Agency Spotlight: LQ Digital

Our Partner Spotlight series interviews experts from our killer network of agency partners and highlights their impact in the field of partner marketing.

This month, we caught up with Monica Niblack, VP of Performance Marketing, LQ Digital.

As General Manager of Agency Services at LQ Digital, Monica leads teams of seasoned digital marketing professionals across all core acquisition channels, including Affiliate. She has spent the last 15 years in the agency space, where her mission has been to help clients achieve and exceed their growth goals by building and executing data-driven strategies across the entire marketing funnel.

How did you get started in the world of affiliate/partner marketing?

I moved into performance marketing during the Great Recession. After training as an economist at UC Berkeley, I expected to go into banking. After graduation, unexpectedly, all the jobs in the banking world were gone!

Digital marketing was an up-and-coming field during that time. On a whim, I took an interview with an agency and realized that my economics background was a perfect fit. I found that with media buying, the concept of marginal cost was key to success for both our agency and our clients. It was the concept of marginal cost that allowed us to scale our partner programs to deliver more profitable growth. Flash forward 15 years, and I still believe these economic concepts are key to any successful digital strategy.

Why should a brand consider working with a partner marketing agency?

Marketing agencies bring specialized knowledge and experience, housing teams with deep expertise in areas like digital marketing, content creation, SEO, social media, and data analysis. This experience can help execute strategies more effectively than an in-house team might manage solo.

An external agency can offer a new viewpoint and creative ideas based on broad experience across varying advertiser verticals, providing insights that an in-house team may not think of due to the limited scope they are operating on. Agencies often have extensive networks and relationships with media outlets, influencers, and other partners that can open up opportunities for collaborations, growth, and scalability that may not exist with internal teams.

Beyond that, the right agency has experience and expertise with navigating marketing challenges and avoiding common pitfalls when it comes to mitigating risk and managing crises. Working with an agency can enhance a brand’s ability to reach their target audience effectively and achieve marketing goals while leveraging external expertise and resources.

What is LQ Digital?

LQ Digital is a full-service digital agency operating as your growth partner. We help clients find their best customers—those who spend more and stay longer—to deliver profitable growth. We recognize that not all customers are created equal, and it’s important that we focus on segments and then choose the right digital marketing channel to support acquisition.

We dive deeper with data sophistication to understand your target LTV and what a valuable customer is for your brand so we can maximize the flow and make you more money.

What makes LQ Digital so innovative? What sets you apart from the competition?

We’re an agency dedicated to supporting advertisers across all of their digital marketing channels. We’re not siloed to one area of expertise, but rather, we have teams running across all media services, including SEO, paid search, paid social, affiliate marketing, and programmatic + display.

In addition, we also operate a conversion services team focused on conversion rate optimization, coupled with our multiple call centers, which can drive efficient acquisition utilizing phone, SMS, and email. LQ Digital is committed to looking beyond just the media transaction. We have both a dedicated compliance and operations team that helps big brands think more about how to build growth while also protecting brand sensitivity.

What types of brands do you work with?

We work with a broad spectrum of brands across financial services, B2B software as a service (SaaS), as well as consumer-focused products and services. Though our client base is diverse, they are all asking us to solve the same problem: drive profitable growth and ensure every partner is contributing to the right unit economics across their digital channels.

With this in mind, we’ve built a data strategy and platform that integrates across our clients’ media and affiliate platforms.

We have three key segments that we focus on:

• Brands with long, complex sales cycles that require media/partner payout decisions based on down-funnel data that won’t be revealed for an extended period of time.
• Clients that may be brand-sensitive and are looking to scale in a compliant, data-driven approach that generates true incrementality.
• Lead gen clients, especially in the finance, mortgage, and insurance space.

How does LQ Digital typically work with Everflow clients?

LQ Digital operates as an extension of our brand clients. We are network agnostic, meaning our affiliate clients are required to make the ultimate decision on the best network for their brand. LQ takes time to listen to brands, understand the problem they are trying to solve, and then generates recommendations for network options, including Everflow.

In our experience, we see Everflow as a great choice for complex sales cycles, allowing brands to see the customer experience across the entire user flow. With their flexible and customizable tracking and reporting platform, coupled with their incredible customer service, Everflow is a top choice when providing recommendations to brands.

What is one unexpected opportunity for brands to scale up their partner marketing efforts?

Frequently, we see partner marketing operating in a silo from other digital channels. Oftentimes, this means they get held to much higher returns, which can limit brands from unlocking the true potential of their partnerships.

By thinking of affiliate as a microcosm of the entire digital space, you are able to better manage dollars across your entire ad spend. This allows you to unlock better returns from mid- and upper-funnel activities by working with partners rather than through direct media buying.

As a comprehensive digital agency, this is an opportunity we are always looking for at LQ Digital. We look across an entire portfolio of a client’s business, even if we do not directly manage all channels. This allows us to unlock upsized growth in partner marketing by leveraging partners in more nontraditional ways.