Influencer Case Study: Me, I'm The Case Study

A brand offered to help me achieve my dream.

Now the video has 100,000 views in 24 hours!

One of the most underrated ways for brands to work with content creators is helping the creator achieve a personal goal. Think about it: your brand's spending on influencer marketing to put your product in the best light possible. Rather than blandly turning Influencers into billboards, PARTNER with them for not just one idea, but for a big idea that's MUTUALLY beneficial!

Watch now on TikTok

@howtohoopforever

I lost $5000 running my own pro basketball team last season… I, uh, don't want to do that again, so I'm running this like a real business ... See more

You might know I have a second social media presence as How To Hoop Forever—I've built about 200,000 followers who are watching my "adult basketball comeback." When the banking platform Relay reached out to partner, they briefed me on their product, then asked me how we might work together.

My idea: I'll publicly reveal the finances of my professional basketball team, using their platform to share the finances & show how their dashboard makes it all easy for me. And the very first video of our campaign just did 100,000 views in 24 hours! Because the concept is strong, the partnership is natural, and it creates curiosity for both my audience and their brand.

You're gonna see a lot more of Relay from me—in a cool twist, we're partnered up for both marketing and basketball, and I'm gonna show you how they're helping me fix my business finances. Of course, you can try them right here with this link!

You believe in your social strategies. You've done the homework, you've got the taste, and you know exactly what content you wanna create to promote the brand.

Then, BOOM—that one pesky executive tweaks the idea, or mentions some social trend his kid saw on TikTok, or maybe kills the idea altogether. Now those concepts you adored lay lifeless on the cutting room floor, mercilessly stepped on and soon to be forgotten.

I wanna help you get better at selling your social ideas. We all love this industry so much, but we're rarely taught how to make other people believe in our practice. Today, we're talking a little mindset work & a couple of tactical moves I used to sell millions in Social AORs during my agency days.

A Good Idea Isn't Enough

There's a mindset shift we gotta talk about before we get into any tactical sales suggestions. And if you love social, you might hate it.

It's your responsibility to sell your social strategies.

I fought that thinking, man. I nerded out on social so hard in my early career days that I'd much rather banter social ideas with other social pros than sell through to the bosses. Buttt my ideas weren't getting made, even though I knew they were strong.

So, I decided it was on me—I had to learn to sell, and assume if my ideas weren't bought, it was my fault. I stopped blaming executives for "just not getting it" and decided it was my job to make them get it (we're the social experts, right? Of course that's our job).

And when I transitioned to that thinking? Everything changed. I became fascinated to the salesmanship of social, joining my agency's pitch team and learning to sell multi-million dollar projects. I started getting promoted & offered the chance to run departments. And most importantly for me, my own social strategies started getting made.

Once you realize selling is part of your job, the job gets easier, not harder.

Separate Your Strategy Deck From Your Creative Deck

Let's get into some tactical social sales mistakes I see a lot, starting with the relationship between strategy and creative.

You should sell your social media strategy first, and then your social media creative ideas. They should be separate sign-offs.

If you walk into a room to explain your approach, how it works with the brand, and a bunch of creative ideas to support your new approach, you're offering wayyy too much for anyone to approve in one go. What's probably a strong strategy + creative combo suddenly becomes a house of cards, because if the approval team doesn't agree with one strategy note, all your creative goes down the drain. Pitching strategy + creative together means neither get the attention they deserve.

The fix is staged buy-in. Get alignment on strategy first, likely through a big strategy deck. Once that's locked, bring your social ideas separately.

This split actually helps you get your creative sold through more often, because you can show how your ideas tie back to the strategy that's already been bought off on!

Breadcrumb Before the Meeting

So we just talked about selling strategy and creative separately. I wanna go even deeper — start selling long before anything's officially presented.

This is breadcrumbing. A casual email floating a loose direction. A quick 1-on-1 where you walk someone through where your head's at. A Slack message that says "not ready to show this yet, but does this feel right directionally?" You're not giving away the idea. You're warming the room weeks before you walk in. By the time the formal pitch meeting arrives, the people in that room should already be a little curious to see what you've built, and many will be pre-bought on your idea!

What It Is and Why It Works

Here's a simple habit that will immediately make your pitches land better: for every single social idea you present, you say what it is, and then you say why it works. Two sentences, every time, no exceptions. "What it is" gives the room something concrete to hold onto. "Why it works" connects the idea to the strategy you already got approved. It sounds almost too simple, but most social pitches skip the second part entirely, describing the idea and waiting for a reaction, hoping the room connects the dots. They won't. You have to connect them. When you can clearly articulate why an idea works in addition to what it is, you're not just presenting anymore. You're selling.

Make It About Money, Not Content

This is where even strong pitches fall apart. Someone asks about ROI and the social team leads with engagement metrics. Comments. Replies. Follower growth. And the executives' eyes glaze over because none of that connects to anything they actually care about.

The business case is about outcomes. Remember when Steak-Emm used to go viral for their Twitter rants? It was unhinged, but they tracked their viral moments against weekly sales data and could actually show the lift. That's what changes how an executive thinks about your budget. You don't need a formal ROI study. You need to show you've thought about what the business gets in return. Restate their goals. Map your strategy to those goals. Make it obvious you understand the company is trying to sell something, and that social is how you help do that.

Walk in speaking that language, and the conversation changes entirely.

Just keep swimming

Like everything, selling social is a skill that requires practice. Just commit to that mindset goodness we talked about up top and you'll find yourself selling big ideas in no time.