Authentic content that drives real results with micro-and-nano influencers

[00:00:10] Todd Crawford

Welcome back to The Partnership Economy podcast. I’m your host Todd Crawford. And this week I’m joined by Amanda Mount, whose work in the digital and affiliate space is helping shape how brands think about performance marketing. Amanda is the director of affiliate marketing at Monks. Here she thrives on flexing her 15 year digital media expertise and interpersonal skills to craft powerful 360-degree campaigns. She’s passionate about storytelling through data and constantly working to make performance analysis more accessible for clients. Amanda loves to deliver cost-effective, out-of-the-box strategies, including influencer storefronts and in-store promotions. Today we’ll explore how brands are blending affiliate and influencer models to unlock more authentic, scalable partnerships. From working with nano-creators to building trust with leadership, navigating performance metrics, this discussion is packed with insights for brands and marketers ready to grow. I hope you enjoy. Hi, Amanda. Welcome to The Partnership Economy podcast. It’s great to have you on. I’m excited for our conversation today. 

[00:01:09] Amanda Mount

Me too. Thank you so much for having me on. 

[00:01:11] Todd Crawford

Yeah, so let’s get started with just helping everybody understand who you are, where you work, and maybe some of the types of clients that you work with. 

[00:01:20] Amanda Mount

Sure, so I work for a full-service digital agency. It’s called Monks, and we run clients’ paid social, paid search, shopping. We have an entire creative team. We have a e-commerce team. We kind of do it all, to be honest. And I’m director of affiliate. It’s a smaller arm of the agency, but we’re small and mighty. We’ve grown really a lot over the last couple years. I manage everything, all types of verticals from retail to, you know, sporting goods, skiing, snowboard, rental, personal fitness, sleep wellness tech, B2B, kind of all different verticals. There’s no limitation. 

[00:01:59] Todd Crawford

Well, that’s exciting. It’s fun to have a newer team inside a bigger agency to help grow the business and support your clients. I saw on your LinkedIn profile, you have yourself in your bio as Affiliate Queen, and I was curious how you got into affiliate marketing. 

[00:02:17] Amanda Mount

Yes, I started in programmatic over a decade ago, and then as a strategy side and tracking conversion evolved, I became more interested in being in front of the curtain, not behind the curtain and really wanted to be more strategic. And so about six years ago, I joined an affiliate-only agency, and I’ve been in the space ever since. And so it’s been really fun seeing all the different types of partnerships that you can work with in this space. I really, I joke, it’s so hard to explain this channel, but it’s like inception. It’s a channel within a channel within a channel. That’s really fun. 

[00:02:51] Todd Crawford

I like that description. That’s awesome. In previous episodes, we’ve been unpacking this concept of like a confluence of influencers and affiliate and how that manifests itself. It seems kind of a thread running through companies running stuff in-house, companies working with agencies. They’re always looking to mitigate risks, but more importantly, really trying to diversify and broaden their partnerships. I’m always interested in what agencies bring to this, because it is a newer concept, but it seems to be happening almost organically, like there’s no edict or plan, but it somehow comes up. I’m just curious from your perspective, how have you seen this start to manifest in your role? 

[00:03:41] Amanda Mount

It’s definitely a hot topic right now. I feel like because nano and micro-mid influencers are so desirable right now because they have more trust with their audiences and they’re more cost effective. It’s becoming more of a topic with our current clients that are running maybe broader, larger influencer programs. They wanna scale it down. They wanna, you know, they have not as much budget. So they’re like, how can we do this in the affiliate space? And so they’re coming to the affiliate team versus, you know, your typical larger influencer agencies, because they know that we have those partnerships and those skills to deal with the nano and mid influencers, and we’re able to actually have measurement as well. That’s something that a lot of the other larger influencer agency’s don’t have, and that’s a tool and resource that we, you know are very, very well equipped with. 

[00:04:29] Todd Crawford

That’s another common thread we hear. I think sometimes it’s more like there’s a PR, or like you said, more of a creator agency that’s managing more of the macro. And there’s lot more budget there, less measurement, and either brands are fine with that, but they feel like they’re missing out with the mid and long-tail creators, and they just don’t have the bandwidth. Those teams aren’t really able to herd cats like affiliate marketers are, I guess you could say, right? There’s a lot of moving pieces in the affiliate space, so it seems more natural fit. And I’m always surprised that it seems to gravitate towards the affiliate team. And again, I think the reasons all make sense, but I like that when people kind of look around and go, how can we do this? They kind of go, how about you guys, right. 

[00:05:20] Amanda Mount

Yeah, I think also the experience in the past has always been with social shopping partners like LTK or find your influence and you know, a lot of times I work with them as one partner out of 100 or 50 working for a client and they do all the heavy lifting and then they have additional fees, and the reporting is not so great or you have to have a minimum spend upwards of like $50,000 just in order to get any data or six influencers. So I think once you test that and perhaps don’t see the results you’re wanting or perhaps your KPIs change, it’s not brand awareness and you do want more down funnel conversion metrics after all the efforts of like a full marketing strategy, then that’s where you kind of take a step back, and be like, wait. Can we do this more efficiently? Can we do this, you know, where we get more bang for our buck or, you know, work with those nano, especially when there’s data supporting that there’s more trust and the engagement rates a lot higher with those smaller influencers as well. They may be small, but they’re mighty as well, just like our team. 

[00:06:23] Todd Crawford

Key here is that consumer trust. I mean, the data shows that people are looking to be informed about a decision. They don’t want to just find the product, see the price, maybe get a coupon, and make a purchase. A lot of people really want to know if they’re buying the right product. They want to spend their money wisely. Sometimes there’s more than one choice, right? So I always use chef knives as an example. I mean there’s, there’s hundreds of different brands and styles and shapes of chef knife, so how do you know which you should spend your money on? So I think they definitely kind of have the consumer’s ear. And I think one of the things I see a lot of brands, they feel like they can go it alone when it comes to developing and executing marketing strategies, but there’s agencies out there, right? And I think sometimes they’re either reluctant to add that cost. And they’re trying to figure out like, well, what are we gonna get for that, right? And I think there’s a lot that agencies bring to the table that it’s really hard to develop in-house. And I don’t know if there’s some things to top of mind that you wanna bring up, but I think it’s important to kind of understand like, what the role of an agency is, especially like for a brand that’s maybe got affiliate, they wish it were bigger always, every channel they wish was bigger, more cost-effective. And but they also maybe want to incorporate creators, and don’t know where to start. So maybe like, what are some of the things that you guys feel you bring to the table that helps brands kind of execute on these strategies? 

[00:07:59] Amanda Mount

This is a huge topic that we discuss, especially with cross-selling in our agency when we are already running other channels such as paid social or paid search. We can run with creators and influencers and UGC is a gigantic piece of the strategy nowadays. Not only is it more cost effective of hiring a creative agency to pump out, you know, different types of ads, but it’s more authentic content as well. And so if I’m running a creator campaign, and I’m working with 6 to 10 creators and they also have UGC as part of the contract. I’m able to then just take that content and hand it off to my paid social team. They’re then able to test that content, and then on their end, even add different layers of segmented targeting that we’re not necessarily able to do in Influencer or affiliate and then, you know, get even more learnings from there. And in addition, you don’t think about it, but search runs YouTube, right? So then that’s another whole aspect where we can have synergy and collaborate is passing on longer content, YouTube video that worked well. If I see on my end that it had a high engagement rate or did well, that’s something that I’m gonna want to pass on to my other channels to test. That creative is working, that it’s engaging, it’s converting. So it’s nice to be able to just tap my peer on the shoulder and share insights, learnings and content and whatnot. 

[00:09:23] Todd Crawford

Yeah, I think the thing an agency really brings to the table is you can hit the ground running. You’ve had a lot of learnings from other clients that may be similar or even different, but there’s kind of mistakes were made, you know not to make those again, or when the client wants to test a certain thing, you kind of already know the pros and cons, maybe the risk, and you can help them kind of make quicker decisions. 

[00:09:45] Amanda Mount

And also just as we’re building out Influencer and expanding more on the affiliate team, we want examples of a campaign brief or what’s the best way to do do’s and don’ts in a campaign briefing. I can tap the creative team and ask, do you have an example of this? So even internally, we’re able to lean on each other to help build out our business model and our processes, which is been beyond helpful as I’m still learning more and more about influencer because I’m I know affiliate like the back of my hand it’s Influencer that’s you know a learning curve now. It’s honestly the same for both sides. I’m talking to Influencer networks and the affiliate side that are challenged by the reporting piece and measurement piece, whereas we’re challenged more on the production piece and a little bit of the strategy piece, if that makes sense 

[00:10:30] Todd Crawford

What I always find interesting is that affiliates always kind of had creators, right? Like the YouTubers are kind of historically run through affiliate programs. I think now they’re kind of bleeding into the, the creator teams as well. In general, affiliate teams are used to, or at least understand how, how creators work. You know, it’s a little bit different than having a coupon site or cashback or even some of the editorial sites that write, you know, reviews and listicles and gift guides, that whole content creation, first-hand user experience. Another challenge, as you pointed out, is the measurement. So I’m curious from your perspective, what are some of the things that you’re doing to better measure this and help clients understand the value? And also maybe even some of compensation models that you guys are working with, with the micro influencers. 

[00:11:29] Amanda Mount

I think the biggest learning I’ve discovered with this process is setting expectations, like setting appropriate expectations. I think that when there’s your point of contact at a brand is so used to data and measurement from a search campaign or exactly what’s the structure of the ad campaign and exactly what is the click through rate and et cetera. I’ve learned with the influencer channel that that’s not necessarily the North Star and the North Star changes per goal. So if it is like a big brand awareness, then yes, the engagement top metrics that we’ve been used to for years in the influencer channel are priority. But we’re learning that, you know, looking at a smaller influencer, looking at the engagement rates, it clicks aren’t going to matter as much. And it’s going to differ by size, it’s gonna different by which platform you’re on, it’ going to different, it is going to different by the content type. Is it long form? Is it short form? And so I think I’ve learned It’s such a different process as far as setting those expectations and measurement because we don’t have those benchmarks like we do for other channels. I can look at, you know, programmatic quarterly reports and see what the average click-through rate is or average view rate is for the fintech. I don’t have all of those metrics, and I’ve asked multiple influencer agencies that have been in the space for years, and they don’t that because they haven’t measured it yet. They’ve only had impressions and engagement. And so it’s just been really challenging explaining that to the, it’s a lot of education as well to the brands and saying, this is just a different ball game in a way. Like you’re looking at their audience, there’s no like AB testing, like you can’t predictive AB testing like you can with other channels, like these audiences are so unique, and it’s just such a customizable channel. 

[00:13:23] Todd Crawford

Within our affiliate product clients that are in what we call unlocked verticals or categories, we have quarterly benchmarking reports. It’s really easy in affiliate once you work through what your benchmarks are going to be. It is very repeatable. A lot of brands within a vertical are working with some of the same partners. So you can get benchmark data and know what kind of your gaps are— where you’re stronger or weaker. We’ve been working on building out creator type ones, and it is all over the place, like you said. It’s so different. And I was just on a call yesterday with our data science team, and we have a lot of ideas, and then you go and mine the data, and then you look at it, and that gives you more ideas but it’s hard to get benchmarkable data that really can apply to lots of clients, even within a single vertical. To get statistically valid data, you have to just keep broadening it, which kind of dilutes it, but it’s better than nothing. 

[00:14:30] Amanda Mount

A lot of these brands that are coming to us don’t have an influencer program at all. It’s completely from the ground up because they haven’t thought about it much and they haven’t invested in it much because it has been such a, you know, one opportunity. It’s like $50,000 for one influencer. That doesn’t sound desirable or people might not trust that that may work. So now that it’s becoming a little bit more accessible, you now, with budgets and with the types of influencers we’re going to run. I think we tell them we are building this from the ground up, so we’re building our own benchmarks. And that’s the whole point in testing different content types and different types of audiences. I mean, I worked with a client not too long ago that didn’t even have their personas built out for specific services. And so, you know, that was a roadblock because I wasn’t getting a campaign brief from that client. And I said, well, isn’t that kind of part of our job? Aren’t we trying to build out the personas for you? Perhaps, you now, it’s a personal finance product. And they wanna appeal at first to the guy that talks about finance and all this and that. And I said, no, what about the me? Like the normal, a woman living in the city that has a lot of social activities or whatnot, like that’s who you wanna appeal to. I know personally for me, I’m not gonna talk to the guys that’s like this, stock investor. Yeah, like that not gonna resonate with me, and they thought that was their persona. And I’m like, no let’s test all these. And so when I gathered and I casted for that campaign. I had everyone from a wedding photographer to a couple that just is looking for an apartment that travels a lot to a personal chef that has three kids. Because it’s like there’s so many different aspects that can contribute to that type of audience, and you have to test that, and you look in their engagement rate. It’s fascinating. It’s not cookie cutter at all, at all. Even with Affiliate, you can have like a fintech client or whatever, and be like, okay, they’re going to do great on Investopedia.com. Like it’s just not that black and white. 

[00:16:27] Speaker 3

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[00:17:19] Todd Crawford

When you’re kind of incorporating this alongside or within affiliate, I don’t know how you kind of position it with clients, but are you looking at running campaigns the way kind of a PR or an influencer agency would have maybe half a dozen campaigns throughout a year? Or are you look at more like kind of that always on or is it both? I mean, how do you see the micro influencers fitting in and their role? 

[00:17:49] Amanda Mount

So there’s a couple of different solutions and there’s different ways to look at how we propose strategy for an influencer campaign, especially in the affiliate space because it is a smaller scale. First and foremost, it’s gonna depend on their budget of course, that’s a given. But also if it’s a brand that’s not as well known, they don’t have as much budget, and they wanna maybe perhaps go more the traditional affiliate route where there’s promo code, where creators apply. That’s maybe a brand ambassador strategy that I propose. Okay, let’s get a custom landing page. Let’s put it in your footer. Let’s have people apply to be brand ambassador, and we can do product exchange. We can provide a promotion for them to give to their audience. That’s gonna be more your traditional affiliate style but still fall under influencer. If it’s something that’s a little bit more of an in-depth service, like we’re talking to a woman’s health brand, and that’s pretty personal. Someone’s journey through their pregnancy or whatever, that’s gonna be a long-term campaign. That’s gonna in a specific geo as well. And so when it gets very niche like that, then I propose let’s focus on quality over quantity. Let’s focus two to three influencers. Let’s look at their journey. Let’s get content into their office visit, into the hospital. That’s going to be more of a long term relationship, and we want to work with that creator over and over again versus, you know, maybe what you just asked the couple campaigns, you know, I mean, each campaign is long, too. It’s four to six weeks, which is different than a typical affiliate campaign. So, I mean, you have to take that into consideration and that would be more maybe three or four campaigns a quarter. It just so different. And then finally, there’s UGC. If it’s simply just want to get a lot of content created over a short amount of time, there is influencers that specifically just do that. So there’s just a couple of different routes to go. 

[00:19:43] Todd Crawford

With the UGC, are you universally seeing that outperform brand created content in the social media marketing that you’re doing for brands? Is that kind of a broad stroke here? Yes, it always performs better? 

[00:20:01] Amanda Mount

It does. It’s just a higher conversion. It just converts a lot higher, and I think it makes sense to me. It is just so much more authentic. 

[00:20:09] Todd Crawford

I think it’s something that a lot of brands don’t maybe take into consideration or understand the value of because you kind of have to say, well, I’m paying this partner, maybe they’re a micro influencer, maybe I’m giving them product and a generous commission, maybe even a little upfront on top of that to create the content. But I’m getting content rights, right? And then I’m putting that into our social media, that performance kind of has to be associated with that creator as kind of your total benefit. So I think a lot of brands don’t quite connect those dots as easily. And when you’re using UGC from some of these macro, it doesn’t, I don’t think it performs as well because it is a little too fake or not, you know, genuine enough, right? 

[00:21:03] Amanda Mount

Yeah, I agree, it’s too much like an ad. I have noticed working with the smaller influencers, they’re so passionate with what they do, and they really are wanting to create like beautiful content, and they’re smaller and so they’re trying to really get their own business off the ground, and they love what they do, and they are passionate about it. Like even the content themes, they come back with me. They’re detailed whereas I’ve worked with, you know, I’ve seen other larger influencers apply for a program, and it’s like, why do you wanna work with this brand? And it’s more of a canned response. So I do see a little bit more passion. I’m not saying the larger ones don’t have passion, but it is more like an ad style for sure. 

[00:21:42] Todd Crawford

The smaller ones too are building their own brand and they’re trying, they really do want to try hard to prove themselves and to, I think the more genuine they are, obviously their audience responds and they can grow their audience that way. To me, it’s what resonates with me. I would not connect as much to a larger influencer as I do the smaller ones, just because like you said, they’re passionate, they know their audience. And when you get to be a bigger influencer, your audience is much more diverse. I mean, it still might be in fashion or beauty or things like that. So you still have kind of more of a type. But to me, I feel like the micro influencers really bring a lot to the table for brands. And UGC is something that you have to kind of factor in as part of the overall cost because you’re getting that content as part of that, which is driving sales on top of what the creators have done. 

[00:22:43] Amanda Mount

Yeah, it’s just so much more authentic and native. When you’re scrolling, when, you know, as a user just looking at, it’s not gonna like pop out as an ad. It’s not going to, it’s going to look a lot more native and relatable. 

[00:22:54] Todd Crawford

When you’re talking with clients, how do they look at this? Are they just following your lead? How much education does it take, especially when they’re starting from scratch? Like budgets, things like that, what are those conversations like? 

[00:23:09] Amanda Mount

A lot of education for sure, because the clients that I’ve been working with just don’t have a lot of experience working with an influencer agency or an influencer program. Recently, one that I’m currently pitching has worked with an Influencer platform the last three months as a pilot, and they weren’t satisfied because number one, measurement. There wasn’t much measurement. They were not giving them a diverse portfolio influencers, they were giving them three or four at a time. And so that was pretty tough because a lot of times just like affiliates, like not everyone’s gonna respond. So you kind of want to cast a wider net there. But yeah, it’s definitely like, what do you recommend? What’s your strategy? But having said that, there’s so many questions still that come from, I can make, you know, great recommendation, and then there’s always the questions about measurement or the why, which is great. We want to justify our recommendation, but then you have to educate them on kind of what we were talking about earlier. It’s just so different with this channel. It is not cookie-cutter. It just is exactly everything we talked about. I have to reiterate to them, and internally as 

[00:24:18] Todd Crawford

What about like budgets? How do you kind of like, I guess, initially, you’re probably getting them to do some kind of test budget, right? 

[00:24:25] Amanda Mount

Yeah, we’ve actually learned recently, too, that we were proposing too short of a length. We can’t do like three-month pilots for Influencer because there’s so much time and detail that go into it. We are now recommending six months for a pilot because you just need all of that time and consideration and just like effort and it’s just there’s just so much time that goes into it, but as far as budgets, they don’t know what they want. They don’t even know the size of influencer. And each size of influencer is a different cost and then it depends on how many deliverables and then it depends if you want content usage rights. And so it’s really hard to have one budget, but we recently you know i think it was like a two hundred thousand dollar budget for six months, and that’s you know about three campaigns you have to kind of work your way backwards. Okay. Eight influencers they’re going to be nano mid. They’re gonna have one deliverable, and this is what we recommend. 

[00:25:21] Todd Crawford

I mean, it’s kind of like dipping your toe in the water. Once you get that, kind of get past that in the first three to six months, you kind of have enough there to have a conversation about it. It’s kind like going to a restaurant, and there’s not enough on the menu that you want to eat, and then you kind have to understand what you’re ordering or what you want before you can go to the next level. I think the hardest part for a lot of brands is they feel like they’re taking a lot of risk because in their mind, you know, they maybe have had a bad experience, like you said, with some of the macro ones where they spent a lot of money, and they don’t really have that measurement and know really what did they get. They got something. They spent some money. A lot of stuff went on, some posts, but they don t really know what they got. So talking about measurement, does that help the brands, I mean, see? Right, the data helps, right? It’s kind of like reassuring, okay, it’s working, we’re seeing what we wanna see. So what are some of the reporting that you’re using? 

[00:26:28] Amanda Mount

We explore more how we define a successful campaign beyond just engagement. And that does take a little bit of effort as well on the brand side, because you can even do brand recall. That’s something we talk about, is if you’re running an influencer campaign, are you sending out surveys quarterly and adding the influencer channel into those questions? Perhaps that’s a way that you can measure brand recall or sales lift. And then also, yes, we’re talking about measuring down frontal convergence more on a specific landing page. Again, that’s something that is so new to this channel. It just blows their mind, because they’re like, what, not just clicks and impressions and engagement? It’s like, no, we can actually put a pixel on your site now, and we can actually measure if there’s signups, if there is conversions. And so that’s something that’s fairly new. And I don’t think it was ever even offered to them. So it’s kind of even a cherry on top. It’s, like, okay, I’m asking you to invest a pretty decent budget. I know I’m building trust with you, but here are all the, you know, ways that we can measure beyond just engagement. And also here are other suggestions as well that like to find a successful campaign. And then how to build out your playbook as well. 

[00:27:35] Todd Crawford

Do you find patience is an issue? Because I think with most of your traditional marketing channels, you could give me $200,000, and I could probably spend it tomorrow or this week, and show you the results the day or week later. Whereas, because this is affiliate, it’s relationship-based, you’ve gotta find the right partners, get them to agree, read the brief, understand, negotiate everything. It is a lot of time and effort. It’s not just plug money in, get reports back, right? So is patience a big issue with clients or are they more understanding of that? 

[00:28:13] Amanda Mount

I think they’re more understanding the more they learn about the channel, and that applies to both influencer and affiliate. I just launched a product, a B2B corporate business card, and I don’t know if the brand understood fully the ins and outs of what goes into that because it’s such a specific business product, there’s a lot to describe. There’s travel perks, there is cash back. Like how do we differentiate that product from others? And so I actually had to take different marketing materials and create a partner facing deck that explained everything about this business card, what differentiates, because it can be complicated. It can be complex. And especially in the business side of things and credit and fintech, they’re looking at eCPCs. They’re looking it like why should I put you on this comparison chart next to an Amex, you know, and so to make that as digestible as possible. The partner is really important. And I think they didn’t realize all that detail and effort went into just, you know, the launch piece of it. And same with influencer. I think once I show them the content theme template brief or what actually all goes into a campaign brief, it’s not just a one-sheeter, it’s actually in deck form and you actually have do’s and don’ts and there’s so much detail. I think, once they start kind of exploring that more, they’re like, okay, they understand and they understand and they are more patient because I said earlier, the other client didn’t even have personas ready. So they’re like, wait, maybe we don’t have all of our ducks in a row quite, you know, yet. So it’s interesting. I think they learn a lot in the process as well. 

[00:29:48] Todd Crawford

Yeah, what I hear a lot when talking with other people about this is the education part. Like having to, even if you’re inside the brand, having to educate up to leadership and then having to education out to your partners, either about the brand and the products and services and or specific to the campaign, that there’s just a lot of discussion and education going on. And again, when you come to traditional media, you know, you just get up to your computer and you start 

[00:30:25] Amanda Mount

You upload the ad copy, you upload the lifestyle image, you put your bids on, you kind of try to see what’s the competitive rate, if you will. I think a lot of people don’t understand, yeah, the relationship piece. Our sales team is trying to sell affiliate and influencer more, and they’re saying, what’s your mantra? Like, what do you want us to focus on? And it’s the relationship piece. And also being in the industry for six years, you, affiliate’s a small world. And so your relationships and who you know matters. And if I wanna use an influencer again for another campaign or a brand ambassador or a long-term relationship, like you have to just have positive conversations and relationships. And if you want good content, you need to describe what the service and project is thoroughly. I don’t want this to be, you know, low quality output of content or whatnot, so. 

[00:31:16] Todd Crawford

Do brands get nervous about letting content be created outside of their 100 percent control? I mean, obviously there’s the brief and there’s guidelines, but you want it to be authentic. Does that make brands nervous or do they ever want to exert more control than they probably should? 

[00:31:36] Amanda Mount

I haven’t seen them that concerned about it because I think, again, so much goes into it. So much goes in to like the detail, and that’s our jobs, right, as the agency and being the experts in the industry. It’s like, you need to be specific upfront. I’m such an advocate of being three steps ahead. And that’s like so important here. And I think that we just prepped them so well. Get everything ready to go all the materials with collateral. Like, so there’s a little room for error. So when that draft comes across the desk, you know, hopefully there’s not much change because then if there is, I’m doing something wrong in my mind, or even if I cast influencers, hopefully I’m not giving them 20 creators and none of them work. Hopefully a good, like 80 percent of them are approved. Like I want to get it done right the first time, you know, it’s all that. Efficiency and whatnot. So I’m building the trust. I mean, that’s a big thing about, you know, trusting an agency is like building that trust. And that takes a minute. It does. But once that trust is built, it’s pretty seamless. 

[00:32:34] Todd Crawford

I was just going to say that I think, because you guys are working with multiple clients and you’ve experienced similar concerns or similar creators, you are able to get things aligned more easily. Still a lot of work, but you’re playing off experience versus a brand trying to figure it out for the first time can actually cause them to under invest or to pull back from such a big opportunity. I mean, I. Every brand I’ve seen that has gone down this route doesn’t want to turn back once it gets working, you know, once they really feel comfortable with the cadence and the results. 

[00:33:15] Amanda Mount

And I think a huge crossover with affiliate and influencer, especially in my experience, the Affiliate Queen, I love different types of publisher opportunities, besides just low, lower funnel deal coupon. I’ve brought everything from storefronts for Forever 21, they weren’t doing anything like that, to card linking offers, obviously in store, just really thinking outside the box. And I that builds trust too, because, unfortunately, affiliate does have, someone have a reputation of being deal coupon and it’s like no. It’s not. I just want to shake people when they say that because there’s so much opportunity. Oh man, we’re working with like the Forbes of the world. We’re with Cosmopolitan We’re working. There’s so many there’s an AI in the game. Like now working with the Forever 21. There were publishers that help you try on outfits and see what that looks like. It’s just wild. And so when you come to the table with these different perspectives and creative ideas that builds trust, and I think with Influencer, I kind of see light bulbs go off in clients’ heads when I come with different kind of strategy ideas and how to reach specific audiences. Personal finance, you don’t make me that creative. Yeah, you can. You can. You can say, let’s reach the people that have a side hustle that are creators themselves. Anyway, I just really love bringing out-of-the-box ideas to the table, and I that’s really important in influencer as well. 

[00:34:41] Todd Crawford

Giving them a little taste of something that, let’s test here, let’s see if this is something that resonates. It does, and then you can kind of move deeper into that partnership type. And I think that’s where brands get really excited about this channel. Like you said, it’s still relatively small, but it can get really exciting because these partnerships are not something you can get through any other marketing efforts. 

[00:35:07] Amanda Mount

It’s fun to kind of see and open the eyes to brands, and everything they can do in that channel. And I know that’s why I love the affiliate space. 

[00:35:15] Todd Crawford

Well, Amanda, I think we could go on for quite a bit more here, but I really appreciate you taking the time to share some of the stuff you guys are doing at Monks and how you’re helping your clients not only grow their affiliate channel, but also incorporate those micro creators, which I think is, again, kind of the new horizon that we’re all headed towards. 

[00:35:35] Amanda Mount

I couldn’t agree more. In the last three months alone, I’ve seen just, it’s skyrocketed, and just so many changes being made. And yeah, so I’m excited to see what the future holds. 

[00:35:46] Todd Crawford

Well, thanks again, and good luck with everything you guys are doing there. It sounds exciting. 

[00:35:51] Amanda Mount

Thank you so much. 

[00:35:53] Todd Crawford

The lines between affiliate and influencer marketing are blurring, and this opens up new opportunities for brands willing to experiment. Amanda shared how nano and micro influencers are becoming powerful assets thanks to their deep audience trust and authentic content. It’s clear that with the right expectations, strategy, and education, these smaller creators can deliver a huge impact. From navigating budgets and content rights to setting realistic KPIs based on campaign goals. Agencies play a crucial role in making partnership programs run smoothly. Whether you’re launching a new creator program or evolving your affiliate mix, the key to success is aligning strategy with goals and being open to learning along the way. Keep testing, keep iterating, and lean on the people who’ve done it well before. Thanks for listening, and I look forward to next time.