Jessica Seib worked at Buzzfeed for 5 years and with Rolling Stones for a year and a half, Jessica is definitely an expert when it comes to connecting the audience with the brand, and the role that affiliate marketing plays in reaching out to your intended market.

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> Here’s a glimpse of what you would learn….

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley interviews Jessica Seib, a seasoned publishing and brand consultant with extensive experience in affiliate marketing, particularly for Amazon-focused brands. The discussion delves into the future of affiliate marketing in e-commerce, highlighting strategies for brands to effectively engage with publishers and the importance of agency partnerships. Jessica shares insights from her career at BuzzFeed and Rolling Stone, emphasizing the need for a cohesive strategy, leveraging both DTC and Amazon channels, and the value of personalized outreach. This episode offers actionable advice for scaling e-commerce businesses to eight figures and beyond.

Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:

1. Leverage Agencies to Enhance Reach

Partner with affiliate marketing agencies or performance PR agencies with strong media relationships. These agencies can help brands cut through the noise, secure prominent placements, and amplify visibility.

Action Step: Research niche-specific agencies like Levanta or Archer Affiliates and schedule consultations to align strategies with their expertise.

2. Personalize and Strengthen Publisher Relationships

Tailor pitches to publishers by understanding their audience and focus. Providing product samples and personalized outreach can create stronger connections and increase your chances of being featured.

Action Step: Develop customized product briefs and prepare sample kits to share with targeted publishers.

3. Adopt a Dual Amazon-DTC Strategy

Blend Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) efforts with Amazon strategies to capture a broader audience and gain deeper consumer insights. This dual approach maximizes reach while allowing brands to fine-tune their offerings based on channel-specific performance metrics.

Action Step: Use analytics tools like Comscore to measure the effectiveness of both channels and optimize campaigns accordingly.

Special Mention(s):

Related Episode(s):

This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures.

I started Hadley Designs in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.

I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.

If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then go to www.EcommBreakthrough.com (that’s Ecomm with two M’s) to learn more.

Josh Hadley 00:00:00  Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley, where I interview the top business leaders in e-commerce. Past guests include Kevin King, Michael Gerber, author of The E-myth, and Stephen Pope from My Amazon Guide. Today, I am speaking with Jessica Seib. She is a publishing and brand consultant, and today we’re going to be talking about the future of affiliate marketing, especially in the e-commerce space. This episode is brought to you by Ecomm Breakthrough, where I specialize in investing in and scaling seven figure e-commerce companies to eight figures and beyond. If you’re an ambitious e-commerce entrepreneur looking for a partner who can help take your business to the next level, my team and I bring hands on experience, strategic insights, and the resources needed to fuel your growth. So if you or someone you know is ready to scale, or looking for an investment partner or even looking for consulting, reach out to me directly at Josh at Ecomm Breakthrough. Com that’s E-comm with two M’s. And then let’s turn your dreams into reality.

Josh Hadley 00:00:48  But today I am super excited to introduce you all to Jessica. Jessica worked at BuzzFeed for over five years and with Rolling Stones for a year and a half. Jessica is definitely an expert when it comes to connecting the audience with a brand, and the role that affiliate marketing plays in reaching out to your intended market. So with that introduction to welcome to the show, Jessica.

Jessica Seib 00:01:04  Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Josh Hadley 00:01:06  I just got super excited to have you on the show. we met at Affiliate Summit East and you were on one of the panels and I could tell you had a but complete depth of experience in affiliate marketing specifically for Amazon focused brands and e-commerce in general. And so that’s why I knew, like and I need to get her on the show, share the wealth of wisdom that she has with everybody else. So I appreciate your time joining us today.

Jessica Seib 00:01:29  Of course. Thank you so much for having me. It’s been it’s been such an interesting space. It’s been a wild ride, kind of building my career on, on helping publishers and brands grow their, their programs through this channel.

Jessica Seib 00:01:41  It’s something that seemed has always seemed so natural to me as a consumer, specifically an online consumer. so working with, with partners and figuring out ways to which we can solve the internet’s most or not most, but some of their, their simpler problems has has been such a joy of mine.

Josh Hadley 00:01:57  So why don’t you, just go? Why don’t you just tell people and give people a quick overview of your career? What were you doing at BuzzFeed? What were you doing at Rolling Stones?

Jessica Seib 00:02:05  Yeah, well, I think the earliest, the early my first job, actually, in New York, kind of sets the stage for the other two roles that I ended up taking on. I used to plan media for NBC news, MSNBC, CNBC, properties through the 2016 election that included a multimedia media plans, anything from out-of-home print, digital television, all with the goal of driving television attribution. So we were trying to convert drivers on the West Side Highway to butts in seats, on couches, tuning in to watching whichever the primary show was that we were focused on for that campaign and that season.

Jessica Seib 00:02:38  So very advanced advertising metrics being used to measure the the impact and influence that each of our channels had on driving a true conversion. And I was looking to make a career change. I had learned a lot in a year and a half working in that role. I took the role. It was probably the lowest paying of all my offers that I had, but I knew the opportunity was going to be so great, and then I was going to work with a bunch of talented people and learn a lot, and I did. Fast forward a year and a half in, I knew I had some experience under my belt that was valuable to other industries and other teams. I was exploring roles at a variety of places. The role, a role at BuzzFeed for an affiliate manager, showed up, and at the time, I had a few friends at BuzzFeed. They were like, the affiliate team is the affiliate commerce like at the time it was called Product Labs team was were the cool new kids on the block.

Jessica Seib 00:03:22  They were doing some really important work in the partnerships and commerce ecosystem. No one really knew what they were doing, but they were making like money faster than they knew what to do with it. And from like overnight. There were several several million dollars being attributed to this team, and that was still at the looking towards the end of what that program became was like small drops in the bucket of what we were able to build. I met with the lead, who was tasked with building the affiliate commerce program, Neil Lee, who remains a wonderful friend and mentor of mine to this day. and we realized our our skill sets were very complementary. I had media an understanding of media attribution, how to navigate publishers ad sales down. Because BuzzFeed was a seller like, I worked closely with BuzzFeed to close campaigns that I had worked on, so I knew most of their products. I knew their capabilities. I knew like generally, how the site was run. Through those partnerships and through also friends who had worked there.

Jessica Seib 00:04:12  And I also knew a great deal about hyper advanced attribution for not even commerce brands, but tune in television, tune in. And so the the methodology for tracking a sale online with cookies and link clicks and other things was a much simpler task and much easier, easier to optimize for. It felt more exciting, than arbitrarily measuring. Tune in. Although I do love television and still that space a great bit. it seemed a lot less lower stakes than than working for news, helping people shop online, which I’m sure everyone had a little bit of news fatigue after 2016. It was something I was looking for in my next, role. I did not know that I would have such an opportunity to grow a business as much as I did in working with that program, working closely with very large retail partners, to create and invent a new way of working in the affiliate space, establishing best practices for paid placements, attribution, reporting methodology, distribution across a number of channels. It was a really wild and fun roller coaster to be on.

Jessica Seib 00:05:07  our the business we built help take BuzzFeed public. I worked closely with our investor relations teams and with notes to our board members on how to kind of explain and breathe life into the work that we were doing and share that with external and internal partners on top of, you know, kind of steering this massive jet while, while we’re still, like, doing a little bit of operating on it. It was very fun. And I learned a lot about a very high growth business at a time that was important to a lot of partners. And with that, I have a lot of learnings that I can share with other brands and other publishers on how they can replicate similar success.

Josh Hadley 00:05:41  And Jessica, it sounds like this is this is exactly why I have you on the show, because you did amazing things there at BuzzFeed, and you’ve got such in-depth experience with affiliate marketing attribution. So I’m interested to hear on the BuzzFeed side is that primarily BuzzFeed’s like. Is is that their primary source of revenue is affiliate revenue? Is that how they monetize that business?

Jessica Seib 00:06:01  It is not.

Jessica Seib 00:06:03  So BuzzFeed, first and foremost was a traditional media publisher with a very strong advertising business. They’re earning it’s a public company. So their earnings statements are our public record. it is a significant portion of their revenue, but it’s not the majority by any means.

Josh Hadley 00:06:18  Okay. But obviously it became a very important factor of them being able to grow and go public there. So, great insight. So, Jessica, as you’re as you’re managing, let’s say you’re at BuzzFeed and you’re let’s say I’m a brand owner, you’re at BuzzFeed. Still, how am I supposed to reach out and try to get my products up on BuzzFeed? Like, what does the day to day look like on your side of like, how do you determine what brands you would be pitching on BuzzFeed or selecting to, you know, affiliate link to and things like that?

Jessica Seib 00:06:46  Yeah. most publishers programs day in and day out, a lot of established programs have 3000 or more onboarded brands. Early days we spent a lot of time, you know, reviewing proposals, onboarding brands in the networks, negotiating rates.

Jessica Seib 00:07:00  Now, I would say the state of the game. Most publishers have a very strong network of partners that they work with directly, and so a lot less of their time is spent in brand and product discovery. most of the time when they’re looking to onboard a new partner, it’s because it’s a sensational brand. It is, something that their consumers are demanding again. They’ve spent years building up an existing foundation of partnerships and lists. So if you’re working with an established player in the space, your voice and explanation for why they should spend, you know, the take the ten minutes out of their day out of this and read one email out of probably the 1000, the thousand more or more emails that they receive daily to onboard one new partner that they may or may not have ever heard of, has to be compelling. And that is a an arena that I know is very difficult for brands to break through independently at the moment. email is probably the best, the best way and most efficient way if you’re going to chart that goal or that path independently.

Jessica Seib 00:08:00  Another means of doing that more efficiently is coming on board. Depending on if your brand is exclusively on Amazon or DTC partner, picking either an aggregator, Amazon aggregator agency, or a performance PR agency who already has the really strong publisher relationships to advocate for your brands and help drive growth. depending on what platform you’re hoping to optimize for, some agencies have more experience with DTC versus Amazon. there’s no harm in working with both. If I knew of a of an agency that did both, well, I would definitely namedrop them here. But I think some specialize in other arenas, more more steadily than others. yeah, I think it’s it’s to a brand’s benefit, especially with the seven figure brands that you’re working with primarily to explore, enlisting additional resources to kind of help cut through that clutter. Because I, for one, know that you can’t respond to every pitch email. You can’t even open all of them. There’s so many that these publishers are receiving day in and day out. Imagine if they have 3000 direct partners and all of those partners email them once per day.

Jessica Seib 00:08:59  Imagine how many emails that is. And then they’re trying to also filter through and see which are actually actionable and relevant, or are going to generate incremental revenue. So finding ways to be strategic and efficient with your communications is key.

Josh Hadley 00:09:11  Awesome. All right. So Jessica, basically what you said is if you want to have your brand featured in one of these bigger media outlets, right, whether it’s a BuzzFeed or Rolling Stones or whatever it may be, they’re getting hit up on a daily basis, probably receiving hundreds, if not thousands of emails from anybody in their dog reaching out saying, hey, check this out, check out my brand. And what you’re saying is, like, it’s literally impossible for them to actually take the time to review every single one. So your recommended approach is try to work with like an agency that maybe already has a relationship with that network representative, right, or that media outlet that that already trusts. You know, that that agency partner and you know that agency partner can maybe share, hey, here’s a new upcoming brand that I think is genuinely worth your time.

Josh Hadley 00:09:58  BuzzFeed. is that what you’re telling us? That would be kind of your recommended path.

Jessica Seib 00:10:02  Yes. That for DTC brands or for there’s a different a slightly different setup for brands who are exclusively on Amazon. There are Amazon aggregator agencies that advocate for a large number of Amazon SKUs in bulk, and incentivized publishers with increased rates on a monthly basis to promote top performing brands and SKUs that work well for their program. And so they’re able to drive growth growth in mass that way. The mechanics are a little bit different, but, they also do have a more unique but, interesting relationships with, with publishers.

Josh Hadley 00:10:33  Okay. That makes sense. So do you have are there any agency names that you can drop as it relates to the Amazon aggregator affiliate agency that is basically taking some top performing brands and their top performing SKUs and then rolling them up and saying, hey, media partners like promote these guys like we’ve already vetted them. They’ve got high, high amounts of revenue. You can make some good earnings on these.

Josh Hadley 00:10:55  We’re giving you bonus commission. Do you have any agencies that you would recommend that people could consider reaching out to?

Jessica Seib 00:11:01  I think yes, a lot of people in the industry are familiar with advan Levanta Archer affiliates. There have been a few others that were available and have sent a subset of their services. they there’s a there’s a number of partners that are still, withstanding and, and operating in an efficient capacity. And I think those are probably the top, the top three.

Josh Hadley 00:11:22  Okay. So I have a question then on that because our brand we’re on Levanta, we’re on Archer affiliates. Advent is something new. I haven’t heard of that one yet. but what would be my approach if I’m just a brand in and really like to get on to Levanta, all you do is like you connect your Amazon account and it like imports all of your products, right? And then you can set your commission. Same thing with the Archer affiliates is that am I just like beholden to well, hopefully some media partner comes looks and finds me? Or is there a strategy for me to still be reaching out, whether it be on those platforms which you recommend, like, hey, I’m Levanta, there’s actually like a messaging portal, like go and try to contact the media buyers there, or kind of what your experience on the media buying side, you know, what, what are you looking for before you decide to work with some brand on Amazon?

Jessica Seib 00:12:09  I found that Levanta and Archer affiliates and even Avon were very hands on and kind of sharing a full list of all of the available SKUs and providing advice based on the publisher as to what SKUs should be considered based on their top performers.

Jessica Seib 00:12:23  So they’re advocating based on the data that they see directly within those larger bulk emails and their partnership relationship management systems. I might honestly contact, if you have a direct line of communication with your partners at those agencies, reaching out to them and saying, hey, I’m, you know, looking to drive optimization and growth for through your channel. I’m wondering, what’s the most efficient way to communicate to the partners that you’re already working with, how we can test, like increasingly incentivizing them to cover us if you’re not seeing results following onboarding immediately. Also working with them to say, how should we be thinking about this? how often should we be checking back? What is understanding the benchmarks and estimates for, driving expectant growth for your your SKUs and your category subset? And going from there, you can try to reach out independently. But again, given the volume of messages that hit publisher inboxes or even writer inboxes, it’s you’re much more likely to get a response and efficient response from a contact who has a contact.

Jessica Seib 00:13:23  Then you are on your own. Unless it’s a brand that’s like gone viral on TikTok or has seen a lot of traction, and it’s something that typically they are excited about covering organically.

Josh Hadley 00:13:32  Okay. That makes a lot of sense. So what you’re maybe recommended approach would be is like yes, get your products on Levanta Archer affiliates. But then you’ve got to reach out to your point of contact their Levanta Archer affiliates and say, hey, how can we get our products in front of or covered by more of these publishers more often. Is that kind of your approach is more work with your work, with your relationship at Levanta more than trying to worry about like, oh, I’ve got to go find the the contact at BuzzFeed or something like that.

Jessica Seib 00:13:57  Correct. Because the point of onboarding with these, these platforms is so that you’re joining a group that already has an existing relationship with all of these brands, and so use their network to your advantage. And it’s likely that the CEO or CEO of Levanta is going to get a much faster response than independent brand name pitching themselves independently, like as a part of.

Jessica Seib 00:14:17  And they can also advocate for your brand in the context of here’s the average performance for similar products in this category, we see this brand outperforming in this area. They can give more context than what you’re able to see because you, I’m sure, don’t see, competitive brand brand performance in the same way that these, these aggregators do. And so they can can kind of speak more strategically to where you’re going to have a competitive advantage and advise and reach out on your behalf where there’s there’s time to. And they may also be able to advise on strategies or contacts that you should try yourself, that they have seen be effective for other brands.

Josh Hadley 00:14:48  Awesome. Okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, so Jessica, you’ve got Advan Archer affiliates. Levanta. Is there any others that come to your mind right now?

Jessica Seib 00:14:58  Not at the moment. And I feel like I’m going to get yelled at after you guys airs. for, for getting some people, but they’re always new players entering the space.

Jessica Seib 00:15:05  There are, tons of experts. You can’t really, especially with the, the Amazon advocate agencies. You can’t really go wrong with those, if you want to have a blended DTC and Amazon approach, I’d say having a traditional, not even traditional because they’re kind of new within the last five years. Performance PR agency that understands how to drive growth on both for both DTC brands and Amazon retailers. And that is a very narrow specialty. a few that come to mind for those are, Helen Cruz, PR agency, Dream Day, JLS, PR and communications. JLS actually does manage a number of Amazon brands and advocates for both Amazon coverage and also DC coverage for those partners. There are a number of others last year that also do, really great brand advocacy. There are other larger affiliate agencies that either specialize. I found that they mostly specialize in DTC coverage and growing DTC brands. They’re less in tune with like Amazon performance. I think that’s a great there’s a huge opportunity to kind of blend the two arts and sciences, even though they are different metrics, but to be able to measure growth and impact across both because they’re complementary.

Jessica Seib 00:16:10  In my mind, you see something direct to site, but you get two day Prime shipping. You may have originally been driven to the DTC site, but if you convert on Amazon, being able to measure the effectiveness or try and close the loop on that path to purchase, I think is a really significant opportunity for these types of agencies to prove and drive value. so yeah, depending on your brand setup and what’s of importance, you can I would recommend doing some research and understanding which of these agencies has a more firm specialty in operating at the capacity at which you prefer? There’s there’s no wrong or right reason to you can you can work with Multiple. Oh yeah. Emirates moon is another one who does really great to see. you can also work with a performance PR, DC agency, and an Amazon aggregator separately if you’d like. or Amazon, skew optimization agency. so yeah, it really it really depends on, on what the unique the brand’s unique priorities are at the time.

Josh Hadley 00:17:04  Okay. So would you say like the more the merrier.

Josh Hadley 00:17:06  Like get on all of these platforms and just go all in. Or would you say like go select be more selective?

Jessica Seib 00:17:11  I think in as long as you have a means of duplicating efforts across the Amazon teams and that you feel confident with, there’s no harm in I that I can see. And working with several with performance PR brands there, that’s something that you probably want to pick one and roll with that one, because the contacts are going to be the same. You’re, you know, they’re going to be fighting for the same coverage and it will be difficult to or not fighting for the same coverage, but reaching out to the same contacts. And it will be difficult to understand who drove what placement or, what coverage increase. If you know you not having one point of contact, that’s kind of navigating that relationship okay.

Josh Hadley 00:17:48  And then for the performance PR agencies, you said these are the ones that are going to do like DTC, a blend of DTC and Amazon. Is that correct?

Jessica Seib 00:17:55  Primarily DDC in my experience.

Jessica Seib 00:17:56  Some also do a blend of Amazon, but they may not have, the same level of reporting that an Amazon growth specialist agency like the Levanta, advance, and Archer affiliates of the world may have they just have really advanced reporting for measuring incrementality on Amazon that hopefully becomes available to some of these PR networks, so that they can report more seamlessly on both. some have their own PR performance. PR agencies have their own means of measuring that incrementality and working with brands directly on referral links to attribute attribution. But again, it depends on on the brand’s priorities and if the strategies are separate, holistic, how they’re considering growth. in theory, they can be separate. Ideally, I think they are cohesive because shopping online is, you know, is is there’s not a unique path to purchase, to target or to Amazon that is completely unique to DTC as well. I made a purchase this morning where I was checking several retailers for the same product to see who would ship the fastest. And, you know, having two different teams working on two different strategies doesn’t really tell that story effectively.

Jessica Seib 00:19:02  You can operate in that way. But I think closing the loop long term is a really great opportunity for both the Amazon teams and the performance PR groups.

Josh Hadley 00:19:11  Awesome. It makes a lot of sense for the ones that you said do a decent job as of right now. Kind of like blending the two worlds DDC and Amazon affiliate marketing. You said dream day JLS LaRue PR is that it? Did you have any other emigres?

Jessica Seib 00:19:26  Moon and then Helen Qu I think if you missed that integration.

Josh Hadley 00:19:29  Moon Helen what was the last one? Helen.

Jessica Seib 00:19:32  She’s a founder of blossom PM agency, blossom PM and all of these agencies also have specialties. Some are, focused on growth for DTC exclusive brands. Others have category focuses like blossom does beauty and lifestyle embrace moon does a number of DTC brands. JLS PR has a lot of Amazon exclusive brands also that do have some DTC activity as well. It just really depends on the category, the specialty you should be able to from any of their websites, get a sense of the types of brands they support most consistently, and where you might fit in best, or where you might be able to take advantage of your brand, might be able to take advantage of the contacts that that PR person already has.

Josh Hadley 00:20:12  Yeah, okay. Love that. And thanks for sharing those agency names. That that definitely helps. And and obviously each brand owner needs to find the right one for themselves. Right. now, Jessica, I’m curious to hear from your perspective, when we met at Affiliate Summit East, you know, I one of the things that piqued my interest is you had said, you know, actually brands that are on Amazon kind of have a leg up, maybe compared to the ones that are DTC only, maybe they’re not on Amazon. You’re what you may be told me and correct me if I’m wrong, is that these publishers prefer to promote or I guess link to Amazon products just because they know that they’ve already built in the reporting systems. Right. And they’ve probably got lots of other products that they’re publishing and getting affiliate revenue from, compared to DTC. So my question is, if I’m a e-commerce brand owner, yes, I’m on Amazon, I’m trying to start up my DTC site. What would be your recommendation? Do you double down on Amazon because most of these, you know, publishers prefer Amazon, or do you try to do both and try to do DTC or lean into one over the other? Can you help me understand what you would do in that case?

Jessica Seib 00:21:14  Yes.

Jessica Seib 00:21:15  And I I’m going to be careful with my words here. I wouldn’t say publishers prefer Amazon, and I’ll explain that briefly. Amazon converts at the highest rate compared to most retailers online because it is an online exclusive brand. At majority there are some stores, but majority Amazon is exclusively online. They have guaranteed shipping. Consumers are already logged in. You really only need to make two clicks to make a purchase. And if you see a product that a publisher has influenced you to buy in that moment and you decided you needed it. You add it to your cart. You check out everything that you had in your cart before you saw that product get attributed to that publisher. If you close out in that session, and it’s a great way to learn more about the consumer and what they’re purchasing outside of what you recommended, the barrier to conversion is really low, which results in super high conversion rates, a large sum of revenue being made via Amazon for a lot of publishers. That being said, true and ethical and journalists do value retailer diversity.

Jessica Seib 00:22:08  It would be really upsetting for the entire internet’s worth of product recommendations to live exclusively on Amazon. Most publishers do value linking out to Walmart’s targets. But even not only those larger retail behemoths, also small businesses, DTC brands that they know every not every product starts on Amazon. Not every product or or in a brand founder has the capital or the connections or the the ability to just launch a brand on Amazon And journalists understand this. They understand that there’s value in unique products and things that aren’t produced in mass, things that are. You’re investing in a person who’s spun up their own clothing site, or their own jewelry business out of a small town in the US, and they want to support those brands just as much as they want to make sure they’re writing profitable stories and making money for the companies that they work for. That in turn, employ them. So it’s a tough balance. They I wouldn’t say they prefer Amazon, but they know that Amazon is a very effective vehicle for sustaining growth for their business.

Jessica Seib 00:23:07  That said, they do want to link out to DTC brands. They do value giving that support to other partners. In that way, brands just have to understand that they have a limited amount of bandwidth and real estate, and they have to strategically balance how they go about promoting and incorporating brands that are not the big three, big four, big five, whoever. And without, there being an opportunity cost for forgoing that Amazon link, which most very advanced programs know the cost of adding or removing an affiliate link, like an average link makes this amount of money. An average non Amazon link makes this amount of money. Here’s the revenue that you’re letting go of to swap that link to direct to consumer. They’re very much aware of this and have tried strategies to make sure that they mitigate those losses. Like including multiple link and purchase options under products that they recommend. So yes, that is the that is the my way of clearing up that statement. I just don’t want it to be mistaken that publishers prefer this, but it’s more so an effective medium for them to to sustain growth for their businesses.

Jessica Seib 00:24:06  That said, that means it’s a huge advantage for brands to have a presence on Amazon. It’s a huge advantage to have a presence for both. And ideally, if you can have your product sold at Walmart, target. Also, DTC diversity is also key. These publishers likely have relationships with all of those brands, and the more places that they can drive to your products and seed, or so thoughts of credibility and, and other, positive consumer like consumer reinforcement towards. This is why you should be making a product that you may have never heard of, a purchase of a product that you may have never heard before because it’s sold at all in all these trusted spaces in addition to B2C, that’s valuable. And that also gives the publisher a lot of flexibility in the ways in which they can cover your product and include you within content as it is relevant. So, yes, I would say being on Amazon is an advantage, but it’s not the end all, be all. And that’s understanding that relationship and the decision tree and the opportunity costs that the publisher is facing at any given point where they’re incorporating a link within content is going to help you more strategically pitch those brands, because you understand what their thought process and considerations are when creating those placements.

Jessica Seib 00:25:04  It’s not so much like, hey, I saw you wrote this roundup of these products. Can you include a link to my brand? It’s why was that? Why was the order of that post built in that way? Are there certain keywords and retailer brands that are helping that post rank? Do they have paid relationships that are guaranteeing that they maintain a certain number of Amazon, target, Walmart links within content for any given period? There are several steps. There’s there are a lot of ingredients that go into making a publisher commerce sandwich, and not all of them can be understood objectively from an on looking brand or partner or, editorial team. Even so, that is my my long winded explainer on that.

Josh Hadley 00:25:40  I love that, and I think you gave us an excellent lay of the land. And I think that, you know, those brands that are especially like in the Amazon First brand, I think that they should see that definitely as an advantage. And I think that for a long time, even for DTC brands that are native DTC, they they got started on Shopify.

Josh Hadley 00:25:56  They didn’t start on Amazon, like working with affiliates and influencers is like, that’s the way that they bring in traffic to their entire site. and so if Amazon brands, because a lot of them aren’t necessarily focused on the PR side of things, if they flip that script and if they’re already dominating on Amazon, and then you could start connecting with these publishers. Getting additional traffic to your listings makes that Amazon flywheel start to spin that much faster, and you just continue to have success upon success. So, Jessica, my next question for you would be this. As you’ve been doing this consulting for other brands, can you share maybe some, you know, case studies or maybe some scenarios that you’ve seen for brands that have been trying to get covered by publishers, what steps did they take? what what actions did you recommend for them in order to help scale their brand, get more awareness, and increase their sales? And you don’t have to say any brand names if you don’t want to. But ultimately, what have you seen in the brands that you’ve worked with?

Jessica Seib 00:26:52  I’ve seen that there is a slight, not entirely, not a massive, but a slight disconnect and incentives and objectives.

Jessica Seib 00:26:59  Brands are wanting coverage. Publishers need brands, NPR agencies and partners that are supporting them to a minimize the amount of traffic that are coming through inbox, and b make sure that they’re being thoughtful about the recommendations that they’re making at both publishers that I’ve worked at. You’d be surprised at how many pitches are sent that are completely irrelevant or off topic to anything that we might have covered on our sites, like rolling Stone, likely not a destination for parenting content or wedding registries could test it, and it’s likely that our readers are parents and are getting married. But it’s not a subject or subject matter that you’re coming to rolling Stone to, you know, seek advice on unconventional wedding dresses. That could be something that works well for BuzzFeed products that add value to your life, that you never knew you needed, things that solve lifestyle, hacks that you know you didn’t even know you needed to clean this corner of your room. Those types of things are serendipitous. they’re they have an element of surprise and delight. They add value to the consumer journey or help them just, you know, satiate that, that need for knowing that you have a surprise coming in the mail that cost you less than a dinner out on a weekend.

Jessica Seib 00:28:08  so it’s really being thoughtful and understanding the context and who you’re pitching, what you’ve seen work well for them can be inferred by looking at the types of content that they write continuously and on a serialized basis, or the posts that are keeping updated. but also, thinking about creative ways to get your product in front of those, those brands. Is it offering samples to a writer? Is it asking for feedback transparently and candidly. Is it, you know, rethinking your traditional PR pitch instead of, you know, writing it as a template ized, maybe overly ChatGPT informed template that goes off to every publisher? How can you tailor it to this person? How can you think about their context, their interest, like the extra five minutes you spend trying to get the get to know the person that you’re emailing the like, the likelihood that they’re you’re going to receive a response greatly increases. And so being strategic about what your outreach is can and taking the extra few minutes might mean that your reply rate and conversion rate on those on that messaging improves that much more.

Jessica Seib 00:29:10  and again, I recommended this earlier, but if you don’t have the time or resources to really think thoughtfully about how you craft those messages, these agencies have been doing it for a long time, and they’ve been in this world for and they have these relationships and they’re trusted by these publishers. It doesn’t hurt to let someone else do the the work for you to monitor your program, to keep an eye on it and help, help you better understand the landscape that you’re up against. Like, it is a really steep learning curve to not only understand a business deeply, but also understand the incentives of the partners that you’re trying to work with. And so not being afraid to partner with experts to kind of help, act as a launchpad for those connections is is key.

Josh Hadley 00:29:50  Awesome, I love that. Are there any other kind of success stories that you’ve seen in those brands that you’ve consulted with in terms of getting coverage or exposure on these publishers.

Jessica Seib 00:29:59  On publishers, and also with creators, diversifying your outreach? sometimes going for like trying to to meet with the heavy hitters is just as effective as working with a very niche and narrow in scope and coverage creator that has a very loyal audience that trusts them with relevant recommendations and purchases, more so than anything that they might read from a larger publisher online, making sure that you’re considering both, audience size engagement rate, places where you can be most efficient and effective.

Jessica Seib 00:30:28  TikTok has also been a very efficient vehicle for driving conversions for a lot of brands. And they’re prioritizing they’re recognizing this themselves and are prioritizing, opportunities for creators to monetize the content that they create. to, to help increase the amount of high quality product recommendations that live in that ecosystem. And I hope this is still I know we’re recording this in in September. I hope so relevant in March. but diversity is is key. And it’s not just about securing publisher placements, but also thinking about how you can craft a diverse and holistic strategy that engages your potential new audiences in a way that is meaningful and authentic, and introduces your brand to spaces where you might not corners of the internet that you might not have been exposed to before.

Josh Hadley 00:31:13  Yeah, I love that you touched on, you know, TikTok and even, you know, micro-influencers, how how important of a role do you feel like they play or for a brand owner, let’s say, you know, you’re you’re a small team. Yes. You’re a seven figure brand, but let’s say you’ve only got five team members or so.

Josh Hadley 00:31:29  where would you recommend that they start? Like start with Micro-influencers or and try to build up an army of micro-influencers? Or would you recommend saying like go all in, go try to go get covered by these big guys? Yes, it’s a hard nut to crack, but if you can get your way in there, the returns are just massively outsized in terms of your return on investment. where would you recommend what would be the best return on investment for a seven figure brand? And they’re trying to just get more, exposure of their product to increase sales.

Jessica Seib 00:31:59  Never put all of your eggs in one basket. I’d say diversity is always going to be key. The formula is never going to be the same for every single brand. it depends on the context of the brand and when in the category and where the product is seen most valuable, you’re not going to at a certain point, you’re going to reach the the number, the umpteenth micro influencer. That’s a point of diminishing return. You want to be very thoughtful and strategic about who you’re seeking out, who best aligns with your brands and targeting, working with people whose audiences seem most relevant to the context and category of the product that you’re trying to promote.

Jessica Seib 00:32:29  Same with publishers. Don’t ever make the mistake that going after the biggest brands in media and in publishing is going to immediately result in return for your product. Your product may just be completely mismatched for their audience and what they’re interested in shopping for at that time. You honestly may be more effective securing a placement that’s efficiently distributed and interesting to a much smaller publisher that will return 20 times greater than even the largest publication like, speaking, for example, BuzzFeed. Other. We heard from other friends in the industry that we were referred to as the content monsters because we wrote so much content securing one placement or two placements within the many hundreds of posts that are published on BuzzFeed in the shopping section per month is not going to be as effective as you would think. oftentimes for especially for smaller DTC brands, unless there that placement kicks up, some signal gets on the radar of an editor who now sees that product within their top 20 and begins informing teams to recycle coverage because the audience is interested in it, whereas if you get a placement at a publisher who is search forward, who has content that lives on on Google and other spaces is evergreen consistently, your long tail for an individual placement might take you a bit further than would your individual link on on a social forward publisher like BuzzFeed.

Jessica Seib 00:33:40  So I could go on and on about this for forever. But truly understanding the context, their traffic patterns, their content output levels that the pattern of performance that they see in their various ecosystems, how they’re capturing traffic for, for shopping, understanding metrics which you can typically get from like agencies or even the publishers themselves on, like the long tail value of the placements that they publish will help you make an informed decision. And again, I don’t think any of these answers is that is the right answer. I’ve seen creators who perform at the same weight with much smaller audiences to publisher brands. Then, especially for smaller DTC brands or DTC brands in general. Then I have some of the largest publishers in the industry, so it’s really never take a take a full 100% bet on any. If you have a small budget, pick and choose and be very strategic about testing 1 or 2 in every single category and optimizing towards what you’re seeing work best until you have more resources to test. Test in other arenas.

Jessica Seib 00:34:37  Again, what works or doesn’t work today may work or not work tomorrow, and so you constantly have to be in a position of an audience eventually becomes tapped. The well eventually runs dry. You have to be looking for the next and most efficient thing, or be open to revisiting things on on your path to growth as your brand awareness change, your consumer exposure changes, your knowledge and opportunity and learnings to be applied to old and new strategies changes. And so you constantly have to be aware of this evolution and reapplying and relearning and rewriting the script that you’ve adopted to make sure that you’re optimizing at your fullest capacity.

Josh Hadley 00:35:14  You know, I absolutely love the recommendation in terms of like, you should always be testing because you never know what’s going to work for your brand. And I love that you talked about like, there’s no silver bullet here. And every brand is going to be behave very differently on very different platforms and especially at different times of the year. And so it’s important to get the lay of the land, see what other people are doing, but then go experiment, go see, you know, how do TikTok affiliates work, right.

Josh Hadley 00:35:38  Go experiment there. How do Micro-influencers work on, you know, on the Instagram and partnering with them there, or how does it work if I try to get on to, Archer affiliates or Levanta, you could be surprised that you just list your products and bam, a big publisher picks you up and you have some success there, right? But you don’t know until you try. And so I love that that kind of like mindset and approach there. Now, Jessica, last question here before we start to wrap things up, you talked about diversifying things and you talked about like, hey, maybe you don’t need the big like a BuzzFeed content monster, so to speak. but how do you identify all of those other metrics that you talked about in terms of like, hey, this is how much like reach that this publisher might have and their rates and different things like that. Is there a software tool ideally that like I could go in and say like, hey, Josh, here’s a list of all the different publishers you could potentially work with.

Josh Hadley 00:36:30  and here’s maybe like an approach or here’s the metrics behind them so that I could determine, like, hey, I’m going to use an agency maybe for these top guys, but I’m actually going to follow your advice, Jessica, and create very unique, tailored pitches to these other smaller publishers myself, because I feel like those are some that I could win. what are your any ideas or tools recommendations that way to give us a lay of the land of publishers that are trying to look for products that they could link to?

Jessica Seib 00:36:56  Yeah, I would say you’re going to have. So in terms of total traffic size, comm score is a service that advertisers tend to use to research total traffic and audience size for specific demographics across publishers. It typically can give you audience size for specific age ranges 18 plus, like if you want to narrow in on a different type of customer, it’ll tell you what their customer size is. I do believe it requires a paid subscription. but that’s a really great tool for just sizing out the the total traffic and slice of the internet pie that that publishers receiving at any given point.

Jessica Seib 00:37:28  That doesn’t answer the question for how many of those eyeballs are going to shopping content, but it will give you, directionally, an understanding of the total publisher size and what percent of their audience might overlap with who you’re looking to target with your brand. From there, you’ll have to do some research. It is a little bit difficult from a brand perspective because typically you’re on if you’re DTC or onboarded via one affiliate network, so you only have the context of that one affiliate network. and then if you’re on Amazon, you have no context because Amazon doesn’t share data about their partnerships with, you know, their retail brands. So doing a little bit of, combining research sources, understand what a PR agencies think about these publishers. How often do they perform, what is their scale, what have they seen? The power and the behemoth of these these engines perform well for like a, a long roster of brands that are on a variety of affiliate networks. So asking the networks themselves, especially if you’re onboarded with a larger network that has a large number of brands, I would assume impact would have some great, insights on performance for the heavy hitting retailers because they have a lot of the larger brands, they could probably tell you.

Jessica Seib 00:38:26  This publisher drives 6% of our total publisher revenue, and these are our top ten publishers. These are our lower ten publishers could probably give you some general insights. But again, it all depends on some publishers, maybe the top publisher on some network, because the brands that they perform best with are there, whereas another publisher might do better in totality, but the majority of their revenue hitting partners are on a separate network. So it’s you’re kind of you’re trying to piece together qualitative data and perspective to kind of and layering that against of what you can see. Viacom’s score does size out the opportunity. Otherwise you’re kind of reliant on first party information that the the publisher themselves can provide. Or if they’re like BuzzFeed, you could probably do some research yourself and, and kind of interpret what you will from their earnings statements and what they decide to share. but it is difficult. It is difficult if you don’t have firsthand information yourself. And the information that you get from publishers individually might not be consistent. Some might be willing to share certain metrics versus others.

Jessica Seib 00:39:16  It’s really difficult to size size up the opportunity independently. also the the smaller brands. Yes. You could probably go after, yourself and kind of win those over directly, but I’m not sure it would be like for the, their smaller brand, the likelihood that they’re going to outperform a creator or a large publisher, it’s probably lower. There’s I don’t see much value. And taking that away from a PR agency, especially if you’re contracting them, like just let them own the entire relationship. They’re going to likely be reaching out to that publisher anyway. And it becomes very confusing and unfortunately annoying when as a person who’s on the receiving end of that emails is getting two emails about the same brand from the same, like two different people, and you’re like, who should I talk to? Who is more effective in like answering these questions? You kind of want to centralize all your resources in one place and be totally hands off. It doesn’t matter who wins it. you can ask to be copied on that outreach if you’d like visibility into how those conversations go, but I don’t think, especially if you’re contracting it out, it needs to come from separate sources.

Jessica Seib 00:40:09  It’s almost better if it doesn’t. So, yeah, that is my my recommendation in there.

Josh Hadley 00:40:15  Makes it makes a lot of sense. All right. To some things up here for our audience then Jessica, let’s say you’ve got a brand. They’ve had success on Amazon. They have done absolutely nothing when it comes to media and PR they’ve just sold products on Amazon. Where would you recommend that they begin? Give us a kind of a holistic like, here’s some quick hitting wins that I would do if I’m this brand owner that wants to get more exposure and I’m already successful on Amazon, what would be your recommendations? Where do they begin.

Jessica Seib 00:40:39  Reaching out to? if they have publishing contacts or if they’re able to get their hands on on a few writers and, and some email formats or some publishers that are relevant to them if they’d like to do it themselves, that’s a great place to start. Or I guess, the early beginnings of a place to start before you’re wanting to explore enlisting, a larger entity to kind of help grow your brands, asking questions, just being inquisitive, like, I’m not.

Jessica Seib 00:41:02  I don’t want to pitch you yet. Tell me how is best to pitch you? What would you like to hear about my product? What is helpful information to provide? Is it deals? Is it samples? Is it an overview? Is it examples of where we’ve been covered in the past? what helps you there? Unfortunately, the response from every publisher is probably gonna be a bit unique. but that will help you kind of tailor what you send to those brands if you get a response a bit better. If you’re not getting responses, then I think taking the steps to enlist agency help is probably the best and most efficient way, to maximize your time. The fees per month aren’t that low, and the amount of time that you’ll are aren’t that high, and the amount of time you’ll save and not have to worry and also receive an automated report about their efforts, will make a world of difference. It’s easier to be the decision maker and give actionable direction based on the data that you’re seeing versus being in the weeds, sending the emails, measuring the efficacy, tracking placements yourself, having to do all that information manually on top of then making strategic decisions.

Jessica Seib 00:41:56  I think don’t spend too much time spinning wheels if you’re hitting a wall, like let someone help you take the reins and drive growth. And again, they know that they’re specifically performance agencies. They know that they’re built on, driving growth. And their, partnership retention is is predicated on that. And so they’re incentivized to show some, some results to, to maintain the relationship.

Josh Hadley 00:42:17  Awesome. Love that. All right, Jessica, as we wrap things up, I leave. I love to leave our audience with three actionable takeaways. So here are the three actionable takeaways that I noted. You let me know if I’m missing something. Sure. Action item number one I would recommend that lowest hanging fruit is just to get your products on Archer affiliates, advan and Levanta. I think that you just get those products on there. And guess what? You may hit magic now. I think that’s more of a rarity. Don’t bank on it, but it may get picked up by a big publisher fairly quickly within maybe your first three months or six months that you’ve been on that platform.

Josh Hadley 00:42:50  But it it’s never going to hurt to just connect your products on those platforms and just say, hey, yeah, if anybody does send a sale through here, I am willing to pay you 20%. You’re going to get your brand referral bonus from the Amazon side, which is great. That’s going to knock off another 10%. And then so you’re out of pocket another 10%. But for Amazon sellers like our tacos numbers, total advertising cost of sales probably over 1,010% anyways, right. You’re probably spending that much on PPC. Why not get some outside traffic that could actually provide more juice to your organic ranking by getting that outside traffic and sale? So that’s action item number one. Action item number two is doubling down on those relationships. So don’t just publish your products on Levantar to affiliates and add on instead. What I would encourage you to do is create a personal relationship with the CEO or somebody else that is there representing those brands. to those publishers, that’s who you need to get your products in front of, and you need to ask them, and hopefully you have a customer success manager at these different platforms, but you’ve got to get your products known and and say, hey, how can you know? You get my products in front of the BuzzFeed’s and the bigger media publishers of the world.

Josh Hadley 00:43:58  That’s where it seems like the magic lies. And then third, my third and final action item here is to do not dismiss some of these micro influencers. And you talked about having success on TikTok. You’ve seen a lot of brands being able to reach out to these TikTok creators, these TikTok creators that have, you know, loyal followings or even on Instagram. Yes, they’re not large, but sometimes you’re saying that the performance outweighs what you may do with some of these big publishers. And so don’t dismiss the micro-influencers at all. There’s a lot of great platforms. TikTok shop itself is probably the best influencer affiliate commission like program that I’ve ever seen, because all the data is in one app and it is so easy to communicate with creators and not. And you see all the the data there in real time. So from what I’ve heard in the affiliate and influencer marketing space, TikTok has built the end all be all, so to speak, when it comes to, you know, reporting and data and being able to contact and reach out to these creators.

Josh Hadley 00:44:52  So don’t sleep on TikTok shop. Jessica, is there anything else that you feel like I missed that we need to communicate here to the audience.

Jessica Seib 00:45:01  That is it. You. You summed it up perfectly. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast. It’s been great chatting.

Josh Hadley 00:45:06  Love it. All right Jessica, final three questions. What’s your what is the most influential book that you’ve read and why?

Jessica Seib 00:45:12  I would say Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. It was a book that it’s, fictional, but it it kind of reframes your, your thinking about your purpose and direction in life and the choices that you’ve made and, ulterior like putting to rest ulterior outcomes. And and instead of wondering what if wondering, you know, how wonderful the choices that you’ve made have led to, your path and what you’ve achieved so far. So that’s my my plug. I think it’s been made into a television series, which I refuse to watch because the book is so good.

Josh Hadley 00:45:41  So love that I have not heard of that book recommendations before, so I like a new one.

Josh Hadley 00:45:48  All right. Question number two. what is your favorite AI tool that you’ve been using and why?

Jessica Seib 00:45:52  ChatGPT is really easy. I have used it for responses that I have email responses that I haven’t wanted to write. like LinkedIn. Post it. I’ve used it for like silly things, like, there are a bunch of interesting prompts and challenges that you can kind of poke around with and have fun with. I use it for recommendations. when I was writing content, I did use it for product recommendations at times, and it would be based off of best sellers on certain websites with high reviews just to supplement what I was already pulling. Of course, additional vetting was was was used to make sure that the products they recommended were actually valuable. But it is a very powerful tool. And I think more and more people and young employees and just, people are a little bit tired of Google, to be honest, are finding it extremely helpful in answering questions. I think the Google is becoming less of a powerful player in terms of driving decision making.

Jessica Seib 00:46:40  And platforms and services like ChatGPT, Pinterest, Reddit, TikTok are, all eating away at slices of the proverbial pie. So, I love it. I and I look forward to exploring other tools as they come available.

Josh Hadley 00:46:55  Yes. And I what I loved about your comment there is that you are using it for product recommendation. So all the more importance for a brand owner to make sure whatever you can do to, you know, get your products in front of these AI tools. And we actually had the owner of Product Opinion on the podcast, a few episodes ago, and he shared his strategy for how he gets his products kind of recommended in perplexity. So don’t sleep on that one. Go, go check out that episode as well. All right, now, third and final question here, Jessica, who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that you would recommend others should be following and why?

Jessica Seib 00:47:32  I would say it’s not necessarily a person, sorry, I just put candy in my mouth at the wrong time.

Jessica Seib 00:47:36  but a platform? I mentioned it in my last answer Reddit, Pinterest, even TikTok. I mean, I know it’s kind of a well-established shopping vehicle at this point. All of them are figuring out creative ways to enter in, introduce methods for recommending products to consumers and non-traditional ways. And I think as publishers kind of scramble to figure out new traffic sources, you need to look to the platforms that service them and the new and emerging platforms that are servicing consumers if the publishers don’t meet them there. Substack is another of the publishers, and content creators don’t meet them in these spaces. They’re only going to fall behind and deepen their reliance on Traffic, traffic, avenues and platforms that are inherently sunsetting and losing share of wallet and share of consumers. an exponential rate. So I’d say it’s a platform, not a person.

Josh Hadley 00:48:22  I like that mindset shift. And I think that becomes even more important to go back to what we talked about here earlier, which is like test, test, test, test, test.

Josh Hadley 00:48:29  As soon as new platforms come out, it is better to be an early adopter because you never know when you know you could hit success with something brand new. And so that would be my encouragement is your you should always be testing. So Jessica, this has been an excellent episode. Thanks for your time today. If people want to follow you in your journey or reach out to you, where’s the best place to do so?

Jessica Seib 00:48:48  LinkedIn is, the best place to find me specifically for work outreach. I keep my personal social channels, close to the chest and very much separate from from work and, work in and pleasure. So LinkedIn is best. And yeah, I look forward to to hearing from anyone who has further questions or needs for consulting expertise.

Josh Hadley 00:49:07  Awesome. All right, Jessica, well, thanks again for your time today.

Jessica Seib 00:49:10  You too. Have a great one.