Speaker 1: Hi everyone, welcome back to my channel. Thank you so much for clicking on this video. My name is Laura, if you don't know me already. And if you do know me already, thank you for coming back. You probably clicked on this video because you're a small business owner wanting to grow your business online and through social media. You're planning on starting a business and you want to learn more about influencer marketing and social media marketing. You are someone who works in marketing that wants to learn how to work with influencers and learn more about the landscape of that community. Or maybe you are an influencer wanting to see how business owners go about picking their influencers and starting their partnerships. If any of those scenarios are the case, you are in the right place. My name is Laura and I started a handbag brand when I was living in Milan, Italy when I was 21 years old. I drained my entire savings account and designed my own purses, which this is my chain bag. Boop. And then I have a few different colors, leather handbags. Then I have these cute little bum bags. And everything is completely handmade in Milan, Italy. I launched my business in February of 2020, which was literally right before the pandemic shut the whole world down. And my timing was impeccable. I had no choice other than to grow my business 100% online through social media marketing. I really didn't know what I was doing, but very, very quickly, I had to learn how to communicate with influencers, how to find the right influencers, where to put my money, how to execute and organize an influencer marketing campaign on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, et cetera. And I really, really did grow my brand very quickly. And I generated a lot of sales through my influencer partnerships, not all of them, but most of them. And I couldn't find any resources online about how to work with influencers. It really is the Wild West out there in the influencer universe. There's not any standards. I wanted to put this video together to tell you guys what I've learned. And hopefully this is helpful. If you're starting a business, if you already did start your business and you're looking to grow it, or if you're working in marketing, this video will hopefully provide a lot of information for you guys. And please, if you have any tips that I don't cover, I'm always looking to learn. So please leave them in the comments below so that I can look at them and learn from you guys. The first thing you'll need to do when you wanna work with influencers as a small business is you're going to have to actually find influencers to work with. And I think this can be a little overwhelming if you're not super familiar with social media, but I would go on your Instagram, go on your YouTube, go on your TikTok account. And if you are starting an e-commerce business, you should be active on all of those accounts just to know what's going on. I'm constantly on social media. Yes, I'm scrolling mindlessly here and there, but I really am looking at it as a business tool and I'm studying the influencers. I'm studying what other brands are doing. I follow all of my competitors and I'm just learning all the time. And if you're starting a business, I really recommend that you get on all the platforms that you wanna use and start to become an expert in your space. Follow the influencers in your niche that you would actually listen to and take recommendations from. Who resonates with you? And start from there. Save all those profiles. Screenshot their profiles. Send it to yourself. Ask your friends who could be your customers or who are your customers, what influencers they like. Who are they following? Who are they looking to for recommendations? And that'll open up another web of influencers. And then from there, you could ask your actual customers if you have a following on your business page and run a poll and say who are your favorite influencers and they'll answer you. Or you could Google influencers, top influencers in X niche. Top influencers in the fashion space. Top micro-influencers in the fashion space. And look for publications if you're in fashion like Who What Wear or Vogue or Marie Claire that are typing up those lists. And then go check out their accounts and see if that's someone that could resonate with your brand and spread your message. After you kind of have a list of influencers that you're excited about, you need to know who you're targeting or at least have an idea of who you're targeting. When I started my business, I thought my customer was a lot younger than she is. And I actually reach a very wide age range of customers from like 20 years old to 60, 65. And that's due to the minimalism of my design and the quality, et cetera. And I didn't know that when I started my brand, but I quickly learned that after different partnerships and seeing what was working. Have an idea of who your customer is. Build out a customer profile. What is she doing? What are her hobbies? What is her age? What could be her occupation, income level, et cetera. And then that way, when you're starting to reach out to influencers, you know what you're looking for. Because at the end of the day, this is business. And if you're gonna spend money on a highly targeted ad, which is an influencer partnership, working with an influencer is paying for a highly targeted ad. So you need to know who you're targeting in order to run the ad successfully and have confidence in where you're spending your marketing dollars. Whenever I reach out to an influencer, I ask them for their media kit and their analytics. If you are paying an influencer for an ad, you need to see their analytics. And that is, for me, absolutely not negotiable. I will not pay somebody until I see their analytics. I need to see the age range of their followers. I need to see the male to female ratio of their followers. I need to see the locations of their followers. And I also try to see a past partnership, a previous partnership, the analytics of that. You would never run an ad on Facebook or YouTube without selecting your demographic and choosing where your ad is going and who's gonna see your ad. And that's the exact same thing with influencer marketing. There's been plenty of influencers that I get in touch with that I'm so excited about. And then I see their analytics and half their followers are men or 70% of their followers live in Spain. I don't want all my orders to come in from Spain because it's really expensive for me to ship there at the moment. So, not every partnership is actually going to be right for you. But I would absolutely never pay an influencer without seeing their analytics, period. The other question that I get asked a lot is the difference between gifting and paid collaborations. I think there's a lot of gray area here when people aren't familiar with influencer marketing. I get a lot of questions of like, oh my gosh, did this influencer buy this bag from your website? And I'm like, no, this was a partnership. Or are you actually paying these people or are they just liking your product and posting with it? It just feels like unless you are in this space, it's really hard to understand what's going on. And so, I have worked with influencers on a gifting level and also through paid partnerships. And they are two very different things. I mean, micro-influencers, which are smaller influencers, which I actually really heavily prefer. When I gift to a much smaller micro-influencer that's just trying to get started, I will gift in exchange for a post. So like, they have to post or use it or post it in their story if I gift it to them because I am losing that cost of my product. If you're gifting to a much larger influencer, like if you reach out to an influencer with 100,000 followers and you don't have the budget, you can gift it to them, but there's no guarantee they're gonna post with your product. There's absolutely no guarantee when you do that. It's kind of like hoping that they'll see it and like it and use it organically because you've gifted it to them. So yes, your chances of being posted are much higher, but there's no guarantee or agreement when you just gift to a larger influencer. But again, like smaller micro-influencers, I will gift in exchange for because I am losing a few hundred dollars when I do that. I've never been burdened on that. I know other people have, I haven't. So, but with gifting to bigger influencers, I've done it a handful of times and I'm trying to think. One of the times it really, really worked out for me and I ended up having a very large, reputable influencer from The Bachelor use her Vogel bag a lot and tag it in everything on Instagram and YouTube and it was incredible. I messaged her saying I was starting this business, I'd love to give one to her, like not asking for anything in return. She responded and said, oh my gosh, I love your business, I would love to have a bag. So I sent her one, no expectations at all and within a few weeks, she was posting regularly with my product and it really, really helped me grow my business and I later sent her a card just saying thank you so much. But that one really worked out for me. There's been a lot of other times where I've gifted to large influencers and nothing's come out of it, but you know, you never know, maybe in a year they start using it, I don't know. And then paid collaborations can be expensive. So I have worked with, you know, again, micro influencers and large influencers. When you agree to a paid partnership with an influencer, you are sending them your product for free and you are paying them for the post. So it is, you know, expensive, but if you're working with the right people and they believe in what you're doing, it will grow your brand a lot faster than just running ads on Facebook. So, and not all of my partnerships have had a great ROI and that sucks. You know, I've had collaboration posts that are scheduled for the day and I am so excited and I have my packaging ready and I'm gonna like sell out of everything and then there's not really any sales and it's like shocking when that happens and it sucks and it's the biggest gut punch, but you know, that's just the way it is sometimes. But with paid collaborations, okay, so with micro influencers, I have not paid a ton. Like I definitely pay them and it's a few hundred dollars, usually, some girls like to charge a lot more than that and a lot of times I just say no. I had a core group of girls for a while that I was paying them a few hundred dollars, they were posting and it was a really mutually beneficial thing. It was a consistent schedule, I was paying them, they were posting, I was selling my product. I don't pay all of them anymore, but a lot of them are still posting with the bags and stuff so it's earned media at this point and I'm really happy about it, but that was a really, really great way to grow my business and it was small influencers. It was probably, everyone was probably under 20,000 followers at that point except for one girl that I was working with was closer to 50K or 60K at the time. This was like 2020, 2021 when I was like getting it off the ground. When I reach out to those micro influencers, I either message them on Instagram or I send them an email if they have it in their bio, which a lot of them normally do and I send them a quick little blurb about my brand, about me because I run everything, a link to my website or a link to the product I'm asking, you know, would you like to promote this and I always, always say, I really want this to make sense for you, I really want this to be authentic to you. No worries if not, like no worries if this isn't of interest to you because I'm so intentional about that because I want them to keep using it. I want them to like actually like it and then I don't know what's going on behind the scenes. Maybe they're recommending my product to all their friends, I don't know, but I really wanna work with girls that actually like my product and I've been really successful at doing that and I know it's really helped me grow my business but I'll send them a blurb, I'll send them a link, a little brand PDF, whatever and I always ask for your analytics and media kit if they have one. A media kit is really like a PDF, a one pager about them. It's like their resume, their portfolio and then it's the rates that they charge for Instagram stories, Instagram posts, YouTube feature, TikTok feature, TikTok dedicated, YouTube dedicated. So there's a lot of different things that they can charge for which is crazy. So yeah, you can see all their rates and then I'll kind of go from there with them and then I'll ship the bag and then we'll email about kind of like the points I want them to make. Hey, can you say this and this please? Can you show this feature? Can you do this? But I don't exercise a lot of control over the post because I want it to be authentic to that influencer and I actually really enjoy seeing how other girls style the bags and what they're doing with them and how they're wearing them. I mean, I just think that's one of the best parts of the whole thing and then it also gives me content to post that's different, just a totally different aesthetic than what I'm creating on my brand page. So that's always really nice but I don't exercise too much control but I know other brands really do. I don't know, I think it's kind of up to you and your branding. So that's micro influencers. Honestly, I have always, always, always had a really good experience with micro influencers. They are closer to their audience. They don't have this huge degree of separation. They're not posting as many products. You're not lost in the shuffle. Macro influencers and larger influencers, I would say over 100K probably, they charge a lot more and you'll learn that pretty quickly especially if they have an agent and I totally get it. I mean, I'm a model, I have an agent. I totally understand having an agent especially if you have that many followers. I can't imagine how many inquiries they're getting and all of those things but when there is an agent, the rates that you're given will be a lot higher normally and I don't know. I've said no to a lot of partnerships after reaching out because I do my own research and I see their analytics and it doesn't always seem like the best business decision for me. Like instead of spending 3,000 here, I could work with six micro influencers for $500 and spread my eggs out further than that. I mean, it's again the wild, wild west and you're literally just making these decisions but working with a macro influencer, for me, I've had a few be really successful and like totally worth the money and I've had a few literally be crickets on my end and I lost a lot of money. As long as you're doing your research and asking for analytics, if there's an agent, I would 100% say like I need to see past partnerships. Has she worked with anyone like my brand? Did it go well? Can I see the results of a previous Instagram story? Partnership, if that's what I'm paying for, can be really expensive and it's kind of a gamble. I'm still learning so much but it's definitely a really interesting landscape in these influencers. I mean, you've gotta give it to them. They have created a platform and a personal brand that is so valuable to all these other businesses. I mean, I could run a Facebook ad for months on end and still not see the same results that I saw with some of my influencer partnerships like in a day and I really mean that. I mean, I've had influencers sell out of my entire product in a day. It's like addicting. It's like this rush of oh my gosh, okay, let's do it again. Who's the next one? Let's do it again. It's a really fun thing to do like in the marketing world. I absolutely love it but it is risky but so is starting a business at all. So if you're doing that, I'm sure you're a little bit, you know, comfortable with taking a risk. I do negotiate rates. That's always something I'm asked to do negotiate. I do think a lot of influencers give a high rate upfront because they don't really know what the brand's budget is and then I always kind of negotiate a little bit or if the rate's fine, I just go with the rate. I mean, I don't wanna pay people less than what they're worth but when I feel like it's over quoted, I do kind of talk about that. The other thing that I do now is, you know, I have these benchmarks. I worked with this person who had X amount of followers and this is the ROI that I got. So am I gonna be able to profit after spending thousands of dollars on our partnership? So it's kind of like those things too now that I'm a little bit more established, I have those benchmarks to look at and can kind of negotiate a little better. I've been so excited about some influencers and then I see the analytics and I'm like, shoot, like I really wanted to work with you but I just don't think it's gonna make sense and once you do have a big partnership, you'll probably see a handful of influencers start messaging your account. So I always find people that way too. I mean, these influencers have totally changed the game. When it comes to marketing and advertising, they have created a community of people that are similar, that follow them for their opinion. So it's not only like paid advertising, it's word of mouth marketing too, which is so powerful and so if you're working with an influencer who has a really engaged audience and is really kind of like an authority in their space, it's gonna work out for you if you have a strong product. The other big tip I would give to any business owner that is working with influencers or a marketing person, you need to have strong landing pages and a strong social media account because when that influencer tags you, everyone's gonna click on it and go look at your stuff and you need to be prepared for that and have stories posted, you need to have educational things on your Instagram, you need to have good imagery, you need to have your products readily linked on your account so people can easily shop it. Have that already on your side so that when the ball's in your court, once they've tagged you, you can complete the sale. As a business owner, just know who you're going after and know what you're worth and know what your product is worth and how much you're willing to spend and always have your ROI in mind. Keep it as profitable as you can, even though this is kind of a gamble sometimes, just try to be smart with your money and don't force anything if it doesn't feel right. If they don't have the right audience or if you don't feel like they're excited about your product, don't force it because there's so many influencers out there now that it's not super hard to find good people that wanna support what you're doing and actually believe in what you're doing. Check the description box below for my handbag website and Instagram so you guys can kind of see that and please leave any questions below and I'll get back to you as soon as I can or if you have any tips that I didn't touch on, please leave them below because I'm always wanting to learn about this and broaden my scope. Thank you so much for watching. If you are starting a business, I sincerely wish you the best of luck and I will continue making business-oriented videos on my channel. If you learned anything from this video, which I really hope you did, please like and subscribe to my channel down below. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next video.