AS 62: How to Use Influencers to grow your brand – In Depth Analysis

Today’s podcast, episode 62: How I used Influencers to grow my brand. I started an experiment with influencers back in epsidode 57. AmzSecrets.com/57. . I asked 10 influencers to grow my brand. 5 influencers, accepted. 3 have so far posted their results.

You know, when I was in Highschool, I never considered myself to be one of the popular kids. I played the sports, had friends, but wasn’t like THAT KID who was the jock.  I thought I was done with that. But now a days, the popular kids have morphed into a new form… their called influencers.

Influencers are sneakily changing the game of marketing. Some of these guys wield armies of followers. Convince the leader to join your war, and his army will follow him.

And so that’s been my experiment. Now before I get into the experiment results themselves, let me tell you theres easy ways to recruit influencers, and really hard ways.

So initially I went on Youtube. I love the concept of someone creating a youtube video for my products, and started my search. And this is the harder way…

I was browsing through by category searching for influencers with at least 100,000 subscribers. Most influencers will have in their description, or profile, a business inquiry email. I got about 8  different influencer emails with my requirements…and then emailed them this curated response. It was targeted, yet able to send out to multiple youtubers, without taking a big chunk of my time:

Hey John Doe,

We like your videos, and we think the style would fit well with our brand.

I am the founder of This-BRAND startup, and we are interested in potentially being a sponsor for you with free gear but also money too.

 Let me know if you’re interested.

David

Founder of This-Brand Startup.

Then I closed my outlook, forgot about it, and went back to work…

A day later, and responses started coming in.

It was so painful to get responses. It turns out, most of these guys, have “Agents…or… Head of Influencer Divisions…or Managers”, that instead of directly reaching a particular Youtuber, they have some guy in a corporate office managing them.

Theres a major play going on right now. Influencers are being scooped up by these agent advertising companies and leveraged against companies. They’re being herded like cattle into pens, and sold to the highest bidder.

I got responses back that we’re like this:

Hi David,

I hope you are well + enjoying your week!

Thank you for reaching out to John Doe. He seems like a excellent fit for your “THISBRANDSTARTUP” and I would love to explore this opportunity further.

Are you free tomorrow at 11am EST to discuss?

Thanks

In my head I’m thinking…why are you talking in third person. Oh…your not the youtuber I contacted, your some other guy.

And this happened a lot. The problem with dealing with a “manager” versus the actual Youtuber is it creates a middleman that needs to make money.

No longer can you give $100 to the influencer and your product, for free, with free shipping. The manager wants his cut too. Not only that, they’re chasing after bigger deals.

So is contacting youtubers individually worth your time? Most likely not.

So my next step was to skip that route and apply to FameBit, Tomoson. Both of these services offered influencers with little to no overhead charge. They automated the process of finding influencers who knew what to do, didn’t ask to setup phone calls to discuss influencer business…that’s just time consuming. and kept the influencer in check with profiles depicting their reputation.

Next,