SEO Podcast The Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing

Evolution of AI in the Influencer Marketing Ecosystem with Corbett Drummey

• bestseopodcast.com • Episode 627

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AI is transforming influencer marketing and content creation, with platforms like Corbett Drummey’s LTX Studio leading the way. Generative AI surpasses traditional stock content, offering unique images and videos while addressing challenges like copyright and job displacement. Embracing tools like ChatGPT is essential for navigating the evolving marketing landscape, as AI enables brands to enhance safety protocols, vet creators, and elevate their strategies. User-friendly tools empower non-technical marketers, blending creativity and efficiency while underscoring the need for precision in automated content creation.

Influencers remain pivotal in the digital age, maintaining authenticity and trust in an AI-driven world. By integrating AI with strategies like SEO and email campaigns, marketers can extend influencers' reach without compromising their personal touch. Corbett Drummey highlights the power of collaboration, combining skilled editors with AI-enhanced tools to harmonize human creativity and technological advancements. Together, these elements reaffirm the indispensable role of influencers while showcasing AI as a complementary force in the marketing realm.

Guest Contact Information: 

- https://www.linkedin.com/in/corbettdrummey/ 

-https://www.lightricks.com/ 

-https://popularpays.com/ 

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The Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing podcast is a podcast hosted by Internet marketing expert Matthew Bertram. The show provides insights and advice on digital marketing, SEO, and online business. 

Topics covered include keyword research, content optimization, link building, local SEO, and more. The show also features interviews with industry leaders and experts who share their experiences and tips. 

Additionally, Matt shares his own experiences and strategies, as well as his own successes and failures, to help listeners learn from his experiences and apply the same principles to their businesses. The show is designed to help entrepreneurs and business owners become successful online and get the most out of their digital marketing efforts.

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Speaker 2:

Howdy. Welcome back to another fun-filled episode of the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Matt Bertram. Today I have a special guest for you, but before we get into it, I just wanted to give everybody a quick update. I know I hadn't done a podcast for a minute.

Speaker 2:

I was at the Brighton SEO Conference. There was a lot of things going on with all things related to AI, with digital PR, with link building, and so went on and found a great guest for you that we're going to be talking about AI, influencer marketing and that ecosystem and what's going to impact it. I know everybody's worried about AI. Got a lot of really cool stuff. I'm going to do a training in a couple of weeks as we move into the new year. Please go check out MatthewBertramcom if you're interested in kind of coaching, EWR Digital if you're looking for your business needs marketing.

Speaker 2:

What I'm seeing in some enterprise level data is there's not a lot of crossover between our agency and the podcast. So I think a lot of podcast listeners are not aware that we've been running an agency for 25 years and have clients, small and large, and are good at everything from search marketing, web design etc. So please go check that out, but let's just jump right into it. I got Corbett Drumming with me today. He's been involved in this space for a long time. He's also part of White Combinator. Corbett, you were introduced to me from my network, somebody that I should definitely connect with. I want you to introduce yourself I think you could do it better than me to the audience and then we can jump into it.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely Well. Great to meet you, matt. I'm excited to talk through these things today. And yeah, to start with a bit of background, I'm a startup founder. I had co -founded a company called Popular Pays, an influencer and creator marketing platform, about a decade ago, and then two years ago we were acquired by Lightrix, who a lot of people know because of the popular photo and video editing apps they've made, such as Facetune, photoleap and VideoLeap. We were their first kind of B2B product acquisition and then since then in the last year, I've been focused on the AI video platform called LTX Studio, so we've been building a platform there, as well as an underlying foundational video model that powers it. So there's a lot we can touch on, kind of where ai intersects with content creation and influencer marketing. But, yeah, happy to follow wherever it might go, whatever it might be interesting for your audience yeah.

Speaker 2:

So to kind of tee it up, right. Um, generative images right. So if we start with generative images, which that's turned into like generative video, right, right. So if we start with generative images, which that's turned into like generative video, right. Listening to some of the Google people out there talking about AI stuff is, I mean, now there's copyright issues and you know that's going to be addressed at a bigger level from training the AIs and that sort of thing. But the images that are created and the videos that are created are unique, right. So if we focus on SEO for a minute and understand how the search engines are looking at everything, they're looking at this stuff as completely unique.

Speaker 2:

So, over even stock or stock video or something like that, AI gets a win. Right, it gets a win. Also, the tools like MidJourney and all the other things that are going on are getting much, much better, right, and so you've got completely unique content. You can start to kind of build out themes. There's ways to maximize productivity from a graphic design standpoint to help brands build.

Speaker 2:

You know, you're able to take, you know, blogs and turn them into videos, like you know, Google released their kind of podcast thing like there's there's so much going on and you know, every podcast that I've listened to or person I've interacted with, they're all worried about AI, right, and you know, I think that some people should be right and one of the stories that I actually shared is I had a content manager probably about the time ChatGVG came around and she was like no AI, right, no AI. And there's a lot of companies out that are are using um tools and and they're like you know, enterprise level tools and they're like if it's 99 human writing one percent ai, it's like no, go back and then you're having to play with the content of like this was human written, but, um, you know, there there are certain ways that are writing happens.

Speaker 2:

That is going to show up as, as ai is like kind of false positives to to a certain degree, and I just don't think people can get away from it. And so, you know, the conversation started to become okay, you're not going to be replaced by AI immediately. You're going to be replaced by people using AI, right, and that was kind of the kind of intersection of like hey, we're going this direction and we're going to lean into it and we're going to be cutting edge with what's going on and we're going to certainly follow the Google guidelines. We're going to do all these things, but we need to embrace this because the world's changing, just kind of like money's changing with crypto, whatever, like the world is moving forward and you need to move forward with it, because you're going to be replaced by people that are leveraging.

Speaker 2:

Well, now there's this like absolute noise proliferation bots. I mean, what's real, what's not? Like we're getting into a real murky world and I think it's caused anxiety for a lot of people out there, think it's caused anxiety for a lot of people out there. So I would love to just kind of hear your perspective of the AI kind of evolution within the influencer marketing ecosystem, to kind of bring those together, and then that could spawn a couple other questions and conversations. But we got AI over here, we got influence over here. I mean these two things are colliding. What does that look like? What are the things you're seeing? What are the things that you're concerned about? Just to kind of set the table for everyone.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. I mean, you touched on a lot of good points in terms of like. One big topic is brand safety and rights and usage for AI in the industry. Another is this colliding industry, especially because one thing I think is worth talking about is that, um, really what's unique about marketing and content creation is ai has impacted our space first and hardest, compared to almost anything out there. Yes, ai will change everything, ranging from finance, healthcare, etc. But the very first applications were in content creation. So, um, we've had to deal with that as an industry earlier and like, harder than everyone else has, and so we've seen that this can mean a few things.

Speaker 1:

Number one AI is changing how content is being created in the first place. So how, like the tools that creators use and marketers use. That's one big pillar. Another is, you know, this element of displacement, and people are worried if it will. You know, take what, take their livelihood, and that might be a creator displaced, might be a marketer. I do agree with you that in general, I think you should be worried more about people using AI than just AI by itself, but I, and then the a third part of that is rights usage and worries around that whether that's creators worried about worrying about their art and likelihood, livelihood or about, like brands, wondering what is brand safe to use. There's some huge pillars here and interestingly we've had a perspective across all of them because we make tools for creators and marketers. We've built foundational models. We know we've been operating industry so we've kind of had a front row seat to all those different pillars of topics so.

Speaker 2:

So one of the things that I thought was interesting is like, um, I forgot the article I was reading. I I'm not sure if it was chad, gbt or what, but it was clear that something was trained on the new york times as far as, like, the response was right. And also at Brighton there was a lot of talk about. Okay, I mean, there was a lot of different segments on the tracks, on on AI, but it was really like what was the language model trained on?

Speaker 2:

and it was really talking about kind of taking your own data, creating those kind of subsets and the human kind of quality of creativity. Now, I think images I've seen the stuff that AI has done and it blows me away Creativity standpoint. Now, on the content side of things, I mean, you've got to still figure out well, what, what are people interested in, what are people talking about? Now, a lot of that's going to start to get automated and turned out and it's really like how big is the inventory online as far as like what, what you're talking about? But but I think that that's why Google even added the to the eat, the experience component, right. So it's like yo, you talking about what you did and what your experiences with, and interjecting that human component, uh, in that, I think is is really quite, quite critical.

Speaker 2:

But I mean, what are, what are you seeing? If you're like you know people are using content. I mean, certainly people were talking about using it to create topics, but now ais are are doing the full boat, right, like they're doing the heavy lifting, and then even you got stuff. I I think it's interesting, like if I was in school today, like how do you grade tests, how do you figure out like information, like it think it's interesting, like if I was in school today. Like how do you grade tests, how do you figure out?

Speaker 2:

like information, like it's it's pretty crazy in my eyes like you know what world we live in and what's going to be available. I would even tell you me the credit. Or I had a big thing with calculators, right. Everybody, like put their stuff in the calculator, you put a bunch of codes on the on the back end and all that. But I was like I am going to use a calculator forever in the future, forever, Like I will never not have a calculator when I'm doing math, so why do you? I have to learn it now. Like, okay, teach me how to do it, but if you're going to give me a test, let's have a real world application, right? So I think that there's a lot of issues that I'm kind of tapping into, but I think the thing that people, what I want to hear from you is okay, AI is happening.

Speaker 1:

You know, AI is impacting stuff, like where does the human fit into it? Like how do you see that? That's an excellent question, and you know. By the way, one other thing worth noting is we recently surveyed a thousand marketers to ask them questions about their usage, so we do have some good data on this, most like. One interesting note, by the way, is that executives are using it more often than entry level people, and I think it's because the executives are realizing that it will change everything and they're trying to get ahead of it. The executives are realizing that it will change everything and they're trying to get ahead of it, whereas sometimes it can be rough around the edges and entry level folks are saying that's not there yet, or you know.

Speaker 2:

But when you ask about like where do humans fit in?

Speaker 1:

the picture. I think it has to do with leverage.

Speaker 2:

OK, I think. Well, I mean, I think that if you're, if you're an entry level and also like, if you look at the question of the data sets, right, so if you look at the question of the data sets, right, so, if you look at the data sets, a lot of people are just playing around with it, right, they're not using it for business. If you look at, like, the total set of searches, like it's four percent, google was a little concerned about the growth rate, but if you like, dig into the data, you're just playing around with it. People are still using it. Like you said, I think the executives, you know, are trying to create impact of, okay, like a big proposal or, or this, or I'm trying to communicate this, or I'm trying to translate that they have things that that can create more value and more impact, and so they can see AI as creating more leverage, potentially based on their visibility of of what they can impact individually and maybe entry-level people in their specific job.

Speaker 2:

You know, depending on what that is, might not be as impactful, but I I do think, like knowledge, workers across the board are certainly impacted and executives could could fall into that category. So, if you have any kind of information, like you thought it was going to impact, like the lower end people first, but it's actually impacting, like the lawyers, it's impacting healthcare, I mean, like all the things that you learn that AI can do. Depending on what capacity, you can create a lot of leverage to do things that might might take someone very skilled that in pattern, pattern recognition or something like that that other people couldn't. Maybe I don't know. I know I kind of cut you off.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, it's all good and that's a good interest. The thing is, we have the data and the reasons underpinning it. There's only hypotheticals, and that's a good one. One might be that the leverage is a good one. One could be that, like as I said, we think that maybe executives realize how fundamental of a shift is coming and they're trying to get ahead of it. But, as you mentioned, like with almost every tech trend, it's usually driven by the entry-level teammates first adopting things and then the rest of the organization, and this is dramatically different. However, it is definitely being adopted as fast as like anything we've ever seen. 90% of marketers are using it weekly. A big percentage say it's like crucial to the job already. But when you ask about where do humans fall in the loop, I really think that I agree with you around how the folks you should be worried about are those that are adopting and leveraging AI versus AI operating by itself. Over time, we'll see more and more of that.

Speaker 1:

Hopefully, it's things that the AI takes off our plate that are more annoying, so we can focus on the bigger and more important things, but we've already started to see a few examples of where AI is taking the lead. One standout example is in brand safety. There are some agencies where we've seen vet creators manually and it takes like four to six hours per creator, and now AI can. Like you know, we built some tools and played around here and the tool we built, for example, can do it in like minutes and look back for years, and that's one where now, conclusively, I think you can say, like AI is just flat out better at brand safety and flagging things. However, you still want the human in the mix.

Speaker 1:

So I think what we'll see is people, whether it's an engineer working with these code assisting tools, co-pilot tools, an agency person reviewing drafts of things or reviewing flags that AI has flagged for targeting and or safety purposes. I think we're just going to have our work scaled. But then one other thing humans kind of being scaled by AI is one theme still, I think we're just going to have our work scaled and but then one other thing like humans kind of being scaled by AI is one theme. And then one other theme is humans becoming more technical. For example, I'm not technical but I can use these tools to rapidly draft content that I never could have with like Adobe before, but now I can get like something from my mind's eye onto paper. With tools like you know, mid journey or our LTX studio for video stuff like that, you can get from concept to content and it makes marketers technical now, which is pretty cool.

Speaker 2:

So I think the interface has been a big part of it right, like, even like the evolution of mid journey. You know things like that. I think that it was designed by coders for kind of coders, right, and now they're bringing more people into. I mean, you even look at, like, um, all the different ad platforms, right, like how they were structured, how they're set up, like there's a little bit of pain around that, but they're, they're, they're improving that, that process, and I think, even prompting, like setting up, like prompts for people to to achieve what they're wanting to achieve. I think it unlocks a lot of creative potential for people that aren't technical to do things right, and I'm seeing this with a lot of different platforms across the board, even building websites, right, like you know, you got drag and drop builders versus having code stuff.

Speaker 2:

I mean you just look at, like what WordPress or some of these different platforms like Wix are really doing, um, and then like again that that pattern recognition or or AI detection, um, you, you put in, you put in those uh variables, like for backlinks, for example, like you can, you can, like you can assess data. I think, again, those applications, even outside of uh, uh, uh, marketing, specifically like, okay, identifying this cancer or identifying like these illnesses, you run it through pattern recognition and you can like pull a data set and then it can kind of spit out an answer, most likely. And so these applications can be applied broadly and I like that as far as, like you know, brand detection and you can set up kind of different triggers to have like automated things happen. Right. And I think that the automation is what I'm scared about of really. You know, people are setting up like content machines or you know, like the AI bots that are. Just you feed it a prompt and it just goes, goes, goes and it's going 24, seven, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And then they're proliferating. What is it? The dead internet theory? What?

Speaker 1:

is your point on this Interesting thing? One last note on the making marketers technical, before going on to the proliferation of bad content, sometimes because that's fascinating too, but for folks listening sometimes you'd say this like oh, you can now be technical even if you're a marketer who wouldn't consider themselves technical. I would try two things. One thing I use it for all the time is spreadsheet manipulation. So, for example, like hey, upload a file to ChatGPT and use this to combine first and last name fields and make a new column. Or longer things like add a new column and research all these companies and add the industry they're in. Or like basic spreadsheet manipulation. That some of them you can do if you know Excel shortcuts really well. But if you don't, like you don't even really have to learn them now you can just prompt ChatGPT and then basic data analysis you can do there too. So that's one quick example that I use like every week, because now, instead of manually looking up things, I'll have it look them up for me and append a new column.

Speaker 2:

Are you concerned about you know? So chat, chat for everybody that's listening. Like, pay the extra 20 bucks, like?

Speaker 2:

I mean it's like one of the most powerful tools out there and, yes, you can get it for free. But if you're talking about uploading documents and stuff like that, you've got to pay for it. But if you're giving a bunch of data like this has always been my opinion and I would love to hear your opinion you know, like OK, if you're running ads and you upload a bunch of stuff to Facebook to like, hash, match, to say, hey, target these people or build this lookalike list, right, yeah, people are like, oh, this is our data, right, and they're like this is our data, I don't want to share it. I'm like Google has everybody's data. Facebook has got everybody's data. We're just organizing that data.

Speaker 2:

There's nothing like there's one half of 1% that you might add to the overall mix. In my opinion, it's just organization. But if people are doing stuff and there's a lot of companies that are limiting the use of chat, tbt, especially from, okay, this is, you know, maybe it's trader codes or you know whatever, but what is your? How do you do that? If you're concerned about the data set and just giving it out to the public domain, that's a great question.

Speaker 1:

I'll answer it in two ways. Like number one, you know, as an enterprise an enterprise, I should say we use a business tier for Lightrix, our parent company. We have 500 plus people. We do use a business tier because then they guarantee they're not using that data in training. However, I would say, if you're a startup, do not worry about it. And, to be honest, I think the fears are overblown, even from a traditional perspective. Even from a traditional perspective, you never know, like, for I think that the reason there's the compliance issues, the reason that these like larger companies are worried about it is that they're trying to do their best to comply with all these things like GDPR et cetera, and so they need that contractual guarantee that you're gonna handle my data properly. But from a practical point of view, like, if you're a startup and you're being like I just would not, your biggest risk is not growing and, um, usually you don't have to worry about the compliance things as much in the beginning when you're just getting started. And I do think the fears are overblown about, um, are they going to use them in some other way? It's just really you're signing the business contracts because you are trying to get the contractual guarantee, but realistically I think you'd be fine. Um, the other part of that is, um, you know, uh, like we, yeah, we use the um a business a tier to have like access to these other features and things. Um, but you know, if you are concerned about it, even as a person like, let's just say you're uploading something that you personally are worried about, you can just do a temporary chat which they say explicitly they won't use, like that data is deleted. So there are, there are options even for, like your everyday user, but 100%, probably the best money you'll spend as a business user is like the $20 a month to access these higher power models. It's like a different experience.

Speaker 1:

I haven't yet tried the new $200 a month pro version but, to be honest, like you don't need the pro version unless you're actually pushing the boundaries of, like scientific literature. I've I've used it for one particular thing. I was trying to like stump it with like it's if you're asking questions about, like a science paper or medical paper or something like your day to day usage, you probably are fine with 4.0, just uploading documents and things. Maybe a one if you need some like extra juice. But, yeah, definitely try the pro as a marketer, it'll make you technical.

Speaker 1:

And I want to give one more example. With the provert like 20 a month, for example, you might think you're not technical, but really to dispel that in like five, no, dispel that in 60 seconds, um, go into the version, go to the new canvas, which was released yesterday, I think, and just say like I want to create a working game of Pong, and you can create it with one prompt. Double click it. Say like save it as an HTML file. Double click it, it opens your browser and it will work right out of the gate.

Speaker 1:

And then you can just say like in the cursor, say like well, can you make the background blue and can you give me a button to increase the sensitivity of the arrow keys? You will be able to code with English. And so now I think it's important for marketers to realize that these tools make you good enough and can help you cross that chasm. So where you are, you can be technical. And that will be a hard thing for people to shake if they've been in this space for a while, but people just entering it will kind of grasp it intuitively. But yeah, I'd say you should be worried about the marketer, that's 10X-ing their own capabilities by leaning on these tools.

Speaker 2:

I would say that I think the pendulum swings back to creativity right, like if you don't have the foundational knowledge right initially, you don't even know what to ask right. Or how to kind of structure it, because it's a support tool in that. I mean, what are you seeing? How is AI impacting the platforms, the creators, the brands, the audiences? How would you-.

Speaker 1:

Man. So I'd say there's definitely some underlying anxiety, for example, both on the creators as well as people making the tools, like us, because there's always a new model, we're always having to upgrade and stay on top of it and it's moving faster than ever. And for creators, they're having to learn new tools all the time. I think there's some anxiety that they might be replaced and or taken advantage of because of, for example, the training data and the training sets. They're worried, you know, am I as an artist or creator, is this, you know, unfairly using that data? And there's a lot of things pending, like you said, like the kind of a landmark. The New York Times lawsuit is a landmark example of that. So there is some anxiety about its IP issues in the creative field. But I think you also mentioned this beginning. It's just inevitable and inescapable that it is impacting things and when you think back to artists of the day, they were using the most up-to-date and latest technology to make their works. The thing that we considered, like you know, kind of classical art back then was really pushing boundaries and the things that we think, whether it's music and old production techniques, like they were, they were pushing these, like tapes and things to the limit and I think the like modern artists using that and embracing it, we'll be able to build a lot more interesting and amazing things with it. So it'll push the boundaries as well. So there's this element of like democratizing and making everyone technical, whether a creator, engineer, whatever.

Speaker 1:

There's that element of anxiety about, like, people wondering about where their place is and people always having to adopt the next thing or, for us, build the next thing. But I do think it, I am an optimist and I do think it opens up possibilities more than anything else and we will have a golden age of content creation. I think you're right in that there is going to be this proliferation of a thousand times more stuff. That's bad, but with AI, you can also surface the gems better than ever before. So there's a stat that's like, every two years, there's more content created that year than entire history of humankind before that, and that will accelerate. I think it's inevitable and it'll hold true. It'll continue to hold in true, but I think that, yes, there'll be a lot of bland stuff created with AI, but we have the technology to also surface the best things for people to see.

Speaker 2:

So I think that's a great, great point and that's what I'm definitely seeing. Right. So a lot of content's being created and Google stopped indexing. A'm definitely seeing right so, a lot of content's being created and Google stopped indexing. A lot of content, right. If it's low quality content, it's like we can't even keep this in our directories of our search engines because it's just not valuable, right? So one, it goes away. Right, if there's too much inventory and then out of the inventory there is, a lot of people can answer the question. They're trying to just keep you on Google's and say, hey, here's the AI summary. Like zero click, here you go, here's the answer. So if you're going to be producing content, it needs to be like a couple of tiers above that. And how many people do you really have that are competing on that level?

Speaker 2:

I've seen with like very big companies versus startups. One of the biggest things that I remember when I was like really heavily in that world was, okay, microsoft, where my mom was like one of the first employees at Microsoft and you know she would always tell me, yeah, we got like two people at the whole company working on this like one thing, right, you know, or whatever. And so you like, look at this whole company, you're like I can't beat this whole company, but, depending on like whatever the problem is you're trying to solve, you know, like it was like like just the analogy, I was like one person's really working hard, so you're competing with that person. One person's looking for their next job right, and they're like whatever. And then one person's like screwing off, like, and so it's like so, so, so you're, you're not. You're not at that big of a disadvantage. Where you have the advantage is you're more able to move quick, right, like you don't have approvals, you don't have all the red tape, like, you can pivot, you can figure stuff out. So you're more agile, and I think that you know if you're trying to be very narrow and you know what you're solving for, um, you know ai, whatever you have, you have that leverage in, like a reddit post. Or you know um social media, like these algorithms, like okay, you're producing stuff for tiktok, youtube, instagram, whatever it's going to go viral, right, like one post could go viral. The game has changed, right?

Speaker 2:

I would love to hear your take on like kind of lessons learned as well as how is influencer right, like, how is it so they get AI influencers. You got like fake AI bots that are posting stuff, generating money, like you hear about a lot of that in the news. But if you're an influencer, how do you leverage AI? And also, like, where is influencer marketing fitting into the broader scope of the digital landscape, the marketing mix, like when you're looking at so kind of go big picture and kind of narrow it down to AI and influencers. I'd love to kind of see what you've learned there and that kind of thing. To start, there's two things. I'd love to kind of see what you've learned there and that kind of thing.

Speaker 1:

To start, there's two things. It ties into the question of this proliferation of content and how can you make content and stand out in this world as a creator, as a marketer, et cetera. A few notes there, but, as you mentioned, there's still some things that have to be shaken out. But there's some emergent business models, such as, like Reddit, licensing their data to people to train their models on it, and you can definitely put a premium on new data. So places that have that data, whether it's Twitter, x, reddit, et cetera, new York Times with topical new things these are all still really valuable, so hopefully that the people producing, like classic publishers, creators, et cetera I think there'll still be value in that, but we still have to. I think there's still more cards to be played and chips to fall in terms of like. Where are that all nets out?

Speaker 1:

As a creator, you might be worried that, like an AI, influencer is going to take your job, because they can create endless content and post it and, over time, just gets better and better and better. I have seen, though, like an oddly high durability of influencers. As someone who's been in this space for over a decade probably 12 years actually it is remarkable how robust influencers as a channel are and I think will be even in the age of AI. Who knows if they'll get to a point where I, as a creator, can license my name and likeness and use models built on that to easier, more easily create content or drive experiences et cetera. I think that's a way that creators can scale. We don't see much of that today, but just the trust that people have in those channels is as high as it's ever been. I think we'll see a little bit of a resurgence of classical channels with authoritativeness in an age of AI where nothing can be really verified. But people will be looking also to these creators that they know and love and trust and follow.

Speaker 1:

I actually am not as worried as others might be that in AI there will be AI influencers, but I don't think that they're just going to take over. There's also not the emotional connection, like if I showed you this like amazing impressionist, you know scene in France and told you one was made by like Matisse or something and the others made by AI. Humans are like, oh screw, that other thing Like the Matisse thing is brilliant, even if in a blind test they couldn't tell. Once you know the providence of something. It just shifts something irreparably in your head, and so I do think that, no matter what, like influencers have a big, huge foothold in this media landscape, and just simply the providence of them being a real person and this coming from them and being curated by them, I think it will remain to be a huge asset.

Speaker 2:

Man, I think that what you just said, they're so powerful for everybody that that didn't hear what he said the the providence of something like. Like art, like people buy the art for the story that's behind it, to show it off. Yes, like they, they follow people that they know, like and trust like, okay, I got some books out there called that, but, like the reality is it's true, right, like, it's absolutely true. I like, I've been talking about this for forever because the communities grow and it's like you don't trust anything and there's so much information, you're looking for this person to provide me the news, right, and, and I think that some of the platform channels know, and there was okay, we were. You know we're limiting content, we're doing all this kind of stuff. Um, like they're not the sources of truth that that they once were. You're really looking at everything like, is this real? Like I mean, right now I don't know, but I'm I creep on twitter.

Speaker 2:

I need need to get more personally on Twitter, but I can tell you, I get so much great information from it, but right now there's UFO sightings all over the place and I'm like, so someone posts it and I'm like, wow, but if I knew that person and they posted it, I could message that person or there would be a level of like is this AI generated? Is this real Like? I think there's probably a blend, but I don't know who to trust.

Speaker 1:

And.

Speaker 2:

I don't know if this information is good or not. Like even Elon Musk just landed a rocket and he's like not CGI. Like you know what I mean it's like yeah Well, let me give you an interesting like thought experiment too.

Speaker 1:

Like I think, like I mean, it's like, here you go and let me give you an interesting thought experiment too. Like I think, like taste and curation is going to be really important. You've mentioned this. You earlier said like you think creativity would be such an important asset and differentiator, and I agree.

Speaker 1:

I think that curation and taste will remain a differentiator, since AI is democratizing for the production of things and really shrinking that gap between imagination and creation, which is really like our mission as a company, by the way.

Speaker 1:

But if that's happening, then creativity is that ultimate, like final asset and taste is the asset there where, if you can imagine it, you can put it to paper now more and more every day, but as a thought experiment, like let's just say that there is an account, or like let's just say that, like if, if I was an influencer, I'm not very influential online, but like people follow you, you might just be curating images generated by ai, but your, the, what you curate, still adds a bit of the story to it, versus an account that's just spitting them out, and so I think, even even if a creator is not created themselves but curating, I still think there's power in that, and, and so I really think that influencers as a channel if you asked me years ago, I wouldn't have guessed that they'd be as durable as they are, but I think they have like a really strong foothold, and so I think it's still worth investing in.

Speaker 1:

I don't think creators should be as fearful as they might be and I think they can take advantage of the media landscape and kind of the lack of trust. We'll see, I do think. Actually, by the way, the biggest problem with AI near term, I think long term there's like tons of opportunity and tons of problems that will come up, but near term it's misinformation and creators, influencers posting like content that's originating from them will have a piece where people can trust certain outlets and creators. There will be some that might be more known to rile up people, but then that'll be attached to them. They'll have a low authenticity score in the communities that they're in because of that.

Speaker 2:

I love what you're saying right now. I think this is super golden for anybody that's listening, because curation is a lot of what we did with our podcasts over the last 12 years. It's like, okay, someone wrote this. Like let's analyze this from our eyes and share from real world experience what we've seen and how this applies. I love that the durability component to that, because I think a lot of creators are like hey, I've built this big audience, like what's going to happen? So I think there's some concern about that.

Speaker 2:

But, like, also, online, you're exposed to so much information and to your point, yeah, if there, if there's people that are adding value, I follow them. Right, if there's somebody that's posting like and I go check this outlandish comments, I remove because I don't, I block them. I'm like I don't, like I am trying to get a truth feed here of whatever I'm interested in or have the curation to that standpoint and and you can, you can, you can, you can group that together. My last question for you I I feel like we've just kind of started to unpack this really is how do you influence? Where do you see the bridge between influencers today and in businesses? Right, so you have a big platform that connects influencers with brands, right, and so where is that business opportunity? Where are people missing out?

Speaker 2:

Like I think a lot of people are still running a bunch of Facebook ads, running a bunch of you know Google ads, right, they haven't really branched out into kind of the digital PR landscape and maybe they've heard about it, or they put a little bit of money towards it and didn't see anything. What are they missing? What's the bridge?

Speaker 1:

That's a great question. It also differs a little bit who you are as a business, and so I'll answer it in a few ways. Whether, let's say, you're a startup brand on Shopify or maybe you're an enterprise company, it depends a little bit. Overall, creators are amazing at creating content and scaling content, driving like awareness to your product and consideration and building a community. But the Shopify type smaller brands also excel at using them for conversion and sales. So I'll split it in a few ways.

Speaker 1:

At its most basic, if you're a small to medium-sized business or a startup or Shopify brand, something like that, you can use creators as an engine to create a lot of content, start building a community, like seeding a community with your product, et cetera, driving things like posts and even reviews online. And then, if you end up working with a lot of creators, one thing I'd heavily, heavily call out is that if you're using them for conversion, it follows a power law, not a bell curve. So bell curve it's like. The average is in the middle. A power law means that 20% of the creators will drive 80% of the results. So really, what you should imagine them as is, if you worked with like 100 creators, 20 of them would drive most of the sales and of that 20, a few of them would drive the majority of those. So it's really a power curve.

Speaker 1:

And what I advise people working with creators if they're working with creators for conversion, test and learn, try a lot of things and then keep doubling down with the ones that are working and kind of use them, work with them as brand ambassadors. The most successful people I've seen on that side are almost using them like an outbound, like a commission only Salesforce and they're like training in, like having regular talks and calls, even with these group of creators, telling them like, hey, here's what's working for the people, sharing tips and tricks. But that that's one thing. On conversion side and as a bigger brand, I would really lean on creators as a way to stay as agile as possible, creating content as quickly and scaled as possible, because you need a ton of content for your ads and you can use them in like your ad units. So I'd say like the bigger you go, the more we find our brands using for content and just raw influencer posts. Then when you go lower on the size of the company, it's often geared towards conversion.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, what I've seen and tell me what you think. But if you mapped it out, certainly on the affiliate side, and I think TikTok store is just, I mean, people are driving sales and commission sales, certainly for a lot of SaaS products and all sorts of things. But, like, when you look at it from a broader standpoint, I work with some B2B companies B2C, but some big companies and we're doing thought leadership and we're creating influence and it's not just about the bottom line, Right, and so you know you're running the advertising to just get the word out there, to get your name out there, to kind of like, let people know how you're positioned in the marketplace.

Speaker 2:

Then the influencers come in and the PR comes in to help position it. So you're on someone's radar with the advertising, but they don't know what to think. They don't know that. That's where the reviews, that's where the trust comes in. So the PR gets in their face of like, okay, I've heard this brand before, but this influencer that I'm aware of, like just mentioned it. Like, ok, now it's on my radar, right, but I've seen you know that fall off pretty quickly. Right, you use an influencer, it's initial attention. Right, like it gets someone's attention. But you've got to get them into your funnel. Right, and you've got to have your strategy of your, your content and and you need to be hit in with SEO. Like you need to, you need to be email dripping. I'm like you've got to, you've got to. You've got to use the influencer to get them on your list. Right, and then and then and then you've got to reel them in, like the hook some.

Speaker 1:

And then you've got a real man.

Speaker 2:

I don't know that. The influencer hooks them and then you got a real man. I don't know. That's kind of the model, how I've kind of seen it fit in into the broader perspective of people are thinking about influencer marketing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I would say also like to go off of that. Like. Influencers drive consideration better than almost any channel, and then you can use that Like. Let's say, you work with 20 TikTokers to promote your product. You give them a basic brief, but they all do their own riff on it. One or two of those ads or one or two of those posts will perform better than the rest. You can use that as like a kernel for an ad. That will be very successful.

Speaker 1:

And so something I'd recommend to everyone is, like we made popular pace, for example, to make it easy to like organize your work there scaling creator campaigns. But I'd also recommend that everyone have like an editor that they um you there's. You can reach out to people on Instagram. You can if you're just buying one. You don't even need to use a platform like pop pays. You can just like DM them. But find an editor whose style you like and get a rate with them so that when you have all these um assets like if you have a bunch of influencer posts they can stitch them into ad units and you can find you can find editors online who can just add a few motion graphics, text, et cetera, text overlay and turn a really great influencer post into probably your best performing ad unit. So that's one really tried and true playbook.

Speaker 2:

We've seen All right, corbett, so okay. So I think that that leads us into the big question here, right, and I think you kind of tipped at some stuff, so you know what is like. Maybe one or just you know. However you want to kind of frame it up. But what's one unknown secret of digital marketing that you don't think people use enough and they should be leveraging?

Speaker 1:

I mean amazing question, and hence the premise for the podcast I would say current people to do is try, using that new cursor on ChatGPT and make a quick pong game online and you can do it in less than a minute. Try, you know, like LTX Studio, to make a movie you've always wanted to make in five minutes. You can now do anything you want to do, and so creativity is really the only boundary and barrier there. But yeah, I would say that the main secret and trick is to expand your idea of how technical you can be at anything you want to learn.

Speaker 2:

Awesome, love it. Okay, so you've mentioned some of your platforms. Make sure to get those to me and we'll get those in the show notes so people can check them out. But if someone wanted to kind of find out more about what you're, you know some of the topics we've talked about. More about you, more about your businesses. What's the best way for them?

Speaker 1:

to reach out to you. Since we covered so much ground. I would say go to leiptrickscom where you can see our whole roster of products, from popular pays, the creator and influencer marketing platform, to LTX studio, our AI video platform. But that that one, that way you can kind of direct to whatever of the things I mentioned appeals most to you.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. Well, of course, thank thank you so much for for coming on. Everyone. Thank you for sticking with me. I realized halfway through this that I didn't have my sound, so hopefully I didn't have the right mic on my sound, so hopefully that was okay. Sometimes people leave me comments about that, so hopefully you stuck through it. Really appreciate it. If you want to grow your business with the largest, most powerful tool on the planet the internet, all right, reach out to EWR Digital for marketing your business. Check out MatthewBurchamcom. We are launching a coaching program in January. There's a lot of good trainings and things that we're coming out with, so, so please check it out and until the next time, bye-bye for now.

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Matt Bertram

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