Maximize Influencer Marketing To Grow Your Reach With Jon Iadonisi
Influence is a powerful tool, especially in this day and age where social media influencers are rampant. But how does influencing work when it comes to marketing, and how is it measured? Today’s guest, Jon Iadonisi, has the answers. Jon is the Founder/CEO of VizSense, a leading provider of authentic micro-influencer marketing solutions. In this episode, he discusses the mechanics of influencership, how it’s used and measured, and how you can maximize it to reach your target audience. Jon likens influencer networking to the spread of a virus. Interested to learn more about his insight? Tune in to learn more about influencer marketing and hear about Jon’s story and spiritual journey to finding faith and God.
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Maximize Influencer Marketing To Grow Your Reach With Jon Iadonisi
I've got someone with me that's going to talk about something pretty cool around influencer marketing. It's become a hot topic here over the last couple of years. As there are a lot of crowded, noisy communications going on out there. You try to cold call someone, email, connect on social media. How do you become an influencer? We're going to talk a little bit about that and other topics with Jon Iadonisi of VizSense. Jon, welcome to show.
Influencer Marketing: Influencers are the people that you want to go to before you make a purchase decision.
Thanks so much for having me, Chad. I appreciate it.
Where are you calling in from? Which state are you located in?
I am in Dallas, Texas.
My grandparents used to live in Richardson. I made it down there.
Being originally from the Boston area, I can tell you that I'm certainly not used to the heat yet.
It's for our readers to get to know you. Speaking of influencer marketing, I like to go back to 6, 7, 8. When you were young, it sounds like you were in Boston. What was your passion? What did you like to do when you woke up? What did you do for fun?
I know my mom could probably give you a lot of answers to this. I would say that there are two things that I did for fun and enjoyed. One was figuring out how things work. I built computers, circuit boards, all sorts of stuff. I probably shouldn't have been messing with at that age. I also shot BB guns. For some reason, when I was behind the rifle, I was able to slow my mind down in a way that allowed me to focus on one small thing, and that was making sure that bullet went right in the bullseye. Those two things took a lot of my time when I was at that young age.
I haven't thought of BB guns in a long time. I remember one time, we had the pump-action BB gun. You bounce off the wall and it wouldn't hurt if it hit a fly, but then this guy had a BB gun that had an air pump on it and I'm like, “Go ahead. That won't hurt.” He shot me right in the belly. I was like, “That was a stinger.”
Even at that age, we never shot at anybody.
Thinking of the connection between then and now, BB guns and your childhood, is there a connection between what you love to do then and what you're doing now?
Influencer Marketing: Marketing is not just about the look and feel. It’s about matching, typesetting, audience analysis, targeting of content, metrics, and attribution. All those things are largely not creative traits.
I would say looking at those two things because, on the surface, they seem a bit paradoxical. One is extremely active, and the second one could be almost viewed as the data, especially if you are a spectator watching a rifle competition. I would say that the secret thread in both of those is being able to have a creative mind to explore things that are unexplored while at the same time being able to focus on something extremely precise and have a definable end state. Those two things have been interwoven in how I approach problem-solving and building businesses.
To go from then to now, there are always speed bumps along the way. At the time, they probably felt like the hardest thing you could ever possibly imagine. Is there one of those times you're comfortable sharing on the show with our readers that you made it through, and then what was your process to get through the tough times?
Typically, when I talk to people and tell my story, I’m like, “I was shot overseas. I was on military operations in combat and got shot by some bad guys.” That to me sent me on a different course trajectory, but one of the things in looking back on it was, it was more of a painful memory was losing my father. He died 61 years old, got leukemia right after I got out of the Navy, and fought valiantly for a little over four years and then died. My father was an amazing person. A great example to follow, somebody that was well-liked, respected, and gave us my brother and me a lot of love.
He was a wonderful husband to my mom. That's something you can't prepare for. I was not only prepared, but I didn't really understand the after-effects, the grieving process, how that works, how life goes on and how things are permanently different from that experience. I would say that was one of the most painful memory.
Obviously, you're older now than you were then. It sounds like you've dealt with that. Any advice for our readers on what is the way to deal with times like that.
Being somebody of faith, I don't believe anything is random. I think that things happen to us. We may not know why. We may not be able to unpack the rational reasons, but being able to know that there is God, he's good and he wants the best for us. That faith aspect helped me get through, but the loss of my father was a rebirth of a new faith in me.
Through that pain and grieving process, I rekindled my faith and learned to establish more of a relationship with Jesus in a participatory way, as opposed to somebody that just checked the box and went to church. From then on, my life has been nothing short of supernatural and extraordinary, but I had to go through that chasm of pain first. I'm not saying that everybody has to, but it's usually when we're at the bottom of the barrel and on our knees is when we start to look up.
I was in a head-on car accident in 2000. We all lived. Luckily, we were in a convertible and it was amazing. The people who have witnessed the accident said it looked like my best friend was pulled out of the front seat by an angel and dropped over on the side of the road.
I've heard many stories like that, and I believe it 100%.
His mom and my mom are extremely religious. I use that term lightly because to your point, relationship and religion can’t be separate.
Spiritual and religion are two different things. One is this dogmatic recitation of pros and stuff, and the other one is actually living in a spiritual sense. Obviously, you need the biblical basis but at the same time, I tell everybody I'd much rather be with somebody that understands the spiritual side from an experiential standpoint and somebody from a theoretical standpoint.
I've been watching that show, The Chosen. Have you seen that?
Yes, I have. In fact, one of the people that is an advisor on that regularly speaks to our church. We go to a church in Dallas called The Upper Room, which is amazing.
My favorite scene is the credits at the beginning when they play the gray fish going around in a circle, and it's a catchy song. All of a sudden, one fish becomes blue and goes the opposite direction of the fish swimming. By the end, I'm like, “I wonder how many bluefish there are at the end of it.” We paused it, my wife and I, “There's thirteen.” Go figure 1 plus 12.
We've launched this app called 77Pray. It helps people remind themselves to connect to God, and it's free. You can have a relationship with God. You just ask. There's a crowdsource prayer option, and there's a handful of cool little features on this thing. When I see that show off the gray fish turning blue, to put simply, what I believe I'm being called to is turn more gray fish blue.
Influencer Marketing: You can pray as much as you want, and you can never be wrong.
One of the fascinating things Michael Heiser talks about is in a couple of his books. When Babel fell, there was a principality that was cast. At that time, there were about 70 countries in existence in the world. When you look at Jesus's entire ministry, plus the disciples, he had about 70 people. It's almost like each number of people he had was meant to go to each nation at that time. Pretty fascinating stuff.
I didn't know the 70. That's neat. I run the math and we’re launching. It's in Android already. It comes out on Apple any day. That is the day when my grandfather passed away, which was many years ago. He was in the Navy like you were. I looked up to my grandfather, and he passed down a lot of amazing things. This is in his honor. The math says if 77 people sign up for Revlon and they invite someone to the app once a day for 77 days, that's 5,929 personal invites. What's not in there is how many posted to Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.
There's some virality that could go there. If only 10% of the 5,900 signup that's 600, we just moved from 70 to 600. Think of the math after 600. If you get a 10X every time, 70 to 700, to 7,000, to 70,000, it's going to hold up. You've been around influencer marketing. What have you found to work to cause something to go viral?
There are a couple of different laws. People have mathematically trying to assign an equation. One is Metcalfe's Law. One is Beckstrom's Law, which Rod Beckstrom invented. Both of these guys took this concept of a network effect and took different spins on, “How do you quantify the spread of a network?” Now the term virality has its roots in epidemiology.
It's how cells actually spread or how a virus spreads, and using your content model, we developed AI models to see how it spreads. When you're dealing with people, what we've found from the data standpoint is there are three main aspects that allow for that virality, if you want to call that to take effect. The first one is content. You need persuasive content. In your case, it's a 77 prayers app. That content should be persuasive. There are different metrics you can measure persuasions, not just imagery. It's also textual.
The second one is who is the identity and/or the attribution of the person spreading the content? That matters. If somebody that's not known posts unbelievable content, it might go far, but if somebody that is known and has credibility spreads content, that's going to go even further. The gasoline on it is when both of these items are backed by a third, which is how engaged that network is? Are these people in the network? Do they participate in the online discussions or do they opine? Are they passionate about these topics? When you have all three is when you have a combustible situation, which will likely result in max reach.
Those are things we don't necessarily think about if we're not living in the world that you're living in.
I get a list of every letter that went through the Philadelphia and Boston Post Office right after the Revolutionary War. I had a name and address, to and from. That Philadelphia Post Office was a major hub if you will, back then. We actually determined from looking at the data and some of the historians had determined that there was somebody that got more male than Ben Franklin did at that time. That, to me, is a way you can use data to maybe we've discovered an unknown influencer back then. Looking at data and looking at the way things spread is about what we are doing. Developing mathematical and computer models to help us understand that better is a big part of our business.
Thinking about that, talk to me a little bit more about some of the challenges in the industry that you're seeing and how do you and your company overcome those challenges?
The biggest challenge I would say is, one is the definition. The term influencer people routinely supplement with the word celebrity. We don't see the world that way. You can be a celebrity and be in movies. That doesn't mean you're going to necessarily cause people to want to buy more hand cream. We take the term influence in its pejorative sense like the ability to actually induce a behavioral change and influence somebody.
What we're seeing in this industry is there are influencers for lip and eye makeup. There are influences for anti-aging makeup and anti-wrinkle makeup. They're influencers for hair care. There are influenced in each of these little segments of industries. They're super smart, specialized, and the people that you want to go to before you make a purchase decision. Several years ago, you did not see that. You saw somebody that was a beauty influencer and they knew about beauty, wishing this gets specialized now.
That's a big difference. That requires an immense amount of data to understand, manage and measure. The second thing is fraud. People mistakenly attribute follower count to influence. The fact of the matter is you can open up an Instagram account. You can spend some money and you can have 10,000 followers in a matter of days and weeks. Unfortunately, those followers are fraudulent in their bots but a lot of these brands don't know that. People are gaming the system with millions of followers who aren't even human. Those two challenges are some of the biggest.
Lastly, I'd say that the final thing is marketing is skewing more towards a data-centric trade. It might have started off in Madison Avenue with ultra-creative people, the Mad Men Don Draper of the world. Now, you're going to have to talk to the geeky people on the other side of the office that do the coding. You're going to have to talk to the data scientists because marketing is not just about to look and feel, but it's about matching, typesetting, audience analysis, the targeting of content, metrics, attribution, and all those things are largely not creative traits. They're more discreet, mathematical, numerical.
My other show is called AI For Sales. We interview people leveraging AI and big data. It's amazing, whether it's healthcare or biotech. It's everywhere. That makes me think of Pam Jordan. We have one of these shared fractional CFOs at my day job, and she is an influencer. We didn't know that until a call where she goes, “I'm the influencer for gluten intolerance.” She had an issue with it. She's done it for several years. All these blogs, she goes, “I know everything about it.” We were like, “You're a real influencer?” The guy asked on the webinar. She's like, “Yes. I'm a real influencer.” You never know where these people can be hiding. It's anybody.
One of the coolest things about this job is we've contacted people in the middle of small-town America like, “I actually can get paid for this stuff?” People have become major income producers for their family where they never thought they could before, because maybe they have been blogging about keto recipes for several years, and now they've gained such an audience that brands want to get at that audience. They're willing to partner with these people. It's been cool.
The last question is my favorite question, and we've touched on it a bit, but I ask it anyway because it's my favorite question. What role does faith play in your life and your journey?
I would say it's the center. I don't like to use a pyramid. It is the center. It is by which everything, my decisions, my actions, I would say my thoughts and my emotions. I've all tried to ground my faith. I've tried to make that the core of each part of what I do and who I am. It's an evolutionary process. I don't always do what I probably want to do. I am human. I do make mistakes, not afraid to admit that, but at the same time, it is a goal and it is a North Star that I try to stay as the center of everything that I do.
If someone doesn't have a relationship with God and they look at it like, “I believe God created me, but I can't have a relationship with squishy air,” what would you say to that person? It sounds like you have a relationship. How did you get there, and what do you do to get one?
There are a lot of different approaches to take with that particular person. To me, the relationship is a spiritual relationship, and that is obviously tough to quantify but at the same time, it's a feeling. I would explain to them the same way you feel in your gut with a gut instinct. That feeling is the way that you interact in this context.
Our heart is the epicenter. We have a spiritual heart and a physical heart. Our heart is the epicenter by which we have these relationships. I would say to that person, “How do you quantify love?” because of his love of feeling. “How do you relate with love and how do you know that you love?” It’s because there’s no measurement of it.
As people, there are certain interactions we have that we probably can't quantify as some emotional construct or a dopamine oxytocin release that we instinctively operate from. I believe that those are the faculties that allow us to have a spiritual relationship. Those are the questions that get asked, and those are the ways that I would describe with this person.
In terms of like, “How do I know it's real?” I would say, “It doesn't hurt to try. It doesn't hurt to pray.” You have an unlimited budget, which is great. You can pray as much as you can, and you can never be wrong. From the biblical sense and looking at the Bible, he always hears his people. If you pray and you accept, your life will be changed. The biggest challenge is taking that step, “Why would you not want to try?” It would be my other piece, I would say.
Especially when you see many people smiling from ear to ear saying, “This is amazing that I can be on planet Earth and be part of all of this.” Other people are saying, “I'm just in the suffering.” They're like, “You can actually have heaven on Earth.” This has been fun. I appreciate your time. Jon Iadonisi is the CEO of VizSense.
These guys help with awareness campaigns, direct response, content, managed services, industry insights and social listening. You've heard a little bit here, and that's just the tip of the spear. If you're looking to hear from both sides, whether you're an influencer or need to get into influencers, you probably help with this. If someone wants to get ahold of you, Jon, what would be the best way to reach out to you?
Go to our website. We have multiple ways to reach out to us depending on who you are. We'll make sure you get to the right person.
Everybody, thanks for joining another episode. We've been talking with Jon Iadonisi with VizSense, Founder, CEO. They’ve been around for several years. What a cool conversation. Thank you, Jon.
Have a good one, Chad. Thanks so much.
Thanks, everybody.
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About Jon Iadonisi
I've begun building computers and writing code with the Commodore 64 when I was 8. Now I love to design and build new types of technology businesses that tackle antiquated methods and legacy thinking. Been building computers and software since I was 8.
After successfully founding and exiting two profitable technology companies, my focus today is the intersection of art, science, and public data. Currently, I'm blessed to be the Founder and CEO of VizSense, a Dallas-based Influencer Marketing and Sales Intelligence Firm that works with Fortune 5-5000 clients, delivering highly specialized marketing and sales campaigns engineered to a specific brand’s DNA.
