41 Social Soup

Founded in 2010, Social Soup is an influencer marketing community that founder Sharyn Smith describes as the result of “a decade’s worth of innovation”.

This year, the platform saw revenue of over $6 million, a 51% increase on the previous year, placing them at number 41 on this year’s Smart50 list.

Smith says this growth is “significant for a rapidly-growing niche in the marketing landscape”, and attributes it partly to some of the tech developments the company has been working on.

This year, Social Soup launched its Influencer Campaign app, allowing influencers to pick up products they have been asked to showcase, and to scan the barcode to receive an instant digital voucher for the product.

The platform also uses dashboards to track and monitor campaigns, offering clients insights into reach and engagement metrics, as well as analysis of conversations in posts and comments.

Smith attributes business growth to the fact “clients are more confident in their campaigns through the ability to measure the impact”.

She adds these insights can benefit the influencer industry as a whole, “which has grappled with measurement and credibility”.

In the past year, Social Soup has landed 21 new large clients, Smith says, and it has a client retention rate of 87%.

However, one of the biggest initial challenges Smith faced was finding the right technology partners to help scale the business.

“This involved a few iterations with companies until I brought all core technology in-house, and brought on a new business partner to lead this side of the business,” she says.

Over time, she learnt having all proprietary technology in-house was one of the business’s key strengths, and “was key in allowing us to be flexible and pivot with the needs of the market”.

The team also faced a challenge in figuring out how to market the business before influencer marketing was a well-known channel.

“A lot of education was required,” Smith says.

“We learnt to focus on the more innovative clients, rather than trying to convince everyone.”