An interview with Sophia King, Head of Brand & Communications at Mention Me
We sit down with Sophia King, Head of Brand & Communications at Mention Me. Mention Me empowers brands to harness the exponential power of fans through referral.
How did you end up at Mention-me and what problem does Mention Me solve for its clients?
I've always loved writing and telling stories, so jumped at the chance to put that into a business setting when Mention Me offered me its first copywriter role in 2019. I've since built on our storytelling efforts and am now Head of Brand & Comms, responsible for growing awareness of why all brands should think advocacy-first. Mention Me is the world's first Customer Advocacy Intelligence Platform, helping brands to harness the power of their fans. We like to think it's working: to date, we've delivered $2bn in revenue to brands including ASOS, Huel and Charlotte Tilbury.
As the Head of Brand & Communications, what are your main responsibilities at Mention Me?
Put simply, I'm responsible for raising awareness in our target market of A) the untapped potential of customer advocacy and B) Mention Me as the platform that unlocks that potential. Day to day, that involves managing a team covering everything from content creation to events, social media to PR and everything in between. All while working closely with the wider marketing team and business to make sure our efforts are making an impact and helping to hit company goals.
To get a bit more technical, which methods work best for making people aware of and interested inMention Me , and why do you think they work so well?
Integrated campaigns are crucial to success for the Marketing team at Mention Me. There's no point us delivering an all-singing and dancing campaign if nobody else in the business knows about it. Every campaign is kicked off with a cross-functional brainstorm then, depending on our objectives, we figure out how we can weave it across our sales, marketing, client and partner efforts. That could mean delivering a co-branded partner event, publishing an ebook distributed via content syndication, writing blogs optimised for search, holding an internal competition to drive engagement... anything that helps land a consistent, compelling story to our target audiences.
At ColdFire, when we look at our clients' Marketing strategies, they vary greatly. Some have found a single, scalable client acquisition process while others thrive on a mix of top-of-funnel strategies. How would you summarize the high-level marketing-related strategy of your organization, and what key elements contribute to its success?
Similar to my previous answer, integration is key to marketing effectiveness at Mention Me. Every campaign is mapped out against the funnel as we figure out how best to engage our target audiences at each stage. We're also constantly assessing how we can improve and build on our efforts. Everything we do is tracked and reported on, with company ARR the North Star metric.
What marketing tactic have you employed at Mention Me or past companies that you feel is often overlooked by marketing teams, and what makes this technique effective in your experience?
Brand-building. There's a misperception in marketing that B2B is the dull cousin of the fun-loving B2C. I'm on a mission to change that and prove that B2B shouldn't mean boring. In fact, those B2B businesses that do take the risk of doing something different are far more likely to win their prospects' attention (and spend). Ultimately, you're selling to people with emotions – particularly if their professional reputation is involved. At Mention Me, we're constantly taking inspiration from B2C brands and thinking about how we can apply them to our own tactics. Take our recent Black Friday campaign, where we created two characters: Buck the big spender and Cate the advocate. We've consistently found that thinking outside the box in ways like this makes Mention Me much more likely to stick in people's minds.
Has your Marketing team experimented with some kind of cold outbound strategy (like cold email)? If yes what was the general outcome and if no, why not?
The Marketing team is more focused on driving inbound leads and nurturing existing ones. We want to add genuine value, so focus on sending communications prospects want to engage with and find helpful for their day-to-day. That might mean sharing one of our latest ebooks giving guidance on how to grow their loyal customer base, or a case study highlighting how a business like theirs has increased profitable revenue through harnessing customer advocacy. We're constantly reviewing our target customers' painpoints and exploring how we can help better solve for them.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
