How to align social media with the marketing mix

0:01My name is Jill Gagan, Editor of Drapers and I'm delighted to welcome you to Draperers Talks, our podcast series bringing you cutting edge content from our live events. This episode was recorded live at Draper's Social Summit on the 20th of May. From unlocking the value of influencer partnerships to navigating emerging platforms, we explored how to cut through the noise, build real communities, and drive measurable growth in an ever-shifting digital landscape. In this episode, Draper's Deputy Editor, Gabrielle Devonaiskas, discusses how social media fits into today's marketing mix with Bonnie Pedlow, Brand Director at Tala, Keely Stocker, Marketing and Ecom Director at Fatbase, and Sarah Ware, Head of Social Media at The Berry Group.

0:43Enjoy! Bonnie, Keely and Sarah, please, to kick us off, set the scene. So where is social media in your marketing strategy now? And while social media budgets are a bit under more scrutiny, I think, how are you currently justifying investment? Bonnie, I'll kick to you. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much. Um, we are a social first brand. We really grew on organic socials and brought paid socials into the mix after the fact. So I'm in a very lucky position where that isn't really questioned. um obviously we have to come to it with fresh perspectives on a regular basis and adapt to the changes we see um but at the end of the day with um community being such a strong point for tala um social media is is at the heart of everything that we do so you don't have to fight too hard for that not too hard keely how about yourself at that phase uh yeah fat base is slightly different more of a heritage brand so definitely not social first from 1988 but a really really important part of our mix now and I think for us it's very much about setting clear KPIs whatever they may be and a KPI per channel I think different channels can be used for very different things and the social team measure them on a monthly basis so that we can see that things are heading in the right direction but I think clear strategy clear KPIs is how you can then get the investment over the line.

2:17Exactly and Sarah how about yourself at Vary Group do you have to kind of fight for that social media spend or is it? It's definitely kind of a piece that's still moving at Vary I would say my role I joined in August last year and so I'm still quite new to business and within that time we've got a whole new social strategy bringing together an organic social influencer are unpaid um so there's definitely been investment a lot of um new headcount as well in the team a lot of new joiners which is really exciting um so it's definitely growing um but yeah we are now really looking to prove that kind of strategy now that it's kind of being rolled out uh looking at how all those new projects are actually kind of landing and getting the right metrics and actually proving that kind of growth back to the business um so that we can carry on growing and building from there but it's an ongoing piece uh we would love more investment for sure within the team but we're getting there absolutely brilliant um and social media now is it more of a conversion tool than uh has it evolved from being purely kind of to build community is it now driving more conversions would you say yes are you nodding i think it absolutely has to be both um and across organic and paid you can do both i think if you were to focus completely on conversion and driving sales actually your audience becomes really disengaged because it doesn't feel authentic it doesn't have the personality um the flip side if we were to focus just on driving that community and it wasn't impacting the business I may get less budget so I have to find a balance of both but I think organic can really help drive that engagement and really create that community and that two-way conversation paid is very much about driving that commercial side of the business absolutely and um Bonnie how about at Tala as well say you know social first brand so how do you balance the two of you know still driving those sales while remaining authentic to your followers yeah um the the answer is in that word you just used which is authenticity it's about um finding ways to engage with our community and our girl in a way that um always feels like we're still speaking to her where she is where she's shopping what the cultural moments are that she is engaging with um and bringing her on our business journey with us um and so we see the the sweet spot it's really being um finding almost a way to blur the line between um community the community focus and then the conversion focus because if she's on the journey with us and hopefully she wants to buy our product too absolutely absolutely and sarah how about at the very group so is it now you know driving that um spend as well as building that community as well yeah for sure i would agree it's definitely very much a balance in terms of ultimately we're here to drive sales we're a retail brand um but we can't do that we can't do the sales piece without kind of the community and the authenticity so we know we really need to bring the channels together so that we have that kind of authentic engagement through organic and influencer and then we support that with paid so for us it's really about how do you bring those three channels together so that than not working in silo which was what we were seeing kind of before we rebuilt our strategy this year um so yeah we're really focused on how to bring them together so it's a real kind of ecosystem we're driving more of that um kind of content and consideration and also that conversion through all of the channels together and how did you kind of prevent the two from working in silo and kind of brought them together i mean again it's an ongoing piece and a huge part of my role i spend my life just talking to all the different teams and trying to bring them together and we're really trying to update our planning process so that we all sit in a room and really know what's kind of um going out across the channels um obviously one of those that works perfectly sometimes and not so perfectly others um but yeah it's really about building those relationships uh giving visibility to all of the teams so that um we know what's coming in and really think about how we optimize for all the channels brilliant um keely like you said fact face is more of a heritage brand so how did you kind of retrofit i guess that social reach into the business I think it's additionally just focusing on your key messages and then looking at how you can translate those messages into content that works on the channels and it can be very different depending on the channel and the KPIs as I said per channel are quite different so if we're looking at what drives traffic to the website it would be Facebook posts, Instagram stories, things like that whereas reels and carousels are more about driving engagement and tiktok which is relatively new for us is about getting our brand in front of a new audience that wouldn't um previously have really considered fat face being a heritage brand and probably their mom and dad shop there or they've seen it when they've been to the seaside at some point so i think it's just using those different channels in different ways that's really interesting um and bonnie i can see you nodding so is it the similar for Tala, like do different platforms serve different purposes?

7:07Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it's interesting to have this conversation of, oh, what's it like for a heritage brand versus kind of a growth focused brand. And a lot of the learnings are the same, that you're using platforms for different purposes, you're using different content types for different purposes. But at the end of the day, it's with KPIs in mind and really having a nuanced approach of what some of those kpis are that some of them aren't numerical um and some of them are about brand sentiment and things like that um where you know influencers play potentially an outsized role so um yeah it's just again it's all about that balance brilliant and touching on that influencer point as well so how does um tala work with different influencers um and how do you balance that impact, I guess, and choose who to work with.

8:00Yeah. I always have a fantastic influencer marketing manager in my team. And I always say to her that what we do is both an art and a science. So it is about finding the right people to talk about the right message at the right time. So there is a lot of sort of that human element and human evaluation while also having, there's a huge amount of data behind influencer marketing. and all of the ways that you can find people that are moving the needle. And maybe, in fact, certainly, same as with content types and channels, different people accomplish different things for the brand. Whether you're looking at that from the size of the influencer and their reach or the type of content that they're really talented at.

8:51So, for example, our, you know, our founder is known for her chatty content. So finding other women that reflect that tone of voice and style is really important to us as a brand. But equally, styling and aesthetics is very, very important to us. So it's, you know, it's having to be flexible and taking opportunities as they come in order to find the right people for the right moment for, you know, the right activations. organizations definitely um and clearly at fat face as well how do you work with content creators influencers yeah i mean totally agree with everything you just said i think it depends on the message and i think we use different influencers or we work with different influencers and content creators for different reasons um we often put them into different buckets so it may be that they actually really support driving commercial but also some of our most important influencers may be micro influencers but they represent our brand values you know we are a B Corp, we absolutely champion sustainability.

9:52We've got some great influencers in that area, as well as inclusivity. So those values are super important. And it's making sure that everyone we work with actually represents those values and the partnerships, we've said this word a million times already today, but feel really authentic. And in that way, we often work with influencers for quite a long period of time, which is not just for the one message. Yeah, absolutely. So that continuity and customers know to trust them. Absolutely. Absolutely. And they can champion your brand if it feels authentic. People believe it, as they should. They're lovely.

10:29And Sarah, how about the very group? I think I've seen some content recently with Michelle Keegan. Yes, Michelle is one of our kind of key talent that we've worked with for, I think it's 10 years next year. So yeah, she has two collections a year, which is amazing. She's one of our kind of hero talents. um we rebuilt our influencer strategy at the same time as our kind of social strategy last year and so we've moved away from kind of just casting influencers based on how many followers they have and we previously had a lot of kind of core fashion influencers um of that kind of uh top tier macro influencer level um but we've moved more into the space um that you two have been talking about in terms of looking at the actual objective of the brief and therefore looking at the segment of influencer that actually will deliver on that brief we know that we need a kind of matrix of different types of influencers coming together regardless of their following um just to hit the kind of different objectives obviously very sales probably most things you can think of under the sun um so that creates a lot of different types of influencer briefs for us so it could mean that we need anyone from kind of a more commercial influencer that will drive sales through to a relator that could be a mum influencer for example where she's talking about kids wear during half term because we know that's a key focus for the very customer um so yeah it's very much kind of looking at what type of content they create their community and how that all builds together across the kind of campaign as a whole to hit the objective.

11:46Lovely. I think the follower point is really interesting as well. I was talking to the team this week and when I first joined Fat Face, we were working with an individual that had worked on a reality show. She'd moved to the countryside. Her content was super relevant for Fat Face. But when working with her, we realized actually her following was more interested in the reality show that she'd been on than the content she was creating so I think it's important to not just check who their influencer is but who's actually following them that's true actually um and I guess how yeah to make sure those followers are there for the right reasons that they resonate with your brand exactly absolutely um with that in mind have you had to kind of separate the business from any you know not naming any names any kind of partnerships before or what do you watch are Are there any kind of risks, I guess, that people look out for that you think need to not work with them?

12:44I think it's just about brand alignment, as you said, really looking into their stats. It's not just about followers. It's, you know, who is that audience in terms of age, demographics, where they live, making sure that's really aligned to your brand so that, you know, there's risk with influencers. As you said, it's art and science, you know, it's not necessarily a formula that, you know, will definitely work with everyone that you contract. and some will work better than others but I think getting that kind of insight up front at least helps to alleviate hopefully some of the risks and so you know we're getting into definitely definitely and Sarah like you said I'm very sells a lot of different categories so yeah appealing to a lot of different demographics um so how do you tailor those social strategies for such a wide breadth I guess of an audience yeah this was a huge piece when we rebuilt the social strategy of actually how do we make sure we don't look really kind of sporadic in feed and talk about laptops one day for just the next and fashion the day after that um so the way that we look at it at very is our kind of organic uh feeds are very much about our community and our core customer so we focus that on our style categories so fashion sports beauty and home with some tech and elect within that um and then we use influencer and pay to actually talk to you the categories wider than that so you know that could be anything from your fridges to your dishwashers to your laptops that's never a same day at Bury um but we know that we need to show up where those those people are leverage influencers that are talking to those um categories that feel really authentic you know there's no point of us talking about that within our feeds when our community isn't following us for that reason we need to make sure we're being really targeted uh with those kind of that content for those specific categories that's really interesting um and Bonnie at Tala so what type of social content formats are driving the strongest engagement currently would you say um That question is always an interesting one because the answer is always a little bit of everything.

14:35There's not one formula for make this type of carousel. It's going to change your algorithm performance. That's not the world we're currently living in. And so for us, it really is about constantly creating diverse content that can reach different people where they are in that moment. So when we look at a week or a month, you know, we have a rollout of an incredibly varied content type, which is a lot of work for the team. But it also keeps things interesting. And, you know, there's a lot of scroll fatigue that exists. And so staying on top of that while also just meeting her again, meeting her where she is, is really important for us.

15:27And so finding new ways to create content has been huge for us. So, for example, we opened our first retail points in 2025. And that has become an incredibly rich vein for us to actually send our content creators into store and have them create content there. um so that wasn't something that was available to us a year ago we opened almost exactly one year ago on carnaby street um and so thinking creatively and and always kind of finding new ways to create content that we can test and learn from and then once we find the sweet spot um in our organics that those that all can be pushed into paid as well um and create that really rich diversity of content in order to hit all the touch points it's just really important pretty nice and do you find um things like saving and sharing as well kind of hit a bit deeper than just likes yeah absolutely i mean i think anyone who spends time on instagram these days from an organic channel perspective has seen that huge shift that likes and likes are kind of a vanity metric at this point and shares and saves are driving that deeper interest.

16:40But that makes sense when you're thinking of someone who's actually looking at this piece of content to say, I want to come back to this later, or I want to share this with somebody who might think like me or might enjoy this or might want this product. Those are really rich actions that your audience are taking. So we do prioritize content that we think is going to create that engagement specifically over a like, which was, you know, I was looking back at posts recently from a few years ago and was shocked at the number of likes compared to where we are today. And it's one of those moments of actually seeing the changes in the algorithm in terms of those metrics.

17:27And that's okay you know it's really meeting again meeting her where she is and it's evolving I guess the way consumers interact as well. Kelly do you find that fat face as well so that level of sharing is a bit. Yeah it's absolutely particularly for this year got a social media manager in the room her number one focus is about driving those engagements and the shares you know we've got a good solid following now across different platforms but it's that that really resonates it's that that keeps the brand at the front of customers minds and and also creates those brand ambassadors that are sharing your messages with other people to your point so yes super super important for us this year and sarah berry group as well do you find a similar yeah definitely i think especially when you're building a community you want to really focus on you know what's that content that's really cutting through with your actual community and your audience you don't just want to be putting content out there that no one really cares about um i think the actual kind of uh level of interaction it needs to save or share a piece of content is so valuable and as you said it shows that someone actually really cares about your content that's so important so yeah we're really looking at kind of how do we make uh those content hooks really valuable for our customer so that we know that it will drive more of that kind of share and uh save and um again ai has been a big talking point at the wider conference so i just wondered um either in the kind of back-end operations of social how your brands are using it or even on the consumer facing front are you using ai at all and how what does that look like yeah um i think that again we one of our superpowers at tala that we feel is that a lot of our workforce is our target customer as well um so you know young ambitious women um who are in their career and care about what's next.

19:17And so what that means is for me as their manager, I have to make sure that I'm upskilling them into this new world of AI and they're completely, you know, it's not me upskilling them. They're upskilling themselves. They're totally taking this on board. And it's really important to do that for efficiency within the team. It would be foolish not to take advantage of tools that can buy you time. But at the same time, What that does is that frees them up to do really creative things that they, you know, they're not preparing some slides or an Excel. Instead, they're able to actually get into the fun stuff and get into the interesting stuff and get into the human stuff.

19:55And so from a team perspective, we're only just getting to the point where that, you know, we're starting to feel even a little bit of that fruition, but we're really excited about where that can take us. we're also a very creative team. So again, it's about freeing people up to do that creativity, but it's also knowing that our customer looking at us can tell the AI exists. And so the idea of putting out a bunch of AI driven content is just really, again, inauthentic to us as a brand. We have an incredible creative team and to not leverage their talents would be an absolute travesty so things like bts content um from our photo shoots or you know when we're creating some weird uh lemon drink thing and we create the bts behind it that stuff performs really well because it's showing the humans behind it um from a creativity perspective so yeah it's it's undeniable It's hugely important.

20:56It's both where our team and our customer are having to take steps forward. But at the same time, our objective is to find ways that that actually increases our creativity and our human touch points. Brilliant. Keene, you're kind of nodding along there as well. Yeah, exactly the same, to be honest. We're very, very early days in terms of even investigating how we can best use it for social at the moment. But it will very much be about driving efficiency in the team and allowing that creativity. I think in terms of using it for creativity, we quickly learned from our community that they weren't a fan of AI when we posted.

21:42I don't know if everyone remembers the doll trend. It was an AI doll. Yes. And we had a very strong reaction from our community that they were not a fan. Interesting. So we've learned that and we are much more cautious. But I think in terms of driving efficiency, yes, we need to be looking to it. Brilliant. Thank you. And how about yourself, Sarah? Yeah, I'd probably echo the same thing, to be honest. It's definitely more in terms of kind of how can we drive efficiency within the team to kind of unlock more creativity. I think we know that on social, so many people do know when it's AI content and we want to remain authentic.

22:19So I think it's all about that balance so that we can free up the team to do what they do best. But it's definitely a journey that we're going on at Avery as well in terms of how do we actually leverage AI in the right way? What tools do we need, etc? So, yeah, excited to see where it can go. Definitely. Thank you. And with that in mind, are there any other type of challenges that you see kind of relating to social media for the rest of the year? Like, is there more noise than ever? How do you break through? How do you reach consumers? How direct, Bonnie? You're sat next to me. I feel like socials is a new challenge every day which is part of why I love my job but it's also what makes that question really really hard to answer you know you can wake up to a new feature on the algorithm and have to pivot so again it's really going back to the things that are important to your brand from a brand values perspective from a community perspective and just making sure that you're always touching on those no matter what the kind of external forces are telling you or necessitating that you do in terms of your adaptations just getting back to those brand values and those brand roots so no singular challenge except for the fact that it is a new challenge every day just just the new challenge every day easy easy Katie how about yourself anything that you're aware of this year um yeah I mean you always have to cut through the noise right it is a very competitive space and you need to capture attention in that space so I think it is about knowing who you are as a brand what your key messages are and how you can take a unique twist on those messages so that you stop people whilst they're scrolling and I think the other challenge for us and I'm sure for many people in the room is where do you put your resource you know social teams are often quite small there's a lot of channels to manage so how do you balance um where that resource goes and where those budgets go so I think again it just comes back to who do you want to be as a brand um and what do you want those messages to be and making sure you're focusing on those and paying attention to trends but the ones that really are relevant for you not just trying to jump on everything that's happening because there's a lot happening yeah absolutely definitely sarah how about yourself yeah i definitely agree with that as well in terms of kind of resource and just making sure you work and actually matters to the brand um i think cutting through the noise is always a challenge and for every brand on social um there's more and more content uh we know that um a very we're really looking into how do we stay really distinctive and we have our social strategy which really looks at how do we create content that's in that intersection of polished and playful we know that's kind of the white space between our competitors so we're now really kind of doubling down on how to make sure that really shows up across all of our content and across all of the categories as well.

25:15I think also just knowing our customer and how much there is going on in the world at the moment, how do we also balance that within our content? She's juggling a lot with her family. She's got a lot of financial pressure. There's so much that kind of goes into that in terms of what's happening in the world as well. So we know that we need to be kind of really conscious of that and still show up in a very kind of mindful, authentic and useful way for her, just knowing that she also has all of that Kind of stunning pressures to do. Yes, exactly. Lovely. We have a few minutes for some questions from our audience.

25:46So a really popular one has been, what are the key KPIs you measure for success of your brands on organic and paid social? I might direct that to you, Bonnie, again. Sorry. Yeah, no problem. I don't think there will be any surprises here in terms of, you know, the key KPIs are the ones we all know and love. So for organic reach and engagement. So and looking at more specific engagements like those shares and saves as well as new follower growth. I mean, it's the stuff we've been looking at for years. So the way I look at it is more in reaction to what happened over that period of time. And is that a good barometer reading or not?

26:33So not getting caught up in the like, oh, we didn't meet this exact KPI, but it's looking at it within the context of, you know, what campaigns were we actually running during that time or what product launches did we have during that time? And was it a good reaction as opposed to the kind of monthly KPI that runs across your board? It's really being conscious of in reaction to that. And then on a paid social side, it's, you know, again, it's the ones we all know and love. But again, it's more about the ones that are behind it is potentially more interesting. So we as a team meet with Organic and Paid every week and look at content success rates.

27:17So how much content do we make as a team? How much got pushed over into Paid? How many of those were winners? So as opposed to just looking at ROAS or CPMs or things like that, it's also digging into the how did we work really well cross-functionally and the success rates of our content production. Because obviously that's from a resource management perspective, a huge part of what we do is making sure that we're creating enough content, the right kinds of content. So looking at that, I guess I'm trying to find you a more interesting KPI. And that's definitely one of them for us is kind of the content flow.

27:54KPI is a good one for us. That's really interesting. And a bit of a kind of team question. So how many people are in your social teams? And what is your recommendation for best working practice? I think we've mentioned that social media teams are usually small. So how do you best kind of amplify the talent that's within them? I might pick on you, Keeley. Hang on. Our social, organic social team is three people and we work with an agency for paid. I think they're incredibly busy. They are out at events. They are on shoots. They are trying to react to trends. They are trying to push our key messages.

28:35So they have to be incredibly organized but creative at the same time. and I think it's really really having a clear strategy as to what content um how you translate that content onto the channels so we know for Facebook for us we can put up a simple image and it will work that will not work on other channels so Facebook can be managed quite simply in that way other channels take a bit more creativity um and different formats so it's really getting into the weeds of where should that team be spending their time um because it is only three people and yeah that's a lot of channels to manage absolutely definitely um and another question for so for the brands that are perhaps on a bit of a budget so how can brands build genuine community engagement on low budgets while still meeting well the pressure or you know the need to put product on social so small budget big impact I guess um Sarah I'll throw this one to you maybe yeah of course um so I would say it's all about finding what actually your customer cares about like why do they want to follow you on social um I think really finding that kind of reason for being will help you to grow actual community engagement um for us we really did a lot of deep diving into our customer and what do they care about who are they following all of that kind of thing so that we could find that kind of unique uh reason um and then i think it's all around kind of how do you kind of stay authentic we're really looking into how do we leverage more of our um kind of employees within our content we know that obviously works there's so many brands doing that um so we've recently launched our very vips which is really exciting leveraging um yeah different employees across the business to bring their kind of not only their knowledge for if they're a kind of designer or buyer or what they might do in the business to talk about product authentically but also their personal passion points again coming back to kind of this real kind of cross category question and uh problem for us at mary that we need to talk about and we want to find people that can talk to all of those categories they might have yeah a passion outside of work that they can really authentically talk to those products so i think it's yeah really finding that reason to being and then really thinking about what makes you feel authentic to actually build more of that kind of community and engagement i think for fashion brands as well you referenced it earlier but you've got a lot of experts within the business so it's using whether it's store crew or product teams you know getting them involved in social because they understand your product they know the quality they know the design behind it so if you can encourage them to be part of your social mix they absolutely authentically champion your brand and you can create conversations as well on social channels that take no budget whatsoever but actually if you create something unique and start a conversation um that that can actually get more engagement than something that's got a whole load of budget behind it utilize the experts we already have yeah exactly brilliant well thank you so much that's all we have time for unfortunately but thank you very much to our fan panelist thanks thank you this podcast was brought to you by drapers delivering you exclusive content from Draper's Social Summit.

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