Millennial Made Trillionaire

Going from Designer to CEO

The journey to becoming a CEO for a celebrity of a designer involves getting the right skills and the right infrastructure. Since designers are not taught the business aspect of their brand, they need to have the right empathetic infrastructure. This is an infrastructure that supports their creativity and people who will support their dreams. You will need to hire the right people to work for you and helping in the management of every aspect of your business. These are the people taking care of areas of business that the designer is not skilled in, like litigation, human resources, business development, marketing, and more.

In an interview with Anthony Egbuniwe sat down with Kenneth Anand, COO at Roth House to discuss how a designer can go from a designer to CEO. The interview shed some light on how designers and celebrities can grow to operate their own business.

Get the Right People to Work with You

Yeezy is a great example of a brand that grew after the founder sort out the right people to work for the brand. Even before establishing Yeezy, Kanye always said more designers and artists should have fewer managers and agents who just take their cut. Instead, they should have more CEOs and heads of business development who bring revenue and chances for growth to the table. This view can be effective in building and taking a business to the next level.

If you are a celebrity looking to create your brand, it would make more sense to bring in someone who can grow your brand for you. Not someone who will help you, manager, your business for a cut of your profits. When Kanye realized the importance of working with the right people, he created an infrastructure for growth by bringing in people who could add value to his brand.

For you to go from being just a designer to a CEO, you need to align yourself with the right kind of people. Virgil aligns with top lawyers to ensure his deals are done correctly and that his brand is growing in the right direction. This is the same thing that designers, celebrities, and creatives need to do for their brand or their business to move to the next level. You need to align yourself with the right lawyers, a good CEO, and people that will help you run your brand as a business.

Looking at an artist like Jay Z, they manage their business so well by having the right people by their side. He has different kinds of people that he trusts to run his businesses and ensure everything is running smoothly. His team comprises of lawyers, staff, business development people, agents, Roc Nation, and more. These are the people ensuring that his brand is growing and meeting each target. The add value to the business on their own unique capacities. For instance, lawyers take care of litigation issues, business development people work to build the brand and protect its reputation.

Having a model where you got different people taking care of different aspects of your business will definitely take you to the next level. As a celebrity, you should not be thinking your manager will handle everything. As much as this may sound cool or an easy-to-implement solution, it will weigh out both you and your manager. But with a proper model, you will be able to take everyone accountable for their actions and contributions to your business. You will be able to ask questions like why the CEO is not brought in more business or the salesperson is not out there selling my merchandise.

Although artists and celebrities are used to doing everything on their own, they need to get to a place where they can trust and believe in other people. If you bring in the right people, then you can grow into a conglomerate that runs its own business. You will not have to worry that your manager is not doing enough. Instead, you will have people handling specific areas of their specialization in the business.

Building Infrastructure with Empathy

Most people do not empathize with artists because they do not understand them. They look at them as a freak, asking questions like why do they dress in a certain type of way or presenting themselves in a certain type of way. They may not understand why artists wear a certain type of hair or why they rap in a certain way. As a result, most artists are not understood until years later. However, artists are the people that pave the way for innovations and new creative ways of doing things. By putting an infrastructure around the artist, we empower them to manage their own art and their own business.

Celebrities and artists usually lack the capacity to be their own CEO and business managers. Without proper education, they need a partner to manage their business for them and ensure everything is running smoothly. This is where the importance of having proper infrastructure to grow them as a brand comes in. A business structure in which the brand is managed as a business with all the right people reporting to the designer as the CEO. Although a designer may lack ability to be CEOs, they can be taught that and how to manage their business better. For instance, the 10% that they spend to run their business with other people around them may be enough. However, if they are not taught this, other people keep on taking advantage of them under the name of an artist manager asking for a 25% or even 40% to run their business.

Bottom Line

Artists need to understand and appreciate the fact that they draw all the income. They are the ones who got the juice, swag, art, creativeness, and everything needed to bring in the money. Getting into a deal with someone who takes 25% or 40% of what you bring to your business is not sensical. You need to build a team of experts capable of handling every core aspect of your business.

Co-Branding and Collaborations Within DTC

Multiple co-branding and collaborations are offering more benefits to DTC brands. This has seen companies producing better products and meeting the needs of their customers better. However, designers need to be careful when making deals or entering into partnerships with established companies. Before entering into any partnership, designers need to determine how much they are bringing to the partnership and what the brand is offering.

Choosing the Right Collaborations

The reputation of a company in the market is determined by consumer perception of it. The better the reputation of a company, the better it will perform in the market. If a brand is labelled as unreliable or untrustworthy, it is unlikely it will perform well in the market. Such a reputation negatively affects how partners choose to engage with the company for a co-branding venture. The opposite for this is true as good reputation results in a favorable company performance.

Looking at Virgil Abloh’s model of operation, not everyone can work with it comfortably. His model works in a way where consistently Virgil has not watered down his core values and aesthetics. He has done it so many times that it looks more legit every time he introduces a new product. However, other people would choose a different model from what Virgil does. If you were to do a collaboration with Coca-Cola or AVR and it did not come out successfully, you will likely think they sold you out. However, Virgil has done it to a point where it is no longer a sellout. In fact, this has turned out to be his nature or being when dealing with others.

As a designer, you need to consider whether you want to align yourself with any particular brand. You need to think beyond the collaboration and what it will do to your followers. Think of whether your followers will vibe with the collaboration or they will think that you sold out. For instance, if you decide to collaborate with Fila, will your followers think you sold out or they will now like Fila even more. When Yeezy collaborated with Adidas, it had a phenomenal impact on its followers that influenced them to wear more of Adidas.

Designers Need to Impact the Company the Work With

A real designer should have a significant effect on a brand they choose to collaborate with. Think of whether you are going to put a halo effect on the company or you're going to leave your followers looking for solutions elsewhere. Although it is difficult for an artist or a designer to build confidence in themselves, it can go a long way in imparting a company in the right way. A good designer should be able to walk up straight to a company and tell them that is is what they are bringing to the table.

Nobody saw a pair of Jordan 1 the same way until Virgil cut up the tongue, slicing up the upper part. He brought a new idea that no one has seen before, impacting everyone across the board. Although some people may argue that he only rethought of a shoe that already existed, no one saw that before him. As much as it is easy to hate it after it has been done, it is very difficult to spot it before it is done.

If you are a designer, you need to look at life from your own lens. Think of how you can make something better, and then present your idea to a brand of your choice. Give the company or the corporation a reason to hire you. They should have an interest in what you bring and the uniqueness of your brand.

Why Companies Do Not Give Full Recognition to Designers

If you are the CEO of a big company, with all the investors and shareholders, you will be more concerned about their trust in your capabilities. Going to the shareholders and announcing that Kanye West is the sole reason the brand grew 5X over the last five years could trigger negative reactions and perceptions to the company. You need to think of what would happen if Kanye walks away when partnership does not work or the sales start to decline for some reason. So, the focus on the CEO and the management is to tell the shareholders that everything is going great without having to give any recognition to a particular designer.

While the consumer will focus on how good certain shoes are selling, the CEO will look at it from the standpoint of how great the company is doing. They will attribute the growth of the company toa certain product without necessarily praising a particular designer. There is no way the CEO will put all his eggs in one basket. Instead, he will look at the whole portfolio and what it means to the company. The moment you attribute the success to a particular designer, it could signal your downfall if the sales decline or the partnership fails to work out.

Designers Outside a Brand are the Disrupters

The nature of work or the contributions of the designers to a particular field makes them disrupters. Essentially, the work of the designer is to make you see things in the way you have never seen or thought of before. They will always ask why things have to always look in a particular manner and try to put something new out there. They have the ability to connect in ways that have never been done before and speak to others of many different levels. By introducing new ideas and ways of doing things, designers are the ultimate disrupters.

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Going from Designer to CEO

The journey to becoming a CEO for a celebrity of a designer involves getting the right skills and the right infrastructure. Since designers are not taught the business aspect of their brand, they need to have the right empathetic infrastructure. This is an infrastructure that supports their creativity and people who will support their dreams. You will need to hire the right people to work for you and helping in the management of every aspect of your business. These are the people taking care of areas of business that the designer is not skilled in, like litigation, human resources, business development, marketing, and more.

In an interview with Anthony Egbuniwe sat down with Kenneth Anand, COO at Roth House to discuss how a designer can go from a designer to CEO. The interview shed some light on how designers and celebrities can grow to operate their own business.

Get the Right People to Work with You

Yeezy is a great example of a brand that grew after the founder sort out the right people to work for the brand. Even before establishing Yeezy, Kanye always said more designers and artists should have fewer managers and agents who just take their cut. Instead, they should have more CEOs and heads of business development who bring revenue and chances for growth to the table. This view can be effective in building and taking a business to the next level.

If you are a celebrity looking to create your brand, it would make more sense to bring in someone who can grow your brand for you. Not someone who will help you, manager, your business for a cut of your profits. When Kanye realized the importance of working with the right people, he created an infrastructure for growth by bringing in people who could add value to his brand.

For you to go from being just a designer to a CEO, you need to align yourself with the right kind of people. Virgil aligns with top lawyers to ensure his deals are done correctly and that his brand is growing in the right direction. This is the same thing that designers, celebrities, and creatives need to do for their brand or their business to move to the next level. You need to align yourself with the right lawyers, a good CEO, and people that will help you run your brand as a business.

Looking at an artist like Jay Z, they manage their business so well by having the right people by their side. He has different kinds of people that he trusts to run his businesses and ensure everything is running smoothly. His team comprises of lawyers, staff, business development people, agents, Roc Nation, and more. These are the people ensuring that his brand is growing and meeting each target. The add value to the business on their own unique capacities. For instance, lawyers take care of litigation issues, business development people work to build the brand and protect its reputation.

Having a model where you got different people taking care of different aspects of your business will definitely take you to the next level. As a celebrity, you should not be thinking your manager will handle everything. As much as this may sound cool or an easy-to-implement solution, it will weigh out both you and your manager. But with a proper model, you will be able to take everyone accountable for their actions and contributions to your business. You will be able to ask questions like why the CEO is not brought in more business or the salesperson is not out there selling my merchandise.

Although artists and celebrities are used to doing everything on their own, they need to get to a place where they can trust and believe in other people. If you bring in the right people, then you can grow into a conglomerate that runs its own business. You will not have to worry that your manager is not doing enough. Instead, you will have people handling specific areas of their specialization in the business.

Building Infrastructure with Empathy

Most people do not empathize with artists because they do not understand them. They look at them as a freak, asking questions like why do they dress in a certain type of way or presenting themselves in a certain type of way. They may not understand why artists wear a certain type of hair or why they rap in a certain way. As a result, most artists are not understood until years later. However, artists are the people that pave the way for innovations and new creative ways of doing things. By putting an infrastructure around the artist, we empower them to manage their own art and their own business.

Celebrities and artists usually lack the capacity to be their own CEO and business managers. Without proper education, they need a partner to manage their business for them and ensure everything is running smoothly. This is where the importance of having proper infrastructure to grow them as a brand comes in. A business structure in which the brand is managed as a business with all the right people reporting to the designer as the CEO. Although a designer may lack ability to be CEOs, they can be taught that and how to manage their business better. For instance, the 10% that they spend to run their business with other people around them may be enough. However, if they are not taught this, other people keep on taking advantage of them under the name of an artist manager asking for a 25% or even 40% to run their business.

Bottom Line

Artists need to understand and appreciate the fact that they draw all the income. They are the ones who got the juice, swag, art, creativeness, and everything needed to bring in the money. Getting into a deal with someone who takes 25% or 40% of what you bring to your business is not sensical. You need to build a team of experts capable of handling every core aspect of your business.

Co-Branding and Collaborations Within DTC

Multiple co-branding and collaborations are offering more benefits to DTC brands. This has seen companies producing better products and meeting the needs of their customers better. However, designers need to be careful when making deals or entering into partnerships with established companies. Before entering into any partnership, designers need to determine how much they are bringing to the partnership and what the brand is offering.

Choosing the Right Collaborations

The reputation of a company in the market is determined by consumer perception of it. The better the reputation of a company, the better it will perform in the market. If a brand is labelled as unreliable or untrustworthy, it is unlikely it will perform well in the market. Such a reputation negatively affects how partners choose to engage with the company for a co-branding venture. The opposite for this is true as good reputation results in a favorable company performance.

Looking at Virgil Abloh’s model of operation, not everyone can work with it comfortably. His model works in a way where consistently Virgil has not watered down his core values and aesthetics. He has done it so many times that it looks more legit every time he introduces a new product. However, other people would choose a different model from what Virgil does. If you were to do a collaboration with Coca-Cola or AVR and it did not come out successfully, you will likely think they sold you out. However, Virgil has done it to a point where it is no longer a sellout. In fact, this has turned out to be his nature or being when dealing with others.

As a designer, you need to consider whether you want to align yourself with any particular brand. You need to think beyond the collaboration and what it will do to your followers. Think of whether your followers will vibe with the collaboration or they will think that you sold out. For instance, if you decide to collaborate with Fila, will your followers think you sold out or they will now like Fila even more. When Yeezy collaborated with Adidas, it had a phenomenal impact on its followers that influenced them to wear more of Adidas.

Designers Need to Impact the Company the Work With

A real designer should have a significant effect on a brand they choose to collaborate with. Think of whether you are going to put a halo effect on the company or you're going to leave your followers looking for solutions elsewhere. Although it is difficult for an artist or a designer to build confidence in themselves, it can go a long way in imparting a company in the right way. A good designer should be able to walk up straight to a company and tell them that is is what they are bringing to the table.

Nobody saw a pair of Jordan 1 the same way until Virgil cut up the tongue, slicing up the upper part. He brought a new idea that no one has seen before, impacting everyone across the board. Although some people may argue that he only rethought of a shoe that already existed, no one saw that before him. As much as it is easy to hate it after it has been done, it is very difficult to spot it before it is done.

If you are a designer, you need to look at life from your own lens. Think of how you can make something better, and then present your idea to a brand of your choice. Give the company or the corporation a reason to hire you. They should have an interest in what you bring and the uniqueness of your brand.

Why Companies Do Not Give Full Recognition to Designers

If you are the CEO of a big company, with all the investors and shareholders, you will be more concerned about their trust in your capabilities. Going to the shareholders and announcing that Kanye West is the sole reason the brand grew 5X over the last five years could trigger negative reactions and perceptions to the company. You need to think of what would happen if Kanye walks away when partnership does not work or the sales start to decline for some reason. So, the focus on the CEO and the management is to tell the shareholders that everything is going great without having to give any recognition to a particular designer.

While the consumer will focus on how good certain shoes are selling, the CEO will look at it from the standpoint of how great the company is doing. They will attribute the growth of the company toa certain product without necessarily praising a particular designer. There is no way the CEO will put all his eggs in one basket. Instead, he will look at the whole portfolio and what it means to the company. The moment you attribute the success to a particular designer, it could signal your downfall if the sales decline or the partnership fails to work out.

Designers Outside a Brand are the Disrupters

The nature of work or the contributions of the designers to a particular field makes them disrupters. Essentially, the work of the designer is to make you see things in the way you have never seen or thought of before. They will always ask why things have to always look in a particular manner and try to put something new out there. They have the ability to connect in ways that have never been done before and speak to others of many different levels. By introducing new ideas and ways of doing things, designers are the ultimate disrupters.

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Episode Highlights

Brew City Aqua is a company of aquaponics farmers, who utilize fish waste, specifically the endangered caviar species. The waste is used to grow vegetables while simultaneously cultivating the fish. Some of these fish take 10-15 years to reach maturity, explaining why only few farmers are into this space. Nonetheless, the company has established itself in the market as a major player in the US despite the founders being young individuals.

The information aquaponics farming as a business is quite scanty. Some marketing research companies estimate the market to be between $850 million and $1.8 billion. This signifies the potential of the market, considering it is made of only a few players. The difficulty in getting information about the industry is data in the field rarely recorded. Also, the major players in the industry do not give out information freely with the assumption that people would not understand easily. Looking at the business side of it, several important points can be drawn from the interview and additional research.

Podcast Takeaways and Learnings

1. More Millennials are Gravitating Towards Sustainable Products

According to Nielsen, a marketing research firm, about half of the U.S. shoppers want to change their consumption habits to benefit the environment more. With the focus being on the environment, consumers are now looking at products with greater scrutiny and placing healthy products higher in their list of priorities. Consequently, the sale of clean, organic, and sustainable products has increased tremendously. Interesting enough, there is a generation gap in purchasing of sustainable food products. while 75% of the millennials are changing their buying habits towards more sustainable products, only 43% of the baby boomers are doing the same.

Businesses that have realized this trend are not focusing their products to the millennials market. For Brew City Aqua, major competitive advantage is focusing more on the younger consumer. Although the company’s target market is individuals between the ages of 18 and 65 years, its competitors are not factoring in the younger generation. In fact, most of the marketing research companies in the field of caviar farming tend to place the focus on individual between the ages of 35 and 65 years as the average consumer. This means that Brew City Aqua have a ready market of individuals between the ages of 18 and 34 years who are neglected by other companies.

2. Pioneering into a New Industry Now Profitable

Pioneering into a new industry is likely to succeed now than it was few years ago. Millennials are not only interested in buying sustainable products, but they are also willing to pay more for such products. This includes products that are environmentally friendly, natural or organic, and socially responsible. For the baby boomers, they tend to have a different trend in that they show more brand loyalty. This is influenced by their inability to find environmentally friendly products when shopping. Companies can now freely invest in a new industry knowing that the customers are readily available.

Although Brew City Aqua faced several challenges pioneering the caviar farming industry, the return on investment is quite solid. The company has been working on several projects for about 4 years. Each project has several investors who are interested and ready to work with the company, while some turned down to protect the ownership of the company. The high number of investors is just a clear indication of how well this business is doing in sustainable luxury business. A week after launching their website, Brew City Aqua reported traffic of about 6,000 visitors. The numbers are tremendous compared to what the company used in attracting customers.

3. Direct Sales is Equally Effective in Selling Luxury

Selling direct to the customer allows companies to reach millennials in platforms they are most used to. Brew City Aqua sells its caviar products directly to consumers on their website. Although the conversion rates are still low, the company utilizes Shopify and Facebook analytics to determine the age of visitors to their website. With the average age of the visitors being 19-35 years, the millennials form the largest share of the company’s market. The company is also in talks with millennial-based luxury grocery stores to try and establish price points for their products that will allow the company to reach more millennial audience.

4. Collection of Data Is Necessary

Just like any other business, marketing research is a necessity. It provides you with information about the market conditions, major competitors, consumer demands, and more. Brew City Aqua utilizes several media to collect data relevant to their business model. One of them being the web by searching information relevant to their business model. The company also collaborate with local farmers involved in the business, and gathers additional information from social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

5. Competition in Sustainable Business is Still Minimal

Even with the sensitization about climate change and need to conserve the environment, only few businesses have fully invested in sustainable business models. Like in the case of caviar farming, only about 1,500 – 2,000 companies or individuals are involved in this business globally. The number is low because of several barriers to market entry, such as regulation challenges and environment issues. In the U.S., the number of players in this business is still low. It also means that data about this business is not readily available since different farmers tend to farm difference species of caviar fish.

6. Luxury Companies Appeal to Millennials by Providing a Variety of Offerings

The needs and demands of the millennials are diverse. Therefore, companies need to offer different types of products that appeal to these needs. In terms of the products, Brew City Aqua is not only offering their customer caviar meat. They are also offering cosmetics, apparel, and educating them about caviar as food. When all these products are centered around sustainability, they tend to be more attractive to the millennials market.

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Podcast Takeaways and Learnings

Measuring Growth is Important in Marketing

SuperCoffee defines growth in two dimensions. One dimension is through brand awareness and equity, while the other is through performance and marketing growth. Both approaches are crucial in ensuring that their marketing is focused on both topline revenue and bottom line profitability, and in this era of highly modernized technology, measuring growth is just a click away. Today, businesses can connect with their targeted audience directly through different kinds of question-answer rounds, voting on the best item of their product line via social media channels.

Social Engagement and Personalization

Social engagement strategy is crucial in an era where personalization is considered important and where people want to feel attached to the brand. It provides a company direct ties to the customers by engaging with them directly. Since it is impossible to engage with the customers at the grocery store, social engagement provides the opportunity for direct interactions through Facebook comments, Instagram images, and other social media platforms.

One of the interesting things that Christopher did at the company was to DM a video to every consumer after-sales. He would share a simple message of appreciation and answered any questions that a customer may have. This form of direct customer engagement resulted in direct customer-relationships, which some have been maintained maintained to date.

Lock Your Focus on One Thing at a Time

In this world where businesses focus to create profits by providing high-quality communication, there are some businesses that create customers for life by developing an emotional attachment with them. This emotional attachment bounds that customer personalization and this specialization is crucial to successful direct consumer model.

The current SuperCoffee’s direct consumer model is based on focusing on one thing at a time. When dealing with a new customer, Christopher will use a broad interest space depending on the goal to be achieved. The most important thing is ensuring that the ad is super engaging and what happens when the customer gets to the landing page. The ad can be placed anywhere on the web, including Google and Facebook as long as the customer has clear interactions.

The focus should be the company’s channel rather than a single consumer segment. If you speak to someone the same way you interact with them on Facebook or Gmail or Instagram, you will not win. This is because people expect a certain degree of personalization that requires that you take each channel as its own business. Only this way can you find out what works best. Like in the case of SuperCoffee, the biggest revenue driver from Facebook is the female 35-54 customer segment.

Facebook is Still a Main Tool for Direct Consumer Engagement

Facebook has recently received a lot of bashing for being an expensive ads platform. However, it is still one of the best platforms to make your brand. It has a platform where you can see ads that other brands are running. This helps you to compare and adjust your brands to reflect what others are doing in the market. You can also run events to drive more traffic to your landing pages.

One way of combating the issue of Facebook becoming more expensive is increasing your average order value. This is the amount that a customer spends on your website over a given period of time. If you are spending $25 to get a customer who spends $60, it shows that your business is having a good return order value. On the contrary, spending the same $25 to get a customer who spends $25 shows you are barely breaking even.

Shopify is a Helpful Tool

SuperCoffee is a Shopify+ partner. Shopify+ is a great tool because it gets the work done, and allows the company to have landing page on their platform. This provides a more customized ability to serve the customers better. Shopify also provides vital data that helps in key decision making. When combined with a platform like Facebook, Shopify helps in driving sales even higher.

Data is Everything

Data helps in determining the performance of a company and setting better strategies for consumer engagement. Christopher uses a daily tracker, which is about 7-page Excel sheet to track almost every KPI for the company. It helps in tracking direct consumer interactions and puts the right type of measures to grow the company’s top line. The data helps in setting new year acquisition rates on Facebook and roll budget for prospecting audiences.

Christopher spends most of his time on the spreadsheets to achieve better performance. The data shows individual inputs that help in creating a better model. For instance, you need to think about how much gross margin or revenue can be generated by spending a certain about on social media ads? What impact will that have on the bottom line and will allow the company to hit topline revenue targets for the month? Based on this information, you can then compare the results with the ad manager data to find out if the company is headed in the right direction. The performance indicators that Christopher looks for successful ad marketing include:

Cost per Acquisition: The amount of money the company has to spend on Facebook to acquire new customers
Return on Ad Spend: If I spend $50 and the customer bought a bundle of $150, then that would be 200% return on ads.

Super Coffee Sales Funnel

The company usually places ads on different sales funnels. The funnels are determined by the financial goals of the company and the most successful current offering. Currently, Christopher is running three landing pages for three different sales funnels include:

Maple-Pumpkins: An ad targeting customers to try the new maple-pumpkins.
Conversion and email acquisition based through quiz that can allows customers to win.
General bundle landing page that offers customers 30% off and free shipping.

Advice to Someone Entering the Direct Customer Engagement Space

For the person entering this space, the first thing to learn the kind of behavior they show on Instagram, Facebook, and where you get your emails. This allows you to identify the kind of ads you are getting and what they are target. Then, find a mentor to guide you on the process of direct consumer. Try to learn as much as possible from your mentor or mentors, whether they are successful individual in direct consumer marketing or just your daily interactions at the job.

Closing Remarks

In direct consumer engagements, it is important to focus on a single channel, landing page, and email. This will help in identifying any results rather than getting distracted by the attention from all the other channels. While Facebook may be expensive, it is still one of the most effective ways of reaching your niche.

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According to Rama, the subscription model is only effective when a company can provide an ongoing connection between its customers. This relationship involves marketing communications, sales support, technical assistance and customer service. In the US alone, companies are losing $83 billion each year due to customer churn and abandoned purchases! For this reason, companies with subscription model strive to gain first party data and improve their products to keep their customers interested.

SkyHi spends a lot of time studying their customer data. This focus keeps their customer churn down and drives customer satisfaction up. Customer churn is calculated by the number of customers who leave your company during a given time period. In a more down-to-earth sense, churn rate shows how your business are doing with keeping customers by their side. For customer acquisition SkyHi focuses mainly on referrals and brand ambassadors (digital influencers) as their main strategy. To ensure that they meet the quality of the product needed, they continuously increase partnerships to establish themselves as a lifestyle brand with their customers.

Podcast Takeaways and Learnings

1. Simplification of Customer Service

The subscription model is meant to simplify services for the customer. At SkyHi, they aim at providing customers with both affordable prices and easy process of getting plane tickets. The customer has the option to enter all the vital information in the app, including their passport data and flight number. Once the customer sees an empty seat, they make a booking and get the ticket in minutes.

2. Role of Consumer Behavior

The subscription model has largely been influenced by consumer behavior. In fact, it wasn’t until a few years ago that this model could work in the airline industry. Right now, customers are booking their flight within 30 days, most of which are one-way flights. Some of these are for leisure or a mixture of business and leisure. This is a significant change from several year ago when the supporting network like “Easy Booking” and “Airbnb” were not there yet.

3. Customer Data Collection

The subscription model has the benefit of collecting customer data and using it to improve customer experience. SkyHi uses this model to understand its costs and get returning customers to ensure plane booking continues. The data collected helps in understanding customer decisions and why they choose one product over the other. This way, the model ensures both customer loyalty and the running of a sustainable business in terms of finances.

4. Meeting the Lifetime Value to the Customer

The data collected from the subscription model can be used to determine the lifetime value to the customer. SkyHi had their own hypothesis about their lifetime value to the customers. However, the data collected from the model provided more information about customer behavior. The information helped in identifying what was valuable to customers. For instance, if customers are taking a weekend vacation consistently, then that’s valuable to them. By consistently providing them with this value, customers remains in SkyHi’s monthly subscription plan.

5. Addressing Customer Needs and Demands

The subscription model needs to be tailored to the needs and demands of the customers. For SkyHi, they provide specific routes in their platform for North America and Europe. These routes contain major hubs because the majority of big cities located in these regions. With the large number of flights with predictable prices, SkyHi provides the best service for their customers based on the available data by matching the customer with the right flight.

6. Offering the Best Deal

Subscription models provide customers with the best deal. In Amazon Prime, customers get the best deals on items for paying a subscription fee. Similarly, SkyHi provides its customers with the best deal they can get on flights. This is quite different from conventional models used in companies like Booking.com, which cannot set a booking price that is below that of the airline. For example, if Delta has its prices at $100, booking.com cannot price it at $75. But the closed system used by SkyHi allows them to set the lowest possible prices.

7. Aligning the Product with Customer Needs

The major challenge of the subscription model is aligning the product with the needs of the everyday consumer. However, the data collected on consumer behavior greatly helps in building a product that customers want. Once this product has been achieved, customers will consistently come back. Continuing improvement of the product based on the changing needs of the customers is also necessary. While the initial focus of the company is customer acquisition, it gets to customer churn as more customer data becomes available.

Essential Tips to Subscription Companies

Conduct adequate financial analysis before investing
Collect enough customer data to make the right decisions
Build products that meet the needs of the customers
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Digital Influencers are revolutionizing the sale concept.

With world digitalizing so fast, there is also a revolution in sales and marketing strategies, "Digital Influencers" are the new Sales Team. But first, let me tell you who are "Digital Influencers" and how they influence the users’ choice.

So the Digital Influencers are the personalities who have established credibility in the social media industry. With access to millions of fans, they have an influence that can persuade others to change their motives, opinions, especially influencing their buying decisions and action that people take in the market.

Millennials transforming the digital market

In an interview with “Brian Freeman," the CEO and founder of Heartbeat, I came to understand how the digital influencers are becoming the new sales team, turning millionaires into billionaires. To learn more about how influencer marketing and influencer sales strategies have transformed the digital marketing, Brian’s idea of utilizing digital influencers to get more audience engagement and increased sales is the crucial concept. Before Bumble, Brian started "Wildfire" in 2013

, which was the first-ever female-focused dating app. He allowed the influencers to post about his brand on their IG accounts, which resulted in a spike of traffic towards the app! Before getting into influencer-marketing and consumer-brand relationships, Brian categorized influencers into Nano-influencers( having an audience that is mostly organic), Micro-influencers(with 5K to 100K followers) and Macro-influencers( celebrities e.tc) based upon their role on Instagram and the volume of their followers. In 2014, Facebook ad campaigns were very restricted as they didn’t want to make it a messy ad place. Brain took another way of getting traffic by letting people post on their Instagram about the specific brand. He shared his strategy of “ Marketplace model," which surpassed google ads strategy.

Instagram is the new Facebook

As per the reports, Instagram is the new behemoth of Marketing and Sales Strategy, hitting 8 Billion Dollars by 2020 with B2B companies lagging . Everybody is on IG.

Millions of influencers posting on their Instagram on the brand's behalf are what making IG the biggest b2b platform. Brian freeman further shared that Facebook prices on a" bidding model," the more people spending the money, the higher the cost. When it comes to Google, It has got millions of impressions to show as the ads show up in the search results. But in IG, ads show up in the middle of everything you are trying to see.

How to get your b2b model prepared for the upcoming revolutionized digital trends?

Brian shared how influencers are acting as the front-line sellers and how b2b companies can incorporate the digital influencers for increased revenue, decreased cost on ads, and the large volume of traffic. To fill up this lag, many b2b brands are now collaborating with Digital Influencers to boost sales and marketing strategies. The frequently asked question, what exactly are digital influencers. Brian freeman gave me the answer according to the b2b perspective. Anybody who creates content on Instagram on behalf of brands is an "Influencer." The best way possible to work with influencers is to tell them clearly what you want as a target and let them become the creative director for their audience. Influencers, whether nano or micro, are directly connected to the audience and can bring you feedback, which is essential for the improvement of your product without spending billions on the advertisement. This is the way influencers can bring value to the business.

How effective is digital influencer marketing?

The competition among the b2b brands is exceptionally significant. According to Adobe, the future of b2b brands is digital. It has been estimated that the collaboration of b2b brands and digital influencers drive five times more revenue than any other brand strategies.

Just take an example of "Shopify" which does the business of 42 billion dollars, and the Shopify+ customers generate 80% of that income, what companies do on Shopify to advertise their products is the use of Digital Influencers, and for every sale they make, they cut a portion of it and give them to their Influencers thus they are running an affiliate business together. But you need to be aware of your audience, what they want, like if you spend 10,000$ and make ten sales whereas if you choose your influencer wisely, you can make thousands of sales with the same investment, there are several variables which are influencing this “affiliate business model." It's always better to work out everything with your Digital influencer and hear them out and don't treat them as your workers. Always look for your audience's feedback.

Way to collaborate with Digital Influencers

So, let me illustrate different ways the collaboration of B2B Brands with Digital Influencers:

Ø Collaborating with the Influencers and co-creating the content:

Rather than spending billions of dollars on advertising, it is better to collaborate with a digital influencer, reach out to the influencers and then let them come forward to speak for your brand; it's always better to let them create the content for you. It's still better to reach those influencers who are already connected to your brand; for this purpose, you can use tools called “Followerwonk” and “Buzzsomo” and reach out to your influencers in one click!

Ø Doing Case Studies:

Sharing the content of an influencer is always in the interest of the influencer himself, therefore always tag those influencers in your tweets whenever you share your product information, but keep in mind that the targeted influencers should be your clients!

Ø Video becomes tables-stakes:

Video Content always played a significant role in the marketing strategy. But you might need to empty your pockets as these videos content usually requires Big budget as compared to the blogs and articles.

One of the easiest ways for video content marketing is to choose an influencer brand and make them live-stream your product and then keep sharing their story. Or another way is to record a brief Q&A session and upload it on all social media platforms.

Ø Turning loyal, influential clients to brand ambassadors:

One of the most important steps, so I will put more emphasis on this one. You might be thinking it is easy to reward this prestigious rank of brand ambassador to any popular influencers, and they will accept it? Trust me; it's not! You will be ignored 100s of times, but no worries try over and over again, here are few tips for you to attract those influencers and make them promote your brand:

ü Organize parties and significant events:

Give your influencers the exposure they desire; the more events you organize for them, the more they will be attracted to you; you are giving them the audience they need!

ü Award your loyal Customers to win their hearts:

Being rewarded for something makes you feel special, right? That's what you got to do, award your loyal influencers, make them stand out of all other clients, and they will surely put a "Thanks Tweet" for your brand, thus boosting your marketing strategy!

ü Give them exclusive access to your brand and make your influencers feel special

Make them feel unique, make them the VIP of your brand, give them access to your exclusive Facebook closed groups to make them feel how close they are to you.

ü Don’t forget to support your influencers on social media:

With too much attention you give them on social media, they will surely notice you; social media is the hive of these digital influencers, so don't forget to show them your support on social media.

ü Never forget to greet your influencers on their special life occasions:

That’s right, everyone feels happy and develop a soft corner for you in their heart whenever you greet them their birthday or some anniversary or sympathize with them on any tragedy, make them feel you care about them, and they will surely care about you!

I have nearly explained all the strategies that b2b brands can utilize while collaborating with digital influencers. But let’s discuss the future of this new revolutionized strategy.

How to choose the right influencer?

Brian freeman shared some essential tips while looking out for the right digital influencer for carrying on your desired brand campaign.

· Micro or Nano influencer based on your target!

· Quality of content, whether it is engaging enough to draw the audience's attention.

· Their past campaigns.

· The way they tell the story of your brand.

· How active they are daily.

Future of B2B Brands and Digital Influencers:

No doubt, Social media has become the ultimate power to influence the minds and opinions of potential customers. Today millions of people follow their famous Instagram influencers, you might not believe it, but many youngsters dream of being influencers, because it's the future trend, B2B brand have already carved their path to success, now its time for Digital influencers and with the collaboration of these two, will create a new era of marketing and sales strategy, Making this strategy to be accessible for almost all the brands, and in that way earning the credibility and also the trust of their customers, thus obtaining a boost in their sales and revenue!

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