Influencer marketing graduating to the boardroom

Summary

MarTech Podcast ™ // Marketing + Technology = Business Growth
Episode: Influencer Marketing Graduating to the Boardroom
Release Date: April 16, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of the MarTech Podcast™, host Benjamin Shapiro engages in a deep conversation with Christian Ashlock, the Senior Director of Product Marketing at Branch. The discussion centers around the evolution of marketing measurement and the optimization of organic marketing channels, providing valuable insights for marketers aiming to balance traditional and digital strategies to drive business growth.

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Measuring and Optimizing Marketing Strategies

Benjamin Shapiro initiates the conversation by highlighting the transition from the traditional "Mad Men" era of marketing, which focused on broad awareness and long-term brand building, to the contemporary digital landscape where real-time conversion metrics dominate. He emphasizes the need for a balanced approach that incorporates both long-term and short-term perspectives.

[02:02] Christian Ashlock: "You need a blend of both. You need to be able to look at the long view and understand what is right in front of you and take one step at a time."

Christian Ashlock concurs, underscoring the importance of integrating both traditional and digital measurement techniques to obtain a comprehensive view of marketing effectiveness.

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Optimizing Organic Marketing Channels

The conversation shifts to the challenges and strategies associated with optimizing organic marketing channels—a domain that often receives less budget and attention compared to paid advertising. Christian Ashlock offers practical advice on enhancing user experiences and measuring the effectiveness of organic channels.

Key Strategies Discussed:

1. Ease of User Action:

   • Christian Ashlock stresses the importance of making it effortless for users to take desired actions, such as sharing content or navigating links.

     [02:52] Christian Ashlock: "Are you making it easy for the user to take the action you want them to take or the action that they're trying to take?"

2. Built-in Measurement:

   • Incorporating measurement tools from the outset to track user interactions and gather actionable insights.

     [02:52] Christian Ashlock: "Did you build measurement in from the start? Can you tell when people take those actions?"

3. Continuous Optimization:

   • Treating organic channels with the same rigor as other marketing channels by investing in testing and iterative improvements.

     [02:52] Christian Ashlock: "Think about them just like you'd think about any other marketing channel where you're doing investments, running tests, and always kind of improving the experience."

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Case Studies: IMDb and Etsy

To illustrate effective optimization of organic channels, Christian Ashlock provides concrete examples from major brands like IMDb and Etsy.

IMDb's User-Friendly Approach

IMDb exemplifies how to balance user experience with business objectives. Instead of employing intrusive pop-ups requiring users to download the app to access information, IMDb opted for a seamless experience.

[08:51] Christian Ashlock: "They showed folks the information and then they tested different little banners they could put at the bottom that they could actually make relevant and customized per users."

This strategy ensures that users receive the information they seek without disruption, thereby enhancing user satisfaction and loyalty.

Etsy's Post-Purchase Engagement

Etsy employs a non-intrusive method to encourage app downloads by targeting users post-purchase rather than interrupting their browsing experience.

[10:01] Christian Ashlock: "After you made that purchase and you were on your checkout page, they said, hey, I know you're excited to get the stuff you just bought. Do you want to track your shipment?"

This approach aligns the marketing message with the user's immediate experience, offering value without hindering the purchasing process.

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Balancing Short-Term and Long-Term Marketing Goals

Benjamin Shapiro and Christian Ashlock delve into the critical balance between short-term tactics and long-term brand building. Shapiro emphasizes the importance of not just chasing immediate conversions at the expense of the overall brand relationship.

[12:03] Christian Ashlock: "Having that long term view from a very tactical measurement, why is it something you can do if you have signed in users?"

Christian Ashlock advocates for leveraging first-party data to gain insights into customer lifetime value, enabling marketers to make informed decisions that benefit both immediate goals and sustained growth.

[12:03] Christian Ashlock: "Do you understand their lifetime value? Do you see their purchase history, their interactions so that every person that shows up to your site or app isn't an anonymous person."

This holistic approach ensures that marketing strategies contribute to building lasting customer relationships rather than merely extracting short-term gains.

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The Intersection of Art and Science in Marketing

Concluding the episode, both hosts reflect on the dual nature of marketing as both an art and a science. They stress the necessity of creativity in crafting engaging content alongside the technical acumen required for effective measurement and optimization.

[13:11] Benjamin Shapiro: "When you're thinking about what type of products and services and what the relationship you want with a customer, think about the experience and think about some of your optimization techniques and just generally what it means to the customers as they're going through your purchase funnel."

This synthesis of creative and analytical thinking is portrayed as essential for mastering modern marketing strategies that resonate with customers while driving business objectives.

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Conclusion

This episode of the MarTech Podcast™ offers a comprehensive exploration of evolving marketing measurement techniques and the optimization of organic channels. Through insightful dialogue and real-world examples, Benjamin Shapiro and Christian Ashlock provide marketers with actionable strategies to enhance user experiences, effectively measure outcomes, and balance short-term achievements with long-term brand growth.

For more insights and resources, listeners are encouraged to visit martechpod.com and connect with Christian Ashlock on LinkedIn or Branch's website at Branch IO.

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Notable Quotes:

• Christian Ashlock [02:52]: "Are you making it easy for the user to take the action you want them to take or the action that they're trying to take?"

• Christian Ashlock [08:51]: "They showed folks the information and then they tested different little banners they could put at the bottom that they could actually make relevant and customized per users."

• Benjamin Shapiro [12:03]: "When you're thinking about what type of products and services and what the relationship you want with a customer, think about the experience and think about some of your optimization techniques."

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This summary encapsulates the core discussions and insights from the episode, providing a valuable resource for marketers seeking to enhance their strategies through effective measurement and optimization of organic channels.

Transcript

[Benjamin Shapiro]

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 iheareverything.com.

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. Getting brands authentically integrated into content performs better than TV advertising. Typical lifespan of an article is about 24 to 36 hours. 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.

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 used technology to drive business results and achieve career success. Here's the host of the Martech Podcast, Benjamin Shapiro.

Welcome to the Martech Podcast. I'm your host Benjamin Shapiro and today we're going to discuss measurement and optimizing your marketing strategies. Joining us is Christian Ashlock, who is the Senior Director of Product Marketing at Branch, which is a trusted linking and measurement partner for growth focused teams. Branch maximizes the value of evolving digital strategies for world class brands like instacart, Western Union, NBCUniversal, Zocdoc and Sephora. Yesterday Christian and I talk about moving beyond the old way of bean counting measurement and today we're going to discuss optimizing organic marketing channels. All right, here's the second part of my conversation with Christian Ashlock, the Senior Director of Product Marketing at Branch. Christian, welcome back to the Martech podcast.

[Christian Ashlock]

Great, thank you. Glad to be back.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Excited to have you back and continue our conversation yesterday where we were talking about the theoretical challenges of measuring marketing. Where we've gone from the Mad Men era of awareness marketing and counting the bottom line over time to this very precise real time conversion style digital marketing activity. And the reality is you need a blend of both. You need to be able to look at the long view and understand what is right in front of you and take one step at I want to get a little bit more practical and talk about some of the channels that are a little harder to measure. Branch being an expert at digital measurement and me being in organic content and podcasts specifically something that's hard to track. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you can optimize organic marketing channels. Tell me your thoughts.

[Christian Ashlock]

I think what's great about organic Marketing in general and is maybe kind of a benefit in this time period where some of the ads tech is getting more complicated or getting harder. Is it is a time to spend some time nailing how you optimize these channels, how you create great experiences and how you measure them. I had an old marketing leader I worked for that kind of called a lot of these, like the brilliant basics, the simple things of how you make word of mouth easy, how you make sharing easy, how you use your websites and your stores and your assets the best. If they're not getting as much budget as ads, maybe it seems like simpler or forgotten sometimes. So I think it's a really important area and I think that the three ways I would probably think about it are, are you making it easy for the user to take the action you want them to take or the action that they're trying to take? Right. If they're trying to share your content, when they share it, do people have a great experience? If I'm scrolling TikTok or scrolling something and I see a great piece of content or an offer or something and I want to send it to my friends when they click on it, like, do they go where they're trying to go? Does that work? So did you make the experience work? And then I think the second thing is, did. Did you build measurement in to the start? Can you tell when people take those actions? Do you have links that report when a user's clicking on it or trying to do something that feeds back to you so you can get some insights on like every time people saw this, did they do something? And then I think like, finally, are you able to pull all of that together to think about how to optimize all these organic channels and think about them just like you'd think about any other marketing channel where you're doing investments, running tests, and always kind of improving the experience you're creating for users so you can drive more actions for your business?

[Benjamin Shapiro]

That's interesting. When you're talking about optimizing organic channels, your head goes to make it easy for people to share the content. I think of that as virality. And when I think of how I describe growing a podcast, there's four different ways to grow a podcast. Organic, viral, paid in partnerships. And you went to viral first, which to me is a fully credible way to drive and optimize organic growth. Take the friction out of having someone who consumes your content away to make it easier for them to become your advocate. Totally makes sense. When I think about optimizing organic channel, first, coming from a content marketer background, I think of understanding the audience and making sure that the content you're producing that is supposed to drive organic consumption is what people actually want. Have you seen marketers or does Branch have any tools, thoughts, philosophies on how to understand what to create, not necessarily how to syndicate it?

[Christian Ashlock]

Honestly, that's not the focus for Branch. There are a lot of great partners that do that. And I think that what Branch's really mission is and I think was really helpful for folks is that you can spend all this time understanding your audience, creating the right content, creating really interesting things, making sure the hamburger you're trying to get people to sell is as tasty as possible and a good value and things like that. But if you miss those brilliant basics, like those points of friction in the process, all that work you did to create the best thing falls off if people can't actually get it or if it's hard for people to promote it to people or they saw your ad and they clicked on it and then that doesn't work. I think there's all these points of action where you're trying to either turn an existing customer into a bigger fan or try to get them to do more, or you're trying to take people you know about a little bit that you're trying to get to have a deeper experience. And if it's hard for them to do what they're supposed to do, I think you lose them. So I think Branches value is more like you've got the goods and you want people to experience it, but if they can't, then that's a hole in your bucket that you need to be able to measure and understand and then work with folks that can help you do that.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

So, Christian, I want to move away from the theoretical of marketing measurement and talk about some more concrete examples of how brands are using organic marketing channels and optimizing them. Well, give me an example of somebody who is taking this tactic of reducing the friction and driving great business results.

[Christian Ashlock]

Yeah, we have a pretty cool example from IMDb. I don't know if you're a fan.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

The International Movie Database. Sure.

[Christian Ashlock]

Yeah. I am constantly looking up who is in this episode of Shogun or things like that.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

I heard Shogun was really good. Is it worth it?

[Christian Ashlock]

Yeah. And I believe it just got renewed for two more seasons, so definitely worth a watch. So if I'm looking up who is this actor in this scene? A lot of times you're going to do that on search, you're going to do that with your phone, you're going to land on their mobile page identifying what this person is doing. Now there's kind of like I always think it's interesting when there's competing interest for a marketer. You want to serve the person that information that did that search. Right. So they got it and go aha. This person was also in this other thing I saw. But you probably also have goals as a marketer knowing that for IMDb, like most businesses, a mobile user is their most valuable user. I think from our research we've done, on average mobile users are three times more valuable than just people who are visiting your mobile website. So you have choices. Right. You could not show them who that actor is and put a roadblock in the way that says you have to sign up for the IMDb app before you can get this info you wanted.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

What a great experience.

[Christian Ashlock]

Yeah, not a great user experience. Maybe to measurement, maybe you get a short term bump in signups, but as you're talking about like your brand and long term measures, it's going to hurt that. So being able to like experiment, measure those user interactions, like test different strategies of banners or messages or encouragements are going to help you optimize that? Yep, we're going to try to get this business goal done. Maybe it's getting people to sign up for IMDb and become an app user and serve the user purpose of I've got the information I've wanted. So I think the value of measurement there is really into feeding creating the best user experience where you can make them happy by getting them to use your app and loving movie and TV trivia all the time, but also helping them with the thing they're trying to do in the second.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

So what was the user experience IMDb when you find that Scarlett Johansson was the voice of her and topical. There you go. OpenAI lawsuits and everything. We're on IMDb looking for an actor and actress and some bio information and oh, I want to share this with my buddy Christian. Instead of getting a pop up that's an interstitial that says, well, you have to download the app to see who the voice of her was. What did IMDb land on?

[Christian Ashlock]

So they showed folks the information and then they tested different little banners they could put at the bottom that they could actually make relevant and customized per users that would have a little bit of a value out of explaining why you could get the app, whether it's to make these kind of searches easier like you mentioned, do sharing or things like that. So I think it's thinking about how to complement what the user is seeing on the screen, which the content team is driving with something that's some real estate. It's not interruptive, but that the marketing team can control and test and have these smart banners that can be targeted and customized that can encourage the actions you're hoping to get them to take.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Now that seems like it's something that's in the middle of the product flow while somebody is experiencing the product. Talk to me about ways where companies are driving organic marketing channels and optimizing their marketing efforts where it is not necessarily interruptive of their product flow.

[Christian Ashlock]

A great example is from Etsy and you can imagine anybody that's a retailer, they are really feeling that tension, Right? I'm searching for a product, you know, maybe I want a hand built katana. Now that I'm such a shogun fan and I find one being made on Etsy, their choice is do I try to ask this user to do more and become a bigger fan of Etsy right away.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Let me interrupt you. The one that drives me nuts is you get to a website, you're just about to start your searching and browsing experience, you're like, oh, I think I found the perfect katana. I really want to get into this website and read the product details and what happens. Bam. Interstitial. Do you want 10% off your purchase for us being able to collect your email? No. I haven't figured out if I even like your brand, your products or services yet. That one drives me nuts. I know it's a best practice. It's a bad user experience. How do we get away from that?

[Christian Ashlock]

Exactly. And it's going to tie back to measurement. Are you measuring just the interaction with that one thing? Are you measuring the overall lifetime value of your customers and all the interactions you're having with them? So what was great that Etsy implemented was that after you made that purchase and you were on your checkout page, they said, hey, I know you're excited to get the stuff you just bought. Do you want to track your shipment? Then you can serve a banner or something that comes up at the bottom of the screen that says, hey, get the Etsy app so you can find out when your cool sword is showing up. But you didn't have to go to the mall to buy it like the 90s. So I think that's another thing where it's a win win, right? You are creating a great experience for the user. There's something they really wanted, like knowing status updates on their package and you accomplish your business objective of you know, people that have the Etsy app, you can communicate with them better, you can send them alerts and updates and they're going to buy more, which is what all the research shows, that your biggest fans are going to have your app and you're just going to have a lot more surface area to work with them.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

I'll bring it back to what our conversation was yesterday, which is there's times when you need the short view and times when you need the long view, right? You can look at every interstitial banner pop up that you're putting in front of your user and say well this one seemed to work, it had a higher click through rate than yada da yada. But it doesn't mean it's necessarily driving the best user experience. Right? Part of getting people to know, like and trust you is by understanding what they're trying to accomplish and creating and adding more value to them as opposed to just harvesting them for clicks. Christian, when you're thinking about some of these marketing optimizations, what's your advice for just generally balancing the long and short term view?

[Christian Ashlock]

I think this is a good A hot topic is around first party data. You have to have some customers that can serve as a base of these are subscribers, these are people that are logged in, these are people that are big fans of your brand that are willing to share some information with you in exchange for whether it's discounts, offers, anything like that. So that you have a cohort of folks that you can really understand what their experience is and that when you're testing things like doing offers or creating new user experiences, can you see how this is affecting the value of those users over time? Right. Do you understand their lifetime value? Do you see their purchase history, their interactions so that every person that shows up to your site or app isn't an anonymous person, that all you can see is did they click on this banner, one second, this one time or not. So having that like long term view from a very like tactical measurement, why is it something you can do if you have signed in users? And that's why you see a lot of companies that don't necessarily think about having that first party data like Pepsi or things like that, building loyalty and rewards programs so they can measure it. And then back to the earlier part about the point of marketing, then sometimes it's just talking to users, which is not something any tool can solve for you, but just doing focus groups, talking to folks, seeing how they're using your app and how they're interacting on top of it.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Yesterday I said that marketing was a balance of art and science, and I think that's one of the two axises. You have to understand the creative and the technical piece to be able to master marketing. You also have to understand the duration that you're focusing on. You have to be able to balance the long term and the short term impacts of all of your marketing efforts. We've all seen those brands that are just out there doing every little marketing trick and tactic that probably drives conversions, but also is annoying as all could be. And it doesn't mean that you want to build a relationship. So when you're thinking about what type of products and services and what the relationship you want with a customer, think about the experience and think about some of your optimization techniques and just generally what it means to the customers as they're going through your purchase funnel. And that wraps up this episode of the Martech Podcast. Thanks for listening to my conversation with Christian Ashlock, the Senior Director of Product Marketing at Branch. If you'd like to hear more from Christian, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show notes, or you can visit his company's website, which is Branch IO. Just one more link in our show notes I'd like to tell you about. If you didn't have a chance to take notes while you were listening to this podcast, head over to martechpod.com where we have summaries of all of our episodes and contact information for our guests. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, where you can even apply to be the next guest speaker on the Martech Podcast. Of course, you can always reach out on social media. Our handle is martechpod. M A R T E C H P O D on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Or you can contact me directly on LinkedIn. My handle is Benjschapp. B E N J S H A P and if you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of marketing and technology knowledge in your podcast feed, we're gonna publish an episode every day this year. So hit the subscribe button in your podcast apply and we'll be back in your feed tomorrow morning. All right, that's it for today, but until next time, my advice is to just focus on keeping your customers happy.

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