XrossWorld

Meet Julio Chaves

Julio Cerne Chaves, co-founder and CEO of XrossWorld, started his ambassador marketing journey by first starting an entirely different business.

“The business was originally a marketplace for different types of activities similar to ClassPass,” Julio said. “The difference is that we were also going to give opportunities for people to learn extreme sports, like a skydiving or surfing class, and add that in as part of the membership deal as well.”

As a part of this original marketing strategy, XrossWorld would also offer free micro-influencers to companies that joined.

“Suddenly all of the businesses were asking us, ‘how did you find the influencers?’, ‘How do you manage them?’, ‘How much does it cost?’, all of these pain points to do with influencer marketing,” Julio said.

Julio also personally struggled to find influencers for this original business plan, taking a month to qualify only 10 ambassadors.

“The whole vetting and qualifying process was really rigorous and time-consuming,” Julio said. “I thought that there must be a platform out there that does this for companies. There were several influencer marketing platforms, but there wasn’t one platform that did the whole cycle of everything.”

Influence With XrossWorld

From there, Julio shifted his business model to focus on influencers, and the XrossWorld of today was born. The ambassador marketing company’s goal is to provide authentic influencers for brands.

Rather than matching brands with someone who simply has a large following, XrossWorld’s mission is to match brands with trusted ambassadors within the brand’s niche. They also use a combination of AI and human interaction in order to vet and qualify their ambassadors.

“Businesses are saying they really need authentic people to tell their brand messaging and engage their audiences on social media because everyone is on social media now,” Julio said. “Everyone’s at home, which means people get bored quicker, resulting in them going on a social media platform.”

Why XrossWorld Works

Julio said that XrossWorld’s two types of clients, customers who use ambassadors to promote their companies and the ambassadors themselves, have both given positive feedback on XrossWorld.

“For customers, the biggest thing that they’ve really loved about this is the opportunity, that it’s transparent in pricing, the ability to scale, and that they don’t have to manage these ambassadors themselves,” Julio said.

For ambassadors, Julio said that XrossWorld is a game-changer.

“The biggest thing that our ambassadors talk about is how easy it is to follow the brand brief, but most importantly, it’s that they get to decide if they want to work for the campaign if they’ve been selected for that campaign,” Julio said. “And the cool thing is, once they are selected to work for that campaign and decide to work for it, they are guaranteed payment as long as they complete their gamification tasks. No one wants to work for free, and our ambassadors love us because if you get chosen for a job and you want to work for that job, you’re going to get paid.”

Additionally, Julio said that the lack of miscommunication and micromanaging gives ambassadors freedom of creativity with brand guidelines, creating authentic messaging.

The Future of XrossWorld

“My vision is to create the American Idol of ambassador marketing,” Julio said. “American Idol had these coaches that trained the singers to be the best they could be. We want to bring in all these amazing people who have all this influence, and we want to coach them to be the best that they can be and implement technology throughout that process as well.”

For others looking to start their own business, Julio’s advice is to let go of their fears.

“Being a startup, you have to be able to pivot, and you’ve got to pivot fast and quick,” Julio said. “Don’t be afraid to adapt or change, but also don’t be afraid to stick to it and ride it out. Most of all, don’t be afraid to fail.”

Click here to learn more about XrossWorld.