Marketing Experts Reveal Top Strategies To

Arlen
[00:01:45]
Welcome to the e-Commerce Marketing podcast everyone. I am your host, Arlen Robinson. And today we have a very special guest, David Moreno, Initially published in February 2021, this episode is part of our “Best of Series.” We have handpicked some of our best episodes, where our guests have enlightened us with some powerful eCommerce marketing gems! David Morneau is the Co-Founder at inBeat Agency and Founder & CEO at Breeeze.co. At his agency InBeat, David helps brands leverage thousands of collaborations with micro-influencers as he knows that people trust user-generated content performs better than studio quality ads. He often works with the leading brands such as New Balance or Nissan to attract new audiences across North America & Europe. He’s known for his unusual strategies when it comes to influencer marketing.  Welcome to the podcast David. 

David
[00:02:31]
Thanks for having me. Arlen, Really a pleasure to be here. Yes, no problem. It’s a pleasure talking to you. And you know, I was mentioning before we started recording, we’re definitely hitting on a subject that I’ve talked about quite a bit as I’ve been in the course affiliate space for a long time with our OSI affiliate software. We’re constantly encouraging our customers to approach influencers cuz they’re kind of like the affiliates of today. You’re gonna be talking specifically about tapping into micro influencers and telling us who they are, what they’re all about, and why they’re kind of a sweet spot when it comes to influencer marketing. And so, you know, really excited to, to dig deep into that. But you know, before we do get into all that, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about your background and you know, how you got into what you’re doing today.

David
[00:03:11]
Sure thing. So five years ago, right, was running an SEO agency right out of law school. Okay. Turned out I didn’t wanna be an actual lawyer seven years ago, actually, I always say five, but it’s been two years. I’ve been saying five. So yeah, seven years ago and then started an SEO agency. We ran that for a couple years until a client came to us and asked us really like, Hey guys, I wanna tap into that micro influencer marketing thing. I’ve been seeing it a lot around the web and I think it could be worthwhile exploring. So we took a look at it, realized that it looked a lot like link building in terms of processes where you just outreach, discover, and negotiate pretty much the same kind of baseline that you’d see in link building. So we took a shot at it and we realized, oh, this thing actually works well and there’s definitely a potential market. So fast forward to today, we’re working with 25,000 plus micro influencers. We’re running software service to help agencies find influencers and there’s no signs of stopping. So yeah, that’s where we’re at.

Arlen
[00:04:10]
That’s awesome, man. That’s the great stuff. And it’s interesting that, you know, that’s your kind of core area and that’s what you focus on. I, I really like that. I’ve talked to a lot of agencies before in the, you know, digital marketing space and a lot of times, you know, we’re, a lot of these agencies are still kind of going with the, the full service models and that’s nothing wrong. There’s nothing wrong with that kind of covering the gamut when it comes to seo, when it’s coming to pay per click, organic rankings, paid ads, all of that. You know, they kind of cover all of that. But it’s good to see that you guys are focused and again, that’s kind of one of your main areas is dealing with the micro influencer marketing because I think, you know, you can definitely, you know, the way things are these days with the, this is explosion of social media and all of these different platforms that are just, you know, growing and growing day by day.

Arlen
[00:04:55]
It’s really an area where if you really focus on that with, you know, businesses that are doing, you know, business with you guys, you can definitely do very well. So that’s good to hear. What I wanna start off with is just really kind of, you can kind of define, you know, everybody’s heard about all these influencers and excited about taking advantage of the reach that they can get, but there’s different levels of influencers and so if you can break it down to us like what’s a micro influencer, you know, what are the different levels of influencers?

David
[00:05:24]
That’s always a tough question, isn’t it? Right. What is a micro influencer that’s always really starts, but essentially we define it as 5,000 to 25,000 followers on Instagram, right? And we’ll define it as a hundred thousand to 250,000 on TikTok. Having said that, this is not a hard line for specific campaigns. We’ll target different follower accounts if you’re, you know, for instance, if you’re looking at this and you’re, okay, the swipe up is a MO for us, then you know, 5,000 to 10,000 doesn’t make sense because you can’t do the Instagram swipe up. So you’re gonna start at 10,000 to 25,000 in that case and you could even expand to some point at 50,000 followers. Right? That’s still pretty micro and some people even consider it a hundred thousand followers to be micro. But we stick really a 5,000 to 25,000 range. The reason being is that we skew heavily towards creating content at an affordable price. That’s really where we get the best content for our buck and we also get the distribution at it. So it’s kind of a double dip, right? Where we get distribution and we get content assets that we can reuse.

Arlen
[00:06:23]
Yeah, good. That’s the good stuff. Yeah. And it’s just when we’re thinking about all of these affiliates, excuse me, these influencers, Yeah. Naturally when people hear that terminology, I think they’re thinking of the big time people, these big celebrities, the athletes, the people that have big names in, in the various industries that have millions and millions of followers. But there are, what people don’t really understand is that when you think about influencers, really everyone in their, in a sense is an influencer. We all have a particular following or people that are in our inner circle are in our little agree social networks, you know? And so I think like people on our, maybe our levels or average everyday people would be just kind of considered kinda local influencers where, you know, we have the ability to reach people that are friends, colleagues, family members and you know, they’ll kind of listen to what we’re saying, they may take recommendations of what we recommend and that type of thing. And so it kind of goes all the way down to that very local level then kind of up to what you’re saying to the micro influencer and then of course gets higher and higher, but definitely sweet spot. And so we want to, to kind of go with this discussion now is really just with your business and everything that you guys have seen, why do you think it focusing on micro influencers, it’s really such a sweet spot these days rather than trying to focus on just kind of any influencer,

David
[00:07:41]
It’s always a question that comes up, right? And we focus on micro influencer for a couple reasons. First of all, we don’t have to deal with agents that makes things just a lot easier. We deal directly with the people, makes the sales cycle or you know, negotiation cycle that much shorter. We also look at, at the byproduct of what we get out of micro influencers. So of course there’s the sales awareness component of it where it’s like, hey, push traffic to my website, drive sales conversions and so forth. But again, we’re looking for content as well. So we’re looking for content that we can reuse and paid media for our clients. So, you know, it’s a good way to power your Facebook ads to have tons of micro influencers creating content for your paid media channels. And we also look to derive some market insights from there.

David
[00:08:22]
So what I mean by that is we asked the influencers questions about trends and product specific questions like, hey, you know, if you were head of marketing at X company, how would you change the packaging or how would you position the products? So we looked to derive market insights and drive copywriting kind of directions from there. So that’s why micro influencers allow us to scale that much easier because we can get a lot of people actually participating into that mix and it, it just makes it that easier and much more cost effective on that front when you’re dealing with the agent, you lose all that. Additionally you get all the heavy cost structures that are associated with bigger influencers. So we try to stray away from that. So yeah, that’s why micro influencers is where we stick.

Arlen
[00:09:01]
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I was also reading that you worked with a brand in the past, not where not too long ago, called Phone Loops and you employed some micro influencer marketing strategies for that brand and really grew them to a multi seven figure brand. Yeah. What specific strategies did you put in place with that company? If you tell us a little bit about them and what you did.

David
[00:09:23]
Yeah, so the magic behind that company is twofold. First of all, they’ve got, you know, an impulse by product. People can just instantly buy a package $20 ish in the mail. You get tons of access. $15 I think is probably more where it lands and thinking in Canadian dollars. That’s why. So and

Arlen
[00:09:41]
I’m sorry, what? What is their product? What exactly do

David
[00:09:43]
They plan? Yeah, cell phone accessory, sorry, to cell prevent your cell phone from dropping. Yeah, exactly. So it looks something like this. You’re right, like the strap on the back of the phone. Yeah, so have one the rep, but it’s amazing. Anyway, so yeah, low cost of good, right? Easy to ship, extremely low cost of good and impulse buy. So with those parameters, right, we, we just could run a campaign where we could contact thousands and thousands upon thousands of influencers and just send them product and just get them to onboard without checking much about like, you know, we didn’t vet all the influencers all that much, right? Because it’s a numbers game at that point. You’re right. And then from, from that bunch of products that we shipped, some people just spawned as great ambassadors of the brand and were just super hyped about it.

David
[01:10:25]
Drove some sales and so forth. So what we did is, you know, we tagged them as V V ips, right? And from there we just moved forward and kept doing the same cycle where take the best ones, ditch all the ones that are not performing or not even posting content for that matter, right? And just build a small army of ambassador and then turns out you can create content on demand, you can do tons of things with that and you can activate new product lines and so forth. So I wouldn’t say that it was the only driver behind their growth, there’s a lot more to it, but it was definitely one of those catalysts that you can use to just power the entire business. It really acts as like a decentralized creative team, right? To have all that content to run ads, to post on social media and so forth. And it just helps the growth and it’s one of those products that, you know, when you see it, you want it. So essentially the more people have it like going around with it, then the more sales it drives and so forth. So you can track that with how many people are coming directly to the website or looking for our brand on Google and so forth. So yeah, that’s the story.

Arlen
[01:11:26]
Okay, great. Well yeah, that, that’s awesome. Yeah. And it sounds like with a product like that, that kind of lends itself to kind of being available, like you said, to just almost, you know, any type of influencer or micro influencer because it’s something that, you know, anyone can use and everyone has a cell phone these days and so it’s something that they can talk about. They can say that they use various places and they can really push it because it is something that, you know, like I said, everybody who doesn’t have have a a cell phone these days. So it’s something that really kind of has, gives it a broad appeal. And now there are of course other products or other companies that may be selling something that you may be a little bit more niche. And so maybe something that not every type of micro influencer would be able to effectively push or whatever, have a audience that would give it the proper distribution. What are some strategies for vetting these micro influencers and trying to find the right one?

David
[01:12:19]
Look, if you’re looking to sell something more, like, it’s always a question like is does your product come from like, you know, discovery or interest, right? And then, you know, Google capture is that like interest part of the, of the spectrum where you’re looking for something in your, you’re looking on Google and you’re trying, okay, well I’m looking for a painting kit, right? So I go on Google. Having said that though, you know, people by the influencers that they follow are showing certain interests, right? So if you’re selling a painting kit, like something more niche, right? Like we’re selling painting kits, like what you’re gonna want to work with is not general influencers followed by anybody. You’re gonna want people that, you know, even a couple thousand followers is gonna cut it where they, they’re like doing water painting, whatever it is, whatever types of painting.

David
[01:13:00]
And you wanna work with these influencers that are extremely targeted to your product offering and that that’s really how you’re gonna wanna vet these influencers. Yeah. The question you should ask yourself just as a framework is who is following this page, right? Who is following this page? And if the question is well probably my target client, then you know, you’ve gotta hit and then that’s, that’s the only question you should be asking yourself and it’s a good one to ask yourself because a lot of the time, right, you know, you’re gonna be like, hey, you know, we wanna promote this yoga mattress, we have this yoga girl. And like turns out we look at their, her audience and surprise, right? There’s tons of guys that are following her. So men are the biggest part of their audience. So you’re not targeting your audience even though the influencer matches your target persona. So it’s really about a, answering that question like who follows this influencer? So I wouldn’t, you know, I wouldn’t follow any water painting pages, I have no interest in it, but you know, people that do will do so.

Arlen
[01:13:55]
Yeah. Yeah. Very true, very true. That’s really the, the bottom line when it comes down to who’s following them and if that the average person that’s following them is your demographic, the type of customer you’re trying to reach, then there you go. You do have a a good,

David
[01:14:07]
You have an audience match. Exactly. Yeah.

Arlen
[01:14:09]
Yeah. There’s a audience match. And you mentioned another thing earlier as well. When you’re dealing with these micro influences, it’s definitely a difference as far as the outreach that you’re doing to try to connect with them. It’s a little bit easier because they’re not at such a level where they’re managed by, like you said, an agency or agency is pushing these people and forming these connections where they have these gatekeepers in place with micro influencers, most likely they’re, they’re managing all of their own contact and the relations that they build. And so it’s gonna be a little bit easier to get in touch with them. And so,

David
[01:14:43]
Exactly.

Arlen
[01:14:44]
That’s definitely a kind of a key thing to consider as well. Now you’ve worked with, you know, of course a lot of brands and grown them using this micro influencer strategy. I’m sure you’ve kind of seen a lot and there’s been a lot of lessons to learn over the years. So what are some mistakes that you think brands have made or lessons learned that you’ve made that you’ve learned growing different brands and then kind of what were some kind of actionable items that you learned in results of these, all these lessons,

David
[01:15:08]
Kind of the secret life of the agency is, and it learning on your client’s back, right. But essentially we’re, we’re in terms of learnings, like the biggest one is probably positioning. What I mean by that is getting your product in the hands of influencers is one thing. Getting your positioning off is gonna destroy any campaign effort. Whether you execute perfectly on everything else. What I mean positioning, I mean what are the benefits? What are the unique selling propositions? What’s the deal you’re offering? What is the way you’re actually positioning the product in the image? What do you want the influencer to be showing when they do the post and so forth, right? These things that are gonna, it’s just like running a bad influencer collaboration. It’s just like running a bad Facebook ad, right? If you didn’t mail it, it’s not gonna work. So that’s really the biggest thing I’ve noticed is if you don’t get positioning right and you get lazy on that part, everything else crumbles and it just makes for a bad campaign.

Arlen
[01:16:00]
Gotcha. Gotcha. That makes sense. As you were talking about that, one of the things came to mind, it’s kind of a good discussion that I’ve had with somebody else, was on the podcast, when it comes to vetting these influencers, of course, you know, you’re looking for people that have that right match and of course they have your audience then, you know, seems like a good match at a micro influencer level. How important is it to find someone that, as far as when you’re vetting them to find out what things they’re, they they are and they aren’t associated with, Cuz there could be certain things that that influencer, micro influencer is associated with that you really don’t want to be a part of. Like let’s say for instance, you within your particular company, you know, support any type of use of cannabis, for instance. Yeah. Cause you know, certain, certain subjects like that or gambling, that type of thing. But then one of these micro influencers, let’s just say they support that or they’re doing some type of promotion, you know, maybe they’re using cannabis but they’re supporting your product. Should that be a concern?

David
[01:17:00]
I mean, depends on your brand guidelines, right? We have brands that are like, Hey, you know, we don’t accept any influencers with an only fan account, right? That’s a big no-no for them. So, you know, okay. Depends on your brand guidelines, how far you wanna stretch it during that, that Trump era, right? We’ve seen a lot of clients that are like, hey, we don’t want anything like, that’s like political. So it was nothing either side of the spectrum, no influencers that were political, right? So you, you get these kind of, of like asks and it’s, it really depends on where you want to take the brand, how you want to communicate as a brand. Cuz some brands are the complete opposite, right? Like they embrace these things, right? They embrace these things and they grow on these things and it’s both strategies are probably viable in our own ways. It really depends. So I’d say it really depends on how you wanna portray your brand. They’re gonna be carriers of your message and you have to be aware of that. But personally I don’t mind it too much. It’s, unless you have something like you have someone who’s extremely racist or something like that in their, in their content and of course that doesn’t make any sense, but you know, if you’re using cannabis or you know, you’re, it doesn’t matter to me personally. But then again, we represent the brand so we

Arlen
[01:18:08]
Gotcha.

David
[01:18:09]
We represent the brands,

Arlen
[01:18:10]
Right? Ultimately it comes down to what the brand is, is open to accepting and how far do they want to go with it. Yeah, I’m just curious. It’s just cuz we’re, we’re kind of in a day in the age where we’re in this whole kind of cancel culture, if you will, and exactly if a particular individual, somebody that’s prominent in whatever industry, whatever, they say the wrong thing, they do the wrong thing, then you know, they can get canceled. And that could be a big thing. Brands these days are quick disassociate themselves from oh individuals and at a heartbeat because they know the blowback from discussions of Twitter and, and what they can get from the social media backlash can be, it can really hurt a company really. It really can. So

David
[01:18:54]
It’s crazy. It’s, it’s ridiculous, right? It’s, you look at that and you’re like, oh, this is like, this calls for higher levels of brand safety for a lot of brands and

Arlen
[01:19:02]
Right. Very true. Now David, if you get ready to, to wrap things up, I wanted to see if there was any examples of video, other businesses that you’re familiar with that you’ve either worked with or just in familiar with, in, in general that, you know, have employed a, a specific influencer marketing strategy and maybe they did something unique that really caused their whole campaign to really just explode. There’s anything you can highlight or point out? I

David
[01:19:28]
Got a couple brands that I just love, right? You know, you’ve got ritual care of, they’re both in like this wellness supplement space and they, they’re, they’re crushing it, right? They’re selling the same thing that you’re used to seeing, but they’re just doing it in such a good way. They’ve packaged, they’ve packaged brilliantly, they’ve positioned brilliantly and they execute amazingly well on what you’d call ambassadors slash influencer marketing. It’s beautiful to watch and, you know, okay, it’s definitely, we pull inspiration from companies like that and all the time, right? That’s what we follow them, we and we just learn from them. So yeah.

Arlen
[02:20:01]
Okay. That, that’s awesome. One last question. What I asked you I was just thought about that’s really comes up a lot when you’re dealing with not only, and I know in our business it a common question as far as affiliates are concerned, and I think influencers kind of under the same category. How does a brand decide, determine the right incentive to pay these particular micro influencers? Is there a particular rule of thumb that employ or is it something that’s dictated by the micro influencer? What do you see?

David
[02:20:28]
So the cooler your brand, the more goodwill you’ve got, the more you’ll get away with, you know, just product exchange that’s a threat. Okay. Yeah. So, you know, if your brand is cool and people are like, because this is a bilateral relationship for these micro influencers to be associated with brands that look great and feel great is marketing for them essentially. Right? They’re trying to make it to that other stage, right? So that’s one of the things to take into consideration what I’d recommend everyone doing and is just like email a hundred influencers, just email them and negotiate, right? It’s kind of link building. How much do you pay for a link for a website that has a domain authority of 50 to 70, right? Well how much is that worth? Well email a hundred of them and you’ll find out how fast, you know how much it’s worth. Right? And that’s really the game. It’s, it’s gonna change pervertical if you’re doing FinTech, if you’re doing financial products, it’s gonna change dramatically. And if you’re trying to sell something gambling, then you’re, you’re gonna pay like 20 times what you’re, you’re looking to

Arlen
[02:21:24]
Gotcha, gotcha. So it sounds like it just really is gonna vary depending on that influencer and you, you know, you of course can negotiate with them, but it’s like you said, it is, if you have a cooler brand, if you have a particular product or service that you think a lot of people want to be around and, and be a part of, you could maybe get away with just exchanging product with them because you know, they want to be associated with your product. Cuz that’s gonna help them get to their next level, which is the, the higher level of an influencer where they

David
[02:21:53]
Yeah. And that Arlen is exactly the right frame of mind. Like what’s in it for them? What’s in it for me? Right? It’s like the basic level of copywriting is like, think about what’s in it for them and then if you can build, we look at it from like a proceed value versus like, you know, monetary value kind of framework is like, you know, if you, the more perceived value you can build, like you’re giving to save the oceans, you’re, you’re helping some minorities thrive or whatever you’re doing as a brand, all these things add up in terms of perceived value and that allows you to build a huge chunk of goodwill that you can just leverage and create amazing relationships without having to break the bank. So.

Arlen
[02:22:30]
Gotcha. Yeah, that’s a, that’s awesome. So yeah, it just sounds like, yeah, every type of relationship that’s good that you’re gonna inform with these micro influencers, you can really kind of structure it however you want and it just, whatever is really you feel is gonna be a win-win for you and that micro influencer you can come up with something that will meet both your needs. So there’s really sounds like there’s really no kind of general rule of film saying you have to pay somebody this amount. Oh yeah. Know, give them this percentage of commission. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. And that’s good to know. So David, yeah, it’s definitely been the awesome talking to you. I’ve definitely learned a lot. I can talk about influencer marketing for hours and hours. Yeah. So it’s a, it’s a hot subject and so it’s a pleasure having you on and I know I’ve learned a lot and hopefully our listeners have as well. But lastly, before we do let you go, I always like to close with the kind of closing fun fact questions just so I can already our audience get to know you a little bit better. If you don’t mind sharing one closing fun fact about yourself that you think people would be interested to know.

David
[02:23:26]
Oh God, I hate these questions, right? I mean, yeah, so I, I was almost a lawyer, right?

Arlen
[02:23:31]
Oh, right.

David
[02:23:32]
That’s really one of those things in life that right. God, I hated it.

Arlen
[02:23:36]
Wow, okay. That’s interesting. Yeah, to go from law to, you know, digital marketing agency, that’s definitely a switch.

David
[02:23:44]
Yeah. But digital marketing agency is like, you know, that low hanging fruit when you’re starting out, right? Hey, let’s sell websites to local businesses and then that just like unlocks and then you don’t know anything, but it’s like the easy kind of way into this digital space for us it was at least, and right turns out, you know, you just learn and learn and the learnings build on top of one another and yeah. Yeah. I just wanted out of law.

Arlen
[02:24:07]
Gotcha. Gotcha. Well thanks for sharing that. That’s, that’s good to know. And it’s good that, you know, you made that choice before you got too deep into it. Cause I know a lot of people go down certain routes as far as your career concerned and you know, they end up regretting it and then they get in where it’s, it’s like too late. You know? I mean, you can always, it’s always switch, but you know, you actually get more and more responsibilities. You get a family, get kids, you get to a point where it’s, it’s hard to make moves.

David
[02:24:30]
Thank God I’m in Canada for the tuition fees I’ve heard in the States. So I’ve heard your tuition fees for law school are pretty high, so Oh

Arlen
[02:24:38]
Yeah, they are crazy. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, actually, so in Canada, how, how is it struck for, For law school?

David[02:24:43]
For law school, like the whole program kind of thing? In Quebec at least is probably like, you know, with books and everything for three year program, you’re probably talking like 15,000 Canadians, so

Arlen
[02:24:53]
Oh wow.

David
[02:24:54]
Wow. Like 11,000 ish US dollars. So yeah, that’s for three years of

Arlen
[02:24:58]
Tuition. That’s, that’s crazy. Yeah. Here in the us I mean, I think we’re at some of the top law schools. I think we’re talking woo, we’re looking at 60, 80, a hundred thousand dollars for that whole time. Wow. Crazy. Yeah.

David
[02:25:12]
Yeah, it’s a different world. I would’ve probably been a lawyer, right? As I got to that, like, well, I’m in, I’m in debt.

Arlen
[02:25:18]
Gotcha, Gotcha. Okay. Well that, that’s good to know. For anybody listening that’s thinking about law school and then doesn’t necessarily have the resources, you know, maybe consider going to Canada, you

David
[02:25:27]
Know? Yeah, exactly.

Arlen
[02:25:28]
Never know. All right, great. Thank you for sharing that. I appreciate that and I was awesome talking to you. But lastly, before we do let you go, if any of our listeners wanna reach out to you and connect, pick your brain, what’s the best way for them to reach you

David
[02:25:40]
In beat that agency? You can book a call there, send me an email as well, David at in Beat. That agency in beat is I N B E A T, by the way. So, or on LinkedIn, David Moreau, David, M O R N E A U, Moreau. So yeah, that’s it. And I’m always open to geek out about this stuff. Really love it. So feel free to just book a call and we’ll chat through.

Arlen
[02:26:03]
All right. That sounds great. I’ll definitely encourage our listeners to reach out to you and beat that agency. We’ll have the link in the show notes and in the transcript, and it’s definitely a pleasure talking to you. David, thank you for joining us today on the e-commerce marketing podcast.

David
[02:26:15]
Pleasure was mine. Thanks for having me. Arlen.

Speaker 1
[02:26:19]
Thank you for listening to the e-Commerce Marketing podcast. 

Podcast Guest Info

David Morneau
Co-Founder at inBeat Agency