Digital Voices’ Post

Transcript

Hi I am Gabrielle palop sluiten en de aanhouder wint platter marketing. Department. That's their shark. And what are the main responsibilities in your role? Ohh, there are many. So, umm. Adding a huge theme, 10 people right now, also managing our main agencies, digital voices as well. Also, I'm responsible for our influence and marketing strategy across US, Asia, Europe and I work with some of the creators myself. How did you get into influencer marketing? What was your career like beforehand? I joined Surfshark five years ago and before that. I had a different career path. I was, uh, I actually had many roles in my early days, so I tried to be an HR and like that. Then I was a project manager at the Architecture magazine. Then I worked at Vinted. And then I came here at Surf Shark. I really wanted to try marketing. I was very passionate about it. I was studying marketing. And I really wanted to do that, but I had no idea that I'm gonna like influencer marketing. And I'm actually very glad that they give us our CMO, convinced me that this is the role for me. And he was very, very right. And here I am five years later, still working in the same job. Were there any major moments in your life that influenced your career path and choice? I remember that. I met my husband at the time and he was living in the US and we were discussing whether I should move to US as well. And I told him that if I'm getting this job so US is no go and then happen. And I'm very happy that it happened. Even though for many people US is a dream but I think I pursued my dream here and I'm really happy that I got to work with amazing people all across the world. And now I'm not just limited with one country, I can work across the globe. And what has been your proudest career moment so far? There have been many actually. But I think every influencer marketing manager dream is to work with the someone who's the biggest influencer. And we recently did that with Mr. Beast. So we partnered with him almost a year ago now. Wow. Time flies. So we partnered with him just before last Christmas and it was a journey. We had many learnings. It was also very fun and we had. A different campaign than usual. We had a gifting campaign with him, with Mr. Beast the basketballs. And it went really well. I had so many people just like calling from across the world asking how they should get like Mr. Beast Basketball and just buy Sir Shark, and that's how you get it. What do you think sets influence marketing apart from other digital marketing channels? So I think influencer marketing is different because you have to have a relationship with craters. You can show your brand in different colors than you could do. You know, only with in-house team creating an ad and just running it like digitally or somewhere outdoors and I think it puts your brand. Through so many lenses and so many different experiences that it helps reach the people we want to reach a lot faster. Is that a specific piece of content that a creator has produced for Surf Shark that really stands out to you? The content fees that really stands out is with the Calling for Ozzy. He's amazing creator and when we started partnering with him, he bought a giant shark. And now we have a bunch of integrations of him flying the shark, swimming on the shark, and doing crazy things with the shark. So I think his content is really great. And I love that we can be also very flexible, allowing creators to make sure that they fulfill their dreams of, I don't know, flying a shark, for example. Which is really fun. And how do you measure the results of your influence marketing for Surf Shark? Yeah, so we are very data-driven company. So we measure everything and our primary goal is to scale our business, our product across the globe. So we measure influencer marketing through clicks, coupon code uses through return on investment. We also measure the Halo effect, so we run customer service after they purchased to understand the broader effect that we get from influencer marketing, even if the code or the link wasn't used. And how do you establish long term relationships with your creators? So for like, our main goal is always to work with creators long term we want. Them to succeed we even have some channels that we're working on for five years now every single month and they made a bunch of videos for Surf Shark and we saw their channel grew as well together with us. I have one partner in Portugal and I think when we started in 2019 his channel was like around 100K subscribers. I think now he's the biggest like tech channel in Portugal and that is really. Great because we can move together, help them in any way we can, sponsor their wildest dreams. And we sponsored his trip to Japan because he had had a dream to fly to Japan and try all the weirdest gadgets he could find there. So we made his dream come true. So we love building their relationship with those people. I think there's always a mutual benefit. When we work together, we want to learn what's important to them and support them in those dreams. And then they also appreciate us as a brand. Our products are always evolves, so they help us with that as well, providing feedback, what they learned from their audience. So I think it's really important you ask like how we maintain the relationship, I think communication and close connection. Is really important and we try to establish that as much as possible with everyone. What are some of the biggest trends you're seeing in influencer marketing right now? We had like a moment where everyone was trying to put really polished content. And I think that right now everyone is a bit like tired of that. And we are moving back to more natural, organic content with the closer connection with the implants. There's audience. So I really like that trend. I think it's it's amazing that we get to know these people a bit better. And I think relationship they have with their audience is very important and the creator shouldn't forget about that. What advice would you give to someone who's wanting to start a career in influencer marketing? If you want to start a career in influencer marketing, you have to love people and you also have to be very patient. I think. Influencer marketing is. I always say like right now when we're looking for new people to join our team, I always say that this is marketing slash sales job. So you have to know how to convince someone that your product is the best in the world and that they should partner with you and not with someone else or any of your competitors. And also you have to know how to make sure that their audiences see the value in your product. Because only that way creator would make organic integrations and would want to work with you further. So, um, yeah, relationships matter, sales skills matter, negotiation skills matter. So we have to be patient and and really like people.