Aug. 7, 2020

1311: Discover Whose Marketing Advice You Can Trust & Whose is BS w/ Edward Nevraumont

In this episode, we talk to Edward Nevraumont, Senior Advisor at Warburg Pincus LLC and Author of Marketing BS.


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Transcript
WEBVTT 1 00:00:05.719 --> 00:00:10.269 Welcome back to be tob growth. I'm Dan Sanchezz sweetfish media. Today I'm 2 00:00:10.269 --> 00:00:14.990 joined with Edward Nevermont, who is a senior advisor at Warburg Pincus and author 3 00:00:15.029 --> 00:00:18.469 of marketing BS. How's it going today, Edward? I'm great. How 4 00:00:18.510 --> 00:00:21.460 are you, Dan? I'm doing well. Thanks for making the time to 5 00:00:21.500 --> 00:00:25.739 record this episode. Today we want to talk about your new book, Marketing 6 00:00:25.780 --> 00:00:29.179 Bs, but before we do I wanted to dive a little bit into your 7 00:00:29.219 --> 00:00:32.179 background. So can you give our listeners a little bit of context before we 8 00:00:32.299 --> 00:00:36.250 dive into the topic of your book today? Yeah, absolutely. So I'm 9 00:00:36.329 --> 00:00:40.969 Canadian, so I guess that makes me a little bit boring, but friendly 10 00:00:41.009 --> 00:00:45.490 at least. I moved down to the US two thousand and nine. I 11 00:00:45.609 --> 00:00:48.250 met my wife here and have my family here. We live up in Seattle 12 00:00:48.689 --> 00:00:52.880 and this is kind of my new home. So I feel I feel more 13 00:00:52.920 --> 00:00:55.359 and more like this is this is the place where I'm going to live. 14 00:00:55.399 --> 00:00:59.719 I originally came here in two thousand and five. I came down to Warton 15 00:00:59.719 --> 00:01:03.119 Business School, spent a couple of years here and then went back and kind 16 00:01:03.159 --> 00:01:07.069 of traveled the world work for McKenzie and company. The consulting firm and I 17 00:01:07.189 --> 00:01:10.349 was single at the time, so I just traveled around the world helping out 18 00:01:10.390 --> 00:01:11.750 clients. So I spend time in Australia, spend a year in Africa, 19 00:01:12.030 --> 00:01:18.620 some time in Denmarks, some time and in England and Netherlands and a kind 20 00:01:18.659 --> 00:01:21.659 of found that what was interesting is even though the world was very, very 21 00:01:21.700 --> 00:01:27.219 different, they all had this problem of just people chasing junk and wasting their 22 00:01:27.260 --> 00:01:32.459 time doing stuff. At Wart and I learned all these advanced marketing techniques from 23 00:01:32.459 --> 00:01:36.969 some of the smartest professors in the world and I was super excited to go 24 00:01:37.049 --> 00:01:41.010 and apply that stuff when I got to Mackenzie. And what I found when 25 00:01:41.010 --> 00:01:44.890 I actually got there was they didn't need the advanced, super fancy marketing techniques 26 00:01:44.930 --> 00:01:48.640 I was learning from academics at Warton. They just needed to stop doing dumb 27 00:01:48.760 --> 00:01:53.120 stuff and start doing the basics right. I remember I was doing one project 28 00:01:53.239 --> 00:01:56.359 with a company that we were trying to reduce churn rate and we got it 29 00:01:56.480 --> 00:02:00.000 working across multiple countries and those one country where all of our work wasn't working. 30 00:02:00.079 --> 00:02:02.989 We had built these algorithms predict who is likely to churn and then we 31 00:02:04.109 --> 00:02:07.069 were sending messages out with targeted message to those people and it was working everywhere. 32 00:02:07.069 --> 00:02:09.430 One Country it wasn't working. So I sent my analyst of that country 33 00:02:09.750 --> 00:02:13.310 and he was a diving in trying to figure out, like, what was 34 00:02:13.389 --> 00:02:15.699 special about this country that it wasn't working. What? What did these consumers 35 00:02:15.780 --> 00:02:20.139 know? How are these consumers different? How was the competition different? How 36 00:02:20.259 --> 00:02:23.500 is the environment different? What was the history? Was Our algorithm working? 37 00:02:23.819 --> 00:02:24.939 And he was. He spent, he said, weeks. They're trying to 38 00:02:24.939 --> 00:02:30.129 figure it out and it turned out the problem was that they're their machine that 39 00:02:30.210 --> 00:02:32.930 sent the SMS is out was just not plugged in and wasn't sending messages out. 40 00:02:34.849 --> 00:02:38.169 And so much a business is the problem of it's not your algorithm isn't 41 00:02:38.169 --> 00:02:43.210 good enough or your sophisticated marketing strategies wrong, it's you haven't plugged in the 42 00:02:43.250 --> 00:02:47.199 friggin machine, and getting those basics right is often the most important thing and 43 00:02:47.280 --> 00:02:51.800 all the other stuff becomes a distraction. And so I've taken that since then 44 00:02:51.919 --> 00:02:54.280 and use that in weren't kind of companies I've been at. So I went 45 00:02:54.360 --> 00:02:59.150 to after I left Mackenzie, I went to expedia and ran their global email 46 00:02:59.150 --> 00:03:02.710 program and again focusing on the basics, and what a difference it made. 47 00:03:02.870 --> 00:03:06.310 I went to company called a place for mom that we helped turn around this 48 00:03:06.389 --> 00:03:10.189 business, brought it from forty million dollars losing five million dollars a year two 49 00:03:10.229 --> 00:03:14.939 hundred and eighty million with twenty percent even of margins, and all that time 50 00:03:15.099 --> 00:03:19.419 didn't do any fancy things at all. In fact, any fancy thing we 51 00:03:19.500 --> 00:03:23.939 did do ended up being a disaster and all of the impact came from just 52 00:03:23.020 --> 00:03:27.289 getting these basics stuff right. I left a place your mom and went to 53 00:03:27.330 --> 00:03:30.849 General Assembly, where I ran sales and marketing globally, and just repeated the 54 00:03:30.889 --> 00:03:35.090 process again. Stop doing the fancy stuff, take our advertising on stapchack filters 55 00:03:35.129 --> 00:03:38.849 down to zero and improve our quality of paid search, improve our contact time 56 00:03:38.889 --> 00:03:42.680 when customers call, and you focus on a lot of these basic stuff. 57 00:03:43.199 --> 00:03:46.800 It's not sexy it, it's not really awesome to talk about a cocktail parties 58 00:03:46.800 --> 00:03:51.120 or podcasts, but man, it makes money and and it improves the customer 59 00:03:51.120 --> 00:03:53.199 experience and makes the world better for a lot of people. So I can 60 00:03:53.240 --> 00:03:57.310 see where it's going and I could see even in your your career progression, 61 00:03:57.349 --> 00:04:00.590 it's developing a sense and a belief that led to you writing BS marketing. 62 00:04:00.909 --> 00:04:04.909 So tell us, like, what is BS marketing? What how would you 63 00:04:04.949 --> 00:04:09.550 define it and how do you spot it out there in the wild? Yeah, 64 00:04:09.990 --> 00:04:13.620 so it's interesting. I'm not even sure I love the title of my 65 00:04:13.659 --> 00:04:17.060 book. It's marketing BS, because I it's definitely not people interpreted as a 66 00:04:17.180 --> 00:04:20.699 marketing is BS and there's lots of people writing how marketings BS and marketing does 67 00:04:20.740 --> 00:04:25.290 damage the world and Mark Zuckerberger is a terrible human being and that. That's 68 00:04:25.370 --> 00:04:27.810 not my argument at all. Like I'm not arguing that marketing is bad. 69 00:04:27.889 --> 00:04:30.649 In fact, I spent my career in marketing and I think marketing is adding 70 00:04:30.769 --> 00:04:33.889 tens of value to the world. I think build a better mouse trap and 71 00:04:33.889 --> 00:04:36.329 they'll be the path your door. Is the greatest lie I ever told to 72 00:04:36.410 --> 00:04:41.079 an entrepreneur. If you don't communicate your product and get it in front of 73 00:04:41.120 --> 00:04:43.720 the right people at the right time, no one is going to be interested. 74 00:04:43.959 --> 00:04:46.920 And if your product is good, presumably if you're trying to sell it, 75 00:04:46.959 --> 00:04:48.759 you think it's good, then you want to make sure you're communicating it 76 00:04:49.120 --> 00:04:54.189 effectively. That's what marketing is all about. I think the problem with marketing 77 00:04:54.350 --> 00:04:56.430 is not that marketing is bad. I think that there's a lot of bad 78 00:04:56.509 --> 00:04:59.589 marketing and that's kind of what the book is about. The book is about 79 00:04:59.790 --> 00:05:03.430 all the bad marketing that's out there and why it's out there and and then 80 00:05:03.470 --> 00:05:06.540 what to do about it instead. As a professional marketer, I always I 81 00:05:06.699 --> 00:05:11.660 always kind of take it always makes me happy when I see how much bad 82 00:05:11.699 --> 00:05:14.819 marketing is out there right I'm like, oh, that's job security right there. 83 00:05:14.899 --> 00:05:16.740 There's just so much bad marketing out there and I see it all the 84 00:05:16.819 --> 00:05:21.329 time. Why is it? Why is it become the almost the norm for 85 00:05:21.410 --> 00:05:26.129 the industry to have so much bad marketing floating around? I think there's a 86 00:05:26.649 --> 00:05:29.529 so that's the book. That's majority of what the book is about. I 87 00:05:29.649 --> 00:05:32.009 think there's a few kind of core reasons. Like the most of the biggest 88 00:05:32.089 --> 00:05:36.759 ones, I think, are there's an incentive problem, and so I used 89 00:05:36.800 --> 00:05:39.839 it the metaphor of your car mechanic. If you want to go to a 90 00:05:39.920 --> 00:05:43.120 car mechanic, how do you know if your car mechanic is any good? 91 00:05:43.720 --> 00:05:46.439 Well, if you're really good at repairing cars, you can probably assess the 92 00:05:46.519 --> 00:05:48.279 quality of a car mechanic. But presumably most of us aren't really good at 93 00:05:48.279 --> 00:05:51.029 repairing cars, which is why we go to car mechanics. And given that 94 00:05:51.110 --> 00:05:54.870 I'm not an expert car mechanic, how do I tell the difference between a 95 00:05:54.910 --> 00:05:57.230 bad one, a good one and a great one? Well, you can 96 00:05:57.310 --> 00:06:00.110 probably tell the difference between bad and good, because if they're really terrible, 97 00:06:00.310 --> 00:06:03.699 they can't repair your car, and so even a non expert knows that. 98 00:06:04.459 --> 00:06:08.180 But what's the difference in a good car mechanic and a great car mechanic? 99 00:06:08.540 --> 00:06:11.699 I know I couldn't tell the difference. And so how do I evaluate my 100 00:06:11.779 --> 00:06:14.699 car mechanics? I evaluate them on things like, Hey, are they good 101 00:06:14.740 --> 00:06:17.379 enough to actually do something? Are They not bad? And then do they 102 00:06:17.420 --> 00:06:23.129 have good customer service? Have they done a good not like a slimy sales 103 00:06:23.129 --> 00:06:25.970 job, but a good sales job and communicated be what their services are, 104 00:06:26.410 --> 00:06:29.170 the good follow up, and it becomes like all these soft things that have 105 00:06:29.290 --> 00:06:31.449 absolutely nothing to do with their ability to repair cars and everything to do with 106 00:06:31.529 --> 00:06:36.079 their their professionalism. I think I'd much rather have a nonprofessional, awesome car 107 00:06:36.160 --> 00:06:39.920 mechanic work on my car, but I don't know how to identify that person, 108 00:06:40.439 --> 00:06:44.600 and so instead I use professionalism, as might the siding factor, for 109 00:06:44.959 --> 00:06:48.509 for repairing cars. The same thing is happening in marketing. So if you 110 00:06:48.589 --> 00:06:53.110 go to a marketing I have friends who are marketing vendors or at Red Marketing 111 00:06:53.149 --> 00:06:57.990 Agencies, and all of them are good people and all of them are want 112 00:06:58.069 --> 00:07:02.060 to do good and they often times they start out building these marketing they they 113 00:07:02.180 --> 00:07:05.100 realize they're good at market and they found it a way to do marketing well 114 00:07:05.420 --> 00:07:08.500 and so they say, m rather than just do this at one company, 115 00:07:08.500 --> 00:07:11.579 I'm going to sell us to multiple companies. But once they become a marketing 116 00:07:11.660 --> 00:07:15.459 vendor, they quickly realize that no one gives a crap how good the marketing 117 00:07:15.620 --> 00:07:18.250 is, that there have this awesome, great marketing. If they want to 118 00:07:18.329 --> 00:07:24.649 grow their marketing agency, they don't need to get better at marketing, they 119 00:07:24.689 --> 00:07:28.170 need to get better at sales and they need to get better at customer service. 120 00:07:28.490 --> 00:07:30.519 Sales will help them get more customers in the door and customer service will 121 00:07:30.519 --> 00:07:34.399 help their customer stick around. And none of their customers care about whether they're 122 00:07:34.439 --> 00:07:40.079 marketing is awesome. And so these marketing vendors are doing that to marketing professionals 123 00:07:40.120 --> 00:07:44.310 all around the world and it's just the their individual marketing vendors who are really 124 00:07:44.350 --> 00:07:46.230 good at their jobs. But we don't know who those people are, anymore 125 00:07:46.269 --> 00:07:51.709 than we don't we know who the good garage mechanics are inside the marketing companies. 126 00:07:51.750 --> 00:07:54.470 We have a different in set in problems. So now you say, 127 00:07:54.509 --> 00:07:56.790 if I'm in the company, I don't care about all it stuff. I 128 00:07:56.829 --> 00:08:00.220 care about doing good for my company. But that's not the way most humans 129 00:08:00.259 --> 00:08:03.579 actually operate. Most humans are good care about themselves and when you get to 130 00:08:03.660 --> 00:08:09.259 a big company that becomes like a political game within the organization and even at 131 00:08:09.300 --> 00:08:11.699 the CMO level. Back when I was a CMO full time, I get 132 00:08:11.779 --> 00:08:15.930 recruited to be a CMO from headhunters all the time, and when that happened, 133 00:08:16.170 --> 00:08:20.730 the first question I always get asked was not how good was your marketing 134 00:08:20.769 --> 00:08:22.730 and can you show us how great your Roi was? They want to know 135 00:08:22.930 --> 00:08:26.050 how big was your budget and how big was your team. And so if 136 00:08:26.089 --> 00:08:30.519 you're a CMO and you want to get a bigger CMO job and make more 137 00:08:30.519 --> 00:08:33.559 money and have more prestigion more status, how do you do that? It's 138 00:08:33.600 --> 00:08:35.399 not by getting better at marketing, it's by getting a bigger marketing team and 139 00:08:35.399 --> 00:08:39.559 getting a bigger marketing budget. Now, one way to do that might be 140 00:08:39.799 --> 00:08:41.230 to be good at marketing. Is You really good at marketing, maybe your 141 00:08:41.269 --> 00:08:45.029 CFO and you seeo give you a bigger budget. But it's really not the 142 00:08:45.149 --> 00:08:48.509 only way and it's definitely not the easiest with, especially in the large organizations, 143 00:08:48.549 --> 00:08:52.870 were measuring the impact of marketing is really hard. Oh and, by 144 00:08:52.870 --> 00:08:54.860 the way, who decides what? Who measures the impact of the marketing? 145 00:08:56.340 --> 00:09:01.220 That the CEMODA. So the CMO is like judging their own work and it's 146 00:09:01.340 --> 00:09:03.460 very easy for them to say the mark is better than it looks. And 147 00:09:03.539 --> 00:09:09.139 see if this is sent a problem where the marketers who are running the companies 148 00:09:09.220 --> 00:09:13.490 want to create things that give them status and prestige so they can get promoted 149 00:09:13.529 --> 00:09:16.169 and get bigger jobs, and then very visible things, visible things, is 150 00:09:16.289 --> 00:09:20.129 what matters. You have marketing vendors who are more than happy supply that and 151 00:09:22.009 --> 00:09:26.200 you have very few people who really care about doing good marketing and you've a 152 00:09:26.240 --> 00:09:31.120 lot of people care about doing visible marketing that get that drives their own their 153 00:09:31.200 --> 00:09:33.759 drifts, their own success. And that's just the incentive problem. There's a 154 00:09:33.759 --> 00:09:37.000 whole other series of problems beyond that. Yeah, I mean I could definitely 155 00:09:37.039 --> 00:09:41.750 see it be even beyond just the individuals, but marketing agencies. If you 156 00:09:41.870 --> 00:09:43.710 look at the incentive of a marketing agency is to stand out and get more 157 00:09:43.750 --> 00:09:48.269 clients rather than just drive the best results for their clients, right. So 158 00:09:48.389 --> 00:09:52.419 like it's almost stacked, stacked against the people they're actually representing. Sometimes, 159 00:09:52.460 --> 00:09:58.100 even though I mean even sweetfish media as an agency. Hopefully we're trying to 160 00:09:58.179 --> 00:10:01.860 beat against that somewhat, but sometimes the incentives fly in such a way that 161 00:10:03.899 --> 00:10:07.889 marketing is mass. Is supposed to be persuasion, but sometimes can become a 162 00:10:07.889 --> 00:10:11.370 little bit of manipulation in order to achieve a different end than you would think. 163 00:10:13.169 --> 00:10:16.330 So once you're out there in the world, like how do you recognize 164 00:10:16.330 --> 00:10:20.129 that that's happening with when you're starting, when you if you have a need 165 00:10:20.169 --> 00:10:22.639 as a company, like how do you recognize the difference between the Good Marketing 166 00:10:22.679 --> 00:10:26.240 in the bad marketing out there? Say, I'm looking for a new CRM 167 00:10:26.360 --> 00:10:30.679 system, like how would I recognize whether a company is actually good or not? 168 00:10:31.519 --> 00:10:33.120 It's really hard. It's not. It's how do you know what your 169 00:10:33.279 --> 00:10:35.830 car mechanics is good? Right, like. I think part of it is 170 00:10:35.909 --> 00:10:41.110 being a strong enough marketer yourself that you can identify who else is good and 171 00:10:41.750 --> 00:10:46.830 use marketing agencies for for exact example, or the markers on your team that 172 00:10:46.830 --> 00:10:50.019 you're overseeing, but your hires, and use them on things that you know 173 00:10:50.059 --> 00:10:54.179 yourself, and so you know what's good and what isn't and it's a matter 174 00:10:54.220 --> 00:10:56.539 of getting them to help you execute those things rather than trying to figure out 175 00:10:56.580 --> 00:10:58.860 those things. But that's also not the way to go through life. Like 176 00:10:58.940 --> 00:11:01.139 you do need to trust people, that you do need to learn from other 177 00:11:01.179 --> 00:11:05.690 people and you can't just do it all yourself. And so there's no real 178 00:11:05.929 --> 00:11:09.970 great answer apart from know something really, really well and if you know it 179 00:11:09.049 --> 00:11:13.250 really, really well, you can talk to other people about the parts that 180 00:11:13.330 --> 00:11:16.129 you know really well and if they're giving you legit answers on the stuff that 181 00:11:16.169 --> 00:11:18.720 you know really well, then hopefully you can trust them with the stuff that 182 00:11:18.759 --> 00:11:22.240 they're not. I use the example of like reading media. Most of the 183 00:11:22.279 --> 00:11:26.679 time, when I read a newspaper but something I don't know, it all 184 00:11:26.720 --> 00:11:30.440 sounds very legit and reasonable, and then I'll read the newspaper but something that 185 00:11:30.720 --> 00:11:33.750 I know really, really well that they go deep in and ninety percent of 186 00:11:33.789 --> 00:11:37.110 the time I'm like, they have no idea what they're talking about. This 187 00:11:37.230 --> 00:11:41.309 is terrible, this is not they they they're just completely completely wrong, and 188 00:11:41.429 --> 00:11:43.710 not even they're so wrong they don't even like the not don't even with the 189 00:11:43.750 --> 00:11:46.820 actual real issues are. It makes you doubt, like all the other things 190 00:11:46.860 --> 00:11:50.460 you're reading in those newspapers. If you can find a newspaper that were that 191 00:11:50.500 --> 00:11:54.179 doesn't happen for the things that you know really well, then maybe you can 192 00:11:54.220 --> 00:11:56.620 trust them a little bit more about the stuff that you don't. It's one 193 00:11:56.659 --> 00:12:00.500 of the reasons why I love The economist so much. When the economists covers 194 00:12:00.539 --> 00:12:03.649 something that I know really well, I I read it and say that's that's 195 00:12:03.809 --> 00:12:07.289 Vanal and not interesting, but usually correct. And so when they cover something 196 00:12:07.370 --> 00:12:09.610 that I don't know well, I I feel like it can trust them a 197 00:12:09.649 --> 00:12:13.690 lot more than the many other other papers, and so I think when you're 198 00:12:13.690 --> 00:12:18.720 assessing other people and their expertise, I think something along those lines is probably 199 00:12:18.759 --> 00:12:24.519 the right answer. I read something on your just kind of the marketing page 200 00:12:24.519 --> 00:12:28.360 for your book, as I was learning, like learning about your book and 201 00:12:28.600 --> 00:12:31.350 about yourself, but for this this interview and it was said like don't trust 202 00:12:31.389 --> 00:12:35.149 the Gurus, which is interesting to me because a lot of people, if 203 00:12:35.190 --> 00:12:39.309 they're not sure about what decision to make, they often go to their favorite 204 00:12:39.309 --> 00:12:41.710 gurus out there, that experts, their thought leaders, in order to try 205 00:12:41.750 --> 00:12:48.379 to make the more informed decision. So what what's you're thinking behind being careful 206 00:12:48.500 --> 00:12:50.980 to trust that experts out there? Again, it comes down to what those 207 00:12:52.019 --> 00:12:56.340 incentives are right. So the same probably have a marketing practitioners and vendors around 208 00:12:56.379 --> 00:13:01.090 incentives. Like there's a whole other setup incentive problems around Guru's. Grews get 209 00:13:01.210 --> 00:13:09.049 credit for saying radical things, exciting things, and most exciting radical things are 210 00:13:09.409 --> 00:13:11.690 not correct. Some of them are, but just because something's exciting and radical 211 00:13:11.730 --> 00:13:15.039 doesn't make it more likely to be correct. In fact, probably makes it 212 00:13:15.080 --> 00:13:18.960 less likely to be correct. But grews who are saying non exciting, interesting 213 00:13:20.000 --> 00:13:22.960 things are not going to be grews very long. That that's a problem. 214 00:13:22.039 --> 00:13:28.710 I like. Our human brain is very condition to love Shiny, complex complexity. 215 00:13:28.750 --> 00:13:31.029 In our brain, we see something that's complex, we're more likely to 216 00:13:31.070 --> 00:13:35.149 think it's correct. There's a great scientific study that was done then is back 217 00:13:35.190 --> 00:13:43.899 in the S. and what the researcher did is he took subjects and put 218 00:13:43.940 --> 00:13:46.539 them in a room with like this is a back before computers, like it 219 00:13:46.620 --> 00:13:48.379 was like one of those like full scap projectors. They projected images onto the 220 00:13:48.419 --> 00:13:54.779 wall and they showed who show the pictures of cells, and the subject had 221 00:13:54.820 --> 00:13:58.690 to ask, just guess randomly whether the cell was a healthy cell or an 222 00:13:58.730 --> 00:14:01.009 unhealthy cell, a six cell, and if they got it right, they 223 00:14:01.090 --> 00:14:03.809 were told was right. If they got it incorrect, they just told it 224 00:14:03.889 --> 00:14:07.889 incorrect. And based on that fast feedback, eventually it people, subjects were 225 00:14:07.929 --> 00:14:11.600 able to get more and more correct. They were able to get more and 226 00:14:11.639 --> 00:14:15.080 more of the cells. They were more they're able to guess which ones were 227 00:14:15.279 --> 00:14:18.559 sick, which ones are incre or healthy, higher, higher accuracy, basic, 228 00:14:18.559 --> 00:14:22.080 using some simple rules based on the feedback they're getting. That was the 229 00:14:22.159 --> 00:14:26.309 control group. In the test group, they did the same thing, only 230 00:14:26.389 --> 00:14:30.429 instead of giving them legitimate feedback, they effectively just gave them random feedback, 231 00:14:31.029 --> 00:14:35.669 and so they're the simple rules just didn't make sense because it'd create like a 232 00:14:35.710 --> 00:14:39.340 rule for themselves and they have to like these convoluted explanations in their head to 233 00:14:39.460 --> 00:14:43.340 explain this random feedback they were getting back then with the experiment? Or did 234 00:14:43.500 --> 00:14:46.379 you put the two subjects in the same room together and had them teach each 235 00:14:46.379 --> 00:14:50.779 other what they learned and the person at the simple rules, who was getting 236 00:14:50.820 --> 00:14:54.330 things very, very correct, explain their simple rules and the person who had 237 00:14:54.370 --> 00:14:56.889 these were getting the random feedback, would explain its super, super complicated rules, 238 00:14:58.370 --> 00:15:00.450 and the hope was that, hey, the simple rule guy would be 239 00:15:00.450 --> 00:15:01.529 like, Hey, this is actually very, very easy. USY simple rules 240 00:15:01.570 --> 00:15:05.570 and you can figure it out. But what happened was the reverse is, 241 00:15:05.649 --> 00:15:09.440 instead of the simple rule person convincing the complex rule person of the need for 242 00:15:09.519 --> 00:15:13.159 simplicity, the complex real person convinced the simple rule person that is simple rules 243 00:15:13.159 --> 00:15:16.720 were not complex enough and need to add complexity. And that's how how difficult 244 00:15:16.720 --> 00:15:20.440 this whole thing was. And when they went back to their rooms again to 245 00:15:20.480 --> 00:15:26.149 use the experiments, the complex person continue to be terrible accuracy and the simple 246 00:15:26.230 --> 00:15:30.429 person now got a lot worse. They were like infected by this complexity virus. 247 00:15:31.230 --> 00:15:33.750 We love complexity. Human beings are just we're primed for it. We're 248 00:15:33.789 --> 00:15:37.820 prime for shiny objects and complexity, and so grews feed us what we want 249 00:15:39.299 --> 00:15:41.539 and that's how they're successful, but doesn't necessarily you. It's not going to 250 00:15:41.580 --> 00:15:46.539 make you successful by by falling for the complexity. Man, that's fascinating something 251 00:15:46.539 --> 00:15:50.250 I'm even thinking about as I follow a number of different people to start watching 252 00:15:50.370 --> 00:15:52.649 for our like, oh my goodness, how many times have I fallen for 253 00:15:52.730 --> 00:15:58.970 that? And I specialize in Seo and marketing automation, where you cannot get 254 00:15:58.009 --> 00:16:00.649 more complex than two of those topics right there, and I'm like, how 255 00:16:00.690 --> 00:16:03.919 many times I'm I'm remembering now, like how many times I've even tried to 256 00:16:03.960 --> 00:16:11.120 implement it some fairly complicated Seo tactics versus and marketing automation. You know webs 257 00:16:11.159 --> 00:16:14.480 that you can weave, and I'm like, you know what, the simpler 258 00:16:14.600 --> 00:16:18.870 they were, the better they were. Almost every single time. It's not 259 00:16:18.950 --> 00:16:22.669 to knock that there's not technical issues, because there are. There are lots 260 00:16:22.750 --> 00:16:25.950 and lots of and SEO particularly, there's lots and lots of technical things you 261 00:16:25.990 --> 00:16:30.750 need to do. But oftentimes the answer isn't conceptually hard, it's operationally hard. 262 00:16:30.909 --> 00:16:34.460 Yep, it's great and process to make them all, make blood post 263 00:16:34.500 --> 00:16:38.179 after blod post is hard to execute. Versus the actual technical part of it. 264 00:16:38.580 --> 00:16:42.659 That's exactly right, and like getting that operational part, doing that operational 265 00:16:42.740 --> 00:16:45.740 part well is really, really hard. Takes a lot of effort and a 266 00:16:45.820 --> 00:16:51.450 lot of time, and too many people don't do that because it sounds boring 267 00:16:51.490 --> 00:16:56.129 and it's just like it's execution work and they get distracted by the magic bullet 268 00:16:56.169 --> 00:16:57.450 that's going to solve all their problems if they can go and do this fancy, 269 00:16:57.649 --> 00:17:02.720 fancy thing, and the fancy thing that the magic boat sometimes works but 270 00:17:02.840 --> 00:17:06.519 most of the time it doesn't, and the distraction of going after that magic 271 00:17:06.559 --> 00:17:10.799 bullet as you miss all the important hard work that needs to happen or to 272 00:17:10.799 --> 00:17:15.200 be successful. I'm a friend of mine is a SEO consultant and his big 273 00:17:15.359 --> 00:17:18.029 win is he just comes in and fit gets their time to first bite down 274 00:17:18.309 --> 00:17:21.829 and like if you get their time to first bike down to it like to 275 00:17:22.309 --> 00:17:25.309 know a seconds or whatever the time cut off is. He's like you get 276 00:17:25.309 --> 00:17:27.190 an improven INN SEO in the first three weeks, and everything else he does, 277 00:17:27.230 --> 00:17:30.579 which takes a long time and it's lots of feedback and so on, 278 00:17:30.980 --> 00:17:33.500 is almost like gravy on the fact that the simple thing of just getting time 279 00:17:33.539 --> 00:17:37.380 to first bike down drives all his perceived value. I love it. So 280 00:17:37.500 --> 00:17:41.259 there's obviously a lot of simple things that people are skipping over in order to 281 00:17:41.299 --> 00:17:45.809 hit the more complex things, which you call just low hanging fruit. They're 282 00:17:45.809 --> 00:17:48.609 all reaching for the high hanging fruit when really there's so much you can gain 283 00:17:48.849 --> 00:17:52.009 just from doing the simple things that are being missed at the expense of doing 284 00:17:52.089 --> 00:17:56.930 the complex things. What are some things that are listeners could start looking at 285 00:17:56.970 --> 00:18:00.079 and actually just started valuating where they leaving money on the table that'd be easy 286 00:18:00.119 --> 00:18:04.640 to grab. Yeah, so the really depends on their business, but I 287 00:18:04.680 --> 00:18:08.359 guess let me let me start with the story that as a few number of 288 00:18:08.400 --> 00:18:11.920 years ago. Is when now, I was talking to a CMO, big 289 00:18:11.000 --> 00:18:15.829 fortune, five hundred business that has really high price point products. So their 290 00:18:15.910 --> 00:18:18.990 model is, Hey, they generate leads online, they pass those leads to 291 00:18:18.109 --> 00:18:22.230 sales team. The sales team works those leads for months at a time and 292 00:18:22.309 --> 00:18:26.789 then converts them into a high price point sale. And he came to me 293 00:18:26.910 --> 00:18:32.420 and asked how do I link my marketing automation tools, all my marketing stuff, 294 00:18:32.779 --> 00:18:36.779 to my crm tools so that when I cut my sales ages are talking 295 00:18:36.779 --> 00:18:38.259 to a customer. If the customer goes on the website is looking at a 296 00:18:38.500 --> 00:18:41.569 big page. I want to feed that information to my sales to die. 297 00:18:41.890 --> 00:18:45.609 So now my sales team can respond to the the right customer at the right 298 00:18:45.650 --> 00:18:49.369 time with the right message. How do I make all that actually happen? 299 00:18:51.130 --> 00:18:53.490 And I said, hey, that sounds like a great vision. Before we 300 00:18:53.609 --> 00:18:56.480 go there, let me ask when your marketing team generates a lead and sends 301 00:18:56.480 --> 00:19:00.240 it to your sales team, how long is it take your sales team to 302 00:19:00.319 --> 00:19:03.519 call back that lead? And he said how? I don't know, I 303 00:19:03.640 --> 00:19:07.079 have no idea, and I'm like, well, before you worry about into 304 00:19:07.160 --> 00:19:10.309 creating these two technology stacks together to talk to the right customer at the right 305 00:19:10.309 --> 00:19:11.990 time, why don't you try to talk to the customers that want to talk 306 00:19:11.990 --> 00:19:15.710 to you and when they want to talk to you, because they're already you 307 00:19:15.710 --> 00:19:18.950 don't need a fancy automation for that. They're telling you, they're calling you 308 00:19:18.990 --> 00:19:21.029 and saying I want to talk to you, or they're sending a lead for 309 00:19:21.069 --> 00:19:22.829 him. They're saying I want to talk to you. Call those customers back 310 00:19:22.869 --> 00:19:26.900 right away when they want to talk to you. And so here we do. 311 00:19:26.980 --> 00:19:29.460 We did this when I was at a place your mom and we got 312 00:19:29.500 --> 00:19:32.420 our call back time down from like five minutes down to two minutes. It 313 00:19:32.619 --> 00:19:36.140 drove a two percent bump on our conversion rate of over overall business like being 314 00:19:36.140 --> 00:19:40.250 a little bit faster and a little bit more customer cent customer centric makes a 315 00:19:40.289 --> 00:19:42.730 heck of a difference. Now I did the same thing at General Assembly and 316 00:19:42.970 --> 00:19:47.769 they're when we got it down to two minutes, conversiony actually went down and 317 00:19:47.930 --> 00:19:51.730 we figured out that we started out for four hour call back times. We 318 00:19:51.809 --> 00:19:53.920 got that down and down and down and down and down. But we when 319 00:19:53.960 --> 00:19:57.319 we optimize, we realize that the ideal call back time is actually seven minutes, 320 00:19:57.519 --> 00:20:00.920 because there's a difference between imagine if you go to a bar and you 321 00:20:02.119 --> 00:20:06.880 give your phone number to a member of the romantic partner, potential romantic partner, 322 00:20:07.119 --> 00:20:10.470 and then that person texts you back within thirty seconds. That's not like 323 00:20:10.589 --> 00:20:15.390 customer service, that's desperation. And so there is this trade between like companies 324 00:20:15.390 --> 00:20:17.869 that try too hard and companies that don't try hard enough. And you need 325 00:20:17.910 --> 00:20:21.109 to figure out where that number is for your particular business. Now to place 326 00:20:21.150 --> 00:20:22.700 your mom, we never found out what that speed was like we got it 327 00:20:23.019 --> 00:20:26.460 down to one minute. It was conversion. It was going up. So 328 00:20:26.099 --> 00:20:30.299 speed beat desperation. Every time a general assembly the answer was no, I 329 00:20:30.660 --> 00:20:33.099 seven minutes was the ideal time. If you take longer than seven minutes, 330 00:20:33.339 --> 00:20:37.609 that's terrible customer service. If you're faster than seven minutes, that's desperation. 331 00:20:37.650 --> 00:20:41.009 Seven minutes was was the peak. But if you don't know what that is 332 00:20:41.130 --> 00:20:42.609 for your bit, what that number is for your business, and you weren't 333 00:20:42.609 --> 00:20:47.170 optimizing and doing everything you can to hit that number, you are leaving more 334 00:20:47.210 --> 00:20:49.720 money on the table than almost anything else you could be doing. Almost wonder 335 00:20:49.759 --> 00:20:53.680 if one of the best things are cut our listeners can do is just secret 336 00:20:53.680 --> 00:20:59.279 shop their own marketing and see what the experience is like and just start looking 337 00:20:59.319 --> 00:21:02.240 for obvious things where it's like, oh, like, if I when what 338 00:21:02.319 --> 00:21:04.309 I expect the next piece to come, what would I hope for? You 339 00:21:04.390 --> 00:21:08.309 might be able to explore and find a bunch of different holes or missing pieces 340 00:21:08.829 --> 00:21:14.470 that your prospects are customers are experiencing every day. Yeah, and I do 341 00:21:14.549 --> 00:21:17.309 it do with the head space of like, I desperately need this product. 342 00:21:17.549 --> 00:21:19.579 How do I get this product? That I'm desperate for it and if it's 343 00:21:19.660 --> 00:21:25.940 not easy to get that's a big problem. Like convenience and distribution and ease 344 00:21:26.019 --> 00:21:30.740 of use are vastly over underrated. I like that. Are there any other 345 00:21:30.779 --> 00:21:33.170 head spaces you would recommend, or is it that, like the key one 346 00:21:33.250 --> 00:21:37.049 that you think would be the most helpful to have when your secret shopping your 347 00:21:37.049 --> 00:21:41.730 own systems? I think so. I think again, it's easy when you're 348 00:21:41.809 --> 00:21:45.529 so we need you great customer service. The people who desperately want your product 349 00:21:45.529 --> 00:21:48.359 are going to love you, and the people who are not interest in your 350 00:21:48.359 --> 00:21:49.839 product might be annoyed by you. All right, like if you go into 351 00:21:49.839 --> 00:21:52.400 a store and you aren't planning to buy and you don't want to talk to 352 00:21:52.400 --> 00:21:56.039 anybody, like having a customer, having a sales first to come and talk 353 00:21:56.039 --> 00:21:59.880 to you is might maybe not be what you want, but if you're desperate 354 00:21:59.920 --> 00:22:02.470 for a product you walk into the store, someone coming in offer you to 355 00:22:02.470 --> 00:22:07.470 help you find that product is really helpful. Don't get turned off by your 356 00:22:07.589 --> 00:22:11.190 non customers being annoyed by you providing great customer service, because that's going to 357 00:22:11.269 --> 00:22:15.029 happen and you, you can need to accept that and just focus on the 358 00:22:15.390 --> 00:22:18.740 your great customers are making it really easy for them to buy. That's fantastic. 359 00:22:18.059 --> 00:22:22.819 Is there anything else our audience needs to know about lessons from Your Book 360 00:22:22.819 --> 00:22:27.299 Marketing Bs all, there's so much they could read my book for hours. 361 00:22:30.450 --> 00:22:33.930 I think the the other issue, I think that we talked about a bit 362 00:22:33.009 --> 00:22:36.450 is up about the book. In the book. Is this feedback problem, 363 00:22:36.450 --> 00:22:38.009 because you are when I start on this, what happens is is all the 364 00:22:38.089 --> 00:22:41.569 brand marketers realize, oh my goodness, I've been following all this bs for 365 00:22:41.690 --> 00:22:45.759 so long, and all the peer the performance marketers are like hey, no, 366 00:22:45.880 --> 00:22:48.240 no, I am a data driven guy, I can see through all 367 00:22:48.279 --> 00:22:53.160 this crap and I know what really works. And you're speaking to the choir. 368 00:22:53.720 --> 00:22:56.559 But then I start talking about performance marketing and also their backs get up, 369 00:22:56.559 --> 00:23:02.309 because our problem with performance marketing is we become so reliant. We we've 370 00:23:02.309 --> 00:23:06.029 an incentive by us, we have the shiny objects by us, but we 371 00:23:06.109 --> 00:23:10.910 also have like a feed, fast feedback by us, and so performance markers 372 00:23:10.950 --> 00:23:12.299 are got to this place where if you can't prove it with data, it's 373 00:23:12.339 --> 00:23:15.380 not true and if you can't prove with data fast, it's not true. 374 00:23:15.819 --> 00:23:19.380 But it turns out most of the most powerful things in the world take a 375 00:23:19.500 --> 00:23:25.579 long time and we've been trained ourselves in marketing on the performance side of hey, 376 00:23:25.660 --> 00:23:29.049 it has to be fast or ignored entirely. I tell the story, 377 00:23:29.170 --> 00:23:32.650 but a group on. So Group on back in the day was a fantastic 378 00:23:32.730 --> 00:23:36.970 product for people who are too young to remember. They they basically sent out 379 00:23:36.970 --> 00:23:40.730 a fantagic like a ridiculously good deal to some business, local business, every 380 00:23:40.769 --> 00:23:44.960 day and that that deal was awesome. But they wanted to keep growing and 381 00:23:45.680 --> 00:23:48.640 the team came to Andrew Mason, who was Seeo and founder at the time, 382 00:23:48.920 --> 00:23:51.680 and said Hey, Andrews said a sending it one great deal every day. 383 00:23:51.680 --> 00:23:53.759 What if you said it more than one deal? And Andrew said like 384 00:23:55.200 --> 00:23:56.309 well, no, I think that's a terrible idea. Our whole business is 385 00:23:56.349 --> 00:24:00.589 predicated on us sending it one great deal with one great offer. Why would 386 00:24:00.589 --> 00:24:03.549 you want to send more than one? And the team was like, well, 387 00:24:03.630 --> 00:24:06.630 the data, Andrew, we're data driving company. Why don't we just 388 00:24:06.750 --> 00:24:08.710 test it and see? And Andrews like, Oh, you're right. Like 389 00:24:08.950 --> 00:24:11.420 I I don't want to be the CEOS authoritative and say hey, you do 390 00:24:11.500 --> 00:24:14.660 it my where of the highway, like you're right, let's run the day. 391 00:24:14.700 --> 00:24:15.180 That will do the day and on the day to would tell us. 392 00:24:15.339 --> 00:24:18.700 And so they ran the data and they started sending up multiple deals to people 393 00:24:19.500 --> 00:24:23.259 and the short term feedback that came back was that it was a little bit 394 00:24:23.259 --> 00:24:27.410 more unsubscribe but like negligible, and the revenue, total revenue per day, 395 00:24:27.529 --> 00:24:32.009 went up because some people bought the second deal. And the team of back 396 00:24:32.009 --> 00:24:33.730 to Andrews, I hate, we proved it. We proved that this is 397 00:24:33.970 --> 00:24:37.809 great, which send them more than one deal, and your kind of reticently 398 00:24:37.930 --> 00:24:40.240 said, okay, I guess that's okay. I guess the data proved it. 399 00:24:40.240 --> 00:24:45.000 I guess I was wrong, but and your wasn't wrong. Andrew the 400 00:24:45.119 --> 00:24:47.920 the day. The short term feedback is always going to say if you send 401 00:24:47.960 --> 00:24:49.880 more and you inundate somebody with more stuff, if you run bigger discounts and 402 00:24:51.160 --> 00:24:55.109 you're going to have higher short term impact, but it's going to do long 403 00:24:55.109 --> 00:24:57.190 term damage. And what happened was is a group on did long term damage 404 00:24:57.230 --> 00:25:00.950 and all of a sudden they're they're ridiculously good. One deal a day turned 405 00:25:00.950 --> 00:25:06.589 into a moderately good two deals a day down to a negligibly good ten deals 406 00:25:06.630 --> 00:25:07.579 in their dozen deals a day that they're doing now, and now they're just 407 00:25:07.779 --> 00:25:11.859 like a cupe on site that sends it has terrible stuff and it was that 408 00:25:11.980 --> 00:25:15.539 decision that happened at that one point that and you recognize it was a problem 409 00:25:15.579 --> 00:25:18.460 at the time that he didn't accept because the data told him to go the 410 00:25:18.819 --> 00:25:22.529 direction. And so you need to figure out, like you need to have 411 00:25:22.849 --> 00:25:27.450 these long term sort of believe in the long term, understand what that feet, 412 00:25:27.650 --> 00:25:30.730 but your long term thesis and what you truly believe and learn as much 413 00:25:30.730 --> 00:25:33.450 as you can of a long term impact about stuff, and then you got 414 00:25:33.609 --> 00:25:37.599 to use your judgment and you can't just blindly trust the day because data can't 415 00:25:37.599 --> 00:25:41.799 tell you what long term impacts are going to have. Man, that's so 416 00:25:41.920 --> 00:25:44.319 good. So what you're saying, it's a little bit more art and science 417 00:25:44.480 --> 00:25:48.000 than we people in data driven marketers want to believe. Yeah, I don't 418 00:25:48.000 --> 00:25:51.789 even know if it's art, it's judgment. It's judging. You don't think, 419 00:25:52.190 --> 00:25:53.190 to think and you have to recognize, and you can go back and 420 00:25:53.269 --> 00:25:56.390 look at lots and lots of other examples, but if you want to understand 421 00:25:56.390 --> 00:26:00.109 what the long term impact of something is going to be you need you need 422 00:26:00.150 --> 00:26:02.509 to wait for the long term and so we can go back and look at 423 00:26:02.549 --> 00:26:06.539 other examples of other businesses that happened a long time ago and see what that 424 00:26:06.619 --> 00:26:11.099 long term impact resulted in. Internalize that, understand it up. Like some 425 00:26:11.220 --> 00:26:14.539 of those rules we know right. Some of the rules is like discounty is 426 00:26:14.539 --> 00:26:18.059 always a terrible idea. Almost always, if you discount your product, you 427 00:26:18.140 --> 00:26:21.970 do long terms. Yet short term sales bump with long long term negative implications. 428 00:26:22.410 --> 00:26:26.089 And JC petty going bankrupt is the latest inclination of that. GCPENNY tried 429 00:26:26.089 --> 00:26:30.609 to turn around their business and go to it an everyday low pricing model. 430 00:26:30.049 --> 00:26:33.799 They brought in the guy who ran apple stores to go and try to fix 431 00:26:33.839 --> 00:26:37.400 it. He only last he lasted less than less than eighteen months. The 432 00:26:37.559 --> 00:26:41.359 even less than a year before he got fired because they couldn't stop the discounting. 433 00:26:41.799 --> 00:26:44.680 But that discounty events. It drove the cut the business under we know 434 00:26:44.799 --> 00:26:48.230 discounty is a bad idea. People understand that the short term feedback you're going 435 00:26:48.269 --> 00:26:51.750 to get on discount he is always going to be amazingly pop you want to 436 00:26:51.750 --> 00:26:53.470 get a boost in your sales this week, run a fifty percent discounting your 437 00:26:53.470 --> 00:26:57.309 product and your sales will go through the roof and we know now that's not 438 00:26:57.470 --> 00:27:00.390 good. Even though it's so the data tells us. The short term impact 439 00:27:00.390 --> 00:27:04.220 data says it's great, but we know from long term experience with other companies, 440 00:27:04.259 --> 00:27:07.220 we know that's a terrible, terrible idea. There are lots more examples 441 00:27:07.259 --> 00:27:11.579 of that. And the longer year in business then we're judgment you have in 442 00:27:11.619 --> 00:27:14.019 the more you read, the more you learn about things, you can start 443 00:27:14.019 --> 00:27:18.009 using your own judgment and there to replace short term feedback problems. So if 444 00:27:18.089 --> 00:27:23.569 we want to accelerate having good judgment, would you recommend just increasing your intake 445 00:27:23.609 --> 00:27:27.690 of case studies? Maybe I have a chapter, but that to the problem 446 00:27:27.730 --> 00:27:32.400 with case that think it's there's no real again, there's no real good answer 447 00:27:32.440 --> 00:27:33.640 this other than making the more you're aware, the more you read, the 448 00:27:33.680 --> 00:27:37.079 more you're aware of stuff. How do you how does someone get smart while 449 00:27:37.079 --> 00:27:41.119 it's not just going doing workbooks but how to do math right? It's a 450 00:27:41.759 --> 00:27:45.190 it's a lifelong learning process and there's no real easy answer. You can you 451 00:27:45.589 --> 00:27:51.109 read case studies. The problem with case studies is case studies are horribly proproven 452 00:27:51.150 --> 00:27:56.710 by Halo Effects, and so the companies that are that we're successful. Whoever 453 00:27:56.750 --> 00:27:59.579 rates the case studies goes and shows like all the stuff they were doing probably 454 00:27:59.619 --> 00:28:03.700 drove that success and that you dive into all these things when the chances are 455 00:28:03.740 --> 00:28:07.940 what drove success was something isoteric that may not even be listed in what that 456 00:28:07.019 --> 00:28:11.299 case study is. And so trying to tease apart what the meanwhile fit cupies 457 00:28:11.299 --> 00:28:14.609 it fail. They'll go back and look at what they failed and they'll show 458 00:28:14.849 --> 00:28:17.930 they could be doing all the same things as the companies are successful and it 459 00:28:18.009 --> 00:28:21.529 comes the opposite. A lesson from the case study. The best example of 460 00:28:21.569 --> 00:28:26.210 that is things like Netflix. So netflix offers unlimited vacation for their employees. 461 00:28:26.329 --> 00:28:27.480 They're one of the first companies to do it. They wrote a hundred and 462 00:28:27.599 --> 00:28:33.039 ten page document about their whole like culture and how they run their culture. 463 00:28:33.039 --> 00:28:37.480 People saw that case study and said, Oh, unlimited vacation, that's a 464 00:28:37.599 --> 00:28:40.599 great thing and encourages people to like work when they need to work, driving 465 00:28:40.640 --> 00:28:44.829 impact rather than driving number of hours worked and Bob Blah. Now you see 466 00:28:44.869 --> 00:28:51.069 all these tech companies offering unlimited vacation, but that unlimited acation was part of 467 00:28:51.109 --> 00:28:53.549 a package of stuff that Netflix was doing, not just an isolated thing, 468 00:28:55.230 --> 00:28:57.180 and so you could read a case at to try to figure what all those 469 00:28:57.180 --> 00:29:00.299 other things were. But at the end of the day, like Netflix, 470 00:29:00.339 --> 00:29:06.500 had a fairly unique culture that you can try to duplicate it by following all 471 00:29:06.539 --> 00:29:08.180 the rules in a hundred ten page document, but we all know that's not 472 00:29:08.259 --> 00:29:11.529 how you build a culture. Our culture is like starts in the beginning and 473 00:29:11.569 --> 00:29:15.210 builds up, and unlimited vacation work in Netflix is culture. It's not, 474 00:29:15.210 --> 00:29:18.009 doesn't mean it's going to work in yours. The reason why Google is success 475 00:29:18.130 --> 00:29:21.089 was not because they offer free lunches to their employees. It's because they built 476 00:29:21.089 --> 00:29:25.680 an awesome search engine and monetize it in incredibly efficient Dutch auction. Yeah, 477 00:29:25.680 --> 00:29:27.480 if you could build a next incredible search engine and money has with a great 478 00:29:27.480 --> 00:29:30.119 Dutch auction, you can probably do as well as Google. But giving you 479 00:29:30.160 --> 00:29:33.000 all your employees free lunches are not going to give you google level success, 480 00:29:33.599 --> 00:29:37.319 right. I mean it's always a mixture and combination and things and from what 481 00:29:37.400 --> 00:29:41.069 I'm hearing from you, it sounds like really like a steady diet of all 482 00:29:41.150 --> 00:29:47.589 kinds of marketing materials, case studies, books, watching what people are doing. 483 00:29:47.829 --> 00:29:49.670 So just being paying attention to what's going on around you and really just 484 00:29:49.710 --> 00:29:56.099 applying critical thinking to what their incentive to say things are, right things, 485 00:29:56.180 --> 00:29:59.940 publish things, and then just using your best judgment from there. Yeah, 486 00:29:59.940 --> 00:30:02.700 it's not a short game. It's really just trying to use your best judgment 487 00:30:02.740 --> 00:30:06.740 and expose yourself to as many things over a long period of time as possible, 488 00:30:06.779 --> 00:30:08.690 as well as working with your hands to learn yourself. I think that 489 00:30:08.809 --> 00:30:12.730 that's a big piece. was doing the stuff and, like learn by doing. 490 00:30:14.329 --> 00:30:15.809 That's how you're going to learn. So we all, we all. 491 00:30:15.849 --> 00:30:18.690 Anyone who's a practitioner marketing knows that you did. Anyone who's feels like they're 492 00:30:18.690 --> 00:30:22.160 a good practitioner marketing, those they did not get good by whatever they took 493 00:30:22.200 --> 00:30:26.359 in college. That's not how you got good at marketing. You got good 494 00:30:26.400 --> 00:30:30.240 by doing it, and I think part of its understanding your own biases and 495 00:30:30.440 --> 00:30:33.119 just recognizing that they exist and you're not going to be able to eliminate them, 496 00:30:33.759 --> 00:30:37.470 but the more you can recognize them, the less likely you are to 497 00:30:37.829 --> 00:30:40.509 fall prey to them. In a really, really bad you're going to fall 498 00:30:40.589 --> 00:30:44.710 prey to them. Everyone is, but you want to try to mitigate the 499 00:30:44.789 --> 00:30:48.150 worst, the worst elements of falling prey to them and at the same time 500 00:30:48.190 --> 00:30:51.259 keep yourself busy by figuring it all the basic stuff that you need to do. 501 00:30:51.859 --> 00:30:53.779 Keep coming back to that. But like looking to paid search, example. 502 00:30:53.859 --> 00:30:57.140 So I paid search. So many companies want to use fancy AI, 503 00:30:57.380 --> 00:31:02.819 to use predictive learning, to target by customer and so on. The Way 504 00:31:02.900 --> 00:31:07.130 to do paid search is if the customer types in red umbrellas in Seattle, 505 00:31:08.009 --> 00:31:11.809 you want to show an ad. You want you want to have an ad 506 00:31:11.930 --> 00:31:15.890 running that targets that keyword and then your ad should read we sell red umbrellas 507 00:31:15.930 --> 00:31:18.720 in Seattle, and hit them on the landing page. It sells right umbrellas 508 00:31:18.720 --> 00:31:22.160 in Seattle and like that's not rocket science at all. But if you're if 509 00:31:22.200 --> 00:31:26.359 you're only selling randombells and Seattle, that's probably pretty easy to do. But 510 00:31:26.519 --> 00:31:30.559 if you're selling a hundred different products in a thousand different cities, in a 511 00:31:30.599 --> 00:31:36.190 hundred different colors, all of a sudden you're at a million keywords and the 512 00:31:36.509 --> 00:31:38.670 hard part, just like we talked about in Seo, is okay, how 513 00:31:38.710 --> 00:31:42.630 do you build a taxonomy that targets a million keywords and an efficient way that 514 00:31:42.710 --> 00:31:48.859 you can monitor and cleaning out the garbage that happens along the way and rolling 515 00:31:48.900 --> 00:31:52.619 up the results in a way that you can actually measure the results, because 516 00:31:52.380 --> 00:31:55.819 you know if you have a million keywords, most your words are going to 517 00:31:55.859 --> 00:31:57.059 get clicked on any even months this. You need to have a way to 518 00:31:57.220 --> 00:32:00.730 a taxonomy that builds them into groupings you can learn from them. That's a 519 00:32:00.890 --> 00:32:05.690 hard thing and it's lots of work. Ninety percent of companies are not doing 520 00:32:05.730 --> 00:32:08.009 it. Ninety percent of marketing vendors are not doing it. Rather than trying 521 00:32:08.049 --> 00:32:13.769 to do something new and fancy and may or may not be hit by one 522 00:32:13.769 --> 00:32:16.079 of your biases, that's a thing you should do, and so that's that's 523 00:32:16.079 --> 00:32:19.559 going to keep you busy for the next three months off, if you need 524 00:32:19.599 --> 00:32:22.559 to do it, or more. There's so many simple things you can do 525 00:32:22.640 --> 00:32:25.960 that keep yourself busy that you shouldn't that's that could solve your even if you 526 00:32:27.000 --> 00:32:29.759 have if you have all sorts of terrible bias beliefs, if you do all 527 00:32:29.799 --> 00:32:31.029 the basic stuff, you're not gonna have time to go and execute your terrible 528 00:32:31.029 --> 00:32:35.029 bias police. You can focus on the basics. There you go, go 529 00:32:35.150 --> 00:32:37.990 back to the basics, execute what you know you need to do and not 530 00:32:37.029 --> 00:32:42.269 chase the new fancy thing. So many, so many things to fix that 531 00:32:43.109 --> 00:32:45.740 are going to solve a lot of your your problems. Even the phone call 532 00:32:45.819 --> 00:32:50.619 one you mentioned earlier was like an obvious one that I remember, remember thinking 533 00:32:50.700 --> 00:32:52.299 heavily about before. I'm like, if we could just call them faster, 534 00:32:52.460 --> 00:32:55.740 I think that would make the difference. Intuitively, you start to see these 535 00:32:55.779 --> 00:33:00.410 things and know that there's those are the big gains or where the big gains 536 00:33:00.450 --> 00:33:04.569 are. So and I think Paul Paul Graham, the founder of why combinator, 537 00:33:05.089 --> 00:33:07.250 to a study ones where he's looking at all these different companies and some 538 00:33:07.329 --> 00:33:09.410 of them became successful and some of them didn't. He was looking to find 539 00:33:09.450 --> 00:33:13.880 metrics to whether things early on that could predict whether they were successful or not, 540 00:33:14.319 --> 00:33:16.680 and one of the see that he found was he looked at how long 541 00:33:16.799 --> 00:33:21.279 it took them to respond to one of his initial emails and then and then 542 00:33:21.319 --> 00:33:25.720 whether that predicted future success. And the companies that were successful tended to respond 543 00:33:25.759 --> 00:33:30.829 to his emails within minutes and the ones that were unsuccessful tend to respond to 544 00:33:30.869 --> 00:33:32.829 his emails within days. It was a good walk. Two orders of magnitude 545 00:33:32.869 --> 00:33:37.390 different between the successful companies in the unsuccessful companies. Like speed and responsiveness is 546 00:33:37.430 --> 00:33:43.460 one of those things that is easily said but hard to execute on or and 547 00:33:43.660 --> 00:33:45.779 it makes a big difference. Wow. I mean, if there's one tactic 548 00:33:45.819 --> 00:33:49.940 to go back it's thinking about that one thing they could probably started thinking about 549 00:33:50.140 --> 00:33:52.619 going and executing today. That will take a long time to actually get right. 550 00:33:53.460 --> 00:33:55.650 I know it would be for us if we started trying to think about 551 00:33:55.650 --> 00:34:00.690 how fast we can get back to our own contact forms and phone calls coming 552 00:34:00.769 --> 00:34:02.369 in. It can be difficult. And then the first episode that is just 553 00:34:02.450 --> 00:34:06.049 tracking it right, so building up the reporting that functionalities. You can look 554 00:34:06.049 --> 00:34:07.570 at it every day. We one of the things we did at the place 555 00:34:07.610 --> 00:34:10.480 your mom is we've pulled that report every day and we looked at how long 556 00:34:10.559 --> 00:34:15.599 did it take us to call back leads yesterday? How is our our seamlessness 557 00:34:15.639 --> 00:34:17.079 of the process? We headed off from like our call center team to our 558 00:34:17.079 --> 00:34:20.400 sales team? How long did it take to be able to do to hot 559 00:34:20.440 --> 00:34:23.199 transfer basis and we went call by call in the morning to fire why did 560 00:34:23.239 --> 00:34:25.150 it take us so long in this one? Why did it take a so 561 00:34:25.269 --> 00:34:28.789 long on that one? And each time you do that you find you got 562 00:34:28.829 --> 00:34:30.349 down a rabbit hole stuff you need to fix in your operations to make sure 563 00:34:30.349 --> 00:34:34.949 it doesn't happen again. Well, fantastic, Edward. Thank you so much 564 00:34:34.989 --> 00:34:38.380 for joining me on BB growth today. Working the audience. Go to learn 565 00:34:38.380 --> 00:34:43.579 more about you and your book. Marketing BS. Subscribe to my newsletter. 566 00:34:43.659 --> 00:34:47.820 So Marketing bscom or marketing BS DOT substackcom. I put out a new newsletter 567 00:34:47.860 --> 00:34:52.260 every Tuesday. There's nothing to buy, I don't sell anything. I'm just 568 00:34:52.380 --> 00:34:57.289 trying to create this community of people who are striving to find the truth, 569 00:34:57.449 --> 00:35:00.650 and so every week I just take something that happened in the news, either 570 00:35:00.690 --> 00:35:04.289 marketing related non marketing related, and try to figure out what was actually going 571 00:35:04.409 --> 00:35:07.239 on and what the real drivers were and what we can learn about it in 572 00:35:07.320 --> 00:35:12.599 marketing. So I have a professional editor. I'm spending money on this thing. 573 00:35:13.159 --> 00:35:16.039 I'm not making any money of this thing and I'm just trying to give 574 00:35:16.119 --> 00:35:20.079 me great satisfaction that the people are enjoying. I think we have a twentyzero 575 00:35:20.239 --> 00:35:22.750 subscribers or so so far, and love to have more pole joint mom certainly 576 00:35:22.829 --> 00:35:25.670 going to go and sign up all right after this. Again, thanks for 577 00:35:25.710 --> 00:35:29.349 joining me on the show today and thank you for listening. To be to 578 00:35:29.389 --> 00:35:35.780 be gross, it's sweetfish. We're on a mission to create the most helpful 579 00:35:35.820 --> 00:35:39.260 content on the Internet for every job, function and industry on the planet. 580 00:35:39.739 --> 00:35:44.539 For the BB marketing industry, this show is how we're executing on that mission. 581 00:35:44.900 --> 00:35:46.940 If you know a marketing leader that would be an awesome guest for this 582 00:35:47.059 --> 00:35:51.650 podcast. Shoot me a text message. Don't call me because I don't answer 583 00:35:51.690 --> 00:35:54.289 unknown numbers, but text me at four hundred and seven for and I know 584 00:35:54.690 --> 00:35:58.809 three and thirty two eight. Just shoot me their name, maybe a link 585 00:35:58.849 --> 00:36:01.090 to their linked in profile, and I'd love to check them out to see 586 00:36:01.130 --> 00:36:04.400 if we can get them on the show. Thanks a lot.