We recently connected with Luccia Cafiero and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Luccia, thanks for joining us today. Do you manage your own social media?

Social media started it all for me. Being a millennial and growing up in the era of a big tech boom, I never thought I’d make my actual career in something I was very passionate about doing as a kid.

It started off as a hobby… being intrigued about the modeling industry. I always wanted to step in front of a camera and create art that I wasn’t able to do from just putting ink/lead/charcoal, you name it, down on a piece of paper. I joined so many online modeling communities and built a following around it that eventually excelled my modeling career as social media progressed.

When MySpace came out it was just a taste of what was to come. I got my first PC as a kid, and boy did I spend my time in my room in there playing on it (plus consoles). But MySpace was something else, where you could personalize your page and even build webpages to share in your profile. I learned the basics of HTML and the capabilities of what it could do for the internet thanks to MySpace. I even had a separate MySpace page where I uploaded the templates I made to share with everyone else.

Then emerged Facebook. If you told me back when I first got on it that Facebook would be this big tech giant that so many big ecommerce brands leverage for their marketing today, I wouldn’t believe it. If you told me that I would be in my 30’s making a career (a decent career) out of Facebook, I would’ve laughed.

I started off building up myself and what I wanted out of my motorsport and modeling hobbies. Then, as reality sunk in about needing to support myself and my expensive hobbies, I made a shift. I shifted from just growing my following to building multiple brands businesses. Leveraging what I grew up with as a kid and ultimately helping brands scale and increase their revenue because of it. All the things that I grew up doing transferred over to what I do now — Paid Social Media Marketing.

I now work with one of the largest and leading digital ad agencies in the nation. Working with so many different brands, scaling ad spend of $2MM+ a month. I’ve worked with celebrity brands, brands you shop everyday in big box stores, small brands just trying to emerge in the market, you name it. I’ve built my career around social media and now I am a Director here at my agency teaching and helping build up junior campaign managers. Sharing my knowledge and experience with those that share the same passion(s).

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

As I mentioned earlier, it all started when I was a kid.

I think problems I solve and the actual “what” of what I do is best described through a recent success story, but first I will give some background of the things I’ve accomplished.

I’ve worked at 4 agencies to learn the craft, and I’ve learned and been taught by some very talented minds in the industry. For them, thank you. I am forever grateful. I have also worked in-house at a large enterprise brand, which really excelled me to learn more on my own and not rely on others to grow my knowledge base. From there I had Facebook (now Meta) publish a case study on the work I did for the brand. From that The Wall Street Journal interviewed me on the success of the strategy.

Can find that here if relevant and can be shared in the article: https://partners.wsj.com/facebook/age-of-discovery-commerce/making-the-most-of-discovery-through-customer-experience/

I did all of this on my own and felt empowered to continue to grow in this field and career. Now, I work with a wide range of brands. Brands in beauty, home decor, education, fitness, automotive, entertainment, and so much more.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Recently, I helped a beauty brand really excel and grow in Q4 of last year. I helped scale Meta ad spend in December by 8x from what they were spending before I got my hands on the account. With lots of creative testing, I was able to increase their CTRs from below bench mark to well above bench mark. I also was able to increase engagement on the ads themselves, which helped drive even more viral behaviors on the ad creatives. Additionally, I found a non-top 30 selling product and increased the products units sold by 134%. It was the 2nd most selling product for the month, finishing out just 34 units shy of their top selling product. They thought that the product had branding issues, changed the name and kept at it. However, turns out… it was just how the product was being advertised and utilized in ads. This month the product is their #1 top selling unit so far, beating out a hero product that has been their top seller for a long time. Another great win? The products AOV is greater than their traditional top seller, increasing their return. It didn’t stop there. They carried this momentum into Q1 of this year (+35% growth in overall rev YoY). Oh, and that #30 product that made it to #2 last month… it made #1 in January at 108 more units sold than their hero product.

This is just one example of how I’ve helped scale brands thanks to paid social efforts.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I had to pivot from my influencer/”IG famous” life a bit in order to go after a path that would enable me to enjoy my passions with financial freedoms. I want to be able to go out to a track day and enjoy it, but not worry about what breaks. I wanted financial freedom to live my life to the fullest, and enjoy all the things that I still want to try. I want to be able to travel and see the world. You only live once and sometimes it means shifting your focus from one thing to another to enable you to live that life to the fullest. Not everyone will become famous off social media, to a point of where it’s sustainable (do you get a 401k from your followers?) and reliable when you’re no longer able to continue to create content. Obviously, everyone has different perspective here, but I knew I wouldn’t. I knew I had to make a pivot in order to get what I need and want out of this life. I made the right choice for myself and I will never look back. It enabled me to find something else I was good at and could really grow from, as well as pass that wisdom off to others that want to learn from me.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lucciamodel
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luccia-cafiero/
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/lucciamodel

Image Credits
Image names have the photographer credits. Me with my car – i took it Beauty shots – i took these Photo with helmet is Native Lad Photography Me on the bench in a warehouse is Cameron Martinez Photo Me walking in front of Audi is AMT Imagery