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This Meeting Could've Been a Podcast drops you smack dab in the middle of the closed-door sessions where Jess Cook (Head of Marketing) and Joshua Perk (CEO) are working to turn their company, Vector, into B2B marketing’s next big thing.
In each episode, they tackle a real, strategic decision together—"Should we hire an agency?", "Should we push free trials or demos?", "What are we going to do with all the swag Josh bought?!"—dishing out pros, cons, knowns, unknowns, wins, challenges, and stories along the way.
Come for the big picture strategy and day-to-day tactics, stay for the jokes that make HR nervous.
[00:00:00] Josh: Hey Jess. You know that CMO that we're friends with at that one company?
[00:00:02] Jess: Yeah. The one's giant budget.
[00:00:04] Josh: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, we were at dinner the other night. We had a couple too many drinks. She showed me her entire influencer strategy, and my question for you is like, why aren't we doing that?
[00:00:19] Jess: Hey Josh, remember when you did that classic CEO thing where you came to me with an idea that you got from another CEO at a totally different company, at a totally different stage with a totally different budget? And you wanted me to do that same idea?
[00:00:31] Josh: Well, first of all, I think you need to drop your attitude.
[00:00:34] Uh, yes, I do remember that. Um, and I don't, I don't know why you said it that way. 'cause there's nothing wrong with exactly what I did. Do you remember that? Okay? Yeah. You have an issue with that?
[00:00:45] Jess: No. None.
[00:00:48] Josh: Yeah. This was so funny because this happened I think like around or after the time we had recorded the first, uh, uh, season of the podcast where we had a whole episode [00:01:00] dedicated to CEOs going out on trips, meeting other CEOs, then bringing back horrible ideas.
[00:01:05] Yes. Do as I say, not as I do. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I was, I was, I think in San Francisco where had some trip somewhere and um, at the end of like a long event day, like we were trying to figure out what we're gonna do for dinner and I got a grouped up with this other CEO that, to your point, is at a different stage of their business and has a totally different budget.
[00:01:28] Um, and. We like literally had several drinks. Yeah. And by the end of it, she like whips out her phone and she's like, I have to show you the hack. And I was like, yeah, show me the hack. Yeah. She's like influencers. And she goes through this like whole thing of just like all of our pipeline is coming from influencers right now and you just need to follow this 27 step process.
[00:01:52] And I was like, it was not 27 steps for me. It's one step for me. I'm gonna tell Jess she's gonna do the other 27 steps.
[00:01:58] Jess: Uhhuh.
[00:01:58] Josh: Yeah, no problem. Yeah. Yeah. [00:02:00]
[00:02:00] Jess: Yeah, that was, that was fun. Um, here's the thing. The, I wanted to do influencers too. Yeah. You weren't wrong. Of course. Not. Of course. Not a never. Um. But yeah, I think it was more of like, let's figure out how to do this the right way for us.
[00:02:16] Yeah. So I remember saying, let me come back to you with a plan. Yeah. That will work for us. Yeah. Go back to episode one where we talked about where I pitched, uh, the, the marketing budget for the first time. This was part of that. So the idea was in, uh, like a content creation bucket where we were gonna have some influencers actually come up with some thought leadership type content for us.
[00:02:36] And we had like $12,000 earmarked for that. Yeah. Um, very different than your CEO Friends program. Yeah, but that's okay because you have to start somewhere. And this was a test for us. We'd never done it before. I'd never done my, I, I've. Been paid to do post before. I've never been on the other side where I have to like actually create the program.
[00:02:56] Josh: Yeah, that's interesting. In a second, I'm curious to hear how [00:03:00] yourself being used as an influencer helped you, uh, build our own. Yeah, but I will say to your point, I think the one thing that I fail is, I think most CEOs fail when they bring these ideas back to their marketing leaders is context, right?
[00:03:13] Like, are we at the same stage? Do we have the same investment? Do we have the same amount of teams? Yeah. 'cause. We didn't, I think it was just you and Alex at the time. Uhhuh. Yeah. Which, um, let me count really? One, two, that's not a big marketing team. No, it's
[00:03:27] Jess: very small. Carry the one, carry the one people.
[00:03:32] Okay.
[00:03:32] Josh: If I round up, I guess it's two. Uh, so, okay, so obviously I brought this great idea. Mm-hmm. You more or less weren't already thinking about, but because it came out of my mouth Right. Was so much better of an idea at that point, right? Yes. And you're like, okay, you,
[00:03:48] Jess: you mansplained it to me, mansplain it, and
[00:03:49] Josh: you're like, oh, it makes so much more sense now.
[00:03:51] Yeah.
[00:03:51] Jess: You're our boss. We should do this
[00:03:55] Josh: all. So you're like, okay, we should do this. Yeah. Like walk me through like how you actually went about doing that.
[00:03:59] Jess: Yeah. [00:04:00] So you know, realistically we wanted to build a pilot program. Yeah. That is. My recommendation for anyone who's ever thought about like, uh, we should, maybe we should try some influencers, is like start small, start with a pilot.
[00:04:12] I was thinking we could probably have about eight influencers. Yep. With the budget we had. Um, and we ended up with seven. Yeah. So kind of the mix was three customers. Yeah. It felt really important to have customers in the mix who have used vector. For the actual like use cases, we want them to, to actually be able to talk about the results.
[00:04:33] Josh: Yeah.
[00:04:34] Jess: And then we had four thought leaders, uh, well-known influencers, demand gen marketers on LinkedIn who were not necessarily, uh, customers, but they have the ear of our ICP and knowing if we gave them access to our tool, it would pretty quickly click for them.
[00:04:51] Josh: Yeah.
[00:04:51] Jess: How interesting and different and important this.
[00:04:54] This, our product was,
[00:04:56] Josh: it's interesting that like, so when I was at this like [00:05:00] super prestigious CEO dinner, when I thought about influencer marketing, I thought you just like. Find somebody with like a million followers. Oh. And just like tell 'em, talk about your, your thing. It sounds like you're like talking about like authenticity and like, things like that we actually care about.
[00:05:14] So you went after a customer authenticity. That sounds way less fun than that. CEO made it out to be. Uh, so you went after a couple things. You went after existing customers. Yep. But then you, you prioritize like. Influencers that had like the ear of our audience. Yeah. It wasn't necessarily people that had millions and millions of followers, but people that had authentically built reputations where we wanted to go.
[00:05:37] Yes. Create awareness
[00:05:38] Jess: 100%. I think I took a look back at our set of influencers. We had like an average following of 13,000 people. Yeah. Um, really nice little sweet spot for building trust.
[00:05:48] Josh: Yeah.
[00:05:49] Jess: And um. These were all folks who, you know, Kaylee Edmondson and Brittany Blanken. Yeah. Who have built careers, doing demand gen, talking about best practices and for them to [00:06:00] talk about us was like a really big deal.
[00:06:02] Yeah. There's a lot of trust built up there. So that was what I was really looking for, was like people who had built that trust Yeah. Who really knew what they were talking about. Deep practitioners. Yep. Uh, so that. What they say carries a lot of weight.
[00:06:16] Josh: What was the did? Did you know, because you already have a little bit of a following and you've been building a community here, did you know exactly who you were going to pick or what was the process for finding these right people?
[00:06:26] Jess: I had a list of folks that I wanted to like try to work with.
[00:06:30] Josh: Yeah.
[00:06:31] Jess: They were all people I had followed for a while. Yeah. So I knew the quality of their content and the types of topics that they were posting about and that it aligned with what we wanted to talk about as well. Yeah. So that was a big thing.
[00:06:44] The other thing I really wanted to look for was, uh, people who I knew were storytellers who could like really bring people in. Yeah. Through the way that they craft their posts. They're not just kind of like. Gonna take my brief that I give them and just spew it back.
[00:06:56] Josh: Yeah.
[00:06:57] Jess: They, the reason they have this trust built [00:07:00] up is because they've lived it, they've done it.
[00:07:01] They've seen all these different scenarios. Yeah. Yeah. And they can play that back to people in a way that. Is able to teach them something.
[00:07:08] Josh: Yeah. And I think you set them up for this because what, what I loved is like you picked customers, which meant like we actually had to have the product deliver value.
[00:07:16] Right. I think there was, at one point, one of our amazing influencers that's a customer is Sydney Waterfall. And she, I remember at one point I think we actually had an issue with the product, right? Yeah. And we had a brief in front of her and we needed to get that part of our product fixed. Right. So there was auth authenticity to it.
[00:07:30] Yeah. And even the people that weren't customers, you gave them access to our product. Yes.
[00:07:33] Jess: Yeah. So that was a really big thing. Um. This feels like a big takeaway. Again, if you're thinking about like starting one of these programs, is you need to do it in a way that allows. These folks to have access to your tool.
[00:07:46] Josh: Yeah.
[00:07:46] Jess: So you can't just expect an influencer to like wanna talk about what you're doing if they've never experienced it for themselves, if they've never been able to try it. Get in even like get in there and like poke around a little bit. Yeah, you have to, they have to feel good [00:08:00] about what they're talking about.
[00:08:01] Um, they have to believe in it. Yeah. And so in order to do that, I gave all of the influencers full access to the product. I actually had Amy, who's on our customer solutions team, do a proper onboarding Oh
[00:08:15] Josh: wow. With
[00:08:15] Jess: every single one of them. That's cool. So that we, they could really understand what they could do in there.
[00:08:20] Josh: Yeah.
[00:08:20] Jess: And it would help inform the content they put out.
[00:08:22] Josh: What was for someone that's. Like me that's never thought about putting together influencer program, maybe a younger marketer that hasn't had the opportunity to do this. Like, how do you, okay. You pick the people, uh, you have this brief of what you want them to write about or like directionally do, do when you're picking out influencers, do, do you have a budget in mind?
[00:08:40] Mm-hmm. Do you ask them what they cost? Like how do you actually execute getting influencers to work with you?
[00:08:45] Jess: Yeah. For, so for this pilot, I knew that the budget, I calculated the budget that we had. Yeah. Based on, yeah. Uh, $500 a post.
[00:08:54] Josh: Mm-hmm.
[00:08:56] Jess: One post per month for three months. I wanted to do a quarter long pilot Yep.
[00:08:59] And see [00:09:00] how it went. Now admittedly, that is a low rate. Yeah. Um, for the, the size of audience. Okay. Um, typically it's in the seven $52,000 a post range.
[00:09:13] Josh: Okay.
[00:09:13] Jess: That's pretty, that's pretty acceptable.
[00:09:16] Josh: Yeah.
[00:09:16] Jess: So I was going into it knowing like. They may say no. Yeah, I did have some people say no. Yeah. And that's totally fine.
[00:09:22] I was, I was ready for that. Um, what it meant to me was I wanted to build a longer term relationship. Yeah. And I was very upfront about, like, I know that this is not probably your typical asking price. Yeah. We would love to bring you aboard and as this grows, so will Yeah. Kind of the rate.
[00:09:42] Josh: Yeah.
[00:09:42] Jess: Um, and so I think what that did was it brought people on who really believed in us and were fans.
[00:09:48] Yeah. Yeah. I, that felt really important too, to like, not just bring somebody on because. They had a bunch of followers and we're cool.
[00:09:55] Josh: Yeah.
[00:09:55] Jess: But like, we want friendlies, we want people who really believe in us and, and are rooting for [00:10:00] us. Yeah.
[00:10:00] Josh: I think that was huge. And I think it also proved to me that like, you don't have to go for the biggest voice in the industry.
[00:10:06] Right. There was a couple people we work with that I think maybe hadn't done paid influencer stuff before. Correct. Right. And this was a co opportunity for them to get paid for like the community they had been building. Yeah. Um, and yeah, that was, that was really, really cool, um, for me to see.
[00:10:20] Jess: Yeah. Josh?
[00:10:21] Yes. Do you know what time it is? What time
[00:10:23] Josh: does it, Jess?
[00:10:26] Jess: It's a time. I don't think it could get any more awkward than this. No, this is, but it's gonna This.
[00:10:29] Josh: Yeah, it's gonna, because
[00:10:30] Jess: we're gonna look into the camera. Deep, deep, like right in the center. We're gonna deliver what all the people need to hear
[00:10:37] Josh: the words
[00:10:38] Jess: in words
[00:10:39] Josh: of affirmation
[00:10:40] Jess: from our mouths
[00:10:41] Josh: to your ears.
[00:10:43] Jess: Let's do it. Let's go
[00:10:44] Josh: to your marketer. Your webinars generate leads, standing ovations, and dollar. Dollar bills.
[00:10:50] Jess: Just print money with those webinars. Print money, y'all.
[00:10:57] Josh: That one made more sense if you watch the video version of [00:11:00] this than, yeah, we did
[00:11:00] Jess: the little like pushing throw money. The money off of my hand. Yeah. Can you hear it? Yeah.
[00:11:04] Josh: Wow. Wow,
[00:11:05] Jess: wow. Asmr. Yeah. Dear marketer, you build urgency into your copy so perfectly that FOMO develops. Fomo.
[00:11:13] Josh: Aw. Poor fomo.
[00:11:14] Jess: I know. I can like see him like,
[00:11:16] Josh: so sad.
[00:11:17] Yeah. Fear of missing out of, missing out. I, no, it'll be okay.
[00:11:20] Jess: Yeah. Poor guy.
[00:11:21] Josh: Okay, so, so you picked out all these people, you've kind of set what your budget is going to be. Some people are okay with that, some people passed. Um, now you've got these handful of folks that you're really excited about running this pilot with.
[00:11:33] What do you ask them to do? What does a brief look like?
[00:11:35] Jess: Yeah, so I give them, I give them like three things. Okay. I give them, um, a timeline. Mm-hmm. So one post a month, you know, maybe two weeks out from when I actually wanted them to post, I would send them the brief. And I would tell them a range of dates that would be like, here's kind of when it would be great if you could post kind of thing.
[00:11:56] Josh: Yeah.
[00:11:56] Jess: It, it offers flexibility. I've been on, uh, programs [00:12:00] before where I've been the influencer.
[00:12:02] Josh: Yeah. And
[00:12:02] Jess: you have to hit a specific date. Yeah. And sometimes it's hard. Yeah. Because you may yourself have something launching that day and you really wanna post about it. Yeah. Um, and so you kind of have to like finagle that a little bit.
[00:12:13] Josh: Yeah.
[00:12:13] Jess: Um, so I wanted to give them a range because everyone has things going on. Yep. And just that like preference would be like Monday through Thursday, right? Yeah. Fridays are kind of questionable in terms of reach and impressions. Yeah. So, um, so Monday through Thursday during that week was like the preferred, uh, posting time didn't always happen.
[00:12:29] Like, so things come up, right? Like you still have to be flexible enough with your influencers, uh, to let them be like, Hey, I got this thing right. So that happened a couple times. Totally fine. Didn't derail a single thing. Yeah. So, uh, so flexible timing is number one. Um, number two is a really tight brief, so doesn't have to be like any dissertation.
[00:12:47] Like I think most of them were a couple paragraphs. Yep. Of, uh, like what is it we want you to talk about? A couple of bullets around messaging that they could either borrow or like. Use as a jumping off point. Yeah. Um, some [00:13:00] screenshots or, uh, some graphics if it made sense.
[00:13:03] Josh: Did you theme them around sort of what was going on in our campaigning?
[00:13:07] Did you have them all kind of post, like similar things? Yes. Like walk me through that.
[00:13:11] Jess: I did. So the first post we actually aligned with the product launch. Mm. So we had a product launching called Signal Driven Ad Audiences. Yep. And we asked them to post about that. It didn't even have to come out on the day of the launch.
[00:13:25] We kind of peppered it the week after so that it would be like, you know, the internal team talked about the actual launch on the day of, and then the following week we'd kind of see all these influencer posts pop up. Oh, interesting. Which was a nice little waterfall effect.
[00:13:36] Josh: Talk to me really quickly, I'm gonna interject.
[00:13:38] Talk to me about like the pacing of these, because I imagine if you're tying it to a specific launch mm-hmm. You want to create a little bit more momentum around that launch versus maybe if it was around a launch, you kind of want like. Always on influencer posting. Is that true or how do you think about the timing of.
[00:13:55] Jess: I tried to think of it as like I wanted them to all post around the same [00:14:00] week. Okay. It helped me personally, selfishly, yeah. Just keep track of everything Yeah. As one person trying to run this program. Yeah. Um, it helped when I then had to reach out a week later and be like, can you give me your results from that post?
[00:14:13] Got it. I could do all that at once, so it really just helped me organizationally. Yeah. To keep them all around the same. That's a good
[00:14:18] Josh: hack. I wouldn't have thought. Through that. Yeah. Which is like, yeah, maybe you would like to do around like all month long posts, but the, the uplift that that puts on you managing that program, it might not be worth it.
[00:14:30] It's tough. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:14:31] Jess: And I think now the LinkedIn algorithm at this moment in time, um, at time of publication Yeah. Um, is still pushing like two and three week old posts. Yes. So it really wasn't. Like anything I was concerned with. Yeah. Like I knew that we'd get a good group of people to see it in the first week.
[00:14:50] Yeah. And then a couple weeks later, we'd have kind of the follow on effect as well. Yeah,
[00:14:52] Josh: that's a good point. If you're listening to this podcast on LinkedIn, it probably came out four weeks ago.
[00:14:56] Jess: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:14:58] Josh: So bad. I don't know why they made that change. [00:15:00] I don't
[00:15:00] Jess: know. It's so weird. But then sometimes I see really good stuff and I'm like, oh yeah, yeah.
[00:15:03] It was good. I'm glad I did see that three weeks later. I just
[00:15:05] Josh: don't like when I like. Here some, like sometimes we'll talk at work like, oh, did you guys see that post? And then I'm like, no, no, where is it? And then two weeks later I'm like, oh, there it's, yeah,
[00:15:14] Jess: you guys, I saw it. I saw it saw it was funny. You guys are right.
[00:15:18] They were like, we've moved on. Yeah.
[00:15:19] Josh: Like, it's not even cool. We're talking about Taylor Swift's album now. Um, get with the program.
[00:15:23] Jess: Okay, so that first post was about that product
[00:15:25] Josh: launch.
[00:15:26] Jess: The second post was actually, um, around the time when we got our initial survey results. Yeah. Um, so a couple episodes ago, you and I talked about how we repositioned the company.
[00:15:37] Josh: Yep.
[00:15:37] Jess: And part of kind of figuring out the right messaging was we surveyed, uh, 80 demand gen marketers. Yep. Those survey results came out and they were really, really compelling. Yeah. And so I wanted to do my best to create content and push those, uh, the findings like as far as we could. Um, and so I gave the report to all of our [00:16:00] influencers.
[00:16:01] Um, I gave them a handful of like graphics, uh, that they could use to kinda show off the different, um, statistics that spoke to them to the most, and essentially ask them to like. Find the one or two pieces of data in here that like, speak to you, that's cool. And do a post about it. Um, so the, the brief was really pretty loose beside like, here's the data and here's what it told us.
[00:16:22] Like, what is it, what are the implications to you?
[00:16:24] Josh: Well, but I bet they enjoy that though, right? Because I feel like every. Every one of our influencers, and even yourself as a content creator, you have a vibe, right? Yeah. Something you're known for, right? You, you made a good, um, uh, name for yourself in content specifically.
[00:16:37] Right. So I imagine if someone engages you as an influencer, you wanna try to tie it back to the things you are known for Yes. Where your audience is. So I, I'm assuming that was received while of that flexibility.
[00:16:47] Jess: Yeah, for sure. And, and I think they all picked. Vastly different statistics, right? Because they all have different perspectives and backgrounds and like their companies are very different, right?
[00:16:56] So it was like the thing that spoke to them and their situation Yeah. [00:17:00] Was a little bit different. And how they, how they. Interpreted it was different as well, which was really interesting.
[00:17:05] Josh: What was the third one?
[00:17:06] Jess: The third one was about a product we have called Ad Reveal.
[00:17:09] Josh: Yeah.
[00:17:09] Jess: So again, we've been going through this repositioning, we're really focused on ads.
[00:17:13] I wanted that to shine through in this third post. Um, this was kind of like the, the last of the three and I really wanted to make it count. Yeah. So we have a product called AD Reveal. It lets you see who's clicked your ads Okay. By name, even if they don't convert. So it was pretty cool. Um, and I essentially gave them like.
[00:17:30] Messaging points about the product itself.
[00:17:33] Josh: Yep.
[00:17:33] Jess: And some questions that might spark a post. So it was like, how would you think differently about, uh, reporting on ad performance if you knew who was clicking on it?
[00:17:44] Josh: That's cool.
[00:17:45] Jess: How would you surface this information to your marketing leader in your exec team?
[00:17:49] Cool. What, what does that even look like to be able to tell them who clicked an ad? Um, so yeah, like, and what would you do with it afterwards? What would you do with a segment of [00:18:00] ICP buyers who, you know, clicked your ads but didn't convert? Like what's the next action? Okay. So, um, the first flexible timing, second thing was a really tight but short.
[00:18:11] A brief. Brief. Yeah.
[00:18:12] Josh: Brief. Brief. A brief brief.
[00:18:15] Jess: And the third is creative freedom. And I think this is really important because. These folks have like been doing this a while. Yeah. They know what they're doing. Yeah. They've clearly built an audience of people that trust them and they did that on their own without any of your help.
[00:18:30] Josh: Yeah. Yep.
[00:18:30] Jess: And so to think that you could give them, um, so much like direction and almost dictate what they need to say is like really foolish. Yeah. Like it's gonna come off as completely inauthentic.
[00:18:41] Josh: Yep.
[00:18:41] Jess: It's gonna turn a lot of people off. It's gonna be very clear that this is kind of an anomaly. This doesn't really sound like them.
[00:18:46] Yes. And most likely they're not going to agree to that. Yeah. Um, so I think giving them kind of the freedom to do what they do best and understand their audience best and their tone and their vibe. [00:19:00] Yeah. Their format, you know, are they really into video? They just do texts like my text posts perform.
[00:19:06] Outperform my video. Wild, I don't know, five, six to one. Wow. And sometimes I'll have companies come to me like, oh, we only want video. And I'm like, that's fine. I just, I know for a fact it won't perform for you. Yeah. Like I want it to.
[00:19:18] Josh: Yeah.
[00:19:19] Jess: Um, and so, yeah, I think just kind of let them loose. Like give them what they need and let 'em go.
[00:19:24] Josh: You know, how I feel, or you, you know how I know that this worked is. When I would scroll through our, my LinkedIn feed and I would come across one of these like sponsor or these like influencer posts. I didn't know if when I got to the bottom of the post I would see the hashtag vector partner or not.
[00:19:42] Right? Yeah. Like if you don't know whether it's, that's it's an influencer post that tells you it's a really good influencer post. Yeah. On the contrary, I think we've all been on LinkedIn within like the first sentence. You're like, this is a sponsored, partnered post. Yeah. Yep. Um, which brings me to one more thing that I thought you did really well with the creative freedom is.
[00:19:59] [00:20:00] Can we stop doing influencers? That you just give them the same banner of the same product launch? Yeah. Like what a waste of your budget. Yeah. Like I've, it's so easy to tell Yeah. That like it's basically an ad Yes. At that point, which is, it kind of defeats the purpose of finding like authentic influencers that have communities that you wanna authentically get into.
[00:20:19] Jess: Absolutely. Yeah. You can give them a graphic. As like, uh, hey, here's the information. Yeah. Here's what our corporate page is going to be posting. Yeah. Do your own thing. Yeah.
[00:20:28] Josh: I think it's interesting that you, you brought like a diverse set of influencers, some of them executives, some of them tactical practitioners, right.
[00:20:35] And so to have some of these prompts that are open-ended where it's like, Hey, how would you physically use this feature? If you're practitioner, how would you report on this? Right, to your executive, or if you are an executive, how would this influence, like how you think about things? And I felt like as a result, especially that.
[00:20:48] Third one. I remember seeing the post come through on LinkedIn. You got really diverse sort of perspectives on this thing that we had launched.
[00:20:54] Jess: Yeah. And, and it was really exciting to see that. And that was actually I think our most successful of the [00:21:00] three, just across the board.
[00:21:01] Josh: Wow.
[00:21:01] Jess: Um, and, and it's hard to tell why, right?
[00:21:04] Yeah. Like it could be a mix of like. The actual product is really compelling. The stories that our influencers told were really compelling the day of the week that it was posted on. Like all those things. Yeah, right. You'll never know why that was the, the biggest hit, but, um, yeah, and it was really exciting.
[00:21:18] I think it was a really good validation to see that our messaging is striking a chord.
[00:21:25] Josh: Speaking of, um, that being one of the more successful of the three that we did, how, like how did you goal this? How did you measure success? It feels so like intangible sometimes.
[00:21:35] Jess: Yeah, yeah. I did not directly track. Uh, so it wasn't like I.
[00:21:40] I, I consciously chose not to give each of them like a UTM code.
[00:21:44] Josh: Got it. Yep.
[00:21:44] Jess: And I thought I might, like, in the very beginning, I was like, all right, I gotta spin up some UTM, you know, codes for these guys. Mm-hmm. So they can, when they actually like, send someone to a blog post, like, I know it was Kaylee that sent them there.
[00:21:56] Yeah. Whatever. But. It started to get really [00:22:00] complex. It started to be more than I could track, and I was like, you know what, this is the pilot.
[00:22:03] Josh: Yeah.
[00:22:04] Jess: I just wanna see directionally that this is working. I think we're gonna feel it. Yeah. I don't think we need like such direct tracking. Yeah. This first time around.
[00:22:12] Josh: Yeah.
[00:22:13] Jess: So I did not do that. Um. What I started to see, I think it was around that same time that we started implementing a, how did you hear about us in our demo request form? Yeah.
[00:22:25] Josh: Yeah.
[00:22:26] Jess: And that was kind of my solve for this was like if I start to see LinkedIn or I start to see some of these influencers names pop up.
[00:22:32] Yeah. Like, okay. Yeah, there we go. That's a nice little sign.
[00:22:35] Josh: Also, can we pause?
[00:22:36] Jess: Yes.
[00:22:37] Josh: Vector's. The only company, I think because we market to marketers where I've seen the, like, how did you hear about us? Where majority of people fill it in and give like wild detail about super detail, about what they heard of us.
[00:22:50] Jess: They're like, this is my. God-given duty as a marketer to give you the very specific way I heard about you. They're
[00:22:57] Josh: like, you want that first touch attribution? I'll tell you where I saw [00:23:00] you. Yeah,
[00:23:01] Jess: I got you, boo. I got
[00:23:01] Josh: you girl. Which brings you back to like the UTM thing, which is like, like yes, you can try to measure everything, but like attribution.
[00:23:09] How many people like see the influencer posts and like scroll to the comments and click that specific link. Right. And like how. How much that attribution can throw off your scent to what is and actually isn't working for you. Yeah,
[00:23:22] Jess: exactly. It just felt, it felt like too much, especially for a pilot. Yeah.
[00:23:25] Um, so we did not do that. Uh, what we did see though was, um, almost immediately
[00:23:32] Josh: Yeah.
[00:23:32] Jess: A pretty big am. Influx of, how did you hear about us coming from LinkedIn?
[00:23:38] Josh: Yeah.
[00:23:38] Jess: Which we were getting a decent amount of because you and I are pretty prolific posters. Yeah. Um, Allie has now started really getting into posting.
[00:23:46] She's doing an amazing job. Nick posts really consistently, so like we have a good group of us who. Who post quite a bit. Um, it was one of the top lead sources, but very quickly it became the top. Yeah. Lead source. Yeah. Um, there were even a couple [00:24:00] times where people would say like, I saw this person's LinkedIn post.
[00:24:03] Yes. Yes. Um, if they didn't put it in the, how did you hear about us? It popped up in the. Alert for the, the sales call. Yes. Yep. Um, so they would be like, yeah, I saw this person's post and I was really intrigued,
[00:24:13] Josh: which you talked about this in season one, but I think it's important just to bring it back up for anybody that either didn't listen or they're trying to build out one of these influencer programs.
[00:24:20] Now you set up call recording software to, you know, like a gong. I think for us, we're using Fathom. Yep. It's cheap. Um, and you are using that. You know, not as the end all be all attribution software, but allows you to capture a little bit of this attribution that otherwise you don't get in a form.
[00:24:37] Jess: Yeah, we, we set up some alerts in there.
[00:24:39] It was really simple. Yeah. Um, we have some different categories. So like, if someone, when we first decided to pivot to ads, use cases and ads focus, we did a whole category of mm-hmm. Ads, um. Keywords. That's cool. Those started popping up. Yeah. Like way more than we were seeing before. Hmm. Um, I have one for the podcast.
[00:24:56] Mm-hmm. So I have like the word podcast and, you know, that's cool. [00:25:00] This, this meeting could have been a podcast. Um, YouTube is another one I have in there, so I wanted to set one up for like influencers. Um, so I think I added keywords like influencers, influencer posts. I added all their, their, their names.
[00:25:12] Individual names. Yeah. Um, so yeah, those would pop up every once in a while. And so it was just like, okay, this is, something's happening. Yeah. 'cause of this.
[00:25:20] Josh: Yep.
[00:25:20] Jess: Um, so that was really exciting after the pilot was over. Yep. I didn't really know what to expect. I didn't know what I would get out of $12,000.
[00:25:28] Like I, I, I had no idea.
[00:25:30] Josh: Yeah.
[00:25:30] Jess: I didn't wanna put like a number around it of like this many opportunities. Yeah. 'cause I just had no idea.
[00:25:35] Josh: Yeah.
[00:25:36] Jess: So at the end of the program, I jumped into like our demo request channel, and I grabbed all that information for the life of the program July to September. And I put it into Claude and I was like, tell me everything where a lead source is LinkedIn or an influencer.
[00:25:49] Josh: Yep.
[00:25:50] Jess: And tell me how many of those, what percentage. Came from marketing, you know? Mm-hmm. Kind of gave them like the guardrails for like what an ICP demo looked like. [00:26:00] Smart. So from July through September, we had 45 demo requests.
[00:26:04] Josh: Okay.
[00:26:04] Jess: Where LinkedIn was the lead source or an influencer was the lead source.
[00:26:09] Wow. And of those 45, 80 2% were ICP,
[00:26:15] Josh: which is crazy. Which is crazy. Yeah. Insane. Yeah. That's wild. That was what
[00:26:20] Jess: I got really excited
[00:26:21] Josh: about. Yeah. Yeah. Because
[00:26:22] Jess: what that tells me is if we scale this program
[00:26:25] Josh: Yep.
[00:26:26] Jess: We can expect with the right influencers. Yeah. To continue to hit about that percentage.
[00:26:33] Josh: That's insane.
[00:26:33] And when you think about like the investment for the return there. Yeah. Right. It's like, and again, this goes back to people often ask me like, you guys are doing so great in marketing, like how do you measure it? And I'm just like, we don't, yeah. Right. Like we measure things, but like we don't measure it as a whole.
[00:26:46] It's like, I think
[00:26:46] Jess: that's why we're doing so well.
[00:26:47] Josh: I think so too, because it's like, it's like, oh, you don't have to get it down to the specific like pixel. Yeah. To know that like $12,000 went in. 40 some demo requests [00:27:00] came out and at our conversion of like demo to opportunity and opportunity to close one, like it, like not even close to there being a question on whether that was ROI positive it
[00:27:09] Jess: was, can I give a number?
[00:27:11] Josh: Yeah.
[00:27:11] Jess: It was 1.1 million in pipeline. Wow.
[00:27:14] Josh: Off
[00:27:14] Jess: of 12,000. Off of 12,000.
[00:27:16] Josh: Yeah.
[00:27:17] Jess: So that to me is like, and 82% of that is ICP. Right. That's crazy. So that to me was like, okay, we have to continue. Yeah. We have to continue this.
[00:27:26] Josh: Can I call out a caveat really quickly Please? Because I feel like, um, something that a lot of CEOs struggle with is you hear a number like that and you start to think like.
[00:27:36] Well, why isn't that all we're doing? Right? Yeah. If that's working so well, here's, here's the, here's the problem. Great point. Right? And like, you just wanna double down on like the things that are working. Mm-hmm. And I think where, um, this gets worrisome for marketers is they're like, well, you know, advertising is harder for us to prove out, so let's pull that back.
[00:27:53] Or, you know, organic content's harder for us to prove. Let's pull that back. The problem is, with any of these programs. You have to have a [00:28:00] mix. Yeah. Right. Because if, if you, and I just said like, oh, screw it, you know, our next million dollars worth of budget is just going to influencer marketing. Like there is a cap.
[00:28:06] Yeah. To like how much opportunity there is there. Yeah. You have to mix it up with all these other things. So don't take Jess's, ROI and stop your other marketing programs.
[00:28:15] Jess: No, I think that influencer marketing worked really well because we also have a really cool brand. Right. Uh, we've been very like out and about at all these events lately.
[00:28:26] Yep. Um, we've made really interesting hiring decisions. Yeah. That made a splash in social. Yeah. We have some great ads out there. We're doing some really interesting things in video. We have this podcast like. All of the other things Yeah. That have happened, right? Yeah. So for someone to see an influencer post and be like, oh yeah, I feel like I've heard about these guys.
[00:28:46] Yeah. Or like, I saw something else Yeah. About them. Right? Yeah. Like, it's, it's very likely that wasn't the first time they heard about
[00:28:52] Josh: this. Yeah. Agreed.
[00:28:52] Jess: So I think it's like, it's, it's the mix, right? Like it, it, yeah. All of the things kind of. Rise. The tides. Yeah. Of the boats. Hundred percent of the boats and the [00:29:00] ducks
[00:29:00] Josh: and all the duck.
[00:29:01] The ducks be rising. The ducks be rising. The ducks be rising. And also, let's use this as an opportunity to say, marketing doesn't fix product market fit.
[00:29:11] Jess: No. Right? Like if
[00:29:12] Josh: you're doing all this stuff and your product fucking sucks.
[00:29:15] Jess: Yeah.
[00:29:16] Josh: You're still gonna have an issue.
[00:29:17] Jess: Yeah. Yeah. You can bring in all that pipeline and it'll go away just as quickly.
[00:29:20] Yeah, a
[00:29:21] Josh: hundred percent.
[00:29:21] Jess: Absolutely.
[00:29:22] Josh: Okay, so, so you went through this, this exercise of bringing in these folks. You've used the word like experiment a lot so far. Yeah. Like, okay, we, we finished the three months, the contract with these folks are over. Like what do you do next?
[00:29:34] Jess: Yeah. So I would say this is a wildly successful experiment.
[00:29:37] Uh, we are absolutely going to keep this going.
[00:29:40] Josh: Yeah.
[00:29:40] Jess: Um, we're gonna do a couple things differently. So since this started, we have repositioned ourselves Yeah. As an ad tech platform. Yeah. And, you know, as, uh, a tool you use to build your ad audiences.
[00:29:51] Josh: Mm-hmm.
[00:29:51] Jess: There were a couple of our influencers who wrote fabulous content for us.
[00:29:56] Josh: Yep.
[00:29:57] Jess: Uh, that at this point probably aren't [00:30:00] the best fit because we need to keep this narrative tight. Yeah. Because it's brand new. Yeah. We cannot waver from it. So we are going to, uh, just change up the mix of folks a little bit so that we're making sure we're keeping that ICP in mind. Yeah. And our use case of, of ads, we're moving away from this idea of like.
[00:30:17] Positioning ourselves as like a competitor of A BMA bit. Yeah. So we wanna make sure that like the influencers support that. Yeah. So we're just gonna do a little bit of mixing up there. We're gonna keep. A handful of those folks that really fit that for us, and we're gonna bring on a couple of new ones.
[00:30:32] Josh: Cool.
[00:30:33] Jess: Which is exciting. Yeah. Um, I would like to experiment with some video this time around where it makes sense. Yeah. Uh, I think video can give you some really interesting results in terms of actually getting product-led content. Yeah. So. Maybe having some of our customers do like build a segment.
[00:30:49] Mm-hmm. Or, um, launch, uh, an an ad campaign using a vector audience or look at campaign reporting. Yeah. Inside the vector could be really cool.
[00:30:57] Josh: How do you think of, so for this next phase, I feel [00:31:00] like there's a couple levers you could experiment with. I'm curious if you think of experimenting one thing at a time or multiple.
[00:31:05] So one thing I think of is like. Seven worked really well for us. Mm-hmm. Could we do 12? Could we do 20? Um, but I also think about the content itself, right? Video, uh, how tos, right? Like do you think in this next phase you will both change, you know, type of content and quantity? Or will you pick one lever at a time to experiment with?
[00:31:24] Jess: I think we'll probably pick one lever at a time. I'd love to give it another quarter of same size group. Yeah. With some different flavor to the format. Um, because I think beyond this group Yeah. I can't do it myself. Yeah. It starts to get really big and complicated. Yeah. And I'm gonna need like a vendor or partner.
[00:31:44] Yeah.
[00:31:44] Josh: Money please. Money plays.
[00:31:48] Jess: Absolutely
[00:31:48] Josh: should have thought about it at the beginning of the year when we did planning. Jess.
[00:31:51] Jess: Dang it.
[00:31:52] Josh: Are there tools for, is this like a person's job? Is this a demand gen? There
[00:31:56] Jess: are, there's a couple different ways you go about it. So there, I mean, you can, there [00:32:00] are companies that have head of influencer marketing.
[00:32:02] Wow. Um, that they have such. Robust programs.
[00:32:06] Josh: Yeah. Common offices. They have a full-time, yeah, yeah. Person.
[00:32:09] Jess: Um, I don't think we're there. Yeah.
[00:32:11] Josh: Good.
[00:32:11] Jess: I think this is more either agency or contractor. Yeah. To like really figure this out for us and just control all of the details. Even just like right down to the contracts.
[00:32:21] Yeah. You know, like seven different contracts being sent out, all being differently. Redlined. I
[00:32:25] Josh: didn't think about that. Right. Yeah. You had a lot of like, um, what would you call that? Just like back of office kind of stuff you had to do to make this happen? Yeah. That has to get done. Yeah.
[00:32:33] Jess: Right. Yeah. Um, all the invoicing, all of those things.
[00:32:36] Um, shit, maybe
[00:32:37] Josh: you do work hard.
[00:32:39] Jess: I do some stuff around here.
[00:32:41] Josh: I didn't even realize you were doing all that stuff. Yeah. Alright. Cool, cool, cool.
[00:32:45] Jess: Yeah, I just, what do you think? It just got magically done. Feel like your laundry or
[00:32:49] Josh: what do you mean? That, that just shows up? That was for you,
[00:32:51] Jess: Jenna? Yeah,
[00:32:51] Josh: that was for Jenna.
[00:32:52] Yeah. She'll like that one. I'll give her that clip.
[00:32:55] Jess: Um. So, yeah, I think it will require some help as this grows. Yeah. So I wanna do one [00:33:00] more quarter where we don't make it much bigger, but we try a couple different things. Yeah. And then I think we'll have learned quite a bit from that. Yeah. And we'll be able to hand off a ton of learnings to whoever we, we bring on.
[00:33:10] Josh: Yeah. I love that. One
[00:33:10] Jess: thing I do think we're gonna try that is expanding the scope of this just ever so slightly.
[00:33:14] Josh: Yep.
[00:33:15] Jess: Is um, by the time this comes out, this will already be known, so I'm gonna spill it here. Yeah. Um, but we actually signed to sponsor. Task Bober and Tim Davidson's. Oh yeah. Uh, podcast Notorious B2B.
[00:33:29] Yeah. With that sponsorship comes a post a month from tasks and Tim.
[00:33:36] Josh: Yep.
[00:33:36] Jess: So it's like influencer adjacent. Yep. Because we get their kind of content on LinkedIn. We also get the Midroll reads and the sponsorship mentions. That's in the podcast itself. That's, yeah. So I'm putting it under the umbrella of influencer marketing because of that aspect of it.
[00:33:52] Yeah. Um, and so I think that'll be really. Interesting thing to see too is like how does that extra little bit of like promo pay off for us? Yeah.
[00:33:59] Josh: [00:34:00] Yeah. I think that's smart. Which is like when you're thinking about setting up the influencer program, right? Like it's, it's natural to think influencer, individual person, big community.
[00:34:08] But there, there could be like literal communities exit five, what they've built over with Notorious, uh, B2B. Like, that's a really interesting way to kind of get like more bang for your buck of like we're, they're literally going to write for us, but we're also going to. Garner this community they've built outside of their individual fallings, which is cool.
[00:34:26] Yeah,
[00:34:26] Jess: I'm excited for that one. Yeah, that'll be, that'll be cool.
[00:34:28] Josh: Be. So to wrap, what's your sort of like handful of takeaways if you are standing up your first influencer program, how do you do it?
[00:34:36] Jess: Start small. Yeah. You not need a huge budget. Uh, even if you can get three influencers. To do some posts for you for a few months.
[00:34:46] Like, start there. Yeah. Start. Whatever works for you. What's the smallest version of this that you could create that makes sense for your brand and your company? So start small. You do not need creators with huge followings. You can find people who have built a really like [00:35:00] loyal audience. Yeah. Um, look for.
[00:35:02] Yeah. First and foremost, yeah.
[00:35:04] Josh: Authenticity over like quantity, everything else. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
[00:35:07] Jess: And then third I would say just like let them do their thing. Yeah. Like give them enough information to arm them so their post. Is of the quality that you're looking for. Yeah. But let them do the storytelling.
[00:35:19] Let them They know their audience best. Yeah. Like let them do their thing.
[00:35:23] Josh: Oh, I love that. Or as Jess Cook would say, let them cook. Six,
[00:35:27] Jess: seven. Let 'em six, seven. Let 'em cook.
[00:35:29] Josh: Wait, is this one again?
[00:35:30] Jess: Oh, clock it.
[00:35:31] Josh: Clock it. Love it.
[00:35:34] Jess: This is a new one. This means if you, if they said something and you agree with it and you do this little finger tap.
[00:35:41] Thing. And you say, clock it. Clock
[00:35:44] Josh: it. We need to change the name of the podcast instead of this meeting Could have been a podcast. It's like how to relate to your gen children. Your middle. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:35:52] Jess: We teach you all the slang. We make it not cool anymore. That's my.
[00:35:58] Josh: Hey Jess. This was a great [00:36:00] meeting, but I do have a question for you.
[00:36:01] Yeah.
[00:36:01] Jess: What's up?
[00:36:01] Josh: If I were an influencer, how much do you think I could charge?
[00:36:05] Jess: Six, seven. Six,
[00:36:06] Josh: seven. This is a great meeting, Jess.
[00:36:10] Jess: It was a great meeting. This meeting could have been a podcast.
[00:36:12] Josh: It could have.
[00:36:13] Jess: It was. It was this meeting. Could have been a podcast as a vector. Production vector lets you build ad audiences from real people that visit your site, click your ads and research your competitors.
[00:36:25] Imagine seeing exactly who will see your ads by name before you spend a dime. It's a great time to be alive. Marketers go give it a whirl@vector.co. See you next time.