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Q&A: Fit For A King’s Ryan “Tuck” O’Leary Talks ‘The Path’ Plus How To Work With Your Favorite Artists On Featured X

Despite everything going on in the world and the limitations presented in the music business, Fit For A King bassist/clean vocalist Ryan “Tuck” O’Leary has remained extremely busy.

Not only has O’Leary released new music with his indie rock side-project Off Road Minivan and recorded a highly anticipated Fit For A King record but the DIY musician has also started a brand new podcast and created a new company called Featured X.

The new business, which launched at the end of July, is your new goto to get some of your favorite musicians featured on your music -- think Fiverr but with all metalcore, post-hardcore, hardcore and deathcore artists.

Talking with Tuck about his new site featuring the likes of Tyler Carter, Shane Told, Spencer Charnas, Brendan Murphy and more, the outgoing entrepreneur said, “Originally, we're like, ‘Okay, we're going to launch and we're going to put out like 13 guys.’ And then 13 guys turned to 30. And then 30 turned to 60. And it was just like, ‘Holy shit. Okay, we're just going to see however many we can get now.’”

He added, “I think with this Friday's drop, we're going to be at around like 100 vocalists because now more people are getting interested in it because they're seeing it which is the exciting part where I just want my friends to get paid. And the reality is, if they can sing two songs a month, pay all their bills and they're good and they can remain artists, that's what's up.”

To learn more about the exciting Featured X as well as Fit For A King’s brand new album The Path, be sure to look below. Afterward, make sure to grab a pre-order before it hits stores September 18th via Solid State Records.

Regardless of all that’s going on in 2020, you’ve still been incredibly busy with a new Off Road Minivan record, new Fit For A King album and now the Featured X platform you just announced. Were all these planned pre-COVID?

Ryan “Tuck” O’Leary: Not all of them and also I actually have a podcast that I just teamed up with Idobi Radio for recently as well. It's called Get Tucked. You can listen to it every Monday at 4pm on Idobi Howl, which is their metal station or on every other platform starting on Wednesdays. Just to throw a little ad there [laughs]. But yeah, the Off Road Minivan record had been done actually for maybe eight months or so before it was released. So that was all pre-planned and ready to go. The Fit For A King record was finished in January. So we were prepared for that and that was supposed to come out on the Parkway Drive tour that we were going to be doing this summer. So that threw a wrench in the works for that. I mean, it was really nice to be home for the Off Road release because I was going to be on tour so it was kind of cool to like, actually get to sit and concentrate and look at the plays and comment on things and really be there for it. Because if I was on tour with Fit, I definitely would have been much busier. But it was a really nice experience getting to do that and luckily having the Fit music -- you know, the two singles we've released and getting to now recently make music videos as of like two weeks ago -- it's been really helpful for us to be able to keep some momentum and our Spotify actually just hit 800,000 monthly listeners today so we're extremely excited. But you know, it's a weird situation to be in because no one necessarily knows how to make the kind of money that people made on tour. And everyone's been really inventive. You know, like the Underoath stream. That was awesome. I watched [them play] Define The Great Line and it was great. So just, we've started to put some things together, we got to film some music videos like two weeks ago or so. But you know, trying to keep as busy as we can.

Totally.

The Featured X platform just came up out of the blue where one of the co-owners is one of my best friends. His name is Jeff. We talk on the phone almost every day just cause we've been friends for 15 years. One morning we're talking and he just like brings up the idea like, “Dude, what if there was this platform and like everyone could just go get their guests features” and it came up because we manage a band called Left To Suffer from Atlanta, Georgia. We were getting together features for their new EP that's going to be coming out and it was just one of those where I was like, “Well, I can call so and so and so and so and we can get these guys on and we'll talk.” And then we're like, “Well, what if there is just a really easy way to streamline this and have everyone get access to these guys?” You know, I can text a guy I've toured with -- Tom Barber [Chelsea Grin] or Ryo from Crystal Lake -- but how long are you gonna wait in their DMS until they respond to you? A long time.

So it was just an easy way where the second he said it, I was like, “This isn't ridiculous. This is feasible. Like, we could do this and we can do this right now.” The hard part was finding someone who can handle the web creation. So we made some posts to try to find a web designer and this guy Adam, he’s from Atlanta and he plays in another band but he also owns a web design company. We pitched the idea to him and he loved it so much that, you know, first he was just working on it and then we gave him a portion of the company as well when we had to do all our paperwork and whatnot. But it just really came together in a matter of like a month and a half. As I'm getting people and building the roster, Adam and his team are building the site and it just kept growing and growing. Originally, we're like, “Okay, we're going to launch and we're going to put out like 13 guys.” And then 13 guys turned to 30. And then 30 turned to 60. And it was just like, “Holy shit. Okay, we're just going to see however many we can get now.” And I mean, I think with this Friday's drop, we're going to be at around like 100 vocalists because now more people are getting interested in it because they're seeing it which is the exciting part where I just want my friends to get paid. And the reality is, if they can sing two songs a month, pay all their bills and they're good and they can remain artists, that's what's up. That's what's important right now. Because none of us can tour, none of us can go make the income we usually can because we gave up all our masters, right? We sign these contracts. When you're on tour, you pay management, you pay booking agents. I'm not saying these things are negative. I'm just saying that they're the reality. I love my booking agent, I love my management, I love my label. I'm all for these things. But the reality is right now, no one's getting shit. You know, because we don't have the income from Spotify and we don't have the income from these kinds of things. So people are being really innovative and they're doing live stream concerts and they're putting together incredible merch packages. But when you put into account how much merch on top of donations to charities has been purchased in the last four months, you've seen how resilient and caring these fans are because they not only bought everyone out of debt, they also donated millions of dollars to good causes. So this was a cool way in our heads to finally connect some people, connect some dots, help our friends who are in a pinch. And I'm not saying that every guy on the site is like broke and needs money but it's helpful. They want to make art, they want to be a part of things. They want to stay artists and the hardest part of this whole thing is sitting in my house for the first time for five months when I've never done that before. So it's been an interesting experience. Sorry for the super rant, Jesus.

It's totally fine! So when you hit up all your friends about Featured X, did they all immediately jump on board thinking it was a great idea?

Yeah, there was like a couple people who couldn't do it for logistical reasons or some guys who were like “I want to see how this” -- and I hate that I keep saying "guys" -- some people who will look at it and be like, “Hey, this isn't for me right now but let's see what it's like in three months.” So what I did first was just hit up the people that I'm closest to which was obviously Kirby [Fit For A King] and Tom Barber and Ryo and Telle [Smith, The Word Alive] and Levi [Benton, Miss May I] and Dave Stephens [We Came As Romans] like, some of these guys that I just thought would be interested in it and would probably back me and help me. Once we got these people involved, it just started becoming so much easier because others were like, “Well, if so and so is doing it, fine, yeah, I'll give it a try.” And a lot of it comes from, you know, we have so many different mindsets that come from these different styles of music, right? And it's definitely created part of the communication between fans and this now where there are fans of like hardcore music and they don't really want their favorite hardcore vocalists to be on a bunch of songs and a ton of features. They just want the vocalist of Kublai Khan doing vocals on an Acacia Strain song because they're friends, right? And I think that's really cool. And that's how it's been for a really long time. But the reality is that when you're a big popular vocalist and this is your job, this is your career, this is what you've been doing, there's nothing wrong with singing on an extra 10 or 20 songs that are awesome. What if you listen to a song and there is this amazing young band and what would really help them to get seen and to get signed and to get traction is to have that [guest] vocalist on their song? And that helps them create momentum and everyone gains something out of this. And you know, people talk about how the friendship aspect is so important to them where they only want to do features with people that they really care about. What if I ended up really caring about your band because I heard your band and I sang on your song? What if I want to help you after that? What if they want to help you after that? Because I've seen that happen. So we're just trying to connect things where right now there may be some issues in the mindset where some people are skeptical maybe of how it will pan out. And we don't know yet. We've had [as of this interview] 14 requests and one fully confirmed. So you know, it's not like we've put out 200 songs in a weekend. I'm very interested to see how it grows and how people take it but it's been overwhelmingly positive for us so far. Fans seem extremely stoked on it. And I'm really happy with how it's going, it's pretty cool. Like for me too, it's just weird to be talking to all my favorite singers [laughs]. I'm a fan first and it's cool to get to have time to speak with a lot of these people, that's a really amazing experience.

With these features, is it the artist's final say on whether or not they want to participate on the song?

Oh yeah, so the way it all works is pretty simple. If you are in a local band and you really want to go and work with Ryan Kirby, you send him your song and your social media links through the website. Ryan logs into the profile that we've given him, he listens to the song, checks out your social media links, takes a minute and thinks about it. Maybe he sends you a message because we have a text bubble there, talks about what you're about, what the song is about, what you want to sing about, why maybe you want Ryan on the song and then if he feels that these things are appropriate for him and this is a good look for him and he wants to sing on that song, all he has to do is hit accept. Upon him hitting accept, you have to pay him. Once you pay him, he has two weeks to perform the vocals and send them back to you. And all of this is done through the site, even the file sharing. So it keeps it really easy and everyone's able to communicate with it and they will see your song, he will listen to your song. And I just use him as an example because he's one of my best friends and he's in my band. So it's really cool because I can listen to these songs as well and we have been as they come in. The first request of all was to Lil Lotus and when the song came in, we're like “Okay, well he's an interesting artist because he does the screamo stuff but he's more prominent of a hip-hop artist, right?” So I was like, “Okay, this'll probably be a hip-hop song.” So we spin it and we're like, “This is a bop! This is good, like, this is a really good song. Holy shit.” And you know, it's just cool to see that work. I want to hear more good music and, like this morning, I woke up and I saw there was a new video by this band called Filth that came out. I think it's just called “Hell.” And the vocalist was so absolutely insane and the band was so good where I just had to hit him up and be like, “Yeah, dude, do you just want to do [Featured X]? Because your band is absolutely bonkers. And I know you may not be the biggest band right now, but if I'm gonna put money on something, I think I might put it on you.” So it's a really cool thing where we're not just trying to have it be a who's who of the scene where if I hear somebody or my partners hear someone and we think they're super talented, we want them to be here too because maybe more people will recognize them from that. If it works, that would be great. I'll make a lot of money off of them, I'll have extremely large pinky rings, Gucci slippers and I will only wear silk, but we'll see. That's the ultimate experience [laughs].

It sounds like this will be pretty fulfilling for you creatively getting to hear all this music.

Oh 100%. Yeah, it's really nice. I mean, I've always tried to stay a fan and a listener first, you know what I mean? I think I absorb a lot of music or at least I try to. And it is really inspiring to see these people and see what others are capable of. And now that there's so many artists and there's so many bands and everyone can get their music out there so easily, it's amazing to see how some stuff circulates based off raw talent. I mean, I love my Off Road stuff. But when I post it, does it get a million views in a day? No, not at all. But then it's cool to see this Filth video that came out today just pop off and people are sending it and it's going around and it's tag after tag on Facebook. And it's like, that's what I want to see is just something that people are excited about. And it is very exciting for us too because when building tours, I want to constantly have a tour that's cool and fun and relevant. And I want to take bands out that other people are excited about. So being on top of young talent, whether it's a band like Filth or Static Dress or like any of these like really cool up-and-coming bands, it's just exciting to always feel like I still have the same feeling I had as a kid [where] I want to love something first, you know? I want to know that band before everybody else knows that band. It's cool and exclusive [laughs]. You know and then you hope for ultimate success for everyone. I don't want them to stay that small band.

So you you spoke a little about the roster and mentioned how you hate referring to everyone as "guys." There are a few women on the roster...

There are only two out of 63 on the site currently [as of this interview].

Are you planning to add more?

Oh yeah, I have quite a few more this week. The thing that people have to keep into account when it comes to, especially with our [scene], when it comes to discussing women and people of color, there aren't a lot. So when I get turned down by one, there's 50 more guys for every Courtney LaPlante. You know, and believe me, I'm trying. I am trying very hard. It's just, one: I don't know everyone. I know who I know and then I branch out from there. And there are only a few girls that sing in metal and core bands. There are only so many LGBTQ people that sing in metal or core bands. There are only so many people of color that sing in metal or core bands. So it's really hard when you do get denied by one or two, and I'm not saying that Courtney turned me down. I was just using her as an example because she's super talented and Spiritbox is crushing life right now. But it's a conversation that I knew was gonna happen. I think the comment was on your guys' Instagram actually where someone pointed it out. And I'm ready for it because I think if they knew me personally, they would understand that I'm not captain of the boys club even though I am a bald, graying little monster of meat. I want it to be as equal of a playing field as it can be. I'm very excited that I have quite a few women that are going to be on the roster added this week. And I'm doing the same thing with females that I am with, you know, someone like the singer of Filth from today where you don't have to necessarily be in the biggest band but I think if you're really really really talented and someone would want to have these things on their song then that's what's most important to me because making really good art is what's most important.

And, you know, it's not just about getting everyone paid because there are some people that are just really good and they're supposed to be there because that's what my gut tells me. And luckily, I get to make those decisions because it's mine [laughs]. But yeah, we have quite a few ladies that are added on this week. And you know, I'm constantly trying to work on that but the other thing that comes with that is, like, okay, so when I talked to Booka from Make Them Suffer, I was like, "Yo, you're my only girl so far. I just want to be upfront with you. Thank you.” And she's like, “Yo, let's get it.” Like, “Cool, I'm into it and I appreciate that.” But you also can't approach people and be like “I really don't have like any girls on my website like can you come and like represent ladies for me?” Because it doesn't bode well either where this is about talent, right? So I want you to know that I want to work with you not because of the way you look, not because of your gender, your sex or however you identify. I want you to know that I want to work with you because I care about your voice and I'm excited about you and I like what you're doing. And I think that other people will want to work with you as well. So it's a really interesting thing to navigate and I think we're doing our best so far that we can. Lacey Sturm if you hear this, I emailed your manager, come do the site please Lacy Sturm.

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Do you think setting up Featured X has helped you appreciate someone like Kevin Lyman a little bit more who got grief for years with people saying Warped Tour wasn’t diverse enough?

Oh yeah. I had a conversation about it this week with Lauren from Sharptooth who is going to be on this week's drop. Which I'm extremely excited about because we're friends and one of my close friends from home Peter plays bass in Sharptooth. I love their band. I love Lauren, love everything she stands for. When we were talking on the phone about it, I was like, “Yeah, I kind of feel for Kevin now because I'm seeing it.” And you know, you have to think it just stinks because you want the festival to be the biggest and best it can be so in order for it to be biggest and best it can be, it has to be with the biggest and best bands and then just sometimes there aren't as many girls in bands that are as relevant so they get left behind. Where I thought he always did a pretty good job at evening things out was on the lower stages. But again, it's a challenge. Like, find me female deathcore vocalists. How many are there? Find me female metalcore vocalist. There's not that many. There's like, Courtney and there's this girl from the band Machinist and there's like Emma from Dying Wish but there's not a lot. And believe me, I'm trying. I'm trying to keep it open to suggestions. So what I did was, after we made the [first] drop, I tweeted out, “Hey, I know we're really male heavy. Give me some suggestions, tell me who the ladies are.” And I got great suggestions from it. And I'm talking to people and [now] I have a bunch of great people signed up. So it's just something where I need guidance too. I'm 31. I've been doing this for a long time. I don't know every band on the planet even though I'd like to think that I do. And it's been very helpful so I'm kind of letting the community guide it a little bit as well, where, sure I could really want someone -- in my perfect world, Geoff Rickly from Thursday calls me and he goes, “Hey Tugboat, I'm gonna be on the site” and I'm like, “Okay, Geoff. We're gonna be best friends now.” And then he's like, “Okay, cool.” And then we're best friends. But that's not necessarily everyone else's [top choice]. You know, maybe some of these kids are like, “I really want Ronnie Radke or I want Chris Motionless” or something like that. So we may want different things. So I like suggestions. It helps me stay relevant and to understand what other people want.

Do you plan on opening it up to guitarists if they want to do featured solos?

Yeah, we're gonna have guitars added to it. We're going to do drums as well. But there's going to be two different styles with the drums where, you know, the reality is a lot of it is digital these days. So if you just want to work with someone and help you write the parts, you hire a drummer to write the drum parts. And if you want them to actually perform the drums in a studio, you can pay for that as well. We're going to do guitar solos, we are also going to do full songwriting and production too. There are a lot of people out there who are just vocalists and they want Bobby from Fit For A King to ghostwrite songs for them. So that's going to be an option as well. And, the last thing I think we're going to add are lessons in case anyone wants it but I think Music Mentors is really the place to go for that. I think Music Mentors is a fantastic place if you're trying to get any sort of lesson options, they have incredible people to choose from. It's very similar to what we do and it's owned by a dear friend of mine. So that's not really a place that we're trying to dip into too much but more so staying on the performance end of things.

So it sounds like younger bands really have no excuse not to take advantage of these opportunities and progress their career. Sure it's gonna cost something but the tools are out there.

Absolutely. And when you talk about the cost, one thing to greatly consider with that, because that's one of the things that I do see some comments on, it's like, “How can this guy charge $1,000?” Well, the reason why is because one: You have like four or five people in your band, right? So $200 bucks a piece on anything, really isn't that bad. Two, you say this guy is one of your favorite vocalists of all time. You wouldn't pay $1,000 to work with your favorite vocalist? Because I know I would pay $1,000 to work with Dustin Kensrue or Geoff Rickly. Then on top of that, we're not asking you for publishing, we're not asking you for masters. So that's really not that much money in the grand scheme of things. The fact of the matter is that you get to own it, you get to push your career with it, you get to make content around it and I'm never going to see anything from it for the rest of my life. So I think that it's a pretty fair deal. And a lot of people don't necessarily want that but then you see in hip-hop, DaBaby is like, "Hundred thousand for a fucking feature, bitch!” And I'm like, “Yes! This is amazing!” Hip-hop is so like, encompassing in the community where they all help each other and they boost each other's songs. That's why Drake has made like 500 people famous and it's amazing to see that and we need more of it. Now I don't want to see Ryan Kirby on 500 songs the way Drake is but I do want people to lift each other up and do more collaborative stuff. An example of that is Fit For A King and We Came As Romans. We took “Backbreaker” and “Carry The Weight” and Dave sang on “Backbreaker” and Ryan sang on “Carry The Weight” and it crushed it. We did limited merch but we sold a shit ton of merch and everybody was streaming the songs and they're all happy about it. They really like it. But then when you look at the comments on YouTube, people still go “Who's Ryan Kirby? Who's Dave Stephens?” Holy shit. How is it that all the fans of We Came As Romans don't know who Fit For A King is and how is it that all the fans of Fit For A King don't know who We Came As Romans are? Mind blowing. So it just shows that there needs to be more connectivity. There needs to be people working together more trying to connect these fan bases because obviously we haven't tapped into everybody.

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It sounds like there just needs to be a giant metalcore mixtape where everyone gets a feature and that's how you discover people.

Someone proposed the idea of a GoFundMe [laughs]. Do a GoFundMe, pay all the vocalists on the site. Do like that, um, one Tech N9ne song where there's like a million rappers on. I forget what it's called but they all rap really fast on it. They sound like Fronz. I'm just kidding. They don't sound like Fronz. They sound like rappers but...

So yeah, before we let you go, we should probably discuss the new Fit For A King record.

Oh, of course. Please.

Talking about features, you have Ryo from Crystal Lake, who you guys have been friends with for a while, on a song.

Yeah, [we've been friends for] a couple years now. So in 2017, we're on Warped Tour and there's this girl who comes from Japan and goes to a bunch of tours and flies over here and goes for a few days and then flies back. And she was at the merch table and me and Ryan were talking to her and I was like, “Hey, are you friends with Ryo from Crystal Lake?” and she was like, “Yeah.” And I was like, “Well tell him that I'm pissed because he had Gideon come to Japan and I want to go to Japan. So invite me to Japan.” And she was like, “Okay, I'll tell him” and I was like, “Yeah, okay” because I was just being my sarcastic self. And a couple days later Ryo slid in my DMS and he was like, “Hey, I love Descendants. You guys want to come to Japan?” And I'm like, “Fuck, yeah!” and they invited us to play the 15 year anniversary of Crystal Lake. For a lot of people who don't know, Crystal Lake originally had a bunch of different members except for Udi, the guitar player. So he invites us over and we go and we play this festival and we come back and then we just kept in touch and they were super kind to us and took us around Tokyo and shit. And then we did the August Burns Red tour in the States. It was August Burns Red, us, Miss May I, and them. It was their first tour in the US. So we just kind of stuck by them the whole time and made sure they were good. ... We just bonded. I love the shit out of them. I have a Crystal Lake tattoo. It's a Crystal Lake, Miss May I, Fit For A King Smash Bros tattoo. It's interesting, you meet some people on the road that are extremely special that just hit you where it's like I've been waiting my whole life for you. Ryo's one of those guys. Like I would slaughter a whole room of individuals for him. He's the greatest. They're all incredibly loving, kind, passionate, happy, great people. And it's a blessing to get to know them because they do live so far away and I would have never met them if it wasn't for music. So very, very grateful for those guys. They are just, yeah, we are peas in a pod.

So how special was it to get Ryo on "God Of Fire" which paired with the announce of the new album 'The Path?'

It was the shit. Yeah, it was great because especially when you hear his raw files when they come back, it's pretty impressive. You think he's good live, I mean, when you can actually hear them just super raw it's insane how good his voice is and we couldn't think of anybody else when we heard the song once we got done with it. It was just so necessary. And yeah, he's the best frickin’ dude. We're so lucky to have him and have him involved with the song. It certainly brings a lot of attention to it because it doesn't get much hotter than Crystal Lake right now. I think them, Spiritbox and Polaris are probably the most hot up-and-coming metalcore bands right now and Crystal Lake every time they come back they draw more people, they're selling more merch, more people are interested. It's insane, absolutely bonkers. When you watch them open a show, it doesn't matter that they played first, the show's over. Like you feel like it's just done at that point because Ryo's in the middle of the crowd and there's 200 people holding him up by his ankles and he's doing this epic shit. Everyone's swaying their arms and you're just like, “Yeah, how do I come out on the stage after that?” So yeah, very lucky to have him on the track.

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And as for the track itself, was it important for you guys to come out with a heavy song so there's weren't any doubters thinking “Oh, Fit For A King's changing their sound” or whatever? Like, you wanted to lead with something super heavy.

Well we did “Breaking The Mirror” first. So “Breaking The Mirror” was out and that is definitely way more rock. It's one of the more rock song, there's one other song that's kind of rock-y too but it's way different rock, it doesn't sound like butt metal rock. It sounds different. I say that with love because it's my band and I can describe my music however I want. But um yeah, so we did the “Breaking The Mirror” thing. You know, at first, it started doing really well on Octane. We ended up doing pretty decent on the active rock charts and we're like, “Okay, well, after you give them the soft side, you got to come right back with the heavy side.” And the other thing that's cool about “God Of Fire” is it has some experimental stuff to it. It does have the kind of EDM build in it and it has some electronic elements. And for me, I still have a top heavy banger that's on this record that no one's heard yet. I'm excited.

This is the easily my favorite Fit For A King record. I can say that. I actually, when Dark Skies was made, I didn't listen to it for like two months because I was really sad that I didn't sing that much on it and I have a huge ego. You know, it took me a minute to accept it and be like, [jokingly] “They're not gonna hear me as much, what the fuck.” But then when “Everything Means Nothing” did really well, I was like, “I'd rather hit a home run then get 10 at bats and sometimes hit a single.” So I had to put myself in check there and then bringing in Daniel [Gailey, guitar] helped a lot. Where Daniel and Bob -- you know, Bob is the writing guy -- but Daniel can shred in a way that just the rest of us can't. So having him get in there and being able to add really helps exemplify some of those more metal moments [and] some of those more chaotic moments. He can play in a way that we don't necessarily play. So having him, plus his vocal range is absolutely bonkers. He can do these like Sam Carter [Architects] yells. And then also, his voice matches really well with Kirby when they're in a similar register with the more like, “Price of Agony” style choruses. So overall, adding him to the team just boosted everything.

That’s awesome.

So going into this record, we were happy. We were in a great mood, we wanted to be around each other. We knew what we wanted to write. We didn't want to write some like super depressed record and we weren't depressed. So it was helpful because we just had the best year of our lives. And we were just like ready to make something that's powerful. Something that just makes you fucking stoked, makes you want to get in your car and like slam it into a brick wall. I don't know why that sounds like fun to me at the moment. Maybe it's the life I've been living lately [laughs]. That was a terrible example, I take that back. But regardless, it's fun. I think it's victorious. It's powerful. I think people will enjoy it. So it's been cool getting to drop “God Of Fire” and have everyone take to it the way they did because for me, I've still got that number one heavy banger there. There's other heavy songs too. There's one where I'm like, “Yeah, you guys are gonna like this.”

We could probably talk about The Path a lot longer but just to wrap this up, do you have anything else in store for 2020 or will you just be focusing on Fit For A King and Featured X for the rest of the year?

I think I’m just going to be focused on Featured X and the new Fit record. Keeping up with the podcast on top of that has been really difficult but I’m getting there. I just think, as soon as I can get back out and do Fit stuff and play shows, obviously we’re going to be out there and doing that but right now all of my other free time is dedicated to Featured X. I’ll be honest, I’ve probably worked more now than I ever have in my life. My phone [usage] is at about 10 and a half hours average daily [laughs]. It’s been a bit intense, my fiancée is baring with me and being extremely supportive but it took a lot to get 60 people in a month and I want to be at 500 in six months.

Wow! That’s a pretty lofty goal.

It is. And it sounds insane and I’ve told myself that it’s too insane but I’m going to try and we’ll see what happens. And now that we have the application coming in, if you are a great singer and your band is really good, I want you to apply. And if you don’t get accepted it’s not necessarily because you’re bad. Your band might not be there yet but I am contacting just about everyone. Cause I want to have conversations and transparency throughout all of it as well where there is a time where, you know, you’re a really good singer but your band has only five monthly listeners on Spotify where I gotta be like, “Come back in like six months and maybe we can put you on and help you push a release or something.” But then I get someone who is really, really talented and their band has like 7,000 monthly listeners and I’m like “Well, your band is not huge but you’re really good and your band could be really big and I’d rather have you here first before you’re anywhere else.” And I’m all for that, we’ll find that middle ground, we’ll talk about it, I’ll be honest with you and I’ll only try to help and not hurt anybody. But I want to hear everything and I like hearing these applications and I like checking out these bands. Myself and my business partner are checking all the applications that come through. I do see everything that comes in, so please feel free to communicate with me. Hit me up on Instagram, hit me up on Facebook, Twitter or whatever. I’m pretty good at responding. Holler.

#Fit For A King #Off Road Minivan #Featured X #Ryan Tuck O'Leary #Solid State Records #The Path #Crystal Lake

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dorothydelgadillo · 5 years

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"Increase Sales With Micro-Influencer Marketing Ft. Shane Barker" (Inbound Success Ep. 82)

How did a small business quadruple revenue in less than a year using influencer marketing?

Shane Barker

This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, influencer marketing consultant Shane Barker recounts how he helped grow Zoe Rodriguez's online fitness business ZBodyFitness from $400,000 to $1.6 million in sales in less than a year through the exclusive use of influencer marketing tactics.

Shane was recognized on the 2018 list of 100 Most Influential People in Influencer Marketing alongside Kim Kardashian, Gary Vaynerchuk, and legendary PR leaders like the CEO of Edelman, and teaches the first-ever influencer marketing course for UCLA.

He is also the author of “How to Build a Successful Influencer Marketing Program,” and has published a valuable guide offering a step-by-step blueprint to help brands connect with the right influencers.

This week's episode of The Inbound Success Podcast is brought to you by our sponsor, IMPACT Live, the most immersive and high energy learning experience for marketers and business leaders. IMPACT Live takes place August 6-7, 2019 in Hartford Connecticut and is headlined by Marcus Sheridan along with special guests including world-renowned Facebook marketing expert Mari Smith and Drift CEO and Co-Founder David Cancel. Inbound Success Podcast listeners can save 10% off the price of tickets with the code "SUCCESS".

Click here to learn more or purchase tickets for IMPACT Live

Some highlights from my conversation with Shane include:

Shane worked with fitness consultant Zoe Rodriguez on an influencer marketing campaign that took her revenue from $400,000 to $1.6 million in just about a year's time.

The development of a good influencer marketing campaign is more time intensive than most people think and involves research on the front end to ensure the influencer is the right fit and can deliver results.

Shane uses an influencer marketing software called Grin that enables him to search for hashtags and find influencers that are a good match.

He also uses GroupHigh to identify blogging influencers.

Once Shane identifies an initial list of potential influencers for a campaign, he goes and reviews their profiles, looks at engagement levels and what other products they've worked with, and what the reactions have been to gauge how effective they would be for his campaign.

He also looks for influencers who are excited to work with the brand he represents, have done their homework, and have specific ideas for how to structure a campaign that will resonate with their audience.

Shane puts together written agreements with all influencers that he works with that specify how the campaigns will be structured, what hashtags will be used, and requires that all FTC regulations be followed. The contracts also specify that the brands will be able to use the content created by the influencer in other ways.

One thing to watch out for when developing relationships with influencers is fake followers. Shane reviews how an influencer's followership has grown and if there are specific spikes, he will ask what they are attributed to. If the influencer doesn't have a good answer, it might be because they are buying followers - something you should definitely steer away from.

Influencer marketing is regulated by the FTC, which requires that influencers be transparent in letting their audiences know when they are promoting something for which they are getting compensated.

Not all companies/products are right for influencer marketing. There needs to be some sort of "wow factor" to really generate big ROI.

Resources from this episode:

Save 10% off the price of tickets to IMPACT Live with promo code "SUCCESS"

Save $100 off the price of tickets to Shane's influencer marketing workshop with code SHANE100

Read Shane's book on “How to Build a Successful Influencer Marketing Program.”

Visit Shane's website

Connect with Shane on LinkedIn

Follow Shane on Twitter

Follow Shane on Instagram

Listen to the podcast to learn how Shane used micro-influencers to get insane marketing results for his clients - and how you can too.

Transcript

Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm Kathleen Booth, your host, and today my guest is Shane Barker, who is a branded influencer consultant. Welcome Shane. Shane Barker (Guest): Hey. Thanks for having me. I'm excited about being on the podcast today.

Shane and Kathleen recording this episode

Kathleen: Yeah. So branded influencer consultant. Can you tell my audience a little bit more about exactly what that is, what you do and how you got to do this?

About Shane Barker

Shane: Yeah. So I've been in the digital space for 20 plus years. And I kind of started off in SEO and digital marketing and it just kind of progressed to a point where about six or seven years ago -- I think we're gonna probably talk about this a little later on the podcast -- I had a client that reached out to me and said they were looking for somebody to help them with some social media marketing. And so we did a call. Well, it ended up turning into influencer marketing.

And so that kind of is how I jumped into this space, and that's how I've really ... It's catapulted me to where I'm at today. And this is probably seven years ago of the influencer and brands that would reach out to me and talk about wanting to figure how they can work together, or how they would find influencers. Or influencers, how do they work with brands?

I also do the digital strategy side of things. The influencer side of things has been interesting because I actually teach a class at UCLA, which is a personal branding/how to be an influencer course. And so because I was one of the originals talking about it, and once again it was just kind of an original thing where they came out to me and said, "Hey, would you want to teach a class at UCLA?" And when UCLA knocks on your door, you don't say no.

So I was out there teaching a course. So it's been really interesting, especially over the last few years because of how it's morphed and how it's changed and like anything in marketing, it's become more mature and it's kind of ... I'm excited to tell the story here on the podcast.

Kathleen: Yeah. One of the reasons I was really excited to have you one is that, I don't do influencer marketing, I'm much more on the content marketing side of things, but I have dabbled in it.

So one, I would say, serious dabbling instance that I had, was for a client campaign back in, I want to say it was 2015 or 2016. And that one campaign was so successful that we won the first ever client campaign of the year award that HubSpot gave out.

And it was an accident. We didn't mean to do influencer marketing but we kind of stumbled upon this perfect opportunity, and it was amazing to watch what happened. I think the client's social media, lead from social media, grew by 12,000% in one month, because of this campaign. It was so crazy.

And I remember, "Well, damn. That worked pretty well, but I didn't honestly know what I was doing." So, I'm really interested to kind of pick your brain and learn ...

I know you've had some really great successes with it and to learn what you've done in those cases, but also as you say, how it's evolving. Because it is changing a lot in recent years.

Shane: Yeah. This is funny about influencer marketing is, it really comes down to once you find the perfect product or service and you find those perfect influencers, and you put out the perfect message ... Of course, everything, now this doesn't have to be perfect, but when those moons align, it is absolutely crazy.

It can be one of those things where your equation, where you look at this and go, "Wow, my client's going to be happy. And now I've got a great case study. And I'm winning HubSpot Awards." And so, that's always a good thing.

Influencer Marketing for Zoe Rodriguez

Kathleen: Yeah. So let's talk about some of the actual campaigns you've run that have really yielded great results. I know when you and I first spoke, you talked about one particular client, I believe her name was Zoe, who did really well with it. Can you maybe take us back and tell that story?

Shane: Yeah. Definitely. So her name's Zoe Rodriguez. She has a company called Build a Better Booty. So do the math on that. She's a fitness instructor. And so she's been doing that ...

She reached out to me, I think about six years ago now, and she was the one that said, "Hey. I'm looking for some ... I do my own content. I'm really looking to do more advertising. I really wanna increase my sales."

And so, just to be extremely honest, when she reached out to me, I thought, "Oh, here we go. We have some kind of a fitness person selling fitness products." I wasn't super excited about it 'cause I was just thinking, "Oh. Here we go. It's a lot of fitness people out there. There's nothing really to disrupt the space." A push-up is a push-up. A sit-up is a sit-up. Right?

So I wasn't really too excited about it. Except when I did the call with her and we were talking about ... I said, "Well, tell me a little bit about your products that you have." And she says, "Well, I have three main products. One is sexy arms. One is sexy legs. And one is sexy booty. Or build a better booty."

So I was like, "Oh, okay. That's kind of interesting." And I said, "So which one is your best seller?" And she goes, "Well, build a better booty." And I said, "Okay sounds good." I said, "Well, what are your sales right now?" And she goes ... She goes, "Really not that good." She goes, "I've only sold maybe like 10,000 of them." And this is at $20 a piece. So I'm like, "Okay. That's $200,000." I said what about-

Kathleen: So really not that bad.

Shane: Right. I'm like, "Okay." She's like 22 years old. Her overhead is a gym membership. But in her mind she was like, "I've really got to figure this out 'cause I'm just not doing good." And I was like, "She just doesn't know what she has."

So, I said, "Well, what about sexy arms?" And she goes, "That one's even worse. That one's 5,000." And I'm like, "That's another $100,000. We're still doing well."

And I go, "Well, what about the other ones? The sexy arms?" And she goes, "Yeah. That one's 5,000 too." And I'm on a call with this girl, 22 years old. Overhead is literally a $100 gym membership in West Palm Beach. I mean, nothing else other than that.

She had no marketing team. She was doing all the content. She had really built up her social media following through Instagram from zero to, at that point, she was at 180,000 followers.

And so on this call, $400,000. That's awesome. I have a lead magnet on my website that I'm asking for an email address and I can't seem to get an email address, but yet she has $400,000 in cash that she's pulling in. And she's like, "I don't know what I can do better 'cause I just can't seem to be doing that well."

And I'm like, "Last time I checked $35,000 a month is not too bad for what you're doing," considering she was just documenting her life and what she was doing in regards to her. Before and after pictures were the big seller with the influencer marketing.

It blew me away. So I instantly thought she was probably ... Like I was gonna get on the team and be a part of some Russian credit card fraud ring or something. It didn't make sense to me. I honestly thought there's gotta be something not right about this. Anytime something seems too good to be true, I get nervous.

So I really looked into it. And there was nothing wrong. I was looking at what she was doing, I looked at her before and after pictures, I looked at her content, interviewed her a few more times, and finally realized that it was gonna be a good fit for us. And she was-

Kathleen: Yeah, there's just an insane number of women who wanna have better arms, legs, and booties apparently.

Shane: That's it. That is it. Who doesn't, right? There's always that, especially because you know in the media and all that kind of stuff. So there's hot times when everybody does ... And this is the thing, is if everybody started fitness and continued with fitness, then we would just all be fit. You would never stop, right? Everything is awesome. The thing is, is we always fluctuate. We have this and that, or we have things that happen in our lives; we eat more, we eat less, we get focused, we don't get focused. So there's always a time for fitness to come back in your life.

So that's where Zoe came in, is that she would come out with these new programs.

So obviously right around bikini time for women, it's like, "Ah I gotta get ready." So you'd have this major push. Or the first of the year, or whatever that is. There was these every four months really, we had these cycles where people would wanna come back on and wanna get serious again. "I wanna get in a group, I'm motivated."

And Zoe had a very female-centric audience. So she'd built that from the beginning. And on her Instagram she's not shy about posting pictures of her body. So she'd have guys that would say stuff and then she would instantly slam them, and then the whole group would slam a guy for coming in and saying something inappropriate, then they would block him.

So she had this very, very I guess kind of organic kind of authentic group that she had built, that really was supporting her and her journey. But was also really excited about her transformation.

'Cause she was a runner, so she literally had no booty, right? And then she started doing her squats and lunges, and a year or two later, she had a big booty.

So the girls were like, "Oh my God, this is me today, and this is what I wanna be like in two years." So they saw that. And once again, that was for fitness before and after pictures that people can recognize and look at and go, "Okay," and were relatable.

Anyways, so we rebranded everything for Zoe. We redid her website, her logo, all of her e-books. She had done a good job with what she had done, but we were obviously gonna come in and revamp all that.

And the end of the story is we took her from $400,000 to $1.6 million in just about a year's time.

Kathleen: Wow.

Shane: And that was just rebranding and all the stuff we did. And everything was done through influencer marketing.

We tried SEO, we did some PPC, and nothing performed anywhere close to as it did with influencer marketing. Because once again, Zoe had a great story, she had built this audience, and people really thought of her as a very genuine person that talked about the ups and the downs of losing weight. And she would eat some food and take a picture of her food baby. She was just really authentic with what she had did, and wanted to see people be successful.

And it was interesting because Zoe was not only a brand, as in ZBody Fitness, but she was also an influencer because she had a good following.

So at that time is when we were getting pitched by the tummy tea, and "drink tea and you can lose weight," all these kind of -- I'm not gonna say gimmicky, but probably gimmicky -- products. You're not gonna drink tea and lose weight.

So we're getting pitched on that side of things, and Zoe was very adamant about not taking on any products that weren't gonna be good products. You have this miseducation of, "Hey you go and drink tea, you'll lose five pounds."

I've drank a lot of tea in my day, and I've never lost five pounds.

Kathleen: I drink tea all day long, and let me just tell you, all it does is make you pee more.

Shane: We've been doing research our wholes lives on this, and this hasn't worked. So that's kinda the deal is, is her audience knew that she wasn't going to promote a product that she didn't believe in.

So we didn't promote a lot of products because we wanted to make sure, once again, that it was aligned with her audience and it made sense to do that.

We got her up to over just under half-a-million followers on Instagram. But we spent about $300,000 in influencer marketing.

We did this before software. I always joke around, we used these things called Excel spreadsheets. So if you have any millennials that are listening, they might not even know what that is. Now there's software that can do that, but these Excel spreadsheets is what we used.

And I had this crazy system, 'cause I was talking with influencers and negotiating with influencers through email, through WhatsApp, through all these applications. And I would have to remember who I told what, and there was just a lot of moving pieces to the whole project.

But the cool part about it, is that I was one of ... Not first people, but ... Well I have to say I probably was one of the first people that started talking about influencer marketing and how we were doing it. And what was the successes of it, and the failures, and what we had seen, and how things have gone great, and didn't go great, and what that was.

So I just wanted to kinda educate people. Because it just blew me away. I thought for sure we'd have some good PPC sales, which PPC's a little difficult because of, once again, the before and after pictures. Facebook doesn't allow a lot of that, and Google don't allow a lot of that, because of the potential of a, not racy picture, but they can be somewhat questionable sometimes.

Kathleen: Yeah.

Shane: They're real strict when it comes to those regulations, when it comes to putting the ads up.

So anyways, but yeah, influencer marketing was really how we really went to the next level. And we've also bundled some of her packages. 'Cause since she sells an e-book, it doesn't cost anything to send a PDF file, right? So she had a really fixed cost there in regards to hey it's $5,000 to get the videos together, the content and everything, and now here we go.

And it's like well what if we, instead of charging them $20 for an e-book, why don't we charge them $50 and give them all five e-books? Give them a 50% discount, and what is that? That's the same email, except we're adding four more attachments to it.

So we learned that as well, so we were able to get the cost from $20 to $35 was now the average. So there was just some things that we did that made sense.

You can't necessarily do that if you're selling shirts. If you sell five shirts, you have X cost for each shirt, so you can't do that. But with a PDF file, it's zero cents after I've already paid for everything. So it's like why not get that out there?

So there was some cool stuff that we did there. And then we built out her email list and all that with Infusionsoft, so that was pretty tricky, some of the stuff we did there on behavioral marketing. But influencer is what drove it. That was 99% of our business, was done through influencer marketing.

Developing An Influencer Marketing Strategy

Kathleen: So now, as you mentioned, she herself was somewhat of an influencer even when you first started working with her. But you worked with other influencers to really amplify her reach.

Can you talk a little bit about in that case, and then also sort of generally, when you look at doing an influencer marketing campaign and you know you have a client that wants to get in front of the bigger audience, what is the process that you use for identifying who those influencers are, or who you want to bring on board for the campaign?

Shane: Yeah, for us, the one thing that people don't realize with influencer marketing is it is very time-intensive if done correctly.

So a lot of people think, "Hey I just go grab an influencer that's got a million followers, we negotiate a deal, I give them some free product or send them money, they put up a picture, and then millions of dollars come in, and then I go and retire." There's a lot of steps in between there before the million dollars and the retirement.

So what we look at is now there's a lot of software, back in the day we would just go look at influencers and kind of look at the engagement we thought was good, and kind of look at some things. There still is the eyeball test that needs to happen. But we use software, like Grin is one of the softwares that we use, where you can go in and-

Kathleen: Grin?

Shane: Yeah, Grin is a good one. G-R-I-N.co, is the website. And you can go in there and look for hashtags. So you can look up yoga instructor, you can look up whatever. You can do city searches, you can do that kinda stuff where you're really gonna try to find that person.

Like as an example, you have a yoga product, you wanna find a yoga instructor, you put hashtag yoga in there, and you can put Los Angeles area, and then you have a list of people that will pop up for that. And they have the engagement-

Kathleen: And that's just for influencers, is that right?

Shane: Yeah. That's mainly like let's say YouTube, or mainly on Instagram is where I do most of my influencer marketing.

And then there's other platforms that you can use for if you're looking for bloggers, GroupHigh is another one we use if you're looking for bloggers. So that could be for food bloggers, or any type of blogger that does an unwrapping, unveiling, does blog posts, anything like that.

And then there's other platforms out there for YouTube as well. And then there's for Facebook and Twitter and all that as well.

But most of my influencer campaigns I do are on Instagram, just 'cause we've had some great successes there, for that lifestyle, like everybody looks at. "I wanna be like that, I wanna do that, I wanna have that life. So I'm willing to buy that product or service."

Kathleen: Yeah. So you use these platforms, and are you ... Influencer marketing runs such a wide gambit.

You have these micro-influencers who, for example on the case of the campaign I ran, it was a LASIK eye surgeon looking to reach potential patients in a very hyper-local area. So we were going after somebody who had local reach, which is a very different ballgame than if you're trying to really go national or even international.

You have people like the Kardashians who, gosh, I just finished recently watching the two Fyre Festival documentaries about all the money that was paid to influencers for that. And that's crazy, crazy, crazy money.

And there's so much in between. So when you're trying to wrap your head around this, you've got these software platforms that will help you find people.

So are you looking and trying to match their audience demographics with the demographics that your client is trying to reach? And then from a budgeting standpoint how do you even start to plan for that?

Shane: Yeah. So we do. So we look at the software, and we'll pull a list.

So let's say we want 50 influencers, and let's say it's all in Los Angeles area, as an example. So what we'll do is we'll pull let's say 250. We go and evaluate them. I'll take a look at them.

And what we'll do is I'll actually go and look at their profiles as well. 'Cause there's a lot of different ways to game software. You can add likes and comments and emojis, and all this other fun stuff. So we actually go and look at the content. 'Cause for us, we're looking for a long-term relationship.

So that's where we use software as a way, we pull them down. And then we go, and I go ahead and take a look at their profile. There's engagement rates, and we wanna see what other products they've worked with, and how people have reacted to sponsorships that they've done. Maybe they've worked with companies that are similar to ours.

And then I actually interview the influencer. Because the biggest issues, and you kinda touched on it, is like how much do I pay somebody? Is it $5, is it $5,000, is it free shirts for life? What is this? How do I structure that? Well it's hard to answer that, because that's like saying ...

It's hard to give a templated answer for everybody. 'Cause each one of these influencers is different. And they all have a different way they run their business, and they have different costs, and they have different things. So I can go to one influencer and say, "Hey I work with Adidas, and we wanna give you three pairs of shoes. They're worth usually $150, and we want you to do X, Y, Z for it." And they go, "Wow, this is awesome, let's do it."

And I can send that over to somebody else and they go, "My production cost is $5,000. I don't want your $150 shoes. That doesn't make sense to me."

You just never know. So it's everything is negotiable when it comes to this.

So usually what I'll do if it looks like the right influencer, and we outreach to them and they say that they're interested, I usually jump on a call and say, "Okay, tell me what you know."

Adidas is a bad example, 'cause Adidas is a household name. But let's say it's X, Y, Z shoe company that nobody knows about. So, "What do you know about our shoe company?" And, "Hey I know a lot about your shoe company, you guys do this, I love your guys' mission, I know you guys give 10% to these communities."

So then it's like, "Okay great, I've got an engaged person." Influencer that knows our product, that's excited about it. I wanna hear it in their voice.

The first question, if I jump on a call and they go, "So how much am I gonna get paid in this thing?" Like, "Oh got it, so it's about money." Which could be a factor.

But for me, it's a little bit of a hip check. I wanna go and check the temperature. 'Cause I wanna find the person that has looked into my company or the company I'm representing and that is excited about it, and then ask them, "What are you willing to do? This is what we're thinking. What we wanted to do is this is the kinda campaign we were thinking. And this is what we were thinking is maybe we'd do three Instagram stories and we do a YouTube video and you do a blog post. You tell me what that's worth and what that would take from a time perspective. You tell me if you think that's a good campaign, and then just tell me what that would cost."

And they go, "Hey listen, let me tell you why you don't wanna do this, is because I know my audience, and this is what I think would be good." Or I'll tell them, "Hey listen, we have a budget of $5,000. And tell me what you would be willing to do for that price point and how many touch points we would be able to do. What's the frequency of this? I gotta be able to talk about it once a month, twice a month. I do a big YouTube video that'll be a five minute video that can index. Or I'm gonna do a blog post, it'll be a 3,000 word blog ..." Whatever that is.

Everybody's gonna have a different thing that they'll recommend that they think would work.

And I don't wanna get in the way of that. I don't wanna tell them, "This is what we need to do because we think this is best."

No, I wanna keep it down and let the influencer tell me, "Hey I know my audience. I don't think if we did a video, I'm not that big on YouTube, so why would I wanna do a video? Maybe I'll do a shorter video for Instagram."

I let them come up with the plans. And I give them a little bit of parameters of, "Hey this is kinda what we're looking at budget-wise, what would it make sense to put together a plan like that for you? And does it make sense for us to work together?"

So I always, like I said, I come with some basics. I come with a brief and some ideas, but I'm always open to what the influencer wants to do. 'Cause they say, "Hey listen, I've never done this before, and this is kinda crazy, but I was thinking we could do this, this, this, and this." And I go, "God, that sounds epic. Let's do it." That's something outside of the box that we haven't heard or we haven't seen.

With the brief you wanna have certain hashtags you use, and you wanna have certain things that you follow so you understand I wanna understand exactly what you're gonna be getting for this price point of $5,000. A basic agreement you put together, make sure that everybody's following FTC, and all these guidelines and stuff that we have.

But at the end of the day, you wanna develop that relationship with the influencer. Because if it's an influencer that just cares about money, and all they're doing is a thousand sponsorships a year, then the audience is gonna be very disconnected.

And that's not what we're looking for. We're looking for the influencer's excited, the influencer that gets what we're doing, and the influencer that says, "Hey this is the perfect fit, and I don't work with a million companies, it's not just a money thing for me, so this has gotta be a good fit for my audience."

And that's the one that you guys did for LASIK. That was obviously a good fit for their audience.

You can have the best product in the world, but if you go to the wrong influencers. And that's the problem is most people look at numbers. So they go, "Oh this influencer has a million followers, this is gonna crush. This is absolutely gonna crush."

It's not always that. So that's what people get confused about. Influencers have always been paid in the past because of how many followers they have.

So now we get into the fake followership. Because guess what happens? If I have 15,000 I get $5,000. But I have 20,000 I get an extra $3,000. And if I have a million, you guys are willing to give me $50,000. So guess where I wanna get to extremely fast? Probably a million.

So that's where we run into this whole situation of the fake followers. And people go, "Oh this is terrible, and this is that." But you're telling somebody, "Listen, I will give you some more money if you can somehow get to this number." And they're like, "Let's do it." So now I gotta get to that number, it becomes this situation.

So that's where we've jumped into a situation like this. And like the festival, the Fyre Festival. Everybody looks at it and says, "Oh my God we gotta be so careful, we gotta be this."

That can happen in any situation. In any situation where somebody says, "Hey we have this, we have investors." How do you double-check that as an influencer and make sure? Do you go send in a private investigator? Do you go and you ... I mean it's hard to say.

Influencer marketing didn't cause it. Influencer marketing was the one that got the people there. So it works.

But the problem is, is the festival wasn't done correctly, and there was all kinds of logistics and things that weren't thought about on a last minute thing, "We're gonna go to this island." In theory it's like the perfect influencer thing. People go, "Oh that's the lifestyle I wanna live, I wanna come in on a private plan. I wanna drink caviar, and eat this, and do this, and hang out with celebrities."

Kathleen: They just didn't expect white bread and cheese sandwiches.

Shane: Or no restrooms or no water on an island, last time I checked. So that's not necessarily influencer ...

The thing is, is actually that was a successful campaign, because influencers drove people there. So it actually was a win, in theory, for influencer marketing. But the publicity behind it is now these celebrities have to be held accountable.

And I get it, but what happens if I was to go represent a product today, I go represent some kind of a Tupperware company, whatever it is. Some company. And then the CEO goes and kills somebody? Or does something stupid. I can't really stop that.

I can look into it and give it a little test and do some research and say, "Well it makes sense, the island's there, and there seems to be some celebrities, and they've got some investors." It's just a difficult thing.

And people go, "Well how do I know if I'm working, if this influencer doesn't have fake followers? Or how do I check on that?" It's once again, just go and look at them, and talk to them. And say, "Hey look, tell me the past campaigns that you've done. Show me some reporting that you've done in the past, show me some campaigns. Why are you at 15,000 followers and then you went up there?"

Kathleen: Right.

Shane: "Oh was on TV, and I was on this, and I became this, and my book came out." "Oh, okay. That makes sense." Or, "No, I just got more followers." That's a little fishy, but okay. So that's what you just have to look at.

It comes down to educating yourself when it comes to influencers. Really anything. Anything you do. But influencer marketing, I've written 100 articles, and there's plenty of other people that have written 100 articles where you can go get a general idea of the questions you should ask, or the emails you should send out. You get a basic idea, and then you have some knowledge when it comes to that. And then you can go in there.

Any situation you go into and you're not educated, you're gonna be a little nervous. Whether it's SEO or PPC it's like, "I just don't know, I'm not really sure. I've heard this is the thing to do."

Just educate yourself a little bit, and then go in. And if it doesn't feel like the right situation with the right influencer, the cool part about it is guess what? There's millions of influencers. Absolutely millions. So they'll be like, "Well yeah, but this person seems really good. We have to give them this high amount."

No you don't. You don't. Because now with software you can go and look at analytics, you can look at the demographics, you can go look at the stuff and say, "You know what? You seem great, but I have this person over here that's willing to do twice as much work, their demographics are the same as yours, so is the followership. And they seem to be more excited about the project than you were." Not a big deal. That's the exciting part about influencer marketing.

People are like, "Oh, is it gonna go anywhere? Something's gonna happen to it." No.

There's people that weren't influencers yesterday that are influencers today. And that's always gonna continue to happen. We're gonna have this evolution of more and more people that can represent your product, which is very interesting.

The problem today with the whole thing is that you have brands and influencers that just don't know how to work together. And that's what we do at UCLA is try to bring those people together.

And I have a workshop I'm doing in San Francisco bringing brands and influencers together and saying, "How do we make this a better relationship?" We can hangout and do some stuff together, but how do we make it so this can be a successful campaign? Or at least watch out for some of the hurdles that could happen so that we're not just wasting our money?

Kathleen: Yeah, I love that. And going back to the conversation about the Fyre Festival, it's interesting because that has really elevated the conversation, and I think more people are talking about influencer marketing.

And as you say, it's such a funny example, because in some respects it was a huge success. They paid these people to get the audience there, and they did it. And the debate subsequently has been a lot around the ethics of influencer marketing.

We had this debate internally in my team. And my position was "Look, I don't see how if you're one of the models that was hired to post something on Instagram about this, I don't see how you could realistically vet it, you couldn't. There was too many smoke and mirrors, and you can only vet it so much."

Where I think the fault really lies is A, their agency, which totally knew that the whole thing was not gonna work. The agency I do think holds some responsibility.

And then I would say if you're an influencer like Ja Rule, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say this on the podcast, who was deeply involved in the planning. If you're that involved and you know it's not gonna happen, I think you own it partially.

But it would be a shame for it to give influencer marketing a bad name. And if anything I think what I'm seeing in all the marketing literature I'm reading this year, is really that influencer marketing in general is taking off, as opposed to at risk because of something like the Fyre Festival.

But it does speak to me, to the larger questions about how do you do it right as a brand? And how do you do it right as an influencer?

I know you were just speaking to some of those points. I guess some of the questions I have, one of them is I come from a content marketing world, where everybody's really forced on lead generation as a key metric of success. How many new contacts did we generate? How many marketing qualified leads did we generate?

My guess is that in some respects you could do that with influencer marketing, but I'm sure that there are other metrics as well.

So can you talk a little bit about if I'm a brand and I'm gonna go pay somebody $5,000 for a bunch of Instagram posts or some stories, when you talk with brands, what do you generally advise them that they should be looking for in terms of an outcome?

Measuring the ROI of Influencer Marketing

Shane: Really I usually flip it on the brand and say, "What are your KPIs?" Like what are our goals? What are you looking to do?

Let's reverse engineer this. Like, "Oh hey Shane, I wanna spend $5,000 and I wanna do a million dollars in sales." And I say, "Well that sounds extremely unrealistic, so let's go ahead and reset those expectations."

Kathleen: Right.

Shane: Right? So it really comes down ... When somebody reaches out to me about an influencer campaign, I have qualifying questions that I send with any client.

So what I wanna do is find out what are you looking for? How realistic are we? 'Cause the problem is, and I've done it, I've written an article about, "Hey, for Zoe every dollar you spend you make four dollars." And people go, "I want that plan." Well of course, who doesn't want that plan?

Kathleen: Yeah, who doesn't?

Shane: Yeah. Even one for two I'll take. Or 1.25 I'll take.

But the thing is, is that I wanna just do a little to find out what their expectations are. So when it comes to brands and saying, "Hey listen, I'm gonna spend $5,000 on this." Well what are you goals? So is it sales? Is it gonna be mentions? Is it gonna be you wanna increase your social media following? What are your overall goals? What would you consider this to be a win?

And that's what I think is important. Another thing I like to tell people, don't spend all of your money just on influencer marketing. This is a piece of your marketing tool set. Don't just put all of your ...

People come to me and say, "Listen I got $5,000 or my business is gonna go down." You know what I'd tell them? Take your family out to dinner, go on a vacation or something. Do not put all of your money in this last ditch effort of this thing that you read about and it seems to be going great for everybody.

Influencer marketing isn't for everybody. Influencer marketing, it's no different than issues that we have with PPC or SEO or anything like that. The idea is, is that if you find the right influencers, and you invest the time, and you go do that.

Same with SEO, if you go after the wrong keywords, it doesn't matter what product you have. PPC, if you go after the wrong stuff, then you're not gonna have your target audience or your lookalike audience and you're not gonna sell stuff.

Influencer marketing is no different. The idea is that you need to go in and do the research and make sure that you're, once again, trying to find those right influencers. Trying to find out. And then talking to them as well and saying, "Listen these are our goals. My budget's $5,000, I would love to be able to get $10,000 in sales. So what kind of campaign do you think that we would have to put together that your audience would buy $10,000 worth of product?" Now if you're selling a one dollar product, then that means that there needs to be 10,000 transactions. And you have to go, "Well I don't know if that's gonna be possible in $5,000."

'Cause one of the things you look at too is that people don't realize that it's not a, "Hey Kim Kardashian, hey can you put this picture up?" And she puts it up, and she charges you $1 million, and then all of a sudden you just make $1 million. It's a frequency deal.

Back in the day, it used to be a little easier 'cause you'd just put a picture up and people didn't even really know what influencer marketing was, just said, "Hey if Jennifer's doing it, I wanna do it."

Now it's a little different. We have more of an educated audience that's kinda like ... If they're following you, and you're not just taking on any sponsorship and you're genuine with your recommendations. I think then people obviously people are gonna be more likely to buy those products.

But it really comes down to what is the brand looking for? And does the influencer think this is gonna be a possible outcome?

But what happens in most influencer campaigns is people just run into it blindly. They're like, "Let's just see if this thing works and we'll just do some stuff, and let's just see what happens."

It's no different than content. You don't just go into content and say, "I'm just gonna write this article today." I think we all did in the beginning. But now we look at-

Kathleen: Right, there was a time.

Shane: Right, we all did that. But now what we do is we look at keywords, we look at competition, we look at what kinda competition for that specific keyword, what is working? We have all this software we can make a better educated decision.

And the same thing with influencer marketing. What are your goals and do those goals line up and are they realistic with the influencer? And is the influencer gonna be able to tell you, "Hey, I can tell you if you've have this amount of sales and we can do that through a coupon code. Or through an affiliate link." Or whatever that is.

It's just, once again, most of the time a brand's read an article and an influencer's looking to get paid, and they come together. And they have this beautiful little baby called an influencer marketing campaign. And all of a sudden they go, "We didn't even talk about the future or whether we're gonna live together," whatever, right?

Kathleen: Yeah.

Shane: There are some steps before that, that you have to ask, to make sure you guys are on the same page. And if you're not on the same page, then don't work with that influencer.

But that's one of the biggest disconnects, is that they just assume that you do one post. It's not that. It's a frequency thing.

An influencer, if they post three, four, five, six, seven, ten times, now their audience has seen it more and more, they say, "You know what I really think that John uses this product. Or I've seen good results from what he's done here with this product or this service. Now it makes sense for me to go and purchase it." So it's a little bit of a longer term play now.

And then also in your contract having like when John posts this content, now in my contract I'm gonna put now I get to use that content however I want. I can use it on my website for social proof, I can use it on my flyers, I use it wherever I'm gonna use it. And then I also wanna do some PPC ads. There's some other stuff that goes into that.

So once again, don't just do a campaign with somebody who's got a million followers giving them ten grand, don't talk about it, have them post one picture, and expect for a miracle to happen.

You really wanna have that overall strategy and make sure you have the 10 things that you're gonna be doing to get it up to that point when it launches and the things that you do after that to continue the success and do whatever it is, Facebook ads that's gonna push it towards that influencer's following, whatever that is. There's a lot of things that go into that, to continue to get the results, to squeeze the juice out of that lemon.

Regulations & Influencer Marketing

Kathleen: Now one thing that I think a lot of marketers who have not done influencer marketing, or don't do it very frequently, might not be familiar with, are the regulations around it. And you mentioned FTC regulations earlier.

Can you just briefly give a quick overview of some of the things that you have to be careful about when you enter into these relationships?

Shane: Yeah. The thing is with the FTC, is the FTC what their thing is, is they're obviously going after the bigger influencers because what they wanna do is make a story about it, and let people know hey, you have to be transparent in the things that you're doing.

So what they've done is gone after Kim K and all these bigger influencers. 'Cause the idea is it's a trickle down. They wanna have the story about Kim K got sued for $50,000, whatever the numbers are and whoever they went after.

The idea of that is 'cause they don't want you to fool the public. They don't want you to go in and when you're representing a product, or a service, or whatever, they want you to be authentic and tell your audience at least let your audience know, "Hey listen, this is an ad. I received free product, or they're compensating me for this."

And there's a number of ways to do that. There's hashtag ad, hashtag sponsored.

The FTC has tried to tighten up the regulations, in the sense of having the verbiage be a little better, so it's a little better understanding. 'Cause it's still a little bit of gray area with it. So that's where people are like "Well I don't really know, do I have to write hashtag ad and sponsored? Do I put it at the beginning? Do I put it at the end? Do I have to say it? Do I have to get it tattooed on my forehead?"

What do I need to do, so that people know that this is an ad?

And if you're going through Facebook and Instagram you can see "in partnership with," or whatever it is, there's ways to tie that in. I just think that if you're at least disclosing that you are in some type of relationship, this is a paid thing. Or even if it's not paid, that's another thing people don't realize. Even if you got a free shirt and you're marketing that shirt, talking about that shirt, that's still, you received some type of compensation for that.

Now do I think that the FTC's gonna come through? The FTC's not gonna be able to come through and sue a million people and expect to be able to do that, and expect for those people to have money to fight it and pay the fines. They go after the bigger influencers.

I'm not saying if you're a smaller influencer don't follow the regulations, by any means. Follow the regulations. But you just have to be careful what you're doing. And once again, it's not too difficult. You hashtag ad and hashtag sponsored, and there's some other stuff. You can read the FTC regulations, they have them on their website.

And then if you have an attorney friend or something or even have an attorney just say, "Hey, looking at this, do you think we're gonna be okay?" Most of the time you'll be okay if you can justify that, "Hey listen, I was being transparent with my audience, and the way that I did that was through this, this this," you should be fine.

Who Is Influencer Marketing Right For?

Kathleen: Okay. So having gone through this whole conversation I think I'm intrigued. It sounds like there's a lot of potential to leverage influencers more in different campaigns. I guess the next question that pops into my head is, who is this right for?

So if you're a brand that's looking to accomplish something through marketing, we've got B2C, B2B, B2G, you name it, nonprofit. Are there certain types of companies and certain types of campaigns that influencer marketing is well suited for and are there certain that it's not? Or is there a way to use it for everybody?

Shane: Yeah, there's definitely products and services that are better catered for influencer marketing. With a lot of the stuff that I work on, I work on very unique products that I think are gonna have that wow factor. So if it's a T-shirt company and they're like, "Hey we have this really cool T-shirt, it's got Bert and Ernie on it." I'm like, "Ah okay, nothing really too exciting about that." I guess we'll go try to find the Sesame Street fans-

Kathleen: Unless you can get Bert and Ernie to shill it for you.

Shane: Then there we go, right? And they're influencers, so there we go.

So there are certain things that make more sense where it's like I think it's gonna have that, I call it the wow factor. I think just about any product or service I think could do influencer marketing, some it doesn't make sense when you have ... I've had insurance agents that are top insurance agents for MetLife and this kinda stuff, "Hey we're looking to get more clients." That becomes more difficult because there's a lot stricter regulations. They're like, "Yeah, we have to have three attorneys to look at our post before it goes live." And I'm like, "You just lost everything because it took you nine days to come out with this Instagram post on what you were doing nine days ago. Nobody cares today." For the most part.

So there are things that if you have a cool product, and it doesn't even have to be necessarily a cool product, but the cool part about it is that there's tons of influencers. And you never know ... The hard part is finding the influencer that's gonna be best for your product.

But there's an influencer for everything. Literally there was a guy, I spoke at the first influencer conference in Mexico, in Mexico City. And there was a guy that was up there speaking with me, and his Instagram is literally about the color pink. That is it. That is it, like he's-

Kathleen: That's very specific.

Shane: He's at 80,000 ... Very specific. Yeah, and that's all it was. So anything pink would get ahold of him, and instead of going after drinks or something, it was just pink. So everybody that followed him, and I don't know if everybody that followed him loved pink, but obviously they had some kind of thing for pink. Or it was just he put out pretty crazy content, he was always showing pink hair, and pink this, and pink that.

So there we go. And now you have a pink product and you go, "Who knew that we were gonna find this guy? And here we go, now we have an audience in theory." ... Can represent your audience, you just have to figure out what that is.

If you have a really cool patented product, it becomes easier because it's cool and everybody wants it, and this kinda stuff. If you don't, you can still find out ... You can still find an influencer that can rep your product, but you just have to look at the demographics of their following and say, "Hey do we think this is a good fit? How can it be a win-win on both sides? And what do we expect the outcome to be?"

Influencer Marketing Tools & Software

Kathleen: Great. Well lots to think about here with respect to influencer marketing. Now you named a couple of platforms in the beginning that can be helpful.

If somebody's listening and they're a marketer with a business that's just starting to dip their toes in the water of influencer marketing, are there any particular sources or platforms that you recommend that look at?

Shane: Yeah. Obviously my website is ShaneBarker.com. I write about it quite a bit, and write about it for a lot of other websites as well. So there's that.

Obviously Grin is who I use to put campaigns together. So they've got a really, really robust platform that they've put together. I've watched them grow over the last few years.

GroupHigh is one that we use for bloggers, so if you're looking for bloggers or anything like that, that has been a really good one. If you're looking for anybody that's in your niche and stuff like that. That's been great.

There's some other like Lee Odden and those guys over at TopRank are doing some good B2B stuff as well. I'm trying to think what else, some other resources. There's a lot.

You obviously can put in ... Influencer Marketing Hub, that's who I'm partnering with to do the workshop that we're doing in San Francisco on March 21st. So we're doing an all day workshop for brands. And for agencies to come out and say, "Hey I wanna work with influencers, how do I go about doing that?" Or, "My clients wanna work with influencers."

Save $100 off the price of tickets to Shane's workshop, "Under The Influence: Influencer Marketing Workshop," with the code SHANE100.

Click here to learn more or purchase tickets

So we're doing a one day training there, kinda hands on training to show them all the stuff we've kinda talked about on the podcast, but more hands on and just kind of explaining everything in detail, and how we do outreach, and how do we negotiate, and that whole process, kinda breaking it down deeper.

Kathleen: Great. All right, I'll put links to all of that in the show notes. So if you're listening and you wanna learn more, check that out.

Kathleen's Two Questions

Kathleen: Now before we wrap up, two questions I ask all of my guests, which I'm curious to get your take on. The first one is we talk a lot about inbound marketing at this podcast. Company or individual, who do you think is really doing inbound marketing well right now?

Shane: Yeah, I mean inbound, it's so funny 'cause when you talk about inbound marketing I'm probably gonna be, the people that I'm gonna recommend are my competitors, right? So that's ... This is a humbling moment for me.

I would say Neil Patel, he's kinda one of the originators, I would say in regards to building out content and doing that inbound extremely well. And now he has an agency and stuff that he's done. So I've always been impressed, I kinda looked up to him in the beginning when I jumped into doing content marketing in the inbound side of things, as somebody that just put out some good content. He seemed to get it right, and he kinda paved the way. Now I'm just trying to catch him on some keywords right now, which Neil if you're listening to this I'm coming for you, and I will beat you, just so you know.

Kathleen: Watch out, Neil.

Shane: Yeah. Yeah, there goes the warning shot just so he knows. There goes the warning shot. But I think Neil's been doing a great job.

And there's a lot of other marketers that do a phenomenal job. Robby does a great job, he does some really cool stuff. So anyways, there's some cool stuff that I follow, a lot of guys that I follow that I work with directly, that like I said, have done a phenomenal job on the inbound side of things.

And we don't do too bad ourselves. All of the leads that I get are all inbound marketing. So we don't have any sales team, I don't have any outreach or anything like that. I don't know if that's something to brag about, but all of that comes from inbound. So it's been a nice little machine.

Kathleen: That's what I always say when you hear stuff like that, "Hey, this stuff actually works."

Shane: Yeah. It takes awhile, but it's a good investment for sure.

Kathleen: That's great. Yeah.

Now second question, digital marketing is changing so quickly, how do you personally stay up to date and on top of everything?

Shane: Yeah, there's different sites or different things. I always try to keep up on when it comes to SEO, Search Engine Journal is one that we always take a look at. There's a lot of the search engine ones, that I think they're always getting the updated information, so we'll kinda see some cool stuff there.

I also like Content Marketing Institute, they have some good stuff there. Some good content as well.

It's funny, so as much as I have my podcast, and I do podcasts and all this, I don't really listen to too many podcasts, so I probably should. I know there's a lot of great things that are happening there as well. I don't tap in as much as I probably should, because I had ADHD for God's sakes, so it'd be great, I could do a video, do 10,000 other things at the same time. But those are probably my picks for your two questions, for sure.

Kathleen: Okay, great yeah. And I like for us, Search Engine Journal as well, that's a really good one.

Shane: Yeah.

Connect With Shane Barker

Kathleen: Great, well if somebody is listening and they want to reach out, ask a question, get in touch, or learn more, what is the best way for them to connect with you online?

Shane: The best way to get my attention is to send me money through PayPal, so I'm gonna give you my email address. If you send cash that's an instant, "Hey, Shane's gonna pay attention to you."

No, you can actually, this is my direct email is just [email protected]. And I answer all questions. So if anybody has any questions, and this has come back to bite me a few times where I've had like 200 emails come through and I'm like, "Oh this is awesome. I did say for free, didn't I?"

So if anybody has any questions about influencer marketing, you can go to my website, obviously you can look it up on Google as well. But you can send me direct questions and I'll make sure to answer them and get something out, usually within 24 to 48 hours.

I just got back from Singapore, so I'm a little tired right now, but I'll say 48 hours.

Kathleen: All right, awesome. Well again, if you're listening and you wanna reach Shane, you can get in touch with him that way, or you can check the show notes and I'll have links to his email and all of his various social properties and websites will be in there. So check that out, and we'll put you in touch.

And in the meantime, thank you so much Shane for joining us. This was really interesting. I learned a lot about influencer marketing, and definitely now motivated to go see if I can find some influencers to test some new campaigns with.

Shane: That's it. That's it. Let me know if you have any questions.

Kathleen: I will. And if you're listening and you enjoyed this or if you learned something new, please take a minute and give the podcast a review on Apple Podcast or the platform of your choice. It really makes a difference. And if you know somebody else that's doing kick ass things on marketing work, Tweet me at workmommywork, because they could be my next guest. Thanks.

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from Web Developers World https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/influencer-marketing-shane-barker-podcast

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