Marketing Happy Hour - The Brand-Creator Relationship Playbook | Lauren Giovannetti of Stan
Episode Date: May 22, 2025In this episode, I dive into the real evolution of the creator economy with Lauren Giovannetti, Creator Marketing Manager at Stan and expert on monetization strategy. Lauren has spent years helping cr...eators turn their audiences into sustainable businesses—and guiding brands on how to partner with them in more strategic, scalable ways. We break down creator storefronts, email list power, and what brands are getting right (and wrong) in today’s landscape.Key Takeaways:// Why forward-thinking brands see creators as full-scale businesses, not influencers// What signals to look for when vetting creators for partnerships// How creators with strong email lists offer unique value to brands// One simple way creators can become more valuable brand partnersConnect with Lauren: LinkedIn____Say hi! DM me on Instagram and let us know what content you want to hear on the show - I can't wait to hear from you! Please also consider rating the show and leaving a review, as that helps us tremendously as we move forward in this Marketing Happy Hour journey and create more content for all of you. Join our FREE Open Jobs group on LinkedIn: Join nowGet the latest from MHH, straight to your inbox: Join our email list!Follow MHH on Social: Instagram | LinkedIn | TikTok | Facebook
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I treat creator relationships truly as friendships.
Whenever I meet creators, one of the first questions I always ask them is,
what are your goals?
What would you like to accomplish?
And then just keeping up with folks, right?
Sometimes reaching out to them, not necessarily for like a brand ask
or something that, yeah, is quote unquote work related.
Just, you know, birthdays, milestones.
I always try to just organically keep up with
those relationships in a way that feels authentic.
Welcome to Marketing Happy Hour. I'm Cassie, consultant, podcaster, and your host. Every
Thursday you'll hear episodes packed with insights from brand leaders on an array of
topics from crafting effective marketing strategies and hitting career goals to building leadership skills and launching your own business.
Inspired by those unfiltered happy hour combos with peers, this show is all about practical,
empowering chats to support your professional journey.
So grab your favorite drink and let's get to the episode.
Today I am joined on the show by Lauren Gio of the Netty, Marketing Project Manager of Stan.
She's going to share a little bit about what the brand does.
I was chatting with her off record and we've just been
interconnected with creator friends over the past few years.
So super stoked to learn more about her and what she's working on,
creator to brand partnerships,
what creators can be doing on their own channels
just to increase conversions, grow their businesses as well.
But with that being said, Lauren, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me.
I'm so excited to be here.
Yes, I'm so stoked to have you.
I think your space is so unique and we talk to a lot of brands, but we also have a lot
of people who listen who are current creators or they're
interested in becoming creators. We also have this space that's growing right now of marketing
authority leaders and so I think there's a lot that even we on the brand side can learn if we
are dabbling in the creator space what we can be doing, but also just what are creators doing
nowadays? What are some of the trends in that space and what are they looking forward to in
terms of just building their their own brands? So super stoked to talk all of
those things with you today. Yeah, me too. I can't wait. Well, I have to ask first,
what's been in your glass lately in true marketing happy hour fashion? Yes, what's
been in my glass? So many different things.
I mean, right now I'm looking at two different glasses.
We have coffee and water and other.
Pre and probiotics as well.
Love a little probiotic mix or a poppy drink.
Yeah, I love having a beverage on hand at all times.
So yeah.
I love it.
And I have to ask you too, you're
in LA, which I love California
Do you have a favorite shop coffee shop or like smoothie shop or whatever out that way that you go to?
Oh my gosh, that's a great question
there's actually a
cute little coffee shop by the Stan office in Venice called Little Lunch and it's like a tradition not a tradition but
in Venice called Little Lunch and it's like a tradition, not a tradition, but sometimes we'll go on a little walk over there in the morning or
afternoon for a pick-me-up and it's got great vibes, amazing staff, and great
coffee. So I would say that definitely a spot to check out. Okay, next time I'm
over that way and in Venice, I love Venice, so I will definitely check that
out. Thank you for the recommendation. Of course. Of course. I love it.
So Lauren, tell us if you don't mind a little bit
about your journey.
How did you land at Stan in the first place?
Yeah, so funny enough, I've been in the Lincoln bio creator
monetization space for pretty much all
of my professional career, which is a pretty random space
to sort of fall into.
But I absolutely love
it. I knew that I wanted to work with creators in some capacity and in social
media, but I just didn't know exactly what that looked like. I was a
communications major in college and a film minor, so pretty much as broad as you
can be. But in college, I stumbled across another company that was also a Lincoln Bio creator monetization tool.
And I just found it fascinating.
I'm like, this is such a cool way
to work with creators in a capacity to empower them
and to help them actually make a sustainable source of income,
not just have to rely on brand deals.
They can start earning much earlier in their creator journey.
So it just got me really excited.
So I worked at this other company,
actually as an intern in college,
helped them build their social media channels,
was just like cold DMing a ton of creators,
being like, hey, have you heard of this?
Like, we can help you out.
So I worked at that company for about two years,
started working there full time when I graduated college,
was on the sort of creator success team,
like helping creators get set up on the platform,
giving them ideas on how to monetize.
And then I actually built an ambassador program
over there as well, scaling it from zero to 80 creators.
And then in the spring of 2023, I believe it was a recruiter actually that reached
out to me being like, Hey, have you heard of Stan? And I had seen Stan organically on my socials
and other creators talking about it. And as soon as I met John, I was just really bought in. I was
bought into the mission and the values of the organization. And I loved his transparency as a founder of being like,
this is where we're at.
This is where we want to go.
All of this is public knowledge, which
I think is really important in a startup,
because Stan really isn't that old.
And now I just hit two years on May 1 of being at Stan.
So yeah, I couldn't be happier.
I love it. Well, congrats on two years coming up. Tell us too a little bit about what you
all do. Like what is Stan for those who are unaware and what do you guys offer?
Yeah. Let me back up a little bit. I mean like Lauren drops on school, like what do
you do? So Stan is an all in one digital storefront
in the form of a link in bio.
So, you know, a lot of times if you're,
if someone's on social media, they're online,
you're gonna see someone has a website,
maybe a link tree, something along those lines
in their social media profile.
That link is very prime real estate for a creator, right?
It's one of the most important things that you can have in your profile and maximizing it is super important
So what Stan is is instead of having like a link tree where you're linking out to your courses on this platform
And your digital products on this platform and then you need another platform for email marketing. It's all under one roof
So if you're a fitness coach, you can sell a membership, a community, digital downloads
and one-on-one coaching in one place.
So it makes it easier for you as the creator, but then also for your audience, because it's
a two click checkout process.
So we typically see creators increasing their conversions when utilizing Stan versus like
a traditional website.
And you already kind of mentioned and alluded to this, but nowadays creators, that term
has evolved, right?
Creators are launching these bigger form businesses, offering coaching and offering online content
and doing all of these different things in addition to those standard partnerships that
we know of influencers doing, right?
So for brands who are maybe not seeing creators
as bigger businesses now, why is it important,
do you think for brands to make that shift
and continue to go down this path
of looking at creators as full-scale businesses?
I think it's important because they are a business, right?
They know how to run every single area of their business effectively.
Like as a creator, you're like naturally a jack of all trades.
You're probably filming your content, you're producing it, you're editing it,
you're posting it, you're creating a community, you're creating a content strategy,
you're developing a community, you're creating a content strategy, you're developing marketing skills, whether you know it or not,
like you as a creator embody all of those traits or you will learn how to do them all.
So I think it's really important for businesses to not just be like,
oh, this is someone just posting videos.
Like, no, there's a lot of work that goes into that.
And I think the more effectively creators and businesses can actually work together,
the better off everyone will be because it's not like let's work against each other.
It's like, how can we collaborate to ensure we have these strategies that are ultimately
reaching the most amount of people as possible?
Yeah. And with that, too, you know, we're seeing a lot of these brands get super creative
with how they're integrating with creators.
You know, they're building events, maybe they're building courses in collaboration with them.
And so to your point, being able to expand your horizons on what a traditional partnership looked like in the past.
And now what are some of the new ways that we can integrate with them?
And that just leads to longer term success, I think.
Definitely.
Yeah.
So with that too, I mean, you just have firsthand
working at Stand Up, seeing creator scale offers
from zero, you know, day one to sold out offers.
And so I'm just curious again,
speaking more to what brands should be paying attention to,
you know, what content patterns or signals should brands be watching out for when it
comes to vetting potential partners?
Yeah. I mean, if you're looking for someone who's effective in driving conversions and
who knows how to get people to their products or to their link and bio to their, you know,
Stan store, it's all about their content strategy and how they're really integrating their
products and offerings into their content.
I think the most effective, most successful creators we've seen on Stan have
clearly identified that there's a question or a problem that their audience has.
And they get really good at explaining the solution and teasing that
in their content.
But then the full-blown solution being that product being that resource that
they've created and are selling and I think being quote-unquote salesy for
creators sometimes is uncomfortable.
They're like, I don't want to ask like my audience to, you know, buy this or I
don't want to be pushy which I totally hear and understand
But again, I think it's that like mental shift of not being like oh, I'm selling and like I'm solving
I'm solving something for my audience and I'm going to attract that target audience into my community
so I think when a brand can see someone who is again,
effectively driving folks through that content
to their Lincoln bio, if you know what they're selling,
if you know what the problem is that they're solving
through like a quick graze in their content,
that's gonna be someone who's very effective
in driving up those conversions.
That's great.
And then even kind of outside of that too,
when potentially entering into an agreement
with a new partner,
and this could be positioning from the creator side
or from the brand side.
We talk all the time about value alignment
and these things that are non-negotiables, right?
And our partnerships,
is there anything that you'd call out,
whether it's the creator looking for and a brand to start working with,
or the brand looking for a creator to start working with that we should be kind
of paying attention to and checking those boxes in order to enter in an
effective agreement.
Yeah. I think values is so important.
And I think it's something that honestly folks don't talk about super often. Do you believe in this company?
Do you resonate with this company? Like how are they showing up on socials?
What's their brand voice like who are they representing and like do you authentically feel aligned with that as the creator?
I think it's really cool at Stan
We have an ambassador program and you know, most the time when we reach out to folks
Hey, you know you want to partner us, be an ambassador with us,
especially if they're already on the platform,
they're always like, heck yeah.
It's like if you're watching Hulu all the time,
shows on Hulu and then Hulu reaches out
and is like, let's be an ambassador.
You're like, heck yeah.
So what is that alignment?
Making a list of things that you organically use
or that you maybe one day like to partner with,
I think is a really smart way to go
because then you're ensuring that it stays in alignment
with who you're serving and kind of what your brand is
and it won't feel like random to your audience and community.
And then I think from the brand side,
it's a similar mental model, right? right of like who is our target customer?
Who are we trying to help? What maybe do we lack in our content right now?
Are we just representing like one age group, one demographic? Can we broaden that?
Can we look for other people to bring into our brand?
Because I think in a perfect world,
a brand isn't just one person or one thing.
It's like a mosaic of all these different creators
tapping into new audiences.
So I think those are two kind of buckets you can look at
working with either creators from the brand side
or the brand side working with creators
and kind of some
questions you can ask. I want to ask you to about own channels. So we talk about this all the time
on the brand side, right? Like have your own channels. Social media is awesome. We love social,
but there's other places and platforms that we can drive to. So if TikTok shuts down one day,
you know, we have something, a community to fall back on. Same thing goes with creators. Creators are building these own platforms,
which is really amazing to see. And that just goes into play with these full blown businesses
we've already talked about that they're building. So from, from the brand angle, again, what
do you feel brands should know about creators who have these strong email lists or podcasts or online
courses, what would you say to just kind of the value of those channels and maybe a potential
collaboration opportunity, for example?
That it is truly the most valuable thing a creator can have.
Because if they have 20,000 followers and 10,000 people on an email list that engagement that stickiness that loyalty is so
High right and they've probably done that very meticulously. They have probably been very meticulous about what brands they speak about or
What content they make or you know just being protective over over that brand identity if they have an engagement
that's that high versus someone with maybe millions of followers.
Maybe they haven't built that email list quite yet.
Maybe they haven't had that same type of engagement and loyalty and maybe they're not driving
people away from their content.
Maybe it's just in in that platform.
Well, when they go to then sell something, it's going to be a very different conversation
because they haven't really primed their audience to do that
and they maybe haven't set themselves up for success quite yet.
So I would definitely urge brands to ask questions like that
and look at that as a huge, huge
green flag, because that means they've effectively driven folks to sign up for their email list,
to buy something from them and they've done so successfully.
So big green flag.
Yeah.
Yeah, I agree.
Could not agree more.
Is there any, are there any other channels too that you're seeing
becoming very popular to creators
to start jumping in and using,
or even not new channels per se,
but just channels that you're seeing creators
really dive head first into
that have been around for a while,
whether it's email marketing coming back.
I mean, I think email has always been here
as an effective channel,
but I guess just anything that you're seeing being popular among creators using.
Yeah, I personally am seeing definitely an increase with creators on LinkedIn.
That's something that I think I've seen growing a lot over the course of 2025.
But to your point around email marketing and just owning your audience I mean, I think everything that's happened, you know with tick-tock in the past whatever six months
I think it really was a wake-up call for a lot of people of like holy crap
I can't necessarily just rely on these apps for my my audience
Right. And so I do think having an email list
I do think driving people to your website,
to your stand store, whatever it may be,
is super important,
because then that email list is yours, right?
That list is yours and yours only,
versus relying on these outside apps
to grow your following and community.
I think it's super important to have that list
so that if everything went down tomorrow,
you have a point of contact with them.
Yeah.
So it sounds like you're saying just diversity of channels
is still important and figuring out where your people are,
tapping into that.
And then brands can then tap into that
in different ways too.
100%.
And I think obviously utilizing the channels,
Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, whatever it may be,
to grow and build that community,
obviously you're not gonna like drive people
to an email list on day zero.
They'd be like, why would I sign up to get your emails?
You have to build that trust and momentum.
But once you do, I really do think it's a great way
to ensure you have longevity of
that, right? If in two years another platform pops up, you can email all those people and be like,
hey, I'm super excited to be sharing content on X, on wherever. So yeah.
Yeah. And I love that you mentioned LinkedIn collaborations too. That is one thing that I'm
watching very closely.
And it's super exciting to see that brands are seeing the value of the creators on these
platforms or on that platform too. Are you seeing any standout angles for strategies
of creator brand partnerships on LinkedIn? Is there anything specifically you'd say
to kind of look out for in terms of how to approach a creator on the platform and collaborate with them.
Yeah. I mean, I think I've seen a lot of great LinkedIn posts of folks just sort of observing
the market or observing trends. And I think there's a lot of organic synergy of let's
say a brand is, I distinctly remember a campaign that Ordinary did a few months ago, the skincare
brand where I believe they were selling eggs because the price of eggs got so expensive
and making that accessible for everyone because I think that's their mission with skincare
and they were doing that as well with food.
If someone's organically speaking about that and
talking about that I just think there's so much opportunity for brands to look
and go like who is mentioning us like who is a fan of us who's utilizing us
who understands who we are as a brand in our ethos because ultimately that's
always gonna lead to a more successful campaign versus, you know, looking for someone that maybe quote unquote has the right stats or what have
you. But then there's sort of this, this misalignment of energy.
I just think there's something so wonderful about someone organically talking
about a brand and then the brand being like, Oh my gosh, we'd love to work with
you. And like commenting, you know, in the comments, that's such a heartfelt moment.
So I really think for brands,
it's just like, who's talking about you?
Like what's the discourse and conversation?
How can you just embed yourself in that
versus reinventing the wheel and doing something new?
Yeah, absolutely.
And the cool thing about LinkedIn too,
I mean, this is both on the brand and creator side
is we have access to see who's working on the company. And so to be able to literally spark a conversation with the people behind
the brand and not just the brand itself, like we are stuck with on Instagram and TikTok,
for example, we're able to spark those human to human conversations too, which I think
is an effective way to open the door for different collaborations that way too.
Definitely. So as I mentioned at the top of the episode, again, there's a lot of listeners here
who are current creators or thinking of building authority on a specific topic and becoming
creators themselves. So I just some advice that you have directly for the creators or insights,
what's one thing you feel creators can do today to make themselves more valuable partners for brands?
We talked a little bit about this already,
but just curious if you have any other insights there.
Yeah, I would say document everything.
Document all your stats, document your engagement,
document things that you might not think are important,
but actually really could be.
Like, let's say for example, you post a story and 200 people respond to this story.
Like being like, I want to hear more.
This is so cool or what have you.
Like those are super important indicators for brands.
And I think speak to the loyalty and trust that you're building with your
audience even if you have you know 2,000 5,000 followers that's an important
thing to take note because you building that that sticky loyal community that
engagement at the end of the day that's what folks really care about so I think
the more effective you can be at like writing your own narrative of being like,
this is what I've built.
Yes, these are the external numbers that you can see.
But then, you know, again, this is how many people are joining my email list.
This is my like story response rate.
If I just post on a random day, how many people are like excited about the dialogue?
I think those are all super wonderful indicators for a brand to get a more fully painted picture
of the community that you're building online.
And then piggybacking off of that too, what's one monetization strategy that creators are
sometimes overlooking but brands would love to support or thinking about supporting here
in the future?
Yeah, I would say a monetization strategy for creators that I think is often overlooked
is creators get super pumped to release a product, right?
To publish a product, to build something that maybe their audience has been asking for.
And multiple times people have come to me and been like, hey Lauren, I put
my blood, sweat and tears into this course and no one's buying it.
And it's just sitting there and I'm bummed.
And I always ask them, how did you talk about it?
Who in your audience knew about it?
How long did you talk about it?
Et cetera, et cetera.
And most times they're like, huh, I only like did one story when I launched it or this one video or what have you so
Having a strategy around a product launch is the most important thing
When you're launching a product because yes, you need to ensure that that product is amazing and value-packed
But you cannot build it alone and then expect this like
overwhelm of like, oh my gosh, like I need this. You know, the better you are at
building that demand, the more successful you'll be. Think about anything that
people like rave over, like Coachella for example, right? They're releasing their
headliners and then they send you these tickets in this cool box.
It creates all this FOMO, all this discourse about it and then, you know, leading up to
the event itself.
Obviously, you're probably not selling music festival tickets, but it's just an important
thing to keep in mind of like how much space that actually takes up in your brain before
the event even happened.
So how can you replicate that?
How can you
create FOMO and buzz around your products? And then again, I think if a brand sees a
creator doing that well, it's a green flag that they can do that for their brand as well.
Yeah. And I think that's such an important note too, just because even thinking about
a consumer behavior pattern, sometimes it takes someone
six times to learn about a product or a launch before they're ready to purchase.
And so taking the time as a creator to educate your audience, share the value of whatever
it is you're offering, answering some of those key questions even prior to launch so that
on launch day, that consumer is so primed and ready to buy and that that
launch goes well.
So I think that's so important to your point too.
That's something that brands can also I think learn and remember also for launches.
100%.
Yeah.
So I want to ask you a few career questions here, Lauren, just before we close out.
We have a lot of marketers that are interested in tapping into this space
and a creator first brand or platform, working in influencer, etc. Do you have any tips or
things that we should just be thinking about skill set wise in order to get into this space
and also just achieve success in a role like that? Yeah, I think it's a really good question
and sometimes I even have imposter syndrome of like,
am I the best person to be giving advice like this?
But I truly believe that I'm Gen Z.
And I think a lot of us, you know, Gen Z millennials
who grew up or a part of our formative years
was like on the internet
and seeing the evolution of the internet. That is a huge value add, right? Like you knowing trends, scrolling, tick talk,
you know, I, maybe it's just me justifying my screen time here, but I really think that
knowing what creators are looking for, knowing what the internet is talking about is actually
super important and super marketable. because that's what marketing is now
right it's all happening online and you actually paying attention to those
things and in your own scroll like taking note of like what's catching your
attention and and what creators are doing, I think is important for you to leverage.
And I think the other thing is no one is ever, well,
I don't want to say no one ever, but in your mind, you might always think like,
Oh, well, I need more experience or like,
I need to do this better before I can apply for this or I'm not really sure if
I'm the right person.
Like you got to tap into a different headspace and just be like, I'm gonna give this my best shot.
Like I have a lot to bring to the table
and there's a lot of, I think positive self-talk,
especially in your early career years
that you just have to go for it.
And there's gonna be moments
where maybe you don't have all the answers,
but being scrappy and wanting to just find them is a great quality
to have and will actually get you really far, right?
Sometimes you're going to be there and be like, I'm not exactly sure what I'm supposed
to be doing, but leverage your team, ask questions, but then give it your best shot.
And I think a lot of times people are actually surprised with
What they can do when they just like go for it
And then the last thing I would say is just definitely networking
Right reaching out to people who are in a space that you want to be in you never know
You never know what's gonna happen the worst thing that can happen. They don't respond
That's it. That's literally it. So shoot your shot, go for it. Look at your connections and who is in your network, and leverage that
and reach out to folks because I think so much can happen with
just knowing the right people and putting yourself out there
because no one's gonna know about your value if you're not
sharing it with others.
Yeah, for sure. And you totally read my mind.
I was going to ask you about relationships,
because I can imagine even just on the relationship side
with the creators themselves, it's
important to get to know one another
and hear what they're looking to do,
and then you as the brand as well.
So how is that coming into play just in your role
working with creators?
And then any tips for approaching relationships to make sure
that they are being nurtured and developed over time too? That's a great question and I think I
treat creator relationships truly as friendships. You know whenever I meet creators one of the first
questions I always ask them is what are your goals? What would you like to accomplish and what can I do or what can Stan do
to help you get there? I think it's so important to be creator first. That's one of Stan's biggest
values and pillars is putting the creators first and doing everything we can to help
and support them because then at the end of the day, it will come back and help Stan and help us.
But I truly think starting a conversation
with that is very important.
Not, hey, what can you do for me?
But what are you looking to do?
And how can we fit into that?
Because I always tell creators,
it's a privilege and an honor to work with you
and for you to choose to work with us.
So I always make sure to have that mindset going into conversations and then just keeping
up with folks, right?
Sometimes reaching out to them, not necessarily for like a brand ask or something that, yeah,
is quote unquote work related, just, you know, birthdays, milestones.
I always try to just organically keep up with those relationships in a way
that feels authentic and not forced.
And I think just showing up as yourself is really important and people always remember
how you made them feel.
So I try to really remember that when I'm building the relationships with creators.
Yeah.
Great advice.
Thank you so much.
This has been awesome, Lauren.
Thank you for passing on your strategies for creators,
for brands in this space.
We would love to stay in touch with you personally,
but also just know what you're working on at Stan.
Where can we follow Stan along, learn more about the brand?
Tell us all the details there.
Yeah, absolutely.
So on Instagram, you can find us at stan4creators.
We post lots of tips there.
You can learn more about the product there.
We also have a really great help center.
If you're someone that's looking to maybe get
into utilizing Stan or learning more about the product,
help.stan.store is a great place to just read more about what
our product can do or if you're already a stan user you can learn how to maximize it through
our different articles and video tutorials on there. Amazing. Lauren, thank you so much,
or actually and your personal page. Did you mention that as well? No, I didn't. Yes, because I'm on my own career journey as well.
I've been teaching others on how to grow online for years and I finally decided to just start
doing it myself as well.
So you can find me on Instagram at Lauren Jovenetti.
Last name is a bit of a mouthful.
So Lauren underscore Jovenetti, G-I-O-V-A-N-N-E-T-T-I. And then on TikTok
at Lauren G-G-O. It's a little bit more condensed, but those are the two main platforms I'm posting.
Amazing. Thank you again for being here and for passing along these strategies and definitely go
check out Lauren's channels as well as Stan's channels too. Lauren, thank you so much.
Thank you so much for having me.
Thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode. If you enjoyed this conversation,
I would love your feedback. And if you're ready to take things to the next level,
sign up for my weekly newsletter in the show notes. You'll get weekly career and marketing insights
straight to your inbox. And if you have an idea for a future Marketing Happy Hour episode, shoot me an email. Hello at MarketingHappyHR.com.
Thank you again and I'll see you next Thursday.