Learn what you need to know about working with celebrities when it comes to your brand.
Advertising executives refer to celebrities as trust agents. When a celebrity endorses your business, it breaks down the barrier of the cold, unknown brand and gives your customers the sense of a friend telling them it’s okay.
If you know, like, and trust a celebrity, you’ll buy the brand.
Speaking of brands and celebrities, it’s almost time for Traffic & Conversion Summit LIVE, the largest digital marketing event in North America. This year’s event is being held in San Diego, CA on September 13th-15th.
Thousands of folks come out every year to hear about the latest and greatest developments in marketing in the online space. The speakers are always phenomenal, the takeaways beyond valuable, and every year there’s a really cool celebrity appearance as well.
On today’s episode, Roland Frasier and Ryan Deiss have a BIG announcement about T&C.
The one and only dynamic duo of Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart are coming to Traffic & Conversion Summit 2021!
Find out how Roland and Ryan made this magic happen—and what you need to know about working with celebrities when it comes to your brand. All on today’s episode!
Making the Case for Brands Working with Celebrities
Years ago, at Traffic & Conversion 3, Roland was a new partner in the business and adamant about getting a celebrity for the event. Ryan was just as adamantly against it. “This is a stupid waste of money” were his exact words back in the day.
They went with Roland’s gut, brought William Shatner to the event, and that changed everything. Shatner isn’t just an actor; he’s a brilliant marketer and a spokesperson for so many great brands. Just like the wildly famous mismatched pair, Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg. They’re very successful business people with a lot of expert advice to share.
So why should brands be thinking about working with celebrities? It’s that whole concept of celebrities as trust agents. Why pay cool celebrities to come to T&C? Because it draws people in who might initially be skeptical. If T&C is good enough for Martha and Snoop, it’s good enough for me. It takes the risk out of the equation.
It’s also a signal. If T&C can get big celebrity names at their event, clearly they’re legit. The brand elevation you get from that signal is off the charts. From a marketing perspective, it lowers your acquisition costs. The celebrity deals always pay for themselves.
Not to mention the amazing energy that comes when you’re in the same room with a bunch of people and some cool celebrities. You can’t put a price tag on that.
How To Do a Celebrity Deal
So how do you get celebrities to work with you? Obviously, you don’t just go out and hit them up on Twitter. There’s a process.
Do you (or anyone you know) already have a relationship with this celebrity? If you don’t know them directly, you go to their agent. If it’s a big celebrity, the agent won’t return your call. You need a connection to their agent (a broker).
You can Google “celebrity broker Los Angeles” or go to IMDb and register for a Pro account to find the agent’s information. If you don’t get replies, reach out to event coordinators at places they’ve spoken at before.
A lot of celebrities don’t have a set fee. You make a firm offer. The amount of money they command depends on their popularity at the time. Then you negotiate for weeks or months. If you’re talking about a single event appearance, it won’t cost you as much as endorsing a product.
How much money are we looking at? The celebrities T&C wants are asking between $100k and $800k for an appearance. Not less than $1m for the Rock, $2m for J-Lo. Celebrities on reality TV are maybe $50k to $100k. Well-known authors might be $75k.
How to Offset the Risk with Other Monetization Opportunities
There are a lot of ways to make sure these celebrity partnerships pay for themselves.
Find someone with a book coming out, and you’ll get sweeter deals by doing book buys. You can also give them a piece of the event revenue (a part of the door) instead of paying the whole fee upfront. If the celebrity is selling something, you can offer them a custom advertising package for their product (like The Rock’s tequila) in addition to their fee.
A lot of B-level celebs, for an endorsement of your brand, will require a $50k test budget fee to see if the thing you’re doing actually works. Then you’ll pay them monthly or quarterly or royalties.
If you’re bringing a celebrity to an appearance, you can sell a VIP ticket that allows people to get closer to them. Front row seating. A speaker dinner. A meet and greet. Photo ops with the celeb + an opportunity to hang out in a group can be sold for $15k.
Roland and Ryan will also interview the celebrities LIVE at the event for the Business Lunch podcast. That drives a lot more listeners to the show. And they do their research and ask amazing questions. They’re not overly starstruck. They play it cool.
Opportunities You Don’t Want to Miss
Speaking of cool, there are some great opportunities coming up for you. Like the EPIC challenge that teaches you how to acquire businesses for little to no money out of pocket. Next challenge starts September 23. Register now!
There’s also another cohort of the Scalable OS Accelerator opening up, for anyone who wants to scale their business without losing their mind. Learn how to grow and implement great operating systems into your business and get more free time back. Jump on the waitlist today!
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