Pod Insights MarTech Podcast ™ // Marketing + Technology = Business Growth Why brand-owned content is marketing’s new frontier About this episode Traditional ads are failing while marketing budgets shrink. Joe Perello, CEO of Props, explains how to transform creator marketing into a measurable performance channel by hosting authentic content on your own website. His approach blends creator storytelling with paid social distribution, creating efficient retargeting pools that drive conversions while simultaneously improving performance across all marketing channels. The strategy positions brand content as a direct response mechanism, leveraging the brand halo effect to systematically lower customer acquisition costs over time. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 The Martech Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast? I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth, and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iHereEverything.com.
0:25 Speaker 01 From advertising to software as a service to data, across all of our programs and clients, we've seen a 55% to 65% open rate.
0:36 Speaker 02 Getting brands authentically integrated into content performs better than TV advertising.
0:42 Speaker 03 Typical lifespan of an article is about 24 to 36 hours.
0:46 Speaker 01 If we're reaching out to the right person with the right message and a clear call to action, then it's just a matter of timing.
0:53 Speaker 00 Welcome to the Martech Podcast, a member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. In this podcast, you'll hear the stories of world-class marketers that use technology to drive business results and achieve career success. Here's the host of the Martech Podcast, Benjamin Shapiro.
1:15 Speaker 04 7.7% is how much of your overall company revenue is dedicated to marketing on average, according to Gartner's 2024 CMO Spend Survey. 7.7% represents a 16% decrease in the marketing spend to company revenue ratio compared to 2023. And even though your marketing budget is shrinking, chances are your investment in paid media has increased. The average marketer spends 27.9% of their marketing budget on paid media, with digital channels comprising almost 2/3 of that spend. Here's the problem: Consumers are ignoring traditional ads. They crave authentic brand stories, and even though we've all been starved for real-time
1:57 Speaker 04 attribution, brands need authentic content to survive. So how can you create a content strategy that actually drives measurable results? I'm Benjamin Shapiro, and joining me today is Joe Perello, who's the CEO and co-founder of Props, which helps brands blend creator content with performance marketing. And today, Joe is going to explain why brand-owned content is the new frontier for marketers who want real, predictable outcomes. Joe, welcome to the Martech Podcast.
2:25 Speaker 05 Thanks for having me, Ben. Good to be here.
2:27 Speaker 04 Excited to have you on the show. Appreciate your patience, of all things. I broke my leg. So we were planning on having this conversation last month. Fortunately, the debate hasn't changed. Marketers are spending a ton on performance marketing, but it seems like creative and content is really what's working. So describe to me the performance marketing challenges CMOs are facing today.
2:49 Speaker 05 There's a lot of challenges, but there are so many opportunities. I think the biggest challenge is that we can measure a lot of things, which is good. It creates, I would say, for some brands, analysis paralysis. It also, just on the mere fact, and I know your audience is probably made up of a big portion of performance marketers. Attribution is made up on a last click model, which essentially records the last thing someone did before they became a customer, and that serves paid search pretty well. My theory is that Google invented that because it was good for Google. But I don't necessarily think, and I know it's not the right way to measure,
3:34 Speaker 05 how you get your customers and through what channels. So the biggest issue we see today is tackling attribution and having faith that people's brains and the way that they engage with brands is largely the same as it was before we had good attribution. Awareness still matters. Consideration still matters. Trial or research still matters, and then people buy. That has not changed. There's a lot of new ways to impact that, obviously. And the way we consume media, obviously, has changed.
4:15 Speaker 05 But you still need to become aware to people, create credibility so that they consider you, give them an easy way for them to engage with you, and then they become clients. And then you need to drive loyalty, obviously. So that hasn't changed. But attribution, in my mind, has created great opportunities, but also a lot of confusion.
4:36 Speaker 04 I'll quote our mutual friend, Mike Linton. He's the host of the CMO Confidential podcast and their newsletter tagline is Sales Overnight, Brand Over Time. I don't know if that's original to Mike, but it always sticks with me and I think of him and their podcast. And it seems like there is this idea that's surfaced over the last 10, 15 years with the rise of Google and performance marketing, that you could skip the brand part. You could just cut the line, go to the end, do your performance marketing. People don't need to be aware of you. You'll just put your ad when they're in the buying cycle and we're off to the races. And now it seems like we're doubling back and saying, well, you know, actually you kind of do need to invest in marketing, not just demand capture. So are we just going back to the original way of marketing where actually brand is
5:21 Speaker 04 what matters and we've been measuring the wrong stuff the whole time?
5:24 Speaker 05 No, I don't think it's a total pendulum shift. The way I describe it is Google is helping you make withdrawals from your bank account. You've got to make deposits.
5:34 Speaker 04 Oh, I really like that. The deposits is something I feel like most, at least CEOs have a hard time with, right? It's the investments that you don't see an immediate return on, right? I could put money in my bank account, doesn't put a piece of candy in my pocket. So help me rationalize that. What are some of the success stories? What are some of the key strategies brands can use to create content that resonates with their audience and starts to actually show that return?
5:58 Speaker 05 That's the hard part. And look, Mike's newsletter is right. It's brand over time is the key phrase there. And he might want to add to that. And not easily measurable in the short term. Where sales are overnight and easily measurable, the hard part is to understand what's driving the sales and you can't change your brand overnight. You can certainly measure your brand, but you have to measure it over the course of six months, a year, two years. And that's not how reporting cycles work. That's not how earnings cycles work. That's not how CFOs plan their year. They're planning their year on a quarterly basis.
6:41 Speaker 05 So these tools like paid search and like Meta in some ways. That give you very robust and very compelling data. They're irresistible. And if you do have a good brand, you can maintain that and keep going. But if you're expecting to be able to just keep taking withdrawals and focus on the bottom of the funnel, at some point, that's going to dry up.
7:06 Speaker 04 Yeah, I was gonna say that you mentioned that it's not how CFOs think about their measurement, their evaluation. It's not how CEOs evaluate their CMO. We get a year to figure out what we're doing and to show a step level function of performance. And saying, well, we developed a brand and it takes multiple years to cultivate a brand and that's all we're doing and our performance is relative to the same, but look how strong our brand is, it's going to pay off in the long run. Great, you're fired. So there's a channel mix problem here. People are ignoring the ads, the ads show attribution, it's the difference between sugar and broccoli. You buy your ads, you get the instant rush of gratification. You could see the business start to perform, but it doesn't help you build strength over time.
7:50 Speaker 04 And it seems like you and props have a different methodology that sort of blend the best of both worlds. So walk me through that strategy.
7:58 Speaker 05 We have an approach that is, for lack of a better word, it's a full funnel approach. And it's enabled by really three things. One is paid social media, and I'm talking about Meta, Snapchat, TikTok, LinkedIn. I'll call LinkedIn social media. These are robust platforms, especially Meta and LinkedIn, that know a lot about their users because we told them a lot of stuff. I've told Facebook a lot of things about me and it knows who I'm connected to, who I'm related to, who I like, who I don't like. It knows so much about me that it can make connections and references that are very, very, very powerful. So that's one thing, right?
8:42 Speaker 05 Those pipes are amazing. They're amazing pipes. The second thing is the rise of independent creators. There are influencers and there are creators. And in our mind, they're two different things.
8:57 Speaker 04 So tell me the difference between the two of them before you go on.
9:00 Speaker 05 An influencer is someone with talent and notoriety whom you engage with to do two things, make great stories about you or your brand and also get them distributed through their followers.
9:13 Speaker 04 They're creators that have an audience.
9:15 Speaker 05 Yes, but as a marketer, you hire them for two things, tell a story and distribute it in one deal, so to speak. A creator is someone who has a journalism quality, a level of expertise and content whom you're not relying on to distribute your content. And that leads me to the third most important part, which is paid media is an exceptional tool to distribute messages, especially in paid social, which is really where we operate. We don't operate in paid search. We're not digital out of home. We are primarily in creator-led platforms like Meta and TikTok and Snapchat and LinkedIn.
9:56 Speaker 04 But you've got a full funnel approach. And the thing that I'll share the end of the story, you're great at moving people not only using influencers and creator content, right? Moving away from ads more towards storytelling down the funnel. Hey, you're aware of us. Hey, you maybe even have some consideration, but you also use content marketing as a performance marketing channel. So walk me through the sort of onsite marketing effort because I think that's really distinct and that's really what marketers need to know about.
10:28 Speaker 05 Yeah. So our companies, I'll start with our first principles. There's three first principles or insights and they're all, they should be well-known. You shouldn't be surprised as to you. The first one is that people respond to stories more than they respond to ads, right? You opened up your podcast with this. The second one is that people trust people more than they trust brands or institutions or especially political candidates. The third one is where the industry has stopped and that is the story is just the beginning. That is only the beginning of the journey. It is not the end. So our platform is built on those three ideas. I'll walk you through a typical. Journey when we engage with a client.
11:12 Speaker 05 We're recruiting creators, right? Journalism quality creators based on their expertise, their alignment with the brand, their credibility, and obviously their ability to tell a really good story. We don't care about the followers because we're using paid media to distribute their story. So that frees us up. Disregard followers and focus on talent. That's number one. Those creators make stories for every level of the funnel. And I'll summarize it for you. A lifestyle story, something that might live at the top of the funnel is not branded, easy solution. We make road trip stories to attract AAA members. We make redoing your kitchen stories to attract home equity loan prospects. Okay, they're connected, very closely aligned.
11:56 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's a filtering mechanism, right? We're creating content relevant to who we think our consumer is going to be.
12:02 Speaker 05 Yes, sometimes the end result, that's a good filter is what's the end result here? Let's jump to that, make content about that. And that brings folks in. And they're also making product stories which are branded. They're also making endorsements. The second thing that happens is all that content lives on our client's website. Our client's website is essentially the top of the funnel. We're driving people to AAA.com, better.com, collegeev.com, all of these clients' websites to do two things. Let the customer or prospect finish the story, like read the story, listen to the story or watch the story. And then two is build a relationship with that prospect through this trust building lifestyle story.
12:44 Speaker 05 Once that occurs, we've now shortened this cycle from ad publisher, see the ad, click, maybe go to the website, maybe not. We've just shortened that down to one click.
12:57 Speaker 04 I gotta interrupt you and ask a question here because you're saying you're putting the content essentially on your client's website. And I think about content distribution, putting your content everywhere where your consumer goes to find the content. If consumers listen to podcasts on Spotify and Apple, I'm going to put my audio only content in those channels. If they go to YouTube to look for how to content, that's where I'm putting my content. You're saying, no, no, no, we're going to put all that stuff on your website and then try to drive traffic to a place where it doesn't seem like that's the native consumption experience. Why?
13:36 Speaker 05 There's a fundamental difference in what we call content, what everybody else calls content. What we call content is legitimately content. It's authentic, it adds value. We make a very big distinction about how we promote the content. And so if you said, hey, I want the promotion of the content to live where the people are, we're in total alignment. Our promotion of the content lives where the people are, which happened also to be great targeting mechanisms. But in order to consume the content, if you will, to find out how the story ends, you've got to click and go to our client's website, which Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn have made extremely easy to do. All it requires
14:21 Speaker 05 is some money. That's all it requires.
14:25 Speaker 04 Therein lies the rub. I actually, is it easy to do? Because there's the notion of organic content. I've got a podcast and a YouTube video and it sounds like you've got a lost leader model with your content strategy where you're like, hey, here's a travel story for AAA about how wonderful it is to spend your summer in Rhode Island. And if you want to see the best place to eat breakfast, go to AAA.com for the rest of the story. And so you're essentially serving up the, I guess I'll use a meal reference. You're serving up the appetizers and the main course, but you got to go to the website for dessert.
15:02 Speaker 05 We're probably not even giving them that much information in the promotion. The promotion is Yosemite is an amazing place and the imagery or the videos behind that is absolutely irresistible. If you care about that and you scroll by all the ads and you click on that and you go to the story, which has more rich content. But you mentioned one thing that I think is really important. The reason why that people click and leave is because it's being served through the creator's handle. Some people call that white listing. It is also made by the creator and actually approved by the creator who has final cut on these stories. So the imagery and the video.
15:46 Speaker 05 Are all stunning because that's the creator's expertise. Like the creators that we have for AAA, they're not experts in AAA. They're experts in national parks, adventure, travel, sleeping in the desert overnight. And their imagery is astounding. They are often looked over because they may not have a million followers.
16:08 Speaker 04 So Bobby Newport, who talks about Rhode Island, talks about the best places to dine in Rhode Island. He gives a little example and he says, if you want the whole story, go to AAA.com and you can see the entire walkthrough of everything I ate while I was in Newport.
16:24 Speaker 05 Yeah, so one little wrinkle on that is the ad, because it's paid, has learn more, click more. So the art of clicking brings up the story, which is on the client's website. That's one thing. The other thing that you mentioned, I think, is also important to know. And that is, that's only the beginning. So the act of clicking and landing on the site is just the beginning because sometimes we get clients from that more often than you would think. And our clients sometimes don't believe that a non-branded story about going to Yosemite is a better way to get a AAA member than a AAA ad. And it's absolutely 100% always better.
17:06 Speaker 04 There's a medium step in there though, right? Well, they consume the content. You could cookie them, but you still have to sell to them.
17:12 Speaker 05 Yeah, then we retarget them. And if they didn't buy the first time, next time we retarget them, maybe with a product story. So now the creator, who they already know, is going to talk about breaking down in the desert and getting saved by AAA with all the same beautiful imagery. The third thing they might say, if we have to go that far, is a direct endorsement from the creator. Like head on camera, what you typically see from influencers. I've had AAA for 25 years, et cetera, et cetera. And that drives not to content, that drives right to the checkout funnel. And then the last thing we do, because these creators make what we call them episodes, but their lifestyle story, product story endorsement, and it comes with an enormous amount of content.
17:56 Speaker 05 Imagy video and we make ads out of that. So the ad where everyone else is starting with that, that's our last thing that we're going to use after you've already read, clicked and listened to this video. And we can drive all this. It may sound like a lot of steps. We don't normally need all those steps. And because we're promoting the content through the creator's handle, because it's a story, Facebook loves this because it's adding to the experience. In their mind, this is adding to the experience versus an ad for an insurance company, which in their mind takes away from the experience. We can do this for a fraction of the cost than you could do with ads.
18:37 Speaker 05 Like cost per landing page view is a fraction of the cost through props than it is through ads because of all those advantages.
18:45 Speaker 04 What I'm hearing from you is that you're essentially using the creator's content to create the same experience that you would through your entire marketing funnel. You've got some sort of awareness creator, some sort of a brand play, which is your, hey, you visit Yosemite story unrelated to the product. You're doing some sort of a product experience conversation and then you're going bottom of funnel with the direct testimonial that links over to the conversion page.
19:10 Speaker 05 Right.
19:11 Speaker 04 I understand the idea that you can promote creator content and it's cheaper than promoting ads, right? You're essentially promoting content, not buying ads that are meant to directly take people off of the platform. Talk to me about measurements and impact. It's cheaper to get somebody to your website, but you're getting them there to see something that is not specifically related to the purchase. So cost is down?
19:37 Speaker 05 Well, it is related to the purchase. It's not branded.
19:40 Speaker 04 It's not direct response performance marketing. It's content consumption.
19:44 Speaker 05 Yes, it is. And look, the wrinkle, the positive wrinkle there, it's on the client's website. That creates a connection. That creates an impression. That creates an opportunity to buy there. But more importantly, it creates a very inexpensive and high quality retargeting pool that allows us to convert those folks and have them become customers.
20:04 Speaker 04 That's the not so veiled value is you're getting people to your website and now you can continue to remarket to them instead of market to them upfront.
20:13 Speaker 05 Yeah, so there are some really interesting effects that we have uncovered since we've been doing this for 2019. Now our client engagements are much bigger. They're annual agreements and that longevity allows us to, and our great relationships with our clients, they're sharing information with us that we would normally see in the beginning of our relationship. And in addition to our efficiency in acquiring customers, the big effect that Props is having is the client's other paid social and digital campaigns improve with performance with Props.
20:51 Speaker 04 Explain that to me.
20:52 Speaker 05 So when we're spending money in paid social, client might also be spending money and they're running ads. And let's just, this isn't true, but let's just say they want to get a customer for a hundred bucks or something like that.
21:04 Speaker 04 Sure.
21:04 Speaker 05 We're spending money, they're spending money, and the blended cost is, let's say, a hundred eighty-five dollars. When clients stop spending with Props, their costs double. This is last year. Their costs went from about a hundred to two hundred for three months. Then they were like, what do we do? We need to fix this. They started spending with Props again and their costs plummeted to the lowest it's ever been all year. And that maintained. So Props is not only getting cost efficient customers, but this approach, promoting stories on your website, bringing people in, is driving efficiency for our clients' other channels. And the reason
21:47 Speaker 05 is because we're driving a lot of people to the website and some of them are converting in that little seven day window that we all have to measure the result. But the reality is, a lot of them are converting down the road. And that's great that our clients are capturing that as well.
22:08 Speaker 04 I have to disagree with you. That's not the reason. It's not the seven day attribution window. It's brand marketing.
22:13 Speaker 05 Better said. Yes, thank you.
22:15 Speaker 04 It's the reason why people create content is you are doing brand marketing, which builds affinity, know, like, trust, all the stuff that matters to get somebody to be your customer. Well, 50% of my marketing is working. I just don't know which 50%. You're like, yes, we're also doing that, but then we have a way to drive the traffic to your website and then push people down the funnel and conversion. So what I'm hearing from you is we're using content as a direct response mechanism, but it is efficiently positioned as brand content. So it has the same brand halo effect, which makes all the other things work better. Like, the reason why marketers can rationalize spending money on what they can't measure
22:57 Speaker 04 is because your brand lowers your CAC over time and you're essentially measuring or you're seeing or evaluating the same phenomenon.
23:05 Speaker 05 You're absolutely right. And it's hard for clients. Some, I mean, the clients that we have and we're growing, everyone is sort of catching on faster, but no one's ever said to them, hey, let's put the content on your website. No one's ever proposed that to them.
23:20 Speaker 04 So why is that not obvious? I don't do it. I have a podcast. I put it on YouTube. I put it on Apple. I put it on Spotify and then I hope people come to my website and buy stuff instead of putting it on iheareverything.com.
23:34 Speaker 05 Like, I think it's two things. One is pre props. When we said content, what marketers were talking about was like ads that didn't look like ads, but they were really ads. And that stuff doesn't work wherever you put it, unless you're really at the bottom of the funnel and you're really in market.
23:49 Speaker 04 The bait and switch.
23:50 Speaker 05 Exactly. And we don't do that. That's the last thing we want to do is like at the end of the story and, oh, by the way, AAA is amazing. That's a waste of time. Nobody wants that. That's totally inauthentic. And by the way, it doesn't work. So you're not tricking anyone. I think what's different is we got caught up in building a following in Facebook and Instagram, getting followers, because the idea was you're going to be able Talk to those people every day through Facebook, right? And they were going to follow you. And that was a model where your website was not even in the picture. And everyone was focused on get followers on Facebook, get followers on Facebook, get followers on Facebook, keep talking through Facebook.
24:35 Speaker 05 You know who that's good for? Facebook. That's great for Facebook. And then the influencer game, and look, I'm not dissing it. Cause I think if no one knows who you are and you go hire an influencer with 10 million followers. Well, a million of those followers are going to know who you are. So if you pay the right deal, I think it's great. I'm not against it, but you're in the hit business. You're not in the results every day business. You're in the hit business. Got to be clear about that. So I think what changed was Facebook limited, this is like three or four years ago, throttled how many followers you're going to reach when you share organically, right? That's really the follower fallacy. This isn't new news either. But those things needed to be digested inside the industry.
25:20 Speaker 05 And people needed to say, hey, you know what? There's no free lunch. We're not going to get stuff for free. You're not going to get organic clicks for free on a consistent basis over time. If you pay, which is media, you're getting an amazing set of pipes. You just have to change what you serve from ads to stories. And the only way to make that work, go from ads to stories is to put the story on your website. It's the only way it works. There's no use in telling a story that's not branded in Facebook. If you're not getting someone to go to your site, that doesn't really do anything. It may feel good, but it doesn't do anything.
25:58 Speaker 04 I'd make the argument that if your content channel is branded, if it's your branded show and somebody comes and gets a non-branded piece of content, there is still some positive effect for the brand. You're building authority and interest.
26:12 Speaker 05 Yeah, provided the handle is promoting it. I agree with that.
26:15 Speaker 04 Let's put a bow on this. There's a fundamental shift between advertising and creating stories. And your thesis is that to make your story effective, you need to have the story live on your own website, and then you're using remarketing. Once you're remarketing, how do you make the migration from, "Okay, we told you this story. Now we know who you are," to continue that sort of authentic tone, but also drive traffic and conversions that can be measured?
26:44 Speaker 05 Yeah, the way we handle authenticity is through recruiting creators who know what they're in for. We're recruiting creators for college ad student loans. They've engaged with college ad student loans, or they have a kid in college, or they've gone through the process. So they can legitimately talk about this product from a place of authenticity. The second thing is, they're upfront saying, "I think this is a great product. Here's why." So no one says that to be authentic, you can't sell. That's not what we mean when we say authentic. Of course you can sell if you believe in something. By all means, sell it. So we're not hung up on, "Oh, is this creator being authentic?"
27:29 Speaker 05 Because we've already done the hard work to make sure they understand the product, they understand the brand, all the claims that they're making are real. And we actually have an AI platform to make sure that the creator is who they say they are. And if they've actually done things for a competitor of our clients, we're going to know that. That's a new development that we built out. It's called Ali. So we are 100% sure that the creators are who they say they are, and that's what matters to us. When they go and do an endorsement, we know it's legit.
28:01 Speaker 04 It's the creator connection that helps you go from taking branded content to get somebody to your site, but keeping that authenticity and that tone all the way through the funnel. That's my big takeaway. And look, whether you're a props customer or not, I think the message here is that stories are going to be more compelling than ads. And there is a way where you can go... On platform or off platform to be able to tell a story to your customer and keep it authentic all the way through your sales funnel. And that wraps up this episode of the Martech Podcast. Thanks for listening to my conversation with Joe Perello, the CEO and co-founder of Props. If you'd like to contact Joe, you can find the link to his LinkedIn profile in our show
28:45 Speaker 04 notes, or you can visit martechpod.com. You can also find his company's website at props.co. That's P R O P S dot C O. And if you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of marketing and technology knowledge in your podcast feed, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app and we'll be back in your feed or on YouTube every week. All right, that's it for today, but until next time, my advice is to just focus on keeping your customers happy.
29:36 Speaker 00 Thanks for listening to the Martech Podcast and I Hear Everything production. Looking to launch or scale a podcast like this one for your brand? Then visit iHearEverything.com.
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