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

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Speaker 1: influencer magic or partnership alchemy.

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In the fast-evolving digital marketplace, the powerhouses are

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those who master the art of creator partnerships.

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But what does it take to unlock this power?

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How do collaborations with creators transform your brand's

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reach and resonate more authentically with today's

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consumers?

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From the nuts and bolts of impactful collaborations to the

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inside scoop on what creators truly crave in a partnership,

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we're diving deep with Impact CEO David Yovano Prepare to

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reshape your approach to digital marketing and harness the

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potential of the partnership economy.

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So stay tuned to this next episode of the your Digital

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Marketing Coach podcast.

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Speaker 2: Marketing Coach Podcast.

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A marketing professional, entrepreneur or business owner,

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you need someone you can rely on for expert advice.

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Good thing you've got Neil on your side, because Neil Schaefer

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is your digital marketing coach helping you grow your business

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with digital.

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First, one episode at a time.

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This is your digital marketing coach, and this is Neil Schafer

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hey everybody.

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Speaker 1: This is your digital marketing coach, neil Schafer,

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and welcome to episode number 361 of this podcast.

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Before we get into our special interview today, just wanna give

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you a recap of some of the news articles that I've been

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watching to give you my analysis and advice.

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So we begin with a very, very interesting article on Moz of

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how to write AI content optimized for EEAT.

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Now, obviously there's been a lot of talk about AI and about

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SEO and the impacts it can have, but really we don't look at AI

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for creating the actual content, but how can we use it in the

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ideation and planning phases to help us improve our content is

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really what this article is talking about.

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Hopefully by now you understand what E-E-A-T means.

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It's what Google has been talking about for some time, but

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it's really about showing well.

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It began with the E-A-T, or expertise, authority and

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trustworthiness, and then more recently I believe last year

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they added experience, and this is something Google doesn't want

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you to create just generic vanilla content, because you can

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use AI for that, but to talk about your unique experiences as

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part of your content, and thus this began to be called EEAT.

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So interesting article, and I'll put the link in the show

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notes you can do a search for it on the Moz mozcom blog.

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But really the use of AI is really.

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The recommendation in this article is really fascinating

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and it really comes down to if you understand your target

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audience and where they are in their customer journey, you can

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now begin to use AI to brainstorm, for instance,

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persona pain points, feelings, interests and therefore you can

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use that information from AI to tailor your content strategy to

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address your audience's needs and interest.

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Interesting point in the article they also use a tool

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called Browse AI, which I had never heard of, but it is

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literally browseai to get ideas on how to understand queries and

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trends for users on a specific topic.

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For example and the author works for a content marketing

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agency they identified main Reddit forums and scraped and

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extracted all of the topics.

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This is done within the Browseai tool.

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They then aligned them with their keyword research.

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The work done focused on the audience that they are targeting

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and the topics from the Reddit forums.

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They then created content pillars and content clusters for

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better organization to push overall performance for

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non-branded keywords.

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So it sounds like Browseai is somewhat of a data scraper.

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I personally prefer Phantom Buster that's neilschavercom

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slash phantom buster P-H-A-N-T-O-M-B-U-S-T-E-R for my

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personal affiliate link.

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But this combination of extracting a large data set,

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feeding it to AI and also giving it other information to refine

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your strategy is a great use case scenario of leveraging AI

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for content analysis, not necessarily for the direct

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content creation.

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So this article excellent article and a great reminder of

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that.

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Also, on the news of AI, an AI search engine that I've been

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using a lot and that others have been using a lot since it was

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featured in the New York Times recently, called Perplexity.

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That's perplexityai have just said that they are raising $250

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million, at a $2.5 to $3 billion valuation, for its AI search

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platform.

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As a dedicated AI search platform, it really is a great

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product that I think that either Google is going to buy out or

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they are going to eat away at traditional search engine market

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share over time.

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It's going to take time because obviously Chrome is built in

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everywhere, like Microsoft Internet Explorer was built in

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10 years ago or 15 years ago, but obviously times change.

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If you haven't checked out perplexityai, I highly recommend

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you do that.

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And on the topic of AI, I also just want to give a quick update

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on what I talked about in episode number 361 news, which

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was Meta releasing their new AI.

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It's actually two parts news which was Meta releasing their

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new AI.

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It's actually two parts.

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They have the AI called Lama 3, which I guess is the version

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that is being added, and then they have Meta AI, which is the

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actual AI assistant which they're implementing across

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their social media.

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Now what's interesting is that you know, twitter has Grok

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G-R-O-K.

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I do not use it, but I am assuming that that AI is

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basically using content that's been published on Twitter as the

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large learning model.

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Well, with meta, they have access to a lot of data and I

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believe that that data is probably more realistic of how

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average people talk.

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So, based on their large learning models and the ability

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to generate content and images right there using meta AI and

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within the meta social networks, I think it is an opportunity

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for marketers to really do a little bit of experimenting with

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creating content within meta AI to see how it might

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differentiate the content when created using other AIs.

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I think we might see a difference.

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And there's a particular article from CMS Wire that says

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did Meta just top chat GPT?

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Now, chat GPT obviously is very refined.

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They've been at it for years and I believe that Meta has been

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developing AI for years as well .

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So definitely.

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I highly recommend you experiment with that and I'd

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love to hear back from you.

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Finally, this episode is going to be published right before I

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attend a content marketing conference called CEX or the

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Content Entrepreneur Expo, being put on by my friend, joe, and

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mentor, joe Polizzi, founder of Content Marketing Institute,

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content Marketing World, great guy and fantastic marketing

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author as well.

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So this is going to be May 5th to the 7th in Cleveland Ohio.

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Author as well.

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So this is going to be May 5th to the 7th in Cleveland Ohio,

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and I mentioned this because Ahrefs put out a great little

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summary of seven content marketing conferences to attend

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in 2024.

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I attend a few different genres of conferences every year, so I

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go to VidSummit now on an annual basis to learn about

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YouTube and short form video and video marketing in general, to

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keep my finger on the pulse there.

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I went to PodFest earlier in the year to keep my finger on

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the pulse of podcasting.

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I will normally go to Content Marketing World, which I'm

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hoping to speak at this year, fingers crossed again.

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But I also went to Creator Economy Expo, as the Content

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Entrepreneur Expo was originally called, during COVID, when it

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was limited to a room of 500 people in Phoenix, arizona, and

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I'm excited to be attending this one.

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So there are other content marketing conferences that I

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recommend you check out as well, if you're not.

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In Cleveland, we have MozCon, which is Moz's, you know, the

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big SEO tool In Seattle, washington, june 3rd to 4th.

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We have Inbound, which I've never attended and it's probably

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too late to submit a speaking proposal, but who knows?

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In Boston, the end of September , content marketing world is

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coming to San Diego, close to me , october 22, 23.

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Ahrefs, which their headquarters, I believe, is in

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Singapore, is having their own Ahrefs Evolve 2024 conference

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there in October.

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We have Lavacon, which I've spoken at before.

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That's going to be in Portland, oregon, october 27th to 30th.

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And for my friends in Europe, you have CopyCon 2024.

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That is going to be in London on November 8th.

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So I hope to see you at Content Entrepreneur Expo if you're

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going, but if not, I hope that this information provides value

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to you All.

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Right, so today's interview is with David Yovanov.

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You might not have heard of Impactcom, but Impactcom began

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really as an affiliate marketing platform and it has really

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grown to become more of a creator economy, marketplace

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slash, performance marketing, slash, really this concept of

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the partnership economy platform and in fact, david is also the

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author of a book called the Partnership Economy, which you

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can get on Amazon and wherever fine books are sold that I

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recommend you check out.

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So you know impactcom.

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Whenever I talk with technology vendors in the marketing space,

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I always say that impactcom is really the best place to create

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an affiliate marketing program.

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It's where the biggest brands are and, as a user perspective,

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as an affiliate for many brands, it's actually the easiest to

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use as well.

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So I'm just going through the list of brands that use Impact

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that I'm an affiliate for to give you an idea.

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We have Upwork, we have TikTok for business, their TikTok ad

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platform, teachable, tailwind, sprout, social Shopify, semrush

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I mean I can go on and on HubSpot, bigcommerce, belkin,

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appsumo.

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It's almost like the who's who of big SaaS brands in the

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marketing space.

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And I also had the ability to attend their partnership economy

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event, which they had in Hollywood, I want to say, about

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six months ago, where they had brands and creators come

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together to talk about the creator economy.

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Really really great event.

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Where they had brands and creators come together to talk

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about the creator economy Really really great event.

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Only a few hundred people there , really intimate and yeah,

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david's a great guy and immediately after going to the

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event, I'm like David.

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You know I got to get you on your digital marketing coach

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podcast to talk about, sort of you know, affiliates and content

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creators and influencer marketing and how it's all

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coming together in the partnership economy.

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So, regardless of where your brand is on your influencer

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marketing or affiliate marketing journey, I think that there's

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going to be a lot of great takeaways here.

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So, without further ado, here is my interview with David

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Yovano, the CEO of Impactcom.

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Speaker 2: You're listening to your digital marketing coach.

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This is Neil Schafer.

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Speaker 1: Hey everybody, welcome to another edition of

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the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast.

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Today we have a very special guest the CEO of impactcom, dave

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Yovano.

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Now we're going to be talking about what's happened over the

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last decade is this growth in influencer marketing, creator

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economy, creator commerce.

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As you know, social media is the place to be seen, to be

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heard, to incite word of mouth, but unfortunately for brands it

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can be a struggle because the way the algorithms work, but

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also because we trust people more than we do brands, we

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relate to people more than we do brands, and that really is the

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core of what's brought about this rise of influencer

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marketing, of the creator economy.

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And with every younger generation, we see more and more

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of what's commonly being known as creator commerce, of

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e-commerce that's being funneled in some way.

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Part of that customer journey is in some way being somewhat

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controlled or influenced by 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 million

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creators, however they say, that are out there.

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So if you're a business, obviously this is going to fall

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into the affiliate marketing slash, influencer marketing

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marketing container.

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But as time goes by, it really becomes more important than ever

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to really understand this and tap into it, and today's guest

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is going to give you a lot of advice on how to do that.

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So, without further ado, I'm going to invite on stage CEO of

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impactcom, dave Yovano.

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Dave, welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 3: Thanks for having me, neil, looking forward to

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today's conversation.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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So, dave, you know, looking at your background, you've

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obviously been involved in the advertising industry

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international advertising bureau .

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What have you?

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You came to impact right, I think, when Instagram was really

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hot in terms of influencer marketing.

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Now, having attended your event recently in Los Angeles which

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was excellent, by the way I've really seen us evolve into.

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You know, it seems like all of this is coming together into one

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, so I'd love to hear more about you.

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Know I am a affiliate for many brands on impactcom.

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I see more and more brands coming in to impactcom, so I see

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your growth and your thought leadership in the space, so we'd

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love just an introduction for everybody that doesn't know

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about impact, but also about you know, just to paint a picture

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of what you've seen evolve over the past few years.

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Speaker 3: Great, yeah, I mean just real quick.

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I got into the technology scene in the late nineties I was

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actually a Lieutenant in the Navy before you know getting

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into thecom boom in a positive way back then and you just have

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grown with a number of technology companies over the

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years.

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I've been with impactcom going on seven years now and when I

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look back at the time I joined, what I realized that we did as a

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company that was unique is that we actually put technology into

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the hands of our customers and if they're working with an

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agency, with their agencies, and they started to do really

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innovative things with it.

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The typical experience was to kind of clean up and drive

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efficiency in a traditional affiliate network, you know,

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sort of program.

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So you know these are like more managed, it's less technology

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led, it's more kind of managed services led.

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And we just, you know we were the pioneers of unique coupon

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codes, just de-duping, you know, cross channels within a channel

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, just cut out a lot of waste.

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And we, you know, took a bit of a SaaS business model

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essentially to it.

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And what a lot of customers realize is that because they had

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access to technology to handle things like contracts and

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tracking and payments to their various partners.

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They started to do a number of things with it.

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They have a lot of like B2B sorts of partnerships.

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I tell a story about Ticketmaster.

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This guy, michael Chua, leads a biz dev team there, tapped a

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very small team of engineers to build out a set of APIs around

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concert dates, venues, artists, pricing information and built

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integrations with all the top platforms Spotify, youtube,

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pandora, et cetera with all the top platforms Spotify, youtube,

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pandora, et cetera and when those platforms created a better

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experience and those consumers essentially bought tickets, they

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would compensate them for them on a performance basis.

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And this was the premise of a book that I released I think it

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was last year, I guess that came out really last year called the

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Partnership Economy.

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It was really just me chasing down the story of impactcom

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customers just like that and just demonstrating and

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illustrating how they're using technology to kind of bring in.

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You know all these different partnership types that have

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traditionally just been very ad hoc.

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It could have been a business to business.

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You know biz dev team and influencer marketing team,

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traditional affiliate program.

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You know customer advocacy.

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There's.

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There's many different types of partnerships that have existed

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for decades with businesses but until impactcom came around

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there hasn't been a unifying platform to bring all these

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different partnership types together in one platform

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experience how they discover and find each other, how they

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recruit themselves into a program between those sides, a

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system for you know the source of truth around tracking, you

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know all the engagement, you know communication pieces that

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happen in the partnership, the payments mechanism, how things

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are optimized.

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There's compliance and protection and fraud depending

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on the piece.

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So there's lots of different things that our technology does

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to really enable a business, any partner, to really scale their

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partnership.

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And so once we kind of understood how our technology

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was being used by a number of different businesses, we

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amplified what those mature customers were doing.

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And next thing, you know there's been a whole economy and

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a real category that's been established around partnerships

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and I think the common theme across the different this will

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get into today's conversation when I analyze it across all the

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different partnership types that I mentioned is we talk

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about the partnership economy.

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What, what makes it unique, is very different from advertising

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or more traditional forms of marketing, because this is a

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situation where the brand is not in control of the message.

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They are not fully controlling that perfectly designed image or

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that perfectly narrated copy that goes out.

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They are drawing an alliance with another business, a

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traditional affiliate, an influencer or creator, and they

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may be giving some brand guidelines, but it's like they

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are speaking in their own voice and their own tone to their

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customers and to their audience in their own unique way, and the

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brand is kind of trusting it right.

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And that is kind of how I would describe this category of

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partnerships and especially to a topic that I know you want to

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focus on today with creators, with influencers.

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That is kind of a requirement now for businesses If they

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really want to be relevant to today's modern buyer.

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They've got to, you know, kind of speak through the voice of a

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career, that trusted source, right.

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If you think about it like a brand, you know doesn't have a

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relationship with that end consumer just yet right, and so

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a way to be more relevant is to go through someone who does have

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a relationship and form that alliance and get them to

00:17:48
recommend you.

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Speaker 1: essentially, yeah, well said, and thank you for

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your introduction to your book and to this partnership economy,

00:17:55
which is a great way to really frame it, and I love that you

00:17:58
focused on simplifying technology for this economy

00:18:01
because, as I mentioned when I tracking in their dashboard, so

00:18:03
it's been really great to see.

00:18:04
I mean, I will recommend to startups, other companies, that

00:18:07
they should join your platform, and I've seen just personally.

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I know SEMRush moved over very recently, sprout Social moved

00:18:25
over, so a lot of the companies that I'm an affiliate for have

00:18:27
moved over, and I think that really says everything about the

00:18:29
platform.

00:18:30
So I really want to dig deeper, though, into this partnership

00:18:33
economy, and, as we were preparing for this interview,

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you had mentioned that digital advertising over time, that

00:18:41
something went wrong and that there are new customer

00:18:45
acquisition channels driving growth, and I think this is

00:18:48
going to be another introduction into this partnership economy,

00:18:51
but I'd love to hear just what you think has gone wrong with

00:18:54
digital advertising and what is the right way to do it today.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you asked the wrong person, I think, for

00:19:01
that, because I could talk for hours about what went wrong and

00:19:05
maybe keep me on track, because I like to roll it back like 100

00:19:09
years so that people have context.

00:19:11
Radio started in the same year that TV started, and the way

00:19:17
advertising started back then was, you know, programming

00:19:19
happened, right, radio shows, and then TV shows happened, and

00:19:22
then, you know, those were free airways, so they had to find a

00:19:24
way to kind of subsidize it, and so the advertising model was

00:19:28
created back then, literally a hundred years ago, and it was,

00:19:31
you know, an inserted spot kind of like what you see today, like

00:19:34
a 15 second or 30 second or even longer spot from an

00:19:37
advertiser.

00:19:38
Think about, think about the ads back then, smoking and

00:19:40
things like that.

00:19:41
You know, one out of five doctors recommend smoking, sort

00:19:45
of thing.

00:19:45
That's what went wrong.

00:19:46
It was really from the very beginning you had an advertiser

00:19:50
who was disrupting the user experience.

00:19:53
So back then people were listening to a radio show or

00:19:56
they were watching a TV show.

00:19:58
They didn't really go on to see an ad or hear an ad.

00:20:02
They went on for that program, but that continued literally for

00:20:07
100 years.

00:20:07
And then you asked specifically about digital.

00:20:09
So when the internet happened so figure the late 90s they

00:20:14
applied the exact same model to this new digital format.

00:20:18
So there's publishers with websites.

00:20:20
You're reading an article or you're watching a video.

00:20:22
It took a while for videos to really catch hold but same thing

00:20:25
You're disrupting the users.

00:20:27
Why do people go online?

00:20:28
They go online for entertainment.

00:20:31
They're going online for connections with other people

00:20:34
and they're going online for information.

00:20:35
They are not going online for an ad right, but the way that

00:20:39
the industry started it needed to find a way to subsidize

00:20:43
itself.

00:20:43
So you can't blame it.

00:20:45
I get it.

00:20:46
In fact this is a way back machine point here that I'll

00:20:50
make.

00:20:50
But if you're to give a lifetime award to one person to crack

00:20:55
the code on actually creating the Internet because it needed

00:20:57
to have a commercial base, but think of Bill Gross, ted Meisel,

00:21:01
so Idea Lab it was GoTo originally, which became

00:21:05
Overshare, but they're the ones that kind of figured out the

00:21:08
early monetization model of the Internet.

00:21:10
It was essentially the sponsored links at the top of

00:21:12
search results, essentially the sponsored links at the top of

00:21:15
search results.

00:21:16
That was like the first form of advertising that actually

00:21:19
worked and made the internet like kind of the commercial

00:21:20
beast that it is today and if they didn't figure that out,

00:21:22
that early stage of online probably would have never gotten

00:21:25
started Just all the innovation , all the companies that were

00:21:27
created.

00:21:27
So I get it Like you know, we had to start somewhere.

00:21:31
But where things have evolved is , you know, you've had the rise

00:21:35
of major platforms like YouTube.

00:21:36
Let's just focus on that.

00:21:37
So literally in the last 10 years there has been a sea of

00:21:42
commercial information that's been published about products,

00:21:46
right, very in-depth, heavily gated, meaning it was an

00:21:48
expensive magazine to get but it was like deep information about

00:21:59
you know any product, cars, you know a computer, things like

00:22:03
that.

00:22:03
With the rise of YouTube and other platforms like YouTube,

00:22:08
you've got the democratization of that same kind of content in

00:22:12
the beginning.

00:22:13
So it's amazing to me that this is really only like seven,

00:22:16
maybe 10 years ago.

00:22:17
But probably like seven years ago is when this really kind of

00:22:20
started to happen at scale.

00:22:22
But you had, you know, think of all the you know kind of

00:22:25
creators back then who would do these unboxing videos and put up

00:22:28
you know Lenovo's, you know hot new gaming laptop on the desk

00:22:32
and like put that right next to you know the last version of a

00:22:36
gaming laptop and they're running their benchmark tests

00:22:39
and some of them really got into it.

00:22:40
White Loves, you know, slowly cutting the box open and just

00:22:43
really made it a show.

00:22:44
But why were they doing it back then?

00:22:46
They actually weren't doing it, in my opinion.

00:22:48
They weren't doing that to earn a lot of money.

00:22:51
They were actually doing it because they were like just

00:22:54
enthusiastic about it.

00:22:55
They're passionate about these products.

00:22:56
Maybe they wanted the social currency bragging rights within

00:22:59
their community, but they really enjoyed what they were doing

00:23:02
and that's, I think, what went right actually with the economy

00:23:07
and the commercialization that's happening now because you've

00:23:10
got this base of careers.

00:23:12
So if you were to fast forward to where we are today, you've

00:23:14
got a tremendous amount of this kind of supply, this commercial

00:23:18
content.

00:23:19
I call it commerce content, you call it creator commerce or

00:23:22
something related.

00:23:23
It's all related, right, it's information about products is

00:23:26
kind of the way that I think of it, and you've got a lot more

00:23:30
people doing this now and today's consumer is now trained,

00:23:34
like they know, when they hear about something, it could be

00:23:37
through a TV ad, it could be from a friend, it could be from

00:23:39
a creator themselves, but the first thing that people do

00:23:42
online right now is they go see what other people have to say

00:23:45
about a product right, that they're, that they're interested

00:23:47
in, and that is what's driving their buying journey today, more

00:23:51
so than call it.

00:23:52
10 years ago it used to be a lot more unilateral.

00:23:54
People would hear about something, maybe through a TV ad

00:23:57
, and kind of run out and buy it .

00:23:58
They would go, hit the brand's website, read up as much

00:24:02
information as they could about it and they would get excited

00:24:05
about it, fall in love with it, and it really fell flat, to be

00:24:08
honest, because that has been how we've been trained for a

00:24:11
hundred years.

00:24:12
Like there's this perfect image out there of this thing and you

00:24:16
get it and it's actually not quite what was advertised, but

00:24:19
we've accepted that.

00:24:19
I'm not sure this is the best analogy, but I've used this in

00:24:22
the past because it's something I remember, like just you know,

00:24:25
standing in line at McDonald's when I was growing up with my

00:24:28
grandfather, and you see this picture of a Big Mac up there.

00:24:31
It looks freaking amazing, right.

00:24:33
It's like this beautiful sandwich, right, perfect

00:24:36
Photoshop and whatnot.

00:24:37
And then you get it and you open it up.

00:24:39
It literally looks like it's been run over by a truck, right.

00:24:42
And that's kind of how we, as consumers, have been trained

00:24:46
Like we see that we follow it, but we and we get it and we

00:24:49
realize it's not as, but we're okay with that.

00:24:52
And that sort of experience has been completely disrupted by

00:24:57
what's happened around the creator economy especially.

00:25:00
But any form of commercial content that's being public,

00:25:03
like major publishers are doing the exact same thing.

00:25:05
All the Meredith brands, better Homes and Garden, food and Wine

00:25:08
, condé Nast brands like Vogue, cnn's got Underscore, new York

00:25:11
Times got Wirecutter, so you've got large editorial teams that

00:25:16
are doing the same thing that individual creators are doing on

00:25:19
YouTube and TikTok and Instagram.

00:25:21
They're talking about products and this is what's driving the

00:25:24
consumer journey today.

00:25:26
And this is the world of partnerships.

00:25:28
You know, by my definition, meaning brands now are kind of

00:25:32
required to draw an alliance with these businesses or these

00:25:36
individuals, inform them like, hey, love your style, I think

00:25:40
you'd be great for my brand.

00:25:41
Here's why I think we're going to maybe test out a product.

00:25:43
I would love for you to cover it, but it's kind of like a PR

00:25:46
motion.

00:25:46
Like PR motion, meaning a business is going to approach a

00:25:49
journalist.

00:25:49
Maybe you need to kind of talk about them, but you're using you

00:25:53
know, you have a very loyal following on your YouTube

00:25:55
channel, right?

00:25:56
Your loyalty is to your audience , right.

00:25:58
So you're always going to want to shoot them straight, and

00:26:00
that's what that consumer wants.

00:26:01
They want somebody to shoot them straight, and if they're

00:26:04
not, or they get the sense I mean today's consumer has a very

00:26:07
high BS filter it's going to show up in comments, it's going

00:26:10
to show up at the unsubscribe, which no creator wants.

00:26:12
So there are checks and balances.

00:26:14
You know, that's what's great about these new platforms and

00:26:16
the way this economy has been built.

00:26:18
So very long winded.

00:26:20
Sorry, this is unscripted.

00:26:21
Speaker 1: No, this is awesome, but, like you, frame it in a

00:26:24
unique way that I haven't heard before, of just the way that

00:26:26
we're trained and for brands out there, I mean, even if you're

00:26:29
B2B.

00:26:30
The younger the generation, the more they go to social media.

00:26:33
First we might still be going to G2 or Yelp or wherever, but

00:26:36
they're going straight to TikTok , right?

00:26:38
Are people talking about it?

00:26:39
What are they saying?

00:26:40
Obviously, this concept of an unboxing did not exist before

00:26:44
YouTube and the fact that people aren't in it for the money.

00:26:47
I know that you recently conducted a great study and

00:26:50
maybe we can go into a little bit of that if we have time

00:26:52
today, but I read another one that just came out of a week ago

00:26:55
from a think tank that interviewed more than a thousand

00:26:57
creators in the United States and they found that monetization

00:27:01
was actually fourth on their list of priorities when they're

00:27:04
creating content.

00:27:05
So a lot of people think that everyone's just in it for the

00:27:08
money.

00:27:08
But it really is that passion, especially in the early days of

00:27:11
YouTube.

00:27:11
But I still think that's alive and well and I think that's

00:27:13
something that brands listening really need to understand that

00:27:16
it's not just about the money.

00:27:17
It's about a lot of different factors that creators are

00:27:20
thinking about to decide whether or not they want to collaborate

00:27:22
with the brand.

00:27:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean just to be clear.

00:27:25
Like compensation is very important.

00:27:27
It's definitely up there as one of the most important things to

00:27:29
creators.

00:27:30
I'd say equally or even more important for many of them is

00:27:34
the brands that they're working with and the control that they

00:27:37
have on the message that they're sharing with their audience.

00:27:40
They want to deliver an authentic view of this product.

00:27:45
They don't want to be kind of like handcuffed.

00:27:48
This is something that they're very proud of in terms of the

00:27:52
audience that they've built.

00:27:52
They always put that as a higher priority, but they do

00:27:56
want to work with brands that they can relate to and use their

00:27:58
authentic voice as a result.

00:28:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, what I said was not an invitation to lowball

00:28:03
offers to creators, because they are worth what they ask for and

00:28:05
they have to make a living and they are small businesses, they

00:28:08
are entrepreneurs.

00:28:09
Speaker 3: Well, I've talked to a lot of them.

00:28:10
What they get upset about is and I can't believe that some

00:28:13
brands do this maybe because they feel they've got leverage

00:28:15
over them, because they're in kind of a small business, if you

00:28:18
will, many of them but they'll come at a creator not only with

00:28:22
a performance only deal, but it's like after you sell X

00:28:27
number of the product, then I'll pay you some form of commission

00:28:30
.

00:28:30
A lot of these creators are like get out of here with that.

00:28:32
I've got to spend time to get to know you as a brand.

00:28:35
I've got to test and review your product.

00:28:36
I've got to produce content, you know, in the form of like,

00:28:39
video, photos.

00:28:41
You know some sort of like.

00:28:42
You know write up.

00:28:43
You know I've got to really invest some time in this and you

00:28:45
know, if there's not, you know some form like, like.

00:28:48
You know that's a lot of risk, honestly, for them to take,

00:28:52
right, they're not in full control of the landing page

00:28:55
experience and the customer experience.

00:28:57
So that's not exactly fair, I think, to ask.

00:29:00
But brands also aren't in full control of what's being said.

00:29:05
You know the video, the review, the content.

00:29:08
So it's not fair for them to bear all the risk either in

00:29:11
terms of like fully fixed fee, and one of the things that we've

00:29:13
really kind of settled on with a lot of the conversations, a

00:29:16
lot of research that we've done, is a form of a hybrid, like

00:29:18
some form of a fixed fee or a flat fee that's paid for some

00:29:23
upfront work, and we, as a platform at impactcom, we're

00:29:25
trying to provide more information and more

00:29:28
recommendations on what is the value of a post.

00:29:30
We call it post plus, meaning there's a blend of a fixed fee

00:29:33
that's paid plus a performance element.

00:29:35
One of the key advantages here is that you know you've got a

00:29:39
lot of this.

00:29:40
Content is evergreen, especially on a platform like

00:29:42
YouTube.

00:29:42
It's very searchable.

00:29:43
You've got content that sits out there for years, like

00:29:46
literally five years still, generating residual income for

00:29:49
the creator, residual sales for the brand and, you know, just on

00:29:52
that point of compensation, you know we're finding that that's

00:29:55
been a real fit, I think, on both sides of the table.

00:29:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think it makes a lot of sense.

00:29:59
It also, from a brand perspective, gives you that

00:30:02
trackability to say you know how many clicks, how much commerce

00:30:06
did this influencer drive in a very, very easy way without

00:30:09
having to reinvent the wheel.

00:30:10
Right about tracking.

00:30:11
So I think that's a great, you know, win-win for everybody.

00:30:20
Obviously, I think you've already sort of hinted at the

00:30:21
answer to this, but you know, can you go a little bit deeper

00:30:22
into why you think that influencer and creator

00:30:23
partnerships, as you see it at Impact, are outperforming

00:30:26
traditional advertising channels for your clients?

00:30:28
I mean?

00:30:29
Speaker 3: well.

00:30:30
First of all, the scale is there.

00:30:32
So it used to be a little bit more ad hoc.

00:30:34
It wasn't really moving the needle for business.

00:30:36
This is one of the things that we've set out to address

00:30:40
actually as a platform is to just really make it easy and

00:30:43
efficient to kind of scale a program with any type of

00:30:46
partnership, not just with creators but with commerce,

00:30:48
content, larger publishers, with traditional affiliates, other

00:30:50
businesses, with customers et cetera.

00:30:52
But I think it's meaningful now for business.

00:30:56
When you put all these different partnership types

00:30:58
together, it's contributing up to 30% of the total revenue mix

00:31:02
for a lot of mature customers we're seeing as a channel, as a

00:31:06
category, partnerships as a whole representing about 50%

00:31:10
growth.

00:31:10
So it's just blowing away other traditional channels.

00:31:12
So that's been a motivator on the business side.

00:31:15
But for the ones that get it, I think what the real advantage is

00:31:20
is just being more relevant to today's buyer.

00:31:23
Like you know, I think most buyers they don't want to be

00:31:26
sold to.

00:31:27
They don't want, they're not going to trust anything that you

00:31:29
are trying to tell them.

00:31:30
You don't have a relationship with them.

00:31:31
And I think today's modern buyer is just much more savvy

00:31:35
and again, the first thing that they're going to do is go and

00:31:38
see what other people have to say about it.

00:31:40
And the real risk here, I think, for businesses is if you're

00:31:44
still only investing, or primarily investing, or have a

00:31:47
higher allocation of investment in these traditional channels

00:31:50
like advertising or display advertising, let's say, and

00:31:54
somebody finds out about you and then they go online to do their

00:31:57
research and they don't find you, you know, like partners,

00:32:01
like creators or other publishers talking about you and

00:32:03
instead talking about your closest competitors.

00:32:05
That's like wasted money.

00:32:07
That's like, that's like the double whammy so you're not

00:32:10
relevant and you're wasting, you know, your marketing spend.

00:32:12
So I think a lot of businesses are catching on to this trend

00:32:15
and I don't look at it as binary , like either take from here and

00:32:20
only put it here To.

00:32:21
They're not already shifting more of their investment into

00:32:34
this partnerships economy as opposed to traditional channels,

00:32:38
because I think it makes you more relevant as a brand.

00:32:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely.

00:32:42
And, in fact, those customers of yours that are getting 30% of

00:32:46
their global revenue from partners.

00:32:48
That's one of the reasons I reached out to you was because

00:32:51
looking for case studies for my upcoming book, and one of those

00:32:54
is definitely going to make it in because it's been so

00:32:57
impactful for so many companies.

00:32:58
So, with that in mind, I know that there are a lot of brands,

00:33:01
whether they're B2C or B2B, that are watching, listening and

00:33:04
they're wondering how can we leverage authentic partnerships

00:33:09
for what you would call significant and sustainable

00:33:11
business growth.

00:33:11
And maybe they already have they're already doing some

00:33:14
affiliates, maybe they've sort of dabbed in influencer

00:33:17
marketing or maybe some UGC.

00:33:19
How can we sort of bring this all together and create this

00:33:23
engine that you speak of?

00:33:24
What would be your advice?

00:33:26
Speaker 3: Well, I articulate a lot of this in the books.

00:33:28
I would encourage you first maybe get a copy of the

00:33:30
Partnership Economy, because we talk about it a lot there and I

00:33:32
think you know it really starts with like like knowing your

00:33:36
customer, like who are they?

00:33:37
Who else do they buy?

00:33:43
From right, the other products that they buy that are

00:33:44
complimentary to yours are potential like really good

00:33:45
partners for you, right?

00:33:46
So we have, you know, a direct consumer wine business, direct

00:33:49
consumer meal business.

00:33:50
They do inserts with each other , right, pretty obvious right

00:33:57
that you know you might want, you know, wine with your meal,

00:33:59
sort of thing.

00:33:59
So just looking for those very obvious types of partnerships.

00:34:00
And then, on the creator front, it's like it is amazing to me

00:34:04
like how like niche or focus or personalized content can be.

00:34:08
So we have a brand, avocado.

00:34:10
They started as an avocado mattress.

00:34:11
It's now known as Avocado Brands, if you're not familiar

00:34:14
with them.

00:34:15
It's 100% toxic-free, organic mattresses, for example, and

00:34:19
they've got a very diverse partnership program.

00:34:22
But there are creators on YouTube and other platforms who

00:34:26
solely focus on outfitting your home to be 100% toxic-free, 100%

00:34:31
organic.

00:34:31
There's a really interesting story the CEO of Avado Brands I

00:34:35
think his son got sick when he was really young and they traced

00:34:38
it down to a material that was used in the mattress and it

00:34:42
really made his son sick.

00:34:42
So it's a really fascinating story and, as a brand, they

00:34:45
invite these creators, these publishers, like any potential

00:34:49
business partner, into their shop, their manufacturing

00:34:53
facilities and they open up their master.

00:34:55
They talk about, like, how the company was founded, how they

00:34:57
source their materials, how they make their products, how they

00:35:00
treat their employees, and you know, these creators, these

00:35:04
publishers, will go back and write about it and cover it and

00:35:06
do reviews, and so you know, what I would say is, like you

00:35:10
know, tap into the sources of information.

00:35:13
Like like that is a, you know, kind of a topic that some people

00:35:17
are like really passionate about, and you need to

00:35:18
understand that about your customer.

00:35:20
Like you know, if somebody is going to buy a hundred percent

00:35:22
toxic free, there's like real purpose there.

00:35:24
So, like tapping into those who are kind of focused on that

00:35:28
subject, drawing in alliance with them, inviting them in,

00:35:30
like not giving them a script saying read this, use this image

00:35:34
, it's like, you know, informing them, like getting them excited

00:35:37
, like getting them on your side so that when they go and talk

00:35:39
to their audience in their own voice.

00:35:40
You know, they're kind of representing and recommending

00:35:43
you kind of in the right way.

00:35:45
So I guess what I'm saying there is you know, know your

00:35:48
customer.

00:35:48
But then you've also got to kind of have to learn how this, this

00:35:51
channel, works, because it's not like advertising.

00:35:54
This isn't an ad.

00:35:56
This isn't, you know, pay a dollar, get a click, pay a

00:36:00
million dollars, get a million clicks.

00:36:01
It's not coin operated that way .

00:36:03
Right, it requires a partnership.

00:36:05
You got to go deeper, you got to invest some time to kind of

00:36:12
get to know, you know, a creator or a publisher.

00:36:14
But you know, just know that a little bit more work and effort

00:36:15
upfront, traditionally.

00:36:17
But there is an evergreen benefit to that and there's a

00:36:20
recurring nature to it as well, because I think both sides, both

00:36:23
brands and creators especially they want long-term partnerships

00:36:26
, right, they don't want this transactional one and done.

00:36:29
You know advertising relationship.

00:36:31
Okay, I covered that product last week.

00:36:32
Now I'm talking about some other product, right, I mean

00:36:34
some, some of them operate that way.

00:36:36
But I think, when you look at the research that I had shared

00:36:39
at the IPX event in Hollywood, and that's exactly what we're

00:36:42
talking about on both sides of the table with brands and

00:36:44
creators.

00:36:45
They want longer term partnerships and guess what?

00:36:47
The audience wants to see that as well.

00:36:49
Right, you know they don't want to see.

00:36:51
You know their their top creators that they're following

00:36:53
keep bouncing around across products and that's kind of like

00:36:55
okay, are?

00:36:56
Speaker 1: you just a salesperson, or?

00:36:57
Speaker 3: do you?

00:36:57
Are you living a certain lifestyle that really advocates

00:37:01
for the brands that you're, that you're sharing with me, sort of

00:37:03
thing?

00:37:03
So hopefully that helps.

00:37:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think all of this hints at just a new mindset

00:37:07
, not just towards advertising and marketing, but just even as

00:37:11
a brand.

00:37:12
That example of Avocado they are being able to open up their

00:37:16
entire brand to these creators also takes transparency,

00:37:26
authenticity, relatability all these things that consumers

00:37:27
crave as a brand they're able to do even without going through

00:37:28
creators.

00:37:29
So I think that some of the brands listening they might need

00:37:31
to go through their own internal evolution of, if we

00:37:34
start to really work with partners in that same

00:37:36
transparent, authentic, relatable way, what do we need

00:37:39
to do as a company to open up ourselves more so that we build

00:37:43
this passionate base, not just of partners, obviously, but of

00:37:46
customers.

00:37:46
And I think you hinted at that need.

00:37:49
Obviously for startups.

00:37:50
I think it's easier to do For well-established businesses.

00:37:53
I think there is this evolution that the modern consumer is

00:37:57
going to request or push them through, and if they don't do it

00:38:00
, I don't think they're going to see the growth that these other

00:38:02
companies that understand are going to get.

00:38:04
So I think you hinted at sort of a larger topic there.

00:38:06
So that was awesome, dave.

00:38:09
I think you've already given a lot of advice and a lot of it is

00:38:12
really rethinking of all these different things that we've

00:38:16
talked about, if there was one thing obviously read the

00:38:20
partnership economy.

00:38:21
Any other sort of lasting tip or advice that you can give to

00:38:25
help businesses just reap more rewards from the partnership

00:38:28
economy, I think just, it's really hard to develop new

00:38:32
muscles, as I call it.

00:38:33
Speaker 3: We've all been doing the same things over the last

00:38:36
hundred years, right, you know big agencies, you know big, big

00:38:40
marketing spend.

00:38:41
And I would just challenge kind of a status quo.

00:38:43
Right, don't keep doing and repeating the same things that

00:38:46
we've been doing for 100 years, which is again, perfectly

00:38:49
designed image.

00:38:50
You know we're running an ad slide Go, go, go go.

00:38:52
I think that in the world of marketing it's a surround sound

00:38:56
effect, it's a concert effect, right?

00:38:57
So I'm not saying stop doing that.

00:39:00
My point is to challenge that status quo.

00:39:04
Understand the relevancy point that I made how much

00:39:10
partnerships is moving the needle for business?

00:39:11
I think a lot of people don't realize that, but to me it's

00:39:19
about training, training and developing a new muscle, kind of

00:39:20
you know and learning how to work with partnerships, because

00:39:22
it is different, like it is a more transformative, you know

00:39:23
change to how you're, how you're acquiring business and you're

00:39:25
kind of forced to, to be honest right now, like if you are

00:39:29
continuing to do the same things .

00:39:30
I can tell you one thing that has trended is the cost of

00:39:33
advertising, right?

00:39:40
So Apple started this with some restrictions in iOS and Safari

00:39:41
tracking.

00:39:41
So, bottom line, I'm not going to get into all the ins and outs

00:39:43
of it, but it is very, very hard for a brand to target,

00:39:46
track and measure an ad today, and so what's happened is the

00:39:51
only way to really do that is to work with a platform like

00:39:55
Google, like Facebook, amazon and a few other top major

00:40:00
publishers like that, who are platforms, I should say, who

00:40:02
have assigned a user.

00:40:05
You might be doing a customer match sort of program with them,

00:40:07
and you know there are a couple of things wrong with that.

00:40:09
One is you're fully trusting them to target and measure, but

00:40:14
the bigger issue is because that's the only place to

00:40:16
effectively target, track and measure in today's digital world

00:40:20
.

00:40:20
You've had a lot more demand going into fewer supply sources,

00:40:23
so the cost of advertising has gone through the roof.

00:40:26
I think I don't know the latest cost of a Facebook ad, but it

00:40:29
used to be $2 CPM and now it's about $15 CPM, the last one that

00:40:34
I saw.

00:40:35
So I guess my point with all that is not only are you no

00:40:39
longer relevant as a brand if you're, you know, continuing to

00:40:42
shove an ad in someone's face that they never asked for.

00:40:44
But it's gotten too expensive, it's gotten very inefficient and

00:40:48
so you are forced, I think, as a brand today, to kind of look,

00:40:53
you know, for alternative means.

00:40:55
And it's a good thing that we've had the rise of the

00:40:57
partnership economy, because I think it is a I don't want to be

00:41:02
, I want to be careful and not call it an alternative for a lot

00:41:05
of people.

00:41:05
You know they're starting with partnerships and then they're

00:41:07
doing, you know, more top of funnel type stuff like Liquid

00:41:10
Ivy.

00:41:11
I had a great talk with, uh, real colas in a detail about a

00:41:14
year ago.

00:41:15
She's the one that kind of enlightened me.

00:41:16
It's like, hey, we're a new brand, we actually started in

00:41:19
partnerships and now they're starting to do some advertising

00:41:23
and it's kind of making making it all work harder.

00:41:25
So really good example of the concert effect that I'm talking

00:41:28
about.

00:41:28
But hopefully I made the point.

00:41:30
I just it's worth it to invest with learning and understanding

00:41:34
its importance.

00:41:35
Speaker 1: And they can work together.

00:41:36
In fact, one of the panelists from another mattress in a box

00:41:38
company at that event in Hollywood talked about how

00:41:41
they're leveraging, you know, creator of UGC for their

00:41:44
advertising, which is making it, you know, a lot more effective.

00:41:47
So there are obviously, I think that you know, facebook ads.

00:41:49
Google ads aren't going away, but actually by working through

00:41:53
the partnership economy, you can make that more effective as

00:41:54
well.

00:41:55
That was one of the messages I got back from that event.

00:41:57
So, dave, thank you so much for being here.

00:41:59
Obviously, for those that are listening watching, definitely

00:42:02
go out Partnership Economy.

00:42:03
I know it's available on Amazon .

00:42:04
That's actually how I found Dave and how I contacted him.

00:42:07
And if you really want to get started or you're not happy

00:42:10
where you're at now, you're thinking you need to do more.

00:42:12
The people at impactcom met a lot of them at their event.

00:42:14
They're great.

00:42:15
Go over there, get signed up for a demo, speak to someone.

00:42:18
I know they'll help you out Any other help you need on the

00:42:20
periphery.

00:42:21
Your digital marketing coach, neil Shafer, is here as well.

00:42:23
But, dave, just recommend you check out impactcom and at the

00:42:39
least, if it's a topic that you are further interested in, go

00:42:42
check out David Yovanov's book the Partnership Economy.

00:42:45
All righty Well.

00:42:46
That is it for another exciting and hopefully inspiring episode

00:42:52
of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast.

00:42:53
This is your digital marketing coach, neil Schaefer, signing

00:42:57
off until next week.

00:42:59
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00:43:02
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00:43:02
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00:43:08
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00:43:18
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