Influencer Marketing in 2025: What’s Working Now?

[00:00:00] Influencer Marketing has Changed. Are you keeping up? In today's digital world, building a brand isn't just about ads or social media posts. It is about relationships, collaborations, and creating trust. In this episode, I break down exactly how businesses can thrive in the age of influence today. From user-generated content to influencer partnerships and even brand communities, I discuss the strategies that can help you get ahead in 2022.

[00:00:31] So make sure you stay tuned to this next episode of the Your Digital Marketing Coach Podcast.

[00:01:02] Good thing you've got Neal on your side. Because Neal Schaffer is your Digital Marketing Coach. Helping you grow your business with digital-first marketing, one episode at a time. This is your Digital Marketing Coach and this is Neal Schaffer. Hey everybody, this is Neal Schaffer, your Digital Marketing Coach and welcome to episode number 408.

[00:01:32] Well, two episodes ago on my last solo episode, I talked about user-generated content. And assuming that you listened to that episode, there is obviously this relationship between, at least in my head, user-generated content and social media marketing and influencer marketing.

[00:01:48] And as I wrote a book dedicated to influencer marketing, the age of influence back in 2020, I thought it was time to share basically an updated view of how I look at the world of influencer marketing today in 2025 if I was your fractional CMO. Now, this is actually a conversation I had with Yash Shavan, who is the founder and CEO of an influencer marketing platform called Soral.

[00:02:17] Go to nealshafer.com slash S-A-R-A-L to let them know that I sent you. So Yash has a very, very interesting story to share, which is after reading The Age of Influence and working at an influencer marketing agency, he decided to create his own influencer marketing tool. So it was quite an honor when he mentioned that. But I thought our conversation was really good because it provided this updated perspective on how I view influencer marketing.

[00:02:43] Obviously, The Age of Influence was written really before the mainstream effect that TikTok and its algorithms and everything has had on social media. And I talk about this in digital threads for those that have read my chapters on social media and influencer marketing. But I realized that I hadn't provided a recent podcast episode on the subject. So, you know, today, influencer marketing is no longer about just finding someone with a big following and paying them to promote your brand. That was very 10 years ago-ish.

[00:03:13] It's about building trust, leveraging content creators, and creating meaningful relationships that drive long-term brand awareness and conversions. So this conversation, like I said, is all about how you can navigate this age of influence. With Yash, we discussed the evolution of influencer marketing, the shift from follower-based influence to content-driven influence, and how businesses can harness user-generated content, affiliate partnerships, and even brand ambassador programs to scale their digital presence.

[00:03:43] If you're wondering how to adapt your digital marketing strategy for 2025 and beyond, well, this episode covers that SCS framework of search email social. This basically covers that social framework that I talk about in digital threads. So keep listening because this episode is packed with a lot of actionable insights that I think you will not want to miss. Now, the other voice you're going to hear is that of Yash. So don't be surprised because it was a webinar recording that I am repurposing for this podcast,

[00:04:11] but I thought the content was compelling enough that I wanted to share it with all of you. So without further ado, here is my interview with Yash Shavan from Surah. You're listening to your digital marketing coach. This is Neil Schaefer. So I want to kick off with a story because I think that it's good for the people here to have context about how we met Neil.

[00:04:36] And I don't know if you remember, but three years ago when I was running an influencer marketing agency, we wanted to build the influencer software. I read this book, this amazing book. I have it here with me called, you know, Zoom is blurring it out, but it's called The Age of Influence written by none other than Mr. Neil Schaefer over here. So I read the book and I was super impressed, very inspired to, and the book really informed a lot of the things that were inside the software in the early days.

[00:05:04] So like our relationship first approach, the fact that it enables a lot of different types of partnerships and so on. So the book was like the book was an inspiration for a lot of the things we built inside of the software. And I was very excited. So I reached out to Neil six months into it saying, Hey Neil, you built the software inspired by your book. Why don't you take a look? And then I had no hopes of him getting back to me because Neil's been in the digital marketing. I've watched his keynotes from before. Obviously I read his book. And I was like, okay, this guy's not going to respond to me.

[00:05:33] But then Neil actually responded to me. And then he took a look at the software, was able to share some early feedback. He also teaches a course at UCLA. So he was able to give it to his students. And then his students were able to share feedback with me. So a lot of Saral actually was inspired by Neil's work, both directly through his feedback and indirectly through his book and through his students. So I just wanted to say that and thank you Neil for all the support that you showed back in the early days and throughout the journey so far.

[00:06:00] And I'm really glad that you're here with all of us today to share a little bit of your wisdom with the 30, 35 people that we have on the webinar today. So yeah, thank you and welcome to the show. Well, thank you. I'm quite honored by those words. So, but I mean, Yash, you went from an agency and you built a tool out of scratch. And here we are, you know, you've created this great tool, great company, lots of customers, global, you know, from your headquarters in India. So congrats on all that you've accomplished as well. Yes. Well, thank you, Neil. Appreciate it.

[00:06:29] Couldn't have done it without partners like you. So love it. Let's, let's dive in, right? I think the first, because I shared the book already, it's called The Age of Influence. So how did you name, because I'm sure naming a book is such a big thing. Why did you, and I'm sure there was a deep reason behind why you named it that. Why did you call it The Age of Influence? What do you really mean by that? Because the title of this webinar is also, how do you build a brand in the age of influence? We all know what a brand is, but can you define and add a little bit more color to what you mean by the age of influence?

[00:07:00] And what was the age before this? How have things changed? Can you tell us a little bit more? Yeah. So, you know, to put the book in its context, it was published back in 2020, pretty much when COVID started, if you remember, yeah. So things have progressed since then. But originally the book was really, if you remember the pre-COVID days, this is right before TikTok emerged, when Instagram was still king. You know, influencers really ruled the algorithms, ruled the timelines. It was very, very hard, and it still is.

[00:07:30] Situation really hasn't gotten much better for brands, but it's really hard to generate word of mouth and really be heard in social media. So the book actually, for those that might remember, if any of my fans are on this call, it was originally called The Business of Influence. And I actually did a pre-order campaign, and I had a different looking cover, which was The Business of Influence, which I wanted people to think of, you know, influencers and business. It wasn't just some random cultural phenomenon that, you know,

[00:07:59] influencers could be leveraged for business means. And it was my publisher, Harper Collins, who said, you know what? We did a survey, and we decided that the age of influence has a better chance of selling more books. So in all honesty, that is how the title came about. Either way, I think it really means the same thing, that we really need to think about online media a little bit differently. And, you know, fast forward, I published this book, Behind Me, Digital Threads, in October of last year. And, you know, fast forward to where influence marketing is today.

[00:08:29] Yes, there's still things that your business needs. You still need an online presence. You still need to do SEO. You still need to do email marketing, right? But when it comes to social media, I think we're still in this age of influence. And the influence used to be based more on follower count. Today, we know the influence is really based on the content quality, right? More than the follower count, the views that that content generates, regardless if you have a lot or few followers. So that's how far we progress. But I think that the tenets of the book, being the age of influence, I don't think that's changed.

[00:08:59] And my advice to businesses really is, we need to collaborate more, not just with influencers, now with content creators, right? We changed the language a little bit in 2025. But really, I believe that social media, and I wrote about it five years ago, and I wrote about it last year, it should really be a place to collaborate with other individuals. And I think that's where you're going to find the greatest value. Love it. Love to see it and hear about it. So what does that, how do brands go about adapting to this age of influence? Are there any mistakes you're seeing them making

[00:09:29] that they're still not adapting to it? Or how do they go about building a brand for this? How do they go about playing this new game that has happened? Some people might be thinking, well, it was way easier back then. Like in 2015, you could just crank up some Facebook ads. You basically needed no social following, and you could just get cheap clicks and make millions and millions of dollars. But now people don't want that. Like you said, it's trust-based selling. It is, you want to have as much exposure as possible, both organically and via ads.

[00:09:56] So how do you go about sort of playing this new game of influencers? Because it's a phase shift in the world of marketing. Yeah, I think it really begins with a mindset. I'm actually speaking at an event in a few days about the relationship between user-generated content and social media marketing and influence marketing, right? So I think that the first step is the mindset that says, if you want to succeed as a brand in social media, right? We still have other parts of digital marketing, but in where people spend the most time online,

[00:10:25] if you want to succeed, you need to become a content creator. And there's just no other way around it You can try to buy as many followers as you want, but the algorithms are not going to share your content unless it is truly offering value to people. And brands are just not wired to do that. The DNA of someone in marketing is to promote, to sell, right? Whereas the content creator thinks very, very differently. They think of adding value, of being relevant, of building community.

[00:10:52] And this is the same thing that brands need to do, but it's really, really hard to do. Unless maybe if you're a small business and the business owner themselves are very active on social media, or you happen to have a real savvy social media person in your marketing team, there are some outliers, obviously. I think of a brand like Duolingo, right? Who have done amazing on TikTok, offering that sort of, in their case, it's an entertainment value. But that's what it requires. And I think that for most businesses, it's really, really hard to do. So what can you do? Well, this is where we talk about

[00:11:21] leveraging the content of others. So I would begin actually looking at leveraging user-generated content. And there's a chapter on this in Digital Threads where basically a quote of mine is, you know, the thought that companies have to produce all of their own content for social media, I think is just wrong. I don't think you have to do it. And I think in many ways, if you're just, you know, promoting yourself to other people, you miss out on the opportunities of developing those relationships. And when I talk about developing relationships,

[00:11:51] you know, let's forget about influencers now, right? Who is it that already has some, what I call brand affinity? I talk about this in the Age of Influence, you know, customers, employees, partners, fans, followers, mentioners. Who is it that already has some like-knowing trust with your organization that might already be talking about you in social media? And that's really where we begin. The concept of, if there are people talking about us in social media, we can, with permission, start to tap into their content and promote it on our channels

[00:12:20] because indirectly, that's going to help promote us as well. This is the core, you know, concept of user-generated content. But, you know, the difference between me promoting myself and a third person talking about me, like, Yash, when you started this presentation, you began by talking how much the book influenced you. Now, I could have stood here and said, the Age of Influence is best-selling, award-winning. It's, you know, it's launched businesses around the world, but psychologically, it pales in comparison to someone else talking about me.

[00:12:49] We call that social proof, right? So really what we're trying to do in social media is start to begin that journey in the Age of Influence by tapping into social proof and tapping into what others are saying about us and really beginning from there. And it's a long journey from there, but this is where we begin to develop these relationships with people that are in our brand affinity circle that are already on social media, hopefully talking about us. And if they're not talking about us, what can we do to get them to talk about us? That would absolutely be where I start today.

[00:13:18] Yeah, I definitely want to dive into the second part of what can we do to get them to talk about us. But I want to emphasize again for everyone else here, I think just the framing of looking at influence and not influencer is very important because like Neil said, it could be, you just have to find brand affinity networks. Those could be teammates, those could be partners, those could be influencers, those could be customers. There's so many of these channels that you can tap into. You don't have to necessarily focus

[00:13:47] just on like that big popular influencer that everybody wants, right? Like you'd be surprised how much impact somebody with five or eight or 10,000 followers can have on your company as opposed to somebody with 100,000 followers. So I think I really like that you emphasize that point. Talk to us about the second thing. How do we, let's say I want to work with influencers. I understand, okay, we're living in an age of influence. Maybe me as a brand owner, I have zero followers. I have to start from scratch. It's going to take me five years

[00:14:17] to get to 10,000 followers. So it's smarter for me to go and work with 10, 15, two dozen people who already have followings of 10,000 people built up. So how do I go about doing that? How do I attract these influencers so that they can promote my products? What do I do from here? Yeah. So, you know, I actually wrote digital threads as a response to a lot of companies that reach out to me after writing the age of influence because as they had the same mindset of, you know, we want to get going

[00:14:47] with influencers. We're going to reach out to, you know, people with 10, 50, a hundred thousand followers. And if you look at it on the flip side, if you're not properly ready, if your brand doesn't have enough social proof, if not enough people are talking about you, if you don't have enough followers, what's going to happen is that these big influencers are just not going to want to work with you. They also have a reputation and without social proof, it's going to be very, very hard to create those relationships, which is why beginning with the user generated content, beginning with having content from other people

[00:15:17] talking about you and building a follower base and a fan base from there, that's actually going to help when you reach out to people that you don't know, right, with influencer marketing. But, but yes, I think, you know, we've seen that brands back in the old days really began with, you know, the more followers, the better. But in this age of some call it recommended media, some call it interest media, where it's really not based on follower count, but content quality and the views they get in the algorithm that that follower count may not be necessarily that important. In fact,

[00:15:47] if we were to move, let's say we're a startup and we have no customers, we have no way of generating user generated content. This is where we go to the next step and say, hey, who are content creators out there? They might be nano influencers, which we would say are like one to 10,000 followers. I would absolutely start small and work my way up. Find people who are passionate about what you do, who might give your product a chance. And this is where we get into, you know, a strategy that is still tried and true

[00:16:17] when we work with influencers that aren't making a lot of money from brands is influencer gifting, right? Is saying, hey, you know, love your work. We'd love to send you some free product. If you love it, we'd love, you know, for you to talk about it on social. If not, we'd love your feedback, right? Of how we can improve our product. And that influencer gifting, I believe once you go outside of your brand affinity, that is definitely the next step is can we generate word of mouth through getting our product into the hands of people? And I've had so many, you know,

[00:16:47] Yasha over the years, so many, you know, small business owners and entrepreneurs and CEOs say, if only they would try our product. If only I could get it into their hands and they tried it. I know they'd love it. So if you're that confident about your product, you know, you could spend $100 on Facebook ads or you could actually ship that product out to content creators who have, you know, a decent follow who talk about what your product, the industry you're in and start the conversations and obviously the generation of content there. So that to me is sort of step two. Yeah,

[00:17:16] I love that. I think gifting is also a really good way because you're not, it's the, we like to say it's the least risky way of kicking off influencer marketing because a lot of the times brands buy into this allure of, hey, I want to work with a creator $3,000 for an Instagram reel and then very likely it's not going to work for you in like eight times out of 10 it does not really even break even and in that case you just lost $3,000 but on the other hand

[00:17:45] if you could just set aside even a $1,000 or $500 budget and send 10, 15, 20 free products out to 20 different influencers and see what they say worst case you get some really good feedback about your product in which case you got to go back to the drawing board improve the product best case everybody posts about you you have enjoy an increased level of awareness and some sales in the market so I think gifting is a really good way but I recall from your looking at your book now that there was some like

[00:18:15] 16 or so ways that you shared which were quite detailed and innovative I won't ask you to dive into all 16 right now and this will be a three hour long show but then what are your you said gifting already but what are some other top sort of beginner friendly ways of affiliate is definitely something we recommend but then from your perspective what are some of the two to three more ways that brands can use to work and incentivize these creators to post about them yeah so I also wanted to add two more things about gifting number one

[00:18:44] you need to do this with influencers of smaller following sizes because the larger the more followers an influencer has the more they're going to charge the less they're going to say oh I'll do it for free right because basically you know a content creator influencer's time is money and I think you need to respect that so not everybody you might you might think your product's awesome but if someone has 50,000 followers and they're used to making a lot of money from brands yeah they're not going to work just for free products so you need to understand that's why strategically you want to

[00:19:14] find the next generation of influencers you want to find them when they still don't have that many followers where they might be you know they might be more open to working with you and the other thing is the more valuable your product is so let's take cosmetics I could have like a $10 hand cream or I could have a $100 stem cell eye moisture cream they're going to be received very very differently because of the perceived value right so something to consider if you don't have that value of a product like under $10 once again it's going to

[00:19:44] be a little bit harder than if you had a product that's valued at $50 $100 or $200 so just things to keep in mind when we begin this journey but you know going forward yes you made a great point and I would say that this is sort of another you know tried and tested type of way of working is okay they have the free product maybe they start talking about it and naturally they go hey I've already generated sales from this is there any way that I might be able to get some sort of commission right and this is where we talk about affiliate marketing which would be the next

[00:20:14] step is to set this up and I know a lot of small businesses don't necessarily have an affiliate marketing system set up but if you are e-commerce and you work with a Shopify or a big commerce it's very easy actually to get these things set up to be able to facilitate the sending of discount codes I know that Sorrell your software also provides this as well which is awesome so that really is the next step which is saying hey if we're able to sell a lot of this based on how you help we want to give you a commission and this is where you

[00:20:43] don't want to give out like a 5% or 3% I think you really want to be generous because the idea is you really want them to talk about your product and the more revenue they see coming in the more they are going to talk about it right so if there's no incentive or hey get a 5% off coupon when if they go to your website they can get a 10% off coupon there's really no value so you really want to give something generous make it easy for that influencer content creator to promote you and hopefully yes

[00:21:13] you'll make more sales and they'll make more money as well so that's absolutely the next step and if you're in B2B I know influencer marketing is as relevant for B2B as it is for B2C make sure that you have some sort of system in place we can say hey that lead was generated from that person and if this closes we're going to give them whatever commission but yeah putting a little bit of skin in the game is definitely a great way to further deepen that relationship yeah 100% this reminds me of I think I was I don't know who it was but it was like I

[00:21:43] was watching a billionaire interview and then the interviewer asked him this is a little bit unrelated to influencers but I'm trying to make a point he said the interviewer asked him what's the one key advice you would give if somebody wants to become a billionaire and he said well just make all of your partner's millionaires right so it kind of illustrates the point that hey don't you know don't try to hold back from your partners if you want this to work make sure that they're being compensated for their work as much as you can as much as your margins allow for it

[00:22:13] and one of the best things about influencer marketing as opposed to a lot of other channels is you can literally reverse engineer your cost of acquisition or like if you're doing affiliate right because you can just say hey I'm offering a 20% commission that's a 5x ROAS and you can reverse engineer your ROAS with influencer marketing or with affiliate marketing so that's very interesting is I find that if you're already spending on Facebook and you're getting a 2x 2.5x ROAS hardly why not

[00:22:43] just work with influencers give them a 20% commission and get a 5x ROAS on that ad spend and you only spend on the ads when the sale actually comes through so it's a win-win for both parties so I think affiliate marketing combined with the power of influencers is really great from a lot of these angles both from a partnership perspective and ensuring that other people are enriching themselves and making sure that your costs and your marketing efficiency is taken care of so yeah

[00:23:12] yeah you know might be a lot of people watching this that say hey I can just do Facebook ads right and the problem I mean we all love paid media it is what it is it can provide value it doesn't really get people talking about your product and I know not everybody here has products that are targeting Gen Z but Gen Z will go to TikTok and see if there's any user generated content is anybody mentioning your brand right the ads are not coming up so you have to remember that the ads they are a way of

[00:23:42] getting yourself in front of people but they are not really a fix to the problem they are a component of a modern digital marketing infrastructure but so is influencer marketing they just work in very different ways influencer content lives on the relationships live on and I think you probably want to ask Neil what would be the next thing you do and today I would say you have people with brand affinity talking about you you you gifted other people you have reached out to nano influencers maybe you have some affiliate relationships going

[00:24:12] on for me the next thing is to bring everyone together into your brand community a community of whether you call them brand ambassadors there's a lot of different terminology for it but I've seen since COVID and I talk about this a lot in the age of influence and I have a case study in digital threads I'm you can have monthly Zoom calls you can offer challenges that say

[00:24:42] this month we want to promote this product or whatever it is and really strategically start to generate a lot more value from all these people that are already talking about you right so the community approach I think is valuable among many friends part of it really is getting feedback because these are people that people

[00:25:13] one by one is very difficult and that's why with the community you can leverage everyone together and let the content creators the influencers let them get to know each other as well you become the center people will start organically naturally talking about you as you build a better community and if you

[00:25:43] can bring people together like Adobe does fly people in from around the world to Los Angeles or Miami I know not every brand can do that but whatever you can do whether it's sending out swag that is just for community members or whatever it would recommend and I think where every big brand these days seems to be doing just what I'm talking about 100% we're seeing

[00:26:13] that even with brands on Sorrel they're almost doing it in three layers and we kind so on you have a middle layer with ambassadors and at the top you have this community layer where it's a

[00:26:43] special unique group which is invite only and you're doing all these special things at the very extreme end maybe there are some brands that are renting Airbnbs having 30 creators spend 3 days there and they all make content together that's the extreme not everybody can do that at the very least you could have them in a common Instagram chat or a Facebook group and then post helpful resources enable collaborations and let them

[00:27:13] let your brand take the backseat and let them collaborate based on their shared values and mission and the brand just an excuse for them to be there so that's a really good model yeah and then you see an important KPI that emerges from this is the social media right like how many pieces were generated today last week last month and that becomes a very important metric to see is this working or not because ideally

[00:27:43] you may not want to go 100% UGC with your organic social media it's something I recommend to all Adobe Adobe to invest in relationships with these content creators and others and that I think is going to give you a much greater ROI over time and begin

[00:28:13] this you know inciting this word of mouth which really is what social media was all about so so yeah I gave it in that order intentionally because I do believe there is an order of things in order to be most efficient and get the value and if you try to build a community with big influencers when you are nobody and you haven't gone through those steps you're going to be really challenged so I talk about this in digital threads as well there's an order of things for search engine optimization there's an order of things for email marketing and influencer marketing as well that there is a logical order so

[00:28:42] wherever you are on that spectrum if you're already working with influencers how be interested to hear what questions we might have to maybe

[00:29:24] let's say now somebody is running a brand they're maybe a marketer or they're the CMO and they realize the importance of this they're like okay in 2025 I want to go ahead kick off my influencer channel where do you pull budget from because this isn't a very common channel like paid media is a very common channel email marketing very common channel like people just naturally tend to do these things influencer marketing is a decision you have to understand

[00:29:57] it it it takes 6 months 12 months of effort to really give you that value so how do you start pulling in budget for this what's the lowest risk way of doing this and how do you measure to prove ROI internally at your company let's get a little bit more tactical yeah so I want to ask you when you decided to invest in chat GPT where did you pull the budget from right when you first invested in the social media dashboard where did you pull the budget from so

[00:30:35] I yes there are tools like Sorrel that require monthly SaaS tools but it really comes down to the way I see it is are you outsourcing content creation to agencies do you have marketers that are spending half their day on Canva creating social media content and

[00:31:13] the editorial calendar for the month can we replace that with user generated content would absolutely be the smartest way to start and when I present on Friday I have a spreadsheet up right it's like you know the cost to create all this different content in-house the cost we're spending with agencies or outsourcing and then the cost if we work with content creators and influencers what does that look like so begin with cost and I think that's going to be an easier way to go in and you

[00:31:52] can't start with branded content maybe you don't have people talking about you yet but can you start with non branded content right like your customers that are following you are they creating content that's

[00:32:31] like maybe I'll publish something and they'll pick it up as well so that would be the easiest real low cost way of getting started yeah love it awesome yeah I think that makes a lot of sense and then like you said that there is an order of

[00:33:03] up is it's people up like you do know like you sales versus awareness like hey we're getting all these people to post about us but there's no sales or there are some sales but it's not really picking up like how do you go about measuring this do measure different things is there an order of operations in terms of measurement as well how do

[00:33:28] you think about measurement and just ROI of influencers? Yeah, it's really funny, Yasha. I remember the early days of social media when I had a specific meeting with a CEO locally here in Southern California. And he's like, I don't see the ROI of any of this Facebook stuff. And I said, well, what's the ROI of your magazine articles, your newspaper articles? Are they 100% trackable? Because they're not. I mean, obviously you can put in discount codes, what have you, but at least in a digital space, things are trackable. So I would start with, well,

[00:33:57] what is the ROI of your organic social, right? What is the value of an impression in social media? How much does it cost to create a piece of content? What's the ROI of creating that? So I think if we start there and we do live in an age where most brands are creating organic social media content, it becomes a logical sort of jumping off point. I think three to six months down the road, ideally, if you're able to reduce the amount of content that you need to create and with the user generated content, you actually see an increase in engagement in impressions and followers. I think you've already

[00:34:27] won part of the battle, which is to show, okay, when we invest in this from an organic perspective, it really does work. But I think from there, it might start anecdotally, but this is where if you have an affiliate relationship in place, you can start to say, okay, this is the amount of influencer generated leads, influencer generated website visits. Or in fact, it could really start with just the Google analytics of traffic from social media, right? That it generated more visits,

[00:34:54] more shopping carts, more conversions. But you got to remember that some of this is that people are going to see it in social media, and then they're going to type it in directly to a browser. So we also have to remember that there is this dark social aspect that maybe we didn't see a direct correlation with the social media analytics, but when there was more user generated content published, did we see more direct hits to our website, right? Or when we look at keyword, talking SEO,

[00:35:19] when we look at tools that measure the keyword volume for your brand, that increases well. So there are a few other things we can see that down the road will lead to increased sales. But can we correlate this activity with this activity that we've been doing with influencers really to get to the point where you start seeing major sales? I think that's the in-between point where is it a leap of faith? Is it investment in time? Is it based on some data that says, hey, we can correlate this to show that there is definite positive movement here? For me, it's a

[00:35:48] necessary investment, right? It's like brand building on its own. You need brand awareness to get people to know about your brand. You can't have every post be about, buy this, here's a sale promotion. So you need a balance. And really working with influencers is a type of brand building in the age of influence. Yeah, no, I love that. And I like that you shared that. It reminds me of a story back in my agency days, we were working with the skincare brand. And what we did, they were kind of just kicking off. I think they raised a small round and they were just like

[00:36:18] kicking off their marketing activity kind of doubling down on a lot of channels. So they started with us for influencer marketing. And then a couple of weeks later, they started with like a PPC agency for their Google ads. And then we set up their program in three months. We had some 70 or 74 creators just posting consistently about the brand. It was great, but there were no attributable sales. And then we had like a quarterly check-in meeting with them and they told us, hey, we got to cancel our contract. We can't really work with you because I love the UGC. It's not

[00:36:47] really affecting my bottom line. Or says if I look at my ROI on my Google ads with my PPC agency, that's crushing it. That's like been like never been better, just like loving it there. And I tried to explain to her that, hey, that is because of the increased level of awareness that the UGC is causing, which is leading to the cost per click on your Google ads going down. She didn't buy that. She was like, okay, no, this doesn't fit the mathematics really. And then they just went ahead

[00:37:14] and canceled with us. Turns out two months later, they reach out because all the influencers stopped posting about them. The crack on Google ads start going up and then they realize, ah, well, this guy was right. Like it's all the awareness from the influencers that's causing, like you said, people aren't necessarily on social media to buy, right? Like they're knowing about the product they're learning. And then a week later when the need arises, they're Googling the brand because they have that recall. And then maybe they're clicking on a Google ad or they're clicking on your organic search

[00:37:40] result and they're buying from you, right? So there's, it's hard to track, but then you have to look at some of these other signals like, hey, is my CAC on my other channels going down? That is my CPM on Facebook decreasing. Yeah. Yeah. No, I have my thoughts about PPC agencies and, you know, as someone who does, you know, I run ads as well, you know, ask your PPC agency. And I'm sure that agency was similar that they will advertise your brand name on Google, right? So let's say, you know, I have

[00:38:07] digital threads. So if I advertise digital threads, that would organically, I would have come out number one, but agencies, PPC agencies do this because it's going to be the cheapest, easiest thing to convert. If you didn't have the pay-per-click ad, you probably will still would have converted organically. In some ways it's insurance to make sure you convert, but it also converts very, very well, right? When you take out the branded keywords and you just look at non-branded keywords, I would have asked that agency, hey, how are the non-branded keywords?

[00:38:34] When people weren't talking about your brand, how did those convert? Because those are a lot harder to convert, right? So like Amazon ads, I do really well. If someone mentions Neil Schafer, you know, digital threads, age of influence, of course it's going to convert really well. But what about if someone mentions influencer marketing, digital marketing, and this is where working with influencers and the user generated content, it's going to help raise that brand awareness so that when people do see your ad, right? Through the pay-per-click or the

[00:39:00] Facebook ad because of retargeting, what have you, that it is going to impact positively the click-through rate and the conversion rate. So that's a great story, Ash. And it's really based on, you know, it's based on the scientific proof that it's omni-channel marketing. People are seeing you in a number of places where they are converting the final click, you know, do you attribute 100% of it there or do you share it where it should be shared to get, you know, a better view of the attribution of all your spend. So yeah, you should be doing pay-per-click. You should be doing Facebook ads.

[00:39:29] You should be doing influencer marketing. You should be doing all those, but they're all going to convert differently. And they all actually work together in many ways, like you mentioned. Correct. Yeah. I think like the traditional marketing funnel of awareness, then, you know, acquisition retention, I think that's a little bit, it's not true. Like you said, I think before the call we were speaking with, it's a flywheel now. It's no longer a funnel necessarily. And there's maybe like mini funnels in between, but there's so many things happening. People are learning about it

[00:39:57] on TikTok, then researching on Google and then buying on Amazon. Like there's no way you could track that, right? Unless you literally have spyware on somebody's device, right? Which is illegal. So let's not do that. But then the way to track that is look at the bottom line, look at the numbers, like look at site traffic. Is organic site traffic increasing? Are you getting more clicks on your ads and things like that? So there's these indirect ways to measure it. I think somebody here, Christiana in the chat gave a really good suggestion. It's a post-purchase survey.

[00:40:24] It's another good way to measure it, right? Because you could add in a post-purchase survey and say, Hey, where did you hear about us? And then they can say, Hey, Instagram influencer, TikTok, whatever. And then they can, that's the realest data that you can have, right? Because it's directly coming from the consumer. So yeah, I love that. And then maybe one minute. Hey, Yasha, I remember, I remember one other thing I want to throw out because it's something that often doesn't get talked about, but when we take this user generated content perspective

[00:40:51] on influencer marketing, you know, I've been to events where, you know, CMOs of consumer brands have gone on stage and say, yes, we work with influencers, but we source content from them only for our Facebook ads because they convert way better. So you got to remember that the content that influencers, content creators creates is better than your content in most cases, meaning not only is it better for your organic social, it's better for your paid ads. It's better for your web copy.

[00:41:18] It's better for like your shopping cart images that you can, when you source it properly with permission and with contracts that you should be using this content everywhere because it's going, you know, it's going to lift up all the boats in the ocean. So that's another, you know, ROI that I think a lot of marketers forget about. And another reason why the closer you get to a hundred percent UGC, this is what people want to see, right? When we go to Amazon to buy something, we immediately want to look at the photos that customers are posting, right? I mentioned people going to TikTok looking for,

[00:41:46] you know, how are people using the product? What does it look like on people? So that's really where the UGC just becomes. And once again, it's embedded in like deep psychological theories of social proof and other things that just, it has so much more value. So that's why this, this user-generated content perspective, I think is going to give you a lot of ROI rather than just thinking of, I want to collaborate with someone with 50,000 followers so that they can mention us once, you know, the ROI is, is fundamentally different. Yep. I love that. I love that. Awesome.

[00:42:15] I want to get to some, some audience questions. I have some audience questions here in my notes that people have sent while they registered. What's the best way to engage influencers to start a conversation about a partnership involving your products where they would be compensated? So while this reminds me of your, uh, I think it was like a flow chart in your age of influence book about like, say, like look at signals and then, you know, like, do outreach. Can you maybe talk about it? I think that'll be a very good answer to this question. Yeah. So, you know, it's all about

[00:42:45] like, no, and trust. Yeah. So, you know, if anyone here has experience with sales, it's the difference between sending a cold email and asking for a referral from a trusted relationship. So if you're going in cold, imagine, you know, if you're directly contacting this influencer, they're probably getting pitched by a lot of people. I shared this in my latest newsletter. I have a podcast, your digital marketing coach. I've already had close to 100 people reach out to me to be a guest

[00:43:13] on a podcast this year for a podcast that only interviews 25 people over the course of 12 months. Right. So it's very, very easy for companies. I mean, kudos to you, Yash. It's really easy for companies to invest in your platform and be able to, you know, send these outreach messages. But the problem is the other side is a lot of them are just going to get ignored. Right. So you need to build a relationship before you reach out to them. It's going to help you convert all the better. And how do you do that? Well, social media is a great way to start that relationship.

[00:43:40] Are you following this person? Have you liked their content? Have you commented on their content? And really you're trying to build top of mind in a genuine and authentic way so that when you do reach out, right, when you comment a few times, then maybe the fifth comment, maybe the 10th comment, you know, maybe after a few weeks you go, Hey, you know, we're, we're an upcoming brand and we'd love to work with you. You know, please see your DM for my message. That approach is going to be a lot more successful. And I believe a lot more authentic as way in sort of just, you know,

[00:44:09] the cold email out of the blue without them and you saying how you love them. Well, if you love them, why aren't you following them and engaging with their content? So this is where we get into the sending the social signals and really slowly developing that relationship over the course of, you know, at least a few weeks. I know we're all in a hurry. We don't want to wait a few months, which is fine, but I would begin there. And really, you know, we have the term slide into the DM, which we would often use for, you know, trying to attract someone of the opposite sex or, or in

[00:44:35] some cases, the same sex, but trying to find an intimate partner. But, you know, what we're talking about here is we're trying to develop a more intimate relationship and we can do it all through social media just by investing a little bit of time. And that's absolutely where I would start the relationship because then instead of trying to use chat GPT to personalize an outreach message, you already know about them, right? You will be able to personalize that just based on the content that you've seen, the comments that you've gone back and forth. And you go from there.

[00:45:00] That to me is, is the easiest no brainer, you know, approach, but 99% of marketers are lazy. They just want to take an automated approach. They want to contact 200 people at scale and they don't go through the effort to really value the relationships with those individual people. Yep. Love it. I think, yeah. Building the relationship, researching well, reaching out with a very particular message to those creators, maybe even warming them up a little bit through comments before you reach out. Like Neil said, is a great way to go about it,

[00:45:30] Jeff. So hopefully that, that answers your question. Please do drop in more questions, but I've got some here in my notes. And Jeff, I would also add, I would also add, you know, Hey, I don't know if you work with brands. We work with, you know, influencers in a variety of ways. Would you be open for a conversation to discuss opportunities, right? There's two approaches. There's an open-ended approach. And then there's a, Hey, we have a campaign going. We need to get 10 influencers. We're going to pay you $50 or whatever it is. I much prefer the open-ended to say, Hey, how do you, how do you work

[00:45:58] with brands? Right. Would love to have a short conversation to see if we might be able to work together. And that is how you take it from the DM to an actual offline zoom call or phone call. And you go from there. Yeah. I like to call it a soft call to action versus a hard call to action. I don't say, Hey, well, this is our budget. Like a lot of brands, we, cause we onboard people and we see that they say, Hey, we've got a $500 budget and we need three deals and two videos. And this is the campaign brief and blah, blah, blah. And that's the first time they're hearing about you. Like they don't

[00:46:27] even want to know all of that. Just, you know, maybe offer to send them a free product, see if they're open to working, see if they're even taking in new collaborations. Like, cause any good influencers like is already going to have dozens of brands in their lineup, like they're already promoting and then a few on the wait list. So like, you know, you got to build that, go that extra mile, build that relationship. So they're able to prioritize your brand over everybody else's. So yeah, makes complete sense. There is a, there's another interesting question in terms of like the

[00:46:55] collaboration types that we spoke of. The question is, which are the more effective collaboration types? Is it, should we do gifted or should we do paid collaboration? And this is interesting because we spoke about gifted. We spoke about affiliate. We literally talk or touch upon a lot of the paid nature of partnerships. Obviously the best way to start is gifted or seeding and that sort of affiliate relationships. How do you go about, do you eventually end up suggesting brands that they do paid relationships? How do you think about

[00:47:24] paid relationships and the ROI on that? And how do you measure the risk reward of that? Yeah. So I think that the cadence is going to be key here because if you are working with influencers that have brand affinity, and then you start to reach out to nano influencers and you gift them and you start having affiliate relationships, is that enough to generate this flywheel? Is that enough to generate the activity that shows the ROI of doing this? And are you ready to scale to the

[00:47:50] next level? Right? So ideally, if you have a community of these people, you could have paid collaborations inside that community where at least these people already know your brand. They already perform. And therefore, yes, if you were to give them a little bit more of an incentive, could they create more for you? So that is one type of, you know, paid challenges inside of communities that you can definitely do. But if you feel that you're not reaching your potential, I mean, obviously when you have a community, I would offer them referral bonuses. Like if you can refer

[00:48:19] other influencers to our community, you know, friends of yours or other content creators that you can, you know, invest in the community to build the community as well. But let's say there's just no one else you can think of to invite in the community. You've gone through all the gifting, you need to reach a new level and you've already seen the value and you have a little bit of budget. Okay. Now we can go into, are there influencers of bigger sizes or that have more perceived influence or we're just out of our budget when we reach out to them, we wanted to give them a free gift

[00:48:47] and they wanted $500 to post, right? That's where we begin to look at this traditional influencer marketing of basically pay to play. And I think this really comes down to, you know, if you've already built this community, which I advise you to do, would this person fit well in this community? Like, you know, ask your community members, another ROI is give me the names of three creators we should be reaching out to, or three creators who you follow, right? So instead of, and, you know, no offense to a tool like

[00:49:14] Sorrel, because you should be using the Sorrel tool to help identify these influencers as well, but you could combine that with human vetting from your community members and really be very selective as to who you reach out to, because now we do get into the ROI question of spending a few hundred dollars or a few thousand dollars. And this is really where the influencer identification is going to make or break your ROI. So you want to make sure that you're, you know, yes, you're using Sorrel. Yes, you're sort of using your community members, but you're also literally vetting their content.

[00:49:44] Is there a cultural fit with their content? Does their vibe match the vibe of your brand? Are they already talking a lot about your competitors, in which case they might have an exclusive contract with them? They might not be able to talk with you, right? So I think that there's a lot of consideration that needs to go into it, which is why that's almost like the final part of, you know, if we go in the order of things of paid relationships with people that don't have any brand affinity and that will not, you know, accept gifted product, you really want to be careful

[00:50:11] so that you make the right investment. And I'd say at a minimum, if this person were to create content for us, could we feature on our website? Could we feature in our ads? And if the answer is yes, right, then that's going to be the ROI. I mean, yes, you'll get additional ROI, but think of the ROI in terms of that content that's created. Will it blow away anything else that any of our other, you know, influencers are creating? And if the answer is yes, then it might very well be worth that additional investment. Yeah. Love that. I think that that's a, that's a really good perspective. And especially

[00:50:39] if you're using a platform like Serral, you don't even have to ask the creator. You can just go in the, the point is to not get rid of the manual work. The point is to enhance it with data and analytics. So in Serral, it'll actually show you all of these things that will show you like, here are the top five creators that this creator has collaborated with in the past. Here are the other 10 brands that they promote. So you can go see if they're promoting a competitor or some sort of a brand that does not match your values at all. And then you can reach out more intelligently saying,

[00:51:08] Hey, I saw that you already collaborate with these three creators. Why don't you add them to our community and we'll set them up with some bonuses similar to yours and things like that. So I think very interesting. I think Krishan here asks a good follow-up on this community topic. Best way to activate, communicate with the community should we create a Slack channel, Facebook group? I see a lot of brands doing Instagram chats, WhatsApp chats. What's your sort of, I think it like really comes down to preference, but have you seen anything work better than the others? There's also platforms like

[00:51:36] circle.so and school that you could use. What do you recommend? Yeah, that's a really good question. In fact, one of the brand ambassador communities that I'm in, they use a third party platform and it's not ideal, right? In fact, there's not going to be an ideal platform. So let me just throw that out there. But also I would actually ask your members like, Hey, we're looking to get together. We want to have a dedicated message board where we can post opportunities. We want to have like monthly zoom calls or whatever it is. We have different options.

[00:52:05] So Facebook group is definitely one option, right? If it's a younger audience, discord might be an option. I don't know. I'm not a fan of discord, but I know a lot of people are. And then Slack is obviously an option. Instagram DMs, as you mentioned, WhatsApp. And then we get into those third party platforms like mighty network circle school. And I think it's really going to come down to the members like what, you know, and ask them if they might be part of other communities, right? Like what, what would you, the idea is that you want to use something that people would want

[00:52:31] to use. So if you're like a huge fan of discord, but no one else in the community is, they're just not going to use it and you're not going to get any value. So you need to really, you know, go with the, you know, what that post-purchase survey. Hey, how'd you find out about us? Same thing. Have a natural conversation. Start with, you know, the five or 10 people that are most active that you think are the biggest fans start by asking them, having the conversation. We're going to start a community. What platform would you recommend in many ways? You know, Facebook, I know a lot of people

[00:52:58] have a love and hate relationship with it, but most people are on it and most people do log on on a daily basis. So, you know, the Facebook group still can work, but if everybody is on Slack, then, you know, that might be a good way as well. But I think the choice of platform is not as important as getting the feedback and making sure that people actually log in regularly to the, whatever platform you choose. Correct. A hundred percent. I think one, and Yash, maybe this is the next, maybe a Sorrel 2.0, you'll have to develop your own community platform. I think there is a need,

[00:53:26] right? It is in the works. Yes. It's on a roadmap for you this year. Yeah, it is actually. So yeah, but I think one of the best things about Krishan, maybe from my end, a little bit of advice is what I've seen work best is anything that's more like Neil said, anything that's natural to the influencers. So usually I see a lot of like, if it's a smaller community, maybe a dozen or so people, Instagram chat is really good. If it gets any bigger than chat gets really messy. So then platforms

[00:53:53] like Slack or WhatsApp or like a more dedicated chat app is really good, but then maybe kick off with an Instagram community, like a common chat group, and then scale from there into WhatsApp or Facebook. I would say avoid Slack or one of these like work platforms because they tend to feel like work when you want to give this sort of like homely, community-friendly feeling to the group. So make sure that they're on maybe like a little bit of Facebook or WhatsApp, which is more personal to people and you get to have their like contact info. You can always give them a call.

[00:54:23] It's more personal like that. So that's a, that's a little bit on me. I know we're almost at the top of there. There are a few other questions, but I'll keep them reserved for next time. We can conclude the show. I think there has been already a lot of value that has been shared by Neil here. So thank you Neil for, for hopping on and sharing all of this. If anyone's interested in learning more, check out the Age of Influence, highly recommend. I've like highlighted and bookmarked a lot of, a lot of the book. And I just reread the book last weekend in preparation for this,

[00:54:54] for the show. And then definitely go check out the new book, Digital Threads. At the very least, go check out Neil's website. He has a great podcast that I listened to. Very, very curated, very good resources from the basics to the advanced strategic stuff. He's got you covered. So anything digital marketing, go check Neil out. We'll send you his website and some resources over email, but Neil, any, any final words? No, I think, you know, it's time to stop asking questions and start to develop relationships, right? And invest in people, invest in relationships. And that's

[00:55:24] really the best advice that I can give. And if you only took one thing away from this hour long webinar, it's really that is don't be shy, right? Reach out to people and start developing those relationships that will generate value, you know, down the road for your brand. Yep. Love it. Awesome. Neil, you've been great. Thank you so much for joining. Thank you, Ash. And thank you all for joining and, you know, holding out to the end here. So hope you add some value and feel free to reach out. I'm sure Yash will follow up or I'll follow up as well. And if you have any further questions, let's continue the conversation.

[00:55:53] Love it. Alrighty. Okay, Neil. Thank you. A lot of thank yous in here in the chat. So it looks like this was great. Thank you everyone. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. I hope you enjoyed that interview. I had a lot of fun and it wasn't one of these webinars where we went over a PowerPoint deck. It was very much a, you know, talking over a cup of coffee about the state of influencer marketing today. On that note, you know, I mentioned the age of

[00:56:16] influence and digital threads. I'm putting together a free VIP community where I am going to give you direct access to me on a regular basis. But this is only for those that have ever reviewed one of my books on Amazon or any of the other platforms. So I know I've gotten a lot of, gotten hundreds of reviews over the years. If you have reviewed any one of my books, I want to hear from you.

[00:56:41] Please send me an email, neil at neilshafer.com. So I can make sure that I invite you when I create this community. There's no fee attached, right? I am really in this era of recommended media and the importance of third-party recommendations and user-generated content. This is my own thank you for providing those reviews. If you haven't reviewed and you recently read digital threads or the age of influence or maximizing LinkedIn for business growth, this is a great opportunity

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