Influencer Marketing? Should Your Business Do It? | Biz To Biz Podcast

Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the biz to biz podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, this guy, the Mike Ditka of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. And we'll be providing you educational information about fintech, payment processing, small business, and the technology businesses are using in the world today. And in today's podcast, we'll be talking about influencer marketing and how they possibly are taking advantage of small businesses. Yeah. In, in, in, in short or in long tail, whatever you would say.

It could be helping or not helping.

Well, the state of influencer marketing, there's a lot of stuff going on. A lot of businesses feel a certain type of way, uh, so we thought we'd talk about it. Um, anyway, before we hop into that, how are you doing, sir?

I'm doing pretty good. We're both having, uh, birthday today.

Happy birthday, Jasmine! Happy birthday, oldest out of the crew. We love you.

Jacob's 28 today, and Jasmine, 28 as well. Wow, that's crazy, dude. Yeah, that's insane that we have that in common.

Yeah, that is. I, I guess I never put that together. I never, uh, yeah. Wow.

Yeah, that's pretty cool.

It is cool.

Yeah.

So shout out to Jasmine and Jacob. Yeah, they're both here in South Florida, so maybe they should meet someday. They share a birthday. That'd be cool.

Yeah.

She is in a relationship.

So is Jacob. But they could be friends.

Maybe they could double date.

Yeah. Birthday friends.

That'd be cool. Birthday twins. Ah, thank you. Thank you. Anyway, man, yeah, uh, how's life?

Life is good. We had an interesting day yesterday. We went on a field trip.

Oh yeah, we went to the Broward Convention Center for, uh, the BBB Better Business Bureau Torch Awards. Round of applause. Round of applause to all the winners. Uh, we were nominated for Ethics, uh, we didn't win. But you want to know something funny about Ethics?

What?

Uh, when we were walking out of there, there was some people standing by the booth.

Yeah, for that, um, Junior Achievement Award. Yeah.

And they took all the stuff.

Yeah, they had like some gift, a grand prize.

They had two gift basket boxes, right?

Really nice stuff.

Yeah, there was like, uh, phone mount thing, uh, where you set your— like a—

it was a whole cordless, like a setup.

Yeah, wireless charging setup.

It was probably at least a $100 gift. I— there was two of them.

There was two of them. So yes, about $50 each, I would say. That makes sense. Yeah. And whatever else, because they cleared the whole table off.

Yeah, whoever walked by just took all the stuff off the two ladies.

That was crazy.

So that wasn't too ethical, out of ethics.

Meeting. That was, that was— and then that, that was sad.

Then they had some speakers. One guy talked about AI, was interesting but a little bit too high level, I think, for most of the people in the room.

Yeah, on top of the guy had a very heavy French accent. Um, I always have a— it's something about French. It's just, it's really hard for me to follow. My grandma was German and she had a very thick German accent. I can translate Patois, I can talk to Haitians, Jamaican, et cetera, et cetera. It's literally the French accent I just have a really hard time following because they pronounce words very differently than us.

Yeah, they pronounce some of the words, they have the same, like they'll have the similar word, but pronounced completely different.

Same word, very different pronunciation. And that's also education, how they were taught, etc., etc. But also besides that, the guy was talking a very high-level technical, like the derivative of where AI came from, which no one cares, first of all. So you could have cut that first 5, 10 minutes out of your whole presentation. And then you could have hopped right into what's relevant. I understand he was selling his services.

Right. I get it. He's a computer programmer. Yeah.

He's pitching his AI software.

I would have said it would have been a lot more interesting to say, hey, here's an AI presentation on how you could use AI to help you with your blogging or social media.

Yeah. I mean, at least set up a, you know, like, all right. For the AI, do the history lesson, sure, educate people. If obviously there are people who don't know that we've been using AI for the past 20 years.

Exactly. He also talked about the difference between AI and automation.

Automate, right? And automation may be triggered through AI, but that's not AI, right? Um, there's steps involved, things that—

yeah, so don't be fooled when someone's trying to sell you like automation.

I mean, there's a lot of different But like the basic thing is predictive text, right? Like that's the basis point of like where you could say, hey, we've been using this for so long, this is artificial intelligence. When Google finishes a sentence for you, that's artificial intelligence.

Yeah, or you're typing text on your phone and Apple.

Right, predictive text, that's artificial intelligence. But yeah, I think it would've been more useful for the people who are in the crowd And in my opinion, it would have drew more attention to his services as well if he would have been like, hey, instead of me, you know, doing this super lengthy history lesson, uh, let's hop in and figure out here's 3 ways you can incorporate AI into your business today.

Right. You know, exactly.

And on the first one, we could do a whole podcast on that. Yeah, for sure. Right. And then On the flip side of that, I was inside, then we had the breakout session. He went too long, so the networking part of it was done. And then we went out to the breakout sessions. Allen went into the finance portion, and I went into the marketing side with Sean, the social media manager. And those guys actually, their presentation was how I would have presented it as well. They were saying, these are what you should do. Here's some things that you could do in your business today.

Actionable information.

Actionable information, actionable intel, right? Like, you know what I mean? Like, this is something that you can do and get, you know, help your business.

And it's also good, like, for you guys, 'cause, you know, you look at the presentation and somebody's talking about, oh, here are our best practices, or here's things you should be doing. And if those are things you're already doing, then that's, validating what you're doing.

Before we started the podcast, I was talking to Sean about, I always go into those things optimistic that I'm gonna learn. Like you asked me, did you learn anything? No. And that's, you know, this comes from being in the industry so long.

Right, but I'm saying it validates what you're doing.

No, right, but I'm saying like, what I was saying to Sean was like, you know, I always go into those things optimistic, like, okay, maybe I'm gonna learn something today. Maybe they got some sort of trick.

One nugget.

Or a tool or something that I haven't used before or something, you know, just something. And, you know, but it also is a good feeling because it lets me know that I'm still hitting all the targets, right? Right. Like, so, you know, when they're talking about what your business should be doing today— podcast, check. Uh, you know, YouTube channel, check. Uh, TikToks Check. Shorts, check. Reels, check. Social, check. SEO, check, check, check, check, check, checkmate.

Yeah, right.

You know what I mean?

And so, and it took us a while to get to that point of doing all those things.

Well, right. I mean, all of it takes time. Like, and that's why it, you know, working with Allen is great because you understand that SEO does take time, especially when we're doing it the organic way. Like you're, this does, you know, we're not dumping $10,000 a month on marketing.

And the financial one was interesting. The lady had a very interesting take. She's from this company that helps small businesses find accountants. And then one of the things she was talking about was you should raise all your prices 3% and then try to lower the cost of those items, obviously in a physical sense.

Only 3% though?

Yeah, like every year. No, no, but then lower the cost of acquisition of your product 3%. So you increase your profit by 6%. And then she was talking about, which was interesting, she was like, she talked about things we've talked about on the podcast, like, oh, what do you do in a down economy? Hey, does your supplier have extra goods or closeout goods that you can buy cheaper? Which we just did buy a whole bunch of stuff for marketing because there was a big sale and we saved, we probably bought everything at like 70% off.

Nice. I was just about to ask before we started, can we get some new zip-up hoodies to travel with?

Yeah, we should get some new zip-up hoodies or something. Yeah, we'll look at it.

Or some sort of windbreaker.

We'll look at it.

With a hood.

So, so was it interesting?

Like a Columbia.

But it was an interesting, it was an interesting, it was an interesting—

It was a good, you know, it was a good conference. I was expecting more people, to be honest.

I really thought a lot of people showed up.

It's an award show.

But a lot of people just came for lunch, just for lunch. I know if you notice the crowd from the morning to the crowd for lunch was way bigger. More seats were taken up.

Oh yeah, I guess you're right.

And you know, the BBB is a great thing for your business. Absolutely. Especially you're in any type of service business. There was tons of moving companies there, all types of service businesses.

I would say just like they just move stuff, right? Not, not just moving. Not when you—

not just your house. They move stuff.

Yeah.

But the thing is, is when you look at the BBB, And we've talked to them before, you know, service businesses like AC, locksmith, plumbing, moving, those are their top industries that they deal with. I mean, we're a payment processor, probably they don't have that many payment processors that belong to the BBB, but we find it that it's good. But let's jump into the influencer marketing.

Influencer marketing, I'm interested in this. You know, I have mixed feelings with this because of what everything we're going to talk about.

So one of the things that kind of triggered off this discussion was I saw an article in the, in the New York Times, and maybe we'll have this woman, Karen Stabler, Stabiner, on in the future.

What is her name?

Karen S-T-A-B-I-N-E-R. Stay— Stabiner. Stabiner.

I hope it's not stabbing her.

Well, she wrote, she wrote, she wrote something called the Generation Chef Risking It All for a New American Dream. And then she just tells a story about, oh, an influencer, a social influencer walks into a bar. No, it isn't a joke. This is the 21st Century Shakedown. And the article just goes into, you know, do you want to swap food and drink with the influencer for view eyeballs on your stuff, likes and views and likes and views and all that. And I was telling Justin, I saw a guy who was an influencer and he went into a pizza shop in Las Vegas and the guy's been— the guy had very good pizza, but he didn't have a lot of business. But this guy's pizza video went viral.

I seen that guy.

Yeah. And there was literally like a line outside of this pizza place. So yeah, it can work. But the thing is, is, you know, how does, how does it all work? And You know, there's influencers and then there's people beginning to do influencing. And, you know, we saw— I saw a thing on 60 Minutes where this guy goes, he made a video and then they went on WeWork or one of those sites, not WeWork, Upwork.

Okay.

Fiverr. And then they bought, you know, like 20,000 views and some guy in a phone farm and they showed what that looks like. You know, clicked all the views. So you don't know what exactly is going on with all that.

What is influencer marketing for those who don't know?

So influencer marketing is, let's say I had, you know, half a million followers on Instagram and Facebook, and I go into Justin's restaurant and I say, hey Justin, you know, I'm a big influencer in South Florida. Let me, you know, if you get feed me and my 3 friends dinner and drinks, I'm going to make a video I'm going to put it all over through my Instagram and Facebook Reels, and you're going to get tons of business. Does it work or does it not work? That's, you know, so that's the question. So you're swapping out and sometimes they want money too. They're not just, they don't want just food and drink. Some of the beginning influencer people will probably do it just for food and drink.

Right.

But eventually they're going to want money from you because if they're sending business, they're going to come back and go, hey, you know, either I want more free food or I want, I want money or money, right?

Or merch or whatever it is, whatever it is that you do.

If it's a clothing store, they might want clothing. And then the other hand, influencer marketing is like we have the guy Sean that works for us. He has a Zoovy car thing on YouTube.

Yes.

So he works on cars, right? So he has companies that send him products, right, for free, and they hope that he's going to make a video about it, right? So that's the other side of influencer.

I like that side of influencer marketing, right? Like when they're actually using the product, right?

So if someone sent us microphones and said, hey, use our microphones on the podcast, that's a smart, right, marketing move. Or here's a camera, shoot your podcast with our—

hey, you just heard me say I need some hoodies, send me a hoodie.

Right. Or call us up and go, hey, we'll give you guys 10 hoodies for the staff.

Right.

Right. And, uh, promote our product on your podcast.

Exactly.

Right. And we'll promote it all over our website and everywhere. Of course, we might hit you up to process your credit cards.

We should be.

But you know, that's influencer marketing.

So, and that's how it works. So And there are lots of benefits from it, right? Like people, you know, if, if you do, if it does work, right? So that like the ones that you see on the news, I remember this one guy, he was having a real hard time in Vegas and he had like some really good chicken, right? And oh yeah, I remember this, and the TikTok guy went and, you know, it was a random guy. Was it the same guy?

Yeah, same guy.

So, so that, that alone does it. So that's this is kind of leads me to the shady side.

But he didn't ask anybody for money.

No, but he's not— he's not this guy in particular, right? But, but when it's, when it's so like put together, right, right? And then, and then all of a sudden this goes viral, this goes viral. I'm glad and I'm, you know, I'm happy for the business owner because of course, you know, they're going to be successful. There's, they're, they're paying their employees so that, you know, that's feeding a whole entire family. That's— it's a huge community ecosystem of, right, of, of things that's happening at a small business.

Think about like Dave Portnoy, the guy, Barstool guy.

I don't like that guy. No, but he's gonna even talk about it.

Okay, but he goes and tastes pizzas.

So what? That guy's a douchebag. Seriously, he has nothing— nothing we can say about him.

No, I'm just saying that's another example.

Yeah, he's— but he's Yeah, and that's something where like, but that's something where his influence shouldn't, it's almost where it can be detrimental to the business. Yeah, if he gets a bad review. So like his celebrity alone, what if he has a bad interaction with the owner and he says, "Oh, don't ever go in that place again." Right. And now that guy's closing his doors.

Right.

So I don't agree.

Well no, that's what I'm saying. That's the bad side of the story.

That is the risk of influencer marketing.

Right, that's the risk you take. And that happening if the influencer comes in and has a bad experience. So, you know, you have to make sure, are you choosing the right influencer? And she goes into that in the article, like you need to investigate these people. How many followers do they have? How many people are watching the video?

Don't just— that's like me walking into your establishment like, hey man, give me a free slice. I got 10,000 followers on Twitter. I'm gonna post a slice of pizza. You don't know that, right?

You just—

what, you're just gonna take my word for it and I show you like what, a screenshot of my Twitter handle, right? You don't know if those people are real, fake, whatever it is. Or sorry, X, you know, X.

Uh, he's going to put a bird on the X now.

Shout out to the Bronx. I bet the Bronx loves Twitter— I mean X. Yeah.

Uh, anyway.

Uh, yeah, man, there's a lot of— so, but yeah, yeah, investing the wrong— not setting clear expectations, not monitoring the campaign. I don't know if you can even really do that.

Well, you have to see what they're doing.

Isn't it like a one-hit wonder?

No, sometimes they post multiple videos, they tour the play, you know, they, they do a bunch. They usually do 4 or 5 different videos and then post them. The people, the ones that are professional, really do something. You know, otherwise, does the person just come in and take a picture of the plate of food and then that's it? You know, so you got to know what you're getting. What's the expectation? Does— what are you going— what's going to happen to your business if the influencer does something controversial, like says something crazy a month from now, right? And then your business is associated with them. How does that work? Uh, the product doesn't fit their audience. Maybe their audience is 20-year-olds and your audience is 40-year-olds. Yeah, so you got to make sure all of those things— so, you know, do your research, set good expectations, monitor the campaign, choose the right person. You know, sometimes you can get a bargain, you never know. And sometimes you can be—

yeah, I mean, you might get lucky. I mean, I get it, right? We get it as small business owners, both of us, you know. I mean, like, we understand, like, marketing budgets are tight, right?

Right.

So, like, and you have to be creative. So we have to figure out new and cool ways of hitting—

not everybody can be a dancer, like, put on the clothes and then dance.

TikTok is not for every business, right? You know, I mean, every business should be on TikTok, promoting their products and, you know, like their services and their offerings and whatnot. But, you know, not Allen on TikTok, it doesn't work, right? Yeah, we tried it.

It's not great.

Yeah, no, it's just we get a few people following, right? We get a few people, but at the end of the day, it's, it's— that's not where our demographic is at.

No, but you definitely got to have a presence everywhere because you never know who's looking for you. If some guy, a younger business owner, is looking at me he goes to TikToks and go, oh, there's this guy I talked to on the phone. Oh, that's cool, you know. Oh, let me check out his podcast, right? So it's, you know, influencer marketing can be a powerful tool, but it's got to be done right. And, you know, like today we got hit up with something that's similar to influencer marketing, the affiliate marketing, you know.

It's not similar, but it's, it's marketing.

It's marketing. It's in the realm of influencers, you know, but small businesses, some of them feel like they're getting the shakedown from these, from the influencer marketers, because influencer marketers, especially restaurants or like a clothing store, are getting taken advantage of. Yeah, they're getting— some of them feel like maybe they got taken advantage of by the person and they're constantly coming in for free food. I was telling Justin a story. You know, before there was influencer marketing, you know, before there was the internet, I'm that old, right? When I worked in Dallas and I also had a restaurant here in Boca Raton, Florida, I used to keep a camera around because let's say somebody famous or somebody very well known in the community, right?

Like every restaurant did that. And right before, back in the day, before smartphones, this is how you got, you're like, You took a picture of someone who came into your restaurant, right?

So I would take pictures with people and then we would send it into the newspapers and magazines and they would put it in the whatever celebrity sightings or the social, the social pages or the society pages.

Did anybody say your food sucked?

No. Everybody liked my food. I had good food. I was one time in Boca just sitting, standing there talking to a restaurant owner about credit card processing.. And literally a group of 8 people walked in and they saw me and they came over and said hello. Then they said to the restaurant owner and they said, oh, if you need a new chef, you should hire this guy. This guy had the best food ever. My restaurant was probably closed for at least 5 years. Wow.

That's cool.

So people remember.

That's super cool, man.

People remember my cooking. You know, I ran into somebody on, on LinkedIn and they remembered me from when I was a chef in Dallas.

But you're saying like he would, so like, you know, this is back in the day, you would send those pictures to the news outlets and then they post them and then, you know, that would be the influencer side of the marketing tactic of what you were doing.

Right, they would do it for free, but I had a person that knew people that worked there.

They were actually eating in your restaurant already.

Right, they're already eating there.

That alone, you know, shows that it's quality, right? If someone is celebrity status and they're coming into your restaurant or eating food, that means they've heard, hey man, they got really good steaks or whatever you did.

I fed plenty of celebrities, right? Some of them, no pictures allowed, but right, they didn't do that. But like, I had, I had a comedian in my place one time, right? And he was like, oh, you want to take a picture with me? And I was like, sure. I knew who he was, right? I left him alone like the whole time. And then we took a picture and it went around and people were coming in, oh wow, we saw this certain person came and ate. I I say I could say it is Gilbert Godfrey.

Yeah, right.

Whatever. He was in the restaurant and we had—

that's cool.

We had sports. We had— I had a lot of sports guys coming in because we had a guy who was a sports agent. His office was around the corner from the restaurant. So if they were around sitting around waiting, he'd send them in to come eat.

Dope. You know, where was this? In Dallas?

No, here in Boca Raton. But if influencer marketing can help your business or it could do some damage, you know.

Yeah, I think you got to be careful. I think, you know, there is a lot of shady people out there who are trying to, you know, they're trying to eat too, but they do anything to get by. So, you know, as business owners, you really have to be mindful. Sign contracts, man. Don't just, uh, let people strong-arm you out of your hard work, you know what I'm saying?

Like your goods and services, like You know, if— or maybe, you know, it could work for like things like a nail salon. You know, maybe you do somebody's nails for free and they have a lot of followers on Instagram and Facebook, and that could help send business into your place.

And as, as a digital marketer myself, I would say focus on the quality of your work first, you know what I mean? I get like times are hard and you're trying to find ways, but like People, if you do good work, you know, the influence should organically happen. So keep pushing, you know what I mean?

Get your kids to help you.

Yeah, that too. Like, you know, I mean, just get your social media game up, you know what I mean? And, and just really try harder. Yeah, influencer isn't going to make or break your business, right?

If they— if they— when they post stuff, you want to make sure they're tagging you. You share, you know, you, you see it, you share it to your page, right? You want to make sure like what, what's exactly going on.

Useful stuff. Like if you're a nail salon, show videos about the new color upkeep or like how to moisturize your hands at nighttime. I don't know, um, the new colors they have or all the beautiful colors that they have. There is some really— I, I seen a blue that I would love to paint the inside of my house, but That would be expensive if you use little nail polish. No, it's like a new Sherman Williams.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, it's like, it's really nice. It's like, it's like an earth tone. Yeah, but it's, it's a really navy blue, so it's almost black. Wow, it's so cool though. It— I would love it for my bedroom, but I don't know if my landlord would appreciate that. That would— it would cost a lot to repaint. Yeah, a lot of primer. Um, so yeah, man, influencer marketing. Let us know what you guys think. Uh, yay or nay?

Has you had any successful stories about, you know, did you use influencer marketing in your business? Did it work? Did it not work? Are you an influencer? Maybe you want to come on the podcast, defend yourself. And no, not defend yourself. Tell us how it— tell us how, how you get customers and how it works, or tell us how it works for your business.

Yeah, I would love to hear your grind stories. I'm sure there's a lot of interesting stories about you guys.

I know someone that was unemployed and they start— they had— they were very popular on Instagram and Facebook.

Yeah, you told me about that.

Yeah. And they went out and they started going into businesses, but they have contracts with the business and they usually, you know, don't ask for like free stuff. It's usually like they come, they'll do a freebie for them and then, then, you know, if they like it, then they want to get paid. And that's kind of a good way to do it too.

Interesting.

You know, interesting.

But yo, follow the podcast Biz to Biz Podcast on YouTube. Smash that subscribe button, like and comment on these videos. Share them to your people that you think might find this information useful. Spread the word on the social media channels for us. Spread the love for It's the Brooklyn Way.

Peace out. Carpe diem. And happy birthday, Jasmine and Jacob.

Yo, happy birthday. Both 28 today. Woo!