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SPEAKER_03Welcome back to Affiliate Insider's Affiliate Marketing Podcast. And today I have a very special guest joining us who's going to be talking a little bit about growth marketing, a little bit about Facebook, a little bit about how marketing is being done from the trenches, and also give his insights into where the future of affiliate marketing might be headed. So joining me today is Yomen Pavey. Hi, Yoen. How are you?
SPEAKER_04Hi, I'm good. Thank you for inviting me.
SPEAKER_03It's a pleasure to have you here. And I think we'll get the podcast started with a little bit of the backstory of how you and I actually met and how we contacted each other. So give us a little bit about yourself, your digital journey, and how we landed up being here together today.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, my name is Johan. I'm I'm French. I made it into the UK about 11 years ago. Keep saying 11 is probably more now. I came in my previous career, which was in engineering, which is where I studied. Uh and I traveled to the UK for my first jobs. Uh actually was working at Ford for a few years, I think three years as an engineer project manager near London. And over time realized that wasn't really what I wanted to do in my life. So re-recalibrated myself, my life into uh digital marketing, which was something that was coming up from like the you know 2007 and the beginning of Facebook, etc. I I picked it up from a few years after that in the digital marketing agency, which was specialized in Facebook ads, where there was not uh much more than that when it comes to paid social. It was the early days, the fairly early days of uh paid social. What was before that is the more the older channels like SEO and content and affiliates, of course. So that's how I started really, and yeah, built my career from scratch in my mid-20s, and got got uh some great opportunities to work with some companies that did very well, hopefully with some some of my help, like Delivery, uh and uh what other one that did I work called Deep Up, and that's how people find me or know me from. And yeah, and more recently I've joined a company called Nude, which is in the FinTech space, helping first-time buyers to save for the house deposit, which is a great mission. But I also launched a podcast last year, yes, which is kind of on pause right now, it's my fault of just you know, priorities, don't have time for for it. But I I I launched one season on my podcast, which was all around digital marketing and talking to experts, but also creatives and creators in the space. And I think that's how that's how we met. That's how we met. Yeah, we've got it.
SPEAKER_03And that brought us to where we are today. So, I mean, the reason why I've I've got you on the podcast, obviously we we specialize in affiliate marketing and everybody listening to this podcast. And I just want to give you guys all a big shout out because I've been seeing all of the reviews that you've been leaving on Apple and Spotify, and it's just amazing that you guys are tuning in every week. But the reason why I wanted to get you on the podcast this week is to talk about that growth marketing that you experienced from back in the day when you were running Facebook campaigns, and I think you bandied around some big numbers that you were spending in these channels, and through that spending, you've had so much learning. So talk us through some of the big changes that you've seen that have taken place over the last decade and how this is influencing the kind of digital space right now. Because we know Facebook is no longer as effective as it used to be. What else is there? Like, where should we be turning our attention?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, uh, I mean, there's what didn't change in the last 10 years.
SPEAKER_03Sorry, the best question.
SPEAKER_04It's changing so much every month, it feels like. Um what I think is one of uh the most obvious things that I've noticed in my own journey is that as I was learning the ropes in let's just call it marketing in general, my background was really paid marketing oriented, especially social paid. And I started, as like I said, on Facebook, very quickly moved into Instagram, then SnapStackChat arrived, and did a little bit on Twitter, even though you know, if you ask most marketers, like no one has been selling Twitter. And more recently, in the you know, the last three years, like TikTok from a paid point of view. But I think what was not as obvious a few years ago was the short-termism or the way paid acquisition was seen as the holy grail of like making growth very evident, very obvious for companies just pouring more money at it and squeezing as much as possible from this channel is becoming more and more challenging because it's just becoming democratized. Like more and more marketers are being clued up or understand those channels and the in and out, ins and outs of these channels, but also those channels themselves are becoming more saturated, which makes it very competitive to stand out and to have good results. It's still possible in some cases, depending on the business by business, depending on your uh what you're selling or or your industry, but it is not what it used to be for sure. So that's what I've seen in that shape, the way I learned around those channels, basically. So I I know that was my core skill set, and I could go really deep on its channels and really understand every little intricacies and testing methods and stuff because I spent a lot of time on there and had a lot of budget to experiment. But I learned around it a lot, and that's why I spent most of the last few years of my career like learning about so like more organic or branding, the the more traditional like marketing kind of skill set, which I didn't have because I don't come from these, I didn't study these these subjects when in school. Um so I did it in not in reverse, but I started from the paid and then learned around as I grew because I think now what that gives me is still a very deep understanding of the digital paid channel. Yeah. But what I spend more of my time now, which is more like growth product ideas, the idea of network effect and how to activate potential network effect within your product. Yeah, which I feel is more it was the case before, but maybe less obvious. Now it's a lot more obvious that this is where a company will win because that's where you differentiate. That's unique to what you do as a company, as a product, as a brand.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And I think that's important. Talking about that uniqueness, because as marketers, we you know, we're we're tasked with spending budget, with getting maximum ROI on that budget. We trust with where we spend that budget. Obviously, performance being the new popular kid of the block, as you said, you know, in the past, paid was the holy grail. Now we're moving to performance. And it's becoming really difficult to get the skill sets that you need. And this is one of the reasons why I also wanted to bring you on the podcast, because as you said, you've grown into a really like senior growth marketer, but you didn't come from a traditional marketing background. And I think this is what brands are looking for. They're looking for innovation, they're looking for people that are looking outside of the box, that are thinking about how can they grow, how can they engage, and are really attacking growth projects without a traditional marketing mindset. And I think we need to look outside of what has always been done, the four P's of marketing, the traditional stuff that we read about in all the marketing textbooks, and actually forget, throw that stuff out the window because people don't operate like a textbook does. And the same can be said in their affiliate performance. So you chatted previously about you thinking affiliate marketing is getting even more complex because we've got all of these channels, we've got all of these micro affiliates, influencers, ambassadors, whatever you want to call them, working across all of these different channels. What do you think the next generation of digital marketers can expect in their careers? Where do you think that people are going to be specializing in their career journey? Because it isn't just you come in and you're an SEO person, or you come in and you're a social media person. Like what is growth marketing, which seems to be a buzzword that's happened in the last kind of five years. What is that job spec? What does it look like?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's a very it's actually a very tricky question to answer because I think growth is they talk about, or I read about growth model or growth mindset. Yeah. I don't think necessarily it comes from one individual, but it's the way teams operate within a business to achieve whatever their North Star metric is. And it also comes from defining what that North Star metric is. Because sometimes that even that is an issue within companies, like agreeing on what should be the what should be the goal. And then once you have that goal, it's really gearing up your teams to build the best product possible or features possible around with the objective to move that needle on that KPI. So it's very specific to a business and it's built around organization within teams between product, marketing, brand, and engineering.
SPEAKER_03So, really, that's a very good point because you can take any transferable skills and move them into the digital industry. You came from project management and engineering background, and you've now played now you're very well positioned to be within that growth market space because you know how product is developed, how people interact as teams, how to project manage something from beginning to end. And I think that's a very important thing to mention is that a lot of people are going to be coming into this industry with transferable skills, with degrees from other um, you know, sciences, whatever the case may be. But as marketing continues to push business forward, we need to be thinking about how do we take those transferable skills and apply them to the traditional ways that we've always run campaigns or um even the way that we've always segmented and spent our budgets accordingly. And I think this is something that in the affiliate space we're definitely looking at because we've got huge media conglomerates that are now wanting to work on this performance basis. But the problem is that we're a little bit behind because the teams that are managing affiliate programs aren't necessarily media buyers. They don't have experience purchasing media and big channels like you have. So the next step is for brands to bridge this gap that we're talking about.
SPEAKER_04I think, I think, especially, and I see it on my own personal journey, especially in the last 18 to 12 months. I think we need to be a lot more open to a lot more flexible, especially since COVID, in working with external parties, agencies, or freelancers or contractors that are that might may have those specific skill sets for specific channels, just because most people since COVID just want to work for themselves. That's what I found. There's so many more people just want to work, they need a business or not even little, but like grow their business and grow their grow their activities. I think as a company, as a startup, to be more flexible working with those types of profiles is definitely uh a plus, if you can, because it's gonna get it's gonna get harder and harder to recruit full-time for specialisms. But I think to go back to your I think to your previous question and like the the new generation coming up, I would say also because of my background, it's still very relevant, I think, to really understand social dynamics within the paid and organic tactics and around those topics as well, understanding the creator economy and how influencers or creators, whatever you want to call them, fit within the paid and organic aspect of a strategy for a brand. For me, that's probably the most important thing happening right now. And I think that's it's linked to also recruitment internally. It's like everyone wants to be a creator, everyone wants to work for themselves. Like it's it all fits within that same uh movement that happened since 2020. So yeah.
SPEAKER_03Even on that, I mean you raise a really good point because a lot of people are asking what's the benefit of working with an agency? Why bring in an agency when you can hire internally? And actually, that's not the case anymore because we need so many different areas of expertise, and you only gain that expertise by working at bigger companies that have bigger budgets. So before you can start to think about working for yourself, you need to have that expertise first. But then in order to get the expertise, you need to go into the corporate environment because that's where you get the budgets to spend. So it's like depending on where you are in your career and what it is that you want to specialize in, there are different avenues to work in, but also brands are realizing they can't ignore agencies anymore because agencies have that depth and breadth of experience that they can bring back into their marketing strategy and their planning and leverage as well. So I think it's very I think COVID has changed the way that we work in digital for sure. I think a lot of people are looking to specialize and double down in the in their particular niche. I know we've done that. We only do affiliate marketing. But what about other big trends? What as a startup yourselves, and you're in the fintech space, what are some of the big trends that you're seeing at the moment and how are you going to navigate these in terms of getting maximum bang for your buck and improving your marketing and your spend, your ROI and your spend?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think so. On the paid side of things, I think there's a huge opportunity with TikTok still to be had on that channel, both on a brand account, but also on the paid side of things and how the two fits together. I think there's huge results to be had. Maybe to compare to like the earlier days at Facebook when it was still quite cheap and less saturated. It's early days, and you can see as well on TikTok, most of the ads that I get sell on TikTok, I'd spend a lot of time on it. It's rubbish. Everyone is just catching up to it. And what was true before on Facebook, which was that every, especially big brands, would take their TV advert and put it on Facebook. That didn't work. Took them eight years to catch up. Now, brands that are even startups that are doing very well on Instagram, take their Instagram assets and put them on TikTok, it's probably gonna take them three or four years to catch up. So that's where the gap is, that's where the opportunity is. Because if you do this right now, you're way ahead of the curve. Most companies are still trying to figure it out. And either they're too big and they're too slow to change, and there's too many approval processes until someone realizes that they just need a creator to put to their phone and being very scrappy, and that's enough. Yeah. And that creative is probably gonna generate like 20 times the result that something very Polish that's been shot in a studio with like actors completely fake. That's definitely one big thing that I think is important this year to focus on. The other thing is less, I would say maybe less abuse for everyone listening, but it's really to refocus on okay, what can you do within your product to to activate your customers, engage with them, make them refer their friends, what's your referral program?
SPEAKER_03Because it's like everybody like everybody forgets about that. If you're giving your partner a really good experience, chances are they are also working with other partners in the same country. They will be your best advocate to actually get new business in. And we forget about word of mouth advertising because we're so focused on what we can and can't track in digital. But actually, relationships still very much matter in the affiliate space. And a lot that you said about TikTok as well, in terms of that being a really underutilized and misunderstood channel right now. If you are an affiliate manager listening, maybe now's the time to get onto TikTok and actually go find those pages that resonate with your brand and turn them into affiliate to explain how the performance marketing model works. Because if it really is like it was seven years ago, we all look back on Facebook and go, yeah, that we wish we'd done this sooner, or we wish we'd done that sooner. My only concern about social at this point, and maybe you can shed some light on this, and get and getting partners or content curators into your affiliate programs as well, is the fact that you're still dealing with walled gardens. So that curator is highly reliant on a channel that may or may not stop them from advertising in future. So, for example, like YouTube, you know, Twitch streamers to the channels, and then YouTubers came on board and you know, YouTube just cut affiliate links. How do you monetize those channels? Because you don't own them. So there is a bit of a risk that goes towards investing in this, but there's also a short-term uplift, which you put you pointing out right now. I mean, this season's podcast is all about what happens in the trenches, right? So I want to do a little bit of myth busting at the moment. Is there still value to be had on Facebook? Should brands be looking at content curators on Facebook or has Facebook really had its day?
SPEAKER_04I actually think that there is still opportunities there because and I like that, and I actually like that people uh in the marketing space start saying that Facebook is not good because it makes Facebook less competitive, and then it makes you it makes even more of an opportunity back again. It's just about where the competition, the competitivity is across those platforms, but they still have the numbers, they still have two billion people across all the ecosystem. So I think the variable that used to be do you know how to run ads or not, and do you know how to set up your campaigns, right? It's out of the playbook, especially since iOS 14. It's more so for app marketers than econ marketers, because they're still not it's not as bad as for apps. But when you're running app marketing on Facebook, you pretty much, like Google, you pretty much have no options. Yeah, it's broad and nothing. So the only valuable is the creative. And if you were not geared up to test enough creative and have uh system in place to be flexible enough to adapt to that, then obviously Facebook is gonna be very bad for you, and you're gonna move your budget away from it. But to tell you the truth, like for us at nude right now, like Facebook is working very well, and we're doing app, but our creative is working. Like the creative testing that we're putting out is working. So I'm actually hopeful. It's good, and and and that allows us to not worry too much about that and focus more about how we can work better with creators and influencers, whatever the level with micro, micro, micro to micro to micro. So yeah, I actually yeah, I'm actually hopeful.
SPEAKER_03What do you think about Elon Musk purchasing uh quite a large share of Twitter today?
SPEAKER_04I was thinking, I wish I I own more of that Twitter share when that happens, but I think it's I think it's very interesting. I think Twitter has been, especially for advertising, has been left aside for a very long time. I don't know if that will change with potential changes with Elon Musk, Elon Musk being being involved. But I think if you have the opportunity to spend time on Twitter as a business, there's a lot that can be done on the organic side of things to just be within your community and what you need what you want to talk about. But it's odd because most businesses don't have the resources to have one person for Twitter. Because I do think it's a specific, it's a specific role.
SPEAKER_03It's about figuring out who's gonna be, how you're gonna be there, and then actually building your strategy around that.
SPEAKER_04Exactly. Most businesses have a social media manager, that person spends 90% of their time on Instagram because they need to find the content or make the content, write the copy, do the analysis, maybe do some reporting, reply to comments, reply to DM. Listen, this yeah, listen when you're done with that, you can't do any other channels. So if you have the luxury to have a person for Twitter, I think Twitter is a fantastic uh platform and might get even better with uh with Elon. What do you think?
SPEAKER_03Absolutely, I agree with you. In the affiliate space already, I can tell you that more affiliates are on Twitter than what they are on Facebook. I mean, I think Telegram is another channel that's grossly undervalued. If we're talking about affiliate marketing in the trenches, start picking your channel. I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. I think pretty much everybody in the business world, they either have uh old profile or they're on LinkedIn checking other people's profiles, whatever the case may be. But I think you you need to be right. Like you need to pick your channel, know where your audience is, and then focus on just that one channel because it is impossible now for affiliate managers, for marketers to be experts across all channels. If you're gonna take a risk and go into something early like TikTok, which is still sorting itself out, then that's great. But then you realize that's the risk that you take by ignoring all of the other establishments.
SPEAKER_04Exactly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Totally agree. So what do you think we can give as a piece of advice to keep people curious, to keep people in a growth mindset, they're working in digital marketing in the trenches? Like what pieces of advice can you give to some of the younger audiences maybe listening to us who are five, six years into their careers?
SPEAKER_04I would say keep keep looking out for changes in the space. Don't spend too long with whatever you're doing on a day-to-day and try and allocate sometimes within your week, within days to look outside and find new ways to get information. Because I do that a lot. I don't even realize I'm doing it anymore because I've done it for so many years. I think that that's how I came into that time. A couple of years ahead of me. So we did try to learn from other people. And everything is there. You have to find your sources between, like we mentioned, between Twitter. There's some great marketers there, some podcasts like this one, some podcasts, some YouTube videos. I've watched sometimes I watch the more ridiculous niche videos that have 200 views. And it's a guy talking about stuff. Yeah, and it's someone showing their screen about how they set up this campaign. And no one's watched it, but I watched it. And even if it's not like it just builds your your opinions on things and what it might not be great, but you might learn why it's not like why it's not great, it builds up your knowledge. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Very good point. You have to be opinionated, you have to have an opinion if you want to become a successful marketer. Because without an opinion and without an idea and without an objective in terms of what it is that you want to achieve, you're just gonna be vanilla. There's gonna be nothing happening. So we, as you said, you consume a lot of information both in your industry and also outside of it in order to keep ahead of trends. But you also need to know to sort the wheat from the chaff because there are a lot of people out there claiming to be weak, and actually what they're talking about is unfounded, untested. It's very easy to watch videos, but it's also but you also need to be intelligent enough to sense check it as well. Sense check what you're watching, question what you're watching, and keep being curious about how other people are experiencing it.
SPEAKER_04Um yeah, that's a good point. That's uh a lot of that the time that I spend doing that is filtering. So that's a very good point, actually. I don't like anything that gives advice, but there is no like examples, nothing tangible there. I usually skip that very quickly. But someone when someone is showing something that they've done and there is like some maybe some data as well, some numbers, that's what I love. Because okay, then you can start like picking the good and the bad within that, like maybe what you would have done differently to make it maybe like a little bit different or better. Yeah, that's a good point.
SPEAKER_03And that's the other thing is that there is no right and wrong in marketing. And in affinite marketing too. Everything is subjective based on your cumulative experience. So whilst there are frameworks that you can learn, whilst there's you know case studies that you can read, whilst you can read up about things that are happening outside of your industry, ultimately at the end of the day, you're gonna take all of this information, you're gonna make and you're gonna build your own strategies anyway, based on your own experience and what you feel is right. Uh I always go like go with your gut. Your gut's gonna tell you whether something feels good, whether it sounds good, whether it is gonna be good. And if it's not, learn from it. Because that's what we've all been doing for the last 20 years.
SPEAKER_04Exactly. You go with your gut and then you look at the data and then it validates or not what your gut was telling you, but at least you've started with you started somewhere. That's also what I like about working in smaller companies and startups, is that you can't you have the ability to do that. It's really hard in bigger companies to go with your gut. Yeah. Because you have to get so much approvals before something gets done that eventually nothing gets done, or when it gets done, it's vanilla, like you said. The idea is completely stripped out of anything opinionated, or that was maybe a little bit that made it incidentally the same as everything else because you're scared that you know you might go too far or you need to level out with everyone else. But yeah, go with your girl and then look at the look at the data.
SPEAKER_03So go with your gut, sense check everything and be brave. That's your three key pieces of advice that you want to leave people listening to. I love it, I absolutely love it. The last thing I'm gonna ask, because of course everybody knows I love a SaaS tool, and I'm pretty sure that over your years of working in all these multiple different industries that you've been in, what's the favorite SaaS marketing tool that you've ever used and why?
SPEAKER_04I've recently moved into Airtable to organize myself and the team. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I didn't realize it could do what it can do, and uh, I love it. You're just organizing projects, organizing experiments, ideas that are running at the moment, making sure you keep tags on everything because once you're running on multiple channels or different tactics at the same time, eventually it gets to be overwhelming. So I I I I really I really like that too. But I've uh yeah, I've I've used uh I've used a lot of tools in the past uh the past seven, eight years. So yeah, that's the most recent one I would say.
SPEAKER_03Okay, thanks for sharing. Well, make sure that we go check that out. Now, as a passing shot, what's the big new shiny thing that digital and affiliate marketers should be investigating right now to stay ahead of trends curves? Give us your expert opinion on that.
SPEAKER_04I think that uh I I mentioned it earlier, but I'm gonna I'm gonna expand on it a bit more. I think I think if you can invest in creators today, yeah, not just on a one-off transactional I'll pay you X and you give me a video or or some customers, more on a long term basis. If you have the luxury of like work with a small pool, one or several creators to help you brand and create pieces of content for your brand across channels, including TikTok, I think that's the I think that's the way forward today in marketing to just suddenly be really exposed in those channels. If you work with one creator and that creator gives you two videos every day, and those videos go on TikTok, Instagram, put it on YouTube short, maybe edit it a little bit, put it on like other channels.
SPEAKER_03But imagine tell you that you could get 62 pieces of content from one video, right?
SPEAKER_04So exactly. So I I I think that's still the I think that's still the key. We just started to do that, dude, on our TikTok channel. We've got one creator that works with us and gives us a video every day, and we learn it through that. It's uh it's it's like a big sandbox, I like to call it. But imagine if you have three or four, yeah, and you're still a startup, but you're generating so much more content compared to your competition. Like over time, it will just build up. You'll be unstoppable. Yeah, you'll just be everywhere. No one could miss you, basically. And that means maybe over time you might not have to rely too much on paid to get the word out.
SPEAKER_03Well, and I think that's a really key point to leave this podcast on is that we do need to find areas to diversify and we do need to niche down. So you don't have to do 10,000 creators, but you could do five. You can start with five and see how they work and how they integrate into the rest of your affiliate marketing mix. And just start from there and test and be bold, as you said. It's really simple. It sounds so simple, it's almost too good to be true. That's to be honest, that's all the best marketing advice I've ever received in my life over the last 20 years working in digital. So if it sounds too simple, it could be that it works. So, what's the harm in trying? So, I want to thank you for being on the podcast today. It's been a pleasure to pick your brains to get to know a little bit more about social platforms, channels, influencers, creators, whatever you want to call these folks, these micro affiliates that are coming to the fore. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. It's been a pleasure to have you on the podcast.
SPEAKER_04Indeed, thank you, Lianne, for the invite.
SPEAKER_00And that's a lot of tweet, affiliate, and affiliate monetary products, if you left down minute, eleven minutes, eleven editful digital marketing, and free to marketing, you'll fill it programming.
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