Andrea Rosi, Head of Operations and Marketing at StatSocial, shares her career journey and offers insights into how StatSocial helps brands understand audience interests, media preferences, and influencer relationships to drive more effective marketing strategies.
She highlights the importance of an audience-first approach, especially in B2B marketing, where looking beyond job titles to understand people as individuals leads to more authentic and meaningful connections. Andrea also breaks down StatSocial’s marketing mix, spanning paid search, social media, and event marketing, and discusses the ongoing challenge of balancing long-term brand building with short-term lead generation.
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About StatSocial
StatSocial is a people-based intelligence platform that delivers identity-resolved, AI-ready audience data built from public social behaviour across major platforms. Powered by StatSocial’s Identity Graph and Knowledge Graph, the platform enables audience insights, influencer strategy, targeting, and exposure-based measurement. Leading brands and agencies use StatSocial to understand real audiences, improve marketing decisions, and quantify impact across paid, earned, and owned channels. Learn more at StatSocial.com
About Andrea Rosi
Andrea Rosi is a leading marketing and operations expert with over 10+ years experience working with Fortune 500 companies in the marcom technology space. Her background includes expertise in go-to-market strategies, product and content marketing, product management and sales.
Time Stamps
00:00:18 – Guest Introduction: Andrea Rossi
00:01:46 – Overview of StatSocial’s Product
00:02:18 – Understanding Audience Insights
00:06:01 – Benefits for B2B Companies
00:10:12 – Risk Aversion in B2B Marketing
00:14:19 – Balancing Data and Creativity
00:14:33 – StatSocial’s Marketing Strategy
00:16:08 – Measuring Event Marketing Success
00:18:00 – Budgeting for Branding vs. Lead Gen
00:19:06 – Future of Marketing and AI
Quotes
“I think one of the biggest challenges in B2B is that engaging, analyzing and engaging audiences has been fairly limited to people’s title.” Andrea Rosi, Head of Operations and Marketing at StatSocial.
“It’s been a really critical gap is being able to enable clients to take an audience first approach to their influencer programs. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve spoken to clients that previously would choose influencers based on reach and engagement metrics.” Andrea Rosi, Head of Operations and Marketing at StatSocial.
“It’s hard to find a balance sometimes… you don’t necessarily know what movement is going to go viral. So you use data to the best of your ability.” Andrea Rosi, Head of Operations and Marketing at StatSocial.
Follow Andrea Rosi:
Andrea Rosi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrea-rosi-343b8158/
StatSocial website: https://www.statsocial.com/
StatSocial on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/statsocial/
Follow Mike:
Mike Maynard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemaynard/
Napier website: https://www.napierb2b.com/
Napier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/napier-partnership-limited/
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Transcript: Interview with Andrea Rosi at StatSocial
Speakers: Mike Maynard, Andrea Rosi
Mike: Thanks for listening to Marketing B2B Tech, the podcast from Napier, where you can find out what really works in B2B marketing today.
Welcome to Marketing B2B Technology, the podcast from Napier. I’m Mike Maynard, and today I’m joined by Andrea Rosi. Andrea is the Chief Operating Officer of StatSocial. Welcome to the podcast, Andrea.
Andrea: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Mike: It’s great to have you on the podcast. I mean, what we like to do to get started is learn a little bit about you. So can you tell us a bit about your career and why you’ve chosen StatSocial as your current company?
Andrea: Yeah, for sure. So I started out my career mostly in product marketing, and I actually started at one of the world’s biggest tech companies, Oracle. And it was a great start to my career in terms of getting a foundation for the principles I needed to bring elsewhere. But where I really thrive and have learned I want to stay is more in that startup space. So smaller companies where I feel like I can make a really big impact quickly and kind of don’t have to worry about all the red tape that you run into at some bigger organizations. And so I shifted from product marketing into more commercial and general marketing. And now I’ve transitioned also into both marketing and operations. My role here at StatSocial is very marketing focused. I do have operational tasks that I handle, but really providing oversight to our marketing team and how we engage with our clients. But yeah, so I’m really enjoying it. And the reason I decided to come here is because I learned sort of earlier on in my career that a startup is really only as good as the leadership and the product. And our CEO here, I think, is super well-rounded and a great leader. And the product is highly differentiated in the market compared to others that I’ve worked with. And I just think there’s so much opportunity. And so I’ve been here almost five years now. And we’re still going strong.
Mike: So sounds great. I mean, it’s a great lead into the next question, which is really to ask you about the product. What does that social do?
Andrea: So we are an insights company, and we source much of our data from social media, which if you think about how much people engage on social really delivers just a wealth of information about an individual. And so we’re actually able to view an audience’s aggregated interests, their media preferences, the influencers that they trust and engage with, as well as brand affinities and so on. Marketers will use all of these data points that have been really missing to inform media placements, influencer strategy, the creative that they decide to use and how it will resonate with an audience. So providing the most holistic picture of an audience, whether that be a brand’s following or maybe just target consumers, to be able to craft campaigns that will resonate more deeply.
Mike: So it’s interesting because, you know, what you’re talking about is really finding out in depth about these audiences and not necessarily your customers’ audiences, but the audiences they want to reach. So, for example, people following an influencer. I mean, that obviously sounds, you know, really useful. I mean, how do your customers use it? What’s the compelling reason for using StatSocial?
Andrea: Yeah, so we support a variety of use cases. And it’s kind of funny because when I first joined five years ago, we could be so many things to so many people. And now we’ve really honed in on where we fit in the market, which has been it’s taken time and energy for sure. But so where we see The best fit is around A, insights, so better understanding prominent personas within a specific audience to be able to know what’s unique about them, what their preferences are, how to best reach them. So part of it really is more just like insights and planning. The influencer component has been huge for us around being able to validate an influencer’s audience and how well they actually align with the brand’s target. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve spoken to clients that previously would choose influencers based on reach engagement metrics, really like these high level, we call them vanity metrics that don’t necessarily translate to anything. And then they go in and look at their audiences and realize they completely missed the mark on who they’re trying to reach. And so that’s been a really critical gap is being able to enable clients to take an audience first approach to their influencer programs. In the US, I will say, we also have like slightly different use cases due to GDPR reasons. And so while in Europe we do provide contextual targeting, in the U.S. there is the ability to take action on some of these more specific audiences for paid media and for measurement as well.
Mike: So that certainly makes sense. I mean, I can understand why people would want that, you know, from picking the right influencer to actually be able to reach their audience in the US. You know, I’m interested, who uses StatSocial? Who are your customers?
Andrea: Yeah, so we have honestly a range of agencies and brands. For brands, we see a lot of traction in the CPG space, travel, retail. Think about like, especially those types of brands that rely heavily on influencer, they tend to be very interested in our capabilities for that reason.
Mike: And I’m not surprised. I mean, there’s a lot of customers in the B2C sector. What I’m really interested in knowing is, do you think this technology has benefits for B2B companies?
Andrea: I definitely do. Again, I think B2B targeting in Europe is very challenging. So when I speak, I’m speaking mostly to our capabilities in the U.S. around B2B. I think one of the biggest challenges in B2B is that engaging, analyzing and engaging audiences has been fairly limited to people’s title, like the companies they work at, the industries they’re in. And so using those data points to inform campaigns tend to make it more of like a Broadcasting campaign like yeah, you’re getting in front of the right people But you’re really just educating them about what you do what your company does and the capabilities Whereas there’s much more of like an emotional Connection that I think can happen in the b2c space because you can better understand those consumers and you can hit them with topics that might be just something they’re more passionate about than just work. So their family life, their fitness routines, all of those types of things. So I think B2B definitely has a huge opportunity, especially here in the US, if people can take into consideration who they are as people, not necessarily where they sit as a job, and speak to them in a deeper level, connect with them in a deeper level that way.
Mike: And I mean, that’s really interesting because you talk about who they are as people rather than what’s on their business card, I guess. I mean, do you think that’s the fundamental issue with B2B is that they haven’t really understood it’s about who their audience is as people? Or do you think there’s other issues where B2B is being held back compared to B2C?
Andrea: Through my lens, I think that It’s a big part of it. I will say reaching very specific audiences is challenging across B2B as well because like a lot of times a B2B audience might be very much smaller than a B2C audience. So there’s less room for error when it comes to like targeting a B2B audience. In my personal experience, we run into that in our own marketing tactics. where let’s say you’re looking to meet or get in front of just C-suite individuals or senior VPs, etc. That’s a very small pool of individuals. So there’s only so many that you can really target and so many ways to get in front of them versus if you’re selling sneakers, you know, there could be a huge demographic and a huge pool of people that you can try to reach. And so it can be more broad targeting. So I definitely think part of it is just how niche B2B audiences can be. I also think it’s the lack of data on those individuals that prevents us from really crafting campaigns that can resonate deeply with them.
Mike: Now it’s interesting, it’s obviously, you know, it is difficult in B2B to reach people through social. I mean, do you think there is anything we could be learning from the consumer marketers that would help B2B campaigns be more effective?
Andrea: I think just like the emotion that they put into it and the way that they try to connect with individuals on that deeper level. And I think part of it is that they have more data to work with potentially. But like looking at the way that B2C marketers use our data, looking at people’s personality traits, you know, looking at what what their cultural differences are and like nomenclature that will really work for them and be something that triggers them emotionally. That type of approach would still work with B2B. It’s they’re still humans in the same way. It’s just I think there’s less of a connection there, if that makes sense.
Mike: Absolutely. It makes a lot of sense. I mean, something we we hear a lot about in B2B, I think, you know, quite often there’s a struggle between this conservative, you know, B2B don’t want to say anything wrong or upset anybody at all. And then the opportunity to be, you know, maybe a little more engaging, a little more out there, but potentially turning off one or two people. I think B2B tends to be risk averse. I don’t know if you agree with that, Andrea.
Andrea: Oh, absolutely. And I think it’s just sometimes it’s harder to make a B2B offering as sexy as a B2C offering. So there’s that too. That’s part of it.
Mike: Absolutely. I mean, are there any sort of really innovative campaigns you’ve seen that, you know, have been run maybe in B2C that really stood out for you?
Andrea: I mean, I feel like for me personally, and it’s talked about so often, it’s not even recent, but always comes to mind for me is like the dove campaigns, which everyone already knows about, but like, highlighting different beauty standards and just all of the campaigning that went around that was massive. Through our own clients, some of the innovative things I’ve seen is like Crumble Cookie. Are you familiar with Crumble Cookie? I don’t know if they’re actually very UK-based.
Mike: I’m afraid I’m not. That’s something I’ve got to try.
Andrea: Just so you know, they’re dangerous. But so we have them here in the US. They’re a cookie company that just went wild so quickly. They deliver to homes and to businesses and they have just very unique flavored cookies and they’re very active on social media. They’re actually a client of ours and they looked at, they’d been targeting their standard followers on social media for a long time, and they were kind of running into a wall. And so they used our data to look at what the makeup was of their brand following and their current customers, and they compared social following to existing customers. and learned that they were incredibly different. All their followers on social media tended to be these more creator-focused, younger audiences, where the people actually purchasing were more family-oriented and had just a completely different profile. So they were able to flip everything and focus more of their partnerships on less what they thought was working for them in the past and more what their audience wanted based on their current buyers. And they increased their weekly buyer count from like 80 to 130,000. within weeks and saw just like huge returns on their ad spend compared to what they saw previously. So I think just like that audience based approach that we try to enable, but also see in even non clients campaigns is critical to marketing today. As far as content goes, though, I just the Dove campaign always stands in my head, probably because I was like a younger woman at the time. And it was just that whole movement that’s still relevant today that I feel they sparked.
Mike: Yeah, and I think that’s interesting. You’ve got on one side Crumble Cookie, which is really, you know, data driven, understand the audience, data driven, very, you know, almost, you know, not very exciting, just like work the numbers.
Andrea: Practical, yeah.
Mike: And, you know, on the other hand, and I suspect that if there’s younger people listening to this, they have no idea about Dove. They see the Dove campaigns and it’s not that different. When Dove first launched, people thought they were crazy. You know, and they got a lot of negative press initially about it. But actually it turned out to be fantastic. So, you know, that was unbelievably creative and edgy. And I think that’s interesting. You’ve got two very different campaigns you’ve picked out there.
Andrea: I know. And it’s hard to find a balance sometimes. And we struggle with that. I think all the time as marketers is you don’t necessarily know what movement is going to go viral. So you use data to the best of your ability. There’s more of it now than there was back then for Dove as well. But you use data to the best of your ability. But I think the creatives, the creative side of it also has to very much be at play.
Mike: Yeah, absolutely. I’d like to just pivot a bit now, it’s been really interesting, but I’m interested also to understand how you promote StatSocial. So what at a high level is your marketing strategy for StatSocial?
Andrea: Yeah, so we… We’ve been very much focused on paid search and paid social. I think trying to capture people that are showing intent towards our solutions has been really important for us and why paid search has been so effective. Also, our content strategy and just like creating organic content that will resonate and bring in people to our site is an area we have focused. I will say that’s been a challenge for me personally, because with AI, it’s evolved so much. Like now people are asking chat GBT for recommendations. on what products to use in certain industries, and you need different types of content to support that type of search engine versus Google. So it’s been a learning for, I think, every marketer across the board, but our content strategy has been a huge area of focus. Where we’ve started branching out and spending more of our budget for marketing in the past year is also around events. Because especially in the creator space, there’s not so many large events to attend. And I think we’ve just seen success actually physically getting in front of people that we’ve been trying to chase via email or on social and that sort of thing. So events has been really helpful for us the past year in an area of focus for us in 2026 is just being able to both generate awareness, but also really like get in front of some, some leads that we know we have existing relationships with as well.
Mike: And that’s interesting because I mean, obviously, as a company is very focused online, going, if you like back to the face to face world seems like a bit of a jump. I mean, how do you measure that? Because the obviously the results can be good, but the costs are very, very different.
Andrea: Very different. So we’re a smaller company. We haven’t always had the biggest marketing budget. So I think for the longest time, everything we did was through the focus of lead gen, like how can we generate more leads for the sales team that we think will buy. When we launched our influencer solutions here in the US, especially around measurement, so much still requires educating the market around that. And unfortunately, that means we have to really spend on branding and educational content and that more top of funnel content that doesn’t give you that immediate gratification. And it’s a hard pill to swallow, but it’s just something that we know we have to have to do. And you don’t always have the most measurable results from that. And so I think the way that we’ve handled it is like X portion of our budget is going to go towards really branding, especially around these less known use cases. Whereas we’re going to spend X percent on really just lead gen focused initiatives. And that’s how we do it today. I think we need more data to see if we need to iterate over time. But we have in 2025 set aside more of a branding budget because it is kind of critical based on where we sit today in the market.
Mike: And I’m really interested, you know, you talk about getting that X percent you spend on branding. I mean, how do you get to that number? Is it to some extent gut feel and faith or is there data you can use to help? It’s a big problem I hear a lot about on the podcast.
Andrea: I wish I had a better answer for you. I can tell you how we reached that number was We looked at which use cases are generating the most opportunities for us. Of the use cases that are less known, we kind of took the percentage of what they’re generating and said, OK, 50% of what we put towards that use case, we’re going to focus on branding versus lead gen. That’s how we sort of backed into the number. And so there is not an exact science to it. I think we need to just keep iterating as we go and learning. But we focus our branding efforts, a lot of them, like the more expensive ones at events. So like being able to do some branded sponsorships at events, webinars, just like being able to get our name out there through paid as well. So I think it’s just a combination of all efforts.
Mike: That makes sense. I mean, I think everybody’s, to some extent, got to, you know, take a guess at it, and then look at what works.
Andrea: And we do use our own data as well, just like we look at our target customer or existing customers and our followers and our target audiences and see you know, where are they engaging influencer wise, media wise, and we do invest in those channels more heavily. I think for younger companies, though, to get to be more data driven, you need more data. So it does take just like, you know, risks and guesses sometimes at first as well. So we do our best to to use not only our data, but any data we have available to inform the decisions. And then we quickly optimize as we go.
Mike: Makes a lot of sense. I mean, we’ve talked a lot about things that maybe 10, 15 years ago, we wouldn’t be talking about. The world of marketing’s changed a lot. I mean, how do you see marketing changing in the next five years?
Andrea: Honestly, AI is just disrupting everything. And it’s hard for me to even fathom what that will look like in the future. But I think content creation is one of the most immediate areas that we’re seeing impacted. We still have humans that write content. I think we don’t trust all of our content initiatives to AI just yet, but it does optimize the process quite a bit. Also, in our industry, the way that our clients are analyzing data has changed so much. So being able to, some of our insights we export to AI formats that they can just import into OpenAI or whatever they’re using, Cloud, and it spits out what they should do in terms of their upcoming campaigns. You can ask it specific questions. So I think it’s also replacing the way that data analysis is done, and it’s becoming much more specific. Overall, I think because of that, Marketing is going to become more personalized than it ever has been capable of being. But we just kind of need to learn as we go. It’s overwhelming to think about all the changes that will come. I think that marketers also worry about being replaced in general, especially content marketers. But I think there’s still a place for humans. I think it’s just figuring out what that looks like with all these new capabilities.
Mike: Yeah, it makes all the sense. Certainly, I love that comment about having AI analysing. I think, you know, maybe five years ago, everyone wanted a data scientist in the marketing team, but it was the weird person who sat in the corner and they never spoke to anybody. And now you’ve got the data going into AI and people are engaging with it. It really has changed how people see data.
Andrea: It’s also created a very competitive landscape, I think, for more crowded markets because the time to insights is so short. People need to be reacting super quickly to everything that’s happening. So, yeah, it’s definitely changed the way that marketers operate for sure.
Mike: Absolutely. This has been great. I’ve really enjoyed it. I just want to ask you, there’s a couple of questions we’d like to ask everybody on the podcast. The first is, what’s the best piece of marketing advice that’s ever been given to you?
Andrea: I think – so my dad actually was a CMO for much of his career and he’s retired now even though he acts like he’s not. So he always told me like you can’t change things overnight and changing too much too fast will work against you. I think sometimes when things aren’t going well, you want to just flip everything on its head. But realistically, sometimes minor tweaks to a single channel can make a huge difference. And it’s like the same way if you were A-B testing too many components of an ad too quickly, you don’t get good data. I think being patient and making small changes over time versus freaking out and just doing everything new and different all at once has been important, especially I have a personality type that’s like very go, go, go. And so I think knowing me, he knew that would resonate. So that’s one piece of advice that I think I try to keep with me to keep anxiety down when I’m not happy with how things are going, but also control the process.
Mike: So that’s great advice. I love that. I mean, we’ve talked about the threat of AI on marketing as a career. So if you were talking to somebody who was just starting their career in marketing, what advice would you give them?
Andrea: Oh, boy. I think being a well-rounded marketer is going to be really important because I can’t predict, no one can, which areas of marketing will be replaced faster by AI or will you know, remain more intact for longer. I think being a well-rounded marketer and embracing the technology is going to be critical versus, you know, pushing it away or feeling threatened by it. So I think You know, I was very focused in product marketing in the start of my career, which by the way, I just, I love that part of marketing so much. And from there I did kind of branch then into more go-to-market initiatives and then paid media. And I think having more of a diverse background gives you flexibility as the industry evolves.
Mike: That’s great advice again. I mean, this has been fascinating. If people want to learn more about StatSocial and maybe about what you do, what’s the best place for them to go to get more information?
Andrea: So our website, StatSocial.com. I’m Andrea Rosie. I can be found on LinkedIn. My email is just andrea.rosi@statsocial.com. So that’s also a great way to get in touch with me as well.
Mike: It’s been awesome. Thank you so much, Andrea. It’s been really interesting. Thanks for being a guest on Marketing B2B Technology.
Andrea: Thank you so much for having me.
Mike: Thanks so much for listening to Marketing B2B Tech. We hope you enjoyed the episode. And if you did, please make sure you subscribe on iTunes or on your favorite podcast application. If you’d like to know more, please visit our website at napierb2b.com or contact me directly on LinkedIn.
