Bolt (formerly Taxify) chooses Modash for influencer discovery and audience analysis. 

Bolt’s achievements are hard to summarize. But a few noteworthy facts are that it is the 3rd fastest growing European company according to the Financial Times, has over 30 million users and is the leading European on-demand transportation platform. Alongside ride-hailing, the company also offers a food delivery service and has introduced fleets of scooters across several markets.

The subject of our interview is Mykhailo Kudla, the Global Marketing Partnerships Lead at Bolt and Ex-Googler. Mykhailo has cemented himself as one of the most knowledgeable practitioners in the influencer marketing space, especially when it comes to performance.

How does influencer marketing look at Bolt? 

At Bolt, we currently have over 500 ambassadors across 18 markets. There is a dedicated team for ambassador partnerships in the Bolt HQ.

Our collaborations are structured as ongoing, month over month campaigns, mainly on Instagram. We are extremely data-driven in how we choose who to work with, tracking performance and forecasting results.

What problems were you facing prior to using Modash? 

We have a couple of very specific questions we need to answer before we work with influencers. For example how many followers are actually from our target country or city, their age group split, followers’ credibility, etc. We also need to be able to forecast the results of the partnerships. Using Modash data, we can do that. 

Of course, identifying influencers across multiple markets that all have different goals and objectives and target audiences is also very difficult.

How did you try to solve these problems before? Why didn’t they work out for you?

We tried many approaches to identifying influencers. Working with other platforms, influencer recommendations from local teams, manually searching influencers and many others. 

We tried to work with other databases but they don’t offer relevant enough influencers’ data to work with. We make data-driven decisions at Bolt and we need a real audience demographics breakdown to make the right decisions. 

We also tested Modash against other platforms, and Modash looks much more accurate when it comes to audience data. We don’t expect 100% accuracy on any given influencer’s data, but we do expect very high quality across all the influencers we work with. 

What makes Modash the right solution for you and the Bolt team? 

We have tested a lot of tools and Modash has proved to be a great platform that gets us what we need. 

Alongside finding influencers at scale, we can also analyze lists of potential creators. If we have sourced a lot, we can upload and source the data and add our internal insights about which influencers are working best.

Modash covers finding influencers that reach target countries. But most importantly, we’re getting the really detailed data of their followers and their accounts.

Moreover, with Modash we can do this all at scale. Sometimes we are verifying thousands of profiles per week.

What kind of companies do you think are best suited to use Modash?

Modash helps to collect great data on scale. It’s crucial for multinational companies like Bolt who have to work in different countries with different expectations and results and budgets etc. 

Also, Modash gives the ability to track a range of influencers’ accounts indicators for potential 1:1 collaborations. That should be a great help even for smaller companies with lower budgets focused on local countries.

They can compare the results of working with a given influencer with the data associated with their profile. We all need to be confident that this influencer is going to reach the audience we want with the message we want, as precisely as possible.

What should those smaller companies have in mind while they set up their efforts?

For all data-driven companies (aka startups), you should start with a diversified list of influencers to learn as quickly as possible. And don’t just buy one post.

Diversify with multiple micro/mid-influencers and start with a performance-based model, paying per conversion. Over time, you will really understand a lot about the key metrics you’re tracking. You will understand which influencers have the most effective reach, and how to move forward to more optimal accounts. 

Partnerships need to happen over multiple posts and a longer period of time. The influencer needs to be able to adopt the brand message and convey the true value to the audience. If the audience doesn’t have time to start believing the influencer’s recommendation, they won’t convert.

Eventually, you will even be able to understand and estimate how many conversions you will get if you partner with X number of influencers in a week or month. 

Later, once you have figured out how to make these metrics work best for you, you can experiment with paying for content (per post). 

Anything else you would like to say about Modash?

The platform makes it efficient to analyze partnerships with Instagram influencers. If you’re looking for an on scale approach, go with Modash.