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The Marketing Millennials
The Truth Behind B2B Influencer Marketing with Brianna Doe, Founder + CEO of Verbatim | Ep. 387
00:42:44
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- [00:02]
A
Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS Marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the top. We are back with another episode of the Market Millennials podcast. Today I have the Brianna Doe on the podcast. And funny thing about Brianna and me, we seem to have a speaking slot at the same conference and we're in the same stage, but we never know. We have that speaking slot together to like a week before, so we never prepare for it. It tends to be a good spot. But it's the guru conference with our friend Jay. You know, Jay on the podcast. But yeah, we, we tend for the last, like, couple years, we've been on the same speaking gig together.
- [00:58]
B
So it' it has been fun. Our annual meetup.
- [01:01]
A
Yeah, we literally have one get together before and then we get on stage and say random stuff. So it's fun.
- [01:09]
B
So we talk for about 25 minutes every 12 months.
- [01:11]
A
Exactly. And this is the longest we'll probably talk until a guru conference. I'm kidding. We'll probably talk more about it, but I want to get into this. You've been doing in the influencer space for a while. You've been dealing with it for a while. Where. Let's just start where. What does the current state look like of influencer marketing? It's changed over the years. But what is like current state 2026? What should people be thinking about?
- [01:36]
B
I mean, a lot of the conversations I'm in are with B2B marketers right now who still either aren't sure if they want to do it or they're not seeing a lot of success with it because they're not trying new things or experimenting. So B2B influence marketing has been, like, a hot topic for a while. And I do think it's going to pop off even more, kick off Even more in 2026 now that we're here in terms of B2C influence marketing, it's. It's just still booming. Like, I mean, especially as with this shift, this ongoing shift to YouTube and more creators really investing time over there and more brands seeing the wins on YouTube. That's what we're focusing on with our B2C clients. But B2B is, I don't know, it's an interesting space. A lot of folks are still trying to figure it out, and I think they automatically think of LinkedIn first and they're not Necessarily seeing a lot of success with it. So it's a year of experimentation.
- [02:28]
A
That's a good point. I think also just like B2B marketing is always like 5 years behind E commerce and B2C. It's crazy how that happens. And also they're in the early stages of what E commerce B2C marketing used to be, where you just do one off post and that's considered influencer marketing. They're not hiring people as brand ambassadors. They're not doing long term partnerships. Some are doing it. I'm not saying they're not, but they, a lot of companies still are like, let's get a bunch of influencers to just do a post for us. And then they're like, why is this not working?
- [03:06]
B
Right? They do the one post and it doesn't get whatever like a million impressions. And so then they, they get on a social media platform and say influencer marketing sucks and it's not for B2B. But you didn't really test it. Like it's, it's larger than one post. I do think budgets play a role obviously, but you have to be willing to at least invest in the same creator, multiple it. You're beholden to the algorithm. So.
- [03:29]
A
So with your clients, what do you. What is first? Like, what is like what do you tell them the why to do this? And then what are some ways that you have seen for both seen at work? Influencer marketing?
- [03:44]
B
Actually typically the conversation starts with like me asking what their hesitations are or their current frustrations are with influencer marketing. And a lot of it typically ties back to, you know, it doesn't work for us, it's not successful. And so we usually dig into what an influencer actually is. I think that's Another thing with B2B marketing is not to paint a wide brush, but I think some B2B marketers are really against the word influencer, almost as if it minimizes or downplays the work that they're doing. But if you're partnering with a subject matter expert or an industry leader or whatever, they have influence, you can call them an influencer. It's okay. So that's the first step is kind of understanding together like what influencer marketing is and how we can adjust goals for or adjust our campaigns for whatever their goals are. And that leads into the why. It's about building trust. It's about building credibility. We're saturated with content on the Internet and so if you have the opportunity to partner with creators or leaders who have already built trust with this audience that you're trying to reach. Why not try and find creative on brand, relatively non salesy ways to connect with them? I don't know. And that's been a big part and I will say too, with the rise of AI and everything else, why not look for those ways to connect more human to human? Your audience is probably looking for that. So that's typically part of the why. And I would say it's interesting the main, with our B2C clients, they're mainly focused on like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. With B2B clients, like I said, they think about LinkedIn first, which is a completely natural assumption. And we do do influence marketing on LinkedIn. But I also encourage them to think about other channels as well. Like their audience lives outside of LinkedIn. They have favorite podcasters, they have favorite YouTubers. And so leveraging other channels where there's also more, more like a built out, you know, process or system around influencer marketing can help because LinkedIn does kind of feel like the wild wild west when it comes to creator marketing right now.
- [05:53]
A
It's just funny to me that I get the word influencer. It's so broad. It's so there's very. People have their preconceived notions of it, but at the end of the day, like Mark, when you, you're doing advertising for anything, you're putting an advertising on like a rented platform to get people to like be interested or have attention in what you're trying to do or the message you're trying to portray. Same thing as Influencer. You're renting an audience that they, that you're becoming a part of. An audience that they have, they've been a part of. But the better part of Influencer market is that they like Facebook doesn't inherently have like trust with like the users that they have. Influencer has built trust for them to be able to follow that person. Whether it's on the newsletter, podcast, YouTube, whatever, they have a trust. And so you basically inserting yourself in a conversation that's natural to someone who's already talking to the people you're doing. But you do markers are already doing this with like launching it on all these platforms. It's just funny that doing it with a human seems like harder maybe because it's harder to do because it's not. You don't go into like a lot of it's not. You go into a system, you press I want, this is how much money I want to spend. This is like the audience I want to hit. And this is like what you want to do. It's more, more of a manual thing with a lot of influencers. Some, some tools are making it easy. But it's just funny that to me that people still have a stigma, like a preconceived notion of it.
- [07:41]
B
Yeah, I would agree. I think. I feel like you nailed it too. For a lot of marketers. I can't log into an ad platform like I can meta business suite or whatever and just adjust my messaging a bit. Like the post is already out there. You know, I can't. It's not an ad that I can turn off and on the way I typically would in the past. And I think also it's. There are still so many like CEOs and CMOs who, when they think of the word influencer, they think of like a Kim K. Like, well, we're, we're a SaaS product. I'm not going to partner with Gwyneth Paltrow or whatever. But it's. There's so many layers to what an influencer is. I mean, you don't have to partner with somebody that's going to cost you $500,000. You just need to find folks that have built trust in whatever your niche is.
- [08:28]
A
So I want to go into a little pivot a little bit, but. So you wrote a book and it seems to be landing. The message in the book seems to be landing with a lot of people. So what do you think are people are reacting to the most in the book you wrote? If you want to say a little bit of what the book is and go. But it's interesting the message that you're coming up with. I want to you to tee it up so then we could talk about it.
- [08:59]
B
Yeah. So the book is called the Unapologetic Professional. And it's, I mean, essentially about learning how to unlearn other people's definition of success and figure out what success looks like for you and your career and then build a career that's not only like meaningful or fulfilling, but also sustainable. Like if you have a career you like, but you burn out two years in and never go back to it, I wouldn't really consider that a win. So building a career that feels sustainable and aligns with goals that you've set for yourself, not what you think they should be. And I've been getting a lot of really cool feedback about it. Something I'm hearing a lot that's resonating with folks is about this idea of untangling your learning how to Untangle your sense of self worth from your job title. I think I learn, I see that a lot with myself and with marketers too and with other industries. But everything we do, or so much what we do is performance based. And so like what I do doesn't have to be who I am, but it's hard to, you know, separate those two. And the other thing that's resonating a lot is this idea of a portfolio career. So kind of figuring out if you do want multiple like side hustles or streams of income or if you want to work on multiple projects at a time, understanding what that looks like and then building it in a way that feels right for you.
- [10:20]
A
I know this is like a, like a pivot from influence to market, but I want to go down a little bit. But for example, I feel like people, your whole career, if you're not at like a cool company with a cool job title, you seem to not be very cool. You think you're not cool. Even though you're not like Salesforce running marketing or you're not here doing this, you seem, it's funny, like even going to do my own stuff, like my own founding stuff, I sometimes think I get less credibility because I'm not ahead of marketing at a company that is doing this. But I could be like, let's say making more income than that job. And it's like, but it's still like we still have this perceived notion that being in a company, being in a cool company is, seems cool. So how, how would you break my thought path or a person's thought path that if I'm not doing this, I'm not cool. If I go down this different path, I'm not, I'm going to lose all my credibility. How do you rethink that?
- [11:32]
B
Well, I think I. My first question would be why do you think that? And there's no right or wrong answer. But for some people it's, I don't know. Well, my mentor always told me I need to make sure I work for the largest company or I see all my friends working for Nike and Apple and I don't have that logo on my resume or whatever the case may be. But understanding like where that's coming from, it's helped me and I've found that it helps like some of the people I mentor too because then you can start to challenge it a bit. Like how am I actually defining what's cool? Also why do I care what's cool? Like and even to a greater extent, how am I defining Success for myself. So for example, if success for me looks like landing nine large speaking gigs a year, I don't know. And I'm securing those even though I'm not working at a cool company, clearly my expertise is showing through in a way it's not hindered by the fact that I don't have this logo. If it's landing certain types of clients and you're landing them, okay, clearly I'm on the right track. I think even if you're not hitting those goals, you need to have those goals for yourself because otherwise you're just. You're gonna get whiplash like chasing after what other people define as success. And I, I think it's hard, especially if you're in the LinkedIn bubble. You know, everybody has like X meta X Apple in their headlines and it's easy to start defining yourself against those standards too. But success looks so different for everybody and I'd rather have my own definition than have to be beholden to somebody else's.
- [13:07]
A
Yeah, I think that's a great. I think it's more of a. Especially also being in. I think maybe you felt this before, but being in the content creating space that sometimes you see the LinkedIn bubble challenging that. Oh, you haven't. You're not in this big org doing this, so why should I listen to your opinion? What I think about is I'm still doing marketing and I'm still doing all these things. It might look different how you're doing it, but I'm still promoting my brand. I'm still thinking about distribution, I'm still writing content. I'm so all these things that I'm marketing, but it's just I'm not at X company. I'm not at this company. Or it's just funny how we look at. Job title is such a big thing. And also it's weird because a manager at Oracle and a head of marketing at Small it could be the same exact level and expertise, but it's two different companies. So it's so hard because what levels at one company are different levels at another company? And people say to self, I'm a director here and this person's the head of marketing and I'm not head of marketing, but I have 15 more years of experience in this person. Why am I not this. I just think it's job titles is so hard because what it means at different companies are. I know you probably hear this a lot, but it's.
- [14:43]
B
No, I'm. I'm laughing because it's true. Nothing's Standardized. Like it's, yeah. And it's exhausting to try and hold yourself up to it because to your point, I could be a director of marketing at one place at a startup, for example, but then that's a senior growth marketing manager at a larger company. And it's like, okay, well, did I take a step down? Like if you. Nothing standardized. It's all confusing. Everybody's making up their own rules. I mean, I remember I, gosh, early in my career I had a brand manager job and they, they wanted me, they wanted to call me like the Crayola manager or something. It's just like everything's all over the place. So you have to figure out, okay, like, how am I defining success for myself? And then kind of put your blinders on and just make sure you're working towards that.
- [15:27]
A
And it's also like a job title when you have it. You could re. If you want to forwardly say it doesn't. You're not stuck to that job title. You can always remarket it and say it differently. Like, you know, if you're a manager of marketing, you could tweak a little bit on LinkedIn, not change the job title automatically, but just show what you're actually doing so people understand it's exactly the same as that director is doing at that company. Or so some of it is. Remarketing and redoing, but also not beholding yourself to the standards of other people is a good idea too.
- [16:06]
B
Yeah, no, that's a great point though.
- [16:08]
A
I just think the problem is when you're fighting against other people for jobs and they, oh, you don't have any director experience. And it's the person who had director experience added at $1 million revenue company and the person who is a senior manager is doing it for 50, 60, $70 million companies. It's different levels is more hierarchy. This, it's just, it's funny how the world works.
- [16:39]
B
It's hard. Yeah. And to your point too, it's especially difficult, like if you're trying to negotiate or get into a new role. I do think to your point, like, yeah, tweaking it on LinkedIn. And then also, if you've been in a role for a while, make sure your job title still reflects what you're doing. Like make sure you're setting yourself up for whatever that next opportunity is. So if you do need to renegotiate your job title, I've done it like a year into a role before, so that's always an option too.
- [17:08]
A
I want to go into something you talk about a lot. And I think we could frame it as for marketers, but also for influencer marketing too, however. But people throw around the word authenticity a lot. And like, what does that actually mean? But what does it actually mean to be like one. Your authentic self as a. In your career? And then also I'll go, I'll say like, what is it? If you are a creator or hiring an influencer, like, what. How do you to tell them to be their authentic self?
- [17:41]
B
That's a great question. I think it's actually, I'll start with the second one because that one's easier for me to articulate because like, if I'm, if I'm locking in, if I'm securing some creators for a brand partnership, like for a client, it's. We'll give them the campaign brief. Right. Tell them, you know, looking to focus on these features or legal said, you can't use phrasing like this. Whatever. It's easier to then look at the content they draft and say this just feels a little salesy or like it just doesn't sound like you. Because I think when we're working with creators, you can tell what their normal organic content looks like and then what their sponsored content looks like and you just want to make sure that it's as close to their normal voice as possible. But I think when you're the creator or you're the person showing up online, it's. It's hard. I'm curious what you think too. Like, authenticity is a tough word for me because I. People throw it around so much, it almost feels like it's lost its meaning and it means different things to different people. What immediately comes to mind is that you're not filtering yourself in such a way so that people view you a certain way. Like, if you are not being honest about your thoughts and feelings and you're only sharing what you think people want to hear from you. I would deem that as inauthentic. But you also, I mean, people also like to bring your full self to work. That's not really possible. I can't bring everything to work all the time. And so there's.
- [19:11]
A
I think, I think that's a. That's terrible advice. To be honest, to bring it forward.
- [19:15]
B
It's not great.
- [19:16]
A
Yeah. Because I, I feel you have the right to protect what part of you want to be private and not. But I think authenticity to me is like, are you sticking to the values you've like set forth and that you've set forth for Yourself and your audience of who you show up to be. So I don't like sharing everything about what I do, my life, but I like to share parts of it. And I think that's fine. I think that's authentic to share parts of it and hide parts of it because you don't have to, but I think is just not sharing away from your values and going way different. It's like a brand. I think of it like, as a brand, like you're running a brand. It's inauthentic for a brand whose values are this, this, and this to then put out a post that is like, way different to what they stand for as a company or they. They've been shouting on the rooftops. I think that's inauthentic. And. And people will sniff that out. So the. The new generation keeps receipts. So if you go, if your receipts say, you said this one time, and you show up like that another time, that is where it becomes a problem, is where you're going against who you are as a person.
- [20:42]
B
I like that a lot. I agree. You're right. I think you articulated it perfectly. It is just about not straying from whatever values you've assigned to yourself or that you align with. And to your point, too, like, I don't share everything online. I. And I don't feel less authentic for doing so. Other people will share literally everything that goes on in their lives at any given moment, and that's authentic to them. I think that's fine. And I do think it's important to remember too, like, you can be authentic and people can still not like you. Like, being authentic doesn't mean you're gonna be, you know, this, like, angel in everybody's eyes. But it's. It's about your value system and making sure that you're sticking to that.
- [21:23]
A
Yeah, I mean, some people won't like the way you talk or the way you look or the way you act or the way you say things. And they're not your people. So just stick to. The problem is if you want to put yourself out there at work or in online, you're going to get natural people who are not going to like you for any reason, and you just gotta have to accept it. Little things could annoy people. For example. I know. I'll even say on this podcast, people hate that sometimes. I mean, I would say I use the word like a lot. It turns them off. Okay, then stop listening to me. There's a thousand other podcasts out there to listen to. I bring on the best guests. They are good. I never said I'm the best podcast in the world. So if you want to follow my podcast, I'm trying to hype up marketers and it's okay if you don't like the way I talk.
- [22:28]
B
That's a good point. Yeah. It could be the littlest, like the tiniest thing that you never thought people would notice that they don't like. And you have to develop thick skin, in my opinion, once you start creating anything online, kind of exactly what you said. If you don't like it, that's okay. You also don't have to follow.
- [22:45]
A
So I mean. And I will do the caveat. I think people think influencers or people. It doesn't. It still hurts everybody to try to publicly shame them online because you think you don't like something. It's just. Just unsubscribe and move on. Don't try to ruin someone's day behind your laptop. If a creator is creating, they're trying to put out their content. If someone's doing something at work to try share a story, don't dog them for the story that they told. Just move on. It doesn't have to affect your life that much. But I wanted to go into more like. Okay, so. So let's go into the thought of, like, reframing imposter syndrome as a marketer or in your career. How. How do you reframe this? Because you're gonna. If you're doing something, if you're growing your career, you're gonna have imposter syndrome because you're gonna have to do different things, and you're gonna have to do things you're not amazing at all the time. So how do you reframe that for people in their career?
- [24:03]
B
Yeah, I think it starts with accepting exactly what you said. Nine times out of 10, you're not going to be able to completely eradicate imposter syndrome for your life. If you're moving towards anything new, if you're growing, if you're, you know, trying new things and accepting new opportunities, you're probably not going to feel 100% confident in every single one. I do think a large part of it is learning to, as cliche as it sounds like, be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Like, you have to be okay with discomfort because you know that it's leading you to something else. And one thing that's helped me, and I touch on this in the book is like, just recognizing it as imposter syndrome. You don't have to be ashamed of is what it is you feel XYZ about this new opportunity and then asking yourself, like, what can I learn from this and what am I trying to accomplish? And just focusing on that and essentially taking each opportunity as a chance to prove yourself wrong. Like, if you think to yourself, I have this, I'm starting a new job. I don't think I'm good enough. I don't know why they hired me, but I'm going to prove myself wrong in all these areas and I'm going to focus on learning XYZ while I'm in this role. That has helped me a ton. Because you're really only at competition with yourself.
- [25:20]
A
So, yeah, I like. I mean, you are your biggest competitor at the end of the day, so you should. But I want to. Do you have any. I know you said, do you have any, like, personal story where you. This has happened to you and your career and you've done that and how you reframe that thought to make sure that you did something different? You probably have a bunch.
- [25:47]
B
But yeah, it's like the theme of my career. So I guess a really recent example, I have a podcast, and it's still uncomfortable for me, like, being a podcast host. And so I got. But I love interviewing people. So I got an opportunity last year at Content Marketing World. They asked me to interview the guy who was doing the closing keynote, and they wanted me to interview him on stage, which was absolutely terrifying. And the minute I got the email, I was like, there's no way I'm going to be good at this. Like, he's an incredible podcaster, incredible interviewer. Why would they ask me? I'm going to get on stage and ask him these questions, and he's going to be like, who is this weirdo who can't formulate a question? I had all these thoughts running through my head. Obviously, I immediately said yes to the invitation and then spent the next, like, three months spiraling over it. And what I worked through is the reframe was okay. I feel all these things. I have all these thoughts, some of which I shared with you, about why this isn't going to work. And then I asked myself, what is the worst case scenario? Like, what's the worst thing that could possibly happen from this? Forced myself to think about it. It's very dramatic. It was like, I forget all the questions and then he gets frustrated and, like, walks off stage or something. It was okay. So that's the worst case scenario. What can I do to mitigate the risk of that happening? I can prepare with the questions, send the questions over ahead of time for approval, which we had to do anyway, and then just make sure I have a little note card or whatever I needed while on stage so I don't forget them. The second worst case scenario is that I mess up. I trip over my words or get really nervous. Okay. Sometimes you just have to accept that something can happen. I might trip over my words because I will be nervous, but I will mitigate the risk of that nervousness by prepping ahead of time. And so in that there's a mix of like, I do recommend thinking about the worst case scenario, actually making yourself articulate it and understand what it is and then understand what steps you can take to avoid that. And then I asked myself one final question. It was what are your main. Like, what are your main hesitations with this in terms of how you view yourself? And I thought I wasn't good enough and that they could have found somebody better. But that's immediately challenged by the fact that they specifically asked me to do it and the keynote approved me as the interviewer. And so giving yourself that evidence is really helpful. And when you think about your career, I'm sure you've heard it before. People talk about it as like the Bragg book or just like your evidence folder, create a resource for yourself full of all the ways that you can challenge those thoughts. Like times when you've won at something, times when you've gotten good feedback from a manager, a client, a customer, whatever the case may be. And build that argument for yourself so that you have it when you need it.
- [28:47]
A
I like that a lot. I also think you going along that brag book is. It sucks. But nobody else is going to hype you up in your career as much as you need to hype yourself up.
- [28:59]
B
Up.
- [28:59]
A
And it sucks that that's the case. But the Bragg book is one way that can help you show that you've done all these things and you can brag about them and you have to share your wins all the time. And also, it's crazy how many what ifs we think about when going into new jobs, taking new opportunities of, well, the team thinks I'm not good at my job. What if I don't hit my goals? What if I don't? But everything is in the future. It's not happening. So what you said is totally true is mitigating those risks. But yeah, I like how you reframe these things. I need to get better because I did the same thing at Inbound. I hate speaking on stage. I always Think I'm gonna vomit. I always over prepare. I always goes better than I thought it was, but not amazing. But I always like better than I thought it was as a good outcome. But I always think the worst is going to happen. And until I get off st, I'm like thinking about that. It's terrible. So I understand that feeling.
- [30:08]
B
I like your point too, about the what ifs. Like, just really ask yourself, okay, like, what if I didn't hit my goals? Okay, you'd probably take those learnings back to your team and then you'd refine whatever it is, the next campaign, the next iteration of the program. What if they decide they made a wrong decision hiring me? Okay, what if, like, what are you actually going to do to mitigate that? Yeah, to your point, I think it's just important to actually articulate what those what ifs are and then realize it's just, it's in the future. Like what you have to do now is as cliche as it sounds. Just work hard and set goals for yourself. But I feel you. I felt the same way at Inbound, candidly, and it went better than I expected. So I take that as a win.
- [30:50]
A
Let's go. I just, I mean, I'm bouncing around this conversation because I think there's a lot of things to talk about. But just from the, let's say, like a client side of like an influencer campaign, could you just share the process of what it looks like from, hey, we have a campaign to what happens next to get the influencers? What does it take? What is a brief? What does a brief look like? And then what happens? Like post the campaign.
- [31:22]
B
Ooh, my favorite topic. Yeah. So, okay, so before anything else, before you even start thinking about who you'd want to partner with, I always recommend aligning internally with your team on what success looks like. And not just with your marketing team, but anybody else who's considered a stakeholder. So the cmo, the CEO, however large your organization is, will inform this, but maybe it's even the sales team. Understand how each department is viewing success, because what you're doing, what you need to do, is make sure that any influencer program you're building, you can report the learnings within the organization and still be able to show how it was successful or what you know how to refine it. So, like practical example, the sales team might see success as, you know, direct conversions or at least like book demos. Meanwhile, your senior marketing manager sees success as brand awareness and engagement. And so making sure that you have some form of alignment in there, or at least you're prepared to track and measure multiple KPIs and metrics. So understand what it looks like internally. That's also then going to inform what kinds of creators you work with. So once you're clear on that, you're clear on how we're defining success, the goals of the program or the campaign, you'll probably align on timing then as well, and then you'll look into influencers. So a big part of this is understanding, like where your target audience or demographic or icp, whatever you want to call them, lives on the Internet. Are they consuming a lot of content on YouTube? Are they, do they listen to 67 different podcasts? Like podcasting is where you should go? Is it LinkedIn like understanding if it's gonna be one primary channel that you start with, or maybe a primary and a secondary and budget will inform that as well, Obviously then you can start looking at creators. So going back to my point about success and how you're defining it, that's when you're going to break down, you know, the channels that you're leaning into, the kinds of creators you want to partner with, whether they're smaller, with more niche audiences, or larger, with more broad audiences, you can drive awareness and then you'll build your initial list of potential creators. I will say, like pausing there for a second, you don't have to necessarily know your budget yet. I think what I found are a lot of brands or marketers don't even start the process because they don't know how much it's going to cost. But it's okay to reach out to creators and just start gathering rates and taking that back to your team if you need to get budget approval. So you can start reaching out to creators, share some information about the campaign, what you're trying to focus on, if it's a specific, specific product or launch or event, whatever the case may be. Let's say this is all going very smoothly. You've locked in some creators who are interested. Now you're in the contracting phase. While you're getting contracts squared away, that's when I'd recommend building the campaign brief, if not earlier. So this is going to include those metrics for success that I talked about 90 times already, that's going to be included in there. So creators know what their how to do well for this, any messaging guidelines, do's or don'ts for how they can talk about the brand, brand assets. It's basically your holy grail or source of truth for creators that they can operate within the parameters of the campaign really effectively and hopefully limit the amount of back and forth with content feedback. And then from there the campaign's gonna kick off. So you're reviewing content, you're approving it, you're finalizing dates, posting dates with creators, content's going out. I recommend getting analytics from the creators at the seven day mark and the 30 day mark and then you're going to take all those learnings and if it's a one time campaign, not a rolling one, take those learnings, look at what happened, look at the results, see what worked and what didn't and then you can optimize accordingly. Final thing I'll say I do think it's important to remember that even if it wasn't a success on the outside, it's really important to still look at the data and see what story it's telling you. It could have been a messaging issue, it could have been some of the creators weren't a good fit. But look at what did and didn't work and then you can apply that to your next program.
- [35:46]
A
I think that's great. I think one thing that I see a lot of people making mistakes on is they don't set up the foundation of tracking internally to make sure this is good, could be a success internally. What I mean by that is if you're going to do a certain Geo launch or something like that and you're not isolating like spike in brand mentions or Google searches or something that whatever that goal is and you're not isolating that internally in your dashboards and stuff like that and you're just expecting sales or something because it could be that you get the spike now people know about you, they do something else and it's a trailing metric because of your buying cycle. There's so many things that could happen but you don't, you're not like you could be attributing that to a wrong thing where there's a spike in brand mansions here and I don't something happened. So set up the tracking beforehand is usually what I'll say before. And then I also always say too because I'm, I'm in the space is that you, you have to hit an audience multiple times for them to remember you as you don't run one Facebook ad to one person and never show it to that person again. So why are you not running multiple things to that audience to stay top of mind so they, when they, that audience sees that they relate that influencer with that brand and you and you're getting so one off camp. That's why I don't like one off campaigns. And I think it's. You got to reframe. Like would you do the same thing on a Facebook ad or something like that? The cost might be different, that's a different story. But you're trying to create a. You, you have to show up multiple times for people to realize. Because creators are also educating their audience on who you are. And the first time my. The messaging might be wrong or the offer might be wrong or and it's not the creator. It could be the offer, the messaging, the launch, the graphic, all these things. Or you gave two tight of guardrails so they can do what they do as creators. There's so many things that could have gone wrong. So I just adding those two things.
- [38:12]
B
Yeah, those are great points especially, especially the tracking because that's kind of my point too. I mean so let's say you ran a campaign, you were trying to drive sales and let's say it doesn't work. You don't drive any significant number of sales. But you do see those brand mentions or the traffic increase. That's interesting data too. Like if people are engaging, let's say with one of your creators posts, clicking on the landing page that you set up and then still not even signing up for more information or converting or whatever, that's going to tell you something too. Maybe it is the messaging or it's something else. And to your point, kind of what we were saying at the beginning. Yeah, the one off posts, man, it's just, it's so much pressure for the creator first of all. And it's also so much pressure for the marketer too. I mean you wouldn't do that with a Facebook ad. You wouldn't turn it on, show it to one person, then turn it back off and be like well why didn't this convert? And so actually giving your audience time to get used to your brand and get comfortable with it is really important.
- [39:12]
A
Also an algorithm creator cannot control the algorithm. I'm sorry, like one time a post can go off, the one time it can go off. It's just that's the one thing and that's not an excuse to make but you should just know that it's repeat exposure that is the way way to be successful with creators that I've seen long term partnerships. Because also creators will do over and above what you say. If you invest in them, they'll talk about you. Naturally they will do more in the the production point of View. They'll do a lot more if you show investment versus not show investment. Lastly, I like to ask people, what is a marketing hill you would die on?
- [40:03]
B
I don't know. This might be too spicy. I don't think, okay, I'm gonna go back to influence marketing. I will die on the hill that B2B marketing, B2B influencer marketing can work, but most B2B marketers are too focused on just differentiating themselves from D to C to actually test the space. I think they're just scared to call influencers what they are and they're scared to invest the resources because it might not pay off the first round. That's my home. Is that spicy?
- [40:35]
A
I think it's. I think. I mean, it's. I mean it's not spicy to me, because I agree. But I think for some people that it is pretty spicy. I think it is. It's true. It's. The definition of an influencer is so broad and that's. I think people, people have tried to reframe them as creators or brand ambassadors or whatever, but there's like all this reframing to try sell it internally to have someone work, help. But there's so many or evangelists or whatever you want to say. It's just, I think. Is it? But influencer marketing does work. You just have to do it the right way, partner with the right person. And actually there are lower left ways you could do it too. So. Yeah, I mean, I'm on your side, but yeah, I think people more like that take some of them, but that's okay.
- [41:33]
B
Well, it's my hill.
- [41:34]
A
Yeah, your hill. You're dying on it. They don't have to die on it. They could. Yeah, get off of it.
- [41:40]
B
Yeah, they don't have to come to my hill. It's my hill.
- [41:42]
A
So lastly, where could people find you and what you're doing and your book and all that good stuff?
- [41:49]
B
Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. Briana Doe. I feel like I should pay them rent because I'm always on that platform. So that's where I mostly am. And then the book you can find@brandedo.com. yeah, you can find everything@brandedo.com.
- [42:04]
A
Well, thank you so much. I appreciate it.
- [42:06]
B
Thanks. Thanks for having me.
- [42:10]
A
Thanks so much for listening. Keep tuning in to hear more great insights from the coolest marketers from around the world. If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe and follow the Marketing Millennials podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. And if you like what you hear, I would greatly appreciate you giving us a five star rating. It helps bring more marketers into our community.