Ep. 106: Influencer Marketing: What it is and why you should be using it
EPISODE 106
Influencer Marketing: What it is and why you should be using it
About the Episode:
Already crossing your fingers when it comes to examining year end growth? There’s a way to make the growth of your organization more sustainable (and definitely more of a sure thing). I’m excited to share with you today a method that many of my clients have used with great success – as much as 5xing their campaign goals. Introducing The Social Street Team™ Method, where your mission, your target audience, and your biggest advocates collide. Your Social Street Team™ is similar to influencer marketing, but it has your organization at the heart of it all. Listen to this episode to learn more about this method and how to get started – even if you’re B2B, even if you’re international, even if your organization isn’t fully community based. This is also something that I extensively teach in The Purpose & Profit Group Coaching Program, and we would love it if you joined us!
Topics:
Christina’s own imperfect action moment that happened recently and the steps she took afterwards to move on
The history of influencer marketing from the large for profit industry to how nonprofits are using it today
What The Social Street Team™ Method is, how it engages digital marketing to connect your mission and target audience, and why it’s important for your organization to implement one
Differentiating the roles of your Social Street Team™ members vs. board members and how to cultivate more fun and community building
How to find Street Teamers for your organization, even if you’re international, even if you’re not entirely community based
Finding one action and goal to commit to for the next 30 days to really get your Street Team™ off the ground and set yourself up for success before the year end
Think you’ve reached out to “everyone” in your network? Out of ideas to get noticed and get funded? Generate leads for your nonprofit or social impact business: https://www.splendidcourses.com/prospect
Christina’s Favorite Takeaways:
“The power of the endorsement is the key to what makes influencer marketing so special and so successful. It has a 5x return of every dollar spent.”
“Whether or not you realize it, you’ve been influenced your whole life.”
“A Social Street Team™ is made up of digital ambassadors… they may also just be your advocates – your dialed in passionate champions, super fans. They can be and should be in your social street team.”
“Being a part of your Social Street Team™ should feel very light and fun, and community building.”
“Many of my clients who have used The Social Street Team™ Method 5x’d their next campaign, just by having a street team, because what does the street team do? It connects you with people outside of your bubble.”
“Everybody at this point is once removed from knowing somebody who's a YouTuber, an influencer, a blogger, or something like that. Influencers are everywhere.”
FREE Resources from Splendid Consulting:
How to Work with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
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Christina Edwards 00:00
All right influencer marketing we're digging into influencer marketing for nonprofits and social impactors today, this is going to cover everything you think you know about influencers, everything you should be doing everything you shouldn't be doing. It's really going to be a best practices masterclass. Influencer Marketing is something that I've been teaching for over five years. And I remember, I mean, close to five years ago saying to nonprofits, y'all need to start doing this now. Because five years from now, you're gonna be like, crap, why did we start working with influencers? So if that's you, and you're like, why did it take so long, you're here now, you're going to start today. And that's okay. There's so much opportunity in working with influencers. I will talk to you about my social Street Team method. This is my influencer marketing methods. I'm going to talk to you about that today. But first, I'm going to share some mistakes and some self coaching that I personally am going through, just as I'm like getting ready to record. So I got an email that I realized from somebody that I sent out the wrong link for a webinar. And you know, that moment where you're like, crap, how many people got the wrong link? How many people thought they were here, and the days and the times, and I'm just having a day, I'm having a little bit of a week if I'm honest. And it was not a good email to get. And when I realized, yeah, in fact, the wrong link had gone out to lots 1000s of people. I felt like crap. And here's what I did next. Because when this happens, it's kind of ironic, because I just finished the webinar. And one of the themes that I talked about is this idea of imperfect action, and imperfect action will make you a lot of money. And that's true, that is true. It is a value of mine. It's something that works really, really well a concept that works really, really well for my clients because it gets them out of draft mode. And I just want to say, having come on the heels of saying that and presenting that to lots and lots of people, then having had some Imperfect Action come smack me in the face where I'm like, damn, I wish the link had been perfect. It sucks. It sucks when you take imperfect action that you think is going to be perfect air quotes. And it's not. So what'd you do? After that, after the fall after the fail after the like, Oh, crap moment matters. Because it is a fork in the road as to how you talk to yourself. I talk often to my purpose and profit clovers, about this idea of giving yourself a soft place to land. So when you make a mistake, when something doesn't go how you hoped giving yourself a soft place to land is the secret to momentum and success. So here's what I did. I thought about it. I looked at it. My brain was like, this is catastrophic. This is so this sucks so hard. And then I realized, like this isn't catastrophic, plenty of people made it to the right place, the people who didn't look at the replay. It's okay, I don't like it. I wish that things had been double checked and etc. It's okay. And there's not a whole lot I can do right now. Like, it's kind of out of my hands. It is okay. And so what that's kind of what I realized just to like dial down, like how big a deal is this, even though it felt like a big deal. The next layer that there are two things that I think can work really, really well. Now, this is a zoom link. And you may be thinking, Yeah, but it's just a zoom link, but you have a flavor of this that will come up in your life. And when it does, depending on like how big a deal it is, you can use these two ideas example. So I was watching this real estate show selling like Serhat on Netflix, and it's really good. It's a little cheesy, but overall, it's really good. And one of the like big player real estate agents in New York, he goes for this listing appointment, and they put them up against another agent. And the seller gets to pick which agent they're going to list with and they don't pick him. And the guy is like deflated because he has more volume, his numbers are higher, like on paper, he should get the listing, but he doesn't. And he like they cut to him like walking out of the listing appointment. And he's like, You know what, I thought I was gonna get it. I did. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna take 30 minutes, I'm gonna be upset. And then we go and then we move on. And it was like Master self coaching. Basically, he said, I want to feel the feelings of disappointment. This sucks. I'm not going to tell myself it's anything other than sucky, because it was like a $20 million listing. And I'm not going to wallow in it. Like I'm going to give myself like a container of time. 30 minutes and we go. And then I have no idea where I heard this maybe a podcast or book or show, I don't know. But it was this idea of this coach telling their losing team it was like maybe baseball or soccer or something like that. The coach said whenever the team loses the game him, they get on the bus. And they're like, All right, everybody gets seven minutes, everybody has seven minutes to wallow and talk about how bad it was. And then we're going to talk about what worked, what we want to do differently. And that's it, we're not talking about it again. And so for me leading up to recording this podcast, it's like, Okay, I've troubleshot what I can at the link, I've sent out the replay, I can replay how, how I wish I had gone differently in my head, that's not helpful. I can replay that, that this sucks, that's not helpful. And we go and so it's almost like allowing yourself to go through it without taking the disappointment and putting your feelings on a shelf. That's what most people do. If they don't kind of wallow in it and ruminate in it, they just put their feelings on a box on a shelf never to be seen or heard from again, I don't recommend that because that's when things bubble up. So instead, go through it, talk yourself through it, talk to yourself, kindly give yourself a soft place to land and we go now we're gonna go into influencer marketing. So I just taught this workshop from Lakester loyalty, really great workshop. If you want to watch the workshop replay, you can send me a message anywhere on the on the places, email, social, wherever. And I spend a lot of time talking about influencer marketing. Who can be an influencer? Let's start with some basic questions of like, what are influencers? What do they do influencers basically give visibility to your organization or for for profits to a product or service, right? And they give it an endorsement. The power of the endorsement is the key here of to what makes influencer marketing so special and so successful. It has a 5x return of every dollar spent. Okay, now for profits know this. And about a decade ago, they started pulling money that they were spending on traditional media think billboards, print advertising, radio ads, digital ads. Now, if they had $100,000, to spend that month, they said, Oh, what if we spend some on the same old, same old and we pull a chunk of it and we start working with influencers? What they saw was holy crap, a higher return when they work with influencers. Why? Because if I'm driving, and I see a billboard for SmartWater, okay, I drive past it, I see it, my brain is like, maybe files it away, right? Now, I'm gonna have to keep seeing that marketing message again and again and again. And maybe at some point, I'm like, Yeah, I'm SmartWater. Okay. But if I see a wellness coach, talk about how SmartWater is high in electrolytes, and all the other waters aren't. And when they tried this water, it's so much better for workout recovery. I'm making this up, you feel me. But if I trust that wellness coach, that power is going to convert me into taking action so much faster, so much quicker than just like a billboard or a printout. Okay. Now, whether or not you realize that you've been influenced your whole life, you've been influenced your whole life. Okay. So I told on the webinar, the story about how my daughter in a pinch, I'm asking her what she wants for dinner, and she's saying no to everything. And finally, I'm like a hot dog. And she says, Yeah, find a hot dog. I'll have that. And she watches me open the microwave door, but she's like, No, I want grilled. And it's been a minute since I've served her grilled hotdogs. So it stopped me and I started laughing. I was like, Why do you want your hotdog grilled? And she was like, grilled hotdogs are better. And I'm sitting here going. And I said to her, where did you hear that? And it would make sense that maybe she saw like a commercial or something like that. But I knew I knew the answer before she said it, but I just needed like confirmation. And she said to me, she went and grabbed her iPad, and it's this YouTuber family and they play pranks on each other and she really likes watching them. And there's this one episode where they have a pool party and they grill hot dogs and there must be some scene where the two kids say to each other grilled hot dogs are the best hot dogs influence the power of influence and endorsement to get people to take action even for a five year old. So that is influencer marketing. The way that I teach it is with this social street team concept. So some of you listening may have an ambassador team, a young Advisory Board, think about that. But this is a big twist on it. This is an on line experience. Okay, this is an online community. This is an online partnership. It can have an in person component, but to be successful it doesn't need to. So a social street team is made up of digital ambassadors, those digitally ambassadors may be influencers so they may be thought leaders on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tik Tok, Snapchat, YouTube, wherever, right? They may be full time content creators there. They may also just be your advocates. You're dialed in passionate champions, super fans. They can be and should be in your social street team. It should be both one One of the mistakes that organizations make, and we hear it a lot, sometimes from like well intentioned board members, is we just need a celebrity. We just need a celebrity. And that's what they're thinking because celebrities have millions of followers, and then it'll get a bunch of visibility and eyeballs, but no, in fact, it is the foodie account that is community based that talks a lot about locally grown produce, right? It could be a wellness blogger. It could be a lifestyle, blogger, a mom, a, you know, it could be an interior designer. Those are all really great street teamers that may have followers in the 1000s. And not or hundreds of 1000s, but not necessarily millions. Because when you think about somebody who's like, ultra celebrity, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian, great, like Uber celebrities, if we think about their audience, their audience is very dialed in to their lifestyle, their music, that as a celebrity and think about the location of their audience, everywhere. The location of your nonprofit is likely more specific. So we need to figure out that alignment. I like to think of it like a Venn diagram, like where does your mission and your target audience kind of overlap with your ideal social street teamers? Like, where is that overlap? Where is that potential partnership? Where's that alignment? So when we think again, about somebody who maybe talks about conscious living that talks about, oh, I What about all the like plant accounts or foodie accounts? And maybe there is an overlap with food insecure households, right? Or we think about a diaper bank here in Georgia that that has partnered with other accounts that are mom influencers, you know, all those mom influencers accounts, right? They get they very much get the need for diverse right. And young children, they very much get the cost and the expense that that that is right. So those are great kind of alignments for social street teamers. And we also want to bring in your champions and your ambassadors, and you're just young superfans to who are advocating this can be any age. So that's what influencer marketing is. That's who can be an influencer. One of the big questions that I hear is, Well, two ways. The first one is do I have to pay influencers? Now I gave you the for profit example. And they these are paid partnerships. So again, you might spend $10,000, to run an ad in a magazine but instead, these for profits are thinking Let me instead give this high profile influencer $10,000. And I will send them a box of our products. And they can create three feed posts and three Instagram stories and one blog about our product, right. So you can think about the way that influencers really rose up the the popularity of the Stanley Cup, right? That was influencer marketing. Because Stanley was making pharmacists for like camping until some people said, these are really cool. And the momentum and the ripple effect. And it became part of like an outfit. Right? It became part of like, a moment. Okay, so that's what influencers do. You don't have to pay them. And I don't teach the social street team concept where you're paying them. Okay, now for profits are. But this is a mutually beneficial exchange. This is a partnership. So we think about their why, which is very important. We're gonna get into motivation. We want to think about what's in it for them? Why would they post about your nonprofit, your mission, an upcoming event, an upcoming fundraiser, a resource, a fact a lead magnet? Why would they post about that? And you need to be able to answer that question, what would be in it for them? So if you found the right group of influencers that have some overlapping alignment, then that is the answer it is they also care about x. They also care about environmentalism because I see them, I see them ditching plastic for good. And I see them talking a little bit about environmentalism, and I'm going to talk to them about our work our programs, our services, right. So you want to have that like overlapping piece, they want to use their platform for good. And in the right pitch in the right packaging of a street team. This is an in kind exchange, okay, so you can think of it the way that a board member or committee member or young Advisory Board would be in you know, unpaid position, but do not make this mistake. It is not the feeling it is not the responsibility of being on a board. And that's one of the mistakes a lot of organizations make when they tell me we tried it. It didn't work, or some version of that. I'm like, Oh, I bet it felt hard. Or I bet it felt vague for the influencer. So if you say to somebody, Hey, will you partner will you be an ambassador for us? And they're like, Yes. What's your plan after that, and this concept is what I teach inside the club, we go deep, there are templates, there are tools, there are pitch scripts, there is everything you would need inside the club for this to take this work like deeper and really fast track your success, but you want to make sure that you're giving them everything they need to succeed. I like to say sometimes, that people imagine that creating a social street team is a lot like, I'm inviting you to dinner. And I'm like, Hey, do you want to go grab dinner? And you're like, yes. And then I'm like, amazing. Be at my house at 630. And make sure that you bring an appetizer, a drink, and dessert and you're like, wait, what? I thought we were going out to dinner, right? I thought it was ordering off a menu. That's what it should be like to be a social street tamer, it should feel like you've given them a digital menu and anything they need, whether it's prepackaged caption, a video, a story and impact point, it's all there for them. So it should feel very light and fun, and community building to be a part of not like they're really doing the more deep work that a board member or staffer would be doing. So that's one of the biggest mistakes that I see people make. So the other pieces is this idea of the version of a street team that I would want to have is a version that is not yet attainable today. Okay, so you're like, we need a new logo, and we need the perfect bla bla bla, and we need this video. And we need this thing. And I want you to think about your beta launch of your social street team. Right? What does that look like to have a street team that is so successful? And is a version that gets it out the door in the next 30 to 60 days? What does that look like? Because that's different than the five year version? Right? The five year version is rinsed and repeated and has more SOPs in it and has more street teamers in it right? I don't want you to worry about that, I want you to worry, I want you to think about the version that gets it out the door today. And so for many of my clients, their inaugural street teams have had between five and 20 people on okay, you can start with five, five people. Now I'm thinking about many of my clients who have done this, they follow this and they five external next campaign, just by having a street team, because what does the street team do? It connects you with people outside of your bubble. So so many organizations are spending so much time creating social content and videos and reels, and whatever's right. And then they come to me and they're like, no one's engaging on our posts. And I'm like, Uh huh. Between one and 10% of your audience on social media, seeing your posts, that's that's kind of the algorithm space line, okay? Now, unless you're running ads, and things like that, that's how we can change it. Or instead, organically, aka for free, you can create a street team and your street team is using their platforms. They're lifting your organization up, they're talking, they're advocating for you. So you're getting that advocacy that endorsement of this organization matters. Now we see this a lot in election season, right? We see advocacy, I was just talking about how it Taylor Swift had over 100,000. I believe people register to be voters in the last election simply from a post right advocacy. So using your platforms for goods, instead of that the voter registration account saying, hey, please register to vote Gen Z. Let's get somebody who's plugged into Gen Z, Gen Z to actually say, here's what you need to vote, here's the link, boom, boom, go. So that's the power of a street team. Again, I'm using Taylor as an example. But you don't need Taylor Swift, you need community based, who has a natural overlap with your cause your mission, we're going to be doing a deep dive in the purpose and profit club in September on this, I highly recommend you sign up to join us join that waitlist. It's a great way to find out about the club and get a special discount when we open because we're going to be doing this work. I often hear things like okay, but where do I find st teamers? For me? For our organization? That's great. But here's how we're different, especially for organizations that are international, right, who aren't so community based. I understand that and I'm like, Nope, you don't get a pass because you absolutely have so much opportunity for social street teamers. And I'm going to give you a case study right now which is looking at Charity Water. Charity Water is an international organization that primarily serves Africa and India I believe 100 million dollar organization. Okay, so the average person in Omaha Nebraska, what is their overlap with a with built building a well clean drinking water in Malawi, right? Like think about that. They could be saying that just like you could be too so they are a great example of an organization that has risen up not only in funding, but in endorsements and visibility and brand kind of IP brand trust through a social street team. They have a couple of different ones, they have quite a few different street teams at play. One of my favorite ones to draw attention to is their tiny heroes. That's their street team of young fundraiser. So children who are doing anything from lemonade stand, so five K's to really anything to help fundraise. They're doing birthday fundraisers, those all counts, they're more pure based, right? They have people who celebrate their birthday adults who celebrate their birthday every year and use a social street team like campaign for that using that method. Hang on, I'm gonna rephrase that one part. They have adults who will for their birthday, run fundraisers, using the same kind of endorsement and influencer marketing strategy to get eyeballs and fundraise and also just bring a lot of awareness. There's a huge awareness level to this method, just to the fact that clean drinking water is not something that the entire world has access to today, right? So just that layer is that first piece that's so so important. They also work with companies, sponsors, brands, and I love that one of my clients who created an amazing street team, her street team was more b2b. So her street team was a lot of brick and mortar businesses, restaurants in a specific area. And that worked so well for her. She also worked with a graffiti artist in the area that works so well. So you really don't have to go? Well, it has to be this exact way. It has to be on Instagram. And it has to be this one way I want you to think about like, Where does my ideal audience like what are they interested in? Where do they hang out? And the answer again, it might be LinkedIn, it might be YouTube, it might be Snapchat, it might be Facebook, and I mean Facebook groups really figuring out. And then the next layer is what I want to say, what's the ask right, and we teach us on the program? What are the next steps? And how do we make it really clear, because when we're asking somebody to join a street team, and they say, Yes, what is the next thing that you want them to do? So I like to have it time bound, where it's for a specific campaign. So they know what they're doing. They know what they're saying yes to right, versus this sort of like evergreen join our ambassador program. Goodbye, right. What are they joining? How can they participate? When's the start date? When's the end date? What is their experience? Like? If you've spent some time thinking about your donor journeys? This is really similar to that. How do I make sure that they feel seen heard thanked, and a part of our community in this process? So you may also think about like, what can I replicate that's worked really well. It could just be a simple handwritten postcard, right? It could be a text message. It could be something like that. It could be IG stories, it could be a blog spotlight, there's so many different ways that you can do it. But I want you to think about that as well. Let me know, I hope this was helpful for you. Let me know what questions you have about influencer marketing. And I told everybody on today's webinar to commit to one thing, take one thing from this lesson today to commit to for the next 30 days. So what I heard a lot of people say was, I'm going to find I'm gonna start asking people to join our street team. And so start with a goal instead of saying, I'm going to start asking people to join your street team, I'm going to ask five people this week, right? So get specific, go through that process. And I also want to offer they're already here, do not start from stranger to stranger, there's somebody in your world you can already ask. So think about them first. And think about asking them or you're one removed. Everybody at this point is like one removed from somebody, knowing somebody who's a YouTuber, and influencer, a blogger or something like that. So they are everywhere. So you kind of look for him, like Mr. Rogers says, look for the helpers, and we're gonna look for the influencers. If you want help with this, if you want to take this deeper, I highly recommend joining the purpose of profit club, our group coaching program. This is the work we're going to really be focusing on for two reasons between now in year end, the first reason is when we have a street team in place and we're building it now. It makes your end more sustainable. It makes your end growth more of a sure thing than a fingers crossed, hoping, praying, wishing. Okay, that's the first piece. The second piece is that scalable, so it not only does it help you set you up for your end, it helps set you up for next year because we add to your street team. We don't turn people out of your street team. Just like donors, we want that retention piece. Okay. So this is really the part of profitable scalable growth having these foundational systems like a street team is part of that. Like, it's essential to that. I think that speaks to an organization like Charity Water success is they said, We're gonna go online first. That's our primary method of communicating with everybody. They really prioritize social media being online email, and we've seen that worked really well for them, and they're not outliers that can work really, really well for you too. I hope you enjoyed today's episode, and I'll see you next time.