How to Grow Your Brand With Influencer Marketing - Dave Schneider

Summary

In this Stukent Expert Session, Dave Schneider, co-founder of Ninja Outreach, an influencer marketing tool, shares insights on leveraging influencers for brand growth. He outlines the concept of influencer marketing, strategies to find and engage influencers, and various partnership models. Dave emphasizes the importance of personalized outreach and mutual benefit, highlighting success stories like Groove and Buffer to demonstrate the impact of influencer marketing on business growth.

Takeaways

• 😀 Influencer marketing is a strategy where businesses partner with influencers who have established trust with their audience to promote products or services.
• 🔍 Finding influencers can be done through various methods like Google searches, checking social profiles, analyzing comments, links, and shares, or using specialized tools like Ninja Outreach.
• 🤝 Partnering with influencers involves considering what value both parties and their audiences can gain, such as affiliate programs, free products, or exclusive discounts.
• 💌 Effective outreach to influencers requires personalized communication, clarity on what is being asked for, credibility through past work, and a clear value proposition for all parties involved.
• 📈 Influencer marketing falls under inbound marketing, which is a preferred method for consumers who are actively seeking information and recommendations.
• 🏆 Success stories like those of Groove and Buffer demonstrate the power of influencer marketing in growing businesses through strategies like guest posting and giveaways.
• 📊 The presentation emphasizes the importance of building relationships with influencers before pitching partnerships, which can lead to more successful campaigns.
• 💼 Dave Schneider, co-founder of Ninja Outreach, shares his expertise and personal experiences in the influencer marketing industry, providing practical advice for businesses.
• 🌐 The presentation highlights how influencer marketing can be used to grow brand authority and traffic organically, without relying on paid advertising.
• 📝 The script provides a comprehensive guide on influencer marketing, from defining the concept to implementing strategies and sharing success stories.

Q & A

What is the main topic of the Stukent Expert Session presented by Dave Schneider?

The main topic is influencer marketing, specifically how brands can effectively pursue and involve influencers in their growth strategy using the Ninja Outreach platform.

What was Dave Schneider's background before co-founding Ninja Outreach?

Dave Schneider was a math major in college, worked as a business analyst at a financial services company for two years, and then pursued a career in digital marketing and blogging while backpacking around the world.

What are the five basic topics Dave Schneider covers in his presentation?

The five topics are: 1) What is influencer marketing? 2) How to find influencers. 3) Ways to partner with influencers. 4) How to pitch influencers. 5) Influencer marketing success stories.

How does Dave Schneider define the current state of the consumer in terms of purchasing decisions?

Dave defines the current consumer state as an age of smarter consumers who conduct research and seek recommendations from people they know and trust before making purchasing decisions.

What role do blogs and social media play in the trust hierarchy for online consumers according to Dave Schneider?

Blogs and social media are becoming respected authorities on different topics, and consumers are increasingly looking to them for advice and recommendations.

What is the difference between inbound and outbound marketing as explained by Dave Schneider?

Inbound marketing is the type of marketing that consumers seek out when they are looking for something, such as influencer marketing, blogging, and word of mouth. Outbound marketing is the type of marketing that interrupts consumers while they are doing something else, like pop-ups, ads, and commercials.

How does Dave Schneider suggest finding influencers for an influencer marketing campaign?

Dave suggests several methods, including Google searches, examining comments on blog posts, looking at outbound links in articles, identifying sharers on social media, and using tools like FollowerWonk and Ninja Outreach.

What are some of the ways to partner with influencers as mentioned by Dave Schneider?

Some ways to partner with influencers include offering affiliate programs, providing free access or products, guest posting, giveaways, product reviews, social media exposure, providing links, and featuring influencers in content.

What are the key elements of a good pitch to influencers according to Dave Schneider?

A good pitch should be personalized, clear about what is being asked for, demonstrate credibility, and communicate the value proposition for both the influencer and their audience.

Can you provide examples of successful influencer marketing case studies mentioned in the script?

Yes, examples include Groove, which grew its newsletter subscribers significantly through influencer relationships, Buffer, which acquired many users through guest blogging, and Ninja Outreach itself, which grew its customer base and website traffic through various influencer marketing strategies.

How can businesses benefit from influencer marketing according to the case studies presented by Dave Schneider?

Businesses can benefit by growing their audience, increasing website traffic, building brand authority, and acquiring new customers through various strategies like guest posting, giveaways, and product reviews.

Outlines

00:00

📚 Introduction to Influencer Marketing with Dave Schneider

Dave Schneider, co-founder of Ninja Outreach, an influencer marketing tool, is introduced by Trevor Erickson. Dave shares his journey from a math major to a business analyst and then to a world traveler who embraced digital marketing. He founded Ninja Outreach in 2014 and has been active in the influencer marketing industry. The session will cover influencer marketing basics, finding influencers, partnership strategies, pitching techniques, and success stories. The importance of understanding the modern consumer's behavior and trust in recommendations from known and trusted sources is highlighted.

05:01

🔎 Techniques for Finding Influencers in Your Niche

Dave discusses various methods to identify influencers, starting with Google searches for lists and rankings of blogs and influencers in a specific niche. He suggests looking at comments on influential blogs to find other influencers and using tools to discover who is linking to or sharing certain content. Applications like BuzzSumo and FollowerWonk can streamline this process by showing top articles, shares, and relevant keywords in Twitter bios. Ninja Outreach is also highlighted as a tool for finding influencers based on keywords and providing data on potential partners.

10:04

🤝 Strategies for Partnering with Influencers

The paragraph delves into the importance of approaching influencer partnerships with a win-win mindset, considering what both parties can gain from the collaboration. Dave emphasizes the value of offering affiliates, free products, or exclusive discounts to influencers and their audiences. He also touches on the significance of building a relationship with influencers before pitching, suggesting personal engagement such as newsletter subscriptions or social media interactions. Common partnership types include guest posting, giveaways, and product reviews, each offering different benefits for brand exposure and SEO.

15:09

📈 Influencer Marketing Partnerships and Outreach

Dave explains different partnership models with influencers, such as guest posting for SEO benefits, giveaways to increase product exposure, and product reviews for trusted endorsements. He also discusses the benefits of affiliate programs, social media exposure, providing links to influencers to boost their authority, and featuring them in content for mutual exposure. The paragraph stresses the importance of personalized and clear communication when pitching to influencers, establishing credibility, and offering value to all parties involved.

20:09

🚀 Case Studies of Successful Influencer Marketing Campaigns

The final paragraph presents case studies of successful influencer marketing campaigns. Groove, a customer service application, built relationships with influencers before launching, leading to significant newsletter growth. Buffer, a social media application, acquired a large user base through guest blogging. Ninja Outreach itself serves as an example of growth through inbound marketing strategies, including guest posting, product reviews, and an affiliate program, all without a traditional marketing budget. The case studies demonstrate the effectiveness of influencer marketing in building brand authority and traffic.

Keywords

💡Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a strategy that involves partnering with individuals who have a significant following on social media or other platforms to promote a brand or product. It is a subset of inbound marketing, where consumers are reached when they are actively seeking information. In the video, Dave Schneider discusses influencer marketing as a way for businesses to grow by leveraging the trust and authority that influencers have established with their audiences.

💡Ninja Outreach

Ninja Outreach is an influencer marketing software co-founded by Dave Schneider. It is designed to help businesses find and connect with influencers who are relevant to their industry or niche. The software streamlines the process of identifying potential influencers, reaching out to them, and managing the relationships. In the script, Dave Schneider uses Ninja Outreach as an example of a tool that businesses can use to facilitate their influencer marketing campaigns.

💡Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing refers to marketing efforts that draw customers in through content they find valuable and relevant, as opposed to traditional 'outbound' marketing that pushes messages to people regardless of their interest. In the video, Schneider explains that influencer marketing is a form of inbound marketing because it involves consumers who are actively seeking recommendations and information.

💡Outbound Marketing

Outbound marketing is a more traditional approach where businesses send out messages to consumers, often without considering whether the consumer is interested in the product or service. Examples include pop-up ads, TV commercials, and direct mail. In the script, Schneider contrasts outbound marketing with inbound marketing, highlighting that the latter is more aligned with how consumers make purchasing decisions today.

💡Bloggers

Bloggers are individuals who regularly write and publish content on a blog, often focusing on a specific niche or topic. They can be considered influencers if they have a significant following and their audience trusts their opinions and recommendations. In the video, bloggers are mentioned as one type of influencer that businesses can partner with for marketing purposes.

💡Social Media Experts

Social media experts are professionals who have a deep understanding of how to leverage social media platforms to reach and engage with audiences. They may have large followings themselves and can be influential in their own right. In the script, social media experts are identified as potential influencers who can be part of an influencer marketing strategy.

💡Affiliate Program

An affiliate program is a type of partnership where an individual or company earns a commission for promoting and selling another company's product. In the video, Schneider suggests offering an affiliate program to influencers as a way to incentivize them to promote a business's product, benefiting both parties.

💡Guest Posting

Guest posting involves writing and publishing content on another person's blog or website. It is a common method used in influencer marketing to gain exposure to a new audience and build credibility in a niche. Schneider shares his experience with guest posting, mentioning that he wrote 100 guest posts in a year to grow Ninja Outreach's authority.

💡Giveaways

Giveaways are promotional events where a company gives away free products or services to selected participants, often to increase brand awareness or customer engagement. In the script, giveaways are mentioned as a way to work with influencers, where the influencer may promote the giveaway to their audience, and in return, the audience gets a chance to win something valuable.

💡Product Reviews

Product reviews are evaluations of a product's quality, performance, and value, often written by customers or experts. Influencers can provide product reviews to their audience, which can be highly influential in the purchasing decisions of their followers. Schneider discusses the importance of product reviews in building trust and credibility for a product or service.

💡SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a piece of content in search engine results pages. In the video, Schneider mentions the SEO benefits of guest posting, such as gaining inbound links from prominent websites, which can improve a site's ranking in search results.

Highlights

Introduction of Dave Schneider, co-founder of Ninja Outreach, an influencer marketing tool.

Trevor Erickson's personal experience with Ninja Outreach and its impact on his marketing strategy.

Dave's background as a math major turned digital marketer and the inception of Ninja Outreach in 2014.

The five basic topics to be covered: influencer marketing definition, finding influencers, partnership methods, pitching strategies, and success stories.

The modern consumer's behavior of seeking recommendations and the significance of social media in purchasing decisions.

The role of blogs and social media as trusted authorities and the shift from hobbyist blogging to respected sources of information.

Influencer marketing as a subset of inbound marketing, contrasting with outbound marketing tactics.

The process of finding influencers through Google searches, blog comments, and outbound links.

Utilizing tools like BuzzSumo and FollowerWonk to streamline the influencer discovery process.

Ninja Outreach's role in identifying and providing data on relevant influencers for specific keywords.

The importance of considering what influencers and their audiences want from a partnership for a successful campaign.

Offering affiliates, free products, or exclusive discounts as potential partnership incentives for influencers.

Building relationships with influencers through engagement before proposing partnerships.

Different partnership types: guest posting, giveaways, product reviews, and affiliate programs.

The significance of personalized pitches in influencer outreach and the elements of a successful pitch.

Case studies of successful influencer marketing campaigns by companies like Groove and Buffer.

Ninja Outreach's growth through inbound marketing strategies and the impact on brand authority and traffic.

Encouragement for businesses to consider influencer marketing as part of their overall marketing strategy.

Transcripts

Hello,

everyone. Welcome to another Stukent Expert Session.

My name is Trevor Erickson, and I'm excited to introduce Dave Schneider, our

expert in the field today.

Dave is the co-founder of a pretty awesome influencer marketing tool called Ninja

Outreach. I actually stumbled across Ninja Outreach last year and fell in

love with the platform.

We've asked Dave to share his knowledge and expert tips on how a brand can effectively

pursue influencers and involve them with their overall strategy for growth.

Without further ado, here's Dave.

Hey everyone. This is Dave from Ninja Outreach.

And today we're going to be talking about how to find and work with influencers to

effectively grow your brand.

In this case, otherwise known as influencer marketing.

Just before we get into that, I'd like to talk a little bit

just about myself and what's, why I'm here.

So in 2010, a couple of years ago, I was just a math major in college.

I quit my...

I got a job as a business analyst at a financial services company

where I worked for two years and learned about business and marketing.

But after two years, I quit and decided to go backpacking

basically around the world.

And I started blogging and doing digital marketing.

And I got involved in basically that sphere.

And finally in 2014, I started a software business called

Ninja Outreach, which is an influencer marketing software.

I've been working on that for two years, been involved in the industry of influencer

marketing, and would like to share what I've learned with you today.

So, what we're going to be covering are five basic topics.

Number one is, what is influencer marketing?

Number two is how to find influencers.

Number three is ways to partner with influencers.

Four is how to pitch influencers.

And five is some influencer marketing success stories.

So basically we're going to be defining the concept, then walking you through how you

could actually implement it, and then finally, hopefully, giving you some

motivation as to why this works.

How are the people are using it.

So firstly, I'd like to set the stage a little bit by saying, you know,

what is the current state of the consumer?

Most of the people that are watching this, if you're going to be building any sort of

marketing business, you're going to be looking to sell something.

And so how do people buy?

Well, nowadays I like to think that we live in an age of a

smarter consumer where people know how to do research.

They know how to use different online platforms to look for recommendations.

I was on Facebook recently, and a friend of mine was looking for an

apartment. And she said...

She posted on Facebook saying, does anybody know about apartments in

Cambridge? She's looking for recommendations from her friends,

basically. And there's a quote here that says, 80% of consumers said that they would

purchase an e-book or software if they read a positive recommendation through social

media. In short, people are looking for recommendations

from people that they know and trust, whether they personally know them or whether

they just trust them as an online authority before they make purchasing decisions.

And they know how to go about finding those people.

So who do they trust?

Obviously, there's things like friends and family, of course.

But when it comes to just online services, mostly people are looking

at retail and brand sites, obviously.

But next is blogs and social media.

Blogs, Facebook groups and forums, things like that.

Which years ago this, this wouldn't have been the case.

Blogging was more of a hobby.

It was just something that people sort of did on the Internet to catalog their

experiences. But nowadays, blogs are...

blogs and social media are becoming respected authorities on different topics.

And people are going to them looking for advice.

And that's just the way that things have really been changing recently.

And that's essentially resulted in the emergence of what we call influencer

marketing. So, influencer marketing is what I like

to have is this juxtaposition where on the left you probably

have maybe your business or blog and maybe it just started.

You don't have much of an audience.

Kind of crickets.

Meanwhile, on the right, you have these influencers in your niche who

have large followings.

These are people like bloggers.

These are people like social media experts, journalists.

All of these people that their primary job and focus has been to build large

audiences of people who trust them.

So, you could imagine if you could merge the two of them, could be

very good for your business and good for the influencer, as well.

And basically what we're going to be talking about is, how do you go about

merging, merging these two

things? So influencer marketing falls under what we call inbound

marketing. This is a slide from HubSpot, which is kind of a really

big proponent of inbound marketing software company.

They tend to think of outbound marketing as this, sort of this red area of

the circle. It's the things that everybody typically hates.

It's things like pop-ups.

It's things like contextual ads.

It's things like commercials and your radio and TV.

Whereas these, there's this other form of marketing which they classify as inbound

marketing, which is basically the things that you want to

find. Influencer marketing.

Blogging. Listen to a public speaker.

Word of mouth. These are the things that you tend to come across organically when you're

searching for something. For example, they say SEO and PPC is

basically a way of being present when a person is looking to

buy. So you can think of the main difference with inbound marketing as

the inbound marketing is the type of marketing somebody sees when they want to be

marketed to, when they're actually looking for something.

Whereas outbound marketing is what they receive when they're doing something else.

Influencer marketing falls under that classification of inbound marketing.

So hopefully that was clear as to, you know, really what influencer

marketing is and where it falls into the spectrum of,

of marketing as a whole.

So now, how do you actually go about doing it?

How do you actually find influencers?

Well, I've been doing this for about two years now, and I've seen, talked with

hundreds of people on the phone in our software to understand how they go about

searching for influencers when they want to start an influencer marketing campaign.

And as you can imagine, most people start with Google, right?

That's what we mostly start with for almost everything.

You basically go onto Google and you run a search for marketing blogs.

Okay, I want to find out who's an influencer in the marketing niche.

And you can do that, and you'll find posts like the 25 best marketing blogs of

2014 or something, you know, these sort of list posts and things like that.

But you can also probably imagine it's really not the most efficient, it's not the

most scalable way of doing things.

It's just kind of a way to get started.

It's fine, but it doesn't really make for a whole campaign.

Another thing is to think from the perspective of, where do

influencers come from?

How do they interact with other people on the web?

Well, a lot of influencers comment on other people's

websites. So if you found one person who you like and say the marketing

niche, if you start looking at the comments on their articles, you can see other

influencers. And often with the way WordPress is set up, which is what the

platform that most people use for blogging, you can click over to somebody's

website based on their comment, because it's hyperlinked to their name, and see what

they're writing about. And that's just another way to kind of find

essentially some influencers when you only have one to start

with. Another group of people is what we call linkers.

So, influencers tend to link to other influencers.

Meaning that if I'm writing an article about marketing, I'm probably going to reference

someone else who's written articles about marketing as well.

So, if you have one article, you can

easily look at the outbound links in the data and see who's being linked to.

Or, on the reverse, you can see who's linking to your

article using a tool like MAS or RSS or any of these

tools which are usually freemium.

You can put in the URL and see who's linked to them.

And this gives you some idea as to, well, who are other people that are writing about

such and such topics?

Next, we have sharers.

In a similar way to linkers, sharers are people that have shared an article before.

Basically, they are reading about markets, for example,

marketing. They're sharing the article.

We can find on on Twitter using applications like

Bissouma, for example, who has shared a post.

Another way to find influencers.

Bissouma, which was the, the application I just mentioned is really great for finding,

say, the top articles on the web about a specific topic.

And then you can see, you know, who's linked to it.

Who shared it. A lot of the things that we were just talking about just now in terms

of how to find influencers but combined into an application.

One more is FollowerWonk.

Similar type of thing where you can search to see who has relevant

keywords in their bio.

So basically maybe you want to see who is, who defines

themselves as a marketing blogger in their Twitter bio.

But searching Twitter could be a little bit difficult or impractical.

Therefore, you can use something like FollowerWonk.

And finally, we have Ninja Outreach.

Full disclosure, this is my software.

It's an influencer marketing software.

You can type in a keyword, and we're going to pull up influencers as well who we feel

are relevant to that keyword and give you a bunch of data.

So these are the main ways that you can go about

basically finding influencers.

You can do Google searches, you can look on their social profile bios.

Bios, you can see who's been linking to a post, who's been commenting, who's been

sharing. And then we mentioned a couple of applications that basically streamline

that process for you, make it go a bit faster.

So, when it comes to influencer marketing campaigns, in general,

finding influencers is not that difficult.

There are thousands out there in most niches, and there are a lot of applications

that are reasonably priced that you can use to find them.

What gets a bit tricky is this next part is how to go about partnering with them.

And this is where most people go wrong.

Most people, when they approach marketing campaigns or specifically influencer

marketing campaigns, they're thinking about, what can I get from this person?

I have this business, I have this product, I want to sell it.

This person has a big audience.

I want them to sell my product to that audience.

But they're not necessarily thinking about the holistic approach of, well, how do we get

everybody involved so that everybody walks away as a winner?

Because in many ways, from the influencer perspective, their

business is the audience that they've built up.

And therefore, they also want to be rewarded when they work with you.

So, it's pretty clear usually when you start an influencer marketing campaign

what you'd like, which is usually sales and exposure.

But I always caution people to think about, well, what do you think the influencers

you're going to work with and their audience is going to want as well?

So a couple of things that, there's a lot of different things you can do to partner with

influencers, but just a couple of basic things that you may offer them.

For example, a prominent blogger in a niche is to offer for them to be an affiliate of

what you're selling. To actually pay them money upfront for the work that they're

doing. Or to give them free access or a free copy of what you're

selling. Similarly, for their audience, you can give away free copies or give them a

discount. Essentially, give them something that they couldn't get elsewhere.

Give them something that, you know, basically rewards them for

spending their time and sharing their audience with you.

In that way, if you think of this sort of Venn diagram here, everybody is sort

of... Everybody walks away a winner.

Everybody kind of gets something.

Another area where people go wrong is typically with engagement.

So, basically we're going to go through a couple of different

types of ways to work with partners, work with influencers.

But always consider the fact that when you start an outreach campaign to

people, it's important that before you get to the stage of, how am I going

to work with them?

What am I going to offer them?

That maybe you've made some attempt to get to know them.

Personally. Maybe you've signed up to their newsletter.

Maybe you've shared posts that they've written.

Maybe you've commented on their blogs.

Got them on social media.

The different ways that you might get yourself known as you build a connection and

relationship with the influencer, because that, by and large, is going to

help you be a lot more successful with your campaigns.

So, in terms of the types of partnerships that people

often do with influencers, one of the easiest one is guest post.

Guest posting is when you write an article on their blog, it then gets

published, and their audience sees the article that you wrote.

It most often will link to.

Therefore the audience can click back, see your website.

You also get some benefits from SEO, from having an inbound link from a prominent

website. For Ninja Outreach, when we were trying to grow our business two years ago and

even today, we did

tons of guest posts.

We did, I did 100 in a year.

Which publishing 8 guest posts a month on different marketing blogs in the niche

to get out there. And for me it helped me significantly sort of build up our authority

for the business, because people saw that I was writing a lot of content about,

about influencer marketing.

Next is a giveaway.

A giveaway is exactly what it sounds like.

It's when you give away product.

This works great, for example, with software where it doesn't really cost anything to give

away an account. There's a pretty low marginal cost for giving away software

account. But I've seen a lot of people do it in other niches like fashion where they maybe

give away clothes. Or even, you know, jewelry to some degree.

Or food-based products all the time.

So this, this often is, can be used where you

maybe give away, you give away a few, a few products.

And then maybe you give a discount to everybody else who I didn't win the giveaway.

But then gives them the opportunity to buy at somewhat of a special price.

So giveaways are great too.

We used to do a lot of those.

Next is product reviews.

This is when you would actually give your product to the influencer and ask them

to write about it.

It's, in some ways it has some similarity with guest posting in that you're basically

producing content on another, on the influencer's website.

But what makes this a bit different is that, number one, the

influencer is right in it and not you.

And therefore, they're bringing a lot of the trust and authority that they've established

with their audience into the article.

And number two, the focus of the article is going to be about your product.

Because it's a review.

As opposed to a guest post, where you might be writing about a topic like influencer

marketing, for example, in our case.

We would always do a lot of product reviews with people.

We'd give the way, we'd give away the software for free.

Ask people to basically write about it.

And now, for example, if you were to search Ninja Outreach, you'll see all these really

great reviews of people that reviewed the product.

And you can imagine from a consumer perspective, when they

want to basically say, well, what is the best influencer marketing software?

Or what do people think about Ninja Outreach?

It's really good to have built up this credibility across the web of all these

different people reviewing it and writing about that.

It builds a lot of trust so that people know that it's sort of a legitimate thing.

Next is with an affiliate program.

Again, as I mentioned earlier, the, from the influencer's

perspective, their audience is their business.

Is they've, their business has been working on growing an audience.

Often, though, this comes at the expense of, of creating something to sell

to that audience. So they might spend time building a large audience, but they don't

necessarily have something to sell.

And therefore, if you can offer them to be an affiliate of your product, or maybe you

give them ten, 15, even 50% of any sales that,

that are made is a real nice way to basically,

one, help them monetize their website, but also show appreciation for what they're

doing. So for example, for us, we go 50/50 with

everybody that we work with.

If they promote our product and make sales, they get 50% of everything that,

that that is made.

So we think it's a very fair model as well.

Social media exposure would be something basically like, sometimes large brands

who have maybe they could have thousands, tens of thousands of followers

on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter, they can use this as an

advantage basically to say, look, if you promote what we, what

we're marketing here, I'd be happy to basically share your

stuff, your website on our social media page.

And in this way, the influencer has the opportunity to build an even larger

audience. So social media can work well, too.

Links. Bloggers.

People who are writing on the web need links.

They need links to their websites to basically get more authority

in the eyes of social search engines and Google.

So, you can link to them.

A lot of times when we write content, for example, we're always referencing

other influencers. We're linking to articles that they've written.

And in this way we can reach out to them and tell them like, hey, look.

We've been sharing what you've been writing.

We've been listening to it.

And it can be a nice icebreaker to another, to another

conversation or partnerships.

And finally, at least in this list, we have things like content features.

Which is, you may have come across things like expert roundups.

They're really popular nowadays.

It's when you feature a lot of influencers in a post.

You feature maybe a quote from them, a tip from them, something like that.

A tweet. So again, it's, this is all

about offering exposure to the influencer as part of the, the marketing

campaign. So, you can feature them in the content that you've written.

So those are sort of the main ways that you would go about basically working

with influencers.

We discussed what you can sort of offer them in terms of, you know, free product.

Money. Affiliate programs.

And also how you actually go about working with them.

And the next part is going to be how you really write to them.

Many of us have received emails that came across as

basically spam.

Unpersonalized. Almost deceptive, to be honest.

Poor grammar. I mean, just things that you just right away send to the spam box.

That's not the type of pitch that that we recommend.

It takes some time, but we recommend that you try to get to know the person that

you're writing to personalize them with their first name.

A recent article that they've written.

A project that they're working on.

Something that is just somewhat special, basically, and

proves why you're reaching out to them and not that you're just sort of reach out to a

thousand people at once.

So typically a good pitch will have a few different

elements. Number one, it'll be personalized.

That say, you know, I use their name.

It references their blog, their website, something recent they did.

Number two, it will be clear what you're asking for.

I've seen a lot of pitches where nobody really

got to the point as to what, what they were even after about.

So I'll say, look, I'm reaching out to you because I want to know if, you know, we could

guest post on your website or you'd review our product.

Next is some sort of credibility.

If it's someone you don't really know well, I think it definitely helps to basically

show that other people, you've worked with other people.

You know, hey, look. We've been featured here.

I wrote this post here.

I appeared on this podcast here.

When you're just getting started and you have, you know, obviously you have to start

from scratch. But as you basically gain momentum and work with more people, you build

up more credibility, and it makes it a lot easier for someone to take a chance on you

and work with you. Having seen that they basically

that you worked with somebody else.

And finally, it's the value.

Again, back to the Venn diagram, the three circles.

What are we offering to their audience?

What are we offering to them?

What do we want everybody to get out of this partnership that we're proposing?

So, with all that said, in terms of how to run a basic influencer

marketing campaign, how to go about and basically find influencers

using applications or searching on the web, how to come up with the

offer that everyone can basically be a winner in the types of partnerships that you

do. I want to leave you with some of the different influencer marketing case studies

that we've seen on the web, that other businesses, some of which

are much larger than ours, have been talking about.

Number one is groove.

Groove is a customer service application.

They do hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in monthly recurring revenue.

And one of the big things they've been talking about is influencer marketing.

Quote from Alex, the CEO says, Nearly a month before we launched the blog, we began

building a list of influencers who we wanted to build relationships with.

Then we began engaging with them.

Later, once they knew we existed and saw us as contributors, we sent them a small

ask. Since it sounds simple, it's exactly what we talked about.

Basically coming up with a with a list of people in your niche, engaging with

them, and then asking them when the time was right.

And for them, this allowed them to basically grow to 5,000 newsletter

subscribers in five weeks, which is a lot.

It's definitely a ton of subscribers.

So number two is buffer.

Buffer, one of the most popular social media applications in the marketing niche right

now. They do over $10 million a year in annual recurring revenue.

They've been around for a few years.

And quote from co-founder Leo says, solely through guest blogging, we've

acquired around 100,000 users within the first nine months of running

Buffer. It's been something that was very gradual, though.

Within the space of around nine months, I wrote around 150 guest posts.

It's a lot of work, but look what they've built.

Similar, this is what, what I said.

We wrote over 100 guest posts ourselves.

These, these strategies have basically been proven to work for a lot

of different products in a lot of different niches.

And Buffer is another success story.

And then finally, I do, although we are not nearly as large

as Groove or Buffer, I do think it's important to basically

show that we also eat our own dog food, so to speak.

That we also do a lot of influencer marketing.

So for us, when we launched Ninja Outreach two years

ago, we had basically no audience, no subscribers starting from

scratch. And we did what I said, which was we wrote a lot of guest posts, we got a lot

of product reviews.

We started an affiliate program to work with different bloggers.

Wrote content. Reached out to people.

And we've grown a lot since then.

Basically, we now have about 500 customers.

And just in the last year, our traffic has tripled.

And it's all through inbound marketing.

It's all with effectively a zero marketing budget.

Aside from obviously paying for tools and things like that, we haven't done any paid

advertising or anything like that.

It's all inbound influencer marketing.

And you can do it as well.

So those are the three case studies.

Oh, and that's the last thing I guess to mention was that aside from traffic, we've

basically got a lot of nice mentions on things like Yahoo and Moz and Neil Patel and

different websites. So in addition to obviously growing your traffic, you're

building your brand and authority because people are seeing you all over the web.

So, that is the presentation on influencer marketing.

I hope you found it very useful.

If you have additional questions, you're more than welcome to reach out to me.

My email is [email protected].

Obviously my website Ninjaoutreach.com.

I'm also on Twitter but not super active on it.

Skype and LinkedIn.

So thank you very much for I guess

paying attention to this presentation.

And I hope that you'll strongly consider influencer marketing to be part of the

marketing strategy for your business or whatever future businesses you end up

starting.