E89: Monica Ho - SOCi: Lessons in Reaching $100M ARR

Speaker A: Welcome to this Week in Local, a local podcast featuring lively conversations about the local digital ecosystem, hosted by Localogy analyst Mike Bolan.

Speaker B: Hi everyone, this is Mike Bolan, senior analyst at Local and in this episode we sit down with Sochi CMO Monica Ho to dive into the company's latest milestone of reaching 100 million in annual recurring revenue, otherwise known as the Centaur Club. So the big question is what are the success factors that led to this milestone and to what does Monica attribute the accomplishment? Is it product? Is it vision? Is it culture? We dive into all these things starting with Sochi's focus on multi location businesses and its decision to be more of a holistic marketing software provider rather than siloed in areas like search and social. So getting right into it, here's our discussion with Monica.

Speaker C: So I guess let's start with there are a few things I want to ask about. Um, the, the milestone itself really what you view as like the attributing factors in the culture, in the tech and all of that.

Speaker D: Yeah, I mean the milestone of hitting 100 ARR was huge for us. Um, and I think a big contributing factor to that is I, I think that we are for our icp, we're considered a foundational tech or um, technology that's pretty core to the operation because that, that's I think where um, a lot of, of companies are suffering. We have tech bloat, we have a tool for this, we have a tool for that, we have a tool for this. And then you think about, you know, the tool is one thing but the data and the insights is a whole nother thing. And um, what's really interesting there is if you've got all your data and insights siloed, then you're not really um, able to leverage the data correctly because our, as you know, um, Mike, the, the channels are symbiotic, right? Search and social are, are converging, uh, generative AI experiences are, are kind of bringing that search experience, you know, across different channels together. And so when you're built very siloed with your tools, you're, you're kind of limited. And then when you think about AI coming to the scene, which was super exciting, but I think then every technology said oh, I've got AI for that and I've got AI for this. But again go back to these siloed tools. If you've got AI sitting on a very limited or siloed data set. Yeah, well it's going to learn from. So marketers need to integrate the tools and their data so that the AI that's sitting on top of it can learn from a deeper set of data and insights. And then you've got a fantastic AI that can make recommendations that are more intelligent than, you know. Again, think about like early, early phase of chat versus chatgpt, which was trained on the entire Internet. Right. Very different. And so that's what these integrated platforms can offer to marketers, um, that silo tools can't. And so she, we, we invested in an integrated platform very early. Right. We started solving a social challenge. And then we realized, well, it's not just a social challenge, it's local reviews. And it's not just local reviews, it's the local search experience. Right. And it's not just that, it's like customer service. So we need to add surveys. And so we just started adding on all of these services and, um, solutions that are essential to an enterprise and understanding their customers, meeting those, those servicing needs and then, you know, making sure they're visible when their consumers are searching. Like, those are the essential elements that we bring together in one platform.

Speaker C: Yeah, And I hadn't thought about it that way, that the sort of integrations that you guys did early on ended up sort of future proofing and ended up being a very prescient move in terms of, you know, AI coming along and just being able to tap into deeper training sets. So that, that's awesome. I hadn't even thought of that. So let's, let's use that to segue into, I believe, what you guys call genius AI. How does that sort of plug into, um, what you guys are working on?

Speaker D: Yeah. So our solution is an integrated platform and then genius sits on top of that. So genius learns. So let's just say, here's a good example. We can service all digital channels for an enterprise, but let's say you're coming in and you're still working with another vendor on reviews and another vendor for social, but you've come to soci for search. Right. The way we've built our platform is that we still pull in the signals for your brand, even though you're just using us for search. We pull in social signals and local review signals that then guide our local search recommendations.

Speaker C: Gotcha.

Speaker D: Right. And that makes what we have found is that has been a game changer, um, for not only local search, but then you flip that and let's just say you're a brand and you're coming to us for social media, you're doing search elsewhere and reviews elsewhere. We'd love to do all of them for you. But we pull in those signals and insights so that when we are recommending social content, right? Imagine if our social, our AI is just learning from social.

Speaker C: From social? Yeah, it's not gonna be, it's like,

Speaker D: well, you're, you're, you're posting a lot about pizza. Maybe do another pizza ad. I mean, no. So we then pull in, how are people searching, how are people like liking your locations, how do they like your food, etc? And all of those signals come into our content generation. And so what you end up getting is a very hyper, uh, local and quality post. And that includes images as well as content. Um, and so we've built our entire system that way. Um, and our hope is, you know, whether you're using one of our solutions or all of our solutions, you're going to see that Genius is in fact that it's learning from, you know, all of the local signals out there. You can train it. So let's just say you don't like to call your customers, you know, customers, you call them patrons or whatever, right? And you can, you can actually go into Genius Studio and make those finer tweaks. Um, and it just continually learns and makes suggestions and gets better and better.

Speaker C: Now that's, that's pretty cool that you know, even though they're only utilizing you for like one of those pieces, like say it's social, you're not holding back, right? You're using all the tools you have. And that, that's awesome. That shows a lot of integrity. I'm also wondering if doing that demonstrates to that customer that like, hey, you know, we also by the way, do a lot in search. Like, does that help to sort of upsell those other parts?

Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. I mean the, like our strategy is, you know, once you see it in action, you should notice the, the difference. And to your point, um, my get, if I'm looking at social, I'm like, wow, this is game changing. This is really great. And I'm using my, this different reviews vendor over here. Maybe I'm doing reviews myself. Yeah, the other thing that you can do in Genius is you can try it out and you can, we can turn it on for you and you can just keep it under, um, locked in key where you're like, okay, let pull in my, my, my recent local reviews and how would genius respond to them? Right? And you can just, look, you don't have to publish the response, but you can start testing, you know, how good is it before you actually implement anything. And what's really interesting about it is it picks up on local lingo, it picks up on little things like if somebody were writing a review in Spanish, it will respond back in Spanish, things like that. Um, again, and I, I think it's just, it's, it's so interesting because it's all, I think what, what enterprises and even franchisees have always wanted was hyper localized content, hyper localized responses. Ingenious actually does that because again, the reason why we pull all those signals together is because without it, you don't really understand that 360 view of the local consumer. Once you have that, the signal and how are people speaking about you. And then you add on top of that your brand training. It's game changing.

Speaker C: Yeah. Now, so while we're talking about AI, uh, it seems like it also has a big part in that other sort of theme I mentioned before, which is the ethos around the co marketing cloud because it seems like the automation piece really adds a few things. One is a lot of scalability and your ability to like really be powerful at scale, um, in a way that is somewhat, you know, automated and software driven. Like it seems like that would just be a key piece of that. And it's interesting because we're always looking at, especially in this, like the last year of just the inflection and excitement and investment around AI. Like we're in this stage where everyone's just throwing it against the wall to see where it sticks. And what we're finding is the parts that seem to have the most value are the things that can create the most tangible sort of benefits for your average local business, whether it be a multi location franchisee or whether it be an SMB, it doesn't matter. Just you know, the things that are on their common list of pain points, which is saving time, sort of. Some of them hate to do, you know, rote marketing tasks and copywriting and SEO tasks. So like the things that are really like, those are the things that are really I think gaining traction because in a lot of cases they don't care about the acronyms and the tech and oh, this is really trendy right now. They just want like those just real tangible pain points to be alleviated. And it seems like you guys have hit that mark in terms of what you're doing with AI.

Speaker D: Yeah, I mean what we, what we're solving for with Genius is, you know, if you like, we just relaunched our site and the way that we're trying to simplify it is, you know, what Sochi's co marketing cloud gives you is the Work of a thousand marketers. And you really think about that, it's because what we're doing is we are actually able. And to your point, Mike, the challenge here is that franchisees, multi location enterprises, they've got huge networks of local managers and you know, dealers and agents. Um, and so I think a lot of them lean on, on that network to get local marketing done. But the reality is they don't have time for this. They're running their business, they've got to deal with customers and inventory and all those things. They don't have the expertise for it and they certainly don't have additional resources. So a lot of that work doesn't get done. So what we're trying to do with co marketing, cloud and this genius automation is we're doing the work for you honestly. And again, depending on the type of business you are, you might be comfortable with that. Um, where you really let it automate or you have oversight and then you, you're basically approving things and batches and letting them out. Um, but that's what we, how we describe it is we give you a local marketer and a data scientist at every location. Every location gets very different recommendations for what you should post in social. They're going to get very specific hyperlocal responses to reviews because it's based on your reviews and how people talk in that area. Same thing with search. Your search recommendations are going to be based on your competitors that are coming up, how they're ranking. Um, and it should be when you think about it, local rank isn't just a very simple formula. It is driven by that market, who's closer in, you know, in my competitive set to, you know, somebody conducting this search, do they have better reviews than I do? They have better links, you know, um, and we take that hyper local content into consideration. Um, and then that's, that's the output. So um, again it's the automation piece is a game changer. You don't really have to think about it. It's doing, doing the work for you and you're really just oversight in approving it and letting it go.

Speaker C: Yeah, and this seems to scratch an itch of a challenge that we've been talking about for years when it comes to localized marketing. It in most cases can be more effective. Um, when it is done at that local level, whether it be like Instagram posts or whether it be responding to reviews or whatever the case may be. All those things we're always looking at you and I have been talking about this for years like the challenges really sort of scaling to that ability where some franchises are set up based on a more centralized structure. You know, how do they do that and how do they empower the local franchisees to do it and to do it at scale and with a certain quality standard? It seems like what you just said sort of like finally cracks that code, right? In being able to do it in this like, intelligent and automated way.

Speaker D: Yeah. A good example is, you know, one of our, our uh, clients is Ace. And ACE has won the J.D. power Award for customer service year over year. And it's because when you come in store, you know the experience you're going to expect, right? You've got the red, you know, the, the helpful people in the red vest, they're always going to answer your questions. They're very knowledgeable. However, online they've been suffering because you know, their retailers don't approach customer service needs on digital as important as they do in store. So, and, and part of it are the platform's problems, right. Facebook has a lot of spam and you've got to filter through that garbage. And you know, um, it's that time and resource problem as well. So you know, in using our Genius products, Ace is now able to, to get to their digital engagements in a timely fashion, very personalized, like a local, you know, store, uh, associate would. But using Genius because again it's trained to that local voice and that local customer to the point where Aces retailers who are co op, they're not franchise are saying, hey, this is pretty damn good. And we like this, right? So that's the testament, um, is when the local, um, you know, retailers are like, this is great, I want to use it.

Speaker C: Yeah. The next question is because we've been talking so much about the product and how that has really struck all the right chords. What other sort of going back to the 100 million, um, ARR. Milestone, what are the other things you point to? Whether they be X factors, whether they be culture, whether they be just leadership and good vision, keeping good people. Like what are the things that you point to?

Speaker D: Yeah, I think, I think the vision, of course. I mean we, as you know, Mike, being in this industry for so long, local marketing is a really complicated problem to solve. And I think uh, a lot of, a lot of companies kind of shy away from some of that complexity. The workflow is complicated and the scale part and getting local marketing right. Um, and, and we've always had that vision that you know, we should be a, like local marketing is a game changer if you can do it. Well, SMBs that get it, they, they, they do exponentially better and they can compete with national brands in their local market because they do that, you know, so well. So we knew that there was such big opportunity there. I mean we, we've done research with Forrester and it, it what, uh, it. That, that, that was never lost on multi location enterprises. It was just this time expertise and resource factor that challenged everybody and we really believed that there would be a point where technology could solve these challenges. And, and to your point earlier, I think the right investments, right, we, we decided to um, build an integrated platform early on and we kept building these really important solutions into the platform um, at a time and we had all of that there when I really actually started working. Um, and we were able, we were the first actually to come out with an AI product in our space. We started with reviews, which was a little bit simpler to solve, um, than local search and social content. And, and we just kept learning and building off of that. So I think it's vision, it's you know, the right investments at the right time. And you know we're, we're, we're very um, cons, we're very thoughtful about our segment. As I mentioned before, we are purposely built to solve multilocation enterprise issues, problems, pain points. That's our jam. We don't try to be everything to everybody.

Speaker C: Yeah, um, I'm also curious. You know, this mile. Big milestone just happened. You guys have been having all kinds of milestones with lots of accolades from Fast Company and others. But I have a feeling that you're not resting on that. Like what are you guys excited about now? Like what's, what's your, your next big sort of milestone goal or even if you, if it's not that specific. What are the things that you guys are working on now that you're most excited about?

Speaker D: Yeah, I think, I mean it's continuing to expand, continuing to expand the capabilities of the platform. Right. So we've, we're launching, we've got our um, annual event called Reimagine at the end of this month. So we're going to be launching some new innovations that I can't talk about just yet.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker D: We also have our latest research. Uh, Mike, as you know we've done the local visibility index for many years. We really started that research with local back in the day. M. This year we're, we're turning it a little bit. Um, we're going to be um, uh, releasing it based on um, a ranking of the 100 most visible local brands. So we, we basically audited over 3, 000 businesses. Um, and based on the scoring, we were actually able to say, like, who are the most visible and why and showcase that it's impacted their business from, you know, a growth revenue standpoint, which is super exciting. Um, and then we're just expanding into new segments, I think. Um, you know, one of the big segments we expanded in this year, Mike, is financial services, banking, insurance. It's a highly regulated industry, but, you know, we were able to add some really fantastic capabilities around compliance and, you know, keywords that you like or don't like against content. So whether you're in financial services or not, these are capabilities some brands really want. Like, you think about a brand like a Walmart that wants to be very picky about where they, um, how they promote their brand. I mean, we have those capabilities, um, through our compliance features and a feature we called Sochi Shield. Um, and we're going to keep expanding. We've got health services, healthcare, um, as well as international expansion on the horizon.

Speaker C: Yeah, and those vertical expansion sound exciting. Um, anyway, always good to catch up and let's keep the dialogue rolling. Thanks everyone for listening.

Speaker B: This has been this Week in Locals. Stay tuned every week for more episodes. You can find the show on all major podcast networks and find out more@locology.com Please subscribe like and comment. Your engagement helps others find us and if you're interested in being a guest or sponsor, you can email us@podcastocology.com so I'm Mike Bolan. This week's guest has been Monica Ho. You can find out more about Monica and Sochi in the show notes. So thanks for listening and see you next time.

Speaker A: Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of this Week in Local, hosted by Mike Boland. Be sure to subscribe for more.