Who do you listen to? Who do you trust? If someone made a recommendation to try a product, how eager would you be to take action on that?
The concept of the social influencer is growing up, and investors are eager to be a part of it. Case in point: the recent $1 million funding round for Social Nature. The company helps natural brands to promote their products, leveraging a community of over 100,000 influencers.
The funding will allow the Canadian startup to double its team from five to 10 over a business quarter, and build up their overall capacity. The investment came from 10 organizations and individuals, including Shopify co-founder Scott Lake, the Pereira / Wharton Family, HIGHLINE VC, and others. The fundraising will help Social Nature scale up, but CEO Annalea Krebs notes that another benefit from the investors is the quality of strategic connections and advice they can get as they grow.
“Influencer marketing is up, capitalizing on a lot of different trends,” said Krebs. “The new generation of millennials are sick and tired of the old way of doing things, and are looking for different ways to connect. At the same time, ad blocking is happening more, reducing conversion rates on advertising. This lends itself to influencer marketing.”
The influencers they include in their program are a bit different than how they’re portrayed in traditional influencer marketing campaigns. “The influencers you’ve been hearing about are bloggers or those on social media, who might have 50,000 followers,” or celebrity social media influencers.
These influencers would be paid to talk about a product. Social Nature instead focuses on the everyday conversations among friends, such as millennial mothers who may have a reach of just 750 across two social networks – yet might have a more effective response from those they reach.