The Influencer Marketing Playbook - with Lily Comba, Founder & CEO of Superbloom

Summary

Podcast Summary: Marketing Operators – The Influencer Marketing Playbook

Episode: The Influencer Marketing Playbook - with Lily Comba, Founder & CEO of Superbloom
Date: December 30, 2025
Host(s): Connor Rolain, Connor MacDonald, Cody Plofker
Guest: Lily Comba (Founder & CEO, Superbloom)

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Episode Overview

This episode features a deep dive into the mechanics, evolution, and strategic impact of influencer marketing with guest Lily Comba, CEO of Superbloom. Drawing on her experience deploying over $20M in influencer spend—driving $100M+ in returns—Lily shares actionable playbooks for both brands and agencies. Topics include performance-driven influencer methodology, campaign structuring, attribution complexity, deal negotiation, platform strategy (IG vs. YouTube), measuring impact, and adapting to emerging industry trends.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Lily’s Background and the Evolution of Influencer Marketing

[04:27-06:20]

• Lily’s career began nearly a decade ago, when influencer marketing “was kind of a dirty word; being an influencer was a dirty word back then.”
• Started in business development, then at Thrive Market, pioneering a YouTube influencer program through a CPA/ROAS model—something she was trained to approach “from a performance lens.”
• At Seed Health, she managed $20M spend, returning over $100M.
  • Quote: “Spent about $20 million on influencers, but... saw a return of over 100 million.” (00:00, Lily)
• Founded Superbloom in 2023 to formalize her performance-focused approach, rejecting traditional agency rules in favor of results and flexibility.

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Building and Running Performance-Based Influencer Programs

[13:05-19:31]

• Superbloom partners with DTC disruptors like Jones Road Beauty, Coop Sleep Goods, Bobby Infant Formula, and more—focusing on categories primed for innovation.
• Every client engagement is tailored to achieve relevance and measurable success—emphasizing not just reach, but CPA/ROAS-driven impact.

Services “Productized” as SKUs

• Offers blend of “traditional organic influencer,” integrated whitelisting, and UGC sourcing for both organic and paid campaigns.
• Quote: “Our approach to influencer is always through the performance lens... our key differentiator is identifying creators, negotiating deals, and briefing them so brands will see revenue conversions and really strong CPA and ROAS numbers.” (14:03, Lily)
• Briefs always include paid usage rights to maximize asset longevity and adaptability across channels.

Importance of Whitelisting & Rights

• “We are negotiating paid usage rights for every single deal that we secure… It’s baked into my influencer marketing DNA.” (17:43, Lily)
• Running whitelisting enables rapid re-deployment of influencer content as native ads (“Same day their ad launches because that efficiency and that speed is really critical for success.” [16:37, Lily])

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Attribution, Measurement, and Dealing with Code Leakage

[19:31-41:46]

• For high AOV products and varying funnel lengths, Lily adapts attribution models. High AOV (but not extreme) products (e.g., $200-$250) tend to perform better in trackable ROAS-driven campaigns.
• Uses UTMs, influencer-specific links/codes, and close post-campaign reporting to triangulate true impact.
• On code leakage:
  • “If you see conversions in revenue in whatever software you’re using, compare that to the link clicks… after an influencer posts you always need to request their post-campaign insights so you can see from their true backend what happened.” (25:46, Lily)
  • To account for leakage and halo, calculates program- and influencer-level multipliers using click-to-purchase ratios.
  • Incremental impact, device changes, and delayed conversions all factor into final ROAS calculations.

Real-World Calculation Example

[36:15-39:58]

• [Case study with Jones Road] Spending $100k, returning $70k directly attributed, but estimate total return is higher with code/click multipliers.
  • Current working multiplier is about 1.4x, accounting for leakage, cross-device, delayed conversions.

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Platform Strategies: Instagram vs. YouTube

[55:27-61:05]

• YouTube stands out as a scalable, data-rich, and longer-tail influencer platform.
  • “YouTube is almost like traditional media buying…Unlike Instagram there’s just way more data you can ask for to predict performance…It’s my favorite.” (55:54, Lily)
  • Key metrics for selection: average views, watch time, clickthrough, subscriber vs. non-subscriber engagement.
  • Only contracts with creators whose audience retention exceeds 25%.
  • “Any brand I know can be successful on YouTube, but if you’re also a brand that has really differentiating talking points…they can get much more messaging in a YouTube integration.” (57:13, Lily)
  • Always prioritizes integrated “sponsored segments” within key watch time windows rather than full sponsored videos.
  • Asset rights negotiated to repurpose these integrations in YouTube ads.
    • “You get the raw clip.” (60:30, Lily)
• Instagram, TikTok: Quicker “moment in the sun”—heavy focus on fresh, rapid cycles, with content rapidly losing steam after the first 24 hours (especially Stories).
  • Attribution more challenging, but can track code/link clicks effectively over shorter windows.

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Deal Negotiation, Agency-Brand-Talent Dynamics

[47:19-49:59]

• Anchors negotiations in performance modeling: “Numbers don’t lie.”
  • Requests stats, models out expected clicks/conversions, and offers commission or hybrid models if forecasted performance merits (though fewer influencers accept commission-only now).
  • Win-win philosophy: “Our goal is obviously to set the brand up for success, but it’s also to set the influencer up for success.” (49:59, Lily)
  • Strong recommendations to share post-campaign performance transparently with talent for iterative improvement.

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Structuring Budgets for Influencer

[72:11–74:07]

• No one-size-fits-all spend level, but a practical minimum is ~$50k/month for meaningful results.
  • Flexibility for disruptive brands with tight budgets, but “as more and more brands are working with influencers, there has to be a minimum investment to break through.”
  • Some benchmarks: 1-2% of media mix or topline revenue, as a rule of thumb for budget sizing and experimental validity.

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The Value of Relationships & Customization

[63:16-65:07]

• “Influencer is not one size fits all and your initial perception…will change… Every brand is different, so every influencer program should be different too.” (63:16, Lily)
• Lily emphasizes the importance of non-transactional relationships, collaborative troubleshooting (especially with talent managers), and ongoing iteration.
• “The success of your program is the success of your relationships.”

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Building Hybrid Programs: Organic & Paid

[65:07–70:38]

• For brands with both organic reach goals and performance needs, advises hybrid programs with clear separation between organic briefs and paid briefs—potentially briefing the same influencer separately for each execution.
  • “Let them do their thing that’s organic, let them do their thing that’s more of a paid ad…don’t send one brief.” (65:07, Connor)
• Recommends carefully matching influencer content style to channel (e.g., organic recipe vs. product ad).
• Position whitelisting/boosted ads with influencers as a benefit for their brand and follower growth.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Spent about $20 million on influencers, but... saw a return of over 100 million.” (00:00, Lily)
• “Our approach to influencer is always through the performance lens... what we're really good at is identifying creators... so brands will also see revenue conversions and really strong CPA and ROAS numbers.” (14:03, Lily)
• “We are negotiating paid usage rights for every single deal that we secure because that's... it's imperative.” (17:43, Lily)
• “Influencer is a full funnel channel. It's a rising tide that lifts all boats.” (21:39, Lily)
• “If you see conversions in revenue... compare that to the link clicks… if an influencer sends you a screenshot of an IG story and they only got 27 link clicks but 300 purchases, something doesn't add up here.” (25:46, Lily)
• On experimentation: “Don't be afraid of testing, don't be afraid of making a mistake… you have to invest at some point.” (54:57, Lily)
• “YouTube is my favorite…You can predict a CPA and you can predict a ROAS with a YouTuber because you can see how many views…watch time, clickthrough, subscriber vs. non-subscriber.” (55:54 & 57:13, Lily)
• “Influencer is not one size fits all and that your initial perception…will change.” (63:16, Lily)
• “The success of your program is the success of your relationships within that program, which is inclusive of the talent managers, which is inclusive of the talent.” (64:06, Lily)
• “Let them do their thing that's organic, let them do their thing that's more of a paid ad…and don't send one brief.” (65:07, Connor)
• “Hybrid programs… briefs are different, the deliverables you book are way different…if you've got an amazing video editing squad, those six videos can be 20, you know.” (67:07, Lily)
• On budget: “There has to be a minimum investment level to break through your competitors that are doing Influencer already.” (74:07, Lily)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00 — Opening results: $20M influencer spend, $100M+ return
• 04:27 — Lily’s background, performance influencer roots
• 13:05 — Brands Superbloom serves, principles of program design
• 14:03 — Performance lens, SKUs, organic vs. paid influencer
• 17:43 — Whitelisting as a must, embedding rights in every deal
• 21:39 — Full-funnel influencer impact, structuring for performance, high-AOV challenges
• 25:46 — Attribution, code leakage, and multiplier math
• 36:15 — Numbers walk-through for multiplier calculation
• 55:54 — YouTube as an influencer channel: performance predictors, media buying logic
• 63:16 — What brands get wrong: customization, relationships, and adaptation
• 65:07 — Building hybrid (organic + paid) influencer programs
• 72:11 — Budget minimums and practical advice

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Takeaways for Brands & Operators

• Performance influencer is now the gold standard: model, measure, and iterate for revenue impact—not just vanity metrics.
• Always secure usage rights for influencer content, so you can leverage it across channels—especially for timely ad launches and whitelisting.
• Attribution is messy: Develop multiplier models and regularly revisit them as leakage, device-switching, and delayed conversions shift.
• Relationships matter: Success is about transparency, post-campaign feedback (also to talent!), and rejecting purely transactional mindsets.
• YouTube is underutilized: Data-rich platform, higher CPM value, and longer tail—especially for brands with richer stories or complex products.
• Productize your influencer offerings: Define clear SKUs for services to prevent scope creep and enable systematic scaling.
• Test, learn, iterate: Don’t cling to preconceived models. Three-month test cycles, per-channel strategies, and ongoing program refinement are essential.
• Budget realistically: $50k-$100k+ monthly is a practical floor for competitive DTC influencer programs in 2025-2026.

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Where to Learn More

• Follow or reach out to Lily:
  • Instagram / socials: @buysuperbloom
  • Email: [e-mail]
  • Website: buysuperbloom.com

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Episode packed with data-driven playbooks, real numbers, and candid advice—making it a must-listen (or must-read) for any marketing leader serious about scaling influencer into a performance asset.

Transcript

[Lily]

Spent about $20 million on influencers, but, you know, saw a return of over 100 million.

[Host 1]

Lily from Superbloom, excited to have you on chat. All things influencer.

[Lily]

Thanks for having me in. 2023 is when I launched Superbloom, which is very much a culmination of my experience in performance. Influencer. I've been lucky enough to be in influencer marketing for 10 years now. Being an influencer marketer was kind of a dirty word. Being an influencer was a dirty word back then. Get weird with your campaigns, think outside the box and constantly be iterating. YouTube is almost like traditional media buying less than a 25% average watch time. We're not going to work with them because their viewers, 75% of the video is not being watched. Like no one cares what you're talking about. Any brand I know can be successful on YouTube, but if you're also a brand that has.

[Host 1]

All right, we're about to talk about all things influencer marketing. Super excited to get into this episode with Lily, but before we do, got to thank our sponsors. This show is not possible without them. Thank you to Motion, Rich Panel, Pression, AI After Cell and Revo. As always, if you like this episode, please share it. Sure you're going to learn a lot from it. Take some notes. Let's get into it.

[Connor]

All right. I am super pumped with Motion's newest shipment of AI technology in their tool called Analyze this. So basically how it works is you create a report like usual, you know, slice the data however, however you want, whatever you're trying to get insight to. Once the report is pulled, you just click Analyze this. It'll pull the report and then it'll send it right into your inbox and you can go into this report and it gives you a very, very detailed analysis of what's working, what's not working, and then ultimately it even goes into what you should do next based on the analysis that it's giving you. So just continuing to automate this analysis piece of creative strategy and I'm, I'm very excited about it, how it's going to unlock more time and more production for creative strategy teams.

[Host 2]

100%. And it's another example of how important critically analyzing creative is today. With Meta's Andromeda, which we've talked about at length on the podcast, creative diversity has never been more important. But creative diversity to Meta is a black box to marketers. We don't know exactly what they think of as, as new and different and unique. So Motion's building native Tools to help marketers guide us through that process and.

[Lily]

Ultimately lead to better performance.

[Connor]

So a few specific examples we've been using it for at hexcloud lately. We just launched a new product category in and we launched some social funnels around it. So I use it to analyze all the cocktail shaker ads that we ran and it gave me super clear, very actionable insights. And then even bigger report and even harder to do manual report was looking at all of our Gordon ramsay ads from September 1st through yesterday. Like think about if you know, Ridge was going to look at all of its everyday carry ads. Like that is literally hundreds, maybe thousands of ads. And it's one thing to be able to pull that report, but it's totally different thing to be able to pump literally millions of dollars of data into the analyze this report and have that analysis spit out in a fraction of the time that it would take, you know, a team of creative strategists to do it manually. So very exciting stuff. Very, very different use cases. So it just shows the breadth that this new feature of the product has.

[Host 2]

So if you're a marketer that wants the insights of Motion, go to motion app.com and tell them that the operator sent you.

[Host 1]

All right. Lily, how are you doing? Lily from Super Bloom, excited to have you on chat all things influencer.

[Lily]

I'm doing well, thanks for having me.

[Host 1]

Yeah, after about 30 minutes of behind the scenes guys by the way, so we finally made it.

[Lily]

But influencer, you know.

[Host 1]

Yeah, I'm sure it's nothing you haven't seen before. Awesome. Well, excited to chat, excited to have you on, you know, excited to learn. I learned a lot working with you. I don't know how long it's been, maybe six months. So excited for, for people to kind of see, you know, what goes into to building this influencer program. Let's do a quick, you know, bio. Would love to just hear about your background and then see where it goes.

[Lily]

Yeah, I've been lucky enough to be in influencer marketing for about it's coming up on 10 years now and 10 years ago it was called business development. It wasn't even, you know, being an influencer marketer was kind of a dirty word. Being an influencer was a dirty word back then. I got my start actually freelancing during my first job out of college was at a traditional ad agency, specifically in at a home which was interesting but also really boring. And as a new grad it was kind of like side hustle. Culture was at an all time high and So I started working very softly in just partnerships, marketing, helping mostly female entrepreneurs get connected to publishers, online magazines, et cetera. And I loved that. I loved the DOT connecting. And so I got my first full time job in business development, also considered influencer marketing, Srive Market. And I was there for about four years. Started as a coordinator, kind of really learning the ropes, getting down into the weeds of influencer marketing, which is still to this day a very administratively heavy channel, but made my way up to a manager where I was overseeing the YouTube pipeline of talent. And that program was one of a kind. It was also the first, you know, one of the very early brands to adopt Influencer as a key channel of theirs. And it was all through the performance lens. So I've always been trained to work with influencers through a CPA or a ROAS model. And then in 2020, that is when seed Health, the probiotics company, hired me to create and launch their paid influencer program. I was there for two and a half years, spent a pretty penny, spent about $20 million on influencers, but, you know, saw a return of over 100 million. And that was really when I was like, oh, okay, I might be pretty good. This works. Yeah, this, this might work. And so then from Seed to Super Bloom, which I did not realize that, how cute that is in 2023 is when I launched Superbloom, which is very much a culmination of my experience in performance influencers. Um, but the best part about running an agency with no agency experience is we don't really follow a rule book.

[Host 1]

So probably some pros and cons to that.

[Lily]

Yeah. Yeah. I had no idea what I was doing. But I feel like most companies when you start, you're like, what's going on? I have an idea. Let's see if it works.

[Host 1]

Yeah. You know, it's funny, I don't know if I ever told you this, but I, I connected. I don't know who it was, but connected with somebody on the Seed Health growth team probably like two years back, maybe three years back, because I was just like, needed to learn really about their, like, partnership ad whitelisting program because I would just like, see it was so successful. So it was. I was an admirer of your work for, for a long time.

[Lily]

Thank you. Yeah, I mean, we. That was Thrive Market had a really robust white listing. I did not Seed, obviously we worked. I worked very closely with the performance marketing and paid media team and I did not realize how unique that was until I launched Super Bloom. And so many brands were like we should be using Influencer content on Meta. And I was like, yeah, let me, let me help you understand this a little bit more. We, we very much take a mentorship approach to all of our, our brand partnerships. But yeah, that was the, the synergy between the paid team and the Influencer team was really tight.

[Host 2]

At Seed.

[Host 1]

Seems like, it seems like it was very like growth oriented.

[Connor]

Like yes.

[Host 1]

Was it was on the, was it on the growth team or. It was similar, but it seems like it was like one of the big growth levers of the company. Right.

[Lily]

Yeah, I reported to. I don't know if it was V. His name was V. I think VP of Growth. We fell under the Growth team. But when I joined the company was still small enough where I was working with the head of, you know, organic social CRM. Like we. That was a big reason why I think the Seed program was so successful was obviously the methodology that we approached the Influencer channel with. But how omnichannel, how cross channel collaborative it was. And especially in those early days, by the time that I left, the program was so big, the company was so big that we weren't necessarily siloed, but we had our own goals and we were just kind of. We were just a machine. But I learned a lot during my time there.

[Host 1]

Yeah, that's cool. And how, how did Superboom come about? Like how would you link up with obviously the Super Affiliate guys And curious how story.

[Lily]

I actually love this story because in 2020. So super affiliate initially launched as a solution for referral. Referral and loyalty programs. And I think Andy and anders started at 2019, 2020 when they were roommates. That their whole story is really hilarious to me. But they wanted to get into affiliate and influencer and their best friend John was the head of supply chain at Seed. And John was like, you should really talk to Lily because she knows what she's doing and if you need, if you need a voice of reason within the influencer and affiliate space, you should really talk to her. So I first met them in 2021 and we just kind of talked on a monthly, sometimes quarterly basis as they were creating tools and features within Super Affiliate for the affiliate and influencer marketer. And then at the end of 2022, early 2023, I knew that like my time was expiring at Seed. And they, in one of our conversations they were like, would you ever go off on your own? Would you ever start an agency? Like, what do you have? What's on the. What's on the docket? For Lily. And that's truly how their belief in me and the partnership that we developed together from a tech and industry expert perspective, I was like, I have. It's now or never. You know, if not me, who? If not now, when? Let's go. And so that's how the really deep partnership between Super Affiliate and Superbloom began. And still to this day, that is the anchor of our relationship with them. Um, we are their sister agency. All of our brands are on Super Affiliate. Um, and it's just fun to be building the software that I never had.

[Host 1]

That's cool. That's really cool. I. That's. That's what I figured. That's cool. Yeah, I love them. Anders and Andy are so great. Funny story about Anders. This is like, the first time I met him was at the. The Meta Performance Summit in. In San Jose, like, a bunch of months back. And there was this guy speaking on stage who, like, like, great presentation from, like, one of the big agencies, but was wearing, like, very cool clothes. And, like, I dress like, I wear the same shit every day. Like, I dress very plain. I'm like, I wish I had that. Like, I wish I had that swag. And I just like thinking about it, well, if that's not me. And then right after Anders goes up to the guy, he's like, dude, where do you get this outfit? I want to get it. It was so funny.

[Lily]

I'm like, yeah, Anders is a cool guy.

[Connor]

Like, Anders. Anders is kind of like a trendy cool guy too. Oh.

[Lily]

And he's just like a sweet guy from Kentucky, you know, like, the two of them together are just truly iconic.

[Connor]

E comm incubator stuff. Like, yeah, they're right. That is a funny, like, origin story. It's like og, like, Silicone Valley vibes. Like, let's all live under the same house and, like, just jam all day until a good company comes out of it.

[Lily]

And their entire friend group is, like, remarkable. You know the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell? I feel like there's going to be a second version that just analyzes their friend group because truly. Yeah. Foreign.

[Host 2]

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[Host 1]

What are some brands that you can obviously Jones Road number one. But what are some brands that you work with or have worked with like that you can tell us.

[Lily]

I mean I didn't ask for permission from any of them but they all.

[Host 1]

You know, it's just Jones Road then.

[Lily]

Jones Road is our only we yeah, we will sink if you guys break up with us. No Coop Sleep Goods. I mean we have a really strong retention with our brands and so I would Jones Our Beauty is obviously one of our brands. Coop Sleep Goods, Bobby, the infant formula company Stasis and Thesis have been with us for a while. Their program has evolved a ton oats overnight. You know, adapt naturals. Like we really where all of our brands are very anchored in disrupting their category which makes the influencer channel a lot more innovative and quite frankly successful.

[Host 1]

So yeah, and I feel like when we're talking influencer, like it could mean any. Like there's so many different ways to run an influencer program. Like I guess let's start getting into it. Like how what kind of like scope, how do you guys run the program? Or like how do you think about it?

[Lily]

Yeah, we have. So it's actually remarkable to just see the evolution of our services since we started two and a half years ago because a lot of it is still the same but a lot of it is also us observing what's happening in the industry and making sure that our brands are staying relevant. And I think that's really important. As an agency, that's our responsibility is to make sure that our brands are successful, that they're staying up to speed on the trends that we're seeing. And I never had that experience with an agency when I was at Seed or Thrive market. And so I'm really proud of our evolution because we still to this day our core kind of foundation offering is traditional organic Influencer where brands come to us and they're like we have a set monthly budget, spend it wisely to put it very simply. But our approach to influencer is always through the performance lens or the growth lens. Like we, yeah, we can report on impressions and awareness and, and reach and you know, sentiment and media value. Absolutely. But our key differentiator and what we're really good at is identifying creators, negotiating deals and briefing them in a way where brands will also see revenue conversions and really strong CPA and ROAS numbers. That takes time. You know you're some brands depending on, depending on the campaign, depending on the timing, depending on everything. Like you'll hit your goals in month one but it usually takes three months to kind of really get going. And that's still our core offering. So we call it Organic Influencer but we are negotiating paid usage rights for every single deal that we secure because that's. So that is a huge priority to us to extend the longevity and the livelihood of that influencer's organic posting. We get the raw files, the edited files and then we send them to the paid media team to run run in as an ad themselves through the influencers handle. You can test it from the brand's handle and we're actually running whitelisting for a handful of brands of ours right now as well. That's something that I really want to expand into next year. Like we are lucky to be connected just to some of the best paid media performance marketers. And we already have, we have two brands on that sku. Right. We literally just launched it a couple months ago kind of under the table. But we're see really strong success there and it's my goal to really kind of own performance influencer for our brands. So not only working with influencers in organic capacity, but being able to once the influencer posts the same day their ad launches because that efficiency and that speed is really critical for success. So those are two of our SKUs and then one that we are also working with Cody on for Jones Road. Is this like performance created by UGC sku? We have a handful of brands that are on a hybrid model. So we're we're running their organic influencer program when we're also building out in addition to all of that creative. We're also sourcing UGC assets to just run on paid. And brands can either do both or they can just lean into organic Influencer or just performance creative. But the important thing is just we will look at your brand and try to and really understand what it is that your goals are and, and customize a proposal for what we think will be successful.

[Host 1]

And just both. To clarify, by ugc, it's. It's essentially whitelisting. It's just they're not posting, but it's, it's not like the, like, they're still like more like influencers, I would say, versus, like, you know, like a $300 content creator. Like, they're still. Yeah, but no, I mean, you guys are the only people I've seen that get whitelisting rights as part of every.

[Connor]

Deal, which is wild.

[Lily]

It's imperative. It's. I think it's because I quite, quite honestly don't know any different. That's just like, it's what we did at Thrive. It's what I did at Seed. It's just like it's baked into my Influencer marketing DNA and it's baked into, you know, the, the women on my team. It's just, it's. It's their nature. You know, it's really important for us to make sure that we are enabling the brand to be successful with Influencer.

[Connor]

I love how you, I love how you talk about your, your services in such a productized way. I love how you're using, like, you're talking about like Skus and like, I think that's. I know, like, in my experience, I came from an agency background too, and you just want to like, do everything for your brands, no matter what it is. And you're like, you just want to provide value, Provide value, provide value. But if you don't have, like, your services super productized, you just end up with like scope, creep galore and burnout galore. And then you like, there's just so many, so many gray, like, where does our work end and begin? So I love hearing you talk about your, your offerings like SKUs. You're like, here's SKU 1, skew 2, SKU 3. It's very clear that you guys have a very well defined scope of work. And like, here's what we do and here's what we don't do. I think it's refreshing to hear like, services, business services founder talk about their product offering like that.

[Lily]

Yeah. I mean, it's probably because I'm a CPG junkie that I just I speak in SKUs all the time. I'm like, well when is that SKU launching is that? I'm like, that is not. And that's just, you know, I've, you know, perfect example that I come from in house where you talk about SKU all the time. So yeah, our agency is very much built by in house people, which I also think helps differentiate us in our output.

[Connor]

I want to, I want to ask you something specifically about your like organic social bit. Because like we at Hexclad Week, you know, for a long time, like we're thinking about organic, I think the wrong way. And we were thinking about it from like I want to measure traffic, I want to measure revenue, I want to like assign a roas and a cpa. And it just felt like we were marching towards the wrong KPIs, especially with our, with our products where like our hero product is a $700 set. Most of these influencer activations that we're doing are reaching new audiences. So it's really, it's not the right approach for us to think that like we're going to activate with a brand new creator, do four organic posts with them and see like a ton of revenue. Because we have a very, very long consideration period, right? So we actually we shifted the KPIs that we optimize our organic influencer to be more impression and CPM based. And like we are, we are purely trying to arbitrage impressions and CPMs with our organic influencer deals. And then we have a, you know, some deals that are a little bit more like revenue oriented. But then it's really the paid ecosystem where we're really focused on like all right, let's get a bunch of spend behind this and drive revenue. So like that's how we think about our influencer program is like organic's all about impressions and CPMs and like those are the, the KPIs that we set and that are like influencer team is held accountable to is like impression growth targets. And then the influencer or the paid team is all about revenue spend, return on ad spend, all like the classic performance metrics. So what are you seeing on, on the organic influencer side for the brands that are like effectively driving trackable revenue? Like a what, like what's the, what's kind of like the DNA of those brands and like their products and then B, how are you setting those? Like like very tactically speaking, like how are you set like orchestrating those organic posts so you can track revenue? Like is it discount code Short links with utms. Like what's the like the mechanics of the of that content and those influencer posts that y' all have found to work the best.

[Lily]

Yeah, well and I just want to say too that you have to test and learn and hexclad is a perfect example of that where you launch your influencer program thinking that it was going to be bottom of funnel and it wound up being more beneficial for you to just have top of funnel KPIs. That's a lot of our brands are simply bottom of funnel. But one thing that I have observed is more and more brands are understanding the benefit. Like Influencer is a full funnel channel. It is a rising tide that lifts all boats. It's going to generate site traffic, Google search increases. You know it's. You're going to see lapsed customers come back because an influencer posted about your brand like there. There's a very wide halo effect to Influencer for our more bottom of funnel partners and brands. How we even the brands that are doing well with organic Influencer actually have a higher AOV but not $700 because especially like Coop Sleep Goods for instance, like their, their AOV is in the low hundreds, closer to two hundreds. And what we've noticed is that that is a successful ROAS based program because the influencer doesn't have to sell as much product in order to hit a certain ROAS goal. And so that is actually one of the early screener questions that we have when determining if we can work with the brand if they will be successful with Influencer is we ask about aov because depending on your AOV you'll either be successful within a CPA model or ROAS model or we would advise more of an impressions and awareness based approach. So you know that just to talk about the part of the funnel, but in order to make a program successful from a performance lens and you know, to drive sales the base, the most basic thing is enabling the influencer with a link and code. Some brands are successful with a landing page experience. Some brands are successful with just a direct redirect to the pdp. Like Jones R Beauty is a great example of that. We started our program with landing pages and we're like no, if people want makeup, they just want to go to the exact product that that influencer was talking about and purchase the shade that they want and call it a day. And so you have you obviously that was through testing and learning and pivoting very quickly. But enabling the influencer with a code and link, having software that can give you a really strong attribution and a good understanding of what the customer journey is. But something that we've also been really successful at and Bobby Infant Formula is a really good example of this is get weird with your campaigns. Um, think outside the box and constantly be iterating. Obviously, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Like that was, that was what at Seat. I also think it was a time and a place like 2020. Everyone was thinking about their health and optimizing their immune systems, et cetera. And so there was so much longevity to just a 15% discount. It lasted for two years like and we saw no with no need to change. Um, but as the influencer landscape gets way more competitive, staying relevant and from a how you're briefing your creators, the campaign that they're a part of, how you're utilizing that influencer content across organic, social as a brand, paid social as a brand, CRM, email, you know, sms. It's just, it's, you got to make sure that you're breaking through the noise.

[Connor]

Do we always struggle with discount code leakage? Like, oh, it's the pain of my existence. Like we will launch a discount, like if it's a, any site wide discount code is going to leak within seven days. And it's like all of a sudden we're going and looking at like UTM. It's like this person drove 400 like sessions via their UTM but they have like 188 discount code used. So I'm like, there's, that's not right. There's no way they have a. Yeah.

[Host 1]

Somebody can fix this. There's a lot of value in it. Oh my God.

[Lily]

So I think, Cody, we're laughing because this is a problem we're having and I will say so I'm a growth marketer disguised as an influencer marketer. If you haven't picked that up yet. And for me I'm like a sale is a sale code leakage. Amazing. That's still a new customer. The issue for influencer, there's two issues. The first one is if you're paying that influencer commission, they did not, they did not earn that sale. It's someone picked up their code and they're earning commission on a code that they did not generate organically themselves. That's the first issue. The second issue is that you know, you may see an influencer generated 3, 300 purchases and you want to renew with them and you're way more flexible in that negotiation because you're like, well you crushed it for us as an agency. Like we, we understand that codes leak and so we, we have a good eye for when that happens. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of checks and balances to determine if it was leaked or if it was true performance. And the first one is, you know, if you see conversions in revenue in whatever software you're using, compare that to the link clicks. Is that, is it on par with what you're used to seeing with influencers or what the site wide click through rate is? That's the first thing. But the, the true determination is when you get there. So after an influencer posts you always need to request their post campaign insights so that you can see from their true back end what happened. And if an influencer sends you a screenshot of an Instagram story for instance, and they only got 27 link clicks but 300 purchases, you're like, something does not add up here. And that's when you can create, and this is what we've done for Jones Road, it's when you create a, not only a multiplier to be like, this is actually the performance of this influencer. So you identify a multiplier based on your program averages based on the influencers averages and then you also create a custom click through rate for your influencer program because that may be different than what is normal for influencers. The site, I think we're handling it okay. It's an always on program. Unless you want, unless your platform that you're using can do one time use codes. That's the only solution is one time use codes. But I'm a consumer, we're all consumers. I'm going to remember someone's code and purchase maybe three weeks after they've promoted a brand. So it really is up, it's up to, it's up to you. You decide like do you want to just be on it with code leakage and just monitor things knowing that people have name recognition of codes or do you just want to eliminate any, you know, potential error and just do one time use codes?

[Connor]

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[Lily]

Very similarly. And I will say too that every brand's multiplier is different and if you have an agency that is saying it's a 20%, 30% multiplier across the board, like that is just, that's simply not true because every brand is different, every AOV is different, the product different, the customers are different, everything is different. And so it's, it's honestly quite simple. We are, we have all these checks and balances to determine what the true performance for that influencer was from that click through rate, from that conversion percentage. That's how we come up with our multiplier.

[Host 1]

I wanna, I wanna share like our, our journey and like what it's been.

[Lily]

Yeah, I feel like it's like a.

[Host 1]

Good example that, answering a lot of that. So we started internally. So prior to working with Lily like this January of doing like paid influence stuff and we were looking at it brand first, we were working with more of a brand focused beauty agency and we probably didn't spend up, but we, you know, we'd spend you know, 50k and we'd be like all right, like what do we get? We got, here's our emv, here's our awareness. And I'm like all right, is that good? You know and it's like we weren't at the size of a brand where it's like we're going to, you know, now we have tracksuit on board and so we're looking at awareness lift and things like that. But that wasn't really like our goal. We were in between. So it's like I don't, I want to scale the program, I want to get more whitelisting access, stuff like that. But like I'm never going to be able to scale it at you know, not having any revenue. So you know, that was when we started working with Superbloom and considering it more of a, more of a performance channel. And I think the thought is like this is a, it's going to hopefully break even. Right. We can or, or make some profit. It, there's definitely awareness there that is you know, kind of part of that multiplier but even better that, that you're building. But obviously we, we can't just have it be just an awareness channel and then you also get all of the value, especially because you guys are not having to pay extra for the rights that it feeds your ad account. You know, so it's like, what is. I think that's where we're even trying to figure out right now. And I'm really trying to. Because I want to continue to grow and scale this channel is like, yeah, what is our multiplier? Because first is it's clearly there is good amount of revenue that you see on a click. Right. It's. Especially for Instagram. It's not going to just be all, you know, views and people searching or code. But there's the challenges that you guys identified with the, with the codes. A lot of people are just not going to use them. There's going to be some people that don't click but don't use code as well. And maybe they buy different devices on it.

[Lily]

Right.

[Host 1]

We also, because we're not discounting. I think there's less incentive to use our codes for a gift with purchase compared to another one.

[Lily]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

So like we're probably at like a.0.7.8 ROAS right now. And like that's probably great. Like we should probably. My guess is we should probably scale that and like that's great if you consider multiplier plus awareness plus. If we took. By the way, if we took 20% of that cost, removed it from our organic influencer program, now we're above a one. And so that's my, that's my guess because we can't do a house geolift test. We. House has told me we need to get to 2% of our media mix for it to work in our. Mmm. So in our media mix model. So that's where we're trying to get to.

[Lily]

But that's.

[Host 1]

Connor. That's like how. How we're approaching it and going about it.

[Lily]

I think October was our third month of testing with our organic influencer and that's when we saw a, like a. A clean 1x roas, which is kind of typical. That. That's, that's what I preface. I'm like, give it. Give it a couple of months. And Cody is incredible to work with because he just. I mean, you just get under. You understand funnels?

[Host 1]

No, no, because I made. But I made mistakes before because we started in January and I didn't spend enough and I didn't commit for a quarter. So.

[Lily]

And it's how you structured the deals and how you negotiate. Like there's this whole playbook. Right. And I think that it is depending on your category as a brand and depending on this. November and December as we all know are very difficult months. Like you can either it's incredibly competitive, it's way more expensive on the meta side for the influencer side they're all like oh, holiday pricing, you know, we don't buy into any of that. But so it's normal also for your performance to ebb and flow based on year, based on the year, based on the seasonality, based on how competitive it is. I will just put, put that out there.

[Connor]

But could you walk through some like either maybe using your, the numbers you just gave Cody or like just dummy numbers like what, how you would like think about like what's the step wise for setting the multiplier like with some actual numbers. So like Cody, you said you guys are Getting like a, a 0.7x indirectly attributable but you know that like only a fraction of what that influencer driving is driving is going to come through like the link or the code and then there's obviously a bunch of halo. So like I just, I'm trying to like what's the, what's like the. Yeah, I'll get some numbers.

[Lily]

I just pulled up our campaign tracker. I got the math right here.

[Host 1]

I'm gonna give, I'm gonna make up numbers.

[Lily]

Yeah, I won't.

[Host 1]

Word is listening. These are not real numbers.

[Connor]

These are not real numbers.

[Host 1]

Yeah. Shereen, we had a 5x roas. Just want you to know. So yeah, so in October we were actually at a 1 in November maybe performance was softer but also we had a lot go live at the end of the month for holiday so that maybe hasn't materialized. But so let's say we spend 100k right. And we got 70k back in directly attributable revenue which is mostly click. Maybe some code. You know again we know that there's some type of a multiplier right. For click because that's what that's probably. I don't know Lily, what window are we tracking clicks on? You know what standard is where we're at?

[Lily]

I would have to check. I think it might be. It's not as long as it could be. I think we're at maybe 14 or 30 days which is standard.

[Host 1]

Yeah. So there's still going to be some multiple multiplier. Yeah, there's still going to be some multiplier of cross device, you know, things like that. There's also going to be you know, the code usage. So I think we're Saying it's like a 1.4. It's like our current guess based on the click versus code. But you can share more on that.

[Lily]

Yeah, well basically what we did it. So we started to see code leakage in October but the difference was nominal. It's like code le October with leakage was a 1.32. October without leakage was a 1.18 ROAS. So nominal difference. But as consumers pick up on the fact that a brand is working with influencers, the more likely your codes are to leak. So you're just going to be doing this practice on a regular basis. It's just an, it's just, just get comfortable with it. So what we did is we, we analy, we did conversions, clicks click to purchase ratio with leakage and without leakage from what we spent from the revenue that we generated we then using that click to purchase purchase ratio we determined roas and cpa. We also you know, we mark AOV did not change. So that's also a good thing is that the codes that leaked those weren't, I can't swear they weren't crappier customers. So that is, that's actually pretty kind of rare because usually customers that come through leaked codes tend to be lower quality. We'll have to analyze the retention of those specific customers but I'll cross that bridge when we get there. So from it's, it's really like from the click to purchase ratio and the difference between the leaked ratio and the non leaked ratio. That's how you can determine your multiplier. We did not have all codes get leaked. It was only three influencers but it was, I mean they got that, they got leaked big time. Like maybe 81 conversions, 72, 53. Like that's a lot to me. That's a lot of leakage. But we basically took the influencers leaked conversions, compared that to their clicks. What was that click to purchase ratio and then what we could from that we can basically their expected conversions. So this one influencer that I'm looking at her expected, she was smaller. We, we expected three from her. She generated 81. Yeah, that's, that's a pretty good leak.

[Connor]

Yeah. So and then what about on the other side of it? Like the people that you just know are like they saw the Jones Road beauty content but naturally not everyone's going to click that link or type in that short URL. Like do you have a, do you have a way to also add a multiplier like on the, on the side where people are going above the, the funnel that you've intended, like their audience to follow.

[Lily]

That's kind of what we're figuring out right now. Yeah, that's tough, right?

[Connor]

I mean that's like, that's like the really hard part.

[Lily]

Yeah, it can be.

[Host 1]

I mean, yeah, there's, there's, there's value. I think that's the thing. It's like. So we're trying to figure out like, all right, what is our click row ask the same way. Right, Connor, like we'll talk about doing it for a YouTube channel or do.

[Connor]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

You know, doing it for, for meta ads. And then, you know, we, we kind of just decide this arbitrarily but we, because we're getting ad rates for 30 days to all this stuff, we take 20% of that cost. So it's really 20k of the hundred. And so where our, like that brings our roas better, we're just like, hey, that 20k, we're going to code that to Ad Creative rather than Influencer because, you know, that's what we think the value is worth. So there's, I think there's, that, there's even just, I think longer term awareness that gets built from this. That is maybe less of a, you know, performance thing, but there's obviously clear value. So my hunch, my guess. And we're also talking about like again, 1% of our media mix. Like we've talked about it with like Connor McDonald before. It's like, you know, if we're spending 5 million a month on digital ads, we should probably be spending 100k to 200k plus on influencer, you know, but.

[Lily]

It'S got a plan for you to do that.

[Host 1]

We're getting there. We're getting there.

[Lily]

We sent our budget proposal, I think yesterday.

[Host 1]

Yes.

[Lily]

Yeah, I mean it's. And kind of what you were talking about, just, just speaking to, it's like this, this halo effect of if your brand. And maybe we had this happen at Seed where it's like, oh, they're, it's everywhere. Like you can't, you can't avoid getting a Seed ad or seeing an influencer speak about Seed. That is harder, a lot harder to do nowadays. But it is, it's like part of this halo effect that Cody was talking about where there's, there's more, there's more to it than just the cold hard numbers that you're seeing and you have.

[Connor]

Brands that you're like, so like more, more Hex cloud where like we've got like we, we were just looking at our we, we've been pulling our year over year. You know, we're doing our recap right now. We're like 1.3 billion impressions in tag social content alone because we seed a ton. We have people like Gordon obviously who rack in, you know, 50 million on their own. Maybe not 50, but a lot. So like, on that, I always think that that simplifies the organic influencer play a lot. Right. Because now you don't have to set up all the discount codes, you don't have to set up all the short URLs. There's a lot less like logistical, like post mechanic conversations happening. And I think that's like the most, I think that's the most under appreciated or under aware component of influencer programs is the amount of comms happening between like an internal influencer, an agency team and the actual influence is insane. There is so much back and forth going on, but obviously that gets a lot less when you're not doing like all of like the, the performance stuff. So, yeah, like, if you have, if you had 10 brands at C or at. At Super Bloom. Sorry, what. What percent would you say are like really leaning into like what Jones Road is doing right now where they're like doing more of like organic performance versus what Hexclad is doing? Where I'd say for every, you know, we, we usually don't have like the whole like sometimes like we just launched our cocktail shaker. That's when we did have like a whole short link UTM schema because we wanted to understand like, where was our traffic coming from? Totally new category. But yeah, I'd say the vast majority, we're not doing that. It's like, what's your like, split, do you think, in brands optimizing for like performance revenue ROAS versus like impressions? No. Like volume of tag content, etc.

[Lily]

Well, a hundred percent of our brands are performance. All of them. I think maybe literally one one of our brands is understanding that. And it's. It's Bobby Infant Formula where we are. We. We have been working them with them the whole year actually. And their CMO is a genius. And if you have not had her on your podcast, you absolutely should talk about Kim.

[Host 1]

Yeah, Yeah, I love Kim. She's great. We talked about having her on, actually.

[Lily]

She's just the best. And like, my favorite. This is a total tantra. My favorite thing about being on the agency side is actually we learn a lot from our brands. Like, yes, we come to the table as channel experts, but there's just so much that we learn and learning from Kim and the entire Bobby team like they under it's infant formula. Most people are going to buy that in retail. Their D2C sales are incredible. But we have been, that has been one of our more impressions and awareness leaning brand out of all of our other brands and we have worked with them throughout this entire year. You know working in partnership with their paid media team to be like okay, yes, this Influencer posted now let's make sure we're running it as an ad and just kind of establishing that also almost like that muscle memory within their organization. But they, they're a unicorn. Like there's just something about Bobby where and I think it's because it's quite literally a life or death product for an infant. If that is the formula that you're using, you're going to continue using it for the entire year that a baby is on formula. But that Influencer program is so top of funnel but they have really strong conversions on site and that was also another brand where we started with landing pages and then within the last couple of months we saw that they weren't performing as well. So we're just redirecting to the website now. So I would to go back to your percentage. 100% of our brands with like some asterisks.

[Host 1]

Right?

[Host 2]

Right.

[Lily]

Yeah, some of them. We had to get them there. Like that's our ultimate goal is like even if we start with the program that is retail focused or impressions and awareness based, like our ultimate goal is to make sure that there is always some performance element because I think some brands get that Influencer can be performance, some brands don't. Our job is to get every brand to understand that there is untapped benefit to working with influencers.

[Connor]

Makes sense.

[Host 2]

All right, I want to give a shout out to Rich Panel because they've quietly become one of the most impactful tools we use at Ridge. You know how SaaS companies love raising prices for the same product every year? Our old support platform did that one too many times. So we made the switch over to.

[Connor]

Rich Panel and the results have been fantastic.

[Host 2]

Our SaaS build dropped by about half and once they rebuilt our workflows with automation self service routing, our cost per ticket fell 70%. Same team, same volume, totally different outcome. BFCM this year was our smoothest we've ever been. We've done the most amount of sales, we had the most amount of queries but with routing we had a lower cost per ticket and our NPS scores.

[Connor]

Have never been higher.

[Host 2]

The team handled Everything without the usual panic.

[Lily]

And.

[Host 2]

And our CSAT has been sitting around 96% every week. And what I really like is that Rich Panel isn't just software. They bring a playbook, they rebuild your workflow, set up your AI, handle migration and training, and you can be live in under two weeks. The lift is basically zero on your side. And they're launching a returns portal soon, which I'm really excited to test because returns are one of those sneaky P and L items everyone ignores until it begins to cost you real money. If you want to cut support costs in half and run a leaner, more efficient operation, head to richpanel.com demo and. And they'll take care of everything.

[Host 1]

You guys are, are really good at negotiating. How do you think about going about these deals? Like what do brands need to know if they're going to try to do this themselves? Of like, what is important? Because, because what I found is a. Doing it before you guys still doing some on the side is like, yeah, people will request very high numbers. Do you guys have like a framework or how you go about, about this process?

[Lily]

Yes, I am big on integrity and accountability when it comes to negotiating and also when it comes to just contractual obligations of an influencer and, and holding them accountable to their performance, but not in like a mean way. So I always like numbers don't lie. So that is how we anchor our negotiations. Influencers are more expensive than ever. And that does not scare me. That doesn't. I don't shake in my boots like that. It's. You get someone's media kit, you get their rates and you ask for the full picture. So and it, and it varies based on platform. It varies depending on Instagram, YouTube, podcast, substack slash newsletter, etc. TikTok. There's, there's. You request enough data to predict how that influencer is going to perform and that is how you anchor your negotiation. And I am also, I was at a conference earlier this week and I was talking to someone who's a bit more junior and influencer and they had recently worked with a bigger influencer that completely flopped. I was like, well, have you shared performance with her team yet? Like with the talent managers? Like you can do that? I was like, yeah, yes. Like you should absolutely be community. Like that is how you develop a partnership. That's how you develop a relationships. That's how talent managers get easier to work with. Hopefully there are some that are. It's just impossible. But it's just a, it's a matter of being like in the early stages of negotiating being like, these are the engagement, this is the engagement that I have calculated for this influencer based on this engagement, this is what I can pay him or her or them for a partnership. And then after they've posted communicating how they performed and what we can do to optimize and are they open to a make good if you know in order. They're so close to hitting our goals. If you hit this goal we can renew with you just gamifying it in a little way. But it all comes back to just showing up in that relationship.

[Host 1]

And so like you're just to be super clear and obviously I know a little bit of it but you're, you're saying you almost like model out performance and so you'll get their stats, you'll get their IG stats or newsletter stats, whatever it is. And you're like, hey, this is what we think the click through rate is going to be. This is what we think the conversion rate is going to be. At this rate you're requesting, we can't break even. Like can you do it for this number? Is that, is that correct?

[Lily]

Yeah. And I've always, I've always been that way. Like, and sometimes one part about like using that approach to negotiate too is when you say like I actually think you're going to generate 500 conversions, you would make more money on a commission based model and you write out that math and then you get them to agree to more of like an affiliate commission based model versus a flat fee. And there are very few, far fewer influencers nowadays that will agree to commission. And it's mostly because a lot of them have talent management and splitting, taking a percentage, taking like a talent manager, you know, commission, it just gets a little bit more complicated. But that's also kind of like a fun benefit to negotiating too. And it's in it, you're in negotiations. Our goal is obviously to set the brand up for success, but it's also to set the influencer up for success. Like if I think you're going to make more money on a commission based model, that's a win win all around because if you do flop, the brand didn't just invest a bunch of money and so on.

[Connor]

Can I, can I ask a follow up selfishly because I'm like curious about these higher AOV brands. One of the ways we've thought about this in the past is we have like a pretty good idea of like the percent of our orders based on survey data that come like within a week a month, 3 to 12 months. 12 plus 24 months from, from Discovery. So you know, one of the ways we've like started like in the past have thought about this is if we, let's say we know that like 10 orders come in from an influencer's post attributed in that first week from like a discount code or a UTM based. If we know that like only 10% of our orders come in, all of our orders come in in a week or less from Discovery, then we could in theory say, well, if we, we could almost model out like, well, if 10 orders came in within a week and we only, we know that blended only 10 of our orders come in, we could almost say, well, we can create like a multiplier where it's like we know 90 of our orders are going to come in over the course course of like a year and a half or two years. So we could almost model that out and use that initial number to say like, okay, we can multiply this. I don't know exactly what the math would be off the top of my head, but whatever. Like the like 90% growth to get to 100% of orders on 10 would be. And you can model it out. So yeah. Do you have any like high AOV brands selling like 3, 4, 500 products that you've like kind of cracked this and have been able to create a, like a model that, that makes sense where they're able to use the immediate sales data and traffic to like bottle out a longer tail of that performance and for that influencer. Mm.

[Lily]

We, our highest AOV brand is around 200, 250. And I want to say that our, our program with them is so successful the same day in influencer posts. I would say that more. So yeah, AOV to me and this could be an area honestly for me to kind of explore more and learn more about. But AOV is how we determine and predict kind of what your goals should be. Roas or cpa, et cetera. For us, the it's, for me, it's channel based on what you can, how you can expect performance to continue or, or change over time. And like Instagram stories expire after 24 hours. So you know, it's like you got 24 hours to see kind of how that's going to convert. Reels live on forever, but they also die down with the algorithm. Like things don't really revitalize like they do on say, YouTube. YouTube. It's like the influencer posts and you want. Yes, you'll see conversions come in within the first 24 hours of them uploading their YouTube video. But you also want to be looking 14 days, 30 days, 60 days, 90 day, often analyzing how that first YouTube video performed. So for me that's more so how you can see performance or moving through over time. It's more channel based for influencer.

[Connor]

Right? Yeah. I'm just thinking how we could model it because to your point, like yes, an Instagram reel is going to have its moment in the sun for a day or two, but how can we model that out over. As long as you get some signal in that, that first day or week or whatever. Like you should be able to. Yeah, I think, I think what we're boiling down to is like there is a way to model everything. And like having a model, even if it's imperfect, is better than having no model at all. Because then you can make, you can at least make. You're going to make a better decision if and of course like you need to pulse check your model to make sure it's not rooted in like.

[Lily]

Right.

[Connor]

Not nothing that's not in reality. But like having a model to like back into is better than having no.

[Lily]

Model your model based on what you've tested. Don't be afraid of testing, don't be afraid of making a mistake like the like, you have to, you have to invest at some point, at some level and from, from the testing that you do, give it a three month test, determine your multipliers, determine your model. I mean that's also a really short amount of time. So you can have program modeling and you can also have like per influencer as, as well.

[Host 1]

That's a good point too because like, so like I know YouTube is doing well for us so we're going to shift more to there. Like you shouldn't just have like a program wide model because it's obviously that's going to shift as well. But we'd love to hear about YouTube a little bit. Like I don't know, I love, I love YouTube. I'm trying to learn you know, more about it. But talk about YouTube, obviously you said it's a little bit longer tail. Do you see less clicks there? Like do you think that's more of a view based channel than something like Instagram?

[Lily]

It's, it's clicks for us because we always have, you know, you know, the description top of fold. We always have like the call to action for the brand with the link and the code all above the fold for in a YouTube description. So it's clicks and it's conversions. Yeah but the, the fun part about YouTube comes actually in the negotiation because unlike Instagram there's just way more data that you can ask for to predict performance. You can predict a CPA and you can predict a ROAS with. With a YouTuber because you can see how many views their their average views that they're generating because it's public information. Like you can compare their subscribers to their their generated views. You can also ask for average watch time click through rate subscriber versus non subscriber views. And so all of those metrics help you do a qualitative and quantitative analysis on their channel. It's my favorite. YouTube is my favorite.

[Connor]

Like we're also, I think we're. That's a big rock for our influencer program this year is get like penetrate YouTube more. We're all over Instagram and TikTok. I don't think we're in YouTube enough. What's like the do you. Do you recommend like integrations like like mid mid video and like what's the type of like content that you like to activate with influences on YouTube?

[Lily]

I know Hexclad. You guys both Hexclad and you guys could have so much fun on YouTube because with both brands you don't necessarily like they're gonna use the, they're gonna use the products in videos that you're not even sponsoring. It's going to be in the background. They're going to be showing a day in the life. They're going to be cooking with hexclad. They're going to do a get ready with me with Jones Road like YouTube. YouTubers are the best. But to answer your question, YouTube is almost like traditional media buying. So I mentioned average watch time and that is a success metric. So I mean YouTubers are publishing 3045 minute videos nowadays. The average watch time is a retention metric. So you can see how long their viewers are on average watching and completing a video. And so that. That's a success metric for us. If someone has less than a 25% average watch time, we're not going to work with them because their viewers 75% of the video is not being watched. Like no one gives. No one cares what you're talking about. And that's we always position an integration within the average watch time. That's a contractual obligation. So if your average watch time you have a 20 minute video, it's 15 minutes. You have to put your hex. Glad your Jones wrote sponsorship within the 15 minutes that your audience is watching to optimize for the most views. And when I was at, I mean this nine, eight years ago, when we were at Thrive Market, that was like the unboxing era of influencers where we would literally sponsor dedicated videos of them unboxing their Thrive Market order. Do not do that. Like, no one cares. And I think YouTubers are not going to agree to a dedicated video anymore either. And they're also not going to have multiple sponsors within the same video. So you're booking an integration where the influencer is Speaking to like 2 minutes about your brand, which is a lot longer than what you can get in a reel and an Instagram story. And so any brand I know can be successful on YouTube. But if you're also a brand that has really differentiating talking points, like what makes Jones Rebo Jones Road unique, what makes Hectic Cloud unique. And really they can get into so much more messaging in a YouTube integration. So seed was really successful on YouTube because there was so much to talk about that one singular skew at the time. So that's how I would. That's, that's what you look for. That's how you book a YouTube video. And you're always booking integrations. And you can also suggest titles if you're a little bit more sophisticated and you understand the YouTube influencer landscape a little bit more deeply. Like you can suggest titles as well. Like I want to make sure that I'm included in a vlog versus a day in the life. Like there's, you can. It is a little bit like media buying.

[Connor]

So you don't like, you don't like dedicated videos at all anymore in YouTube, you're all about the integration and having it be native to. Okay, how does that translate to like an ad? Are you then saying like, hey, we also want to be able to like cut the, the integration and use that, that specific like minute 6, 30 to minute 8, 45. Like we get access to that footage and we can run that as an ad because you're not going to run like their whole video, their whole 15 minute video, right. As an ad. But like you want that clip, you'll.

[Lily]

Get the raw clip.

[Connor]

Yep, yep, got it.

[Lily]

I would say that I, A lot of brands are afraid of YouTube ads from an influencer and as like a media channel. But I think that YouTube should be a much bigger part of a brand's media mix. Not just influencer, but also for, for ads.

[Connor]

But the MTA data looks bad.

[Host 1]

Yeah, yeah, no, I'm, I'm excited. I mean we, again, we started, we tried it with like agentio and stuff and it's just the performance wasn't there. But so I'm excited that we're seeing some good performance. YouTube ads do very well for us.

[Lily]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

So I'm excited. Yeah. And I think, I think, yeah. I mean there's a lot of I think value and I do think again, it's still a performance channel but I do think there is and I've seen data on this that like it does drive brand metrics and brand health like really well because it is a longer form video where you're getting a much. You know, Conor McConnell talks about this a lot but you're getting a much higher quality impression. You know, CPM is worth a lot more there when you're getting somebody to watch it for 30 minutes on a TV screen versus, you know, just scrolling by.

[Host 2]

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[Host 1]

What do you wish brands knew about Influencer in general? What do you think brands get wrong or when you're working with them or see or just what you see out there, you're like, I just wish that like everyone got this in 2026 almost.

[Lily]

Well, I think this conversation has been very exemplary that Influencer is not one size fits all and that your initial perception of Influencer will change. It is very rare that it's like influencers are going to do things this for us and then you start testing and it's, oh wait, it's doing something else. But that's magical. So I would say from a clicked up, from a program perspective, it's not one size fits all. Your agency has to be customizing your proposals, your blueprints, your program. It has, you know, every brand is different, so every Influencer program should be different too. And then I would also say from like an influencer marketer's perspective, I just stopped being so transactional.

[Connor]

Yeah.

[Lily]

Like, I can't believe that I'm still saying that to this day. But yes, there's a transaction happening, but it's all about the success of your program, is the success of your relationships within that program, which is inclusive of the talent managers, which is inclusive of the talent. And like we were talking about earlier, it's, it's just communicating frequently and often and transparently and making sure that you're setting everybody up for success. So, you know, I think that as the creator economy as a whole, it continues to explode just being way being open and flexible, that Influencer may look differently for your brand than it does for your best friend's brand and so on and so forth. And just make sure that you have a team in house, have an agency that, that can adapt and be fluid, that is staying on trend whether it's in house or an agency also making sure that they are enabled with a software that will help them be successful as well.

[Connor]

Cody, one of the, one of the things I've, we've spent a lot of time thinking about is, is organic versus paid. Because for us, like when we do organic Influencer activations, a lot of times they're centered around recipes and like that's not really the best content to run in a paid ad. Like it, there is some subtle, some subtle shifts and I don't think that's necessarily the case for every single brand. I think there are some brands where like the organic post can be native to that creator's content and the brand's content and it can be used as a paid ad. But we're starting to really like, I'm pushing our teams for every influencer deal to think through. Like, like would this person work for organic yes or no. Would they work for paid yes or no Just based on their style of content. And if the answer is yes to both, let's actually send them two different briefs. Let's let them do thing that's organic. Let's let them do their thing that's more of a paid ad and that's just for us because like a recipe is not going to necessarily be what we want to run in paid. And then, and then if the, if the question becomes do we have to choose yes or no to use this person in both or one or the other, it's like the default answer at least for us should be paid because we are a very paid media driven org and creator led influencer led ads work very well for us. So we've been spending a lot of time in the last few months just like just kind of level setting on like when and like if we have to choose one, we should choose paid. If they're gonna work for both and we think that they have the content style for both and the budget for both. Like we should not be sending them one brief. We should be sending them an organic social brief. We should be sending them a paid media brief. So we've been just like kind of like fine tuning our thinking around it a little bit more and I'm, I'm really excited to see how that plays into yeah. 2026. I'm hoping that creators that we were only getting organic content from are now sending us great organic content that we're hopefully getting good impressions and CPMs on. We're also getting an iteration of that that's like more of a product oriented paid ad. So that's been one of our, our big shifts as we head into the new year.

[Lily]

Yeah, you're building more of a hybrid program and I would love more brands to think about their influencer program being more hybrid and being more cross functional because like we were talking about earliest part of our conversation is just how cross functional the seeds influence the seed influencer program was. And you know, making sure that your influencer team understands that like program. All programs look different where these. This is going to be my budget for organic influencer. This is going to be my budget for more paid influence. You know, growth influencer. They're not going to look the same like those programs are going to look very differently. Their briefs are going to be different. The way that you script them, the way that you, the, the actual deliverables that you book with them are going to be way different. Like for hexclad, the organic is like how do you use hexclad in your, in your day to day life? There are influencers that can sell hexcloud in that way. There are other influencers that are going to create an amazing UGC ad for you and you can ask them to also record two additional hooks and two additional CTAs. So one deliverable is actually six. And then if you've got an amazing video editing squad, those six videos can be 20, you know. So yeah, going back to just like.

[Host 1]

Think a little bit differently.

[Connor]

Like if someone sees, if someone sees you know, this person post like a, a very organic to their content integration with our product, visits our site and then a week later sees a bit more of a product focused ad from that same person. Like that's a fantastic experience right there. That's a great, that's a great like 1, 2 touch point versus they're getting sold the product, right? And unless it's like a Bethany Frankel, right Where like that is her organic style, right? Like she's. Yeah, every one in three or four posts is her like selling a product. Like unless that's the creator. Like you shouldn't try to like like square peg round hole and be like no, we want you to sell our product and then post it in your, your or your feed. It's like no, that's not native to their audience. If anything that's manipulative to her audience because that's not the type of content that they're there for. So I love like the one, two punch of organic native to their, native to their, their content they are posting and then in the ad account put more of an ad. And I think that's like the best experience you could give that person's audience.

[Lily]

Totally. And I even think just like speaking to talent managers and talent directly, it's not all about organic. It's not like we are also opening up new income streams for influencers and working with them in different capacities. Like we want to work with you on an organic campaign, but we also want to work with you on a UGC campaign. Instead of it being a one off, it's now two separate campaigns and we can analyze that influencer's performance. Like if they perform well, better organic than they do on paid, we're just going to lean in organically. You are also. And that comes back to the relationship. Like, you have to think there's, yes, benefits to the brand, but tremendous benefits to the influencer because they also learn about where their strengths are.

[Connor]

Yeah, we've also been starting to think more like, how do we go to these influencers? Instead of saying, hey, we want to run ads from your page and positioning it more as, hey, we're going to potentially put six figures of media spend behind your handle. And that has huge benefits for your awareness and your follower account. And like, thinking through how do you, how do you position these whitelisting deals with creators, that's a little bit more of the lens of, like, this is going to benefit you, not just like, hey, we want to spend, like, we want to run ads from your page. Like, positioning is, I think, subtle but important here.

[Lily]

I'm laughing because that conversation has never changed in the decade that I've been doing this. And like, my biggest wish is that, like, to understand the benefit of having an. Having a brand basically boost your content as an ad is like, you're gonna get more followers, more awareness. And with that, yes, could come the occasional hate comment that is on the brand to delete, figure out, handle, whatever. But I just think more and more agencies are open to it. It's very rare that an influencer is like, straight up, no, you can't do partnership ads with my content. You can't. And there's very few influencers that are like that. But because talent managers are picking up on that trend of brands wanting paid usage, they're charging an arm and a leg for it. And that is when I have to, you know, read them the script of what's the benefit to the. The benefits outweigh this fee you're charging me.

[Connor]

Yeah.

[Lily]

And let me prove it to you. In this scope of work, we'll monitor how this influencer's channel has grown. And from, from a basic, like, vanity metric, like a follower, like, we'll be able to tell you how many new followers that you generated, but you'll see that yourself. I do think that the issue can arise where an influencer has too many ads running from their handle. But you also don't want to be working with influencers like that because if they're taking way too many brand deals, they're not going to be that. No, you don't want that.

[Connor]

Do you have a sense of, like, what. How do you model out, like, a ballpark influencer budget? Like, do you feel like there's like a percent of your top line revenue that you can use or is that a percent of your total ad spend? Like, do you, do you have any, like, mental models for. I know it definitely changes per brand. Like, I've heard some brands say, like, you should spend at least 1% of your top line revenue on. On Influencer. Which I think, like, if I think back to where hexclad's put their budget, like, I think that's decent. Like, that's probably how Art has. Has trended, like plus or minus a few basis points. But do you have any mental models for that?

[Lily]

Not. I mean, Cody was actually the first brand that spoke to us about like 2%. Mmm. You know, I was like, oh, is that how people decide percent of your.

[Connor]

Your media mix? Right, Cody?

[Lily]

Right.

[Host 1]

Yeah. That's just what House has told me to, to get like, right. Accurate data in there.

[Connor]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

Especially because, like, with a channel like Influencer, there is a manual lift of getting that data into an. Mmm. It's not like an API. So it's like, yeah, you're probably not going to have good data and not going to be worth it for less than.

[Connor]

Yeah, you got to send them like every Influencer post that's happening. That's crazy.

[Lily]

It's, It's. I don't have a good answer for that. It's. It. I, I know in my mind the budget minimums where we can have some fun and where we can actually start gaining some, seeing some numbers, gauging success. And the sweet spot for us has been 50k minimum. We will be flexible and go lower than that for certain brands that we feel confident in that they're disrupting something, we're like, yeah, we can have some fun at 20k. But as the industry gets more competitive, as more and more brands are working with influencers, there has to be a minimum investment level in order for you to, to break through your competitors that are doing Influencer already.

[Host 1]

All right, Lily, this has been great. Thank you so much. I, I learned. I know Connor did as well. Connor, you got any, like, maybe one more question or anything else you want to get to?

[Connor]

I. This was awesome. I learned a ton. I'm. I got my wheels turning on how we should approach YouTube this year.

[Lily]

Give your homework.

[Connor]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

Oh, you guys would crush YouTube. I mean, like, I can't. I. I also, by the way, my, like, entire Instagram is like food stuff. It's just like what I engage with and like, look up recipes. I, I barely make them. I make a few, but, like, obviously hexcloud is all over it, right? Like so much seating and stuff like that. But I feel like YouTube, you guys would crush. You're just like, really? I'm actually perfect product.

[Lily]

I'm. I'm actually shocked that you're not.

[Connor]

That we're, it's not that we're not on YouTube. It's like we did a YouTube sprint in 2023 to get like our products. Like, and we do have like, we like prudent reviews. For example, is like a big YouTube cookware reviewer. Like, we're very integrated with him the strongest. So we are there. I just like, I think we need to go into 2026 and say, hey, we're going to, we're going to put X percent of our. Because we're just like the impressions we get in TikTok and Instagram is massive. But like YouTube definitely lacking and like YouTube ads are, are becoming in a bigger and bigger and bigger part of our strategy. We ran a big holdout test and got a really, really positive read on the incrementality. So I want to like, we're going to keep spending on YouTube and I. If we're going to keep spending paid on YouTube, I think we just need to continue to ramp up the organic influencer led YouTube stuff. So that's, that's kind of the guidelines I want to give to my team this year is like, here's our influencer budget. I want you to spend a minimum of percent on YouTube. Like go.

[Lily]

Yeah.

[Connor]

So yeah, this has been really helpful to help kind of shape that thinking. So I appreciate it.

[Lily]

Yeah.

[Host 1]

All right, Lily, this was great. Thank you so much for joining us.

[Lily]

Thank you.

[Host 1]

This was awesome. Where can people. What should people do? Where can people follow you or learn more about you?

[Lily]

You can find us on Instagram on, you know, buy superbloom.com or buy super Boom. On most platforms it's by Super Bloom and I love to talk about Influencer. So you can also email me lily@buy superbloom.com we are, we're happy to chat. It's my favorite thing to talk about.

[Host 1]

All right, thanks so much.

[Lily]

Thanks so much.

[Host 1]

All right, guys, that was a good one. Episode 92 with Lily from Super Bloom. That was an awesome one. We love working with her. Obviously you can tell why she's super smart, super bright. So I could tell Connor Olan was taking notes the whole time. I think you guys are really going to enjoy this. If you do, please share it, Share it, post it on X, subscribe on podcast, wherever you get it. Drop us a comment on YouTube. Tell us whatever you think. And again, as always, thank you so much to our sponsors, Motion Rich Panel, Pression, AI, aftercell and Revo. We'll see you guys on the next one.