Is Influencer Marketing Still Worth It? with Sherri Langburt

Andrea Jones [00:00:00]:
If you are curious to dive into the world of influencer marketing, especially getting the right influencers in your corner so that they can help you promote your brand and your business, this episode of the Mindful Marketing podcast is for you. But before we dive into this fantastic conversation with Sherri Langburt, first, a word from our sponsor. Riverside is the all in one podcast recording and editing tool that I use for this right here show. I use it to edit not only the audio in the video. It is like chef's kiss, magical, making the entire process so, so easy. Plus I love their magic AI clips. Their little AI robot in the background pulls out the most impactful moments of the episodes without me having to comb through and do it myself, resizes them for social media. So those vertical videos you see on TikTok and reels, those all come from magic AI inside of Riverside.

Andrea Jones [00:00:57]:
It's literally one click. It spits out 10 clips. I pick the best one and away I go saves me so much time. If you want to get on the Riverside train, check it out today, the links in the show notes, and make sure to use my code DREA, D R E A, at checkout to get 15% off your membership. I'm excited for this conversation today because I have been on both side of sides of the aisle as an influencer and as a marketer, and I'm excited to get into what's working here now in today in 2025 with influencer marketing. And with that, Sherri, welcome to the show.

Sherri Langburt [00:01:30]:
Thank you so much, Andrea. Nice to meet you. Thanks for having me.

Andrea Jones [00:01:34]:
Yes. I'm really excited for this conversation. But to give our listeners some context, tell me, how did you get into the world of influencer marketing?

Sherri Langburt [00:01:43]:
K. I kinda stumbled upon it. I was working corporate America, way back when, and, kind of one of the things that I was working on was ad sales. And our business was really subscription focused. And as I started to kind of explore ad sales opportunities, a lot of the brands were looking to work with influencers. And so we put that into our fold, and it kinda started to work really well. And that's when I said, I am gonna go break out on my own because no one is doing this and no one is focusing on it. And I'm gonna start an agency that focuses on helping the brands and the agencies find the right influencers to do their content promotions.

Andrea Jones [00:02:26]:
Yeah. I love this. And I feel like people think, you know, influencer marketing is a new thing, but brands have been using other people to promote their content and their their products for a while. But for those people who are listening, how do you how do you define an influencer? What is an influencer?

Sherri Langburt [00:02:44]:
I mean, look. I think that there's different ways to define, and I think everyone has their own definition. Certainly, if you're looking at a TikTok or Instagram or a Pinterest or a YouTube, it's gonna be very different from the type of influencer that you find on LinkedIn. And I think that it's also very different if you are in pharma or finance where there's high like, highly regulated industries versus beauty or food or fashion. So but, you know, in the industry, I think, you know, there's different thresholds. So there's, like, the nanos, the micros, the macros, the megas, and all the way up to celebrities, and those are different thresholds. Most people would say a nano is someone who has a following on any of these given platforms of over 5,000 followers. Some would say it's 2,000.

Sherri Langburt [00:03:29]:
I personally think it should be 10,000. So anyone upward of that, and then the tiers start happening as you go higher.

Andrea Jones [00:03:38]:
Okay. I wanna get into this because I feel like the world of influencer marketing has changed a lot. So for context, I used to be a fashion blogger. I worked I would say, like, if I were gonna name drop, I worked with Steve Madden, like, in 2012. So this was, like, this was, like, at the time, it was weird. My friends were like, what are you doing? How how do you have photos with Steve Madden? Right? And I'm like, oh, I just have my little blog and my YouTube channel. I think it's changed so much over the years. Right? So, you know, if we're taking 2012 to today, like, what are some of the changes at influencer marketing that have happened over the years?

Sherri Langburt [00:04:19]:
Interesting. It's, like, when you start to think about what's going on right now with TikTok. Right? I think back then, because I've been doing it even longer than two twelve 2012, blogs were still a thing. And long format content in a blog and the beauty of that was there was not just the written and the video that you could put in there, but there was placements for programmatic. So but you owned your channel. TikTok, like, wasn't a thing. Pinterest was still kind of a thing. Like, people loved Pinterest.

Sherri Langburt [00:04:48]:
And so I think, you know and I think that static was still much more of a focus than video. So there's just so many things that come into play. You could also look again at the different verticals and industries. You know, people certain industries have been later to the game. I think we've gotten very niche, very specific, in terms of, like, before it was like, oh, we need mom bloggers or mom influencers or mom creators now saying, we need women who live in Chicago who will eat organic and have, you know, a blue cat and, you know, three boys who, you know, don't eat meat. It's so specific now, because there's so many creators, and I think you have to when we talk about, you know, these buds where it's like the the content has to be authentic. Well, you know, if you wanna do a campaign and you're a retailer, but the influencer that you choose shops at your competitors, that's not authentic. So there's a lot more that goes into it than just, you know, we need a mom influencer.

Andrea Jones [00:05:49]:
Yeah. It has changed so much. And I think for the better because I think, you know, brands can get, these influencers that are their their communities are so bought in. Like, they're so tuned in. It can make or break a a brand. So when you and your company are kind of, like, looking at these influencers, how can you tell if they're they actually have influence? Because I've been on these Internet streets for a while. I know people could buy followers. So how do you tell if they're, like, actually influential?

Sherri Langburt [00:06:17]:
So you look at the engagement rates. Right? And you could look at, you know, a like to me is a vanity metric. So anyone scrolling I have a a big heart, so whenever I see anyone post I'm liking, I might not even look at what they're doing. And that's just me as a human. Right? So I think you look at the comments, and even if they had, you know, great amount of engagement on the comment side, are the comments relevant? So if I'm talking about, you know, a new, you know, protein shake, but everyone's commenting on my haircut, not relevant. So looking at the comments, looking at, I think, some metrics that people don't look into, and you could ask the influencer for this, is previous content that they shared. Not just the comments, not just the likes, but the saves, the reshares. Because the saves show how many people had intent to go back, maybe attempt to purchase.

Sherri Langburt [00:07:10]:
The shares show, like, how many people thought that this was engaging enough to circulate with other people, so the viral nature of the content. You could also look in stories if there was links or, you know, kind of those stickers. So sticker taps, link clicks. I think it's everything that you have to look at and not just, like, right up front what you're seeing as as a as an onlooker from their stats.

Andrea Jones [00:07:32]:
Yeah. And it's definitely gotten more complicated too, both on the influencer sides and the brand side of, like, looking at those success metrics. And I think one of the challenging things is, you know, the you mentioned, like, niche communities. Sometimes the niche communities can at first appear smaller, but they they're very influential. And you mentioned, you know, with this nano all the way up to celebrities. So, you know, when a brand is looking at you know, should we go with a bunch of nano influencers, or should we go after, like, a bigger influencer? How do you decide the mix between the smaller, like, niche communities and the larger, like, more seemingly impactful influencers?

Sherri Langburt [00:08:15]:
So I'm, I think it obviously boils down to your objectives and your goals, and every brand is different. But as a marketer, I look at, if I could get one person who's gonna create one set of content and reach one audience versus, let's just say, one is the same amount of, you know, financial investment as 10 or 20 or 30. But I should get those multiple people that add up to the amount of followers and engagements and as the one, why wouldn't I want to have diverse content, multiple sources of content, different formats of content, reach different audiences, etcetera? And so that's kind of where I look at it. I think it's not that one performs better than the other in terms of just the reach. It's everything else. Are your goals to get more content? Are your rules to goals to tap into new audiences? Are your goals to reach people throughout the country in different locations, different voices, different interests? Maybe within the same niche, but a little bit different. I think that's why I'd always go for the more versus the one.

Andrea Jones [00:09:20]:
Yeah. Yeah. I I definitely see the beauty of that too. Even from, like, a brand perspective now, you have so many more assets to be able to, like, circulate around Yeah. Like, your community and all of that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea Jones [00:09:31]:
So speaking of UGC, what do you see working really well right now? Because I think that engagement's down across the board. Like, we all can see that, especially on our beloved Instagram. It's just not like it used to be. So what what are, like, the types of content UGC pieces that are working really well right now?

Sherri Langburt [00:09:49]:
I don't know if it's just necessarily the UGC. I think it's also little touch points. Right? There's little places that people aren't leveraging, like making sure the content is in your highlights. If you're hiring an influencer, have that in your contract for a few days or a week. Making sure they don't remove the post after they got paid. Right? So making sure it stays up there. There's a little notes feature. There's all these different areas.

Sherri Langburt [00:10:14]:
Link in bio. I think that there's all these different areas that are small, tiny touch points that can end up helping optimize optimizing the content more or showcasing it, like, referencing it more is what I'm trying to say. You know, obviously, you look at something like TikTok and how it impacted and all these trends. I think we're gonna go away from those sounds and those trends a little bit, and it's gonna be more meaningful content. So more the educational, more the experience of me and my life and how I live my life as opposed to, like, you know, a wee you know, a cute song. I'm not saying they're gonna go away, but combination of some of these touch points that no one is it's all the little, you know, kind of toggles you could turn to make something work even more.

Andrea Jones [00:11:06]:
Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree. And I think this just goes for, like, marketing in general. Like, there's so many different places where you can connect, so might as well use them all to your advantage. Okay. So when we think about working with influencers, one of the things that was frustrating for me when I was working for with influencers is that it really is like relationship management. Right? Like when you're when you're working with someone, you're partnering with them, and there's a lot of trust involved there.

Andrea Jones [00:11:34]:
So when brands are looking at building those relationships, building trust with influencers, what are some of the things that brands can think about as they're starting to go down the path of working with some of these influencers?

Sherri Langburt [00:11:46]:
So, obviously, given creators are creator because they're creative. Right? And so giving them that freedom, one of the things that we see that works really well is collaborating with them in terms of the content. So giving us concepts in advance so that you go back and forth and it's a mutual dialogue. Because I think what creators have to realize too is sometimes, if there's 10 creators on the campaign, everyone's submitting the same idea for a recipe, like a poke bowl idea for a rice bran. And so it's not that the brands are trying to get pushback. It's that they definitely don't need 10 pokeball recipes. It's hitting the same thing. And so giving the creator you know, I think it goes both ways, giving them some flexibility and creative control in terms of submitting concepts, but also on the creator side, you know, really understanding that it's not that the brand is trying to give you pushback.

Sherri Langburt [00:12:39]:
We do sometimes see brands that are just you know, we don't like what what the influencer's wearing, but that should be in the upfront. Like, a brand should kind of if you don't like what she's her her aesthetic, it's personal, it might not be on brand for you, then you shouldn't, you know, kind of engage with them. So I think giving the influencers the autonomy to do creative, but having parameters in control and letting them know why, as long as you let them know the why. Like, we're not trying to be too rigid. We just have different creators submitting ideas, and we wanna make sure we have, you know, a broad, you know, pool of options from which to choose. And also, another thing is, you know, what we always have talked about, like, these ongoing partnerships. So, you know, instead of just working, like, one and done, we need you for this, have that ongoing relationship with the influencer. So maybe it's that you do an always on program with the influencer, you know, during key seasons or, you know, four times a year so that they know in advance that their year is as a partner as opposed to just like, you know, we need you and, you know, next up, we're gonna go with someone else.

Andrea Jones [00:13:48]:
Yeah. Yeah. I find that interesting, like, the long term partnership piece because I find myself, just like as a human, gravitating towards people who talk very consistently about the things that they love. Right? And so when, brands can find those influencers who are already kind of having those conversations, I think that really does make it, you know, mutually beneficial. What about from the influencer side? I'm just curious, just wanna be a little bit nosy too about this because I think influencers have to also be selective about the brands that they work with. So what are what are the some of the things that brands can do to make their products interesting enough that, you know, the top influencers, top creators wanna work with them.

Sherri Langburt [00:14:33]:
I need to say one thing before because it highlights for both. It's a bridge. I see a lot, you know, when you're not working with an agency and you're an influencer and you're an independent, and then your bill doesn't get paid for the thirty days, the six whatever the terms are, the sixty days, the ninety days. And I think everyone should just understand that most influencers are, you know, solopreneurs, and they don't have a legal team to go chasing a bill, making sure you pay your bills on time, because it really impacts the like, I'm gonna cry like, it's just so heartbreaking to see that and I get it. You know, huge multi conglomerate, one influencer's invoice is getting lost amidst bigger payments that have to go out, but being sensitive to the creator environment and that, you know, these people, you know, are working with you and for you when they need to get paid on time. Some of the one of the things, you know, in terms of how do you make your products stand out, I think merch. I mean, you started to see it the past few years, but merch is just and I see it not just like everyone thinks like, okay, I'm gonna create a water bottle. Bottle.

Sherri Langburt [00:15:37]:
It doesn't have to be a water bottle. There's so much creative. Or if you're a service brand bringing things to life with merch because think about finance. Like, what am I gonna show that's really so interesting in finance? There's nothing, you know, and there are things. Like, we've done little baby onesies for an insurance brand. So the moms with life insurance, it brings it to life. I think anything that you could do, we have to understand that the world is so visual right now. And even if you're a brand that maybe doesn't have a product that is visual or as a compliment to a product that is visual, you know, adding that merch is great.

Sherri Langburt [00:16:15]:
We do the custom boxes, not just for the unboxing experience, but for the the staging properties within the kit. Because when an influencer gets a kit, they have all this other unique items that create that whole experience and gets them excited, and then their photos and their videos are more elevated, etcetera. So so those are some of the things that we're seeing that really move the needle in terms of, you know, kinda making things stand out.

Andrea Jones [00:16:42]:
Yeah. I I always love a good unboxing. I'm always the one who, like, if if my faithful influencer is unboxing, I'm watching it. I'm watching the whole thing. Like I wanna see give me the packaging, like let me hear the crinkle, I need to experience it. And I think it is like you said it's a very sensory experience no matter if you have physical products or not. But one of the things that you mentioned that I'm curious about too is, like, photos and videos. Is there a particular style of content that's working really well right now for influencers? Is it all video or are photos still are they still alive and well?

Sherri Langburt [00:17:18]:
Well, Instagram just came out with the new algorithm, like, the big reveal of how their algorithm's gonna work. I think it dropped this morning. And so I think it's it's really gonna focus on video. Personally, again, it goes back to the brand and what they need. We have brands that reach out that they still need the static because they're using that static for other things. Right? They need it for ads. They need it for their website. They need it for product, you know, product books, things like that, sales kits.

Sherri Langburt [00:17:48]:
So it really depends. One of the things that I think so many companies think about or focus on is we need the social awareness. But I'm always pushing, like, omnichannel. Right? How do you like, influencers is not just like, oh, what's the ROI on influencer? But that's only when you look at it with from through the lens of, like, how many how much awareness and how many sales am I getting? But if you really look at it, like, how could we take the influencer content, which technically is elevated, and drop it into various other parts of marketing, A, the consumer journey is gonna be much more cohesive and you could save money because you're not gonna be like someone's not gonna be sitting there saying, Oh, I need to go buy an image from whatever platform they use to buy images or videos on. There's so many other use cases. So I think looking at it through a more holistic lens through the entire marketing organization is important.

Andrea Jones [00:18:41]:
Yeah. Honestly, to me, that's one of the biggest benefits of working with influencers is that you have a team creating content for you that you can then leverage in other elements. When I was working on this on the agency side for this, one of my biggest clients was a product, like, a beauty brand where we would do photo shoots. We would do the style video shoots, but those weren't the top performing content pieces. It was our UGC from our influencers that would drive the the content forward. So we were, like, repurposing the heck out of it because it made the most sense from a brand perspective and not just on social, but, like, on the website, in the emails. Like, there's so many different ways you can leverage these assets, especially, you know, depending on how your contracts are laid out. Like, there's so many different things you could do as a brand with that influencer content.

Andrea Jones [00:19:28]:
So yeah. I mean, you paid for it. Might as well use it to the its fullest extent. Right?

Sherri Langburt [00:19:33]:
Right.

Andrea Jones [00:19:34]:
Yeah. So when we're thinking about that, like, headed into this upcoming year, one of the biggest things, I think challenges that brands are bumping up against is, like, the AI conversation. So what what are influencers what are brands doing to mitigate the risks of AI? But then, also, I would love to hear about, like, some of the benefits of AI in influencer marketing as well.

Sherri Langburt [00:19:59]:
You know, I think that you have to make sure that the approvals and checkpoints are in place to make sure that something doesn't look you know, it's just like my 13 year old. He comes home from school and he thinks he's gonna pull one over, you know. And I know when he uses AI and the teacher knows when they use AI and, you know, there have to be checks in place. But I do think it has merit, right? You're stuck on creating ideas for your content calendar. You could be really specific. I don't think anyone is gonna go out and copy exactly, but it's an idea generator. It helps you think of ideas. It helps you check your work.

Sherri Langburt [00:20:34]:
So you could put in, you know, a guidelines from a brief and then upload, you know, the caption copy and say, does this make did I miss anything? Can you edit this? I think it's a good kind of tool in terms of idea generation and editing and things like that. But I don't think I think the influencers themselves, they're not gonna start replacing themselves and replacing real footage with fake footage in an full video because this is what they do.

Andrea Jones [00:21:01]:
Yeah. Yeah. A %. And I think AI can feel scary. And, yeah, there are some people who are, like, using it maliciously. But I think for the most part, like, if we learn to embrace it and use it as a tool to help us with our creative work, it could be it could be really interesting use case. And I think there's just so many ways that we haven't even explored yet, like, the the true extent of how it can help.

Sherri Langburt [00:21:25]:
You mean someone put in my name into some I don't know what platform and said, can you create a BabbleBox podcast that would be five like, the thirty second intro? And it was like me talking, introducing a podcast.

Andrea Jones [00:21:39]:
Wild. Yeah. Well, time will tell. Time will tell.

Sherri Langburt [00:21:43]:
I'm not doing it, but I'm just saying it's like, I don't know. Yeah.

Andrea Jones [00:21:46]:
Yeah. I really hope we don't have AI influencers, but I mean, I already see it happening. So yeah. Okay. I would love to hear some success stories as well. So I think one of the challenges, especially for brands who are newer to influencer marketing, is that sometimes we can't conceptualize. Like, what does success look like as we're starting to deploy some of these strategies? So can you share an example of a campaign that really stood out to you where the influencer had a an impact on the brand's success story?

Sherri Langburt [00:22:21]:
I'm gonna give you two because I just did a campaign wrap up call with the client. So we have a program that we designed specifically for smaller emerging brands because we know influencer can be daunting and expensive. And so we do these themed boxes where there's five brands in a box. Not brand specific, it's a theme. So we just did a kid's toy one for holiday. And that campaign, it's less expensive because you're pooling your ad dollars. It goes up to 20 influencers. So you're getting a lot of bang for your buck.

Sherri Langburt [00:22:51]:
They're all micros. But when we looked at the stats, there were like a hun like, beyond it's not just the impression reach. It was the views were over, like, 300,000 views. The likes, the comments were over fifteen, sixteen, 17 thousand. I mean, it was outrageous. So I think, you know, looking at, like, different creative ways to do influencer, that's one example. You know, I I think you have to also frame it. You know, a lot of times, a newer brand, an emerging brand, everything is ROI focused.

Sherri Langburt [00:23:26]:
They're dependent on that sale. And so if that's where you are, that's okay. But then I would just focus on working independently, find one or two people, search for people who actually know your brand maybe or writing about your brand, and work with one person and grow it organically until you get to two people or three people when you could afford it. I think the misconception is I'm gonna work with one influencer, and they're gonna get me this many sales. And once you think it's just sales driven, it's not just sales driven. As I said before, there's so many other ways in which an influencer can move the needle for you. So they're saving you in terms of creating your own content now. All you have you have a content library.

Sherri Langburt [00:24:06]:
You know, you could use these assets. You can boost an influencer's content. You could turn it into ads. You can use it for your website, your newsletter, you know, ratings and reviews, endorsements. Like, look at this influencer who worked with us. So I think thinking of creative ways, and I'll give you an example. Like, on smaller spends, you know, if you spend you know, it's not gonna be if I spend $5,000, I'm gonna get $15.20, $30,000. You have to think of other ways, in which you're gonna monetize that content.

Sherri Langburt [00:24:38]:
I'm not saying it can't happen. It does happen. But, you know, repeating a message over and over, especially when you're a smaller brand and no one knows who you are, is really

Andrea Jones [00:24:50]:
Yeah. And I think that's one of the beautiful things that I love about influencer marketing is, like, it's not us patting ourselves on the back going like, oh, our product is awesome. It's like someone else, like, validating that for our for us and in our marketing. And I love this idea of the curated box, like, influencer box. It's such a brilliant idea. Beautiful. I love it. So if someone's listening to this and they're like, okay.

Andrea Jones [00:25:13]:
I need I need to work with Sherri and her team. Tell us more about how you help brands and influencers

Sherri Langburt [00:25:20]:
work together. So we work on the brand side. Right? We have thousands of influencers, but we work on the brand side. We do brand dedicated campaigns, which is what probably everyone knows and sees the locks. Right? A regular influencer campaign. We have our co promotions, which are these themed multi brand solutions. We have all different boxes: food, new mom and baby, pet, kids, health wellness. Those bring in five non competing brands.

Sherri Langburt [00:25:46]:
And then we do the custom kits too. But essentially we're working with companies or the agencies to come up with the strategies, find the right program, make up the whole kind of scope of work for what we're gonna do, and then we find the influencers that fit the specific need that we're looking to do.

Andrea Jones [00:26:04]:
Yes. I love this. So if you're listening to this and you wanna work with BabbleBox, I'm gonna put a link in the show notes online dreya.com/350 so you can learn more. Where else can people connect with you online?

Sherri Langburt [00:26:16]:
I'm on LinkedIn under Sherri Langford on LinkedIn, and then BabbleBox is BabbleBox official on LinkedIn, on Instagram, and all the other channels as well. And then our website.

Andrea Jones [00:26:27]:
Oh, awesome. Awesome. I'll put all of those links in the show notes, y'all. Check them out. Sherri, thank you so much for being on the show today.

Sherri Langburt [00:26:33]:
Thank you so much. It was so lovely chatting with you.

Andrea Jones [00:26:36]:
Yes. And thank you, dear listener, for tuning in to another episode of the Mindful Marketing Podcast. Make sure you join

Andrea Jones [00:26:39]:
us in the Mindful Marketing Lab if you wanna go even deeper into these marketing strategies. We have a special guest coming in the Lab this month to talk all about playfulness in marketing and in our business, so stay tuned for that. And I'll have a new episode for you next Tuesday, so I'll see you then. Bye for now.