Alessandro Bogliari is the co-founder and CEO of The Influencer Marketing Factory, a social media influencer marketing agency that is based out of Miami, Florida. Alessandro knew that he wanted to bring something new and different to the world of online marketing, so he decided that his company would focus mainly on connecting brands, influencers, and their audiences through TikTok. Their efforts have been extremely successful, and The Influencer Marketing Factory today stands as one of the top influencer marketing agencies in the world with clients like Sony Music, Google, and Snapchat.

Alessandro Bogliari says that he has always had an “entrepreneurial mindset.” When he was studying in Milan and Copenhagen he was always trying to branch out and create new businesses on his own. This led to him becoming the co-founder and CEO of one of the top influencer marketing agencies in the world.

Alessandro’s first introduction to influencer marketing came in 2016, when he was studying for his master’s degree in Copenhagen. “I wanted to write a thesis about something new,” he said.

Ultimately, he came up with a formula that takes a variety of factors into consideration to determine how much to pay an influencer – number of followers, engagement rate, network, etc.

“It was an idea to say, ‘Everyone is interested in influencer marketing, no one knows how much to pay influencers.’ So, I made a big survey, I interviewed people, I collected data, I scraped information, I combined all these things and based my thesis around influencer marketing but most precisely, how much you should pay – it was something like fashion influencers in the United States, something really specific. And so, while I was looking more into that, I started learning about platforms, agencies and so on.”

A couple of years later, Alessandro moved to Miami to launch his own agency. The Influencer Marketing Factory started representing brands and influencers in late 2018, without any outside investors. In just the last two-and-a-half years, the company has grown to a team of 25 people with a 7-figure annual revenue.

Alessandro was able to build such a successful company so quickly because he found a gap in the industry and filled it.

“I made my first startup when I was 18 and I learned a lot – managing people, leadership, creating a product, and so on. After that, I went to Copenhagen to study for my master’s degree while I was also working as CMO for another startup. While I was there, my skills were going from normal digital marketing to growth marketing. I learned so many ways to do out-of-the-box idea type of marketing.”

At the time, influencer marketing in itself was an out-of-the-box idea. “I got into influencer marketing because a lot of other agencies were mostly doing the same approach to marketing,” Alessandro said, “like paid ads in the fashion industry. Thanks to previous experience and skills in growth hacking, I was able to combine my interests for influencer marketing to start [The Influencer Marketing Factory].”

TikTok Influencer Marketing

Alessandro and his team knew that influencer marketing was the next big thing in the marketing world, but they wanted to set themselves apart from the rest of the marketing agencies in a bigger way. “[Influencer marketing] was growing, but our big difference was definitely TikTok,” Alessandro said. “We’ve been one of the first agencies in the influencer marketing space that was offering TikTok influencer marketing to clients.”

They were such a standout, in fact, that they immediately attracted the attention of big name brands – their first client was Sony Music. “It was a hashtag challenge to launch a new song. Nowadays everyone knows about hashtag challenges, but back in the day it was something new.”

Alessandro attributes his company’s success to his education and professional experience, but also to a little bit of luck. 

“It was the right timing. I fell in love with the idea that influencers were these people growing and influencing others, creating content, and even [were] able to make money and help companies make more money. So, I got fascinated and I said, ‘Let’s open an agency that is going to be a bit different from the others. Let’s focus on TikTok.’”

Creating Successful TikTok Campaigns

The agency’s ‘obsession’ with TikTok paid off. Alessandro and his team spent hours every day watching videos, learning about the TikTok community, and absorbing what made content on TikTok different from content on other platforms.

The Influencer Marketing Factory helps brands and influencers create successful campaigns by offering data tracking, remarketing, and conversion pixels, especially in the eCommerce space. “It’s not just about smiling faces anymore,” Alessandro said. “It’s actually the data behind that, starting from the influencer identification up to all of the demographics and creativity.”

Although the data is important in TikTok campaigns, Alessandro says that the most important aspect is the influencer-to-community connection.

“The goal is not just about the data, it’s about the potential of people. It’s about the type of community that they have. It’s more about the person. That is what I love about TikTok.”

However, some brands need help with making that connection. That’s when The Influencer Marketing Factory comes in to help.

“Maybe you are really good on data, [but] you’re not good on the community side. That’s why we have our people spend a lot of time understanding each community of these influencers to see if they’re a good fit. So, it’s time consuming, but at the end, you’re going to see the difference in results.”

Alessandro has a lot of advice to offer brands that are looking to create their own successful TikTok campaigns.

First, he says that every brand should take a unique approach to the platform. “Each company should have a different approach on TikTok, because not everyone is doing a trend you should follow”

Next, he says that brands should put their trust in the influencer that they decide to work with. “You should trust their process, their way of thinking even if you don’t understand. They are the ones that know their audiences and they are the ones spending 10-hours a day on the app.”

Finally, he advises smaller brands to start out doing the work and research themselves, especially if they don’t have a decent-sized budget. “At the beginning it’s important that you start understanding what TikTok is and how you would like to use it. What do you want to achieve? What are the KPIs? What type of narrative and storytelling do you want to have?”

Once a brand has answers to all of those questions, and a budget of between $5,000 and $10,000, they can start looking for influencer marketing agencies to work with.

The Influencer Marketing Factory is always looking for innovative ways to get ahead in the industry. Most recently, they became the one of the first marketing agencies to accept cryptocurrency as a form of payment. Although Alessandro’s company is still relatively new, it’s clear that it is already consequential in the influencer marketing industry, and has intentions to continue as such.