Q4 is closer than you think

[00:00:01] Canned Intro

Welcome to The Partnership Economy. This podcast explores the power of partnerships through candid conversations with industry leaders. Join our hosts, Dave Yovanno, CEO and Todd Crawford, co-founder of Impact.com as they unpack the future of partnerships as a lever for scale and an opportunity to put the consumer first.

[00:00:24] Todd Crawford

Welcome back to The Partnership Economy podcast. I’m your host, Todd Crawford, and it feels great to be back after a short break. Speaking of breaks, today’s topic with new engines, Lacie Thompson offers great tips to get back into the swing of things and planning for Q4 after the summer break. Before we dive in, let’s introduce Lacie. Lacie has been in digital marketing and focused on partnerships for over 14 years. She started on the brand side before pivoting to agencies. In 2018, she founded LT Partners, a marketing and consulting agency, later acquired by New Engen in 2023. Today, Lacie is the chief growth officer at New Engen. When she’s not building strategies. Lacie enjoys traveling with her family and exploring the outdoors. In this episode, Lacie and I will discuss how brands can best prepare for the upcoming Q4. We’ll dive into why this year is unique for consumers. When to start thinking about placement, especially with the recent SERP changes and best practices for getting ahead of the competition while strengthening relationships with content partners. I hope you enjoy. Welcome, Lacie to the podcast. It’s great to have you and very overdue.

[00:01:43] Lacie Thompson

Thanks so much, Todd. It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:46] Todd Crawford

Yeah, yeah. So before we, go down our path to discuss some interesting topics for everyone, let’s talk about Lacie and kind of your journey, your history and the company you work for now.

[00:02:00] Lacie Thompson

Yeah, it’s my least favorite topic, so I’ll go quick. I am the chief growth officer at New Engen today. I got started in digital marketing on the brand side many, many years ago. I worked for a company called Blue Nile, running their affiliate program and then oversaw a few other channels as well. And then I went to Expedia and ran their affiliate program. Before I was at an agency for about three years. And then I started LT Partners after that, which is an affiliate marketing agency, that I started in 2018. And, we were acquired by New Engen last year in June. So we now have affiliate capabilities at New Engen, which didn’t exist before.

[00:02:46] Todd Crawford

So what is New Engen do besides, you know what they acquired from LT?

[00:02:51] Lacie Thompson

New Engen is a digital marketing agency. So we have full capabilities across every digital marketing need. And it’s also built on the foundation of strategy, creative and measurement, with more sophisticated analytics capabilities.

[00:03:10] Todd Crawford

Okay. All right. So it’s the middle of summer. We’re all enjoying it, having our vacations, lounging around the lake or the pool or unfortunately, it’s time to plan for Q4 already.

[00:03:27] Lacie Thompson

Yeah. I mean, I follow a Costco Instagram influencer, and I saw Halloween decorations there. So I think if they’re selling Halloween stuff at Costco, we have to start thinking as marketers about all of Q4 today.

[00:03:40] Todd Crawford

Okay. So from a brands perspective in particular, looking at the affiliate channel, when should a brand start really thinking and preparing for Q4?

[00:03:55] Lacie Thompson

I think this year is a little bit unique. Last year, I believe our team started working on Q4 plans in August. That was when we had the first outreach from a content publisher for a gift list. But we are starting now because we have a few dynamics that are really interesting and unique. One is that we’re going into an election year, so I think there’s going to be a little bit of a different behavior that we’ll see from people online in general. It will affect pricing and other channels, inventory and other marketing channels, and ultimately will have some sort of impact on affiliate marketing as well as affiliate really overlaps in a lot of other areas of digital marketing. And then we also have the changes to the Google SERP. So where content ranked high organically last year is not the case this year. So doing your research, building the lists that you want to target, understanding what changes have happened and where those impacts are made will help you determine where you need to be this year that will be different from last year. I think those are probably the two biggest things to take into consideration.

[00:05:15] Todd Crawford

So for brands, I’m not sure how many have really finalized necessarily what they’re going to be promoting, you know, on Black Friday or something like that. But really what we’re talking about is engaging with your content publishers at the very least. Possibly if you work with couponing and loyalty, that that’s something else that you want to be doing that outreach sooner rather than later. But with the content publishers, they’re in the process of evaluating what worked last year, what’s still ranking well, because that’s really something that they benefit from is the search engine rankings, the organic search engine rankings, and figuring out, what content they’re going to write in which brands are going to work with. So the sooner you reach out to them and get involved, the higher the likelihood that you’re going to be in some of that content. Right. That’s really what we’re talking about here.

[00:06:14] Lacie Thompson

Yeah, the publishers are definitely planning for Q4 a lot earlier. I mentioned that we got our first outreach last year in August. But just this morning, one of our directors slapped that we’re starting to get media kits from publishers for Q4. We’re creating a database of those media kits. And so I definitely think that because of all the changes that the publishers are going through, they have to start earlier as well with their planning process and understanding what inventory they have access to. And the sooner you can engage in those conversations, the better you’re going to be positioned with the partners. Because if you wait until the last minute, you get the scraps of what’s available. And sometimes that’s great because you can get a good deal. But we’ve seen less and less of that in the last few years, and you end up just paying for something that’s like, what nobody else wanted, really. So the sooner you can get commitments made, you can do things like make quarterly plans instead of doing ad hoc reactive placements with partners. And I think you can always build back up plans and you can always get the partners more details later. But having the conversation now about when do they need those things in order to execute is much better than waiting until you have the information and trying to make something happen.

[00:07:41] Todd Crawford

So let’s unpack some best practices or strategies here, because it’s obviously one thing to say, you got to start doing this sooner and reaching out to these publishers. But what really are some of the brass tacks here that you would think are key for brands to consider or to action on?

[00:08:00] Lacie Thompson

I think it’s good to make sure that everything with your program is in a good place. That the infrastructure is how you want it. All of your contracts are up to date. Any terms and conditions that you want in there in there. It’s also summer is a really great time to just do a deeper dive into some of the partners that are in your program and do some cleanup if you need to. Unfortunately, we’ve seen some pretty nefarious things happening lately that we’ve been really on top of, and so we’re cleaning that all up because we don’t want to go into Q4 and have this really outrageous cop that we have to deal with next year because something is happening that isn’t appropriate for the channel. So it’s just a really good time to clean things up, make sure that you have your foundation set and then going into Q4, like I said, we want to understand, like what the goals are along the way and then have backup plans for if we don’t get there. That’s the ideal situation. I would not recommend anybody just rely on Cyber Week. It’s an extremely expensive week to be competing in the space and everybody is there. And so you want to think about are there moments outside of Cyber Week that can be impactful for your business. Things like Singles’ Day, Green Monday, like there’s lots of different shopping moments in Q4, and not everybody is sitting at their computer on Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday. So I would recommend, you know, finding other ways to get in front of the audience in different moments. Last year, the pre-Black Friday time frame. So November 1st leading up to Thanksgiving actually saw huge spikes in traffic, but not as strong of conversion rates because obviously people are waiting for Black Friday, Cyber Monday. So you can either try to dangle a carrot super early and try to get people to convert super early, or once they go through that Black Friday, Cyber Monday moment and they didn’t get everything that they wanted or didn’t find the best deal on your product, you can entice them with something more captivating after the moment when it’s a little bit less competitive.

[00:10:13] Todd Crawford

Yeah, it’s like almost like three, three promotions, right? Like you said, I think a lot of brands and we saw this in the last two years, are trying to get their share of your wallet as a consumer before Black Friday if they can’t. Because if you have a limited budget in the summer, you’re going to spend on the holidays, after you’ve spent it doesn’t matter what my promotion is, or after. But what, instead of what I’m selling, somebody else is selling. I don’t get a chance at that. So it’s key to have that, like you said, early November, try to get some wallet, then then participate in the Cyber Monday or Black Friday and then have something after that to kind of mop up. I guess make sure you’re there for obviously there’s a lot of last minute shoppers. There’s not a lot. People aren’t always bargain hunters. I think probably leaning in more to men as you get closer to the holidays, there’s a lot less shipping day and things like that. So that’s definitely a key part of this strategy. And I think, you know, you talked about kind of cleaning up the program. I think it’s also good to make sure you feel confident in how the tracking is working. Make sure there’s no issues there. And I would also maybe think about looking at data like who were your best partners last year, because that’s probably your priority of who you want to reach out to this year in that kind of descending order. Right. Like, I for sure want to work with whoever was number one, number two, number three. And maybe there were a couple other ones that could have been in my top three, but for at last year, I couldn’t get it, right, or I didn’t get in with the placements I wanted, kind of how you alluded, you kind of ended up getting some of the scraps. Maybe there were some partners that you did work with but didn’t perform as well because of that. So you want to get to them sooner again this year.

[00:12:09] Lacie Thompson

Yeah, definitely lock in the ones that you know can be meaningful for your business. I would also say just because of some of the SERP changes that have happened this year, look at year to date trends and how partners are moving up and down in your program, because there could be opportunities with partners that last year weren’t very meaningful, but might be massive this year. And you’ll miss out on that if you’re only looking at the data from last year. And then I would also say you could do program wide things that could entice partners without necessarily having like, that one to one conversation and putting a bespoke plan in place, but doing things like holiday bonuses or something as surprise and delight as a publisher picks your brand up and drives meaningful value for your business, rewarding them as, you know, a holiday gift or something like that is creative way to, to capitalize on all of the other partners that you might not be having one to one conversations with.

[00:13:13] Todd Crawford

So if I’m a brand and I want to work with some of these content publishers, and maybe I have in the past or haven’t, you know, what is the strategy, both from just getting their attention, but also the economics. Like, you know, most brands just love, you know, paying you seven percent or 15 percent commissions. And you should just write articles about me. And I think that’s probably not enough anymore. Or in the case of these large publishers that have limited amount of content they’re going to create and way more demand, right? So you’re going to have to do more than even just a generous commission amount. Right? So what what’s the best strategy for approaching content publishers soon early to ensure that you are going to be in those placements?

[00:14:06] Lacie Thompson

Yeah. I mean, while the economics of a partnership with editors are important. It’s equally important that they actually have tried your product and appreciated and can speak articulately to the pros and cons of it. So that’s part of the reason why working with editorial publishers early on is really important, because you have to give them the product typically, or if that’s a difficult challenge for your company because it’s a high AOV product or something like that, you have to get creative about how you can get them to experience the product, and that requires more time because they have to use it, taste, try it, whatever the case may be, and evaluate it before they want to include it. Any in any of these gift guides. So I think gifting is really important early. I also think that what ends up happening, if you’re if you’re looking at the right data for all of your partnerships, you’re looking deeper than just the partners that are driving revenue for you. And the thing that we typically recommend looking at when you want to understand the dynamics between some of these partners and some of your other marketing channels is looking at new versus repeat traffic. And we see content partners time and time again, drive over 90 percent new traffic, according to Google Analytics, which we all know is not perfect, but it’s relatively high compared to a lot of other partners. And so these publications are introducing new audiences to your brand. And that’s very upper funnel, very incremental. And then when you have other partners, that are more bottom of funnel, likely getting the last click before a conversion, this dynamic is part of the reason why content partners require a much higher CPA, because often they’re not actually getting paid when the conversion occurs that they introduced somebody for. And so I also recommend evaluating now early on whether the attribution structure that you have in place for all of your partners really makes sense if you understand the value of some of these types of partners, and you want them to be motivated to put your brand in a round up or in an article, because they are all using tools like Trackonomics to understand, you know, how much revenue are they driving from each of these different brands, what’s the conversion rate look like. And I kind of joke sometimes and I say like, this isn’t purely capitalistic. You know, like, yes, these are companies. They need to make money from the content that they’re putting out there. But from an editors perspective, too, if one product is converting really high compared to another, it probably means that the audience really likes that product more than the other one, and so they want to deliver the right things that will resonate well with their audience. And and the way to do that is ensure that they actually get credit and attribution when those purchases are made.

[00:17:16] Todd Crawford

Okay, so we’re thinking about reaching out to publishers. We’re thinking about how we can maybe compensate them upfront or guarantee payments to be included in articles in addition to rev share. We’re thinking about work on our own website and our strategies there to convert and retain and acquire customers. What else should we be thinking about?

[00:17:44] Lacie Thompson

Any time we think about a specific channel strategy, we also need to step back and think about things more holistically. And I kind of want to double down on what you were just talking about, about the moment that we’re in and the impact that certain publishers are having on the consumer journey, because last year, in Q4, I think I pulled the data on December 1st. We saw a 95 percent year over year increase in traffic driven from the affiliate channel. And I do really believe that we’re in the same type of environment where people are going to be doing a lot of research. These publishers know that they’re not getting paid to the degree of the impact that they’re making on the consumer journey. And so I just want to mention that at a macro level, I believe we’re going to be in a very similar environment where people I think the data from last Q4 was people spent around the same amount of money, but bought fewer things because things were more expensive. So in order to make sure that they’re maximizing their wallet, they’re going to be doing a lot of research. So I also think when you step back outside of affiliate and think about the whole picture, you have to think about how you’ve optimized retention strategies or, email signups or SMS, you know, or wherever your data source of truth is. If you’ve implemented other strategies or you’re investing more into like branded paid search, for example, you might see more attribution actually going to other channels. We’ve actually seen, as we move to a more incremental four funnel strategy for brands, some other channels are getting credit for the conversions that affiliate is driving. And so I think that’s why planning early is really important, so that you don’t go into Q4 looking at the wrong data and assuming that certain things that you’re doing are not working the way that you want them to.

[00:19:50] Todd Crawford

Yeah. And back to this idea of paid placements to get into article. I think that’s one of the things that, you know, most brands get that kind of paid placement budget, especially in the Q4. They might get smaller budgets throughout the year, but the vast majority of their discretionary paid placement is given to them in Q4. And I think, you know, that’s one of the nice things about affiliate marketing is a lot of flexibility in the way you construct the compensation, whether it’s I’ll pay you a flat fee plus a revenue share, maybe the revenue share is also juiced, or maybe it’s lower because I’m giving you a very generous paid placement. Because at the end of the day, that’s what your competitors or other brands that you don’t even compete with are doing with these publishers. So, you know, you feel kind of dumb saying, what do I have to pay you to get the best deals? Because you don’t want people to name their own price, but you do need to look back at what you’ve done historically, maybe. Right. What did we do last year? Have good notes, not to toot our own horn, but we have CRM and you can make notes on each publisher what you did, conversations you had, document calls and deals that you’ve done so that you can go back and check those. Right. Like because sometimes you forget it’s been a year and maybe it underperformed or overperformed. And that’s also good to update so that, you know, hey, we spent ten thousand dollar with this publisher last year and it was the best deal we ever did. Or we spent ten thousand dollar and it didn’t perform at all. Right. So then when you talk to them and you go, well, last year we spent ten grand. It didn’t perform well at all.

[00:21:28] Lacie Thompson

I would add on that it’s it’s really important to help the publishers understand what didn’t perform means and why you’re having that perspective. Because I think sometimes we get caught in this dynamic of speaking different languages. And so if your objective is to drive a lot of new traffic because you feel like that’s the most incremental, or to acquire the most new customers that have never purchased from you before, it’s really important to be very specific and bring data to the table for the publishers so that they can then go, okay, I wasn’t effective at doing that with this methodology last year. I think that I could do it if I tried this this year. And they can be a creative partner and a solution oriented partner with you, to help you hit those targets. Instead of if you just say you didn’t drive as much last click revenue as last year. If that is your goal, they will create solutions that are going to be geared toward that goal. So I just think publishers do not have enough data that they are provided. And it’s our job as brands or agencies in having those conversations to help them and give them the information that they need to be the best partner for you and to advocate for the right things to drive the business value for you.

[00:22:53] Todd Crawford

And I think it’s also important when you talk to these publishers, because their business changes year over year and the opportunities they have to promote you change the way they package it, where they praise it. So I think the first thing to start off is like, hey, this is what we did with you last year. What else, what else should we, you know, what do you have available this year going into Q4? And what are there, you know, because a lot of them want to make it easy for you. We have this package and it gets you this and this and this and includes the social media posts about it, the newsletters, you know, it’s all a package deal and this is why it performs well. They’re trying to package up things that do well. They don’t want to get paid by you and have you go didn’t perform as well as I thought, you know, or didn’t perform at all. That’s not their goal, right? They want you to be over the moon. They want to be over the moon. That’s the best that’s, you know, best situation. So I think it’s important to just kind of understand all the moving parts that they have where you can invest and, and where they can help you. And then, you know, understand timelines for deliverables. When do I have to get you products? When would you have the content? When would you be posting it? How much social media would be behind it? How much email marketing would be behind it? And it’s stuff that you can post in your own social media, right? When you see them post about you, you can, you know, you have to be more coordinated than ever now. And, you know, we talk about you working with influencers and user generated content and being able to amplify it or put it into your own social media, or you can do that with these content publishers and juice their social media or share it through your brand social media and again, or put it in your newsletters. Hey, here’s are, you thinking about getting a chef’s knife? Here’s our you know, here’s what that site said about us and things like that. I think it’s really important that you’re you’re closing, creating that that loop and making it as successful as possible. It’s not as simple. Okay. We got in that article and we paid however much.

[00:25:10] Lacie Thompson

Yeah, yeah. We’ve seen a ton of allow listing and using UGC in different formats, across a lot of different paid media channels. And so this is really important when you do that, that you understand how to iterate on that creative and, and that the partner is agreeing for you to iterate on that creative and that everybody’s on the same page and have the same expectations going into the partnership, for sure. I would also say just around your comment on publishers are kind of serving up the things that they believe will do the best for your brand. I do think, like as agencies, that is part of our responsibility as a company is to deliver those metrics to them and and do it in a way that creates a lot of efficiency. So, internally, our team has access to every placement that we’ve ran across all six years of branding placements with these partners. And we know the partner name, the placement, the dates, what it costs, commission increase was, and we even pull in like how much new traffic did, this placement cost to increase, how many new customers. And so if you can grab that data and understand what things have done in the past, it allows you to be much more strategic about what will actually move the needle for you based on your goals and KPIs going into this year. And then the other thing I would just mention is definitely look at last year. I think oftentimes you’ll understand where you didn’t do enough with a partner where they could have been more impactful. But this year, especially with the changes to the SERP, I would look at year to date and look at the the movers and shakers like, who’s going up, who’s going down, and make sure that you’re talking to people who may have not seemed that great last year, but year to date, they’re moving in a really positive direction. You don’t want to miss out on the trends that are happening right now.

[00:27:17] Todd Crawford

And I think a lot of people go back to kind of those Q4 budgets. Sometimes they’re maybe set already. The discretionary, you know, paid placement. But if you have these conversations, let’s say that over two weeks and you kind of add up what your ideal budget would be for paid placements, and let’s say it’s 30 percent more or the budget hasn’t really been given to you yet. Now you can sit there and say, here’s all the placements, here’s what we can do, you know. And now this is the what we need, right? So is part of it is is planning that way as well in getting the budgets right. Because what you don’t want to do is have a very small budget. And you could have done more and you can’t. And that’s always a struggle.

[00:28:02] Lacie Thompson

I would also say in a lot of my conversations with marketing leaders at the brands that we work with, budgets are somewhat fluid, and I think what you’re going to see this year is a lot more fluidity. I will do a little plug for the New Engen election dashboard that we’ve created where you can understand how CPAs and CPMs and CPCs and all these other channels have fluctuated in previous election years. And I think it’s you’re going to see, depending on your industry, you might see some pressure in some of the other channels that will make it so that there could be pullbacks in those investments. And you’ll be thinking about where can I deploy that budget. And affiliate is a great option because there’s so many unique and different ways that you can execute that spend that generally drive stronger return than some of those other channels.

[00:29:03] Todd Crawford

Yeah. I want to quickly go back to the user generated and social media. I mean, a lot of affiliate managers, they don’t really think about it that way. And so maybe talking to your peers on the influencer team. Like how do they use user generated content, how do they get access to it? What do they got to say and do there? And talk to your social media team. Like how do you use user generated content? Have they been doing it in the past? Because I think once you kind of coordinate with them and go, look, here’s the types of publications that we could be in and have been in, and you could take the review of ours and put it into your content. Right. Like that to me, would be really key to, to being more coordinated and also just understanding how it works better.

[00:29:52] Lacie Thompson

I hate to get so far ahead of it, Todd, but I think, sometimes we don’t do a good enough job planning for Q4, but almost always we don’t do a good enough job thinking about what’s coming after that. So I think it’s very important that you also like, as you’re in November and December, you should be thinking about after Christmas and like what’s coming in the beginning of next year, because publishers have like worked their tails off for like four months straight and they are exhausted and they are definitely going to be checked out over Christmas through New Years. So I know that we’re focused on a holiday but don’t forget to think a little bit ahead, even when you’re in the moment and things are really crazy and busy, because that can also be an advantage.

[00:30:42] Todd Crawford

You know, to your point, too, if I’m talking to a publisher today about being in some Q4 content and I’m guaranteeing some spend with them, I might leverage that to say, what’s going to happen in Q1? What kind of content are you going to be creating because I want to be in that too, and kind of creating a bigger package, right? Publishers prefer guaranteed spend and a brand saying, I want a nice package. Put a little bow on it and let’s sign it and let’s, let’s execute on it. Right? It kind of gives you peace of mind too, because, you know, you’re getting this content and it’s not just Q4. And I think, again, rolling out of Q4, January, February, a lot of people are spending money that they got for Christmas or for the holidays. So you want to also, you know, have content coming after that, that can continue the momentum. And again, if you can lock it up in August or September, you know, you’re way ahead of the game and you can lock out your competitors, you’ve locked out your competitors because they’re going to lock you out. It’s a race.

[00:31:53] Lacie Thompson

Yeah, exactly. And then you can kick your feet up for Christmas.

[00:31:58] Todd Crawford

That’s right. Because you’ve done all the hard work now and then you’ve got a nice thing. You’re just watching the data.

[00:32:03] Lacie Thompson

Yeah, exactly.

[00:32:06] Todd Crawford

Well, Lacie, I greatly appreciate your input and sharing your knowledge. And I’m so glad we finally got to have this conversation.

[00:32:13] Lacie Thompson

Yeah, same. It was great to chat with you, Todd.

[00:32:20] Todd Crawford

Q4 is much closer than you think, and now is a great time to start taking action and plan your strategy. With the upcoming election and changes to Google SERP, it can be beneficial to look into how these dynamics will impact your marketing channels and budgets. Remember, engaging with content publishers early is key. They’re most likely already planning their content for the holidays and beyond. So it’s best to secure your spot now to lock in prime placements. And when working with content publishers, it’s helpful for them to understand your product and what your goals are so they can help you hit your target. Finally, make sure you’re thinking holistically about your strategy, understand the value partners bring to the consumer journey and ensure you’re looking at the data correctly so you can accurately credit them. Thanks for listening and I look forward to next time.

[00:33:11] Canned Outro

Thanks for listening to The Partnership Economy brought to you by impact.com. If you enjoyed today’s episode, be sure to subscribe to the show and rate and review it on Apple Podcasts.