How Celebrities and Influencers Can Help Your Brand Reach 7 Figures in Year 1

Hey ya’ll!

Apologies for the slight delay on this week’s newsletter. I’ve been working on a complete playbook for you on acquiring your first customers, and it’s taken longer than expected.

This playbook will be amazing (and worth more than most of the $1000 courses you pay for). We’re finishing it up now; it should be out in 7-10 days, so make sure you keep an eye out for that.

Below are a few of our recent newsletters that I think you may enjoy.

• Low Risk, High Reward Path to Launching Your Brand: The Ultimate Manufacturing Playbook

• The Ultimate Guide to Product Pricing

A few of you have replied to the emails and reached out regarding consulting & courses. We don’t plan to launch a course or membership at this moment; I’m very busy running my own brands as well as advising other 7 & 8 brands. This newsletter is more of a hobby to share what’s working.

However, I’m going to open up a couple of consulting slots for those of you who are interested and have reached out. We’ll do a 1-on-1 deep dive into your business and put together a plan on manufacturing and getting more customers for your brand.

This will be a 1-hour call, and I’ll only have 2 spots available each month. We’re at over 5,000 people on our newsletter now, so these will sell out. With this being the "launch” of our consultation, for now, we still have 2 slots available for August.

Below is the link to our Stripe account. Once you book the call, I’ll send over a Google Doc requesting some information on your business. Our team will research the market, your brand, and start working on a plan for you that we’ll cover on the call. 

—> Click Here to book a 1-to-1 call with me.

Today, I want to put together a quick email guide on creator and influencer-led brands. We’ll dive into the different strategies we’re seeing brands use to implement creators and influencers to grow sales.

This one will be quick but action packed. Let's jump in 👇👇

Right now, we’re seeing brands use creators in 3 ways:

1. Top of funnel approach for brand awareness

2. Seeding successful influencers to work with long-term

3. Launching a brand from scratch with creators, influencers, and celebrities.

Let's dig a little deeper into each of these.

ASRV is one of the best examples of companies using a top-down approach to the marketing funnel to drive sales, brand growth, and customer loyalty. They’re using influencers and organic social to drive top-of-funnel awareness.

Sponsoring hundreds of athletes allows them to tap into instant distribution and potentially millions of customers. ASRV sponsors athletes and creators to create engaging content.

Users visit their site and gain initial awareness through the organic content. The multiple touchpoints make a sale much easier. An example of this content can be seen below.

ASRV has recognized there’s still a large arbitrage with the amount of attention influencers and social campaigns can drive. ASRV has sponsored hundreds of influencers driving millions of monthly views to ASRV's website.

From there, customers are retargeted using Meta and Instagram ads, driving them back to the pieces and categories they were initially interested in.

It’s one of the best examples I’ve seen of direct sales campaigns that drive revenue and ROI. This is true frictionless growth. In addition, they are building brand loyalty that will pay dividends for years (while dropping acquisition costs).

Next, we’re taking a deeper dive into seeding influencers to work with long term.  

Typically, creators and influencers are paid a standard fee for a specific amount of posts and content.

However, as they continue to work with the brand, the incentives change. Projects go from short-term, one-off work to offering them a percentage of sales and long-term contracts.

1. An upfront premium fee (say $2,000 per piece of content).

2. An affiliate link for a % of sales (can range from 10% to 50%)

3. A guarantee to work with them on a longer-term basis.

Often, if you see a creator working with a brand for a long period of time, they are getting heavily compensated with the premium and a percentage of sales. 

To take this further, some creators can start to demand a % of revenue and shares in the company. There are two ways this typically happens.

1. An brand ecommerce operator (such as yourself) partners with a creator or celebrity to start the brand from scratch - which we’ll cover in a minute.

2. Or, an established brand has worked with a big-time creator. They see great results and offer them shares in the company. In exchange, they receive ongoing content and access to their distribution and audience.

We previously saw this with Ridge (a company doing over $200 million per year) when they partnered with MKBHD. As Ridge expands into new product categories, they now have a huge channel to push new merchandise through.

What started out as a wallet company has now expanded into an entire line of products for men in the everyday carry space. 

On a side note, DadGang Apparel is an amazing example of a brand growing through word of mouth plus a great product & message.

Their owner Bart often mentions they almost never partner with celebrities or creators. Even though it feels like every athlete on the planet is wearing their hats. This is organic growth at the highest level.

They barely run ads yet have a multi-million dollar brand, which means huge profits and a business that can potentially last for decades.

Partnering with a celebrity to launch a brand

The Honest Company does hundreds of millions of dollars per year in sales, with Jessica Alba being the face of the biz. Their co-founder, Brian Lee is a genius at putting together the pieces of a celebrity-led brand. Brian oversees operations on the back end of the company.

Jessica is the face of the brand and probably has input on product development, strategy, and marketing direction. However, none of this happens without a legitimate operator on board.

A celebrity is typically not going to understand how to handle inventory, logistics, or the operational back end of running a company. They deliver massive demand through their distribution networks and bring a lot of validity when it comes time to raise money.

So how do you partner with them? The best way to do this is through networking. A friend of mine recently partnered with one of the biggest influencers on the planet. I couldn’t believe they agreed to work with him (but they just genuinely loved the product).

How was he able to pull it off?

He knew their business manager from a previous job. It was 50% luck, 50% recognizing an opportunity and just asking. I’m not sure how much business in this space has come through cold email (although it’s worth a shot).

The most important thing to remember is you’re going to need to bring some serious operational chops and business experience to the table. This is especially true if you’re going to partner with someone who can bring in massive demand from the jump.

I’m talking about running 8 and 9-figure brands and understanding the operations that come with it. It’s not for everyone, but if you can nail it, you’ve got instant distribution and a lot of your acquisition problems handled.

On a side note, if I were to take this approach, I would do it with a celebrity chef.

Their name recognition and connections would get you into thousands of retail stores overnight. A huge hurdle in a space where people sell online.

Second, cookware, ingredients, etc. have a high returning customer and repurchase rate.

Lastly, the products are endless and there’s a ton of untapped luxury in this space. Look at Hexclad for inspiration around luxury cookware brands.

Wrapping Up

Do you need to launch a brand with a celebrity or partner with an influencer as you’re getting off the ground? It’s not a necessity, but can establish demand and social proof early. Two things that can cost a lot of money to attain.

I do think it’s smart to make a list of the top 20 creators and potential celebrities in your space that you want to work with. You can begin seeding the relationship early on through simple outreach.

Let them know what you’re working on, send them free products, and keep an open line of communication. When the time comes for you to partner on content, ads, or do business together at a larger scale, you’ve already established the relationship.

We began doing this last year in our brands, and we’re now ready to launch some ad creatives with the influencers in the next couple of months. Of course, I’ll keep you updated on how that goes!

Talk Soon,

-Ken

P.S. As I mentioned above, I’m opening up 2 slots per month for 1 on 1 consultation calls for brand owners looking to launch new products and acquire customers.

After payment, we’ll send you a Google Docs sheet to fill out. From there, we’ll research your brand, market, and put together a plan for you; there are only a couple of spots, so if you’re interested, you can book it below..

—> Click Here to book a 1-to-1 call with me