Why content partnerships are still important in the age of SEO

[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 partnership as a lever for scale and an opportunity to put the consumer first.

 

[00:00:24] Todd Crawford Thanks for joining me for another episode of the Partnership Economy Podcast. I’m your host, Todd Crawford, and I’m excited for you to hear today’s episode with Jennifer Bence of President Home. It’s filled with informative and fun tidbits. Jen is the VP of affiliates, influencers, and Partnerships at Resident Home, a retailer that owns famous mattress brands like Nectar and Dream Club. She has over two decades of experience working across various verticals, from fitness to mattress brands. She also has managed multiple DTC brands and has used her breadth of knowledge in major digital channels such as affiliate display, search and social to serve as a mentor to others. In this episode, Jen and I will explore the importance of content, partnerships and their role in the fire journey, the impact of changing algorithms on major search engines, and the combined power of using affiliates and influencers together. I hope you enjoy! Hey, Jen, welcome to the podcast. It’s great to have you on.

 

[00:01:32] Jennifer Bentz Hey, Todd and I very nice to be here and, excited that you guys asked me to join.

 

[00:01:37] Todd Crawford Yeah, yeah. We really want to learn more about your approach to partnerships that kick us off and give everybody a little bit of background on you. Why don’t you tell us your title and the company you work for and any other details everybody should know?

 

[00:01:49] Jennifer Bentz Yeah. So my name is Jen Benz. I am currently the VP of affiliates, Partnerships and Influencers at Resident Home. Actually, we just got acquired by Ashley Furniture. Been here for almost six years in July and our team manages the performance acquisition. And there is another team that manages the paid acquisition part. I’ve been in the affiliate space for, I think 23 years, started in 2001.

 

[00:02:15] Todd Crawford So under the parent umbrella or the corporate umbrella. Can you just tell us some of the mattress brands or sites that you guys run?

 

[00:02:24] Jennifer Bentz Yeah, so we are a family of mattress brands, mostly bed in the box mattress brands known for the biggest ones would be nectar mattress Dreamcloud mattress. Our newest one is Clover Lane, which is not a bed in the box. That one differentiates itself from the other ones. It’s shipped flat. It is a very luxurious mattress. It’s meant for a different type of consumer nectar as your value consumer Dreamcloud is more luxury consumer. The demographic, the age range is a little bit higher. You’ve got Sienna, which is a cheaper mattress. You can get a twin for $199. You’ve got a bar for the people that are more natural focused. And then Clover Lane is like the super luxury mattress.

 

[00:03:03] Todd Crawford Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. My mattresses definitely exploded. When you come from, like, a subscription model or a traditional retail, you’re Alvez. Or maybe in the $7,080 range, and mattresses are 10 to 30 times that. So so obviously, from a consumers perspective, high value purchase and high consideration, right? I don’t want to spend a thousand $2,000 on a mattress and get the wrong one. Even though they have you can test them out at home and things like that. People want to make as much of an informed decision as possible, and I think that kind of leads into the type of partnerships you guys focus most on, which are the content review sites versus coupon and loyalty. Can you just talk about your approach to the partner mix that you guys look for?

 

[00:03:45] Jennifer Bentz Yeah, because the LV so much higher. It’s not an impulse buy. It’s not something that’s under $100 where they’re gonna quickly put their credit card down. No, it’s $1,000 purchase. Sometimes there’s a partner that you need to consult with. Your partner may sleep, maybe a back sleeper, and then you may be a side sleeper. So there’s a lot of research that needs to be done. So a lot of our partners that we work with are mattress review sites. So people are looking for that information. Like you mentioned, its content is hugely important for us because that consumer’s not going to make that decision right away.

 

[00:04:15] Todd Crawford In a lot of these content sites that do the reviews and and the evaluations, a lot of their traffic is derived from organic search results. So they may do some paid media and some social to create awareness and drive traffic. But primarily when you type into search, what’s the best mattress for, side sleeper or best mattress under $1,000 or at $1,000? These are the sites that typically index, but the times they are changing. So there’s been some changes with Google and how they indexed content. And that’s maybe adversely affecting some of these sites.

 

[00:04:55] Jennifer Bentz We track this all the time. We track the changes in the Google algorithms and what’s tracking on the first page for different keywords. But we’ve seen a lot of volatility since. Think I made the Google May. The change was like around I think what Cyber Monday if I’m not mistaken, and the rankings went bananas. They went crazy. They were just all over the place. So a lot of people lost rankings, some gained ranking, Reddit gained ranking, Quora gained ranking. So it seems like Google’s making a lot of changes right now. We’re keeping track of it to see what’s happening. And since that change, we have seen it like every day it’s a different result. So no consensus.

 

[00:05:33] Todd Crawford Somewhere that they would be like feeling like you’re testing search results with real humans, as opposed to maybe using automated testing in a dev environment, because their whole motto is trying to put the best results in front of the consumer that aren’t paid right, because if their organic results don’t seem good, people don’t like the search engine, right? That’s the reason that they’ve been good for so long, and they’ve made these algorithm changes for decades now. But it is weird that they would push older, less valuable, less thorough content to the top. It seems to go against their kind of. But I guess my mental model is of how the search engine results should appear, what other people are seeing. Because if they’re this isn’t just specific probably to mattress results, right, that are being indexed differently at these sites. That you. You mentioned that are writing mattress reviews are. Some of them are doing other product reviews that they’re not just a mattress only review site, the Forbes and Time in the likes. They’re actually reviewing all kinds of products and creating, you know, gift guides and lots of things that historically have indexed well. And and we know consumers love that because it feels like it’s objective, real world experience with a product. People just want to get as close to what feels like the right mattress and then make the decision. Right?

 

[00:06:57] Jennifer Bentz Yeah, exactly. Or find someone that looks like them in a video and be like, okay, that’s the mattress that I need. And they said they sleep the same.

 

[00:07:04] Todd Crawford I remember the first time I bought a mattress in the box, the amount of reviews YouTube and written that I went through, trying to figure out with what is, what should I get, which one. There’s so many little nuances, so let’s shift gears just a little bit. Your title as both influencer and affiliate in it, how do those converge under you and how do they work together or are they siloed off.

 

[00:07:32] Jennifer Bentz There are siloed off and now they’re coming together. So it’s a totally different group of people and they behave differently that you have to work with one a certain way and work with the other a certain way. And there’s different processes for each of them. But we need influencers just as much as we need our affiliates because like I said, the you mentioned the AOB is so high, people are looking for that to make that decision over time. They’re not going to make that decision very quickly. So with our affiliates and our content sites that we work with, that’s more before the purchase. What kind of mattress do I need? Helping them choose the right mattress for the content creators are influencers. What we want to use them for is really the unboxing. What does it look like? I’m getting a mattress in a box. What does that mean to me? So we do a lot of unboxing experiences with our influencers so they can say, okay, they’ve got the mattress box came to the door. How big is it? People are wondering. They opened the door. You can see how big it is and it shows them carrying it up the stairs. They may or may not need help. Shows that it comes with a little envelope cutter. So they’ll cut that the box open and then they’ll cut the cellophane and they can see how fast it inflates. And I think that’s the biggest thing that people don’t understand. How is a mattress coiled into a round ball. And then it just opens up into a full sized mattress. So that gives that experience. And that’s why we work with a lot of these influencers.

 

[00:08:55] Todd Crawford Well, I imagine a lot of people like to watch it because if you do get a mattress, you only get to do it once, right? You get to experience is an interesting experience, like it’ll roll up into a long tube, you get it onto the frame the best you can, and when you open it, it comes open.

 

[00:09:09] Jennifer Bentz It’s yeah.

 

[00:09:10] Todd Crawford It’s a little mini exciting moment there and you only get it once. So maybe watching it a few times gets you excited for years. And I guess if you want to experience it again.

 

[00:09:20] Jennifer Bentz I’ll never forget my mom. This is like when I first started working at a resident. We went to Costco and she started looking at mattresses like, mom, why are you looking at mattresses right now? I work for a mattress company. She’s what you work for a mattress in a box company. And they told me on the radio, they said, don’t buy a mattress in a box. Like, yeah, that’s called marketing. That’s it’s all the same mattress. So it’s for people like that, that that mentality that they’re used to buying a flat mattress and getting it shipped to the house. But those videos are great to see on the influencer side. But to answer your question, yeah, that’s like, how are they converging? They’re really converging because three years ago, I would say when we started to work with influencers, they worked for, honestly, a mattress, they wanted a free mattress and we didn’t have to pay a flat fee. And it’s a high value product. So that’s what they want. And they did that review for us. Now we’re looking for really high quality content. And four years later, our influencers that we’re working with, they know what affiliate programs are now. So they’re more well versed in it and they’re looking for a commission. So that’s how it’s really converging is that we’re setting everyone up in in the impact program. They’re earning a commission for whatever they sell. And we use that coupon code technology that impact provides to help track stuff and stories and posts and working out well. Yeah.

 

[00:10:36] Todd Crawford Well, I imagine a lot of the content can help people just realize that these mattresses are out there, and I should start thinking about them and understanding what’s the pros and cons or the differences are between them all.

 

[00:10:47] Jennifer Bentz Yeah for sure. And then with things like right now, like the ordering and the group that also like tracks all your sleep stats and even like the Google Nest as it as well. So there are a lot of sleep doctors out there right now that are really leaning in on this content. Like you’ll notice, like some of our content sites, like the Sleep Foundation and you’ve got the sleep list, they each have their own sleep doctors, and that’s what they’re there for to to help you figure out, like why do you need about your back is hurting. You may need a new mattress. If it’s been over five years, you may need a new mattress. And like I said, that’s what they’re depending on. This content for is to figure out why they’re not sleeping well.

 

[00:11:22] Todd Crawford There’s two ways to work with. Creators, right? There’s hey, if you want to promote, get a free mattress and put a link or a coupon code and get a commission, we’d love to work with you. And then there’s campaigns. Maybe you guys have a new line or a new brand, and you want to get a lot of awareness out there and a product launch. Are you doing that? And I guess I’m just trying to understand, like, how do you decide who’s best to do that versus more of the reviews because you need it all.

 

[00:11:53] Jennifer Bentz You need it all. So we use creators differently for different things. So one is campaigns. I’ll, I’ll just give you an example of one of the campaigns that we ran a few years ago. We had our first ever flash sale and we wanted to do 100 influencers, get 100 creators, and they could post on the same day when the flash sale, the flash was one day, 24 hours only. They all posted on that same day, and it took a long time to try to get all those because you have to get contracts for everyone, make sure they’re signed up to impact, find the right creators. And it was literally like, hey, the flash sale is happening. Here’s a mattress that we just got this nectar mattress. It’s awesome. You should get it to everyone. Buy it on this day. And I think it was like March 6th or something a few years back. So it did really well for awareness. But we have no idea, like the amount of what was attributed to them themselves because people probably just went straight to the site. But that’s one type of campaign that we’ve done. To your point is the product line announcement or a special flash sale, but we’ve also worked with creators to get content, really to get content that we can use ourselves in our paid media ads. So we always want to make sure that we own the content when we do contracts and we have full rights to it. The content that they create that’s our specialty is creating content. It works so much better than getting a highly produced ad. So that’s like a lot of times what we focus on with creators as well is getting that content, and we test it between a highly produced content or a standard creative versus UGC. And a lot of times you just see ads work the best.

 

[00:13:31] Todd Crawford So with the user generated content, where are some of the places you’re using or are you just using it? Are you taking your dollars to amplify their posts?

 

[00:13:38] Jennifer Bentz Sometimes we do that, but it’s mainly for our own ads. So our own ads on Facebook and Instagram that we’re using them on.

 

[00:13:46] Todd Crawford Yeah, I mean, it seems like I mean, you guys could have and maybe you do your own resident sleep doctor that could do recommendations and videos on your own site. But again, it’s you tell your employee right. Telling people things but it versus that kind of like third party. This is a mattress I picked in. This is why. And I like it and I’m happy with it.

 

[00:14:08] Jennifer Bentz And that’s stuff that we’ve tested as well as do we want to do. We want to run ads directly to our site or have someone else talk about it. That’s why it’s so important to work with these content and influencers.

 

[00:14:21] Todd Crawford So when it comes to like tracking and measuring what you’re doing on both teams, how is that coordinated and where is or similar measurements? I mean, are you always here? If people are working with creators, they’re looking at social signals, how many likes and shares and comments and things like that, engagement metrics versus actual sales, which sometimes can be difficult to track even with the best codes and links, because people just see the content and then open up a browser.

 

[00:14:53] Jennifer Bentz So when we do recruitment, we look at engagement, we’ll look at the engagement of all their posts that they’ve been posting for the content creators. And that’s how we really choose who we want to work with. They may have 30,000 followers, but the engagement is amazing and they’re getting a lot of likes. They’re getting a lot of comments, but you might see someone that has 2 million followers and you can tell look at reading the comments that it just they’re not as relevant. So for that part of it we look at engagement. But we’re an ROI driven company, very data driven company. At the end of the day, it’s sales for us, although with influencers you’re not going to get the sale. It’s a mattress, it’s a mat. It’s too expensive to get that immediate sale. So we do look at the full funnel tracking. Now we’re able to because we’re using creator before were we using other platforms. And we had to piecemeal that data together. But this has made it a lot easier where we can see that full funnel. So somebody may have, clicked on a social media like a story and they may not have purchased, but then we can see, hey, they went to Forbes and they read an article, and then they came back two weeks later, and maybe they went on Rakuten and they decided they wanted to buy and get some cash back on it. That was that final sale. So we’re able to see that full funnel, which really helps us. But to that point we are also testing cheaper products. So I mentioned that one mattress that’s $199. So that’s something that we’re testing. Maybe that’ll work well on influencers. We’re still gathering that data to see if it’s working, but it is looking promising.

 

[00:16:23] Todd Crawford Yeah I think if you. Have an Airbnb and you want to put a mattress in there. You just want a good, cheap mattress, right? You’re not going to splurge on a $2,000 mattress for an Airbnb, but. Or even like sometimes a kid’s bed. So back to measurement. So you’re saying, okay, we can see, you know, I know our reporting will show this concept of participated revenue and credited revenue. So if I were an affiliate and I were one of the touchpoints in a consumer journey, but I didn’t win the commission, click let’s say last click. But I was involved. So in a period of a month, I might have been involved in $1 million in revenue and credited with $200,000 of revenue that I actually earned commissions on. You guys could look at that and go, okay, we see the value of the overall partnership versus just what they won. I think that’s really important across all partnerships to see that. But especially when you start working with a higher funnel, more awareness and these this high consideration where I’m not going to click and buy because one person said, this is a great mattress, I got too many other things I’m worried about.

 

[00:17:28] Jennifer Bentz Exactly. And it helps you feel a little bit better about some of the media fees that you’re paying to, because a lot of these sites now charge placement fees, so it helps us with that too. And we look at the full funnel would be like, okay, we paid this company know X amount of in placement fees. But now looking at it may not have shown because maybe they weren’t credited for everything, but we see that they were responsible for some touchpoints, like maybe $1 million worth. So that actually did work for us that campaign. So it gives us that whole visibility and we’re able to see the full multi-touch attribution.

 

[00:18:01] Todd Crawford And I think obviously across your whole site, all your sites, all your paid media, earned media, and with the paid these types of partnerships that we’re talking about, this idea of incrementality or attribution is probably one of the few products that you have to accept that there’s there has to be this many touchpoints. There has to be this much exposure before someone’s comfortable making the purchase. And so I imagine that isn’t as big of a concern. We hear a lot of retailers, we think we would have got that sale anyway, which is impossible to measure, but they almost feel like they should be able to put one touch point out there and get a sale, versus the consumer isn’t comfortable without a little bit more information.

 

[00:18:44] Jennifer Bentz Yeah, no, I agree of the Incrementality is a big one for us. We do look at Incrementality as well. Like you said, it’s not as important. It does become important with loyalty, some loyalty sites. There is a particular loyalty set that we work with. It always comes up every year. If it’s incremental and that contribution report, I just go to that contribution report. And I look at that number and I look at the percentage of solo sales that they brought in. And it always shows that it’s really high. So it’s great. So it works out I love that report.

 

[00:19:14] Todd Crawford Yeah. Those are great data points that definitely help managers defend or prove the value of partners. Right. The hardest problem for a lot of people on these teams is they don’t have the data, or they’re not confident in the data, or they’re looking at other data that doesn’t have these facts. And bits are Adobe Analytics, and this is what it says about this channel. It hardly ever goes down to the partner level. A lot of times it’s just casting this painting with a broad stroke. This is the channel’s performance, which I think is probably the biggest mistake when it comes to affiliate, especially because there’s types of affiliates where when you’re looking at search or you’re looking at programmatic, there’s not really types, it’s the keywords and there’s website placement impressions, but it’s really more about the types of partners. And are they additive to each other, or does it take multiple partners of the same type or different types to really produce velocity or.

 

[00:20:14] Jennifer Bentz And and who’s taking share from who. Right. Because that that can happen too. Because you could be running like you said, there’s different types of partners. There’s SEM and you’ve got SEO and some of the ACM guys maybe taking share from the SEO guys because it’s they see that first. It’s at the very top. So we look at that as well. We look at we’re constantly looking at who’s taking share from who. And it changes. If a lot of people are happened to be bidding that same week, maybe Memorial is coming and a lot of people are bidding. And because that’s usually big for furniture sales, and we’ll see that the SEO affiliates have lost a lot of share during those times because there’s so much bidding happening on the SXM side of it. So we’re constantly looking at that stuff.

 

[00:20:54] Todd Crawford So when it comes to the economics, I mean, you definitely have a leg up with the free mattress, right? And you’re giving somebody something that’s, you know, $1,000, give or take, but there are still partners that are going to want something on top of that. Besides the chance to earn the commission on the sale, like the placements, how do you guys negotiate those? And because for some creators, they’re only going to do one mattress, right? I can’t do a new mattress every week. That would be crazy, right?

 

[00:21:23] Jennifer Bentz So for us, we. What we’ve done is we just come up with a budget where we’ve got a set budget on a monthly budget that we know that, this is specifically for creators. And we look and we get rate cards from everyone. It’s, more for this Sienna product, right? Like the cheaper mattress, the more expensive mattresses find the. Really? That’s all they want. They want that in commission. They’re fine because they might ask for multiple mattresses with the cheaper products. We do paid placement fee as well, but we’re looking at engagement. We’re looking at everything before we make that informed decision. So we track that all in creator. We put the placement cost in there. We put the cost of the actual product in there, and then we’re able to see how things back out in impact.

 

[00:22:08] Todd Crawford So from a spend and cost. So as an influencer, I feel like I got $1,000. So you sent me $1,000 mattress. You look at as cost of goods, so it’s obviously a fraction of that. So that’s how you look at when you measure your return on ad spend. You say, maybe I gave a $300 mattress for cost of goods, but he he thinks he got $1,000 mattress. That’s great for him. And then he earned a commission which paid another 100 bucks. So now, $400.

 

[00:22:37] Jennifer Bentz Total. Yeah, exactly. We look at all the cogs and any placement fees that we’ve spent, and then they said on how much revenue they brought in.

 

[00:22:45] Todd Crawford So back to the two teams. They obviously stood up separate. Is there any communication coordination currently between the teams. You don’t see any risk of both teams working with the same partner.

 

[00:22:59] Jennifer Bentz No, we don’t see it. We’re very small and lean. Team. There’s three of us and I get my hands dirty as well. So we know who we’re going after and who we’re not going after. And we even have a list of do not work with list. So yeah. And I would say on that part the do not work with like the vetting process. That’s something that I don’t know that many people talk about, but that is we’ve learned from our mistakes. But that is so important when you’re working with both on the affiliate side and the influencer side. It’s just that you have to have a good vetting process in place.

 

[00:23:31] Todd Crawford What can get somebody on the Do Not Work list?

 

[00:23:33] Jennifer Bentz We have found some influencers that we worked with that had a past life that a lot of people complained about. They’ve made a post and it just our customer service got inundated with, well.

 

[00:23:44] Todd Crawford I think that’s so much more vetting.

 

[00:23:46] Jennifer Bentz It’s more vetting.

 

[00:23:47] Todd Crawford That’s not how they’re marketing you.

 

[00:23:49] Jennifer Bentz Exactly.

 

[00:23:50] Todd Crawford Maybe not a super favorable review. Mediocre review. You’re fine with that?

 

[00:23:55] Jennifer Bentz All right. We hope we have a good creative brief as before. And we actually asked for it to see the review before it goes up.

 

[00:24:01] Todd Crawford So there’s studies that show like on Amazon that actually all positive review products don’t sell as well as positive review products with some negative reviews in there, because then it seems more realistic that somebody had to have a bad experience or bad attitude, whatever it takes. But tweaking the metrics wasn’t.

 

[00:24:20] Jennifer Bentz What I’m sorry. The mattress review sites, when they’re doing their reviews, they talk. They don’t just say, yes, buy this mattress. They say, buy this mattress if you’re a side sleeper. But if you’re a back sleeper, you might want to look at something else.

 

[00:24:31] Todd Crawford Right? Pros and cons kind of thing. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Like not good for back sleepers. Great for side sleepers. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. If you’re going to review a product you want to give everybody the both sides of the coin. Right. So they feel more informed. When would it just out of curiosity, what do you think the consideration timeline on average am you probably knows think it like how long does it take someone to start thinking about buying a mattress to buying a mattress on every.

 

[00:24:57] Jennifer Bentz 2 to 4 weeks, usually because it’s a big purchase and you’ll see a especially the times of year two. It’s like people wait for those holidays, they’ll wait for it. So all the major Presidents Day, Memorial Day, 4th of July, Christmas is usually not one, but right after Christmas because people have money.

 

[00:25:16] Todd Crawford Oh yeah.

 

[00:25:17] Jennifer Bentz Yeah, we used to when I worked at Beachbody. That was also a big time between Christmas and New Year, and we called it Q5 back then because it was just people had money, they were giving gift cards or they were giving cash, and that’s what they were waiting on.

 

[00:25:29] Todd Crawford That’s why a lot of companies, their fiscal year starts February 1st. Because of that. January is part of Q4 and November is really the beginning of Q4 for most people, not October. So yeah, that’s interesting.

 

[00:25:41] Jennifer Bentz October is our worst month. People aren’t buying mattresses. They’re buying gifts for the holidays.

 

[00:25:47] Todd Crawford So back to user generated content and putting money behind. How much more does that benefit your sales? Have you measured that if you’re getting user generated content and then you’re putting it in your own ads compared to just your own ads, how do those compare?

 

[00:26:05] Jennifer Bentz Yeah, we do measure that on the paid media side. We’ll have like some identifier that marks which ad did the best. So on their end it’s really the Roas, right? The Roas and how it’s doing. On Rnd we look at the usability of ads. Let’s say we got ads from 100 influencers, and we were the usability for all those ads because you’re going to get a whole bunch of different ads. Some are usable, some aren’t. We’ll have a metric that will say, okay, 20% of them were usable and we were able to use them. So we’ll know that if 20% at least were usable or good. So we look at the usability percentage of all the ads that we bring in.

 

[00:26:41] Todd Crawford But then when you use them, I’m saying compared to your own ads, how much better do you see them perform?

 

[00:26:49] Jennifer Bentz Oh, way better. Sometimes it’s 23X.

 

[00:26:52] Todd Crawford So money well spent. I think a lot of people underestimate user generated content, or they’re not comfortable with it because they want the glossy controlled ad and they’re missing out on 2 to 3 X performance.

 

[00:27:06] Jennifer Bentz That Gen Z group, they really well. They want to see that authenticity. They’re looking for reviews.

 

[00:27:14] Todd Crawford Yeah, I think that’s huge advice for people, is you should at least be testing it at some percent of your overall ads that you’re running, maybe only 20%, but just create a control group. So any parting words or advice around any of this?

 

[00:27:29] Jennifer Bentz Yeah, I think don’t get discouraged with all the Google changes, all the algorithm changes. Just keep track of what’s going on. Check Google status updates. They definitely update everyone and what’s happening and hopefully in a month things will turn up. And then on the creator influencer site I just think like constantly testing test different types. I feel like when people first get into influencer marketing, they think, oh, I’ve got to, I’ve got to pay $20,000 for that person that has 3 million followers. That’s and honestly, we made that mistake years ago. We’re like, okay, let’s pick one influencer. I think it was like 25,000. It was really expensive, did nothing. Versus someone that had 10,000 followers that did way more in sales. So I think that really looking at that is a big one.

 

[00:28:18] Todd Crawford I hear that a lot that the especially like DTC, right, where you’re really looking for real engagement and less followers typically means more engagement, more people that really not following them because all my friends follow them or other famous people follow them. So I’m going to follow them because I follow that famous person and they follow. Does that kind of mentality in those followers are pretty worthless when it comes to trying to drive revenue? Maybe get some awareness, but not everybody is going for that.

 

[00:28:49] Jennifer Bentz And lately there’s some influencers out there that are doing giveaways. A lot of them are doing these giveaways. I don’t know if you’ve seen them where they take a suitcase, right. And they’ve got like a Louis Vuitton bag in there and they’ve got a the new Dyson blow dryer. They’ve got $20,000 worth of stuff. And the way that you enter that giveaways, you have to follow like six other influencers and then tag friends. So yeah, they gained probably hundreds of thousands of new followers. All these guys, but not necessarily will convert.

 

[00:29:17] Todd Crawford They’re doing it for a chance to win. Yeah. Entering a contest, I think that’s key to almost review their content, to see if they have been posting stuff like that, because obviously then their followers are less engaged.

 

[00:29:30] Jennifer Bentz Yeah, yeah, it is less engaged. Really want the other thing to consider? I do listen to a podcast. I forget what the name of the podcast was, but it’s from a content creator perspective where they’re learning from each other, the different content creators. And one thing that stuck out to me was that the content creators are looking for a partnership as well. They don’t want to work with someone and be done right after their first thing. They want to work with one a brand and work multiple times with that brand. And that’s really important. They’re looking for that partnership, so they’re willing to work with you. And we’ve got some influencers that we’ve worked with several times.

 

[00:30:03] Todd Crawford Well, after I’ve opened my mattress, which was the super exciting part, having a 30, 60, 90 day, hey, just like, you know, I’m still sleeping on this mattress. It’s just it’s gotten better or it’s just as good as I expected. Like, I think that’s important too. Is those follow up posts give? Yeah, but it’s still great.

 

[00:30:24] Jennifer Bentz People with kids, let’s say, be like, oh, I bought this for, let’s say, my son. And now his sister got jealous. So we had to get them a mattress as well because they slept on it. One of our own employees, she got a dreamcloud mattress for her daughter and she got jealous. She’s one of my daughters on. Who am I going to sleep on that mattress? Because I love it so much.

 

[00:30:43] Todd Crawford Well, all good, info, advice. Preciate it. Jen, thanks again for coming on and sharing all this information and opening everybody’s eyes to the world of mattresses in a box a lot more than you imagine to it.

 

[00:30:55] Jennifer Bentz Yeah, it was a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

 

[00:31:00] Todd Crawford Instead of focusing only on one stage of the funnel, brands can benefit from capturing consumers attention. At every stage is a combined power of affiliate and influencer marketing. Like Jen mentioned, both of these channels are vital to keeping consumers engaged and more informed. Content partners reviewing products and influencers unboxing and using products in real life. Today’s buyers, especially for products with high elves, want to research products thoroughly before making a purchase. Throwing branded ads plugging yourself in at random parts of the journey is not enough for most brands wanting to make an impression that leads to a conversion. Although search engine algorithms can impact content rankings, it is still beneficial to work with content partners as consumers will pursue knowledge on their own and through publishers they already know and trust. By developing a strategy that intentionally fit’s affiliates and influencers across the entire funnel, you can keep your brand top of mind for consumers, improve brand value, or they naturally look for product insight. Thanks for listening. I look forward to next time.

 

[00:32:09] Canned Intro Thanks for listening to the Partnership Economy brought to you by Impact Comm. If you enjoyed today’s episode, be sure to subscribe to the show and rate and review it on Apple Podcasts.