5 Steps to Scale Influencer Seeding 🌱

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Hello!

Welcome back for some more bites to chew on. 

COT Community

ICYMI: On Sunday’s COT episode, we talked with the public-CPG-biz-builder-legend, Jake Karls, founder of Midday Squares. 

In the episode:

• Developing emotional connections with customers through storytelling

• Journey into mass retail (Target) + challenges

• Burnout and the importance of self-care

• Creating a positive company culture

Watch/listen to the episode here. 

On the Menu

We’re serving up our step-by-step influencer seeding system using SARAL, which has been fundamental to scaling our influencer program:

1. Bulk Discovery

2. Automation Outreach

3. Offers & Comms

4. Shipping

5. Maintaining Relationships

Bite 1: Bulk Discovery (Finding 100+ Candidates Per Week)

Our previous process: The hardest part about finding potential influencers was… finding potential influencers.

Searching via #s and terms on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube was a pain in the 🍑. 

We had to brute force it and manually sift through thousands of non-influencer posts to find a handful of candidates. 

What we do now: SARAL lets us search a database of influencers to hone in on relevant candidates. For Obvi, we’re using keywords such as “wellness,” “health,” “haircare,” “skincare,” and “weight loss.”

🌟We also leverage SARAL’s lookalike feature. We plug in influencers who’ve done well for us, and it’ll show similar influencers, which allows us to curate a more exact list.

Bite 2: Automation Outreach

Another process that sucked and took forever: Outbounding influencers. We would do classic, old-school cold outreach based on our research and send single emails at a time.

What we do now: We bulk-send a drip sequence through SARAL to 100-150 influencers at a time. Sending the drip sequence was a learning on our end. We previously sent individual emails and got response rates of 20-25%, but with drips, we’ve increased response rates to 35-40%. 

🌟Even if you don’t have access to SARAL, we highly recommend this strategy (either manually or through your general CRM). It’ll make the most of the hours you’re putting into research.

Taking it a step further: We add a follow-up email or two for those who didn’t bite on the original drip sequence.

Bite 3: Offers & Communication

Our outreach is (and always has been) complimentary but genuine.

What we tell influencers:

• We love your content. [We really do!]

• We think your audience would really resonate with our product(s). 

• We’d love to send you a free gift. [I.e., sample products]

• If you’re interested in working together, we offer a hefty commission (30-50%).

• Before anything else, though, let’s chat. 

🌟We offer high affiliate rates because… This is a partnership. The best way to begin, grow, and deepen any partnership is by offering as much value as you can at every stage. We want to be partners forever. 

Once the influencer(s) agree, we’ll send them products. 

Think of it like a care package: Do something special for them. We have a memorable pink box, and we include several of our products: supplements and a shaker cup, too. 

Bite 4: Shipping & Joy

The shipping process:

• Pack influencer boxes at our warehouse

• Sync packages with SARAL

• Deliver via 3PL

• After delivery, send influencers an automated message that confirms they received the package

And often, they’ll post about the experience: 

We love to see the genuine joy that comes from the unboxing experience. The whole “surprise and delight” phrase may be overused… 

But it’s not wrong. 

Bite 5: The Real Work… Maintaining Relationships

Keep in mind: The first 4 steps are just the beginning. It’s great that you’ve found influencers and the relationship has sprouted.

But, to take it to the next level, ensuring that they’re true affiliates is key. 

We try to get them onboarded, so they can continuously promote the brand and keep up with what we’re doing. 

The benefits for us:

1. Tons of top-of-funnel reach

2. New sales

3. UGC that we can repurpose in our paid ads, website LPs, and everywhere else:

🌟SARAL also integrates with our other tools, like Sendlane, so we can send our influencers campaigns, drops, holiday discounts, etc. That further reduces the manual effort on our end to ensure that they stay up-to-date on our products, messaging, launches, company updates, and more. 

To learn more about SARAL and how you can seriously scale your influencer program, click here.

#ProudPartner

Catchew Later!

We sincerely appreciate every moment you spend with us and reading our work. We’ll see you soon.

All the best,

Ron & Ash