An Influencer Marketing Strategy 101 Guide Membership Websites – Part 2
Unlock the power of influencer marketing in 2025. Our 101 guide covers everything from finding the right influencers to measuring ROI.
Unlock the secrets to successful influencer marketing in 2025 with our comprehensive guide! This video delves into the essential strategies and trends that will shape the future of influencer partnerships. Learn how to identify the right influencers, create authentic collaborations, and measure your campaign’s success. Whether you’re a brand or an aspiring influencer, this guide is tailored for you. Don’t miss out—watch the video now.
Jonathan Denwood & Nicole Ouellette.
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The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:02.190] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 113, Lucky 13. And in this show, we’re going to do an ongoing review. We covered it last week of influencer marketing, the strategy behind it, tips and tricks, and something you should consider if you’re trying to start your membership website getting the wheel rolling. I’ve got my great co-host, Nicole, with me. Nicole, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?
[00:00:44.660] – Nicole Ouellette
Sure, Yeah. Hi, my name is Nicole Willet. I own a company called Tech Nicole Support, which is a marketing company, and I also have a couple of co-working spaces. I’ve seen small businesses from a couple of angles, and it’s always great to talk to Jonathan about all things tech.
[00:01:00.120] – Jonathan Denwood
Marketing and tech. How do you build your membership website? Then, there is the important bit. How are you going to market it? So hopefully we’ll give you a special show. Oh, dear. Nicole’s a bit ill. Oh, dear. She’s still getting over a cold.
[00:01:19.210] – Nicole Ouellette
Still getting over a little bit of a cold I had a couple of weeks ago. So I will mute myself occasionally to- You’re not the only one.
[00:01:24.800] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve got a couple of friends who have fallen down with the So, like in this podcast, we’re going to be covering all the things that you need to know about influence and marketing and how it might be one of the right tools me a quiver to get your membership website going, getting the wheel moving. Before we go into the real meat and potatoes, as we say in North London, I’ve got a message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. I get feedback from some of our listeners. They love my Cotny rhyming. So there we go. Say, Nico, I’m in your hands because I’m really not up to influence the marketing, really, but I know you know a lot. So how do we start the show, and what do you want to cover in this show that we didn’t cover in the first half last week?
[00:02:39.060] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah. So, we talked last week about influencer marketing. I gave an overview, and what I wanted to do was dig in a little bit and talk a little bit about some case studies because I think a lot of people have a lot of experience with influencer marketing when it comes to products. Well, you do. I buy this pen. Well, you’re on social media a bit. Are you saying you don’t see any influencer marketing in your social media?
[00:03:04.290] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I see other people do it, but I haven’t done it. That’s why I was interested in the cover, not only for the benefit of our beloved tribe but also because I might consider a bit of it, but there we go. There we are.
[00:03:18.910] – Nicole Ouellette
Well, and I think we’re just so used to, like I said, seeing like, oh, buy this pen or buy this consumer product that there are some B2B applications as well. And so I wanted to, like I said, just everyone if you haven’t listened to the last episode, that might be a good companion to this one, give the background of it. But we’re going to… This is the 201-level stuff, in my opinion. So First of all, and I don’t think we really flush this out, but if we look at data over the last few years, we see that the cost of influencer marketing has actually gone down a little bit more over the last two years than it had been. And in large reason, a lot of people speculate that it’s because there now exists user-generated content. And I can’t remember how into that we got versus influencer marketing. I think we did talk about that pretty extensively. Do you remember, Jonathan, if we- Well, maybe if you can give them a quick? Yeah, absolutely.
[00:04:21.970] – Jonathan Denwood
What do you see as the difference is- Yeah.
[00:04:25.180] – Nicole Ouellette
So to me, so there’s two different… When you think about people creating content for your brand, There’s two levels of it. One is called UGC or user generated content. And that’s the idea that I record a video myself. It’s typically a video, but it can also be still photo interacting with your product. And maybe there’s a series of them. Maybe it’s just not a singular one. And I send that. So let’s say Jonathan hires me as a UGC content creator. I make a series of videos about his online membership program, and I send them to him. And And the idea is that I’ve created content and it is going to Jonathan’s membership audience, but it is a real user interacting with the content. Now, an influencer campaign or a brand campaign that is a little bit different because not only are you creating the content, you’re also sharing it with your audience. So you get that augmented factor. And anybody who’s ever tried to build an audience before knows how much work it is. So you’re getting that added benefit. So we’re Working with an influencer versus working with someone on UGC content, an influencer is going to be more expensive because you’re getting more.
[00:05:38.640] – Nicole Ouellette
You’re getting not only the content, but you’re getting them putting it in front of their audience. I don’t know if that was a good explanation. Do you have anything to add to that to maybe clarify for people in case I’m talking too marketing?
[00:05:50.430] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, this is recap. So I think you’re saying, So I got the first one, the influencer, and he’s got his He or she, or she or he, has got their own tribe, and they use your product, and then they might talk about the product, how they use it. Where you lost me a little bit was the difference between that and the second group.
[00:06:20.250] – Nicole Ouellette
The user-generated content? Yes. Well, it’s the idea that I’m making content, I’m interacting with your product, but rather than posting it to my channels, I’m sending it to you. You might use it in an ad, you might use it as part of your own social media content. So you’re just getting someone’s interaction with your brand or your product.
[00:06:41.890] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, right. So I think what you’re saying is- Yeah, you’re not getting that added benefit of their audience, I would speak. Right. And I think that I understand there, but I think that applies… Am I correct in surmising that would only work with somebody that has a large much for him. Does this apply to somebody who’s got a close relationship, but a micro-audience, hasn’t got tens of thousands of followers, but the audience they have got, they’ve got a very tight relationship, especially the second part. Does that apply?
[00:07:24.810] – Nicole Ouellette
The idea with UGC content is I don’t post it to my channels. I’m I’m just creating the content, and I’m sending it to the brand for them to use, like I said in their own marketing. So you’re not getting the benefit of that audience. That said, what happened was there was all these influencers doing brand deals, and UGC content is a little bit newer as an idea, because I think a lot of brands wanted real people working with their product, working with their service, and talking about it to be able to use, like I said. And like I said, anybody who’s ever had maintain any marketing channel knows how much work it is to come up with new content ideas. So this is a way of getting other people talking about your product, but they’re doing it on your channels. So you’re not getting that benefit of their audience with UGC.
[00:08:14.320] – Jonathan Denwood
You’re not even getting into UGC content as a person than it is to become an influencer because you have to build up your audience to do that. So is it also linked to the concept that people on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube, especially the first two I’ve mentioned, which I don’t really do a lot. I don’t do anything on TikTok I’m looking to do, and I certainly don’t do anything on Instagram. Is it around having multiple people utilizing the product? Or they send it to me, so you’re building, you’re trying to get people to give the impression or trying to serrate the impression, maybe that’s a better way of putting it, that there’s a movement, there’s a flow of increased interest in your product and service. I’m on the right track.
[00:09:17.060] – Nicole Ouellette
Absolutely. Yeah, I think that that is definitely a part of it. And the other part of it is obviously, as people who have made these membership platforms, for example, we have a certain way of talking about our products, but having our customers talk about it, we get a different vocabulary. We get different talking points. We get their point of view as well. But absolutely, if you have a bunch of different people talking about how great your product is and you have a video of them doing that, that makes a compelling case.
[00:09:44.750] – Jonathan Denwood
Right. So where do we move on?
[00:09:47.970] – Nicole Ouellette
Right. Okay. So I wanted to clarify that because I feel like I didn’t do a good job talking about that last time. And like I said, now that UGC content exists, user generated content, creation exists, that has driven down the prices of influencer campaigns overall. And we’ve seen this multiple places in online studies. So I wanted to put that in people’s heads if they were like, oh, I I like that idea, and maybe I want maybe a lower cost way of getting that influence. Besides looking at influencers, you might want to also look at UGC content creators. But the other thing I wanted to bring up before we get into the case studies is people do use influencers, or this idea of influencers or UGC content creators for B2B services and other kinds of… I guess what I mean more is like non-consumer products, because I think most people listening to this show have a membership community or they’re trying to have one, right? So I thought these two stats were really interesting that I pulled, and I linked to the article, which is… And this is in… Hold on, I’m just looking at which article this is in.
[00:11:01.270] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, this is in the is online comms article that I sent. But B2B buyers are looking at at least three to five pieces of content before they contact the vendor. So they’re looking at content ahead of time. So having content for them to look at is going to help them make that purchase. But also I thought that it was interesting that B2B decision makers are spending more than 70 % of the purchase cycle engaging with content before ever reaching out to you. So not only are they looking at pieces of content, they’re spending more than 70 % of the time looking at and engaging with the content before they even contact you. So I thought that those were two compelling ideas to think about. And what I did was I pulled together five case studies and I wanted to talk with you about them and see if you had some other ideas about it, and specifically how it would apply to membership. I don’t know if that would be fun for you.
[00:11:59.690] – Jonathan Denwood
Could Goody, goody, goody. Goody, goody, Yam, Yam. That will be nothing to you. I think the monkeys used it, but it’s when I was growing up, I was a little child in the ’70s and early ’80s, there was a BBC TV series called The Goodies, and that was their catch for it. Goodie Goodie, Yam Yam. It was a fantasy, comedy, series.
[00:12:31.100] – Nicole Ouellette
I mean, I like to think of this podcast as a fantasy-comedy series.
[00:12:34.620] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, some of my… Hopefully, you might look at it as a bit of a nightmare, but I’m there, Nicole. We don’t know, do we? So what do you want to do next, Nicole?
[00:12:46.440] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, so okay. So this first case study I thought was interesting. It’s basically about this SAP, which does application software. And trust me, your online communities, I’m sure, are sexier than application software. But this SAP- What is application software? Well, I don’t really… It’s a leader in application software. Thousands of customers. Sap, come on. If we have a tech company, we just have to have an acronym that nobody entirely understands.
[00:13:14.640] – Jonathan Denwood
But It seems to go with the territory, don’t it, Nika?
[00:13:17.720] – Nicole Ouellette
Right. So what I thought was interesting is they held an in-person conference, right? But part of their conference was they invited five influencers to actually speak at their event or to be at their event. And they talked about topics, including machine learning, data analytics. And the event was trending in Germany for two… Because this was an event in Germany, and it was trending for two days. And it drove attendance up. The attendance drove 50 % of all social media mentions. So I thought that it was interesting that they actually got influencers to present at an event as something to give the event track And like I said, it’s one thing to see an influencer talk about a cup of coffee or something like that. But I thought that this approach was interesting because if you even attend an event in your industry, you don’t even have to be the one putting on. Working with influencers and getting them there and talking about your event might be a really great way for you to get some traction.
[00:14:23.330] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, I’ve got some insights here.
[00:14:25.590] – Nicole Ouellette
Yes, I thought you would. That’s why I wanted to talk about this. Tell me more.
[00:14:29.380] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, it must be now three years ago, I attended to do a online conference where we were going to have some major speakers We were like, I had Rob Rowland, who’s well known as the podcast Presenter of startups for the rest of it. I had Hendrixon, who’s as the lead educator at Microsoft Learning. And I had Pat, I forgot the second name. Sorry. That’s right? Yes. Yes. I’ve got Pat Filling as well. And I had a host of other… Fishkin? Fishkin from SEO.
[00:15:25.150] – Nicole Ouellette
Oh, yeah.
[00:15:26.160] – Jonathan Denwood
So I had some pretty big hitters.
[00:15:29.820] – Nicole Ouellette
I was going to say, you know some cool people.
[00:15:32.810] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I do actually. I do know some people that are personal friends. I would say Rob’s coming on my other podcast tomorrow, actually. He is a personal friend. So I had these people, friends and people I had cultivated, and I bought a package. I bought a package with a console consultation, a consultant who had run other webinar conferences about the technology and how we should run it. And he sold the concept to me that the main speakers at the virtual conference would be the people that would be the headliners, but it would be the secondary speakers that would do the heavy lifting for us, plus I would do some of it, and they would promote the conference to their… Then they’re going to be much more active in promoting it, not the heavy, the big names. Pat, I actually had to pay him to be the lead. He was the lead speaker. The others, I wasn’t paying. They were doing it because they were friends of mine, or I’d built a relationship with them. But it’s a ton of work in it. The business model that I had been sold was rubbish, actually. I hired a couple of really very qualified VCs, personal PA’s, sorry.
[00:17:26.000] – Jonathan Denwood
I hired a couple of highly recommended PA’s, and they were They did an outstanding job for me. We had a library of pre-developed social media content for the event, 30 days out. I must have spent four months on it. But I got ill, Nicole. I got cancer, and I was in the midst of treatment, and it was all getting a bit too much for me, Nicole. Are you clapping the silence me, Nicole? Or was it the dog?
[00:18:05.270] – Nicole Ouellette
No, I was trying to get my dog to stop barking.
[00:18:07.540] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, that’s the dog. That was English human, Nicole. I was in the midst of a battle with pangrish cancer, and there were some other things going on as well. But the main thing is that the consultant, he had sold me this concept and it was nonsense because The secondary speakers didn’t really promote. We were constantly on their back to promote this through social media, and they were very resilient. We had some really good frontline speakers, and I was losing my… Because I was fighting this illness, and I was getting more worked up because I’d asked a lot of friends who weren’t charging me to be speakers. And I had got sponsorship. I had got over $25,000 worth of sponsorship. And obviously, it’s me to build And the consultant had lost the interest because I had paid him about 5,000, but also he was going to get a cut off the profit. And it became obvious that he had really no idea. The thing is, I had been warned by other people that had worked with this consultant. They had given me some warnings that they didn’t feel that he was fantastic. And And I’ve done it because I thought I needed somebody who had experience in this to help me.
[00:19:51.440] – Jonathan Denwood
But he was truly useless, Nicole. He was truly useless. I would like to say something further, but I’m not I’m not going to because he might listen to this. I’m going to leave it at that, Nicole. But the point was getting people to actually do what they say they’re going to do, because I was very upfront with… I was like… And we gave them a ton of pre-developed content. We had a shared library, and it was all populated, the text, the images, and they still wouldn’t do it, Nicole.
[00:20:33.790] – Nicole Ouellette
Interesting. Did Pat help as a headliner?
[00:20:36.260] – Jonathan Denwood
No, he wouldn’t do anything. The deal, he wasn’t prepared. And that was my It was clear to us, actually. Well, yes, it cost me… Pat wanted about $10,000, which I had to pay him 5,000 upfront, and I’m not going to go into… Because we had to cancel because of my illness. We had to cancel it. And the sponsors were really good to me because most of them didn’t demand their money back because they could see that I had really done my best and my illness wasn’t down to me. But it’s left this idea that you’re going to get… I never really… So Anne And the other thing was that it was clear that he wouldn’t promote it, because at the time, he was a well-known individual, but he had just got in with circle. Comcircle. Co. Ours was around membership, but it was community and membership. He’s the investor in circle. Co. So he made it clear that he would be the lead speaker, but he wouldn’t promote it. The problem was the other people that agreed as friendship and that, they They’re very, very busy people, and they weren’t quite… They were well-known influencing individuals, but they were very busy people, so I didn’t feel I could ask them to promote it.
[00:22:29.170] – Jonathan Denwood
But the consultant And I thought that it pushed it, that it was going to be the second-tier speakers that were attracted to be speakers because of the Pat and the three to four well-known figures around Pat that I’d managed. Well, it was a two-day virtual conference with over 14 to 15 speakers, and none of the 12 of the minus… Could I get them to my team, get them to promote it? No, we couldn’t. It was really very difficult situation, and I wasn’t well enough. But I think my virtual assistance really went above what I was paying them. They really, really did try with these people, and they just wasn’t responsive, Nicole.
[00:23:26.160] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah. Well, I’m sorry to hear that. That sounds like all kinds of bad things converging at once.
[00:23:34.330] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, that’s how it normally goes, Nicole. I get that.
[00:23:40.000] – Nicole Ouellette
And I guess the reason I brought- I would never do a virtual conference again.
[00:23:44.150] – Jonathan Denwood
I don’t blame you. I would rather… Well, some form of online torture, rather than attempt that again. I’m a bit… How you get, how you promote it What got me about the secondary presenters, the consultant really sold this to me, and it sounds plausible, but all great cons are, this is my take on it, all great cons are plausible, But I think he knew in his heart. The only thing is, maybe the reason why it didn’t work is that you really, the top speaker and the top four people underneath, you’re better off having a commercial, totally commercial arrangement and having it in black and white, how much they’re going to promote it. And maybe that’s where I went, but I was influenced by this consultant. And I think it’s only if you’re paying people and it’s in a contract, and they’ve got to promote it a certain amount, they’re not going to do it. Maybe that’s why it went wrong, Nicole.
[00:24:54.880] – Nicole Ouellette
Well, I don’t think it’s bad to spell out expectations ever, and it it’s hard because it’s like, sometimes you have people you’re friendly with and you’re friends with, and, oh, yeah, it’s going to be great. I’m going to do it. But yeah, maybe it does come down to that. I just thought what was interesting is that they use these. They sprinkled these people in this five people across this two-day event. It sounds like they weren’t the majority of the speakers, but it was like they had these people come, and part of, I think, their agreement was talking about it.
[00:25:28.470] – Jonathan Denwood
And that’s what I think. Like I said, I was influenced by this consultant that it was going to be the second, and they would want to promote it because we had packed, and I had managed to get three or four people that were well known online. But maybe the other thing is they dink directly, but I thought the combination, Henderson from LinkedIn Learning is one of the best well known teachers on that platform, so that’s a connection. I think I thought Rob rolling It’s a very popular podcast and talks about online marketing. And the secondary speakers had pretty large, reasonably large audiences. He told me that they would market it And no, I think the example you’re showing is that he probably had a cast eye in agreement with those top five people, and I had been influenced by this consultant and his nonsense.
[00:26:30.830] – Nicole Ouellette
I think everyone listening has probably been influenced by a consultant in nonsense in some way.
[00:26:38.430] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I got warned by two other people that he was nonsense-filled, but I felt I needed the advice of somebody, and he was at a price range that I could afford. And he seemed very plausible, but I had been pre-warned that he was And there was something missing, and I still went through with it, Nicole.
[00:27:06.500] – Nicole Ouellette
Sometimes, you have faith in people. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, but I think, yeah. But I’m really glad you shared that story because I think there’s definitely some stuff to be learned from it from all of us. Like I said, if somebody listening to this has not been influenced by a shady consultant, nobody has.
[00:27:29.690] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I I think the two, especially the one that really, really warned me, the reason why I might not have warned it, the person that warned me was an effective business individual, but somebody that I had observed could be very difficult themselves and extremely demanding to a level which I think on the verge of being unfair. And because I respected that person as a business person, but I didn’t totally respect them in the way they managed people, which I had observed. I discounted what he was saying to me to some degree. But I did get another warning, but it wasn’t so detailed, and so I made a judgment call, so maybe I’ve been a bit tough on myself. I think it’s time for us to go for our break, Nicole. And then we can go into some of the other case studies, but I thought I would share that lovely experience with the listeners and viewers. See, it can go wrong for anybody at any time, folks. Absolutely. You just got to applaud on, folks. We’re going for a middle break, folks. We will be back in a few moments. Three, two, one. We’re coming back.
[00:28:54.240] – Jonathan Denwood
So, Nicole, do you want to tell us about your great online service and what it does. Or trend to send.
[00:29:05.640] – Nicole Ouellette
Trend to send. Trend to send. Yeah. So if you’re like me and are annoyed that we all have to be video makers on social media, this service is for you. Basically, what I try to do is I find the trends that are going on. I have a little spreadsheet and everything, and I track them across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. And basically, you get twice a week text message from me with a trend that you can easily do, film and edit in less than 15 minutes, and post across multiple platforms for maximum visibility. And what’s frustrating is videos I spent hours on versus videos like these trending videos that I spent 15 minutes on. I get twice as many views and interactions on the trending videos, and it’s silly. So rather than fighting City Hall, I don’t know, I guess we need to join City Hall. So if you want to be more visible online, these trending videos are the way to do it. And I have grown my audience with them. I have increased my engagement with them. So you can check out trendtosend. Com if you want to see some example ones and see how it works.
[00:30:12.750] – Nicole Ouellette
And we have pricing tiers where we edit the videos for you and all that. But it starts at 49 bucks a month and you get eight trends a month. And if you’re posting eight videos a month, you’re doing more than most businesses. So check out trendtosend. Com.
[00:30:26.590] – Jonathan Denwood
Sounds a great service. So Nico, Shall we move forward with some of the other case studies you got to share with us?
[00:30:33.920] – Nicole Ouellette
Absolutely. So this is just other case study, and I really like it because it’s about GE, right? And we think about like, oh, GE, I have a vacuum cleaner or a dryer or something. But this particular campaign was around their… What is it? Their manufacturing facilities, because they do a lot of commercial work as well. So what they did is they hired six Instagram influencers, and they made a hashtag, GE Instawalk, which I’m not sure if I would have picked that hashtag, but it’s fine. They’re a big company. They know things, I don’t know.
[00:31:08.060] – Jonathan Denwood
It could be worse. It could be #Tesla, couldn’t it? I’m sorry, listeners abuse. I just couldn’t resist. In English, there’s a twisted dark side.
[00:31:21.430] – Nicole Ouellette
I appreciate a twisted dark side. I could use that aspect to myself. So I appreciate you bringing it into this podcast. But But basically, so these six people posted with this hashtag, and this idea was, let’s show GE’s manufacturing and get people aware that they do these commercial applications. And they got 8 million extra views and 3,000 new followers off of that campaign. But with this idea, you might not have, I don’t know, a wind turbine to show people on a virtual tour or on a physical tour. But that doesn’t mean you can’t… How could you potentially do a virtual tour of your membership community with maybe a group of influencers? Maybe there’s a hashtag, and that gives them, I guess, a way to give a virtual tour and show your business to their audiences. And maybe it ends up being that they get a free month trial plus an X amount of money for producing the content. There’s a way I think that you could make that work for you and for the influencers that that you’d work with. So I just thought that it was an interesting idea to have this. And what they did was they picked a platform, in their case, Instagram.
[00:32:38.480] – Nicole Ouellette
So I think if you were going to do something like this, you wouldn’t want to be like, oh, here’s a hashtag, and you’re going to use it across eight social media websites. I think you would pick a website, and you would pick a few people, and you would do this thing as a virtual tour. I think that could potentially work. What are your thoughts about that, Jonathan? Is that too silly?
[00:32:58.210] – Jonathan Denwood
No, it sounds a great case study. Great way of doing it.
[00:33:03.850] – Nicole Ouellette
Well, a little creativity there. That’s always nice to have. I don’t know if you want to add anything to it or if we should move on to case study.
[00:33:11.300] – Jonathan Denwood
Shall we move on to the next one?
[00:33:12.890] – Nicole Ouellette
We can. Absolutely.
[00:33:14.150] – Jonathan Denwood
I think I thought I had said too much in the first half.
[00:33:17.660] – Nicole Ouellette
No, I think it’s nice for people to hear these things from other people.
[00:33:24.770] – Jonathan Denwood
I didn’t come across bitter, did I, Nicole?
[00:33:26.830] – Nicole Ouellette
No, I don’t think so. I don’t think so. Like I said, we’ve all listened to consultants who have told us crappy advice, and we paid way too much money for it. And the thing is, if we all share our experiences, we can all save each other from that heartache.
[00:33:46.990] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think the other thing you want to learn, see, I get a lot of people that want to start their membership website, and they book a free chat with me. And then I had a couple last week, and I always advise people, you really don’t know what’s going to really click with your target audience until you get into battle, and you really get that first batch of students in, and you of them, and you spend a lot more time with those students than you’re going to do when you really get the fin public. But you want to spend a lot more time with that initial batch of students because you How much experience you’ve got around the subject, you’re going to be surprised. You’re going to be surprised which bits of the course that they really rave about and bits that doesn’t really register and don’t really work. And they’re going to be bits that you think they were going to really rave about. And it’s happened time after time after time. So that’s That’s why you need a course that gets a result, but you don’t want to build this wall and piece, as I say.
[00:35:06.820] – Jonathan Denwood
But I think it’s linked to what you’ve outlined.
[00:35:10.380] – Nicole Ouellette
Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. And the thing is, you have your students that are going through an initial iteration of the course and giving you feedback. But this is another way to get that feedback in addition to getting marketing material created for your offer, too, whether you work with UGC content creator or an influencer. And sometimes people are both. But like I said, there’s a delineation that we made at the beginning. But this third case study, I think will speak to you.
[00:35:41.290] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, do you think so?
[00:35:42.750] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, foreshadowing. So Essentially, what happened is Dell, again, I was trying to pick, like I said, some pretty non-sexy stuff to promote because it’s not… And some, like I said, different consumer a things to talk about. But Dell hired Walter Isaacson, who’s, I guess, a former CNN CEO. That was a lot of… And they hired him to do a podcast, a short run podcast of a certain amount of episodes. I think there was 12 or 14, I forgot to write down how many, called Trailblazers. And the idea was, Dell wanted to get in front of that podcasting audience, but They don’t want to create the podcast themselves. So what did they do? They found somebody who knew how to make a podcast and who had an audience, and they hired this person to create a series of episodes, basically interviewing, like I said, it was called Trailblazers, and it was all about innovation and disruption stuff, which is, they’re in the tech industry, so that works. But what I was thinking was, what if someone is listening to this podcast and they want to get in front of a podcast audience, but they don’t necessarily they want to go through and make their own podcast, what if they would hire someone like you who knows how to do podcasts, and you could white label a group of content?
[00:37:12.570] – Nicole Ouellette
So going back to the example of, was it Was it the music coach?
[00:37:16.560] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m trying to remember who the example- Yes, the lady that is trying to produce a course around stage fright.
[00:37:25.330] – Nicole Ouellette
Right. Okay. So maybe she says, You know what? I am not interested in podcasting. But maybe I hired Jonathan, and he can interview people who speak publicly and do a series called the Stage Fright Series. And you would do it under her banner, and you would be talking to people about how they’ve overcome stage fright, where they started their career and all of that. And basically, as you know, having a podcast, you have people who would listen to the initial download right away, and then you have people who discover your podcast and then go back in time and listen to all the episodes. You have these pieces of content, this series that’s out there working for you even after the initial launch period. So I thought that was a really interesting way to get in front of a new group of people without necessarily having to make the content yourself. What do you think about that approach to maybe marketing a membership website or platform?
[00:38:28.450] – Jonathan Denwood
I think I think it could work. I think another mythology, the problem with podcasting, the reason why I do it, I get very few direct sales evidence through my podcasting. The reason why I do it is it builds up influence. And also I have direct evidence that it really helps me with my SEO and my written content on both on my website. I I’ve got another online business, which I don’t talk about, but I’ve used both concepts, and it really gives the written content and video to it, and also it increases the domain or for If you got established podcast. So in SEO terms, search engine optimization terms, that’s why I do the podcasting. The only medium apart, the only podcast podcast medium that’s worked for me to get actual evidence of direct purchases is going on other people’s podcasts and then offering a substantial deal, either a discount or some knowledge product, which then I send them a discount to my main product, but some special knowledge product, a knowledge product, which I’ve developed and I’ve done a round of podcasting. I’ve booked a round of podcasting and I’ve known other people, but you do need some special offer if you want.
[00:40:14.360] – Jonathan Denwood
But I found that has worked. But the only other is YouTube is making videos, and I’ve made over 1,500 videos now in two years, and I’ve tripled the size on my YouTube channel, but it’s been a lot of work. Apart from paid advertising, I think the only area that I think clearly has shown, and I haven’t done a very good job of it, and I’m looking at methodologies to do it, is building up your email list and concentrating on your email list. But I think it could work, but I think going on podcast as a guest and having good free offering and then sending them after they obtain the free offering or offer a direct discount, special offer, a pre-launch offer. I can see that working for the type of people that are listening to this podcast, Nicole.
[00:41:24.660] – Nicole Ouellette
That’s a good way to do it. It sounds like that is Something that’s something people could probably more easily DIY than hiring an influencer to- Well, I think it just depends on their budget because the thing about that, if you’re getting somebody that’s got high visibility and credibility, And you’re doing the video plus the audio, you then can cut up the video part and use it for TikTok, for Instagram.
[00:41:55.500] – Jonathan Denwood
It will provide a lot of short form video content That’s true. Plus, also a lot of it has been shown that long form… Because most people now are doing… We do this show, we do it as a audio, but we also do it as a video. Most professional podcasters are now, not all, but most are doing both. They’re recording it for video because then they’re cutting it up for short form as well, Nicole.
[00:42:31.800] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, no, for sure. It just gives you a lot of options. But if somebody was thinking, Okay, I don’t necessarily know. I want to get in front of a new audience and do a new medium, but I don’t know if I want to go through the learning curve of learning how to podcast, for example. I just thought that was Microsoft is not going to be like, yes, let’s hire a podcaster at Microsoft to do this. They were like, oh, let’s see if this works. Let’s run this as a podcast campaign, which I thought was an interesting idea. But anyway, so we have two more case studies, which I think we can probably get through in our time, but cut me off if you need to.
[00:43:23.160] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re doing well in the time.
[00:43:24.540] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, yeah. So basically, this fourth idea I thought was really interesting. And again, I Obviously, like I said in the last episode, influencing is relatively a relatively new idea. I think it was just added to the dictionary in 2017, which really feels like a long time ago now, but really wasn’t that long ago. But So a lot of these examples are big companies. That’s not to say that we can’t take the ideas and modify them for our smaller companies. This is from Microsoft and- Oh, God, the devil. The devil, right? But basically, I thought this was really Cool. So what they wanted to do is they wanted to talk about… They wanted to get in front of new people, and they wanted to promote women in STEM careers. So what they did was they hired Well, they hired National Geographic photographers to do a spotlight about women scientists. They did a series of still photos and profiles in the caption about these women scientists. And it ended up reaching about 91 million people. So it’s related to Microsoft, but it associated them in a positive way. And I like how it’s like, Oh, can you create art around your subject matter and get people to talk about it and to be aware of it?
[00:44:43.080] – Nicole Ouellette
I thought that was maybe an interesting idea.
[00:44:47.260] – Jonathan Denwood
No, I really like that one, actually, Nicole. I can really see how that works, because we all think it’s very effective what we’re talking about, because it works with me all the time. I have a group of people, mostly I don’t watch American television. I’m mostly listening to audiobooks, podcasting. I’m a great consumer of podcasts, and YouTube. And if people I have a small group of people. I’m interested in WordPress. I’m interested mostly on online marketing. And I have a group of SEO online marketers that I religiously follow. And they AI people that are utilizing the best AI technology, because personally, I’ve got a bit of dyslexia. And AI, it’s just helped me so much. So I love it because it’s helped me. And I use a lot of AI in producing content for the website, for the social media, and it will help you in producing content because you probably haven’t got the budget to hire people, folks. So I have these groups, but when they’re talking about a new product, a new service, I religiously go and have a look at it. And I don’t always buy it, but it makes me… Because I trust these people, and they’ve recommended good stuff in the past to me.
[00:46:30.050] – Jonathan Denwood
So I think it’s what we’re talking about, and it’s definitely something that people are launching a membership side, don’t normally think about, and they want to, because it works And I’m an old English geezer, aren’t I? I’m as cynical as you can get. No, not really, am I? But it works with me, and I think I think it will work for a lot of people, won’t it?
[00:47:02.410] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah. No, I just like that it was a creative approach. And I think you might be you might be surprised, but sometimes having someone approach creating content in a more maybe creative way, because obviously, whatever we produce, we make these these membership platforms, we’re so close to it. I think it is really valuable to get that outside perspective when you’re working with an influencer. Or like I said, it’s a cool idea to work with AI about it. I hadn’t really thought about that angle, but it makes sense.
[00:47:42.920] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. Got the next one?
[00:47:45.680] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, yeah. And this is the final one that I have. And you might… I basically just wanted to give some ideas of ways to approach an influencer campaign rather than just randomly emailing someone saying, Hey, so that you can think about how it would fit into your overall marketing in terms of your membership website. So this one is… And the SEO of this will speak to you, I think, Jonathan. But Remember go-to meeting?
[00:48:16.870] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah.
[00:48:17.520] – Nicole Ouellette
Okay, so go to meeting, still a thing. And this was happening during COVID when obviously Zoom and other platforms were starting to get ahead. They wanted more more people to get into their… There’s a free version of go-to meeting, and there’s a paid version. Obviously, they wanted to get some people into the paid version. So what they did, as the market was becoming saturated with options, they wanted to drive the signups through the paid accounts And so what they did was they worked with relevant content publications, and they offered a three-month cost per acquisition increase in exchange for a blog post or a review. So basically, it’s like, Okay, we get this. You write on your website about go to meeting, and we will increase the amount of money that we’re paying off of maybe an affiliate or something like that. And they got a 725 % increase in paid accounts over that period. And their number of trial signups went up 701 %. But the other thing that they got from it, which the article didn’t really touch on, was they got all of these websites, talking about them and linking back to them, which is is, as you know, even if you’re making less money per transaction, sometimes getting that link back might be worth it.
[00:49:38.940] – Nicole Ouellette
I figured we have some SEO thoughts about this.
[00:49:41.330] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, but that’s the other great thing about going on other people’s podcast podcasts because my other podcast, the WP Tonic, it’s an interview podcast. So I always do show notes. I do show notes here as well, which has a link to your I have two products, Nicole, and I have a domain of 40 of 65, which is wonderful. Every guest that comes on my other podcast, I have show notes and I link to their product, or if they’re not got a product, I link it to their LinkedIn profile. But most of them come on the show because they want to talk about their product or service, whatever. And it’s a great way of building links, quality links to your website, because my experience, every day I get SEO companies saying, Can you write about our product? Or can we do a guest post? And I must get them every day. And it’s very hard to… I’m not going to say black hat, but it’s more gray hat. There’s been a host of techniques getting… There’s a number of quais on business news website The well-known one is Forbes. They were notorious about buying their own links, but they’ve been hammered and a lot.
[00:51:25.010] – Jonathan Denwood
And there was news sites based in India and blah, blah, blah. But they all get cracked down. But really building quality backlinks is extremely difficult, legit ones. But going on people’s podcast is a really legit methodology in getting those type of backlinks. And if they’re linked, those websites you’re going on or linked to your particular audience, they’re probably going to be the type makes sense to Google. So it all works, doesn’t it? Can I tell you one of the reasons why I wanted to have this discussion? I was really Do you know Nathan Barry, the founder of Convert kit, renamed now Kit. He did an interview and he was talking because he got into I think his background is in design and UX design and design in general. And he made a considerable amount of money in building educational products around how to develop modern day UX interfaces. He managed to sell a lot of online books on the subject, where there was a great shortage of knowledge. We’re talking about 10 years ago, and he became quite a big influencer. And then he developed Convert kit, and for a couple of years, he did an interview, and he was saying in the interview, and it’s registered with me, because he’s a particular…
[00:53:25.350] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve met him a couple of times. I’ve never persuaded him to come on my a podcast. He’s got closed, but both times where I got closed, he bailed on me, so I’ve given up. But he’s a pretty smart dude, and he’s been interviewed on a podcast, and he said, Yeah, he developed Convert kit, and it was running for a couple of years, and it was making about 50,000 a year. It was just about breaking even, basically. He had a couple of part-time people, and he was spending more time on building more of these information products, and he wasn’t really spending attention on kit. And then he had a conversation with one of his mentors, And he started complaining about what he wasn’t getting anywhere with Convert kit. It was seen stagnant. It was on his third year now, and it was actually slowly going down ‘s on the high point of 50,000. ‘ It was gradually going down through what is called churn, folks. And he was complaining to his mentor, and his mentor said, Well, yeah, ‘You need to either give up on it or you need to concentrate your maximum attention on it.
[00:54:52.850] – Jonathan Denwood
‘ It’s not going to grow unless you really focus on it. And it woke him up. He was saying the main way he really got the ball rolling with Convert kit was through influencer marketing, mixing it with affiliate marketing. Reall y personally, He was taken seriously because he had a following through his info products. So people would take the time to Zoom him or have a meeting with him. But he said he only really got it starting to really grow through really having a worked-out strategy around the influence of marketing and affiliate marketing, and that’s always stuck in my memory banks, Nicole.
[00:55:53.820] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, it makes sense. There’s only so much that you can talk about, like your own product or service. And at a certain point, you have to start having other people or other ways to talk about it. And it sounds like influencer and affiliate marketing models have worked for a variety of folks. As long as you’re flexible in your approach, you might find a way that will work for your objectives and your budget.
[00:56:21.970] – Jonathan Denwood
Right, Nicole, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and what you’re up to?
[00:56:27.920] – Nicole Ouellette
Yeah, so if you go to technical goalsupport.com, you’ll see basically all my social links there, as well as all of my other content on that site.
[00:56:39.040] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think next week, folks, Nicole’s agreed to this. We’re going to be talking about email marketing, buying lists, and the whole area. I think Nicole’s got some opinions and views. I’ve got some. It should be a great show. I’ve actually really enjoyed this show. I think we’ve covered some great insights.
[00:57:01.030] – Nicole Ouellette
I like how you say it like you’re surprised.
[00:57:03.200] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s my Englishness, Nicole. You must remember, I’m not American. I’ve been living here. I always pass… I might stay here. I don’t plan to stay in America. I think in the next couple of years, I’ll be moving on. But if I do decide, I’ll always be English, I’ll always be British. It’s what I was brought up in. I didn’t move to America until I was 42, so the bulk of my years has been in the UK. But we might share a common language. Absolutely. But we are a bit different.
[00:57:42.660] – Nicole Ouellette
That’s what makes it work.
[00:57:44.060] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, they’re on. Hopefully, you found this really useful, folks. If you did get some feedback, go to the WP-Tonic YouTube channel, go to Nicole’s YouTube channel, give us some feedback, email us, or whatever. I think it’s been a great discussion. Hopefully, you’ve got some ideas from this to market your own membership business. We’ll be back next week, folks. Bye. Bye.
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