INTRO
TONY: Welcome back to the podcast. Now, businesses today are operating in one of the noisiest and most uncertain environments we've seen in years. Consumers are overwhelmed with content. AI is flooding the internet with endless information, advertising costs continue to rise, and trust in traditional institutions, media, and even brands keeps declining. And at the same time, global economic pressure is forcing companies to become more efficient with every marketing dollar they spend.
And in the middle of all this, something important has shifted. People trust people more than brands. And that's why creator-driven marketing and influencer partnerships are no longer just social media trends. They've become a major part of how modern businesses acquire customers, build credibility, and compete in crowded markets. Industry analysts now project the creator economy to exceed hundreds of billions globally as businesses move more budget into creator-led marketing.
But there's also confusion. While influencer marketing is growing rapidly, most business leaders still don't fully understand how to use it strategically. Some see it as hype. Others treat it like random sponsorships or vanity marketing.
Today's guest has spent more than a decade working directly inside this evolution, helping brands build influencer systems that actually drive measurable business growth. She's worked with hundreds of companies, she's seen the mistakes firsthand, and she's developed frameworks designed to turn influence into something scalable and repeatable.
So today we're going to go beyond likes and followers. We're talking about trust, customer acquisition, modern brand building, and what business growth looks like in a world where attention has become one of the most valuable assets on earth. Meet Yuliya Gorenko. Let's get into it. Let's bring her on. Hi, Yuliya. Welcome to The Tony D'Urso Show.
YULIYA: Hello. I am so honored to be here.
TONY: It is so great to have you on. This is a subject that is near and dear to founders, CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business people in our audience. We want to learn how influencer marketing becomes a true growth engine. It's something I've never quite looked at from this lens before.
What I'd like to do first is give you a chance to take us back. What led you into influencer marketing, and what did you get wrong about it early on?
INTERVIEW – PART 1 (BACKSTORY: FROM L'ORÉAL TO INFLUENCER PIONEER)
YULIYA: I think it all started with curiosity. Back in the day when social media was just emerging, brands were starting to realize they could leverage social channels to have a presence and communicate with customers. But at that time, most companies were still focused on traditional media—TV advertising, print, out of home. Those were the proven tactics.
I was very young and very curious. I saw social media developing. I saw new faces and new profiles appearing on those channels that were able to draw massive attention from audiences—literally competing with traditional media.
When I was just getting started, I worked at L'Oréal—probably everybody's familiar with it, one of the largest beauty companies in the world. I was leading social media and public relations for their consumer product division. My day-to-day was mostly working with journalists, TV, and print. And I realized there was more opportunity out there.
Back in those early days, there wasn't much strategy behind it. It was just: there are these people with massive audiences on YouTube and Instagram. How about we approach them, send them our products, build a relationship, and have them mention or recommend the product? I remember the leadership was a little skeptical at first. But about six to nine months in, they started recognizing the full value of this approach and how it was basically the future. Traditional media is kind of dying out. That's where I think most brands should be focusing—digital channels and trusted personalities.
As for what I got wrong early on—I was very young and very naive, and there was not much structure around those influencer partnerships back then. You would basically treat it as a purely relationship-based tactic. You would send out a product, and maybe they'd post about it, maybe not. Maybe they wouldn't even like your product. Maybe they'd say something bad about it. There was no strategy.
I quickly realized that in order to generate results, you need to be very specific about how you think about campaigns. You need to clearly define the scope—what are you expecting from this influencer? Everybody should align on those expectations before the collaboration begins, to ensure both the brand and the influencer are happy with the outcome. There should be an agreement in place, a creative brief in place. Nowadays that's pretty common knowledge. But twelve years ago I had to invent that wheel on my own.
TONY: It's really interesting. There's a lot to unpack here. I've been in marketing and promotions and public relations for many years, but I never really looked at it this way. I'm curious—what do business leaders most misunderstand about influencer marketing?

INTERVIEW – PART 2 (MISCONCEPTIONS: NOT NEW, NOT HARD TO MEASURE)
YULIYA: A few things. First, one of the most common misconceptions I still observe today is treating influencer marketing as an experimental new tactic. This couldn't be further from the truth.
If we take a step back, I truly believe that the influencer as a concept has existed as long as human civilization. There have always been influential personalities, thought leaders, and trendsetters. They just didn't have digital platforms to express themselves. There were always people who set trends and influenced public opinion. So influencer marketing is technically as old as human civilization. It's not experimental. The only thing that has changed is the addition of the technological component.
Nowadays, people like yourself have a platform and a podcast to reach thousands or millions of people through digital means. But the essence of the ability to influence other people remains the same. I would strongly encourage business leaders not to think of influencer marketing as a new trendy thing. It's always been here—it just has a bigger reach now due to technology and social media.
The second big misconception I've heard throughout my career is that influencer marketing is hard to measure. That also couldn't be further from the truth. What is actually hard to measure are things like traditional media. Do you really know how many people saw your ad on a particular page in a magazine? Or out of home—do you actually know how many people saw that ad at a bus stop? Influencer marketing happens mostly online. It's digital. So tracking and attribution are actually far more straightforward than many traditional media channels.
A great example—our team at Mishka worked with Tony on a campaign for one of our clients. We provided him with a clear call to action, created a specific tracking URL that he would feature in his episode description and read verbatim. On the brand side, we were able to see exactly how many people visited that web page and how they engaged with it. On social media, you can see each publication, the engagement, the comments, what people are saying. You can measure sentiment. You can see how many people a particular influencer drove and how many converted—signed up or purchased. The attribution and measurement are very easy and very straightforward. I would love more people to finally realize that and measure it properly.
TONY: And that's Yuliya Gorenko. You can learn more about her and her agency at Mishka.agency. That's M-I-S-C-H-K-A dot agency.
One thing that really struck me during this conversation is how much business has changed over the last few years. AI is changing the way companies create content. Advertising costs continue to rise. New social platforms appear almost overnight. Consumers are flooded with more messages every single day than at any other time in history.
With all of that happening, it's easy to assume that technology is replacing relationships. But I don't think that's what's happening at all. If anything, technology is making trust even more valuable. People still buy from people they believe. They still listen to people they respect, and they look for recommendations from voices they've come to know over time. And that's exactly why today's conversation matters. It's not really about influencer marketing. It's about understanding how people make decisions today—because every entrepreneur is trying to answer the same question: how do I earn attention without shouting louder than everyone else?

SPONSOR BREAK – SHOPIFY
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And now back to Yuliya Gorenko. Before the break, we were talking about why so many business leaders still misunderstand influencer marketing and why trust has become one of the most valuable assets a business can build. Let's jump back into the conversation.

INTERVIEW – PART 3 (EXPECTATIONS, ATTRIBUTION & THE MCDONALD'S LESSON)
TONY: You know, I've been doing this podcast almost twelve years and I've had sponsors who do one commercial—let's just say they spent two thousand dollars—and if they don't get six or eight thousand dollars back right away, they won't resign. They're like bean counters: "If I put this much in, I've got to get three or four times back immediately." That's not how McDonald's was built. They never did just one commercial and called it done.
And there's another piece. I had a sponsor who put a compelling offer on their website and wanted people to use my name as a code when they purchased. So I'd drive people to the website, they'd see the compelling offer and buy because of the offer—but not necessarily remember to enter my code. The sponsor discontinued, but if you look at social media, they're getting thousands and thousands of views on the posts we put out thanking them as a sponsor. It's a misunderstanding. You can't drive people to a site, tell them to enter your code, and also put a super special deal right there on the homepage. It doesn't work that way. There are things they still have to understand about how influencer marketing is different from traditional marketing.
YULIYA: Brand expectations when it comes to influencers are very frequently unfair, and I could talk about this for a long time. From what you just mentioned—"do one post and I expect it to crush my website with new orders and sales"—to another expectation of not being willing to compensate influencers properly for their time and work.
Larger advertisers who approach this channel strategically never treat it as a one-off test. They have a long-term vision—at least six months ahead. What are we doing? Which channels are we activating? How are we tweaking our messaging according to seasonality? They have a very thought-through plan for each particular influencer.
Smaller advertisers sometimes treat it like a little experiment. If they don't see ideal ROI from day one, they give up. And sometimes it's actually the advertiser's fault—not the influencer's—for not working out a clear offer, a clear call to action, or clear attribution. As you described, are people actually using the coupon code? Who knows—maybe they forgot by the time they reached the website.
The clients we work with at the agency fully understand the value of this channel. Some invest more in influencer marketing alone than in all their other media channels combined.
TONY: And these sponsors are coming from a different world—promotions, billboards, radio, TV, magazine ads. It's very different. But now they're starting to trust creators and personalities. Why is that trust shifting? How did it happen?
YULIYA: There is research—it's pretty common knowledge in marketing—that trust decreases with the scale of reach of the media channel. The larger the media channel, the less trust it has with the consumer. Think of a nationwide TV campaign. The consumer might see the ad and not respond because they treat it as white noise.
In fact, if you compare nationwide media versus local media, trust is much higher locally—anywhere from twenty to sixty percent higher. People trust their local reporters and journalists more because they believe they're less biased and more involved in the community. Now do you know what the most trusted channel is? It's person-to-person recommendation. Peer-to-peer recommendation. When a trusted friend or family member tells you they hired a great contractor and recommends them, of course you'd rather call that contractor than search for one from scratch.
That's where the magic of influencer marketing happens. You might not know an influencer personally, but these personalities develop a really strong bond with their audience—almost to the point where the audience feels like they know this person. They listen to them every day on a podcast, they watch them on YouTube, and they see them in their social feed. It feels personal—like a personalized touchpoint. There is a strong level of trust there.
What we love to say is that influencer marketing is word of mouth amplified. Word of mouth is the most trusted channel, and now with technology and social media, we're able to communicate one-to-many while maintaining almost the same level of trust.
TONY: That's very interesting. In my years in corporate America doing promotions, I noticed that images with people on them got more response than those without. Sometimes a little more, sometimes a lot more. But when there's a person in the image, it attracts more attention. And I've noticed in my own purchase decisions—if I'm buying a lawnmower and I can get it from a store I know nothing about, or from somewhere where I know the person or recognize their face, I find myself gravitating toward the one where I have that personal connection. That trust transfers from the person to the transaction.
And with influencers, because you know the person, you watch their show, you listen to their podcast—when they promote something it carries so much more weight. When you look at your own purchases, you really get it.
YULIYA: Exactly. And with that—as you mentioned—there can be mistakes in choosing the right influencer. How do we make sure we're selecting the right ones?

INTERVIEW – PART 4 (CHOOSING THE RIGHT INFLUENCER: ART, SCIENCE & GUT)
TONY: How do we choose the right influencer? As entrepreneurs and business owners looking to get the most bang for our buck, how do we make sure we're doing this right?
YULIYA: That's the hardest part of any influencer campaign. It's what makes it or breaks it, because there are influencers who will drive tremendous traction and sales, and there are plenty of people who will just take your money, do a lazy promo, and generate nothing.
There is art and science to it. Some of the things we do at the agency—we always put a ton of research into any campaign. We try to understand who the trusted voices are, who the real experts are in this particular niche. We use certain tools, but we still do a lot of manual research—almost like keyword research—understanding what the community talks about and who the top voices are. Then we evaluate whether there is real engagement behind those voices: actual engagement, viewership numbers, and listenership numbers, to understand how involved the audience actually is.
And then sometimes you just need to listen to your gut. I know that coming from an expert with over a decade of experience, you might expect me to give you some interesting shortcut. But honestly, just listen to your gut—because at the end of the day, you are the business owner or marketing leader. You understand your brand's DNA, your brand's voice and aesthetic. You need that gut feeling about whether this person will properly represent your brand. Will they be the right brand ambassador, the right brand advocate?
On our team, we have probably over thirty checkpoints and parameters we evaluate when vetting influencer profiles—things like audience demographics, where their audience is based, the age range, and for B2B campaigns, which industries those audiences work in. But once you've gathered all that data, trust your gut. Is this person actually going to represent our brand properly?
TONY: Yuliya just said something that really stayed with me. She talked about trusting your instincts. Technology can give us data. AI can analyze patterns. Reports can fill pages with numbers. But leadership still requires judgment. Sometimes the biggest business decisions can't be made by a spreadsheet—they're made by experience, wisdom, and having a clear picture of where you're trying to go.
That's one of the biggest lessons I've learned after interviewing hundreds of world-class entrepreneurs, CEOs, founders, and thought leaders over the years. The most successful entrepreneurs don't simply work harder. They think differently. They know exactly what they're building, why they're building it, and what success looks like.
That's why I created the Vision Map Blueprint. It walks you through the first three foundational steps designed to help you create greater focus and momentum. First, define your vision—what are you really trying to build? Second, discover your purpose—why does it matter to you? Third, create your long-term objective—what result are you working toward over the next few years?
The questions are simple. Most people never take the time to answer them. Yet your answers influence almost every decision you'll make in your business and your life. As I often say, clarity creates momentum. When you know exactly where you're going, your decisions become easier, your priorities become clearer, and your progress accelerates.
If you're ready to build your future, visit TonyDUrso.com/vision. That's Tony D-U-R-S-O dot com slash vision. Download your free Vision Map Blueprint. Work through the guided exercises—you'll be surprised how much clarity comes from writing your answers down. You'll complete the first three foundational steps of the Vision Map, creating the foundation for everything that follows.
Remember, clarity creates momentum. Let's make it happen.
And now back to Yuliya Gorenko. Before the break, we were talking about choosing the right people to represent your brand and why authenticity matters more than popularity. Let's jump back into the conversation.

INTERVIEW – PART 5 (MARKETING IS EVERYWHERE: GUIDING YOUR TEAM)
TONY: I am of the belief that almost everything you buy and have is because of marketing. I bought this shirt because I saw somebody wear it online. You're wearing your headset because you saw it somewhere. Your desk, your computer, your picture frame—you didn't come up with some of those ideas on your own. You saw them somewhere. They were marketed to you. Almost everything we have is because of marketing—by communicating what we have properly to the people who will benefit from it.
So let's say I'm a corporate executive going into a marketing meeting tomorrow after hearing this conversation. My team are people I'm paying the big bucks—they know their business. How can I guide them to make sure we're actually doing influencer marketing properly? Our company gets sales from multiple channels—retail, word of mouth, magazines. How do I break into influencer marketing without stepping on toes?
YULIYA: I think the first thing any marketing team needs to do in the early stages of influencer planning is map out a very clear objective. What are we trying to accomplish with this campaign? Are we trying to go viral and generate awareness—as many eyeballs as possible on our product? Or are we trying to create educational content that explains a certain issue in the industry and positions us as the trusted solution? Or are we purely trying to drive sales—conversions?
Have that very clear understanding first: what are you trying to accomplish with your influencer program? Once you define that, next is how you get there. Brainstorm with your team which influencer segments you want to target. What's the ideal persona profile of the influencer you want to work with? Create a very clear brief—a document with your talking points and creative requirements. The influencer needs to understand what message you're trying to deliver. Give them a laser-focused message. Tell them the key things they need to cover. And give them a very clear call to action—just mentioning your product is good for awareness, but it might not drive immediate action. If you're focused on sales, make sure you have a strong call to action and that the influencer repeats it, features it in their episode description, and amplifies it through additional channels like a newsletter. Be very specific. My main recommendation: don't just say "let's do something because everybody's doing it." Know exactly what you want and why.
TONY: Now I'm really getting into this. You mentioned awareness, going viral, and ROI. Is this a dichotomy? Do I want awareness or do I want sales? How do I know which direction my company should go—whether it's just starting out or has been around for a while?

INTERVIEW – PART 6 (AWARENESS VS. ROI: KNOWING YOUR COMPANY)
YULIYA: It truly depends on the company. Let me use L'Oréal as an example—my alma mater. It's a huge company with multiple distribution channels. You can find their products at a drugstore, online at various retailers, on Amazon, at Target. Their distribution is so diverse that for brands at that scale—like L'Oréal, or McDonald's, or Coca-Cola—awareness and brand recognition typically come first, because it's incredibly hard for them to track direct attribution. They activate so many marketing channels and their product is available in so many locations that it's very hard to attribute a particular influencer mention to a particular sale at a particular store.
So if you're a nationwide advertiser with a physical product available across different locations, you should probably be more focused on awareness.
But if you're a direct-to-consumer product that people can only buy from your website, this allows you to be much more focused on driving people to that one place and converting them—maximizing their order value. You build a funnel where all your marketing efforts lead people to your website.
And consider your buyer cycle. For a consumer good like mascara, it could be an almost immediate purchase decision—I saw the ad, I liked it, I pressed order. But for B2B software, the buyer journey might take three, six, or nine months. The influencer strategy looks very different for each.
I understand everyone wants to see ROI at the end of the day. But you also need to be realistic about your market, your product, and your distribution. And before anyone says, "We'll just ask AI to figure it out"—I've worked in the trenches long enough to know it just doesn't work that way.
TONY: That last exchange really got me thinking. Every few years someone declares that business has completely changed—first the internet, then social media, then smartphones, now AI. And there's no question these technologies have changed the way we work. But here's something I don't think has changed at all: people still want to do business with people they trust. Technology changes. Human nature doesn't.
People still want honesty. They still appreciate authenticity. They still remember the person who genuinely helped them solve a problem. That's one of the reasons I really enjoyed this conversation with Yuliya. Yes, we're talking about influencer marketing and AI and customer acquisition—but underneath all of that, we're really talking about relationships.
The businesses that last aren't usually the ones chasing every new trend. They're the ones that understand people. They listen, they serve, they keep showing up—and over time, they earn trust. As entrepreneurs, it's easy to become distracted. There's always another platform, another marketing strategy, another software tool, another promise that this one thing will finally solve everything.
But maybe the better question isn't "what's the newest strategy?" Maybe it's "how do I become more valuable to the people I serve?" Because when you consistently create value, people notice. When you consistently solve problems, people remember. And when people remember you, marketing becomes a whole lot easier.
Let's get back to Yuliya. Before the break, we were talking about how artificial intelligence is changing marketing and why authentic human relationships may actually become even more valuable because of it.

INTERVIEW – PART 7 (AI IN MARKETING: WHERE IT HELPS & WHERE IT FALLS SHORT)
TONY: Advertising costs are rising. AI content is flooding everything. It's changing how people market—the whole landscape. Should we rely so much on AI? How do we bring it into the mix?
YULIYA: At this point, AI is just inevitable. There's no way any of us can stop it. And I think it can be very useful—it's already massively adopted in advertising. Where I see the most value is in automation of things like ad targeting. There are algorithms powered by AI that identify where your buyer is online and show your ad to the right people at the right time. It's not done manually anymore. Things like targeting, ad automation—that is very, very helpful. That's what most marketing teams rely on these days.
When it comes to content creation, though, I'm a little more skeptical. I understand some people already fully rely on AI for content. But I think influencer marketing in particular is not going anywhere—and it may actually become even more important because, as you said, content creation has become so easy. There's so much content out there, and it's not always good. It doesn't always resonate or deliver real value. People see this, understand this, and almost seek more human connection amid all this technological boom.
I'm seeing a huge comeback for conventions and in-person events. Everybody wants to mingle, network, and connect. People really appreciate being around other people and building real relationships. So I believe—and maybe I'm biased because I do this for a living—that the power of human connection and human influence is not going anywhere. AI can serve as a tool to automate your social media publications or draft some posts for you. But the most successful influencers our team works with succeed because they are so passionate about what they do, they come up with unique and creative ideas, and they truly deliver value to their audience.
Among all this AI development, influencer marketing will remain a kind of beacon of hope for human connection.

INTERVIEW – PART 8 (THE INFLUENCER SAUCE FRAMEWORK)
TONY: Before we wrap up, I want to make sure we get this in. You created a framework called the Influencer Sauce. Can you tell us about it?
YULIYA: Sure, and I'll keep it quick. We speak with a lot of clients who are lost. They'll say, "Influencer marketing sounds cool but we don't know how to implement it. Where do we start?"
What we always tell clients is: stop reinventing the wheel. You already have your marketing strategy in place. You already have upcoming campaigns—a new product launch, a new feature launch, an industry event you're exhibiting at. You already have your marketing plan mapped out.
Stop thinking about influencer marketing as a completely separate new experimental tactic. That's why we called it Influencer Sauce. We say: add it as a layer on top of your existing marketing strategy. You already have your pizza—just spread the sauce.
What that means is: add your influencer activations to the marketing tactics you already have in place. If your PR team is working on a big product launch, partner with influencers to amplify it. Have them talk about it. Don't hire them for something completely unrelated and disconnected from what you're already doing.
The idea behind the Influencer Sauce framework is that influencer marketing should be connected and tied into your overall marketing strategy. When you start thinking about it that way, it becomes very clear and easy to understand—where am I bringing these influencers in, what am I asking them to do, and how will I work with them.
TONY: That is a really smart framework. I love that. Influencer Sauce—brilliant. A practical way to look at it.

INTERVIEW – PART 9 (CHOOSING THE RIGHT SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM)
TONY: One last thing before we close. There are so many social media platforms—they keep springing up constantly. I got on multiple platforms because of their perks and benefits, but I was so diluted that I eventually pulled back to the main four or five. That's where I'm still getting great results. But even then, they're not all right for every product. How do you decide which social media platform is worth pursuing?
YULIYA: At its core, marketing is about understanding how to reach your target audience. So identify where that audience is, what content they consume, and which platforms they're on. You need to do the research and understand what your audience is interested in, where they spend their time, where they go to learn, and where they go for entertainment. You can reach them while they're actively working or while they're relaxing at the end of the day scrolling TikTok.
The biggest misconception I see with brands is trying to assign a certain social media channel to a particular type of brand. People say, "Oh, you're a B2B brand—you must only be on LinkedIn." That's wrong. Sure, if your audience is there, give it a try. But you're not limited to LinkedIn.
Right now we're doing a lot of work for clients on Discord—a platform for online communities—to reach software developers. That's where they actually socialize and talk shop. They might come to LinkedIn sometimes, but that's not where they get inspired or have real conversations. We also find those audiences on YouTube or in niche newsletters.
I hate to be that person, but the answer is always: it depends. It depends on your brand and where your audience actually is. Once you identify what your audience is interested in, you'll be able to confidently choose the right platform.

OUTRO
TONY: Brilliant response. I really appreciate that. Once again, this is Yuliya Gorenko, who talked about how influencer marketing can become a true growth engine if you know your stuff. Find out more about her at Mishka.agency—that's M-I-S-C-H-K-A dot agency.
Yuliya, thank you so much. I'm a longtime marketer and this was great. There's a lot to think about and so much good stuff to apply. I just want to thank you so much for being on the show and talking to us.
YULIYA: Thank you so much. It was wonderful.
TONY: Absolutely amazing. Take it from a longtime marketer—this is the good stuff. I love that Influencer Sauce framework. Put that sauce on, make it thick, and watch your campaigns grow.
If you like this, share it with your friends. Tell them about Yuliya and her agency, tell them about the Influencer Sauce, and some of what she's been through and learned. This is some really hard-won information.
And wherever you're listening or watching, would you please follow the show? It helps to bring more amazing guests to you. All right. Let's use this and let's help you move on your journey to success. Thanks. Remember, just take action. Success awaits those who persevere and remain steadfast despite the odds. Sow good seeds, do good deeds. And I'll see you on the next episode.