Tom Wallace is CEO of Cute Nutrition, a women’s supplement company launched in March, 2016. Despite being such a young brand, it has already expanded significantly via a large and highly engaged social community across Instagram and Facebook.We met with Tom to learn how he had built this brand presence across social media so rapidly and how it is impacting his business. 

How can a start-up company make an early impact in the fitness industry?

As with any market, you have to search for a niche that isn’t yet saturated and ask yourself whether there is likely to be a significant audience demand in that space in the coming years, and if it’s a niche that you believe you could effectively cater for. My goal was to create the most aesthetically pleasing brand in the market, so both the content and the products are carefully designed and the imagery and videos are an important way of inspiring women to purchase. In order to create this kind of content my advice would be to engage with influencers that represent an aspirational version of your prospective customer. That said, for them to be interested in working with you, it’s essential that they believe in your product and your brand so you must establish your foundations first. 

How can brands use influencer marketing to grow sales?

Influencers are a powerful way to launch yourself into a market. Even if you don’t have many existing customers, as long as the influencers believe in your product then they are a powerful and cost-effective vehicle for presenting your brand to your audience as a particular way of life.When it comes to digital marketing, many businesses begin with the technical elements first. They attempt to build a complex website in the hope that it magically attracts users, but it rarely works out that way which is why I started the other way around. I began almost entirely on social media. I created lots of imagery using my influencers and used that to develop a large and highly active community until they were ready to buy.We now have customers all over the world, including Germany, France and the US, and this is largely thanks to the role of influencer marketing and social media. We can track the conversions directly from social so we can see the direct impact it has on the bottom line. 

How can brands use influencer marketing to retain customers?

Now that we have a good customer base, I prefer to work with real customers as influencers, rather than Reality stars or Sport stars, and I have found that my customers emulate the influencers’ images with their products, giving me, even more, content for the brand’s social pages.When relying on your customers as influencers, it can help to provide them with something that is more photographable than the product itself. Along with our supplements, each of our products comes with a different cup, or shaker or mug, which have ‘cute’ captions on them which are perfect for photographing! Sharing our customer’s content makes them feel loved and part of the Cute community, so that they want to buy from us again and again.We also have a loyalty scheme, and regularly invite their opinions and feedback for future product development. It’s about making them feel as close to the brand as possible.Transformation campaigns are also a good way to work really closely with a  customer. By helping them to become more healthy and confident they turn into some of your most compelling and loyal ambassadors.Finally, you need to consider the role that social plays within your broader digital strategy. We know that Google takes into account your social influence, so it’s a central part of our SEO activity which now helps drive a large number of additional visitors to the site looking for specific products.