Building social community through customer-centric marketing with Riley

Speakers: Cat Anderson & Fiona Parfrey

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Cat: Welcome to season two of Social Creatures, a podcast from Sprout Social. I’m Cat, and I’m here to explore some of my favourite success stories from the world of social media.

This is a space for anyone, and really, nearly anything goes, but what makes an account successful or popular? Honestly, it’s hard to know, but that is what we’re here to find out.

Throughout the series, we’ll talk to the brands behind some of the best accounts that you know, and maybe some that you don’t know yet to explore the way that these businesses, organisations, and individuals have achieved their success in social media, and how you can do it too.

Period products are one of the biggest markets in the world, but for some reason, whenever that time of the month comes, most people seem to never have any products at hand.

Plus, most of the traditional marketing around period products centre on just getting on with it, that periods are an inconvenience rather than an uncomfortable and often painful part of many people’s lives.

This is why today’s guest, Riley, has such a refreshing take. Combining a health and wellness approach with direct consumer social media marketing, they’ve taken the world of period products by storm with a simple message of, why should your period be a pain.

Joining me today from Riley, is co-founder, Fiona Parfrey.

Fiona, I cannot tell you how much I’ve been looking forward to this conversation today because of all of the guests we’ve had on Social Creatures, I might have been a fan of them, I might have known of them, but this is the first conversation I think we’ve had where I am a full-blown customer.

And not only that, I’m a customer from your social media presence, which is I think is going to make this really fun.

So, I’m so excited to have you on. So, thank you for coming on today.

Fiona: Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here too, and thank you so much for being a customer of Riley.

Cat: Let’s just maybe go right back to the beginning here. So, when we think about how people market periods, it’s kind of always been done in the same sort of way. It’s a market that’s very controlled by a few big major players, so it sort of feels like a market that’s maybe quite hard to break into.

But it’s always sort of marketed like go skateboarding or go like bungee jumping and stuff in a pair of white trousers. Whereas Riley, really broke onto the scene with something completely different, and as it turns out, something that really has resonated with people.

Can you tell us a little bit about what your style was and what your sort of strategy behind your marketing was?

Fiona: Yeah, really good question, Cat. I think you are dead right, this market has been dominated by a few key players, definitely ripe for disruption. We are on a mission to take the mystery out of female health.

Myself and two other co-founders and so three female co-founders, we were all personally frustrated about how little we were taught about our own bodies, and what we wanted to do was create a trusted community focused around breaking down the stigma associated with female health topics.

So, when we come to marketing it and when we were discussing I suppose, our brand positioning, it was very important to us that we provided informative, fact-based content, and that we speak to our community in a way that’s relatable, that’s honest, it can be easily digested so that our communities start to feel comfortable enough to get involved in the conversation, to ask questions.

Periods have been traditionally marketed is get out there and dawn your tennis whites and let’s go smash out a game. And like we just know as women that’s not realistic. Periods aren’t always the most fun experience.

For some, they’re better than others. But we just wanted to have a really honest, no-bull shit approach in how we marketed this product because we get it, and as founders, we are part of our target market, and we didn’t want to make unrealistic promises to our consumers like other brands may have in the past.

We know that consumers are smarter than that, and we wanted to be more progressive in how we marketed Riley.

Cat: Oh, I have so many questions off the back of even just that first answer. So, I think what you’re saying there about consumers being smarter and being more savvy again, as that consumer who stopped like on my massive doom scrolling on Instagram or whatever it was …

Your campaign did make me stop. Which I can say I’m usually a bit of a savage when it comes to adverts on social media because I just almost don’t want to see them. Like kind of like everyone, you have to work hard to make people stop scrolling.

But I stopped scrolling because I think your transparency is really interesting because I think like right off the bat, what we saw was, okay, we’re going to show you our product versus another product. We’re going to show you a few different things that are different, and we can get more into that in a little bit.

But what I also thought was really interesting is that this transparency really permeates through the entire experience. So, everything that you put out on social media, frankly it feels like I’m talking to you Fiona, it feels like I’m talking to you and the two other founders.

Because even on your packaging, there’s stuff about how you were just three girls around a table, having a glass of wine trying to put the worlds to rights. So, you get that real sense of a trusted community which is so important then when it comes to your health.

Was that something that you intentionally were trying to do, being that sort of vulnerable because it’s so interesting on a professional product.

Fiona: Yeah, that’s interesting. I think transparency for us as business owners and co-founders was part of the values that we wanted to have in our business from the get-go. And so, that’s true to everything.

So, that is with our supply chain, how our products are manufactured, how we deliver them to our customer, but also, transparency in terms of the marketing messages that we put out there and the different types of content that we put out in social media.

On top of that, another layer of transparency is us being really open and honest on we are a new startup, a new business trying to disrupt this space, and how we navigate through that, and really bringing our community along that journey with us.

And so, yeah, I think that’s a huge part of it. Like we definitely have an idea of kind of polished look and feel of how we want to present everything. But at the same time, it’s pairing that with being ourselves and being honest with our community, and us as co-founders, and we’re a very small team.

There’s only six of us, so all of us being open to jumping on stories and making TikToks and putting ourselves out there as part of the marketing tool for this startup, which definitely is something that sets us apart from the kind of mainstream competitors in our space that aren’t founder-led brands.

We started doing it at the very beginning because there was just the three of us and we had no choice in the matter, just to do everything on social media ourselves, but we saw was really resonating with people.

And so, I think it’s fair to say in this day and age, most consumers, like people buy off people, they want to trust who’s behind the businesses that they buy from. And so, we’re really trying to lean into that and give them a face to the name and be part of the journey with us, I suppose.

Cat: And it’s interesting you say that it really resonated, and like boy did it. We were just saying you were sharing on LinkedIn there last week about a growth of 12x in your first year. How much of that do you think was dying to your presence on social?

Fiona: Ooh, that’s a really good question. I think to understand, we have two revenue channels in our business.

One is direct consumer e-commerce, very social-driven. And the other then is the B2B side of our business. So, we work with a lot of enterprise clients to supply their bathrooms with period products just like they would supply it with toilet paper because we believe fundamentally, it’s a basic human right.

And so, although you would think that the corporate side of our business is very different, a lot of those early clients that we got actually discovered us on social media, and right now, then for our D2C customers, most people discover us from Instagram and TikTok, and then also word of mouth recommendations and in the press.

So, I think yeah, social has been a fundamental driver in growing our business from where we were in 2021 after launching to 12x year on year last year. And we value the importance of social media and understand what it can do for us in terms of ultimately, creating conversions but like generating awareness around a brand, and then nurturing our followers to help them understand why they should be choosing Riley, and then ultimately, convert them.

So, it’s a huge part of our business being social-led and as a content-driven brand that’s really customer-centric. It’s a great avenue to get our content out there and to communicate with our target market.

Cat: Again, as one of those customers, I can’t help but agree. I totally agree because I’m interested actually to talk about some of the differentiators that Riley has over some of the other competitors because as we mentioned at the top of this, there are a lot of other really huge companies that absolutely dominate the female health and the period business.

However, what I thought was very interesting about Riley is that you very much saw what your differentiators between them and yourselves were, and really double down on those.

Maybe you could tell our listeners a little bit like what are some of the differentiators that makes Riley a little bit different, and therefore, scroll-stopping on social would you say?

Fiona: The whole idea for Riley came about as a subscription idea because we were sick of running out of period products when we needed them.

It came really simply like there was so many products that we get. Like I get my razors on subscription, my deodorant, we get our groceries, even toilet paper, so why not period products. And it just seemed like it was a little bit overlooked.

And the conversation actually came about really naturally one night; myself and Aine and Lauren, my friends (now my wonderful co-founders) were hanging out and Aine got her period, but we didn’t have any products, we checked our handbags, nothing.

And so, it just sparked this conversation like wondering why this commodity that we need every month isn’t delivered to our doors. And when we did some market research, we found that 95% of women have run out of period products when they need them. So, this was a real common problem, like it wasn’t just us.

So, it became clear to us that having the convenience of a delivery service was a no-brainer. But then when we did a deeper dive into mainstream products that we’d been using our whole lives since we were young teenagers, we discovered that they are manufactured with a whole host of very unnecessary ingredients that contain chemicals like bleach and pesticides and rayons.

And it’s just like for us, we just felt compelled to do something about that. There’s up to 24 hormone disrupting chemicals found in mainstream period products, and that was the shocking … yeah, scary.

Cat: It’s so terrifying.

Fiona: I know. Like first of all, why is this happening? Like when you look into it, it’s essentially because it’s a cheaper form of manufacturing and the big conglomerates can make more profit.

Like we as women who want to protect our bodies and we’re really conscious of everything that we put into our bodies that we eat. Like we’re also putting period products in our bodies, so surely, there’s a better way of doing this.

So, not only is it a subscription service, but we also manufacture our products with much healthier ingredients in that we only use 100% organic cotton. There’s no added chemicals during our manufacturing process.

Even down to like the glue on mainstream period products, oftentimes tampons have the string is glued in, but we actually like weave ours in very cleverly during manufacturing so there’s no glue added.

And so, our whole ethos is creating products that are better for our bodies and also, better for our planet, and then delivering them in a really convenient way to our customers.

In terms of how you get that to be a scroll stopping Instagram post or ad, they’re really good questions, and I suppose it’s something that we’re constantly testing and learning and trying to figure out. And the messaging around the healthier options for us is definitely what I think most consumers are paying attention to right now.

And then I suppose on top of that, our whole vision for Riley is to be a lifelong female health brand, and we don’t just want to stop a period care. And so, the fact that we’re focused on really high-quality educational content around different female health topics that people are genuinely interested in and want to learn more about is an added value that a lot of different brands aren’t providing.

So, I suppose balancing the mix between those different types of content to really get people’s attention.

Cat: Yeah, I think all of those things were elements that completely just made it like a no-brainer for me to become a customer because the subscription model for periods, why was that not done before?

That seems like such a gap in the market, because it seems so obvious is something that you will need every four to six weeks. And also, like I love how environmentally friendly and high focused everything, right down to the mailer that the products arrive in, is all compostable and like you can recycle it and that’s very, very intentional as well.

But I think for me, it was the element which showed … I always think with any kind of marketing, there’s like aspirational marketing, like you could be this or you can do this action and it will improve this situation. And then there’s the marketing which shows you the stuff which is on fire right now.

And for me, when I saw your ads and saw “Oh, there’s a whole pile of things in something I’m already using that I didn’t know about.” Like I didn’t know that there was bleach in tampons, I didn’t know that there were things that were dysregulating my hormones.

And it came as such a shock that I just thought like, oh my God, that is not very well known. Again, you mentioned that we’re not really taught about our bodies, but I don’t really feel like that’s disclosed particularly well. I don’t think women necessarily know that.

So, whenever I saw that, it was like wow, that for me, was a thing that was on fire this moment and I thought wow … like as soon as I saw that, I didn’t use any of the other big-name products ever again, actually, because I was like wow, that’s absolutely terrifying. So, for me, that was your scroll stopper because I think people just don’t know how terrifying that is.

Fiona: Completely, I suppose, because we’re not legally obliged to share what’s in these products, and then that comes back to the whole transparency piece for us. It’s a question of why not, we’re putting them in our bodies, so surely, we have the right to know what they’re made of.

So, yeah, I think it’s just, yeah, definitely being transparent about that. And also, I think listening to the customer and engaging, especially with our early adopters was such a key piece of the puzzle for us because if we’re talking about the planet, there is amazing reusable options out there on the market like period underwear and menstrual cups.

We are a single-use product which obviously, there is better alternatives for the planet. That being said, we identified a gap in the market from speaking to people, whereby there was this huge cohort of customers who wanted an eco-friendly, sustainable and healthier option but weren’t quite willing to make the lifestyle shift into a cup or pants that that might entail.

And so, bridging that gap and providing them with a sustainable alternative to the products they’ve always been used to using every month, nothing has changed — but giving them ones that are manufactured in a better way and delivered in a better way was really what we wanted to do.

And it’s a work in progress. We’re constantly trying to improve our offering and look at other ways of serving our customers. The main thing is just getting started, getting it out there, building up the community on social media, and being agile enough to make changes as, and when we need to.

Cat: Speaking of social media again for a second, how did you go about it? Had you had experience with social media before? How did you find your community? How did you go about making the content? Spill your secrets.

Fiona: Really good question. Yeah, so the answer is yes, I had experience in social media before. I’d worked in digital advertising, I’d also worked in the startup world running the organic channels as well.

I had a previous business to this that I was running alone. So, all of the social media was done by myself at the time. Like they were big learning curves for me. So, when we were launching Riley, what we did was actually, we started by creating a community prior to even launching the business to the market.

So, we started putting out content on Instagram actually predominantly because TikTok wasn’t so much of a big thing back then, around like female health content that we knew was engaging and interesting.

And from that, we started generating a small following; not massive, but small — enough to gather email addresses. And so, when we launched the business then we could market to these people straightaway and generate sales from the get-go.

And what we really needed from that was the feedback from early adopters. And so, that was a real strategic decision to make sure that we could use social media to get really, really early customers and then engage with them.

And that’s something that hasn’t really changed as we’ve grown. Again, it’s been about us putting out really high-quality content that will add value to people’s lives, but with that engaging with our community as we’re growing our communities. And so, we really do use social media as a tool for that.

So, we make a point in answering every single comment left on our social media platforms, answering every single DM because it’s essentially a customer service tool for us, but also creating polls and stories where we ask people questions to get their feedback on what we currently have, but also to figure out what they would like to see from us going forward.

I like definitely did have experience in social media prior to Riley but it’s constantly changing, so it’s just one of those things that you need to always have like an eye and ear to the ground and be constantly watching and tweaking strategies as the platforms change.

Cat: I love that because I think it could be so overlooked sometimes. Sometimes social media can just be used for broadcast, but I think as you said, it absolutely is a channel for customer service.

We did a report last year, our index report that showed British and Irish consumers will choose public channels on social media and DMs as the top two channels they will use in order to reach out to brands when they have customer service requests.

Fiona: Yeah, we get more people sending us DMs, like customers sending us DMs on Instagram for customer service queries than we do toward dedicated customer service email. So, definitely, yeah, 100% that’s the case for us.

Cat: Yeah, and it’s funny though because I think it’s still not something that every single brand has figured out because I do that as well. And so, if I have a query, I will first of all go to social media, and it’s amazing the brands who get it and will reply within whatever amount of time.

And then there’s some that is just radio silence, and you look at their Twitter feed or whatever and you’re like wow, it’s just one way.

I wanted to ask you as well, education is a big part of the brand as well, and you share a lot of reproductive and sexual health information, and I wondered how has that built into the core values of the company and how has social media helped you with that? Also, I’m curious has that been a learning curve for you as an individual as well?

Fiona: Yeah, absolutely. I think I probably answered a lot of this already, so I don’t want to repeat myself, but definitely creating informative content is part of our brand identity and is really at the core of our mission.

Because we felt again as the co-founding team that we were disappointed and frustrated that we hadn’t been provided and equipped with this information when we were growing up.

And so, we really, really want to be part of changing that and we’re so passionate about it. I think there’s so much power and knowledge. Unfortunately, female health is a massively underserved and overlooked area since the dawn of time, really there’s so many scary statistics.

Like there’s a four to one male to female ratio in drug treatment studies. We’ve been looked at as small men in a lot of studies for the last few hundreds of years. So, I think that’s a huge amount of issues, especially misdiagnosis or long diagnosis of female health issues such as PCOS is massively misdiagnosed, endometriosis takes seven years to diagnose on average in Ireland.

So, it’s just crazy, but there’s so much to be done. We are not medical professionals by any means. And so, yes, we’re definitely on our own discovery journey with this, but we’re really strict with ourselves on only providing factual content from legitimate sources, and hopefully, in the future, partnering with the right people to continue bringing really well-documented facts to people.

I suppose we’re only scratching the surface. Like we’re delighted to see the impacts that our content is having on people already. We get so much feedback on, “Thank you so much for shedding a light on this, I’ve been dealing with this privately for so many years.” Or like period pain for example, like severe period pain is not normal.

Like if you are having severe period pain, go and see a doctor. And so, so many people don’t even know little things like this. So, it’s great to see like our community as well getting involved and sharing their own personal stories too and advice which I think it’s a testament to the brand that we’re building and our community feel comfortable enough to be vulnerable with us, and come along this kind of discovery path with us.

And yeah, I think even for me personally, like I’ve learned so much since we started Riley and I’m so excited to bring that to younger generations who really feel like they have the right to know this information.

I really love that you’ve talked about the community sharing with you as well because I do think we kind of do keep this side of our lives kind of private except if you’re at around a table with a glass of wine and you might moan.

And then I have had that experience where you moan to a girlfriend, and then they say, “Oh I’ve had the same thing.” So, it’s so lovely that you’ve kind of replicated this really small scale intimate but important conversation that women, if they’re lucky, get to have with their girlfriends.

But you’ve created a community where people feel like they can have those conversations, I think that’s really important. So, like well done. I think that’s seriously amazing work.

Ant it kind of made me think as well when you were talking about the popularity influencers; how have you used influencers with Riley?

Fiona: We’ve actually been very lucky in that there’s a lot of like fantastic influencers that have organically become customers of ours, and have shared our brand online without us even asking, which is-

Cat: Oh my God, the dream.

Fiona: Yeah, very like very kind of them. Like one that comes to mind is Trisha’s transformation who’s huge on Instagram. We’ve never met her, she’s a customer of ours, and she’s posted us on social so many times, and she’s just being sound, wants to support this female-led startup. So, that’s been amazing.

As a small startup with very limited budgets, we’ve not been able to invest heavily in influencer partnerships to date, but we do see the value of building authentic partnerships with the right people.

So, to start that, we’ve worked with a lot of micro influencers and gifted them with product, those that have reached out to us, but also, we’ve actively contacted people as well. And so, we’ve just gifted them with products as a way of creating content, ongoing content creation in different styles and it’s really helped with brand awareness.

And I think definitely, hopefully, in the near future, we’d like to do some paid partnerships with influencers and test that out as a marketing activation. But for us, I think choosing the right person that really aligns with our brand values and believes in what we’re doing is going to be an incredibly important aspect of that.

As well just to caveat that with everything that we do from a marketing activation perspective is a test and learn process before we do any sort of heavy investment into the space, and then just AB testing until we find the right sort of fit.

So, if influencer marketing works well for us as a trial, hopefully, then it might become more of our longer-term paid strategy.

Cat: Okay, that makes perfect sense. And it’s interesting you mentioned there about AB testing and experimenting with things, which is something that has come up time and time again on this podcast as almost like the secret to social media.

I think you can never really rest on your laurels, and as you mentioned earlier, it’s always changing, so you always need to be trying new things. Is that something that you approach each quarter with? Like what’s your approach towards AB testing and experimentation?

Fiona: Good question because you might even find the sweet spot and something that’s performing really well but it won’t last forever because it is always changing, and so it’s a constant that we look at.

We’ve set out our marketing plans for the year and broken that down into quarter, and then by month and all of that. But we are also very aware that it’s a rapidly changing environment, not just in social media but in e-commerce as a whole, and paired with things that we can’t control like economic climate, and everything like that. We need to be constantly reviewing our strategy.

And so, I think that’s again like a small kind of thing. Well, actually, I wouldn’t say it’s small. It’s actually a major differentiator that we have against our competitors or the large mainstream competitors because we can move really quickly and we can adapt really quickly as a small team, and listening to customers and engaging with customers is at the core of what we are, and who we are.

But it’s also quite easy for us. There’s no red tape, like we can get on social media, and we love doing that as founders, just jumping on social media, and like actually having a conversation with our community.

And yeah, just was the reviewing of what’s working and what’s not working is something that will be ongoing.

Cat: Such a great story ,and I’m so glad that I’m even a tiny, tiny, tiny part of it because even just hearing you talk about it, like seeing all of these huge advantages that you have over these massive, massive conglomerates basically, like it’s so great to think that there is space in this world for people to make the right choices, do the right things, and then have some like extra trump cards in their back pocket.

As you said, you can be that much more agile with how you switch plans, and as founders, you can jump on. I love it, I love it so much. I’m sorry I told you I wasn’t going to be too much of a fan girl, but I’ve failed.

Fiona: No, it’s amazing. And do you know what, it’s like this is the other thing as well, is like we meet our customers all of the time. We speak to them on social media, but we also meet them at events that we do, like wellness festivals and things like that, and like just randomly as well. Like we’re starting to get to the point where we have people randomly stopping us and saying it to us, which is incredible.

And we as co-founders of the business, no matter how big we get, we never want to lose that. And I think social media will be the tool that we will have to lean on and leverage as we grow to really make sure that we’re staying in touch with our customers. So, yeah, thank you Cat, for your support. Honestly, it means the world.

Cat: Now, well, like I feel like saying thank you for opening my eyes to something that was going on in my life and I didn’t realise. Like I am a very happy customer and I promise this isn’t like a sponsored episode or anything. It’s all very genuine.

My final question is what’s next for Riley? I mean, the world’s sort of your oyster, eh? Like I’m so curious what you’ve got planned.

Fiona: Yeah, great question. We’ve got lots of plans, we’ve big ideas. So, I think I had mentioned like our vision is to be a lifelong female health brand, and so there’s so many other areas of female health that we think need to be improved.

So, you start off as a young teenager with menstruation and there’s so many different touchpoints up until menopause when everything again, changes in your body from sexual health, fertility, giving birth, like so much for us to look at.

What we really want to do is we’re very focused on researching the next vertical that we can move into that makes sense for our community. We’re definitely still focused on expanding out our period care range, which you probably see we’re like launching new products every couple of weeks at this stage, which is fantastic.

But then moving into the next space that makes the most sense for us and the space that our community wants to see. And then as well as that, we really want to take this small Irish startup to the four corners of the world.

So, we’ve got global plans for Riley, we’re only a small team of six right now, but we’re actively hiring and once we get more amazing people on board, we’re very confident that we can achieve all of the very ambitious things that we want to achieve.

Cat: That’s so exciting, Fiona. And honestly, I cannot wait to see what’s in store for the future of Riley.

So, Fiona, in this season of Social Creatures, we are sourcing questions from the industry from some of our guests, and we have one today for you. This question is from Anu Hautalampi who is the Global Social Media Lead for United Nations Women.

Anu: Hi Fiona, it’s Anu Hautalampi here. I’m the Global Social Media Lead for UN Women. I wanted to hear your thoughts on how to build an empowering community for women and girls through social media. Do you have any tips for us?

Fiona: Hi Anu, so nice to hear from you. Thanks for reaching out and love all of the work that you’re doing. It’s a really good question: how to build an empowering community for women and girls on social media.

So, the first thing I would say is make sure to give everyone a voice. So, that’s everyone in your community, all of your followers and people that engage with you online.

And the way I would do that is to have a conversation with them. If they leave you a comment, make sure to reply to it, ask them questions. If they reach out to you on DMs, make sure to get back to them and use polls on Instagram stories, and make sure that you’re engaging with everyone so that they can have their say in everything, and have that ongoing two-way conversation.

The other thing I would say is when it comes to your content, just make sure to keep your community in mind with everything that you do. So, they should be at the forefront when you’re planning out your content and figuring out how does this benefit the community.

If you’re not sure what that looks like, just ask them, ask for their feedback, jump on stories, put up a post, ask your community what they want to see, and what kind of content if they want you to put out there. That’d probably be my top two tips, Anu, and I really hope that helps.

Cat: Well, I could not wish you any better wishes. I will be on the sidelines doing a full choreographed cheerleading routine because I just think you guys are so great. If anybody wants to learn more about Riley, how can they do so?

Fiona: Weareriley.com is our website and then on social media, it’s we.are.riley across Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, and come and say hello. We are very friendly and yeah, definitely we love to chat with people. So, I would love if you could follow along and yeah, get involved.

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Cat: You’ve been listening to Social Creatures with me, Cat Anderson. Many thanks to Fiona for joining me today. And you can find all the links to her socials in the description of this episode.

And of course, a thank you to Sprout Social for making this podcast possible. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to let us know on social media at Sprout Social, and subscribe to hear other episodes like this wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks very much for listening, and we’ll see you in two weeks.