MBA1587 Does Influencer Marketing Work? + Free Ride Friday

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Review and you enter our weekly random draw. It's that simple. You it's our way to say thank you for showing us love on itunes. All right, let's jump into today's episode. Heyo. Welcome to the $100 NBA show business truths on the daily with our 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA a complete business training and community online. And in today's lesson you will learn does influencer marketing work? Why do big brands have sponsors have influencers promote their products on social media? Does this actually work? Does it actually give you a return on investment or is it a waste of money? Or maybe it's a little bit of both? Is this only for big businesses with big budgets or can you get started with Influencer marketing as well, with a minimal budget. That's what we get into in today's episode. There's a right way and a wrong way to do influencer marketing. I want to make sure that you steer clear from the pitfalls and you go for the gold and get a return on your marketing invested dollars. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Does having your business or brand promoted by a celebrity, by an influencer, by a tastemaker in your market really work? Does it do more than just awareness? Does it actually convert into actual sales? That's what we get into in today's episode. The first thing I want to mention is that influencer marketing has levels, okay? Not everybody's going to be able to afford to use Shaquille o' Neal as an influencer or a Kardashian or the Rock for that matter. Okay? But for most businesses, you don't need these big celebrities, you don't need these big names. What you actually need is somebody who has a following, that has an audience that would be perfect for your products and services. Somebody who's really niche but has raving fans. I'll give you some examples. Pat Flynn is considered a influencer in the blogging community, the online business community, the content marketing community. ConvertKit is a email marketing service for creators, for bloggers. So Pat is a big deal in that space. So when Pat promotes ConvertKit, it's gonna move a lot of business because his fans absolutely love what he says, love what he does, and they'll do what he recommends. So if he promotes ConvertKit to his email list, on Instagram, on his social profiles, does a webinar that's a perfect match for ConvertKit, they're actually gonna make more sales from Pat Flynn, who's only known in that community than, let's say, a B actor who's well known but maybe doesn't have the following in that space. There's a site called cameo.com that has, you know, celebrities that are well known, household names that, that are willing to give you shout outs, and some people even endorse businesses. Now this might look cool and seem nice and maybe a ego boost for your business, but it's probably not gonna move a lot of sales because Kevin from the Office is really not the authority in your niche market, is not somebody people really trust in terms of a recommendation. It's just a kind of cool thing to have, but it's not really gonna move sales. So what I really wanna impress upon you today is you. You Want to find celebrities in your niche, in your market, who are the people that have the biggest following? Who is the biggest name in your niche? If you're in the swimming niche, who's the biggest swimming coach that everybody knows about in your country? If you're into snowboarding, who is a big snowboarder that is on YouTube that has a following that people watch? You don't have to go with the household names, but the names that are known in your niche are really powerful because they can really, really influen influence their audience to buy your product. So how does this all work? Well, what I recommend when it comes to an agreement with an influencer is do a combination of a guaranteed minimum plus commission. This allows them to have some skin in the game and want to push your product and promote it and recommend it and use it and give a testimonial. So something like this would be like, you know, you're going to share this on your email list, you're going to do a webinar with me and you're going to post this on your social profiles. Three times in one week. And we're gonna pay you, let's say $10,000. Now this is just a figure I just pull out of my head. This is something that you can negotiate and also depends on the following. But in addition to the $10,000, you wanna say, hey, use an affiliate link, here's the affiliate link and you're gonna get 20% on all sales. Again, the percentage pulled out of my head, you can come up with the number that's right for your business. But the point here is, is that they get a combination of cash upfront for doing what they do. Or you can even spill it. 50, 55 grand. 5 grand in this example. You know, 5 at the start, 5 after they fulfill those obligations and then they get the ongoing commission for any sales they get.

So they can continue to promote you.

Beyond the minimum commitment and they become sort of a partner with you. I want to also stress that you want to tap into markets that would be interested in your product but maybe have never been introduced to your product. A good example of this is Michael Port, who's a amazing public speaker and public speaking coach and the co founder of Heroic Public Speaking. Michael and I have worked together several times. He had a best selling book called Steal the Show that he spoke about on this podcast. But we've also partnered with him to get in front of his audience because his students, public speakers, are most likely going to benefit from a webinar software. They're going to need my products and services. They trust Michael. Michael is their coach. He is an influencer in that community. He's a big deal. So that partnership really, really works. Also, some low hanging fruit is influencers within any businesses that you already do business with. Say for example, your product integrates with a service or you use a service with your own services package. Like say for example you teach a photography course and you recommend a certain type of camera lens. There might be somebody who's a real influencer over at let's say Canon who produces this lens that's all over social, that's known that would be happy to promote your business and your course because you're recommending Canon. So think a few layers deep rather than just on the surface. Who's the most famous person that I would love to promote my product?

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Influencer marketing can work for your business, but it's got to be a win win. It's got to really be a person that has a lot of pull in your community that is a perfect fit that they would recommend your product anyway if they were a user. By the way, you don't need somebody who has a humongous audience, a reasonable audience, somebody who has an email list of 20,000 people and a social following maybe of 10,000 people. It's not humongous. But if you work with smaller influencers, you're going to start having incredible momentum and word of mouth because you're getting around, every leader of every community is speaking about you, and you become the talk of the market, the talk of the town. So it might be better to budget out rather than go for a big fish. Split up your budget amongst several niche, powerful, but smaller influencers. Guys, thank you so much for listening to today's lesson. But today's episode's not over. It's Free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's Free ride. And the winner is hidden R20. Hi Danar20 says refreshing five stars. This podcast doesn't drag for 30 minutes just to get five minutes of information. This podcast is short and sweet. Great for business owners or even people who have a side hustle. Thank you, Hayden R20, for that amazing review. Your mission is to email me over at Omar100- MBA-NET so I can hook you up with the lifetime membership to easy course. It's that simple, guys. Just leave us an itunes rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw we call Free Ride Friday. Just listen on Friday to see if you want. It's that easy. And don't forget to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. Also, by hitting subscribe, you get access to all our archive episodes. Over 1500 business lessons. It's the only way to get access. So go ahead and hit subscribe on whatever you use to listen to podcasts. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. The reason why influencer marketing can work for you is that you're borrowing another person's audience. You're borrowing somebody who has people's ear. And if you have a good match, someone with a strong following, it can really work for you. That's why it's important for you to take the time to do the research and find out, does this person really resonate with their audience?

Are they legit?

Do they headline talks at conferences? Do they have a thriving business because of their audience? Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in Monday's episode. Until then, take care.

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