179 | Influencer marketing drives business growth even in B2B, learn best practices from Alessandro Bogliari, CEO of the Influencer Marketing Factory

Social media and paid search are over-saturated - organic reach is declining, and paid is becoming more expensive and less effective. At the same time, influencer marketing is booming.

Why?

Because if your target audience, already trusts a specific person, and that person recommends your product or service, your business benefits from the trust they already earned.

Like any other marketing method, B2C has mastered it before B2B, but in the past few years, B2B brands are utilizing influencer marketing as well.

In this episode we are talking with Alessandro Bogliari, the CEO and founder of the Influencer Marketing Factory. Allesandro shares practical tips, and best practices on how to get started and grow with influencer marketing.

💥 The detailed process you should follow
💥 What should be your process for different budget levels
💥 Do's and Dont's
💥 How B2B brands are leveraging influencer marketing
💥 and much more...

Connect with Alessandro on LinkedIn

Hi, It's Isar the host of the Business Growth Accelerator Podcast
I am passionate about growing businesses and helping CEOs, business leaders, and entrepreneurs become more successful. I am also passionate about relationship building, community creation for businesses, and value creation through content.
I would love it if you connect with me on LinkedIn. Drop me a DM, and LMK you listened to the podcast, what you think and what topics you would like me to cover 🙏

Transcript

Isar Meitis: 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Business Growth Accelerator. This is Isar Matis, your host, and I'm really super excited today. It's a topic I've actually never touched, and it's a very important topic these days that can really help businesses of all sizes and aspects grow. So social media and Web 2.0 created the concept of influencers. And influencers comes in different shapes and sizes. They have different followings and in different industries, different places around the world and so on.. However, if you know how to pick the right influencer that can have you connect better with your target audience, it's a hidden gem. It's an amazing way to grow businesses. Including in B2B businesses, and I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, well, influencer marketing, it's more for selling, you know, consumer goods like soap and clothing and energy drinks and stuff like that. Who the hell uses influencer marketing for b2b? I don't even think it's possible. Well, the reality is, it is possible and companies across different industries, including pharma, medical insurance and so on, are leveraging influencer marketing. So it's doable and if you wanna learn how to do it yourself in your industry, either for B2B or b2c, there is no better person than. Alessandro Gli to teach you. So Alessandro grew the influencer marketing, his influencer marketing factory agency to eight digits in just three years. He works with companies like Google and Meta, so the biggest names in the world, and he's considered a global expert on influencer marketing. So we are in amazing hands to learn about these topics together. Today we're going to talk about how to successfully launch and run influencer campaigns in different budget levels. And yes, we're also going to talk about how to do this for B2B companies with some examples and use cases on how that can be done. So it's a new topic for me. It's a really important topic these days in general, when the regular digital marketing is so overpopulated and so, Dense that it's very, very hard to get new stuff out there. So it's a new channel that if you're not using, you can definitely try. And if you are using that can give you additional tools and ways to do it. Even better, get ready to take some notes because this is gonna be high speed. I spoke to Alessandra, an amazing onboarding meeting, and Alessandro, I'm so excited and happy. Welcome

Alessandro Bogliari: 2:27

to the Business Growth Accelerator. Thank you. Uh, love to be here..

Isar Meitis: 3:30

Let's go back a little bit before we jump into the details. When did you figure it out? When did you figure out that that influencer marketing is a big deal that is not leveraged enough that drove you to start

Alessandro Bogliari: 3:41

your business? Absolutely. so I was actually still studying, doing my master's degree. I was, living in Copenhagen, Denmark, in the cold of Denmark, and, spent a lot of time indoor crunching about like, you know, numbers and data and I, I already knew that something was called influence for marketing, but I would say that was really about the brand awareness, right? So back in the days I'm talking. Eight years ago it was still, you know, putting, you know, a face usually on social media, telling you to buy a certain product. Yeah. But knowing how much to pay an influencer was really, you know, a big black box. Right. You, you, you, you got into that and, more or less you had some way to, you know, figure it out. There was a lot of gifting, and so long story short, what happened is that I had to write a thesis about, you know, something and I chose influence for marketing, and I, I, I came up with a really easy. I don't want to even call it algorithm anea easy formula to calculate how much to pay someone on Instagram based on criteria such as number of followers and engagement rate geolocation and industry. And so I built all my thesis about this is growing, but we have to start putting some data and science behind that. If you calculate ROI and arrows on Google ads, you should be able to do the same also for influencer marketing. So it started from that perspective, and then I started working with other people. You know, in the industry. And, a few years later when I was ready, it was like, you know what? I can start my own agency, the Influencer Marketing Factory. you know, I just started with a couple of people, now we're a team of 50 between the US and Europe, working with some of the clients that you mentioned that before. But yes, it was a big opportunity, but still it was missing some data points. It was about like understanding how much you can get out of it. That was ma mostly like, you know, my, my main thesis, you can use influencer market in a serious way, you know, just as a nice to. Brilliant.

Isar Meitis: 5:24

I, I really like this from two different perspectives. One that you actually started this from an academic perspective versus an actual business to begin with. Yep. And I also like, I'm a very data oriented person, and a lot of times when you're dealing with people mm-hmm. it's very hard to put the science back into it, right? Because it's like, it's more of a relationship building, brand awareness kind of exercise. And you're saying, no, this is a marketing channel. You need to be able to compare apples and apples. If I'm gonna put$50,000 on this channel, or$50,000 on this channel, I would like to know in advance, roughly hopefully what the ROI is going to be versus, okay, I'm gonna put 50,000 of this thing and I'm hope it's gonna do something, and then$50,000 later I will know. So I love absolutely everything you said. Let's start drilling into this thing. Yeah. If I'm not, if I've never done this before and I'm a great example because I haven't mm-hmm. how do I even get started? Like how do I define a budget? How do I find the right influencers for me in order to even test this thing out?

Alessandro Bogliari: 6:29

Absolutely. So first of all, I know that this, you know, might be of course, common sense, but I realize that many brands and also individuals don't do that. You have to spend enough time to like, you know, look what is happening nowadays on social media. Each social media is different, right? LinkedIn, especially for the B2B, is pushing a lot of content creators out there. In fact, they, last year, they come up with the creator mode. I also use, it is really good for organic reach and to connect with people, you know. But then what is happening, for example, on YouTube, what is happening on TikTok, right? Just these days that TikTok is pushing longer content, right? They're trying to you know, compete against YouTube, for example. And in fact, they're giving also a new type of, like TikTok found for TikTokers that want to go, like more longer form, what is happening on Instagram reels and so on. So first of all, I would go there and spend enough hours to understand. Too many times to have a, an idea of what influencer market and it is, uh, maybe based on things that you read online, for example, or a friend of yours told you something, but the best way, as in anything right to te test yourself and even just. before Listen to conversations, right? Look at the, niche audit system might be existing, and especially in the b2b. I know that we're gonna go more in detail later, but there are specific niche, right? People that communicate on not only on social media, but also on this core channel. Slack channels. For example, Subreddits you can get and gather all that data first to understand what is happening, what people want to see, what they don't like, the do's and don't, and then use those sort of rules and trends. Then to bring them on social media. The worst that you can do is just go out there and think that you already know. Start posting things that actually can backfire on your own brand.

Isar Meitis: 8:04

Interesting. So you're saying it all starts, like, basically like anything is business with good research. Mm-hmm. what do I research for? So how do I find these influencers? Just start and see who is getting more, engagement. Like how do you identify the influencers in your industry? And I'll, I'll add a little bit to the question because at the end of the, day It's not about the influencer, it's about the audience they reach. Exactly. Right. So how do I, how do I figure this part out? These are great point. This is also what I say all the time. Do not only focus on the influencer or the content creator because, what I say all the time is this. For example, imagine someone that, is, you know, from the United States, right? So, they, you know, they have a lot of like, you know, US based audience, but for some reason they're traveling, for example, to Europe, right? For one year. If you look at the geolocation of the influencer, they're gonna be, let's say, you know, London for example, right? Or Paris. That doesn't mean necessarily that their audience is located there. So you might look for someone in Paris and looking for French customers, for example, to go to a specific event or buy something locally, but their audience is still in the us So of course you want to have a touch and fill the influencer. Looking at other data, such as, for example, historical data in terms of conversions. For example, if you're looking at software downloads or app downloads, how many, for example, of your audience were, was you were able to translate in customer base and so on. So, of course, historical data influencers, it's really important. But as, as you correctly said, looking at also of the audience, right? Certain you can do it. I would, I would say that unless you use, a platform that look at the demographics, usually workspace on sampling of data, right? So you cannot analyze as, as a software, like a million followers. But usually the softwares they look at maybe 1,000 2000 people analyze their gender age, usually based on machine learning and ai, you know, like softwares that they use, geolocation of these people and so on. And again, unless you have a software that you can use, there are plenty out there. You know, those used by, you know, bigger companies up to, you know, those, SaaS that you can use for$50 a month. It gives you a really good indication. Too many times still people go maybe on, you know, like on Instagram for example, or YouTube, and they look for a specific topic. They find the person. But they have no doubt about it. And I always like, how can you actually understand if this is the right person? And one challenge, for example, is LinkedIn I love LinkedIn but it's still a bit difficult to find the right people because there is not really, you know, a search engine. Right. for content creators as I would like to see. So it would be interesting to see in the next years there are gonna be more of these platforms also giving you demographic data and psychographic data For LinkedIn influencers, that would be really, cool Interesting. Can you give a few examples of this software that, that are available to the public and not if you're Google, that you can use in order to find data about audiences of people?

Alessandro Bogliari: 10:57

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there are many well-known like, hype Auditor for example. It's one, mo Dash is another one. there are like really a lot of them every, to be honest, still up to these days, every day there is a new one coming out. Those are mostly like, you know, two identify influencers, but then there are like big ones like, uh, Green, for example, or Maverick that are only one platform. Usually, again, you know, used by maybe bigger brands where you can not only identify the influencers, but you can actually track everything. we, as an agency, we do, for example, we have an hybrid, so we use certain platforms to find them, but then we created our own ways to track everything. but apart from identify them, that is really important that you can understand all the steps, like all the negotiation involved, agreement, legal, you know, there are so many things behind an influencer marketing campaign that people do not realize. They're actually very time consuming on the one end or on the other. You need to have knowledge about what is happening, what are you doing too many times, no matter the wrong price, for example, or something to I and so on. So having like, you know, the, more knowledgeable like, you know, people that are working every single day on that might be really helpful, especially if you're new to.

Isar Meitis: 12:02

Awesome. So it, it's actually a group segue to the next step that we wanted to talk about, right? So we said, you said research, we kind of figured out the research, we found the right influencers, probably more, hopefully more than one. What's the next step? So I, I found a few people who have the ears and the eyes of, of my optimal audience. What then?

Alessandro Bogliari: 12:23

Absolutely. So again, you know, I'm mostly talking about, on the B2B side because again, you know, the B2C side, it's, I don't want to say, I mean, it's easier, right? Because Yeah. First of all, you have more potential people, right? That can fit your needs. Sure. In the b2b, it's more like it's niche. Usually prices are gonna be higher. Why? Because you are talking with professionals, they might already. Main job. So if they do this and they do it, first of all as an extra sometimes or as an additional income, and two, they have an authority in their space. So they cannot just say yes to everything. If you are like an influencer for the B2C and selling a pair of shoes, whatever, literally have maybe, you know, like an authority that can be destroyed because you said something about, you know, new shoes that is not perfect. You know, when it comes to b2b, you have a reputation right in your space. So first of all, before You know, finding the right person. Also on the other side, you might have someone being like, you know what, I don't feel that is the right fit for me. And usually they're more transparent on that. But to get back to what you're asking me on, on the next steps, it's absolutely crucial to be on the same page from day one. so apart from legal, and the agreements that usually have, there is a typical agreement about, you know, media rights and you know, like what you can say, why not? And so on. It's really important to give to each content creator and influencer a scope of work. And you're gonna go very in detail. So the more detail it is the file and the briefly you're gonna give the better it is. So there are no misunderstanding. And that usually includes, for example, how many videos do, do you have to create? Is there anything extra? Such as, for example, you know, like appear on a podcast. Do you have to add a link in bio? And if so, this is the UTM parameters and the Bitly that you have to use and this is the deadline. By that time, you cannot, you. Remove that for six months. If this is the amount, and it's, let's say more than this, you cannot work with, another competitor for next, for example, three months. So the more detail you go the better it is because too many times, you can, you know, get any sort of misunderstanding. and then, you know, things go south, and as you said at the beginning, it's a people to people. Even if it's b2b, there is another person in front of you, with their own scheduling, their agenda and so on. So I would say that the, the steps are really important from day one. It is not to rush it, but to be on the same page. It is better to catch any potential mistakes or, you know, potential problems in the future from day one. So once identified, the next step should be absolutely going to legal and agreements be on the same page about dos and downs. And, only after that start receiving the first draft content that you, and, you know, if you're an agency you would like, you know, work together with the company. If instead you're a company directly working with the influencer, you're gonna start going a sort of. You know, I don't want to say a loop about, a way to optimize the content up to both, you know, like parties are happy with it. And then, you know, there are many other steps after that. But that is, I would say, the crucial part to do for every type of campaign.

Isar Meitis: 15:16

Awesome. I think this is very solid advice. Let's, let's move to the budget side of things, right? Yeah. So what is a, if I'm just getting started and I wanna test the water, What is a reasonable budget to start with and then what's like, okay, this is working great. Mm-hmm. how does that usually evolve and what are the differences? Mm-hmm. that I will ask for or do with different levels of

Alessandro Bogliari: 15:38

budget. Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, big difference, as I was mentioning before, between B2C and b2b. In the B2B side, usually if you talk about people in the tech space, for example, back in the days with crypto, now we are seeing less of that, right. for obvious reasons. But I would say that, in decades these people already have a job usually, or they can just choose a bit more, right? They can be a bit picky. And so usually the type of budgets that you're looking at, It's definitely higher. In the B2C side, instead, you can have different ranges, but my main two, if I have to divide it into like just super easy, would be you are entering in the market with like, something that is, let's say$5,000. Okay. Really small budget. We, for example, as a, as a, as an agency, we don't work with anything that is usually below, let's say,$20,000. There's a test budget that usually lasts for a month. Why? Because. In that amount, we, you have also to consider our fee, and the majority of the money goes to the influencer. So if you have like something that is, let's say$5,000, a thousand dollars, right? My main like, you know, piece of advice is to test it out yourself. You are gonna definitely get hurt the first time because it's wrong, right? You don't know about the prices, you don't know what has involved to do things, but at least you, you sort of like, you know, You get into that yourself and you understand terminologies, how people, like to negotiate on certain things, what is included? And only ones like, let's say you built, you know, something and you working with five to 10 influencers, right? on that money. First of all, you don't have to pay an agency like us, for example, right there, usually between 15 and 20% that you can. Either to an influencer or to use for paid media, for example. Because another cool thing of influencer market is that you can actually boost organic content that is working. Sure. And drive traffic. So that is like, again, the people that are still figure it out. And I would say that if you go with an agency with a so low BA lower budget, like might be frustrating for both parties because you have certain expectation. But at the same time, unfortunately, influencer market is not anymore as it was five years ago or eight years. People want to get paid more and more, right? Like the market is going that direction. So unfortunately you wouldn't even get that much with like, that type of money. And so I think that expectation from day one are really important. Instead, if you have, let's say, you know, 15, 20, 30, 50, we do have clients that give us like six digits, other seven digits type of projects. So that is the case. You already tried it out. You think that it has, you know, like a lot of opportunities, you can understand that, you know, you know how to track things. And it might be that you don't have anyone in your company that can help you do that, or you still need more people. Whenever work, let's say on a campaign with 50, for example, right? Different influencers. It's really time consuming. there is a lot of negotiation. There is a lot of. Exchanging like rates and ideas over email. Sometimes with even younger people, you will not communicate with them on email. You will do it on iMessage, you will do it on WhatsApp, you will do it on a Slack channel. You will do it on a anywhere, right? But, but email with a lot of younger people. So you have to realize that it's three time consuming. Between, again, you know, gather the information, the brief, the, you know, the, the, how much should I get paid for this and so on. And if you don't have anyone in the company that is just dedicated to data, is gonna be trying to use maybe let's say a marketer in a company, try to. Had some of their time here and there, but this person might not have a knowledge about the influencer marketing and so we might be double charged for something. It, it might, you know, like, not seeing something really important on the contract and so on. So usually companies come to us when they want to scale up their game. So again, long story short, if then a budget, yet we go by yourself at the beginning to really understand things and only when like you are really ready and you have like 50 k, hundred K and so much more. Fantastic. You should use an agency because we already know what to do. We know the prices in the, in the industry, we know certain terminology that are important, and also we're reluctant update to the same day about what is happening, right? We, we, we are in the loop of the trends and instead you as a brand to have to come up with like, you know, okay, what is happening in the industry? is this regulation still on? What about the new trends? We do that for you. Right? So there is, if I had to again, split it in two macros, that would be the.

Isar Meitis: 20:06

Again, great advice. I, I wanna say some, a few things about what you said. First of all, I think in general, starting in-house and doing stuff yourself, Is great in the beginning because it gives you a little more depth once you go to work with an agency, and this is true in any topic, like before you go and hire, I dunno, any, any other thing, try to do it in-house. Try to get your, your, you know, your feet wet and your hands dirty, learn what's going on, and then you got a better understanding. Once you got to negotiate, once you come to ask for things, you are much more educated to do the right things. That's one aspect of it. The other aspect, which is more of a follow up question, you talked about these level of budgets, what do they actually buy me? So let's take two entry points, right? So let's take$5,000 a month. I got$5,000 a month that I'm gonna use myself. What should I expect in this timeframe? So we are in, you know, March of 2023. What should I expect to get for$5,000 working with an influencer? What should I. Paying$20,000 a month to maybe an agency to help me do.

Alessandro Bogliari: 21:14

Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, it's for me, unfortunately possible to tell you, let's say a, a menu item, right? Type of thing. Okay? With 5k, this is what you can get. I can give you more on an indication of what to expect if you do it yourself. Or for example, with an agency, depending on the budgets, if you put in yourself only, let's say$5,000, first of all, don't put all your eggs in one basket. We've been seeing that for everything in the markets nowadays. The same would be also with, in. Why, if you look only at metrics, that is only a part of the indicators, right? About the potential influence of someone. So for example, if you say, oh, I really love this person, and I see them everywhere, and they have, let's say, you know, a million followers on whatever it is, and you go all in, that person might also do the, you know, fantastic job. But because of the algorithm these days, like, you know, try to shadow banner if there is an advertisement, if the video is posted, let's say on a. Where usually the audience of the person is not really that active, but the brands still want to go that day. There are so many things that could happen that you are external factors that you cannot really like, you know, control. So our, our, our advice, no matter the budget, try to, you know, diversify them as possible. Your sort of investment in different. Or influencers, maybe take five of them and give them a thousand dollars each. And it really depends by the industry. As I was saying before, in the tech space, for example, really high price, if instead you are looking at, b2c, it's something else, this, the people with the same numbers can give you. Totally different prices. Why? Some of them might be independent influencers, so they can give you maybe a lower price. If instead they are represented by an agent, the agent will GI will ask you for 20% more. So that is already something to take in consideration. For example. So for the small one, with the 5k, you mostly have your own work. So you are also have to consider it like your. Sort of like, you know, hourly rate if you do it by yourself, all the time for negotiation and so on. What to expect. Difficult really to say. But imagine that usually the typically is maybe, you know, a video or, let's say 32nd integration on YouTube. This is it. And you're gonna get, let's say, a link in bio for 24 hours. You know, again, this is just like really,

Isar Meitis: 23:21

Yeah, very, very broad

Alessandro Bogliari: 23:22

brush. Very broad, right? Because it's super difficult to be honest. The other day I was looking at certain data of people that were paying some people with the same numbers. Someone is asking 2000 and someone else is asking 12,000, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's our job to, to negotiate. But when it comes to bigger budgets and usually use an agency, the good thing it is that you mostly like sit down and you have the others doing all the work for you, right? So as an agency, you know, we take care of. Come out with, ideas, for example, and the storytelling behind the, the, the, the product or service that you want to offer. We identify all the influencers. We reach out to all of them. We help you negotiate the best pricing. We try to put in, for example, media rights. The good thing of influencer marketing, especially also in the b2b, if you think about it, it is that a lot of the times in the B2B space, it's difficult to get this. And instead, if you can get it from an influencer and you pay for the media rights, you can use it, for example, for a webinar, you can use it on your website under testimonials. Yeah, you can boost it on social media and so on. So when you pay for more, you also get more, you get all the relationship right that are in a smoother way co you know, compared to maybe going by yourself. we have all the legal agreement, sort of templates that we know, you know, like how to use. We know what is more or less the prices that you might pay. And also the good thing is that especially in the B2B space, there are not that many people. So if you go through an agency like us, you are able to identify actually the right people or talk with your agents. Give them every single month something and we're gonna get a preferred rate. So instead of going 1 0 1 all the time and having, let's say,$5,000, we can tell them, what if we give you 50 K around the year, more or less, because this is what we can expect, but you give us that cost for 4,000 instead of five, but we're gonna give you more jobs right. During the year. So again, it's, so it's similar relationship, like, you know, based, I would say is a, is a type of. and lastly, we also take care of manage all the campaign again, 50 people, a hundred people. We take care of everything, all the management, all the tracking. So we have all systems to look at Proma codes and U T M parameters and Beatles, right? And that help us to identify we'll, Which were the best performance for the campaign. So if next time you want to run it again, we're gonna tell you, you know what, out of 10 people, out of 50 people, these were the top five performers, let's use them again. And lastly, we finished with an ROI analysis of the campaign. And, and what I want just to say overall on this is that influencer marketing, you cannot look at that. Like, I put$1 in and the same day I get$10 out. Right? It doesn't work like that, right? It's not, it's not like, you know, it's really about the behavior and psychology of the people. So it's one of the main touch points, and especially in the b2b, you might not say yes to a software, right, just because you just checked that YouTube video. But if in your journey of research about a new software, for example, you also. Three different people on YouTube, one on TikTok and one on a podcast, right? You read a, a blog post about something that always refer to the same software that is one of the main touchpoints you might then convert in a month. But also because of that influencer, you were able to, and with cookies, you're still able to look at, okay, this person brought me in and maybe they offer me, let's say 30% of discounts on the first year. Something like that. So again, there are so many things happening at the same time, and that's why tracking is really, I.

Isar Meitis: 26:37

Awesome. I, I wanna say something myself and then when I wanna ask you a deeper question about tracking, and then we're gonna dive into actual B2B examples. Yeah. But the thing I wanna say myself that in general, in these kind of marketing, so, you know, I, I help companies grow businesses through, through podcasting and through live shows on the internet. And it's the same kind of story. There is no quick, oh, you, you put thing online and the next day you get a click and then you, there's a conversion. it's a very different kind of thing. It's a longer. And there's a big, big difference between, you know, the data that is, that is directly correlated to business, and that is more qualitative data, sorry, more quantitative data. I've seen that many clicks is what's happening in the funnel versus the qualitative data that you can start seeing. And the qualitative data that you can start seeing comes from things like how many people engage with my content on the right channels on social media. Is it the right people? Are the right people that are my target audience, engaging with the content because I did that thing that I did not do before. It also connects very well to what you said before that you said, don't put all the eggs in man basket. You did one great guy that has a lot of access. A lot of people make decisions based on context, and the context in many cases is somebody who's like them. Same size of company, same place in the world, same accent, same sex, same. ethnicity. Ethnicity, you know, whatever the case may be. If you have one influencer, doesn't matter how big he is, he may connect on an emotional level, which is a small group of your audience. You have five or six, maybe each and every one end up doing less stuff for you. You a, have more eggs and more baskets, like you said. One can be on TikTok, one could be on YouTube, one could be on LinkedIn, but the other is some people will connect with different people and you'll start seeing, going back to that qualitative data, which is people are engaging with this content. People care about the thing that we did, which over time we lead to people wanting to work with us. It's at the end of the day, it's a trust building. Experiment, right? It's how do I build more trust, leveraging people who already have developed trust with my, the right audience. So having that mindset in place and also then the tracking in place is a very big deal. Which leads me to the tracking question. Mm-hmm. what are the things you track and along what timeframe? During this process, like what are your leading indicators that a campaign is actually doing something before you pour more money into it? And then what are the things that are the next steps that you're looking for in order to say, okay, probably if we keep on doing this in three months, this is what's gonna happen, or in six months, or

Alessandro Bogliari: 29:22

whatever the timeline may be. Yeah, so I would say that in the past years we've been seeing more brands and companies moving from brand awareness metrics, right. Also called vanity metrics to something that you can actually have as a converser, right? Yeah. So it really depends by the industry, but I would say there are some that are really easy to track and some others that be more tricky. The easiest one I would say are apps because you can easily use third party to track things, singular or net apps flyer many others. We work with a lot of apps, both B2C M b2, And that is the easiest way you can, boost a campaign, let's say on TikTok or YouTube or Instagram, and send the people to download the app that are cleaning the app store, for example. And in that case, you are gonna use as an influencer dedicated link. And anytime that someone download the app, it's gonna go back to you. So that is like really tracking 1 0 1. Works well. The same could be also for both B2B or b2c when it comes to promo codes or discounts codes, for example, maybe. And usually what I recommend all the time as a brand is use and if there is 10 sensitive. Because the worst thing that could happen with influencer marketing is that you go out, but then. Yeah, like if the idea, idea is that you can, you know, like, use a certain pro code all year long, what do you do? You're gonna push and procrastinate, right? And they will never use it. Similar to any other things that happens, usually also, like, let's say in fashion. And so you prefer to do like something that it's gonna be only seven days, only three days, and so on. To use it. And again, because you can use a promo code if you add it there, you know, and usually it's about, you know, a discount. For example, mark 30. Okay, fantastic. You put it there. And this could be a really good, also for software for example, or B2B type of solutions, right? you can see a video, watch a video on YouTube, you're gonna add that promo code. And you're able to go back at the end of the month and be like, how many, mark brought in, okay, these numbers because you can easily see in a Google sheet, for example. And, so that is like an easy way. some others might be a bit tricky is that what if you are changing the device and nowadays with cookie, sort of cookie less future, right? It's a bit difficult. So again, anything that, like Proco, I would say is the easiest way just because you can, no matter where you go as device, you can still put it out there. U T M parameters, and so they help you a lot. Mostly for, I would say quantitative because it just give you an indication, but then, you know, like in terms of conversions, you still might, especially if it is in the B2B of like less numbers in terms of like, you know, top of funnel and whatever you get at the end of the funnel, you might still looking at them like sort of a one by one. Because, what helps a lot, I would say also with influencer marketing, apart from tracking, is also the, you know, it's also the type of feedback that people can give you. When you were saying before about niche, what I say all the time is this, when you buy an influencer marketing campaign, you only don't get a promotion. You get user generated content that you can use. You get, again, all the tracking, pro codes, everything, so you can look at. But especially you have a focus group basically, that you're, it's included in your price because if you go to a YouTube page, sorry, YouTube account under a video, and maybe that video has a 32nd integration or 62nd integration about a product, they might ask you for example, Oh, what about the software you talk about at minute 15? What is the cost Or like others like, yes, I use it. It's amazing. I didn't know about this feature. And you as a brand, you can actually look into that. So when, whenever you do tracking, the easiest would be only look at sales, only look at up loads. But what about also the indirect type of things that you might look back in a month, for example, when you were asking the timeframe. Usually we look up to, it depends again by the. If this is a test campaign, we look at it 30 days, but if instead this person, this company, work, work with us for let's say six months, we look at all the six months plus some other months later so that we can get back to the client and be like, this happened also, you know, later, because again, you might not buy the same day. You might convert, especially the b2b, it's gonna take for certain companies be before choosing a new service or provider, like six months a year. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So it's, it's a lot of different things together in quantitative, in qualit. Together is the only way to look at influencer marketing. You cannot use only one of the two because it will give you really only 50% of the overall sort of helicopter view.

Isar Meitis: 33:32

Great stuff. I'll add one thing that is great for B2B companies as a way in general, by the way, not just for this kind of marketing, but for any kind of marketing campaign you're running on b2b, there's a very big difference between generating demand and capturing demand, and usually what people track is how demand is being captured, meaning, A cookie, a a AppSumo for apps or, not AppSumo apps flyer, for apps or, a Provo code. So all these things show you where the demand was captured. How do people actually go in and buy the thing that you're selling? But how do you know? What help them make the decision. And like you said, they do this in chat rooms. They do this on TikTok, they do this on Instagram, they do this on different servers that you don't have access to, like 80 something percent. And that's from an actual research that was done. 80 something percent of the research phase happens before a costume. Ever engages with anything the company has access to, meaning most of the journey happens before. So how do you track that part? And the way to track that part is through different things. One, like I said before, is just engagement. How many people engaged with the different content on, on online? That means, okay, we're creating some. Of the right content that people care about. But the other thing is you can put on your website, on the form, and if it's a B2B company, that's usually how it works. Somebody wants to talk to a salesperson, they wanna know more about the product. You can put in a field that says, how did you hear about us? And make it mandatory and make it an open field with text. And then people will tell you, I was watching, TikTok videos by so-and-so influencer. I was listening to those podcasts and a few people recommended this. And people will tell you these things that you have absolutely no other way of knowing. And if you have enough volume, very clear, very quickly, you'll start seeing a pattern. Where the demand is actually being generated versus where the demand is captured, which wants all the direct clicks and so on. Cookies, will tell you in the combination of the two, can help you make better strategic results on how to change and shift your future campaigns. So I love all these things. Let's go to b2b. What kind of things you're seeing in the B2B world today that are successful leveraging influencer?

Alessandro Bogliari: 35:46

Yeah. So one thing that you know, also to get back to what we were saying now about looking also in in dark type of engagement and data and metrics, one thing that we noticed also for B2B is actually the idea that if you're running an influencer marketing campaign and you see a peak in branded search on Google. That's a good indicator that people are looking at that. And the same, you can do it for b2b, right? Many times, especially in the b2b, that is niche. If you just see like something that is coming on your Google Analytics, for example, that comes from Google searches, right? You can go and search console and look if there is an impact on that one. There is also something that they're like B2B are using more for authority, for seo O and so on. The same also for b2. Ana YouTube video or a blog post, or a podcast with the name of the brander and something that is related to the, those brand searches is gonna be even more, much more powerful for B2B than Ana TikTok video that goes viral for one day, right? Or in Instagram Real, for example. Why? Because if you really go on a strategy about, let's say you want to dominate SEO on YouTube, I do do it. How do you do it? Either you, it takes you five years to build your own brand account. You can do it of. or you go to influencers that are really already dominating for those keywords and you can ask them to put your brand name in the, in the title, in the description, in the AKs, in the tags and so on. And whenever someone is gonna, let's say, look for your brand name solution review, for example, you can narrate how however you want, instead of every others, right? Get there before you. So the s e o for social media is quite important. We've also been seeing lately, You know, like younger people are using TikTok as a search engine. You want also to dominate that, right? If I am in the b2b, why should I wait for others to create content that I cannot control over the narrative while I can go there and be the first one and getting five, 10 people, right? Like, you know, really, really strong on that topic. I'm thinking about like, you know, could be even like, insurance companies and like, you know, banking solutions for other businesses. I've been seeing also like, you know, like let's say, you know, like other companies helping small businesses, right? With their needs. In that case, I would like really get, you know, five to 10 people maybe, you know, on TikTok, YouTube and so on, and I would use my brand name plus whatever I want to be associated with. So anytime that someone is gonna Google you. The same day or in six years, most probably gonna find those videos. And the good thing also is that if you put a tracking link in those descriptions, they're gonna stay there. So of course you're gonna see a peak at the beginning, but might be that in three years you're still gonna get link, clicks and potential customers from that specific video. So I will look into long term and only short term. The short term gives you the burnout. Where is that? That like, you know, sort of. Boosting, but sometimes the peak on social media and virality can also actually backfire. What if you cannot control over a new like big quite of people coming to your service, to your product and so on? Yeah. Yeah. If you are like, you know, even by, let's say B2B hardware, right? For example, you don't have enough of those like in store, right? So there is all these different questions and, and the last one I want to say also, we've been seeing also. More people in d B2B that are trying to, and I'm talking about maybe certain I don't like, you know, could be devices, could be again, on the hardware side, could be, especially physical, physical products. There are mostly B2B and they try to get the majority of these products online and show in traction so that they can go back these companies to target Walmart and the others and be like, look at this. We're getting traction. Can we enter physic? And sell it from here. And I would say that these big brands, all the distribution channels are realizing that, you know, we all know that the TikTok may be buyed. Now in some, even in Walmart, you have like, like so on, on TikTok, there is the new C on TikTok. So if you can also do the same in the B2B and go there, and that, for example, is one of the things like, how can I enter in something that difficult? If you show that the attraction, if you see that people are loving it, They might be more inclined to open that channel as well in terms of distribution. So again, we've been seeing many things from the B2C world in the b2b, but it's still, I would say still experimental budgets are a bit bigger sometimes. Mostly because it's companies, but it's all a little presentation of the total, you know, budgets per the year.

Isar Meitis: 40:04

What do you see as examples on how some of the brands you're working with B2B brands, how they are. And obviously we don't have to mention names of the company, so we don't disclosing any specific, company information, but, but good examples on how a influencer campaign is helping a B2B brand. What tactics are they using? What results are they seeing? Stuff like that.

Alessandro Bogliari: 40:28

Yeah, I can tell you one case study that we are working on that I identified that would be interesting, especially works well with, YouTubers. Another one that is more of an example of things are like, you know, public, other, and case studies, right? Whenever it comes to b2b. So the one that we ed it is, one of the biggest, suppliers for B2B from coming from from China. So anything that is like, creating quality products. For suppliers and the B2B space. So, you know, like don't think about any, if there is like cheap type of material, but it's actually good, you know, items that you only can purchase right in, in bulk. And working with this client again, you know, there is not a direct supplier, so it can only work with b2b. The challenge for us was like, how can you remove the sort of boring part right? Of something like that, right? And actually sell it. Other people. And in this case it was mostly communicate from YouTubers to other people that have business that need new suppliers. And you know, it could be for drop shipping, could be for their converses, could be that, for example, they need a specific item to build on on that with their own branding. And sometimes you don't even know where to start. You can yeah, Google it around. But for example, there are many questions like in the, in the e-commerce space, you know, for example, you know, is that product really good? How can I, you know, even initiate right. The negotiation skills if they don't know, for example. So something that we did in this site was both having YouTubers talk about this, supplier and looking at about things like they tested their own product to see if they were good. So physically they're like, testing in the mountain or just showing up? Yeah. In terms of listing, then, you know, like, We did also like, apart from integration was for example, the education side. So these YouTubers were educated on their YouTube channels. A are you looking now to expand your business? Fantastic. You need a supplier. Let's go into negotiation skills whenever it comes to b2b. So it was never just like quarterly promotional, but the educational part is crucial when it comes to b2b. You want to sell knowledge also and not just a, a, a service. And then if you are a really good storyteller, you can be like, I tested a product for you. Next time we're gonna go into negotiation skills. Fantastic. Then the next time we're gonna talk about, for example, you know, things like, okay, I have to, you know, like I need, business ideas and how to make money with eCommerce. The next one is gonna be how to find the right, brands. Sorry, the right products are working well in that period. Is there any trends happening once you go in that all that education you already, they're gonna. First of all, I trust this person because it just didn't mely sell to me a product or a service. It educated me in X amount of time. Now, trust it enough to be okay. Now it's my time. Oh, what was that supplier that they integrated me? Oh, it was this one. You know what? I'm gonna click on the one. I know that I can trust them. I know that most probably the influencer is gonna also. Get something out of it. Right? Because they're gonna mostly get some sort of thing. And if you're thinking as a business person, you know how much it is important, right? Also to help other businesses. So we did it in this case, again, this was the idea of a, of a supplier and really was out to add together education Plus, Actionable item and the right service to use. Right? So these are like some, some of the ideas like how to find suppliers, how to meet with them, how to trade right, are so specific as things that you want to have an authority. You want to have someone they can trust. And once you have it, if they can also give you, you know what, don't look anymore about different 20,000 solutions. This is the one that I test. I'll accurate. And through this link you can maybe access without preferred login or you know, you don't have to wait on the wait list or the first ship, it's for free. You know, anything like that. So that is like one key study, for example, that we run on. And it was really interesting to see educational plus actionable items and on something instead. Totally different. That also would be interesting for b2b. I've been seeing that like from, you know, American Express or like, you know, or actually like ibm, for example, ibm. When it comes to influencer marketing and and I had the chance to talk with, one of the person in charge of that, on our own podcast, he told me that, they whenever can also use their own employees as influencers. Why? Because you, as an employee, you do that like it's your brand and butter. You very well know like the products, how do they work? You know more about the company. You are really like not passionate about usually, the, the company you're working for. And so, you know, IBM has been doing that. I also thought, I think also that Adobe, I've done that, I've seen many linking videos of actual professionals, employees of Adobe showing you how to use a new feature, for example, for the Adobe suite and IBM is doing the same, right? For, the B2B side, both. Hardware side, but also software. It's the same. Also, IBM did it also for Watson. Right? One of their, their services there. So using employees also, it's a great way, again, it's not for everyone. Usually it's for maybe bigger companies that can accommodate that in terms of needs, in terms of organizing all the campaign. But it's, it's a great way to talk in a way that is not necessarily to corporate, but you still are backed up by all. Like all the history, all the, all the, all the leverage, all the, you know, strength of a company. So again, two totally different things. One is, the initial one is B2B YouTubers, straight to the point in terms of like this knowledge, this is what you need and so on. And others instead, in the b2b, what if you use employee and. Before we were like, call advo advocate. What if we transfer them in? Influencers and content creators, Los Angeles would like to add it, is that some companies are actually investing on their employees and they are teaching them how to create becoming content creators, right? This is the lighting, this is the maximum to use. This is, you usually host a webinar. and we've seen successful things for the B2C and nowadays also for the b2b. So, Totally different, but, just understand that you can do potentially both together or depending on the top of the company. Choose one of the two.

Isar Meitis: 46:21

Brilliant. I wanna add a few things because I, I think you touched on so many important points. One, I'll start with what you talked about in the end about being an enabler for your employees to be, you know, the megaphone of the company. To, to be the, the, the face of the company. Companies who are not doing this, and the only thing I disagree with you is it could be a company of three people, right? Mm-hmm. it doesn't have to be i b M. If you understand the power of human connection as a way to build relationships, as a way to build an audience that is the relevant audience for what you do, the easiest way to do this is with your own employees. And instead of saying, well, you know, if you have time, go do this as a hobby, you build a studio in your office and you give people slots of time to work there. You buy them the microphone and the lighting so they have a better setup at home, and you help them promote the stuff. You give them the right education on how to do this. You will gain in the long run, a huge benefit of now having more content, very authentic coming from real people that will develop an audience, and going back to what I said before in a different context. One is a computer programmer, one is a VP of hr, and, and, and one is, is the head of product, right? It's, it's very different things, but they're each gonna talk about stuff that they're passionate about that is somehow tied to your company that will connect with some people that will then wanna do business with you because they have a better understanding of your business. So I. This is a huge important advice that most companies do not do today. More and more are starting to though, because it's really a great way to do it. The second thing that I wanna mention, there's a guy called Chris Walker. Stupidly smart. That's a really dumb thing today. I really smart really smart marketer, one of the top marketers in the world today maybe. And he talks about how he learned what he now built a company that in a few years made 20 million, selling. But the way he started, he was in, in the medical device. And he didn't know enough about it because he just moved into the indu to the industry. So he started interviewing doctors who were using their products, and they're not influencers, but they're real people in the actual quote unquote field who use medical devices. And he is like, why are you using this? Why are you using this and not the competition? What benefits did you gain by using just, he did this for his own research. But then he is like, oh my God, this is pure gold. So he started posting that content of an actual doctor and, and how do you get to these doctors? They're not gonna come to you. And we're talking before Zoom. So he drove to hospitals. So you're in a hospital facility with your phone filming a quote, unquote very, you know, intimate and yet non-professional interview with a doctor on why he's using your medical device. And now you post. He started getting huge amounts on Facebook that, again, it's a non-professional kind of world on other doctors saying, is this true? Like, do you have any proof? Do you have any actual studies? So then he started conversations with more and more bigger doctors, which he then did the same thing. Like, okay, what if I give you this device to try it out? Will you then be willing to do an interview with me after you use it for a month and let me know what you think. Now you have somebody who's a bigger. Name that actually more people know ahead of a regional hospital that is gonna do the same thing. So if, if you want, it's like a grassroot way to do influencer marketing, but if you're getting the people who will get engagement from the right audience, it doesn't matter if nobody else knows them, it doesn't matter. They don't have half a million followers if they have 20 off the right doctors. Or in a general case, your buyers. I'm like, oh my God, this is exactly what I was looking for as this solves a huge problem I have, and now these 23 of them will be your next level of evangelists. You win on all different aspects with a relatively small budget because these people are not quote unquote influencers. They're not gonna charge you$4,000 a month. They just wanna understand more on the topic and help you and them solve a problem. So, great, great advice. Everything you. We could keep on going around this for for probably another hour. if people wanna learn more about you, about what you do, they want to connect with you, they wanna listen to your podcast, they wanna work with your agency. What are the best ways to do that,

Alessandro Bogliari: 50:48

Alessandro? Yeah, absolutely. I would say three main ones. So the influencer market manufacturing.com is our website. There are some case studies there, a bit outdated. We're now refreshing the website soon, but that gives you an indication of what we do, all the service that we offer. the second one is the influence factor. it's our own podcast. We also have like fantastic people that jump on every single week that are either from the creative. Influencer marketing, social commerce, livestream, you know, and reporters like everyone that really is touching somehow in all these different topics. So we have them and it's this, you know, 30, 40 minutes conversation with them while I push be more, because we also realized the podcasting, it's, it's quite good in the video towe phase. So we're loving it. And the last one is my own linking. So if you look for my name, Alessandro Bo. They want to admin there. I also have the creator mode on, I post whenever I can in like, you know, almost every day about something. So you can also connect or either like, follow me, whatever you want there just to be in the loop of what is happening. so I would say that these are the three main things, but we're everywhere of course. Right. You know, I've been, been an agency. We have also to do our own homework. But this, I would say that the easiest and fastest way, if you want to either connect with me personally or learn more about our. Awesome.

Isar Meitis: 52:00

Alessandro. This was really educational. I've learned a lot. I'm sure people listening, learned a lot. Thank you so much for taking the time and sharing with me and my

Alessandro Bogliari: 52:09

audience. Absolutely. Thank you for having me.