“Influencer marketing is a bit of an infant industry. And naturally, with all infant industries comes a lack of infrastructure,” says Sam Royle, co-founder & CEO of SoSquared. 

Sam and his team are committed to bridging this gap through data-driven matchmaking and a vision that transcends traditional metrics such as likes and follower count. 

As brands grapple with the complexities of creator partnerships, SoSquared is tackling industry-wide challenges head-on, from ROI prediction to brand safety concerns. 

However, Sam’s vision extends beyond traditional metrics to long-term relationships and the potential of social commerce. 

In an exclusive interview with Net Influencer, Sam shares insights into SoSquared’s approach and his predictions for the future of influencer marketing.

Reimagining Influencer Marketing for All Industries

Sam’s journey to the creator economy is unconventional. 

He began his real estate asset management career before transitioning to consultancy for private equity and investment banking, focusing on emerging market investments in renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure. 

This background provided him with insights into mature markets and their infrastructure.

“I noticed that a lot of businesses in more mature markets have the infrastructure, tools, systems, whether that’s analytics, CRM, identification tools, comms channels, etc., to help them transact more efficiently on a day-to-day basis,” Sam tells us.

This observation led him to identify a gap in influencer marketing and eventually co-found SoSquared with his partner, Greg Donnelly. 

SoSquared connects influencers with businesses across various sectors. 

Sam notes, “Traditionally, influencer marketing [is] associated with beauty, fashion, cosmetics, and those kinds of industries. But actually, influencer marketing is applicable to everyone.”

The company’s vision has evolved to encompass the broader creator economy. 

“Our mission is to simplify and automate the most challenging parts of influencer [and] creator marketing by enabling businesses to generate campaigns at scale, using prompt engineering to automatically match the most relevant content creators based on proprietary data points and behavior analytics,” Sam explains.

The Technology Behind SoSquared’s Creator Matchmaking

Under Sam’s leadership, SoSquared offers an end-to-end suite of tools designed to professionalize influencer and creator marketing.

The company’s offerings span traditional influencer marketing, user-generated content (UGC) creation for ads and organic social media, and social commerce, focusing on TikTok shops.

Sam emphasizes the company’s sector-agnostic approach: “We do everything from beauty, fashion, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, insurance, lifestyle, home living, supplements, and fitness. It’s content that we specialize in.”

A key differentiator for SoSquared is its services element. 

“We have our own internal influencer and creator experts who can sit and guide clients through more of a white glove service as they need it,” Sam explains.

The platform’s matching process between brands and creators is data-driven and sophisticated. 

“Every creator has a profile on our platform,” Sam details. “They set their attributes, industry verticals, tags, etc. What we then do is reinforce that with proprietary data.” 

According to the CEO, this approach allows SoSquared to build confidence scores for creators across various categories and content styles.

The company’s platform includes an automated campaign creation process, creator identification tools, an end-to-end CRM system, an integrated wallet system for payments, and automated report writing leveraging API connections with major platforms.

Sam reveals that to democratize access to influencer and creator marketing, he and his team are “launching a brand new product in the next 5 to 6 weeks, which will be completely free.” 

The goal? Allowing “everyone to participate.”

Transforming Influencer Marketing Outcomes

Sam emphasizes the importance of immersion in the creator economy to stay ahead of emerging trends. 

“If you want to be the best at what you do, you need to consume everything around what you’re doing,” he states, highlighting the value of being both a provider and a consumer in the industry.

SoSquared’s approach to success extends beyond traditional metrics. It focuses on providing infrastructure that enables efficient and secure transactions in the creator space. 

“Success to us looks like providing that underlying infrastructure enabling businesses and agencies to transact in the space more efficiently, securely, and safely,” Sam explains.

The company’s impact is evident in its work with diverse clients, including a major insurance company. 

By leveraging UGC creators instead of traditional advertising methods, SoSquared increased the client’s inbound leads by about 500% month-over-month. 

Sam notes, “What we really kind of opened the client’s eyes to was that the traditional way of doing things is not necessarily the right way.”

A key focus for SoSquared is improving the ability to forecast and predict return on investment (ROI) in influencer marketing. 

Sam acknowledges the historical challenges in this area: “To this point, it’s been tough to truly calculate the ROI of influencer marketing.” He sees success as the ability to “clearly demonstrate” the impact of creators on businesses.

Key Challenges: Predicting ROI and Ensuring Brand Safety

“Traditionally, influencer marketing was all based on mass eyeballs,” Sam tells us. 

However, he believes the focus has now shifted towards engagement and authenticity. 

“Brands are moving more to wanting to work with nano and micro-influencers or creators because they have more engaged communities built around a specific niche topic,” Sam explains.

This evolution presents opportunities and challenges. 

“Everybody wants to be a creator or an influencer. The market is very saturated,” Sam notes. 

To address this, SoSquared is developing a sophisticated “confidence score” system to help businesses in selecting the right creators.

Sam identifies two significant challenges: predicting ROI and ensuring brand safety. 

On ROI, Sam says, “We need to start looking at tools that will enable them to influence creative marketing.” 

“As you’re working with 100, 200, 300 different creators throughout the year, it’s complicated to understand their background,” he says of brand safety, implying that potentially controversial pasts could negatively affect their businesses.

SoSquared is actively working on solutions to these issues, leveraging historical and proprietary data to forecast potential returns on influencer partnerships.

Sam highlights the need for a shift in perspective within the industry. 

“The biggest change that I wish would happen right now is that businesses would stop seeing influencer marketing as a silver bullet,” he says. 

He advocates for a long-term approach: “It’s a 12-month campaign and execution. And that’s what businesses need to realize.”

Talent Scouting in the Digital Age

Sam outlines SoSquared’s expansion plans, including entry into the U.S. and MENA regions within 12 months. However, his long-term vision is more transformative, aiming to reshape the creator economy’s infrastructure.

“The way that we see ourselves is that we support. We’re not here to compete with agencies. We’re here to support agencies,” he explains. 

The entrepreneur envisions SoSquared becoming the underlying infrastructure for the creator economy, similar to “what HubSpot did for marketing automation.”

Sam emphasizes a dual focus: enhancing business efficiency and empowering creators. 

For brands, Sam advises a talent-scouting approach to influencer marketing. 

“If you spend the time identifying smaller creators that can grow, and they grow with the business, your alignment with them as they start to sort of skyrocket and become a much bigger influencer can absolutely work wonders for your business,” he states.

For aspiring influencers, Sam recommends treating content creation as a full-time job. 

“Every day you wake up, you should be working on yourself… looking at different content techniques, editing techniques,” he advises.

Looking ahead, Sam sees social commerce as a new frontier. 

“Social commerce, in my opinion, is something that’s going to be the next five years,” he predicts. 

The industry expert points to platforms like TikTok Shop as examples of how shopping experiences are evolving to combine convenience with engagement.

Sam also highlights the shift in search behaviors, noting that “40% of Gen Z prefer Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube as a search engine now.” 

He believes this trend will significantly impact how businesses approach their online presence and marketing strategies.