We’re thrilled to present the latest addition to Afluencer’s content lineup – our podcast series featuring insightful conversations with influential brand owners. In this inaugural article, we have the privilege of introducing Meghan Arora, the visionary founder of Auroraa Innovation, as our esteemed guest.
Meet Meghan Arora: The Mind Behind Auroraa Innovation
Meghan Arora, the innovative mind driving Auroraa Innovation, takes center stage in the Afluencer podcast series. With a wealth of experience in the world of influencer marketing, Meghan shares captivating insights, challenges, and triumphs that have shaped her brand’s journey.
Podcast Premiere: Delving into the Auroraa Innovation Universe
Join us in exploring the enchanting world of Auroraa Innovation through the eyes of Meghan Arora herself. We’ve embedded the riveting YouTube podcast video below, offering an exclusive glimpse into the transformative power of influencer marketing.
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Key Takeaways
00:28 🛣️ Identify your unique selling proposition and story.
01:07 💡 Focus on effective strategies to market and scale without relying solely on expensive platforms.
04:36 🎯 Understand your market segment and tailor marketing strategies accordingly.
05:31 🌟 Emphasize your unique product story to differentiate yourself.
07:24 💰 Set realistic expectations for conversion rates and repeated exposure.
09:41 🔄 Be patient and persistent with marketing efforts.
11:19 📊 Diversify marketing strategies to include a balanced mix of approaches.
14:32 📱 Evaluate the evolving landscape of user-generated content (UGC) to maintain authenticity.
16:55 🤝 Foster genuine relationships with micro-influencers to build a loyal community.
17:38 📈 Aurora Innovation Labs offers strategic planning services for businesses. Reach out through their website or social media.
Transcription Insight: A Peek into the Conversation
Gain an insider’s perspective as we burrow into the transcription of our engaging conversation with Meghan Arora. Discover the strategies, anecdotes, and wisdom that have fueled Auroraa Innovation success, all captured in this in-depth transcription.
In Conversation with Meghan Arora, Founder of Auroraa Innovation:
Meghan:
I always kind of say that I was like a creative who just had to do a very nerdy thing growing up like an immigrant here. So I ended up studying computer science and finance, which I just thought were two pretty relevant topics. We need to make money. We need to be able to be profitable. And we’re competing against, if not giant pockets where computers, biology, that’s probably having frightening leaps and bounds.
I think something people need to consider is, okay, which lane in my head? Did I create a product that’s really, really different and has a significant story behind it or a reason for that? And if that’s the case, Chase that story, that is the biggest thing that you can do and nobody else can do that for you.
Brett:
Welcome to our Afluencer podcast, where we connect influencers and creators with small business and e-commerce store owners and marketers. And you’ve got someone excited to talk to you today because she’s right in the middle lane of what a lot of our brands are trying to accomplish in terms of having a cool product that worked hard to develop them, put up a website and now the question is how do you get it out there?
How do we get the product to market from a business consumer standpoint, and also how do we get it to scale? So I talked to a lot of brands who are on Google AdWords and Facebook, and you realize quickly it’s going to be a very expensive game. So you got to do something that’s going to work in terms of getting your product out there and getting it to scale.
Which brings us to our guest today, Megan Aurora. So Megan is a content creator and micro influencer and also CEO of Aurora Innovation Lab. So Megan works with business to consumer brands to help them get their products to market. So we’ve got a lot of different ways that we want to kind of pick. Megan US brain and expertise today on the show.
So Megan, welcome. And can you give us a little bit about your background and your journey to becoming a content creator and also your company, Aurora Innovation Labs?
Meghan:
Yeah, for sure. I always kind of say that I was like a creative who just had to do a very nerdy thing growing up, like I grew up, you know, born in India, like an immigrant here. So my parents were were pretty much, Hey, you better get it together. So I ended up studying computer science and finance, which I just thought were two pretty relevant topics, You know, whether I like them or not, I’m going to be dealing with banks, I’m going to be dealing with technology.
I did end up liking them. So it made for a good journey, but that’s why I have a bit of that creative aspect. And now I’ve jumped into also having a tech consulting firm and at the time, you know, I remember my dad was an accountant. He was like, Why do you need to do those to like, what business do those two topics have being together?
And now I think it’s become like the core of almost every single business. We need to make money. We need to be able to be profitable, and we’re competing against, if not giant pockets, we’re competing with technology that’s probably having frightening leaps and bounds, and it can be really confusing on how to keep up. And I mean, even someone who kind of boasts about knowing enough about all of these things, I can still feel overwhelmed as an entrepreneur.
So I know that that extends to probably everyone I work with, and it’s been a great journey to kind of have both sides of the story.
Brett:
Yeah, I hear you. It’s a lot today. I mean, I’ve got this morning, I’ve got Chartbeat and Gemini Open and the different A.I. tools that I’m trying to make sense of is this stuff. Like you said, it’s moving so fast. And to your point on these companies having deep pockets who we compete against, I mean, that’s kind of common a review process also where we’re looking at, hey, how do we get this product out there against these companies?
Because you don’t want to compete with these big companies that are running TV commercials, Right. What kind of tell us in terms of like the money is no object to them in terms of what they’re going to spend on Google AdWords or Facebook in a traditional way. So, Megan, before we get on, you mentioned you’ve got a consultancy where you do work with a lot of brands who are doing that are going to market.
They’re trying to get their product out there. What do you see that’s working well today, and especially on a limited budget, right? If we’re a startup or even if the gaps of funding, we still can’t compete with, we’re not going to compete with Walmart, we’re not going to compete with the big guys of the world. So what’s working for you today in terms of marketing and getting noticed out there?
Meghan:
You know, one thing that is important and maybe we don’t consider it is it’s not always one size fits. All right? Like if you’re a makeup brand, there’s there’s the big dogs in Sephora. And then there’s also like the people selling gimmicky makeup, four or five year olds in the dollar store, and they’re still making money. And I think it really helps to know which lane you’re in so that you can actually make the more relevant decisions for your business.
And we’re in a world where there’s all of this noise, like people posting the top ten ways to get your business top ten list again, e-commerce. And it can get really confusing. But at the end of the day, if you’re just doing what everybody else is doing, unless you have those deep pockets, unless you’re born into a family with a huge name, there’s really no chance for you to make it out there.
So I think something people need to consider is okay, which lane in my head did I create a product that’s really, really different and has a significant story behind it or a reason or a need that it’s filling. And if that’s the case, Chase that story, that is the biggest thing that you can do and nobody else can do that for you.
And then if you’re playing a different game, we’re coming into the market and you know that you’re beating them on college or you’re beating them on, you know, just being very convenient, play that game. So I have a business that I work with and she has like a Botox filler clinic and she’s like, Oh, I was thinking of adding a product.
And I was like, Well, you should probably add something that everybody needs to use from your clients. So if you’re doing a bunch of microneedling and everyone needs to have hyaluronic acid and moisturize, get the the best options for you, make that accessible and make it convenient for them. So when they’re leaving, you know, they’re able to grab this hyaluronic acid is like at its basic an ingredient.
You can have a high quality of it. But she didn’t reinvent the wheel. But what she did is you able to make it really convenient for the people who are using it. And so I think knowing which lane you’re in is so important because that’s what’s going to help you have a really, really clear strategy from the get go.
Brett:
And get the story out there. I like that insight. I do find that with a lot of the brands that we talk to where the lane that I feel like they’re in is they’ve got to lean on the creative, they’ve got to lean on a story because if we look at the other side of the fence and we say, Hey, we’re going to try to spend money on AdWords or do search engine optimization or this or that, it’s either a deep pocketed effort or a multi-year effort or all the above.
Right? And to your point, I think the lean is kind of that creative lane around that story to find this story. And that’s what we want to lean on, which is great, right? But from a then from a practical standpoint, let’s say we get that dialed in a year where we’re unique here is a story we want to tell.
Well, then from a mechanics standpoint, how do you approach that with your clients in terms of getting the story out there?
Meghan:
I think the second thing is just having a really realistic expectation on what the conversion is. I mean, if you think for yourself and you you’re thinking about what to purchase or where to go get a treatment done or where to go to the gym, you’re going to have say, 3 to 5 options in front of you and you’re not going to go with the one you just heard of.
You might be like, Oh, that’s cool, Think about it later. But very rarely. I mean, I think it’s mostly you’re tracking something seven times before you actually purchase or you follow through with it. And so that’s an expectation that I think is difficult for a lot of business owners to get behind because you’re spending real money, right? So you don’t really know what’s working.
And it can be a tough it can be a tough pill to buy to be like, okay, I’m not going to know for a while exactly where this lands. And that has to be, again, something it’s just realistic. Like you can’t go into a situation expecting otherwise. And so maybe that means your budget is a little bit more manageable for you to keep up for some time.
You’re still making ends meet in other ways. That’s an important way to go into it because even when it comes to influencer marketing, people will expect, okay, my audiences or my content creators audience is going to convert right away. That also doesn’t necessarily happen, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t power like I’ve had brands reach out to me and I’ve been like, I don’t know what this brand is, and I’ve just been curious and I’ve gone on TikTok and been like, Oh, there’s actually not that many posts.
And all it does is it just leaves me with no nothing concrete to base anything off of. And now, you know, since I’ve created for them, it’s been some time. One, I love the products I’m able to like want to go back off of my own experience. But I’ve also noticed how much more social media buzz is around them.
So it’s not just, oh, are you going to pop up as a first thing? I search when I search skincare, but it’s what I do. Search your name. Am I going to get anything? I really get crickets. Am I going to get some other brand name pop up? And those things take a lot of time. You have to be realistic and none of them are bad.
But if you’re going in throwing a lot of money, a lot of your time behind one thing, expecting it to turn out another way, you’re going to be disappointed.
Brett:
Yeah. Great point on the seven touchpoints back in the day, that kind of used to be an expectation, and I think this is almost before marketing was primarily online. Used to have these off touchpoints right where you might send somebody a postcard and the show is how long ago this was, right? But you would send them a postcard that would be one touchpoint, and then maybe they saw you online here and then you would reach them a few times and there was just seem to be common knowledge in marketing.
And then as we went to just everything being conversion tracking, I think we got away from that and I found personally that that conversion, I mean, it’s it’s okay. It’s like, hey, this is kind of working for you, but each link tracking each stage is not realistic. Like you said, it’s more of, Hey, I saw you seven times.
And then on that seven times when I became a customer and then hopefully I stayed a customer. And that’s always a tricky thing I find as a business owner, because when I want to stop something, because we’re spending money and I don’t know if it’s working. I almost have to stop and hope it doesn’t break something, but it doesn’t come down to conversion lengths.
Right. And I think your point is a very good one in terms of, hey, we got to keep that something and see if it works. And you might have to spend more than you want. And when I do see this, unfortunately, but influencer marketing where people come in and they’ll do something to say, well, it didn’t work well, now it’s kind of a start.
Of course it can’t work because we didn’t put enough effort into it, right? So that’s kind.
Meghan:
Of like there’s a parallel between like a Warren Buffett investing strategy here, where it’s like, if if it was really that easy, we would all do it. And like with Warren Buffett, for example, he’s a lot more of a balanced portfolio. And if you’re out there spending money on like a marketing and sales strategy, you can’t throw 100% of it into a risky like in your face short term fix.
And that’s why there are different strategies like the blogs and the Echos as well as having some someone of ad spend some stuff in person. Like you kind of have to have that mixed bucket because I mean, you could try like an e-commerce drop shipping quick lowest price, but that’s not going to be your long lasting product Like that might be just a quick thing that maybe blows up, but most likely does not at best.
Brett:
Yeah, totally. The camera and microphone appear here. We started doing YouTube videos. It was almost it was a year and a half ago now. Right. And initially, it’s nothing and it’s a lot of work and you don’t get anything from it. And if we were to quit at that point, it would have been normal because you would have gotten no results from it.
But you don’t know until you. So you kind of get into things, right? Like you said, you have to devote a portion of your portfolio to those efforts. So do you have any specific examples, Megan, that either collaborations you done on your end with your maybe companies have partnered with or with your clients in terms of, Hey, this is something that we did, we stuck with over time and then eventually began to generate results in terms of sales or whatever ultimately is looking for here.
Meghan:
With the sales part, I think it was kind of in that vein. So it wasn’t just about cosmetic Botox filler, those that I was talking about, but there was also another company and they were a large boutique. So with them they wanted to go into the product line and they were trying to figure out sort of what to do.
And I had to like, step back. And I’m a strategic consulting, so I’d be like, Hey, what is your dream here as a business owner? What do you really pride yourself on? Is this just another avenue to expand? And one thing the owner said was, Oh, I really want to teach people how to do lashes. So they already started doing like their academy programs.
And so for us it became about, okay, how do we add that product line as a part of that? Because it’s coming on to something that’s working with your expertise, working with where your exact passion lies. So we were able to kind of start the product part with basically four new technicians plus technicians. And so they were able to get their startup kits and then kind of come back and know they were going to a trusted source with kind of the ropes and was able to grow it from there.
So that was one of those more unique offerings, which was really useful because if we had just done a shot in the dark, it wouldn’t have been as effective and maybe we wouldn’t know where to take those products of who are we selling to, why should they trust us? And it was just one of those scenarios where this allowed us to build like a good foundation.
And because that foundation also wasn’t based off of.
Brett:
Just.
Meghan:
Random marketing, not knowing where our consumers were coming from, even if there were to be some variables in how consumer spending goes and how the brand develops, there was always something to fall back on. And it also provides the business owner a lot of peace of mind at the end of the day.
Brett:
Looking ahead as you think about the strategies that are working today and that you think will work tomorrow, what do you like in terms of the user generated content or the UGC? What what’s good today are the videos and the real is still working for you and your clients or is it starting to evolve into something? Alice Where do you see all that stuff going in terms of the trends?
Meghan:
I think that one, when something becomes more saturated, you can start to tell where the genuine aspect lies. And I think, you know, you can tell when people are sort of just praising a product on a more superficial level. So I think what I’m hoping is say I get a product for UGC, am I going to just make that one video?
Because I was going to say that I was or, you know, maybe I’ve delivered my, my video and now I’m like, Oh, I actually really want to post about it, or I’m actually going to integrate this into my lifestyle. And I think that’s where the longevity comes from. I think sometimes, sometimes companies can forget that you’re UGC clients are also some of your first consumers, so you don’t want to lose that because if you’re losing them, you’re not seeing them convert.
There’s also a question of, Hey, what’s my product up to? And I think it’s fair as a as a company to to pick and choose in a way that you are actually going to harder a genuine audience as a result of it. Like I had a hair company, like a hair extension company reach out to me and I was like, Thank you for reaching out.
And I asked them all like, Hey, I’m not sure if I’m the best fit because my hair is long. And so I was like, Is this the best product for me? And then we kind of went back and forth and we found something that might work because I just I just knew that if I got something that I put on one one, the video was going to look kind of them.
And two, there was no chance of me sort of using it again. And so it would it wouldn’t make sense. And I think as a as someone who is starting off, especially when you’re a much smaller business, you really like each one of those units. Anything that you’re paying for can really affect your bottom line. So you want to make sure that you’re putting yourself in the best position to actually have it convert for you down the line.
And I don’t think there’s anything better than the people who get it. Generally continuing to use your product, wanting to speak about it more, even coming back to be like, Hey, I want to make more. Like I really enjoy this. And it also helps. I have that much of a transactional relationship. We get to build that community. So I think you just is a great starting point.
There’s like a lot of changes in the industry as it grows, but as long as as a business owner, you can understand how to maintain that as a really great feedback point and and adjust and continue moving forward. I think it’s going to really support the grow your business, right?
Brett:
Yeah, there’s the continuity of that, right? Being in front of that audience and working with the person, right? That’s micro-influencers or create or whatever term we want to use. Right? But over and over and over again to kind of build that trust with the community. So get you out of here on this one. Megan Is there anything else that we can share in terms of Aurora Innovation Labs, who you’re looking to work with in terms of clients or who you’re looking to partner with in terms of brands?
And then I guess the follow up on that is how they can people can reach you.
Meghan:
Yeah, absolutely. So I just finished like a huge blitz of doing a lot of strategic plans for small to medium sized businesses. And I got to touch on a bunch of different points marketing, sales, even operational technology. So that’s something I love to do when I’m not creating for brands. I think it’s a great way where if, hey, you’re doing hair extensions and I’m not the best model for them, we can still find some some value there and you can always reach out to me a way, whether we’re looking for like a strategic set of calls, a report, whether you’re looking to do something a little bit deeper in terms of implementation or more, you
can always contact me, probably through my website is the best way with all things business. So that’s Aurora innovation, loudobbs.com. I’m hoping we’ll have a link somewhere here because my name has way too many A’s sometimes and then.
Brett:
I will get the link there and then we will also get the link to your H wants a profile for brands who would like to collaborate here as well. And then any other social. And also you know that.
Meghan:
My Instagram is the only Aurora and it’s spelled the same way as for my website and then all of that link in my bio should have a good access to my UGC portfolio or anything like that.
Brett:
Perfect. We’ll get all the links here in the show notes Megan Aurora with Aurora Innovation, Las Vegas. Thanks again for the conversation. Really interesting hearing about just how you think about getting these products to market. I know that’s a it’s a big topic for a lot of brands, e-commerce stores. How do we get it out there? And appreciate you kind of breaking it down how you’re working in defiance on this.
Meghan:
Absolutely. My pleasure.
Brett:
Well, thanks again.
Meghan:
Take care.
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Reflecting on a Journey of Innovation and Influence
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