How to Ace Influencer Marketing With Deirdre Breakenridge

Welcome to the Marketing Growth Podcast. I’m your host, Shane Barker. I’ve been chatting with Deidre Breakenridge about her books, consulting business, and her professional journey. In this episode, you’ll find her take on content marketing and working with influencers. So cool. You know, we’re gonna switch gears here a little bit, talk a little bit about the content marketing side of things. Like, what do you think the biggest challenges for marketers are? Where do you see marketers failing when it comes to content marketing? Is there anything you see—content that comes out and you go, Oh man, I really wish more content marketers or more businesses would do this? Is there anything that really stands out for you, something that’s been glaring that you see quite often?

It’s funny, and I need to let the audience know I didn’t set this up for you to say or for me to say. It’s just interesting. My main focus right now is the workshops I’m doing for brands on how to work with influencers. There’s a huge disconnect between brands and influencers—not all of them, but from what I’ve seen and the research we’ve done. I talk to brands, I talk to influencers, and the problem is brands are often just sending a product and going, “Let’s see what happens,” without caring about the metrics or what goes into the brief.

That’s where I switch gears—through UCLA, I taught a curriculum that evolved into a workshop. It’s basically: if you want to do influencer marketing, there’s a right way to do it. Not every campaign will be successful, but there are certain questions you need to ask, certain briefs you need to put in place. And if you love an influencer’s content, don’t give them a brief that strangles their creativity. You obviously like their style, so let them do what they know resonates with their audience, as long as it lines up with your brand.

Make it more of a relationship, instead of “We’re the brand, we’re paying you, here’s what we want.” Or I’ll see brands say, “This is Kim Kardashian’s cousin, we want to work with her.” And I ask, “Why?” They say, “Well, she’s Kim Kardashian’s cousin.” That doesn’t mean anything. Did you look at her profile, her analytics, her engagement? Or is it really just that she’s a cousin? A lot of brands look only at follower count and assume it’s good. Education is key.

I use a terrible analogy: it’s like two 15-year-old kids having a baby. I’m not advising people to have babies at 15—finish school, date some people, learn about life, then start a family. But the point is, a lot of these brands and influencers jump in without understanding each other. I’m not saying you have to hire me or a consultant, but at least educate yourself about how to work with influencers. Not all influencers are the same; everyone has different ways of doing things, including payment or even whether payment is required.

A big piece is the value exchange. Influencers might have a full production team or a videographer. You can’t expect them to shoot an eight-hour video in exchange for a free ten-dollar T-shirt. That’s no real value to them. Another issue is using software that just pulls a list and sends a templated email. That’s not how you build relationships. When I started, there was no influencer marketing software. We did the eyeball test: look at an influencer’s content and see if they’re a good fit. That’s still essential.

I appreciate you bringing this up because it’s important. I don’t usually mention my workshops, but that relationship angle is really key. A lot of good can come from it, but you have to learn how to work together—and that’s where the disconnect is right now, you know?

It takes time, and I think that’s what people miss out on. Everybody—well, not everybody, but people in the world—say, “Why would I do a seven-second A/B if I can do a two-second A/B?” It really comes down to: in anything you do, whether it’s PPC, content creation, or marketing, you can skip steps all day, but you’re probably not going to get the outcome you want, right? Influencer marketing is no different. If you send a templated email to a thousand yoga instructors because you have a yoga product, you’ll find someone who’s interested, but is it the right person? It takes a lot more time. You have to put in the effort.

I think people get confused. They assume, “Hey, this is an influencer. They’ve got a big following. They’ll post this picture. I’ll give them a thousand bucks. I’ll make ten thousand dollars, then go live on my island with a Corona.” Probably not gonna happen that way. The idea is, you’re building a relationship. That’s the important part. If they move the needle now, you can collaborate on new campaigns and other ideas. It’ll be great for the influencer and great for the brand. Absolutely.

Cool. All right, we’ve only got a few more minutes because that’s how it goes when we’re having fun. Sometimes there’s just no excuse, right? So what do you think for content—are there any software tools you use? I know you mentioned Grammarly earlier. Are there other tools for punctuation, grammar, or distributing content that you feel you can’t live without?

Awesome. Yeah, you know, it’s funny—people often don’t realize what goes into doing a podcast, especially when you’re just starting out and doing video as well. You think, “Oh, you just record it and post it,” but there are so many moving pieces. I don’t think you can do it the right way without a lot of planning. There are always new things to learn—taking clips here, putting them there—it’s a lot of work. But I think it bears fruit over time, for sure.

So tell me a little bit. What would you like? What would you like? What would you consider—obviously we haven’t even gone into the 17,000 things you’ve done in your lifetime—but what would you consider your biggest achievement? With all the great things you’ve done, is there a current project you’re working on, or one that you’ve worked on in the past, that you look at and say, “I’m extremely proud of this?”

I mean, that’s awesome exposure. You’ve got to be kidding me. That is really cool.

Yeah, I can imagine. If you’re sitting on a flight, you’re like, “Wait, I know her. Oh, wait a second, maybe I should reach out,” because you have nothing else to do other than stare at the screen and think, okay, maybe I’ll take a few notes and get a hold of her offline. That’s awesome.

She’s my evil twin.

Too funny. So how long was that on United for?

From a consulting perspective, you can’t really get in front of a better client—the people who are actually flying between this and that. That’s beautiful, yeah. Congratulations on that. Thank you. So we’ve only got another minute or two. First of all, I want to say, tell me about Daisy. So I have to get a little bit—let me get a little bit of information about DAISY, because I’m a fellow dog lover. So I just want to talk about DAISY for a minute, and then I want to talk about what your typical day looks like.

Oh god, I love dogs. I’m a huge dog person—we have two rescues, so I love dogs. So I had to ask you about Daisy. Tell me about your day, because I know you’re good at structuring stuff. What does a typical day look like for you?

So I don’t—it’s hard to say what typical is, but I do carve my day so that my creativity is in the morning. My creativity also includes when I do my video and podcasting, because I want to be high energy and feeling really creative. But my favorite part of the day, literally, is my morning, which is devoted—usually an hour—to reading, the Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. SAVERS program: silence, affirmation, visualization, exercise, reading, and scribing. I do it every morning, whether you could do it in six minutes or each part lasts a minute or however long it takes you. For me, it’s about an hour, and I love it.

That is awesome. Yeah, it’s good. I go back and forth with regimens or schedules, but I just recently started doing that earlier when I walk, because I can’t run. Long story short, I hurt my leg doing CrossFit. I was doing boxing, so now I’m trying older sports like Pilates and yoga, which is tough for me—I’m trying to slow down my brain. I’ll let you know how it all works out. I’ve been walking and running. I try to keep a good regimen in the morning, just to get my mind going. And so…

Agreed. All right, so I’ve got the last question of the day here. If I were to give you a credit card—let’s say $50,000, I don’t know if that’s enough for a Jersey girl. I know you like to shop, plus the hairspray—that’s definitely not gonna be enough. But if I gave you a card for $50,000, where would you go? What would you do with it? Would you go buy clothes, or would you go on a trip? What would you do?

Man, that sounds awesome. Well, nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with a little family time and a resort and pampering. Why not adult beverages? I don’t know if there’s anything better than that right there. Well, you’ve been an absolute doll for the interview. I absolutely appreciate you taking the time today. Like I said, I’ll let the team know once this goes live, or let you know—let your team know. And once again, if you need anything from me when you talk about these projects that you’re working on, please reach out anytime.

So if somebody wants to reach out to you in regards to that or anything else, where can they find you?

That’s awesome. Well, hopefully we have some millennials that’ll reach out to you and get some interviews going. Have an awesome rest of your day.