Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer

Unlocking the Power of Creator Partnerships: Interview with Impact CEO David Yovanno

• Neal Schaffer • Episode 361

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Unlock the full potential of your digital marketing strategy as I team up with Impact CEO David Yovanno to delve into the captivating world of creator partnerships. This episode promises to equip you with the wisdom to harness influencer magic and partnership alchemy, transforming how you connect with consumers and amplify your brand's authenticity. As we navigate the Partnership Economy, you'll be fascinated by the story of Ticketmaster's Michael Chua and his innovative API integrations that connect music fans with live events through platforms they love, like Spotify and YouTube.

Prepare to shift your perspective on traditional digital advertising as we pull back the curtain on its inherent shortcomings and illuminate the emergence of customer acquisition channels that truly resonate with user interests. You'll hear first-hand my critical thoughts on the evolving role of AI in content creation, underpinned by the need for expertise, authority, trustworthiness, and experience. Learn how Impact.com and other forward-thinking businesses are creating a single platform for various partnership types, turning the voices of creators and influencers into powerful tools for genuine consumer engagement.

Finally, discover why brands like Avocado are turning to niche content creators for authentic connections and the compelling reasons why transparency in these partnerships is non-negotiable. We highlight the growing trend towards hybrid compensation models, offering stability and performance incentives for a win-win scenario. By the end of our insightful conversation, you'll be inspired to forge a community of engaged customers and passionate partners, building new marketing muscles by embracing the transformative power of the partnership economy.

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Speaker 1:

influencer magic or partnership alchemy. In the fast-evolving digital marketplace, the powerhouses are those who master the art of creator partnerships. But what does it take to unlock this power? How do collaborations with creators transform your brand's reach and resonate more authentically with today's consumers? From the nuts and bolts of impactful collaborations to the inside scoop on what creators truly crave in a partnership, we're diving deep with Impact CEO David Yovano Prepare to reshape your approach to digital marketing and harness the potential of the partnership economy. So stay tuned to this next episode of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast.

Speaker 2:

Marketing Coach Podcast. A marketing professional, entrepreneur or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got Neil on your side, because Neil Schaefer is your digital marketing coach helping you grow your business with digital. First, one episode at a time. This is your digital marketing coach, and this is Neil Schafer hey everybody.

Speaker 1:

This is your digital marketing coach, neil Schafer, and welcome to episode number 361 of this podcast. Before we get into our special interview today, just wanna give you a recap of some of the news articles that I've been watching to give you my analysis and advice. So we begin with a very, very interesting article on Moz of how to write AI content optimized for EEAT. Now, obviously there's been a lot of talk about AI and about SEO and the impacts it can have, but really we don't look at AI for creating the actual content, but how can we use it in the ideation and planning phases to help us improve our content is really what this article is talking about. Hopefully by now you understand what E-E-A-T means. It's what Google has been talking about for some time, but it's really about showing well. It began with the E-A-T, or expertise, authority and trustworthiness, and then more recently I believe last year they added experience, and this is something Google doesn't want you to create just generic vanilla content, because you can use AI for that, but to talk about your unique experiences as part of your content, and thus this began to be called EEAT. So interesting article, and I'll put the link in the show notes you can do a search for it on the Moz mozcom blog. But really the use of AI is really. The recommendation in this article is really fascinating and it really comes down to if you understand your target audience and where they are in their customer journey, you can now begin to use AI to brainstorm, for instance, persona pain points, feelings, interests and therefore you can use that information from AI to tailor your content strategy to address your audience's needs and interest. Interesting point in the article they also use a tool called Browse AI, which I had never heard of, but it is literally browseai to get ideas on how to understand queries and trends for users on a specific topic. For example and the author works for a content marketing agency they identified main Reddit forums and scraped and extracted all of the topics. This is done within the Browseai tool. They then aligned them with their keyword research. The work done focused on the audience that they are targeting and the topics from the Reddit forums. They then created content pillars and content clusters for better organization to push overall performance for non-branded keywords. So it sounds like Browseai is somewhat of a data scraper. I personally prefer Phantom Buster that's neilschavercom slash phantom buster P-H-A-N-T-O-M-B-U-S-T-E-R for my personal affiliate link. But this combination of extracting a large data set, feeding it to AI and also giving it other information to refine your strategy is a great use case scenario of leveraging AI for content analysis, not necessarily for the direct content creation. So this article excellent article and a great reminder of that.

Speaker 1:

Also, on the news of AI, an AI search engine that I've been using a lot and that others have been using a lot since it was featured in the New York Times recently, called Perplexity. That's perplexityai have just said that they are raising $250 million, at a $2.5 to $3 billion valuation, for its AI search platform. As a dedicated AI search platform, it really is a great product that I think that either Google is going to buy out or they are going to eat away at traditional search engine market share over time. It's going to take time because obviously Chrome is built in everywhere, like Microsoft Internet Explorer was built in 10 years ago or 15 years ago, but obviously times change. If you haven't checked out perplexityai, I highly recommend you do that.

Speaker 1:

And on the topic of AI, I also just want to give a quick update on what I talked about in episode number 361 news, which was Meta releasing their new AI. It's actually two parts news which was Meta releasing their new AI. It's actually two parts. They have the AI called Lama 3, which I guess is the version that is being added, and then they have Meta AI, which is the actual AI assistant which they're implementing across their social media. Now what's interesting is that you know, twitter has Grok G-R-O-K. I do not use it, but I am assuming that that AI is basically using content that's been published on Twitter as the large learning model. Well, with meta, they have access to a lot of data and I believe that that data is probably more realistic of how average people talk. So, based on their large learning models and the ability to generate content and images right there using meta AI and within the meta social networks, I think it is an opportunity for marketers to really do a little bit of experimenting with creating content within meta AI to see how it might differentiate the content when created using other AIs. I think we might see a difference. And there's a particular article from CMS Wire that says did Meta just top chat GPT? Now, chat GPT obviously is very refined. They've been at it for years and I believe that Meta has been developing AI for years as well. So definitely. I highly recommend you experiment with that and I'd love to hear back from you.

Speaker 1:

Finally, this episode is going to be published right before I attend a content marketing conference called CEX or the Content Entrepreneur Expo, being put on by my friend, joe, and mentor, joe Polizzi, founder of Content Marketing Institute, content Marketing World, great guy and fantastic marketing author as well. So this is going to be May 5th to the 7th in Cleveland Ohio. Author as well. So this is going to be May 5th to the 7th in Cleveland Ohio, and I mentioned this because Ahrefs put out a great little summary of seven content marketing conferences to attend in 2024. I attend a few different genres of conferences every year, so I go to VidSummit now on an annual basis to learn about YouTube and short form video and video marketing in general, to keep my finger on the pulse there. I went to PodFest earlier in the year to keep my finger on the pulse of podcasting. I will normally go to Content Marketing World, which I'm hoping to speak at this year, fingers crossed again. But I also went to Creator Economy Expo, as the Content Entrepreneur Expo was originally called, during COVID, when it was limited to a room of 500 people in Phoenix, arizona, and I'm excited to be attending this one.

Speaker 1:

So there are other content marketing conferences that I recommend you check out as well, if you're not. In Cleveland, we have MozCon, which is Moz's, you know, the big SEO tool In Seattle, washington, june 3rd to 4th. We have Inbound, which I've never attended and it's probably too late to submit a speaking proposal, but who knows? In Boston, the end of September, content marketing world is coming to San Diego, close to me, october 22, 23. Ahrefs, which their headquarters, I believe, is in Singapore, is having their own Ahrefs Evolve 2024 conference there in October. We have Lavacon, which I've spoken at before. That's going to be in Portland, oregon, october 27th to 30th. And for my friends in Europe, you have CopyCon 2024. That is going to be in London on November 8th. So I hope to see you at Content Entrepreneur Expo if you're going, but if not, I hope that this information provides value to you All.

Speaker 1:

Right, so today's interview is with David Yovanov. You might not have heard of Impactcom, but Impactcom began really as an affiliate marketing platform and it has really grown to become more of a creator economy, marketplace slash, performance marketing, slash, really this concept of the partnership economy platform and in fact, david is also the author of a book called the Partnership Economy, which you can get on Amazon and wherever fine books are sold that I recommend you check out. So you know impactcom. Whenever I talk with technology vendors in the marketing space, I always say that impactcom is really the best place to create an affiliate marketing program. It's where the biggest brands are and, as a user perspective, as an affiliate for many brands, it's actually the easiest to use as well. So I'm just going through the list of brands that use Impact that I'm an affiliate for to give you an idea. We have Upwork, we have TikTok for business, their TikTok ad platform, teachable, tailwind, sprout, social Shopify, semrush I mean I can go on and on HubSpot, bigcommerce, belkin, appsumo. It's almost like the who's who of big SaaS brands in the marketing space.

Speaker 1:

And I also had the ability to attend their partnership economy event, which they had in Hollywood, I want to say, about six months ago, where they had brands and creators come together to talk about the creator economy. Really really great event. Where they had brands and creators come together to talk about the creator economy Really really great event. Only a few hundred people there, really intimate and yeah, david's a great guy and immediately after going to the event, I'm like David. You know I got to get you on your digital marketing coach podcast to talk about, sort of you know, affiliates and content creators and influencer marketing and how it's all coming together in the partnership economy. So, regardless of where your brand is on your influencer marketing or affiliate marketing journey, I think that there's going to be a lot of great takeaways here. So, without further ado, here is my interview with David Yovano, the CEO of Impactcom.

Speaker 2:

You're listening to your digital marketing coach. This is Neil Schafer.

Speaker 1:

Hey everybody, welcome to another edition of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. Today we have a very special guest the CEO of impactcom, dave Yovano. Now we're going to be talking about what's happened over the last decade is this growth in influencer marketing, creator economy, creator commerce. As you know, social media is the place to be seen, to be heard, to incite word of mouth, but unfortunately for brands it can be a struggle because the way the algorithms work, but also because we trust people more than we do brands, we relate to people more than we do brands, and that really is the core of what's brought about this rise of influencer marketing, of the creator economy.

Speaker 1:

And with every younger generation, we see more and more of what's commonly being known as creator commerce, of e-commerce that's being funneled in some way. Part of that customer journey is in some way being somewhat controlled or influenced by 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 million creators, however they say, that are out there. So if you're a business, obviously this is going to fall into the affiliate marketing slash, influencer marketing marketing container. But as time goes by, it really becomes more important than ever to really understand this and tap into it, and today's guest is going to give you a lot of advice on how to do that. So, without further ado, I'm going to invite on stage CEO of impactcom, dave Yovano. Dave, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 3:

Thanks for having me, neil, looking forward to today's conversation.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So, dave, you know, looking at your background, you've obviously been involved in the advertising industry international advertising bureau. What have you? You came to impact right, I think, when Instagram was really hot in terms of influencer marketing. Now, having attended your event recently in Los Angeles which was excellent, by the way I've really seen us evolve into. You know, it seems like all of this is coming together into one, so I'd love to hear more about you. Know I am a affiliate for many brands on impactcom. I see more and more brands coming in to impactcom, so I see your growth and your thought leadership in the space, so we'd love just an introduction for everybody that doesn't know about impact, but also about you know, just to paint a picture of what you've seen evolve over the past few years.

Speaker 3:

Great, yeah, I mean just real quick. I got into the technology scene in the late nineties I was actually a Lieutenant in the Navy before you know getting into thecom boom in a positive way back then and you just have grown with a number of technology companies over the years. I've been with impactcom going on seven years now and when I look back at the time I joined, what I realized that we did as a company that was unique is that we actually put technology into the hands of our customers and if they're working with an agency, with their agencies, and they started to do really innovative things with it. The typical experience was to kind of clean up and drive efficiency in a traditional affiliate network, you know, sort of program. So you know these are like more managed, it's less technology led, it's more kind of managed services led. And we just, you know we were the pioneers of unique coupon codes, just de-duping, you know, cross channels within a channel, just cut out a lot of waste. And we, you know, took a bit of a SaaS business model essentially to it. And what a lot of customers realize is that because they had access to technology to handle things like contracts and tracking and payments to their various partners. They started to do a number of things with it. They have a lot of like B2B sorts of partnerships.

Speaker 3:

I tell a story about Ticketmaster. This guy, michael Chua, leads a biz dev team there, tapped a very small team of engineers to build out a set of APIs around concert dates, venues, artists, pricing information and built integrations with all the top platforms Spotify, youtube, pandora, et cetera with all the top platforms Spotify, youtube, pandora, et cetera and when those platforms created a better experience and those consumers essentially bought tickets, they would compensate them for them on a performance basis. And this was the premise of a book that I released I think it was last year, I guess that came out really last year called the Partnership Economy. It was really just me chasing down the story of impactcom customers just like that and just demonstrating and illustrating how they're using technology to kind of bring in. You know all these different partnership types that have traditionally just been very ad hoc. It could have been a business to business. You know biz dev team and influencer marketing team, traditional affiliate program. You know customer advocacy. There's.

Speaker 3:

There's many different types of partnerships that have existed for decades with businesses but until impactcom came around there hasn't been a unifying platform to bring all these different partnership types together in one platform experience how they discover and find each other, how they recruit themselves into a program between those sides, a system for you know the source of truth around tracking, you know all the engagement, you know communication pieces that happen in the partnership, the payments mechanism, how things are optimized. There's compliance and protection and fraud depending on the piece. So there's lots of different things that our technology does to really enable a business, any partner, to really scale their partnership. And so once we kind of understood how our technology was being used by a number of different businesses, we amplified what those mature customers were doing. And next thing, you know there's been a whole economy and a real category that's been established around partnerships and I think the common theme across the different this will get into today's conversation when I analyze it across all the different partnership types that I mentioned is we talk about the partnership economy.

Speaker 3:

What, what makes it unique, is very different from advertising or more traditional forms of marketing, because this is a situation where the brand is not in control of the message. They are not fully controlling that perfectly designed image or that perfectly narrated copy that goes out. They are drawing an alliance with another business, a traditional affiliate, an influencer or creator, and they may be giving some brand guidelines, but it's like they are speaking in their own voice and their own tone to their customers and to their audience in their own unique way, and the brand is kind of trusting it right. And that is kind of how I would describe this category of partnerships and especially to a topic that I know you want to focus on today with creators, with influencers. That is kind of a requirement now for businesses If they really want to be relevant to today's modern buyer. They've got to, you know, kind of speak through the voice of a career, that trusted source, right.

Speaker 3:

If you think about it like a brand, you know doesn't have a relationship with that end consumer just yet right, and so a way to be more relevant is to go through someone who does have a relationship and form that alliance and get them to recommend you.

Speaker 1:

essentially, yeah, well said, and thank you for your introduction to your book and to this partnership economy, which is a great way to really frame it, and I love that you focused on simplifying technology for this economy because, as I mentioned when I tracking in their dashboard, so it's been really great to see. I mean, I will recommend to startups, other companies, that they should join your platform, and I've seen just personally. I know SEMRush moved over very recently, sprout Social moved over, so a lot of the companies that I'm an affiliate for have moved over, and I think that really says everything about the platform. So I really want to dig deeper, though, into this partnership economy, and, as we were preparing for this interview, you had mentioned that digital advertising over time, that something went wrong and that there are new customer acquisition channels driving growth, and I think this is going to be another introduction into this partnership economy, but I'd love to hear just what you think has gone wrong with digital advertising and what is the right way to do it today.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, well, you asked the wrong person, I think, for that, because I could talk for hours about what went wrong and maybe keep me on track, because I like to roll it back like 100 years so that people have context. Radio started in the same year that TV started, and the way advertising started back then was, you know, programming happened, right, radio shows, and then TV shows happened, and then, you know, those were free airways, so they had to find a way to kind of subsidize it, and so the advertising model was created back then, literally a hundred years ago, and it was, you know, an inserted spot kind of like what you see today, like a 15 second or 30 second or even longer spot from an advertiser. Think about, think about the ads back then, smoking and things like that. You know, one out of five doctors recommend smoking, sort of thing. That's what went wrong. It was really from the very beginning you had an advertiser who was disrupting the user experience. So back then people were listening to a radio show or they were watching a TV show. They didn't really go on to see an ad or hear an ad. They went on for that program, but that continued literally for 100 years.

Speaker 3:

And then you asked specifically about digital. So when the internet happened so figure the late 90s they applied the exact same model to this new digital format. So there's publishers with websites. You're reading an article or you're watching a video. It took a while for videos to really catch hold but same thing You're disrupting the users.

Speaker 3:

Why do people go online? They go online for entertainment. They're going online for connections with other people and they're going online for information. They are not going online for an ad right, but the way that the industry started it needed to find a way to subsidize itself. So you can't blame it. I get it. In fact this is a way back machine point here that I'll make.

Speaker 3:

But if you're to give a lifetime award to one person to crack the code on actually creating the Internet because it needed to have a commercial base, but think of Bill Gross, ted Meisel, so Idea Lab it was GoTo originally, which became Overshare, but they're the ones that kind of figured out the early monetization model of the Internet. It was essentially the sponsored links at the top of search results, essentially the sponsored links at the top of search results. That was like the first form of advertising that actually worked and made the internet like kind of the commercial beast that it is today and if they didn't figure that out, that early stage of online probably would have never gotten started Just all the innovation, all the companies that were created. So I get it Like you know, we had to start somewhere.

Speaker 3:

But where things have evolved is, you know, you've had the rise of major platforms like YouTube. Let's just focus on that. So literally in the last 10 years there has been a sea of commercial information that's been published about products, right, very in-depth, heavily gated, meaning it was an expensive magazine to get but it was like deep information about you know any product, cars, you know a computer, things like that. With the rise of YouTube and other platforms like YouTube, you've got the democratization of that same kind of content in the beginning. So it's amazing to me that this is really only like seven, maybe 10 years ago. But probably like seven years ago is when this really kind of started to happen at scale. But you had, you know, think of all the you know kind of creators back then who would do these unboxing videos and put up you know Lenovo's, you know hot new gaming laptop on the desk and like put that right next to you know the last version of a gaming laptop and they're running their benchmark tests and some of them really got into it.

Speaker 3:

White Loves, you know, slowly cutting the box open and just really made it a show. But why were they doing it back then? They actually weren't doing it, in my opinion. They weren't doing that to earn a lot of money. They were actually doing it because they were like just enthusiastic about it. They're passionate about these products. Maybe they wanted the social currency bragging rights within their community, but they really enjoyed what they were doing and that's, I think, what went right actually with the economy and the commercialization that's happening now because you've got this base of careers.

Speaker 3:

So if you were to fast forward to where we are today, you've got a tremendous amount of this kind of supply, this commercial content. I call it commerce content, you call it creator commerce or something related. It's all related, right, it's information about products is kind of the way that I think of it, and you've got a lot more people doing this now and today's consumer is now trained, like they know, when they hear about something, it could be through a TV ad, it could be from a friend, it could be from a creator themselves, but the first thing that people do online right now is they go see what other people have to say about a product right, that they're, that they're interested in, and that is what's driving their buying journey today, more so than call it. 10 years ago it used to be a lot more unilateral. People would hear about something, maybe through a TV ad, and kind of run out and buy it. They would go, hit the brand's website, read up as much information as they could about it and they would get excited about it, fall in love with it, and it really fell flat, to be honest, because that has been how we've been trained for a hundred years.

Speaker 3:

Like there's this perfect image out there of this thing and you get it and it's actually not quite what was advertised, but we've accepted that. I'm not sure this is the best analogy, but I've used this in the past because it's something I remember, like just you know, standing in line at McDonald's when I was growing up with my grandfather, and you see this picture of a Big Mac up there. It looks freaking amazing, right. It's like this beautiful sandwich, right, perfect Photoshop and whatnot. And then you get it and you open it up. It literally looks like it's been run over by a truck, right.

Speaker 3:

And that's kind of how we, as consumers, have been trained Like we see that we follow it, but we and we get it and we realize it's not as, but we're okay with that. And that sort of experience has been completely disrupted by what's happened around the creator economy especially. But any form of commercial content that's being public, like major publishers are doing the exact same thing. All the Meredith brands, better Homes and Garden, food and Wine, condé Nast brands like Vogue, cnn's got Underscore, new York Times got Wirecutter, so you've got large editorial teams that are doing the same thing that individual creators are doing on YouTube and TikTok and Instagram.

Speaker 3:

They're talking about products and this is what's driving the consumer journey today. And this is the world of partnerships. You know, by my definition, meaning brands now are kind of required to draw an alliance with these businesses or these individuals, inform them like, hey, love your style, I think you'd be great for my brand. Here's why I think we're going to maybe test out a product. I would love for you to cover it, but it's kind of like a PR motion. Like PR motion, meaning a business is going to approach a journalist. Maybe you need to kind of talk about them, but you're using you know, you have a very loyal following on your YouTube channel, right?

Speaker 3:

Your loyalty is to your audience, right. So you're always going to want to shoot them straight, and that's what that consumer wants. They want somebody to shoot them straight, and if they're not, or they get the sense I mean today's consumer has a very high BS filter it's going to show up in comments, it's going to show up at the unsubscribe, which no creator wants. So there are checks and balances. You know, that's what's great about these new platforms and the way this economy has been built. So very long winded. Sorry, this is unscripted.

Speaker 1:

No, this is awesome, but, like you, frame it in a unique way that I haven't heard before, of just the way that we're trained and for brands out there, I mean, even if you're B2B. The younger the generation, the more they go to social media. First we might still be going to G2 or Yelp or wherever, but they're going straight to TikTok, right? Are people talking about it? What are they saying?

Speaker 1:

Obviously, this concept of an unboxing did not exist before YouTube and the fact that people aren't in it for the money. I know that you recently conducted a great study and maybe we can go into a little bit of that if we have time today, but I read another one that just came out of a week ago from a think tank that interviewed more than a thousand creators in the United States and they found that monetization was actually fourth on their list of priorities when they're creating content. So a lot of people think that everyone's just in it for the money. But it really is that passion, especially in the early days of YouTube. But I still think that's alive and well and I think that's something that brands listening really need to understand that it's not just about the money. It's about a lot of different factors that creators are thinking about to decide whether or not they want to collaborate with the brand.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I mean just to be clear. Like compensation is very important. It's definitely up there as one of the most important things to creators. I'd say equally or even more important for many of them is the brands that they're working with and the control that they have on the message that they're sharing with their audience. They want to deliver an authentic view of this product. They don't want to be kind of like handcuffed. This is something that they're very proud of in terms of the audience that they've built. They always put that as a higher priority, but they do want to work with brands that they can relate to and use their authentic voice as a result.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, what I said was not an invitation to lowball offers to creators, because they are worth what they ask for and they have to make a living and they are small businesses, they are entrepreneurs.

Speaker 3:

Well, I've talked to a lot of them. What they get upset about is and I can't believe that some brands do this maybe because they feel they've got leverage over them, because they're in kind of a small business, if you will, many of them but they'll come at a creator not only with a performance only deal, but it's like after you sell X number of the product, then I'll pay you some form of commission. A lot of these creators are like get out of here with that. I've got to spend time to get to know you as a brand. I've got to test and review your product. I've got to produce content, you know, in the form of like, video, photos. You know some sort of like. You know write up. You know I've got to really invest some time in this and you know, if there's not, you know some form like, like.

Speaker 3:

You know that's a lot of risk, honestly, for them to take, right, they're not in full control of the landing page experience and the customer experience.

Speaker 3:

So that's not exactly fair, I think, to ask. But brands also aren't in full control of what's being said. You know the video, the review, the content. So it's not fair for them to bear all the risk either in terms of like fully fixed fee, and one of the things that we've really kind of settled on with a lot of the conversations, a lot of research that we've done, is a form of a hybrid, like some form of a fixed fee or a flat fee that's paid for some upfront work, and we, as a platform at impactcom, we're trying to provide more information and more recommendations on what is the value of a post.

Speaker 3:

We call it post plus, meaning there's a blend of a fixed fee that's paid plus a performance element. One of the key advantages here is that you know you've got a lot of this. Content is evergreen, especially on a platform like YouTube. It's very searchable. You've got content that sits out there for years, like literally five years still, generating residual income for the creator, residual sales for the brand and, you know, just on that point of compensation, you know we're finding that that's been a real fit, I think, on both sides of the table.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I think it makes a lot of sense. It also, from a brand perspective, gives you that trackability to say you know how many clicks, how much commerce did this influencer drive in a very, very easy way without having to reinvent the wheel. Right about tracking. So I think that's a great, you know, win-win for everybody. Obviously, I think you've already sort of hinted at the answer to this, but you know, can you go a little bit deeper into why you think that influencer and creator partnerships, as you see it at Impact, are outperforming traditional advertising channels for your clients? I mean?

Speaker 3:

well. First of all, the scale is there. So it used to be a little bit more ad hoc. It wasn't really moving the needle for business. This is one of the things that we've set out to address actually as a platform is to just really make it easy and efficient to kind of scale a program with any type of partnership, not just with creators but with commerce, content, larger publishers, with traditional affiliates, other businesses, with customers et cetera. But I think it's meaningful now for business. When you put all these different partnership types together, it's contributing up to 30% of the total revenue mix for a lot of mature customers we're seeing as a channel, as a category, partnerships as a whole representing about 50% growth. So it's just blowing away other traditional channels. So that's been a motivator on the business side.

Speaker 3:

But for the ones that get it, I think what the real advantage is is just being more relevant to today's buyer. Like you know, I think most buyers they don't want to be sold to. They don't want, they're not going to trust anything that you are trying to tell them. You don't have a relationship with them. And I think today's modern buyer is just much more savvy and again, the first thing that they're going to do is go and see what other people have to say about it.

Speaker 3:

And the real risk here, I think, for businesses is if you're still only investing, or primarily investing, or have a higher allocation of investment in these traditional channels like advertising or display advertising, let's say, and somebody finds out about you and then they go online to do their research and they don't find you, you know, like partners, like creators or other publishers talking about you and instead talking about your closest competitors. That's like wasted money. That's like, that's like the double whammy so you're not relevant and you're wasting, you know, your marketing spend. So I think a lot of businesses are catching on to this trend and I don't look at it as binary, like either take from here and only put it here To. They're not already shifting more of their investment into this partnerships economy as opposed to traditional channels, because I think it makes you more relevant as a brand.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely. And, in fact, those customers of yours that are getting 30% of their global revenue from partners. That's one of the reasons I reached out to you was because looking for case studies for my upcoming book, and one of those is definitely going to make it in because it's been so impactful for so many companies. So, with that in mind, I know that there are a lot of brands, whether they're B2C or B2B, that are watching, listening and they're wondering how can we leverage authentic partnerships for what you would call significant and sustainable business growth. And maybe they already have they're already doing some affiliates, maybe they've sort of dabbed in influencer marketing or maybe some UGC. How can we sort of bring this all together and create this engine that you speak of? What would be your advice?

Speaker 3:

Well, I articulate a lot of this in the books. I would encourage you first maybe get a copy of the Partnership Economy, because we talk about it a lot there and I think you know it really starts with like like knowing your customer, like who are they? Who else do they buy? From right, the other products that they buy that are complimentary to yours are potential like really good partners for you, right? So we have, you know, a direct consumer wine business, direct consumer meal business. They do inserts with each other, right, pretty obvious right that you know you might want, you know, wine with your meal, sort of thing. So just looking for those very obvious types of partnerships. And then, on the creator front, it's like it is amazing to me like how like niche or focus or personalized content can be. So we have a brand, avocado. They started as an avocado mattress. It's now known as Avocado Brands, if you're not familiar with them. It's 100% toxic-free, organic mattresses, for example, and they've got a very diverse partnership program.

Speaker 3:

But there are creators on YouTube and other platforms who solely focus on outfitting your home to be 100% toxic-free, 100% organic. There's a really interesting story the CEO of Avado Brands I think his son got sick when he was really young and they traced it down to a material that was used in the mattress and it really made his son sick. So it's a really fascinating story and, as a brand, they invite these creators, these publishers, like any potential business partner, into their shop, their manufacturing facilities and they open up their master. They talk about, like, how the company was founded, how they source their materials, how they make their products, how they treat their employees, and you know, these creators, these publishers, will go back and write about it and cover it and do reviews, and so you know, what I would say is, like you know, tap into the sources of information. Like like that is a, you know, kind of a topic that some people are like really passionate about, and you need to understand that about your customer. Like you know, if somebody is going to buy a hundred percent toxic free, there's like real purpose there. So, like tapping into those who are kind of focused on that subject, drawing in alliance with them, inviting them in, like not giving them a script saying read this, use this image, it's like, you know, informing them, like getting them excited, like getting them on your side so that when they go and talk to their audience in their own voice. You know, they're kind of representing and recommending you kind of in the right way. So I guess what I'm saying there is you know, know your customer.

Speaker 3:

But then you've also got to kind of have to learn how this, this channel, works, because it's not like advertising. This isn't an ad. This isn't, you know, pay a dollar, get a click, pay a million dollars, get a million clicks. It's not coin operated that way. Right, it requires a partnership. You got to go deeper, you got to invest some time to kind of get to know, you know, a creator or a publisher. But you know, just know that a little bit more work and effort upfront, traditionally.

Speaker 3:

But there is an evergreen benefit to that and there's a recurring nature to it as well, because I think both sides, both brands and creators especially they want long-term partnerships, right, they don't want this transactional one and done. You know advertising relationship. Okay, I covered that product last week. Now I'm talking about some other product, right, I mean some, some of them operate that way. But I think, when you look at the research that I had shared at the IPX event in Hollywood, and that's exactly what we're talking about on both sides of the table with brands and creators. They want longer term partnerships and guess what? The audience wants to see that as well. Right, you know they don't want to see. You know their their top creators that they're following keep bouncing around across products and that's kind of like okay, are?

Speaker 1:

you just a salesperson, or?

Speaker 3:

do you? Are you living a certain lifestyle that really advocates for the brands that you're, that you're sharing with me, sort of thing? So hopefully that helps.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think all of this hints at just a new mindset, not just towards advertising and marketing, but just even as a brand. That example of Avocado they are being able to open up their entire brand to these creators also takes transparency, authenticity, relatability all these things that consumers crave as a brand they're able to do even without going through creators. So I think that some of the brands listening they might need to go through their own internal evolution of, if we start to really work with partners in that same transparent, authentic, relatable way, what do we need to do as a company to open up ourselves more so that we build this passionate base, not just of partners, obviously, but of customers. And I think you hinted at that need. Obviously for startups. I think it's easier to do For well-established businesses.

Speaker 1:

I think there is this evolution that the modern consumer is going to request or push them through, and if they don't do it, I don't think they're going to see the growth that these other companies that understand are going to get. So I think you hinted at sort of a larger topic there. So that was awesome, dave. I think you've already given a lot of advice and a lot of it is really rethinking of all these different things that we've talked about, if there was one thing obviously read the partnership economy. Any other sort of lasting tip or advice that you can give to help businesses just reap more rewards from the partnership economy, I think just, it's really hard to develop new muscles, as I call it.

Speaker 3:

We've all been doing the same things over the last hundred years, right, you know big agencies, you know big, big marketing spend. And I would just challenge kind of a status quo. Right, don't keep doing and repeating the same things that we've been doing for 100 years, which is again, perfectly designed image. You know we're running an ad slide Go, go, go go. I think that in the world of marketing it's a surround sound effect, it's a concert effect, right? So I'm not saying stop doing that.

Speaker 3:

My point is to challenge that status quo. Understand the relevancy point that I made how much partnerships is moving the needle for business? I think a lot of people don't realize that, but to me it's about training, training and developing a new muscle, kind of you know and learning how to work with partnerships, because it is different, like it is a more transformative, you know change to how you're, how you're acquiring business and you're kind of forced to, to be honest right now, like if you are continuing to do the same things. I can tell you one thing that has trended is the cost of advertising, right? So Apple started this with some restrictions in iOS and Safari tracking.

Speaker 3:

So, bottom line, I'm not going to get into all the ins and outs of it, but it is very, very hard for a brand to target, track and measure an ad today, and so what's happened is the only way to really do that is to work with a platform like Google, like Facebook, amazon and a few other top major publishers like that, who are platforms, I should say, who have assigned a user.

Speaker 3:

You might be doing a customer match sort of program with them, and you know there are a couple of things wrong with that. One is you're fully trusting them to target and measure, but the bigger issue is because that's the only place to effectively target, track and measure in today's digital world. You've had a lot more demand going into fewer supply sources, so the cost of advertising has gone through the roof. I think I don't know the latest cost of a Facebook ad, but it used to be $2 CPM and now it's about $15 CPM, the last one that I saw. So I guess my point with all that is not only are you no longer relevant as a brand if you're, you know, continuing to shove an ad in someone's face that they never asked for.

Speaker 3:

But it's gotten too expensive, it's gotten very inefficient and so you are forced, I think, as a brand today, to kind of look, you know, for alternative means. And it's a good thing that we've had the rise of the partnership economy, because I think it is a I don't want to be, I want to be careful and not call it an alternative for a lot of people. You know they're starting with partnerships and then they're doing, you know, more top of funnel type stuff like Liquid Ivy. I had a great talk with, uh, real colas in a detail about a year ago. She's the one that kind of enlightened me. It's like, hey, we're a new brand, we actually started in partnerships and now they're starting to do some advertising and it's kind of making making it all work harder. So really good example of the concert effect that I'm talking about. But hopefully I made the point. I just it's worth it to invest with learning and understanding its importance.

Speaker 1:

And they can work together. In fact, one of the panelists from another mattress in a box company at that event in Hollywood talked about how they're leveraging, you know, creator of UGC for their advertising, which is making it, you know, a lot more effective. So there are obviously, I think that you know, facebook ads. Google ads aren't going away, but actually by working through the partnership economy, you can make that more effective as well. That was one of the messages I got back from that event. So, dave, thank you so much for being here. Obviously, for those that are listening watching, definitely go out Partnership Economy. I know it's available on Amazon. That's actually how I found Dave and how I contacted him. And if you really want to get started or you're not happy where you're at now, you're thinking you need to do more.

Speaker 1:

The people at impactcom met a lot of them at their event. They're great. Go over there, get signed up for a demo, speak to someone. I know they'll help you out Any other help you need on the periphery. Your digital marketing coach, neil Shafer, is here as well. But, dave, just recommend you check out impactcom and at the least, if it's a topic that you are further interested in, go check out David Yovanov's book the Partnership Economy. All righty Well. That is it for another exciting and hopefully inspiring episode of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. This is your digital marketing coach, neil Schaefer, signing off until next week.

Speaker 2:

You've been listening to your Digital Marketing Coach. Questions, comments, requests, links go to podcastneilschafercom. Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes at neilschafercom to tap into the 400 plus blog posts that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's digital first group coaching membership community if you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on your Digital Marketing Coach.