Influencer Marketing Trends

Speaker 1: [Music] hi I'm Melanie bar welcome to the shiled experience with Melanie join me as I talk to women who have successfully built it a career and business that they love we dive into the topic of how they built it and talk about everything from Having the courage to make career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively create successful teams Implement strategies for growth and Infuse Tech Innovation magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that bring brings us joy so let's dive in thank you for joining us Sherry tell us about Babel box and the moment you decided to launch it Babble boox is a full service influencer marketing agency we're best known for our signature box kits and multi-brand kits and if someone wanted to work with Babel box how would they start and can you tell us a little bit about the boxes is there an idea or a concept and do you help at the boxes how does that work if you want to find us the best way is to send us a note or give us a call we do three different types of influencer campaigns one are campaigns where we scope out what you want what the brand wants or what the agency wants for their client those are the types of campaigns that everyone was used to for our box collaborations we have co-ops which feature multiple Brands and they have themes and so those usually have five brands in a box and we have themes like holiday gift guides for kids new mom and baby resolution and usually Brands reach out to us and they'll look at the calendar and say these three Health Wellness box make sense for us we want to be part of that or they just sign up for one box and then for the custom box it's a little bit more involved so we have kickoff calls and we have to scope out what is the Box what is the look and feel that you want what types of products you want to send in the Box we're not sending sample siiz products they're realized products and a lot of times it's not just a box there might be noise in the box or lights in the Box they might have a need to ship frozen foods which we are probably one of the only companies that will take on that challenge for influencers there's the design and the Fulfillment and the shipping and then on the other side of it is the influencers so there's a lot of like planning that goes into that and where how did you get into influencer marketing I worked in Corporate America when Mommy bloggers were a big thing and I was single and I said wait a minute how come none of these advertisers they're all talking to moms why isn't any one uh talking to single women which is a big segment single women single men singles in general and I took a leap of faith and said I'm going to start my own blog Focus not on dating but cooking for one travel for one health for the single person and realized very quickly that it was going to be very hard because no one everyone wanted to talk to the mom so I started working and doing what a lot of the mom networks in the Blogger world did they had all these mommies that they would then go to ad advertisers so I started doing that for everyone who wasn't a mop so it wasn't just people who wrote about being single it was like food cooking recipy Health Fitness Wellness these were bloggers that were up and coming but no one really paid attention to them and soon enough we had hundreds and then thousands of influencers focusing on different categories and verticals that's really smart because even if you are married there was a lot of time that you were single and lived a single person life so you would think there would be a big market for that at least I would yeah I don't know the stats but it's like a split half the country was single and no one was really speaking to them and I don't really know if they are but things might have changed a lot in that demo split and when the Box goes out who does it go to they look and it's intentional they look like these subscription boxes that you see Arc box or FB fit fun but they're not they are bigger they include real siiz items and they only go to influencers so customers consumers can't get the boxes it's a media buy so it's going to curated influencers the types of influencers depend what the brands want it might be a health Wellness box it might go out to Nano influencers versus mega influencers it really depends uh the scope of the project Babel boox is a kindness first fast-paced adrenaline fueled company that seeks people who are interested in advancing the influencer marketing industry how has business growth been for you since you launched we were in the influencer marketing space since 2010 and everyone would say oh aren't you worried about your competitors and I I don't look to the sides when we launch the boxes it for so many reasons it differentiated us it was something different it touched on different Trends it touched on the subscription box Trend it made things easier for Brands it made a lot of our Solutions make things more cost effective because if you're partnering with other brands in our Co-op solution it's less expensive to do it it helped differentiate and grow the business and then I would say with Co when everything like influencers just Rose to the occasion because Brands realized that we can't do photo shoot and we can't do anything so let's send stuff to influencers and then the box was a nice vehicle to send it to them so we've been very fortunate for personal Brands and companies who are already influencers what do you see that's coming next in the industry I think it's going to be the reverse you already see it with people who are like okay I want to have a product line you're going to start seeing what do we do with these malls that are becoming vacant we have popup shops that are influencer popup shops or merch shops I have an 11-year-old he comes home with prime or we bought crunch Labs granted their Mega massive influencers but I think it's going to be the influencers are going to lead the way back to reality like offline activations yeah and I think so too and I just said to someone the other day I want a box of clothes to show up we're all so busy we don't always have time to go to the stores anymore so it's nice to have that box show up it's fun we have someone on our team who actually moved into an apartment like a rent apartment and and she didn't realize but it used to be an influencers apartment and so she seems getting all these packages and she's like I don't know why but all these brands are sending me stuff yeah that's nice I wouldn't complain about that right for someone who is new to being an influencer a company or a personal brand where do you suggest they start if you're a company and you're new you know you don't need the SAS platforms you don't need an agency I would start with one or two find out who is writing about you go and listen to the social conversations and are there people writing about you and tap into the talent that really likes you or go very local if you're a local business and you don't have people talking about you build that Community because if it starts from around you it will grow you don't need to go big in the beginning you could also do a lot of things natively if you are reaching out to people in your community that are influencers because you're local they might want to support you and you'll save a lot of money that way and that's so true and if product are good friends want to support friends you offer co-promotions how do you work with companies and Brands to do that we have a whole calendar and so the this was the solution that was just supposed to be more costeffective for Brands and easy and turn key we have this whole calendar again if we start now we'll say we have holiday food and entertaining we have all the gift guides for pet men women kids and so our team curates different brands and so it will be category exclusivity for the brand Brands but there might be five products in the box brands send us the products we pack it fulfill and it goes out in our Babel box so that's our branded box is not a custom box and then the influencers that receive it there's 20 of them and they're micros so in our world they would have between 20 and 100,000 followers so when 20 influencers get that box like one of them might be considered not so big but when you add up the 20 we know that we're going to get 2 million three million four million impressions and a lot more content than if you just work with one person we're doing a lot of the curation what's tricky is making sure that the products all fit together and there isn't a conflict not just with exclusivity but with Aesthetics price point it's a balancing ax for sure but I see how if there's a topic it would be fun to receive a box all based on that topic that could be easily shared yeah the term T pools right so we're trying to touch upon where we know holiday is definitely one of them right but back to school is another one is Valentine's Day One resolution is definitely one in the health Wellness space where I come from so there's these different occasions celebrations moments in life that we try to touch upon and that also makes it easier for the brands because they don't have to think about it oh I need placements for a holiday I need placements for resolution I'm good and those are all things that we're all thinking about on our calendar I'm not thinking about resolutions just yet I know but it's coming I know chatter is your sampling program with an elevated twist which which seems so fun how would a brand work with chatter so chatter is of the play where sometimes you have a brand that says oh my God we have 30,000 samples what do we do with them like the tiny samples and that's where we'll just leverage influencers to offset some of the sampling so it's smaller because most of what we do is realsize items to the point where like we've sent baby carriages and mattresses to to influencers but Chatters if you have those tiny samples and then we'll Mass sample to influencers and Beyond the influencers to consumer seg and I love the name because chatter isn't a full conversation so it makes perfect sense with the size of the sampling I love it thank you you have a podcast episode titled influencers and motherhood what do you see that's next for moms who are promoting either their own or desirable Brands I think the big question is are you allowed to put your children in the content and we do have a lot of brands that say no children even though you think it's a kids brand like kids can't be in the content but think now mothers have to be really intentional do we want our children in these videos because it's a safety issue and also whatever Chicago passed it was like about labor laws are we on Tenth of of the rate that the influencer get is technically I think supposed to go to the child that's something that we have to be mindful of magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy what is one thing that you do for you to make sure that you're finding and living your joy so I'm like literally GNA have tears in my eyes so I love what I do and I have friends who will say to me all you do is work but I wanted to be a writer growing up and so technically I'm not writing but I'm watching people who are creators write or create videos scripts content to me that brings me joy I love being able to be part of that process say like we have a blank box every day because it's so fluid one day I'm working on toys and Banking and the next day I'm working on Fitness so it's just so creative that I love it I love nature taking time to payak hike be outside and it's got to be so fun the industry you're in because you're right it's got to be changing constantly and always different so I'm sure that's fun and exciting every day and it seems like you became a writer in the right way that was perfect for you I hope maybe one day I'll get back to the pen and paper thank you for sharing with us all about influencer marketing please tell us how and where we can find you of course you can find me personally Sherry at Babb box.com so it's sh or ibx.com that's my email direct if you want to find us on Instagram it's bbox official same thing with Linked In and Facebook thank you for joining us today I'd love to hear from you reach out to me at hello she.com on our Sheil it website or at Sheil it on social thank you to my editor rich draino who always makes us sound good until next time let nothing stop you from experiencing the life and business that you crave [Music]