One of the biggest difficulties for any brand is finding the right people who can provide valuable exposure for your product. For example, if you’re a healthcare company selling a line of supplements you don’t want just anybody taking your supplements, you want a true athlete. You want somebody who is constantly running, cycling or swimming and is in great shape. But most brands don’t have the time or resources to adequately seek out these influencers.
Here enters Freestak, a company that takes away the pain of finding the right influencers for brands in the area of running, cycling, triathlon, outdoor sports and more. According to CEO Simon Freeman, the company first started off as a social media marketing agency specifically for running brands. “The change was driven very much by what our clients were saying,” said Simon. “Such as, ‘you’ve got some brilliant campaigns for us in running, is there any chance you could do something in triathlon products?’”
The key to all of this success has to do with the community of influencers that Simon and his wife, Julie Freeman (a co-founder along with Simon) have built over time. “Over the last couple years we’ve just become more and more focused on the value that the influencers, bloggers and creators can provide for brands,” said Simon.
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Simon noted that building the community of influencers is something that will continually be an ongoing and shifting process. It’s also a process that Freestak is taking head-on so that brands don’t have to go through the research process of finding influencers that are really the right fit for their company. “The challenge that brands face is that in order to figure out if an influencer is really the right person, they need to spend an hour with them,” said Simon. “So we’re taking the pain away. We’re not just scraping [for influencers], we’re adding people that are ready.”
Test the World’s most experimental #adventure brand #bloggers #influencers #bloggerswantedhttps://t.co/5rMNM3Uwbf pic.twitter.com/3wyAyEJNoQ
— freestak (@freestakUK) July 23, 2016
Simon compared the process of brands finding influencers by using Freestak to a dating site in the sense that brands can research the influencers and filter by a range of interests. Once they’ve found an influencer who they believe could be a good fit there’s an in-app messaging system which helps to keep communication in one place as opposed to having a back-and-forth email exchange.
Another thing that brands can do is create a profile with different campaigns. Depending on the type of brand you could start a campaign for a trip to Lake Tahoe to go trail running and express that you’re looking to take five influencers. According to Simon, the influencers can apply to campaigns, register their interests and say “I want to do that.”
On the other side of things, influencers can also create pitches on the site. A pitch for a runner may be something like “I’m going to try and break the record for the race across America.” If a brand feels like this is something that could create good exposure for their products they might choose to contact the influencer.
Simon and his team just recently showed a brand that uses Freestak its results and the brand ended up with an enviable problem. They had been looking for five influencers but were given nine possible candidates who all fit their desirable criteria. “I always had faith, but I’m still surprised at the level of creativity these people [influencers] are coming up with,” said Simon. “I’m like, ‘this is awesome!’”
Freestak is continually looking to grow their community in the near future in order to make room for even larger brands who are searching for influencers.