Scaling an influencer platform can be a lot of fun, especially when you have the ambition of thinking of your creators as your best friends. That is the story of Anna Cronqvist, the founder and CEO of Esther’s, a social e-commerce within the home interior space.
Esther’s vision is to create a new way of making inspiration shoppable, connecting consumers with content creators and retailers. And so far, they have been scaling super fast, with creators at the forefront.
In this interview, with Raiha Buchanan as host, Anna shares some tips and lessons you can leverage to scale your business. Let’s explore these tips, shall we?
1. The Journey Begins With A Problem
Anna Cronqvist has always loved interior design and realized that finding inspiration is easy but finding inspiration where you can buy what you see is not as easy.
She discovered that 95% of all the inspiration lacks information, or links, to where you can buy products. Anna realized that consumers get frustrated when they don’t know where to buy what they see.
But talking to creators and realizing they don’t have the time or monetary incentive to handle those questions helped Anna understand that there is a problem to be solved. Talking to retailers, she discovered that retailers also want to be seen by content creators.
And so her journey began!
2. Back Yourself
From a young age Anna dreamt of starting her own company, but she knew that she had to wait for the right opportunity in an area she was really passionate about. Before starting Esther’s she worked for some well known companies, in as many different business areas as possible, to understand how to operate and scale a business.
During Anna’s maternity leave, while having time to reflect on her future, she knew the moment had arrived for her to start her own company. She now had the experience, a problem to solve, and the passion to build a product to solve it.
3. Having Direction And Speed
According to Anna, she loves things to move fast but has learned that having direction is more important than speed. It’s good to have both, and having a co-founder makes it much more manageable.
For instance, Anna and her co-founder perfectly complement each other. Anna is the engine and her co-founder is the steering wheel. While they need speed, direction must not be overlooked, making both a vital element for success.
4. Creators Are The Center Of Everything
In Anna’s words, most platforms position themselves as helping brands and retailers, but not a lot focus on helping creators grow their business. Anna believes creators are the center of everything as long as influencer marketing is concerned.
With that in mind, she wanted to create a platform where they offer as much value to creators as possible, allowing them to focus on more important things - creating content.
5. Building Relationships With Creators
Instead of running paid socials, Anna and her team found that creator or user-generated content performs much better than brand produce. So they used this approach by putting creators at the forefront and marketing themselves through them.
To stay in touch with creators, Anna is always available to them over phone, talking to them about how they are doing, with the intent to be their friend - or best friend even. But, most importantly, by constantly staying in touch with the creators, Anna learns a lot about how to make a great product experience. After all, they are at the forefront, talking to their followers and brands.
Wrapping Up
Influencer marketing remains one of the top marketing strategies due to how fast it is to scale when working with creators. But, like Anna, you must have both direction and speed. And when you succeed in making creators your best friend, the sky is no longer your limit.
And that brings us to the end of this beautiful piece. Feel free to listen to this interview by heading to Logcast.
