Welcome to Brands Talking Influencers Q&A. We’re taking our Fireside Chat to the GRIN Gets Real podcast. Now you can listen and learn beyond the webinar experience. At the end of our Fireside Chat, we usually have a nice little live Q&A. But we’ve got so many great questions and not enough time. This is a podcast where we answer those unanswered questions.

A little bit about the fireside chat:

We interviewed Tyler and Ashley from Tres Colori. Tres Colori is a DTC jewelry brand that’s based in New York. They create personalized nameplates and jewelry. They use data from creator content to be strategic with their paid ads. Their entire marketing strategy is focused on looking at what they do across all social platforms together—not as silos—to execute a paid strategy that continues to increase their revenue and brand awareness. They shared insights on how they get content rights, leverage UGC, and the importance of working together as a marketing team to execute an omnichannel strategy.

We have so many more questions; I can’t wait to dive into it. So put your AirPods in, turn up that volume and get ready for those unanswered questions with Tyler and Ashley from Tres Colori.

Katya:
Tyler, Ashley, welcome back. This time you’re on the GRIN Gets Real podcast. This is an extension of our Brands Talking Influencers Q&A with all of your unanswered questions. And you, my friends, got a lot of them. Are you ready to dive in?

Ashley:
I’m ready.

Katya:
Now, how often would you say that you’re going back to the same influencers to post versus finding new influencers?

Ashley:
Oh, that’s a great question. I love this question. I would say that I have a pocket of influencers that I always go to for content. They’ve been like my day-ones. I’ve kept them in my pocket and developed great relationships with them. They are more than happy to create content. I have all the rights to their photos regardless of if it’s a Tres Colori post. And I would say I have a nice amount of influencers that I cycle through.

But for new influencers, there’s no cap. And I think that’s something that’s really important. I know that we have like a KPI for prospecting a week. But I tell Tyler I want him to meet a minimum—his KPI goal is that minimum. There’s millions, maybe even a billion influencers. Let’s capture as many as we can. It’s like Pokemon.

Katya:
Grow where you can—love it. Do you have an ambassador program where you have people posting on a regular basis? If so, how’s that working for you in GRIN?

Ashley:
We do. Our ambassadors are specifically kids. And the reason why they’re kids is because we spontaneously came up with the idea of launching a kid’s collection, which instantly took off the moment it launched. And it’s been successful ever since. We started the SEM browser program specifically because we didn’t want our competitors to use the kids that we outreached. And so these kids (and we have a very nice amount of them) post content with Tres Colori. We have different agreements with them. Whether it’s weekly and monthly—whatever is agreed on. But that’s pretty much our ambassador program in terms of like other influencers as a whole.

Tyler:
And as Ashley said, the most important part with these kids that are brand ambassadors is the exclusivity part of it. So all of these kids that are posting amazing, proven, tried content backed by ads and performance have exclusivity contracts with Tres Colori, so nobody else can go like nab them in the jewelry vertical.

Katya:
Now when you talk about kids, really, you’re talking about…

Tyler:
20 to 25.

Katya:
OK, I love that you call that “kids.”

Tyler:
No, no, I’m saying that 20 to 25 percent of our revenue comes from kids.

Katya:
OK, so what’s the kid age span that you guys are targeting?

Ashley:
Me, I personally classify kids under 10. But not, like, the womb. I would say between 2 and 10.

Katya:
OK, next question. Tyler, you kind of already answered during the fireside chat, but I would love to double click a little bit because it has to do with whitelisting. And you were so passionate about it when you answered. Do you use retargeting and new demo targeting and influencer dark posting whitelisting?

Tyler:
I would lean more towards dark posting than whitelisting just because of the expiration dates on platforms like TikTok. It isn’t to say it isn’t an integral part of the strategy. And to be honest, I could test a lot more with it. It’s just when we did test with it on TikTok in the exploration of something that is no longer being able to put paid dollars behind. I was like, kind of innocence jaded. I was kind of upset. I’m like, “Man, this was like doing great but expired after 14 days.” Like, I don’t want to be in this situation again.

Katya:
In your answer, you said you lean more towards dark posting. If you can, for the audience, describe the difference between dark posting and whitelisting.

Tyler:
So dark posting would be like having that influencer or that person post on our behalf, versus whitelisting is like more of that in-collaboration-with. The biggest difference is the platform.

So full transparency, full honesty, it all serves a purpose. And it’s all something that should be tested on different platforms. The reason I’m so anti-whitelist is because of that expiration date, like in terms of a business, I’m a performance marketer. I’m not just like a brand manager. So at heart, I’m always thinking growth and scale. I’m always thinking longevity. So the fact that if something can take off, do really well and kill it for a week. I would say I would rather have something that could kill it for months and months and months. Call me old school or traditional or whatever it may be like, but that’s kind of my stance on it.

Katya:
Nice. All right, this next question. It’s a long one. Here we go.

“Hi, I’m a luxury dessert company. I recently hired an influencer to promote my product. She’s a foodie influencer and has a lot of engagement. Her posts on my brand received a lot of engagement, but I noticed it’s from other food influencers. My question is, should I be open to working with luxury influencers? For clothing, food, and fashion?

Ashley:
I like it. Why not? Like you have nothing to lose? Maybe you’ll have more success with someone who travels or maybe works within fashion. Everyone loves food. Food is kind of like what brings people together, so your audience is really unlimited. So why not, rather than sticking to food influencers, like branch out go to other influencers.

Katya:
Yeah, that’s also why you should always be testing with different types of influencers because you never know.

Ashley:
Yeah, it’s so funny. This is so off topic, but when I was in college, I ran a food blog. I don’t know if it’s the same, but a lot of food influencers have this group where they talk to each other within Whatsapp or Telegram. And they all support each other. So if one food influencer posts, all 50 of them are commenting, which is probably why she saw that because they are all supporting each other. So that way, the brand awareness and their reach for all of them kind of shoot up together.

Katya:
That reminds me of influencer pods. I think there are a lot of people that don’t want to engage with influencers who are part of influencer pods, but I think there’s influencer “pods” and then there’s influencer “friends.”

If you’re a creator, you have creator friends. That’s the world that you live in. They’re your co-workers essentially. Right? So I think there are a lot of brands that are hesitant about that. Because, is it truly engagement from the community that I want? Or is it just co-workers supporting one another? Either way, it’s brand awareness?

Ashley:
Yeah. Especially like, if they grow, you grow.

Katya:
That’s true. Do you find you get more from micro influencers?

Ashley:
I enjoy working with micro influencers a lot more because they’re excited. They’re on board. They’re kind of at the starting line of their brands. And they are so specific on how the deliverable should be. They are the ones that DM, and they’re like, “Hey, like, give us feedback.” And I love that. They take so much more time to create content. They, like, put in the time and have a calendar. They’re like, “OK, I’m creating Tres Colori content. I need to make sure it’s perfect.” They ask a lot of great questions. And you never know, micro turns into macro.

Tyler:
I would say, because these micro influencers are untainted, they don’t have biased opinions that happened at that mid-tier and into macro. It’s not just a business transaction, it’s something that they’re super motivated to do because they want to be an influencer. So they’re trying to do good.

Now, if they provide us with awesome content, and they hit, and I can put ad dollars that blow them up, and they blow us up—now you have a super healthy relationship, where both parties are really profitable. And that’s how we’ve been able to get some kids from 10s of 1000s of followers to closer to a million followers. And they’re so appreciative of us because we were the people there giving them a chance when everybody else was overlooking them. Versus working with some mid-tier-moderate person that’s asking absolute bullshit for their rates. It is the wild frickin west out there in influencer world. So if you get to that 30k to 100k mark, people are going to try to take you for a ride. So I would actually recommend starting micro and nano first, building some solid relationships, and then try to invest into bigger influencers to see how it works. But have your roots be built with people that are trying to do the same thing your brand is doing.

Katya:
Yeah, love it.

Ashley:
Also micro, they’re, they’re looking to develop relationships with brands. Yeah, like this is like what they want. They’re like, “OK, I’m going to work really hard to create this relationship with this brand. So they are so on board to whatever tasks they’re given. They’re going to do 110% because they want to make sure that they’re delivering and everything is great. So then that way, the brand works with them again. They just care so much more.

Katya:
That makes sense. All right. How does GRIN help you keep track of and foster or manage those crucial relationships?

Ashley:
I love this. Tyler knows my answer already. Because I came from Excel sheets, GRIN helps me just naturally create relationships without even noticing now. I check in on influencers all the time. I haven’t worked with a few for a while, but I’m just like, “Oh man, you’re pregnant. I’m so happy for you! Or, “We’re so happy for you because as a team, we actually are very happy for you.”

When our influencer marketing started, it was something that was very crucial for us. And it happened very naturally. And we started off all micro, and all these micro influencers became macro. And the relationship stayed, and it was just very organic and genuine. It just happens.

Katya:
What are your thoughts on the new paid partnership label on Instagram? Do you think that reduces the effectiveness of the post since everyone knows it’s a paid promo?

Ashley:
I think it depends on who the paid partnership is with. Is it a paid partnership with GymShark? Everyone knows that they do so many partnerships with so many influencers. It’s no surprise that they’re doing a paid partnership with GymShark or a larger scale brand. And in that case, I would say it’s fine. You know, they’re getting the engagement, that brand awareness, regardless if it has or if it doesn’t have that specific title.

I would say, though, for smaller brands, which I would classify us as, I wouldn’t want influencers to put that, again, because I want it to be as genuine and as organic as possible. So I think it really just depends on the brand and the scale of the brand.

Mejuri, a few years ago, was very into influencer marketing. And you saw so many influencers (macro and micro) promoting Mejuri. If they had that stamp on it two years ago, all of them would have majority on it. But for us, it’s something that we would choose not to opt in on.

Katya:
That makes sense. Do your influencers have discount codes, or do you feel like it takes away from your authenticity?

Ashley:
There’s always a sale on our website. Regardless, we’re always running some sort of discount. So influencers will most likely have a more or same discount as our website.

Katya:
And I think it’s important that anyone who’s giving a discount, like it’s either gotta be the same or it definitely has to be incentivized as to actually leverage the discount code.

Tyler:
I would say for somebody that doesn’t have a way to track or is struggling to track and attribute influencer marketing, discount codes are sloppy. It’s not the cleanest way to do it because not everybody’s going to be using a code. But if you want just like a baseline coverage to kind of get a feeler out there for purchases from influencers, have unique discount code for that influencer is a great first step.

Ashley:
Yeah, we go back and forth on this as a team. If we’re running 50% off, and we’re giving an influencer 50% off, how are we supposed to track that? And half of the party is saying, well, if a follower is very committed to an influencer, they’re 1,000% putting their code in. Versus someone who just stumbles across it, and they’re just going to take the website code. But you know, very rarely is it equal. The influencer code will most likely always be more unless it’s during a holiday season.

Katya Allison:
How do you get the initial relationships of trust started? How would you advise getting a relationship started from zero?

Ashley:
I like keeping things short and sweet. I ask to collab with like a super cute emoji showing excitement. Something that is kind of like a pet peeve of mine is when the influencers send me like two paragraphs, I’m not reading it. I’d rather you just say, “Hey, let’s collab.” And I will instantly open it and review it and communicate with you. But once you send me two paragraphs, it’s a lot, especially when you have an entire exam that you need to go through. I send them something very short and sweet. And I will just fill in as many DMS as I can until Instagram blocks me.

Katya:
OK, I don’t know how comfortable you are answering this. So we can definitely cut this out if for any reason, but in a month, how much do you spend for influencers? And what is your ROI? Can you give general numbers?

Ashley:
To be honest, we barely spend money on influencers. The majority is gifting. 90% is purely gifting.

Katya:
Oh, that’s interesting. And even if you leverage the content for paid ads, you’re not paying that influencer for it? You’re just getting the content rights?

Ashley:
Correct.

Katya Allison:
That’s so crazy. I think in my head, I thought that you guys paid for the ones that you repurpose for paid ads.

Ashley:
I guess like for our ambassador program. I won’t say the amount that that is because that is a monthly cost. And that’s a monthly fixed cost.

But we don’t pay for content rights. We don’t. We rarely pay for influencers. It’s 90% gifting, and like I said in the fireside chat, I’ll DM them be like, “Hey, do you mind if we use this photo?” And the customers are thrilled for us to tag them.

Tyler:
To expand on that question without getting into our margins, which is what you would need to truly answer, it’s literally the cost to produce. It’s the cost to produce our stuff. We have a lot of oversight over our jewelry that’s getting made. So that’s how we can say it’s quality pieces because we’re the ones making it. And that happens to save us a lot of money, which frees us up to gift this stuff profitably.

So on the ads front, when I’m spending dollars, I don’t have to have a crazy 5x return to start making profit. I maybe need to keep it a little closer to a 1.2. I’m making money that’s very reasonable in expectations, but it starts because we own the manufacturing.

Katya:
All right, how many follow-up emails or DMs would you do you typically send? Do you also need to comment on their content to get answers? And what other methods do you use to get the answers? Lots of questions!

Tyler:
So using GRIN has made it actually a lot easier because there’s not a lot of back and forth like there used to be. Now we kind of do an intro, I send them their live URL link where they’re able to go in to select their pieces, which cuts out a lot of the communication that I used to have to do. And within the live URL, they select their pieces; it has the different text fields where they can enter the personalization shipping content, rights to content, etc. I just asked him to ping me once it’s submitted just to make sure that I see it.

Katya:
Do you also comment on your influencer’s posts?

Tyler:
Yeah. Not because we should, it’s because we want to. They’re showing our support, so we show support back.

Katya:
Well, this is a hefty one. As influencer marketing gets widespread and the education is more known about the benefits as an influencer and a brand, how do you remain successful with gifting when most influencers expect to be paid as micro and macro? Also with free content, how do you create terms and conditions that cover usage and amplification?

Ashley:
I think there’s different ways influencers approach brands.

One, if you’re in, if you’re emailing an influencer, I feel like if an email states paid, it’s more professional. The email usually goes to the manager or the agency and then immediately is a paid collab. If it’s going through paid, we, as a team, will negotiate with the manager and specifically tell them what our metrics are. And then we’ll deliberate based on that. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and it’s OK. And we’re OK with that. We’re not going to fight with every single manager because there’s so many fish in the sea. We have to be realistic as a brand that we have a budget, and we’re not going to go and bend over backwards for specific influencers when you know, a lot of other influencers within the same realm are like, “Hey, I love your pieces.”

Tyler:
I think a lot of brands—as influencers get into the space and they get educated—it’s going to force them to be more realistic with themselves. Like, I don’t want to bend over backwards for an influencer that doesn’t want to work with me. An influencer that wants to work with us would be willing to accept free gifts and would be willing to do these things. So we keep an abundant mindset when it comes to the influencers out there, and not some scarcity bullshit that I’m going to have to pay you three grand to make this work. So it’s about us. It’s your perspective as the person managing these relationships with influencers and keeping that abundant mindset, and knowing that if somebody wants to work with you, they’ll do whatever it takes to work with you. You don’t have to pay them an astronomical amount of money.

Ashley:
I really hate working with agencies and managers because of that specific percentage that they want in their pocket. At that point, they’re not thinking about the influencer anymore—they’re thinking about their commission. So my head, if I’m able to go around them, I 1,000% will. It doesn’t work all the time, but it’s worth a shot. And I have gotten lucky with it. And the manager will email me back being like, “Hey, like, I know, you’re speaking,” and I’m like, “Well, that’s between me and her or me and them,” or whatever it is in that’s the reality of it. And at the end of the day, why are we going to push our limit when the $3,000 doesn’t even guarantee any profit?

Also, if I see a micro influencer who works their ass off to create content, and I see that they put the time in to create an amazing reel or amazing post, would rather spend on them than someone at like a macro to know that they’re putting in the time the commitment

Katya:
With free content, how do you create terms and conditions that cover the usage and amplification?

Ashley:
We just simply ask them. If we’re gifting or not, we’re not expecting for people to go out create hours of content. We simply ask them to give us some sort of support and shout out and whatever is comfortable to them. And that’s why I mentioned 90% of the time, they’re giving us a IG story, which actually has a nicer reach than a feed post. And we’re OK with that. I’m OK with that. I want to use that and repurpose it for our story. It’s totally fine. Especially if they’re including a hashtag in their code.

Katya:
How do you find specific influencers to target?

Tyler:
Well, GRIN’s filtration system is pretty wild. And honestly, I was shocked by some of the details that you could sort and filter by since some of the actual features aren’t available on networks like Facebook or Instagram. When you’re just going to target random people, you can set those audience demographics of the creator in GRIN.

Ashley:
You can also test anyone with any kind of interest. If I’m going to put an interest, I’m going to just say, “food 300,000 people.” I’m going to pop up, then I’m going to narrow down to New York. Now there’s 10,000. Then just keep narrowing it down. So my sweet spot is to get at least under 100. Then I’m like, OK, let me look through these.

Katya:
Do your campaigns include multiple tasks?

Ashley:
Sometimes, yeah. And if an influencer usually asks for payment for that task, it’s no problem. Because at the end of the day, it is optional. We’re not requiring you to do something, especially because you’re doing it for free. It’s always optional, and we always negotiate with them.

Katya:
OK, so this one is another contract question. But it is slightly different. Do you send contracts when you’re going to be running an ad? Or do you just use the GRIN terms and conditions?

Ashley:
We create our own. When an influencer is opting in, they’re literally signing off to every single kind of usage we would want.

Katya:
Should we be posting influencer content on our Instagram?

Ashley:
Absolutely. And if I’m posting something, I’m literally watching it the moment I post and seeing how it does and how comments are going, engagement awareness, and everything on it. Like I want to see it in action. I don’t want it to be scheduled. And then I completely forget about it. I want to like actively know, OK, I posted it. Now I’m gonna watch it. And it’s sometimes when it hits, it’s really exciting. When it doesn’t hit, it’s like, OK, let’s note this. What day is it? What time is it? Why is this different from other days that have worked? And you strategize based on that.

And it also depends on what’s trending. I’m not going to schedule things that are irrelevant to what’s going on in society. Like right now, sneakers are really hot with us. If I posted things with just products, but there’s like a really trending sneaker, and we have a photo of that sneaker with product, I want to make sure that that’s being posted. We have so much content that is either from influencers or just from photoshoots that I want to make sure that it’s everything is timed correctly.

Katya:
How is the consumer funnel different on TikTok compared to other social media channels?

Tyler:
With each of these platforms, you run into different complications. Tomorrow, for example, TikTok’s pixel is opening up to first party, third party, and dev tools. Something like that took Facebook eight years to do. So the funnels are the same, but how the funnels function are different. And it requires you to make sure that you’re doing whatever you can with the data to support and fulfill as much as you possibly can.

So again, that links into first party, all the ins and outs of that world, which is a whole separate topic. The answer is it shouldn’t be different. You should be treating your funnels the same. What you can do is take UTMs from TikTok in to target them on Facebook or target them on Google. Use your Google UTM and target them on Facebook lists. So there’s ways the platforms can play with each other.

Katya:
Do you find that discount codes work?

Tyler:
Everything is a discount code for us. There’s always a sale; there’s always a discount code. If I’m going to use something, regardless of whatever the content is, the ad text in bottom of funnel always has a discount code.

Ashley:
It’s so funny because someone on our team said this, and it’s so true, especially during a pandemic, it was like, literally the epiphany of a pandemic. It was like, what people do for an extra 5%. That’s true. And it’s so true.

Katya:
So true. If there’s a discount, I want it. I think there’s some brands that feel like it cheapens their brand. But I also think that it depends on what they’re selling. Are you selling one product? Are you selling many products? Do you want people coming back? Because a lot of times, if you have a lot of different products that people can pull from, like a discount to get them through the door, it’s just an opportunity to retarget them and tell them what else you have to offer them as a brand. And it just creates the most sense.

Ashley:
Look at Fashion Nova. They have consistent discount codes, and they’re one of the top brands right now. They have an incredible ambassador program. Their customers, whether they like their product or not, are continuously buying. It doesn’t make them cheap. It makes them a great brand.

Tyler:
I always use the analogy of the grocery store. Go to your local grocery store and see what benefits you get for signing up for a loyalty program. If it’s exclusive discounts, or fuel points, discounts on gas, or whatever. They’re not looking at you as just that $100 purchase for groceries this week. They’re looking at us $400 per month. They’re looking at us $4,800 per year. So if that $50 in fuel points is enough to get you to be that $4,800 a year customer, than hell yeah, I’m gonna give you $50.

Katya:
I want to thank you so much for letting me steal so much of your time and for having you guys drop all of that knowledge. Thank you. Thank you.

Tyler:
Thank you. I’m so sending you my deck.

Ashley:
It’s super fun. If anybody wants to reach out, our door’s always open on LinkedIn or social channels. Feel free to pick my brain about marketing. I always like to make myself available for people that want to ask questions.

Katya:
Between the fireside chat and this Q&A, all I have to say is, “Wow!” It’s impossible to walk away from both of them without really rethinking or just thinking a lot more about how you’re leveraging all of that UGC that you’re getting. And that’s from your customers and your influencers alike. I think that as a director of content, I would say that this is completely my jam. While there isn’t a direct one-to-one between post and sale, how you leverage that content can drastically reduce the costs of creating that perfectly curated piece that may not actually convert as high as using or leveraging that UGC on a paid social channel.

Now, I think it’s because, as consumers, what really makes a thumb-scroll-stopping ad is something that really comes across as authentic. Now, I’m not saying that we should be rid of all branded content, but just imagine a world where you didn’t always have to search for a stock image, or you didn’t have to pay for a complete photo shoot.

Do you want to hear more? Be sure to subscribe to the GRIN Gets Real podcast to get the latest episodes. Be sure to give us a rating and leave us a review. If you’re interested in watching the fireside chat with Tyler and Ashley called “UGC 101: Maximizing Creator Content for Your Paid Ads” or other brands stories that we’ve featured from ABLE, Vera Bradley, Trifecta, and many more, just visit the Live Events section at grin.co. Check out our resources and blogs while you’re there for more tips, tricks, and marketing trends. Until next time, keep grinning!