“It’s marketing through people instead of at them,” says Emily Steele, CEO and Co-founder of Hummingbirds. In this episode of Innovation and the Digital Enterprise we talk with Emily about how Hummingbirds is leveraging hyperlocal content creators to drive brand awareness and sales.

Emily shares her journey from running a local marketing agency to founding Hummingbirds, emphasizing the power of word-of-mouth marketing and community-driven content. She explains Hummingbirds’ unique approach of fostering relationships between local businesses and hyperlocal content creators, who serve as community-scale advocates for the brand.

We discuss how in our oversaturated digital marketing landscape, Hummingbirds delivers meaningful, authentic, relationship-driven results. We close our conversation chatting about Emily’s future goals and plans for growth, and the challenge of scaling while maintaining that authenticity.

• (01:28) Emily Steele on the beginnings of Hummingbirds
• (02:36) The power of local influence
• (08:12) Scaling, Community Building and Exploring new verticals
• (11:51) The Hummingbirds community
• (16:52) Emily's journey to entrepreneurship
• (18:13) Building a successful brand and Achieving rapid growth
• (20:36) Strategies for success
• (24:38) Measuring impact and ROI
• (27:44) Exciting opportunities ahead
• (30:29) Fun facts about Hummingbirds

Emily Steele is the CEO and Co-founder of Hummingbirds, a SaaS company helping brands connect to local customers through digital word-of-mouth marketing. Before launching Hummingbirds, Emily proved a passionate advocate for local Des Moines businesses as the owner of Love Local. She has a Bachelor's in business administration, from Drake University, and studied at Richmond, the American International University in London. When she’s not championing local business, she helps organize The Water Ride, an annual bike ride that raises funds for clean water efforts in Ghana.

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Podcast episode production by Dante32.

Patrick:

Hello fellow innovators. This is Patrick Emmons.

Shelli:

And this is Shelli Nelson.

Patrick:

Welcome to the Innovation and the Digital Enterprise Podcast, where we interview successful visionaries and leaders giving you an insight into how they drive and support innovation within their organizations.

Shelli:

Today we're welcoming Emily Steele to the podcast. We're honored to have Emily as our guest. Emily is the CEO and co-founder of Hummingbirds, a dynamic tech company revolutionizing the way brands connect with their communities. Hummingbirds specializes in leveraging hyperlocal content creators and customers to drive both awareness and sales, currently operating in 15 cities with ongoing expansion. Prior to her pivotal role at Hummingbirds, Emily established herself as a passionate advocate for local businesses as the owner of Love Local. Emily brings a wealth of expertise to the table holding a Bachelor's of Science in Business Administration with concentrations in marketing and public relations from Drake University. Go Bulldogs. Her global perspective was further enriched through studies at Richmond, the American International University in London. Today we're excited to learn from Emily's journey and glean insights into the intersection of technology, community, and entrepreneurship. Welcome to the show, Emily.

Emily Steele:

Thank you for having me.

Patrick:

Emily, if you don't mind, kick this off by sharing with our listeners a little bit more about Hummingbirds. What are the problems that it solves? Who are the customers? And just share a little bit more about the organization itself.

Emily Steele:

Yeah, sure. So I was running a local marketing agency called Love Local, and I was working with a handful of customers that were really trying to drive local behavior, like go to the massage therapist, physical therapy clinic, music festivals. They all really look to drive behavior from the people who live in their own city. And so all of their marketing advertising efforts are concentrated based on geography, zip codes, neighborhoods. And as I was working on different strategies and tactics for these clients, I kept coming back to word of mouth being such a valuable tool, especially at a local level. You think about the conversations you have with your neighbors of where should we go to dinner? We have date night next weekend, and they're giving you recommendations or who should help with tree removal or whatever it is. We look to our local network when we're doing local things and making local purchasing decisions. How many times will I say local? We should count on this podcast.

Patrick:

But is it local?

Emily Steele:

Local, local, local. And so as I was testing, experimenting with some of the clients, I was just like, okay, when I see other people posting about things on Facebook, Instagram, it drives my decision making behavior. So surely if brands could tap into their own customers or their own physical community of people, they can move the needle for themselves. And as I really dug, A, this was solving a problem for my own clients, but I was like, oh my gosh, there's $162 billion spent on local advertising every year, and not even a small percentage of that is towards creators, influencers, bloggers. It just was absolutely mind-blowing to me that half of the money spent is still on traditional advertising. So think billboards, print, TV, radio, and then the other half is your digital, your Meta, your Google Ads, people who have intent as they search.

So Hummingbirds was kind of born out of the agency I was running. I brought it to life in Des Moines, Iowa, which is where I'm at, and brought hundreds of people together in the Des Moines area, built a very, very basic product and put campaigns in there that our local creators, we call them Hummingbirds. I'll share a little bit more about the name in a bit, but we call them Hummingbirds and they match with these brands and they experience their offer and share it on social media. So it's definitely in alignment with the influencer space, but no one calls themselves influencers in our platform. We are Hummingbirds. We love exploring and trying new things and being local pollinators in our own backyards. And so that is kind of in a nutshell what Hummingbirds is. So brands will buy credits that accesses our platform and then the Hummingbirds opt into campaigns and those credits are used to create content.

Patrick:

This is direct boots on the ground, guerrilla marketing. This is people that are actually out there using these products and going to these organizations, these companies, and it's really harnessing that content where it does feel like that's a big gap when I think about a decade ago, Amazon and the reviews was something that we all trusted. And I don't know if that trust is there anymore. And you look at some of the other environments or systems or tools that we use to try and filter through. So actually getting recommendations and referrals from these folks that actually live in the community and actually have a relationship with other people in the community. Why do you think that's so successful right now?

Emily Steele:

I think it's also the fact that you look at the world's very powerful consumer, which is the Millennial woman. Women make a majority of purchasing decisions for themselves or their families. They're on Instagram two to three hours a day, so this is where they're spending time, this is where they're discovering brands and making decisions about what to do this weekend or tonight even. And so it's like to me, it's all these miscellaneous pieces that form kind of the perfect moment for us to put this product in market and say, "Hey, there's something better for local marketing. And it actually is marketing through people instead of to them or at them."

Shelli:

It's very organic and relationship driven is what it feels like.

Patrick:

I mean, and I don't agree with it, I think what you're doing is awesome as relationships are critical, but some of the investors or other folks that you've talked to must have verbalized some concerns about scalability, of how do you scale this? How do you respond to a question like that?

Emily Steele:

We're like, "Well, we're doing it." So I would say though early days. There's not as much concern anymore that we're a year and a half in post raising capital. But I would say when we were originally seeking venture capital to get ourselves to 15 cities and really develop the 2-sided network, the concern was always around supply. Because we look at Hummingbirds, it is a two-sided network like your Uber, your Airbnb. We just layer a SaaS model on top of it. So it's just a little bit different. But we always need to find the supply and demand ratio, if we have thousands of Hummingbirds have nothing to do in the platform, it's a lame experience. If we have lots of brands and we don't have enough Hummingbirds opting into campaigns, it's a bad experience for brands. I would say that early days were very much around, "How are you going to get the Hummingbirds? How are we going to keep them sticky? How do we know that the supply is going to stick around instead of turn and burn all these people?"

And so for us, it was all around building a community-centric brand. And that's my secret sauce. I've been doing that in Des Moines, the last decade, building community-based brands and events. So I know how to bring people together under a shared vision and excitement. It's all about go discover things in your own backyard and share that. And we bring people together through meetups or through online forums where they feel like they're connecting with people who are like-minded, who care about doing things, getting out in the community, meeting early adopters who are also excited about the new cocktail bar opening down the street. So I think it's about that. For us, when we think about our moat, it is the community-centricity of it. And so that's really the leading conversations, early days we were having with investors. It's kind of that playbook to get Hummingbirds and keep them around, which has proven successful over the last two-ish years.

Shelli:

Any big learnings or surprises over the last couple of years since you launched?

Emily Steele:

Yeah, I think what's been really interesting, the heart and soul of the brand is always going to be around geo. What are you doing in your own backyard? I would say our messaging in the beginning was like go try local brands and experiences. However, we started playing around with some CBG brands. We had a hot sauce company and an ice cream sandwich company. Just fantastic time of year especially. And we were like, "Hey, we are going to see if we can get your product into Hummingbird's hands. We're going to offer a discount. We're going to be super generous because we want to learn about this vertical and see if A, people locally opt into these campaigns, are they interested in CBG brands or they just want to do local things?"

Well, the Hummingbirds end up loving these CBG products because they get a $50 gift card to go to their local grocery store to pick up a hot sauce that's $7. Then the rest they can use to grocery. So it's a really incentivizing fun perk for them to do that. And it's fun to try new products that you can then introduce your spouse or your family to. And so once we proved out the CBG vertical, that's really, really accelerated our growth because these brands are really trying to understand how to unlock the Midwest. They've unlocked the East and West Coast, so they're like, "What's the Midwest like?" We have really big shopping carts because of family sizes. And so there's just a higher purchase volume of these products.

And so for them, they're like, "If we can open up 15 of the grocery stores that you're in in every city, that's a lot of credits that these brands are buying with us." So they really increase our ACV and the impact revenue-wise that we can make. So I would say that's the biggest surprise is unlocking the CBG vertical and it going well on the Hummingbirds creator side of the house.

Patrick:

I'm curious on the Hummingbirds, what makes a awesome Hummingbird? What is it you're looking for? What does that look like?

Emily Steele:

I would say an awesome Hummingbird, the ones who are like, "Oh, please stick out, we really love when you do campaigns and love your presence." It's someone who's active on social media, they're already naturally sharing their life, whether they're going to the zoo with their kids or out on the bike trails, like sharing an event or a cause they care about. They're active on social in their everyday life and they're good at documenting it from they can pull together a reel that's creative and compelling. Their content, the way they write draws people in. So I think it's authenticity is always going to be at the core, but then there's also like, do you have high quality? Can you take a very good photo to represent the brand? And we really target Millennial women. That's kind of our bread and butter in terms of how we think about brands aligning with the audience they're trying to attract and tap into. So those are the things I would say, yeah, and it's like I said, majority women who are part of our community at this point.

Shelli:

Are most of them full-time or is this a side hustle or a combination of both?

Emily Steele:

Yeah, this is totally a side hustle. Our model for the Hummingbirds is very much about perks. So you can get two free tickets to the Moulin Rouge, you can get $50 gift card to Costco to grab an OLIPOP. And we did that really intentionally because we're not looking for influencers. We're looking for people who want to try cool things. And so no one's really looking to "make it" on our platform. Go to other ones. There are 1,000 other influencer platforms that all pretty much are the exact same and you can go there. We want to be different, and this is how we differentiate. So if you're someone who wants to make money, I'm like, I love that for you. This isn't what Hummingbird is and that's okay.

Patrick:

Interesting. How do you ensure that when the Hummingbirds go and try something out, say they don't like it, do they choose not to support it? What does that look like? How do you keep that authenticity? Or how are you going to make sure it stays authentic as you're growing and scaling?

Emily Steele:

Yeah, I think for us, if you really don't have a great experience with a campaign, a product, a brand, we ask that you give us feedback that we can share with the brand and then we just give the brand a credit back. "Work with someone who is probably going to have a better experience." You can't control everything. So from the brand, we try to make it right on both sides. We would never say, "You still need to post about it even if you hated it." We're not trying to build that type of company. So there's nuance to it. But from an authenticity standpoint, no, don't create content that's not factual based on your experience. And don't post about it if you didn't love it.

So we really try to keep that alignment and so much about the campaigns, we don't give brands access to pitch Hummingbirds. It's a mutual opt-in. So Hummingbirds use the campaign, they raise their hand, they hit I'm interested, and they can give their little pitch, "This is why I want to be selected." So there's already kind of that initial, I want to be selected, pick me, versus like, "Oh, you look popular. I'm going to pick you," from a brand perspective. So that really helps in terms of the authenticity because the bird knows really about it from the campaign brief in advance.

Patrick:

You mentioned before the source of the name. Do you want to-

Emily Steele:

Share a little more?

Patrick:

Share that story? Yeah.

Emily Steele:

Sure. I should have just kicked it off with that. It's one of my favorite stories to share. As I was building this out in Des Moines, I just was so stuck on what to call this group of creators. I was like, "The Local Influencer Collective." I was like, "That feels so lame and so exact. It's too what it is." And I was noodling on it for probably a month or longer and went out to dinner with my family and my father-in-law is a big bird guy, which now my daughter is, which is hilarious to witness, her being like, "Oh mommy, that's a cardinal voice or a cardinal sound." I'm like, "Wow, that's incredible."

So he goes around the circle and he assigns all of us bird names. He's like, "Emily, you are a hummingbird. You flit around. You're a local pollinator, you're busy, you're everywhere. You zip around, you do all these things." And I was like, "That's the community. That's exactly the type of people I'm bringing together in this city. We are calling them Hummingbirds." And it's so on brand, it's so perfect. The fact that the domain was available, it was meant to be.

Patrick:

Wow, the domain was available? That one blows my mind. Yeah.

Emily Steele:

Yeah. Since '98. It was not cheap, but it was worth it, I think.

Shelli:

That's a great story.

Emily Steele:

Yeah, super special.

Patrick:

Yeah. I love the concept of local pollinators. It also has that image of a healthy environment. These are natural behaviors. We always think about criticality of honeybees in any kind of ecosystem.

Emily Steele:

Totally.

Patrick:

Without them we're in real trouble.

Emily Steele:

I know. Yeah.

Patrick:

So do you mind sharing a little bit more of how you got into this, your background, how you got started?

Emily Steele:

So when I felt like I needed to do something for the women entrepreneurial ecosystem, I kind of felt like a fraud because I'm like, "I'm not a woman business owner. Who am I to fixed this?" But the opportunity presented itself as it does in the craziest of ways. There's a women's networking group called FemCity Des Moines, and it was kind of getting off the ground in Des Moines, but never quite got the momentum. And so a woman was moving away. She's like, "Do you want to run this thing?" I'm like, "I'll give it a try. This feels like a way I can make a difference." Spun up that organization to over 500 members, made it the fastest growing chapter in the country since it's kind of a chapter-based model and had these moments of [inaudible 00:18:24] was really successful getting all these people to the events. FemCity Des Moines became this iconic chapter across the country. I was like, "I'm really good at building brands. I love this. I'm going to start my agency to teach brands and execute with brands the way I build my own kind of side hustles, if you will."

And so a lot of it came from just being a community builder and wanting to bring community building strategies into marketing, really bring that people element into it. So that's a piece of it. And like I had mentioned very briefly right out of college, I did community development, economic development. So I really understand the power of local people, engaging in local communities and how that impacts sales tax and what sales tax dollars do for our cities. It's so nerdy, but it's all those passions combined that really led to Hummingbird's kind of claiming a different type of voice and stance on the influencer space. So I'd say those are a few of the pillars.

Shelli:

That's awesome.

Patrick:

Well, one, you mentioned a lot of growth. So 400% growth over the last 2 years.

Emily Steele:

It's crazy.

Patrick:

It's crazy. And you're looking at invading Chicago, taking-

Shelli:

Here we come.

Patrick:

Emily Steele:

I think starting it out of my agency and really treating it as a service, bootstrapping for two to three years of just being like, this is in and for my community. How do I understand what my clients love, what the birds love? How often are they coming back? All that time, I was creating product market fit. Once that felt really good, and brands were like, "When are you going to these cities?" Birds were like, "I'm leaving Des Moines. Are you coming to St. Louis? Are you going to Minneapolis?" The demand was so present, and to me I was like, I don't think it's right or wrong, by the way. I just wanted to prove it could work before I raised capital. And frankly, timing worked out because raising capital on an idea isn't as accessible unless you're a very, very seasoned entrepreneur in the tech startup space.

So I knew we had enough motion, we had revenue in the door, customers were coming back for multiple campaigns, birds were coming back. I was like, if we raise a million pre-seed round, I have full conviction that a few people on the sales team opening up a few more cities will ignite revenue. And so I think it was the product market fit exploration and having mere certainty of how the model could scale versus a performer that's kind of BS. So I think that was a big piece for me. And then to prove out those milestones so quickly led to raising our next round of capital, which we're going to five X our growth this year because we had confidence on exactly what we're raising money for, what it was going to do.

And so I think those are the pieces. And same with I would say to our OKRs are really, really strong and there's company alignment across all of them and what people are expected to do and their ownership on the team and what that means. And so it feels like all of that has really come together and it's a fun company. What we're doing is fun, it's impactful, it's meaningful, and so the culture is just really strong, which means we have pretty high performance internal too.

Patrick:

That's awesome.

Shelli:

Emily, when you do these pitches, you're probably asked who's your competition or is there competition out there? What's your answer to that?

Emily Steele:

I feel like, yeah, there's a competition. I would say in the small business space, if we're really targeting people who are brands that are really operating in one city or a few locations, the competition is other local advertising. They're like, "Oh, I'm putting in budget to billboards, I'm putting budget to TV." So we would dip into existing budgets versus a net new. So that's competition for sure, just like the local advertising space and the other players.

I would say, because we've opened up kind of the CPG vertical, it's like the competition is more around tech solutions that actually drive coupon redemptions, things that are very, very black and white. I do this, it creates this. Content creation is a little bit more of a long game. We have proven retail velocity doing isolated campaigns without any other advertising with brands, but it is a little ... Like the creator space is squishy. There's no pixels when you're doing offline behavior and you're going to a grocery store to pick up a frozen pizza.

So I would say the competitors, if brands are really heavy in performance marketing, they're a little more skeptical about the creator play at the offline local level. But the brands that are more interested in brand marketing, that connection with customers who can then become customers, I always say, "A billboard can't become your customer, but our Hummingbirds can. They can come back. They can tell their friends forever." The brands that get that they really, really lean in and they're some of our best customers because the fundamentals of how you think about marketing are just different than just a performance job.

Shelli:

That's awesome.

Patrick:

I'm curious on that. I'm curious. I don't care because I agree with you. There's activities and then there's things you can track. Is there a way for you to know the impact? Is there a way for you to quantify and qualify and say, "Hey, this is ..." Or is it a little bit more the heuristics of it? Because you mentioned coupons and it's amazing. I think in today's world, after the preceding decade or so of easy money, suddenly people are clipping coupons again. It was a big conversation point the other night, and so obviously people are looking to get their dollar to go further. But when you go to work with a new customer, is there a story that you're able to tell them about, "Hey, we were able to drive this amount of new business, repeat business?" Or is it just really more of a faith?

Emily Steele:

It really depends on what the brand is looking for. I see three buckets typically populate in conversations with, in the sales calls, it would be, "Hey, are you looking kind of for reach, engagement, impressions?" So you're kind of playing the billboard game because you're trying to get your message out, push it out, reach, impressions, bubble up into this campaign's success, et cetera. So some people play just there. We want local awareness, we want local buzz. We don't need hard, concrete results.

And then I would say there are always going to be the brands that want to prove hard ROI, and that's really in the CBG space. When you can see retail velocity, you see how many units are moving off shelves in very specific retailers, and so they can track that at a store level, which is super helpful. But there are some brands that are like, "Hey, we look to see if someone came in once, if they come back again. And we know if they come back again, they're probably going to come 10 times. And we know the value of 10 visits is X dollars." So those are the conversations we're having on calls that just ensure that they're going to be set up for success because this is not like a, oh my gosh, a local celebrity is going to talk about you and your business is going to transform overnight. I think people wish those things were real, but I just don't think they really are anymore.

Patrick:

Yeah, that's great. But Margaret or Liz or Steven, I follow this guy. He's all over town. He knows all the good places. She knows where to get this done. So there is that trust and that's real.

Emily Steele:

Patrick:

You can go get a Cameo of somebody but you pay a ton of money to get one of those influencers to do it, and you only get 10, 15 days. Anyway, so we had the guy from Cameo on the podcast a while back.

Emily Steele:

So cool. I love it.

Patrick:

I think it's super interesting. I've bought a couple.

Emily Steele:

They're so fun. What a great little gift and surprise for people.

Patrick:

Yeah, absolutely.

Shelli:

Emily, you recently announced that you're involved in a competition coming up. Can you tell us more about that?

Emily Steele:

Yes. So we are heading to HubSpot's INBOUND event this fall. We are finalists for their pitch competition, so there's an opportunity to receive a million dollars, which is pretty cool just to be able to go on stage at such an impactful event. I mean, we'll be surrounded by our peers that are also creating solutions for our types of customers. So just great to be in front of an audience who just really gets this. And then also in front of a panel of judges who we get to share a story and our impact with. And I feel really grateful. I think it's really cool to be a finalist, but even cooler that we're building something that actually matters, that we get to share our story. So first time in Boston too, so I am really excited.

Shelli:

That's really exciting. Yeah.

Patrick:

Awesome seafood places all over the place. As Midwesterners, if it's barnyard animals we're the best. But when it comes to fish, nothing beats New York or Boston from my experience. But the HubSpot thing I think is super interesting. I'm a big fan of HubSpot. I think they've done a tremendous job over the last ... In the post Salesforce world really.

Emily Steele:

Yep.

Patrick:

Is that a platform that you would see integrating your solution into? Is that something that you see being in their marketplace or something to that? Is that something you would see potentially?

Emily Steele:

I can't quite envision it black and white today, but there's something there. We're definitely digging in with our team just to be like, what is it? Is there something? The way we sell today wouldn't make an integration totally feasible. But I think once we move more towards a product-led growth versus a sales led growth motion, it makes more sense to think about integrations and things like that with the HubSpots of the world. But I'm like, I think we've got to figure some of that stuff out in the next year or two to see how do we amplify each other's audiences and add value in the small business or local behavior drivers of the world.

Patrick:

Awesome. Well, this is really exciting. Very happy for you. It sounds like as you're growing, you're looking for organizations that want to have hyperlocal touch when it comes to their marketing strategies and looking for the Hummingbirds of the world.

Emily Steele:

Absolutely.

Patrick:

And find a home where they can be around other little birds that buzz about and go and pollinate and stick their nose into things. It's a nose, right? Or is that a beak? I guess it's got to be a beak.

Emily Steele:

It's totally a beak. It's totally a beak.

Patrick:

It's not a nose.

Emily Steele:

The fun facts I know about hummingbirds now I'm just like, this knowledge, it's gotten too far.

Shelli:

That's awesome.

Patrick:

All right, I'm going to put you on the spot then. What is the most interesting thing about hummingbirds that most people don't know?

Emily Steele:

People might know this, how their wings, the wing beat is so fast, they can go backwards and forwards. They just can flutter and be present in one spot. It's just so remarkable to me. I think my favorite fun fact about hummingbirds though is a group of hummingbirds is called a charm, and I just was like-

Shelli:

That's so sweet.

Emily Steele:

That is so perfect. Because a group of crows is called a murder. Can you imagine if we had a murder of hummingbirds? I'd be like, that is off-brand friends. So the fact that it's a charm of hummingbirds, I was like, say no more. This is the company name.

Shelli:

That's awesome.

Emily Steele:

Here we go.

Patrick:

Yeah, there's some animals where it's like, it's a business. I forget like otters or something like that. But yeah, a murder of crows is ...

Emily Steele:

I'm like, yeah, this won't do it for me.

Patrick:

Poor crows. I mean, what did they do? They're not troublemakers. But yeah, so a charm. That's interesting. That one I did not know. So that's good stuff.

Emily Steele:

Fun fact.

Shelli:

I love it.

Emily Steele:

Yep. Take it with you wherever you go.

Patrick:

Emily, thank you again so much. We wish you nothing but the best. Good luck. If there's anything we can do to help, and for our listeners out there, if you feel like you've been missing out on finding yourself as a Hummingbird, or if you're looking for an opportunity to engage a new hyperlocal marketing strategy, definitely check out. I think it's hummingbirds.com?

Emily Steele:

You bet.

Patrick:

Yeah. Which again, I'm amazed that the URL was available. I would imagine some 70-year-old guy would've had it, a birder, somebody.

Emily Steele:

Right. It feels accurate.

Patrick:

Yeah. But no, congratulations. We wish you nothing but the best, and please keep in touch. We'd love to hear how things are progressing.

Shelli:

Yeah. Congratulations, Emily.

Emily Steele:

Thanks Patrick. Thanks Shelli. Appreciate having me on.

Patrick:

We also want to thank our listeners. We really appreciate everyone taking the time to join us.

Shelli:

And if you'd like to receive new episodes as they're published, you can subscribe by visiting our website at dragonspears.com/podcast or find us on iTunes, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Patrick:

This episode was sponsored by DragonSpears and produced by Dante 32.