The Grandfluencer Effect: Unlocking Influencer Marketing's Untapped Potential

[00:00:00] If you've been wondering who your children are looking at on the phone or even wondering who adults are looking at now on social media, you're probably thinking about who are the influencers

[00:00:11] of this world and it's no longer the establishment figures but it's trendy, up and coming and often self-produced people. But influencers and influencer marketing is now playing a bigger

[00:00:23] and bigger part in business, both for B2C and B2B. So I'm really delighted today we're going to go all the way to New York to talk to one of the people who actually invented the algorithm

[00:00:35] which helps you to quantify the value of an influencer and their impact on your business. Alessandro Boliari is the co-founder and CEO of a company called the Influencer Marketing Factory. Alessandro, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. You're welcome because

[00:00:55] you have a fascinating backstory. Unfortunately we don't have too much time to go into that but it gives us a little bit of history and then you're going to talk to us about influencer marketing and how businesses of all sizes can capitalize on it that is not just

[00:01:11] for people that have got big budgets and need million follower influencers. So Alessandro, tell us a little bit about you and then how can influencer marketing help the business to get noticed? Absolutely. We'll try to make a long story short, we Italians we talk a lot, you know,

[00:01:28] so I'm going to try to reduce the time. And as it's a podcast it's really cruel because you can't wave your hands around. So the Italians it's very challenging. Oh man, you tell

[00:01:40] me, I know, I know. So basically almost 10 years ago when I was studying in Denmark at the time I tried to thesis about something. I was already working in the influencer marketing space. It was relatively still new, it was the wild west in terms of finding information,

[00:01:55] finding analytics, finding any academia papers about it. So I was like you know what I have to write something about from my thesis. Why don't I show that if you have a data driven approach and analytics behind influencer marketing can become a serious business, right?

[00:02:11] So that's what I did. I put everything in 100 pages and I calculated, I took like thousands of data points and I created this little tool to analyze and calculate on any handle out there for Instagram how much to pay someone. That was based on like you know different

[00:02:26] data points and was just an idea maybe not 100% perfect but just to give you more or less okay I can have a range in my head how much I should pay someone on Instagram. Then you know

[00:02:38] moving forward from that I went from the informational side on the influencer marketing to the agency side, right? So basically what I did is that after Denmark I moved to Miami where I stayed there for a couple of years. I co-founded the influencer marketing factory

[00:02:51] and you know what we did is that after a couple of years of understanding how things were working and so on we've been offering a TikTok for the first time to amazing clients such as like Universal Music, Universal Warner Music, Sony, many others.

[00:03:07] And we realized that the influencer marketing was not going like you know was just at the beginning somehow and basically what we realized is that everyone wanted to learn more about it and we started the company with like literally 1500 dollars in our pocket to people and then

[00:03:24] it skyrocketed especially during Covid because it was a terrible time for many things but everyone was spending time on TikTok, on YouTube and on Instagram. And so many clients came to us and were like I want to get viral in this moment where everyone is spending time there.

[00:03:37] So again that's what happened now I live in New York City we have a fantastic team of almost 50 people between the US and Europe and we help companies activate their campaigns when it comes to influencer marketing from A to Z. That's a great story thank you well you've

[00:03:54] packed a lot in Sardar thank you so much. A brilliant story and now influencer marketing factory as you say is working with big brands and I've been scrolling this so if you want to see

[00:04:05] this on our YouTube channel which is just at Jimmy James you'll see the clients that Alessandro has got include Google, Metta, Dunkin, Grubhub, Bumble and we're going to ask him later how he's managed to acquire all those amazing brands as clients. But first of all Alessandro you talk

[00:04:26] about influencer marketing for those of us that have heard of it but maybe don't really understand how it works and quite probably don't trust it really versus traditional advertising. Tell us how does influencer marketing make a difference? How does it work so that it seems

[00:04:46] both you know have integrity and be genuine and not just seem like people carrying products you know for the sake of it but it's not really helping bring quality to the brand? Yeah so you know influencer marketing it says in the term right it's made by someone that

[00:05:05] can influence you. It can be anything, it can be buying something, it is to go watch a movie, it is to go and vote, it is to do anything right that could be the message behind that.

[00:05:15] But why it works because many studies say that these days not only necessarily young people but different generations they're starting to believe more and trust more influencers and content creators more than traditional celebrities primarily for a reason because

[00:05:32] they are peers, they are people that are relatable to them. You know what I was saying during you know the COVID time while you know journalists were asking us why people were looking at and watching videos of someone else in their room right so nothing exciting

[00:05:46] definitely not polished content very very raw right but I was like yeah that's why it works because if I want to listen to someone that is telling me like they have the same problems

[00:05:56] of me like they are going through something or they want just to be excited about something that happened in their life I can relate more to a mom of three or you know like someone that

[00:06:05] is just becoming an entrepreneur and want to tell their story compared to Justin Bieber that is spending their time on a yacht or a mega villa nothing against that absolutely but how can I relate right and get trust of someone that had millions compared to me that

[00:06:18] maybe I am at home and I'm having some difficulties in paying my rent right so that's why it works you go and look for someone that you can have trust to can be relatable and can have this

[00:06:28] like peer-to-peer relationship and that's why it works you know. That's really interesting because my sort of assumption had been that an influencer was someone who might be looked up to because they've maybe attained a status or a wealth or a position that I might aspire to

[00:06:48] but the idea that what really matters is that we're on the same level and it's someone that I can associate with and as you say that kind of raw content Alessandro it seems as though

[00:07:01] it's been the preserve of the young who have been sitting there you know because they've been more digitally savvy as well and I guess have more time on their hands.

[00:07:11] How does this play out for the if you like the b2b or the the gen x's the slightly older community who traditionally might have looked at magazine editors for example or conference speakers how does it play out for this community? You know first of all I would

[00:07:32] like to say that all even the young people was true up until a few years ago when TikTok was new right transitioning from musically to TikTok and you know like Instagram like YouTube already have like you know older people sometimes watching because it can be longer content more

[00:07:48] informational compared maybe to other social media. We've been noticing it is not just us even data like whenever you use platforms to understand the demographics of influencers you can see that is aging up even content creators and influencers there is a term called ground

[00:08:03] influencer and it's people over 60 that are making content and influence the others so they exist they are there and they are fantastic to promote certain products and it's also great because you know what anytime that you go to someone that is after a certain age right and

[00:08:20] go and play right somehow they don't take too much seriously or they go out and they inform people about something they're very passionate about young people are loving that because they're like you know what like instead of just refusing technology refusing new social

[00:08:33] media you're actually you know embracing that and then that's why people love to see that and on the second part about like the b2b it actually works also on that of course you know

[00:08:42] you will see primarily consumer goods right it's a bit easier to sell but we in the past we work it also like you know you know pharmaceutical devices and we work with banking and insurance we work at sometimes on campaigns on linkering where professionals will tell you which

[00:08:57] software to use so even if there have been less than that finally especially with linkering that in the past couple of years it became even more creator focused and network based you know

[00:09:08] you really can get in front of the right decision makers so absolutely i would still say a lot of companies are primarily b2c and the consumer goods but finally this myth that is

[00:09:18] for young people and only for the b2c is going away and there is also you know opportunities for b2b and for all of you. Yeah that's interesting you called the older generation i guess that's me

[00:09:28] included is it called ground influencers? Groundfluencer yeah it's this term that many journalists reporters used to i don't know who invented it to be honest but it's the way to refer to someone that is like not in their 20s anymore let's put it like that

[00:09:42] but they're still creating content they're entertaining people and i watch some of this content they're amazing they give me a lot of joy to be honest. Yeah that's wonderful and i think also what it's showing is that my generation because i'm probably in that as the exes we're

[00:09:56] probably catching up with how it all works we've been shown by our children and grandchildren how to make all these apps finally work. Alessandro then you talked about ROI let's just touch on that because you wrote the code originally for that but for many business owners

[00:10:17] they're probably a little bit anxious about an influencer because of the concerns about machine costs about the accountability about the opportunity for bots for example to be running up the numbers i know in mobile ads for example over a third of the ads served a function of

[00:10:34] malware so how do you address the integrity of the work of the sort of final results? Yeah so a couple of things you know before even going deeper when it comes to auto

[00:10:47] calculate things so first of all each company each brand out there should be very clear about their KPIs and goals right is it about brand awareness do i want to reach more people new

[00:10:58] audiences do i want to attack a new market or do i care more about conversions i need to sell more shoes i want to have more setups for my SaaS business or is it a combination do i want

[00:11:10] to attack the new market and also getting conversions right so first of all very clear about the KPI and the goals that you want to achieve once you have that in mind that is where

[00:11:18] you start looking at the right influencers and the right strategy what i say all the time is that executing the campaign and the reporting is the i don't want to say the easiest part

[00:11:27] but you know the most challenging and where you should do the homework it is to find the right influencers and that's what we do as an agency like you know we help you based on

[00:11:37] statistics and data historical data many different factors and data point because if you don't find the right ones that you really could waste money and i say like only an agency like you know so

[00:11:47] it goes against my interest on interest but what i tell the time is that if you don't do your homework you can literally spend thousands of dollars and don't go only because you see

[00:11:56] someone has millions of followers and you're like oh i really want the person because i saw it sometimes on whatever you have to do a lot of analytical like you know study and

[00:12:06] understanding is it the right person in terms of metrics touch and feel brand values how do we communicate about things did they ever got less scandals in the past did they ever work

[00:12:16] with a competitor of mine how the posts that are usually promoted that they perform you know so there is all these things to look at and and when it comes to also the ROI so first of

[00:12:27] all like you know you have to find the right one then working a lot on the strategy and then the last part is the ROI how do you calculate that again there are multiple ways depending on

[00:12:36] your on your kpis that you put it you know from day one when it comes to you know app downloads for instance we use third party tracking data tracking tools like you know

[00:12:46] apps flyer single or net there are plenty of them were used basically just you know tracking pixels to see and understand exactly which influencer are bringing how many downloads so you can go very granular it can give specific links to each influencer with utm parameters

[00:13:02] right to calculate everything so we get we are getting too technical here but just to say that with influencer marketing you can calculate everything that is happening but let me tell

[00:13:11] you this it is another big myth not like not all the time you're going to see an ROI direct ROI the same day nor the same week sometimes not even the same month influencer marketing

[00:13:21] it takes a bit longer because it's one of the different touch points so it's not like programmatic i put one dollar in google ads and expect seven dollars out with influencer marketing it takes

[00:13:31] a bit more and it gives you more it gives content it gives you you know like a reach it gives you influence and it gives you something that i call the real time focus group there is

[00:13:41] the comment section under videos so you get everything at the same price of a fraction of traditional media and you can still calculate the ROI end of the campaign we'll be back after

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[00:14:33] i know the other point you've made which i hadn't thought of before is about the amount of content that you get because presumably if you pay someone who's an influencer to shoot a commercial

[00:14:43] for you do you have the rights to that content or do they have the rights to that content because if you have it yeah you can use it on your own social channels good question

[00:14:53] usually you pay more so you have to communicate that in this couple of work which with each influencer usually you pay more for media rights and you have to communicate well you know with transparency with the influencer where right you can you can use those can i

[00:15:07] use those for advertisement can i use those for a billboard can i use those for tv depending on that usually either the influencer or the agent that they you know represent the influencer

[00:15:18] we get back to you with with a quote so usually you buy the campaign and then if you want to reuse that you can also do that and plenty of brands are also using for media rights

[00:15:28] they're paying for that because the type of content created it's more authentic it's more trustworthy therefore they can use it also for their own pages and believe me like we can

[00:15:38] see in the in the data those double videos beat by a lot all the stock videos or the super polished made in studios again nothing against that it's just another way to communicate

[00:15:48] but if you want to go on social that is the type of content that works best yeah lissandra that's incredible and you've got on your website one example where a leading resort used um one of

[00:16:00] your influencers and 4.3 million instagram users uh like the campaign so you're getting an amazing amount of reach 29 million plus tick tock followers so the numbers are just phenomenal mm-hmm alessandro so the journey from italy to america setting this business is also an

[00:16:24] entrepreneurial one and you've managed to go from two of you putting in 1500 dollars and getting your first check for 400 dollars to now having a roster that such insati or in any of the o and m big agencies would like to have as an entrepreneur perhaps you could

[00:16:43] just tell us how did you manage to get across the chasm there from relative unknown to being a market leader yeah first of all a lot of hours no weekends and not sleeping that much that is

[00:16:58] like something that i have to tell because especially on social media there is this myth right you see all these videos of people with their Lamborghini telling you like how easy it was to build a business that is not true building a business is complex it's tiring it's

[00:17:12] time consuming mentally and physically it can really like you know it can be challenging so that said like you have to put the hours in like no matter what you have to you have to work

[00:17:22] with that said the world we did it is that we attacked a market that was already a bit saturated but we did it too without all the box ideas and positioning so i have you know

[00:17:34] my background is as a growth hacker or growth marketer so basically i used to help companies without all the box ideas to grow their customer base in the b2b space and so that helped me to

[00:17:46] understand how you can get in front of the right people even with a fraction of the cost of the big dogs out there so what did what did we do for instance we invested a lot on seo

[00:17:58] ourselves so we built landing pages that were dedicated for instance for you know tick tock infrastructure marketing agency and when we at the time when we were looking for that solution we were the only one basically out there right we did the same for youtube we

[00:18:12] did say for instagram we started putting out things out there and something also that helped us a lot it was to position ourselves as experts so every year we we produced a couple of very big

[00:18:24] reports in depth analytics and our own you know first party surveys about the creator economy about virtual influencers about social commerce and so on we do all these and we give that for free to journalists and reporters that allowed us to be on major publications

[00:18:44] that can think of like you know writers and what's the journal forbes you name it for free without the need of a pr whenever you give something for free that is valuable people

[00:18:53] will share about it you know and that's how we got the reposition of experts even from day one without any money that is a really really smart idea and the position due plainly as the go-to authorities as influencers well didn't it what about attracting influences because a

[00:19:13] business like yours has two halves of the equation doesn't it you you've got to get the the clients to come and want to work with you but you've also got to get the influencers

[00:19:25] in order to be able to get the client so how have you gone about the other half of the of the equation so there are like you know two ways when we look at the influencers right

[00:19:36] either you you manage them right as a talent that you exclusively represent there is also something that we do we don't have that many where I like no around 20 right now primarily on tiktok you know if you put out together all the following maybe we'll talk about like

[00:19:51] 50 millions of followers but we are very quality over quantity so we receive hundreds of thousands every quarter of requests to join the agency we're very selective because we want to have all the people that have a professional mindset you know influencers are going to be able to work

[00:20:06] well with brands that are on time they're respectful of the work and so on so on that side when it comes to that you have to do a lot of either scouting or really select the right

[00:20:15] people here and there on the talent side but when it comes instead to working with other influencers that could be either you know represented by themselves or like represented by an agency or an agent in that case it works in different ways we have our own internal database

[00:20:29] that we built in these in these years so it could be people that we working in the past agencies partnership that we have currently or we also use platforms that can give you a very

[00:20:41] granular view of each influencer and what I say is very important not to look all the the metrics about the influencers so the follower numbers of course the engagement rate is important of course the type of industry but what matter the most it is the demographics

[00:20:56] you can have someone that is based out of like you know new york city adding certain metrics and so on but let's say that you want to promote a local store in new york city

[00:21:05] right and for some reason that person is based in new york but they move from london right all their audience most probably is still going to be from london so you're paying

[00:21:13] someone in new york but who is watching their video is out of london so how can you bring these people in a store in new york right so it's very important to focus on that and

[00:21:22] you can do that usually using there are so many platforms out there and you know again what I was saying before about the homework doing the right influencer search and identify them negotiate the right pricing be sure about the scope of work once that is done

[00:21:38] again i don't want to say that it's simple but it's one of the most crucial parts so that's usually how we outsource it's either our own database third-party database relationship with that with the with the agencies out there there are different ways but

[00:21:51] the result of like plenty of fish out there in terms of influence or so many different different styles yeah interesting so to summarize that in terms of when a company's thinking about an influencer what would be say the two or three criteria that they should use

[00:22:10] when they are looking absolutely so in addition to what we call vanity metrics so number of followers you know likes engagement and so on because they can unfortunately can be fake that

[00:22:22] you can buy likes you can buy comments you can buy whatever you want so easy to inflate so in addition to those I said before let's look at the demographics for instance you

[00:22:31] want to find someone from the US go in the demographics and say I want to have influencers with their audience at least 70 from the US let's say right something else some platforms also give you a data very important about how many fake followers they have they're

[00:22:47] able to calculate that they use different you know criteria to understand if they ever both fake followers and then if you have like someone with like more than 10 20 percent of whatever it is better to stay away because you're basically paying a price based on

[00:23:01] certain metrics but they're inflated they're not real right so there is another matrix that I think is very important and then in addition to the metrics that is quantitative data also qualitative data is good what type of comments right they are receiving under their

[00:23:14] content are people and their followers buying whenever they you know say something how they're performing how they're talking in front of a video right do they cast during their videos or they have clean content you know so there is a lot to look at and everything together brings

[00:23:31] the right influencer and going to give a very like you know successful campaign. Well Alessandro Boliari over in New York is giving me a master class today in influencing and the influencer market sounds as though really it's a whole new as you say content

[00:23:50] creator economy isn't it really and there's some regulation and some technology that's helping us to regulate in the absence of what used to be circulation figures for example for the traditional media it sounds as though you and your partner have had an amazing

[00:24:08] journey as entrepreneurs is there anything that has not gone quite as bad as a sort of a lesson for those of us that are building a business or starting a business one tip you might give that you know one sort of warning.

[00:24:25] Yeah you know I think that one of the main maybe mistakes that I did is that after maybe you know year three or four or something like that I relaxed a bit that I know that we are

[00:24:36] living in the grinding right that is also I don't agree all the time like you know the grinding mindset you need sometimes to relax but I think that I got in a moment where the

[00:24:46] company was like going very well right it was skyrocketing in terms of growth and I relaxed a bit and I didn't attack the market when I was ready like we might have done a bit more

[00:24:55] upselling a bit more across selling so like it's that easy sometimes that after a lot of work you want to relax a bit that is totally fine you should do that but at the same time

[00:25:05] don't think that everything is going to great just because in that moment everything is great right so if I go back tell to myself relax a bit of course but also don't like don't unfocus

[00:25:15] from the final goal so wake up as every day you want to get new clients that you want to upsell you want to get your team growing and so on and that's what I would say is the main one

[00:25:25] like I maybe I didn't think about like growing enough when it was time and then of course you know after you start like realizing oh maybe if I did that now I wouldn't like you

[00:25:36] know I would sleep a bit more you know compared to before so try to be focused all the time because it's just that easy to unfocus and if you're the founder or co-founder of a company

[00:25:47] you know it can absolutely affect the rest. Yeah absolutely I guess we had that old expression strike while the iron is hot so if you've managed to get the heat in the business

[00:25:57] to really take advantage of that and Lassandra then a sort of a tip so is there anything that you would add to that in terms of encouragement to people that are thinking about going to be

[00:26:08] entrepreneurs? Yeah that's you know like I've been building companies or things for us since I was like 19 years old even you know like before starting anything about that and what I say all

[00:26:21] the time is that you know you have just to start working on something go out there go out with an alpha version of whatever it is. You know what is that saying like if you're happy

[00:26:32] about something that you're building it means that you are too late to the game or stuff like that I don't know so it says like you know if like you want to go out with something

[00:26:40] even if you're not happy about it. You will learn about that with customer right like tell you if they like it or not you will just go like go in the arena start doing things that's so

[00:26:50] too many people be like oh yeah like I have to read just another book about how to create a business let me finish my google sheets or excel file about the forecast for my first

[00:26:59] five years how can you even build a forecast about a business that you don't have it's pure theory so what I say all the time you want to start something just do it go out

[00:27:08] the market will tell you what to do and how to change things and just be there like you know and work up until you're happy with something but do it don't overthink it that's my advice

[00:27:19] for you today. Wonderful, wonderful advice and you've plainly gone on and done it as you say across not only geographies but across industries as well Alessandro if there's a podcast or a book that you found inspiring as well what would that be? Will I share that

[00:27:37] as well? Yeah absolutely so talking about entrepreneurship I listened to my first million it's a pretty popular podcast out there it is about how people made their first million but not only it's about also people that made much more than that how they created their companies

[00:27:52] what I like it is that it's very transparent I would say when it comes to challenges and problems how do they like you know find a solution to things and it goes to details about

[00:28:04] each different industry so I learn a lot listening to that because it's a great way to not just getting generic you know like you know advice out there it's like oh wow like they go to

[00:28:15] that problem that's how they solve it they look at this problem and they find the solution and it's very in depth when it comes to the the specifics and also the style is very like

[00:28:27] you know conversational but at the same time very professional in terms of the information they can get so it's one that I like to listen to. Okay one of them has checked it out that's

[00:28:35] wonderful Alessandro if people want to find out more about you and the influencer marketing factory in New York and you've got your offices in Miami as well how can they do that? Yeah always happy to connect on LinkedIn so if you look for my name Alessandro Bogliari

[00:28:52] you can find me there if you follow our page the influencer marketing factory on LinkedIn also we post every single day content reports surveys anything to be updated we also have a newsletter called spreading the influence and a podcast called influence factor where I host

[00:29:10] we have you know like great guests from major companies you can see in for 20 minutes I talk about everything that is created economy influencer marketing it's a great way to understand both creators how they think and influencers and also how marketers think so

[00:29:24] you can be in the middle listen to both of them but happy to connect on LinkedIn and on our website you can find our services case studies and so on but yeah just like send me a dm

[00:29:33] always happy to just share a bit more about that or answer any questions. Alessandro thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. So we've been listening to Alessandro Bogliari and although he mentioned about

[00:29:47] you know building the business at the beginning and overcoming that chasm what he's just shared at the end is also really important because they started off doing reports and send them to media but he's also shared about he's got his own podcast he's hosting companies that are

[00:30:01] presumably either his guests his clients or potential clients because they're the mnc companies that are going to use the service as well so plainly creating a great deal of content but based around education community and conversation so hope you've enjoyed my

[00:30:16] conversation today with Alessandro he's in New York my name is Jim James I'm here in the UK bringing you this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur so that you can get noticed

[00:30:26] for all the work that you do and until we meet again just encourage you to keep on communicating.