The Web Marketing Insights Podcast
The Web Marketing Insights Podcast
How Storytelling and Data Affect Your Conversion Optimization
Joe Martin, CEO, Martin Creative
Dan Ritzke, Founder, Third Act Marketing
Chris Bonney, VP of Strategy, Gulo
Zach Wilson, Partner, Gulo
Hi everybody. Thanks for joining us today. I'm Chris with Gullo solutions and this is the web of marketing insights podcast. Very special episode today. Zach and I have a couple of great guests that we're just super excited to have with us. One is Dan Ritzke from third act marketing. Dan, thanks for being with us. And Joe. Uh, we have Joe Martin from Martin creative. Happy to have you here. Joe, thanks for joining us.
Joe Martin:Does anyone really ever have Joe Martin? All right, we'll go with that. Let's go with it.
Chris Bonney:Appreciate it. So we're here to talk about today a storytelling, digital marketing conversion rate optimization, covering a lot of ground. And how did the, how do these things overlap and how as a marketer listening to this podcast, how can you know what's important to take away from this? If you haven't heard of conversion rate optimization, then this is a perfect podcast for you because it is a very important topic as a marketer to know. If you are familiar with that and aren't sure maybe what your next steps are, today's podcast is perfect for you as well. So want to make sure we back this out and just, um, Zach, I want to kick it over to you and say for those that are just on the podcast saying, you know, I've heard of CRO, I know what it is, but can you just kind of fill me in on what it is and what it isn't as a marketer?
Zach Wilson:Yeah, that's a great question. So what we defined conversion rate optimization is a couple things. For a typical web user, it's something as trivial as engagement, right? You're bringing someone to a page and you want them to do something that can be literally read, that can be click on a button, that can be fill out a lead generation form that can be purchase a product and go into the purchase funnel. So there's there, there's some very high level terms that we break these things down are down as in the science of all those things is actually conversion rate optimization. And what we wanted to try and dissect today a little bit are what is conversion rate optimization one two, because it means something different to everybody. How do you, how do you talk to people about conversion rate optimization? Because when we talked about conversion rate optimization and say that, or CRO, people's eyes just glaze over and we lose them. So never use that term if you're talking with someone, a prospective client, that's number one. And um, and then too like Chris alluded is, is what are the, what are the important aspects of conversion Optor optimization to, um, to marketers and the people that are actually implementing these things. So that's, that's, those are the kind of the ideas that we've been tossing around and that's why we bought, brought in, uh, Joe and Dan to try and pluck these things apart with us today.
Chris Bonney:Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's perfect. Uh, Joe, I want to kick it over to you and can you just let folks that haven't seen you, uh, speak yet or, or seen you on a podcast yet, uh, talk about, you know, your background a little bit and what's led you to focus on this conversion rate optimization thing and why it's so important and something as marketers that we really want to pay attention to.
Joe Martin:Yeah. I started off as a web developer in the field, just learning how to code websites. From there I went to school for design after design school and it started to start my own company. And it's there that all of a sudden I think anyone who starts a company or even freelancers, you start to realize just how much more is involved in building a website in terms of even communication with a client, invoicing everything you need to get across to do if you have people that you're working with, you payroll and taxes, insurance. So started doing all that. And uh, as I was building up, I really heavily got into the sales and the marketing side and I started to realize just how important copy was in those regards and that what you say is so very important. And for a while I actually felt like I wasn't doing companies' justice because I would design them the site and then say, here, go put in all your copy when really it should have been, Hey, what do you want to say? And then we'll design and the site around it. Because what we really want from the site is it to convert it. We want it to actually have you get new customers. And I think that's what makes it so important these days is that this is, this is all we're trying to do. When you spend money on AdWords or SEO, you're just trying to get people to become customers. Well, we kind of lose sight of this idea of, Oh, we're just trying to get them to our website. It's like, no, no, no, we need to get them there. But then we need to convert them. We need to make them take some kind of action and using the data, the analytics behind it. This is CRO is the future. This is where it's headed. Any company that's not looking at conversion rate optimization is already behind.
Chris Bonney:Oh, those are great insights. And Dan, I want to kick it over to you based on what Joe said. He said something about messaging and I think it's a great point to say it's one thing to design a website, but what are you building it for? What do you want it to do and how are you going to say that? So just can you just talk a little bit about your background? I know, you know, you're, you're a marketing, positioning, messaging, you know, uh, a consultant that works with clients all the time and you've seen a wide spectrum of people and companies that have maybe been misguided in the way that they're thinking about the world of marketing. Is it features or benefits or is it about actually the emotional connection that we're trying to make with people? Um, and how does that to converting somebody on your website, cause it feels like such a process workflow based thing, but to Joe's point, um, messaging and how you see what you're saying is so important. So can you just fill us in on your background a little bit, why you think storytelling is such an integral part to what we do, um, from an emotional driven, um, marketing and conversions?
Dan Ritzke:Yeah, definitely. Um, so my background, uh, most of my career I spent working in advertising. Uh, I worked for, uh, ad agencies here in Chicago for a little over 11 years. Um, and, uh, for as long as I can remember, to me, great marketing, effective marketing is always synonymous with great storytelling. Um, you know, a lot of times I think, uh, you know, small businesses all the way up to fortune 500 and 100 companies are kind of fall into a trap of, um, getting into a habit of, you know, uh, using their marketing as, as kind of just a Bullhorn to, uh, communicate, uh, features and benefits and, you know, as a company why we think we're great and why our product is great and how we're different and better than our competitors. And so, you know, we get so used to that over time that, uh, um, uh, about a year ago I decided to start my own company and, uh, to focus in on, uh, consulting and strategy and storytelling to really help companies. Uh, for me it's really just getting back to the basics of, of what makes, uh, um, uh, communicating, uh, effectively, uh, really comes down to with connecting with your audience. And, and for me, the best way to do that is getting back to the basics of, of, of really understanding your audience. Um, uh, figuring out what it is that they, they want. What is it that they need? Uh, figuring out as a, as a company, if you have a product or a service, how was that solving a problem for your audience? And getting really, really clear on, on, you know, it's not about me, it's not about, uh, you know, me as the business owner, it's about my audience. And, um, and the way that I'm going to connect with them is by, uh, is by telling really the best story, uh, that I can, that, that they're going to want to pay attention to. It's going to get their attention and, uh, and it's going to keep their attention. And that's, you know, that's the very first step to getting someone to convert or to take some kind of an action. Um, you know, you're never gonna be able to do that unless you really are able to kind of hook them in. Um, and, and for me, I saw a huge, huge gap kind of, um, in, in, in the marketplace of, of a lot of companies that are not really not really doing that, um, real effectively. And it's, uh, a big missed opportunity. And so I think, you know, storytelling strategy is really synonymous and, and just kind of part of kind of a CRO mindset. And so one of the things that I love that, uh, Daniel touched on there is this idea of you need to talk in the,
Joe Martin:in the voice of the customer. And when I talk about this being kind of the future of what I see is one of the things that I think I love about conversion optimization is it forces you to be empathetic. That as a company you really need to get into the mind of your customer and understand what are they going through? How can I really help them? And then it's forcing you to think more about an individual and less about the dollars, which is just for me. I think that's the biggest thing that we're, we're bringing a little humanity back into marketing here.
Chris Bonney:No, that's excellent. Absolutely excellent points. Um, and, and Joe, I know that you have, uh, done some research and some, uh, original data that you have and, and, and worked with companies on this and you also have some points to look at and how, you know, I think it's a, you know, five tips to, to do this better. So before we get into that, cause I do want to, um, can you talk about what the, you know, wha what the data is saying it. Do you have examples from your data as to why this is important or what, you know, what some conversion optimization success stories might look like, something like that.
Joe Martin:Yeah, I can run through a couple of them. And I guess the first thing to understand is conversion rate optimization happens and every in multiple places, cause it can happen inside of an email. It can happen on a website. It can happen during a sales call that every single one of those components can be conversions. And so we're kind of looking at things overall. But when we talk specifically about a website, we can use something as simple as AB testing and AB testing. If you're not, you're familiar with it as simple as saying this or that.[inaudible] that's it. And letting people choose this or that and then seeing what happens. And so this is one of the things that I offer for companies is we'll actually go on their website[inaudible] suggestions and run the AB test for them to figure out which one converts higher. And it's amazing how small changes can have such a monumental impact.[inaudible] uh, there's a company we're working with in Chicago. We rewrote the first sentence of the website, which should usually be your unique value proposition. Let's people know who you are, what you do, why they want to work with you. We rewrote that in their call to action and we saw 35% increase in transactions with a Florida company I worked with. We changed two words on her site. All we did was change the call to action, the words on it. And she's like 28% increase in session value. And for a different company here in Chicago, they're a pizza tour in Chicago, which you've never taken a pizza tour where the hell is wrong with you? Go take a pizza tour a but for them, absolutely. I ended up just, yeah, we just, that we rearrange the order, the tours on their home page. So instead of it looking like the price was going up from 89 to 119 to one 59, we switched it. So actually put the most expensive tour first. And so it looked like the prices were actually going down as you looked at more of the tours and that ended up seeing a 40% uplift in revenue that just, that this is what we're optimizing for, that we're not trying to optimize a trick, we're trying to just make things easier for you to understand so you can really understand the value of what you're getting.
Chris Bonney:[inaudible] you know, um, just something that just dawned to me, Joe's, you're talking about this and your background as a designer too. So we've talked about copy, we talked about storytelling a little bit in calls to action, but what about just design, uh, you know, have a page in. How important is that, if at all? I, it feels like it probably is, but can you just talk a little bit about that in his, or even a way to maybe talk about that hierarchically, you know, copy versus design, you know, versus page flow. I mean, what, you know, the psychology of the user, how do those things play into, into that?
Joe Martin:That's where we talked about a little bit earlier that I feel like a lot of companies, especially web companies like to do this thing where they just find a template online, move around some stuff, handed over to a client and say, here, plug in your information.
Zach Wilson:When really they're, they're just guessing it, which should be on that homepage. And what a lot of sites lack is a sales narrative. They don't, they don't understand actually how they're taking someone through this, that if you start to look at your website as a real person, you get to control everything in that person says what they're wearing, what they look like. You get to dress up your sales, they can say what they need to and make sure that they're saying the right things at the right time. And that design aspect should be helping to compliment. Is it, I don't want you to pick a picture because you thought it looked like a good picture. I want you to pick that picture because people in that pizza tour wondered how much pizza am I going to eat? And you can show them in a picture how much pizza they get in one setting. If we can use images and design to address objections and provide more information and not just, might just show pretty pictures.
Dan Ritzke:Yeah. And actually one, one thing I'll add to that too is, um, you know, I, I've never, um, you know, I, I don't have a design background that's never been anything that, uh, uh, that I've, I've focused on. I've always, you know, partnered with really, you know, smart, talented people. But one thing that I do help a lot of my clients with is, is to understand, for example, your homepage. You know, someone who's getting there for the first time. As a business owner, there's a whole lot of stuff that we want people to know about, whether we want to communicate a lot of stuff about[inaudible] our product and our people and our history and everything that makes us great. The stuff that you know, that we know inside. Um, but you know, a lot of times that is not the stuff that is going to convert those, those prospects when they get to your sites. So you have to kind of, again, it's a, comes back to what Joe was saying about empathy. I mean, you have to really understand kind of the mindset of the person coming to your site and knowing I'm gonna, you know, give them just enough to get them to take that next step, whatever that next step is. Um, and, and there's a bunch of, you know, a bunch of stuff that you're going to want to share and you're going to have content and other places on your site where, you know, we're, uh, you know, has a PA had time in a place where people will go, you know, seek out that information. But, uh, when it comes to the experience and, uh, you know, uh, the, you know, that stuff that the customers are interacting with, um, you know, keep it simple, keep it, uh, you know, not a ton of copy, not even a ton of design, really just, it's, it's giving them just the information they need to, uh, uh, to take that next step. And that's, um, you know, what that next step is, is a big part of the strategy of, of just, uh, uh, keeping it simple and just literally your job is to kind of get that person from point a to point B. Sorry,
Zach Wilson:G rated. It's simple, stupid kiss. Mmm. So on. On that note, piggybacking off of Joe and Dan, I heard this, uh, interesting analogy just recently about empathy and sales and putting yourself in someone's shoes with regard to CRO. And[inaudible] really hit home for me because I was, I've been, I'm sure all of us have been on both sides of this. Once I tell it, it's the trade show analogy, right? You're walking down, you're walking, you're on the exhibit floor of a trade show, you're walking down one of the aisles and you're looking, you're looking, you're looking, and you've got all of these vultures, right? Trying to jump out at you and you're just like, wait, all I want to do is see what you're doing to see if it fits me right. And, and the, the parallel for a website[inaudible] and along this line of empathy and building pages or sites that convert are having this empathy and not being a vulture, right? So the vulture is the website, as Joe just said, is that that pace sign up for demo all over the site and just jumping down your throat when they really haven't, when you really haven't done anything to lead the user to down that path, to really get them to do that demo or sign up for the free product. And it's, and it's about, it's about that journey and giving them little samples and nuggets so that they can understand and learn and take a peek and figure out if they want to demo or try the free product or even purchase. So it's, it's, it is a lot about understanding, putting yourself in your, uh, your user customer's shoes, building that empathy. But, uh, you know, again, I'll just go out on record and don't be a vulture like that, you know, try and try and be a little bit more subtle and a little bit more tactical about what you're trying to do. So, um, you can try and tease the user a bit.
Joe Martin:Yeah. My, my theory there is that there's only probably three to five things. Do you need to say to someone to get them to take that next action now? Yes, there's absolutely variances and if you're trying to sell something, there's probably certain things you'd say to sell the price point matters. But it comes down to to those one or two sentences in both Zack and Dan hit on this that Dan said, person Zach said, user and thinking singularly is such a big component of it and it's just learn how to sell one customer or my favorite Claude Hopkins quotes, learn how to sell the one before you try to sell the thousands, figure it all the way out and that you want to say so much. And one of the things that a lot of companies do is they put on their site, they start their sentences with we, and I'm sure you probably see this a lot. This is what we do. We do this. Then they refer to themselves into the third person just to change it up so they don't have to refer to themselves as weak. And then in the next sentence, it started with the word us. All the same things. Start those sentences with the word you instead. And it's this nice little sub trick that all of a sudden you start writing the sentence for the customer. You write it in the way that they're going to read it instead of writing and how you want to say it.
Chris Bonney:Know. That's great. It's a great point in Dan, I want to kick this over to you to just layer on top of this, the psychology between the implicit explicit and philosophical aspects of storytelling and how, you know, however you want to talk it through, whether you do it anecdotally or just talk it through. But you know, I think that's really layers nicely under what Joe's talking about is, you know, uh, the, in the mind of the user, the customer, whatever we want to say. There are these three things at play and so would you mind giving us a thumbnail of that? Sure. Yeah. I mean I, how much time do we have? I could, I could probably talk for a couple of hours on this. This is sort of like the stuff I nerd out on, right? Um, so yes, storytelling is, um, you know, there's an art and a science to it.
Dan Ritzke:Um, and, and all of it's rooted in, you know, 2000 years of, of evidence that storytelling is the best way to, uh, to communicate with someone and to get their attention and to captivate them and to, um, and to get them to sort of forget all this stuff that, you know, distracts us, um, every day of, every second of every day. Really. Um, and so it's kind of, yeah, it's the art and a science. So the, it's really interesting. The, you know, the human brain has a couple dominant functions. One is like, just to help us survive and, and to, uh, keep us from, you know, burning too many calories, whether it's, uh, you know, reading a book or, uh, you know, watching a movie or, um, literally, uh, you know, doing something at work. We're exhausted sometimes. And, and it's only because we've been thinking about stuff. And, um, and so, you know, the second we are, you know, communicating a message or telling a story or, uh, you know, talking about a product or a service and that it starts to get confusing or it starts to get complicated or we're maybe all over the place. Um, or it's not like the stuff we were just talking about. It's not written about our audience or for our audience. Um, people catch onto that really quickly and they tune it out. And it's almost a subconscious thing that, you know, their brains are telling them this is not worth our time. Like we should, we should move on to something different. Um, and so that's, that's sort of the, that's the kind of the science of it. And then the art of storytelling is, um, is, is, uh, sort of the practice of keeping you, you know, your message as, you know, as simple as you can possibly get it, use the fewest amount of words. I mean, it's, it, it is an art form to tell a story in a single headline or in a few sentences. Um, and so when you can do that, it's the best of both worlds. You're, you know, you're not making people work too hard. Uh, you're communicating that message. It's about your audience. Um, and, and you know, those are all the things you need if you're trying to, uh, really, really quickly and efficiently, uh, uh, convert people. Yeah.
Joe Martin:So when I go, when I go through that with people and we talk about making it simple and getting the phrasing down correctly, that Dan, I know you've had this challenge of trying to work people into it. Mine is always, I make them explain it to my grandmother and I want you to tell me in a way that my grandmother understands what you're saying and what you do. She doesn't understand it. We're out.[inaudible] too complicated.
Chris Bonney:Yeah, no, it's a great, it's a great point. And I want to get Zach's opinion on something. Uh, Joe, I think you did know if we're going back to the CRO, so what we've talked about so far is saying, here's what CRO is, here's the value of it, here's how it's applied. Here's how storytelling and copywriting and CTHS design even are a part of it. But let's get just super practical. Are there things that you can tell people or you do tell people about CRO that they can just take away today and uh, and apply. And then I'd like to, you know, maybe do a couple and then I'd like to get Zach's opinion on that as well on what you're saying. Yeah.[inaudible]
Zach Wilson:yeah. Well, let's take a page out of what everybody is saying here. Um, and I think there's been some very practical advice given, uh, and, and we haven't said the star clients, but I think, you know, explain it to me. Like I'm, your grandmother is a great one. Um, and that needs to be put on, um, on a page for sure. Uh, practical, uh, advice. Tip number two is, um, is, is like Dan said, is keep it simple. You know, keep these, keep the page simple, keep, uh, keep everything very simple and easy. And with that should be fast of course. Um, and then from a more executionary step, and this is something I know Joe does and we do as well in terms of how you're looking at analyzing these things. It doesn't have to be, and I've, I've actually read a lot of people on how they do this. It doesn't, the, the testing, these things doesn't have to be super complicated. Come up with a couple of different hypothesis as to eh, take a page, for example, your homepage or a key landing page. Take a couple hypotheses of, of what is what users are doing and make a couple, make a couple changes and pass them over to your web team and see what happens over a small course of time. You know, if you've got a lot of traffic, a couple of weeks, if you don't have a lot of traffic, it might be a couple of months. But if it's, if a page[inaudible] uh, or uh, uh, an inter page landing page or your homepage is not doing what you want, change it and don't wait.
Joe Martin:Okay. That's okay.[inaudible] that they even know if it's doing what they want it to. There's yes. I think a lot of people go into it and they don't understand the end result they're trying to get. There's always one of the first things we need to know what we want to measure before we started looking for the data to figure out. We're trying to measure. So getting, getting some of those other things in place. Uh, to add into your bullet points. Mmm. A few that I always promote are things that I've seen on a lot of sites is this idea that you need to write sales copy instead of bullshit. Yes. Don't give me the crap about your company. Actually write sales copy. I want you to address someone's objections, which are their reasons. They're saying no to buying. I want you to touch on their fears. Why are they afraid to buy from you? Talk about those things. Talk about more in that phrase. That's everyone. Write sales copy instead of BS. Number two is to proudly display your unique value proposition is Dan just talked about trying to get it down to one sentence and one sentence should tell me what you do. So my grandmother understands it and then tells me why I want to work with you, why I want to buy what you have. Now, one of the best ones I've seen as a company in San Francisco called Dylan's tours and their unique value proposition and says many bikes and mini bikes and electric bike tours to help you see the most iconic sites of San Francisco in one day. I know what you can do, mini bus, electric bike touring. I know why I want to take this because I want to see it and you can get it down to that. You were in fantastic shape and that should be the first sentence on your website cause we want to, we want to lower someone's guard when they get there. And we talked a little bit earlier about throwing too much at you, the vultures just jumping at you. The first thing someone wants to know is what the hell do you do and why do I even want this? So probably displayed that UVP. Number two. Yes, it's proper call to actions. Understand what next someone wants to take at that point. Uh, one site that I saw online, they had about five different items you could add to the cart.[inaudible] for them was a visitor badge for three 99 and another one was uh, I think like a stencil set or something for eight 99. And the third one was a 79,000,$999 machine. You're not adding an$80,000 machine to your cart. She's the right call, the recharter to talk to a representative. So you use the right call to action. So if you are writing styles, copy instead of DX, if you have that UVP out there, if you're using proper CTA is the only other thing you need to cover. Lead magnets, which is just something to capture someone when they get there, give them something in exchange for their email address. You're in good shape. Final tip. Okay, keep listening. It doesn't stop. We know, I think Dan does, especially Zach. I know you're not Chris. We all do this. It never stops. There's no, there's no point that we, we finish a project and we go[inaudible] cool. It's done. Never happens. It's always evolving. Yeah, great points. Really good points. And so I thought maybe we could do now is have sort of a lightning round of things.
Chris Bonney:I'll start it out, but just, you know, within the topics that we've covered today, uh, each of us may be go around, we'll go Joe, Dan, Zack, I'll start and just maybe give one website, maybe two or a blog or a person to follow, um, that, that I think people can take away. Maybe they didn't, haven't heard of it, and they want to learn more. And it's a place that we can guide them. Places that we've learned ourselves. I'll start, you talked about copywriting, a sales, copywriting, so copy hackers, I don't know if you guys are familiar with, right? Just the best. Uh, and if you don't know who copy hackers is and you're in a small to midsize business and you're a marketer and you're wondering what we mean when we say write marketing and sales copy, that's an amazing place to start. Um, so I'll throw that one out based on what you said.
Joe Martin:Joe said you want to share your, yeah, I have second copy hackers folder. That would have been my second choice. And I've actually had the chance to meet Joanna Wiebe a couple of times and just amazing. It just seems amazing. Yeah. Yeah. So, and I met her at the conversion XL conference down in Austin, which is my big one I'm going to push is a site called conversion xl.com. And they have an agency where they actually do conversion optimization, but then they're really big about teaching, paying it forward. And they host an amazing conference every year that's coming up the first week in April of 2020 this year.[inaudible] I'll be there, come hang out, let's go learn conversion stuff. I've learned so much from conversion XL, from their online courses, their blogs and then also going to the conferences. Yeah. So yeah, I would um, throw out, um, I think Joe and I talked about this one time and I tend to tell a lot of people, uh, uh, building a StoryBrand is a really great, uh,
Dan Ritzke:um, I have, my gosh, it's, it's a, it's a whole company now. They used to. It's a, Donald Miller is a really brilliant guy. Got his start in screenwriting. I mean he was an author, he wrote books and then wrote a book building a StoryBrand, which is all about, uh, storytelling and marketing. And, uh, really just getting back to the basics of a lot of the stuff that we just, um, we just talked about. And, uh, and so it's really a great book. And, and their whole, you know, website and company that they've kind of built around it is just, uh, uh, great for businesses of any size. If you're a small business or just getting sort of introduced to this in a world of, of marketing and conversion rate optimization. Uh, it's great. And then, you know, even for sort of larger, well-established, uh, brands is such a great sort of like get back to the basics, um, uh, kind of, uh, an experience at a website and a company and, um, and it's a, a great resource for people, you know, and I would, uh, I would definitely second that one for me.
Chris Bonney:What I thought was the most interesting about that is that there is a framework, right? It's not a formula. It's not formulaic that you can just throw against something and everything's gonna work, but to read that book and understand what they do, and is it seven steps, I think, um, of telling the hero story and who needs to be involved in the hero's story in, are you the company, the hero? No, you're the guide. And I think that in and of itself is just sort of a paradigm shift that if you haven't thought about it that way, right. Um, uh, then, then it's, it is a really eyeopening kind of a thing. Uh, so with za with that, Zack, um, what's your recommendation?
Zach Wilson:Um, mine are mostly podcasts. I'm actually, uh, I'm more of a, uh, an oral, uh, listener. Um, there's, uh, there's a couple that are actually about, uh, digital and sales, sales funnel, mystery, um, conversion rate experts and um, target, uh, I think it's called target our experts, which is also about a lot about the analytics side of uh, uh, Google mop, optimize and, um, Google analytics, which are, uh, mainstays for us personally. And um, those are, those are great. They're always, there's always like a great anecdote, tips and great stories and a lot of the high, high level things that we've been talking about, uh, today, uh, in, in, in those, in those specific podcasts. And then, um, uh, yeah, so
Chris Bonney:those are, those are a couple of mine. Yeah. All great stuff. So as we wrap up today, and this has been just a great conversation, um, I just want to go around to each person. Um, Dan, we'll start with you. Uh, any other things that you want to just share with folks, um, and say, Hey, when it comes to this stuff, here's, I wanted you to take away from today and take with you. Yeah, I mean, I think the, for me, the biggest thing is a lot of what we're talking about is, uh, is when you really break it down. It's getting back to a lot of the basics. Uh, I think it can be tempting for people to get a little carried away and get overwhelmed with I'm okay, Oh, CRO, there's this whole brand new way of thinking that I have to now like get on board.
Dan Ritzke:And if I don't, I'm gonna get left behind. And, um, and, and while it might feel that way, I think, uh, I think a lot of what we're talking about is just getting back to the basics and, and, uh, creating really, really, uh, simple, effective, uh, marketing communications. I think Joe was one that said it. It's not, um, it is very much, I think important for, you know, a website to, um, to kind of, uh, have all this stuff be top of mind. But, um, it's across the board. I think it's all about making it really simple for your, for your customers, for your audience, and, uh, really understanding them of, of what they're trying to accomplish. And, and how we as marketers can get them from point a to point B and, and remove as much friction as possible along the way. So, uh, for me it all kind of comes down to that and uh, um, and, and I, and I, and I hope people kind of understand it's not as, as overwhelming as it might seem cause it's really, yeah, to me it's just a reminder of getting back to a lot of the basics.
Joe Martin:I'm going to go off good idea. The basics that I usually break it back down to are the two fundamentals of business that I feel like we all heard as children. And then as we start companies we just ignore it. Number one, know yourself. Number two, know your customer. And we skipped over this. Knowing the customer is where I want you to intimately know that. I want you to know what your customer ate for dinner last night. Where did they go? Why does it go there? How many miles did they have to feed? What do they drive to go pick up dinner? How'd they pay for it? Like the more you can know about that and the more you understand about where are your product or service fits and how it can help them the most. So I'm going to second this idea of getting back to basics. Know yourself, know your costs.
Zach Wilson:Yeah. And just piggybacking off of that, once you, once you know all of those things, you can, um, you can tactically strategize against them, right? Like, I mean, that's the, that's the actual executionary side of it as you can. Like Dan said, you can write a copy that's speaks to their pains. Uh, you can design and lay out pages that, uh, that, that, that help them solve their problems. So yeah, I mean, this, this, this idea of getting back to basics is, is, is, is really, really, really important. But you do need to also take it that extra step and that extra mile and be measuring, like, you have to, you have to know what you're looking at. You can't just, you can't just go into your, uh, your Shopify site and say, Oh, I sold, you know,$5,000 this month. Right. Like, it's not that, it's not that simple. Like, yeah, that's awesome. You did, that's sweet. But you could have sold 50, maybe, you know, or, um, you know, we had a, uh, we, we refer to this a lot. We did a project last year. Uh, this is, you'll love this when Joe, we did a project last year, um, mid, mid, mid last year for a, an organization and they had a directive to, uh, collect some more first party data, right? Like pretty, pretty easy, seemingly. Like they had, they had been collecting first party data for, I dunno, like three or four years. They only had a few, you know, a few thousand records. But we, when we went across the site and sort of broke apart the site and injected a bunch of CTA[inaudible] with, uh, with well-formed copy and well-formed, um, a CTA copy and we took what they had collected over the past three years and we collect, we doubled that in six weeks. And so, eh, I mean it was these, these little things that you can do. And you know, the biggest thing there was like, we gave them[inaudible] the, uh, our client, the, the, uh, the tools and the data to go back to there, um, the higher ups and say, Hey, look what these guys are doing. Look what we're doing now. And th these, it's interesting too, cause we're all in client services, right? Like you need, you need people on the client side to advocate for you. So you, you need to give them the tools to meet their objectives, right? Like they're, they're hiring you or they're hiring us or whomever because they've got a problem and we've got to give them, we've got to give them the, the, the information so that they can go back to their, whoever their bosses or whatever and say, yeah, Hey boss, guess what? I just solved our problem. Here it is. Here's the information, right? So, so yes, so at the, at the core of it, we've got to do all these things and getting back to basics and keeping it simple. Um, and talking to our grandmother and putting it in in the simplest of terms. But you've gotta, you've gotta, you've gotta be measuring and you've got to report on that. And I, I, one other thing I learned this from, um, she's not there anymore. I think she's actually the CMO at American heart association now, but she was the COO at a thermos at the time. And, um, she's giving a speech for a AMA and she said, you know, the problem with agencies these days are, and, and, and, and marketing analysts are, you're trying report on too much data, so work with your clients, work with your bosses. And she said, don't track more than whatever your KPIs are, but don't track more than four KPIs at a time for any specific project. Anything else. It's not data as in the problem these days. It's getting data drilled down to a point where you can meet your Goss's goals, you can meet your client's goals, or, um, and, and there's something to actually simple to look at. Again, she's like, there's nothing that drives me more than someone working for me that gives me this mountain of data that then I have to go parse through and sift through and find the answers I want. That all whittled down into four simple reportable elements. And it can, you know, it can be anything can be click through it, it can be engagement, it can be anything, but whatever, whatever project or engagement that you're working on, simplify it, simplify it for yourself and simplify it for your client. Because if you can look at just four things and report on those four things, then you have something to work for. They have something to work for and it's, it's small and it's tactical and it's a digestible, right? So that's uh, that's, that's my takeaway from a[inaudible] today.
Chris Bonney:Yeah, that's great stuff guys. I really excited about what we talked about today on the episode and want to spend a special thank you to Joe and Dan for joining us today on the web marketing insights podcast with Gullo solutions. Me and Zach, we'll see you next time. Appreciate y'all tuning in. I'd love to have you subscribe, uh, below on YouTube and look forward to seeing you all again. Thanks so much. Hi everybody. Thanks for checking out the podcast today. Uh, go to Gullo solutions.com to learn more about us. Subscribe to our newsletter. Uh, also, if you can hit subscribe on our channel here on YouTube, uh, that would be great as well.