Hey everyone, hello and welcome. What a song that got me going. All right. Hey, I'm Dan Bova from entrepreneur.com. And thank you so much for joining us for today's webinar. Learn how to grow your brand on a tiny budget. So we are going to get some incredible tips for going big in your marketing without breaking the bank from today's expert beauty industry leader, Niloufar Vohora. Nilofer has had an incredible career. She was CMO of Milk Makeup. She held senior leadership positions at Sato. Try saying that. I dare you. And Rebecca Minkoff and is now CMO of Amica, which now you probably know this because you signed up for this, but I love this description. Amica is a fearless Brooklyn-born woman. salon-raised healthcare brand, a friend to all hair, hairstylists, the planet, and you. I love that. Welcome, Niloufer. Hi, great to be here. Thank you. Well, so for everyone watching, I see the chat is already coming alive. So that's great. Do not be shy. Ask your questions. We will get to as many as possible as we go along. So, Nilofer, let's get to it. Growing your brand without spending a ton of money sounds pretty good. Let's start with influencer marketing, because I think a lot of people out there think that this is something that's going to cost them a ton of money to do effectively. And what do you say to that? I would say that it's possible to do that without spending money. Essentially, what is influencer marketing? It's really just engaging with your community. And your community starts with your customers, your friends, your family, people, anyone who is an authentic, authentically has come to your brand, loves the brand, can have influence on bringing your brand to others. So I want to jump right in with one question because I think this is great. We're talking about our community and Dawson Walters says, how can I sell to friends and family without it coming off as pushy? Yeah, I saw that question and it made me chuckle. You know, look, I think it's really the proof is in the pudding. I mean, if you have a product that you stand for and that you're, you know, you believe is really going to work. I mean, that's why you created the product in the first place, right? Then, you know, then share it, share it with them and ask them for their real authentic opinions on it. And, you know, no, you you know, no pressure to do anything, but just to give you honest feedback. You'd be surprised at how, you know, we actually do that even now, you know, over 15 years later as a brand, we have an army of enthusiastic brand ambassadors, about 450 of them. Many of them, most of them started as just, people who were customers who love the brand. And now they have the option of opting in when we launch a new product to receive the product, share, you know, just give their authentic opinions and reviews. There's no pressure for them to post about it, but we love to hear from them and we love to hear what they have to say, whether it's good or bad. I welcome the bad feedback because it helps us to be better and to make the products better. So when you're talking about feedback and giving products to people, I mean, there's some costs associated with that. make the product to give to people. How do you get to that? Do you when you want someone to start buying it now you've tested it like, okay, that that part of this is over. How do you sort of segue from there? So sorry, just to clarify, it's to you know, you've essentially you've created the product, you've sampled it, you've tested it, and now you want to get it and get it out there. I mean, look, I think, you know, we We've talked about this, Dan, where there's I think there's a power of utilizing your community. I think we've all had questions around, okay, well, how do we utilize social media? How do we utilize a way to market in an easy, not easy necessarily, but like an authentic way. And the best way to do that is through your own channels, right? So that could be social media, it could be your website, it could be your website, you know, just your email list of your followers, people who, you know, when it starts with one, moves on to, you know, to 50. And from there, you know, it just keeps going. But you want to get your product out to as many people as possible to talk about it. And I think that there is a cost of product, but the cost to, you know, a lot of times when you're starting out, you don't have the money to spend on huge campaigns. even now at Amica. I mean, we're, you know, we're a large brand, but we still make those choices around what is going to give us the most amount of reach and the most amount of efficiency in our media. I wonder if you could talk about, because you, before we started, you told me the great story behind the name of the brand. If you could share that with everyone and also maybe talk a little bit about, you know, the power of the name and how that helps define what this product is. That's a great question. I'm so glad you asked. So Amica means friend. It's the Amica, the word is, it means friend in the language of Esperanto, which many of you all may know, was a universal language that was created at the turn of the century to really unite the world under one language. It's probably the most popular international auxiliary brand today. But what we love about it is that it truly encompasses our ethos as a brand of being a friend to all. Our brand motto is all hair is welcome. And we really truly exist to deliver on that promise. Amiga is the only salon raised brand that unites that luxury brand like luxury pro-grade products with clinically proven performance, joyful self-expression and true community and inclusivity. And so we really approach all of our product development, how we come to life as a brand, how we market ourselves in really truly making our community feel welcome and being able to find themselves in our brand. So let's talk a little bit. So now we have people that we're sending stuff to, we're getting their feedback, and we want to kind of get the word out there and do it, as you're saying, in a kind of natural, authentic, friendly way. But are there tricks or things you would advise people to do? to not only have someone say, oh, this is nice, but to really kind of grab them and hopefully drive them to buy it. - Yeah, it's a great point. I mean, I think, look, we always hear about, and I'm sure many of you have heard and you're wondering, you know, how do we really engage with influencer marketing and creator led marketing? There's so much power in unlocking the scale and monetizing your community. But how do you do that? How do you build a community? And I think one of the things to keep in mind is that your community is, you know, is anyone who is engaged with your brand, anyone who has experienced your brand and one of the things that I would really encourage entrepreneurs to do is to leverage their community. So what does that mean? What are some tips and tricks? Well, so if someone is commenting on your social post and they're giving you feedback or they're sending you a DM or someone's commenting on a social post, it's very easy to say, "Hey, message me in the DM or respond to them in the DMs." But I often like to comment and recommend my team to comment back and respond back publicly. That starts a conversation. It starts this authentic engagement. One, it makes the person feel as if they've been seen and heard. And two, tells others that the brand is really engaged. They care about their customers. They care about talking to their customers. And it can start a conversation. And that conversation leads to engagement. It leads to authentic conversation, impressions. This metric that we like to use in marketing called earned media value which some of you may know, it's essentially a marketing term, but it's a metric that we use to assign a monetary value to what a brand does in non-paid activities. So impressions, or if someone talks about your brand, or if there's likes or shares for your brand, those are all assigned a monetary value. It's kind of monopoly money, if you will. But we use that as a metric to show how that engagement, authentic engagement in our community is the potential to unlock sales down the road. We know, and it's been well documented, namely by Creator IQ, which is one of these companies that tracks EMV. And they've shared publicly that you typically tend to see when you see you know a spike in your earned media value that level of engagement and you know people talking about your brand you can expect to see that translate into sales within a six month period um and so there really is value in engaging with your community in that way well that that's a i'm so glad you brought that up that six month window um you know i i think when people are first launching something You're a little impatient, you're a little worried like, "Hey, when's this going to start working?" You worked at so many different brands, some of the names that I butchered during the introduction of this video. How do you kind of like step into a new place and sort of, you know, get the ball rolling? Like, what's your outlook like in terms of when you expect, okay, this is the brand message that we're putting out there? You know, when do you kind of expect to it to start kind of coming back to you? So it's a good question. I mean, I think I'll start with product because that's what we, you know, we produce. So oftentimes there's, you know, really a playbook that I like to employ, which is starts with a tease phase, right? So anywhere from two to four to six weeks before your product actually launches is the time that I would start really teasing out that product. And so that includes, you know, you know, the comment from Dawson earlier, sending it to your family and friends, sharing it with people in your community, people who are influential. Now, that could be, you know, we'd love to work all the time with people who have a million plus followers on social media, but you know, really there's a huge amount of power in these nano micro creators and nano creators or anyone with, you know, 50,000 or less followers. And so these people have a huge amount of influence in their own communities. Identify who they are, who are these people that are you know, have an affinity for your product or your brand. And, um, maybe they're following other brands similar to yours. Maybe they are, um, you know, following like-minded brands like yours that share your values, identify them, reach out to them. And, you know, as I mentioned, see if they are open and willing to receive the product to, to try it. Um, And, you know, it starts with that organic engagement early on. So that tease phase where they are testing, learning, you know, really trying the product, going out and posting about it starts that buzz and excitement for your product. It also allows you to reach an audience that is goes beyond your own. audience. So if you're a brand that's starting out and you're like, well, I don't have a huge follower base. There are people who do. And so if they post, you're reaching now not only your own audience, but you're reaching their audience too. That all is super important to do before your product even launches. It creates this kind of groundswell of social buzz and excitement. And if we're lucky, that social virality. Then when we launch the product, it's super important to, I think, you know, really give the backstory. People love to hear the backstory of how products were created. They want to know, you know, what led to it. And if it was a product that was requested by your community, show that to people, give them that authentic voice to your customers to be able to speak to that. And then as you are engaging with those creators who are posting reviews, first impressions, testimonials about your product, engage with them and ask them if you can post their content on your own socials or if you can amplify that yourself in your emails or your texts or use that on your website as user-generated content. There's a huge amount of value that that we may not have the budget to have a huge, you know, really beautiful brand shoot, but the power of people and real people talking about your brand is so much more important than a fancy shoot. - Yeah, yeah. And I did want to talk to you about that. You know, you've spoken before about, you know, not saying, oh, I wish we had a beautiful studio to shoot in, but you maybe have a store, maybe you have where you made the stuff, or maybe your friend has a nice looking backyard. So basically use what you've got. That seems to be something that you're a big proponent of. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Yeah. So it's interesting. I mean, Amika, when we started the brand about 15 years ago, we, you know, we didn't have a lot of the we were starting in the same place that a lot of you were. But we knew that there was a power in utilizing the resources that we had existing. And we were lucky to have a salon that we opened in Williamsburg. Our offices are in Williamsburg. So really engaging a place that we can engage with our community and in real life. And so people could obviously come into the Amica salon, try our products, use our products, but we used it as a place to invite our original, our community in to learn about our products, experience our products firsthand, film content. as well and I would encourage that, you don't need a beautiful space, but people love to see, use the space that you have. If you have an office, if you have a coworking space that you're working out of, even if you really utilize that, power of that one-to-one relationship or one-to-many relationship, we still love to do coffee chats with people where we'll invite them in. We do that with editors. We do that with our community. We do that with customers. Recently, we had You know, someone in who had created a social post that was, you know, was a little critical of Amica and, you know, and the product doesn't necessarily work for them as well. And we invited them into our office to meet with our head of product development and to learn more about the product. And they went away leaving with a much better understanding of the product and, you know, and a whole suite of products that actually worked really well for them. amica is a brand that when we say all hair is welcome we truly believe that we develop products for all hair types textures and styles and so some of the products may not work for you know for you um but that might mean that just doesn't mean that we don't have something for you it just means that you might be using the wrong product for you and so in that case it was a matter of bringing that person in and sharing um you know having that one-on-one conversation and they were able to shoot content that um you know was super engaging because of that relationship that we've got Oh, that's great. I love that. We've got a bunch of great questions in the chat. But first, I just wanted to touch on, you know, you talked about not just aligning with, you know, the influencers and things, but other businesses in your community that kind of align with your brand's voice and what you're trying to accomplish. Can you talk a little bit about that, how you were able to do that? Yeah, I know. I love that question. You know, it's interesting. We often, as a B Corp, we believe in sustainability in everything we do. We responsibly source our ingredients. We put a lot of thought into being clean certified at our retailer, Sephora. We are... We also have a very, very significant sustainability effort with regard to our packaging as well. And so oftentimes we'll find brands that have a similar value system or a similar way of thinking as we do. And it could be as small as partnering with them on a social collaboration. So having a post where we are where we're both posting on our shared post on both of our socials to garner additional followers on our Instagram, for example. And some of those partnerships have turned into real monetizable relationships. I'll give you one example. We recently partnered with another Brooklyn based brand Ellis Brooklyn, which is a fragrance brand. And we just launched a collaboration product with them, our number one selling dry shampoo, Perk Up. We collaborated with Brooklyn Ellis to incorporate their Miami Nectar fragrance into our Perk Up, which is a limited edition product that we just launched. Super proud of it. And that partnership arose because there was this like natural, very... organic natural relationship between our two founders, our CEO, Chelsea Riggs and Ellis Brooklyn's CEO, Bea Shapiro, being both entrepreneurs from Brooklyn, you know, based in Brooklyn. They had known each other for many years. We had been looking for ways, you know, we'd always wanted to partner with them in some way. And it just really became this natural organic relationship when we saw that the social collaboration did so well. They started talking about what we could do that was even bigger. and so we partnered together to create a joint product, a collaboration product. We both sell at Sephora and so it was natural that we would have a partnership that would leverage the relationship we have with the retailer. And we had a crazy sellout moment with, we launched the partnership with this really amazing, fun, social, organic campaign. We had a wait list that was several thousand people long and a lot of social buzz behind it. And we created a joint product between the fragrance as well as the bundle set that was sold only online. Ellis sold out of their set within a matter of days. And we are really excited to be, you know, to see that organic partnership that starts with, you know, started really with just two founders, two leaders of the organizations to come together and think about what we can do together. But it started as a very, you know, really small. And so I would encourage you to find other network, find other creators, other founders that are in similar. They could be in the same industry. They could be complementary industries, but it's a great way to leverage the power of both of your teams. That's awesome. Yeah, I love that. That's so great. So, questions here in the chat. One, I guess, is, I don't know if it's the opposite of what you were just talking about, but you were just talking about genuine connections. What about AI? How does your team use AI to build traction? This is from Victor in the chat. Yeah, so we, you know, I think AI is fascinating. I love, you know, I have my own chat GPT that I have trained in our Amika brand voice. And we are, you know, we use it a lot to, you know, to do deep research. We will use it to scrape our ratings and reviews or ratings and reviews of other products that are out there to see if what customers love about those products and what they don't and how can we position our products differently. So there's a lot of ways to really test out and use AI. you know, before you make big investments in your product or before you make big investments into positioning your product or naming your product a certain way, it's a great way to get that research. That's great. That's great. Mohammed is asking, you know, we've been talking a lot about products. Does the advice you're giving also work for a business that provides a service, do you think? I believe so. I mean, I think, look, what is a service? You know, what's a product you're selling something that you believe in that you've created. And, um, And yes, it's a matter of when we talk about scaling our community, when you have a really great service, when you have experienced something that works really well, you're going to tell all your friends about it. You're going to tell everyone you know about it. So there really is a lot of power in unlocking the resources you already have, the community that you have, the power of your customers. All of those things are still relevant if you have a service but not a product. Excellent. And speaking about what you're just talking about with AI testing things, we have a question here from Shama. What if your products are still in the prototype stages, has a clothing brand? Are there other ways besides or in addition to AI that you could sort of put out some feelers and see if people are into this idea? Yeah, I mean, I think there's... you know i think what goes back to the question we had before i mean i've worked in fashion before i know how expensive it can be to develop prototypes to do fitting to do all the technical design work um you know behind um behind a fashion and clothing brand. So certainly there's a lot of risk there. But I think that there is a way to survey your community. We have a brand ambassador program. And we started that program with about 50 people who are customers, and we now have scaled it to about 450 people. And we've mindfully grown that community of brand ambassadors. They are people who receive early product. They're people who test out our products. We will get their first impressions. We'll invite them to to experience our products and test them out, we engage with them in ways that are a little bit different than partners that we might pay to create content. It's a much more organic, authentic relationship. I think building a community like that of people who are really going to engage in that way can help you to test out the product even when it's still in prototype stages. What do you think about the idea, people have talked about this before, about kind of working in the industry before you say, hey, I'm going to do my own thing. What value do you think that brings? And I guess part two of that is I'm wondering about these ambassadors that you have. Is that a good way to become an ambassador for a different brand just to like, kind of look under the hood and see how this all works? I guess so. I mean, it's a great idea. I mean, look, like I think, you know, you want to understand your competitors. You want to understand the industry and what better way to do it, you know, than to engage with, you know, with other brands. I mean, I personally, I follow so many brands on social media. I sign up for their emails. If they send me an email with a caption that I want to open, I send that to my team and I'm like, this is a really interesting way that they got me to open this email. We all know we receive so many emails from brands every day and how many of them go unopened or deleted? But once you unlock that and you get a customer to open that email, it's a great way to get them to engage and learn about your products and to come to your site directly to buy. It's only one click away at that point. So yes, absolutely. There's a lot of power. And you don't necessarily have to be a brand ambassador. You can just be an engaged customer to understand and learn from not whether it's a brand that is, you know, in your industry, or one that you just admire, and you think that is doing something really interesting, which is a great lead into this question from Carly, which is, you know, with how crowded beauty is, how do you know what initiatives are right for your brand and not get too distracted by what everybody else is doing? I mean, it's a great question, Carly, because it's, you know, particularly in the beauty industry, you hear, I'll give you an example, you hear so much about people doing things like you know, those huge brand moments or pop ups or things that, you know, you'd love to do as a brand. And but there isn't a lot of ROI behind them or measurable ROI. And so you have to kind of balance that in terms of what's right for you, what's right for your, you know, what's right for you and your brand at that moment in time. So I would think about, you know, What are your revenue targets? Which products in your suite of products are your, what's your commercial strategy and how do you support that strategy in the best way? I'll give you an example. So we, you know, oftentimes it's very easy to look at what another brand is doing and say, oh, well, we should be, you know, we should be doing that when we launch this product. But if we're not, if that's not where our customer is, for example, if a brand is out activating at a some festival or concert or something. But if your customer is not there and your customer is a totally different demographic, a totally different mindset, and they're not even shopping in that place, then it's so far to get to that point from point A to point B where that customer is going to say, okay, I saw the product here and I'm going to shop for it here. If that doesn't make sense for you or your brand or your customer, then it probably doesn't make sense for your brand to do. Great. And speaking of being in the right place, Jay Skipworth is asking in terms of ads, do you have any opinion on Google ads versus Facebook ads? Is there a platform that you prefer or recommend? Yeah, I mean, I think that's a very broad question. And it really depends on your audience and your audience strategy. I will keep going back to how valuable it is for you to understand who your customer is and who you are targeting. And depending on, you know, and where that customer is engaging. A lot of times you do need to test and learn. I mean, we will do a huge amount of analysis to understand that it took us a while to get to the point of understanding, you know, what What type of customer is shopping and seeing our ads on? What role does Meta play versus what role does Google play versus what role does TikTok play in terms of driving our customer into which channel? are a brand that sells at multiple places. So we sell on Amazon, we sell on our own website and we sell on Sephora. We also have a very strong pro community. So we sell in salons and directly to stylists via retailers like Salon Centric or Cosmoprof. So we have a lot of different places where our customer can find us. And it's a different customer depending on whether they are a pro stylist or they are a consumer. And so we really look to understand each of those customers, where they are and how they're behaving and where we want to drive them. And that's how we figure out which ad platform to use for that customer. Great. So Polkin asked a question, what about solopreneurs? So a lot of what we're talking about here, it sounds great. It also sounds like a lot of work and maybe too much work for one person. Are there any sort of, you know, a scaled back version of some of the stuff you've talked about, like solopreneurs just getting started, like, hey, you can't do everything, but try to hit these marks as you're launching. Yeah, I mean, I think there's, you know, you're one person, you can't do it all. But there's certainly, you know, I do think that there's a lot of value in utilizing others to, you know, to get that word out. And it's a lot of what we talked about already, you know, I think, unlocking the power of your community, unlocking, you know, others to promote your brand for you. It's, you know, it's it sounds simple, but it truly is a scalable way that you can get the word out about your brand beyond just you as one person, which can feel really daunting. Pedro is asking an interesting question, says in the insurance business, which is intangible and also very specific niche in my role as a broker. How does marketing work? And I'm going to ask a little bit more here and just ask about your process for figuring out like what is the part of this that I think is going to connect with an audience, whether it's like you'll like this thing or how it's going to make you feel or you've got this problem and I'm going to solve it for you. Like how do you kind of approach figuring out what that message is going to be? Yeah, it's interesting. It's something that we think a lot about at Amica. When we develop products, we truly look, we like to call it co-creation. We really want to solve a consumer need that doesn't exist in the market today. you know, whether it be, so I think I would think about it from that perspective. So if we know that our customer, you know, number one concern is frizz and frizzy hair and, you know, in deep humidity, we really think about what, what other concerns does someone with frizzy hair have? It's usually not just frizzy hair. It could be something deeper around nourishment or protection or repairing hair. And so we'll think about that holistically in terms of the customer experience. develop a product with that in mind. And then that really shapes how we position what we are offering to the consumer based off of what they're asking. And we're lucky. We have a community that is deeply engaged and loyal to our brand. They tell us what they want from us. Specifically, we have the luxury of being a brand that has a very strong professional community. We're a salon raised brand. And so our pro stylists will tell us, you know, what their clients are looking for, what they're looking for in serving, servicing their clients. And that's no different than, you know, the insurance business. If you are, you know, if you're a broker, you know what you're, you know, speak to the customer, understand what's, what is not working in the industry today? What are the offerings out there that are not working for them? Use AI to even scrape what customers' pain points are and really think about tailoring that messaging to the audience based off of what their pain points are and what you're offering that's unique and different. That's great, great, great, great points. So I think we've got time for a couple more questions. So if you have one, stick it in the chat, but we've been getting some really great questions. So thanks, everyone. David Guy, two part question here. He wants to know how much of Amica's marketing was done online versus in person when you were just getting started? And what do you feel is more important to longitivity of a brand? Yeah, I mean, I think it's both, right? Like we, as I mentioned, you know, there's nothing that compares to that one-to-one, you know, kind of one-to-many connection that you have in real life. And we were, you know, I gave you some examples early on of how we utilized our salon. We, you know, it's interesting. You know, Bea Shapiro, who is the CEO of Ellis Brooklyn, you know, the fragrance brand that we just partnered with, she actually learned about the brand because she was a client of our salon early days, many years ago. And so this is, you know, there's a power to that connection that someone that experience that someone has with your brand in real life. But it's very hard to scale that and it's very hard to see the impact and ROI of that. So I do believe that having an online, you know, bringing that same experience that you're giving people on, you know, in real life and being able to create that digitally is super important because it allows you to achieve scale. Great. I think this is a beauty question. Dawson is wondering what products do you recommend for contouring? It's amazing. So I used to be the CMO at Milk Makeup and I'm super proud of one of our contouring products that we launched there when I was there. It's our Sculpt Stix. And, you know, and I swear by those products and I would, you know, really another clean brand that's really good for you. So really highly recommend that one. That's awesome. So for everyone who wants to, you know, learn more about your company, but also I think probably get a masterclass in how marketing works, where can, how can they follow Amika? How can they follow you and know what you guys are up to? Yep. Our website is loveamika.com. Our Instagram is at Amika. We are also on TikTok. Definitely and follow me, Niloufer Vohora on LinkedIn. And, you know, I post a lot of things around, you know, marketing and feel free to reach out. Would love to connect with all of you. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. This is really, really incredible information. Really appreciate your thoughts and really great questions, everyone. Really, really great stuff. Brought out some really great information. So thanks so much for joining us. Thanks, Niloufer. And we will see you next time. So have a great rest of your day, everyone.