Joe Gagliese Explains The Importance of Influencer Marketing

Joe is the Co-Founder and CEO at Viral Nation Inc., before starting up 6 years ago Joe was not a marketer, he slowly became in tune with the influencer space early with an idea to monetize athletes and celebrities on social media and quickly started representing influencers. After his first year, they decided to start their own marketing firm, Viral Nation, because of their own profound knowledge in the digital space. Over the years they have grown to become a full-service marketing agency, obviously hinged on influencer marketing, but have now included performance marketing, digital, strategies, content, and experiential, with just over 100 people.

On the influencer side of things, they manage campaigns from big to small, from big-name celebrities and YouTubers all the way down to Victoria Secret’s ambassador campaigns or micro-influencers. Viral Nation is niche flexible thanks to their size, they are able to do anything from big game releases to Crayola crayons, with a variety in between. They have currently been working on creating more B2B influencer marketing, by finding ways to use business internal influencers and getting them to create content that works for them and using social media in smarter ways. Joe says they’ve taken the best practices from tv and radio where you can't track conversions, and digital which is hyper trackable, and they’ve put it together into influencers that have the best of both worlds and stuck the best practices there.

Using influencers is special because you not only get specially curated content for your brand and awareness, but you get social growth. Influencers do a lot of the work nowadays to get brand names out there that many people would never see or hear of otherwise. Joe says one of the big examples of the importance of influencers is Youtube. Most people nowadays are looking up reviews on youtube for the top products they are thinking of purchasing, and this is where brands can really take advantage by getting their stories and customer experiences out there. If you don't, random people will review your product without control and will be at the top of the search results.

Although there are a plethora of influencers out there at your disposal, not all of them can get the job done. You have to be sure when selecting the right people to represent your brand that they have a relationship that makes sense with the product, such as a dental student showing off a new toothbrush to their following, and their audience should actually take interest in said product compared to an influencer in a different niche. You can’t just pick anyone and expect engagement. Influencers are people too, you have to not only screen for context, but also know what they are like to work with and if they will be the right fit for you.

With the emergence of TikTok in the game, Joe says the entertainment platform is a different way to communicate that LinkedIn or Instagram, to an audience that isn’t taking its content too seriously. He says anyone using TikTik as a marketing tool needs to remember to “align, align, align,” as you can't communicate the same way you would with other platforms. You need to determine if your brand fits with this platform's identity and decide if you should be using it at all. Don't force it, but you can create ideas!

If you’d like to find out more useful information, Joe says you can follow Viral Nation on LinkedIn as they post useful content all the time.

Written by Juliana Bermudez