product, your timeline length, or the amount of time it takes a customer to convert on the app. Your brand is much shorter.
[00:24:38] It’s more of an impulse buy. So there’s less, um, validity or credibility or proof that you need to provide to these people. To make the purchase or convert and become a part of your community with a higher AOV product. You need to provide more reason, uh, for the season, right? You need to get them, people buy things for two reasons, right?
[00:24:51] Price point. So we’re talking about IRAs and to what we’ve seen a recommendation from someone they trust. And so that’s where we really see influencers come into play. Um, And using them for that purpose has shown to be incredibly effective. And so we see it at the lower AOVs for sure. What you’ve seen a lot of the time, but there’s higher AOV products are right for the opportunity to use influencers to the benefit of the sales of your product.
[00:25:18] James Sowers: [00:25:18] Awesome. So, um, I was going to ask, what are some of your favorite examples of like. Influencer marketing deployed successfully. Right. And this is probably a client case study, but since we’re talking about low AOV versus HIO V do you have maybe an example of a high AOV product line that worked well with influencer marketing, maybe that you didn’t personally touch, but you see out there in the market or whatever.
[00:25:34] Um, do you have, do you have a story around that, of like the types of ads they were using, what the product was, what kind of results they saw, maybe anything come to mind off the top of your head around that?
[00:25:42] Taylor Lagace: [00:25:42] Yeah. I mean a couple, honestly, I mean, Sarah Gunn. Right? Hi Mark. We worked with Terra gun, um, about two years ago.
[00:25:52] And one of the influencers that they leverage was, and this was a macro influencer was David Johnson, uh, Arizona Cardinals running back and. His ads did a studio shoot with him, but using that content post organically and put it into the ad account, skyrocketed that ad account and gave a massive lift in performance.
[00:26:10] So you’re seeing, obviously, like we’re saying this running the Arizona Cardinals, he was at the height of his game. I think he was an MVP nominee that year using this product for rehabilitation of his body. Nobody’s looked to in greater regard than that special athlete and how they take care of their bodies.
[00:26:27] And this is a tool that does just that. Getting content around that. And then speaking to the value adds of it. It proved to be an incredible case study and it worked very well. So that’s one that comes to mind with a high AOV product right off the jump. And then could you remind me of your other question?
[00:26:40] James Sowers: [00:26:40] Yeah, so it was basically, um, Maybe a high AOV versus low AOV, or just specific case studies of like influencer marketing that worked well. Right? Like how did, what kind of creative were you using? You know, what kind of influencers did you use? What tangible outcomes. Cause I know you’re data centric. So like, what was the return on that investment?
[00:26:40] What were the levels of engagement? Like do you have, not that we need specific numbers, we can always link something in the, in the show notes, but like, do you have a story around a client success, um, situation that
[00:26:40] Taylor Lagace: [00:26:40] you had recently
[00:26:40] James Sowers: [00:26:40] where influencer marketing like knocked it out of the park?
[00:26:40] Taylor Lagace: [00:26:40] Gotcha. I think, well, another one here, and this is more on the micro-influencer level of hangs is with a brand new laser weight.
[00:26:45] And this is very much so within paper, um, you haven’t really touched on like white listing much here yet, but doing paid media with micro influencers on behalf of this brand laser way, uh, we source content of them going into get appointments. So laser ways, appointment based business, where they. Have people come in, they do laser hae or laser hair removal treatment.
[00:27:05] They do cosmetic treatment. They do facial type treatments, et cetera, et cetera. Um, so when worked with influencers scheduled appointments with them and then filmed their experience. So we gave people a visual, what does it look like to get this type of appointment and the influencers walk people exactly through that.
[00:27:20] So very experiential type of content, service type content, testimonial, et cetera, letting people know what they’re in for if they schedule this. Um, and so. We took that content had them post organically. Again, we kind of see that as the cherry on top, then we also redistributed that through paid media on Facebook and Instagram, with white listing ability, what was super interesting.
[00:27:40] And for those of you within the audience, that know what wireless thing is, it’s just your ability to use this content from the influencers page and serving it from their page. Instead of from your brand page, as an add, you can target their audience, you can target their look alike audiences. You can target your audiences, et cetera.
[00:27:58] When using a micro-influencer you would think that their audience obviously is pretty limited and its ability to target because, you know, say they have 50,000 people, whatever it may be. So you can reach frequency levels that are pretty high. Off lower spends, but creating lookalikes audiences within this campaign proved to be pretty amazing.
[00:28:19] And so like, we’ve been saying micro-influencers audience are incredibly dense. So when you identify the right person with the right audience that you’re looking to target, that you’ve seen to convert on behalf of your brand building lookalike audiences off of that and telling Facebook, Hey, give me. No 2 million to 10 million additional people that are most similar to these, but are unique to it that will optimize for the event that we’re looking to convert them on.
[00:28:43] I would highly recommend testing it because at the end of the day, within this campaign, the influencers look like audience was, is obviously prospecting. When targeting that audience from her ads, our
[00:28:53] CPA was 40 bucks.
[00:28:56] That audience converted at $13 and with $15,000 of spend behind it. So it was no flu.
[00:29:03] It wasn’t like 50 bucks behind it. And this is what it performed at. And you know, this is some case study that we’re putting in front of you. I don’t know her lookalike audience and paid media performed at over 60%. Uh, greater than their goal. And so that proved to be incredibly beneficial and to have that brand, that’s a micro, uh, success story, um, with a prospecting audience to out from the rest of the funnel.
[00:29:25] So that’s a case study that comes to mind. Like I said, David Johnson with their gun that gave the, I think it took their account to it before. And just remember that’s a higher value product with higher costs as well. So a four row as isn’t like. It’s it’s very good. Obviously they’re making great margin, but it might not be as great a margin, as you might think right off the jump.
[00:29:43] Another one is if I were way back in the day we were working with them, um, they were actually on their way, uh, kind of going downhill a little bit and they made a large investment in Chloe Kardashian. This is way back when this is like their first investment in a macro Chloe Kardashian. Literally. What we would say, like save their business.
[00:30:02] It just skyrocketed them from there. And like, when I say return, like, I don’t even know the exact return is pretty hard to say, but they did, they did a signature line with her. They did a studio shoot with her. They wouldn’t just all out and just threw it at her in hopes of it just converting. And it worked wonders.
[00:30:20] Um, it really saved the business and took him to a whole nother level and where they obviously, from what that converted, that was their first touch point with influencer. And now if you’re familiar with defy eyewear and you follow them, they’re making influencer investments across the board, everywhere from here on out.
[00:30:33] So that case study really launched them into a full channel that they were the take seriously on behalf of the business. But those are some case studies that come to mind. Um, again, content-wise at the end of the day. For the people that are listening within it, you just have to figure out what content has worked on behalf of your brand.
[00:30:48] And then how can we bring that to life through influencers, speaking into it.
[00:30:51]Yeah,
[00:30:51] James Sowers: [00:30:51] well, that’s a great point because that was actually my next question. So you’ve said several times during this conversation that you start with finding great content creators and figure out ways to make them influencers for products, that would be a good fit.
[00:31:04] So my question for you then is, do you have some specific people influencers that come to the top of your mind about, um, they already, they produce great. Content for product placements, right? Like, are there specific people with names and faces that we can share with the audience? So like, go look at some of the stuff that they post, and this is what influencer marketing done, right.
[00:31:15] Looks like.
[00:31:17] Taylor Lagace: [00:31:17] Hmm, specific names.
[00:31:20] James Sowers: [00:31:20] Like one that I, I brought to the table here is, um, I don’t know how much this one counts. So I’ll share two. One is Nick bear and he is the CEO of a company called bear performance intuition. They make protein shakes, sorry, protein powders. Pre-workouts all that kind of stuff that you might be familiar with.
[00:31:32] If you’re into fitness, he’s the CEO, but he started the company as a company of one basically. And he started a YouTube channel sharing his life as an army officer while he built this company on the side. Right. So he’s deployed in Korea. He doesn’t have much to do outside of his training. So he starts this company or whatever.
[00:31:48] And now he’s got a YouTube channel where he’s doing iron mans and like, so he’s walking the walk in terms of being. Um, invested in his personal health and fitness. He runs a health and fitness company and every single morning, he’s on Instagram saying I’m taking my strong greens powder. I’m taking my strong reds powder.
[00:32:04] I’m taking my multivitamin all made by my company. Like, so he’s turned himself into an influencer and I understand like the caveat there might be he’s the CEO and that’s his job, but it is a personal account. It’s the Nick bear, you know, fitness account. It’s not. Their performance nutrition’s branded account.
[00:32:19] So, I mean, that’s one example. Another one that comes to mind is also in the fitness realm. There’s a guy named max tuning who has an apparel company, and he has a couple of businesses on the side, but he built his following on YouTube from sharing his workouts and his power lifting and his lifestyle.
[00:32:34] And he’s worked with another supplement company called ghost and they wanted to make a, um, like a personal flavor for him. So part of his. Personality is he loves mango margaritas. So I don’t know if it’s a pre-workout or what it is, but they wanted to make a flavor mango margarita by max tuning. Right.
[00:32:49] But, um, the influencer part comes in because he shared the entire process of producing that from start to finish. Like, he didn’t say what it was going to be, but he’s like, Hey, I’m working on a special flavor. It’s just for me, I’m sending it back because it’s not quite right. Like, it’s one of my favorite foods.
[00:33:03] I have like five that you guys know about. I’m not going to tell you which one, but I’m sending it back because the flavor is not good enough. And so like, I was following this journey and I’m like, yeah, Man, I’m a marketing guy and I’m getting swayed because like, I, I don’t know how much of this is genuine.
[00:33:14] Right. But I’m going to assume that it is. And it’s like, if he’s sending it back because the quality is not right then yeah. I’m way more likely to try it when it comes out, because he seems to actually care about the product. It’s not just like, they paid me 500 bucks to tell you about this new pre-workout.
[00:33:25] Right. It’s like, no, I’m involved in the process. I’m talking about the label. I’m talking about the ingredients. I’m talking about the flavor profile. Like I’m making sure this is buttoned up. Cause my name and my face are going to be on it. So then when it does come out, the people that follow him, I feel like they’re much more likely to buy it.
[00:33:38] Um, so I guess those are two people that come to mind to me is like, You’re doing a great job at producing the content that actually sells the product without blatantly being in your face and just like go buy my thing, right.
[00:33:47] Taylor Lagace: [00:33:47] For sure. For sure. 100% without somebody really coming to mind off the jump. I think some of that could be valuable though, to the audiences.
[00:33:54] If I give a specific individual, like for example, you’re just saying fitness influencers and everyone may maybe. Inclined to work with, uh, a fitness influencers per se, but equipping you to identify the right people that create great video content to have your brand. We can definitely walk through real quick.
[00:34:09] And again, I would hop on Facebook brands, collabs manager, it’s their own free search engine tool. So it’s not like a grin or one of these platforms that cost 5,000 per month on behalf of your business to go identify people and search for them. But what I would do is get on that brand labs manager. They have all the different filtering systems of age, demographic, interests, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:34:29] What type of profile do they have? What type of audience they have all of the sort of data that you can actually enter to find and sift through a filter to identify the right people from there. I would go into these individual profiles on their Instagram and a great way to figure out, identify if they’re a great content.
[00:34:43] Creators is. Do they have highlights and like you’re saying, are they putting out content systems like the fitness instructor or the example that you used this guy’s putting out content every single morning about the products that his brand owns and uses given the actual feedback, are they putting authentic content or is it not just real salesy, you know, aggressive type stuff that makes you feel kind of cringy young, uncomfortable?
[00:35:04] No, it’s organic. It’s it’s real. And I know authentic is the most oversaturated term within the space, but genuinely like. Does it actually get you intrigued by the product? Can they create content that will ultimately sell and move the needle on behalf of potential consumers that are seeing their content on behalf of your brand?
[00:35:20] So a great indicator of that, do they have a lot of IgE highlights the lights within their profile? Are they putting out a bunch of video content within those? Are they as much as static images, you want to find the people that are putting out a lot of video content on those. And then from there you can get a great gauge of are they creating great content?
[00:35:36] So the initial step brand class managers kind of serves as that initial. The filtering system for you. And then there’s a white glove approach here where you have to got to go into these protocols, check them out, gauge their video content creation ability. But that’s a great filtering system on behalf of any brand in the audience right now for their team to actually go and implement.
[00:35:53] Um, and you’ll you’ll 100% of the time find people that would be great. That’s for the campaign that you’re running.
[00:35:58] James Sowers: [00:35:58] Yeah. I mean,
[00:35:58] it sounds like, like a lot of things in business, there’s no shortcut to success. Right? You got to put in the work, you’ve got to manually review the accounts. You have to have some understanding of what they’ve been putting out and what they bring to the table.
[00:36:08] So, um, there’s, there’s no, there’s no cutting corners here. Um, so when you reach out to these folks, like what, what are you saying? I know you’re coming from kind of an agency perspective and, and managing the relationship, kind of being a middleman for lack of a better term. Like you’ve got a client, right.
[00:36:20] You’ve got an influencer. You’re kind of in the middle of saying like, Hey, would you be interested in working with them? Let me make the introduction. If so, but like, um, if, if that’s different from how somebody might DIY at right for a little bit, until they can’t afford to bring someone like kinship on to help out, like, if there’s a difference there, could you tell me kind of how you approach an influencer maybe as an agency versus a brand owner, or maybe that’s the same, the same approach.
[00:36:39] So how are you actually presenting the opportunity to the person who would be doing the product placement?
[00:36:39] Taylor Lagace: [00:36:39] Yeah. So
[00:36:40] our age is definitely has a more holistic strategy involved in working with influencers. So it involves seating, involves like mass seating to a lot of people at any given month. It involves tapping on probably like five to 10 careers to actually create video content and actually post them out the brand in a contractual form, um, on a month to month basis.
[00:36:58] And then actually doing the paid media on behalf of the content that we’re receiving and if there’s any white listing going on. So it’s kind of a three-pronged approach here. So I guess I would start with the seating. Uh, how we start conversations there on behalf of the brand. And that’s kind of what I alluded to earlier and kind of spoke to it.
[00:37:13] Hey, you know, this brand has identified you as somebody that they would love to, uh, see product to. They think you’re a great embodiment of everything they represent. We absolutely think you would love the product. We want to give it to you. No strings attached, like start the relationship in all caps, no strings attached.
[00:37:27] This is how we’re starting. This thing. Send us your address. We’ll get this out to you right away. That’s how we start the relationship with it. The mass amount of influencers that we’re talking to any given month, I’m going to have the brand, because again, you’ll see the amount of relationships that are built with great rapport.
[00:37:42] It’s amazing. And the amount of organic social
[00:37:44] traction that you’ll get out of these
[00:37:45] people free of cost. But out of that pool of people, uh, we typically. Uh, identify the five to 10 creators that we’re going to source to work with on a video content creation, uh, basis. And that’s typically the second touch point and how we’re talking to communicating with them.
[00:37:59] So maybe that’s one to two weeks later after they received the product, we’re going to go through the list of people who posted about this brand, um, uh, for free, without us asking them. Who, uh, out of these people that, uh, wanted to receive product, we go on again, white glove approach who creates the best content, who can we actually tap on for those side of 10 people that we can think and see winning on behalf of the brand organically.
[00:38:21] But again, even more importantly, through paid distribution on Facebook or Instagram, for example, like I’ve been saying. And that’s typically the second touch when that conversation. And at that point, we just say, Hey, you know, we see that you love the product we saw that you posted. Um, you know, if they didn’t, we’ll just ask them for feedback.
[00:38:38] And whoever says, yes, love the product. Hey, okay. Well, this brand would love to work with you in a more expansive, um, in a more expansive way. Would you be interested in, we’re looking for two to three videos, um, on image, et cetera. And if they say yes, Hey, we work with the brand at that point to create some sort of creative brief.
[00:38:52] Lays out the type of video content that we’re looking for, give them as much as they need, maybe an ad example of what to look for as inspo provided to them. And then we give the brand two rounds of approval on that content ensure quality every step of the way, but that’s kind of how the sequence of conversation and a little bit of the process working with us and how we compensate with these influencers.
[00:39:13] James Sowers: [00:39:13] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And between the sourcing influencers are going out to find them through the Facebook brands manager, and then managing the relationships. Once you do the outreach and the product seeding and kind of tracking who’s producing the best content, which one is getting the most engagement or the most return on investment.
[00:39:29] Like this is very quickly starting to sound like a full-time job, which I know is the value proposition of what you guys do. Um, so, so that’s good. I mean, because that means that like, You know, there’s, there’s not only value in what you do, but there’s value in pursuing influencer marketing in general, which I think is really good.
[00:39:43] So when you, when somebody shows interest, you find the right pairing, um, how do you structure that relationship?
[00:39:50]Taylor Lagace: [00:39:50] Right?
[00:39:50] James Sowers: [00:39:50] Like, are you, are you structuring it in a contract format? Are you offering payment upfront for a certain number of posts? Are you offering compensation, like in an affiliate model where they get a commission for resale through their discount code or their, their personal code or whatever?
[00:40:01] Like I know this is probably varies from. Account to account, but in general, like are there two or three kind of structures to these relationships that you’re using in terms of incentives and compensation and the stuff that, you know, the financial stuff that people care about? Right. That’s important.
[00:40:15] Yeah.
[00:40:15] Taylor Lagace: [00:40:15] No great question. So the seating campaign, we’ll just go back to this example, the three-pronged approach, and you’ll have content creation, organic posting as the second tier, and then third tier we’re running the pay media. So, and seeding. We’re definitely onboarding a lot of these people onto after again.
[00:40:31] We started the relationship on giving. We follow up two weeks after they received the product who posted organically, who gave positive feedback, who became a brand advocate at that point, we’re onboarding all of those people onto affiliate, or we’re actually, we’re sending out an affiliate program to them, giving them some sort of commission fee, obviously on any given sale that they receive on the content that push on that of the brand at that point.
[00:40:53] So we’re going to try to onboard all of those brand advocates that we saw engaged. And so on that point, No upfront fee for those people, obviously, um, who knows how much, um, Well, nevermind. I won’t say that, but yeah, no upfront fee for those people, but again, on those five to 10 people that we’re sourcing on any given month for actual content, for them to deliver us to two to three videos for that brand to own and perpetuity so forever, and to use across all their distribution channels with full rights to the content.
[00:41:15] Yeah. At the end of the day, you need to pay up front fees for that. Cause if you think about it, these are full-stack content creators. Think about them as an in house studio, uh, person on one, if you’re going to get, you know, from five to 10 influencers, two to three videos each and the image, and then we did all those assets and, you know, different formats of like one by one, nine by six.
[00:41:36] And that’s like 50 assets until right. Even more than what would you pay for those, that amount of assets for a studio shoot.
[00:41:44] You know, a
[00:41:44] decent chunk of change. And so that’s what people need to start and, and that’s without the organic posting. So you’re going to use and own all of this content. But on your own channels.
[00:41:52] So how would you think about paying for that type of content, that amount of content through a studio shoe, and then on top of that, you get this organic distribution from people with clout or their audience. So when you pair those two together, yes. When it comes to those sort of deal structures, we always
[00:42:07] pay
[00:42:08] a firm fees and contract them, uh, to make sure that we do get full rights and ownership on behalf of the brand for that content.
[00:42:15] James Sowers: [00:42:15] Yeah, I think that’s a big source of the fear or the reservations around influencer marketing is like people who are trying to do it themselves. They’re reaching out to folks on Instagram, through DM or whatever that they like, and they’re saying, Hey, how much does it cost for product placement? Or like, what’s your rate for product placement?
[00:42:29] I’m like, that’s probably not the best way to start a relationship in general, but we’ve covered that already. But, but it feels like if I’m a brand owner, I can see them saying, well, the influencer has all the power, right. They have the audience, they have the reach, they control the account. Um, if I send them the product, like.
[00:42:44] They could put something up for an hour and take it down and I’m out of my money, right? Like all there’s, there’s no balance there and it doesn’t have to be that way. I understand that. But, um, the, the key thing that I’m hearing from you is like, whatever relationship you engage in, ensure that you get to the repurpose rights to all of that, right?
[00:42:58] Like you own the creative assets that come out of this relationship and you can repurpose those on your branded account, not just through the influencer. And that kind of helps to tip the scales back toward your favorite. Right. It makes it feel a little bit more. Equal in terms of like, who’s getting the mileage out of this
[00:43:14] Taylor Lagace: [00:43:14] and happy to share it.
[00:43:15] Like anybody in the audience, which is out to you after this, I’m happy to share for the contract that we use as well with influencers. So these five to 10 people that I’m saying that we can track them half of brands on a month to month basis, there was always a contract. It says full ownership of the content, full distribution rights, licensing rights, et cetera, but also says, Hey.
[00:43:31] No, you need to leave this up for more than 24 hours or whatever time. Like if there’s a, the feed posts all the way up to and perpetuity, it has to live there forever. You can never take it down. That can be in a contract. Uh, you can say that you can’t post about competing brands for the next six months or a year or next two weeks or a month, whatever it may be.
[00:43:48] Obviously
[00:43:49] these, um, Stipulations will increase certain costs, especially if it’s exclusivity, but they can all be included in the contract to eliminate these fears, worries, concerns, sort of contracts for at the end of the day. So happy to share that with anybody that may be interested in that, but
[00:44:07] yeah.
[00:44:07] So just make sure you contract them with the right language at the end of the day.
[00:44:12] James Sowers: [00:44:12] Yeah, that makes sense. I have just a couple more questions for you. And then if you have a few minutes, I got four or five questions from our audience. If you want to go through that. Um, but I don’t want to keep you too much longer than we agreed to, to sit tight.
[00:44:13] So, um, can you go maybe like 10 minutes.
[00:44:13] Taylor Lagace: [00:44:13] What’s that gonna break our contract?
[00:44:13] James Sowers: [00:44:13] Yeah. Good point. Um, let me think so. Yeah. So if somebody wants to kind of experiment with influencer marketing, learn it themselves before they bring someone like you on to help them out. And let’s say they want to get started in the next quarter or the next three to six months.
[00:44:24] And let’s take black Friday off the table because we’re sitting here at the end of September. It’s almost October, like that’s top of mind for everybody. Maybe not the best time to dabble in influencer marketing, but maybe it is, but let’s not let that influence your, your advice, right? Like, but let’s just say the next three to six months, I want to give this a fair shake.
[00:44:38] I want to run it myself first to kind of learn the ropes. And then once it gets to be too much for me, or once I prove the validity of it or whatever, I’ll bring in a tailor to help me out. And I’ll outsource that and I’ll contract with you to do it. How can somebody take that first step today? Like where should they start?
[00:44:51] I’m guessing it’s Facebook brands, manager find the right influencers, but then what comes after that? Right.
[00:44:55] Taylor Lagace: [00:44:55] I love it. Yeah, I know. And I love that question. The end of the day. That’s what our company is trying to do. We’re trying to educate as many people to take the right first step in influencer marketing.
[00:45:04] Again, you get so many people that say influencer market doesn’t work after they try it the wrong way. Um, the first time that they, they, you know, enter into those waters. So love the question. Uh, what I would do is exactly what you just said. Um, get on brand clouds manager that start identifying, um, You know, as many people as you possibly can, that you think would be great fits to send your product to.
[00:45:25] And obviously this is a different, no, uh, by brand and by how, uh, expensive is AOV and cost of it. So, you know, you take Kalo for example, silicone wedding ring, and that’s coming that we work with their costs to produce the product is 20 cents. You know, they can afford to send thousands of these out per month.
[00:45:44] Now with a high AOV products with Casa, you know, a hundred, 200, $300. You’re not, uh, something in the same position, but what I would say is, you know, allocate a certain budget based on the cost of your products, how much are you willing to give? Um, whatever you’re comfortable with. Just do as much as you can, and you’re willing to invest them.
[00:46:01] Right. Okay. That’s how many products are willing to give let’s go identify that amount of people on Brent clouds manager. Okay. And what you’re probably gonna find, uh, you want to probably identify two times that amount, maybe even three times, if you want to be really safe, um, and reaching out to these people.
[00:46:15] Cause not all of these people that you reach out to are gonna want product and get back to you and respond, et cetera. So just get to the amount of people that sends out that amount of product. From there again, that’s how I would start. Two weeks time after they receive the product gage, all the posts that took place, all of it, all of them, regardless if they, it or not, it would be became a brand advocate there.
[00:46:38] And at that point, yeah, I would, I would revisit conversations with these people. Maybe choose five of them in total. Get two videos from them to give you an actual practical step here, get two videos from them, an image, uh, story posts. Um, Yeah. And if you want to do any other posts, I would start there cause it’s going to keep it the most inexpensive.
[00:46:58] I do story placements are also the most effective, but it’s also like the most inexpensive. So I would also start there and you’re also going to get a great gauge, give them a UTM link. Um, so it’d be able to track the performance of it and your Google analytics. So give them a UTM link, boom, from there, out of the five or 10 or however many people you actually activate in that way.
[00:47:18] Gates who performed the best. And at that point, use two to three of the top performing people from that campaign, get more content from them. Get white listing ability, run that stuff in paid media. Boom, you got your first micro campaign and you’re off to the races.
[00:47:32] James Sowers: [00:47:32] Right. And then when you’re sick of doing it yourself and you want to get back to the rest of your business, the logistics, the accounting, yeah.
[00:47:38] Then, then you come call Taylor. Right. That’s how that works.
[00:47:41] Taylor Lagace: [00:47:41] Awesome. Yeah. That would be a great starting place for sure.
[00:47:44] James Sowers: [00:47:44] Yeah. That’s, that’s a great playbook to follow and I hope, uh, at least a few folks that are listening, go out there and run that because I think it’s worth their time and their investment.
[00:47:51] Um, when you’re doing that, this is the last question I have for you from the main body of the conversation, but it’s, um, when you’re doing that, do you have any favorite tools or resources or templates that you’re using to, to physically manage. This entire campaign, right? Like, so we talked about on the front end, you’re using the brands manager to find the influencers, but in the middle, like, are you,
[00:48:08] Taylor Lagace: [00:48:08] that’s the free tool?
[00:48:08] We actually use a different search engine with in-house internally. That’s the free tool. I would recommend people if they’re not looking to make an investment.
[00:48:08] James Sowers: [00:48:08] Sure. Okay. So then are you using any tools, like some things that come to mind for me, are, are you using a tool to manage the email outreach?
[00:48:12] Cause I know you can automate that. You can add, you can like build a sequence and then add a bunch of name, email addresses, and it’ll run on its own kind of, and then you can step into manually follow up. Are you just using Google sheets to track like likes and comments and stuff like that to measure engagement?
[00:48:24] Like. Um, and whatever your tech stack is that somebody might be interested in who’s listening. Like, what would you recommend as far as tools to manage this end to end process of finding influencers, identifying the ones that you want to work with, managing the posts or whatever. And then even if they agree that you want to get into how you physically like actually compensate them and send them money, or where you host the contracts, like whatever you want to share in terms of your tech stack and your tooling.
[00:48:45] Uh, I’d love to,
[00:48:47] Taylor Lagace: [00:48:47] yeah. I’ll give you the full thing. Um, so we use, uh, S so right off the jump for identification, we use a platform called tagger, um, That’s just a more expensive investment for a robust search engine and Facebook and brands, class manager, it’s just new, they’re in the beta version of this.
[00:49:02] It’s just free. Right? So that’s why I’m recommending. If you’re not looking to make some sort of robust investment, we typically take that cost off of the plate of the brand and absorb it ourselves. So, but for free that’s where I would start to identify these people. So from there, uh, we use, uh GMass and that’s just, uh, For email mass outreach in that automated system of, you know, seeing who would want to be on board.
[00:49:26] But I also definitely DM all these people on Instagram when to reach out. So it’s paired with the, I mean, that’s not, you can obviously copy and paste, but that’s not like automated. There’s not an automated tool for that per se. Um, from there for contracting purposes, we use RightSignature for payment purposes purposes to onboard them as independent contractors.
[00:49:44] We use Gusto, um, for. Let’s see, what else are we using here?
[00:49:49] James Sowers: [00:49:49] What about like, uh, performance tracking? So obviously the platforms will have their own ad tracking, like Facebook ads manager and stuff like that. But
[00:49:56] Taylor Lagace: [00:49:56] so when we see it, all these people, so a really cool platform that again, if you’re going to do Instagram stories is a.
[00:50:02] It’s called my ID scout. Um, and so basically my new scout is a platform that enables the brand to see. And again, because we’re not asking for anything and we send these products out, but we want to gauge who’s posting organically. And so if you put all the list of people within mighty scout, who you seeded, basically, it’s going to pull anybody that posts about.
[00:50:22] Given brand and all these, all these people influencers, well, typically tag the brand. If they talk about a product, um, if not always, unless it’s the super like low key organically within their story. If they’re like intentionally speaking about the product that they’re going to tag your brand. So basically whether it’s on Instagram story or an IgE feed post this mighty scout pull in.
[00:50:44] All the content that was posted on the app, your brand within the window that you place, if you put all those people that you seeded within it. And so it’s an incredibly valuable tool and you get to see the immediate value of it. You get to see the amount of impressions, engagements, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:50:59] And it’s a pretty inexpensive to what that, so that obviously, um, Allow it frees up the time of like manually going into every single of these people’s profiles and seeing did they post, did they not? Oh my gosh. Did they post an ID story even though it’s down after 24 hours and you missed it? Dang. And you get to see the level of, you know, all the data that you’d want to see.
[00:51:18] Um, so that’s an incredibly valuable tool that we definitely, uh, are seen to be a value and what we recommend. Um, and then for affiliate, we onboard them onto refers them. Um, that’s the best tool that we’ve seen for affiliate and that’s obviously on the organic side. It tracks anything you’d want to see, um, and it automates payments as well within that you can prepay influence your landing pages on there.
[00:51:41] It makes it incredibly, uh, seamless to communicate with influencers that onboarded on your affiliate program, give them content to post that you’d want to see posted it, to see what kind of revenue they’re driving, uh, link clicks time on the website that the driving, anything that you wants. The analytics wise on the organic side, Refersion is a great tool to leverage.
[00:51:58] And then on the backend through paid media, Obviously through your paid channels, you’re able to see Facebook dashboard is probably one of the most robust dashboards that exists, um, for the amount of data that it’s able to showcase to you.
[00:52:08] So
[00:52:08] those are all the tools that we are seen as have the most value to see what kind of return you’re getting our ROI and you’re influencing our investments.
[00:52:17]Yeah,
[00:52:17] James Sowers: [00:52:17] that’s awesome. Take that. Pair that with the playbook you went through before and people have a step-by-step, they got the recipe for launching influencer marketing in the next quarter. So thanks. Thanks so much for sharing all that in so much detail. And of course we’ll link all those things up in the show notes.
[00:52:28] I don’t expect anybody to pull over on the side of the road and type in Refersion on their phones so that they can bookmark it for later or anything like that. Um, yeah, so maybe I’ll get into a few listener questions. Okay. And, uh, just a couple here and then we’ll, uh, wrap up by letting folks know where they can learn more about you and more about kinship.
[00:52:43] So, um, the first one comes from David and David wants to know, um, The difference between, or is there a, an incentive to using your creative assets and providing it to the influencer or asking them to create their own? Now, from what I’ve heard from you say today during this conversation, you pretty much rely on finding the right influencers who are already content creators to produce their own material, uh, promoting your product or your service or whatever you’re going for.
[00:53:06] Um, but I do think it’s kind of interesting to say, like, Hey, do you, do you create your own assets in house? Like maybe you’re already doing a product shoot or whatever, and you distribute that out to your influencers and say, Hey, here’s some raw material for you to work off of. Feel free to use this in a future post.
[00:53:19] Like, um, there are two aspects of that. I think one, do you prefer one over the other? And two, if you do decide to produce your own material and distributed out, is that something that a tool like Refersion would handle? Like, just send this to all my influencers at once, right? Like the zip file or whatever, with all these photos and videos, like just send it to them.
[00:53:35] So they have the stuff to work off of.
[00:53:38] Taylor Lagace: [00:53:38] You would be able to refer them, uh, just answer correct the junk. But my answer to that question is always have the, again, the main value out of influencers is their content creation ability. So you want to leverage them as the creators of the content instead of you giving them some sort of content that you created internally to give to them as it is.
[00:53:54] Cause then at that point you’re valuing their them as distribution channels, right. And the main value added. Yes, the distribution channel is, is kind of the cherry on top, but the main value is their ability to create content on behalf of your brand with your product or service or whatever it may be. Um, so I would say 100% all the time, get them to create the content.
[00:54:12]Um, on behalf of your brand and leverage that into the distribution channel, but I would always do it that way instead of you create a content and giving it to them. Okay,
[00:54:20] James Sowers: [00:54:20] awesome. That’s very insightful. Um, so the next question here comes from Sean and Sean said my definite definition of an influencer equals an affiliate that refuses to be paid on a performance basis.
[00:54:31] Now, even if we remove, uh, I’ll call it the snark from that, right. There is an interesting point in there in terms of like, um, Why would an influencer? So I think what Shawn’s probably thinking, I’m not going to put words into his mouth, but this is my interpretation is that typically people think of an influencer as somebody who gets paid upfront to do a certain amount of posts or create a certain amount of assets, get that out to the audience, leave it out there for a certain amount of time and, um, basically drive.
[00:54:57] Eyeballs and theoretically sales from that versus an affiliate who is out there producing content and inserts, a dedicated link or a discount code or whatever in their material, whether that’s a video or a blog article. And everybody that buys through that link, the affiliate gets a commission return.
[00:55:13] So it is kind of pay for performance there, whereas. The truth. I can think what the misconception is that you pay an influencer upfront and they get the money no matter what. Right. So I think that’s where Sean’s getting it. And that is an interesting question of why, um, one versus the other, but based on what you’ve told me today, it doesn’t sound like it’s always pay upfront and hope for the best, right?
[00:55:30] Like there is an Avenue where. You see the product, um, maybe have an engagement where there is some compensation up front for a certain amount of assets, but then you get them onto like an affiliate program where they end up earning a commission and it becomes more of a long-term relationship. Um, but I’ll, I’ll let you share your own perspective on that.
[00:55:46] Yeah,
[00:55:47] Taylor Lagace: [00:55:47] no, I thought that was, I thought that was a really clever definition. There’s so many different terminologies and now people, you know, coin influenced and affiliates and content creators. Some people would say influenced with their dads or content creators, and then just kind of wasn’t pair with, you know, these people and the value that they bring is their content.
[00:56:02] But to speak to your question directly, Yeah. I mean, I, I visualize them one of the same. I think again, that definition is clever, but what I would say is a lot of time, it’s both, you know, like, like if you take the strategy that we’ve been identified, right? Your idea, you start on giving, asking onboard people into affiliates, but then we’re tapping on certain people to create content and basically to.
[00:56:25] To speak to his definition of it. The difference between the two is right. Affiliates are people that are pushing content, spreading the net really wide. Right. And you’re kind of, kind of like making money while you sleep. And you’re not as intentional with all of it. Yeah. And you can send them all the bits and pieces of content.
[00:56:41] Like you said, through Refersion of stuff, you want them to post or like, Hey, this is the campaign we’re running. Like. If you can post about it. Awesome. It’s very like hope for the best. And it’s like a game of numbers. Right. And that’s kind of how affiliate is. And then out of all the people that you send us to, okay.
[00:56:57] If we can just get 10% of the people who post, we can expect this type of return, these types of results, that’s kind of how affiliate would work, where contracting them to actually give them a front payment. You can be much more intentional on what you’re getting back. And so there’s much more of a process like, Hey, You get, you know, you get approval on the content that they’re producing on.
[00:57:17] You’re not really getting that with affiliate, like affiliates, not gonna S and you’re not gonna be able to handle that labor, the amount of affiliates that you have on your program to give two rounds of approval and the content that they’re going to post on behalf of you organically. That’d be absurd amount of work or, Hey, if you actually give an upfront fee to people for five to 10, you can be much more intentional with the creative briefs that you give them much more intentional with, you know, the type of content they’re giving to you to get approval on it.
[00:57:42] Okay. What’s the messaging of this. So. That’s where I see a big difference in the two, but at the end of the day, they were kind of one of the same to me. There’s things that these people will do as affiliates for free of cost. And then when you contract them and you want to contract them, so you have ownership over the content.
[00:57:59] So they have it up on their feed for a certain amount of time. So there is exclusivity, there is approvals on the content they’re giving you. There is a creative brief that creates intentional content that you guys are looking for a need. And so through that sort of upfront payment and contract. You can ensure that quality where affiliates again is kind of like, Hey, this is a numbers game.
[00:58:18] We’re going to mass send this out, try to get as many posts. We can try to get as much organic traction and hope we get a lot of ROI because there’s no upfront fee for you guys to do it. And I would a hundred percent build it out as much as you can on a month to month basis. I’m a big proponent of it, but I’m also a proponent in intentional creation with influencers and then tails it from fees.
[00:58:36] James Sowers: [00:58:36] Yeah, I think you laid that out beautifully. And this actually, it made me chuckle a little bit, and I’ve seen this several times over the last few weeks. It’s like, it’s funny because theoretically, somebody who launches an e-commerce company, like they’re an entrepreneur and they took on some level of risk to get this thing off the ground.
[00:58:50] But then when it comes to something like influencer marketing, they want a guaranteed ROI right away. They don’t want to risk anything. Right? Like they’re super risk averse. And maybe it’s because they took on that risk to get to where they’re at. And so they don’t want to lose everything they built, but it just, it always surprises me.
[00:59:02] Facebook ads, influencer marketing, content creation, like whatever the case may be. A lot of entrepreneurs I think are hesitant to invest upfront in kind of a blind faith, you know, uh, jump leap of faith, I guess, is what I’m looking for there in terms of like, I’m confident that we’ll be okay if we lose all of this, but I think we’ll get at least some of it back, right?
[00:59:19] Like it’s not going to go to zero. And so it’s just funny when I see. A mentality that is so risk averse from people who have gone out of their way to start something from scratch to do something that is inherently risky. Right. Um, so yeah, I
[00:59:30] Taylor Lagace: [00:59:30] think you’d like to not be fearful. And I get it at the same time.
[00:59:31] I mean, influencer is such a jaded space for many, and you hear, you know, and we’re in such an oversaturated market of all the gurus quote unquote of the world. Um, and then being kind of let down once they actually buy in to what’s being sold to them. And so I don’t think there’s a marketplace that is kind of known for that any more than influencer.
[00:59:50] So I, I get the hesitations, I understand them. Um, but that’s why we’re here to do things like this, where we can give people the tools to win and get their first single and get off to a great start. So that’s my notes.
[01:00:03] James Sowers: [01:00:03] Awesome. I think you’ve done a great job with that. I have one final listener question for you.
[01:00:06] This comes from Deb and his question is, you know, basically around budget, like what is the cost to execute a campaign like this? And maybe the way that I would phrase that is like, um, how much should a company be willing to invest to. Reasonably test out influencer marketing and know whether or not it’s a good fit for them right now.
[01:00:24] Right. So like beyond just the cost of the products to seed or the influencer fees or the tools, like if you just had to put, um, maybe a range on, like, you should have a budget of 10 to 25,000 to come work with kinship. And is that per month or per quarter or per campaign or whatever, like, do you have some kind of rough ballpark figure where it’s like, if you’re willing to.
[01:00:45] Risk this much financially to give it a shake that I think you’re ready. If not, then keep your head down, build your business through other channels. And when you get to this point, um, think about influencer marketing again.
[01:00:56]Taylor Lagace: [01:00:56] Yeah,
[01:00:56] no. Yeah. I mean to give you how we see.
[01:00:58] So
[01:00:59] for that, that like five and five content creators, we typically, so just give you our budget.
[01:01:06] And obviously our budget is something that entailed our costs, but it’s like 10 K to work with find influencers to get. You know, two to three videos, one image, uh, I G story and then like a creative edit on top of that, like that mash what we were talking about. So it’s like six deliverables and then all provided in one by one nine by 16.
[01:01:26] So again, you’re going into 50 plus assets as a total delivery again, I would think about that. What are you paying for a studio shoot to get that type of content and this content from what we’ve seen and what led to this? When I was at common thread, influencer content outperforms, a lot of the ad account library already.
[01:01:42] So it’s a, it’s a high performing asset. What would you be willing to pay in comparison? And this doesn’t take into account the organic distribution at all either. So we cost 10 K there. And so, I mean, if you take into consideration our costs, I mean, it’s going to be obviously cheaper than that without giving you like our actual margins, but right.
[01:02:01] Figure it out. But again, if you start by seating and which we typically do with our clients, you can typically get lower price points. And so where that might cost 10 K if you started the relationship right away on casting, it might just be 10 K right there, but we all always get it lower than that. And our ability to start relationships on the right foot on the right note.
[01:02:21] Getting not asking you find that cost and that price point go down. And then on seat in front, our price Motivity is just $20 per head of identifying and reaching out and communicating. And then from there onboarding them onto, um, you know, people that receive product and then onboarding them onto our slave program.
[01:02:37] Come brand advocates typically do a minimum there of some sort based on the AOB of the product. If it’s like a high AOV product, obviously it’s any less, it’s more to be around 300 people events. So that’s kinda how we do it. And then on paid media, typical market rates of like 20% based on spend that percent time, et cetera.
[01:02:57] But for people that are just looking to start again, I would just start with the seating that comes down to your cost of your product, and then onboarding them onto an affiliate program. And if you can just. Start with three people, one person, I would just budget like a thousand bucks tops per influencer that you’re working with.
[01:03:13] Um, if you want to get like one video or two videos and then an IgE story posts, like it probably won’t even cost that much, but if you want to go in with a conservative budget that’s whatever. Okay.
[01:03:23] James Sowers: [01:03:23] So what I’m hearing in that maybe is, um, Consider this a long-term experiment, right? Like something you’re frequently trying to start with small numbers, start with one person.
[01:03:33] Then if that goes well at a second person, but if you start with one person and a small budget and it doesn’t go, well, try not to write off influencer marketing at large, because some of the numbers I’m hearing you throw out is like, we go find you 300 potential influencers and we see the product there.
[01:03:47] And then we look at how those are performing and we choose 10 to whittle down from there. And then from that, we get. Five. And those are the people we work with long-term and have really rich relationships with. So like, if we’re talking about numbers like that for doing it reliably in an agency format, like if you’re not doing that, don’t expect to see outstanding results.
[01:04:04] Like maybe you will hit a home run, like the Courtney Kardashians story with defy where like, maybe you will. Right. Um, but maybe you won’t end up and don’t be disheartened, like keep trying, keep iterating, keep experimenting with like creative assets and the types of influencers you work with. And maybe.
[01:04:18] The incentive packages or whatever, but like keep dabbling and just make this part of your standard operating cadence, because eventually you’re going to get to a scale. Are you going to find that right? Combination of budget, creative and influencer, or the person you’re working with and it’s going to show some positive results.
[01:04:32] At least that would be my interpretation. So, um, I don’t know if, would you say that’s fair, like for somebody who’s going to DIY it for now?
[01:04:38] Taylor Lagace: [01:04:38] It’s incredibly fair. I mean, it’s like for the people that understand like Facebook ads or IgE ads, if you just want like one static image on behalf of your brand, and that’s the one ad that you’re running, you don’t find success.
[01:04:49] Are you just going to throw it all away and say Facebook ads doesn’t work? I don’t know. The name of the game is great performance and a diverse set of ad account library and the same line of thought, like. You need to spread the net wide on influencers. See what kind of content works on behalf of your brand pair of influencers.
[01:05:04] See what type of personas paired up with your brand with influencer works the best, what type of audiences targeting that you’re going after with the influencers that they, what type of followers they have all of this together. You’re trying to spread the night wide as wide as possible to figure out what works in the app, your brand.
[01:05:18] And once you find those right. You narrow it down from 300 to 10 to five to three, those would become brand ambassadors. And long-term partners of your brand that create consistent content for you and post on a month to month basis. You’re going to try to find people that have high affinity with those people.
[01:05:31] And there’s ways to do that as well. Like on brands, plasma, and you type in the person, give me spit out, you know, the a hundred most similar people. That’s something that you can a hundred percent to you. And so once you do that, you just rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. You’re building out that affiliate program and you’re, you’re slowly filtering through and identifying those brand ambassadors that are gonna be your flag there of your brand.
[01:05:50] James Sowers: [01:05:50] All right. Folks, Taylor gave you the playbook for how to do it. Step-by-step he gave you the tool stack. He gave you the budget recommendations and he’s doing more of this on Twitter. He’s at Taylor. Lagacy got that right? I think nailed it. Twitter. He’s doing these massive threads. I’ve seen a few of them over the last few weeks and they’re getting a lot of engagement, so I love them.
[01:06:08] Um, so besides following your own Twitter Taylor, like where can folks go to learn more about you get more of these insights in their inbox or in their social media feed? Like how can folks stay in touch after we say goodbye today?
[01:06:19] Taylor Lagace: [01:06:19] Yeah, Twitter would be the best place, um, or just go to our website, kinship.com.
[01:06:23] That’s K Y N S H I p.co not.com. And then I’m also on LinkedIn, just Taylor Lagacy. Um, but Twitter would probably be the most bang for your buck there. That’s where I’m definitely posting, you know, every three days or so, a pretty long thread on different strategies and approaches to get your influencer program off the ground.
[01:06:42] Yeah, I’m
[01:06:42] James Sowers: [01:06:42] a follower. I’m loving it. And, uh, I remember it, Taylor saying, if you reach out to him and ask for some of those contract templates, I think he said he’d provide those. So I definitely take him up on that if you want to, if you want to give this a try and get the template. So, um, Taylor, thanks so much for coming on the show today.
[01:06:54] I learned so much I’m, I’m kind of a novice when it comes to influencer marketing and I feel like I’m intermediate now, right? Like I’m not an expert. I’ve got to get in there and actually do the work, but, um, I just leveled up today and that’s all thanks to you. So thanks so much for coming on the show and, uh, hopefully we’ll have you back for another round a little bit later on this year, early next year.
[01:07:10] Taylor Lagace: [01:07:10] Appreciate you, James. Thanks for having me. It was a great task.
About the Author
James Sowers
James Sowers is the former Director of The Good Ventures. He has more than a decade of experience helping software and ecommerce companies accelerate their growth and improve their customer experience.