Click here for Part I & Part II

Developing brand ambassador networks companies can tap into to build buzz and word-of-mouth marketing

Raavi Iqbal is the co-founder and CEO of SocialLadder. Launched in 2014, SocialLadder is a mobile peer-to-peer marketing platform designed to help live event promoters build hype and sell more tickets by growing their networks of brand ambassadors and social influencers. Users can incentivize their teams of ambassadors with rewards and challenges, and monitor and track progress in real time through a score-based leaderboard and advanced social media analytics.

EDWIN WARFIELD: As technology and marketing trends evolve and the SocialLadder user base grows, what’s your vision for the company’s future? Are you considering partnerships with ad agencies?

RAAVI IQBAL: It’s interesting: the progressive agencies are very, very interested in identifying and partnering with companies like SocialLadder that ultimately have a network of people. More and more brands—the customers of these agencies—are realizing that pop-up banner ads and these traditional avenues for digital media spends aren’t working like they used to, and they’re looking for ways to more efficiently convert to sale. That’s where word of mouth plays a big role. Ultimately, agencies will follow with what their customers want to do, and so, we’ll certainly partner with agencies at the right time, but it’s typically driven by the lifestyle brands that are the customers of those agencies.

Ultimately, with SocialLadder, we are a platform. We’re driving value for our customers, but we’re also building a network. That network is now over 150,000 people, and these people are not just on social networking, where it’s just people coming together to meet with each other; it’s a network of folks that are really, really good at promoting and selling. One of the key values with SocialLadder is that we know everything about these people, including exactly how much they’ve driven in terms of sales. We have individuals on this platform that have single-handedly driven over $100,000 in sales, and they’re extremely valuable. We know everything they’re interested in, and we’ve created opportunities to align them with more and more events, more and more brands that they can actually move the needle for.

We believe that the real vision with SocialLadder is to ultimately build the largest network in the world of micro-influencers that can be immediately harnessed to drive sales and increase buzz for virtually any lifestyle brand out there. The magic behind SocialLadder is that we’re learning everything about these people. We’ve created an equation where they want to tell us all about themselves, and so we’re able to use this information to align people with meaningful opportunities to promote and sell. What we see in terms of the vision of SocialLadder is creating this network and then leveraging that with many, many brands to give them a way to reach the people that are at the center of their circle of friends and really use word of mouth as an alternative to some of the more interruptive styles of traditional digital media advertising opportunities that are out there. Instead of a brand spending money on a pop-up banner ad, they’ll spend money with SocialLadder because they want to access real people that are passionate about their brand, and they want to create a way for them to talk about their products or to directly help them move products by selling to their friends.

Connect with Raavi on LinkedIn

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ABOUT NEWMARK KNIGHT FRANK

Newmark Knight Frank (NKF) is one of the world's leading commercial real estate advisory firms. Together with London-based partner Knight Frank and independently-owned offices, NKF's 15,000 professionals operate from more than 400 offices in established and emerging property markets on six continents.

With roots dating back to 1929, NKF's strong foundation makes it one of the most trusted names in commercial real estate. NKF's full-service platform comprises BGC's real estate services segment, offering commercial real estate tenants, landlords, investors and developers a wide range of services including leasing; capital markets services, including investment sales, debt placement, appraisal, and valuation services; commercial mortgage brokerage services; as well as corporate advisory services, consulting, project and development management, and property and corporate facilities management services. For further information, visit www.ngkf.com.

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Edwin Warfield, CEO of citybizlist, conducts the CEO Interviews.

If you're interested in reaching CEOs, please contact edwin.warfield@citybuzz.co

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