Welcome Crowdly: Bringing Authenticity to Advocate Marketing
Written by Sean Broderick
When I invest in start-ups, I’m looking for opportunities that combine the best brains with an industry most in need of change. I’m fired-up of late because Crowdly, one of our newest investments, is a solid match on both fronts.
The Problem with Advocate Marketing
In the world of Advocate Marketing, many players have been selling a questionable set of services to their clients. They promise social media buzz by engaging bloggers, Facebook and Twitter users, who purportedly can proselytize on a brand’s behalf. While these so-called influencers may be prolific, they are also ineffective, as their efforts are largely insincere and carry virtually no weight with a brand’s actual and potential customers. As a result, these pseudo-advocates’ actions cannot translate into successful marketing campaigns. What they can do is make it much more complex for companies to source authentic advocates and to optimize their relationship with these most influential brand ambassadors.
Enter Crowdly
Crowdly shoves aside outdated, ineffective advocate marketing solutions and replaces them with an effective, proven platform that brands can use to find, connect with, and leverage their own genuine advocates. The Crowdly platform allows brands to effectively connect with and drive their existing online loyalists to power their advocate marketing initiatives. These brands have real-time access to detailed metrics on the content and nature of interactions online, down to the individuals who are causing the most earned influence about their brand. They can slice-and-dice this information, and then use Crowdly to mobilize authentic, sincere, and devoted brand advocates. The Crowdly platform provides incredibly effective, turnkey activations that let brands connect their high value initiatives with these high value advocates who have a proven love of the brand. Crowdly offers brands advanced insights into their advocates, while providing them with integrated activation tools through a user-friendly platform. Crowdly launched in Q3 2014 and has already won global brands such as Diet Coke, Hendrick’s Gin, and Bose.
Why We Love the Founder
I’ve known CEO Dan Sullivan since the beginning. Early on, Dan understood that big brands couldn’t engage their best customers in a meaningful way, even after they’d built impressive online fan bases. Dan is also a leader. He’s smart and a sharp salesperson who has built a platform to fit the market need, with a superb sales process. Dan is a savvy manager as well, and has impressed us with his ability to run a tight ship and grow it fast on short money. Dan Sullivan is a CEO we are excited to back. We believe Dan and the Crowdly team are poised to change their market.
Crowdly’s Rosy Future
Dan and Crowdly’s recipe for success is simple: combine top-notch software, an industry begging for improvement, and rock star sales. It’s no wonder then that Dan and his team are growing Crowdly’s client list at breakneck speed. Brands love them, and we’re excited to back them. Crowdly is looking at robust growth in the US this year, and since we like to think globally at SOSV, success outside the US should be just around the corner.
Originally published at sosv.com on July 28, 2015.
