Jeremy Barbara - Sundays

Sure, yeah. So I've been doing influencer marketing for about seven or eight years. Started at Seekeek, the ticketing company when I was in college as a little influencer marketing intern. Got into influencer marketing in the same way most people do by accident. Basically helped build that program over the next four years. And when I first started, it was really just trading tickets for low level YouTube shoutouts. Just my boss and I trying to be really scrappy about it. Over the next four years, we built that program into one of Cgeek's biggest marketing channels and what SeatGeek ultimately became really well known for.

Then spent the next three years at Current, the mobile banking app. Similar situation. We weren't doing a lot of influencer marketing when I started. Helped build that program into one of Current's bigger programs as well. Also had handled some audio partnerships at both SeatGeek and Current. And now for the last eight months, I've been at Sundays for dogs trying to build a new Influencer Marketing program there just started eight months ago. We haven't really done any influencer stuff leading up to that, so pretty much starting from scratch, which to me is always the most fun part, testing new channels, trying new things. But yeah, that's a little bit about where I'm at.

Sweet. Jeremy so I'm curious, can you unpack for us? What does setting up the program entail? How do you set up the program and then how do you define which one is the right channel to start with?

Sure. Yeah. So for mean everywhere I've ever been, everyone I've ever talked to about starting influencer marketing program really the ultimate goal where you want to get to is something that functions pretty it's like a pretty well oiled machine on its own where you are obviously every month trying and testing new things but the things that work kind of run on their own. So when we first started Seekik again, it's a lot of testing different channels, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, testing different categories of YouTuber, Instagram, Influencer, whatever, testing different kinds of strategies, talking points, et cetera, and ultimately doubling down on what works and booking that out long term. So then basically you have this foundation of longer term partnerships that you can build more tests on top of. So that's what I mean when I say building out a program where you can ultimately I mean both CP current and even now at Sundays you can get to multiple millions of dollars a month of spend and influencer with really a pretty lean team of four or five people.

Yeah, I just wanted to ask one more thing, Blaine, which is I know there's no blueprint answer for this, but what is enough budget to test? Because we're talking channels, we're talking messaging, we're talking demographics of creators. You can easily spend ten grand just testing one messaging. So at what point is like, look, I wouldn't even bother if you don't.

Have X budget to test or something. I don't think that there is too little to test influencer because ultimately it just changes the type of influencer you're going to work with. So if you're in a position where you don't have a lot of money, you can really only trade product for shoutouts like we were doing at Sea Geek. That's the kind of thing where you can still depending on obviously how expensive your product is, there are influencers out there. Obviously they're not going to have millions of views, not even maybe thousands of views that you can trade products for shout outs or if you're willing to spend a couple of you can work with a little bit bigger influencers, maybe high thousands to 10,000 followers. There's always people you can work with. And when I say obviously, I've been fortunate enough to work at companies where we have a little bit more budget to test and therefore we can test influencers with maybe 100,000 followers and 1000 followers and eventually get up to millions of followers. Everyone's going to be a little bit different.

But ultimately, with any budget you can try a lot of different things.

Tweet jeremy, one of the reasons I was pumped to talk to you is because you've been able to work in a variety of different companies. Like you said, being able to work from everything from a marketplace to a consumer finance tool to a dog food product. Right. And what I'm really curious about is you need a strategy, right, every time you're launching the influencer campaign based on what you have to offer. For seed Geek, obviously it's great you guys have tickets to really amazing events that everyone's going to probably want to go to and it makes for a really natural way to shout out the product. And I'm curious for different sorts of products like the finance platform that you worked with and Sundays, which your audience is going to be people who are more creators that either have dogs or are influencing around that. How do you identify the type of creator that you're looking to work with and how do you identify what you have to offer them from your product? What were the products that you were offering when you were working in the finance space? And now when you're thinking about Sundays, what are you working with with creators when you're setting up those campaigns?

Sure, yeah. So it's a great thought and I think the first step is always identifying what is the lowest hanging fruit. How can you connect to influencers in the easiest way? So for SeatGeek, the obvious thing is, one, looking for channels that are very sports specific. So we're working with like NBA, two K, YouTubers, Madden, YouTubers, et cetera, and then B, how can you give them something that's worth it to them? And a lot of times it could just be like, hey, this is how much I charge for a partnership and you pay that. You don't always have the benefit of being in Sea Geek situation where you can just trade a product that everybody wants, but then also just finding unique ways to get creative. Ultimately, one of the biggest hacks for doing influencer marketing is like creating mutually beneficial relationships by linking the audience in a way that they can't link it themselves. Like current. The best example or what worked really well for us was we would do these giveaways that would but they wasn't just like a monetary giveaway, we were connecting the audience in a way that they weren't normally able to connect with the creator.

So we worked with Tim the Tap Man on Twitch on a campaign where basically he was playing Call of Duty and for every kill he got, he would give $100 to a random person in Chat and he would pay them through the Current app. So you have this excitement around the giveaway, but you're also naturally now connecting tim the Tatman to his followers through the Current app. People are downloading the app so that they can interact with him, sharing screenshots of them, getting money from him. Anytime that you can make the content better. It's a natural fit for any creator. Because ultimately, what a lot of people get wrong in influencer marketing is they give this script of you have to say this this in this exact way, and therefore you've kind of circumvented the whole point of influencer marketing, which is like that they have the influence. They can talk to their audience. So anytime you can give them that creative freedom to integrate your product in a way that makes sense for them, that's how you win.

So I'm curious, how did you arrive at that specific strategy? I'm sure an element of relationship building with them over time and just shooting texting back and forth, messaging back and forth, sending inspo? Or is it an internal brainstorm or was it up to the creator completely?

It's a little bit of both. And that's a great point of the whole. This is entirely a relationship game and it's all about mutual trust and working with these creators. That was something that we arrived that a little bit later at Current. At first, it was more of like the low hanging fruit. Like, how do we just start this program? How we start working with creators, what's the easiest things to do? And as you build those relationships, you can start to throw out more interesting ideas. So generally, the way I see it is you want to give creators creative freedom, but it's also really hard to just say, hey, here's your creative freedom. Do whatever you want because you want to give them some kind of guidance.

So, like, for the Tim the Tap Man thing, for example, I think it was we had an internal brainstorm of like, okay, here's some things we could that they're very open ended and pretty broad. Let's bring them to him, see if he has any ideas, and then they can take that and come back. And ultimately we arrive at this idea that ended up working really well for us. So, yes, it's very much a relationship game, and it's about building mutual trust.

Yeah, I actually want to take a step back to the process before even engaging and getting into the relationship base. What is the right influencer marketing team look like? How many people are there? Details of the negotiation and vetting? Is this an opportunity that's worth it? Is it worth it at a certain price point, but if it's priced, then it might just not be worth it. How do you vet the opportunities and what does the team look like for? Who handles a relationship? Who does the negotiation? Or is it a one man show?

I've seen it done in a lot of different ways. Generally, the way I've seen it work the best, it usually does start as a one person show because a lot of companies influencer marketing is a pretty intimidating form of marketing to get into because it is still even to this day, kind of the Wild West. So generally it's about proving that's going to work, proving that there's some kind of strategy and generally that's a one person thing. And then as you build, you can only handle so many relationships even under the format I talked about before, where it's like once you have something that works, you book it out long term that requires less work. Now you can do more tests and it all piles on top of each other, but eventually you do need more people. But even at SeatGeek Current, these companies where we were spending a lot of money on influencer marketing never had a team of more than five people. And generally that was one person kind of focused on strategy and oversight of the overall strategy itself. And then people doing the daily negotiating, executing, finding influencers, pretty much the whole process from start to let's let's I.

Want to zoom in a little bit more. Let's say you get a response back, you have your system reaching out to people, you get a response back and it's like, hey Jeremy, thanks for reaching out. Here's my YouTube. Here's my Instagram. By the way, I have a podcast and a newsletter. Here's the stats, here's my rates. How do you evaluate this opportunity?

Sure, I mean, I'm biased and I've always focused mostly on YouTube and we can get into the reasons for that in a so I do think that it's a bit of a misconception how expensive YouTube can be because again, I think it really depends on the size of influencer you're looking at. Like people talk about rates on YouTube going up and up and up. And what they're talking about usually is like, these A list YouTubers, these bigger YouTubers, but you can still do really great and do a ton of influencer stuff on YouTube for $20. CPMs, which I think in my personal opinion, from working for a handful of companies and also just talking to others, is like that CPM will work for most companies. If you can get $20 CPMs on YouTube consistently, it's going to work. And that's generally like when you're first working with a partner, really all you have to go on is the views, the CPM pricing. You really don't have a lot of information, especially if it's the first time ever working with any influencer. All you can really price based on is the impression.

Obviously you want to look at a lot of other stuff when you're trying to determine if you should work with an influencer. But in terms of the pricing, that's really all you have to go alpha. So that's usually what I'm looking at.

Okay, so we'll look at the CPM, let's say, okay, this is a CPM that makes sense for us campaign is successful, how do you then turn this into a long term relationship? Like you said, do you think leverage is handed over to the creator by now? It working so well. And what is the long term relationship that you typically partner?

Yeah. Well, after you have done that first video, you have a ton more information because I'm talking direct response. Direct response videos not necessarily brand here, but once you know the performance of links codes and you get an idea of how much this influencer is driven for you, I think it gives you a lot more leverage to say hey, this is what we saw. This is how much we can pay at this point and work from there. And generally I'm looking at like, we'll book that first video and if it works, it's like, all right, we'll book a handful more three to five. And then if it's just continually working, it's like, all right, let's talk about a bigger partnership over a year that maybe includes a bunch of other stuff other than YouTube.

Okay, so you go up to three, five videos. I'm rapid firing here because I've ran this process myself. So my last question regarding mean, I love YouTube as well as a channel for creators because I've seen it on Google Analytics. You get compounding views, you have SEO, instagram is more so like the video has to pop then and know TikTok has an element of SEO. But I'm curious, when you're running the YouTube campaigns and you partner longer term with the creators, what's the difference between the branded, what's it called? It's like the whole video is a dedicated video or integration or something like that. What's the main difference between both of those and do you recommend one over the other?

I've always done integrations. A dedicated video would mean the entire video is dedicated to, let's say it's like a product review. Now this is probably also just because the companies that I've worked for and the creators that we worked with, it didn't really make sense for, I don't know, David Dobrik to just do like a dedicated video all about seeky, you know what I mean? Dedicated videos are incredibly expensive. They work for a very in depth product like tech products. But generally what I'm focused on is a 62nd integration. But again, I want that to be a true integration of integrating the product into the video rather than just like, now I'm going to go talk with my sponsor. We change setting, they read off a script for 6 seconds and then they go back to the video. Good creator partnership to me are ones where the product is actually integrated into right.

It's just casually natural in the conversation. And do you guys set performance? How do you feel about performance bonus compensations based on certain metrics, et cetera? I see that's where sort of affiliate meets influencer marketing, for sure.

Yeah, I play with that. A lot. Again, I'm pretty stingy when it comes to working with someone for the first time. I'm pretty stingy about the CPMs. I try to, again, stay in the range that we're comfortable with and a lot of especially the bigger creators aren't super comfortable with that. But again, because you've built a relationship and there's this mutual trust, a lot of times you can work in creative ways to make things happen. So, for example, if I'm looking at a channel with a really views fluctuate a ton and maybe the average CPM at $20 is $20, but there's a chance that I'm going to end up paying $100 CPM just because some of these videos don't get as many views. Then I really like to talk about view bonuses.

Like, okay, if you hit 100K views, we can give this bonus, et cetera. I want to make it a fair deal. I think if you go into influencer marketing, just trying to rip off influencers, or if an influencer is going into a brand deal, trying to just get the money and run, it's just never going to be good for anybody. The best creator partnerships are ones that last a long time because it's mutually beneficial to the creator of the brand. So I never want to short sell somebody or try to rip them off and vice versa.

Jeremy, my question is, when you're setting up those partnerships, like, you're saying you want it to be a long term partnership that ends up working and for, for you guys right now, like at Sundays, right? What type of CPMs are you seeing? What are you looking to hit? What's reasonable? What are people quoting you on? Yeah, why don't you give us the lay of the land?

Yeah, I mean, it varies a ton. It varies a lot depending on the type of influencer you're talking to. It depends on the agency you're talking to. I again think that we've pretty strictly stuck to like $20 to $30 CPM on YouTube and have been able to do a ton of stuff that's because we now at that $20 CPM, you're not going to be able to work with YouTubers who are getting millions of views like the A list names that everybody knows, but you can still get a lot done when it comes to other platforms TikTok, Reels, et cetera. I'll probably cut that almost in half to like a $10 CPM just because, again, I trust YouTube the most and that's for a lot of reasons. I just think when you look at influencer marketing and the reasons it works, the influencers who get themselves to YouTube have the most influence because there's the most intent and there's the most attention on YouTube. So you look at a platform like Twitter, for example, the attention is really low. You're seeing a tweet for maybe a second.

The intent is also at this point pretty low because a lot of it is now algorithm based, not necessarily even who you're following. We'll go to TikTok. TikTok is very high on know, you could spend a minute, multiple minutes watching a video, but your intent for seeing that video is pretty low. It's all algorithm based. You may have never seen this creator before in your life, whereas YouTube, you go on there and you're searching for something, you're searching for someone, and you are seeing their video and you're clicking that video, you are signaling that you are willing to spend 510, 20 minutes of your time watching this creator. That's why I think influencer marketing works the best on YouTube, is because the people with the most influence are getting the views on YouTube. And also now you have more time to actually talk about your product. It's really hard to get a good integration on TikTok because the content and the ad have to be one, and it's really hard to do that.

At least on YouTube, you have some time for some talking points. You can talk about a product a little bit without taking too much away from the content.

Yeah, I think that's a really important point to make. It's like not all platforms are necessarily created equal. And Ramon, even this is something I talk a lot about with Ramon when it comes to podcasting, right? And we talk to podcast advertising as a channel, and it's really unique because, like you're saying, there might be a lot of intent. You may have a lot of trust established with the host, and then that ad is being read in their own voice or they're even natively just talking about products they like within their longer form content, as opposed to, like, you're saying an impression on Twitter, like, what does that really mean? Do we know who saw it? Do we know if they converted? So I think really building out your marketing strategy so you're able to especially when you're testing out, like, you're saying you want more intent, you want to be able to prove that there is. And because on Instagram, me and Ramon have run a bunch of tests on Instagram, and sure, we'll hit things, and other times things will totally flop, and then we may have users coming in from all over the planet that we don't even know their intent or why the hell they're even in our service to begin with. So I really like that idea in terms of really being strategic with your marketing dollars, in terms of what's the intent happening on the other end, what's the relationship like between that influencer creator and their audience, and thinking about it that way, as opposed to just like, oh, a CPM is a CPM. Doesn't matter what platform it's on, newsletter, blog post, whatever. It's all the same.

No.

How do you know how to backtrack the math from the CPM to what that will translate that into a customer acquisition cost or something? How did you get to that CPM.

For your generally, it's the kind of thing that requires both at seeky Current and Sundays always started, it was like, all right, we're starting this program. We want to pay reasonable prices. And to me, a reasonable price is a $20 CPM on YouTube. And once you get more information about, okay, how are those views translating to conversions in CAC now you can get a better idea of what you can actually pay. So at first we're basing it on CPM, but eventually it becomes more about like, okay, should we adjust the CPM based on if we're coming in too high or coming in too low on CAC?

And so you lock that based on from a blended view, especially because it's early day, so you sort of know what your daily averages are and then you log whenever a post is going up. And that's how you can sort of see the traction that a specific video might have brought.

Well, so we'll track with links and codes and there's never a perfect science, but it's like on YouTube. And another reason I like YouTube, it's one of the more trackable platforms. Generally, people are pretty good about clicking link and Bio if you ask them to in description rather than like a link in Bio on TikTok. So usually with links and codes, you can get a pretty good sense of how much a specific YouTube video is bringing in for you. Then there's other ways of post purchase surveys where we have people write in, they'll say they came in through YouTube and they can write in even a specific YouTuber. And then also with bigger influencers, especially if you have a business that has a pretty consistent daily traffic, you can see those organic bumps of like, okay, we saw X amount increase in traffic. So using all that to kind of figure out, all right, on a video basis, how well did this video do? Now we can take a look at, all right, how many views did this video get backtrack into the CAC we saw and maybe adjust the CPMs for the next video that we do with this creator. And then also that $20 CPM might be a general rule for when we're first working with someone we have no information about.

But as we start to find niches on YouTube that work, let's say we're working with like a fishing channel and we saw a lot of success and we know that we can pay a 30 or $40 CPM in order to hit our CAC for that channel. If we find another phishing channel, we can get a pretty good idea that it might be similar. So really it's all about trying to spend what we feel comfortable with at a broad scale. And then once you have more information, you can get more granular in how you're pricing.

Jeremy, another question that I have is how do you think of influencer? Is it its own channel? Is it a performance channel? Is it a top of funnel channel in terms of awareness? Because it's a little bit of both, right? A lot of times it's really tough. Even if it's a creator that you trust, it's like really tough. I mean, for a brand, you're thinking about it, you're like, oh, obviously I'm going to pay this creator and they're going to post and I'm going to get a bunch of downloads. But at the same time, when you're, I guess in the user seat or the customer seat and you see something that may not be the time that you actually convert, so the Attribution becomes touched. So you as a marketer, are you thinking of your influencer strategy as performance, as awareness, as a mixture of both? How do you think of it?

Yeah, I think we think of it as a mixture of both, but I've always in practice thought of it as a performance channel. So to me it's really hard to get to a point where you're spending a lot on influencer marketing if you're only considering it awareness channel because it's really hard to justify that spend. And I personally think there are really good and creative ways of still doing good influence marketing that's still direct response and still performance based. And again, at all the companies I've worked for, we've been able to spend a lot of money on a monthly basis while still tracking all that back to a return on ad spend. And I think it's possible to do that. And I think a lot of people get caught up in splitting spend between awareness and direct response. But ultimately it's like if we can bring everything back in direct response, then we can justify every dollar we spend.

So what are some of the ways that you're doing that with Sundays? I think you gave a great example of an activation that you did with Call of Duty where the funding had to be done through the specific bank account or whatever. But how do you in practice right? I think one of the funny things I see with creators is you'll see creators, you see them talking about products and sometimes CTAs and Attribution are really clear. And other times I'll be watching other creators create product and I'm like, that's obviously paid, but how the hell are they tracking that, right? It was just like a poorly executed campaign. So for you and Sundays, you guys are obviously very performance driven and you want to be able to track and you want to be able to get Attribution for it. What are some of the ways in which you've done these campaigns that you're able to drive clear CTAs, whether through a code, a link, et cetera?

Yeah, I mean, we're pretty strict. Like I said, we give a lot of creative freedom and we want people to integrate Sundays in a way that's natural. But at the end of. The day, if there's one thing that has to be there every time, it's, hey, click the link in my description for x percent off, use my code, whatever. Because at the end of the day, in order for me and creators understand this, in order for me to go ahead and rebook this, it has to perform. And therefore at the end of the day, they have to drive that performance. So as creative as we get with how the product is integrated and what they're doing and trying to keep the audience engaged, instead of just saying, now, here's a word from our sponsor, and going off to a point. Where people are skipping.

I think the key is you want to keep the audience engaged by doing something that's interesting, but then also still be able to hit them with a very clear CTA. So I talked about the competitive advantage of seekeek, being able to trade tickets and experiences and therefore you get lower prices. I think our competitive advantage at Sundays is dogs. People love dogs. And I think the obvious thing when I first started was like, okay, we can work with the dog creators who the dog is at the forefront of the content. But what I was more excited about and what we've seen a lot of success with is the influencers who have really never shown their dog in their content or rarely show their dog in their content. And when that dog hops up onto their chair or whatever and it's like, hey, I want to talk to you about our sponsor. Here's my dog.

And people love that. People love their favorite creators. They want to know what their life is like behind the scenes. And people love dogs. So when you see that creator that you love's pet and you see them interacting with their pet, that's exciting, keeps you around. And then we can talk about Sundays and all the benefits of it. So that's kind of like what I see as our advantage in terms of keeping people engaged and then we can get to the CTA.

And then also maybe that audience isn't so exhausted of seeing all those same things. So this leads me into my next question, which is, you've had the opportunity to work with a bunch of different creators for Sundays, a lot of different angles. Why don't you tell me tell us about some of the most creative campaigns that you've seen some of these influencers launch. Like, what were the ideas behind the creative? What were some of the things that you thought like, oh, shit, that's never going to never going to perform, and then it really performed or vice versa. I think that I thought this idea was going to pop and then it didn't. What are just some of the real time examples of what you're seeing from the creative side?

Yeah, one of my favorite early ones was one of our biggest benefits at Sundays is that it's human grade, like real human ingredients for dog food so you as a person could eat it. And we've had influencers in their videos actually go and eat the food, which I think is funny. And I think it's a really compelling point. Like, if a person can eat this food, then your dog you wouldn't sit there and eat kibble, but you could eat Sundays, which I thought was a really good one. Some other things we've had some surprises where it's like random categories that we didn't expect to work working. We had like a film review channel work really well for us, where again, that's someone who doesn't really ever show his dog. He's in a studio and he's talking about movies, but when he brings his dog on set and feeds him Sundays, it's interesting to people. And we're still pretty early in the process of just testing things and figuring out what works.

So we haven't gotten as super into the creative weeds as I would like yet. Because again, I think it's the kind of thing where we now have some partners that are recurring, but you have to build that trust before you start to do some really interesting and maybe it's putting an influencer and their dog on the box or there's a lot of different ideas we have that we're excited about.

And what does your outreach look like? Do you guys do any product seeding where you're looking for other creators who may not be massive influencers with a YouTube channel? Are you guys doing any product seeding where you're just sending product for free so long as they post? Or have you guys graduated to the point where you're solely focused your operation on bigger creators that are more paid performance engagements?

Yeah, we're pretty open to everything. So we have a commission program for smaller creators that's actually really interesting because it's a lifetime commission program rather than like a first time acquisition commission program. Which again, gets back to the whole point of mutually beneficial. A lot of creators, when they hear the word commission, they're out. It's like, all right, I just don't really think this is going to be beneficial to me. But with this, it's like, okay, I'm going to get paid 15% every time someone not only orders from Sundays with my code, but every time they order again, I'm getting another 15%. So that's how we generally work with smaller creators and then the larger creators. We're doing obviously, like flat fee partnerships and stuff we've been talking about.

But we also do a lot of gifting. We send out a lot of product to creators, especially like, if I'm negotiating with someone and we just can't get something done, I still love to send them product anyway. But yeah, we're working with all different sizes of creators.

Yeah, I'd love to chat more on that. So on the outreach specifically, are there any bullet points or things that people should cover? Should it be an open ended outreach? Because, like you say, you're like, oh, I'm just going to get people for commission, but you might be leaving a lot on the table on a creator that actually had a good CPM and he just didn't even respond because he's not interested in commissions. And then if you have the outreach of like, hey, we're willing to pay X grand per video, whatever, you're just kind of negotiating with yourself. So what are your thoughts there?

Yeah, I mean, the way I think about it is obviously myself and my team only have so much time in a day, and therefore we're optimizing for CPA, obviously, but also we're optimizing for reach and working with the biggest influencers we can. So unfortunately, a lot of times you just don't have the time to work with some of these smaller creators on a more direct basis. And that's why we have this program, so we can aggregate some of the smaller creators. But generally, if we see that someone in that program is doing really well, we try to maybe it's booking more videos with them so that they can get some of that flat fee money and just working with them more. But I'd rather have them at least offer them this commission program than have nothing at all for them. And in terms of outreach, we're reaching out to creators all the time. I generally leave my outreach pretty open and it's like, hey, we lead influencer at Sundays for dogs. Here's our product.

Just like a blurb about our product. Let me know if you're interested in working together. Maybe this is just my personal bias, but when I get a cold outreach email that's over three sentences long, I'm immediately I generally don't look at it. So I try to be like, as quick and concise as possible. Here's who I am, here's what I want and here's how I think we can work together. And then obviously, it's a longer negotiation process of like, okay, here's we want to do YouTube integration and here's what we can offer and all that stuff. That's kind of what our process.

Yeah, that makes sense. And it seems like the life of an influencer marketer is like inbox 80% of the time you're in your email. So I totally get when and it's same for the creator, right? They're getting so many emails a day, they don't want to hear a whole blurb about a whole paragraph of why your product? Because then it sounds like it's you you rather than also making it about them. And so something short concise will trigger a response. If they're interested, they're going to go on the website, they're going to learn more, and then you get to the discovery phase. So it actually on the discovery phase, what do you do to maximize the chances of the partnership being successful? So you can have your own notion document with all the info about the company talking points, et cetera. You could just send that out. You can take the high touch approach of like, hey, we're going to get on a call.

We're going to talk about this, or is there a balance in between both of those approaches?

There's a balance. Our influencer guide in terms of the talking points, I'll usually send that just because we try to keep it really open ended. We try to keep it really user friendly of like, hey, here's high level what we are with bigger creators. Hopping on a call is always great, but it's not always feasible. But anytime you can hop on a call with a creator and really they can put a face to the name, put a face to the brand, it makes a huge difference. And I've found that the most successful partnerships I've done at any company is like the creators that we've worked with for a while. We've been on calls, we've been in meetings, we've had lunch, whatever. Those partnerships just go a long way because again, it's all about the relationship and the mutual trust, but depending on the size of the creator is how high touch we can be with stuff like that.

Hey, Jeremy, as we kind of wrap up here, I'm curious if there's any other either channels or unique sort of creators that you guys are looking at or working with. I know I've talked about this a bunch with Dan, who's also at Sundays and oversees a bunch of the marketing. And I know Dan was really big in podcasting. For example, before podcasting was like a thing, right? And so whenever I chat with Dan, he's always looking for the newest channel where you're going to find an Arbitrage. Are there any things or new platforms or new channels that you're looking at in the future with Sundays?

Yeah, I mean, one of the things we're pretty excited about right now is we just launched on TikTok Shop only our samples right now because it doesn't support subscriptions, but we're probably going to get full size orders on there soon. But one of the problems with doing influencer stuff on TikTok, we've kind of talked about it a little bit is like this idea of it's really hard to get from, it's really hard to track because it's hard to get people to the bio, to the link and through all these hoops to go and buy a product. TikTok Shop makes that really easy. The other reason TikTok is hard to do is because again, with the short form content, you really have to tie the content to the brand and the integration. But I'm excited about TikTok Shop because it gives us a really good way of integrating into content on TikTok and having a really easy customer journey to at least just try a sample. So that's one of the things we're pretty excited about. Another thing I want to get into is when I was at Current we were getting really into Twitch and Live and it worked really well for us and it's an intimidating platform and intimidating format to get into because CPMs are incredibly high. But there's a reason for that.

It's because this person is sitting there watching Live. It's very different than views on YouTube where somebody could be watching possibly, whatever. People are very engaged on these live platforms. And then the other risk is like, it's live, so you don't get the approvals, you don't get to sit there and say, like, oh, we need to cut this out, or you can't say that, but Live is a super powerful format that we're looking to get into as well.

No, I was going to say I'm curious. I just keep hearing of what you guys are exploring, what you're getting into, what does your current team look like for managing these operations and then what is a good size team to be able to tackle the type of stuff that you guys are doing?

Yeah, right now it's just two of us, two and a half, I should say. We also have some help from our paid social team as well. So pretty lean right now. Again, we're still very early in the testing phase trying to figure out stuff that works, but we'll probably be looking to hire early next year. Again, I think you can have a fully scaled influence marketing program that's spending millions of dollars a month with four or five people. It's the kind of thing that you just have to and you don't need any type of platform to do that either. I do it all in Airtable and zapier and things that are accessible to anybody and I think it's the kind of thing people are intimidated by. But it's entirely possible if you just follow these core things that we've talked about just, like, working with creators who have actual influence on platforms where they can actually influence those people, giving them creative freedom and tracking it all.

Yeah, I love what you mentioned. All you need is a Google Sheet. You don't need a platform that costs 30 grand because you're tapping into the same creator database that every other company. They're not discriminating for your other competitors. I could go on and on with this. I spent years in that industry, no longer there, and I just think that in house is the best way for managing influencer relationships.

Absolutely. And it's such a qualitative game, too. Like, a lot of these platforms, like, okay, that's great. I can search by a US percentage at this high and age that's this, and followers that's this, and engagement percentage that's this. But that doesn't really tell you a lot. And a lot of times, it's really just about every influencer program I've ever worked. It it'll never be as good as just getting onto YouTube yourself and watching and digging in and digging into these platforms and watching content, sitting there when you're watching a video and saying, okay, who is this video for? And you could generally get a pretty good idea without the demographics. Now, I think geography is important, obviously.

Like, if you have a US product, you don't want to be working with a 30% US percentage, but in terms of just getting an idea of who's actually watching this content, you can do that all yourself. And again, the quantitative stuff is good in terms of guiding you, but ultimately, you have to learn to watch the content, read the comments, and decide who has actual influence.

Yeah, I think that's a key point for anyone that's listening to looking to hire a head of influencer. The head of influencer having hobbies or things that, in their actual life, have something to do with the product as well, or really understand the audience and the demographic, because they're just going to come across the best opportunities in their daily life. Blaine and I built this company now cast magic for podcasters. Blaine and I are podcasters, so our feed and our YouTube is already just showing us creators. We're not searching for them, but Blaine will DM me, check out this creator that just came across my feed, and that's how we'll find an amazing opportunity. It wasn't because they were in a list of top 20 creators for podcasters, because their inbound is probably popping off by that point.

Exactly. Yeah. It's really about putting yourselves in the shoes of your customer. And it's funny, you get to a point where you don't even realize it, but it's like, you can look at a YouTube channel and be like, this will work, or this won't work. And then I always find it funny. You have a new person starting with a team or an intern or whatever, and they'll send you a channel and it's so clear to you that this wouldn't work. But they don't have that yet because they're just looking at the followers, the views and maybe the demographics. But because you are so in tune with the customer and with the product, you have an idea of what will work.

Yeah. As we get towards the end here, I know you probably know this by looking within 3 seconds if it's a BS account, if the views are fake, if the comments are fake. I know this has probably become an instinct for you now, or people can be clever with it. How do you identify that?

Yeah, there's a few things I look at and it's always difficult. But one of the things I like to look at, just not even for if you have fake followers, but if you are an influencer, who has real influence is like, can you move your audience across channels? So if you've got a few hundred thousand views on YouTube, but I go to your Instagram and you have a thousand followers, I'm immediately asking myself, why hasn't your audience, why aren't they following you to other platforms? And I think that that's not always a signal that those views on YouTube are fake, but it is a signal that maybe the content is maybe those views are about the content or about the subject. It's not about the person. At the end of the day, there's a lot of content on YouTube that gets a lot of views, but it's not about the person. If a person doesn't show their face in the content, I find that doesn't work often. A lot of documentary style content won't work often because they're caring about the subject matter and not the person. Also, you have YouTube channels that are like I call them like SEO channels where it's like how to use a screwdriver. I don't know.

It's like people are capitalizing on high SEO topics, but that video might have a million views, but all their other views have 100 because they're not an influencer, they're just capitalizing on search terms. There's a lot of little nuance that you get used to as you start to work with these channels and test things.

Yeah, I think that's a great call out when you're working with creators, know what you're going after, know why they're getting traffic, where their traffic sources are, where they're coming from. Is it because their audience just loves them as a human being? Or is it because they have a different strategy that they're building out? And maybe it's great for some videos, but maybe it's not going to perform as well for yours. So anyway, Jeremy, thanks so much for coming on. For our listeners who want to connect with you or find out more about you and Sundays, where can we find you?

Sure. For myself, just on Twitter X, I guess you want to call it that at Jeremy. Barbara just tweet about influencer stuff generally. And then Sundaysfordogs.com, check us out. If you have a, you know, great blend of good ingredients without having to cook meals for your dog, check it out. Use let me think of a promo code, I think promo code Jeremy might be 35% off, but I can get back to you on that.

Yeah, well, we'll add it to the show yosha as well. Yeah, awesome. Well, thank you for the time, jeremy, this was awesome.

Yeah, thank you guys. Really appreciate it.