How To Leverage Influencer Marketing To Grow Your Brand - Nicholas Quintero - Meal Prep on Fleek

SPEAKER_00 0:04

This is the Beyond the Story Podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. And now Sebastian Bro. Nick, welcome to the show, dude.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

What's up, man? Good to see you again.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Likewise, man. This world, this digital world is so hyper connected, it's always online, online. But then, you know, 2020 happens and Zoom's the norm.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Yeah, man. Yeah. All over the place. That's what got me over here to North Carolina.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Yeah, I bet. Lots of lots of moves for lots of people. That's for sure. Well, uh, definitely great to connect with you again. You and I reconnected recently on a post uh on that Dan Henry had made about something about YouTube or content or something, you know, uh opinion of that that Dan had posted uh pertaining to such. And you just replied with a tremendous amount of of value in the comments, which is a great, grossly underrated strategy, by the way, um, of being able to overdeliver comments are content, right? That's right. But uh you had specifically talked about influencer marketing and influencer, you know, cont content marketing and then influencer marketing with all of that. So let's just dive right in. Let's help our listeners better understand a little bit more about you uh and then you know what you do, and then let's dive into this whole influencer marketing category. It fascinates me, something that I have not done as of yet, but um very curious to learn where this whole world is evolved into and where you think it's headed.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Yeah, definitely. Um, so a little bit about me. Um, I'm in the meal prep space, so healthy food, healthy recipes. I have four Instagram accounts over 200,000 K, uh, two TikToks over 100k, Pinterest over 100K. So like social growth has been a big focus for me. And how do I achieve growth and what are the different methods to do it? Uh influencer marketing is something that I came across. Uh, it also kind of fuels a publishing strategy uh for me. So that's um, you know, just kind of connecting all the different aspects of business and social.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Cool. Yeah, I guess it would. I mean, it could achieve a couple of objectives. Number one, you got somebody out there talking about your product. Number two, the content is actually being created by that individual. So those are those are two things that are taken off your plate. Well, not that you can do one. I mean, you can talk about yourself, but getting someone else to that, especially has a larger following uh may makes just that much more sense.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Yeah, or not, right? It depends. They might have a smaller following, but a lot of influence. Uh, you can find someone in a niche talking about diabetes and you want some authority in the diabetes space. So you work with them, you connect with them, you start developing a relationship, and then content strategies come together pretty organically.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Sure. So when did you start doing all this?

SPEAKER_01 2:48

Oh, uh 11-ish years ago is when I, you know, a full-time role in the in the media space. I've been in e-commerce for close to 17 years. Um, and then that was, you know, when internet forums were the platform, right? Facebook, no Facebook, no Twitter, nothing like that. Um, just building relationships organically, uh, showing up into uh car forums was what my my business was in. So being the expert in the space, teaching people how to do stuff, responding to comments, all the social media stuff that we do today.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

Sure. So how's this whole influencer marketing thing work? What walk me through it? If I'm a business or a brand, let's say I'm a coach and I've got a program I run people through and I'm looking to attract new clients and I want to leverage influencer marketing to do so. Break it down as if I called you and said, hey, I need help.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Yeah, part of that is objective-based, right? So I'd definitely set a questions on what's the objective, what's the desired outcome for you. Uh, and then we set up some pillars, like what are the categories that you're focusing on, and then who are some of the leaders in the category or not, right? You can, there's so many different tiers of influencer marketing. Um, everyone, quote unquote, has influence. It's just being the right person with the right uh platform. Um, just as an example of that, I would say that my wife has a ton of influence and the group that she's in. If she says, I tried this new thing, you got to try it, then 15 women are gonna try it, right? And that's that's like a very micro level compared to what you can think of when you think of influencer marketing, people with you know, hundreds of followers or thousands of followers or millions of followers. Um, you just you have to make sure that your numbers are right. And part of that would be, you know, we can get into some of the numbers, but engagement metrics, um, how many clicks get on your Instagram stories? Are you telling stories? Are you showing up every day? Um, how organic is the whole conversation? So a lot of nuances to look for.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Yeah, there is. So I would say, I mean, the main objective would be new business. I mean, new clients and and new clientele would be the reasoning for that. Now, I know sometimes there's different objectives, sometimes like a content objective, sometimes it's a a growth objective for you know the channels growing more. But um, what what do you see more of? Is it is it more of a mixed bag of results that come out of working with influencers?

SPEAKER_01 5:00

Yeah, if if you have one single sales objective, it makes the the sell on your site a little bit hard. Um, influencers or people want to just have relationships with people. Um, the most convincing story is someone that has actually gone through the transformation that you're providing to them. So, you know, again, you can have someone with 250 followers who is working on this transformation or just came through this transformation. Uh, I deal a lot with weight loss, right? Weight loss or macronutrients. So people that have just achieved a 15 or 20 pound weight loss has way more influence than someone who's just kind of, you know, talking about your kids and talking about the dog and the weather and you know, a little bit of fitness and health. But someone that's documenting the process and getting them from point A to point B in a strategic manner is someone that has way more influence than not.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

And and how do you decipher whether or not the influencers that you guys work with are actual influencers? Meaning if they post something, people engage with that content, they're interested in that content because that individual has enough clout. Remember, clout, shout out to clout, uh, to be able to influence a decision for somebody look, somebody looking. What a split of sham. Um well that escalated quickly. Um, but uh, you know, did uh has enough clout to get someone to to influence their decision making process.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Yeah, new clout only costs eight bucks, right?

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

Um, yeah, great question. Um, when so again, I I focus a lot on the health space. So um people that are in the middle of a transformation will use common hashtags: weight loss, weight loss journey, weight loss transformation, transformation lifestyle. So I'm like very hands-on when it comes to my own marketing efforts and how do I grow or how do I achieve a result? So I'll go through all these hashtags um and start looking for people that are consistently showing up and posting um on a hashtag. Or uh if I get from weight loss transformation to their page and I see that it's pretty uh consistent with how they're making progress, that's someone that I would want to connect with.

SPEAKER_00 7:09

Yeah, absolutely. And how many influencers do you guys work with in any given time?

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Um, there's probably 30-ish on our, you know, on our current partner roster, so to speak. And a lot of, you know, so my objective isn't necessarily direct sales. I want platform growth. I want to encourage people to meal prep. So we're doing a lot of collaborations like, hey, you make my recipe and I'll post your account to my 450,000 followers. Right. And so I want people to help kind of perpetuate the conversation around meal prep. And that's the bigger picture.

SPEAKER_00 7:43

Yeah. So and wow, that's some rapid growth you have with all of your, you said four channels.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

Uh yeah. So my main meal prep on Fleek channel has 455,000 followers.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

And and how did all this growth happen and how how long did all that take?

SPEAKER_01 7:58

So I actually I'll send you a list uh that you can link up to the notes, but I have a zero to 100K, just like tactics, right? So one post a day. Uh at the time I was doing about 70-30 content. Uh, 70% were collaborations and 30% were reposts. So either owned content or partnership content piece or viral repost. Um, there's a little bit of a nuance around viral repost right now with all this new monetization that's going on in platforms. So I'm not recommending that as much anymore. But there's still strategies to take uh, you know, a viral moment connected to a video that you're talking about and seeing growth. I like to call that the just in danger strategy, if you know who that is.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

No, I don't. Let's talk about that.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

Oh, cool. Yeah. So uh just in danger, I don't remember the whole um handle, but he's grown like crazy on TikTok and he's the guy that goes, listen, and then he gives you like a fact, right? But what he does is he stitches this solid hook, right? So you have some of the uh a hook is the first, you know, one to three seconds of a of a video, and that's what captures your attention. So he takes the hook from a super viral video, and then he stitches himself into the back end of that video. So right off the bat, he's getting um user attention, and then he has a fun fact that follows up on that. So that's like a really unique, I guess, perspective on how to create viral posts these days.

SPEAKER_00 9:20

What's this guy's name?

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Justin Danger Dunley or something like that. Super funny.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

I'm gonna have to look him up while we're uh while we're recording here so I don't forget it because that's you know Justin underscore danger underscore nunly N-U-N-L-E-Y. I got him right here. Very cool. I'm gonna have to check that out. We'll definitely check out your accounts uh um as well. So um where does influencer marketing go when the algorithm changes? I mean, I know it stays the same, well, it goes down, duh, but how does that impact the work that you're currently doing right now? And how does it impact the results?

SPEAKER_01 10:04

So I'm I'm probably more on the optimistic side in that people with the platform are getting more reach. Um, it's more organic. You see brands reach out to people that are personalities at a faster rate now than they have been. Uh brands themselves are turning into creators and monetizing platforms uh with subscriptions or creator monetization and things like that. So I think that more people are looking for a path to grow on social. Um and that's one of the pain points, right? If someone has 2,000 followers and you have 100,000, your sell to them to collaborate becomes a little bit easier. They want to see growth, they want to monetize. Hey, I need you know, a thousand followers and 400 watch hours. Okay, cool. I gotta, you know, start working on this. And I do think that uh influencer or creator partnerships is growing at a pretty fast rate.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

So if an entrepreneur, business owner, somebody just getting started, somebody's a little seasoned in here, but's been negligent with their content game is like, hey, they're listening to this interview and they're like, this guy really knows what he's talking about. I need to get my content game figured out. What can someone start doing today and then every day thereafter to help them start to cultivate um not only growth for their following, but also consistent content?

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Yeah, so a really quick, easy strategy is outreach, um, especially if you're a brand with a CPG product or some sort of consumer-based product, start reaching out to people that use the product, uh, generate some user-generated content, and volume is the key. So a super simple strategy. I know that Gary V talks about this too. About eight years ago, a buddy of mine uh has a seasoning company. We partnered with a pretty good size content creator, uh, very, you know, strategic videos. Product positioning was right on point. Um, and this was a paid collaboration. So I think it was like a thousand bucks. Paid him for the video with rights to use it and advertise. The video went viral. We continued to amplify the video over the course of like seven months, and he generated something like 60 grand in sales off of that one video off of that $1,000 spend. Um, it was just like that was a perfect scenario for us. So, anyways, my point, volume is important because you don't know what's going to hit. Once you find something that hits, and and that would be defined as whatever your objective is, generates followers, gets click-throughs. Um, you know, obviously sales is important, right? That's usually the path to click-through from a social post to your website. Um, and then you amplify what's working, and that's usually a page opportunity as well.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

Love it. Well, these are all great tips, and and I love the the world that we're living in here. Speaking of Gary, he's been predicting the the we would be creating content like this since I since I started. So it's in at least 12 years that he's been predicting it, and I took the ball and kind of ran with it based on his advice. I'm glad that I did. It was a very, very difficult drum to beat up until a couple of years ago when the light switch finally went off for a lot of people and brands that go, I guess I got to get into this content game because it's not going anywhere. Remember, that was the talk for a little while. It's just a fad. Um, and uh it's not going anywhere, and that's where the eyeballs are at on here. So, well, uh Nick, I appreciate you taking some time to hang out with us here on the show and explain what this whole world of influencer marketing uh is all about. Wish you continued success. Any final thoughts for our listeners?

SPEAKER_01 13:22

Everything's going to video, man. So vertical video under one minute right now, and it's gonna keep getting longer. The crunch for attention and capturing attention is is ripe. So lots of opportunity. Take as much advantage of it as you can right now.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Vertical video less than a minute. You heard it right here on Beyond the Story. Thanks again, Nick. Keep rocking and rolling and keep and uh keep those influencers in line. I know that's a full-time job. Good lord.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

You got it, buddy.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

Thanks, man.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

Talk to you soon.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

Until next time, friends. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story podcast. Be sure to appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. Signing off from the podcast, launchlab.com studios. We'll talk to you next time.