The Grandfluencer Effect: Unlocking Influencer Marketing's Untapped Potential

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 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 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 actually invented the algorithm which helps you to quantify the value of an influencer and their impact on your business. Alessandro Bogliari 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, uh, you have a fascinating backstory. You know, unfortunately we don't have too much time to go into that, but give 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 it's not just for people that have got big budgets and need million follower influencers, is it? So Alessandro, tell us a little bit about you and then how can influencer marketing help a business to get noticed?

Absolutely. We'll try to make a long story short. We Italians, we talk a lot, you know, so I'm gonna try to reduce the time.

And as it's a podcast, it's really cruel 'cause you can't wave your hands around. So the Italians, it's very challenging.

Oh man, you tell me. I know, I know. So basically, you know, almost 10 years ago when I was studying in Denmark at the time, I had to write a 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, finding analytics, finding any academia papers about it. So I was like, you know what, I have to write something about, you know, for my thesis. Why don't I show that if you have a data-driven approach and analytics behind influencer marketing, it can become a serious business, right? 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. And it was based on like, you know, different 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 of how much I should pay someone on Instagram. Then, you know, moving forward from that, you know, I went from the informational side of 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 Influencer Marketing Factory. And what we did is that after a couple of years of understanding how things were working and so on, we've been offering TikTok for the first time to amazing clients such as Universal Music, Universal Warner Music, Sony, many others. And we realized that influencer marketing was not going— 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 $1,500 in our pocket, 2 people. And then 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 be like, I want to get viral in this moment where everyone is spending time there, you know? 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. Wow. 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 packed a lot in, Alessandro. 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 this on our YouTube channel, which is just @JimAJames, you'll see the clients that Alessandro has got include Google, Meta, Dunkin', Grubhub, Bumble. And we're gonna ask him later how he's managed to acquire all those amazing brands as clients. But first of all, Alessandro, you talk about influencer marketing. For those of us that have heard of it, but maybe don't really understand how it works, 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 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 can influence you. Can be anything, 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. 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 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 and watching videos of Someone else in their room, right? So nothing exciting. 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 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 3 or, you know, like someone that 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 have millions compared to me that 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 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, um, because they've maybe attained a status or a, a wealth or a position that I might aspire to. But the idea that what really matters is that we're on the same level, uh, and it's someone that I can associate with. And, and as you say, that kind of raw content. Alessandro, it seems as though it's been the preserve of the young who have been sitting there you know, uh, because they'd be more digitally savvy as well, uh, and I guess had more time on their hands. How does this play out for the, if you like, the B2B or the, the Gen Xers, the, the slightly older community, um, 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 like to say that all of the young people was true up until a few years ago when TikTok was new, right? Transitioning from Musical.ly to TikTok and, you know, like Instagram, like YouTube already have like, you know, older people sometimes watching because it can be longer content and more informational compared maybe to other social media. We have been noticing, and it's not just us, even data, like whenever you use platforms to understand the demographics of influencers, you can see that it's aging up. Even content creators and influencers, there is a term called groundfluencer, 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 type of products. And it's also great because, you know what, anytime that you go to someone that is after a certain age, right, and 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 media, you're actually 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 will see primarily consumer goods, right? It's a bit easier to sell. But we in the past, we worked also like on pharmaceutical devices and we worked with banking and insurance. We worked sometimes on campaigns on LinkedIn where professionals will tell you which software to use. So even if there have been less than that, finally, especially with LinkedIn that in the past couple of years became even more creator-focused and network-based, you know, you really can get in front of the right decision makers. So absolutely, I would still say a lot of companies are primarily B2C in the consumer goods. But finally, this myth that is only 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 included, is it called ground influencers?

Ground influencer. 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. But they're still creating content, they're entertaining people. And I watched 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 Xers, we're probably catching up with how it all works. We've been shown by our children and grandchildren how to make all these, uh, apps finally work.

Yeah.

Alessandro, then you talked about ROI. Let's just touch on that because you wrote the code, uh, originally for that. But for many business owners, they're probably a little bit anxious about an influencer because of the concerns about how much it costs to 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 are a function of 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 how to 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 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 signups for my SaaS business. Or is it a combination? Do I want to attack a 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 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, but the most challenging and where you should do the homework is to find the right influencers. And that's what we do as an agency. We help you based on statistics and data, historical data, many different factors and data points. Because if you don't find the right ones, you really could waste money. Money. And I say like owning an agency, like, you know, so it goes against my interest on interest. But what I say all 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 someone has millions of followers and you're like, oh, I really want that person because I saw it sometimes on whatever. You have to do a lot of analytical, like, you know, study and 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 like scandals in the past? Did they ever work with a competitor of mine? How the posts that are usually promoted, they perform, you know? So there is all these things to look at. And when it comes to also the ROI, so first of 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 your KPIs that you put at, you know, from day one. When it comes to app downloads, for instance, we use third-party tracking data, tracking tools like AppsFlyer, SingleNet. There are plenty of them where you use basically just tracking pixels to see and understand exactly which influencers are bringing how many downloads. So you can go very granular. You can give specific links to each influencer with UTM parameters to calculate everything. So we're not getting too technical here, but just to say that With influencer marketing, you can calculate everything that is happening. But let me tell you this, it is another big myth. 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, it takes a bit longer because it's one of the different touchpoints. So it's not like programmatic. I put $1 in Google Ads and expect $7 out. With influencer marketing, it takes a bit more and it gives you more. It gives content, it gives you You know, like reach, it gives you influence and it gives you something that I call the real-time focus group, but there is 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 at the end of the campaign.

Interesting just how trackable it is. And 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 for you, Do you have the rights to that content or do they have the rights to that content? Because if you have it, you can use it on your own social channels.

Good question. Usually you pay more, so you have to communicate that in the scope of work 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 use those. Can I 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 represent, the influencer, will get back to you 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. 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 see in the data, those type of 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. But if you want to go on social, that is the type of content that works best.

Yeah, Alessandro, that's incredible. And you've got on your website one example where a leading resort used one of your influencers and had 4.3 million Instagram users like the campaign. So you're getting an amazing amount of reach, 29 million Plus TikTok followers. So the numbers are just phenomenal, Alessandro. So the journey from Italy to America starting this business is also an entrepreneurial one, and you've managed to go from two of you putting in $1,500 and getting your first check for $400 to now having a roster that Sachi and Sachi or you know any of the O and M. Big agencies would like to have. As an entrepreneur, perhaps you could 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 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 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 work. With that said, what we did is that we attacked a market that was already a bit saturated, but we did it with out-of-the-box ideas and positioning. So, um, I have, um, you know, my background is as a growth hacker or growth marketer. So basically I used to help companies with out-of-the-box ideas, um, to grow their customer base in the B2B space. And so that helped me to 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 ourselves, so we built landing pages that were dedicated, for instance, for TikTok influencer 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 did the same for Instagram. We started putting out things out there. And something also that helped us a lot was to position ourselves as experts. So every year we produce a couple of very big 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 that you can think of, like Reuters, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, you name it, for free without the need of PR. Whenever you give something for free that is valuable, people will share about it, you know, and that's how we got the right position of experts even from day one without any money.

That was a really, really smart idea and it positioned you plainly as the go-to authorities as influencers as well, didn't it? What about attracting influencers? Because a business like yours has 2 halves of the equation, doesn't it? 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 in order to be able to get the clients. So how have you gone about the other half of the equation?

So there are like, you know, 2 ways when we look at influencers, right? Either you manage them, right, as talent that you exclusively represent. That is also something that we do. We don't have that many. We are like, you know, around 20 right now, primarily on TikTok. You know, if you put all together all the following, maybe we're talking about like 50 million followers. But we are very quality over quantity. So we receive hundreds, if not thousands, every quarter of requests to join the agency. We're very selective because we want to have only the people that have a professional mindset, you know, influencers that are going to be able to work 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 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 that we built in these years. So it could be people that we worked with in the past, agencies, partnerships that we have currently, or we also use platforms that can give you a very granular view of each influencer. And what I say is very important not to look only at the metrics about the influencers. So the follower numbers, of course, the engagement rate is important, of course, the type of industry. But what matters the most, it is the demographics. You can have someone that is based out of like, you know, New York City, having certain metrics and so on. But let's say that you want to promote a local store in New York City, right? And for some reason that person is based in New York, but they moved from London, right? All their audience most probably is still going to be from London. So you're paying 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 you can do that usually using— there are so many platforms out there. And again, what I was saying before about the homework, doing the right influencer search and identify them and negotiate the right pricing, be sure about the scope of work. Once that is done, 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. It's either our own database, third-party database, relationship with agencies out there. There are different ways, but there is a lot of, like, plenty of fish out there in terms of influencers on many different verticals.

Yeah, interesting. So to summarize that in terms of when a company's thinking about an influencer, What would be, say, the 2 or 3 criteria that they should use 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 faked. 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 want to find someone from the US, go in the demographics and say, I want to have influencer with their audience at least 70% from the US, let's say, right? Something else, some platforms also give you data very important about how many fake followers they have. They're able to calculate that. They use different criteria to understand if they ever bought fake followers. And if you have someone with more than 10%, 20%, or whatever it is, better to stay away because you're basically paying a price based on certain metrics, but they're inflated. They're not real, right? So that is another metric 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 content? Are people and their followers buying whenever they say something? How they are performing? How they are talking in front of a video, right? Do they cuss during their videos or they have clean content? So there is a lot to look at and everything together brings you the right influencer and you're going to get a very Well, Alessandro Bogliari over in New York is giving me a masterclass today in influencing and the influencer market.

Sounds as though really it's a whole new, as you say, content 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 journey as entrepreneurs. Is there anything that has not gone quite as planned? Is there 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.

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 living in the grinding, right? That is also I don't agree all the time. Like you know the grinding mindset. You you need sometimes to relax. But I think that I got in a moment where the 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 it was ready. Like we we might have done a bit more upselling, a bit more cross-selling. So like it's 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, don't think that everything is going to be 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 unfocus from the final goal. So wake up as every day you want to get new clients, you want to upsell, you want to get your team growing and so on. And that's, I would say, is the main one. Like, maybe I didn't think about 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 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 are the founder or co-founder of a company, 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 to really take advantage of that. And Alessandro, 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 entrepreneurs?

Yeah, that's, you know, like I've been building companies or things, startups since I was like 19 years old, even, you know, like before studying anything about that. And what I say all 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 about something that you are building, it means that you are too late to the game or something like that. I don't know. So it says like, you know, if like you want to go out with something, even if you're not happy about it, you will learn about that with customer, right? Like telling you if they like it or not. You will just go like, go in the arena, start doing things. I saw 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 5 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 there. 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 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? Would you like to share that 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. What I like is that it's very transparent, I would say, when it comes to challenges and problems. How did they find a solution to things? And it goes to details about each different industry. So I learn a lot listening to that because it's a great way to not just getting generic advice out there. It's like, oh, wow, they got to that problem. That's how they solved it. They look at this problem and they find the solution. And it's very in-depth when it comes to the specifics. And also the style is very like, you know, conversational, but at the same time, very professional in terms of the information that you can get. So it's one that I like to listen to.

Okay, wonderful. I must check that out. That's 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, 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 that I host. We have, you know, like great guests from major companies. gets in for 20 minutes and talks about everything that is creator economy, influencer marketing. It's a great way to understand both creators, how they think, and influencers, and also how marketers think. So you can be in the middle, listen to both of them. But yeah, 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, 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, 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 sending them to media, but he's also shared about he's got his own podcast, he's hosting companies that are presumably either his guests, his clients, or potential clients because they're the MNC companies that are going to use the services as well. So Plainly creating a great deal of content, but based around education, community, and conversation. So hope you've enjoyed my conversation today with Alessandro. He's in New York. My name's Jim James. I'm here in the UK bringing you this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur so that you can get noticed for all the work that you do. And until we meet again, just encourage you to keep on communicating. Thank you.