In this episode of The Bathroom Break, hosts Daniel Murray and Jay Schwedelson discuss the behind-the-scenes aspects of micro-influencer deals and share their personal experiences with such arrangements. They provide insights into different types of influencer deals, pricing structures, and best practices for both companies and influencers.

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Best Moments:

(01:07) Jay's recent colonoscopy experience

(02:17) Overview of micro-influencer deals

(03:24) Typical structure of influencer deals

(04:21) Different types of influencer deals (affiliate, one-off, long-term)

(06:39) The process of negotiating and executing influencer deals

(08:08) Value of micro-influencer deals for various businesses

(08:52) Importance of maintaining an influencer's authentic voice

(09:21) The role of briefs in influencer collaborations

(10:29) Benefits of long-term influencer partnerships

(11:34) Hosts' lunch plans and preferences

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Welcome to a new special series called the Bathroom break. That extra 10 minutes you either have to listen to marketing tips or use the bathroom. Or both. But I don't recommend both. But that's your choice.

This collab is going to be super fun.

We have Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials and me, Jay Schwetelson from the do this not that podcast and subjectline.com each episode in the series, we are going to go over quick tips about different marketing top topics. And if you want to be in the bathroom, fine, just don't tell us about it. Thanks for checking it out.

We're back with another episode of the Bathroom Break. I'm here with Jay Schwedelson of Do this not that Podcast, which is top three in the charts. Hits one probably every two weeks, which is amazing.

And I'm Daniel Murray, top 20 podcast. I'm. I'm way behind him on the charts, but I want to. I wanted to start out, you had interesting week. What was your top moment of the week this week?

I hate you so much. So I had a colonoscopy this week, which, by the way, psa. Everyone should get their colonoscopy when they reach the right age.

And all this is my second one. The bonus is you lose a few pounds, it's a party the night before, but it's not that bad. It really isn't.

And then immediately afterwards, you could eat whatever you want. So I got the best turkey sub, big bowl, ice cream. Loved it. So wait, wait, wait.

You have one advice and your wife gives you one advice for when you get.

I can't talk about that.

We won't talk about it.

We won't talk about it. All right, I'll say it. I'll say it.

I'll say it in a certain way that when you are prepping for your colonoscopy, when you think that you might have to go to the restroom, you do. Okay. There's no in between. Basically, like, go. Because if you think, oh, I'm in the in between, you're not. And that's when bad things will happen.

That's about as best as I could.

That's a pretty good advice. That is pretty good advice.

But I want to go into the topic for today is we're going to kind of talk about pulling back the curtain on micro influencer deals, how influencer deals actually happen. Do you want to kick off some examples that you've experienced with influencer deals?

Yeah. So let's first state that neither Daniel or I think that either one of us are are important.

We're the farthest thing from anybody that should be influenced by anything that we post.

But we do both get reached out to for these micro influencer deals and we thought it would be interesting to share how those are structured, if they're effective and if you may want to be doing them for your business, not with Daniel or I, but whatever industry you're in, whatever sector you're in, consumer business, whatever.

And micro influencer deals actually work better than if you get a massive influencer because you get massive influencer, you got to pay a boatload of money. But micro influencers, you don't have to pay a lot of money and you can get some good bang for your buck.

So for me, for example, I'll get reached out to and they'll say, okay, we want you to help promote our new piece of software, our brand, whatever it is. And the first thing is you want to make sure. I want to make sure that I buy into the product, the service or whatever.

But assuming that I like the company and all the way the deals normally get structured is whatever platform that influencer has their biggest following. For me, it happens to be LinkedIn.

There's a package that's put together, okay, you're going to do three social posts over, you know, a 90 day period and we're really trying to push this particular product or offer. And then you go back and forth and collaborate on the copy in the post.

You go back and forth about if you're going to use a meme to try to drive the attention, whatever it may be, and then you're paid in kind of like a quarterly package and you review the performance of those posts.

And I would say in general, when you work with an influencer that has maybe anywhere from 50,000 to 200,000 followers on a platform, you're probably in terms of cost, in my what I found, you're looking at anywhere from like 5,000 to about $25,000 per quarter for that type of engagement. I don't know if that's in the ballpark of what you see or what you do. What do you think?

I'll say there's a. Let me just pull back. There's a few types of influencer deals out there that you can go do. One, there's affiliate influencer deals.

So a company will come to you and say if you post X, Y and Z, you get a percentage of the deal. That one's a little harder because it's results based. It's better for the on the company side.

But it's harder to take as an influencer because you got to keep posting a lot of things and you don't know the back end. And we all know how attribution works sometimes what if you say something something can happen. So one is affiliate, two is just one off post.

So what a lot of companies will do is they will have. They'll reach out to a group of influencers and they say we're promote, we're doing a launch of this product.

So that's like a one off post. I really don't.

I get why I think it's good for if you for a company to do it for a launch of something But I don't like one off deals for influencer stuff because it's hard to to you are building trust with someone else's audience. So you need multiple touch points. Just how you do on Facebook, just how you do on everything get on top of mind.

So the one off deals a lot of companies will come a lot of times and say I want to buy one newsletter ad or one one post. It's really hard to see results off of one one thing that you do. So they'll come up in one.

Then there's larger influencer deals that happen like Jay's kind of learning to quarterly half year yearly deals that you can you go into and the year they will like they'll say we want to do these multiple touch points or if the year when do LinkedIn newsletter, podcast and they'll pay you a certain amount for those those deals. But then I'll go into more how the process goes. So people know what happens is someone reach out to you.

They'll say hey I want to do let's do the one off post because it's easier. I'll do a one off post for you. They'll ask you your rate so you will give them a rate always as if you were an influencer.

Always give a higher number so you can negotiate done. I'm. I'm pro creator here because it's so there's no transparency of the industry of how much people are getting paid for this.

So always give a higher number.

I always recommend people do that but usually they'll give you that then what happens is you'll sign a deal with them, you'll sign a paper, then they'll give you a brief and the brief is what you follow. And sometimes in the package the deal says, we expect 100 engagements on the post. So you are supposed to hit that and you might not get paid.

So sometimes there's an engagement clause, there's stuff like that.

And then once you post, then you can, once you, once you send your invite, there's sometimes back and forth of creative editing and that could take a long time. And then they tell you the day to post, you post, then you share the results with them. Good, bad. And then you can get multiple deals.

Sometimes it's a multi month, one post a month, it could be multi, but that's really behind the scenes how it.

Happens, you know, and just throw in there if you're out there like, well, my company's not right for an influencer deal. We're some boring B2B thing, or our consumer brand's too small. And really I, this has nothing to do with me getting a deal. I could care less.

But there really is a lot of value there because you're able to get this quasi endorsement from somebody who has a big following on the consumer side or on the B2B side.

And if you have marketing budget where you're running, you know, paid ads on whatever platform, you've never tested a micro influencer, I think you're missing out on one of the most cost effective channels that exist. So you have to at least test it.

And really, you probably already are following the micro influencers in your space that you'd love to work with and they would probably love to work with you. But the one thing I would tell you is don't try to change what that influencer does or how they speak.

Don't be like, okay, we'd love to work with you. And we need it to sound like this. If you're not comfortable with the way that they speak, don't work with that influencer.

Because if they don't write it in the way that they speak and the way they post stuff, if it's mean or if it's whatever, it won't work with their audience because that's why their audience follows them. And I've turned down a lot of opportunities where like, we need you to say exactly this. I'm like, well, I don't say stuff like that. It won't work.

I'm really sorry. So don't try to change that person's go to market Yeah, I think the.

Brief is the guardrail. So you as a company you should set a good brief to the creator and say, hey, I want to say this and not this, I want to say this.

The point of a brief is not to tell the creator what to say. It's to give them guardrails that hey, stick in this lane.

So what I, the problem is I see with a lot of companies is that they don't send out a good brief and then they get mad at the brief the creator posts.

But I think you need to set guardrails and have a good brief up front and to go on your side that I think the best way to do micro why micro influencers is really good test is you get, you get access to all these little audience that have already built in trust where like Facebook does not really have built in trust of their users. Like it's not a person. You have built in trust from Jay, you have built in trust from other influences out there.

So you have built in trust on them who they really trusted this person that they're, they're going to give them good advice to do X, Y and Z. So there's really built in trust.

But I do recommend if you're listening to this and you could do a first micro test with that person, do a small deal.

But if you want to have a influencer or creator or whatever you want to call them, stick with you for a long time, commit with them for a long period of time because they will do things that are organically for you. They will talk about you in rooms, they will talk about you in communities. If you do one off post, they're less likely to do it.

So I, if you hear business, I really believe that there will be a wave where there will be like how Nike had Jordan. I'm not saying that but like how they. Nike has all these athletes.

Companies will have year long b2b influencers or companies will have year long influencers as their face of their company. And you see this really in B2C a lot. But B2B, that will happen as well.

Totally. I think it's really, really good advice. All right, before we wrap up here, Daniel, what is for lunch today?

Oh, that is a great question. I'm actually. Is this weird? But I, I'm actually gonna have eggs and toast for lunch. I'm like breakfast at any time person. Like I love breakfast food.

Weird, weird Pancakes or waffles? Ooh, pancakes. But I do love like Belgium liege waffles.

Oh, nice.

Yeah, those are those, those are great. Those are great. What are you having for lunch? You're probably gonna have, like, a salad. I know you.

Oh, well, the reason I have a salad every day for lunch is that way for dinner, I can go after it. So I always have the worst lunches possible. They taste like garbage. Or salads, like with salmon or something.

Wait, isn't it. Isn't it like turkey. Turkey meat?

No, Turkey chili. Yeah, Turkey chili. Thursdays is a big thing in my home.

Yeah, Turkey chili. Yeah.

There it is. Thank you for remembering that. Appreciate that. All right, we've covered a lot. We will see you guys. The next one.

Go follow Marking Millennials because they're awesome. Later, Daniel. Come on, man. I gotta get back to work. Get out of there. All right, while he's still in there. This is Jay.

Check out my podcast, do this, not that, for marketers. Each week we share really quick tips on stuff that can improve your marketing and hope you give it a try. Oh, here's Daniel. He's finally out.

Back from my bathroom break. This is Daniel. Go follow the Mark and Millennials podcast, but also tune into this series. It's once a week, the Bathroom Break.

We talk about marketing tips that we just spew out. And it could be anything from email subject line to any marketing tips in the world. We'll talk about it.

Just give us a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out.

Later.