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Customer journey influencer marketing3/10/2024 When we turned on the platform, we found, like Dua Lipa eight years ago, we found Billie Eilish eight years ago. We had to create databases of all these people who were talking about musicians. So we created this platform where we just tracked all these people, but we had to create databases of all these musicians. The most popular people early on are gonna go somewhere and it really had nothing to do with listening, likes, or views, which that market had been somewhat gamified. If everyone’s talking about “Ryan”, we could predict that “Ryan”’s gonna go somewhere. A lot of times they’re able to find these people very early on, but what we did is we said, well, let’s listen to everyone who matters in the music space, primarily on Twitter at the time. They have music bookers, they have doormen at venues who are seeing artists that they think are interesting, sound producers, all these different people. They do that by having boots on the ground all over the world. The music industry spends billions of dollars every year trying to find new artists and then promoting those artists. We first started with this idea, and the idea was we wanted to disrupt the music industry. We actually did both of those things when we started Tagger. Or you can create an idea that you think is interesting that might pertain to a market and then you build that. Ideation stage is so much fun and there’s two ways that you can really do this: One is, which is the smart way to do it, identify a need, and then create solutions based on that need. There’s like five stages of a startup, right? There’s ideation, there’s launch, there’s validation, there’s growth, and then there’s maturity or exit. Pete: It’s so interesting, that ideation stage. Most businesses, and you’ve started a number of them in various industries, we’re trying to find a problem to solve, right? So what was the problem that you were really looking at and where did you see your ability and your team’s ability to find a unique solution with Tagger? Ryan: Let’s step back a little bit to when you first were kind of coming up with the concept of Tagger. So it’s just this machine that we can jump into which is great, and that the entire team is so excited about Tagger and the ability to sell influencer to all their customers. So they have this growth mentality and we have like maybe 10 sellers around the world. A lot of people are coming from Salesforce at that company, which is interesting. What we were looking for is not only a company that we could scale with in a major way, but also the right cultural fit. Sprout has 30,000 customers and they’re all doing influencer marketing, ’cause it’s such a major part of the media mix and it’s obviously such an important part of the social space as well. The real conversation happened, and they came out and we met with their CEO, their president, head of business development, and what we were looking for is an opportunity to win in this space. They reached out and said, hey, we’re kind of looking at this space. We talked to Sprout probably in December of 2022 for the first time. When they say that the deal changes a hundred times a day, it really does. Pete: I think selling a company is harder than actually starting a company. I’d love to hear, and I’m sure our audience would love to hear a little bit about what happens during an acquisition – how do you know that the company that’s acquiring you is the right fit? What was that process like? Tagger just got acquired by Sprout Social, so congratulations. Ryan: So, I don’t wanna bury the lead here. So I’ve started companies in the independent travel space back in the.com era, I started a medical device company, I started a water sports recreational business, and then obviously most recently started Tagger Media about eight years ago. I’ve been doing stuff for a long time, but I’ve always kind of started companies. I know we have some big news to talk about but would love to hear a little bit about your background, a quick elevator pitch, and resume of how you got here today. Ryan: I’m happy to be joined by the founder and CEO of Tagger Media, Pete Kennedy. Read on to hear Peter’s insights on the startup journey, and how he was able to adapt and build a successful company by focusing on customer needs. You can listen to the full episode of the podcast here. This Q&A is an adaptation of a conversation between Coegi’s SVP of Marketing and Innovation, Ryan Green, and Peter Kennedy, the founder and president of influencer marketing company Tagger Media, which was recently acquired by Sprout Social.
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