Influencer Marketing: Your Guide To Getting Real Results

0:00But the reality of owning a vagina is that often these things are fairly mundane and ordinary, right? you menstruate typically every 28 to 35 days. You may have intercourse with a new partner and things pop up. These are all very like normal things. So theoretically, they aren't as nuanced or topical as one might think. Hi, I'm your host, Shuang Esther Shan, and welcome to Shopify Masters, your companion for launching and growing your business. A lot of founders want their brand to do more than just sell great products. They want to change their industry. For the Honey Pot is all about creating products and resources to support vaginal health.

0:46Giovanna Alfieri is the VP of Marketing and she has taken the brand's message and the network of influential creators to make the Honey Pot a household name. Giovanna is my guest today and we'll learn all about her strategies for marketing that goes beyond social media and creating a lasting impact. Giovanna, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. This was going to be fun. Yeah. So, I mean, the honeypot has really shifted the industry and also what we think about when we hear the words vaginal care. And I think that is credited to you and the team for such a great job in different marketing techniques where you're not really just pushing the product, but you're sharing stories and And also you're sharing the brand's identity and concept.

1:36How does one achieve that actually? Yeah. I mean, I think that there is a level of intimacy that both myself and the team have with the brand in totality, whether that's through the lens of being vagina owners or just understanding what has been sort of lacking in the industry at large. I think that when you're thinking about such a legacy category that is also about ordinary needs, that having that level of intimacy and vulnerability in the context of marketing and how that informs your strategy is hugely important. So we have to facilitate very safe spaces where the micro experiences of team members or of humans or those feedback loops that we're tapping into are actually leveraged as points of conversation.

2:22And the idea is how can we sort of cradle them, nurture them, and bring them into the macro. And what we've seen by doing that, meaning, you know, extrapolating micro experiences and turning them into macro conversations, campaigns, you name it, is that everyone inevitably has that, oh my goodness moment. This is so deeply relatable. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for creating the space. And so I think what's hugely important for brands is not to say to deprioritize bottom line or deprioritize selling things, but rather understanding how you can do two things in conjunction, the whole notion of two things being true.

2:59and understanding that at times you may be making, well, hopefully not massive fiscal risks, but you may be sidestepping from the bottom line growth to make sure that the community growth is prioritized. And I think that we've done a really meaningful job of finding that balance, really holding true against our brand pillars and making that be the North Star and this idea of service. So being in service to our humans is the guiding principle for us, whether that's through the lens of education or innovation and the products that we choose to bring to market. It's this energy of service and how are we actually serving people.

3:38And moreover, I think, you know, when you think of D2C darling brands or just the kind of exponential growth that a lot of brands have in market, there is the tendency to lose sight of what building a legacy is, right? And so there's this idea of, you know, kind of quick growth, let's go, let's move things, but not looking at kind of the long-term implications or the effects that you're making on both the marketplace and the humans that are using your product. And I think that for us being rooted in this notion of building a legacy that is disrupting the antiquated norms of a category is been sort of the secret sauce.

4:15One of the things that I think is also really important, just as like a tidbit or a guiding principle for humans who are looking to either build a brand or scale said brand is like, what would the category look like if you weren't in it? So if you were not playing in this category, what would some of those needs be? Ingest those needs and kind of use them to inform either the foundation of your business or kind of the ongoing evolution of your strategy. Yeah, really thinking about the change you want to create within the industry and also beyond. And I think it really ties back to one of the concepts you mentioned, which is education, which is often really tough to do.

4:56And especially for the honeypot, there's so much nuance and there's so much education to be done. How do you do it and still make it entertaining for the community? Yeah. So like I said, I think one thing was making it relatable. That's important. It's the conversations that you would have with your friends, your family members, your most trusted confidant, and that is one immediate bridge for sort of minimizing the potential shame or discomfort that comes from the educational topics that we cover. Humor is a massive opportunity for us to, again, get into those sticky subjects or those things that we've been unfortunately conditioned to feel are inappropriate, lewd, you name it.

5:38And so for us, using those two perspectives, again, that form of confidence, that tone of safety and security and that tone of relatability has been a huge vehicle for our education to be digestible, to be referenced, etc. And then humor, making it fun, right? So we know that humor often kind of suppresses personal belief systems or things of that nature and opens up an opportunity to simply laugh or to have that moment of reflection. And so I think the brand has done just such an incredible job in the touch points where it makes sense to leverage humor to create that connection. And that has been a tactic that is important to us, but also one that we don't sort of abuse either or exploit, right?

6:25Because then we don't want to be perceived as not having research or science backed and that we're kind of making a joke out of the experience. but rather what you'll see is our high-level content might have an angle of humor, but then the caption, per example, will be something that is deeply insightful, that has reference points, and is science-backed. So I think it's that juxtaposition that's really important and that ability to know the space and to be the space as well and to know that, you know, what those contrasting points of views that can come up, what those contrasting conditionings are, and sort of creating a strategy around that.

7:01Yeah, because humor makes you more authentic and relatable, but you also want that authority and also the grasp of being knowledgeable on the topics that you're talking about. I think one of the areas that's very nuanced is the fact that the honeypot uses different ingredients like aloe and mint. And oftentimes there are so many social media posts talking about, oh, you can't have those ingredients for maybe your pads or your tampons. So how does the team take that complex issue and handle it and actually have clarification around that subject? Yeah. I mean, I think if we look at it through the lens of brand or business building, one thing that's hugely important is having a point of differentiation, right?

7:50And for us, having that point of differentiation is really leaning on herbal healing modalities to infuse into our products. Being plant-derived is a huge point of differentiation for us, and it's important to us. It's important for us to have a grasp on both the ingredients that we use at present and those kind of innovative ingredients down the pipeline. And so from the pure products perspective and business in terms of a point of differentiation, it was hugely important to us when we're thinking about disrupting a category where there isn't a ton of innovation or diversity of thought in the product is how can we bring something as ancestral as an herb to the forefront where we can start – the humans who consume our products can start making relationships with new ingredients and have a new expectation on what their menstrual or vaginal wellness products can provide.

8:40So I think one is really underscoring the point of difference and why being powered by herbs is so important to us. But then on the flip side to kind of revisit the apex of your question is there's hesitation, right? There's often either past use cases where someone has had an aversion to X products or ingredients, or there's also just a sheer hesitance of like, why would I need that? And I think what we do is take both those conversations and are very gentle with them because we think that they're very meaningful discourse. It's like we're not suggesting that you internally wash your vagina, nor do we suggest that your vagina smell or look a certain way.

9:22What we're saying is that for a large swath of humanity, there is a need to clean their vulva, be it due to high amounts of sweat or discomfort or any number of normal things. And what we're saying is that humans should have a choice to do what's best for them. But they should also have a choice to do what is best for them under the guise of really trusted products, right? And so that is where the kind of herbal component comes in. Washes are, you know, again, highly antiquated, have been in the space for a number of years, and they have really, really crummy ingredients. And so for us, it was taking a commercial product and giving it a meaningful spin.

10:02And so for us, it's actually facing those questions head on, but also giving humans the agency to make the decisions that are best for them. We are not prescribing that you absolutely have to use the honeypot to be vaginally well or to have some level of wellness. But we're suggesting that if you are looking to build a ritual for care, that we should be the number one brand for you. And so I actually think that the dialogue and the challenge of it is important because I think we all have kind of blindly trusted brands and that can be both a great experience but a terrible one as well. And I think the reminder for humans listening who are trying to build their brand is, from my point of view, a brand is the promise of an experience.

10:50And so for us, that experience is delivered through education, but it's surely and most importantly delivered through the products. and delivered through the humans who need those products. As someone who looks after all of the marketing, all of the conversations, there is a great balance that's needed to follow trends and create content that is trending or be a part of conversation. But then you also want to create your own type of campaigns, your own kind of content. how do you go about balancing newness in your own right and also following suit at the same time? So there's a few ways to answer this question.

11:33I think first and foremost, like, I think we all have a desire to look immediately to the competition and be like, ooh, what are they doing? Like, is there anything that we can plug and play from there? I think that just breeds more sameness. And that's personally not interesting to me as a consumer, nor as a marketer. And so I think really the ability to like get external to pull inspiration from like I referenced a bit ago like micro experiences things that you're seeing are actually what's trending because that's fundamentally the things that people care about so I think the one is like instead of looking next to you looking beyond you and looking beyond what's kind of in the closest reach to drive that kind of inspiration or really extrapolate meaningful conversations I think secondarily the reason that we're all in this sort of trend-driven content mentality is because we know that that's what drives visibility.

12:29So I don't know that we're all so acutely dialed into the like cultural implications of that, but rather, oh, this could be an interesting way to go viral or to get this message out to more people. And so I actually don't know that the trends are what the brand is most keen on following. It's kind of like what happens post-trend that I think we find really interesting. So whether it's we know that music, let's just say, certain songs on TikTok or that's how you're going to build a video asset, it's thinking about is that song the right song for our brand first and foremost, but also what conversation are we looking to drive by leveraging this song, right?

13:13It's like, again, are we just doing this for search visibility or to somehow get a prominence on a For You page? Are we actually doing it because we can make a really unique and brand-specific connection with it? And so I think that that's a challenge for a team because we're moving high-quality content at pace. Like, it is fast. There's a lot coming at us, and there's a lot of output. And the team is managing now an ecosystem that is very diverse and the needs of which are very different. And so I think it becomes really important to kind of ask the fundamental question of like the why and also if we do it, how are we doing it differently?

13:50But the reality of owning a vagina is that often these things are fairly mundane and ordinary, right? You menstruate typically every 28 to 35 days. You may have intercourse with a new partner and things pop up. These are all very like normal things. So theoretically, they aren't as nuanced or topical as one might think. And so it's actually our ability to craft and shift the story and the content of those basic things to read differently every time. And so the way that we do that is thinking about menstruation in the form of archetypes, right? So these are some really basic examples of how we might do that.

14:34But for example, there is a pad user versus a tampon user, or we do vulva washes. There's a bevy and breadth of different essences. So maybe the archetype of a person who prefers sensitive to Amber Sandalwood would also like content position differently. And so for us, it's actually about creating that sentiment between brand product and the human on the other end of it and starting to create topics of relevance to each of those touch points. And I love the fact that you brought up the different archetypes and having them in mind when you're creating content, because a lot of founders talk about collecting customer data, industry data to understand different profiles of your possible customers.

15:22What are your tips for getting the archetypes right? And what exercises do you do to actually craft those profiles? Yeah, that's a great question. So I think that there are certainly the tried and true sort of data-focused tactics such as segmentation studies and focus groups and things of that nature that allow you to actually collect those insights. I feel very strongly that data can only take you so far, right? So the idea of someone putting some kind of like value or number on me personally is very upsetting. And so I like to look at the data as that like entry point of where you can start asking questions.

16:03And so it's about, okay, great, I have this segmentation study. I understand that my consumer set is sort of divided up against numerous iterations of this segment, but then start asking the questions, right? So why does this human identify with X buying pattern? What would it look like to change their perspective on this and start really asking more of those kinds of like therapeutic psychoanalytical questions of like, how can we take this a step deeper? And that has been definitely a guiding principle for the strategy on our end. It's also about understanding like, again, those little behaviors.

16:41We want to be the brand that is the example I always present is you're on a road trip, you get your period. I want to be the brand that is at, you know, any number of rest stops that you go to when you have that oh crap moment, right? And that takes a lot. It takes the brand awareness, the brand, you know, exceptions and understanding, but it also takes the ability to like distribute and physically be present there. And I think that that's hard for, you know, a smaller brand to achieve, but we're certainly on the path towards that. And I think that the data helps inform what that roadmap looks like and how we inevitably get there.

17:17But I think it's a bit too one-dimensional to craft a strategy purely on absorbing first-party data and using the mechanics of a CRM. It gets you so far, but then there's going to be a plateau. And that plateau is going to be like your audience saying, hey, this brand used to work for me, but you guys have gotten so far from my value set or from my needs or what have you. Yeah, because that connection might not fit into a segment or an archetype. And it's sometimes one-off, quantitative. It just, to your point, works in that gut connection anyways. But I guess like having that foundation of the different archetypes also help you to involve either creators or customers within the community.

18:07Talk to us about involving them within your marketing strategies and making them a part of how you market and communicate as well. Yeah, so I think it's about concentric circles, right? So you kind of start at the segmentation or the assumptions, what have you, and then start to build from there. And so the way that we think of content creators are that quote unquote build, right? It's the concentric circles around potentially these core definitions or the core segments or the core kind of elements of our community and extending well beyond that. And I think that the way that we do that is by having such an immediate connection to our community who truly has been rocking with the brand since the beginning.

18:49And so having that level of one-to-one communication and connection with an audience, candidly good or bad, is such a gift and such a great place to kind of launch from. And so for us, I think that when we're thinking about archetypes, when we're thinking about content creators, it's really about that extension from the core and understanding, you know, and I'll give you kind of an example. We will be having a huge launch into a new category. And for us, this is both tremendously exciting and also scary, right? We are known as a vaginal wellness brand, and we are taking so much of that knowledge and extending it into a new category.

19:29But that also is a challenge, right? But when we were thinking about the strategy with which we would go to market, one of the main things that came to mind was, okay, well, we could go the traditional beauty influencer route. We could go this route, right? Those are all of pertinence to both this product segment and, you know, those audiences are inherently of value to us. But what if we dug a little deeper? And what that meant to us is like digging a little deeper was how about an esthetician or how about someone who is experiencing really hard skin conditions where they are also educating their audience on their personal experience and can lead with that and then sort of naturally segue into talking about products.

20:15So for us, that was really important was, again, is on its head or these are core community members or core consumers or, you know, do they fit neatly into the segmentation study? Probably not. However, we know that because of the tone and hierarchy that they've created within their community, that they're going to be value aligned with us and be able to distill our messaging through the lens of education first, you know, personal experience second, and then, you know, kind of product third. That's really kind of, you know, the way that we both think about it and how we inform the decision making process.

20:52Love getting a sense of the thinking that goes on before product expansion and also building up this community. Before we dig into things even deeper, I wanted to take a moment and thank our listeners for tuning into the show. Make sure you're following or subscribe to Shopify Masters and share this episode with a friend. And we always love reading your reviews and comments. So don't be afraid to leave us your thoughts for the show. Thank you so much. So the other part I love about how the honeypot works with influencers is also your focus on maybe nichere influencers, micro influencers who might not have the biggest following, but they also contribute their own stories to the different topics.

21:45What is your approach for selecting creatives to collaborate with? I think this is where I get like data doesn't matter again, right? Because the idea is like are we looking for many to few conversations, many to many conversations, right? Like that is where the strategy comes from. It's like what is the ultimate objective of not the campaign in totality but this singular piece of content, right? Because we know the campaign in totality is intended to have reach, impressions, conversions, all of those great things at the highest level. But the idea is like very, very narrowly focused on that one piece of content and that one content creator.

22:23And so for us, I think, again, why I say data doesn't matter is because if you have a social media account, you have an audience that cares about what you're doing. Even me personally, I don't have a tremendous amount of followers, but when I post, people care, right? That is the point of social media. And so for us, what it is, is again, finding people who can reflect our values back at us whilst producing meaningfully creative content. It's also an effort to satisfy the ongoing content engine because there's only so much an internal social team can do. There's only so much an agency can do. And what's powerful about micro, macro, otherwise, or just influencers in general, is the ability to deliver against the brief in a way that shows some level of connection and understanding to the brand.

23:14And so I think for us, what we have done is just really looked at content creation as ways to propagate messaging that matters to us and also be able to satisfy the tone of the brand, right? It's really hard for agencies to replicate our humor. But what we find is there's like a large number of micro influencers that actually can take that tone and voice very organically because they're just naturally funny or they don't have to think twice about it. And so for us, it's just been a matter of kind of almost humanizing the strategy, but also not devaluing or overvaluing certain parts of the funnel or certain types of people.

24:00And just saying, like, we want content that connects with people and is funny and is educational. If those three things are being delivered, then however that kind of ebbs and flows across the strategy, it's totally fine because it's delivering against that objective. I think back to how a lot of conversations you have around vaginal care or period care is happening with your friends. And I feel like selecting those creators that makes it feel like you're just chatting with a friend and getting their take is so important. And to your point, that might not look great in the metrics, but it does look great on the way that it resonates with whoever's watching it.

24:41Yeah, I mean, there's a reason why Tupperware parties worked, right? Like, if you can kind of mirror or model things off of that, it's that level of like intimacy and familiarity. It seems so like far in our past, but there's a reason why this kind of community to your exact point, one-to-one conversation, something that feels hyper intimate, something that feels deeply authentic, like works. And the thing I've always guided the team on as it pertains to strategy or more importantly, the way that we design content is like, let's make it feel like you're in someone's living room. Obviously, our products are used in the bathroom.

25:20So that metaphor gets extended accordingly. But it's just the general idea of like if you were welcoming someone into your home and you were just hanging out and conversing, like what would that conversation look and feel like? Also great that you brought up Tupperware parties because parlays perfectly to my next question about in-person events. I do think the team took a great swing with working with the Beyonce concert in Atlanta, which is so cool. Talk to us about some of the strategies that went behind it and what makes a good in-person event that resonates. So the Beyonce example is, of course, was a sampling activation at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.

26:05And so as I'm sure you guys can imagine, it's quite challenging to find the avenues for sampling menstrual products or vulva care products, right? It's not like you pop into Costco, there's like a little, you know, setup, you can hand those things out, right? It's quite a selective and narrow experience, and it has to be designed really intentionally and can often take exorbitant amounts of funds or just takes a level of working with a retailer in a deeper way, especially when we're, you know, focused on kind of the commercial elements of our business. And so when this sampling opportunity was presented via a vending machine that's like highly technological, super cool, we worked with a partner called Strapped on it, and also it was like, you know, customizable and all of these things, felt like the appropriate footprint, right?

26:50You're in the bathroom, you're at a concert, things are happening, things may not be happening, or you're just simply curious. I've seen this brand kind of floating around in the ether, would love to learn more. And so for us, it was the way to kind of going back to the last question, like be in the living room or be in the bathroom in that moment. But going back to the broader question as it pertains to in-person events or just experiential in general, I think that for us what's really important, again, is we don't have like a sexy brand that you can come and just like try on makeup and leave and look really like cool.

27:25For us, we have to go a level deeper. And that's why between our Reclaiming Wellness efforts, which is our Black History Month campaign, our HBCU efforts, or any of the additional touch points that we've had the beauty of interacting with from an experiential level, it's about how can we create a forum for education that is rooted in our brand principles? And then the extra layer is making what I just called unsexy, sexy through proxy of other experiences, bringing in other humans who focus on wellness or who focus on education or community building or all of these other things. So for us, events are very layered.

28:07It's not just like we can do a fun pop-up with really great florals and really great light bites and say like, okay, cool, we penetrated the market, right? For us, it's about being able to create a very dynamic thing and for you to walk away and be like, huh, I kind of felt like I went to a master class or I went to, you know, a women's studies class and I walked away kind of gathering this perspective versus feeling like you were at some tried and true brand event that was pretty one dimensional. all. And also to your point where when you're at a beauty pop-up or a beauty event, it almost feels more traceable because people might be wearing the product and then therefore it's being talked about versus Honey Pod's products are more intimate and you can't really tell someone walking around from someone else.