From Posts to Profits: Maximizing Your Influencer Marketing Strategy with Ishveen Jolly

Summary

Podcast Summary: "From Posts to Profits: Maximizing Your Influencer Marketing Strategy with Ishveen Jolly"

Introduction In the April 14, 2025 episode of The Best SEO Podcast: Unlocking the Unknown Secrets of AI, Search Rankings & Digital Marketing, host Matt Bertram engages in an insightful conversation with Ishvin Jolly, the founder of Open Sponsorship. The discussion delves deep into advanced influencer marketing strategies, emphasizing thought leadership, reputation management, and the effective integration of influencers into comprehensive marketing plans.

Origin Story and Company Overview Ishvin Jolly provides a glimpse into the origins of Open Sponsorship, highlighting its foundation in New York and its evolution from a sports sponsorship platform to a robust influencer marketing company. He explains, “We saw the rise of influencer marketing as an opportunity to partner brands with athletes on social media, combining influencer marketing with sports sponsorship” (01:18). This strategic shift allowed Open Sponsorship to bridge the gap between traditional sponsorship inefficiencies and the dynamic world of social media influence.

Current Marketing Landscape and Challenges Matt and Ishvin discuss the prevalent issues in influencer marketing, such as the transient nature of social media posts and the often disappointing return on investment brands experience. Ishvin notes, “The main thing is how do you use these benefits…what you do with that content is even more important” (05:17). This underscores the necessity for brands to not only collaborate with influencers but also to strategically repurpose the generated content across various marketing channels for sustained impact.

Effective Influencer Marketing Strategies Ishvin emphasizes the importance of leveraging influencer content beyond its initial platform. For instance, integrating athlete endorsements into email marketing, websites, and paid advertisements can amplify reach and effectiveness. He states, “Whether that's MMS or as I said, website PR, whatever it may be…what you do with that content is even more important” (05:17).

Selecting the Right Influencers A significant portion of the discussion revolves around identifying and partnering with the right influencers. Ishvin outlines key factors such as engagement rates, follower authenticity, content quality, and demographic alignment. “Engagement rate is a good one…plus, do you actually just like their feed?” he explains (13:27). This multifaceted approach ensures that influencers genuinely resonate with the brand’s values and target audience.

Case Studies and Success Stories Ishvin shares compelling case studies demonstrating successful influencer campaigns. One notable example involves Kachava partnering with Sean White, where authenticity and alignment between the influencer and brand led to exceptional results. Additionally, he highlights the effectiveness of smaller, micro-influencers in generating high engagement and authentic content, stating, “We can do hundreds of those deals in one go in a way that an agency can't” (19:44).

Special Considerations: College Athletes and B2B Campaigns The episode explores the unique dynamics of leveraging college athletes in influencer marketing, especially following the legalization of name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals. Ishvin points out the vast pool of college athletes as a strategic advantage for scalability and diverse audience reach. “College athletes…there are so many of them. And therefore you’re getting like those smaller deals as well” (20:09).

For B2B businesses, Ishvin suggests using influencers to humanize the brand and enhance internal communications. An example provided is Glassdoor’s collaboration with Draymond Green, resulting in a significant increase in email open rates and engagement (33:29). This illustrates the versatility of influencer marketing beyond consumer-facing campaigns.

Recommendations for Beginners Addressing newcomers to influencer marketing, Ishvin advises setting realistic objectives and understanding the specific goals of the campaign. He emphasizes starting with manageable budgets and scaling based on performance. “Be realistic about your objective…hit that goal and then scale up” (40:55). This pragmatic approach helps mitigate risks and ensures measurable outcomes.

Key Takeaways

• Integration is Key: Successful influencer marketing extends beyond social media posts, incorporating content into emails, websites, and paid ads.
• Authenticity Matters: Partnering with influencers who genuinely align with the brand ensures more effective and credible campaigns.
• Flexibility and Scalability: Influencer marketing budgets can be tailored to fit various scales, allowing for flexibility and growth based on performance.
• Diverse Influencer Pool: Utilizing a wide range of influencers, including college athletes and micro-influencers, can enhance reach and engagement across different demographics.

Conclusion The episode concludes with Ishvin reiterating the power of influencer marketing when executed strategically. He highlights the advantage of securing repurposable content rights, stating, “You can repurpose that for six months on your feed, on your website, in your email marketing” (43:37). This flexibility, combined with authentic partnerships and strategic content use, positions brands to maximize their marketing ROI effectively.

Final Thoughts Listeners are encouraged to explore Open Sponsorship’s offerings by visiting OpenSponsorship.com and engaging in strategy sessions to leverage athlete and influencer partnerships. Ishvin’s expert insights provide a comprehensive guide for businesses aiming to harness the full potential of influencer marketing within their broader digital strategies.

Notable Quotes:

• Ishvin Jolly at 05:17: “What you do with that content is even more important.”
• Ishvin Jolly at 13:27: “Engagement rate is a good one…plus, do you actually just like their feed?”
• Ishvin Jolly at 19:44: “We can do hundreds of those deals in one go in a way that an agency can't.”
• Ishvin Jolly at 33:29: “What’s your need?”
• Ishvin Jolly at 40:55: “Be realistic about your objective…hit that goal and then scale up.”
• Ishvin Jolly at 43:37: “You can repurpose that for six months on your feed, on your website, in your email marketing.”

This episode offers a treasure trove of strategies and actionable insights for businesses looking to elevate their influencer marketing efforts, making it an invaluable resource for marketers across various industries.

Transcript

[Ishvin Jolly]

This is the Unknown Secrets of Internet.

[Matt Bertram]

Marketing, your insider guide to the strategies top marketers use to crush the competition. Ready to unlock your business full potential? Let's get started. All right, welcome back to the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. I am your host, Matt Bertram. Having some technical issues again? I don't know, but I have Ishvin Jolly with me with Open Sponsorship. It's a influencer marketing company from across the pond and wanted to talk about some advanced strategies to incorporate into your marketing strategy as it has to do with thought leadership, reputation management, and influencer marketing. It's a huge topic, so is. Welcome to the podcast.

[Ishvin Jolly]

Thanks for having me.

[Matt Bertram]

All right, well, we tried to do this again when we were having snow vid here in Houston, so I appreciate your patience. For all of you local listeners, you know what I'm talking about. We're based in Houston, Texas, and we don't get snow very often, but let's talk a little bit about your origin story. I know we did that previously, but I thought it'd be good for the listenership to understand how you got to this point.

[Ishvin Jolly]

Yeah, absolutely. So I suppose even though I'm British, our company is based in America, so we started in New York. Really it was about sports sponsorship, a $60 billion industry, a wonderful form of marketing that's super inefficient. And then with the rise of influencer marketing, we saw this opportunity to have a really easy way, an effective way for brands to partner with athletes in social media and then content marketing, user generation, all of that stuff. So we basically combine influencer marketing and sports sponsorship.

[Matt Bertram]

Awesome. So when you talk about the different industries, just to kind of set the table a little bit more, what are you working across all industries? Are there specific industries you're focused on? And also what is the market landscape look like with different influencers in different, you know, basketball, baseball, that sort of thing.

[Ishvin Jolly]

Yeah. So we kind of work across the. The whole range of industries. Everything from, I mean, obviously we do very well with like, supplements, vitamins, health and wellness apparel, anything that's like, very organic to athletes. But we also have like, Western Union as a client and, you know, like Fintech or Crypto or kind of all these other brands as well. And then in terms of athletes, we have over 19. So everyone from, like, as you mentioned, like, top NFL, NBA players all the way down to kind of palace instructors, Yogis, Olympians, and kind of everything in between.

[Matt Bertram]

And open sponsorship, is it basically a network where you're connecting influencers with different brands in different industries and they can kind of negotiate those terms. And you broker that through the platform. Is that kind of the setup?

[Ishvin Jolly]

Yeah, well we started off 10 years ago as a platform like self service, but like a LinkedIn or like an Elance or Airbnb come in, put up your campaign a bit like a job posting. Athletes agents will apply and you manage everything, contracts, payments through us. What we realized about three years ago was the match is just one part of it. What you do with the athlete, the influencer is, is so much more like and that could be within the deal. So like are you asking them to post on Instagram or YouTube a reel or a story, but then also what do you do? Post, right. So athletes are super effective in PR on your website, even on your Amazon site. So really the, the main thing, it was essentially just like let's help our brands be more successful. And so we essentially parlayed on top of our marketplace, we added in a services business so some of our clients would see as more of a tech enabled agency.

[Matt Bertram]

Today I, I think that that's a much better setup from what I'm seeing. You got to really like I've seen with the influencer space and affiliate marketing and stuff like that someone posts on Instagram, right, And the real lasts for 24 hours or whatever it is and then it's gone. And they spent a bunch of money, right? And that's all they got. And then the brands are going, well, that wasn't great. Like we didn't see a bump, right. So even when we do like podcast pitching and stuff like that, there's a lot of like pre promotion, post promotion. Like there's things that have to happen for it to be effective and engage. I've seen a lot of times people try new things, experimental marketing and then, then, then they don't work. And, and so it's maybe that it, it does work, but they implemented it in a way that might not be as effective. So can you maybe talk through what typically goes on in the marketplace and then what you've seen work more effectively, maybe in a little bit more detail?

[Ishvin Jolly]

Yeah, so I'd say that kind of what you're saying, like the biggest thing is how do you use these benefits? So of course like the Instagram or the TikTok is very effective in terms of, well that's how you create the association. That's what the athlete puts out there. It gets in front of their organic followership. So that's great. But really you as a brand probably have thousands, tens of thousands of emails in Your email list. Now when you use that athlete's content, their name, their image in your email and say, you know, let's say it's a college campaign and you're saying like March Madness. And so it's like hey, we're running our March special in collaboration with this athlete who's in March Madness. Like it just adds cachet, it adds a story. It's cool. And anyway, as brands you're spending so much money on like content creation and storytelling and pr, why not just use this deal that we're doing with you in inside of those channels? So whether that's MMS or as I said, website pr, whatever it may be. So I'd say like what you get the athlete to do is important, but what you do with that then content is even more important.

[Matt Bertram]

So with, with the agreement you're making and especially I think in the college realm that's, that's really opened up recently. But the name, image and likeness type deals, is that more commonplace than, than just the post and so they become de facto they could be your spokesperson for. I, I don't know how are the contracts negotiated for X amount of time or like if you were to put them on your website, right. You're like hey I we did this. There's probably like a, a time clause or like a relevancy of that person anyway that you might not want to keep them on if you're not continuously engaging with them or something like that. Like how, how do you frame that up if you're a business?

[Ishvin Jolly]

It's actually like one of the best things about doing this stuff is like you will pay them, pay an athlete influencer the rate for like a social media deal, but then you get the rights for let's say six months typically to use in organic and paid. And so you have got a six month partnership but essentially it's costed out like a one month partnership. So it is a very, very good deal.

[Matt Bertram]

Okay, so I, I understand like yeah, let's, let's like use like maybe a case study or something like that. So I work with some supplement brands as well. The former co host actually of this show started a supplement company that's doing quite well and he uses a lot of influencers and that's where I get a lot of my experience. We, we work with some specific E commerce brands as well. Um, but like okay, we talk back and forth a lot about what he's doing and he's getting on a lot of podcasts, he's inter. Engaging with a lot of people, people are posting but there where's the line? Especially like with supplements, right? Of you just paid this person to do this thing, right? So like how when you're looking at it to find the right partner that it aligns with your brand and it aligns with like their belief structure. Like because just someone saying something is great, you know, they may not do it one right because they got to agree to it too. And so how do you find that brand match? I guess.

[Ishvin Jolly]

Yeah, I think it's tough because there's so many factors, right. One is like the supplement space is really competitive with influencers, as is beauty, as is fashion. I mean so is everything nearly nowadays I really we like the model of doing many one off deals and seeing who resonates and that resonate that, that like resonance. It's many things. It's one is like well did you like the content? Two like did you like working with them? Like did they deliver on time? Were they easy to work with? Like did they get you? Three is how was the performance like in terms of sales, traffic generation? Like you can have great content but that person could have all fake followers. Now that's okay if what you want to do is the content and you can have shit content but actually people click through because you know they're influential or they don't post a lot. So we really like the idea of like doing lots of like one offs, maybe one offs or like one month partnerships, two different deliverables, whatever and then deciding who worked and then turning those into like your little family of influencers long term, potentially doing royalty deals with them. Like having them continuously like create content for you but continue to pick up new people. And the big thing for that is also like as, as brands evolve, who is your target demo? Like I don't think anyone ever really knows anymore. Like is it male, is it female, is it young, is it old, is it college, is it high net worth individuals? Is it this? And so I think it's like nice to have like different people appealing to different things. And I'm sure your former co founder like you know he'd say well my supplements are great for this Persona and this Persona and I think influenza marketing is a great way to have having. You know, back in the day your website could only really speak to one person. But now with influencers you can have like the, the pro athlete who needs supplements plus the, the, the mom that, you know, the young mom who needs supplements and you can get them both.

[Matt Bertram]

Yeah, no, definitely the different target audiences and, and I, I call it internally, I don't know how appropriate it is, but I call it kissing frogs when we're talking. And you wouldn't do that with the influencers. But like, when we're hiring different contractors, we're engaging different people. You have to a B test, you have to try out a lot. And, and some people look good on paper, you know, some people, the metrics look great. And then you just have to see, like, you don't know until you work with that person if they're going to be a prince, I guess. Right. Like, you don't know what's going to happen and you have to try out a lot. One of our workarounds was, and we do this with our podcast network as well, is we target different target Personas for each brand. So we dba a bunch of different brands that kind of speak to that different target audience or that consumer maybe with a similar customer journey. But it is a different message, it's a different pain point that we're going after. And so then everything for that brand which might have the same key ingredients speak in this way to that person. We do that also with our oil and gas podcast network. We build a storyline and topics around what the sponsor wants to see. So it's not blatant advertising. It's, it's like, here's people that are interested in this type of thing. Let's create that content. And oh, by the way, this is who's kind of sponsoring the curation of this content that you might be interested in. And I can totally see, you know, trying out so many different things, like what are the metrics? I guess when you're trying to evaluate for the first time, who should I engage with. Right. Because there's a lot of different metrics to look at. As you spoke before, you know, I think that fake reviews, fake sponsors, like, you don't know what's real today. Right. And, and, and I've seen also that like, okay, yes, the millions of dollars for a Kim Kardashian post or whatever reach a lot of people, but how the algorithms work, they kind of find the right content now on social media and, you know, a smaller, like micro influencer with a really engaged network could, could be a great opportunity to engage with people that would very much connect with your brand and like you said, kind of bring them under the tent of what you're trying to do. So how do you evaluate that? I guess. Yeah, yeah.

[Ishvin Jolly]

I think obviously, like, there are the data points, like engagement rates, a big one now, again, Everything can be like, fake and whatever else. But engagement rate is a good one. Obviously follower size, like, even if it is like bought, Like, I think that's why we also like the athlete space. You tend to get less fake following. They're legit, you know, representative of their following. But that's, I think, where like the vibe of their content comes into play a lot. And that's like going back to the amplification. So, you know, what they put out on their channel is just going to be a small part of like the deal. And so do you like their content? Do you like who they are? Do you like their look? Like, are they overly glossy? Are they overly, you know, this way or that way? And obviously today it's all about videos. So like, how is their video, how do they come across and whatever else. So I think it's a combination of a bit of data and we also have like demographic following, so that's really good. We also have a social listening tool. So we can see like, well, who, who has actually talked about your brand or your segment beforehand? Like, who's talked about. So who's talked about supplements? What have they said? What was the engagement of those posts? So I think there is a lot of data to lean on. And then plus, do you actually just like their feed?

[Matt Bertram]

Yeah. And, and you know, one of the things that I get asked a lot when, when companies come to us and they just want to start posting on social media or they want to be active online and they're like, well, we've tried it before. They've posted a bunch of stuff. Depending on the size of the business, there might not even be like a mood board or a brand guide, and they're just kind of like posting all over the place. Where I've seen companies fail is when they pick something out, they say, oh, this is awesome, this is new, this is shiny. I'm going to do this. And then they do it within a vacuum and then it might fall on its face a little bit. So when you look at the overall marketing strategy of a company, there's a right time, I feel like, to add on influencer marketing in that kind of PR category because it does get that attention. But like, what are the things that you feel a company needs to have in place? Maybe it's an email list, maybe it's, you know, great SEO. I don't know. They have some paid campaigns, but like, this is a additional step or integration into what they're already doing. So when you evaluate companies on your service side of the Business. When do you decide or what do you recommend to a company when they're kind of quote unquote ready to add this component?

[Ishvin Jolly]

I think it can honestly be as early as launch if this is what your need is. I mean it comes back to need. Right? So let's say you've launched a new F and B brand and you want customer feedback, user feedback, taste testimonials for your Amazon page for your website. Great. Influencer marketing is a very cheap way to go get. It's like, it's, you know, it's like the new school user research kind of thing. Right? Send people your products and, and get feedback and if they like it, they can make a post. If they don't, then you know, you can cancel the deal. So it could be as early as product launch. Obviously the most effective is when you've got all your channels lined up and this like one deal can slot across them all. But so often at that time everything's quite siloed and so it's quite hard for like the influencer person to get the paid back guy to use this in the paid ads. And the emails already been scheduled out. So there is something like very nice about working with very small companies where you like, they'll do, they'll really amplify it. But of course like there's less of a base there.

[Matt Bertram]

Interesting. Can you provide maybe a couple examples of like really good success stories or setups where you've just seen influencer marketing work? Fantastic.

[Ishvin Jolly]

Yeah, I think, I mean obviously like, well, okay, so I'd say there's a few. So one is we're seeing a lot of this at the moment where brands have launched with retail. So I've just got into Target or Whole Foods 711 and I need to dry eyeballs to that partnership. If everyone on my feed knows that we're now in Whole Foods, then that's good for my brand. But also I want to drive those sales. Influencers are a great way for that because they can go in, they can pick up the product, they can take some video, you can promote that in your paid ads and like you, there's only so many times you can say we're in Target. But there's a lot of times an influencer, very like different influencers can say, hey, they're, they're in Target.

[Matt Bertram]

Right.

[Ishvin Jolly]

I've gone bought them. So I think that is a key. I love that one. Like so brands in retail. And that could even be like in Starbucks parks. It could be, you know, we've done all sorts it could be, you know, wherever it may be. That's one. I'd say two is when you find people who are very aligned, kind of what you were saying. So you've gone through the pain of having like, a few mistakes and like, not found your person. And then you find someone who just really resonates like they are your, you know, they're an extension of your brand. Their followership is an extension of your customer base. We did that with one of our brands, Kachava and Sean White. It was brilliant. And often that's if they're already a customer. So that's always really nice, like, hey, I'm already a customer and now you're going to turn me into a brand ambassador. And it's just super authentic. So I love that. Another one we do is we do a lot of smaller deals. I mean, obviously the team loves doing our big deals, but like, we do 20% of the deals we do are just product. And probably another 20% are like 200, 300 bucks, which I think is fair because you're comping them for their time. And those are also great because, you know, if, like, we've done stuff with mattress companies, obviously food and beverage kind of across the board, and if you're like, hey, I'm a college athlete, I'm a smaller athlete, I'm a micro influencer and like that supply of like collagen that's expensive and like, if I'm going to produce great content and I'm just getting free product, like, that's awesome. And I think that's really where the tech comes in, because we can do hundreds of those deals in one go in a way that an agency can't. So I think that's like a point of differentiation on our part.

[Matt Bertram]

No, I love that. So one of. To jump kind of back to something that we mentioned earlier that I would love to kind of go into a little bit more detail on. Can you just talk about the market dynamics where college athletes can now do those kind of deals and, and what. What's developed in the marketplace around that? Because I think a lot of people have interest in their different college teams.

[Ishvin Jolly]

So I think what's really interesting is just like the way that the world has. Has gone about these influences. So we first started, we were very focused on the pro space. And then college was. College athletes in 20, 21 July were allowed to monetize themselves. There was a lot of like, what will happen? How does it work? And it's just the same as the pros. The big difference is there's so many of them. 1. And therefore you're getting kind of what I was saying, those smaller deals as well, like the 200, 300 bucks. So that's been really interesting. I'd say last few years we've really seen a rise of the female athlete. So WNBA today is, I mean, it's pricey compared to what it was like if you'd worked with us five years ago on that. So that. And then the last thing that we've really been seeing is we've actually extended way beyond athletes because our brands were saying to us, cool, we love doing athletes. But it's the intersection of being able to do that plus foodies, plus influencers, plus DIY influencers, plus authors and everything else. And so I think that's been really interesting, which is I. You. You don't like. Beauty is its own category. But like, mostly, where do you go if you want just good influence? Like, if you're, if you're launching in Target, great athletes are great. But I could also use like a mommy blogger. But I could also use like a local recipe person. And so I think that's been really key for us is like being cross sectional across lots of influencer categories.

[Matt Bertram]

Speaking of mommy bloggers, we do the marketing for the Boy Scouts of America, which is now Scouting America. But we started incorporating two years ago mommy bloggers into our strategies and we saw a lot more traction across the board in different areas because they're very connected into the community. And it turned into a lot more engagement and then even like long term followership. Right. Because we were, we were reaching the people that were really reaching the moms. And that was, you know, we started to test out, just let's test out every channel and set like a new baseline based on the new branding and based on like what we're, what we're trying to communicate now and kind of revamping the, the brand message. And it was, it was really fascinating to see the uplift that we were getting on different campaigns. And these were.

[Ishvin Jolly]

How are you tracking that success? Like, what was the metric you were looking at for uplift?

[Matt Bertram]

Well, we were checking the year previous. Okay. Where we weren't using it first and then we were doing it in the Houston area. So it was a fall recruitment campaign. And the mommy bloggers, there was even like different groups that this is like pretty built out that there's like almost every neighborhood. Okay. Like on the neighborhood level has a mommy blogger. And so like on the north side of Houston, for example, we engaged a mommy blogger where we were advertising on her website in her email and also in her news, well, in her newsletter in her email. And then she was doing some social posts, right? So we were like, okay, we're going to advertise here and then in this area we're going to run the same paid campaign, but we're not going to use the mommy blogger. And we were looking at the conversion rates, okay, from the previous year. And so it wasn't like a perfect metric on attribution, but it was saying, okay, well if these paid rates are consistent of what they were last year we added this component, are we getting a higher conversion rate of new people raising their hand saying, hey, I would like to sign up for Boy Scouts than we did the previous year? So we were just adding that variable to it. That was kind of one of the first tests that we were doing. And we saw click through rates go up, the average costs go down, and we saw more conversions in that area. And so we were also testing in different markets, different influencers we had access to. So it was kind of hard to see this influencer versus this influencer. But going back to what we talked about, like, how quick did they respond? Like, what were they willing to do? You know, looking at how well the emails that they sent out were engagements and the post they did and like what we could just see on the surface level was, was certainly helpful. And that decided the refined list that we would use for the next year. And also each mommy blogger, you know, if, if they were like really talked about sports or talked about recipes, right? Like they're talking about raising kids versus rest, like, so we started to get an idea of, of what that, that mommy blogger that we wanted look like. So just to provide some, some detail and that, sorry, I, I love this stuff. So I, I go down these rabbit holes. One of the things that I'm thinking about, like, let's talk about crypto, for example. Like we have a client in the crypto space that's launching a new service and there's a lot of like trust issues like with crypto in general, right. And they want to be viewed in the financial traditional space as well as the crypto space, right. So it's kind of two different audiences that, that overlap. And you know, we're doing a lot of foundational work for them. We're doing some press releases, we're doing some authority posts, we're building out the content that, that people would find and then the next layer that we're going to be Adding is that influencer base. Right. And so you know, what are some case studies that you've seen where influencers or what type of influencers match? This is more of a, I guess a personal question for a client, but I would love to hear that. I know a lot of people would too. And crypto is heating up. We just had the Trump administration announce strategic reserves and everything kind of whiplashed with the pricing. And I just think that there's probably another cycle coming shortly in crypto and it'll be the thing that nobody wanted to talk about and now everybody's going to want to talk about. So this might be good, this might age well.

[Ishvin Jolly]

So I think so there's a few different things again like tying it back to need. So are you wanting new audiences? In which case like okay, who speaks to that audience? So let's say you're a completely new brand and you just need to get in front of people. Right. So therefore you might pick like athletes with majority male followers in the US in your age range of 24 to 35. And maybe you're focused on like the Miami market or like Texas or you know, California or wherever crypto is trending more. So are you going for their demographic and their following? Because you just need eyeballs. One, maybe you're already have that, but actually you need credibility. Great. So then I would be picking credible names. So I probably go for like financial influencers, like people who talk about money markets and stocks on shares and you know, doing an evaluation. You could go for an athlete who's very well regarded in the space. Maybe they're an investor, maybe they are just smart. So those two would be there. Maybe you have the validation and you have the eyeballs and actually what you need is you want to do a big event and you just want someone to turn up and speak and do like a meet and greet because you know you're going to sell loads of crypto on like at that point. So then you want to have someone who's like can make it to LA on the 5th of March or whatever else. So I think like there's different use cases and different ways to think about, well, who slots into that. But that's like, that's the beauty of the space.

[Matt Bertram]

Yeah, I love that. Okay, so let's keep on that kind of thought process and talk about service based industries. For example, what are the thought processes that you would think through when you're building a campaign for, I don't know, a service based business that might be more mundane. You could say home services, or you could say financial services, or, you know, just something like the average business, right. Of a local small business. How would they incorporate influencership?

[Ishvin Jolly]

No, I love that. So we worked with, like, a lawn mowing service once. So 1. I love athletes for that because I kind of always joke that if you're very famous, the chances are you move to, like, L. A or New York. But if you're an athlete, you stay because you have to. And so, like, you know, the most famous person in, like, a Pittsburgh or Cleveland or Indiana, wherever is an athlete and then piling onto that college because they're in, like, small towns that even they might not be a pro team. So I really like athletes for local businesses. So kind of the same thing as what we just said, right? So, like, and also the other bit is, like, a lot of, like, local businesses or service businesses, they already have their marketing going. So you probably do a bit of radio. Maybe you take out a couple of flyers and you post them through the door. Maybe you, like, you advertise in your local paper. And then you probably do a bit on social, but social is probably not your primary driver. It's maybe other things. And then you might do some paid ads through a local marketing agency. So you need a bit of content for that. I mean, I love the idea of, like, whether it's a small athlete or big athlete. And now that's up to you. You know, obviously, if you can afford a bigger, go for it. If can't, then go smaller, that's fine. And it's like, you know, Cleveland native, we chop his lawn, right? And it could be just a cheesy photo or a voiceover of the athlete that goes in your radio ads. You know, like, we forget when we live in big cities at how powerful, like, local radio can be on the, you know, like, hey, you know, I'm part of the. The Steelers, and, like, these are my guys to cut my lawn in Pittsburgh, blah, blah, blah. And so I really love the idea of, like, there. I would say it's less about scale. Like, you might be in D to Z there. I'd say it's like picking one or two people and, like, going deep on that relationship with them.

[Matt Bertram]

Oh, I can see that. Okay, let's switch to BNB now, Mike. So there's a lot of big companies that have budgets that are trying to spice up their marketing, maybe with digital transformation. Maybe since COVID they're like, okay, there's a lot of opportunity online. I have a lot of conversations with sales Directors that are like, you know, they, they thought marketing was just like graphic design for events. Right. And then when the events got shut down, they started exploring all these other levels and there's this merge between a sales qualified lead and a marketing qualified lead.

[Ishvin Jolly]

Yeah.

[Matt Bertram]

And, and I even have a podcast where I kind of talk about that integration of comms and in that area, I think that those businesses that are like you're selling something again, mundane, maybe a valve or, or something like that, I think adding personality to the brand can really be helpful. Maybe what's, what's your view on, on a B2B business that's maybe not a salesforce or something like that, that's not well known, but to use it in their marketing. Certainly I can see the sports team's angle for sure if it's a male dominated industry. But like, I don't know, how would you, how would you approach that?

[Ishvin Jolly]

Yeah, I think it's all like there is different. It's all about like getting your story out in a way that people actually want to receive it. So one of my favorite deals that we did years and years ago when we've kind of like first started was a deal between Glassdoor and Draymond Green. You know Glassdoors, Silicon Valley based company, tech company, but quite disruptive. And they had a Draymond Green essentially like ghost write an article, a blog. And it was like Draymond Green's like 8 tips to keep your workplace fired up and obviously very on brand for him. And it had like a 900 open rate increase in like share rates and all of this because obviously even everyone at Glassdoor was like, this is so cool. Draymond Green knows who we are. And they shared it on their LinkedIn and their emails were great. Right. So I think that's just such a good example like not to tie always back to need. But it is like what's your need?

[Matt Bertram]

Right.

[Ishvin Jolly]

If you're a software company, maybe you're doing this as employee engagement. Maybe that's the most important thing. Maybe it is because you need to get in front of your CIOs and they never pick up the phone. Well then, you know, we, we did a, an event. It was a virtual event with a security SaaS company and Neil DeGrasse Tyson. And you know, of course, like that's exciting. It was half an hour zoom in the middle of COVID And so I'd say I think athletes are perfect for B2B companies because you almost want you. Like there's only so much you can talk about what you do. It's not like a product where it's like, check out this flavor. It's like, we know what you do, but why should I show up? And like athletes and influencers could be a great reason to show up or that story that they tell could be a great one for like the email. And then at the bottom it's like, hey, by way, book a call with us kind of thing.

[Matt Bertram]

Wow. So that's something that I, I haven't thought about much, if not at all using it from an internal channel. I think we, we've talked with a number of companies about like large companies about setting up internal podcasts. Right. To, to communicate from the top down what's going on at the company. If you have a company and you're trying to energize the company, that could turn into a lot of user generated content. Right. Because it's so cool you're speaking internally. And I think that the pendulum in my mind from a branding standpoint is with all the AI, right is shifting back to who are we as a brand, what is our brand story and how do we communicate that? So when you're looking at it from a B2B standpoint, you're really looking at like if you're an internal marketing team, you're looking at your brand as a whole and say, how do we develop our brand more, how do we grow our brand more, how do we build additional layers? And to focus on that internal component will have an outward effect. Right. Because they'll be sharing it and that kind of cool factor. I love that. I think that that's a great example about how people are not using influencers. When I think influencer marketing, I think of a lot of affiliate partnerships and stuff like that just based on previous experience. But I think that there's a lot more refinement and development of it. I've even seen the marketplace go from with content marketing from kind of authority posts and stuff like that to really bleed more into the social media. And then that kind of brand mention is, is not coming from a publication as much as it's coming from a trusted person or individual. So I've seen that kind of trajectory happen. Very interesting. So what are some other things that maybe businesses should consider when they're looking at influencer marketing? Because you really opened my eyes to how you could use it internally. Is there other things like that that might be helpful for the audience?

[Ishvin Jolly]

I think one is just like, it doesn't have to be expensive, but it can also, you Know it can be a channel you can spend millions on but it can be a channel that you can just spend 5k a month on. And so I think like that variability is unique and it's quite cool and the, the ability to scale up like if it's working great, if it's, if you're able to figure out intern to put it into all your channels, great. So I think that flexibility, that's what you know we've seen brands come in spending 5, 10k and they scale up and up and up from that or they could be just doing product and you can flex up and down like you know if, if you're, if it's Thanksgiving or Amazon Prime Day you spend more. Great. If it's like another time you could just do product only deals but you can have an always on approach. So I think that's quite key is just like the flexibility of the budget. And then I do think like there's something about like just the word of mouth marketing. Like you are essentially getting your product like fine, whatever they post on social but you are getting your product into the hands of like influential people within their communities. And like that in itself is a benefit that I think gets missed. Like it's pretty cool like that you might be being used in the locker room by an NBA player and like that like you know that that's key. And then I think third is like for brands to think about like what is the message you put out there? And there should be a lot of testing around that. Like recently we were working with Western Union and like at first what we were thinking about doing the messaging, the first round of deals we was, it was more like the app and it was like Western Union, this is an app to do this. And, and now we're going for a different track and we're going to be a bit more emotive. Like this is what sending money abroad to my family means for me. Like I've made it and my family's back home. And so I think like I've definitely seen even like something I've pitched recently to someone back to that internal is like having influencers talk about the founder story. Like why did they start this company? Who are they? So I think like it's kind of cool to think about like the creative not just being like here's a phone, buy it 3.99. It's like what's the connection? And there's so many things that you can have that person say and do for you. It doesn't have to Be like an infomercial.

[Matt Bertram]

No, I love that. So, you know, one of my last questions is, is around. Well, the biggest barrier that we run against is if somebody hasn't done it before, right. Any kind of marketing, they haven't done it before. They're not like a believer yet. Maybe they've heard mixed stories from different people. We get that a lot with SEO and our marketing packages. Hey, I've been, I've tried this before. It doesn't work. I've been burned. Whatever. You know, influencer marketing, I think is probably a mixed bag from that standpoint as well. And it, and it, it's a kind of a, A new thing to incorporate. And for people that are gun shy, I don't know, lack of a better word on, on spending budget, a lot of times I believe you need to test, like, I look at things from a quarterly standpoint and like, like, we need to get enough testing that we get to some kind of statistical, like baseline to know if this is working or not. And that I think it's good to cycle through a lot of different people to see that. But when someone's doing a pilot or someone's doing, you know, trying to spend some money and they haven't done it before. Right. Influencer marketing, there's probably a lot of people that you talk to that haven't done it before. And then we're talking, okay, a 5k price point where they're just getting comfortable spending online as it is. How do you navigate that conversation and what are the things that you tell them? Because there's probably people listening going, hey, like, I want to do this. It sounds great. I don't know if I'm ready to spend that kind of budget. And then they end up saying, okay, I'm going to try it. I'm going to try it for 300 bucks or 500 bucks or whatever. And they try it once and they're like, oh, it didn't work. Like, you know what I mean? Like, so how do you navigate that conversation? And what would you say to somebody that's listening, that's on the fence and has been considering it, and they're just not over that line yet.

[Ishvin Jolly]

I think you have to be really realistic about, like, your objective. So if we definitely run into this. So, you know, you spend 400 bucks and you wanted sales, you wanted content, you wanted the biggest name, you wanted all of it, and it's everything I.

[Matt Bertram]

Was, I wanted this to be a magic.

[Ishvin Jolly]

Right, Exactly. So I think we do try and do a bit of A good job of saying, now we do before we probably didn't. But also because we understand it now even better. But we say, like, you're not real. You're not going to get sales for, like, unless you're spending thousands of dollars, you're not going to get sales. You will get content that you can put in your paid ads. And if you're like, yeah, but that's an extra expense, well, that's what you've got. And like, do you spend a couple of hundred dollars at least today producing content for your paid ads? Well, see it as that cost. You will get someone like, you know, if you want someone who has 100k plus followers, it's gonna cost you. If you want someone who has less than 10k, you're gonna get it cheaper. But then when they post, very few people are gonna see it. So again, like, what are you going here for? Eyeballs, impressions, comments, likes. So I think it's just like, about being kind of of realistic with what you can get and being clear on like, well, what's your goal? And then hit that goal and then scale up. Like, don't change the goal. Once you've got, oh, I wanted good content, I got it. But they didn't have any followers and they got five likes. It's like, well then that, like that, that's not why we pick that person. So I think that that's the, the main thing is like expectations being realistic and not changing the goal.

[Matt Bertram]

Yeah, I think that that's great. It's part of your marketing strategy. It's not your full marketing strategy. Right. This person is not your salesperson. This person is going to help get your name out there. It's going to help get you recognition, it's going to help give you great content. And I think you said that at the beginning of the podcast, it's what you do with it. Right. Once you have engaged that partnership, what do you do? So we're about to wrap up my last question for you. Just to squeeze out any more value out of this podcast that we can. If there's anything that we didn't talk about what is. And it could be something you, you've said before, but let's prepackage it and we'll use this as a short. What is one unknown secret of Internet marketing that maybe we've talked about or we haven't talked about that you think is worth sharing?

[Ishvin Jolly]

Yeah, I think we did talk about it, but I will reiterate it that, like, the ability to do a deal. I know, I'm not gonna say through everyone, but I know that what we do with our deals, the ability to do a deal for one Instagram post or one TikTok or one YouTube and get the rights to repurpose that for six months on your feed, on your website, in your email marketing, in your mms, on your pay, in your page, typically in your Amazon site, literally on, on your founders, LinkedIn or you know, your CMOs, LinkedIn, it's like the best hack like in for me out there.

[Matt Bertram]

I love that. No, I think social's so powerful. I think a lot of people are waking up to that, that people are driving business just on social alone. And, and this is another tool in the tool belt to communicate that, that storytelling. So ishvin, with open sponsorship.com what is the best way for people to find you, to engage with you? Where are you posting content? Where can they find out more?

[Ishvin Jolly]

Yeah, so obviously check us out. OpenSponsorship.com Sign up for free. We'll get in touch. We'll do like a strategy session and tell you how you can use us and athletes and influencers. Find me on LinkedIn. Drop me a note. Yeah. Thank you.

[Matt Bertram]

Awesome. So everyone, hopefully you enjoyed this podcast. If you are looking to build a online lead gen marketing channel where it's managed for you. So that's really what we're focused on building for clients is a managed service where you can focus on growing your business and we can focus on growing your marketing and bringing you in the right customers. Reach out to EWR Digital for more revenue in your business. Set up a free consultation online and until the next time, my name is Matt Bertram. Bye bye for now.