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No one has it all figured out. And anyone who says they do? Well, they’re lying.
This is for the women who are trying. Trying to juggle all the things. Trying to make sense of what they actually want. Trying to keep their heads above water without losing themselves in the process.
Career. Money. Relationships. The pressure to do it all. The pressure to want it all. And the moments you secretly wonder, is it just me?
Here we speak openly, laugh through chaos, and ask questions instead of pretending to have all the answers.
Because we’re all a work in progress.
Brianna Doe (00:00):
There are just so many ways to partner with creators. You can do sponsored posts, you can do activations, you can co-create events with them, co-create content. It varies by brand and it varies by creator. And I just think that's so exciting. Even the negotiation piece is fun because you're negotiating not just dollars, but how you're going to work together and collaborating with them on that. And so I think it's just one of the most creative and energizing spaces to work in.
Gayle Kalvert (00:25):
Hi, I'm Gayle Kalvert, and this is Marketing In Progress, a spinoff of Work in Progress. This is for anyone juggling the world of B2B marketing, figuring out what matters, what you can skip, and what actually grows revenue. You'll hear from marketing leaders, sales leaders, and agency owners. Every angle with no filter. You won't hear any jargon and no fluff. Just real talk, smart ideas, and some laughs along the way. Hi everyone. Welcome to Marketing in Progress. I'm so excited to have Brianna Doe with us. Brianna is the founder and CEO of Verbatim, an influencer marketing agency. First of all, she's a great sport. We didn't prep her and she rolled with the punches and offered some really great information in the world of influencer marketing. We also talk about what keeps us up at night, how do we keep up with the pace of change in marketing these days, what's working, maybe what's not working. So let's dive in.
Gayle Kalvert (01:26):
Brianna, thank you so much for being here. Like I said, being a guinea pig and trying this segment out for me. So we're both marketers. I dunno about you, but I feel like marketing is moving at the speed of light. I know that all industries are being disrupted with AI, et cetera, et cetera, but I wonder what your thoughts are on being a marketing professional, whether it's our clients, right, or those of us that are on the agency side. I find the most challenging thing is to keep up with all of the changing tactics.
Brianna Doe (02:06):
Yeah, I think I would agree. It's hard to keep up with it and it's also hard to then prioritize. I'm curious what you think. I think it's difficult to prioritize which new tactics or trends or updates are the most important and which ones you can ignore. I mean, every day there's a new AI tool or a new prompt that I'm supposed to be using on AI. I don't know which ones to choose. I dunno which ones I'm supposed to check out. And then you wait a week and they've announced six more. And so I think that's also hard too, especially even if you're an entrepreneur or if you work in-house, you very limited time and very limited bandwidth. And so the time that you do spend learning these new tools or catching up on the trends, it's hard to wade through all of it and figure out what's the most important. Are you experiencing that?
Gayle Kalvert (02:50):
Oh, 100%. I mean, the benefit I have now at Creo Collective, my agency, is we are literally that, a collective of marketing experts who have different areas of expertise. So that makes it a little easier to have a network to be like, Hey, this person knows the latest on search optimization because everyone's using ChatGPT instead of Google, right? I mean SEO is changing so quickly. But yeah, so there are people who have different areas of expertise that I can tap into, but when I was in-house, I felt like it was impossible to keep up on everything going on out there. When you're in your business in Verbatim, are you focused on influencers in a certain industry or what kind of focus area or?
Brianna Doe (03:34):
Not really because our clients span tech, fashion, retail, health and wellness, they just cover a lot of different categories. So we don't limit ourselves in terms of influencers, but we do have a lot of clients asking about AI influencers lately, which is a whole separate conversation. So that's the only area I would say we don't work in is AI and not influencers that talk about AI. I mean the actual AI-generated influencers.
Gayle Kalvert (04:01):
Can you elaborate on that? AI-generated, like fake people?
Brianna Doe (04:06):
Yes. It's a whole thing now, and I can send you some examples too, but basically I could create an AI-generated human and start making her, him, they create content and I could get brand deals for this AI person. So I started selling products as if I'm a real human, but it's just an AI. I think it's very dystopian, and I don't know if you've seen this, it's been going viral lately. There's an influencer who was at Wimbledon, but she was AI. I dunno if you've seen her. So that's a good example too. It's raising a lot of discourse about how weird it is, right?
Gayle Kalvert (04:38):
We'll stick with humans for now. Yeah.
Brianna Doe (04:41):
Yeah.
Gayle Kalvert (04:43):
I'm with you on that. Okay. What are you most commonly asked about by your clients? What's the pain or what is it that people are trying to achieve or solve in the influencer marketing space? Because I'm not close to it at all.
Brianna Doe (04:56):
I would say one of the most commonly asked questions is it's around budget. It's some variation of I don't know how much I should be planning to spend, so I can't build a budget. How do I do that? What's realistic? And also what's realistic to help me drive results instead of just throwing some money at creators and then not getting any results? Where do I start seeing the ROI and then that's how I'll figure out my budget? I would say that's actually one of the main questions that I get. And it makes sense. I mean especially because there's just not a lot of standardization, if any, around influencer rates. People charge whatever. You could talk to two influencers with the same engagement rate, similar engagement rates. They have 10,000 followers. You could get one of them quoting you $500 for a post and one quoting you 15,000. There's just so much left up in the air, and I think that's what makes it hard for brands to figure out how to do it, especially if they haven't done it before and they're trying to get budget from higher ups. They don't know where to start.
Gayle Kalvert (05:56):
You are representing the influencers, not the brands, is that correct? Or the brand?
Brianna Doe (06:00):
No, we're on the brand side.
Gayle Kalvert (06:01):
You're representing brands, making deals with influencers?
Brianna Doe (06:05):
Correct. So we handle sourcing influencers, negotiating with them. Influencers can contract, it depends on the brand, but a lot of them have influencers contract with us directly on behalf of the brand, and so we handle the payments as well.
Gayle Kalvert (06:19):
Okay. So when you say you're being asked how much to spend, that's by brands. How much do we need to invest to reach this audience? Okay, that's really interesting.
Brianna Doe (06:29):
Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
Gayle Kalvert (06:30):
It sounds fun. It's also fun that it's I think not so rigid and there's probably more opportunity to be creative and do different things.
Brianna Doe (06:40):
Oh, a thousand percent. I mean, there are just so many ways to partner with creators. You can do sponsored posts, you can do activations, you can co-create events with them, co-create content. It varies by brand and it varies by creator. And I just think that's so exciting. Even the negotiation piece is fun because you're negotiating not just dollars, but how you're going to work together and collaborating with them on that. And so I think it's just one of the most creative and energizing spaces to work in.
Gayle Kalvert (07:09):
But it seems like that would be really challenging. Nothing is the same.
Brianna Doe (07:13):
To an extent, yes, but because I've been doing it for so long, it's almost like I have a mental calculator. I can just look and be like, I'm not paying you that. I'll pay you this.
Gayle Kalvert (07:22):
Okay.
Brianna Doe (07:23):
Yeah.
Gayle Kalvert (07:24):
So if somebody wants to be an influencer, how many followers do they need to have? Like you said, I know it's all over the place, but maybe we've got a big tech audience. You're working in tech, so if you're tech looking for an influencer, what do you look for that says, okay, this person is actually legit and not like, I'm just pretending to be an influencer?
Brianna Doe (07:46):
So it's going to depend on what kind of creator or influencer you want to be. Especially—tech is actually a perfect example because some tech brands, they're going to want, especially in B2B, they're going to want the thought leader or the industry leader. That person might not have a quarter of a million followers, half a million followers, but they have an audience of 10K. That's all decision makers like CFOs and CROs and whatever. And so it really boils down to the caliber or the value of the audience itself and how that translates to the brand's goals. So if somebody wants to start creating content and partnering with brands, it's important to figure out if you want to be more of a thought leader in this space or somebody that creates content, like high quality content that brands find appealing. You can be both, but that's just important if you kind of pigeonhole yourself, if you just focus on making fluffy lifestyle content, depending on the audience that you're trying to build. You can have 5,000 and they're just incredible. And a brand will work with you with that.
Gayle Kalvert (08:51):
Right. I mean it takes me back to magazines and it's like you could be a trade publication and you're in a niche segment and that's really valuable. Or you could be like People Magazine or something that's for everybody. So the audience is bigger, but there's a different value associated depending what you want to achieve.
Brianna Doe (09:11):
Yeah, perfect example.
Gayle Kalvert (09:12):
I mean we are hearing a lot now that even in B2B, right? People want to buy from people. They don't trust brands. They only trust people. So are you seeing a lot more of employees, like corporate employees also investing in their personal brand and being influencers?
Brianna Doe (09:32):
I am seeing more people that work in-house creating content and building personal brands. I think though, the majority that I'm seeing are doing it to do just that, to build their personal brand. The company is just a secondary element of that, which I actually think is ideal. Honestly. Jobs come and go. You don't want to become, I don't want to be Brianna from Apple. I want to be Brianna regardless of what company I work at. So I think that's important. I think that's crucial, but I am seeing more of that and I think it's exciting. I think B2B, any sort of influencer marketing in B2B has the opportunity to be really cool and innovative because there just aren't that many examples in this space. So it's exciting.
Gayle Kalvert (10:15):
So I ask all my guests from Work in Progress. Are you coffee or tea?
Brianna Doe (10:19):
Neither.
Gayle Kalvert (10:21):
Oh, cool. Okay. What is it?
Brianna Doe (10:22):
I don't really, yeah, I just drink water.
Gayle Kalvert (10:25):
Only water?
Brianna Doe (10:28):
Well, water and alcohol.
Gayle Kalvert (10:30):
Okay, well, that's good. Thank God you have a fault, Brianna. Thank God.
Brianna Doe (10:36):
I could never get the smell of coffee. I can't do it. And then I got COVID and now it smells like soup.
Gayle Kalvert (10:42):
Really?
Brianna Doe (10:42):
This is too much information. But yeah, so I can't stand it. My husband loves coffee. I have to be upstairs in another room or it makes me feel ill. And tea, I like it, but I can never drink a full cup, drink a couple sips, so I just don't really do it.
Gayle Kalvert (10:55):
Alright, so you start your day with some water?
Brianna Doe (10:58):
Yes. Ice cold water.
Gayle Kalvert (10:59):
Perfect. Okay. It's great. All right. What's your favorite, what is the song that you're going to put on right now if you need to get happy? If you wake up crying, Brianna, you're like, this sucks. I need to cheer myself up. What do you got?
Brianna Doe (11:14):
If I need to cheer myself up, I'm probably going to put on, I think it's called Dance the Night Away by Dua Lipa from the Barbie movie. I love that song. Or any Kendrick Lamar.
Gayle Kalvert (11:24):
All right. Did you like the Super Bowl halftime show?
Brianna Doe (11:27):
I was obsessed. I think it actually changed my brain chemistry. That was probably the best Super Bowl show I've ever seen.
Gayle Kalvert (11:34):
Same. It was great. And I was watching the Super Bowl with my 14-year-old son, six of his friends, and they didn't know what was going on. And I was like, you guys are such dorks. How do you not know? I was still way into it. They were like, what's with your mom?
Brianna Doe (11:51):
Amazing. Amazing. It was incredible.
Gayle Kalvert (11:52):
Yeah. Thank God.
Brianna Doe (11:53):
What about you? What's your hype song?
Gayle Kalvert (11:56):
Oh, I have a bunch. It's kind of cheesy, but it does it. Trust Fall by Pink.
Brianna Doe (12:02):
Ooh, good one. We love some Pink.
Gayle Kalvert (12:04):
I love BIMP. Like, Regulate, any of those. Yeah. I'm a girl of the nineties.
Brianna Doe (12:15):
Okay. But that is a banger. BIMP is a good song and so is Regulate, honestly. Yeah.
Gayle Kalvert (12:20):
Good. My kids are like, mom, just get into it. Just forget what they're saying, just go with it.
Brianna Doe (12:28):
I do like… speaking of the nineties, I do like Thong Song. That one does hit me up. I'm sorry. I don't know. I feel like we all need bottom on that song too quickly. The beat.
Gayle Kalvert (12:40):
We left the Thong Song too quickly, you're saying? It didn't have its time on the Top 10 as long as you wanted?
Brianna Doe (12:47):
Yeah, petition to bring it back.
Gayle Kalvert (12:48):
Alright, well, we're going to bring it back right now. Brianna, obviously, it's going to go viral for sure. The Thong Song. I hope that was helpful. If you know someone that you go to for this topic, send them my way. After all, we're just figuring this out together. See you next time.