196: Answering Your Questions about Influencer Marketing with Nick Brucker

In this episode, I talk about my new favorite computer app and then I interview Nick Brooker from Spark Designs about influencer marketing. Hey. Hey, lovely listener. You are listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. We hope you're having a fantastic day. This episode of the podcast is sponsored by Drum roll please. WP Tasty, our S website for WordPress plugins for bloggers. If you're a food blogger on WordPress, you know how important plugins are. Well, not just plugins in general, but rock solid plugins. WPTasty understands that too. That's why their plugins, tasty recipes, tasty pins and tasty links are powerful, lightweight and simple to use. You can learn more about these plugins@wptasty.com and for today's Tasty tip, I'd like to chat with you about the app that has completely changed my life. I know that sounds super dramatic, but it really isn't. It has been such an important app for me recently and it's called Notion. You may recall that I am a paper and pencil girl when it comes to to do lists, but the problem with that process is that I'm constantly where my paper planner isn't. It's at home when I'm out or it's in another room when I think of a to do to Notion is always with me, either on my computer or on my phone. And it's so much more than a to do app. It's completely customizable. So I actually have it set up to be my editorial calendar for my blog, my half marathon training schedule, my long term goal scheduler, my reading tracker, my personal and work to do's and more. It can actually do so much more than that. It can actually act as a knowledge base for your team. It can track your income, it could do your laundry. Okay, maybe not the last one, but this app really can do so much and I just cannot stop talking about how awesome it is. I can carry this around with me everywhere I go, so I can instantly add my ideas to my list without forgetting them. Notion has been such an incredible addition to my workflow and you can learn more and download it for free by going to Notion. So. And now the episode. This is actually a super exciting episode for me personally because I got to interview one of the guys I actually know from my local gym, Nick Brooker from Spark Designs. This is a really fun interview because Nick comes into this conversation with a deep understanding of both a brand perspective and a blogger perspective when it comes to marketing content. So he's here to give Advice to you about the problems you might be facing when you start to think about taking a brand and relationship to the next level. We actually recently asked our Food Blogger Pro members some questions about their struggle points when it comes to influencer marketing, and we're sharing those questions and Nick's answers today. So without any further ado, Nick, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, Alexa. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah, this is really cool because this is my second time kind of interviewing on the podcast, and it's the second time I'm interviewing a fellow Pittsburgher, which I'm really excited about. Nick and I met at a gym, a local gym. Shout out to Brian at Beat Fitness. And it was just really cool to kind of connect because we both kind of understood what the other one does for a living, which is interesting because blogging is not the easiest thing to describe to an outsider. So it was cool to kind of have someone who's kind of on the inside to talk about blogging with. So really excited that you're here.

Likewise. Thank you.

Yeah, before we get started into the meat of the episode, why don't you start out by talking about your background? Because we talked about this a little bit before off the call, and you have quite the interesting background about how you got to where you are right now. With Spark.

Yes. In 2013, I started Spark Designs, which is a creative agency based here in Pittsburgh. And the story of how that came about was I was interning at a healthcare organization in 2011, 2012, and I was in the events trade show department, and I saw the sort of money that they were spending with ad agencies downtown and throughout the country. And, you know, as an intern trying to show as much value as I could, I said, you know what, let me get some of the design software and see if I can help save the internal department money. And so they agreed to do that. And what I ended up doing was learning and teaching myself the software. I always thought that I had a creative eye and a decent eye for design and how things should look. And so, you know, healthcare branding, healthcare marketing is pretty, pretty simple. It's, you know, whites and blues. And so what I decided to do is, you know, just give it a try and see if I could help save the department money. I ended up doing that. But as an intern and a temp employee, my job time and duration was limited. But what I was able to do was create enough leverage so that it gave me an opportunity to stay connected and end up taking on this healthcare conglomerate as my first client, first account out of my bedroom whenever I was still living with my parents. And so that kind of created a stepping stone to really create a marketing company for the future. And that was late 2012. And at that same time, a friend of mine that I went to college with was in between jobs and we'd stayed connected after we graduated and him and I had a conversation and we said, you know what, let's see what we can really try to create and let's try to leverage our network as much as we possibly can and put ourselves in the right positions, go and network. And from 2013 on, that's what we did. And we just started building really good relationships, continuing to meet the right people that could put us in rooms with potential new business, potential people who could help us on the creative side, help us execute on some of the projects that we were working on. And, you know, year over year, we just continued to reinvest back into the business, continued to build our team, continued to add services. And one thing that we did was always paid attention to trends where marketing and branding and design and everything was going. And you know, first we were just a design and a web firm. But then one thing that we were able to understand was, okay, we're starting to see that how do people get to a website? And it was, oh, social is picking up and businesses are starting to adopt social media. And you know, you had Google search. And so that ended up allowing us to spin off different business units. And, you know, today we are full service. We just opened a new office down in downtown Pittsburgh and we're a team of 20 people right now with the goal to expand into new markets and really hit and focus on verticals that we feel we're strong at, which are food and beverage and consumer goods, healthcare and medical and sports and entertainment. So we are riding a momentum wave right now. And it's very exciting because we're a young, energetic firm and we look forward to what's in store and what's to come. So it's exciting, definitely.

Well, and I think it's really important, what you said there about kind of keeping on top of the trends, because SEO is just a huge trend right now. And I saw that that is one of the services that you offer with Spark. So what are some of the other services that you guys do offer as a firm?

Yeah, so what I had mentioned, we are full service. So anything from branding, design, we do web design and web development, full on social media, campaign management, search engine optimizations, we also have a full in house video production studio as well as audio for putting out podcasts and things like that. And you know, we, we hope to expand in the future into doing more PR and experiential marketing as well.

That's great. Well, and you. I feel like every day is probably a little bit different because it's such a fast moving industry and like just last week what you were on a cruise like for work. So it seems like you have a really, really awesome job and it's really cool that you can just on so many different things.

Yeah, it is a pretty interesting gig. We partnered with an organization that's also based in Pittsburgh, but what they do is they run the non game day experiences for a few different NFL teams being cruises. And so we have the ability to go and film with current players and retired players legends. And what we're are we're tasked to do is just create good marketing material and really sell cabins to fans for the next year. But it provides a lot of opportunities for us because we get to really continue to grow our sports and entertainment vertical. And that's a big piece of it. And so it is exciting. And it's exciting because it's. These are people and players that, you know, I've grown up watching. People on our team have grown up watching and now we're filming pieces of content with them, getting sound bites and doing a lot of social and you know, business related items when it comes to like marketing their teams cruises. So it's pretty cool.

That's definitely awesome. Yeah. I was just looking through your Instagram pictures from it and I was just like, that is the life.

Yeah. And everybody thinks it's just a vacation, a glorified vacation. But it is a lot of work. I mean 12 hours filming, we get up early, we're filming music and entertainment events in the evenings. So it's a long four days, but it's definitely worth it. And it's, it's a lot of fun.

Yeah, definitely. And a lot of exposure to a lot of different people. So that's really great and kind of leads me to the meat of this episode, which is marketing. And one of my gripes with going to business school and the case studies that we always did was that they were super vague and they didn't really apply to issues that were actually happening in the business world. So it would be more like company A needs 6,000 widgets and company B sells 200. Something like that, that just super abstract. So for the focus of this podcast interview, I'd really love to focus in on the real problems that some of our Food Blogger Pro members on the Food Blogger Pro membership site are having, which is why we came up with a couple of questions ahead of this podcast episode. And I took those and I asked our community and we got some really great responses back. So we're actually going to talk through some of those questions and responses. And then, Nick, you're going to just talk through some of the ideas you might have and some marketing strategies that they may be. May be able to apply moving forward. So the first question that we kind of landed on for this interview was, what is your biggest obstacle when it comes to marketing your blog and business? And there are so many that I'm sure a lot of the listeners out there are experiencing right now, myself included with my blog. Marketing is so not my forte. So I'm really excited to learn from you today, Nick. So our first response is from my good blogging friend Casey, and it says, my biggest obstacle is getting noticed by brands. When I am noticed, they are wanting to send me free product for mention for some brands in my niche. I will do this to build a relationship in the hopes of working together again in the future. But how can I actually go after them afterwards? Or how do I ask for payment instead of that free product? Which I think is a really great question. And I think a lot of the listeners today will be in the same position. And I know a couple of years ago I was in that same position. I kept getting free product, free product, but I kind of wanted to make that transition to getting paid because, you know, the money pays the bills. So do you have any advice, Nick, on how they can kind of take that business relationship to the next level?

Yeah, and obviously, if, you know, you're a food beverage consumer brand, product is the one thing that they would love to give away because, you know, then it doesn't impact their bottom line as much. So obviously that's going to be the first thing that they offer up. However, we. We do a lot of work with brands and we have food beverage brands as well, and free product is the first thing that they want to give up. However, what I would say is how do you, as the blogger or influencer or whatever you want to call it, show as much data as you possibly can. And what us as marketers are looking for is the analytics that can, if you can tie a direct ROI or impact to what you can do for this brand, then you create a point of leverage for your following for your blog brands and influencers and bloggers in general, they're all trading on the currency of attention. If you have a built in following that, you know, you can put something creative that stands out and these people will, will actually make a purchase, then that's value. And if the brand can see that, then you've created a point of leverage where then you can offer up, you know, free product, just won't do it anymore. And you want a, you want X whenever it comes to a monetary trade off. And so I would say that the biggest thing that us as marketers or on the brand side as an internal marketing team would be looking for is how can you directly tie a ROI or a sales impact driver to what you're going to be able to do. And if you can do that, you should have no problem being able to charge, you know, really what, what a post or a recipe or an article would be worth, you know, but that's, you know, it goes twofold as well because a lot of brands and decision makers on the business side are not going to be worried about likes or views. They want sales, they want people to actually go to the store and buy a product. And so if you can figure out a way that you can convert your audience to people who will make a purchase, you know, then you're, then you've created a point of leverage. And that makes that conversation of asking for money or asking for a form of payment much easier.

Right. And I think that's something that, as food bloggers, it's a little bit difficult because if there's a certain pretzel brand that I'm helping promote on my blog, it's really hard to measure my influence because people might see that brand at the store and buy it, but they won't necessarily like come back to my post and report back. So just kind of as a follow up to that question, is there any way or are there any ways that you can think of to help measure that influence?

Yeah, so that's another good question because, you know, you only control so much of the buying process. You know, you may influence somebody to go to the store and buy, but the brand on the other side would never know that. So, you know, certain things that we do is really put a lot of the burden on yourself and say if you know that your audience has a tendency to go and really trust what you're doing and go and buy, tying a promo code to a particular post or saying, you know, hey, I'll feature, I'll feature you guys in a story or in the next recipe or something. Take a picture while you're at the store, when you're buying this type of pretzel or this pretzel brand or something like that. So there's creative ways that you can add an ROI to what you intend to do that would influence the brand to give it a shot. If this is the first time test run with a new brand or a new product, and if you prove yourself once, then the likelihood of them coming back to you is a lot greater.

Definitely. And I think that just goes back to one of my biggest pieces of advice. When people come to me and they're like, hey, I really love this brand. How do I kind of set myself apart? It's that relationship and just kind of showing your value. But I think it's really important to have both sides of the equations to form that relationship. But then also show that, hey, my work is extremely valuable and you're getting that ROI like Nick was talking about. So.

And if you think about it, these brands today are faced with so many different people who want to work with them. I mean, we're in the social and a digital world where everybody wants to be an influencer, whether they're a large scale influencer, a micro influencer, and these guys can't pay everybody. So how do you set yourself apart and really dive into what? What is in it for them? What do they really want? And they want sales. They want their product to move off of shelves. And if you have the ability to do that and you can prove it, then that's golden. And they can't say no if that's the case.

I love that. Yeah, totally, totally, totally. And I think there are some really great nuggets of takeaways right there. But let's move on to the next question right here from Rebecca, because it's sort of on the other side of kind of refining her offering. So she says condensing down our niche to a more focused brand is one of our biggest obstacles. I'm passionate about seasonal produce and whole health, body, mind, soul for families. So although most of my recipes are created with nutrition in mind, I believe health and well being are much more than just the nutrients we take in. We create recipes, cooking videos and animations for kids that celebrate fruits and vegetables. That sounds so cool. But I really struggle with the marketing all of those ideas into one cohesive brand. So Nick, do you have any ideas for how to kind of condensing down that niche?

Yeah, and you know, that's something that a lot of people struggle with whenever it comes to having different areas of interest and different areas of focus. How do you appeal to wide audience when you have all these different things to offer? So my thought would be to really, really hone in on the different niche markets, because if. If there's a community there and you can be a big fish in a small pond, you carry a lot more weight now. You obviously end up appealing to a smaller pool of people. However, your impact becomes much greater, you know, and I would say to really try to focus as much as you can on what's core to your brand or what you're passionate about and really try to focus on that and build your community around those things. Because it's hard to appeal to everybody. Everybody has a lot of passions, but, you know, kind of go to where passion and opportunity meet or where you see opportunity. Because you'll probably have the most success when you hone in on a smaller niche market.

Definitely. And I think another way to do that is just to ask your readers what they want. If you're not necessarily working with brands right now, but you're more interested in forming your own brand and just kind of refining that own brand, I think there's no harm in asking your readers what they want to see from you. And that might help give you a bit of a direction, too.

Yeah. And what that does is just. It creates transparency and a deeper loyalty to yourself whenever you're asking, because it shows that you also care. And if the people that are the face of these brands or blogs or whatever it may be, they have to realize that their success comes from their audience and being able to continually deliver to their audience what their audience wants to see. So I do think that asking them and opening up that level of transparency is important and, you know, important for success in the future as well.

Agreed. And you can even do that, for those of you listening, you can even do that by writing a blog post and just say, hey, let's have a conversation in the comments. Or you can do a reader survey with a tool like Typeform or I think Google, what is it called? Google Forms, maybe, and just ask, ask your readers what they want to see. So there are a lot of different ways that you can kind of have that conversation with them. And I think that's just a really great route to take. The next question that we asked our community members was, have you figured out how you can fit into a brand's marketing strategy? So we're kind of going back to what we initially talked about, Casey's question. But this response is from Nisa and it says in some ways, I think I have that figured out how they can fit into a brand's marketing strategy. If a brand reaches out and has certain criteria or a message that they are working to promote via a specific campaign, I generally have a good understanding of how to do that. But it's something that I can't always foresee when it hasn't been laid out in certain terms. I would love to learn how to connect with brands in a way that is more valuable to both myself and them and build more long term relationships with like minded companies. And I honestly think that's a fantastic question because you're looking for a way to just build that value and make sure that your relationship is valuable. And I think that's something you should definitely be asking yourself as a blogger, as an influencer. But do you have any thoughts on that? Nick?

Yeah, I mean, you know, this question is very well thought out because a lot of people would want to, they want to get a post and they would want to get paid for it. However, you know, here what we see is somebody who wants to create a long term relationship. So if you're setting yourself up for a long term relationship, one of the things that I think is very important is to be very strategic. So this, in this instance it may be the right move to show as much value early on as you possibly can by saying, hey, I am a huge fan of your product. I want to do this. And don't ask for anything in the beginning. You know that what you're going to do is prove and show value to this brand and use that as a, again a point of leverage for long term. So if you know what you're going to do is going to show value to them, do it pro bono in the beginning and then create a relationship and that relationship is what's going to turn into compensation over the course of however, however long, you know. And so I'm a big believer in showing being the first person in a relationship to show value. Because if you can show value early on, then the person on the other side and you don't ask for anything, the person on the other side is indebted to you if you need something at some point in time. Right. And I think that's very important and I think that that would be a good strategy to adopt. Especially whenever you're going into the situation and you want to build a relationship, that should be the key. You never go into relationship, what can I get out of this? Go into the relationship thinking what, what value do I bring to this person? And if the value's there, the compensation and the money is going to come regardless.

Absolutely. And I think just going along with that, just being there. And this is something I've talked about on Food Blogger Pro a bunch. We have a sponsored content course that I made probably a year or two ago. And in it I talk about the story of how I started to work with my first brand that I ever worked with on my blog. And it was basically giving them exposure on my Instagram account. On my posts, whenever I would use one of their products, I would tag them, I would say how much I love them. And by the time I got up the courage to actually reach out to them via email about a business relationship, I got the response back saying, well, you can already tell that we are fans of yours already. So they already knew who I was. They're already sharing stuff that I had shared that use their products. So it was all about just making sure that they first of all knew who I was. And also they understood that I just loved their products so much and that our niches fit together really well. So I think being there, being strategic, like Nick said, are great ways to kind of help form that long term relationship.

Right. And you know, one of the things like you had done, I mean, that's a great strategy. Just reach out to brands, whether it's through social media platforms and find the just create lines of communication. Right. As soon as that connection's built, there's opportunity for a relationship there. And it takes time to. We interact with brands all the time, but to spend the time to reach out and just say, hey, I like what you guys are doing. I would love to work with you in the future. Here's what I do. And I just think it's important to take the time to create those lines of communication with brands through social channels, because it can be very effective.

Definitely. And do you have any advice on a preferred way of communicating with brands? Is it best to just reach out on social media or would getting the contact information of their marketing team and emailing them help? Or what do you think?

Well, it depends. I mean, being in the food space, I think that that lends itself naturally to social channels. You know, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, you know, bloggers, you're taking pictures. A lot of you guys are photographers as well. And so a lot of what's being promoted is on Instagram. And even if you're reaching out to brands on Instagram, a lot of the times the person that you're Contacting and you're talking to is part of the marketing team anyway. So that's probably one of the people who are making decisions on, oh, who is our brand going to be partnering with? What sort of partners do we want in the upcoming quarter? Does that mesh with our strategy? So those are going to be the people that you're going to want to talk to, in my opinion. I think that's probably the quickest way to a decision maker.

Definitely. I would agree. And it's just so natural, like you said, to tag a brand on Instagram, say, hey, I really love your pretzels or cookies or whatever, and just show them who you are. So I think, oh, go ahead.

No, and another thing I was gonna say was even on the brand's post, going into the comment section and writing personalized messages is, you know, you see a lot of people who go in and they'll just, you know, put a thumbs up or, you know, follow me here. But that just seems spammy to me. And I don't. I'm not a fan of that. But I would say what works very well is taking the time to go into certain channels that make sense, or going on Instagram and following certain hashtags that make sense to your particular blog and going in and engaging in conversation. Because that's not only going to build trust with the brand, but engaging in conversation with other people that are in that thread that may want to hear what you have to say. And that also goes to build your following and your brand as well.

Definitely.

And making it personal and authentic is important, too.

Oh, for sure. Yeah. And that's what we talk about all the time on Food Blogger Pro is the importance of engagement and intentional engagement using a Bjork word. Bjork. Nick, I'm not sure if, you know, is the. My boss, the guy who typically does these podcast interviews, but he's all about that. Intentional, intentional movements and intentional engagement. And I think brands can definitely see through it when you're being fake, giving those thumbs up, being, hey, this is great, you know, but actually putting some meaning behind what you're saying to these brands will really go a long way.

Right? Absolutely.

So I. That hits all of the questions that we had from the members on Footblogger Pro. We could only go through a couple. We had a lot more in the thread, but we can only get through a couple in this podcast interview. So, Nick, do you have just one key takeaway that you would love to leave listeners with?

Yeah, I would say, you know, in the position where I sit is I almost am in the middle between bloggers and influencers are on one side, and I work with a lot of brands, organizations on the other side. So I'm kind of like a middleman here. And so one thing that I've seen is that corporate brands, organizations, companies, they want to be able to partner and find people who can drive their brand for them. Right? And on that other side are influencers, people who have created huge followings in a particular space or category, entertainers, athletes. And what they want to do on that side is they want to be able to monetize what they've built in terms of following and reach and engagement. So there's a value chain there. If you can figure out how to create as much value for one another as you possibly can, it's a good fit and it makes sense. So I would say figure out where your core competencies are in terms of your message, your brand, your blog, your reach, and try to find organizations or companies or food brands that are looking to grow in your space. When you can do that, that's when you create a win win scenario for both parties. And that's what everybody's looking for. And so I would say the way to do that is to figure out how to continue, how to just be authentic and partner and reach the right people. I mean, that's really it. I could talk about this for a lot longer, but that's it. Create as much value as you possibly can. Know your numbers, know your audience. Once you understand those things, you shouldn't have any trouble going and reaching out to brands and companies and organizations.

That's great. And a really great note to end on, Nick. So thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. And if listeners want to connect with you, kind of want to follow along with what you're doing, learn more about Spark. Where can they do that?

Yeah, again, I'd be happy to do it again, if there's more questions in the future, I would love to do this, you know, and we have a food and beverage vertical. I know our social team. Some of those girls would love to be a part of this. So, you know, food for thought in the future. But yeah. So our website is sparkdesigns.com www.sparkdesigns.com and on Instagram, SparkDesigns and me personally, Nick B R U C K E R. So if you want to follow along or engage in some conversation or, you know, take a look at some of the people that we're working with, maybe it's a good fit. Feel free to reach out. It'd be great.

That's awesome. Thank you so much, Nick. Really appreciate you joining us today.

You're welcome. Thanks.

And that is that, my friend. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Food Blogger Pro podcast this week. And before we wrap up today, I'd like to take a second to ask you to subscribe to this podcast. If you're enjoying it, you can subscribe to the Food Blogger Pro podcast on your favorite podcast listening app like itunes, Google Play, Spotify, or Google Podcasts, and you'll be notified whenever we release a new episode. What are the benefits of subscribing? Well, you'll never miss an episode. We release a new episode every Tuesday where we talk to incredible people about the topics that matter to you as a blogger, business owner and or influencer. Subscribing makes sure that you're always in the know. Whenever we release a new episode, you get it automatically every Tuesday. Easy as that. And we would absolutely love to have you, dear friend, as a subscriber. So thanks again for tuning in this week. We'll see you here next Tuesday, same time, same place. But until then, make it a great week.