907 Ashley Stanford:

Melinda Wittstock:

Coming up on Wings of Inspired Business:

Ashley Stanford:

If I was going to be compelled to share something, I want to know what’s in it for me because essentially a lot of people consider, their own social media profiles is their own real estate. And if they’re going to share something, one, they want it to be a value and to their audience and two, they want to bring value to others. And while I’m not saying everyone loves games like I do, but I thought that that would be a really fun place to start.

Melinda Wittstock:

The fastest way to grow a business is to engage a loyal community as your most effective sales force. So today we dig into the magic of gamification as a way to reward your most influential customers. Ashley Stanford has pioneered a way to revolutionize the post-purchase confirmation page, transforming it into a hub for social engagement. Today the founder of Ice Cream Social shares all her insights into why gamification makes marketing viral and sticky and how her company helps you do the same.

Melinda Wittstock:

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m all about paying it forward as a five-time serial entrepreneur, so I started this podcast to catalyze an ecosystem where women entrepreneurs mentor, promote, buy from, and invest in each other. Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together and lift as we climb.

Melinda Wittstock:

Today we meet an inspiring intrapreneur turned entrepreneur who incubated and launched her startup from its corporate beginnings at Ticket Socket. Ashley Stanford pioneered a groundbreaking platform that transforms customers into influencers through gamified incentives and social sharing. Ashley is the CEO and Founder of Ice Cream Social, a platform that helps any business with a digital offer to turn customers into powerful brand advocates. Ice Cream Social’s widget is customizable and presents customers with enticing offers and encourages them to invite friends through shareable unique URLs. The result? Boosted sales and a sense of community and shared experiences among users.

Melinda Wittstock:

We’ll be exploring the psychology behind gamification, the economics of modern advertising, and how to integrate Ice Cream Social with existing marketing strategies to enhance customer engagement and brand exposure. We also discuss the evolving landscape of influencer marketing, emphasizing authenticity and measurable impact. Ashley will be here in a moment, and first:

[PROMO CREDIT]

Looking for your next new podcast listen? Tired of searching or asking friends for recommendations? Podopolo is your perfect podcast matchmaker. AI powered recommendations and clip sharing mean you don’t have to lift a finger to find your perfect shows. Podopolo is free in both app stores – and if you have a podcast, take advantage of time-saving ways to easily find new listeners and grow revenue. That’s Podopolo.

Melinda Wittstock:

We all want hacks and tools that can help us grow brand awareness, sales and loyal customers, so today we’re going to make it fun and talk about how to use the psychology of gamification. Ashley Stanford is the CEO and Founder of Ice Cream Social, a SaaS platform that helps you to turn every customer into an influencer. With more than 15 years of experience in the digital marketing space, Ashley also specializes in building strategic marketing plans, mapping strategy execution, and collaborating to optimize tactics that drive increased performance for clients, primarily in the events and entertainment space.

Melinda Wittstock:

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Ashley Stanford and be sure to download the podcast app Podopolo so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

[INTERVIEW]

Melinda Wittstock:

Ashley, welcome to Wings.

Ashley Stanford:

Oh, thank you, Melinda. I’m very excited to be here.

Melinda Wittstock:

Me too. I am especially interested in this whole phenomenon of influencer marketing. The sweet spot is where your customers become your salespeople. I mean, that’s gold. And so this is what you do with Ice Cream Social. Tell us about how that works and what the impact of it is.

Ashley Stanford:

So, Ice Cream Social is a social referral tool that you could bolt on to any website or checkout flow. And to kind of give you an example of how it works, let’s say you’re buying tickets to an event, a festival, and after you’ve made your purchase, you land on the confirmation page. Now, the confirmation page has become prime real estate and digital marketing over the past several years. And so, what we do on this confirmation page is we deploy Ice Cream Social, and it presents your customer with an offer. And it’s typically something along the lines of, hey, events are more fun when your friends go with you. So, if you get five friends to come to this event with you, we’ll refund your ticket. And we provide them, you know, with a unique URL and, you know, they can easily share on social media and whatnot.

Ashley Stanford:

But the whole idea of it is to, one, turn every single customer into an influencer for your brand or event, and two, gamify it. People respond well to that, and we found really great success. Like a virality of people sharing when you add that gamification factor to it.

Melinda Wittstock:

Gamification is the secret of marketing, because inherent in it is an exchange of value, right? And making the person feel special; I guess we can really geek out on the neuroscience of that. Right? Like, you know, people are incentivized essentially to get something that’s valuable to them in exchange for doing something. So, like, they might be motivated by recognition or motivated by something for free or like a sense of ownership or belonging. Like, tell me, let’s get into the gamification piece for a little bit because it really works.

Melinda Wittstock:

Assuming that you’re doing it right and you’re getting the psychology of it.

Ashley Stanford:

Yeah, I mean, I could go on and on. I don’t know a lot about the science and Psychology behind it. Except for my personal, personal experience and growing up, I love to play video games. And my brother and I really only had a couple games. Unlike today, these kids, they’ve got all the games. We had Mario and Star Fox. And so, playing Mario once you beat the game, like that’s it. And what are you supposed to do as a kid? I would create these challenges and say, okay, now I’m going to play this whole game again, but this time I’m going to say, okay, how many coins can I collect? Like, how can I beat that record? Or how can I play this as fast as possible? Or get as many lives as possible? And I would almost create these own challenges for myself.

Ashley Stanford:

And that’s really what excited me about being in marketing, because my first experience in digital marketing was search engine optimization and just this idea of making little tweaks on someone’s website and then boom, they’re number two on Google, which sadly doesn’t work that easily today. But I knew that adding some sort of level of gamification is what people want, just because that’s what I wanted. And I know if I was going to be compelled to share something, I want to know what’s in it for me because essentially a lot of people consider, you know, their own social media profiles, like that is their own real estate. And if they’re going to share something, one, they want it to be a value and to their audience and two, they want to bring value to others. And while I’m not saying everyone loves games like I do, but I thought that that would be a really fun place to start. And another little kind of spin off story of Ice Cream social, essentially of how it, you know, really began was just some clients asking some hard questions and posing to me, hey, I need to sell more tickets. What could we do that does not involve me spending more money on Meta ads? And so, I think one, bringing in play and two, it being birthed from a real need of what our, our customers were looking for.

Melinda Wittstock:

You mentioned, you know, the cost of advertising, which is, you know, significant. And yes, you can target on Meta and all that kind of stuff. I do think that people are getting, I don’t know, maybe a little bit jaded about that. Like it’s a lot of money and, and people kind of know it’s an ad, whereas if something comes from a friend that you trust, obviously that’s just inherently more persuasive and ultimately less expensive. Let’s get into the economics of this. So, if say you’re selling a product or you have an event and you embed the Ice Cream Social kind of widget on your site, what is that costing you relative to, say, having to do a big, you know, marketing campaign?

Ashley Stanford:

Yeah, great question. So, with many of our clients, I’ve done essentially these case studies where we look at all their different marketing channels, let’s say their social media ads, email, SMS. I have some clients that do billboard TV and Ice Cream Social and we’ll allow it to run as it normally does. And we’re measuring what is the cost per acquisition of an order for those different marketing tools. And when you stack them all against each other, Ice Cream Social is by far the least expensive because essentially it’s word of mouth marketing. And so, you’re only paying a small cost to use the tool. And what we’ve also found, because transparently, unless you have a very robust customer base that’s very avid fans, it could be difficult for Ice Cream Social to be a standalone marketing channel for you. Especially in this day and age when it’s so crowded online, you really do have to have a robust digital marketing strategy.

Ashley Stanford:

And so, while I don’t recommend Ice Cream Social as a standalone strategy, what we have found is when you work Ice Cream Social into your marketing channel, mix with these other levers that you’re already pulling, such as email, SMS, Facebook ads. What it does is it actually brings down the cost per order per acquisition of all your other marketing channels because it’s also helping bring in traffic. It’s allowing you to pixel your traffic, it’s allowing you to grow your email database, your SMS database, and while they might not convert right away through an Ice Cream Social link, essentially you’re still able to, you know, add them collectively to your database and market to them in other ways, which helps support all the channels.

Melinda Wittstock:

Just so you can essentially remarket. So, say someone comes in, I don’t know if say Coachella is a client, for instance, but let’s use that. Say it’s an event and someone says, okay, and here are five of my friends. So now you know who their friends are, whether those people go or not, right? They’ve been recommended.

Melinda Wittstock:

But that’s now in your email list, that’s now in your social. You can retarget to those people, Is that right?

Ashley Stanford:

Right. If Those people come back to your website then. Yes, of course, you can retarget to them if you know, initiate a checkout or enter your email SMS list in another way, of course, then they’re added to your database. At one time we were able to just really collect all that data and give it to you even if their friends didn’t do anything yet. But with GDPR and privacy, you know, we have tightened that up a little bit so there are some opt in laws that we must abide to. But yes, it definitely helps. Just that idea of boats rise with the tide.

Melinda Wittstock:

Marketing can be very overwhelming, right. For a new business, like trying to figure out which strategy, which order, right? How do you even know, say if you’re going to do an influencer marketing strategy? How do you even know who your Right. influencers are? Especially like at the beginning? So, say for a company that’s relatively new, it’s early stage, it’s starting out, it has a thesis about who their customers are.

Melinda Wittstock:

And in that context of a, like trying to figure out who your influencers are, what your budget should be, how you should kind of order these things to get the best results. Walk us through that.

Ashley Stanford:

Yeah. So, one foundation of, you know, really any marketing strategy is for sure understanding who your target market is, who your customer is. So, if you’ve got that in place, we’re off to a good start because sadly a lot of people don’t. Secondly, before you get into influencer marketing, and honestly any type of marketing is you do want to make sure that you are set up to properly measure. And for a long time when I first started out in influencer marketing, it was really the wild wild west and people weren’t sure how to measure results or how to negotiate contracts or anything like that. And making sure that, you know, if these influencers are having an impact on your business or not is important. And there’s a lot of different ways that you can track that. If you’re working with an influencer, there’s of course, you know, you want to measure more the vanity metrics of okay, did their video perform well or is it engaged? What do the comments look like? What are people saying about our product or event you want? Maybe you give them a promo code that their audience can use so you can, you know, measure the impact via that promo code.

Ashley Stanford:

Maybe you give them a unique URL, maybe it’s like an affiliate link and you can measure traffic and conversion that way. Sometimes we’ve aligned ourselves a lot with influencers for like promotions or sweepstakes, things that require an opt in because sometimes there’s not always a possibility to drive a direct sale. So, things like that, you just want to make sure that you can measure it because with something especially like influencer marketing where there’s a lot of variables, you don’t want to be throwing spaghetti against the wall and wondering if it works because it is a strategy or it’s tactic that you will need to refine. You may not get it right the first time, you may not work with the right influencers the first time. You just want to sure that you can measure so you can continue to optimize and pivot as needed.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, I mean, you know, when you mentioned data, this is, this is so important. Like everybody knows they need data. One of my businesses was a social intelligence company that could understand from people’s social conversations who was likely to be an influencer or a micro influencer who engage the most with their message and all this intelligence. Very, very valuable. And what we found was a lot of people wanted that and they’d pay for it, but then they’d never actually use it.

Melinda Wittstock:

It was incredibly frustrating to me as an entrepreneur. It’s like, look, I mean we’re giving you all this insight. Like this is crazy. Like from the entire Twitter fire hose or from the entire like, you know, Facebook.

Ashley Stanford:

I those tools with big brands and they love to see that, they love to see all the mentions and, and what people are saying. But you do need to have someone who knows how to act on that data for sure.

Melinda Wittstock:

How to actually interpret it. And so that was the, the issue with this business. It was a tech business, but everybody kind of wanted us to be in an agency, which I didn’t really want to do. It was really funny, I mean to the point where like there was a, a financial technology company that we really found from the social conversations that their ideal, their ideal group were millennial women, but they were convinced they were selling to baby boomer men. It’s like, no, like, yeah, like, and, and they couldn’t hear it. Like, they were so stuck, you know, on their idea.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. So when you have, you know, clients where the data is saying one thing, but they’re like stuck in their own kind of belief about like, does that happen with your clients? Or, or, or, or, or if it does, like, what do you do?

Ashley Stanford:

Yeah, you know, it does for sure. And I have, I would say more so today in my career, I’ve aligned myself very well with clients who love the data and yeah, let’s try this, let’s try that. Very open and willing. But previously, when, especially working with tools such as yours, like social listening tools and consulting more with agencies and large brands, sometimes they’re not ready to digest that because they’ve got a one-year, three-year plan and we have to execute it against it. And pivoting isn’t exactly something they’re prepared to do. And you know, you just, you do your best.

Melinda Wittstock:

You know, I joke that you can be right, or you can be rich.

Ashley Stanford:

Yeah, yeah. Like, I guess when I’ve been in those situations, it’s like, okay, here’s the facts, this is what we should do, but we’ll carry on as you want us to, but we’re going to keep bringing this up every report just until it hits home for you guys. And honestly, in working with big brands, which is, you know, kind of a great thing about smaller companies and startups, but in working with big brands, sometimes they, that data would never get recognized the way it needed to be until a new executive came in, until there was new breath in the company, you know, or new turnover or whatever the case may be.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right? It’s much more difficult with the larger companies. They get very set in their ways where at least entrepreneurs, you know, entrepreneurs have less money but they’re more nimble. Like maybe they’re more willing to try new things. So, tell me, what’s it been like growing ice cream social and like getting it like embed. It seems like a no brainer, right? Like, so, you know, is it, is it technically hard to do or is it just a little bit of iFrame pasting in or like how, how hard is it to embed this in your, in your sales funnel?

Ashley Stanford:

Yeah, I mean you described it perfectly. It’s a little embed. So, if, if you’re not using a tool that we’re natively built into. Like we’re natively built into, you know, all your major Shopify’s WordPress, you know, where it’s a simple like plugin or a drop of a piece of code ticket socket where it’s built into that tool. It’s pretty easy to get up and running. It’s not something that is a tedious onboarding in any way.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, it seems, it seems like a no brainer. And so how much does it cost?

Ashley Stanford:

Great question. So typically, what we’ve been doing is allowing clients to try it at no cost. So, try it for free, get you up and running, make sure you like it, make sure it works for you. And then what we do is, should you want to proceed, we charge almost like as an affiliate, we’ll charge a small percentage. Let’s say for oftentimes it’s maybe 10%. Will charge 10% of the net new revenue that we bring in for you directly through Ice Cream Social.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, so, so let’s do the numbers here. So, I run a company called Podopolo and it has all these tools and services for podcasters to grow their audience, make money from their content and such. Gen AI tools and all these sorts of things. But say a podcaster comes in and they sign up for like 97 bucks a month, and they invite five friends and each of those sign up for 97 bucks a month. So, you’re basically taking 10% of that like forever if it’s a monthly recurring.

Ashley Stanford:

It’s just net new. So, it would just be on that first initial $97.

Melinda Wittstock:

Got it. Okay, well that, that seems really fair. So, so what are your challenges in getting adoption to this? Because it seems like everybody could benefit from it.

Ashley Stanford:

Sure. I would say, you know, some of our bigger challenges have been integration in a sense of these larger companies that we’re trying to integrate with that have older tech. So, as I mentioned, Ice Cream Social, we do a lot of retail, but we do also work a lot in the event industry and so we have integrated with, you know, ticketing companies and there’s other, you know, larger ticketing companies, reward companies and whatnot that we’re integrating with. But sometimes, you know, their tech’s a little bit older and just getting that integration sometimes and getting on dev schedules can take, you know, months. So, I would say that’s kind of been one of our bigger battles, is just working through integrations with larger companies, you know, are more of like part of our long-term plan. For sure.

Melinda Wittstock:

Got it. So where do you see your company going ultimately? What’s the big vision and do you want to sort of be embedded in everything, everywhere, all at once or what’s the ultimate goal?

Ashley Stanford:

So, we’ve been very lucky to catch the attention of NBC Comcast Sports Tech, who’s invested in our company, and you know, works with us to align us with their partners in the sports tech industry, which has been really great to learn from and figure out. Just get new mindsets on, you know, how events work in other realms. We definitely want to continue to forge that relationship and work with, you know, big sporting teams and whatnot. We also have plans to release essentially an influencer slash ticketing marketplace where you can go and find tickets to events and invite your friends to go with you, whether it’s a Ticket Socket related event or not. Essentially a marketplace that can pull in all events and you can become an influencer for any event, essentially.

[PROMO CREDIT]

Want to know the secrets of building value in your business? Check out Zero Limits Business Growth Secrets. Join me together with Steve Little – serial entrepreneur and investor– as we explore the little-known 24 value drivers that spell the difference between a 6, 7, 8 or 9 figure business. That’s Zero Limits Business Growth Secrets, produced by Podopolo Brand Studio at zerolimitsradio.com – that’s zerolimitsradio.com and wherever you get your podcasts.

Melinda Wittstock:

And we’re back with Ashley Stanford, CEO and Founder of Ice Cream Social.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUES]

Melinda Wittstock:

So, tell me a little bit about your transition because you were executive vice president of client strategy at Ticket Socket, but then you found a way to, you know, create this. I guess you were sort of intrapreneurial, I guess, within Ticket Socket and then spun this out into your own company. That’s kind of a cool way to begin an entrepreneurial journey rather than like completely starting from scratch. Tell me about what that was like and how that all came to be.

Ashley Stanford:

Sure. So, I just want to say you never know where opportunity is going to come from. So, anything that you’re doing, no matter where you’re at in your career, I would just say treat any opportunity seriously, do good work, be a good person, because you never know. My actual first freelancing job was doing sales at the original company that the CEO of Ticket Socket had started. This was when I was 17 years old. So, this was over 20 years ago that I started that I met this person and was working with them. Fast forward many years, reconnected working with Ticket Socket and just, you know, they have that startup mentality, although they’re not a startup and just very open to ideas. And you know, they did have an environment, do have an environment that I felt very comfortable in being exactly as you described that intrapreneur and being able to collaborate with people on Those ideas and you know, it was the relationship that I maintain with them and the environment that they provide to like, really help be a great springboard for ice cream social.

Melinda Wittstock:

Amazing. So, you’re an expert in influencer marketing and it’s been so interesting how this has come up. Do you think it runs the risk of starting to feel inorganic now because people are so aware of it. It’s kind of like, okay, this person’s being, I like this person, but they’re being paid.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, like I’m a little more, I don’t know, jaundiced about it. Like, like, oh yeah, like is it starting to feel like an ad? I mean, is there a tipping point there? What’s going on just generally in that influencer space in terms of how people react to it or is it still as powerful?

Ashley Stanford:

I would say absolutely. I mean us as consumers and you know how much the digital world has just been in our face and grown since COVID especially, you know, but we’re becoming smarter. We do recognize now a lot of this quote unquote influencer marketing that’s happening and taking place where it’s not as organic and you know, the FTC and whatnot, you know, is doing their best to step in and regulate that and at least make it more open and known to people when this is happening. But I do think, I mean, especially if you are on TikTok, some people have hard feelings about Tick tock and are not on it. But if you are on TikTok, it I think it’s become more and more obvious of like who’s just trying to sell and get you to buy something so that they can make money. And, and honestly where I’m going to put that in the hands of are companies, brands and agencies that are working with influencers. If you want to do influencer marketing that is good and has a lasting impact and is great for your brand, you do want to take the time, find the right influencer that seems like a great fit for your brand, that you can have a long-term relationship, I would like to move it into the realm of like a brand collaboration. You know, it’s, it’s an ongoing conversation, content creation, brainstorm with them.

Ashley Stanford:

With an influencer, it’s not a, hey, here’s our product. Post it, make a video and let’s see what happens. You really want to think about the story you’re telling. Make it just authentic.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, authentic. And also, you know, it really should be about them, not about you. That’s something that people struggle with because we got a lot of little kind of, you know, social media has turned the country into a whole bunch of narcissists. Right? That are like, me, me, me, me, me, me, me. And like, no, it’s about them. It’s about your customer. It’s about helping them. How many people are getting that wrong? I would imagine a lot of people.

Ashley Stanford:

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:

In their marketing.

Ashley Stanford:

Right, for sure.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, this is so interesting and exciting. I want to make sure everyone knows, actually. What’s the best way to find you? Work with you either as a consultant or embed your Ice Cream Social widget in their sales funnels. What’s the best way?

Ashley Stanford:

Yeah, for sure. So, you can go to IceCreamSocial.io or you can visit me at ashley-stanford.com or look for me on LinkedIn.

Melinda Wittstock:

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Ashley Stanford:

Absolutely. Thank you, Melinda.

[INTERVIEW ENDS]

Melinda Wittstock:

Ashley Stanford is the CEO and Founder of Ice Cream Social. Be sure to download Podopolo, follow Wings of Inspired Business there, create and share your favorite moments with our viral episode clip feature, and join us in the episode comments section so we can all take the conversation further with your questions and comments.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s it for today’s episode. Head on over to WingsPodcast.com – and subscribe to the show. When you subscribe, you’ll instantly get my special gift, the WINGS Success Formula. Women … Innovating … Networking … Growing …Scaling … IS the WINGS of Inspired Business Formula …for daily success in your business and life. Miss a Wings episode? We’ve got hundreds in the vault, all with actionable advice and epiphanies. Check them out at MelindaWittstock.com or wingspodcast.com. You can also catch me on LinkedIn or Instagram @MelindaAnneWittstock. We also love it when you share your feedback with a 5-star rating and review on Apple, Spotify or wherever else you listen, including Podopolo where you can interact with me and share your favorite clips.