Hey folks. Welcome to Affiliate Nerd Out. I am your Nerdarator Dustin Howes. Spread that good word about affiliate marketing. You're gonna find me here every Thursday at 12 o'clock. I. Eastern, oh no, excuse me. Pacific time over on LinkedIn live, hanging out with the guest. My guest today, Joe, he is the man over having a pr, a digital and affiliate marketing agency and also into the NFL Agency world, which is really interesting mix and excited for you to be here. Welcome to the nerdatorium Joe. Yeah, thanks for having me, Dawson. Super excited to, to chat with you today. Beautiful. Our topic of the day is going to be the NFL agent who actually advocates for affiliate marketing, which is something I never thought I'd come across, but I ran into you at a ASW We had a great conversation and you have this extremely rare and unique. Digital marketing agency that has some very interesting overlap that I really wanted to tap into today. Why don't you go ahead and get started with telling the people who you are and what you do? I. Yeah, thanks Dustin. So I have been in the affiliate marketing space for almost 10 years now. I work for, I'm the VP and growth of VP of Growth and Partnerships for today's business. Today's business is a full service digital marketing agency. We've been around since 2011, started out as a social media agency. Fun fact, we did the. Social media marketing for the Cleveland Cavaliers back in 2013, about two years into the company's founding. Then we actually did one of the first ever influencer campaigns with Kylie Jenner. So a couple little fun facts about us, but we've evolved. We're now full service. We have close to 30 full-time employees. Most of our company's based in New Jersey, but we are we do work remotely. And yeah, I started as business development manager for the firm about 10 years ago and have worked my way through all kinds of different jobs and responsibilities from executive assistant to athlete talent manager to influencer, campaign manager, affiliate manager. And ultimately we just bundled it all up and said, okay, you're the. Manager of growth and Partnerships. So then worked into director and then vice President of Growth and Partnerships as we went along. Bit about my background. We touch about 20 to different industries or so. On the affiliate side we're definitely focused on mainly e-comm businesses and like men's fashion, health and wellness supplements, sports. That's a place we. Have a lot of brands in. But outside of that we do, we work in healthcare. We work with hospital systems, orthopedic groups, home improvement businesses literally you name it, we do digital marketing across the board and all kinds of different things. Okay, excellent. And. You also mentioned that you are in the NFL scene as well representing players. How does that overlap with what you're doing in the PR and digital marketing in the world? Yeah, so basically what happened was I had been working with professional athletes pretty much right when I started working at today's business back in 2016. And. I just handled their marketing. So we did their kind of the same thing. We, it was basically today's business. We do their website, we handled their social media. And then what we would do additional is we'd bring them marketing and endorsement deals and really any type of off the field business initiatives we handled for pro athletes. And what happened was one of the agents we work with, a guy named Andy Ross. He's been an agent for over 30 years. He's very well experienced. In the NFL Agency game came to us and said, Hey, I'm leaving my current agency. I'm gonna start my own thing. Do you guys want to join me? I need someone that can build me a website, design my logo help me recruit athletes, help me bring these guys endorsement deals and handle any type of off the field initiatives for them. And. Upper ed sports was born. We we built the site, designed the logo, creative, all that. And I ended up going and through Andy's guidance he helped me get prepared and apply for the NFL PA certification. So I got certified and am now a contract certified N-F-L-P-A contract advisor as of about two years ago. So now. Everything off the field. Still my specialty, but starting to learn the ropes of the, on the field contract management and working with the teams and working with the scouts and players to really be a part of their entire career growth plan. Okay. Awesome. Thanks for explaining very interesting and unique road that you've been on to get to where you are. But let's talk about the brands that you're representing in the affiliate space and how that your network of. Influencers in the athletic world are overlapping with those brands. Can you tell us about any of your brands that you're working with, where you're actually working with athletes in that capacity? Yeah. So one of the clients we work with is called Muggsy Jeans. Okay. They are a stretch fit Jeans brand specifically for men, and we manage their affiliate program. They run it on awin. And we handle everything from them, from most of like obvi, the affiliate program management and really getting them featured into different content placements online and working with people like men's Health. And I. New York Post and Esquire and all those big content sites. But in addition to that, we're also helping them get into the influencer and athlete channel. So we have them up on LTK as like a sub network. So we're working with all the influencers and creators that are using LTK. And what we're what's something that we're new doing it's a little bit newer, is we're starting to get a lot of the athletes and creators, to partner with them in the affiliate program, but also using them as like white list content creators. Okay. So big thing that MZ is doing is investing into more content for their ads. So we just worked with cool example of how we married the two worlds Together is one of our clients. On upper edge sports is a guy named Justin Pugh. He was a first round draft pick with the New York Giants. Played about 10 years in the NFL. And now he's doing a really cool YouTube series where he is going around as an. Ex NFL player and going to every single Thursday night football game and reviewing who's got the best fan base, right? So he's doing a bunch of really cool content off the field as a retired player. And Mugsy Jeans has partnered with him. We sponsored one of his YouTube videos, so he, did a whole segment about Mugsy posted an affiliate link into the YouTube description on that post. So evergreen content. As that series continues to run, different fans are checking out how they stack up against the other fan bases, and so those, that content's continuing to get views and clicks. But he also did some IG stories and some more 20, 24 hour type content as well. So that was part of it. And then. We loved it so much. The team at Mugsy loved it so much. We came back and right before the Super Bowl did another activation with him where he did a bunch of Mugsy jeans content down in the Super Bowl. So we're just starting to release that now. So we'll definitely, I. Send that content over for everyone to check out once it's so long, I can't imagine pitching to an athlete like, Hey, we want you to do a 24 hour stream all about this product. Or just envisioning, did the 24 hour stream come first and you said, oh, that's gonna be a good fit for this brand, or did was it the other way around? Yeah, I might have misspoke. So when I said 24 hour, I meant like IG stories, things that go away after 24 hours. Okay. Oh my bad. But no, he didn't do a 24 hour stream. That would be pretty crazy. That's actually, I love the idea though. I feel like that could go, I. I know Barsol Sports does a lot of stuff like that where they'll have guys that, they'll just do challenges where they just, Hey, I gotta, I'm gonna sit here all night until I hit a hole in one. And I've seen a lot of those things. So maybe there's an affiliate deal and maybe there's a future deal. We work out with Barsol Sports in the future on something like that. But yeah, perhaps I could envision somebody like doing a dance marathon or of some sort for a. 24 hour stream and have an a different sponsor every couple of hours. I don't know. It could be cool, but I Interesting. On the players and like, how do you initially talk them into doing affiliate marketing? Is this you bring a brand to their attention and you see what they wanna do with it. Yeah. It's a great question. So when it comes to doing affiliate with athletes, there's a couple things to know. Like one, of course, these guys all get paid very well, right? Yeah. And they're not full-time content creators most of the time, whereas affiliates and influencers that you see on Instagram and those people. That's what they do full-time. They're very good at creating content. They know how to sign up for your program and grab the links and do all that. Professional athletes and college athletes, their full-time job is to play sport, be really good at sports, and they're obviously the best of the best in their respective field. So the first thing you have to do is one. Make everything very easy for them. So don't expect them to really sign up for your affiliate program. That's something that you have to do for them. I'm doing something with a brand right now where I'm like, Hey, let me just sign up for all of their accounts and I'll just send them the link. I'll just send them their code and let them post it. And keep it simple. The other thing is too these guys are all getting paid very well, like I mentioned, so they're not always, I. If they're gonna do a brand deal they're expecting a large sum of money because they get paid large sums of money. So they don't wanna really sell out or do different things with brands, unless it's a big fee, however. It also works in your favor. On the other hand, like sometimes they don't care about the money at all. If it's just a brand that they are truly interested in or a product or category of products that they're very interested in, they're like, just, Hey, whatever I have to do I wanna work with this brand. I wanna work with this product. I'm willing to do it. For example, I had a player on the New York Giants the other day who was posting about, non-toxic, like healthy home swaps. Okay. And he actually posted this image that was featuring a brand that I work with and he didn't even realize it. And I had someone send it to me and be like, Hey, you should reach out to him. Like he's, he would seems like someone you'd wanna work with. Hit him up. And instantly he was like, oh my God. Yeah. Like I just posted about this I think I need a someone to come to my house and get rid of all the toxic home products. So I connected him with this brand. He didn't even ask about the money. I told 'em that, hey, they pay a commission rate. It's very good, but. Most importantly, I could get you the product and I can get you product like restocked consistently. And he's oh my God, that's perfect. Send it over. Let's go. Oh man. Timing and product interest are like the two biggest things. And then from there it's just making it easy, right? Because while they might be interested in getting the product and. Posting about it. They still have so many other things going on, so you have to like, make it very simple for them. Don't try to and that's why sometimes it's good to have a middleman or an agency that, that knows what they're doing because a lot of people are gonna send over the whole entire content briefs and all this long information and application form. Like it's never go, that's not gonna work with these guys. You have to just, you gotta really simplify it. So what I, and that's what I do. I'll go through the content brief. I'll look through everything and be like, okay, cool. Here's what we need. I'll break it down very simply. Yeah. You need to post this, gimme your email. I'll sign you up for the account. Here's what you have to post. Give me your add, gimme your address. I'll give you the product. Here's what you have to post, and here's your link. This is exactly how to do it. I send them a screen. I do the story for them sometimes with the screen recording and say here's exactly what we want you to do. And just make it. Very simple. Wow. Okay. That is boutique and that is very handholding, but super effective is what I figure it would be. The health brand, it wasn't truly free, was it? That's the brand. Yeah. Oh, awesome. My buddy Orlando and Brittany out there, shout out to them big fans of them. I'm a two tier affiliate of theirs and love their program and what they're doing. And yes they have a very interesting and amazing opportunity where they send influencers that they think have potential, a giant bundle of. Goods and that's such a good fit and really great for you to recognize that was gonna be a good partnership there. Kudos to you there. And I read a stat not too long ago, about 85% of athletes actually go broke after retiring. Are you familiar with something of that nature? Yeah, I'm very familiar with that stat and it's a crazy stat to think about. But it is true. It is very true and they do often face financial hardships and it's actually one of the things at Upper Edge sports that we're trying to combat. So we're actually working on some really cool things that are bridging that gap right now between when they. Players finish their career in sports and before they get their, like pension. Yeah. And they get, start getting the benefits 'cause there's a gap. It's usually, it could be about a 10 to 15 year gap before they start collecting from their N-F-L-P-A benefits. I can't really get into too much of the details on it right now, but we're actually coming out with a product within our agency specifically. No one, no other NFL agencies doing it, but we're actually gonna be like bridging that gap between I. And that timeframe so that people, it's like an annuity essentially, where they're gonna be getting cash every year to, to support themselves throughout that process. That's super smart and probably the biggest reason behind it is they go through their career getting these large sums of money and they spend the large sums of money and live freely, and then all of a sudden the income's just gone. And now they keep on spending, like they've always been spending, they've had those habits for so long. None of 'em have prepared for the future in that kind of essence. Affiliate marketing is a great way to counteract that. In my opinion, it's recurring and chill revenue. If you create evergreen content, we can start building for the future when your name is at its peak, really. When you're trying to talk. These athletes into doing these kinds of deals, sponsorship's always going to come up. But what are some of the methods you can utilize and help others utilize that will help them see the light of what affiliate marketing could be in the future for them? Yeah. I think it comes down to. A couple things. One is just like mapping it out for them. Okay. So just showing them like examples of people that are doing it well. I is gonna be important, right? Like a lot of brands, they don't always say they don't always show how it can work out. They just jumped to the point like, oh, hey we give this commission and that's great, but having a case study of it, working for someone else is, I think really important. And showing them like, Hey, this other, ev it's the whole like FOMO methodology too, right? Like every, no one ever, no one wants to miss out. Yeah. Every once, once you get one person doing it, they're like, oh wait. This guy's doing it. You see someone else in the locker room talking about it, doing it, it spreads very quickly. So trying to get the first person under your belt to, to do it and being able to have some stats that show Hey, this is how much money this person's making. That's really one of the most important things, I think is getting that momentum going. And it's gotta be a product fit as well, right? One of my clients is power plate. Which is in every gym of every sport out there because power plate is a super useful tool for recovery for athletes, and that would be a, an amazing fit for anybody in that NFL and and college space. We gotta do some work there together here, Joe, by the way. Definitely. Can you talk about the new laws that are in place to allow college athletes to make money and make a living out of their name before they go pro? Absolutely. For those who aren't familiar, I, I assume many people are at this point, but a few years ago the NCAA pretty much got rid of. The, all of the, or not the NCAA federal court got rid of the NCAA from preventing kids from taking NIL deals and monetizing their name, image, and likeness. So anytime I say NIL, that refers to name, image likeness. And that, that kind of goes to really anything from. TV rights deals to merchandise, right? With their jerseys on it to just one-on-one brand collaboration. So right now, college athletes are able to basically do any sort of marketing deal with the brand that they want, for the most part, where it gets a little. Tricky is every school has like their own little regulation has like their own way of monitoring it and has their own compliance team. But it's all shifting so fast right now between the ncaa, the individual conferences there's not like a really solid foundation where you can go and be like, here's the rules. It's certainly not like super black and white. So it's an open playing field, each player and school, like I said, will have to report things internally to their own their own compliance teams. But yeah, it's pretty much open field to, to be able to work with any of these athletes and, they're all very interested in. Trying to capitalize on it.'cause you gotta remember, 95% of these kids if not more, are not making it to the professional level. So they're trying to, earn as much income as they can while they're, at the, on that platform that they have. And in college. Yeah it's a time to capitalize. Just like any oth Olympic athlete really is has to take that shining star of when they're competing and try to make the most out of it before they, go on to an a, a professional career of some sort that's outside of their sport. With that, like how do you like to match up? Brands with the athletes that you're working with, and will they accept just gifts or are they really into the sponsorship and needing that income like automatically? Yeah, so what I typically do with the athletes I work with is I just try to understand like, what are you interested in? What is it outside of football or whatever sport they might be playing. Like what do you care about? What do you use every day? What are like the products that every single day you're using? I like to start there.'cause then they're like hey, I'm already spending money on these items. Yeah. So if I can replace that with a brand deal, although maybe I'm not getting a flat fee income, if I'm saving 500 bucks a month on protein powder, whatever it is that they're buying. That's saving them money. It's bringing incremental value and they already or authentically use it. So yeah, it's that much better of content. It's more genuine, smart. And it's just more likely to convert because their audience probably. Is more likely to use that product as well since you follow people that are similar to you and that use similar things. So I like to start there as Hey, what are these athletes actually interested in? And what are they spending money on right now? Super smart. Awesome. And you've got some experience with, the athletes just wanting some free gifts and doing content around that. You're going that extra mile and getting them signed up for the program. But what are you saying to the brands to talk them into shooting these gifts over? Yeah. So I usually. That's the nice part about being on both sides of the fence here is I know what I want to hear as a brand. Yeah. So I give them the pitch that the brand wants to hear. I go, I. Hey, here's this athlete that I work with. He's already interested in your products. He uses them, or he wants to use it, your product. Here's the team he's with. Here's his following, right? I have a person who's very big on TikTok, right? His name's Brock Hoffman. He's one of the biggest TikTok creators in the NFL. Which is a rare I got lucky too 'cause I have a rare person that is one, one of the few athletes that actually does a lot of content and is very good at putting together content. But I'll go to the brands and tell 'em like, Hey, he's interested in your product. He has experience driving sales and results for other brands. So I've come to them usually with a case study and show them some of the sales numbers and some of the traffic and follow or growth that he is driven for other brands. And then usually as a little kicker, I always like to add that. Hey, right now he's on the Dallas Cowboys. So I said, if you were to wanna work with the Dallas Cowboys organization right now, it's going to cost you hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. This is a way that you can somewhat position yourself with the Dallas Cowboys. Yeah. Without spending all of that money. So even if there is a little bit of. If it's a hybrid deal and there's a little bit of upfront money as well. I do think, in that case, particularly with Brock, it's definitely worth it. He's got a very large TikTok following. He creates great content, he's got proven success, and he's one of those guys in the locker room that everybody looks to. He's kinda like a glue guy in the locker room. So when he's using a certain product, a lot of other people in the locker room, want to get involved too. Like for example. He is an investor in a company called Life Cider. Okay. Which is a apple cider vinegar like beverage in a can. It's like a healthy version of, it's like a healthy version of a Celsius almost. It is, looks similar. Ken. And five or six other members of the team also ended up investing in the brand. Nice. So he was the guy that came in and started Everyone else invest, I even invested in it. So I'm, he's he is pretty convincing. Yeah. It could turn, they could turn into two tier affiliates as well if they're sharing this experience and getting others into the program and. Yeah, the affiliate program has that injected we're gonna try to pay them in perpetuity for the other people that they bring in. Super smart. Yeah. I think that's, I'm that like going back to what I said earlier, like getting the momentum going with a certain group, find out who that person is in the locker room and double down on that person. Hey and maybe you structure the deal that way. Maybe it's. You, it's an affiliate component, but for every person that you recruit to like post about us or do something, we give you a little bonus kicker, whether it's more product, cash, bonus, additional commissions. I think that's a really cool way to activate and build a momentum around that campaign that you're trying to build. Yeah. And a little bit earlier you were mentioning that you were paying attention to. What they were doing on social and almost listening are there any tools that you're out there utilizing that are really helpful to your agency, that are doing some kind of social listening or helping you in the process to make these things happen? Yeah. Great question. So we have been working at today's business. We've been working with brands managing their social media accounts since, like inception, since we started the company in 2011. And we were like one of the first I. Customers actually for Sprout Social which is a great tool. Not sure if people are familiar with it, but it's one of the largest publishing tools for social media. But they also have a great listening tool as well where you can plug in hashtags, at handles different things and just monitor keywords on social media which is a great tool. There's another one I use called Mighty Scout. Definitely worth checking out if you run influencer campaigns. It actually is a very affordable tool for just monitoring specific accounts. So if you wanted to plug a hundred accounts in there and put like different hashtags that you wanted to follow, it'll monitor it. It'll monitor all those and alert you anytime someone, post one of your, those people you're monitoring post about whether it's a handle or a hashtag it'll keep you up to date and it'll actually download the content for you. Oh. So you can actually like download that content. So if you ever wanted to repurpose it, it's really good for that as well. Oh, great. You know that UGC is great, but you also have to get the. Authority from the person that creates it. And that might come at a premium price sometimes as well, right? Yeah. But again, it's just if you, if they're already posting about you or posting about your category they're that much more likely to do something at a much lower rate or an exchange for gifting or an exchange for commission. People like getting free stuff when it's the stuff that they want, right? Oh, yes. Great. Great point to end on, Joe. Fantastic. Really appreciate you being here and sharing your knowledge with the community here. How do we get ahold of you, Joe? Yeah, you can follow me on LinkedIn at Joe Sanfilippo. Same thing on Instagram, it's just Joe Joe Sanfilippo, so LinkedIn, Instagram, probably the two best places to contact me. Good to go. Thanks so much, Joe. Appreciate you and for those out there watching, keep on recruiting and we'll see you next time. Take care.