[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the Advocacy Channel, a customer marketing podcast brought to you by impact.com in this episode, we're excited to welcome our very own David Yovano,
[email protected], the world's leading partnership management platform. With more than 25 years of leadership experience in marketing technology, Dave has been a pivotal force in shaping cutting edge marketing strategies for both high growth startups and established public companies.
Join our host, Will Fraser as he sits down with Dave to dive into the shifting tides of consumer behavior and its profound impact on the marketing landscape.
Don't miss this conversation packed with valuable insights that will equip you to stay ahead of the curve and future proof your customer marketing strategies. Enjoy.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Dave, thank you so much for joining us on the show today. I'm really excited to get into this conversation with you.
[00:00:58] Speaker C: Absolutely, Will, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here today.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Wonderful. Now, before we kind of get into some of the more modern conversation here, I want to step back for a second. You've been in the Martech industry since the late 90s. I'd love to hear kind of how have you seen the landscape evolve and what do you think the shifts are that marketers should be paying attention to?
[00:01:18] Speaker C: Yeah, I think really if you want full context, rather than starting 25 years ago, you might as well just roll it back 100 years and get the context of how radio started in the same year as tv. You know, see a programming that people were tuning into and what did brands and advertisers do back then? They would interrupt that programming with an ad. And back then it's, you know, four out of five doctors say that it's okay to smoke or they prefer this cigarette brand sort of thing. That's kind of what society has been trained on for. Call it that next 75 years. So when the Internet started, it shouldn't be surprising to any of us what brands did as soon as that new medium came alive. Right. People were now just kind of in an online format consuming media, whether it was written or video or otherwise. And brands did what you would expect them to because they've been doing it for the last 75 years. They were trying to interrupt that programming by jamming an ad in front of them. Whether it was a display ad, a pop up, could have been an email, whether it was spam or otherwise. Kind of, you know, hitting the consumer over the head with their brand message, with their them doing all the talking, because that's kind of what they had been used to for the last 75 years. And so yes, I mean when, when I started my career late 90s, started with a company called ValueClick, which became conversant later got acquired by Alliance Data Systems, part of the Epsilon Group. But you know, we came out as an ad network. You know, we had aggregated a network of thousands of websites that really couldn't get a seat at the table with big advertisers, big agencies. And so we aggregated and packaged up their supply and sold it to brands typically with display advertising formats. I worked with a number of companies throughout 25 year period leading up to where I am
[email protected] and we'll talk about what's changed, call it in the last five to 10 years or five to seven years. But during that early period it was all about, like I said, display ads, pop ups, co registration, email marketing, just any marketing technique that was popular doing that dot com boom and then what ultimately became the dot com bust and then kind of the rebuild from there. It was just a wild time. Everyone I think was just enamored and inspired by this new Internet thing. And I don't think people thought about it too hard. It was just this race to do something. And so I think that early wave of marketing companies was just really trying to repeat some of the things that we've been doing for the last 75 years, but do it in a more digital fashion. And honestly, I think things kind of got out of control. Brands just got too aggressive simply because they could. If you think about TV programming, let's say, or even radio program, there's a limit to the supply. And so there was well understood practices of when you would interrupt programming wouldn't be like every second it'd be between a song or a set of songs or a show, or every call, five to seven minutes of a show, an ad would slide it. But with online it was no real standards. I was a member of actually the Interactive Advertising Bureau, an industry group that worked very hard to set some standards for the industry. You know, brands and publishers could trade with each other more seamlessly. And I think we made some real strides and standardizing things and trying to create a good experience for the consumer. But really it was all about the advertiser and the publisher and how to maximize their revenues. I think who lost out in that exchange, unfortunately is the consumer who I think just got abused, got overwhelmed with, you know, it was all about, you know, your reach, your uniques, how many impressions, how many clicks. And it was, you know, the consumer that was hardly on the radar. For anyone, it's just all about volume and growth. But then, you know, looking back, you could just see that, you know, really we were playing with fire and at some point that model was going to break. You know, brands pushed pretty hard. As they pushed pretty hard, I think consumers started to push back. And when I think about the turning point, honestly, to where we are now, which I know that we'll get into, but just during this period, I would say it had to have been. If I could think of one company that really started an inflection point where consumers started to gain control. It was really the rise of YouTube first. And then there were other social publishing platforms that followed what is now, you know, Instagram or Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, others where consumers are really the ones kind of driving the content. Right. They're the ones talking about products. I call it social commerce. So you've got these social media platforms where consumers are sharing a lot of entertainment stuff. Yes, but what has become really popular, especially in the last, call it, five years, is that they're also talking about products. And that's what today's consumer is really tuning into. So you've seen a complete pivot almost of consumers who are, call it for 75, 85 years, listening to brands as the. As the number one voice of, you know, what to buy, how to buy, why to buy, and all the details and research on products, that's where consumers gravitated to today. I think it has shifted pretty hard to consumers trusting other people that are speaking in a more authentic way, who are advocating for products in a certain way, even if they are being compensated. Which if you go back to the early days of YouTube, it wasn't as well accepted that if you were talking about products and you were talking about your affiliate links, what have you, you know, it was almost like a stain that. Oh, you know, of course, you know, it just wasn't as well accepted that now it's like people expect that people are talking about products.
They're probably going to be compensated. A lot of people disclose it openly and it's just well accepted that, you know, people who are producing all this social commerce content, that they should be compensated for it. And it's not necessarily detracting from the authenticity of what they're publishing. So you've seen a huge rise, I think, in the amount of content about products out there. Commerce content. What brands today need to realize is, you know, they have lost control of the message, but they've gained something even more valuable. And that is really the influence of their consumers by people that they trust. So I would just say flat out where we stand today, brands really don't have control of the narrative anymore. They're no longer the stars of the show. They used to be. During the era of radio and TV commercials, when they came out where they were the ones doing all the talking, people were in love with that perfect image of a product.
Consumers are the ones that are shaping the narrative now. And the shift that's happened is really that advocacy, honestly, is the future. This is where other people are advocating for your product, where they're recommending it. It carries just so much more weight than any advertisement ever could. And that's the real potential power of this shift. And it's something that brands just need to embrace, right? It's a train that you can't stop. Essentially, I would just say that start for them to pay attention. Consumers aren't just listening to your messages anymore. They're shaping your brand. And you got to engage with them. You got to listen to let them help you tell your story. This is the new world. It's not about controlling the message anymore. It's about empowering others to do the talking about you. People are going to talk about products, generally speaking, when they like the product, sure, they'll, they'll lash out if there's something they really don't like. But people are finding largely is that people who talk about products are genuinely fans of the products. Otherwise they probably wouldn't be talking about them. If they don't have something nice to say. They're really not going to waste their time going on a rant just unless they're passionate about something. And so what you see are, whether it's a creator or a publisher of any type or even another business, if they're aligning themselves with a brand, they're investing time getting to know the brand. Now, the brand might have some guidelines, hey, I wish if you would talk about this. But they really are entrusting that partner to kind of speak in their own voice, in their own authentic way to their audience or their customers, in their own unique way. And I think that's a good thing, right? Because I think at the end of the day, consumers want authenticity. They want somebody to shoot them straight. You know, they want the straight scoop from somebody. And guess what? The reality is, real life is there are negatives to a product. That doesn't mean they spend 15 minutes beating up a product, but they're going to talk about what works, what doesn't. And guess what brand People are still going to buy your product even if somebody talks about some negative points about the product, because you know that that is the real way people talk about things. And so I see it as a positive, I guess is my point that they're losing control if, if they embrace it and understand it.
[00:09:35] Speaker B: Yeah, that, that embrace and understand is a key part there. And I mean, we've all heard the overly positive too, like shiny of a response and I think nowadays people don't respond well to that if it's, you know, just all good. But like you said, most people who are out there who love a brand and love a product are going to dwell on the good and they might just help people figure out which version of the product is the right version for them or what is the exact right fit for them. So definitely exciting to see how that that balance of power has shifted though.
[00:10:07] Speaker C: You know, I've learned this from talking to a lot of creators. You know, we've launched our product creator last year, so we're about a year into it. We acquired Activate three years ago. I'm talking about impact.com and as a result of that major project just had a lot of exposure to creators getting their feedback on our platform. And what they'll tell you flat out is that their audience has a very high BS filter. You're going to hear about it in comments, you're going to hear about it through an unsubscribe and no creator wants that. So that's the other thing that I love about this new dynamic world that we're in, is that there are checks and balances that are all centered around a better customer experience. Right. If those publishers or partners or creators, whatever you want to call them, they're all kind of interchangeable. If they're not being authentic, they're going to be less relevant, honestly to their audience. There's going to be less earning power for them, smaller audience, which no creator wants essentially. So I see those as really important parts of this ecosystem for sure.
[00:11:08] Speaker B: It's kind of a self regulating system in some ways nowadays with that back and forth between the creator, the advocate and the consumer as a market. We kind of talked about this change that's happened over the last hundred years, but I think we've seen some big kind of forcing functions over the last five years, specifically with the COVID 19 pandemic. Right. I think it really drove a lot more online behavior. But I'm curious, how do you think the pandemic influenced, you know, this kind of customer marketing and you know, what changes have you seen in how brands are now engaging with consumers because of that?
[00:11:42] Speaker C: I mean, it just accelerated everything. You talk about a wild ride over the last, you know, 25 years that I've been in tech, but you know, certainly in the last five years, you know, which is when Covid started, you know, call it 2020, so four years, I guess.
Yeah, I mean, just, you know, think about everything that happens. And I know we all feel like we're past it, but it is kind of cool to kind of just think about that, that whole experience. I mean, physical stores shut down, in shopping, in person shopping I should say, is extremely limited or non existent. Brands had to move really fast to just pivot completely to a digital presence and E commerce sort of experience. Right. So E commerce and social media became the ways that people and brands especially connected with customers. Then you had, you know, there's like a bit of a trifecta that happened if you think about it, during that time, like people were sitting at home with nothing to do, some government subsidy money and they essentially kind of deployed their time and resources essentially in two directions. They bought a lot more things online, but they also had free time to publish more content about things. And so that's why I call that the trifecta. Right? You've got more time, you've got more money, more time to publish content, you have more time, you know, to kind of spend shopping and invest those dollars and you have more dollars to invest, generally speaking. So you know, I think that era really just accelerated everything. And if you think about it, it was hard to find things like toilet paper, right? And you're searching around through your community trying to find like where to buy like essential items. And you know, for a lot of people that just solely relied it on Amazon forever, found that hey, guess what? Walmart and Costco, who you can also order online, they'll also deliver to your store, actually have it in stock and it'll be there later today. And that was like, wow, I didn't know Walmart or Costco, you know, provided a similar service to Amazon. So anyway, I just think the aggregate experience of COVID was accelerated, like probably five years of just that entire experience. How people shopped online, how they relied on their community, review of things or where to go for things, really kind of forced more of this community aspect to commerce and then everyone kind of operating with more E commerce as opposed to offline commerce.
[00:14:05] Speaker B: I mean, I think that makes sense that that acceleration just kind of pushing us forward into this continued view of kind of customer marketing and advocacy through that trifecta. You know, I think what's interesting here is, you know, we kind of come to this question of like now how do we actually engage these customers and these advocates in this authentic way? Right. How do we create that organic, feeling, high authenticity experience? Right. Ultimately, how do we leverage our customers and our advocates in this world today?
[00:14:33] Speaker C: So there's different types of partnerships in this whole partnership economy. But when you talk more specifically about customer advocates and you know, getting your customers to kind of refer you business from their network of friends or family, let's say you got to think about like what motivates them. Right? And what motivates them, I would say, is different from the other types that I mentioned. Right. Most publishers are in the business of publishing content. You know, they're expecting to earn a living from that. Like, you know, or run a business from that Same thing with a creator. I don't care if you're an individual creator or a team of creators. You're in the business of creating content and you're expecting to get compensated from it. I think customers are different from those other types in that what is motivating them is not a big paycheck. I think what motivates them is a combination of things. One is how passionate they are about the brand. So I'd say the first thing that's required is that it's just not a transactional nature that you have with your customer. They might have good alignment between their values and your values, or they just love your products and they're buying multiple SKUs within your product. Like they're really all in and believe in the mission of that business sort of thing. So it helps, I think, to have buy in that's beyond just found a deal and, and they're not treating it like a commodity sort of thing. Like they've got some level of investment in the brand. And so I'm sure we can build more on that. But I think that's a big part of it. Meaning they feel some obligation to help you out because they're invested in you, They've done a lot of research, they love your product and, you know, there's some value exchange or alignment there. I'd say the next thing, really, it sounds simple, but just asking them for a referral, like, you know, some people are okay with just loving your product, but you know, if you don't ask them as a brand to share with their, their network of friends or family, hey, if you love this product, you know, why don't you refer one of your friends without even asking for or offering to compensate them, just asking for them. Like, think about like a good analogy. You know, it's not E commerce, but like if you're staying at an Airbnb, you love the Airbnb that you stayed at and you leave, you're not really compelled to write a review. But like, if you get this request from the host, say, hey, if you love your stay, we'd really appreciate a five star review. It's going to help other people like you find us better. And so just that app, they're not offering to pay me anything or anything. But you know, if you really liked it, you're probably inclined to share that. But that also leads in that example. It also leads kind of like to another, I think, point that I would make is the relationship that's there, right? I think that you're more likely to get a response on that review not just because you had a great stay, but because maybe the host was just an amazing person to deal with. Like, they were very proactive, they answered every question and you just feel like you like them. There's a bond there, there's a relationship. And so I think that same thing translates pretty squarely to what is that customer's relationship to the brand. How did you treat them? Whether it was a digital experience or an in store experience, do they feel connected to you in some way? So a lot of brands have worked on certain things, like just really cute little handwritten messages that they might send in a package or just something that tells the customer that they're special, that they, they are, you know, extremely thankful for that customer relationship. And so easy ways, I think, to kind of create that connection, that, that relationship. And then I would say the last thing would be think about compensation, right? Because that's one step further than just asking for the referral. Right? Hey, if you love the product, would love it if you referred anyone from your, your network. But going one extra step to say, hey, and if you do this and somebody buys my product or signs up for my thing, here's what's in it for you. And what I would just say is that that compensation is very different from the other types of partnerships that we talked about. Like creators are expecting to get paid, publishers who are in the business of publishing content are expecting to get paid by brands for that. I think in the world of customer referrals, it could be a gift card, it could be a discount on a future purchase. Chances are they're really passionate about your product. And they're really going to value that. Be like, okay, you know, you didn't have to offer me 15% off or 20% off my next purchase, but love that for sure. I feel more obligated even that I was going to anyways. But you know, since you're offering that, that added incentive for sure, happy to do it sort of thing. There's also, I think, an altruistic driver with this type where if you refer a friend and they purchase something, they're getting 20% off. Right. So it's less compensation directly to you as a, as a customer, but feeling good that you've helped your friend out, your friend saved money to experience the same quality product that you enjoy sometimes goes a long way. And it's like an added motivator, I think, to get somebody to kind of share that recommendation and ultimately drive somebody to your business.
[00:19:15] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think, you know, just double clicking on that relationship piece. Right. I think that's like such an important piece when we look at these customer referrals because it's not just one relationship, it's kind of like a double of relationship marketplace. Right. You know, the brand to the customer, but the customer to their friend. Right. And when that brand and customer relationship is strong and people have trust in the brand and enjoy the product they're using, they do want to then share that with the world and people who have that relationship with them. I mean, if you think about the recommendations you get from a friend on what shoes to buy or what tennis racket to look at, I mean, those are some of the few recommendations in the world that might get you to just literally go and buy it and not continue to do a bunch of research or become aware of it. Right. Or at least the most powerful ones like that. And I love the altruistic nature because it's so true. You know, in our personal relationships, we're looking to build our social credit. We're looking to help our friends out, to just help our friends out sometimes. And so, you know, maybe I know that you're a really big F1 fan and I know that I have the ability to give you early access to F1 tickets. You know, that might just be my, my nature or maybe even I want to share a product with you because it supports a cause we both care about. And those are things that are just super powerful. And, and the scale is not the scale of the reach of the message, but the scale is the number of people that can share the message. And I think that's just a really Interesting way to look at though that it is, it is still partnership, it is still relationship 100%.
[00:20:40] Speaker C: And if you think about it, this sort of sharing has always happened like probably going back 100 years. Like you've always talked with your network of friends about products that you've enjoyed or we've all done it. I think the, what has changed is up till now, I think brands haven't really thought about it as an important channel, right. To get referrals to drive more customer acquisition. And maybe there's no incentive for them to do it. They weren't thinking about it. But I would say in general, just brands haven't made it easy for people to recall it or you know, share a link, what have you. And so I think those are a couple things have changed. Like I talked about this evolution when publishing first happened on YouTube. You know, if you were getting any affiliate credit for that, people look negatively on that. It's like, ah, this is just a cheesy sales. The only reason why he's publishing this is so that he can make some money. Right. It's kind of like the multi level marketing reputation from back in the day. This person's just here to sell me something sort of thing. And I think that that stigma is like worn like almost completely off to where, you know, people who are publishing content in any form about products online, it is expected that the audience that's listening is assuming they're getting compensated in some way. What they're trying to do is look at that through their BS filter and determine is this person speaking to me authentically or not? Right. And if I agree with what they're saying, I'm going to use their links because hey, look, they took time out to, you know, explain something to me and you know, it's brands don't go through that level of detail where there's taking something apart and they're talking about what's good, what's bad. And it's like that's the inside scoop that I'm looking for. Hell yeah. Like I'm gonna use this person's link. Hopefully they get 10% because they deserve it. They put a lot of work into helping me out. Right. Really tough decision that I couldn't get a straight answer from anyone else. And so now customers are in that same boat. So they're kind of graduating to the creators that started on YouTube called seven years ago. They're now rolling in terms of real system around what's accepted. A lot of commerce content being published and it's well Accepted that they're being compensated for this. What's happening in this customer advocacy, this customer referral space now is what had just been randomly a person would talk about something. Brands could never really attribute that to a referral because somebody would just buy a product and there's no, you know, way to kind of link back, if you will. And now you got brands that are just proactively, whether it's through an email or a receipt or what have you saying, hey, if you love this, use this code, you know, share this link with your friends. There's kind of like making it easier, number one, I think for customers to share. But number two, my point is, if you're understanding my, my flow of trying to explain this is that I think people feel it's more acceptable to, to share that without feeling like that multi level marker where there's like this negative stigma associated with it. And I think all that adds up to a more meaningful channel called a sub channel, I guess of this type, you know, to get customers referring other customers at scale. Now that didn't exist even a couple years ago.
[00:23:40] Speaker B: You know, I think touching on that point of like the social acceptability is, is so important. But also as we look at kind of like this idea that people are like evolving through the types of maybe partnerships or the, the level of professionalism, I guess kind of as we look forward to the future of this kind of like partner marketing, customer marketing, how do you see the interoperability of these people? You know, you talked about YouTubers that are kind of like rolling and really have a system now and, and maybe are closer to publishers and maybe customers. Like what do you see as kind of that, that whole coming together of these different types of partnerships?
[00:24:15] Speaker C: Well, when you talk about the whole like right away, I think of just marketing as a whole, just like kind of starting with that. I think it's something like a trillion dollars is spent globally on marketing.
And what I worry about is brands are deploying a lot of that investment in the traditional ways that we had talked about, going back to how radio and TV first started, right? You're just kind of interrupting with a traditional brand message, a brand controlled message. And it's very interruptive and disruptive if you think about it. Compare that to people who are finding in a social commerce sort of experience, they're finding that commerce content where people are talking about product, they're reviewing products, people are actively searching for that information as opposed to being interrupted. And that is now kind of like the primary way people are at least Making decisions about products, and oftentimes finding out about products. When I think about this trillion dollars that's spent in marketing, I do think holistically there is a bit of a surround sound concert effective thing. So I would never say, hey, you know, stop what you're doing over here. Everything needs to go over here. That's not the way that this works. Because the truth is, somebody might find out about a product through a traditional TV ad or outdoor ad or whatever it is, you know, traditional media. But the very next thing that they're going to do is they're going to get online and they're going to try and find out what other people have to say about it, right? And certainly if a friend of theirs is saying, hey, I bought this thing for me, it was like this arcos golf thing. It's like this little thing that screws onto the top of your shaft or your golf club that when you pull it out of your bag, it knows what club you're using. It knows when you hit the ball because it's talking to a mic on your phone. That's like the coolest thing ever, right? And so, you know, a friend explaining that to me, like, kind of hard to get all that complexity through, like a TV ad.
You kind of need to hear about that from somebody else, especially somebody that you trust, that you play golf with, that sort of thing. I'm not a big golf person, by the way, but I am a tech geek. And so when cool products like that come out, like, even though I'm not a great golfer, of course I'm going to try and use a gadget like that. But anyway, my point is, when I think about how a trillion dollars is invested globally across all of marketing, what I think brands need to take serious is that how consumers are following their journey. And I gave a talk at a major event that my company has back in June where I talk about going from full funnel to full circle. And in that illustration, what I'm talking about is it's no longer about, you know, the ADA model, awareness, interest, decision, action. It's about the discovery piece that might happen in a community setting and going back to a good customer experience. And how customers talk about your products also feeds the discovery piece. It's kind of like the main point there. And so just knowing how consumers are kind of shifting their path to purchase, but then beyond that, how they talk about products, I think brands need to fully invest in this as not just kind of the happenstance, ad hoc or a small channel. This has become the major channel for most of the brands that at least impact.com does business with. It's roughly 30% of customer and revenue acquisition for the mature customers on our platform, but even more importantly, growing at a rate of like 50% every year. And so what I'd advocate for is, you know, do you want to be kind of a laggard with this pivot that's happening and how consumers are finding out about products and making their decisions about products, or do you want to be a leader and start to reallocate some of that investment from, you know, these traditional channels that are clearly not as efficient for a whole other reason. But I think more importantly, you're just not as relevant to today's buyer if you're continuing to rely on the traditional channels where the brand is doing all the talking. You've got to embrace the fact that if you want to relate to customers, you've got to go through this partnership channel and trust others to talk about you and get them in a position to refer you business.
[00:28:06] Speaker B: You know, I think it's, it's wild to kind of just like say this all really comes to trust. Right. At the end of the day here we are trying to help people establish that trust and we kind of saying this, this trillion dollars spent on, on that maybe that brand advertising maybe isn't developing the trust that's available if you go and explore in the different types of partnership.
[00:28:25] Speaker C: Right.
[00:28:25] Speaker B: And that can really, really be an instrumental mover for a company's revenue targets. You know, we've enjoyed this conversation. We've taken up a good chunk of your time here, and I really do appreciate it, Dave. I think as we kind of wrap up, it'd be wonderful, kind of if there was one key lesson, one piece of advice that you wish that a brand or an advertiser would understand from our conversation today. What would that piece of advice be to them?
[00:28:49] Speaker C: You know, there's, you know, we came out with the partnership economy, I think it was a couple of years ago. And in the book we give some tips to brands and how they action, how to be successful in navigating this partnership economy and, and really getting the most out of it. And the number one thing that I think I talk about in those tips is studying and talking to your customers. And, and I think once you do that, it will become very clear. And you're asking questions like, how did you find out about me, my product? What are other businesses that you do business with? Right. Those are your potential partners, essentially. But you know, I, I I don't care what business you're in. And I say this for myselves internally a lot at my company, it's like you've got to talk to customers. Our business has many customers. We've got brands as customers, we've got publishers and creators and other partners as customers. We got agencies as partners, we got tech partnerships who are essentially customers of our company. And we're constantly talking to them about, you know, how they're operating, how they're buying, you know, what are they hearing from their customers. And that informs how we relate to the customers that we're trying to do business. So if I had to summarize it, I guess off top of my head, that's the number one thing. So if you're, you know, acquiring customer, you're. You're experiencing inefficiencies, you know, with your either traditional channels or traditional digital channels. I would say run a survey, call people, you know, hey, so you just bought our product, have a chat with you for 5, 10 minutes, happy to send you a gift card and follow up. But, you know, tell me, you know, how you found us, how did you do your research? How did you make that decision? And so I think if you're having those conversations with your customer, I think you're going to be really interested to find out if you haven't had these conversations in a while, that they're finding out about you in ways that, you know, are different from how they found out about you call it 10 years ago, right. The way that they're researching and making decisions, that critical decision on whether they're buying you or someone else, they probably found out about that, that piece of information from a creator, let's say, or someone else that had written about it that isn't traditional source of how you've acquired customers. And I think if you put all that research together, you're going to find you're going to be able to confirm the importance of this category, of this channel. And it's going to inspire you, I think, to, to engage and invest more in it.
[00:31:02] Speaker B: You know, I love that going back and talking to the customer and using this lens of partnerships and looking for who is influencing their journey more so than just saying, where can I put an ad in their journey? You know, can I, you know, it's not just where can I put a banner ad on what website? It's like, can I actually partner that website and create this, like social commerce or a really engaging, authentic partnership experience with a publisher or a creator or, you know, a customer referral. So I think that that's an awesome piece of advice to end on, Dave. So before we break, the very last question. I know I said I only had one last question, but the very quick last question is if people would like to connect with you, continue to learn about what you're talking about here today, what would be the best way for them to do that?
[00:31:44] Speaker C: I'm on LinkedIn. I think it's Diovano on LinkedIn or Dave Yovano should be easy to find. So Message me on LinkedIn, Dave. @n impact.com you can check out the Partnerships book. In terms of the book that I wrote on partnership economy, lots, lots of ways to get in touch. I always love hearing feedback.
[00:32:02] Speaker B: Wonderful. Well, Dave, thank you so much for your time today. I know I learned a ton. I'm sure our audience did as well. We'll put links to everything you just mentioned there in the description and just thank you so much again.
[00:32:12] Speaker C: Thanks Will. I enjoyed it.
[00:32:14] Speaker B: Cheers.
[00:32:19] Speaker A: Thank you for tuning in to another great episode of the Advocacy Channel brought to you by impact.com we hope you found today's discussion with CEO David Yovano insightful as you navigate the latest shifts in customer marketing. If you enjoyed the episode, please review rate and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. If you're looking to build powerful referral marketing programs that transform your customers into revenue driving advocates, head over to impact.com to learn more about our platform.
That wraps up another great episode of the Advocacy Channel. We'll see you real soon.
