An Interview with Nicole Ponce

You work for a large search engine marketing company called Semrush. What led you into the marketing industry?

I studied management in college and did an internship for Chris Bosh and his wife Adrienne Bosh, a professional NBA player. During this internship I was exposed to social media management and content management, as well as having the opportunity to see ‘behind the scenes’ of collaborations and promotional content. Being in the back end of all of this, I loved the dynamic of connecting a brand to a person and then telling a story. After that I worked for an app startup in Miami which functioned like an elite Eventbrite which I also found very interesting. I moved to Europe looking to change scenery and explore the other side of the pond and landed a job in influencer marketing and joined a company called Semrush where I have been ever since.

Tell us about some of the other things - public speaking and podcasting - that you get involved in!

I love speaking to people so talking at events comes so naturally to me. I have paused my podcasting for now to focus on other things but what I loved so much about it was the opportunities that it gave me to have long conversations with others and learn about their journeys. I was able to speak to other podcasters, to entrepreneurs, and to people who are trying to craft their own successes. I wanted to hear more about how people made things happen, hence the title of the podcast: Happeness!

How have you experienced being a woman in the technology industry?

I am Hispanic as I was born in Ecuador so the combination of being a Latina and a woman in tech could be quite isolating at times. Especially when I was first going into the industry around 10 years ago, it was massively male-dominated and I found that, even on the level of finding influencers or speakers for events, people would gravitate towards the same 10 or 15 people who were all white men. I have made it such a focus in my job to give opportunities to other women and to people of other ethnicities because there is so much talent out there waiting to be given a platform. I am a big advocate for giving as many people the opportunities they need as possible.

Could you tell us a little more about your day to day role at Semrush?

I lead the influencers team and get to oversee any content that goes out with influencers across all of our social platforms. I oversee not just content creation, but I also oversee product launches that utilise influencer markets. My day to day work looks very different each day because the projects I am involved in shift a lot over time. Outside of campaign and collaboration management I oversee offline events and strategies to see how we can grow the Semrush brand. I was the first hiree for my role at Semrush so before me the influencer marketing team did not exist! This means that I evolved the whole strategy of moving our brand perception from just being SEO focused to being involved in marketing more broadly.

Most people reading this will have only been on the ‘content consuming’ side of influencer marketing, so could you tell us more about what goes on in terms of the ‘content creation’ side of things?

There are lots of online tools which can help you match with influencers and find people to work on a given campaign. But, because what I do is more niche, I do like to do things ‘old school’ by manually searching for the best influencers to work with us. We really focus as a team to always focus in what to look for in an influencer and the things we are searching for include (1) whether they have a community and good engagement with that community (2) whether we trust what they are saying in terms of ensuring that their account is not just a platform to run paid adverts but that they actually engage authentically with their audiences (3) consistency in their post types and strategy.

Above that, the biggest thing is ensuring that the brand works with the influencer. I always ask myself: “If the brand was not involved in the content we are creating, would the influencer still post the content?”. If the answer is ‘yes’, then you know that the collaboration is going to be ideal! You want to make the collaboration so seamless that the influencer’s audience does not immediately see the content as a paid advertisement. I really like to use influencers which have used the product before and whose values align closely with that of the brand.

What led you to move to Europe from the States?

When I was in middle school taking French class, I remember looking at the notebooks and thinking that the culture in Europe was so interesting. I told myself that I would eventually end up living there one day and I thought I would live in France, but I’m actually living in Spain at the moment! After graduating from university, I moved around in the States for a while but then the opportunity to move to Europe came about and, having nothing tying me down in the US, I went for it! I lived in Prague for four years before moving to Spain. I think that being in Europe is so different to being in the US in terms of there being more essence, more culture, and more things to do. I don’t know if I want to stay here forever - who knows where life will take me!

Living in different places opens up so many new perspectives and I see the world in a hugely different way to how I did growing up in the States. I think that, in general, Europeans are slightly more aware of the world around them than Americans so it was really interesting for me to get out of that bubble.

For me, learning about the different ways that people communicate has also been something I’ve enjoyed. I love communication and I find it fascinating that the way each individual perceives a word might be hugely different from the way that another person would interpret that.

From your wide range of experiences, so you have any tips for young women who may want to go into the technology space?

Connect, build your personal brand, and get yourself out there. I know that it can be hard to start connecting with others, but you never know how much a connection can help you in the long term. You need to have a focus on building your personal brand not just online, but offline as well because the impression that you make on people at events and meetings can really further your career. Also, having connections with people working at jobs that you’d like to take on in the future can help you understand more about the day to day work that is involved in that position, and can position you to take on work for these people in the future.

Participating in events and being part of community teams - in particular there are lots of brilliant women-led communities out there - can allow you to use the more established connections that already exist within these organisations. The more you build your profile, even if you don’t have experience, the more it shows that you are staying on top of the trends within the industry. The headline is to make yourself visible and reachable.

Tell us about an inspiration to you

Mel Robbins is a motivational speaker who really inspires me. Lots of the people in the marketing space are at a similar age to me which is great because I like to be surrounded by my peers, but seeing Mel grow at an older age makes me feel as though I can accomplish anything at any age. She shows me that there is no time constraint on pivoting my career and that I don’t need to be caught up in the stream of what people think you should be doing at a certain age.

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Thanks for reading! See you in the next issue - Erin McGurk