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A Quick Overview of Lenny and Larry’s Brand Ambassador Program

Lenny and Larry's cookies brand ambassador programI am constantly looking for nutritional snacks and such for when I travel. I am an extremely picky eater, plus I had my gall bladder removed a few years ago, and if I don’t eat regularly, it can cause headaches and slight nausea. So having tasty and ideally nutritious snacks while traveling is a must for me.

About a year ago I discovered Lenny and Larry’s nutritional cookies. The problem with most ‘nutritional’ cookies or bars is that they taste terrible. Lenny and Larry’s cookies actually aren’t that bad, in fact they taste great when compared to similar products. Additionally, they are very easy to digest, with a great protein to fat ratio.  Each cookie (4 oz) is massive and enough for 2 servings, with 6 grams of fat per serving and 8 grams of protein.

Needless to say, The Complete Cookie is now my go-to snack when traveling. So the other day when I was on their site, I noticed they have a page that explains their brand ambassador program. I want to review their program because I know a lot of you are curious as to what a brand ambassador program looks like ‘in the wild’.

Before I discuss Lenny and Larry’s brand ambassador program, I wanted to review some of the key elements that a good brand ambassador program will have:

1 – A process for helping ambassadors better sell your products to the potential customers they will interact with regularly.  This could be coupon codes or samples that ambassadors can share with potential customers to encourage a purchase.

2 – A process for letting ambassadors collect and share product feedback from their interactions with potential customers, as well as their own product feedback. This is especially beneficial for letting ambassadors share feedback from potential customers on why they don’t currently buy your brand or its products.

3 – A way for ambassadors to directly communicate and connect with each other around shared ideas and beliefs that are core to them, that also relate to your brand and its products. For example, if your company makes cooking utensils, it might be a good idea to create a message board that unites ambassadors around the idea of cooking.

 

Based on what I see on this page, Lenny and Larry’s brand ambassador program is focused on having its members drive sales.  Period. There’s also a passing mention of driving digital WOM with the #TeamLL hashtag, but it’s obvious that the main focus of the program is additional sales.

From the page:

“Our Brand Ambassador program is our way of saying thank you.

Every ambassador gets a personalized landing page with a unique URL. Every time someone purchases after following your tracking link, you are handsomely rewarded. The more you promote, the more benefits you’ll receive.

Rewards:

Free cookies
Monthly discount codes
Official Lenny & Larry’s swag
$$ Commissions $$ (extra income)”

Which is a good start. A solid brand ambassador program should absolutely make it easier for its members to generate new sales from the potential customers they will interact with. However, if the main/only focus of the program is to encourage members to sell products, it can create problems. For one, the members will start to have sales-oriented interactions with potential customers, as you see here:

So let’s say that I am a fan of Lenny and Larry’s, but not interested in becoming an incentivized salesperson for the brand.  In this case, it appears the program doesn’t offer much for me. Here are some things I’d like to see added to the program (and to be fair, Lenny and Larry’s could be offering some or all of these elements now, but I don’t see any mention of them on the brand’s website):

1 – A way to directly connect with other brand ambassadors. I would like to see a forum or maybe a private Facebook group or some digital mechanism to let me interact with other members of the program.  Lenny and Larry’s creates healthy snacks so I am sure there are many fans of the brand that also have a lot of knowledge of the brand’s products as well as healthy eating and living that they could share with other members.  This type of knowledge-sharing would benefit all members, as well as bring them closer together.  Which also creates a better experience for the brand ambassadors, and this gives them another reason to be loyal to the brand.

2 – A way to directly connect with the brand and share thoughts and ideas. Think of this as a brand advisory council or similar.  Members no doubt have ideas and opinions on how to improve the program or change it based on their interactions with potential customers.  It would be great if Lenny and Larry’s had a mechanism in place to directly connect the group with the brand. When crafting a brand ambassador program remember that while leveraging ambassadors to drive new sales is important, leveraging their feedback from interactions with other customers can also pay huge dividends.

3 – Give the members early access to new products that are in development. If you’re already a fan of Lenny and Larry’s products, you’ll probably be interested in any new flavors to existing products, or any new products in development.

 

The point here is, if you’re going to create a brand ambassador program, give members multiple ways to participate. Not everyone wants to sell your products, even if they love your brand. Give your ambassadors special access to what’s happening with your brand, and multiple options for how they can participate and extend the relationship with your brand. I think Lenny and Larry’s brand ambassador program is a good start, as long as they are open incorporating new elements, starting with giving existing ambassadors more input into the future of the program.

Having said that, I know how hard it is for the boss to sign off on launching a brand ambassador program without there being a direct impact to sales, so I totally get the focus on attempting to drive sales through existing ambassadors. This is typically one of the first and biggest roadblocks I encounter when working with clients, the boss can only see a brand ambassador program’s value through the lens of how many new sales it will immediately generate. This affects execution and roll-out and if not carefully positioned, can negatively affect the progress of the initiative.

If this post has piqued your interest in launching a brand ambassador program, here’s a bit more information on how to get started creating an amazing brand ambassador program.

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Your Big Brand is Already Doing Influencer Marketing, Whether You Realize it or Not

airlines customer serviceLast week, I wrote about how social media isn’t hard, companies make it hard. The idea being that a lot of opportunities fall into the lap of companies every day in regards to their digital strategies, and often these opportunities aren’t capitalized on.

For example, right now there’s a mad rush by brands to get on the Influencer Marketing train. Brands want to know how they can work with influencers, and how they can get those influencers talking positively online about their brand. Big brands are paying millions of dollars to consultants and agencies to help launch Influencer Marketing campaigns.

And yet, they often miss capitalizing on free opportunities to interact with influencers that fall into their laps.

I was thinking about this as I read about my friend Ann Handley’s recent traveling nightmare with Delta airlines. The story was a breakdown in customer service that’s unfortunately all too familiar to those of us that fly frequently. But I wanted to pick this story up when Ann, after getting no help (or empathy!) from Delta reps at the ATL airport, decided to turn to Twitter and the @Delta account.

At this point, I want to back up for a minute. When a customer has a problem with a brand, they will typically try to contact the brand via offline or online channels BEFORE going to social media. I’ve been educating clients on this for 10 years, I’ve been blogging about it here for years, hell I even wrote a book about this. So when a company encounters what they might perceive as a ‘complaint’ from a customer on social media, they need to understand how the customer got there. Typically, as Ann did, they tried to contact the brand via other customer support channels, and did not get the help they needed. So they turned to social media, and at this point, they just want someone to LISTEN to them and show EMPATHY for their situation. In short they want the brand to say “I’m sorry you’re upset, help me understand what has happened so I can see what can be done to help you”. The point is, you have a customer that’s typically frustrated, who is upset with the treatment they have gotten from your brand, but if you show empathy for their situation and work with them to resolve it to the customer’s satisfaction, you have a chance to convert a ranter, into a raver.  Nothing creates an advocate faster than a brand that listens to the customer that has a problem, and who goes the extra mile to solve that problem.

Now that we’ve covered that ground, let’s turn our attention back to Ann’s situation with Delta. I’m not going to really comment on what happened with Ann at the ATL airport (because you should read the post) but suffice it to say that Delta’s customer service efforts in person at the airport were less than satisfactory as far as Ann is concerned.  So she’s upset, and a bit frustrated by the time she decides to try the hail mary of contacting Delta on Twitter for help.

And the second she did, whether Delta realized it or not, but they were engaging in Influencer Marketing. A quick click of Ann’s Twitter account tells you the following:

  • She has nearly 400k followers
  • She’s a bestselling author

In other words, she’s an influencer. And I’m not sure what the social media equivalent of a Q Score is, but Ann’s would be off the charts. Everyone loves Ann.

So Delta had a rare opportunity to interact directly with an influencer fall in its lap. According to Ann, here’s what happened: She tweeted to @Delta saying she needed help.  Approximately an hour later (see the problem?), she got a reply, and an exchange began. Ann was offered a voucher or free miles, but really wanted someone from Delta to explain to her exactly what had happened and how her situation was allowed to reach this point.  Delta told her on Twitter that they were dispatching a customer service rep to her location in the airport to talk to her.

Eighty-five mins later (see the problem?), she was still waiting for the CS rep to reach her when her name was called for standby for another flight and she left the airport. Still frustrated and upset, she squeezed into the back of her flight, and started writing what would become her blog post.

Again, brands like Delta will spend millions if not hundreds of millions on Influencer Marketing in 2017. Yet when they have a chance to connect with an actual influencer for free, they blow it.

And the great irony of this story? Ann is a professional speaker, and as a fellow speaker, I can tell you that one thing we love is new case studies to share with our audiences. So there’s at least one positive Ann can take from this last week.

The moral of the story is that there’s no sense in your brand chasing the Shiny Object of the day if you can’t nail basic customer service. Empower and train your employees to have understanding and empathy for your customers and 95% of your customer service issues will magically disappear.

And for extra credit: Understand that every customer is an Influencer to someone. Your brand is engaging in Influencer Marketing every day, whether you realize it or not.

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The Rise of the T-Shaped Influencer

T-Shaped Influencer

About 10 years ago, it was incredibly cool to call yourself a ‘social media consultant’. Social media in a business context was new and exciting (and in too many ways still is 10 years later), and those that marketed themselves as social media consultants were coveted.

Yet even as social media consultants were enjoying popularity, a few were sounding potential alarms. Eventually, the market would mature, and companies would need more specialized skills from their consultants. Over time, this has indeed happened. Companies no longer need to hire as many social media consultants and agencies as they once did, now they hire employees and conduct much of their social media and digital strategies in-house. Social media consultants have gone from being generalists to more specialized.  In the last few years we’ve seen the rise of specialized social media positions in analytics, content creation, and community management, among others.

As the market matures, needs become more specialized. The same thing is beginning to happen with Influencer Marketing. I first started working with clients on influencer campaigns in 2010. Then, the rationale for picking influencers was simply ‘biggest number wins’. Sure, it was best if we could connect with influencers in the specific industry that was relevant to the campaign, but if not, any influencer with a few hundred thousand followers on Twitter would do. I tried my best to explain to these clients that it wasn’t about the overall numbers, it was about how connected and influential the influencer truly was over their followers. The smart clients understood this, and their campaigns were successes.

Digital Ad Spends Are Way Up, Everyone is Using An Ad-Blocker

Two interesting stats that dovetail: digital ad spending is set to hit $100 Billion by 2020, while at the same time, ad-blocker usage spiked by 34% since 2015, with 70 million Americans now blocking online ads. This is another reason why Influencer Marketing is so appealing to many brands. Consumers are increasingly distrustful of any advertisement. Influencers give marketers the ability to reach an audience through a more trusted source: The influencer. Instead of running ads on a blog that will be ignored, a brand can instead partner with the blogger directly to have them create original content that promotes the brand. Ideally, the influencer will be smart enough to create the content in a way that creates value for both the brand, and the influencer’s audience.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen. Companies that invest in influencer marketing are often seeing nebulous results that are difficult to distill any meaningful value from. Some of this is due to poor planning and execution, as well as partnering with influencers that either weren’t a good fit for their campaign, or who didn’t perform as necessary.

Big Money Means the Need For Bigger Results

Now that we’ve moved past the ‘shiny object’ stage of Influencer Marketing, companies that are still investing in this tactic are increasingly demanding real results for their dollars. As they should. With this, comes re-examining how influencers are chosen. The idea that ‘biggest follower count wins’ is being challenged. Companies are realizing that if an influencer has a big follower count, that just means they have little connection with any of them. And the whole idea behind Influencer Marketing is that brands want to work with people that will influence behavior. If an influencer has little sway over her audience, then it really doesn’t matter if that audience is 100 or 100,000.

In fact, what many brands are beginning to realize is that smaller followings typically mean an influencer has more influence over their audience. The reality is, authentic, personal engagement cannot effectively scale past a certain point. The one-to-one interactions that build trust and result in one person having true influence over the actions of another require a lot of attention. If an influencer has a following of 100,000, it’s frankly impossible for them to have enough time to have personal interactions with even a fraction of that audience.

Which is why T-Shaped Influencers are suddenly in demand by brands. T-Shaped Influencers are influencers that have a narrow focus and following, but a deep connection with that audience. The audience they have influence over is highly specialized, but if they have a connection with the audience you want to reach, it makes more sense from a brand perspective to connect with a T-Shaped Influencer instead of someone with a much larger following, that really has little influence over any of them.

Think of it this way: The traditional influencer with a large following typically has a connection with a lot of people, but a DEEP connection (the type that results in true influence) with only a few people.  So their influence footprint would be wide and shallow.

On the other hand, a T-Shaped Influencer has a very narrow area of people they influence, but their level of influence over that small group is very DEEP. So if you wanted to connect with the small group that the T-Shaped Influencer has a connection with, it makes more sense to work with them versus working with the ‘traditional’ influencer that has a large following, but a loose connection with that following.

Here’s an example: Let’s say your brand is bringing a gas/electric hybrid sports-car to the market, and you want to launch an Influencer Marketing campaign to help support the launch.  Here’s two influencers you could connect with:

1 – Tim, the generalist influencer.  Tim has a following of 350,000 on Twitter and Instagram. He is focused on business and technology, so there’s some overlapping between electronics and hybrid cars.  On average, he charges $350-$700 for an Instagram post or blog post.

2 – Sarah, the T-Shaped Influencer. Sarah has a following of only 5,000 on Facebook and Instagram. But approximately 90% of her following are people that are highly interested in automotive information. On average, she charges $25-$60 for a Facebook update or Instagram post.

 

While Sarah has a much smaller following, she also has an audience that’s far more relevant to a brand that’s launching a hybrid sports-car.  Another beneficial byproduct of Sarah’s smaller following is that she can have much higher levels of engagement with that smaller following.  In fact, when it comes to engagement when working with influencers, smaller number wins.  Influencers on Instagram with a following under 1,000 saw over 15% engagement on their posts, whereas influencers with a following of over 100,000 saw their engagement rates fall to 2.4%.

 

Years ago, an agency contacted me because they wanted to launch an influencer campaign to support a new offering from a client. The agency had already built a list of a few candidates, and they wanted me to see if I could come up with a few more possible influencers to round out their list. Remember this is long before Instagram and Snapchat, in fact Twitter and Facebook were much smaller.  The agency was primarily wanting to see content created on blogs, and promoted on social media.

So after a week or so, I gave them a list of several influencers they should consider. They immediately questioned my choices. “Wait, she only has a few thousand followers on Twitter, why didn’t you get this guy, he has over 100,000 followers!”

“Go look at her blog”, I explained. While she did indeed only have a few thousand followers on Twitter, every post she wrote had engagement that was off the charts. Each post had 50 or so comments, and half were from the blogger.  Her readers loved her, and she loved them.

Then I showed them the blog of the guy that had over 100,000 followers.  We went back months before we could find a single post with a comment.  We went back to his Twitter account, and no one was replying to him, and he wasn’t replying to anyone.  Then I showed them the Twitter account for the girl that only had a few thousand Twitter followers.  Non-stop conversation, and most of the interactions were between her and her blog’s readers.  I told the agency “If you pick this guy, he’s going to cost you a lot of money and his blog post is going to be totally ignored.  If you pick her, she’s going to blog about you on her blog and her readers are going to love it, and you.”

Thankfully, they decided to shift their Influencer Marketing approach away from big numbers, to a more T-Shaped Influencer model.  The agency picked influencers that had a smaller following, but a deeper connection with a specific audience.  And as an aside, this approach led to results that surpassed all goals the agency had set for the campaign.

Your brand should do the same with your Influencer Marketing campaigns. Seek out T-Shaped Influencers that have a smaller following, but a deeper connection to a specific audience.  Remember, you want to work with people that will influence behavior in your favor. Bigger isn’t always better.

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Print, TV Ads Are Better at Driving Purchases Than Sponsored Social Media Content

Using influencers to create sponsored content A new study by Marketing Sherpa (as reported by eMarketer) found that print, TV and radio ads were all found to be trusted by over 70% of consumers when making a purchase, while sponsored content on blogs were trusted by 43% of consumers and ads on podcasts were trusted by 37% of buyers.

Given how marketers are increasingly shifting digital budgets to influencer marketing, these findings are significant, and worth a closer examination. As I’ve stated here before, working with influencers can have a place in your marketing mix. However, it is typically best utilized to raise awareness, not to convince customers to make a purchase. But regardless of how you will be working with influencers, you want to tailor that relationship based on what your goals are.

If you are working with an influencer to build awareness, then content that introduces the influencer’s audience to your product/brand works better. More specifically, you want to have the influencer create content that helps explain the possible connection between their audience, and the product you are trying to build awareness for.  The content isn’t exclusively focused on your product, it’s more about helping the influencer’s audience understand how your product could fit into their lives.

If you are working with an influencer to drive sales, then content that helps close the sale is better.  Check out the Eagle Creek Tarmac 22 video below for a great example of this.

Regardless of how you will be working with an influencer, make every effort to make sure they understand your product as completely as possible. If the influencer can’t understand how your product works or why it is relevant to their audience, then they can’t create content that explains this to their audience. And here’s a Pro-Tip: It’s more important to work with an influencer that is familiar with and who USES your product than it is to work with an influencer with a larger following, that has never heard of you. An influencer that is familiar with and who uses your product can always do a better job of explaining why your product is awesome to their audience.

 

An Example of Content From an Influencer That Drove Sales

Several years ago I was in the market for a carry-on luggage bag. I saw this video from Chris Brogan and immediately bought the Eagle Creek Tarmac 22 featured in this video (still have it to this day, it’s absolutely bulletproof and I love it).

Here’s why this video convinced me to buy a $300 carry-on:

1 – Relevance. I was in the market for a carry-on and had just begun doing research on which one to buy. This was the exact content I needed at exactly the right time.

2 – I trust Chris. Chris positioned the video as a product that he uses as a frequent traveler. He also referenced the fact that Mitch Joel (also a frequent traveler) also used the bag, which further added credibility to the video. Sidenote: Since I bought and love the Eagle Creek Tarmac 22 that Mitch endorsed, I’m now about to buy a laptop bag that I saw Mitch praise on Facebook.

3 – The video clearly demonstrates the product in action. Chris shows me exactly how the bag will easily hold enough clothes for a multiple-day trip, and for good measure shows you how it has enough room to take home a few books with you, which I always seem to collect when I speak at or attend events. In fact, I just confirmed with Adobe that I will be attending the Adobe Summit in Las Vegas in March as part of their Influencer program. It will be a 5-day trip for me, and the Eagle Creek Tarmac 22 will handle it with ease.

 

BTW, it’s worth noting that this was not sponsored content, Chris just created this video to be helpful, which he always is. My point was if you want to work with influencers to drive sales, keep this video in mind when you are crafting your efforts.

As with any other part of your digital marketing efforts, working with influencers requires proper planning and a good strategy. Your brand should benefit, the influencer should benefit, and perhaps most importantly, the influencer’s audience should benefit. Create a way for all three parties to benefit, and you’ve got a winner.

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What Every Company Should Consider When Working With Influencers

TwitterInfluencers

Last month I wrote a post on the value of measuring engagement vs numbers when selecting an influencer for your company to work with.  That post resonated with a lot of you so I wanted to expand on it and talk about the key considerations for your company when working with influencers.  Working with influencers and ‘sponsored content’ is a very popular option for companies these days, and done correctly, it can be a real benefit for your business.  Here’s some of the things you should consider before working with influencers:

1 – Why does your company want to work with influencers?  Influencers can work well in certain situations, especially if you are trying to draw attention to a new product line or initiative.  It’s best to understand the role that influencers can play to see if they make a good fit for what you are trying to accomplish.  As always, start by asking what your expected outcomes are, then work backwards.  For example, if your goal is to increase sales by 15% in the next quarter, working with influencers alone might not accomplish that.  But if your goal is to increase your brand’s share of the online conversation around certain product lines by 15% in the next quarter, then maybe it makes sense to work with influencers to help accomplish this goal.

2 – Work with influencers that have a history of working with companies.  These influencers are more familiar with the process, and have a better sense of what your expectations will be and how to meet or exceed those expectations.  They will also work with your company to create a specific plan of action based on your expected outcomes.  And for those of you that want to work with companies, this is exactly why you should spell that out on your site or blog.  I am constantly talking to people that want to work with companies, but when I go to their blog, there is no information on what they can offer companies or that they are even interested in working with companies.  You have to let companies know if you are available to work with them in an influencer marketing program.

3 – It’s always better to work with influencers that understand your company, industry and products.  Try to work with influencers that have a history of working with companies in your industry.  Many influencers specialize in working with companies in select industries or product categories.  Ideally, your company would be better served working with influencers that have experience in your industry as they will likely have a better understanding of your space and how to help companies in your industry succeed with their influencer marketing efforts.

Influencers

4 – Numbers alone won’t tell you which influencers you should work with.  I talked about this in January, but the biggest mistake companies make in working with influencers is picking them based on the size of their following.  For example from my own experience I know that Twitter users with 5,000-20,000 followers typically send me more referral traffic than a RT from someone with 20,00-100,000 followers.  Why?  Because a lot of Twitter users with over 50,000 followers use bots and reciprocal or ‘followback’ techniques to pad their follower numbers in an effort to appear more influential than they actually are.  The size of an influencers’ network is important, but also look at how engaged the influencer is with that network.  Engagement is action, and you want to work with influencers that will compel their followers to take action on your behalf.  Look at how many replies, Likes, RTs, comments, etc the influencer gets.  In other words, how often are the actually engaging with their networks?  It matters.

5 – Influencers or fans: Which is more important?  In general, influencers have a larger following, but your fans have a closer and more passionate connection to fewer people.  Ideally, it would be the best of both worlds to work with influencers that are also happy and passionate customers of your brand.  If that’s not possible, then keep in mind that if you are trying to build buzz, typically influencers work better.  But if you are trying to build and sustain passion for your brand, working with your existing fans is better.

6 – Respect the relationship that an influencer has with his or her network.  You want to work with influencers that have developed a level of trust with their network.  So be mindful not to ask influencers to put themselves in a position that would abuse that trust.  Consider the influencer’s point of view, when you approach them about working together, they will be thinking ‘how can this create value for my readers/followers/network?’  You should incorporate this into your expected outcomes as well, think about how working with a particular influencer will help your company AND how it could help the influencer’s network.  Maybe give them special access, a special discount, or something that creates value for them.  If you do that, the influencer will be far more receptive to your pitch.  On the other hand, if you only consider how you want the influencer to promote you and your products with no thought given to how it affects the influencer’s network, that can easily put off the influencer and kill the partnership.

7 – View working with an influencer as a partnership.  Carrying over from the last point, don’t view working with an influencer as they are doing something for you, view it as a situation where both your company and the influencer (as well as the influencer’s network) benefit.  You want to view it as a partnership which encourages the influencer to not only do a better job for you, but it also encourages them to work to work with your company again.

 

These are a few tips I’ve picked up over the last decade while working with clients on influencer marketing initiatives and having companies work with me as an influencer.  But there’s always other perspectives, so I reached out to a few of my influencer friends and asked them each to tell me what is one thing they wish companies knew about working with influencers:

Kerry Gorgone: In last week’s post on how Ford works with influencers, Kerry mentioned that “Engaging digital influencers is a smart way to amplify your reach, but is that where your aspirations end? It shouldn’t be! Give influencers personalized links to landing pages, so you know exactly where your traffic came from. Give them discount codes so you know when people convert because they’ve come across an influencer’s content.”

Jay Baer: “I wish brands would actually do their homework and look closely at the type of content people typically create and either adapt their ask accordingly, or select influencers to work with accordingly. I see way too many brands asking influencers to do stuff that they’ve never done before, with no evidence that they ever would.”

Calvin Lee: “I wish brands would build a better relationship with influencers and continue to work together on future campaigns, instead of just the one shot deal. Approaching real fans, influencers of their product and services. It’s not always about the numbers.

Looking beyond the numbers of followers, likes and reshares influencers have. Brands need to really research influencers they want to use. It’s so easy to buy followers, likes and reshares.  Many brands are clueless of who they have hired. I’ve seen so many fake influencers brands are using in their campaigns.

Adel de Meyer: “I think companies should approach influencers with better offers than free swag or discounted software usage. True influencers worked hard to build their community and should be awarded for their time, expertise and reach accordingly. I am also hoping businesses will do better research in finding true influencers in the different industries. I see too many brands working with influencers that have low engagement rates, or that do not align well with their brand image and values.”

 

Keep these tips and advice in mind when you plan your next, or first, influencer marketing effort.