Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Independence by Design podcast, where we discuss what it means to be a business owner and ways to get unstuck from the day to day so we can design a business that gives us a life of independence.
If you're wondering what a dashboard would look like where you could have all your sales and marketing data on it, understand your conversion rates, and understand your client acquisition costs, this is going to be the episode for you. I've got Allison Bechdel on the show. She has been in the digital marketing and data space for at least 15 years. She was referred to me from a client and friend of mine and you'll know who I'm talking about if you're listening in and they have a ton of traffic. And Allison is a master in her craft. We are going to be screen sharing, but also talking through some of the material that she's got so you can actually see an example of what is actually possible. And that's what I want you to take away from this episode is the goal is to show you what is possible from the data and the strategic thinking. So that way you have an idea to get judge the gap between where you are and how to get some of the. The information and the dashboard that Allison's walking through. I hope you enjoy. And as always, I'm trying to get better on the interview and my podcast. There was a lot of feedback recently that I interrupt and I have too much passion, so trying to balance that all the time. And I really love this topic. So hopefully, hopefully I'm getting better. See everybody. Allison, so pumped to have you here.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: Shout out to Bjork. I think he listens every once in a while. He'll probably see your name and probably be tuning in, so what up, dude?
And also Pat, who gave us the intro. I was very excited when you had reached out. I don't know, it was like a month ago or something like that. And I.
Your expertise and data and understanding the client acquisition journey and the funnel and it's just, you know, when you find someone, I don't know if you have this, but when I, when I find someone, like, they have their passion and their craft and it's the same thing that is you.
And I can tell because of the passion and how fast you talk about it. And I'm like, sure. Energy rivals mine. So I'm pumped because we're like, I want to talk about the customer journey, how to map out that customer journey and all the different places people find the acquisition, the Original engagement, how it goes all the way through to purchase and then that eventual client acquisition cost and the repeat. But, like, before getting on into the nuances, like, how did you get passionate about this, Alison? Like, what's the. What's the backdrop for everybody?
[00:02:28] Speaker B: Yeah, honestly, weird, great question. Because I didn't go to school for this. I didn't really have any, you know, statistical history, any kind of data points that were really in my, you know, wheelhouse before getting kind of into this. But I started in the world of event planning and wanting to book bands and wanting to do something very, very different from what I do now.
[00:02:46] Speaker A: I don't even know if I knew that.
[00:02:47] Speaker B: Yeah. So, yeah, back in the day, I used to book bands for Summer Fest and like Harley Davidson and all that kind of stuff. Oh, yeah, Way, way.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: And I know that's when I know you're from Wisconsin, because that's awesome.
[00:02:56] Speaker B: Then, you know. Right, Exactly. So, yeah, so I started doing that for a long time and then started getting, you know, being the token millennial that worked at the, you know, place that I was working at, it was like, hey, you need to figure out how we are going to do social media and how we're gon and run our website. And all of a sudden E commerce was handed to me and I was like, okay, got it. So this is going to be a little bit more than just posting some stuff and seeing how that goes. So with that, I started then looking at agency jobs, got into an agency that liked to sell a lot of things without really knowing how to do those things, which for me was a perfect opportunity because it was like, hey, we're going to pay you to essentially figure all this out, which I love. I'm a big puzzles person. I like to dig through things and try to figure things out myself, which I think then does kind of parlay into why we've gotten to kind of this point in web analytics. So working in different web development agencies across the country, some based in the Midwest, some based in California and in Boston, kind of all over the place, has brought me to this point where now I'm really not based anywhere because everybody kind of needs a little bit of taste of this in one way or another. And because analytics is super overwhelming and it can be a lot of data for, honestly, too much data. And we're going to go into that a little bit too.
Too much data for people to look at when it's not meant for everybody. Not every data point is important for everybody. So trying to identify what those Are. But once you kind of have that, you know, that framework, it's a lot easier, a lot more digestible for people. So that plus the introduction of GA4 within the last couple of years, kind of having people to relearn the whole system if they had some kind of analytics history, that also kind of played into where I'm at today. But yeah, it's something where I like to kind of. It's almost like behavior analysis and it's kind of like a little bit of psychology, a little bit of. A little bit of just, you know, anthropology, if you will. It's kind of a little bit.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: What's the story telling you? Right.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. Exactly. So it's like, where, where is it? What. What are we finding of this and what changed and where is that kind of all coming from? So a little bit of connecting, storytelling, but also remembering that we're all consumers as well. Like, okay, so how do I want to be, like, how do I want to be advertised to? How do I want to be reached? How am I searching people? How am I doing this kind of thing in my everyday life? And I think that's something that people forget about weirdly all the time. It's like, wait, wait, why are we sending that email out? Did you want to get that email on Thanksgiving? Because I want to get an email on Thanksgiving. Do you. Is that going to be important to you? Are you going to save it and put that information.
[00:05:06] Speaker A: It's my favorite day to unsubscribe to shit.
[00:05:08] Speaker B: Correct. Exactly. So it's one of those things we need to think about, like, us as consumers, how we want to be, you know, interacting with brands, and that's also tying that back to the data itself.
[00:05:20] Speaker A: What. Before we get into a lot of the details, because we're going to get into some specifics for everybody, I think we're going to even maybe do some screen sharing and stuff like that. But also I, you know, I, where did you, you, you said things that triggered of, like anthropology and stories and psychology.
And you and I were talking on our last call about, like, your first principles of understanding how stuff works. Like, was this driven into as a kid of like, like, what's the story? Because, like, I, I think getting to the data and the specifics become a byproduct of wanting to understand how shit works. Like, how. How does your brain. Where did this come from?
[00:05:58] Speaker B: I think a lot of it, weirdly, is probably because I'm an eldest daughter and just because, like, hey, you're, you're the person that's got to, we are going to figure all this out with you, so you better figure it out too. And you have a high expectations for us. So like that's you know, just kind of in the true psych of it I think is definitely some something to be said there. But I think that I've always, I mean websites are really interesting. You know, I think we came out like in all of this is like when I starting into the workforce, web was still, I mean again, it wasn't, I don't wanna say all that long ago, but long enough ago where things change and evolve obviously very quickly when it comes to digital and web space. So I think that it just was, hey, what with, with kind of this perfect storm of this agency that was kind of like handing me keys to like figure stuff out, I got to then kind of really dive into stuff I really liked too. So like even though I was given stuff that like, hey, you need to figure out Google Ads for this client. Okay, great. I can and I can figure out those data points. It's not my favorite thing to do. Whereas my favorite thing to do is going to be more in that storytelling, more on that digging portion. So like I think that that is.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: Which is like what for you? Like why do people buy or like what, what's like the big one or two questions that encapsulate or like puts a container around all the work that you're doing, do you think?
[00:07:09] Speaker B: Yeah, so I think that there's, there's kind of twofold there. The first thing is, is my data set up correctly? Is it set up properly from the beginning? Is that the first thing that, that should be done and thought through for everybody? And I'm saying this should be thought through at least once a year for everybody realistically, because I, if I've seen it and I've worked for some very, very big brands and can attest very much that there are the biggest brands in the world are the ones that had something that was set up probably 15 years ago that wasn't done probably right the first time and has been broken the whole time since. And nobody knew because somebody was hired 15 years ago and the person who hired them has long gone, et cetera.
[00:07:43] Speaker A: Been gone for 11.
[00:07:44] Speaker B: Correct. So that's where it's like it happens all of the time. It's like, hey, let's make sure our data is first of all where it should be incorrectly implemented. Then from there, once that's kind of done in that audit process or whatever have you, is Done. It's then looking at, okay, what has happened at this point, why are we here? And a lot of it is we don't know. Our sales are going down, our revenue is going down, we can't get sessions, we can't get leads.
Every a problem is usually what it is likely tied to revenue. So when we know that revenue is going to be likely, the key performance indicator, that key goal that we're kind of chasing, once we know that's our primary, there's going to be a lot of secondary and tertiary ones though. And that's also what's forgotten about. It's like sales, sales, sales, sales, sales, 100%. Yes. But also newsletter signups because newsletters are going to drive more traffic to the site. Therefore we have an engaged audience. There's a little bit of kind of playing out every single aspect of these users and how they're getting to us, how they're finding us.
It's understanding those. GA4 and Universal Analytics I think actually did a much better job of organizing the data to help users. Think about it a little bit clearly.
How universal analytics used to split data up was into like three different types of reports. One was user based data, demographics, age, location. Pretty simple. Next one is acquisition. So where did the user come from prior to the site? Okay, great. Once, where did they come from prior? Was it from social media? Was it from a webinar? Was it from an email campaign? Where did they come from?
And the third one is behavior. So what did they do once they got there? What'd they do? What pages did they visit, what things did they click on, what videos did they view, what downloads did they engage with? Those are the kinds of things then that we want to understand.
So not only are we understanding our users and audiences, which is going to help us with targeting, understand who's actually already purchasing it from us, who's finding us then great. Which channels did they use? Which ones are the most beneficial that are driving to our primary, secondary, tertiary goals? And then behavior wise, what are the common steps that are getting to that? And a little bit of us thinking through this way is honestly the backwards way of how I tend to like to think through this.
So how I tend to like to think through this is actually working backwards from our goal, from our conversion point. That's a big thing that, you know, a lot of the. When I have goal and KPI planning sessions with my clients, which is honestly a prerequisite for every single client that works with me, people can say that they know their goals. Yes, we know our goals. Revenue, yes. We know our goal is leads. We know that, that again, that might be your primary goal, but we need to figure out what these other goals are and other touch points are as well.
[00:10:05] Speaker A: Right. Which is so fun because like there's. Let me spit back at you. The things that I think were really important to highlight for the context of the people listening in and how they fit into the ownership operating system is predictable revenue. Like when I look at a company like Allison, like every single month, we need to get revenue on the income statement. And whether it's equipment and then services or whether it's, you know, I think about like a lot of E commerce, it's product or I mean it's, it's. It's going to end up being a combination of products and services broken out on the income statement, the revenue line. And the question is, what got those revenue lines there? It's the leading indicators. When I hear like the secondary and third, you know, the goals is the, the conversion rates to get to the revenue on that point. Because like, when I think about Alison, when we're doing a forecast, give you some context. Like if we're sitting in the boardroom and we're looking at a company financials, it's like, okay, every single month. So like right now we're like wrapping up 2026. I want to see. I'm sorry, 2025. We're looking at 2026 is budget. So I want to see every sing.
How much revenue do we think is going to land in that income statement every single month for 2026?
And then the question is, do I believe it or not? And I came from a world where my old business was not much in the sales or was not much in the marketing, but it was sales. So we had 22 salespeople and it was 400 phone calls, 15 appointments, seven net news, five proposals, three closes, and 33% of that revenue in the funnel closed every single month for 20 years.
We can get that level of data on the whole customer journey, which is why I find it. The expertise that you have is very fascinating because it's the leading indicators of the conversion rate. So here's what I'm. How I want to summarize this is when I think about a, a customer journey, it's like, okay, for that equipment or that service, that product, what had to happen and how long did it take?
And then how much are you willing to acquire that dollar of gross margin of gross profit and what. And so like, how much of the gross Margin are you willing to spend to then push up to trade shows, newsletters, videos, ads. And then the question is do more of what works more. And so like that's when I think about, you mentioned predictable revenue. And that's really one of the modules. And so it's that whole journey that's not tied to the financials that you have figure out a way of grabbing everything tied to that customer journey. I mean, is that a fair way to put it?
[00:12:37] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So because that's to kind of put, I think maybe a bow on top of it is what we need to do. And it's whether it's online, whether it's offline, wherever it might be occurring, is taking our goal, our primary goal and working backwards to every single step that needs, that a user needs to interact or engage with before accomplishing that goal. So if we think obviously E commerce is very simple, we take a purchase. Great. Okay, so what do they all have to do? They got to visit a product page, they got to add that product to cart, they got to find that product, they've got to, we have to look through quite literally that entire journey backwards from acquisition, from them getting to the hey, where could they come from? Where could they land on? So once we identify all of those steps to that final conversion point, it's making sure we have the tracking in place for those making sure that hey, we must be missing something because there's this whole area that the consumer interacts with. Maybe it is salespeople, maybe it is your email system, maybe it's an, you know, could be just forms on your website. But if we're missing the tracking of that item, then we don't know what's happening. And we miss that whole third question of like the behavior of the user on the site. And we don't know our behavior of that user, what they should be doing and how we can facilitate them to that conversion point. And if we're not tracking that along the way, really again gaps just for analysis. But then further, even more conversion rate optimization, which inevitably does happens on the line in every kind of website that has a website or kind of conversion point is what does a CRO effort look like? And if you're not tracking all those steps up to that conversion point, then you don't have any CRO data in place to even begin. So that's another part of it too is a lot of the stuff that we do web based is not retroactive, meaning if I implement something today, I don't have yesterday's data. So a lot of this too, is making sure our data's set up properly. We've got our tracking implemented, and it's implemented early on. So we have data to use for historicals and to use for making business decisions. But those are. I mean, definitely some of those. Those things that we need to be kind of thinking about in a sense that. Yeah, of course it makes sense. Duh. Of course we need to be tracking those. But. But practically in a web and in a statistical and data based. Hey, maybe people are falling off at this. This step. Okay, what. Why. Why are they falling off that step? What's happening is, is the salesperson not getting to them quick enough? Is it the formed incentive. Thank you. With a link included that we didn't qa? You know, there's a lot of things that we are missing when we don't have those data pieces.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: Yep, totally. And so here's what I was thinking. Done some notes here is.
I think that there is a use case for us in this conversation, Austin, to take what we would call the bell curve of what you're dealing with and probably what I'm dealing with and say, okay, so bear with me here. So someone that is maybe not bought into the mindset, we could maybe. And I'll. I'll jot these down. So to keep us on track. But like the mindset and how do we shift the mindset and then let's say they have a ton of shitty or no data.
Where do we. Like, how do you approach that?
How do you then go about implementing it and where. And the things to think about and then getting to this point where then we're making strategic decisions around it. I mean, really think about, like a full customer journey for you. And I'll. I'll start with if you. Well, first of all, what do you think about that?
[00:15:45] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that sounds great. Yeah, for sure. And I. And I do have some stuff pulled. I did put a little deck together if we wanted to review any of this. But some visual stuff.
[00:15:51] Speaker A: Do you want to do that before or after we go down this route or what do you think?
[00:15:55] Speaker B: It's up to you. I mean, I'm happy to. Some of the stuff we talked about a little bit. Just a little bit. As far as the customer journey goes.
[00:16:00] Speaker A: Let's do.
[00:16:01] Speaker B: Let's do that.
[00:16:01] Speaker A: Because, like, you know, as last comment before you pull it up is where we want to be, I think is a good place to start, which is all of the information you just talked about that we can. We can dive into. Is what do we do more of? So if we say we're like, if my old business, it was like, we can spend 20% of the margin to acquire that dollar, what do we spend it on? Is it people like salespeople? Is it, Is it paid ads? Is it blog? Is it video? Is it trade shows? Is it, you know, I mean, like, and then I just want to do more of that. And I. So there's this constraint of the client acquisition cost against the lifetime value of the customer. Is the financial metric to say, is my business viable or not? And then we pull it up to say, okay, what do I do more of? So I can predict out my future cash flow.
And when I look at like a lot of my clients, you know, outside of the financials, once they get the financials put together and the people have been working really hard on that, then it becomes like, okay, and that's why I introduced you to Kim Clark. Like, how do we get that predictable revenue so that way we can rest assured? Because after revenue, Allison, like, you build out cost of goods and the overhead, and it's a lot more straightforward, but people are just guessing on the revenue, so they don't know how to build out their business infrastructure. So I think, you know, the outcome is that just that detailed database or data driven conversation or decision making. And so I think back to starting off, like, because you're dealing with a lot of the onboarding, like, okay, there's the mindset. There's like, what do we do about this? And so let's jump in however you want to and I'll kind of steer us that direction.
[00:17:34] Speaker B: Yeah, great, let's do that. Yeah, let's go ahead and share this.
[00:17:41] Speaker A: What's the mindset that you come across as people? Like, if they're not bought into this, why is that?
And like, what's the resistance that you see from people?
[00:17:50] Speaker B: Yeah, so I will say, I mean, I personally, I do, I do live in a little bit of a unique world when it comes to that. Because I think honestly, like, my qualified leads are the people that come through and they know that they need me. You know what I mean? Like, if they, if they. You know what I mean?
[00:18:05] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I don't want to work with the people that aren't bought in yet.
[00:18:07] Speaker B: Right. If those people don't really know what they need me for, then those people are not necessarily the right people.
[00:18:12] Speaker A: Got it. I love it.
[00:18:13] Speaker B: You know what I mean? Like, to be completely frank, like, and hey, and I, and I can, I can go and do sales efforts and to tell people why they need the work that I can do for them. But if they're not, if they don't believe in it, then that's a whole other.
That extends my sales cycle about two months longer than I need it to be. So, yeah, that's a little bit of there. But as far as mindset goes, don't get me wrong, I mean, I have it all the time where, hey, I need to bring it. You know, we need to convince the CEO, we need to convince somebody else that this needs to be done. What can we do? And honestly, an audit tends to do a lot of that speaking. Or, you know, it's, hey, what's going on? The current state of. From somebody who is in this all the time. So mindset wise, it's like, hey, it's a little bit of. Little bit of making sure that person's at ease. Like, hey, you got something? We got something in here to look at, which is great. And I know it's a little point we talked about, like, making sure we have data to even begin with. But at the same time, if they. Everyone wants to know benchmarks, everyone wants to know, hey, how are we doing compared to our competitors? What are our competitors doing? How can. What. That's a huge aspect of this. And there is a little bit of data that we can do a little bit of comparison between our competitors without really knowing everything they do. That's. That does open a whole other kind of can of worms, though, when it comes to benchmarking competitors. We don't know what people are spending, we don't know what kind of effort, what kind of teams have looked. There's so many other things and factors that go into benchmark data. Well, while important and while exciting for us to look at, for me, it's much more exciting and important to look at our competitors.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: It's like looking at revenue like, great, you're on the Inc 5000, but you have no money for two payrolls. I mean, like, it just. You don't understand the back end.
[00:19:35] Speaker B: Yep, exactly. Exactly. So, no. So mindset wise, just understand, like, this is important. If you don't really know what you're making decisions based off of and it's only your gut, then no wonder we're feeling a little icky about what's all going on. You know what I mean? So that's. That's kind of it too. It's like, at least we have something that's concrete that can be like, hey, yeah, data did go up or down and this is why it did and why it didn't to have those answers. So but let's see what do I got here? All right, so KPIs, we talked a little bit about this. Just starting with outcomes and goals. You know, whether it's revenue leads, MQLs, whatever those kind of that primary goal is that we want to look look at is in working backwards. So back solving it based on those outcomes and then using what moved this month, obviously as that oh great sessions went up, that means that we did something right, that we brought more, you know, more people to the site, we brought more acquisition and more people that were seeing it.
[00:20:20] Speaker A: So how is it when people are finding their KPIs, Allison, do people overdo it, underdo it? How? Any two cents do you have on like how to find the right KPIs?
[00:20:31] Speaker B: Yeah, totally.
[00:20:32] Speaker A: So here's the golden Did I just jump you ahead?
[00:20:36] Speaker B: So here's kind of what I I to answer your question, I will say that I People tend to underthink them just because there's a lot of as I mentioned earlier, there's a lot of data and a lot of data points that's available to us. Whether it's you use utilizing your CRM like a HubSpot or utilizing GA4, what have you. There's a lot of let me explain.
[00:20:52] Speaker A: GA4 just real quick for the audience.
[00:20:53] Speaker B: Just in case Google Analytics 4, which is your Google Web analytics, it's a free Google platform, 99% of clients of mine have it. Adobe is really the only other kind of competitor there. But Google is GA4 and Google are kind of the so as far as understanding then what KPIs are important, I've run this, this is an example of a goal and KPI planning session that I run with my clients. You'll see across the top. I have the goal engagement is a static one. So this is one that I hate. For every single client, this is going to be exactly the same, maybe one or two additional ones based on some customization or unique items. But engagement, this is going to be just data points that we always need to be thinking about. Always, always, always. And then from here are going to be our actual great leads, webinars, podcasts, careers, email, other goals that we might have on the site where the sources so hey, where's it coming from? The website, the CRM, webinar provider, et cetera. And then from there this is going to be kind of where as I was speaking to working backwards goes comes into play. So great. Our Leads, where are they coming from? What did they search when they came through, what landing page did they land on? What was the engagement rate of that page? There should likely be a form on that page. What's the form submission? How many, what's that conversion rate of that form submission? What are the qualification factors of that? If there was any additional form fields that we want to have. So these are just some of those kinds of items that as we again thinking back or thinking at what the goal is or what that conversion point is. And, and I'll say when I say conversion point I truly mean it as an exchange of information. So that exchange of information might be email address that might be your credit card information that might be what have you. But in my opinion, conversion point is an exchange of information between a brand and a consumer. So that's going to be where we're looking at. Hey, what, what is all those points and what on the page or on that experience do we need to make sure that is included to see if this is actually what's occurring? You'll do see some that are again more advertising based like CAC or cost of acquisition. What did it cost for us to get that single user? A lot of these goals and things too also can come in play for, as I mentioned, ads for targeting and bidding across ads. If we do have some of these numbers more established. Not every client does, not every single client has all of these and I will say can be more customized. But the best place to start is thinking of your conversion point and working backwards.
[00:23:02] Speaker A: How do you balance like overdoing it versus underdoing it and then how people strive towards idea without overthinking it or getting paralyzed to begin with.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: Great question. So the as much as I say people over or underdo it, overdoing it is very easy to. Very, very easy to do. And what I mean by that is like from even as me being the person like great, we've done this goal in KPI planning and now we have all these gaps, all these things that we need to be tracking that we're not tracking. Okay, if I don't have that plan, I could go nuts and I could track everything and anything on the website which is not helpful or beneficial because it doesn't obviously lead to our conversion goal.
So while it is like yes, we could, we could bring in all of the data and all of the data points that are in GA4 and in your CRM systems. While we can do that, it's not going to be helpful because it's Just going to be overwhelming. So when we can think about it in the terms of, hey, what's this important to this goal? Based on that, that's going to keep us a little bit more siloed, keep us a little bit more focused on what we're trying to be doing here versus that. And that's why keeping that engagement column is still super important. We still want to know those sessions and if sessions are up or down, what pages are the top page viewed items. We still want to know that information, but it's not necessarily tied to one specific goal because it's tied to all of them. So we need to make sure that, like, hey, great. So those engagement metrics are going to be based on every single thing we're going to talk about. And they might be reiterative and we might, hey, say the same thing more than once. So I think, for example, form submissions I have here under leads, although I might also have form submissions sometimes. I've got them under here too. Or acquisition source.
[00:24:32] Speaker A: Because engagement is how they're engaging with your material. Correct. And then you're then mapping that on top of the actual conversion points of where they're flowing through the customer journey to get closer to a purchase.
[00:24:46] Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. So we just want to make sure that, hey, we've got our basic engagement terms, our basic engagement items. That is good to know. Then everything else should be more custom based on what your. Your personal.
[00:24:56] Speaker A: And is it.
[00:24:56] Speaker B: Is it.
[00:24:57] Speaker A: I'm tracking you and you know, like, like atomic habits where it's like, okay, I mean, like, everybody, you know, we're going to run out to the end of the year and people want to go to the gym and then they, you know, top off by February because there's like, I'm gonna redo my routine, my sleep routine, my gym routine, and my diet and everything all at once. And they don't do anything. Is it. When I think about like little bite, like bites at a time. Do you ever start with, okay, we're gonna start with like the top five conversion points, make sure that the data's there. And then we continue to branch out from there after that. To say, like, first it might be I want their email. Then I want them to go, like, for me, it's like, I want their email. Then I want them to sign up for a paid virtual workshop. Then I want them to fill out a form and then maybe have a sales call, like, but. And then all of the stuff underneath that is going to be unbelievably important to track and get to see. To be able to better apply effort behind. But you know, with half my clients it's like we don't really have a CRM where we do or we got the website data, but we, you know, don't know what to do with it. So any thoughts on that as far.
[00:26:04] Speaker B: As kind of the data points themselves and understanding where, what's, what's important, what's not important, the bite size portions of it.
Starting, starting at your most popular conversion point makes the most sense.
[00:26:17] Speaker A: Like your sale, like your sales stages essentially. You start at your sales stages first.
[00:26:21] Speaker B: Yes. So start at your sales stages first. So, and that's. And, and how I broke down kind of this goal in KPI planning, it is very much like, great, this conversion point or this is what I want them to do. What I also often see is that it's not necessarily just based on goal of conversion point, as I mentioned, but the goal might also be like effectiveness of our Google Ads campaign. So a goal might just be Google Ads altogether. So then we'll look at the source of that specifically and understand how that's performing based on each of those touch points. Great. Where. Where's Google Ads sending into each of these funnel steps? So we might actually look at it then based on a channel, not only based on the, the goal itself.
[00:26:58] Speaker A: So it's two different dimensions. So you would start with sales stages.
[00:27:03] Speaker B: Right.
[00:27:03] Speaker A: And then you might do channels.
[00:27:05] Speaker B: Right.
[00:27:06] Speaker A: Where you could be like looking at. Maybe like if you have a sales team, you'd be looking at the CRM data versus like Google Ad paid spend or something like that.
[00:27:14] Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. So then you'd be able to pull those in as well. Like using a HubSpot or using a CRM if you have one of those. Like there are definitely ways to bring that data into and be able to visualize it in that way so you can see a little bit better understand where those fall offs are, understand where those gaps are occurring and where that, that tightening can start occurring as well.
[00:27:32] Speaker A: Okay, so just for my own benefit here, because like a lot of the people that I work with are, are B2B. And so you would have like the sales stages.
[00:27:40] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:27:40] Speaker A: And really the different channels would be at the top of the funnel for the most part in the awareness side. So you're just. And that's where it would be more marketing than it would be sales. So it's all like. Cause we were talking the strategic planning session I was doing last week and in Dallas where you are, it was about diversifying away from SEO and paid because of the challenges coming up. So we were trying to figure out the different channels, but the customer journey to buy that product is going to be the same after the acquisition. I mean, like, so it's kind of like it's really just the top of the funnel, right?
[00:28:14] Speaker B: Exactly. So that one of those things, because there is usually money and time that are spent in those acquisition, acquisition sources, that's why traditionally we also do see them as like a goal or as a conversion, is because we want to. Because it is. There is effort and time being spent there as well. So that's why also we see it that way. But yeah, so kind of based on this, these are obviously the steps and these are kind of those three different or I guess adding the fourth for our offline data behavior of the four different types of data that we can kind of understand from analytics or Google Analytics acquisition, where they came from, engagement, what are they essentially engaging with in that behavior and then offline behavior as well.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: So that's just for the people listening. And we have awareness, decision making, lead qualification and conversion for a B2B sales funnel.
[00:28:55] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. And again, that this lead could also be, you know, just be engagement. If you're not B2B or qualification, could be sale or could be, you know, there's a lot of different things that, you know, can swap out depending on the funnel. But regardless, just making sure that we're understanding kind of where these things are occurring. Where is all this stuff happening? The awareness is happening on a search engine result page, on ads, via referrals. Decision making is happening within the content based on reviews and comparisons.
The lead itself is going to be a form or a call or an email. The qualification form, call, email, same thing with that final conversion. So once we can identify where these things are happening, that's going to help us then identify what data points and where we need to kind of look into those.
[00:29:35] Speaker A: This is okay. This is awesome. I want to hone in on this for a second because for context, for the people listening. The way I think about this for like ultimate decision making and the data is if I want to have a certain amount of income in each revenue line per month in the income statement, we then would have this customer journey ahead of that and we'd say, okay, what are the leading indicators of the customer journey that we want? So let's say we. I'll identify its awareness, decision making, lead, qualification, conversion.
You're starting with identifying that customer journey, Allison, tied to the ideal client profile of your products and services. So that's where that ICP comes in.
But then you're going, where's this information?
So you're starting with the revenue lines first and then try in the income statement, then going, okay, there's a journey to each of those revenue lines and you're identifying that journey based on the user journey. But then you go, where, what tools are they? So you're not starting with a tool first.
[00:30:36] Speaker B: Right.
[00:30:37] Speaker A: You're going, okay, the business use case. And that's where you were saying, like anthropology and psychology, what is the journey that we're going to lead them down. And then maybe you can kind of walk through a series of tech stacks when you say, where is this stuff? Because it's all trackable now. Right. Back when you and I first started doing this stuff, this stuff wasn't trackable. But now it's just like, now you can drown in data.
[00:31:01] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I will say this tech stack that. See if I had anything that was exciting in here. Yeah. So here's kind of a small tech stack that things that we might want to include. So GA4 web traffic is going to be your website data, CRM or any of your lead facilitation that you might have. And as much as I say those kind of as like real Items, I mean GA4 is obviously a real, very free platform that anybody can use. As we mentioned, not everyone has a CRM or uses their own spreadsheet or what have you. When we are utilizing certain tools, especially Google Looker Studio, formerly Data Studio, we can actually utilize just even a Google sheet. So if we have content and data, just like in a spreadsheet, we can.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: Still visualize that data, where's the data at?
[00:31:38] Speaker B: Right, yeah, exactly. So if you just, if you're pulling data just based on, you know, what your assistant is emailing you for what happened last week, and you have that in a spreadsheet, we can still use that as data visualization for a dashboard.
So that's very helpful for people who don't necessarily have a specific platform. But we also can pull in stuff from email, social media platforms, advertising platforms. And honestly there's a lot of customization that can be done too. So anything that has kind of an endpoint API that we can build off of, usually something can be built or if there isn't one that already exists for us to use as a connector.
[00:32:10] Speaker A: That's awesome because then goes back to your gap analysis, say, okay, well I do want the data. Like everybody's probably not arguing with, I want this information. What's the right order that I start digesting and building it all out, going, okay, one is, I don't have the information, where do I start getting it and then how do I enhance that over time?
[00:32:31] Speaker B: Right, yeah, absolutely. Let's see if I was this last one. Yeah, I mean as far as kind of the getting the data in place that you need to have websites and kind of obvious, obviously while I'm here, websites are going to be our primary and easiest way to get data because it's just going to be living there and connecting a Google Analytics account to it is free and easy to do. Again, I did mention earlier we want to make sure those things are set up properly. So that's obviously a concern, but it's not necessarily setting it up properly but just making sure at least we get something. I'd rather you have some kind of data than nothing at all. If we, if we can't end up cleaning it up because it is so messy, then we'd start from scratch anyways. So if it's one of those where like, hey, those are kind of the two use cases, we got something we can work with, we got nothing we can work with. We're starting over for many. So. So as far as like getting started, just, just get started, honestly, just, just sign up and get something on your website.
As far as CRM and obviously what you're doing internally then.
[00:33:28] Speaker A: So when you say get something on your website, it's like get Google Analytics, put the freaking pixel on your website and even canned out of the box, you're going to have some basic data.
[00:33:39] Speaker B: That'S going to be useful for you 100%. And a lot of these websites now have connectors and free connectors and apps that you can do to connect GA4 or connect your analytics so you're not having to then hire a developer to install a code and get installed. A lot of these things can be done via plugins. So that's something to remind, you know, doesn't need to be a huge heavy lift. It's literally a small piece of code that's put on your website.
So that's something that, yeah, just get it, just get it up, get it, you know, sign up, installed. Easiest thing to do first.
[00:34:06] Speaker A: Okay, sorry I derailed you for a second. So you said.
Because one thing that I think, you know, people get really struck, they really struggle with is where's the one source truth? Right? So is it like if I'm going to look at this stuff in a holistic picture, I've got it living in spreadsheets, some shit on my website, I got a CRM, I got like maybe a ERP system or so, you know, maybe it's a help desk ticketing system. Like, so what, what would be your place to start? Like, what's the ideal outcome that we're shooting for, for like the overall dashboard look? And is it Google Analytics, Looker Studio that you're.
[00:34:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll go ahead and show you. Just a quick example of one. So this is just a quick example of kind of my standard engagement page. So as I mentioned earlier, those engagement KPIs are essentially static across everybody. So I'm able to utilize this page for pretty much everyone.
So this is where our source of truth from GA4 is coming. Based on those KPIs, we can see page views, sessions, total users. Again, all those KPIs at the top that we kind of talked about briefly, a timeframe. This is also what's really nice about Looker Studio. Again, it is free, connects natively with all of our Google products, those Google Sheets and those other ones that I've mentioned. But it's also dynamic. So I can actually go in and change my date range. Let's say I wanted to look at just this month to date.
Just be 10 days. It'll be able to. It'll change all of our data in real time. I can hover and see. Okay, great. So new users. Was 80% of my user sessions last year or last month? Last this month to date. We can see page views, we can see all this kind of things and we can click even further. So let's see if we wanted to say, great, I want to see based on my Google cost per click, what is the actual landing page that they landed on? So I was able to click on that one specifically for Google cost per click and then actually see it all right here. So without having to go into analytics, because GA4 is very overwhelming and that's what a lot of people say. I mean, I don't know how data combines. I don't know how it should be combining. I don't know what I should be looking at. This is where this obviously comes in hand. Or not only can we use one data source, but we can also blend data sources together. So this is something where like, hey, great, if we have a unifying factor across a session, for example, a session ID that we can tie to your CRM, we can actually see. I think we set this up for you guys a long time ago is like actual. The custom. The step they were at what's, you know, we, we. There's a lot of customization that can be done that can be pretty, you know, intense. But there is even just, like I said, out of the box being able to get some of this information. Where are people landing? Where are people going? What, what do they do? Very basic, high level. We're able to see that just you utilizing this by blending.
[00:36:33] Speaker A: But go back to what you're saying too. So and you can tie that then to what step they're in in the sales stages. Right. So you can, because that's where the engagement is different based on like if someone in theory went to a workshop and which they show that they're now a sales qualified lead and not a marketing qualified lead. I really want to see their engagement and how that's different compared to the other people that are more top of the funnel. So you could be taking that, if the CRM set up the right way where that contact is in a specific stage, then you can then bring that data in to then layer that on top of the web interaction data.
[00:37:07] Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely.
[00:37:09] Speaker A: Who doesn't want that information?
[00:37:11] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. I mean it's something that again, it takes some time and in every situation, as much as we are kind of generalizing some of this just for the purpose of talking about it, there is definitely a level of uniqueness that every business is going to have. I mean, what factors and hey, how many steps and what are they doing and what's the best method to move forward with this? And that's the other side of it that honestly that we're not really talking about is then the actual insights is great. Now that we have this information, not only is it okay, we should update that campaign or we should change that sales cycle a little bit different, but it's what do we, what should we do? What should we be doing that's different.
[00:37:45] Speaker A: Or hey, and I want to get to that and I absolutely want to get to that and talk about like what, what are the different decisions? But for this looker studio, I mean effectively it's like Microsoft BI for all of your customer journey. Right? Because then like I think it's so important because people will default to their shitty CRMs dashboard and then they're not looking at their web dashboard or they're not looking at then their, you know, their webinar dashboard or it. So like it's a way to centralize everything. But that's why I was, I wanted to highlight like starting with your customer journey of what are the sales stages from awareness To Mark. And for whatever it's worth, people listening in is like, I have, I like the awareness, like, hey, there's all this going on in this engagement on the top of the funnel. But I don't have their email yet.
Then I get someone's email.
Then they provide some, like there's some event, I call it the. Then going from mql, which is that marketing qualified lead to sales qualified lead, where they engage, where it's a full workshop that they attend or it's a webinar or they had a sales call with someone. So then it's like there's a higher level of commitment to them. Then they go from sales qualified lead to then the bottom of the funnel, effectively whatever word you want to use to that which is proposal or demo or discovery call or whatever the hell you call it. And then they sit there for a certain amount of time until they close.
So it's like four stages to set up. But then all of the things that they're doing in between those stages of the website, the podcasts or the webinars or the phone calls, all that stuff are sitting within those four stages that we talked about.
[00:39:28] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, 90% of it. It's going to be real data that we can see and use for sure. So it's in utilizing a visualization tool is the easiest way for stakeholders, you, anybody to be able to really understand it.
[00:39:40] Speaker A: So then let's go to. You want to go to then like actual insights. So because the whole goal is to convert from those stages to then like, like I said with my old business, it was 30% or 33% of that funnel closed every freaking month.
[00:39:53] Speaker B: Right.
[00:39:54] Speaker A: And the question is, if we're getting down to 25, why, why do we do. Where do we spend our money?
[00:40:01] Speaker B: Exactly. So those actual insights are definitely the next part of this. And then I will say is I think probably the most. What takes the most time to understand and being able to analyze. And I will say, hey, could you probably copy and paste this data and throw into LLM or ChatGPT, try to understand what's going on? Yeah, probably. Am I going to tell you that it's going to be super accurate? Probably not. And I can tell you that from being somebody in this space and having, and literally doing that just to save time to have like, hey, I have got to get this report out. Here's a quick screenshot of what I see, what can, what's going on here. And I will have to redo the whole work because it's Absolutely not correct at all. So, like, as much as.
[00:40:38] Speaker A: Let's, let's, let's touch on that for a second because on our last call we talked about that and that's why I know you know what the hell you're doing is because the first principle thinking we can't outsource to these GPTs, because I was watching Peter Diamante. You ever watch Moonshots?
You like? Peter Diamant says he wrote the book Bold and Abundance. He's one of the best tech podcasts I watch. They say like with, with LLMs, large language models, everybody is, you can't outsource the top and you can't outsource the bottom of the activity. They're middle to middle.
[00:41:16] Speaker B: So.
[00:41:16] Speaker A: Meaning we have to know the outcome that we're striving for with very, very clear detail. And then we have to be the ones to do it. They're helping us with the in between because the, it's the insights. Like, I mean, I was doing the same thing with like, you know, financial modeling and planning with people's valuation targets and stuff like that. It's like, okay, well what kind of deal structures do we want? What's the valuation? How do we want to look at the working capital? But I had to like, in crazy nuanced detail, explain what the hell was going on. But it would pop out. I'm like, it's wrong. And the only reason I knew it was wrong because I knew what the f. I was talking about and looking for and when you were in. And maybe we can get into that, that are your updates on what's going on with the search and stuff like that. But you were able to on our last call say, I know it's wrong because I know this.
[00:42:00] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:42:01] Speaker A: Right. I mean, first principle insights of what you're looking for. Right?
[00:42:04] Speaker B: Yeah. And I'm not trying to say that to like, hey, you need to hire me or this is. Is like super unachievable. I'm just letting you know that, like, it's super important. Like, I have, I still have clients now being like, I just threw this in chat GPT and this is what it said. I'm like, that's great, but I'm going to tell you that that's not really what we should wrong or like, that's.
[00:42:19] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's not for job security. It's just like, yeah. It's like, no. It's like the only way you know it's wrong is because you know what the answer is supposed to look like.
[00:42:26] Speaker B: Right. And you know from experience, hey, that doesn't look great. I don't think that's correct. That. Let me triple check that number because I don't think that was right. And yeah, I don't think I've been wrong since. So it's one of those where like it. Understanding this data is the best thing I can do without trying to get like super like nerdy about numbers is like the percentages are what's going to help us. Using percentages of things is going to be helping us the most. So when we can understand what we're what ratios and what percentages we're really looking for and what those thresholds need to be, that's going to be probably the easiest way for you to start understanding how to optimize and do those insights yourself. That's those numbers are what I tend to look at first and foremost. Great. Hey, what is our percent change? What was it last month? What is it this month? What happened there? Okay, so great. Once we understand those percentages, that's going to be able to help us diver deeper. Okay, great. Oh yeah, that percentage went down. Our conversion rate went down. So that means that either our sessions decreased and our conversions decreased or that means our sessions increased and our conversions decreased. Or so there's a couple reasons there too. So we, we can say, you know my, my favorite actionable insight to give is for just as an example is click through rate. Click through rate is a very simple one because again, it's a rate, it's a percentage. It's very easy for us to understand what's going on when we can take two numbers and compare them. Click through rate is how often somebody's clicking something based on how many times they saw it. So it's impressions over clicks. So once we understand what that rate is, we know, great, we're getting more impressions but not enough clicks. That means we need to look at our click through or we need to look at our meta description because the click through the what they're seeing on that search engine result page is not what they're expecting to see based on what their intent is, is or what their query was. We know, great. There are impressions in our SEO doing great. That means our impressions are up, but the click through rate is down, meaning that our meta description is probably not very good or the content needs to be updated.
[00:44:08] Speaker A: So it's let's unpack that one. For a lot of the B2B people where, and this is where I'm actually working towards this next year is Once I get all of my free content out, like I've been working on all my training stuff that may be putting out and I don't know if it's Beehive or HubSpot or however it's. But like it's. Let's assume it's a blog. And I think this relates to anybody that's listening in that has a company where you want to prove to the audience that you know what you're doing and you're the expert. So whether it's a case study or whether it's a specific topic that we're educating on and it's whether it's a video and written words and then you're asking them for an email address, right? It's like here's all the shit that you need that you think is important about this stuff.
By the way, would you like to attend a workshop or attend this or give me like you're getting them that. That's that click through. And I think Allison was so.
It's such low hanging fruit, which is because every one of the, the people I work with, Alison, are really good at what they do.
You know what I mean? They're like really good. And their, their biggest issue is they're, they get. They're trying to pierce through the trust that is completely diminished. And so it's like give free shit away that you're the best person to install or do this project or show up because you know, and Kim Clark talks about it. Your competitive statements are like you're. It's just actionable things that you've done to get them to go over here. So the competitive or the insight that I would hear from the click through rate of you're talking about is I didn't create the content that proved that trust to get them to the other side.
And I'm convinced that everybody listening in has that trust and has the experience and has that background. We just need to convey it in the right way. So then it's like, well how do you update that page?
Is it a customer testimonial? Is it this or is it that or. And like. But there's nothing to measure right now. So they're not. Or the other thing that they're asking for isn't good enough compared to. What was your thoughts about this?
[00:46:09] Speaker B: Yeah, no, exactly. I mean click. That's a great point. Is like hey, we know we have to. The other one other note, I guess keyword or buzzword I want to add in there is intent because the intent and intention is what is another huge thing not only from an SEO and ads and just from again general user behavior and experience is hey, what is the intent of the user? Is it just. And we can tie that back to the actual sales funnel or the B2B funnel. Is it hey, they're just looking for information their decision making, they're just looking for general information on it. And hey, just because we, you should still provide general information about your service area even if you were not, you know, even it's not a conversion point because you still want to prove that, that you have that, that authority and authoritativeness in the space. So there's, you know, there's again a billion and one little, you know, minuscule little things that can be and should be touched all the time. But just at least understanding where to start is definitely obviously where this data kind of comes in play.
[00:47:07] Speaker A: So you talked a lot about percentages. So what other percentages? And you when you say that percentages.
So how do you identify what are the top percentage KPIs that you're, that someone should be looking at and then where do you start that pulling the thread of how to figure out what to do about it.
[00:47:25] Speaker B: Yeah. So as far as the percentages, again anything that's going to be rate based. So when we are tech, when we're getting stuff that's very basic from GA4, Google Analytics for example, sessions, users, page views, those are very, very basic data points that we're getting for everybody mostly.
So once we have those baselines, that's essentially what we can be utilizing based on kind of what we talked about the user behavior over the user demographics, how many users are we getting and the percentage of users that are male versus female versus the interest that they have versus the device category that they were if they were on mobile or desktop. Like those are the percentages that we're utilizing the user as that base kind of metric under. So once we understand that, great, we know what our baseline is. We know what our baseline portion of that is. And that's kind of something we didn't necessarily touch on is the kind of audit and baseline not necessarily benchmarking for in compared to other people making sure you have a baseline for yourself. So that's always what I tell people too is that hey, you can say I need my conversion rate to be 8% or I need it to, you know, my, my, my CAC needs to be under $100 or what have you. Like that's a great goal to have and that's an internal like objective for you to try to accomplish, however, what realistically what we should be doing month over month, quarter over quarter, year over year, what have you is just improving. It doesn't need to be by a certain percentage, it doesn't need to be by 100% better than last year or what have you just improve. Because we know there's seasonality, there's socioeconomic things that come in play. There's just other factors that are beyond our control that we cannot do much about. So making sure we're always improving month over month, utilizing those percentages, comparing that data, month over month, year over year, whatever your cadence is, will help with starting to get that information.
Then whether or not it's positive or negative is going to tell us what whether action needs to be taken. So if it's a, you know, there are a couple metrics out there, just a couple to name bounce rate, engagement rate, that again, we want engagement rate to be up and we want bounce rate to be down. So when those things go up or down, just kind of keep in mind that it's not necessarily a bad thing or a good thing when engagement bounce rate goes up, even though it's a positive influence. So there are some of those kinds of things that occur. But once we are kind of in that great, we know that the numbers are going down.
Why are they going down? What happened? What are those two numbers that we were comparing? What were the two numbers that we were comparing and which one did went the wrong way? Was it the sessions or users or was it the conversions or was it what? Or was it both? And so that'll tell us. Great. Okay. If it's sessions or users or page views, that's acquisition based. We need to do a better job of getting people to the site. If it's going to be one of those kind of core metrics that's engagement based. If it's then hey, more behavior based, then we know, hey, maybe it's not in the right place on the website. Maybe we need to change the wording. Maybe we need to a B test something. Maybe we need to do something a little bit different, change our meta description pager, change our content. So that's where it's understanding kind of, hey, where are the metrics that we're looking at? Are they going up or down by percentages? And the ones that are going down, which are the two metrics of those that actually did go up or down and what can we do about those?
[00:50:22] Speaker A: So don't forget Kim Clark. Have you chatted with her yet?
[00:50:25] Speaker B: No, we're supposed to met me last week and we both were crazy.
[00:50:27] Speaker A: So now she's going to Mexico. You guys are gonna. I, I'm excited for you guys to meet. She talks about rates of change and that's where when I think about those, those like if you have this ongoing data, you can look at the rates of change behind this stuff too because she does it, she came from it looking at the economic cycles. But what I, when I think of all serious like, like manipulation behind your strategy is if the customer's business cycle is going through a certain situation of the economic cycle, then she talks about the economic cycle but also then the calendar year. So then you're grabbing your message because you're like, hey, this click through rate went down because this topic is now no longer relevant. And they're actually, my customer is going through a recession.
And so like you're just manipulating everything to manage to the ratios that you're talking about. Right. And so that's just, I'm tying it to a previous episode I did with her where it's like, it's that messaging and that economic cycles to understand how to then buck the trend. Right. So it's like, okay, this is what my whole, my whole industry is going through a softening right now. But I actually proved that I was able to withstand that because I maintain my, my, my conversion rates and the click through rates but based on the content strategy or the events that I'm doing or the promos that I'm doing, whatever the hell it might be. And I think that's where Alison, like I get so bullish of the people listening and they know what to do if they have this information most of the time.
[00:51:54] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. Well, and that's, that's honestly where like I'm, the work that I do is really great to help and supplement those people because I have the knowledge that they don't and they have the knowledge that I don't. And that's, you know, for even 90% of like physical great. We need to make content updates or we need to make changes to a website that the client has to be involved. I'm not going to be, you know, the, the subject matter expert. They are and they're going to have much better I can tell you, hey, what's going on based on the data and what I'm seeing. But obviously that industry knowledge is more, more valuable than anything that I can do because again I'm pretty industry agnostic. I can kind of go across industries. I can kind of it's all just understanding the data and what needs be to be done, what levers need to be pulled. But as far as the actual implementation, that's going to be where you know that knowledge.
[00:52:38] Speaker A: It's so similar to financials because like when I look at a company through the lens of an investment from the boardroom, I'm like, okay, what's the ability for this company to generate more free cash flow? Every business is the same. They have three financial statements, they got the cash flow statement. And then the question is, well, how accurately can you predict the cash at the end of next year? Oh, you can't? Well how come? We'll get, go get the data, name the industry, it doesn't matter. Go get the data. It's like, it's the same thing. Like go get the data, then explain how you're planning on using that data. Well, I don't have a plan to explain it. Well, come up with a plan to explain. And then even down to then the financials is like okay, well the revenue needs to land predictably on the income statement and then the cost of goods back to then the margins.
We need to be able to maintain 57% gross margins per product line.
[00:53:31] Speaker B: Right?
[00:53:31] Speaker A: Well we're not doing that. How come? And you just keep asking why and why and like and then the what to do about it. It's like, I mean every one of my clients, it's like, well we need to come up with a training program for the text or we need to figure out how my project managers are going to, you know, have a better ability to do budget to actual, I mean whatever it is. But like it's the, it's coming at it from the same approach of the first principles of this is a machine with objective, yes. Ways to do this and then how objective ways to get the data. But then what to do about it is unique per company.
[00:54:05] Speaker B: It is and I will say as I guess a little bit of a shameless plug. One of the things that I'm currently working on and my company's working on is a SaaS product that is actually insights driven. So it's essentially taking my data in my brain and based on what I know is like hey great, when this again my click through rate example, when that happens, our cliff rate goes down. Let's take a look at our meta description. So what, what is that? That tied insight based on that metric. So we're starting to come up with a SaaS product that ties into your data, be able to do that for you. So but that. Because that is. I will say the. The bigger challenge of understanding is, Is, hey, what's next?
[00:54:36] Speaker A: What to do about it.
[00:54:37] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:54:37] Speaker A: What is your experience with the resources of the people in these companies and the ability to get this done? Because even like, when I think about the challenges that experts like you or like, I mean, I've got Pat Hobby that's coming on the show quite a bit. It's like scaling the one person is almost impossible, and finding a lot of people that have the same level of care and quality is very hard. And so like every, like all these people listening and probably have all person.
And then you go, okay, how the hell do you tackle this? Like, from the strategy to the data to the implementation of the tech stacks and stuff like that, it's like, what do you see what works, what doesn't work, and how people can handle that challenge.
[00:55:23] Speaker B: Yeah. So what I've honestly been seeing a lot more of in the last, honestly couple years is bringing somebody more fractional in to help you with this. So whether it's on a prac, on a project basis, or an ongoing basis to at least get the framework started, if you have somebody that doesn't have the data brain or have the understanding on how this works, bring someone in for a short period of time will be able to at least get you your feet off the ground. I will say that's becoming much more, Much more common. Even if you have somebody that you think could do it, just at least give them the guidance or, hey, we have an email team, but they don't really know what to do or what the next steps are. We have somebody that's running our ads, but we're not really sure if those are working just to have somebody to kind of do that. Oversight is becoming much more popular than just trying to hire somebody that can do everything for you.
[00:56:02] Speaker A: At one point, I'm tracking it, I'm tracking it a little bit of validating what you're saying, but also challenging you. So, like, so, like, I'm gonna use Pat Hobby as an example. So, like, he's booked.
So, like, he's the guy that I'm like, okay, he know he. So he's like the you in the finance. That's why I'm bringing this up. It's like, go. So like, none of my other clients can work with him. It's like, because he's got five. And like, even with you, if people are going like, I want to work with Allison because you're a fractional, it's like, great, now you've got five, six clients and you're done. And like, the challenge that I've had is like back to the first principle of thinking why I'm, why I've got you on the podcast right now is like, it's impossible to find people because like I cannot count how many fractional CMOS people have hired and they're 7,500 to $10,000 in a month. And they got jacked shit for it. And they didn't come at it from a data tied to the revenue, tied to the margins. And they just come in there and they're like, it's just a, it's a disaster, Allison.
[00:57:01] Speaker B: So like as far as. So here, I'll give you this. So as far as some, some ways to, to stack your tool belt if you do have somebody or some, some of the good people or resources to look into, at least based on the kind of stuff that we talked about or I talked about today, right? Simo Ahava is incredible. Simo S I M O A H A V A Ahava Simo has been kind of a, I would say a leader in the space for data analysis and analytics and web analytics for a long time time. He has a free blog, he's provided a lot of free tools. He also does have his own courses and things that has. He's. He is probably the best when it comes to what's going on other places. A lot of YouTube. A lot of stuff is out there. That's another thing too. A lot of the stuff that I'm talking about is, is available to you. I'm not. There's a lot of. This is not behind the paywall that you have to. It's just time and energy to get there. However, his name is Julius. I always forget his last name because it's kind of very long. But he is, I believe, in charge of Analytics Mania, which is another great, really wonderful website. Blog articles, how to. He knows. He's very thorough. He knows what he's talking about. So those are the two people that I tend to push people towards if they are interested at least understanding this a little bit better, maybe even a little bit more technical or even a little bit less. I would say Julius is a little less and Simo is a little bit more. But they are really good starting places to understand. Hey, how do I get this set up the right way or is this the right thing that I should be doing?
[00:58:21] Speaker A: Those are. So here's okay, this is awesome. But I also, this is why I want you to meet Kim Clark, because my listeners are going to probably have some understanding of this is. So what I think is, and I'm doing this with, I'm working on this with Pat, too, of the coaching business model instead of the implementation. So here's the thesis that I'm trying to explore is because Kim has been coming at this from a. A predictable revenue, she's been working on her playbook. And everything you're talking about is part of, like, what is a good, predictable revenue engine look like? And if what I believe is possible, Allison, is if we have training and access to a playbook of, like, what to do, in what order, then we can elevate the doers in these companies.
Because, like, there's just not, like, I mean, the fractional business model too. Like, if someone finds you or like a Pat hobby where there's no overhead and it's one person, the economics actually make a ton of sense. But what ends up happening, these firms, the firm charges, you know, they got to make their 50% margin, so then they have to hire a bunch of half nimwits to actually afford to charge. I mean, like, so the whole thing just. Just falls apart. So I think that there's a flipping on the head saying, okay, here's what good looks like. So now, like, I mean, if you think about how we started this podcast, is like, if we know what the outcome is that we're searching for, searching through to figure out how to connect those dots becomes a lot easier for someone to use their brain than not knowing. It's like solving it from the inside out versus outside in. And so, like, this is why I want you to meet Kim. Because I think working on building out this playbook to say, here's what good looks like. Cause I know everybody can't work with me.
[01:00:08] Speaker B: Yep.
[01:00:09] Speaker A: But then, like, if there's a way to then, like, have, like, guests, like, where, like, it's a weekly call, and then there's a playbook that says every monthly, you know, call, you should be reviewing this stuff and go check out this training. So I don't know. That's why.
[01:00:20] Speaker B: No, that's a great idea. It is. It is a great idea. I mean, I will say that I often. And now I'm starting to do a better job of it just because of NDAs and things. I do a lot of governance docs for companies and, like, have these docs ready and prepared for people, but because they're specific to that brand, I can't do a whole lot with it. So I'm now trying to do a little bit better job of hey, writing that into my once I write this for you. It's mine too, please. So we're. We're starting to get some of that library together. Not once now that I can dance around some of those a little bit.
[01:00:48] Speaker A: But yeah, and that's why I'm. I'm bullish and you and Kim getting to know each other because I think there's some collaboration. Collaboration that can be done there. Because, you know, the takeaway I think is for the listeners is and I've noticed this on the ownership boardroom finance valuation side, Allison, is if people have a better understanding of the outcome that they're striving for, then they can use their intuition to scour the Internet and like to validate like resources to say, is this actually going to get me what I need or not? Or I don't want to go through eight months at five grand a month and then have nothing to show for it. It's like, let me see if I can summarize this and if. See if you can poke holes in it or add to it is okay.
We know that the outcome to make decisions on a customer journey that has, call it five stages in it where we want to see a ratio of close of percentage of conversion through each of those stages. And then inside of there, you can have a lot of nuances of different metrics that you're measuring to. From engagement to behavior to see how well they're doing inside of those. Each one of those, that customer journey should be tied to a revenue line.
And then it's how do we increase the percentages? And then tracking the rates of change, tracking it, whether it's going up or down. And then trying to figure out what to do about it.
And then trying to figure out where is all that data and then trying to figure out how to clean up the data over time and then do more and more stuff with it. But what else am I. I mean, how do you think about my summary?
[01:02:19] Speaker B: I mean, no, I think that I think you're spot on. I think, you know, marketing used to be this idea of we need to put advertisements out and get our name out so we can make sales. And that is billboards, right? Like that's, you know, that that's the bus seats.
Yeah, let's get some, you know, some benches somewhere.
Right. Like it's gonna be like that. That used to be what marketing was. And like that is. It's. It just isn't anymore. And like you if we are and I know B2B and B2C, they obviously vary, but it's. There is so much more that we can do when we're tracking things. Things now and actually make informed decisions based on just like what, what we think or what we thought was going. Right. Because otherwise you wouldn't be in the situation. You're like, oh, what's going on? Like, obviously something's gone wrong.
[01:03:02] Speaker A: Sales are soft. Bummer.
[01:03:03] Speaker B: Right? Exactly. So I think that, you know, as much as it feels like a lot, it is a lot. It feels like a lot. What are my data points? Where do I find this? How do I connect it? What do. It is a lot for sure. However, marketing isn't going to go away from that anytime soon. So if you don't have a team that's unable to.
That can't support that, or you don't. You have a team that cannot support that kind of mentality, like you're already behind. Like, truthfully, I mean, I, it doesn't. You don't have to have a one, one solo, you know, superstar. But just being able to understand that, like, we can't just be thinking about, hey, what is the cost of the mailer that's going out this month going to cost and what's, you know, hopefully we get two people that come back on it. Like, that is not viable to be doing on a monthly and an ongoing basis to actually support your dollar. Because, you know, realistically, when you hire somebody like me or when you. I don't. I, I can have zero ego about your data because I don't. I. Hey, it is what it is. The data is what is performance and what is real. And I, I have no, I can't. There's nothing. I did. Nothing you did.
[01:03:59] Speaker A: People have to step on the scale, though, Allison. Isn't that the. Do you find that that's part of the issue? Sometimes you're like, okay, I have to admit, oh, yeah, that's a dumpster fire.
[01:04:09] Speaker B: Yes, of course, there's definitely some of that that that has to take place. But I will say, at least in my experience and more recent experience at that, most of the challenges that I have seen within marketing and digital marketing and trying to get things to get to a point where people want the biggest challenge is usually internal. And I say that from an internal process and internal processes and who's doing what standpoint, I will tell you, most of my clients have that problem. Or there's politics and other stuff that's.
[01:04:38] Speaker A: Involved where I'm thinking about a client right now. And I know she's probably listening in and going, no, no.
[01:04:46] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. I mean, I and my clients probably know the same thing too. They. They're not obtuse to what's going on here. So. Yeah, no, I think that that's.
Finding the right people is definitely, you know, I don't have to drill that into how important that is for people, but I think that it's understanding where digital marketing is going. We've talked a little bit of LLMs, we've talked a little bit about, you know, some haven't talked a little bit. I mean, AI obviously on the horizon.
[01:05:10] Speaker A: I don't know what your, what your timeline is here, but like, I. You want to speak for.
[01:05:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:05:15] Speaker A: Five, ten minutes on just like. Because I think we could springboard off into maybe a second round two where we dive into a lot of like, where is actually AI going? But like, I think you. Because I actually went right up to my wife afterwards and like, all right, you. By the way, she wants to talk to you again about her company because they. They've got, they've got a lot more of their shit together.
Like you, I thought your 2 cents on it was very much similar to mine and how in the business side and the finance side, like, okay, like, what's hype, what's not? What should we actually be? Like, what kind of panic or urgency should we have on where. But like, what's. What's your thoughts on it?
[01:05:51] Speaker B: Yeah, so my thoughts on AI, to be honest with you, and kind of LLMs, ChatGPT, just for general conversation purposes. I think that honestly, people got really excited about it really fast. I think we've seen this happen in a lot of tech hyper exciting things that occur and people get really excited about them and then the excitement, or all of a sudden we start poking holes in it and all of a sudden we start being like, oh, that isn't actually how I thought it was going to work. And we start seeing the effects of it on other people. And I think that's what's been happening quite a bit with ChatGPTs and some of these LLMs is it's a lot of reconfirming bias and it's not a lot of actual understanding of real.
Of what's real and what's. What's actually helping us. So I think that it's like any other tool, knowing how to use it wisely. However, when it comes to tracking and utilizing it as a true marketing tool, I think it's foolish. I think it's Something that is. People are trying to. Well, how do we, how do we start ranking in ChatGPT? And how do we start. It's like that is quite literally not the point of chatgpt. The point of chatgpt. Yeah, maybe for some research, some base brands, maybe some base names, but you are not going to be advertising on ChatGPT.
Sure, you want to make sure that your content is structured well, but that's how it should have been structured for online search to begin with. So LLMs are going to be learning from what's already at play. They're going to be learning what's current, how websites are functioning. They're not saying, hey, now that you have a website, you need to be giving us all of this data like this, this, this, this. That's what LLMs are crawling sites in, understanding what's currently at play. So when it comes to optimizing for AI, personally, I think it's foolish right now. I think it's too young, I think it's too new. I think that there's just too many nuances and too much go on a haywire for us to anybody have like, oh, we have a, we have an AI or GEO plan. Like, we have a generated, you know, we, we have one and that's what we're gonna do. It's like, that feels like a lot of wasted money for something that could quite literally change tomorrow because we don't know what's happening.
[01:07:42] Speaker A: I'm tracking what you're saying, and I think maybe just the word of caution for people because my wife went to Inbound, which I think they're even changing the name of Inbound now because of GPT and the LLMs. I think it's maybe a word of caution that the thought leaders out there are paid to make sure. It's like the weather people, like, they're, they're gonna wake up and talk about the weather regardless of whether it's a storm or not.
[01:08:07] Speaker B: Right. So.
[01:08:09] Speaker A: And just maybe like taking everything for a grain of salt and like. And I think, Allison, this is why understanding what is actually important, which is like marketing and sales, is about having a customer go through a customer journey at specific stages so you can sell them some shit and it ends up in revenue on your income statement within a specific amount of money you are willing to spend to acquire that customer.
And like, knowing the first principles, I think can help people not get panicked and like doom scroll on stuff that they think they're behind. I don't know what your thoughts are.
[01:08:45] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I mean, I do feel like a lot of this conversation feels like, hey, if you don't have anything, you're wrong and you're already behind. Oh my gosh, there's so much to do and what are we all going to do about it? Like, it's overwhelming. I get it. It's a lot.
However, it is when it comes to everything that we're doing from a marketing perspective, utilizing the tools we have, AI is not going to go away. So we need to learn how to use it and make sure that utilizing it properly. However, to your point, our dollars are also spent in, in our time and money in our efforts. So hey, let's not spend a bunch of time and effort on Geo or on our, on our current LLM strategy when we don't actually even have a strategy about what's, what's going on on our, our regular search engine.
[01:09:27] Speaker A: We don't even know what's going on on our website right now. It's, it's really funny. Like, sorry to interrupt the. I did a podcast like three months ago about document management and it sounds absurd because that was my old business. It was like, people are still pushing paper around in companies and people are like, talking about AI is going to kill us. I'm like, half of your business processes are still an analog paper, so you're not going to be able to analyze any data because it's still stuck on paper. So it's like perspective is a big deal.
[01:09:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Trying to chase after the new shiny thing is never going to be good, especially when it comes in digital. Because, yeah, like when it comes to this kind of stuff, you don't want, you don't want to be the first one because that's, you know, it's going to change. And literally that's, you know, beta testing and additional testing and testing and new things that are coming out all of the time. And I've seen it once, I've seen it a hundred times the chance. Great. We have a whole strategy around this whole new thing.
The next day, the next week, the next whatever, meta, Facebook, whatever decide channel, we're talking about changes and then it's, oh, cool. All of that work was for nothing because they changed and didn't tell anyone because they have no obligation to tell you. So, like it is, there's, it's keeping practical, using the data points, using numbers for what's real and actually happening on your website is what you should be spending your time and money on and not on these new crazy, fun things that are happening. Unless you actually have the time to be able to focus on those.
[01:10:47] Speaker A: So fun. Anything else that we touch on that we haven't heard.
[01:10:52] Speaker B: I know, yeah, it's, it's, it's dense, it's a lot. But I, it is something that gives you a lot of clarity. I will say I feel like if you, if you have unease, you're like I'm not sure what's going on, something's up, something doesn't feel right. To even have just data points is going to make you feel better. So it's, it's just to be able to understand.
Okay. Yep, that month wasn't good. Things didn't go so great.
[01:11:11] Speaker A: Where should people start? Like what would be the first thing to do?
[01:11:14] Speaker B: I mean outside of getting your analytics installed? I would identify what your conversion points are and what that exchange where that exchange of information is occurring on your site. If it's that first step, it's the third all of the steps that that's occurring making sure that that's being tracked so we can at least do something with it that then out of the box GA4 Google Analytics does track a bunch of stuff for us so we don't even have to do anything custom. There is some custom that will likely be needed to done if you have some unique instances or some unique isms about your site. However, out of the box analytics does track page views, sessions users does track sculpt scroll tracking, outbound link clicks, downloads, form fills like video views. All that's already done for you. If you're awesome just plug and play. So it's just getting that it up so it can see what is it is collecting and what it's not and then go from there as far as like next step and cause then you.
[01:12:04] Speaker A: Can massage it later because you start having the information that you can just.
[01:12:08] Speaker B: Go back and and I'll say GA4 does a much better job than Universal analytics did when it comes to customizing it to work for your business versus trying to make your business work for analytics. That was something I saw quite a bit in with Universal analytics is that it was just felt like everything was very E Com focused. Whereas one thing I didn't mention is actually in GA4 they actually have a new suite of lead specific reports.
So it is like lead generated like whether lead qualified lead if it was disqualified lead like full sweet actually and you can put in reasons too so like why they were disqualified and why they were qualified. So you can start getting a lot of this data even in GA for outside of your CRM platform. So if you have a form, for example, that has like, great, if they click this form, they're an mql. If they are this button. If they click this one, they're not. We can essentially trigger that to occur and start collecting that data for you. And then we'll have even reasons for why people are doing things and are not doing things. So there are some new reports that GA4 is building, is now allowing people to use that have never been in play before.
[01:13:07] Speaker A: It'd be interesting as we see what else it's capable of doing with Gemini behind the scenes.
[01:13:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:13:13] Speaker A: You know what I mean? Because now that they've got this platform, I think it'll be interesting as they start pumping their own AI tools behind it.
[01:13:21] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
[01:13:24] Speaker A: Where can people get in touch with you?
[01:13:25] Speaker B: Yeah, come on. My website. Digital Aid. D I G I T A L Hyphen, a D E.com or my name. You can find me. I think I'm one in a million, actually. So Allison Bechdah's my name. Yeah. Feel free to find me in LinkedIn online. I'm. I'm around. Yeah, I guess.
[01:13:39] Speaker A: And you'll will, you know, if people get to your website.
[01:13:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I will. I will definitely know. So if you. I will find you.
[01:13:46] Speaker A: I will find you. I'll hunt you down. I will. Siri and Alexa and everybody's gonna read.
[01:13:50] Speaker B: Yeah, you'll be hearing from me. Actually, feel free to find me. But, yeah, we're doing fun stuff. The data world over here.
[01:13:59] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on.
[01:14:01] Speaker B: Yeah, of course, Ryan. Thanks.
Sa.
