State & Liberty + Today's Business + New York Post

ROB: [00:00:00] Hi, Sam.

SAM: Hi Rob. It's nice to see you in person for a change.

ROB: Yeah. This is unusual, this not divided by screens.

SAM: Why don't you tell our listeners where we are?

ROB: We are in Portugal for Think Tank.

SAM: For those that don't know what Think Tank is, it's Awin's Annual client retention event and thought leadership conference.

And Rob, there's a question that I've been dying to ask you.

ROB: Oh yeah, go on.

SAM: When you are in the market to buy yourself new clothes, what does that shopping experience look like? And I know that this is not a video podcast, so I just for the record, wanna clarify. It's not because Rob is a poor dresser. I just, I wanna understand that's why.

ROB: Thank you Sam.

SAM: I just want to, I've complimented your clothes a lot in the past, especially when you are like zip up. Sweaters and I say, you look very European and sporty, but I just, so I wanna understand like, what is the thought process behind that?

ROB: Uh, my thought process is largely how can I make this experience as quick and painless as possible?

SAM: Yeah, that's fair.

ROB: Who's the, here's a question for you. Who's the best dressed person at Think Tank ?

SAM: Taking you and I out of it of course?

ROB: Obviously. Yeah.

SAM: Mm-hmm. I [00:01:00] mean, Lily Ray.

ROB: She's got an iconic style.

SAM: She's got an iconic style, but so did Scott Galloway. Yeah, I, if he turned up in something other than a t-shirt and a blazer, I dunno what I would've done.

ROB: That's true.

SAM: Hi, I'm Sam.

ROB: And I'm Rob, and you're listening to Awin-Win Marketing Podcast.

SAM: On today's episode, we're digging into how a simple, proactive affiliate play turned into a lasting high impact partnership.

ROB: Yeah, this one's a great case study actually. The team at Today's Business who are working with men's wear brand, State and Liberty, reached out to the New York Post to have evergreen editorial content updated with product links. And that small step actually sparked a fully collaborative relationship between them.

SAM: I got to chat with both sides of the partnership to hear how it all came together and how it's helping State and Liberty drive new customer acquisition in a meaningful way.

ROB: It's a great reminder that sometimes all it takes is a smart well timed to ask to unlock real growth.

JOE: We, at Today's Business are the affiliate management [00:02:00] agency for State and Liberty, and I really say we're more like a full partnership, marketing company, anything that has to do with partnerships, affiliate, we, we handle for them, and we've been working with them for over five years now at this point.

SAM: That's Joe Sanfilippo, Vice President, Growth and Partnerships at Today's Business.

JOE: I actually started out as a customer, was a fan of the products and ended up reaching out to them and, and pitching them on the affiliate program. And they had some bad experiences in the past, so it took a while to get them interested in it, but was able to get through to them.

They had signed us on and we've had a great relationship ever since.

SAM: Yeah, that's great. Was there anything when, like pitching Today's Business and trying to sell the brand on affiliate, was there like one pain point or sticking point that you felt like really landed home with them?

JOE: I had kind of did an audit before I went in, so I had went and showed them all of the opportunity like: Hey, you're not in any of these articles that you should be in, like literally best athletic fit dress shirts, the entire company's built around athletic fit dress shirts. I'm like, how are you not in these? And then in some instances they were [00:03:00] in them, but the publishers were sending the traffic to broken links and four oh fours and stuff.

So I'm like, you guys are literally missing out on revenue and. Just by not being active in the channel. So that that helped out a lot.

SAM: Yeah, absolutely. Can you talk our listeners through a little bit of like the challenge that State and Liberty wanted to solve with affiliate marketing?

JOE: Yeah, so I think the biggest challenge that we are always presented from State and Liberty is just how do we acquire.

More new customers, right? So they have over the years, built an incredible customer base, um, that continuously comes back and really speaks volumes about the quality of the product. The challenge is always getting those new customers, and with that is, okay, well, we're trying to acquire new customers. If we're gonna do any paid promotions or sponsor posts.

SAM: Mm-hmm.

JOE: Can we at least try to get to like a one-to-one return on investment? Right. So it's like we're willing to spend on new customers, but if we could break even and acquire new customers, like great. Obviously anything above that is excellent. It's fantastic.

SAM: Yeah. A one-to-one ROI is, I [00:04:00] would say probably lower on the affiliate side.

I know across like a one globally we see about a 13 to one. Mm-hmm. ROI. But I think the budget control and like the benefit of affiliate is such a strong selling point. So how did you land on the New York Post partnership as being right fit for achieving this like objective that you had?

JOE: Yeah, I mean really with New York Post, they just have such a great editorial team that creates really high quality content that ends up ranking very well on Google, particularly for a lot of the non-brand keywords that State and Liberty wanted to to go after.

So whether it was best dress pants for men or suits, New York Post has a lot of great content in that category. So that was a big part of it. And I'd say the second part was just. Having the experience with Ryan and working with him and his team before, I just have a lot of trust and faith in the fact that like they're going to work with us to help us hit our goals and are very helpful in making sure any challenges or hiccups that we overcome are like taking care of right away.

And they're always gonna help us like. Get to where we want [00:05:00] to be.

SAM: Yeah. Well I think that's a good segue, Ryan. So would love to hear from your perspective. Now, Joe's come in, he's laid the foundation. He is singing your praises, but what No, it's great. It's why we're here. But what about what State and Liberty, their products and kind of their affiliate channel goals most excited you and wanted to like build this partnership together?

RYAN: For sure. I think when Joe came to me for this specific campaign, it was like fairly new in my tenure.

SAM: And that's Ryan Murphy, Partnerships Manager, Commerce at New York Post.

RYAN: And in the grand scheme of things, the New York Post like shopping section, the commerce isn't all that old. We've only really been around for about like six-ish years.

SAM: Mm.

RYAN: So those first few years were like really building out our content, just like Joe said, like best shirts for men, best this, best that all of these superlatives like to have a really good Rolodex of evergreen content. So when Joe came to us with State and Liberty, we were like, yeah, we haven't. Really had too much of a focus on this.

Like the content exists, it's due for an upgrade, and I think getting product in our hands, like having people see it, if we can incorporate that into [00:06:00] our content, that's a huge benefit for us as well. Because if we can actually say, I really like the way it fit. The quality of the material.

SAM: Yeah.

RYAN: I wear it every week, et cetera, things like that, that eliminates a lot of other, you know, possibilities of somebody going somewhere else.

So once we get that, that helps with conversions and everything as well. We've never really got to like actually speak with a client or speak with Joe like on behalf of a client to like see what their inner dialogue is what they're trying to do. So that was really exciting to like get to work on something almost like net new.

SAM: Yeah.

RYAN: Even though it already existed and that's like where the partnership starts too.

SAM: Yeah, definitely. And so like talk to us a bit more about what the editorial advertorial process is with New York Post. 'cause it sounds like it's a bit different than some other editorial and media publications where there's separation between church and state, between editorial and advertorial, if you know what I mean.

RYAN: For sure.

SAM: And it sounds like it's actually a more curated process, generally speaking at New York Post versus in some other publications.

RYAN: For sure, and I'm sure it's the same with some other publicists as well.

SAM: Yeah.

RYAN: Where we're not only doing like [00:07:00] what we want to do, but we're also looking at what we can be doing.

SAM: Yeah.

RYAN: So as much as you know, we wanna talk about like separation of church and state, like we wouldn't be able to do what we're doing if that was the case. We need to know what the editorial team is pitching, what's trending. What's working, what's not working? Because if we can lean into things that they've pitched that have been performing really well, that's only good for everyone at the end of the day.

SAM: Yeah.

RYAN: So it's a really interesting thing where in my specific role, I'm not only like reaching out to people, but I have people reaching out to me as well. We all work together where I can be like, Hey, Joe, someone on the editorial team pitched X, Y, and Z.

SAM: Yeah.

RYAN: This I think would be a great fit for State and Liberty.

On the flip side, Joe came to me and was like, your content's ranking, we'd love to work together.

SAM: Yeah.

RYAN: And having content that's ranking is a huge part of our business too. Like we have an SEO member on our commerce team, so we're always looking at like what the keywords are, what's trending, what's not.

The other thing with what. That like really sets us apart at New York Post is we are really category agnostic. Like we're a news [00:08:00] publication. We don't have one specific niche that we're looking for. We can cover almost anything and everything, but we know what we're good at. We know what resonates and obviously seasonality comes into play and all kinds of things like that.

But without partnerships and editorial like working together, I truthfully, I don't know if this would happen. Yeah, you'd probably like pitch one of them and they'd be like, great, no thanks.

JOE: Like that's exactly, it's so hard to find a team that truly like works cohesively, right? There's a lot of people that, you know, have it so separated that I, I think it's hard to get things done and it doesn't make sense to me because-

although editorial, it should always be edit first and it has to resonate with the audience and those things, but like if something's selling, it means it's resonating. Like so you should look to your commerce team and be like, oh, this works. Like our audience likes this.

SAM: So you guys have established this partnership.

This was, I know, a few years ago, but mm-hmm. When you talk us through like getting the partnership kind of started and off the ground

JOE: State and Liberty say, Hey, here's what we're trying to achieve, go find the partner. Came to Ryan. Got on a call, explained our goals and what we're trying to get done to him, he listened, he [00:09:00] explained the different opportunities that they offer, um, and, and their packages.

And again, it was just nice working with them, like they understood, listened to us, they worked with us, not just trying to like sell me something, really trying to help us find a package and, and a plan that worked. So when we ended up kicking it off, I believe we just started with one placement. We're like, Hey, this is the lowest hanging fruit, like based on what you guys are trying to achieve.

Like let's start here. We think this is gonna work. The results were exceptional, and then we just rolled from there.

RYAN: Probably a cliche at this point, but like one of the things that you really have to do in like terms of partnerships is like crawl, walk, run, like .

JOE: Mm-hmm.

RYAN: Let's not do everything all at once.

If there's something that we can do to like prove some success, it's a partnership, it's not a deal.

SAM: Yeah.

RYAN: So Joe came to us with some ideas like. What's a best seller? Great. This is what's ranking for us. We're gonna drop it in, update some of the things here and there, and then it was just like pretty much.

Off to the races.

SAM: So you started just integrating State and Liberty products into your existing articles?

RYAN: Exactly. We have a ton of Evergreen articles.

SAM: Okay. Yeah.

RYAN: [00:10:00] So those are usually updated some more frequently. The others, some things are very seasonal, like you can't update sunglasses in December.

SAM: Right.

RYAN: There are certain things that should be updated a little bit more frequently. This was just long overdue and that's like a huge part of, I think a lot of publishers businesses like having a good catalog of evergreen content, but you want to make sure that. It's relevant as well. We gotta give you a lot of credit too.

You can't, you did a lot of the heavy lifting, like coming into it. You were like showing us what's ranking, what's working exactly what they're looking for.

JOE: Something that we appreciate team is like, try to make things as easy as possible for the publishers. Like give them all of the ammunition to like just make it easy.

So we did all the research of going through their entire site and which articles had the most traffic that were most relevant, like kind of teeing that up and then vice versa. We have all the data on our end for State and Liberty, like what's the highest converting product? Those things. I'd also say on the low hanging fruity thing, again, it's so hard to get my clients to like allocate budget sometimes.

SAM: Yeah.

JOE: That it's so important that we just find that win out of the gate. Right. [00:11:00] Because once you get past that like initial hurdle, it's like now we can go.

SAM: Yeah, definitely. So what does that conversation then look like with the brand to now get more investment and continue to amplify the partnership?

JOE: From there. It was, you know, month or two goes by. We're looking at the numbers. Everything's very powerful. Everything's very strong, right? Like I think we ended up doing like a four to one return on ad spend, which is great 'cause you have to think about it this way, like with a content partner, these are. Prospecting campaigns.

SAM: Yeah.

JOE: If you wanna look at it from like a Google Ads or Facebook ads perspective, like you're going after new customers. So if you're getting anything over one-to-one, in my opinion, that is very strong because I look at Google ad campaigns from brands all the time, and it's always like, yeah, my branded search is 10 to one. 40 to one.

SAM: Yeah.

JOE: But all of their non-branded searches, usually one-to-one or below. So if you can get into that and be above one-to-one like that, in my eyes, is very successful. Especially if you're acquiring a lot of new customers and you have a good customer lifetime value, like most of the brands we [00:12:00] work with do so showing them those results, they're like.

This is great. Now, like when they see that, 'cause that's how they think about things. They're like, how do I do as much of this as possible?

SAM: Yeah.

JOE: Like, how much can I spend until I hit my plateau of ROI? So from there we went back to Ryan, can we get this product to the editorial team? Can they test it? Can they look at it?

Can we do those things? And. From there, we even started looking at new content and I don't know if I'm jumping the gun on the question here, but like to the point where we started going into like we were seeing so much success with New York Post Online. We're like, State and Liberty has two store locations in New York.

This is New York Post. Like what better fit to help drive in store traffic? So we started running that type of content Yeah, with them and have been happy with those results as well. Little bit harder to track, but um, for sure, you know, I'll.

SAM: It's affiliate guy and you, it's like, definitely gotta track it.

But no, I think that that's incredible. And particularly with content and editorial, those prospective buyers aren't bottom of the funnel about to crush checkout. They're still doing their research, they're still figuring out what they wanna buy. So to see such a. High return on [00:13:00] investment, like really speaks to the product itself, but also how engaged the New York Post is and how like natural of a partnership this was.

RYAN: Right. And I think a lot of times the upper funnel is neglected.

SAM: Yeah.

RYAN: So many people are just looking for the conversions at the end of the day, which is great. Like, I get it, people need to make money, need to move your product. But a lot of our evergreen like roundups. It's still exploratory. A lot of the superlatives that we use are, like you were saying, like best shirts for men.

JOE: Mm-hmm.

RYAN: So there's an intent. 'cause they're looking for the best ones. They want to go get something. But at the same time too, they haven't made up their mind yet because if they knew they wanted to get something from a specific brand, they just go to that website. It's still like a lot of research and everything like that.

If you have like an explainer piece, you see the name, you learn more about it.

JOE: Hmm.

RYAN: The next time you see it, you're gonna be like, oh, I remember that. They said X, Y, and Z about this brand. And then you see it again. Then you see it again. It just, it's always driving intent one way or the other.

ROB: Awin-Win Marketing podcast is brought to you by Awin, pun intended. Awin's a global affiliate marketing platform that helps [00:14:00] e-commerce brands called advertisers. And online trusted authorities called Publishers connect and create partnerships to deliver huge commercial benefits that are a win-win for all. Awin advertisers see an average ROI of $13 for every dollar they invest in their programs, and they see those returns while achieving a variety of markets. Goals, acquiring new customers, increasing their AOVs, boosting, retention, growing brand awareness. So what are you waiting for? Start your Awin affiliate program today by visiting awin.com.

SAM: I'd like to talk a little bit more about the in-store campaign, if that's all right. Sense? No, I just think it's, it's really, it's interesting 'cause I think the hallmark of the affiliate channel is, it's so trackable.

RYAN: For sure.

SAM: So to run an in-store campaign through an affiliate partnership when you can't track it.

Talk us through a bit more about how that came to fruition, what it looks like and what's the motivation to continue to run it.

JOE: Basically, State and Liberty came to [00:15:00] us and they wanted to do just more local content. They have 30 store locations throughout the country. So we've kind of went to pretty much everybody that has, uh, local blogs.

I mean, to the point where like I wrote a blog, um, for Chicago Mag on like the best suits in Chicago, and literally went around to every store and took pictures and did like a legitimate review. Um, we just are continuously trying to find ways to get more local. Traffic drive more in store traffic and had already seen the success with New York Post and, you know, came to them and asked if we could do something similar and, you know, they were all for it.

SAM: That's great. And so then are you tracking that? How are you tracking that?

JOE: So we have affiliate links in the article.

SAM: Yeah.

JOE: But we really just look at how much traffic is on that page in general. And then we look at the keywords because it's kind of just a. Awareness play almost to a certain degree. Like if it's ranking for where to buy suits in New York and and various keywords and you're showing up, like I assume it's people either in the city or traveling to the city that are looking to shop.

Like no matter what the intent [00:16:00] there is very strong. Us being at the top of the page and having a good review, that's good enough for us, you know.

RYAN: I think another aspect of that too is having such the wide net that we do in terms of like a nationwide coverage.

JOE: Mm-hmm.

RYAN: Like we have this crazy statistic where the New York Post reaches one in every other New Yorker.

SAM: Okay.

RYAN: Which is insane to begin with, but that is like a fraction of our entire audience. 92% of it is outside of the tri-state area.

SAM: Oh, wow.

RYAN: So even though we're like getting these people in the New York area Yeah. To go to the store, it's still great for anyone who's searching for suits as well.

Because if you're in Chicago, if you're in Texas, if you're in California, if you're anywhere, there's a chance that you're seeing this.

SAM: Yeah.

RYAN: Yeah. So the affiliate link obviously is a huge aspect of that. But at the same time, I don't know, I've gone down. Rabbit holes and looked at people's locations that I'll probably never visit.

SAM: That's why the Internet's great.

RYAN: You're still on the site,

you're still looking through their product and you're like,

oh, that could be great.

JOE: Yeah, and we've definitely seen sales come from that article still itself, like online stuff.

SAM: Yeah.

JOE: So you get both. Right. And at the [00:17:00] end of the day when you've done enough placements, it all kind of blends together as well.

You know, you start to look at it as one overarching partnership and. Just continuing to add to it. Right. And that's why, you know, we're starting to try to explore more things with Ryan and his team as well. You know, whether it be social media posting and newsletters, different things, like we've kind of integrated with their audience a little bit now.

So, you know, trying to find additional ways to stay top of mind, especially around like key times of year. You know, weddings are big for State and Liberty, so I'm sure we'll probably have a conversation after this about some wedding stuff that we'd like to do, um, with. With that season coming up. So yeah, it's, it's just one consistent, overarching partnership.

SAM: I think too, both of you are thinking about it, not just from like the business perspective, but how do I shop as a consumer? What is my own from awareness to action process?

RYAN: For sure.

SAM: And then how do I model that into like what I'm doing from a business perspective? I think this is a B2B industry and sometimes.

That part gets lost or missed is

Yeah, the

end of the day, like everyone is still a consumer.

JOE: A hundred percent. Yeah. I have to like try to get [00:18:00] myself out of the affiliate mindset sometimes. My business mind never really shuts off. I'm always like asking people, like when I'm out or I'm meeting new people, I'm like, Hey, how do you, like, what do you do when you go look for dress shirts or clothes?

Like where do you buy your clothes?

SAM: Yeah.

JOE: Like I'm always asking those questions, trying to figure out like, how are other people looking at this? 'cause I just trying to get to the bottom of it, like, and everyone's different. But it's nice to kind of have that lens 'cause you can get more creative and come up with more unique ideas and and ways to integrate affiliate into that.

RYAN: And there's just so many players in the game too. Like you need to figure out how you're gonna differentiate yourself a hundred percent versus someone who's doing something very similar, which is sometimes easier said than done. But there's also so many people who just do the tried and true. Like I have a bunch of friends who probably still go to Kohls and Target just because that's what they always do.

But then if you want to compete with them, you have to figure out something new. So.

SAM: Yeah, definitely. Have there been any learning moments? Have you trialed anything in the past where maybe it didn't work out as you were expecting and you had to pivot? 'cause you both have mentioned being really [00:19:00] nimble in your partnership and being able to like pivot when you needed.

So would love to add a bit more context to that.

RYAN: The only thing I could probably think of is just like we've just misinterpreted each other's like idea, like the campaign a little bit, which is easy to do. Like Joe is managing several different brands. I'm having conversations with anyone and everyone.

We're also talking to the editorial team. We're making sure that there's nothing other, like other events going on. So there's sometimes we maybe come out with content. And we're like, we're stoked about it because we just worked really hard on it.

SAM: Yeah.

RYAN: And then we show it to Joe and it's like, oh, well I thought it was gonna be like this.

And you're like, you know what? That is true. Sorry about that. We probably should have just jumped on like one more meeting to like clarify everything. Let's figure it out and move forward too. It's never been like anything bad.

SAM: No.

RYAN: It's just been like how could we communicate a little bit better? Which I think that's not an industry specific thing.

SAM: No, and

RYAN: I think everyone can sometimes communicate a little bit better. Yes.

SAM: The industries, you keep saying it, it's partnerships. Yeah. There's human like fallible ness with that too, [00:20:00] so.

JOE: Yeah. No, I think Ryan now that like everything we've actually done with them really haven't had like a piece that didn't hit.

There's just a, yeah, maybe one time where there was like a slight misinterpretation and that's why like, again, I just like sing the praises to Ryan has seemed so much because they were just so quick to be like, you know what? Right. Or our bad or whatever. It was like, let's just get this fixed right away.

I, that's why we have so much trust with 'em now. Like I'll do anything with them. 'cause I know they're gonna help us figure it out. Like whether it's a misinterpretation or like. Something just doesn't succeed. I feel like I can trust Ryan that he's gonna help me figure out a way to make it work.

RYAN: There's definitely times where people can be like, all right, well now we're not gonna pay you.

Yeah. Or something along those lines, like bridges get burned, I think, a little bit too quickly sometimes. Mm-hmm. And at the end of the day, like we're all still driving traffic, revenue, et cetera. At the end of the day, we're gonna work to make it work.

SAM: Yeah.

RYAN: Ultimately, I'd rather continue this conversation than have to find.

A new Joe, a new State and Liberty new, something like that. So two-way road for sure.

SAM: But at the end of the day, [00:21:00] like you both are, right? It's, it's a partnership. So Joe's success is Ryan's success. Ryan's success is Joe's success and it doesn't work unless you both are equally invested and like on the same page and working towards the same goal.

It's a business, but you have to like take the business ego out of it a little bit.

RYAN: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SAM: So what comes next for the New York Post State and Liberty partnership?

JOE: In my eyes, I think it's just trying to continue to expand. You know, there's a lot of things that we haven't done with you guys yet that would love to test from the social media side.

Newsletters, like we had mentioned additional articles. I know, I mean, we talked about location based stuff, and you guys have an audience outside of New York, like we mentioned. So I think that's an untapped channel that we haven't really gotten into yet.

SAM: It's all content right now.

RYAN: Right now it's all content.

Content, yeah. And that's the thing too, like we don't necessarily wanna reinvent the wheel. Like if something's working, we're still gonna lean into it. But this allows us to like definitely try a lot of like newer things. Social would be something really cool for the New York Post domains that we have.

So we have New York post.com, [00:22:00] decider.com, and page six.com.

SAM: Mm-hmm.

RYAN: Page six is like gossip tabloid, celebrity focused, little bit of a higher A OV, but a much different demographic.

JOE: Mm-hmm.

RYAN: And what we've seen as of late, like we've been leaning way more into commerce content on page six. And it's performing really well.

Some of it's performing better than certain New York Post things.

SAM: Mm-hmm.

RYAN: So that could be a really interesting thing to look into with State and Liberty, because like I said, like completely different audience.

JOE: Mm-hmm.

RYAN: This is more of a female driven audience where it's like.

SAM: Let's target their boyfriends.

RYAN: Yeah. Like buy something for your boyfriend, buy something for your husband, for your fiance. Like, do you not like what your husband's been wearing to the same wedding? Or the same thing to every wedding, like get something new. Like there's a huge opportunity there gifting season, like dads and grads. Like there's a bunch of stuff that we can do.

So yeah, it's just a matter of what fits at

that

time.

JOE: Page six I think is a huge opportunity because we actually find, and with a lot of brands that we work with in the men's fashion and sports and stuff. Like you think it's gonna be all men? It's almost half women but-

SAM: I mean, I can't tell you how many girlfriends [00:23:00] I have where they're like, I'm dating some guy and I really like him, but he dresses horribly.

Yeah.

JOE: So there, it's a huge opportunity. So I definitely want to explore that. And what's cool about State and Liberty too is they have a lot of pro athletes that wear their product.

SAM: Yeah.

JOE: A lot of these pro athletes have wives and girlfriends that are like featured on page six all the time. Right. You know, from like Olivia Culpo, her husband, I dunno if they're husband or not, but, uh, Christian McCaffrey Right.

Has been seen in their products. Aaron Judge has worn State and Liberty. Braxton Barrios, who's dating Alex Earl. So she's very popular.

SAM: Mm.

JOE: Um, so there's a huge like. Opportunity to weave those things together. The other thing is just taking everything we talked about here and replicating it across other brands that we work with.

SAM: Yeah. Well, it's a nice advantage of like, Joe being in your position is working for Today's Business, which is an agency. Then you can replicate success you have with one of your clients. Yep. Yeah. For others.

JOE: I mean that's kind of built the business.

SAM: Yeah, no, truly. But it's beneficial to then State and [00:24:00] Liberty too.

Yeah, because they benefit just as much as every other brand you work with.

JOE: Works for everyone. It's definitely one of the arguments to work with an agency is you're getting access to experience and data across a variety of different brands, not just your own.

SAM: Yeah.

JOE: So like you get my expertise and we don't.

Share people's data or

SAM: no, of course not

JOE: like that. It's very private, but obviously in the back, like I'm doing it, I have the experience, expertise, so you get that access for sure.

SAM: So last question for you both, and I asked you this a year ago, so I'm curious, I don't remember your last answer. I'm curious.

Curious if we'll get it again, but Ryan, I'll start with you. What is your best piece of advice for any brand that's looking to get started in affiliate marketing?

RYAN: Honestly. It's something that I think everyone should at least try. Um, but you have to do your research. It's not something that you just like go into willy-nilly.

SAM: Mm-hmm.

RYAN: As much as we have been talking about like wanting to take this campaign and like copy paste it with someone else might not work. So you gotta find out what works for your brand, like who your audience is, what's gonna resonate. And you have to listen a lot too. [00:25:00] And I think that so many brands are really into like, I know what's best for my brand.

I want X, Y, and Z. Great. I'm sure you know your brand better than anyone else, but at the same time, you need to listen to what's actually going on. See what other people are doing and take that into consideration.

SAM: Well, you know your brand too.

RYAN: Exactly. Yeah. I know my brand. You know your brand, Jon knows his brand.

JOE: Mm-hmm.

RYAN: How can we make it work together? And then you have to find something in the middle. Um, but you also gotta be open to trying new things. Like that's a huge thing too. Like if you've never done affiliate, first and foremost. Try it, see if it works, but don't give up right away. It's an industry that I don't think is going anywhere.

SAM: Yeah.

RYAN: And if you can get into it and like really have it work for you, that's a huge win.

SAM: Yeah, definitely. All right, Joe.

JOE: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean, I literally pretty much echo everything Ryan says is like exactly what I would say. I would say definitely talk to an expert. Kind of a little bit of self-promotion, but like talk to someone that's doing it.

They have the experience, they're gonna be able to help you get over that learning curve a little bit quicker because they've probably done a lot of [00:26:00] bad partnerships, they've done a lot of good partnerships. So you know what works right away. So that's gonna help you out tremendously, is doing your research.

SAM: Mm-hmm.

JOE: Whether that's talking to an expert, you know, talking to an agency, whoever it might be. I loved what Brian said about. Be patient. It doesn't happen overnight. These things take time to build. It takes time to build trust. It takes a while to get feature. Like people need to know that you're even in the affiliate space before they even ever consider it.

Then you have to have time to get product to editors and get them interested and get 'em excited. Like it, it takes time. Like I've had brands that come to me and they're like, after two months, three months, like, why is this not working? I'm like, it is working like it's going to work. Minimum commitment is one year absolute minimum.

And honestly, you really should just always be an affiliate. There's really no reason not to have an affiliate channel. You can set it up however you want to make sure it always works for your business. It's a hundred percent customizable. It should be an ongoing evergreen channel. It's partnership marketing, like I said.

So do your research, talk to experts and be patient. Give it time and try new [00:27:00] things like you don't know. If you haven't tried it and that, that's really it. Like

yeah, we're on the same

page.

RYAN: There's really no downside.

JOE: Like if you set it up right, there's no downside. Yeah, that's, I mean.

RYAN: I'm sure there's one, if we had to really dig, I'm sure we could find one, but truthfully, like even a bad affiliate campaign is doing something.

JOE: Mm-hmm.

RYAN: Is better than nothing.

SAM: Thanks again for tuning into this episode of Awin-Win Marketing Podcast.

ROB: Next time we're going to be speaking to Boots who are the UK's leading health and beauty retailer, and they join me to talk about how they're running influencer activity through the affiliate channel, using their partner Metapic.

SAM: As a reminder, you can catch all episodes on Spotify, Apple, Pocket Casts or awin.com/podcast. While there, we'd really appreciate you give us a five star review.

ROB: Please do.

SAM: Please.

ROB: Thanks again for tuning into Awin-Win Marketing Podcast where we show you how affiliate partnerships always offer a win-win.

SAM: Bye!