In 2011 Filip Tysander used his life savings of $24,000 to start his own watch brand, Daniel Wellington. Now he is a self-made millionaire with a watch empire which sales $180 Million worth of watches each year, and a margin of more than 50%. His secret, Instagram.
The Swedish entrepreneur avoided paying for traditional methods of advertising, opting for the unique approach (at the time) of working with thousands of bloggers, celebrities, and other “influencers” worldwide. For example, Blake Scott, 27, has been a frequent collaborator of Daniel Wellington, sharing the watches with his 318,000 Instagram followers. “I first found out about Daniel Wellington via Instagram: Everyone outside the States was wearing one, and it seemed so cool,” he says.
Not long after, someone from the brand contacted him and said he wanted to give Scott a couple of watches to post on his feed. Following on from this, he negotiated a deal with the company, which paid a few hundred dollars for an organized campaign. This led to an insane amount of promotion which has largely contributed to the company’s success.
As Instagram continues to grow, it is no longer a site for selfies and pictures of food. Instead, it can be seen as a business tool with incredible marketing and data potential. One startup that knows this is Snoopreport. They provide a service that tracks what users do on Instagram, pulling actionable insights from what users like, comment and who they follow. To get a better understanding of what this new company really does and what they have planned for the future, I spoke with the CEO, Anatoly Noskov and asked him a few questions.
The word “Instagram celebrity” has become increasingly popular in recent years, have you had many “famous” customers contact you? For example with a large or influential following?
Anatoly Noskov-CEO of Snoopreport
Instagram is the best platform for the emerging influencer market, so it’s not a surprise the term Instagram celebrity is so widespread. Many companies have realized that dealing with Instagram celebrities can be very profitable, but at the same time, choosing a right pool of influencers is crucial for any digital marketing campaign. That’s why we mostly have digital researchers and digital marketing agencies contacting us in order to better understand influencers (Instagram celebrities).
For example, after tracking an Instagram user with Snoopreport you may find out that some Instagram celebrities already like your brand, meaning you can spend much less on paid posts with them or even better, send them a gift and politely ask them to simply post a few pictures with it. On the other hand, with Snoopreport you may see that some important Instagram influencers are promoting your competitors, so you can better save your time and not even ask to collaborate with them. Instagram celebrities can also use Snoopreport to investigate competitor’s growth strategies but we haven’t had such a request as of yet.
Sometimes entrepreneurs like to use analogies when describing an idea that is novel or innovative, is there an analogy you use or one that comes to mind when describing Snoopreport?
We are like Iconosquare inside out, they keep track of what other users do with a certain Instagram account and we keep track of what a certain account does with other Instagram users.
Who do you consider to be your main competitors and how do you differentiate yourself from them?
We do not have any direct competition so far. The product is that innovative. 😉
How did you come up with the idea of Snoopreport and what made you set out to provide this service?
I’m a serial entrepreneur and we’ve been using Instagram as the core traffic source for a number of our startups. We developed the company because we found we needed it, when we were trying to investigate competitors, create an Instagram growth strategy or better understand which posts our audience was enjoying. That’s why we created Snoopreport.
What do you consider Snoopreport’s greatest achievement within the past 6 months?
We are out of the private beta and proud to introduce our service to the wide audience.
What is the main focus for Snoopreport over the next 6 months?
We are focusing on expanding our services to the professional community, we want our audience to see the infinite possibilities for Instagram audience research via Snoopreport. That’s why we let selected professional researchers and analysts use Snoopreport for free if they agree to share use cases on our blog.
Your service is for individuals as well as companies, do you find your service is more popular with one of these groups over the other?
Frankly, we’ve only served companies during a closed beta period and the outreach to B2C market has just started. While we believe Snoopreport could be very beneficial for a digital marketing, research, positioning, CRM enrichment and many other needs business have, we also see a huge market for individuals. Snoopreport can also be used for tracking your children and their friends account activity, to keep an eye on who they follow and comment.
We will try to provide simple understandable reports for Individuals while creating a lot of features professionals need. Our PDF report is pretty simple yet informative, while our CSV report for professionals contains all possible data needed for in-depth analysis. We also got a group CSV report containing actions of groups of Instagram users which is used for clusterization and audience research, it’s usually used by professional agencies, for example, we had a really great case with Publicis Russia.
What do you find to be the main motivation for using Snoopreport for companies and what is the main motivation for individuals?
Understanding the audience better for business and curiosity for individuals.
