Name: How to Win Mindshare with Influencer Campaigns
Uploaded: 2026-02-26T19:16:12.276Z
Duration: 58 min
Description: How to Win Mindshare with Influencer Campaigns

Transcript for "How to Win Mindshare with Influencer Campaigns": Hi, everyone. Happy Thursday. We're almost there. At my last flight place, we like to call this Little Friday. So welcome to Little Friday. If you are looking to join how to win mindshare with influencer campaigns, you are in the right place. I also wanna say thank you to our promotional partner, Marketing Profs, for, helping us get the word out about this webinar. that, Today's webinar, we will be covering creative campaign ideas that get influencers excited and their audiences engaged. In my pre pre check call, kickoff call, if you will, with my speaker, I think one word we kinda keep one phrase we keep saying is people are just moving differently these days. And so we're gonna talk through how you can move differently if you're thinking about dabbling in influencer marketing. We'll do real campaign breakdowns, talk through some of their results from a high level, and then how to use video video to amplify reach and build lasting mind share across the funnel. Let me I don't I probably should've introduced myself. If you are new to this webinar, I am Cindy Dubon, the director of growth marketing. We run this webinar series monthly. So welcome back for those of you who joined us in January. At this point, I'm gonna welcome my other speaker to the stage, Vin Matano, if you wanna join me. I'm gonna stop sharing this slide for a second. Hey. Hi. Hi, Vin Matano. Thank you so much for joining us. Where where. are you coming from me. once again? Yes. Once again, Thank excited to chat again. you. Your Jersey in Jersey, if I saw that in the chat correctly. I am in Jersey. Anyone in Jersey, feel free to drop in the comments, but I'm right outside of, like, Manhattan, so not too far from New York City. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you for running us back with me. We have this we'll call it part one, and, officially, part one of this, and I'm so excited to get through part two before we really dive in. Give us a little spiel about what you do, what you're up to, what we may know you as outside of this webinar with Goldcast Events. Yeah. I, I run a b to b influencer marketing agency. So all the work that we do is primarily with b to b SaaS companies, sourcing creators, coming up with campaigns, and managing the campaigns. I'm also a creator myself. I got over a 100 k or so followers across all of the the three main channels, and I create content mostly about my founder journey, marketing trends. And I get to work with some really cool brands, so I kinda have both perspectives of the creator as well as the brand. And then prior to that, spent I the last six years at a company called Demandbase, which was in the b to b marketing space. Seems like a lifetime ago, you're probably at demand base. It feel it it does feel that way, but it wasn't that long ago. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. We're gonna do a quick quick fire, if you will, with Vin Matano. I'm gonna bring up a question. And while we do that, I would love to ask the crowd just to frame this conversation because I know you all are here to learn about, influencer campaigns. What questions can we answer for you? And we'll use that to kinda frame as we go throughout the content. But please drop your questions into the chat. And while you do that, then I'm curious. What campaigns have caught your eye very recently? And I might just anchor that and say, in the spirit of being February, were there any Super Bowl ads that caught your eye, any Valentine's campaign, or any other types of campaigns that have caught your eye recently? So, luckily, for for everyone here, we have a lot of examples to go through, so I will save those particular ones, for that. I think Super Bowl is really interesting. It was, there was almost a 100% increase in b to b Super Bowl ads compared to last year, which is really interesting. I made a whole video about, like, breaking down my favorite ones. It was really interesting. Salesforce partnered with MrBeast. I didn't, like, love the commercial. However, it's, like, a really good signal for our industry. Major b to b brand Salesforce, probably one of, like, the most well known b to b brands right now, working with one of the top creators in the space. Commercial was just, but that's a huge signal for us. There's another really great one, that ramped it, which I'm sure we'll talk about in just a bit. And so, yeah, those are some things I'm keeping an eye on. I would say not quite the ad that caught my eye. I'm, like, trying to take a break right now. I feel like every year, up until this year when I won Super Bowl, it's like, you can't get out of the marketer where you're like, let me break this down. What result were they trying to get to? But I. saw Bosch's. ad kinda going around, like, Guy Fiery. I did see that. was pictures. Yeah. I saw that those pictures, like, on Instagram before the ad, and then it was funny because then I saw the ad, and that made a ton of sense. Another different thing for me is seeing George Clooney. I think he did Grubhub. Grubhub, a lot of, like, food delivery ads, but it's interesting not seeing George Coloney do, like, Nespresso. I just associate him with Nespresso so closely or the tequila brand. Yeah. And now was gonna say okay. like I think it. cost me a goes. Casa Migos. Right. And so now, like, to see him on Grubhub, I'm like, where's the Casa Migos or the Nespresso? Like, where's Danny? Is it Danny? I think Danny DeVito does Nespresso with him. I'm like, where is the machine in the pods? Last. year, they last year, Yeah. they said it was, like, the crypto bull. It was, every commercial was crypto. This year, every commercial seemed like it was AI. So that that It to be the trend. That vodka one with the AI bots shaking the vodka where I was like, Yeah. And the Spectre. I mean, just ugh, shudder to think about vodka. Anyways, let's keep this moving. I we have a few questions, Ben, already ramping the chat. I'm gonna just quickly rattle through a couple couple of them. How are you defining influencer marketing? How are we sourcing creators? Influencers and sociopolitical campaigns, best metrics. So not to say you gotta answer them all, and I don't and we'll definitely tackle some of these during q and a. But rest assured, if we don't get to your answer, we will get you an answer from the expert himself even after this event. With that said, I believe we've just opened our first poll. So if you wanna navigate to the polls tab, it'll be right next to messages before docs and q and a. You can partake in our poll. As a reminder, this is one of the ways in which you can qualify to win one of those fun giveaways. While you take participate in that poll, I'm actually gonna have Vin kick us off with some plays you should steal. Yeah. So, Cindy mentioned that we actually did this webinar, sometime last year. I don't even remember when it was, but it I felt like, that conversation was more so around, like, how to get started, you know, where to look for creators. And I think a lot of b to b companies are still in that, stage where they are getting started with influencer marketing. However, this time around, I want to share some examples of campaigns that either we worked on or ones that I just admire from the industry. And so this might be, like, a stage two of, like, maybe you've tested the waters out and you wanna start thinking more creatively about how to use creators. I when people think of influencer marketing, they just think about, like, oh, I have to pay somebody this, you know, a few $100 or a thousand bucks for a post, and they post about us, and that's it. That's not it. Then those are probably the, the ones where where you would start, but here are some ways throughout you can kind of, uplift some of the influencer efforts that you're doing. So I think, gifting is really interesting, as an influencer motion, specifically in the b to b space. One of the things that we try to do at Creatorbuzz, which is the agency that I run, is we like to see what's happening in the consumer space and find a way to apply that in b to b. So when you think about a gifting campaign in the consumer space, you know, oftentimes, you're sending creators, I don't know, products, whatever, makeup products, hair products, fashion products, something they can actually use. Well, it's really challenging in the b to b space if you're selling SaaS because it's not like you can actually gift them something physical. And oftentimes, I've seen gifting campaigns fall flat when you're just kind of sending some merch. I've gotten a lot of merch sent to me. I go to a lot of conferences. I get a lot of merch. I wind up throwing it out most most times. And so we did something really cool here with Apollo. I was a former seller for six years. Q four was, like, the most stressful time of year. Anyone in go to market can probably relate to that. It's like, you have to get everything at the end of the year. You're, like, super stressed. You're working more. It's really stressful. And so what we did, instead of, like, doing a big promo for Apollo, we basically curated this, like, q four recovery kit. These are stuff that we sourced and sent to all well, we sent these to, like, 50 creators, and we also included a annual membership to come just to basically, I don't know, strengthen the the trust within, like, the sales community. It's a really great way to, like, increase awareness while also, like, providing value to a certain community that you service. So this was a really fun one to be a part of, and is a really great idea to help promote your brand in a in a way that doesn't feel, like, inauthentic. And what I'll add because we actually do a fair amount of gifting here. We've done two, like, themed boxes. We try to ladder our or we try to connect our, like, gifting program with some type of event. So for. us, we actually have a quarterly, like, virtual event. And for the past two, we've done some type of themed box. So maybe you guys may have seen us do AI marketing school. We sent a back to school kit to folks, which was really well well received. And then we also did a really fun marketers got talent, which was a competition live, much like the show. We sent out boxes in that theme. And so I think what I'll just say from my experience with direct mail and gifting, one is it doesn't have to be big. I think people confuse the fact that, like, you have to send a giant box for us to be massive. But then two, it it sounds like really cliche to say, but, like, it depends on the goal. Right? So I think if you wanna create a big splash for your brand, this is where direct mail gifting plus the influencer extended reach really makes sense for me. Yep. But then at the same time, like, if you got pipeline to drive, like, it's really not really stacking the deck in your favor when you're like, we're gonna have influencers promote this box, and suddenly, we're gonna have all these opportunities come in for it. You know? I don't. know if you have any anything else to add on that, Vin, but, like, that's been my experience here at Goldcast with with doing direct mail and gifting and trying to tie it in with influencers. Yeah. This is very top of funnel. Like, we're we didn't even we're not driving anyone to a link or anything like that. This is purely a brand play. And then the other thing I'll add to that is, like, don't assume creators or influencers are gonna post just because you sent them something. Most times, they're not going to. As a creator myself, I make a lot of content about, like, tech and business. And so whenever I get stuff sent to me, it's it's not usually, like, the most cool thing. Sometimes, brands look like I'm getting, had a hoodie sent to me, this this week, actually. And, yeah, I'm not just gonna post that. I don't know what else what I would post about that. You know what I mean? So I think, pairing that with some sort of budget to actually pay creators to, one, that are receiving the gift to actually post the gift and create content around that gift is where your dollars will go the furthest. And then you can also, like you said, set aside a certain amount of boxes to send to folks that you're not willing you're not looking to pay, maybe some partners, customers, ICPs, stuff like that. And that's the way we did it with with Apollo. It you know what people forget? It's like with swag, this is why I always am in favor of sending out quality swag versus just, like, swag for the sake of swag. You forget that people will wear your hat when they're walking their dog, and maybe they're streaming. Right? And so I definitely think there's this, like, small window of the fact that your stuff might get the air time you want, but maybe just not in the way you would like to prescribe. Right? So it's like, it's not they got a box and, like, we'll go this brand new out of box, but it's, like, suddenly on every webcam or webinar that they're on, right, like, your hat is there. Yeah. You also wanna. include something that, like, you actually use and that kinda feels cool as well. Like, swag shouldn't be the main thing you're sending. It should be, like, a secondary thing you're sending. So for this box, the main thing that we sent that was, like, the most in value was the comm membership, an annual comm membership. We did another campaign with a company called Slate, and sell to social media marketing managers. And so, like, that role requires you to be on your phone a ton. So we sent everyone these bricks. I don't know if anyone's familiar with these. I am a customer and love it. It basically locks your phone and helps you, like, reduce your screen time. So we sent everyone this this, brick, and then we the box was titled, like, you know, do not disturb kit or something along those lines, and that was, like, the key point of the box. Awesome. One question I'm a have you take right now then just because it's gonna frame. our next one is someone wants to know, like, how are we defining influencer? Is it number of followers? Do they create content for you? So just blanket. How are we defining influencers? Influencers are anyone that is respectable in your certain niche. In the consumer space, when you take a traditional influencer marketing, you know, you you might think of someone that's maybe that lifestyle creator and shares about their life. Right? That's, like, the the traditional sense. Maybe you're thinking of, like, Alex Earl, for example. In the b two b sense, it's it's quite different. It's also a lot more, it's a lot more niche. And so if we're thinking about an influencer in the b two b space, like, take Goldcast Events, for example, they sell to b two b marketers, we might work with someone at follower count alone. Like, I we really don't even look at follower count. But let's just say they have 10,000 followers, which is really not that much in the grand scheme of the influencer space. Well, that person with 10,000 followers still might be very influential. They might be the exact person that would use Goldcast Events. Like, we're not gonna work with Alex Earl, for example, because her audience is probably is definitely not relevant. And so influencer in the b to b space is someone that, like, speaks to your audience and your customers, and they could look and talk in many different formats. They could create video. They could do carousels. They could do text posts. They can run newsletter, podcasts. Like, it could live in many different ways. Thank you. I'm gonna keep us moving. Let's go on to the next story around influencer stunt. I don't know why I put this all on one slide because there's, like, a lot to unpack here, so I I apologize for that. But so Ramp is a big fintech company. They do, like, corporate expenses and things like that. They did this stunt months months ago where they hired Kevin from the office or Brian, as, like, their CFO. He was the accountant in the office, the show, and so they made him their their, like, finance guy internally as a stunt. They basically put him in this big box in a glass box in Times Square, and he had to, like, process these expense reports manually. That was the first activation they did. So they did, like, a follow-up to that stunt for the Super Bowl. And so they had this ID this campaign called, like, multiply what's possible, which is what their team had come up with. And they basically made, like, a thousand version of Brian's in this commercial. And they're saying, Ramp makes you so productive that you have it's like having a thousand version of yourselves. And so what they did to, like, mix their Super Bowl stunt, which is, like, very digital. It's it's aired on TV. With a physical element is they hosted this tailgate called Brian's party. This is what their team came up with. And they hosted this lookalike contest, which is like if you're, like, deep into Internet culture, these lookalike contests are, like, quite popular now for some reason. I don't know why. They had, like, a Timothee Chalamet lookalike contest. They had, like, a Bad Bunny lookalike contest in New York. And in these, like, major cities, like, they host these lookalike contests. Very niche Internet culture. I don't know even know how they started. But regardless, they hosted this tailgate where they had a lookalike contest. So people came in suits and bald caps, and it was super unhinged, but they had, like, thousands of people show up. And not only did they do that, but they actually activated with a lot of creators there as well. So, they we sent about, like, three creators to this event or four, if if you include myself, to this event to capture content from just capturing content like vlog style, which is what I did. We had some, like, corporate humor creators capture content there and create some, like, really funny skits. And then in the middle here, if anyone is familiar with, the career ladder, it's a social show where you get up on the ladder and he tries to guess your career in under, like, two minutes or whatever the time is. And so we had Brian up on the ladder, and Max from career ladders had to guess Brian's career, his new career, which is, like, working at Ramp now. And, so yeah. And it between these four creators, generated, like, 6,000,000 views, and that was just, like, extra amplification for their stunt, which then supported their Super Bowl commercial. So there's, like, a lot of webs to this, and I think, like, you have, like, one core campaign, and then you have all this distribution that's surrounding it. It's funny. I saw someone, Hannah, in the chat said, I was so confused. His name is Brian. I know him only as Kevin. I was guilty of that as well. I was literally referring to him as Kevin to a bunch of people, and I happened to be able to talk to the ramp team just to give them kudos on this. They were like, we so we call him Brian because that's that's his team. I said, oh, okay. Yes. That makes a ton of sense. One thing I'll share just from, like so Ramp is a customer of ours, so I was privy to being able to talk to them a little bit about this is that this, for sure, was tied to growth marketing initiative for them. Their experiential marketing team sits in growth marketing. And so I think, like, from what I recall at a high level, they're definitely tracking this on a brand standpoint. There's they have a ton of stuff where they're tracking, like, brand mentions. I think there's tools that they use. But the other part of this is that, directionally, they're tracking traffic to their website as a result of these, like, brand takeovers, big brand splashes. And so they were able to share with me that they did see spikes to their web pages. They saw an uptick in, like, demo requests, MQLs coming in, and they attributed it in large part to this, you know, this this influencer stunt as we're calling it here. And a lot of it you know, it it's a little bit of, like, timing worked out for them. I think she also said that, they didn't have a ton of stuff going on at that time, so it was much cleaner to track. And that sometimes the smaller, you know, stunts are not as easy to track. But for this one, I think this was a really, really productive and successful campaign for them. I know I've been seeing vary variations of ramps, influencer efforts, or activations in my feed, like, what feels like for months. So I actually haven't even caught up fully on, like, their Super Bowl stuff because I still remember Kevin showing up in a box in Times Square, I believe, just, like, with a ton of receipts everywhere. Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. And they they the thing they did that was, like, really interesting about this was, if you're thinking about doing event, a marketing event and I was actually just talking to another, actually, a security company about this. They're looking to do, a cafe at one of their industry events. Like, that's been done before. Anytime you go to a conference, usually, someone has a little coffee booth set up or some sort of cafe. Of the things that we did here with, Ramp was we hired a creator who actually makes coffee. So the coffee that was that was served at this event, Ramp, of course, paid for because it was, a vendor, but that vendor was a creator. So he actually created content at that event. And and I noticed every one of their vendors or, like, entertainers had all had an audience online. So, like, the band that they had play at this tailgate before the thing kicked off was the guy one guy was a creator. The DJ they had afterwards was a creator. They had since the company's called Ramp, they had a skate ramp. All the skaters, I wound up seeing their videos afterwards. They all have followers. They all create content. So I challenge you guys to think, like, if you are doing any sort of events, like, can we have can we integrate creators? Like, if we need a photographer, can we find a photographer that has a following and work in an agreement where they are producing content for you guys for extra distribution? Like, if you need a singer, like, is there a singer that you follow online that's, I don't know, super niche to New York City, but they sing and they create content? Like, these are all things to think of to help with get getting extra distribution. Do you find, Ben, that, like, when you have, you know, a a talent of a high following or reach or whatnot that, like, other influencers tend to be more willing to participate in that campaign, like, is there a correlation there for you? Like, I imagine really. with Brian slash Kevin, right, like, a lot more willingness because he, to me, at least, for, like, a certain demographic, is very well known. Right? And so it's a little bit like a mutual beneficial between both brands, Kevin, as well as the the other influencers. A 100%. It's it's it's really, like, one of those things where it's, like, the better your brand awareness is, like, the better everything else is. Like, creators are more willing to work with a cool brand like Ramp, especially with, like, the stunt going on. They wanna be involved in it. Like, creators, I've heard, like, would take, like, concessions and do things for a lower rate just because it's, like, a really cool opportunity. And if they get any exposure directly with Brian, which I don't know who did or who didn't, of course, Max did with the stunt. But, like, if I was a creator and and I was getting promised some some time with a well known person, like, yeah, I would definitely make concessions to make that possible. So there's other ways you can incentivize creators to make it more attractive to them even if you don't have necessarily a huge budget to go after these folks. Awesome. If anyone has any other questions related to this, please put them into the chat. If not, I'm gonna have us move into Actually, one, playbook. Oh, yeah. Sorry. quick thing. You're just saw. Alice's question, and I thought it was relevant. to to this slide here. Like, do mind if I answer them? No. For sure. So she asked, like, do you need influencers with large followings or micro niche influencers that are better to work with? That's a really great question, and I was hesitant to show this slide because of how big the creators were that they were that that we did work with. Like, Max has, like, I don't know, 10,000,000 followers or something. This is, like, an example that is the outlier. Most cases, it's not like this. And in fact, in b to b, it's probably well worth your time to work with more of these micro creators. At least that's a lot of the work that we do is work primarily with micro creators for the most part. Because in b to b, again, going back, we don't really need this, like, wide, huge reach. Really, what we need is, like, the type of people, the quality of that reach. Like, if you only sell to, I don't know, revenue operations, I try to think of the most niche role possible. You know, you're not gonna wanna work with, you know, mister Beast, for example. Right? That's, like, a huge thing. You might wanna work with who is, like, the rev ops person in your niche that people look to and take advice from when they speak at events. And, that's where you wanna that's what you wanna find when you're doing a b to b campaign. Now this, again, this was a big moment. They had a Super Bowl, so, like, they wanted to match that. There's a time and place for everything. Thanks. I'll be sure to ask you before we move on for any any other questions you wanna take. But let's, jump. into no. It's all good. That was, like, totally my bad. Let's jump into the next one because that one, I actually I'm not excited about all of these, but the product launch one is very interesting because I think if you're in the b to b space, you know that product launches are so much work. And, you know, on top of that, you wanna make the biggest flash possible, and trying to come up with something that's super sexy, for lack of better words, is is hard sometimes, especially if you're in a an industry where, like, maybe it's not a sexy thing for that audience or just to talk about in general. So let's kick off this product launch plus influencer play with this air campaign. Yeah. So we we work with a company called Air. It's basically it's a digital asset management tool. Think like Dropbox, for example. And it's it's it makes it easy that their product is called Air because there's a lot of things you can do based off of that. And so they released their new product. It's, like, an upgraded version of their product, and they they called it the best air yet. And so, their team came up with this campaign. We just help support it on the influencer front, but their team came up with this campaign, and they sent their CEO on a mission to find the best air ever, like, the world, like, actual air. And so they literally sent their CEO to Iceland, and they filmed this little documentary, that is, I think, like, seven minutes long or so about his journey to find the world's best air. And at the end of the video, they were they announced the product. And they go I don't know if you, like I'm pretty, like, nerdy into Internet culture, but there's this, little island in Iceland that, like, a lot of people make videos about. It's the it's, like, the world's loneliest house. I don't know. People make videos about it on the Internet. It's in Iceland. And so they went there, and they were, like, looking for the best air in the in the world. And at the end, they announced the product. And so if you go to the next slide, Cindy, what we did to kinda help support that or what they did to to kinda help support that, they they did it on multiple things. So they announced it online. They put it they they created this documentary. They had a bunch of social content go live. They actually create they actually hosted a, like, happy a hour or, like actually, was a movie premiere is what it was. It was a they premiered their documentary that they filmed in Iceland, and they hosted an Icelandic happy hour, which is crazy. And ice luge, they had, yeah. like was like, what is in a Icelandic happy hour? Like, what can you tell. us what that is? Yeah. So they had, like, Icelandic food, which is, like, I don't know, fish and krauts and sausages and things like that. They had the, this, like, Icelandic orchestra. It's called Bjorkastra, I think it's called. And they they create, like, Icelandic music, and they were performing, a small little band. And then they actually had, cans of air. I actually have it right here. So they they they created these. It literally says best air ever, and it says ice like, whatever this location is in Iceland, and they handed these out. And I thought it was really unique, and it was probably not that expensive to order the air, although maybe it was. I had no idea. And it was really cool. And we sent some creators to this event to capture content at the event. So they went, and they posted about it. They created content. And that was, like, the on event support. And then we'll talk more about the, the digital support as well. But Do you wanna move to the next slide? yeah. Sure. Sure. So that was, like, the on event support. And then we had creators. I think, like, with the product launch, like, you spend all this time and energy, and you have, like, a launch date. And then you launch on that date, and then, like, after, it's, like, back to normal business. So the air did the opposite. They launched. They had the event, and then we had basically creators talk about this product release. And they didn't talk about the product release in relation to the product itself, but more so about how, how Air promoted this product. And so they talked about the documentary. They talked about sending the CEO to to Iceland. They talked about the event that they hosted in New York, and all these creators kinda covered it. I think there was, like, five creators that we worked with to kinda help promote this, and then I think there was some additional ones, that just created some organic content about it because it made such a splash. For this campaign specifically, like, when they I'm assuming when they work with a content creator, you're, like, sponsoring them to come come along for this trip. Right? Or is it a mix of both from a budgeting standpoint? Oh, they didn't actually go on the trip. They just, like, they just, like, talked about it. Oh, interesting. Okay. Yeah. Because you went you went. No. to that. Oh, no. This is something entirely hour. different. Okay. Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. So they went to Iceland separately. Just the CEO went. The. event was in. New York. I myself went, and then, like, two other creators we sent to the event in New York. And then these folks that you see here, they didn't come to any event. They were just talking about, like, the strategy behind launching the product. Okay. Yeah. So if I'm breaking this down correctly so far, we're talking, like, their team is doing content. Right? They have this documenting that they're working on, and then they are promoting this with a field event, a happy hour, if you will, to not. only generate buzz for this documentary, a very interest interesting campaign, I will say, just from the standpoint of producing a movie as a brand. So they have a field event where they're hosting in New York, and then we're even extending the life of this by talking about all of this and having con content creators or influencers help with that. So we're really like, it's a one it sounds like it's a one effort thing, but there's multiple phases of this to send the reach of this campaign. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly that. Okay. Mhmm. And then there's you know, this is what I'm talking about. Like, you pulling up their canned error is just not anything anyone can can plan for. But I'll tell you what. Like, I'm gonna be telling people about this canned air thing for a minute. Every time I talk about influencer, probably. I think what I will echo here, and then please jump in. Like, what I'm gonna echo here is that, like, this probably feels, for most of us, like a really big endeavor, huge undertaking. And, you know, to phrase you then, error is just moving differently with this campaign specifically. But, like, any one piece of this can work for something that you're doing. And I don't mean literally, like, host an Icelandic happy hour, but, like, having a field event and extending the reach of that or making it a brand moment by partnering with creators might be a good idea if you wanna generate buzz around it. If maybe if you're launching, like, a roadshow, it might be the the first one that makes a lot of sense. But I I feel like early in my career, I'd look at this, and I'd say, like, I'll never do this because it's there's way too much money, way too many pieces. I don't have the team or the resources. And, like, now I look at things. I'm like, which piece of that can I take and kinda, like, adapt to what I'm doing to meet the goals that I have? I don't know if. you have anything you wanna add into that. And then I also saw that you dropped the YouTube link to it, yes, and talked about how you work with creatives, which I will also say that Goldcast Events is a happy customer of Creatorbuzz as well. So, Oh, yeah. we can definitely share feedback in terms of what our relationship has been like and what things we're doing. But, anything else you wanna add here, Vin? Yeah. I just wanna add that Air is, like, a small company. Like, Ramp is a huge company. A big budget. Salesforce, huge company. They can get mister b's. Air is, like, a Air is a small company. Like, they're they're a start up at at series b maybe, I think. I don't know. They're they're they're very small. And so it's really just intentional about how we're, one, using your budget, like, working with five creators. I think we work with, like, five or seven creators if you include the event. Not incredibly expensive to do that. Right? And they they're just using their budgets in creative ways, which is really interesting. So I definitely would recommend giving Era a follow just just, like, One up with what they're doing in general from a marketing standpoint. They know how to, like, really put their budget to use. So you definitely don't need a huge budget to make a big splash at all. question. I don't know if you wanna take now or later, but Alice is asking, you know, to optimize the momentum from content, do you partner with influencers for extended periods of time, or are there defined number of posts for a campaign? Mhmm. What's more. cost effective? Well, so I think what there's, like, two really, generally speaking, because, generally speaking, there's, like maybe we're launching a campaign. In a campaign, you just want a lot of people talking about it. You wanna as much reach as possible. You want buzz. In that instance, it's probably wise just to get, like, a a group of creators a larger group of creators to support this campaign. Now a lot of our brands we work with kind of are on this kinda, like, always on approach where you do have this kind of cohort of creators that you know you can tap into. They're kind of, like, partners with you, if you will. You're kind of working with them in a long term basis. But anytime there's some sort of, like, campaign support, that's where you wanna bring in a lot more people because you're gonna need a lot more, you know, people talking about it, essentially. Let me know if that helped answer your question. Then I don't know if you know, but another one is why were these creators or influencers chosen to partner with Air? What was it about their profile? I. don't know if we have all the details on that. Yeah. I. do. I I actually do. We we we selected all these creators. So, in Aera's case, they sell to creative directors. That's their, like, creative operations. That's their ICP. And, so we worked with like, this guy on the left hand side, Jason, he literally makes content about creative, being a creative director and or, and or art director. Some of these people talk about brand strategy, which is what Ayer's customers would care about, which makes it really easy, because then we can have creators talk about their own brand strategy. So that makes it really, really easy. So I would recommend, like, trying to figure out what your audience would wanna consume. You don't necessarily have to work directly with, like, someone that looks like your customer on paper, but as long as it's content that they would wanna consume is someone that I would recommend sourcing. And then, like, that aside, one, they make really great content. Like, their videos are just, like, great from a quality standpoint. They make content like this already. They're already breaking down brand strategies, so it's really easy to do that. And then three, you can look at, maybe cost might come up if if if if that's, like, in line with the same question. You can look at, like, an overall CPM to to see if you're spending your money accordingly. And so some brands in the b two b space on the low end well, most brands in the b two b space, maybe they try to they try to go between, like, fifty and a hundred dollar CPM on a normal basis. And then sometimes they will pay premiums for executives or for, campaigns that they just need, like, additional, like, voices on. So it's very flexible, but that's something that we might look at. So the last playbook, if you will, before we move fully into q and a. So take it away, Ben. Content distribution. Yeah. And I shouldn't have used it. I probably should have used a different company for this as well just because we we talked about Air so much. But, this is when we just wrapped up, and I thought it was, like, when people think of b to b influencer program, I think most people think of LinkedIn. And that's okay. And that's normal because most folks in b to b are on LinkedIn. However, we did this campaign with Eir separate campaign with Eir on Instagram. And I think when people hear about that in a b to b campaign, I think people are pretty hesitant because they're like, oh, Instagram is for, you know, whatever, Instagram models or whatever is on Instagram. Not the case. One of the really great things about LinkedIn, though, is you can literally put a link inside of your post on LinkedIn. So that way, if you're trying to drive someone to a certain landing page, it's really easy to do that on LinkedIn. They don't have to go searching for it. You don't have to go dig back to their LinkedIn bio and get that. There is this tool that, a lot of business creators leverage called ManyChat, and ManyChat is the automation. If you ever see someone come say, in their video or in their post, comment x, and I'll send you y, and it automatically sends you something, That's ManyChat. A lot of business creators use ManyChat. So, Air just created a white paper at the end of the year. It was a trends report. A lot of people put those together, and that's, like, traditional b to b influence marketing. We're putting together a white paper. Not the most exciting thing to download. Let's be honest. Like, no one's, like, jazzed up to go download a white paper. So what they did is they worked with, we helped them source some creators for this campaign. The creators contributed a paragraph or so to this white paper. So that way you have, like, people that are, I don't know, quote, unquote, popular or have an audience contribute to this report. They each shared their own prediction about, you know, creative direction or whatever their their topic was. And then they made a follow-up video breaking down their prediction in a long in a longer form video. And we each of the creators used the ManyChat automation. So they said, you know, comment error, and I'll send you the full report with the other predictions. It drove over 6,200 downloads for this report. So we're trying to get a lot of our clients to do some stuff on, Instagram with the ManyChat automation specifically for any, like, content distributions or reports or resources, anything that requires, like, maybe a form download or a visit to a website. And it's it's been very successful for us, and we're trying to push that even more. This was I think when we talked on our prep call, this one honestly blew my mind because two things you, like, kinda know to be true, air quotes, know to be true in b two b is that white papers are dead. Right? Like, nobody wants a white paper, which isn't true. I think we've now discovered that, actually, people will consume your content if it's actually good content. And then the second thing is that, like, none of my audience is on Instagram, or I can't find people on Instagram, or don't go on Instagram to, like, interact with my brand. And so this this actually really blew my mind, Vin, when you were telling me. Just for everyone in the audience, I, like, went and tested this whole thing, and it works pretty seamlessly. And so you comment on their, you know, post. They send you a DM, and it links to the gated page. So you're filling out a form. You're capturing all that info that's feeding into your system. We're not talking about collecting info out of Instagram and putting it into your back end. It's, like, pretty seamless to me. And I think it's really smart, but, like, bringing in creators and making them part of the journey. So I I don't know if anyone is going to be testing this play for themselves. I know I'm gonna try to get Goldcast to do it, but six six thousand leads, is that what you said, Vin? Over. 6,000 sixty for this? two on our leads from this. 6,200 leads. I don't know how much they spent on that, but that is a really high ROI lead gen effort. Of course, there's always as a as a demand marketer, there's always the questions around, was it qualified, this and that. But just purely from, like, a reach standpoint and validating that reach, that's been that's very interesting. I think will say there's sorry. There's also a lot of tools. You know, you can also layer on top of your website to also figure out how many folks got there and didn't convert. And so who who knows, right, like, the audience that you're building there? What were you gonna say before I went on? I was I was just gonna agree that, like yeah. I mean I mean, with anything, it's you never know if it's, like, qualified leads. But, I think the challenge of, like, actually getting people to download a white paper, if you can solve that, I mean, you should I mean, that's that's maybe a RedOps problem to to figure out the the the lead routing and the quality lead flow. Like you know? So, yeah, I I would say the biggest challenge is, like, getting folks to download a white paper, and this is a way to solve for that. I gotta have you put me in touch with the Air people because I need to get the notes on this campaign and all the other stuff that they're doing. But I I totally agree. I think it's just like, if we're talking about reach and then there's a lot of questions around how you track, this is pretty clean to me in terms of, like, knowing that you did this and that you got some level of this back for it. Anything else you wanna add before we go into q and a? Any other, like, Swirly campaigns? I think you mentioned at some point, you're like, man, I probably should've done something else besides Air. Like, any other campaigns that you think are worth noting we didn't get a chance to cover? There's a influencer campaign or just, cool campaigns in general? Whatever you want. Whatever you want, my friend. I don't know. I just saw this one that this company, Blanded, that I really liked. I know if it's just because of my age, but I really liked it. This they did a campaign. I'll put it in the chat with, Soulja Boy. And I liked it because, one, like, you wouldn't think an AI company would do a brand partnership with a a rapper, but, the company does AI voice agents. And so they, like, cloned his voice, and he has a song where you can, like, call him. It was very popular when I was, like, in middle school or in high school or whatever. Soldier Boy had a song called kiss me through the phone where he had his number on there, and you can call him. And it was basically like a voice agent. So they, like, played on that, and they used him in this ad. And they had a phone number where you can call essentially, Soulja Boy, and you could talk to it. And it, like it was it was a bland AI voice agent, though, so it, like, collected your business information. And it was really cool, and I just really liked it. And, I don't know how niche that is, but I I liked it. I think I think a lot of us are on here just for, like, the creative ideas behind it because half of it is, like you know, a lot of it's execution, but a lot of it also is, like, a very creative idea to start. So that's also very interesting. Alright. Let's move into q and a. I we have a ton, Vin, of questions. I'll remind folks, plea like, we also have the functionality to for you to like a question. So if you see anything in q and a that you definitely want us to answer, please navigate over there and hit like. But, otherwise, it's gonna be up to me and Vin to kinda cherry pick what we can answer in the next couple of minutes. But I think I will take one from Kelsey here. How do you know if an influencer will be powerful enough to create an impact for your company? How big is a good rule of thumb without overextending your resource? I think we get a lot of questions, and even myself when we first started, it's like, they don't have enough followers. So can you talk through, like, if someone is big enough and, like, how we might quantify that from a brand perspective? Again, like, maybe just, like, almost just, like, throw out the whole follower thing, like, truthfully. Especially on LinkedIn, it's so out of whack. People in the go to market space or even the recruiting space, they're gonna have a ton of followers just because of the nature of their job. Like, when I was in sales, I would you know how many people I would add just to try to, like, prospect them? Like and so my follower number inflated. If someone added me back, they would automatically follow me. And even if you don't create content, you can have a really big follower count. So just like if you're doing stuff on LinkedIn, just just don't even look at the follower count. Literally, it's just gonna confuse you. Go look to see at their last thirty days worth of posts, and go see if they have, like, some solid engagement. Solid engagement is relative, but, like, a rule of thumb is do they have a 100 or so reactions to their posts? Do they have 50 or so comments on their posts? Are they getting roughly, like, 10,000 views on a post? Really, what you wanna see is if they're having relevant engagement and conversation in the comments. You're not just people saying, like, yeah. Thumbs up. I agree or, like, something like AI BS. Another thing I didn't put on this slide, which I kinda wish I did, was around, account level reporting, which I think is interesting. Being able to do that on LinkedIn is what we do, for some of our clients is basically create a report of the accounts that have engaged with our influencers content. If you're working and supporting an enterprise sales motion, like, don't have a prosumer tool, it's really hard to track. And, like, I'll I'll be the first to say it. Like, it's, you know, it's hard when a client comes back to us, and they're like, oh, well, you know, we spent this much. Like, what actually happened? And if we can't track sign ups or leads, it it is very challenging for us, to show ROI to our clients. So some of the things we can do is, like, create a report of all the accounts that have engaged with our influencer stuff and share that with the team. So now we can now the now the brand can say, okay. Cool. We actually got in front of some key target accounts, that, like, our sales team is actively looking at. And so that's something I'd recommend too is, like, do they have, like, account level engagement? Do they have, like if you're looking at the CMOs, do they have CMOs that are commenting on their posts? It's all stuff that is, like, very, maybe not as quantifiable. How about when you have an enterprise expensive enterprise software, how do you work with new creators who actually haven't worked with your software before but are relevant to your space? Tangentially, I think a question we often get asked relative to influencer marketing is, like, what if I'm in an industry where influencers aren't a thing? I think then you've actually worked with, a few in in the those spaces and beg to differ. So I'm gonna let you answer this one. There are influencers in every industry. I hate to I hate to tell it to you. I had a friend. Not a I shouldn't say friend. I I I met someone that used to work for they sell to fire departments, and they work with fire department influencers. I have I have a friend that does work with, warehouse security, which is, cameras, to prevent accidents that are happening. They work with influencers. They're influencers literally in every industry. They might not look like the most traditional influencer, but they have they have influence over a particular audience. So they're out there. They you could start by looking into your customer base, like, what customers are constantly speaking at events, what customers are constantly on podcasts, what customers are active in the industry. Like, that's a really good place to start. Then ask that person if they know anyone else. Like, creators are all friends. Create like, if you work with one creator, you can work with many creators. You can ask them for intros. So they exist. Trust trust me. How about the part where, you know, there's them using your product? Like, what do you have to say? Because I think we've also struggled a little bit with that with Goldcast as well, certainly as we're, like, launching new products. Like, they haven't used it, and maybe they haven't used any of the other pieces of our platforms. Like, what what advice do you have there? That is that's really challenging when you have an enterprise, motion, and you someone new just can't just sign up and use it and then share their experience using it. If you can get them access to the tool, definitely pull as many strings as possible on your end to make that happen. Because if they can use the tool, it's gonna make for a way better post. Now if if you have a product where they they can't get fully integrated, we work with this company called Default, and, they have a tool for RevOps. It's like a like a lead routing and scheduling tool sort of thing. The the the tool is an enterprise motion, so no one can just sign up and use the tool. And if they're not customers of the tool, like, it's really hard to, like, create an influencer post around that. And so what we did with with that particular campaign was we had each of the operate the go to market ops person come up with a challenge that they experienced in their own role. So one of the creators came to us and they said, hey. One of our, pain points is that we have a leak in the funnel, and, yeah, stuff's getting misrouted once it comes through HubSpot, and doesn't get enriched or something like that. And so we basically created this, well, not not we, but the team at default created this workflow for this person. And that person shared that workflow on, on LinkedIn and said, like, hey. We have this challenge. Here's a way that, we could potentially solve that challenge. And they're not saying they're using the tool, but they're saying that this tool can solve a particular challenge that they experience firsthand. I know we tracking is a bit hard, but we're getting a few questions, I think, either via chat around what tools do you use for effective tracking or reporting. Similarly, like, another question is, how would you recommend tracking for success outside of what you've already kinda brought up that you're able to do? Tracking, well, the content performance. Yeah. So, like, here's one question. What tools, platform analytics, research, campaign management do you use for effective tracking and reporting? Is there a holy grail that does this all for you? I think in general, it's just like, how do we know that it's working versus it's not? So link so LinkedIn's very LinkedIn Like the have any. tool that integrates with LinkedIn is is not very, forgiving. They don't allow you to pull in any impression data. That's like they're really big on that. They'll, like, remove companies from this. So that data, we get manually from the creators in terms of impression counts and stuff like that. All of their reactions, and engagements, that's all public. We can we will automatically pull that in. Any of the account level reporting, we have a tool that we built internally where we're building, accounts that have engaged with our influencer stuff and then also creating, like, a comment, sentiment analysis. Like, what kind of, what is the conversation that's happening on our influencer's post about the products? So, personally, there is there there probably are tools that exist that, like, automatically maybe extract some of the and gate the impression data. That is not in line with, LinkedIn's t's and c's, so just tread carefully. And, we haven't found any success with any third party platforms for finding creators in the b to b space because, we find that even the ones that maybe do exist, we we can get, like, as niche as we need it to be. So we have a team that just, like, manually will find creators based on certain, criterias and niches within, let's just say, like, marketing is too broad in b to b. You have to go really deep. Like, maybe it's marketing ops versus digital marketing. Right? So that's kind of where our our team spends time. Thank you for that. I think what I will also offer in terms of, like, maybe not necessarily tracking, although it kind of is parallel to this. A lot of us in the demand gen growth marketing space are running paid ads. Right? LinkedIn specifically as a channel. I think that, you know, we can certainly at Goldcast, we will run creator ads or creator posts as thought leadership ads, and that inherently is tracked through our various systems as well. And so. I think trying to think of ways where, like, even though this feels like a new effort, how can that feed into, like, the systems you've already built is a really interesting thing. Right? So with Air, specifically, they used Instagram, ManyChat, but still going on their website, and that process is already built down, you know, like, through and through. And so I think for tracking, I would push, you know, other marketers on this call to think, like, is there a way for us to connect the dots more easily instead of sourcing new software, creating more work for somebody else. Because I I think that there is a world where that Venn diagram, like, overlap exists. Mhmm. Then I'm gonna there's two more questions that I wanna ask you. One is my own burning question, as a Goldcast marketer. But what's what's the role of video in influencer marketing? I mean, we at Goldcast firmly believe video is how you best win mindshare. We've seen, you. know, video being used more and more. You told me something that during our prep call, I hope you say it again. If not, I'll remind you, around video. But, like, what's the role of video, and, like, how should we approach that relative to influencer marketing? Let me think of what I said. I think I said this, and let me know if I if I said something differently. But, so I think I have a unique perspective as a creator myself. I am like, 90% of my content is video, And I do that purposely. One, I like making videos. Like, I've always I just like making videos. Two, especially on LinkedIn, like, 80% of the content going on LinkedIn now that's written is all AI generated, and it's, like, very obvious. And so, I think, like, showing up on camera and talking in a video allows people to just be like, okay. This person is real. I also just based on conversations that I've had, like, I don't have, like, a huge following on LinkedIn. There's people that have, like, triple the amount of followers than me. But I feel like I, maybe maybe are, like, more recognizable, I I guess, to say. Like, when I go to events, I feel like folks are more willing to say, oh, I've seen your videos versus, like, a friend of mine that has way more followers than me that just writes text posts. So I feel like it helps develop trust at a faster speed. Our sales cycles I'm used to really long six, nine month sales cycles in in my former seller days. Our sales cycles are probably, I don't know, thirty, sixty days. And I don't know. I feel like when folks are coming inbound from us, they see our content online. They're familiar with us. We're sharing value. And so the sales cycles are shorter on average. So I feel like, yeah, it does it it creates, like, trust at scale is maybe what I said on our prep call. It more or less. Yes. What you said. was. you're like, I'm all in. I love video because I think people just recognize you. Like, they because you said how often do you, like, know a follower you see them posting, but then you meet them in person? You're kinda, like like, almost, like, out of place. Right? You're like, do I know you? Like, I feel like. I do, but I don't. And you're right. Like, I think about people who post on video. Like, I in my non work life love Instagram, and, like, I feel like I know these people. I know that I don't. But it's like, I feel like I know these people because I see their videos all the time. And so I I think that's, like, the most pointed way to answer that is that video, you know, helps people recognize you. And if we're talking about mind share and brand awareness and all that, it's precisely that, right, being recognized. Yeah. And I and I do agree with you. Like, I think just being recognized overall facilitates better deals, quicker deals, and helps feeds those prospect conversations or even customer conversations along. The last question thing one, sorry. Go ahead. one thing I'll add to that too. Like, if you're investing into influencer marketing, if you work with a video creator, chances are they're they're active on other channels because video is the main, content piece on other channels. So if you work with a video creator, chances are you can get them to post that same video on LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok versus if you're just investing into text posts, it's chances are they're probably only active on LinkedIn. So your dollars can go a lot further if you invest in a video creator. And, also, video typically makes for better ads, so you can also use that for, thought leadership ads. And if anyone would like to test out our ability to record video, you either have the option to test out Goldcast via this webinar platform that we're using now, or we also have recording studio, which allows you to record high definition videos. So if you're interested at all in either of those two and you aren't already a customer, please go ahead and navigate to get a demo on the top right there, and we will get to you sooner rather than later. I opened the last poll, so I'm just gonna share it real fast. It's how are you using video to build mindshare? And it looks like for the bulk of this audience, it's my people, webinars. Webinars seem to be the the best way. No surprises there. I mean, oh, we're still actively voting. Second place is podcasting. That's kinda interesting for me to hear. I I don't know that I've heard of, like, a lot of people starting new podcasts. It might just be the bubble that I'm in, but I'm I'm really curious about that piece. Any reactions then to this poll result? It's funny. It's interesting to see folks are, like, not on on doing video yet. Maybe I'm in my own bubble. I feel like I'm like, are we doing? We gotta get on video. These guys are latest Goldcast Events. Yes. Yes. You definitely should. Last question, I think it's a fun one, is if you were starting an influencer campaign from scratch with a very in a very niche industry, what first steps would you recommend? I I would ask the team why you wanna try this out. We get on a lot of call I think, like, influencer marketing is just, like, a hot topic right now, rightfully so. And I think we get on a lot of calls where where where companies and marketers are like, yeah. We we wanna try this. And so, okay. Great. Like, why why did this come up now? And they're like, well, I don't know. Other companies are doing it. I said, okay. Like, the you need to ask yourself, like, why are we investing into this now? Is it because you don't have great brand awareness or competitors are winning deals over you guys, and that's something that you need to help perception on? Maybe you have a bad brand perception problem where they think you do x, but you actually do y. There needs to be something that we can, like, go back to and say, hey. We're actually improving this. We just got off a a call this morning with a company that, they're, they're basically the second in the industry, and their main competitor is, like has the one that, like, verb, where people, like, say the competitor's name as the as as the act. And so they have a really big brand awareness problem. And so we're we're trying to come up with this campaign to help with that, and we're using tools like SimilarWeb, to actually, like, start measuring the brand awareness to see if we're increasing it. Or you might say, hey. We have this new product launch. It's a prosumer tool. We need to actually drive users. Like, okay. Great. Then let's come up with a campaign that will best convert. That's needs to be discussed first. Then from there, we you can start to look for creators, and I would recommend maybe starting small. You can, like I said, start to look for customers that are already relevant in your in your industry. You might have friends. Your your executives might have friends, and they might recommend someone. Your executives might know some people that are also active in the industry. Start really small there, then ask that person that you work with for an introduction to somebody else. Typically, when we see brands starting, they're typically starting with, like, five to 10 creators, which is, like, a really good place to start. And then we've seen, you know, our biggest clients, they they do, like, 50 creators on an ongoing basis every month. So, kind of a loaded question, but I but I hope I kinda gave some direction into, what you should look at before you get started or get started planning. And then if you wanna ask me that question, my answer is go go to Creatorbuzz.com and fill out that let's chat form because that's where I would most definitely start. I think you can tell from Vin. He definitely knows what he's talking about, and if not, he can at least point you to the right direction. Vin, thank you so much for joining us. I can't wait till we run it back a third time. It was. a pleasure. I hope everyone in the audience found value. later, and I hope everybody has a great rest of your week. We're almost made it to Friday. Bye, guys. Yes. Thank you.