Welcome to DTC Pod, where we take you behind the wheel with the best founders and operators of consumer brands. You'll learn the ins and outs of business from setting up shop, hitting your first million, scaling past eight figures, and even navigating an exit. As founders ourselves, our goal is to help you learn from the best as you build. Visit us@dtcpod.com to sign up for our weekly newsletter, join our founder community and find additional resources from every episode. Dtcpod is brought to you by Trend, the creative solution for your brand.

Go to trend.

IO to access thousands of creators for content needs such as product photography, unboxing videos or even TikTok. And IG organic creative. Use the code Dtcpod ten for 10% off your next content purchase. As a D to C brand, you need real time financial visibility to save money and make better decisions. Waiting for books from slow and expensive bookkeepers that don't get ecommerce is slowing you down. Trusted by hundreds of brands, final Loop is a real time accounting service built by D to C founders. For D to C. Founders try final loop. Completely free, no credit card required. Just visit Finalloop.com D to CPOd and get 14 days free and a two month PnL within 24 hours with all the ecom data and breakdowns you need to crush it.

What's up, DTC Pod? Today we're joined by Marshall Nyman, who is the founder and CEO of Naimo and Co. So Marshall, I'll let you kick us off. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background in affiliate and digital marketing.

Yeah, appreciate you having me on the show. Great to chat with everybody today. Well, I guess that's a little long wind of a question now that I get started in the digital marketing space. So never wanted to be in marketing. Actually, when I originally got started in my career, I just graduated with my MBA and I knew I wanted to live in New York City. So I moved up there and was living on my sister's couch for a bit and was just trying to find an opportunity. Went out one night with a buddy, started talking to one of his friends, and he told me to bring my computer and meet him first thing Monday morning at his office. And I did. And that's how I got started in affiliate marketing. Had no experience, and he basically taught me how the industry worked. I started as just a little internship, then after a few weeks, it turned into an hourly job. And then before I knew it, I was a full time employee there and I worked there for five years. And anything that you could have learned about affiliate marketing, I had an opportunity to do there. We were generating traffic primarily through email, through different types of offers, and that's really where I got my passion and knew that I wanted to someday start my own affiliate business. But from that direction out in New York City, I got pulled all the way out to California and I started working for an ecommerce business that did everything for brands. It was called one stop. They were one stop shop for anything that you needed for an ecommerce business. They built the website on their own platform. They had a development team in house. They did customer service, support, fulfillment and marketing, among other things. So within the marketing team there, I was working on the email side of things, saw they had a really big need for affiliate marketing and was able to bring my experience in the last company there and help them really ramp up what they were doing in the affiliate space. And it was really a different type of affiliate than what I was used to. This was more commerce focused content direct to consumer brands, not as much as what we were doing in the past where it was maybe like a one off offer. It wasn't maybe a brand that wouldn't maybe resonate with you and I. So this was really exciting for me. And at that time someone said, hey, I need help on a brand. And so I decided to give them a little support on the email marketing side of things. And when I left the conversation, I said, hey, you ever think about doing any affiliate marketing? And they said, we've thought about it, but never kind of got to the point where they jumped in and I said, do you want to start an affiliate marketing program? Let's do it. And we got one kicked off. That was my very first client. It was actually six years ago this March, and that's how Naimo was born. It just started as a little side project and then six years later, it's a full flown agency.

So why don't you tell us a little bit more about the agency and what you guys special in now? What is it as it exists today?

Yeah, so as far as affiliate marketing, in a very simple answer, we help brands get promoted via third parties, whether it's on social or different platform. It could be a website, and then they get a commission if somebody makes a sale. So it's 100% performance based. There's a ton of different types of partners within this space. There's coupon, content loyalty. There's even some technology partners. You can even run paid search, paid social through an affiliate model. So affiliates are very broad channel as far as what we specifically focus on. We help brands with content partnerships. So we think about that point where someone's going to solve that problem on Google. What is that question they're going to ask? Maybe there's a best of list. Maybe there's a product review or brand review that that person is going to interact with. A lot of times those are affiliate articles. We're helping the brands we work with get their products in front of those editors, those editors will produce content or maybe an influencer on their social handle, and then we track everything via our affiliate platform. And that's how they drive the traffic and we track those sales and they get a payout. So it's a really cool model because it doesn't require a big upfront budget like maybe other channels. We're used to saying, here's 1020, 50, or $100,000, go run this campaign. Instead it's, hey, can you please run this campaign? And this is the type of payout that you could potentially make on a rev share.

So why don't you tell us a little bit more about affiliate in the terms of why does it work from, I guess, maybe the consumer side of point of view? Right. Why is affiliate such a strong channel as opposed to just going to the brand? And how do you maybe build a strategy so the consumer can see the brand when they're talking directly one to one to the brand or landing on that page? But what's the power of affiliate in leveraging other channels to speak about brands?

Yeah, I think the reason it's a strong channel is because it's really not one thing. Affiliate can be so many different things. And that's why over time it's evolved and it's continued to become a stronger and stronger channel for brands because anybody can leverage affiliate for really whatever they're doing. It's more of like a means to run your marketing than necessarily a marketing channel. So that's why I think it's grown a lot and there's a lot of interest. And why it's so applicable is because there's coupon publishers, everybody's searching for a deal, there's loyalty partners. People want to be rewarded for their shopping behavior. There's content, people want to know about the newest products. There's review sites, people want to know people's opinions on the products, how they rank out. There's influencers. You can have a technology on your site as well running on an affiliate basis. So that's why I think there's just so many options. It's not like it's like a very specific channel like some of the others, where this is the tactic, you're employing it and you kind of run with it. Affiliates, a lot of test and learn what worked for one brand in the same vertical may not work for another brand. So you really have to be willing to test on the channel, try different partners, see where your audience is, and have that partner produce content.

So why don't you tell us a little bit about what an offer looks like for a brand or what an affiliate engagement looks like? So say the brands got started. They know how to, they've built a product, they've started to sell direct, maybe on a couple of other different main channels, like maybe they're on Amazon, maybe they're selling direct to consumer. Maybe they've run some paid ads and now they're interested in, oh, let me dip my toes into the world of affiliate. I'm sure a lot of brands maybe have started in house doing affiliate stuff in terms of general product seeding to influencers they might like or something like that. But once they get beyond that, when they come to you, what does it look like? How do you build an affiliate strategy?

Yeah, most brands that I talk to either have no affiliate program or they have an immature affiliate program. And so they're looking to just really optimize what they're doing. And so our goal is to put together a strategy that's going to help fill the top of the funnel so when people are doing research on Google, Social or whatever the platform, they're able to get that information and then come to that site. So there's a lot of different ways to create that interest.

So, Marshall, let's assume that you're a brand and you're thinking about starting to tap into affiliate. Let's say you've spun up your D to C instance. You've got an Amazon store set up. Maybe you've even started doing some product seeding where you've started working with a couple of influencers that you know or that you like yourself, but now you want to really start to tap into other marketing channels outside of Facebook ads or something like that. So let's say I come to you. How do you guys think about building an affiliate strategy? What does it look like? What's required on the brand's end? Just walk us a little bit through that. Yeah.

So the very first thing to have an affiliate program is you need to get set up on an affiliate network. There's quite a few options out there. They're all fairly similar. All the publishers work. So it's really just what fits best for your business. You have to have one of those to get started that tracks everything, provides the links. It's really the hub for everything. There is affiliate marketing, and then after that is when we build the strategy. And so we really want to think, where is your customer? So there's a few different buckets that we look at right away. The first one is mass media partners. These are some of the biggest media partners out there that are producing content on a Forbes Merit, her, Business Insider. You probably have been on their more specific properties. So they're the holding companies. And so those are the ones that we start to look at as where can we find which properties work for this specific brand? Then we'll start to look at like, niche sites, bloggers, influencers, which ones are on brand. Then we'll look, from an SEO standpoint, what questions that your customer is going to type into Google. Maybe there's a certain product review sites or whatever it may be that's coming up in those searches. We want to try to get in those articles because if you're looking for maybe best betting and you type in what is the best betting to Google, that first article is going to get a lot of traffic. And if you are able to be in that article, you're going to get a lot of traffic to your site in return. So trying to understand where the customer is, that's where your customers, they're doing research, they're also on social, so having the right influencers. And then the last thing we look at for a strategy, which I think pretty much in any industry, is look at what your competitors are doing. With affiliate, it's easy to see what network someone else is working on, what commission rate somebody else is set at. So that's a very important part of the strategy, understanding what to pay the different partners. We set that up in the very beginning as kind of like a framework. And then as we build the program, over time, maybe there are certain publishers we want to pay a little bit more than our standard 10%, or maybe there's even a product that we want to push and we offer a higher commission on that. So we're looking at all these different things to build out a strategy. And then the last piece with the competitors, just understanding where they are, what sites are writing about them, because any of those relevant sites that are writing about their products are places that we would probably want to see our product as well. So that's really what we think about when we put together that affiliate strategy and then we go out and onboard those publishers into the program and get them to produce that content.

So, question about the publishers, like you had mentioned, not just publishers, but coming up with an offer and getting set up on one of these platforms, what's typical? I know you had thrown out the number around 10%, but what does it mean for them to have that offer? What do they have, how do they track sales? And how do you, as a brand, come up with a good offer that works across all these different types of affiliates?

Yeah, so it's a good question. So we try to steer more towards focusing on a commission than on an offer. I think offer is definitely like for brands that are more focused on a discount strategy, we try to keep our brands at a full price strategy. So it's more about what's a great commission that we can offer or what's a way that we can incentivize a publisher with an added bonus. Having an offer is definitely helpful. I think also, if you have an offer that's out there and it's generic, it's not interesting to publishers. So a lot of times we have to look at maybe making something a little bit more unique. I'm working on something for a client right now. We're going to give the publisher access to the sale a few days earlier than the actual sale to post about it. So it's coming up with something that I think is a little bit more unique for each publisher than just having a generic offer. But our standard rev share that we would offer on a program is usually around 3% to 5% for a coupon partner, maybe like five to 10% for a loyalty partner, ten to 15% for content, and then for like premium content, maybe upwards of 20% even. Sometimes some people are paying upwards of 25%, but it kind of blends out to be about 12% average in a lot of our programs.

Got it. And then for publishers, I'm really interested on that side of things because I think that's one that a lot of consumers are familiar with, like you're talking about, it's got the SEO angle. People are constantly writing these different listicles and gifting guides and all that sort of thing. So for those sort of offers, how do you get the publisher engaged? Is it just a matter of publishing your offer and your brand to the network and then getting picked up by the writers? Is there another component as well? What does that look like? From going to structuring your offer on that network to getting actually written about and published and picked up?

Yeah, I think that's really like the hardest part of affiliate. So you can get set up on a platform, you can get your offer out, you can get publishers potentially interested, but really like forging the relationship where you can send them the product and then they're going to potentially write about it. It really takes a lot more than just setting it up in the platform. I think that's probably the biggest misconception that I get from people when I talk to them that have an affiliate program. We set it up, nothing's happening. Yeah, nothing's happening because you haven't gone out and done anything. You have to go out, you have to forge relationships with these publishers and get them interested and excited about your brand. If I'm a business owner and I'm running my own affiliate program, I'm going to look for editors that are very specific to my product and try to get that product to them. That's why people tend to work with somebody like me, because we have experience, we've forged these partnerships over time. And so I can say, hey, this is a brand that we're working with now. Is this something that's interesting to you? They could at least give me the yes or no and then I can kind of pass that on where these people are getting so many people hitting them up every single day about I have a new brand, I have a product, DA DA DA. It's hard to know who to promote. So having that in definitely is very helpful. And I would say with affiliate, there's been this big merge with PR, so a lot of what we're doing is a PR play. I don't know if you've heard the term performance PR, but that's kind of the intersect of affiliate and PR. And so what is that magic that's happening? A lot of it's like a PR play is forging those relationships, getting those editors interested, knowing what content they're potentially going to produce. So that's kind of how we approach it.

And then one thing that I'm also curious about, and maybe you have insight on this, maybe not, but on the other side of things, on the publisher side, how are they thinking about content in these days? I know affiliate is like one of the main ways that they're able to monetize their operations. I don't know if you know, but do you know any of the direction from the editors and how they actually think about picking up offers? Or is it more just a blend between what they're interested in writing about, where they say, we'll write about anything that's like within this affiliate sphere, and we'll even entertain other products. How are they balancing that balance between trust for their readers and also making money for the content publisher?

I think it just depends a lot on the size of the site that gets separated more and more and more as the business grows. When you're a small site, yeah, you're doing a little bit of everything, but as soon as the site grows, pretty much the editors are separated from the affiliate side, and they're not worried about how much this potentially could make us or that side of it. They're just focused on what is a product that is great and do I want to write a review of it? Okay. We're almost at Summer. I'm going to write an article about sandals. Right. So then they might say to the affiliate person, can you let me know what brands that we have would be good fit for sandal coverage? And then maybe that person is facilitating getting sandals to that editor, and then the editor is going to review it. But the affiliate person isn't saying, hey, you have to cover this brand and you have to give them the top position. There are paid opportunities too. So we've primarily talked about the content commerce side, but there's also the paid side where you can pay to have an advertising article on some of these sites. It'll say it's an advertorial, but that's another way to work and get guaranteed coverage, and that's another way that these sites are making money. It's not just on the affiliate side. It's also on the guaranteed paid side.

Yeah. And I'd love to even talk a little bit about advertorial. Right. I know that's been a very successful channel for a lot of brands and a lot of brands that are able to use it and really get across all the values of their products. So what's your experience been with advertorial? How have you seen it performing? What constitutes a good advertorial, and yet what are just some examples of how you've seen the advertorial side of affiliate work?

I think it just depends obviously, on the brand. But if there's a product and there's a lot of interest around that category, then if you write an article that's going to generate interest from search and it's really providing a lot of value, that's going to help convert. I think also if you have a product that it requires a little more due diligence from the user before they make a decision, it's not like a T shirt, I can go on and buy one right now. It doesn't take a lot of decision making. I really don't need that much information on the product page besides what's the shirt made of. The sizing. There's limited information. You pretty much know when you see the price if you're going to buy it pretty quickly, where something that takes a little bit more consideration. I think having those articles that are really built out and they really provide a lot of information and it's driven by the brand, so it's helping convert people. I think that can be really powerful if it's probably not as necessary on those easier decisions, but where decisions are not a one or two day decision, it might take you three months, six months, a year to buy something. You need a lot more information. And that's where that advertorial, in my mind starts to really be more beneficial on those higher ticket items.

And that's another interesting thing that you brought up, is just like different products have different decision making processes, right? Some might be as simple as like, oh, I'm looking for a new pair of flip flops and it's like, okay, I'll buy these ones, no problem. Versus other things like if you're buying a bed or you're buying a super expensive purchase, there's a lot more consideration that goes into it versus kind of a throwaway product that you can have multiple of and that there's like a low risk for. If you buy it and you don't like it, it's like, okay, whatever. So why don't you talk to us about when you're working with brands, how you think about structuring affiliate and bringing the right strategy for the different types of different types of product segments.

Yeah, if it's a product that doesn't need a lot of decision making, it's just getting as much coverage as possible. I think if it's a product that requires education, what type of education do we need to do? So maybe it's actually really not on the content side as far as written content. It's video content. We need people out there using the product and showing it in the wild, how it stacks up against everyday use. It's really understanding what's important for that customer and how they're going to relate to it most. We sell like a lot of baby products. So leaning into parent influencers that are talking about the issues that they're going through. It talks to somebody, it resonates somebody. That's what we try to look for is what's going to hit that audience, what's going to find that person and speak to them? Everybody's doing that research. Everybody's kind of figuring out what's best for them. So you just got to, again, know your audience. And I think that comes into any marketing channel. So if you really know your audience, and I think for affiliate, you won't have one audience, you might have a few different audience and knowing what different places those audience are and being able to deliver in all those places.

My next question is more about the affiliate landscape as a whole and the marketing landscape as a whole. Like you're saying, it's really important to know your audience and the types of content that they're going to need. So it seems like from the publisher point of view, there's a very clear infrastructure that's been set up for tracking, for putting a deal together so the publishing networks will bite. But in the world of content and like video and YouTube and all these other places where creators are involved in that affiliate process, what are some of the either tools or ways in which you guys manage those sort of affiliate packages or deals?

Yeah. So influencers kind of what we were talking about earlier is why is affiliate grown influencers become a big part of it too. So that's definitely been part of why we're seeing so much growth in affiliate as well. Just with, I mean, influencers everything right now. And it's easy to rely on that for affiliate. So as far as platforms or like how we go about finding influencers. So with the traditional affiliate networks, there are some influencers on there, we'll connect with those, we'll run with those. But usually it takes like a secondary platform that's pulling in insights to let us know who's the right audience, how engages their audience, who's their real followers. Sometimes you think from just looking at someone's social that they'd be a good fit and then you dive in a little bit more. Some of those platforms allow us to run campaigns specifically through their platform, and it'll run through the affiliate platform. So it'll track everything via that influencer platform, but it just runs to our traditional affiliate platform. Something like an Ltk we've used for some of our clients, something that doesn't connect into the affiliate platform, but you can run something similar like a grin. So we'll use these different influencer platforms to help us find additional people to drive interest for those brands. But that's typically the way we go about it. Usually the affiliate platforms aren't enough to get a strong influencer program. And then as far as how much of the program it usually becomes, I would say like a good affiliate program, maybe 10% of it is influencer.

Got it. And then the other question I have is how do you think about content and brand as part of that affiliate? Because you need assets to be able to do it. So whether you're doing like influencer whitelisting or you have great marketing assets that you're kind of like putting out there. What are some of the assets that a brand needs to be able to really be dangerous in the affiliate space?

I think really, as far as assets, the only thing you need is good quality product images and really stuff that publishers can use. They're not going to use a banner that has your brand logo on it or has a CTA. They want lifestyle images that when they post it in an article or review, it's going to look like organic. It's not going to look like something that brand provided, but even better. And I know a lot of the brands that we work with prefer this is for when they gift the product, for them to take great photos and use that in their work. And then the brand can also then leverage that content in anything that they're doing. So it's like a two way street. There's a benefit for both. So I would say, yeah, they want to be able to leverage what they currently have if it's strong, but it's actually getting the publisher to develop their own content and assets, that tends to be the most valuable.

Got it. And then just another thing real quick is in terms of the logistics of making it happen, how do payouts work with the brand? What are the payment terms for some of these affiliate platforms and how does that whole side of the comp structure work?

Yeah, so as far as the payout structure, every affiliate platform is slightly different, but the model typically is they don't pay out the affiliate until the sale has locked. And that basically means the brand has confirmed this is a true sale and we're going to pay out on it. You can set the locking period. It can be based on what your return rate is. So maybe you want to not lock your sales until you know that everybody's made that return. So if you have a 30 day return window, you might not want to have your locking period less than 30 days. But the longer the locking period, the less advantageous it is to a publisher. They don't want somebody that has a 90 day locking period that wouldn't be interesting. And I don't think anybody really does it. It's usually 15 to 30 days. So once that locks, then the publisher is paid out. Depending on how that network pays out, some networks, they have the brand pay up front and then they just subtract those funds. And then some they invoice the brand at the end of the month. And then once they get paid, they'll pay off the publisher. So the publisher doesn't get paid until the network gets paid and the network will not invoice until it's locked. So it's not like an overnight process. It does take some time for somebody to get paid. So that probably could be. A frustrating point for someone just getting started that's a publisher and then some of them require like a certain amount of revenue generated before they'll start to transfer the money out.

No, that makes a bunch of sense. And then the other question that I'd have is because you've obviously been in the space for a little while, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you see brands making when it comes to affiliate? Whether it's on the structuring deal side, it's who they work with or how they're about, whether it's their percentage. What are the biggest pitfalls you commonly see?

I mean, the number one thing is people think they can do it on their own. That's pretty much the number one issue I run into. I'll audit the program and I'll see that they just don't have the right partners in there. When you set up on an affiliate network, the publishers that are going to apply first are obviously the publishers that are probably the lowest of value to your program, most likely to maybe do something that is not within the rules of the program or less favorable for how you want to run your marketing. So a lot of times people just approve everybody because they're like, oh, this person wants to work with me. So not knowing how to vet the partners and have the right partners is pretty much the biggest issue that I run across because people think they can manage it on their own. They'll let people in, they won't have the payout set right. We were auditing a program today, they thought they set something up, like very unique, but it was set up in the wrong way and so they were paying everybody out in 0% and so it wasn't recording any sales. So they thought they set up like this advanced feature which it's a challenging feature to set up and it's set up wrong and it's not giving the publishers compensation for the traffic they're driving and it might not make them excited about the program. So a lot of times we're coming in, we're cleaning up, we're fixing everything and getting the program so we can actually move forward. But that's the biggest mistake that I see people make is think they can do it on their own without knowing which partners and how they work and all the nuances. It's easy to get caught up in a scheme or some sort of fraud with affiliate.

Got it. And one thing that you were just saying that I'd love to really kind of dig into a little more is you're saying you guys have like an audit process, right, to make sure that brands aren't going about it the wrong way. So imagine I'm a brand and imagine I'm selling hoodies or I'm selling apparel, right? What's your first step in terms of auditing me and making sure that you guys are set up in an engagement to be able to make this really successful.

Yeah, we want to see the publisher mix right away, and that tells us a lot. And it's probably like, piggybacking a little bit on. The last question is we have a top of funnel approach, and when we look in the program, if there's full funnel, what happens is it sounds great to run a full funnel affiliate program, but if you do, a lot of the attribution tends to go to the bottom of the funnel. So most affiliate programs play on last click. Attribution, you can play on first click, and you can also split the Attribution between the first and the last click. So the first thing that I'm looking for is one, what is the marketing mix in there? Is it all top of funnel? Is it a mix? If it's all top of funnel, then I usually can have a good idea, like, are they missing a lot of partners? Do they have the right mix? Are they on the right track? If it's full funnel, I can look at the partners that I normally work with and if I see that they have a really low conversion rate and they're driving a lot of traffic, that to me already says that they're losing attribution to maybe somebody that's at the bottom of the funnel. So right there we're recommending to maybe change the way you do your attribution or removing some of the partners that are in the program or having a specific strategy around some of those lower funnel partners. Another thing that I run into a lot is people have these lower funnel partners in the program and they're fine to have, but you have to have a strategy not just like, oh, they're here, they're coupon publisher, and they serve a coupon and that's it. You need to kind of work with them to really understand how are they driving traffic to your site? How is it going to make that traffic incremental? Are they going to check out at a higher Aov? Is the conversion rate going to go up? What are those things that you're going to work on together to get something out of that partnership, but you want to make sure that your funnel is properly set up so it's not over attributing to one side versus the other?

Yeah. Could you kind of explain that in a little bit more detail just so I kind of have a clear understanding? So do you mean it in the sense that one sale might be attributing to multiple partners? Or what do you kind of mean by setting up the funnel for top of funnel as well as bottom of funnel attribution the right way? Yeah.

So you have multiple affiliates in a program and you have one click stream, and multiple affiliates can touch the same person throughout the sale. So go back to the bed example, because when you're saying bet, I thought about when we bought one and how much back and forth each person did on the research. I did a bunch of research, my wife did a bunch of research. We talked about it. And so top of the funnel, we said, what are the best beds? Right? So we start looking there. Then we maybe said, okay, we narrowed it down to two bed companies, so we're maybe a little bit more middle of the funnel and we're going to go we want to look at a review on each one of those. So now we're on a second affiliate site. We're looking at reviews. Then maybe we did a little bit more research and we're starting to get ready to make a decision. Maybe we're searching for deals now, and we're looking for best bedding deals or mattress deals. And now we're on a new affiliate site. And then I'm a loyalty shopper. I like to get points or miles when I check out, so I know my last click is going to be with a loyalty partner. So that loyalty partner is going to get the Attribution for my sale. Now, I looked at 1020, 30 other places, and that full Attribution is only going to go to one place. So if you think about it, the last touch is always going to get the credit because it's going to have the highest intent, somebody that's ready to buy, looking for a discount coupon or cashback points, miles, whereas someone at the top of the funnel, if they're still just doing the discovery, the intent is different. Not saying they're not as good of a customer, it's just going to take more time and require more touch points. So having that single click stream and maybe crediting at both the first touch point and the last touchpoint can be really beneficial.

Got it. Yeah, that makes a bunch of sense. And then as far as Attribution, how does it work for people? Is this based on cookies? How do brands attribute who the sale went to and what does that look like for someone who's just getting up and started?

Yeah, primarily it's cookie based. There are some more advanced technologies, server to server technology. So it just depends on the specific network, what technology they use. But it's all pixel based. There are some integrations directly with shopify for a lot of the platforms that help track. So that's typically how they're doing the Attribution is they're looking at that to make that decision.

Got it. And in terms of where things kind of go from here, I think we're kind of at an exciting juncture where a lot of brands are looking for other outlets that maybe they haven't been doing such a great job at to really tap into, to grow. I know affiliate is one of them. A lot of brands that I've been talking to have been really excited about affiliate and upping their spend and focus in terms of those programs. But what are some of the I guess in both ends, right? What are some of the tailwinds that you're really excited about in affiliate and being able to work on in the upcoming year or two? And then what are some of the, I guess not headwinds, but changes that you see coming in the affiliate space?

So as far as what I'm most excited about is just it seems like the channel is getting a lot more respect and it's becoming a bigger part of the budget and I think heading into a potential recession or downturn or whatever the economic state is, people are going to look to performance marketing. So I think it's going to be a really strong channel for the next few years because of the economic state. And then what was the second part of your question?

Just like, what do you see changing in the landscape as well? Right, there's so many more platforms. You have different creators, you have people who are shopping online, on mobile, through apps, through all these different fragmented platforms. So how does that affect affiliate and what's the future of affiliate?

I mean, I think affiliate can be anything. So as more technologies, tools and things come to light, they can easily use affiliate to gain traction. Like some of the biggest partners out there, they're using affiliate to find new business or it's even how they help get their business off of the ground. You can use it to prospect early on and get connected to a lot of brands in a really great pool and run things on a performance basis. It's going to interest a lot of people. So somebody like a firm was an affiliate long time and that's how they got people and then they eventually come off affiliate and run it through the traditional model. But just having stuff like that is a great way for publishers just to grab somebody in. So I think as far as where things are headed, anything that's changing is probably great for affiliate because that's a new channel that we can bring into the fold. One thing that you mentioned was whitelisting. That's like a huge topic this year on how that's going to fit into affiliate. I see a lot of publishers running with it right now. I just talked to another publisher, they're looking to run some additional stuff on social with that. So it's definitely like kind of just evolving. It was very specific to deals and coupons like five or ten years ago. Now it's kind of shifting to content and so all these new ways to produce content can come to be part of affiliate.

Yeah, I've even seen some stuff where I guess the link between PR and affiliate and publishing kind of like you'd been talking about. I've even seen some stuff where you've got a brand that will work with a publisher. They'll get their brand in vogue or something and then they'll take that article or whatever, publishing and they'll use that as social proof to run ads on. Are there any things that you've seen kind of in that realm?

I mean, that's exactly it. What they'll do is they'll say, like, this is good housekeeping's 2023, best pillow of the year, and then they'll run an ad around that through the brand social. Hey, we were named best pillow of the year by this site. This is the badge we received. And then there people are coming, so it's definitely becoming a big piece for sure.

That's really cool. And kind of as we wrap up.

Here.

Are there any other tools or technologies that you've kind of spotted that get you really excited?

I think for affiliate, a lot of it is you got to kind of roll your sleeves up. There's not like a lot of tools. There's a lot of buzz about chat GPT and how it's helping people in SEO and other channels. And I think affiliate, it's still just like a roll your sleeves up channel. You got to find the partners, go out there and really just stay on top of it. It's not like you set it and forget it kind of channel. So there's not a ton of tools that really make your job that much easier. There's definitely some tools that you can use for prospecting affiliates to find which ones are the right mix for your program. There's tools that will tell you where your links are for your competitors or for the types of categories that you're looking to cover. So you could look for publishers in that area. There's some reporting tools that we use that pull the reporting from the different networks together so you have everything in one place. We don't really use too many tools. It's a sales job. At the end of the day, it's forging relationships. We do a lot of conferences. That's where we meet with the publishers, share what we're doing with the brands, bring the product, let them touch it, feel it, see it. So that's definitely a big way that we leverage it, too. Cool. Amazing.

And as we wrap up here, where can we connect with you? How can brands learn more about affiliate from you? Are you on LinkedIn?

Twitter?

Why don't you shout out your socials and where to find you?

Yeah, I'm always on LinkedIn. You can find me there. You can always find us on our website as well. Www. Dot nymo co always happy for a chat, so just send me a connect on LinkedIn and tell me how you heard me. And happy to get on a quick call and chat about affiliate if you have any questions. Sweet.

Thanks so much for coming on the pod, Marshall.

Yeah, I really appreciate the time. Have a great one.

Thanks for tuning in and we hope you enjoyed this episode of Dtcpod. If you enjoyed the show, we'd love your support. A rating and review would go a long way as we continue to host the best builders in DTC and beyond. Follow and subscribe to the show and make sure to check out our show notes. Where you can find our socials and weekly newsletter. Visit us on dtcpod.com to join our founder community and access resources from every episode.