Digital marketer Fulya Uygun has always loved building things. Now, the Turkish immigrant is building a premier digital marketing agency that caters exclusively to women and women-owned brands.
Uygun is co-founder of Bowery Boost, a NYC-based performance marketing agency that specializes in working with e-commerce businesses in beauty, fashion, and consumer goods. Even while she held marketing jobs at major brands, Uygun says she had a side hustle doing consulting. “Before Covid, I was very active in digital marketing events, forums, groups and I would always have more than I could handle,” she recalls. “Eventually, I decided, as difficult and time consuming as it is, to start my agency.”
Working with multiple brands was a key factor in going independent, according to Uygun, who understood the value of having access to data of more than a single brand. “Working on one thing at a time never satisfied me and I’m a great multi-tasker,” she says. But she also knew that working with multiple brands gave her a competitive advantage — a better sense of overall trends, just the kind of “comparison data” that is most important for many early- to mid-stage companies.
However, Uygun soon found focus. “Knowing many women founders in NYC, I suddenly had multiple clients to support my growth as an agency,” she recalls. So, she decided to cater to the people she knew best: women entrepreneurs.
Inspiration: Women
“Because I have first-hand experience, I know how hard it is for a woman to get access to fundings, loans and credits,” Uygun says. “I also know how many no’s you get compared to a male-owned brand. I’m part of many female and minority owned business groups, and we all know we need to support each other to overcome this disadvantage.” Uygun has noticed some progress recently — publicly-held brands like Stitch Fix and The RealReal, for example, are women-founded and run — but says that women-owned brands still have “years ahead of us.”
Bowery Boost had another motive in working exclusively with women, as Uygun found that they tend to believe more in the products and services they offer. “Many of our clients are not only women- or minority-owned, but also sustainable,” she notes. “Women are trying hard to change something that’s broken in this world and replace it with something beautiful. Why wouldn’t I want to support a cause like that?”
Influencer campaigns
Digital marketing often means partnering with popular brands, but this can be expensive and more nuanced than expected. “For influencer campaigns to look authentic, the products that celebrities and influencers are promoting have to suit their lifestyles and need to fit with their personalities,” observes Uygun. “People can feel when something is not authentic. Being too salesy will only turn people off.”
Uygun adds that lots of influencer campaigns barely even make sense. In the rush to get their brand into the collective conscience, brand managers don’t necessarily stop and make sure that their celebrity partners have similar values. “Customers are very sensitive to actions brands take, and you don’t want a partnership to cost you your most loyal followers,” she says. “The partnerships that organically fit are the ones to go after,” but partnering is a two-way street. Celebrities and influencers, she says, should only choose to promote products that they can actually use in their lives.
Women Supporting Women
Bowery Boost is itself a case study in organic marketing. “We value the products and services women put out there and want to support women to have bigger market share in the workforce,” Uygun says. The agency has also fought for higher financial resources and capabilities for women owners. As a founder, she says she experienced firsthand how hard it was to get access to the funds needed to start and grow a business. That’s when Fulya decided to apply her 15 years of experience as a digital marketing professional to help women and their brands set themselves apart.
It’s an exciting time for new brands, particularly digital native ones — a category that includes Uygun’s new agency. “We believe we can support the growth of these brands in particular by ensuring that we’re getting the best out of the resources that these women-owned brands have to invest,” she says.
Integrating the Female Brand
As with any brand, male or female-owned, the product or service remains the most important point of differentiation. Uygun says that no brand can survive today with a mediocre product or by competing solely on price. “If a brand has a product that adds value to its users, and to the world, then it’s all on us marketing professionals to communicate that to the world with the right content and media channels,” she says. “You need to know why your customers choose you over your competitors, and use those points everywhere.” One way that women founders have historically set themselves apart is by giving back, showing that they care about people and animals in need. Uygun is encouraged by how Gen Z connects with brands with high core values: “In order to differentiate, you need to add value and have values.”
Since women’s and minorities’ access to financial resources are still comparably limited, however, value must often be created with less money and more patience. “For any paid digital campaign to work, we need to be able to collect reasonable data, and for that, we need to be able to spend, test, and analyze,” Uygun says. “As with many business owners, a common mistake is not giving digital marketing campaigns enough time. But building some organic engagement, some PR, and passing some data to your agencies before starting anything paid will eventually lower your costs. One way that women founders can really set themselves apart is simply by being patient.”
— Fulya Uygun is a co-founder of Bowery Boost, a female-founded NYC-based performance marketing agency that specializes in working with eCommerce businesses in beauty, fashion, and consumer goods. She is also a member of the Female Founders Fund,The 10th House, and the venture firm The Helm, all dedicated to investing in and supporting women and minority entrepreneurs.
