Sonja Crystal Williams: 0:05

Hi everyone. Welcome to today’s episode of 10 Minute Marketing. I’m your host, Sona Crystal Williams. I’ve got a special guest back with us today. Welcome back, Stephanie, Good to see you.

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 0:17

Thank you so much for having me. I feel like we did this around this time last year, so I’m excited to be back again with some updates for you.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 0:26

Yes, and if you all haven’t listened to our previous episode together, Stephanie is the president of Micromedia Marketing. She’s also a dear friend and kind of a marketing partner I’ve really turned to for many years when we worked on several projects together. Today, I asked Stephanie to come back to the show specifically so we could talk about influencer marketing, because that’s been one area that your agency has really thrived and I just want to get into this topic and some of the other recent episodes. We talked a lot about trends happening with digital marketing and social media and I feel like influencer marketing has been one of those trends that you kind of see as a business owner, but I think for some small businesses they don’t always feel like it’s within grasp, that it’s like only something that big brands can do. So I want to dig a little into that and I want to start by just asking you a really general question. Maybe it’s loaded, but what do you think, Stephanie, is the value of an influencer for any business or any brand?

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 1:29

Yeah. So I see how you could say that some brands might see really large companies having, you know, thousands of dollars budgets to work with influencers and that does happen. But I’ve been able to look at a different variety of influencers, from nano to micro to mega, so there’s all kinds that you can work with and you can really start at any budget. You’d actually be surprised. I even launched a houseware product for kitchenware and the budget was really only sending products, and we were able to find some smaller, nano and micro influencers to work with.

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 2:08

Now, what is the value behind that? Well, video is growing and has grown over the years. So if you don’t have those resources in-house, number one, I think it’s an amazing way to drive up really good video content for your social media channels. But the second thing is, if you don’t really have someone day- to- day that could be the face of your brand, putting out content about your brand, talking about your brand, you can utilize this as an additional resource to create content and to show a unique side coming from someone else, so it could even be coming from your consumers. Some brands can even be tagged with user generated content. So content, I would say, is number one. But then, outside of that, what can you do with that? Well, you can utilize that not only across your social, but you can use that across a lot of other marketing channels. So that’s why I think it’s a really important tool that can be used for any size brand.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 3:08

I love the way that you broke that down. So we have nano and micro influencers. Define that for people who don’t know the difference.

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 3:15

So let’s go through all the kinds of influencers. Yeah, so nano is someone that really has can even be like about a thousand followers. So when you’re looking more at micro, macro and mega influencers, that’s where you get in the range of one to 10,000, then 10 to 50, 50 to 100, 500 and up. The mega are really like in the millions. We tend to work more with micro influencers that are between around 50 to 100,000. And in some cases we can get up to like 500,000 followers. And we’ve worked a lot in the space that’s talking to women and home decor type brands. So we’ve worked in the sector that’s in furniture, lighting, and we’ve been able to find really nice partners that are in that size, that range. But there’s also I’ve kind of hinted a little bit at UGC content. So user-generated content isn’t necessarily coming from what you would categorize as an influencer, but it is coming from someone that is creating content on their channels and they’re really excited about, you know, certain kinds of content. They might not have that huge following, but they can create high quality video content for you. So they might be interested in actually working with you for product instead of payment. So the larger the influencer gets, that’s where you do need to have hundreds or thousands of dollars in budget to be able to pay in exchange for even one post or one story linking back to you. But if you are able to look at maybe in your niche, someone that has a smaller following, you can talk to them and do a post for a few hundred dollars or even for a few hundred in product instead of payment, and you can come up with some good deals and some good ways to work with people. So it doesn’t always have to be based on a dollar amount.

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 5:25

A lot of times, look into the larger influencers it is but you can also go a little bit smaller and look at offering product, but look at working with people longer term. So try to build a more authentic relationship with them. See if they’re really interested in the category that you’re talking about, if they’re passionate about it, if you can work with them more than just a one- off basis. There’s other things that you can do with them. If you have, say, an Amazon store, they could actually link back to your Amazon store and make commissions on the products that they’re promoting.

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 5:59

So it is important to try to find someone that aligns with what your brand is about, and in a lot of cases we have found people that are a little smaller. Their audience engages with them a lot and we’ve been able to grow with them over the years. So they might have started small had we have a. You know, we take a good look at how does their engagement look, not just their following. What’s the quality of their content, and if we see like a value there and we’re aligning with our goals together, we stick with them, work with them longer term and then over time they start to grow as well, and then you already have that relationship established and you’re able to continue to work with them when they do get bigger. And then, yes, you might have to switch to payment, but you already have that relationship in place and it’s something that you can make work.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 6:47

Yeah, I think it’s a huge opportunity, to your point, to create like win- win scenarios, especially if there’s an opportunity to start with the influencer, or maybe they’re just that UGC creator when they’re smaller, and then grow over time. You also alluded to two of my other questions, one being budget, and you brought up the good point that, yeah, it’s not always a monetary exchange.

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 7:14

I always say like working with influencers is like the wild wild west. There’s no way I can be.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 7:17

Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen it all, yeah exactly and, and so there could be some instances where, if your product is desirable to some of those potential influencers or the user generated content creators, they’re going to just say “hey, I’d like your product in exchange. And then there’s going to be the people who, to your point the micro influencers, the mega influencers who have hundreds of thousands of followers plus grow influencers, the mega influencers who have hundreds of thousands of followers plus and they’re like no, I get paid, you know $10,000, right, this video together.

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 7:50

Yeah, so, like I can give you an example too, because I’ve one of the things I’ve done too is when growing brands and launching even brand new social media accounts, I’ve reached out to partners that are really interested. So, like I mentioned, we’re in the home decor space, so we’ve worked in lighting and bedding and we had a new client working in furniture. So we were able to approach already established connections and this influencer that I’m thinking of, she has 700,000 followers. Generally, I think if you were messaging her cold, you know it would be straight to payment. But what’s nice about working with someone like her is she does DIY projects and she works in different homes and she does a lot of interior design. So partnering with someone like her is great, because when you’re doing home decor products, it’s not just about her fixing her home and then being done, it’s her working on different projects. So over time, we’ve been able to establish relationships like that. So we reached out to her and said we have this brand new brand. It’s beautiful. We had even a call with her to tell her a little bit about the story, about why they decided to design the brand and how it came to be, and she absolutely loved it.

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 9:10

We gave her, I would say, a little over $1,000 in product for her kitchen. She got a set of bar stools. Her fans went absolutely wild for it. She even showed how easy it was to put it together, how quick the shipping was and everyone loved it and those bar stools actually sold out. Now that doesn’t happen every day, but what’s great about that is we went back to her and when we started expanding other lines, we were sending her others and she also did have an Amazon store. So in addition to always receiving at least about $1,000 worth of product, she’s also, when these items were selling out, she’s also able to make a commission off of those specific sales. So that’s how we were able to work with her by giving product and also that commission through Amazon’s influencer program.

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 10:06

So that’s just a great example of how you can work with someone bigger and you don’t have to spend $10,000 for one post. Because I do want to say you have to be careful with your budget and set goals of what you want to do, and I would put and have put money behind campaigns, but I do it when I already have that established relationship and we know how it’s going to go, because I’ve seen some companies spend very large budgets without, you know, really knowing the influencers and, like you said, it’s the wild, wild west, so some really large influencers, you know you’d be surprised that it could be a little hit or miss sometimes if someone’s posting all the time and just tagging a bunch of brands and they’re just posting it in a Story and they don’t even want to leave it up for you know, it’s just something that’s up for 24 hours. It might not get you the same kind of results that you’re expecting. Just because someone has a million followers, you have to look at who’s really their audience, are they really engaging with them. Are they really talking about the same things that my product is about?

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 11:16

You know, if it’s, if it’s glasses, designer glasses are they really talking about fashion? And that’s something else. Another kind of campaign we’re running right now, we’re talking to influencers that are so into Fashion Week and that’s, that’s what they’re talking about. That’s what their audience is into. So you have to make sure you really are looking at everything that they’re doing with their content and how their audience is responding to that, and not just spending your budget, you know, just on one post without knowing what the results might be.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 11:47

Yeah, I think that was like, I think, a lesson learned for a lot of brands, big and small, maybe as early as a few years ago when people were getting more into influencer marketing and just looking at the numbers of, oh, this person has a million followers, they must have an amazing account and not taking those things you said into account, what’s the quality? What’s the conversation? What does the engagement look like? A friend of mine years ago in the fitness industry kind of ran into a similar mistake of hiring an influencer with a million plus followers, only to find that after spending I think he paid this person about four thousand dollars to promote his brand.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 12:30

Right, her million plus followers were not the women, in this case, that he was intending to target, but was a 60 percent male audience women in this case that he was intending to target but was a 60 male audience and, oh, yes, right, if you look at the comments, maybe it was men that were telling her how beautiful she was, but not actually women that were interested in in the product she was talking about.

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 12:53

Yeah, that’s, that’s right, that’s so important. Um, actually, now that you mentioned that, that makes me think of you said your friend spent $4,000 working with one influencer and you know that’s kind of the results that they saw. I want to touch a little bit on user generated content. Okay, because for a client and I was talking about fashion. So this is another client that’s in designer sunglasses and eyeglasses and they were also launching a fairly new page and didn’t have really like a face behind the brand. So we were able to find a really amazing like personality, bubbly, excited about fashion. That was in New York, where they’re located, and we were able to form a partnership with her where I believe and it’s not exact, but I believe it for about 1500 a month, we’re getting a lot of great quality videos. So every month we’re able to send her new sunglasses and eyeglasses and get user generated content for their channel. But this is more like a voice behind the brand. But for that budget imagine, for the $4,000, you can finish all of Q4, have all these amazing videos. So when we launched this earlier this year, it was amazing for the account because through her content we not only were able to you know, have have the page grow a bit, but the content isn’t only being used on social media. You can also utilize this content on your website. You can, if you get the permission and agree and you agree to it with them you can utilize the content on your advertising and that’s something that has been a game changer, because that page started pretty much at zero and it’s almost at 5000. And it’s all been focused around that content and for that budget we were really able to generate like a face for the brand.

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 14:56

Now she was, she’s more up and coming and she doesn’t have a big following, but she’s been amazing to work with. We work with her on scripts and what kind of, you know, videos we want for the seasons and for the new products we’re going to launch, and we’ve had an amazing experience and that’s why I do think it is worth at times to give a chance to someone that that might be a little smaller if the quality of the content is good, if the ideas are really good and if you’re in line with what you want to do. And then, when you work with someone bigger or you put a bigger budget behind it, you do it with someone that you know, you have some experience and trust with and that you really understand that their audience is the right audience for you. And when that is the case, it can be a huge home run. You can sell out your product. But there is other kinds and other sizes of influencers that you can also work with. That can be a great fit.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 15:49

Yeah, now break something down for me. You mentioned working with in that particular case with this influencer for the sunglasses company, but just in general, like you mentioned scripts and sitting down and coming up with ideas, and what is the work that goes behind the scenes? Yeah, is it just hey, I’m paying an influencer or I’m sending them product? Go crazy, do what we need you to do,” or is there guidance associated? Like what should a brand manager or a social media manager be thinking about once they’re establishing a relationship with an influencer?

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 16:23

Yeah, there definitely should be expectations, guidelines, there should be an agreement. So there’s actually a lot that goes on behind the scenes and even if you talk to someone and you send them product and they’re going to be posting, they could–a n influencer, especially a bigger influencer, could be scheduled out and have plans and campaigns, you know, for the next month. So you do actually have to plan ahead. You have to manage a lot of communication. So there are different tools that can be used as well to do that. We love using Later for scheduling, and they just rolled out a tool for influencer management. There’s Up fluence. There’s Aspire IO for UGC. We’ve been using Social Cat. So what’s nice is you don’t want to really be on Instagram just DMing people. Okay, that I mean, that’s what we used to do back in the day, but that could take so long. So there are tools now that you can utilize, and some of them cost a few hundred dollars. So they’re not, you know, it depends on what you’re looking for, but they’re not outrageously priced. But you do want to set guidelines and expectations. We usually have a few different things. So, first and foremost, we have an influencer welcome kit that gives them an idea about who we are, because how are they going to know who they’re talking about if they don’t really understand the brand that well? So it gives them like a bit of our story. We give them examples of what we’re looking for. We don’t tell them exact script with the UGC face of the brand, those were more scripted, but on a general day- to- day campaign. We don’t give them a script because we want it to come off natural and organic. But we do want guidelines. We do want to make sure, you know, that that they’re tagging us. We want to make sure that they know a few key points of what we might want them to feature. But we give them general guidelines and then we give them examples as well. We also have, you know, have them sign an agreement, because some influencers don’t want you to utilize their content in advertising and you might have to pay more for that.

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 18:29

If you do, some do let you utilize it in advertising and it can be really amazing. So I wouldn’t just use the content once and just put it on your page. There’s so many different ways that you can utilize it. It can help with conversions on your website. So if someone’s looking at your product and then they see how someone’s wearing something or somehow how it fits someone, and it doesn’t look like just a catalog type photo. It’s a real person experiencing your product like we did something with a vegan skincare line and really showing the results and having people you know utilize the product and talk about how it makes them feel, how it makes them feel great and how it’s helped them. Those are things that, you know, it’s one thing for you to say something about your own brand, and it’s something else for a real day-to-day consumer to talk about how it’s helped them or how much they love it, their experience with it.

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 19:22

So I would definitely recommend utilizing that kind of content across different places. So you got to make sure, though, if you have it in advertising, that it is something that has been agreed to, um. So basically it’s that, and then it’s giving a time frame for when it’s expected to be published and then taking it from there. But it is a lot of back and forth communication. Right now, we’re doing a few campaigns for Fashion Week in New York, and I have an influencer that was going to do New York but she was traveling, and now she’s going to do Fashion Week Paris. So you have to–i t’s great because you know a lot of these influencers get to travel and then you can get amazing content around the world. But you do have to have a little bit of flexibility.

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 20:06

But usually it depends on the product, but I will usually give them like a two to four week window. For other products it can take up to two months, like for the bar stools. You know, they needed to maybe install or finish a product that they were doing so, but you do want to have a–y ou might not give a specific hard date, unless it’s like a Black Friday, Cyber Monday campaign, but you do want to have like a window like within by this date, two to four weeks by this date. And then you and then, yes, you, you do have to have someone managing that.

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 20:39

So the communication is constant. I would say at least once a week, if not more, just checking in. Do they need anything? Do they have any questions about the product? You know it’s a bit of back and forth, but then one thing I think is really important is keeping track of the success getting from them and sharing those reports with the clients, but also seeing like who are those? Like shining star influencers, even if they’re smaller, because then we look at them and we continuously work with them for campaigns. So right now we’re doing something for Fashion Week and then for fall, but then we’re looking at the holidays, so we really like to see you know who out of those partners has been a success that we want to continue to work with, and I went off on a tangent, but I have some clients that even turn those into brand ambassadors or more long term partners for their brand as well.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 21:33

I think you have truly broken it down and, for the person who sounds overwhelmed, this is what Stephanie does. This is the day- to- day. This is why you bring an agency on board to do this stuff. You can do it yourself, right? But at the same time, there’s so many pieces to manage.

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 21:50

Yeah, it does. Actually it sounds like a lot, but it’s very exciting and it’s again. Imagine you having to sit down and create a dozen videos and instead it does sound like a lot, but with these platforms now and being able to manage them there, we’re able to sit down and at once get 15 to 30 UGC content creators that we select. So we get a lot of applications, we go through them all, we select and make sure that they’re a good fit, and then we’re able to get the video delivered in a more timely manner. And then we can have all these uniform campaigns.

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 22:39

Like right now we’re launching one for fall, and then we’ll transition into the holidays. But we used to only do the day- to- day influencer management for our clients that we would manage all their social media pages for, but it’s become so popular that now we do also offer the UGC campaigns. Just for someone that is running social in-house that might say, “hey, we need a little bit of help with this, we need a little more video, we need something for the holidays, and that’s a new service that we’re offering as well.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 23:11

Perfect, so that’s a standalone offering. That is so awesome.

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 23:14

Yeah, yeah. There’s just such a need for it now, so we decided to roll it out this year.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 23:19

Yeah, it is the exploding trend and, like you said earlier, it goes hand- in- hand with the need for video content creation and some of these brands that don’t have that person and this is a great way to get it. So thank you so much for sharing this amazing breakdown of influencer marketing, seeing where it all fits together, Stephanie. I want to end this episode with a couple of questions for our lightning round. So first question we talked about this a little bit in the previous episode about how much you love to travel and we just had those conversations in general of the many places that you’ve been, let’s just say lately, what’s been one of your most memorable travel moments?

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 24:02

Oh, my goodness. Well, I think we talked about this before. I’ve been spending the summers in Montreal now, so I’ve been learning how to speak French and I’ve been having the best time. Actually, my husband got me, I don’t know if you could see this little necklace. This year I actually got my French passport, so I’ve been just really trying to embrace, you know, more of a French lifestyle, and it’s not this year, but next year, I’m having a big birthday milestone, so I’m going to go celebrate it in Paris, so I’m really excited and planning that out and looking forward to that.

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 24:51

But yeah, I, I love the fact that when we work remote, we can can travel around and I was even able to see you in Montreal while you were here for a training session. So I’ve loved that and that’s been amazing.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 25:04

That’s beautiful. So you’ve got memorable moments.

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 25:08

Yeah, this Paris one is like one of the most memorable ones. I’m really I’m– well, actually my goddaughter, who’s also, who’s turning 16, nd then I’m having a milestone that I don’t want to say which one, but she’s going to plan and we’re going to meet out there. So going to plan and we’re going to meet, we’re going to meet out there. So she’s going to celebrate her 16th and I’m going to celebrate mine with her as well.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 25:35

biopic on the Lifetime of Stephanie that’s going to get released. What would your goddaughter, your nieces, nephews, whoever, grandma, mom, what would people say about you in the biopic?

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 25:46

Oh, my goodness. Well, talking about my goddaughter, I do want her to see like a strong female woman that’s independent, that can travel, that can work, that can have that balance. There was a time, though, especially when I first started my company, where she would see me working all the time and she would say– she calls me Popo, and she would say, “oh I, this is Popo, popo’s working, popo’s working. So I’ve actually been over the past couple years, even through COVID, working on a balance of being that strong, hardworking woman, but also having that balance of being able to travel and that’s something that I started doing last year with Rick and and living life, so having having that good balance and showing her that example that you can, you can do it all, but it’s I used to really just focus just on work, and now I try to enjoy both things.

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 26:47

So I can work, I can grow my company. I can enjoy that, but I can also enjoy my family, my friends, seeing lovely people like you that come come to visit. I’m lucky because, when I’ve been traveling around, my friends and family have come to visit us as well, so being able to spend that time with them is amazing, but I do want to set that example for her and for just the women I work with. Like, I have a team of women that are friends, and some of my friends and moms, and I just want to show them and empower them that they can have it all and they can have that lifestyle freedom of being remote that we love so much too.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 27:29

I hear you, I’m living in that era.

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 27:31

Yeah you’ve been traveling and I love that you take your kids with you and I don’t see everyone do that and I just love seeing that. I’m so happy that you do that.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 27:42

Thank you. Thank you so much. All right, Stephanie. Where can people find more information about the services you offer?

Stephanie Lichtenstein: 27:50

So my company is called Micromedia Marketing. We just turned 15 years old a couple of months ago, but in that milestone we also launched microsocialcontent. com, and the reason we did that is because we manage the day- to- day, but there’s so many brands that their teams need help. Their teams need support. So now we have those services where you can get your own UGC video content and we can work with your internal team and I did, specifically for this podcast, I came up with some great tips to share for your in- house teams. So if you go to microocialcontent. com, there’s a free ebook at the top as well. If they wanna get some feedback and some tips, so that’s up there too. So, yeah, check those out. And if you want me to review your brand on social media, you can reach out at social@micromediamarketing. com.

Sonja Crystal Williams: 28:46

All right, awesome, Stephanie. Thanks so much for being on the show again. Until then, everyone, have a good one. Bye, thank you, bye.

next time.