Q&A: Exploring the Newest Version of Norby, the All Inclusive Creative Marketing Platform of Your Dreams
A ONE STOP SHOP FOR EVERYTHING CREATIVE - Norby is changing the game for creators, businesses, and entrepreneurs with their revamped and easy to use branding and communication platform. Norby powers essentials like link in bios, personalized subdomains, messaging and communications campaigns, analytics, and event ticketing in one convenient location - streamlining everything a burgeoning creator or business may need into one convenient tool.
Norby was born due to the need of better marketing and communications platforms for the ever growing creative community online, especially following the outburst of new creators and brands in the pandemic era. Best put by Norby client and artist Grey Prnce, “Norby allows myself and my partner to feel connected to our community but at the same time organized. It's very scary jumping into the world of having a social media platform, your life literally changes, and we had no choice but to grow and we did. Finding Norby whose brand mission was to grow as we did really resonated with us as creators and artists. We feel as though Norby is there for us as much as we are there for them, a symbiotic relationship.”
Since Norby’s inception during the pandemic, creators and brands have flocked to the service for a variety of reasons, most notably being the empowerment as a changemaker to control their vision while being supported through any challenges by the Norby team. Grey in particular feels this support in stride by Norby and stated, “Norby makes it so that in numbers we can see our overall value to brands or whatever but beyond that Norby cares about us as creators and continues to prove that. We aren't just users. We are assets, we are appreciated and valued. Especially on TikTok where our account has faced all sorts of discrimination because of what and who we represent, for the platform we use to see us and think we are special feels so good. Sometimes being online and being a creator in general you hardly see a positive return on your energetic investment but there are people watching, platforms watching, brands watching that love what you're doing. Norby is one of them.”
Norby’s benefits are endless with the all-in-one platform allowing businesses and entrepreneurs to easily focus on what they do best: create and connect with their audience. The Norby community boasts creators like artists and musicians all the way to studios and therapy spaces, with a common thread being in the desire to create earnest and engaging communities within their own spaces. For people like Dotun Abeshinbioke of Abike Studio, community is a major part of their love for Norby and the entrepreneurial community as a whole, “I love being able to connect with other entrepreneurs and creatives via online communities and offline at IRL events. Running a creative agency means I've been fortunate enough to come across and work with some inspiring entrepreneurs and host valuable events for creatives like myself.”
Norby thrives on fostering the growth, connection, and support Dotun and Grey mentioned. It’s what drives the Norby team forward in their new rebrand as they evolve into an even better marketing platform for their growing community, and it’s exactly why we love Norby here at the Luna Collective. With the new rebrand, we received the opportunity to chat with Norby’s Head of Marketing, Community, & Partnerships Tori Lazar to get the scoop on Norby’s new direction as a branding platform and her perception of just how important Norby is to the creator community, reminding us yet again just how Norby’s marketing platform is a tool for change.
LUNA: What does your rebrand mean beyond just a change in look and feel?
TORI LAZAR: Branding is a labor of love and I think anyone who has ever built a brand or worked on constructing a brand identity will understand what I mean. Behind the "vibes" are countless hours of research, conversations, and reflection in hopes of understanding and serving one thing – your customer. I kid you not, we spent two hours moving around 100+ post-it notes on a wall, contemplating our six brand pillar words. And as small as that seems, it's SO important because those six words will drive every decision we make as a business. From writing a caption on Instagram to deciding what feature get's prioritized on our product roadmap. Many of our team members, including myself, have taken the entrepreneurial leap and built businesses on our own before. We know how hard it is to bet on yourself like that and to build something from the ground up, and we have the utmost respect for it. We want our customers to feel that and to see themselves in the brand – and in us. We want them to know that we're here for them as they embark on that journey and that we're working HARD to build tools that make it more accessible, efficient, and fun to find success in whatever their passion is.
LUNA: Is there a particular element about the new direction that you’re most excited about?
TORI LAZAR: The photography! It completely throws the traditional SaaS branding approach out the window...but shooting the product in real-life settings and in our customers' hands is the only way to truly showcase how Norby can fit into a modern creator's daily life and workflow. Every single person you see on our website and other marketing channels is a real Norby customer who has found value in the product and believes in our vision. Our community shows up and shows out, and today, that's really powerful.
LUNA: What do you value most about the creative and entrepreneurial community?
TORI LAZAR: Their vulnerability. Starting a business or leaving a traditional career path to pursue an unconventional passion is one of the most vulnerable positions a person can put themselves in. It shifts how you fundamentally view the world, consume and process information, and make life decisions. The act alone demands respect and that's why creative/ entrepreneurial people make for the best community builders. It's because they're willing to get vulnerable about the risks they're taking and how they're questioning the status quo – that's not something you can necessarily find in (or is welcomed by) less creative industries. Although, I do think that's changing and creativity is finding its way into corporate company cultures/ communities too because it's a must-have for Gen Z (which we, at Norby, love to see).
LUNA: What makes Norby unique?
TORI LAZAR: Norby is built for and by creative entrepreneurs. Our team is made up of creators and builders just like you. We genuinely relate to our customers' experiences and can connect with them over the challenges of marketing and growing a brand online. This perspective fuels every decision we make as a team and inspires our customer-centric approach.
We want Norby to be your go-to partner in growth. That's why we built a first-of-it's kind, all-in-one marketing solution that can expand with you as you grow. You need access to the right tools so you can connect with your audience at the right time and through the right channels – and you need it at a price point that actually makes sense for the nature of your business. Norby provides all of that...and we're just getting started.
I feel really grateful to be a part of a team that's so passionate about making success accessible. I wish I had Norby when I started my first business.
LUNA: What tools do you find most useful for independent creators/entrepreneurs?
TORI LAZAR: If you're a creator or small business owner, you need to leverage these 3 marketing tools and tactics always and forever.
1. Landing pages to establish your brand's online presence and amplify your talents.
“Norby's landing pages have proven to be the most valuable tool for me. As someone who has various projects and phases of promoting different links, events, messages, etc. I LOVE that I can create different landing pages for different phases of my creativity. Before, I'd have to swap things in and out of a site like Linktree, and would feel like I was constantly making repetitive updates.” Van Newman - DJ, Writer, Community Builder
2. Lead magnets (a.k.a. freebie/ low-cost offerings like guides, virtual events, templates, newsletters/articles) to attract new people to your community without spending hundreds or thousands on paid ads.
“Norby has singlehandedly made marketing fun again. I went from feeling uninspired and honestly burdened by having to churn out content for my email list and text list, but the features and seamless experience using Norby made me excited to put out new freebies and bite-sized gems for my community. My email list has grown 31% since using Norby with minimal promotion!” Shyne Webster - Brand Strategist, Founder of Designed by Shyne
3. SMS and email marketing to build community and connect more meaningfully with your audience beyond social media.
“Norby is a first-of-its-kind, community-centered platform that has helped us form deeper relationships with our audience through personalized text message marketing features and other direct communication tools that enable us to reach our people where they're most engaged. Since creating a podcast concierge service through Norby, we've more than doubled our podcast downloads and with their easy text notifications, we've increased our show-up rates to live or in-person events by 20%.” Ellen Yin - Podcaster, Founder of Cubicle to CEO
LUNA: Which feature of Norby is your favorite to personally use?
TORI LAZAR: Our Inbox tool is truly life-changing. It allows you to track and respond to messages across your social media, SMS, and email marketing channels all in one streamlined inbox experience. This means you can reply to your Instagram DMs while simultaneously having a two-way SMS conversation with a member of your community from the same dashboard. However, I personally think the secret sauce lies in our Inbox analytics. You can view audience journeys by contact - meaning that you can actually see how each contact goes from being a passive follower to an engaged community or paying customer. You can see what they clicked on or signed up for, how many events they joined, and how or where they got in touch with you. That data is GOLD for optimizing your content and marketing strategies to increase leads and conversions for your business.
Before joining Norby full-time, I owned a marketing agency that specialized in community-centered marketing strategies and I worked with a lot of DTC brands, creators, and community platforms. If I had that tool at my disposal, it would have saved my team and clients an enormous amount of time piecing together insights from multiple platforms or through manual investigation.
LUNA: Who is Norby’s target/ideal user?
TORI LAZAR: Norby is for anyone looking to build their brand, monetize their content, and grow their business online. We're for multi-hyphenate creatives and multi-channel community builders. From experts and educators to podcasters and TikTokers at various stages of growth. Our sweet spot at the moment is the creator middle-class – creators running professional-level productions or businesses that use social media and content marketing to drive awareness for their careers and skill-sets offline. For example, we have a lot of multimedia artists like Grey & Grayson on Norby who are musicians first, but also have a rapidly growing audience on TikTok and are Gen Z marketing experts. I'm always like “WHAT?! HOW DO YOU DO IT ALL?” It's so fun to see how our customers are carving out unique career paths for themselves using Norby's tools.
LUNA: How do you hope to see Norby grow in the upcoming year?
TORI LAZAR: This is a BIG year for Norby in terms of scaling our vision. We've established the viability of our product, and we've proved that people will pay for it (woo!). Now, it's time to hit that onward and upward curve, reach a wider audience, figure out our growth loops, and continue to elevate the product. Last year was all about listening and learning, and (although that never stops) this year is about the application and building of the infrastructure to meet our customers' needs at scale. But with that growth, our hope is to start closing the success gap. Only 4.3% of creators make over $100K per year and honestly, that's unacceptable. Platforms like Norby can change that, we have the ability to make people's lives easier and equip them with tools that make success (without burnout) more attainable than ever before.
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