Josh went to dinner with a CMO friend. A couple of drinks in, she showed him her entire 27-step influencer marketing strategy. Josh's takeaway? One step: tell Jess. She can just handle the other 26…

So, she built Vector's first influencer pilot with seven creators, $12,000, and zero vanity metrics. The result? $1.1 million in pipeline, 82% ICP demos, and posts so good you couldn't tell they were sponsored.

Hear how Jess started small, gave creators actual freedom, and proved influencer marketing works without a massive budget.

Get to the good stuff:

[00:20] The CEO move. The hack. The 27-step process for influencers. Josh has 1 step, Jess gets 26. Yayyyy.

[03:10] Jess talks context. They didn't have the same budget or team size. There may have been some rounding up involved. Carry the one, people.

[04:00] Start small, start with a pilot. Customers, leaders and an average following? 13,000. Trust beats vanity metrics every time.

[06:37] Follow your influencers for a while. Understand their content, their tone, and their storytelling style before you reach out.

[07:44] Let influencers have full access to your tool. Onboard them properly. They need to know your product, believe in it, and actually use it.

[09:20] They may say no to your rate. That's fine. Build long-term partnerships, not one-off transactional posts.

[10:20] Deep camera focus—affirmations from our mouths to your ears. ASMR vibes.

[13:38] What does the brief look like? Tight, short, flexible. Focus on messaging points they can borrow or riff on. (Just, you know, avoid posting on Fridays.)

[15:37] How Jess aligned posts with product launches, survey results, and Ad Reveal. All within the same week because organizational bliss.

[19:04] Let influencers do what they do best. They know their audience. Let them loose. They want it to work for you.

[19:44] If you don't know it's an influencer post until you see the hashtag, it's a great influencer post. Matching ads and banners? That's just an ad.

[21:25] Jess consciously skipped the tracking rabbit hole for the pilot. Sometimes "how did you hear about us?" is all you need.

[22:53] The marketer's duty—thank you, dear marketers, for filling out attribution forms with wild detail. I got you, boo.

[26:01] The results? $12,000 turned into $1.1 million in pipeline. 45 leads in 3 months directly from LinkedIn. 82% ICP. Josh almost fell out of his seat (again).

[27:30] Marketing doesn't fix product-market fit. If your product sucks, all that pipeline will disappear just as fast as it came in.

[28:45] What's next? Jess is changing up the mix, but she can’t scale this alone.

[33:30] Jess's key takeaways: Start small. Give them the story, then step back and let them “Cook.”

This Meeting Could’ve Been a Podcast is a Vector production.

Filmed and produced by Sweet Fish.

Editing by Handy Man Edit.

Music by Peter McIsaac Music.