June 10, 2025 • 31 mins
“The truth is, when you start checking out other brands, you will start to notice how inconsistent they are. So just by being consistent, you're already ahead of the game.” —Jeff Greenfield.
Most entrepreneurs are drowning in a sea of marketing noise, desperately trying to be heard while burning through limited resources with little measurable return. But the real battle isn't about having the most sophisticated tactics, but about crafting a message so compelling that it cuts through the digital clutter and speaks directly to our ideal customer's deepest desires and unspoken needs.
Jeff Greenfield is the Co-Founder of Provalytics, a cutting-edge analytics platform that transforms how companies measure marketing effectiveness. With decades of experience decoding complex marketing data, Jeff has advised some of the world's largest brands on optimizing their advertising strategies.
Tune in as Justine and Jeff expound on marketing analytics, revealing how businesses can leverage historical mathematical techniques, harness the power of digital platforms, and make data-driven decisions that dramatically boost profitability—all while telling a compelling brand story that resonates emotionally with their target audience.
Meet Jeff:
Jeff Greenfield is the Co-Founder and CEO of Provalytics, where he is revolutionizing marketing attribution with privacy-centric, cookie-less solutions tailored to a rapidly evolving digital landscape. With over three decades of expertise in strategy, growth, and marketing innovation, Jeff has a proven track record of building transformative companies and delivering measurable results. At C3 Metrics, which he co-founded, Jeff developed industry-first technologies like the cookie-less identifier. These innovations helped clients such as JP Morgan and Nestlé achieve marketing ROI improvements exceeding 25%.
Jeff’s journey began with his studies in biochemistry at the University of Maryland, where he developed a data-driven approach that has shaped his career. His diverse expertise spans strategic leadership, technology innovation, and creativity, drawing from experiences that include aviation, magic, and healthcare. Today, Jeff leads Provalytics with a commitment to empowering marketers to make smarter, faster decisions that drive measurable impact, helping businesses thrive in a privacy-first world.
Connect with NextGen Purpose:
Episode Highlights:
02:29 Marketing: From Traditional to Digital
07:37 Why Old-School Marketing Techniques Still Work
10:25 Ancient Math Powering Modern AI
14:40 Building Brand Awareness with Limited Budgets
22:58 Navigating Social Media Platforms
26:53 Turning Data into Millions
29:14 Beyond Clicks: Rethinking Marketing Metrics
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Justine Reichman: (00:13):
Good morning, and welcome to Essential
Ingredients. I am Justine, yourpodcast host. I'm so excited
today to have Jeff Greenfield.He has a company called
Provalytics, which is all aboutthe analytics. And for those
that are tuning in that arelooking for inspiration and
looking to build a better foryou innovation or just be in
(00:33):
that space, what better place isthere to go, but to the
analytics? The proof is in thepudding, right? So I want to
welcome our new guests that aretuning in today, whether you're
watching the podcast or tuninginto the videocast. I want to
welcome our guest, Jeff, forjoining us and sharing with him
what he's built in theanalytics, and how it can impact
(00:55):
those that are innovating today,and those that are only just
beginning to research anddevelop what they're going to do
next. So Jeff, welcome to theEssential Ingredients Podcast.
Jeff Greenfield: (01:05):
Well, thank you so much for having me,
Justine. I'm excited to be here.And you're right. When it comes
to analytics, people don'tunderstand how important
measuring and looking at things.For me, before we even get into
the marketing speak, I thinkabout, there's an obsession now.
We all start to understand howimportant sleep is. And if you
(01:27):
wear the Apple Watch at night,it breaks down how long you
sleep, your deep sleep, how muchyou're awake. We don't know what
happens during deep sleepexactly, but we know how
important it is, and we don'trealize that it could be an
issue until we start to measureit when we start to measure when
we realize that maybe we're onlygetting a couple of minutes a
night of deep sleep, and maybethat could be causing some other
(01:49):
problems. Well, now I'm aware ofit. And so now, I at least have
a way that I can measure it tosee if I make changes that they
actually improve. And that'sreally what it's all about
because you can't tracksomething if you're not
measuring it. You need tomeasure it, and then you can
look to improve upon it. Sothat, I think, from a big broad
(02:09):
perspective is really, reallyimportant. And marketing is one
of those things that a lot offolks they tend to forget about,
or they tend to neglect, or theyput way too much emphasis on it.
And so hopefully, we candemystify some of that because
it's really gotten complicatedover the last decade or two.
Justine Reichman: (02:30):
Oh, I couldn't agree more, and there's
all these tools too. Half ofthem, you don't know how to use.
The other half, you don'tunderstand the impact. But
people are using them. Youhaven't wrapped it around how
what they're doing can impactwhat you're doing and connecting
the dots. People fly blind a lotof the time, right? They're just
saying, I'm going to start to dothis, and I don't know what it's
(02:51):
going to do. But if you take astep back, maybe, and you look
at some of the analytics, it canhelp you. I would imagine. And
you correct me if I'm wrong, buttailor your marketing
accordingly.
Jeff Greenfield: (03:03):
You're absolutely right. You kind of
Justine Reichman: (03:03):
What I'm hearing, though, which I
hit it right. You hit the nailright on the head, that there's
a lot of stuff that folks don'tunderstand. But I think the
biggest, most important thingfor everyone to comprehend is
there's an old saying from afamous marketer in the Midwest
by the name of John Wanamaker,and he's attributed with saying,
(03:26):
half the money I spend inmarketing is wasted. The only
problem is, I don't know whichhalf. And that was before there
was digital marketing. So youcan imagine that before there
was digital, there was print,like magazines and newspapers.
There was radio. There wasdirect mail, like coupons that
(03:47):
came to your house. And thenthere was TV and billboards.
Let's say you had a furniturestore and you're running ads on
TV every week, there's no way toactually know deterministically
how many people came in becausethey just drove by. How many
people came in because they sawsome furniture at a friend's
(04:08):
house, and how many people sawthe sale advertised on TV. You
can't absolutely positively becertain, primarily, because
you're dealing with humanbeings. And we don't respond to
just one thing. There'stypically not one thing that
happens. It's a series of eventsand exposures, and there's an
(04:28):
emotional component to it. Andso back before there was digital
advertising and all of thesedifferent places to advertise,
what marketers would do is theywould rely upon these
statistical tools. One of themost famous ones is known as
marketing mix modeling or MMM.And what that would do is that
(04:49):
would actually count the numberof what we would call
impressions. And an impressionis every time an ad is shown to
someone that would count as animpression so you can look at
how many things you buy, howmany ads you essentially buy
every day, how many people aresupposedly looking at it, and
(05:09):
they would look at therelationship between that and
what your sales were. And whenthey had enough data, they could
actually do a really good job ofpredicting based upon how many
ads you had out there, what thesales were. And then if you said
to them, well, I want my salesto be 25% higher. They would run
(05:30):
the math and they say, okay,well, then this is what you need
to do in this combination. Andthey would do it. And that's how
brands like Coke, Pepsi, BMW andall of these brands that we know
that are still around and huge.That's how they built their
businesses by relying upon theanalytics and the math behind it
(05:52):
in order for things to work. Butwhen digital came around,
marketers got very excited. Ithink it was like having a
little bit of a dance with thedevil. Because what happened is
that, all of a sudden, now youwould buy ads on Yahoo or some
website. This is way beforeFacebook. At the end of the
(06:12):
month, you would get a report ofhow many clicks you purchased.
And finally, there was a waywhere you could actually count,
okay, I spent this amount ofmoney. I showed X number of
people ads, and this number ofpeople visited my website. It
was concrete, it wasdeterministic. And marketers
(06:32):
interesting conversation because
were like, okay, this seemscloser to the sale because
there's an action. And so theystarted moving a bunch of money
towards this type of stuff, andthat built this whole kind of
empire, if you will, ofFacebook, Google and all of that
stuff. And even though it's easyto do for the bigger brands,
(06:53):
what they've realized is that asthey got closer to that sale,
when you think about sales, it'slike a funnel. You send out
messages to say, hey, I'mselling this. Are you
interested? And some people are,some people aren't, and it gets
further down the funnel. Butwhen you move your dollars
(07:13):
there, you're actually reachingfewer people. And so the bigger
brands now are realizing thatmaybe we went in the wrong
direction. We need to go back todo more of this type of
branding. So digital has thiscatch 22 for marketers. It can
be very targeted, which isgreat. But that also means
(07:33):
you're telling fewer peopleabout your product.
Jeff Greenfield: (08:05):
You're spot on with that. I just read the other
day that the CEO of Bumble whoalso founded Tinder, she's
redoing Bumble, this dating app.And because they realize that in
order for someone to be in arelationship, first, they have
to love themselves. So they aredesigning a series of quizzes
(08:28):
and essentially games on theBumble app so people will learn
to feel better about themselves.And then they are promoting
offline events where peopleactually get together, and they
do this strange thing face toface and have a conversation.
Imagine that which is so antiapp. So you're 1,000% right. As
(08:50):
when the pendulum swings so farin one direction, it can't get
any further. And what'sfascinating, Justine, is that
over the last two decades sincethe beginning of digital
marketing, a lot of newmethodologies have come out to
(09:10):
measure the effectiveness ofmarketing to measure it. But it
was all based upon being able totrack individuals across the
internet. Well, guess why? Nowthings have changed. And just
like with the vegetables, justlike with the dating app, we are
going back to the future. Andthe techniques that we use here,
(09:32):
and others like us, we are usingthe same techniques that Coke,
Pepsi and all these big brandsused before there was digital
marketing. We've improved uponit, but we are using old school
techniques. In fact, the maththat we use in our platform, one
piece of math is from the 1700s.The other piece is a formula
(09:59):
that we created in the early 60sout of the University of
Chicago. So literally, the onlything that's new about what
we're doing is that thecomputers we're using are a
thousand times faster than theyeven were five years ago. So we
can actually calculate thestuff, but the math is old.
(10:22):
Really old. All pre internet,which is wild.
Justine Reichman: (10:25):
You mentioned something that was back in the,
not the 60s, the earlier one.1700s?
Jeff Greenfield: (10:32):
It was a formula that was created by a
preacher, and it's calledBayesian. And interestingly
enough, Bayesian is what'sdriving most of the machine
learning and the AI these days.And the reason for it is because
(10:55):
when you're trying to have asystem learn. So a computer
learning, and it's accumulatedtons and tons of knowledge. And
now you say, hey, there's newinformation. You want to update
it. There's two ways to do that.One way is to go back and
recalculate all of that data,which means the computers have
(11:19):
to keep getting faster, whichthey are. But when you get more
and more data, it accumulatesreally, really fast. But human
beings are really interestingwith the way that we come to
decisions based upon newinformation. So I'll give you an
example. Let's say I gave you anaxe and there's a small tree
(11:40):
that you have to chop down. Justa small, little bush or
something. And I give you theaxe and I say, before you start
chopping, I want you to give mean estimate of how long you
think it'll take you to chopthis down. And you've never done
anything like this and you say,three hours. I say, okay. And
your guess of three hours isbased upon all of the
information that you have, youmade your best guess. And so
(12:03):
now, I allow you to chop for aminute and ask you to stop. I
say, do you want to revise youranswer? And of course, you say,
yeah, I think it now to be anhour and a half. And each time
you take every new minute, ifyou stop, the answer that you
come up with will actually bevery, very close to the actual
result. And essentially, thisBayesian formula simulates the
(12:30):
human beings ability to say,based upon all of the
information I have, this is mybest guess based upon that. And
that's what Bayesian is. Andwhat's fascinating is that this
formula from a preacher from the1700s is used in some of the
most sophisticated platforms andmachinery that's out there. It's
(12:53):
been used to crack codes inWorld War II. It's one of these
things that people would beshocked about how it's utilized,
and that it's been around for solong.
Justine Reichman: (13:04):
Wow. That is so interesting. We go back to
that, and that's what's actuallygoing to fuel us and connect
with the future. AI being thefuture, this being of the past.
And then connecting the two andsaying, wow, this is what we
need to do in order to get evenfurther. And I think it's such
(13:24):
an interesting concept. I dowant to ask you though, right?
When I think about traditionaladvertising, whether it's
outdoor, or print, or radio. Tome, I just hear dollar signs.
And maybe it's because I was amedia planner back in the day,
and I knew what things weredoing. But for those businesses
(13:45):
that might be tuning in today,we're going to have small
startups, and we're going tohave larger companies, and their
goal is to have an impact in apositive way on the environment,
for our health and our wellness.Really, we're about the impact
of food on the future of ourhealth, wellness and the planet,
right? People are really mindfuland scrappy before they get to
(14:08):
be strategic often in thebeginning. So as an expert in
this industry, we come to you tobe able to provide a resource
for our guests so that guestthat's tuning in today and
saying, oh, my God, we're goingback here. That sounds like I'm
out of my league. And then youhave somebody, it could be a
large company and they couldhave budget, and they're saying,
(14:32):
okay, I can totally do that. ButI want to focus on that smaller
entity and say, what would yousay to them?
Jeff Greenfield: (14:39):
Well, what I would say is that you need to
start thinking about, numberone, who your specific audience
that you're trying to reach,because it's very easy to get a
little too broad. And if you goback to before digital, here I
go back before. And if I was alarge brand and was going to be
(15:03):
buying television, I would buyspecific programs based upon the
demographic, the age range thatI would be thinking about. And
so when you think about intoday's world, in fact, I just
read something today.Interestingly enough, Netflix
has more TV viewers in the 24 to34 age group than any TV network
(15:28):
or cable outlet today. That wasjust announced today. So that's
pretty powerful. Now obviously,if I'm a small business, I'm not
gonna be able to afford Netflix.It's very, very expensive. I'm
not going to be able to get onTV. But we want to start to
think about, if I'm targetingmen and women in the US that are
over the age of 35 to 40 plus,they're not in Tiktok, they're
(15:53):
not on Snapchat, they're onFacebook and Instagram. And so
what I want to think about is Ineed to develop a community, and
my website is Facebook. And thereason I say this is that when
my wife and I think about goingto a new restaurant and I wonder
about their hours, we have twodifferent types of habits. I go
(16:15):
and google them. I go to theirwebsite, but she lives in the
metaverse, in the meta world ofFacebook and Instagram, she goes
to their Facebook page. And iftheir Facebook page is not up to
date, she's like, should we eventhink about going there? Because
that's her reality, and that'sdemographic. And so you want to
(16:35):
think about things that you cando where you don't necessarily
have a lot of budget. One of thethings that you can do, which
just takes a lot of elbowgrease, and that's what you have
to do in the beginning is startbuilding out a community on
Facebook and Instagram. Starttaking pictures, start creating
content. Start doing that, andyou have to do it,
unfortunately, on a daily basis.But what you can do is there's
(16:58):
platforms out there, veryinexpensively. They'll allow you
to create a piece of content andthen pre load it so you could
actually, on your weekends,create a bunch of content for
the next month. Load it ahead oftime so you don't have to do it
every day. It'll automaticallypost it for you. And there's
even free tools out therethat'll do that as well.
Justine Reichman: (17:19):
I think that that's really important for
Jeff Greenfield: (17:19):
I think you should do both, because what you
people to think about. So you'resaying posting every day on
Instagram. Are you sayingstories? Are you saying in your grid?
want is, let's say someone isdiscovering you for the first
time on Instagram, and they'rethere, and there's no story.
(17:43):
That says to them, oh, issomeone not up to date on this?
And then the first thing they'regoing to do is they're going to
look at the post and say, whenwas the last time they posted?
And they're like, oh, a weekago, 2024. So having something
new every day saying, hey, I'mhere. I'm responsive, and we're
on top of this. This is the mostimportant thing in the world to
(18:05):
me, and that's what you want tocome across with.
Justine Reichman: (18:07):
Are there analytics? Are you familiar with
the analytics behind that andthe impact it has by doing it
every day versus two or threetimes a week?
Jeff Greenfield: (18:16):
Analytics behind that show that the more
frequent that you're there andthe more updates you do, it
always wins. It wins number onewith the algorithm. Because
remember, in the meta world, someta owns Instagram and
Facebook, and they're in theworld of selling advertising. So
(18:37):
the more stuff there is forpeople to look at in between
that stuff, they can put ads. Soif you are giving them content
to show to people, you're goingto show up more frequently,
versus someone that is justdoing two to three times a week.
Justine Reichman: (18:54):
Wow. Okay, that's great to know. Because
sometimes, we hear differentideas around that. Sometimes,
people say that you don't needto post every day. It doesn't
really impact it. Other peopleare saying, do more stories than
the grid. And I don't reallyknow the answer that it is not
my core competency. I ask onbehalf of the community. Are
(19:15):
there maybe three things thatyou might recommend to those
that are looking to up levelthemselves in a space, whether
it's for brand awareness,whether it's to sell more
product, whether it's to makemore partnerships, etcetera.
Jeff Greenfield: (19:29):
I would say the number one thing is make
sure your messaging isconsistent. That's number one.
Number two is make sure that youhave your story that you want to
tell that it is tight, that it'sa good story, that it's
compelling, and that it has anemotional hook to it. The the
WHY behind what you're doing inthis space is incredibly
(19:54):
important. For me and my space,my space is all about numbers.
It's not very sexy at all. I getto be in the middle of a lot of
big decisions with some of theadvertisers who spend the most
amount of money in the world.And that's very cool, because
I'm up on the most excitingstuff that goes on. But the WHY
(20:16):
for me, why I'm doing it now isbecause when people have the
proper numbers and the propermetrics, it requires a change.
Because all of a sudden, theworld has a different
perspective. It's like walkingacross the street and looking at
something in the middle of theroad from a different
(20:38):
perspective. If you were goingto draw it, if you draw it from
a different angle, you see acompletely different picture. So
the why for me is that I get toshow people a different picture
than they've ever seen before.They've looked at the same
object for many years, and nowI'm taking them on a journey to
the other side of the street.And they see it completely
different by doing that thatexpands their horizons. And the
(20:59):
fun part for me is theresistance that I feel and that
I see, and helping people alongthat journey. To me, I feel like
it's not just helping them dotheir jobs better. But every
time I see something differentthrough a different lens, I have
this, oh, my god moment. Ididn't realize that. So it
(21:22):
expands your own horizon. Ithink having that why there is
important, because that's alsothat emotional hook as well. And
I would say the third thing isthat you can never have enough
people that are talking aboutyou and talking about your
product, and that the number onething you should do is get
(21:45):
people a video. We're on a videopodcast right now. Video podcast
wasn't even a thing a couple ofyears ago. This is all brand
new. Podcasting has been aroundfor a long time, but the video
component is new because peopleare realizing that people don't
just like to listen, they alsolike to watch. And video is what
(22:06):
drives all of this social media.It's what's driving your
audience. And so the more peopleyou can have talking about how
much they love your product,that's the best thing. So I
would say, get moretestimonials.
Justine Reichman: (22:21):
Number one, testimonials. Okay, so I'm
curious now because you broughtup the differentiation between
the podcast and the video cast.The podcast, whether it's on
your on iTunes, iHeartRadio,etcetera, it's really kind of
clear how we can reach out topeople and can engage, and get
more listeners and viewers. ButI'd say it's a little different
(22:43):
in the YouTube space. What doyou know about the YouTube space
and leveraging your video oryour content on YouTube to be
able to get more of a community,and a community that's engaged,
that's liking, that's askingquestions, that's connecting?
Jeff Greenfield: (22:58):
I think the tough thing with YouTube is that
when you create a communitythere, it's really not your
community. It's Google'scommunity. You could have 10
million subscribers. But if yourvideos aren't as engaging as
they once were, meaning there'snot as many people watching,
(23:18):
they're not watching as long, sothere's not an opportunity for
them to generate enoughadvertising. Those subscribers
of yours are not going to be asup to date as they were with
you, because the algorithm isgoing to shift. So you're always
at the mercy of that algorithm.The advantage of Facebook or
(23:40):
Instagram, is that most of thecontent is very short form. It's
Justine Reichman: (23:44):
When you talk about substack and you're
a lot shorter and stuff likethat. For folks that are looking
to create a true community thathas video, and also folks that
creating this community there,and you're comparing it to a
have the capability to actuallywrite and are good writers, and
they like to tell stories,platforms like substack are
evolving. Because back in theearly days of the internet, the
(24:07):
way that brands would create acommunity is they would have a
website and would have adiscussion forum that they owned
themselves. And that way, thatwas their community. They could
communicate out a message topeople. They would get it. They
were in complete control. WhenFacebook first came around, a
(24:30):
lot of those communities likefolks in dog rescue and
different organizations moved toFacebook because there was no
technical hurdles. It was soeasy to take care of it. And
then they've noticed over theyears these shifts and the algorithm.
(24:54):
newsletter, let's just say,because it does have a
newsletter, it has the abilityto allow the community to engage
and connect with each other,which is what a lot of people
want. How much more work andtime does it take to set up a
substack and make sure that itis constantly fresh?
Jeff Greenfield: (25:13):
Well, in order to do that, you have to add the
content to it. You have tocreate the content. So that's
why I say this solution isviable for someone who loves to
write, who likes to put outcontent, someone who could write
out an email newsletter to theirfans every single day, something
like that. Well, I would saysubstack is not necessarily
(25:35):
everyday. Substack is more likea monthly or depends upon how
often you would want to updatethem. You could do it even
weekly.
Justine Reichman: (25:42):
What would you say impact differential
between doing it once a weekversus once a month, and then
creating other engagement withinit?
Jeff Greenfield: (25:52):
I would think now that we're talking about it.
If you're out every day on thesocial programs, platforms,
driving people to sign up atyour substack as long as you're
timely with it and you'reupdating it, let's say monthly,
with the big update. But I thinkthe nice thing now, because we
talked about video, I believeyou can add video now to
(26:13):
substack and doing a videoupdate, which you can do with
your iPhone very easily, is sosimple. Sometimes, a lot easier
than writing a long blog post. Iwould say, if it was me and I
was an emerging brand, I wouldbe doing it probably on a weekly
basis.
Justine Reichman: (26:31):
Jeff, awesome. So many great insights,
so many great tools. My lastquestion for you is, maybe you
could share a story about one ofyour clients that you've seen
where the impact has really beengreat, and maybe share some
statistics around it so thatpeople can really get the
gravity of what you're talkingabout the impact it can have.
(26:53):
So as we sort of wrap things up, are there any
Jeff Greenfield: (26:53):
Yeah. I think one of the greatest stories is
tools for analytics that youmight recommend for some of our
for a large multi billion dollarretailer who was following the
numbers, they were followingwhat their analytics was telling
them, and the majority of theirspend was on search. So people
searching for an item, and youcould click on it right there,
(27:14):
which is very expensive becauseyou're in an environment where
everyone is competing, and theprices keep going up. And they
had tried things like connectedtelevision, podcast advertising
and things like that, but thenumbers were never able to prove
them out. And as a result, the Clevel executives wouldn't
(27:35):
support that increase in budget.And so we came in with our
platform and did an analysis ofthe last year, and we were able
to demonstrate for them thatthey had overspent with search
to the point where they wereactually losing money. They were
losing almost 50 cents of everydollar that they were spending
(27:57):
in search, which was shocking tothem. We showed them that those
little tests that they had donewith connected television and
podcast advertising wereactually had amazing impact. So
the end result was we had themshift the dollars that they were
losing in search, and move themover to more of these awareness
(28:19):
type tactics at the top of thefunnel. Because when somebody
talks about a brand on apodcast, there's nothing for
them to click on. They're justhearing it. And same thing as
with connected television. Andthe end result for them was that
in the quarter following themmaking those changes, it
(28:39):
resulted in an incremental $15million in profit. Because when
you start to think that, hey,I'm for every dollar I spend in
advertising, I'm expecting like$3 or $8 back in return. But
when you're losing money onthose dollars, when you shift it
to something where you'regetting that type of return,
(29:00):
that adds up to a significantsum of money really, really fast.
viewers or listeners that aretuning in today?
Yeah. What I would say is the most important
thing as you start to dabble indigital marketing is everyone is
(29:22):
addicted to the click becauseit's something that you can
count on. And what ends uphappening is that most
marketers, they will calculatehow much each click cost them,
how many clicks they got perday. And it's important to
remember that the way marketingworks is that you invest
(29:42):
dollars, not to buy clicks. Youinvest dollars to buy eyeballs,
right? And that job is thoseeyeballs, you're trying to build
awareness. And when awareness isbuilt up to a high enough level,
people will walk into yourstore. If your store happens to
be online, well, then that willbe the clicks.
Justine Reichman: (30:05):
That being said, Jeff, so great to have you
on today. What a plethora ofresources and insight. I know I
learned myself, which I alwayslove on these podcasts. There's
always a takeaway for me. I feelthat there are takeaways,
there's so many other peoplethat are gonna feel that there
are takeaways, so I want tothank you for sharing that. I
want to thank our guests fortuning in, and those that were
(30:26):
new. Thank you for joining us.Thank you for joining the
community. And just say thateach week, we have a new guest
on our podcast with newinnovations, new resources,
something to inspire ourcommunity to build a better for
you future, whether it's for ourhealth, our wellness or the
planet, but it's a great placeto tune in each week to be
(30:49):
inspired. We hope this inspiredyou, and we hope this inspires
you both, whether you're makingpersonal changes or you're
innovating in the space. Eitherway, it's all about being able
to make more informed choices.So thank you again for tuning in
to our guests. Thank you, Jeff,for being such a great guest. We
hope to see you here again nextweek.
Good morning, and welcome to Essential
Ingredients. I am Justine, yourpodcast host. I'm so excited
today to have Jeff Greenfield.He has a company called
Provalytics, which is all aboutthe analytics. And for those
that are tuning in that arelooking for inspiration and
looking to build a better foryou innovation or just be in
(00:33):
that space, what better place isthere to go, but to the
analytics? The proof is in thepudding, right? So I want to
welcome our new guests that aretuning in today, whether you're
watching the podcast or tuninginto the videocast. I want to
welcome our guest, Jeff, forjoining us and sharing with him
what he's built in theanalytics, and how it can impact
(00:55):
those that are innovating today,and those that are only just
beginning to research anddevelop what they're going to do
next. So Jeff, welcome to theEssential Ingredients Podcast.
Jeff Greenfield: (01:05):
Well, thank you so much for having me,
Justine. I'm excited to be here.And you're right. When it comes
to analytics, people don'tunderstand how important
measuring and looking at things.For me, before we even get into
the marketing speak, I thinkabout, there's an obsession now.
We all start to understand howimportant sleep is. And if you
(01:27):
wear the Apple Watch at night,it breaks down how long you
sleep, your deep sleep, how muchyou're awake. We don't know what
happens during deep sleepexactly, but we know how
important it is, and we don'trealize that it could be an
issue until we start to measureit when we start to measure when
we realize that maybe we're onlygetting a couple of minutes a
night of deep sleep, and maybethat could be causing some other
(01:49):
problems. Well, now I'm aware ofit. And so now, I at least have
a way that I can measure it tosee if I make changes that they
actually improve. And that'sreally what it's all about
because you can't tracksomething if you're not
measuring it. You need tomeasure it, and then you can
look to improve upon it. Sothat, I think, from a big broad
(02:09):
perspective is really, reallyimportant. And marketing is one
of those things that a lot offolks they tend to forget about,
or they tend to neglect, or theyput way too much emphasis on it.
And so hopefully, we candemystify some of that because
it's really gotten complicatedover the last decade or two.
Justine Reichman: (02:30):
Oh, I couldn't agree more, and there's
all these tools too. Half ofthem, you don't know how to use.
The other half, you don'tunderstand the impact. But
people are using them. Youhaven't wrapped it around how
what they're doing can impactwhat you're doing and connecting
the dots. People fly blind a lotof the time, right? They're just
saying, I'm going to start to dothis, and I don't know what it's
(02:51):
going to do. But if you take astep back, maybe, and you look
at some of the analytics, it canhelp you. I would imagine. And
you correct me if I'm wrong, buttailor your marketing
accordingly.
Jeff Greenfield: (03:03):
You're absolutely right. You kind of
Justine Reichman: (03:03):
What I'm hearing, though, which I
hit it right. You hit the nailright on the head, that there's
a lot of stuff that folks don'tunderstand. But I think the
biggest, most important thingfor everyone to comprehend is
there's an old saying from afamous marketer in the Midwest
by the name of John Wanamaker,and he's attributed with saying,
(03:26):
half the money I spend inmarketing is wasted. The only
problem is, I don't know whichhalf. And that was before there
was digital marketing. So youcan imagine that before there
was digital, there was print,like magazines and newspapers.
There was radio. There wasdirect mail, like coupons that
(03:47):
came to your house. And thenthere was TV and billboards.
Let's say you had a furniturestore and you're running ads on
TV every week, there's no way toactually know deterministically
how many people came in becausethey just drove by. How many
people came in because they sawsome furniture at a friend's
(04:08):
house, and how many people sawthe sale advertised on TV. You
can't absolutely positively becertain, primarily, because
you're dealing with humanbeings. And we don't respond to
just one thing. There'stypically not one thing that
happens. It's a series of eventsand exposures, and there's an
(04:28):
emotional component to it. Andso back before there was digital
advertising and all of thesedifferent places to advertise,
what marketers would do is theywould rely upon these
statistical tools. One of themost famous ones is known as
marketing mix modeling or MMM.And what that would do is that
(04:49):
would actually count the numberof what we would call
impressions. And an impressionis every time an ad is shown to
someone that would count as animpression so you can look at
how many things you buy, howmany ads you essentially buy
every day, how many people aresupposedly looking at it, and
(05:09):
they would look at therelationship between that and
what your sales were. And whenthey had enough data, they could
actually do a really good job ofpredicting based upon how many
ads you had out there, what thesales were. And then if you said
to them, well, I want my salesto be 25% higher. They would run
(05:30):
the math and they say, okay,well, then this is what you need
to do in this combination. Andthey would do it. And that's how
brands like Coke, Pepsi, BMW andall of these brands that we know
that are still around and huge.That's how they built their
businesses by relying upon theanalytics and the math behind it
(05:52):
in order for things to work. Butwhen digital came around,
marketers got very excited. Ithink it was like having a
little bit of a dance with thedevil. Because what happened is
that, all of a sudden, now youwould buy ads on Yahoo or some
website. This is way beforeFacebook. At the end of the
(06:12):
month, you would get a report ofhow many clicks you purchased.
And finally, there was a waywhere you could actually count,
okay, I spent this amount ofmoney. I showed X number of
people ads, and this number ofpeople visited my website. It
was concrete, it wasdeterministic. And marketers
(06:32):
interesting conversation because
were like, okay, this seemscloser to the sale because
there's an action. And so theystarted moving a bunch of money
towards this type of stuff, andthat built this whole kind of
empire, if you will, ofFacebook, Google and all of that
stuff. And even though it's easyto do for the bigger brands,
(06:53):
what they've realized is that asthey got closer to that sale,
when you think about sales, it'slike a funnel. You send out
messages to say, hey, I'mselling this. Are you
interested? And some people are,some people aren't, and it gets
further down the funnel. Butwhen you move your dollars
(07:13):
there, you're actually reachingfewer people. And so the bigger
brands now are realizing thatmaybe we went in the wrong
direction. We need to go back todo more of this type of
branding. So digital has thiscatch 22 for marketers. It can
be very targeted, which isgreat. But that also means
(07:33):
you're telling fewer peopleabout your product.
Jeff Greenfield: (08:05):
You're spot on with that. I just read the other
day that the CEO of Bumble whoalso founded Tinder, she's
redoing Bumble, this dating app.And because they realize that in
order for someone to be in arelationship, first, they have
to love themselves. So they aredesigning a series of quizzes
(08:28):
and essentially games on theBumble app so people will learn
to feel better about themselves.And then they are promoting
offline events where peopleactually get together, and they
do this strange thing face toface and have a conversation.
Imagine that which is so antiapp. So you're 1,000% right. As
(08:50):
when the pendulum swings so farin one direction, it can't get
any further. And what'sfascinating, Justine, is that
over the last two decades sincethe beginning of digital
marketing, a lot of newmethodologies have come out to
(09:10):
measure the effectiveness ofmarketing to measure it. But it
was all based upon being able totrack individuals across the
internet. Well, guess why? Nowthings have changed. And just
like with the vegetables, justlike with the dating app, we are
going back to the future. Andthe techniques that we use here,
(09:32):
and others like us, we are usingthe same techniques that Coke,
Pepsi and all these big brandsused before there was digital
marketing. We've improved uponit, but we are using old school
techniques. In fact, the maththat we use in our platform, one
piece of math is from the 1700s.The other piece is a formula
(09:59):
that we created in the early 60sout of the University of
Chicago. So literally, the onlything that's new about what
we're doing is that thecomputers we're using are a
thousand times faster than theyeven were five years ago. So we
can actually calculate thestuff, but the math is old.
(10:22):
Really old. All pre internet,which is wild.
Justine Reichman: (10:25):
You mentioned something that was back in the,
not the 60s, the earlier one.1700s?
Jeff Greenfield: (10:32):
It was a formula that was created by a
preacher, and it's calledBayesian. And interestingly
enough, Bayesian is what'sdriving most of the machine
learning and the AI these days.And the reason for it is because
(10:55):
when you're trying to have asystem learn. So a computer
learning, and it's accumulatedtons and tons of knowledge. And
now you say, hey, there's newinformation. You want to update
it. There's two ways to do that.One way is to go back and
recalculate all of that data,which means the computers have
(11:19):
to keep getting faster, whichthey are. But when you get more
and more data, it accumulatesreally, really fast. But human
beings are really interestingwith the way that we come to
decisions based upon newinformation. So I'll give you an
example. Let's say I gave you anaxe and there's a small tree
(11:40):
that you have to chop down. Justa small, little bush or
something. And I give you theaxe and I say, before you start
chopping, I want you to give mean estimate of how long you
think it'll take you to chopthis down. And you've never done
anything like this and you say,three hours. I say, okay. And
your guess of three hours isbased upon all of the
information that you have, youmade your best guess. And so
(12:03):
now, I allow you to chop for aminute and ask you to stop. I
say, do you want to revise youranswer? And of course, you say,
yeah, I think it now to be anhour and a half. And each time
you take every new minute, ifyou stop, the answer that you
come up with will actually bevery, very close to the actual
result. And essentially, thisBayesian formula simulates the
(12:30):
human beings ability to say,based upon all of the
information I have, this is mybest guess based upon that. And
that's what Bayesian is. Andwhat's fascinating is that this
formula from a preacher from the1700s is used in some of the
most sophisticated platforms andmachinery that's out there. It's
(12:53):
been used to crack codes inWorld War II. It's one of these
things that people would beshocked about how it's utilized,
and that it's been around for solong.
Justine Reichman: (13:04):
Wow. That is so interesting. We go back to
that, and that's what's actuallygoing to fuel us and connect
with the future. AI being thefuture, this being of the past.
And then connecting the two andsaying, wow, this is what we
need to do in order to get evenfurther. And I think it's such
(13:24):
an interesting concept. I dowant to ask you though, right?
When I think about traditionaladvertising, whether it's
outdoor, or print, or radio. Tome, I just hear dollar signs.
And maybe it's because I was amedia planner back in the day,
and I knew what things weredoing. But for those businesses
(13:45):
that might be tuning in today,we're going to have small
startups, and we're going tohave larger companies, and their
goal is to have an impact in apositive way on the environment,
for our health and our wellness.Really, we're about the impact
of food on the future of ourhealth, wellness and the planet,
right? People are really mindfuland scrappy before they get to
(14:08):
be strategic often in thebeginning. So as an expert in
this industry, we come to you tobe able to provide a resource
for our guests so that guestthat's tuning in today and
saying, oh, my God, we're goingback here. That sounds like I'm
out of my league. And then youhave somebody, it could be a
large company and they couldhave budget, and they're saying,
(14:32):
okay, I can totally do that. ButI want to focus on that smaller
entity and say, what would yousay to them?
Jeff Greenfield: (14:39):
Well, what I would say is that you need to
start thinking about, numberone, who your specific audience
that you're trying to reach,because it's very easy to get a
little too broad. And if you goback to before digital, here I
go back before. And if I was alarge brand and was going to be
(15:03):
buying television, I would buyspecific programs based upon the
demographic, the age range thatI would be thinking about. And
so when you think about intoday's world, in fact, I just
read something today.Interestingly enough, Netflix
has more TV viewers in the 24 to34 age group than any TV network
(15:28):
or cable outlet today. That wasjust announced today. So that's
pretty powerful. Now obviously,if I'm a small business, I'm not
gonna be able to afford Netflix.It's very, very expensive. I'm
not going to be able to get onTV. But we want to start to
think about, if I'm targetingmen and women in the US that are
over the age of 35 to 40 plus,they're not in Tiktok, they're
(15:53):
not on Snapchat, they're onFacebook and Instagram. And so
what I want to think about is Ineed to develop a community, and
my website is Facebook. And thereason I say this is that when
my wife and I think about goingto a new restaurant and I wonder
about their hours, we have twodifferent types of habits. I go
(16:15):
and google them. I go to theirwebsite, but she lives in the
metaverse, in the meta world ofFacebook and Instagram, she goes
to their Facebook page. And iftheir Facebook page is not up to
date, she's like, should we eventhink about going there? Because
that's her reality, and that'sdemographic. And so you want to
(16:35):
think about things that you cando where you don't necessarily
have a lot of budget. One of thethings that you can do, which
just takes a lot of elbowgrease, and that's what you have
to do in the beginning is startbuilding out a community on
Facebook and Instagram. Starttaking pictures, start creating
content. Start doing that, andyou have to do it,
unfortunately, on a daily basis.But what you can do is there's
(16:58):
platforms out there, veryinexpensively. They'll allow you
to create a piece of content andthen pre load it so you could
actually, on your weekends,create a bunch of content for
the next month. Load it ahead oftime so you don't have to do it
every day. It'll automaticallypost it for you. And there's
even free tools out therethat'll do that as well.
Justine Reichman: (17:19):
I think that that's really important for
Jeff Greenfield: (17:19):
I think you should do both, because what you
people to think about. So you'resaying posting every day on
Instagram. Are you sayingstories? Are you saying in your grid?
want is, let's say someone isdiscovering you for the first
time on Instagram, and they'rethere, and there's no story.
(17:43):
That says to them, oh, issomeone not up to date on this?
And then the first thing they'regoing to do is they're going to
look at the post and say, whenwas the last time they posted?
And they're like, oh, a weekago, 2024. So having something
new every day saying, hey, I'mhere. I'm responsive, and we're
on top of this. This is the mostimportant thing in the world to
(18:05):
me, and that's what you want tocome across with.
Justine Reichman: (18:07):
Are there analytics? Are you familiar with
the analytics behind that andthe impact it has by doing it
every day versus two or threetimes a week?
Jeff Greenfield: (18:16):
Analytics behind that show that the more
frequent that you're there andthe more updates you do, it
always wins. It wins number onewith the algorithm. Because
remember, in the meta world, someta owns Instagram and
Facebook, and they're in theworld of selling advertising. So
(18:37):
the more stuff there is forpeople to look at in between
that stuff, they can put ads. Soif you are giving them content
to show to people, you're goingto show up more frequently,
versus someone that is justdoing two to three times a week.
Justine Reichman: (18:54):
Wow. Okay, that's great to know. Because
sometimes, we hear differentideas around that. Sometimes,
people say that you don't needto post every day. It doesn't
really impact it. Other peopleare saying, do more stories than
the grid. And I don't reallyknow the answer that it is not
my core competency. I ask onbehalf of the community. Are
(19:15):
there maybe three things thatyou might recommend to those
that are looking to up levelthemselves in a space, whether
it's for brand awareness,whether it's to sell more
product, whether it's to makemore partnerships, etcetera.
Jeff Greenfield: (19:29):
I would say the number one thing is make
sure your messaging isconsistent. That's number one.
Number two is make sure that youhave your story that you want to
tell that it is tight, that it'sa good story, that it's
compelling, and that it has anemotional hook to it. The the
WHY behind what you're doing inthis space is incredibly
(19:54):
important. For me and my space,my space is all about numbers.
It's not very sexy at all. I getto be in the middle of a lot of
big decisions with some of theadvertisers who spend the most
amount of money in the world.And that's very cool, because
I'm up on the most excitingstuff that goes on. But the WHY
(20:16):
for me, why I'm doing it now isbecause when people have the
proper numbers and the propermetrics, it requires a change.
Because all of a sudden, theworld has a different
perspective. It's like walkingacross the street and looking at
something in the middle of theroad from a different
(20:38):
perspective. If you were goingto draw it, if you draw it from
a different angle, you see acompletely different picture. So
the why for me is that I get toshow people a different picture
than they've ever seen before.They've looked at the same
object for many years, and nowI'm taking them on a journey to
the other side of the street.And they see it completely
different by doing that thatexpands their horizons. And the
(20:59):
fun part for me is theresistance that I feel and that
I see, and helping people alongthat journey. To me, I feel like
it's not just helping them dotheir jobs better. But every
time I see something differentthrough a different lens, I have
this, oh, my god moment. Ididn't realize that. So it
(21:22):
expands your own horizon. Ithink having that why there is
important, because that's alsothat emotional hook as well. And
I would say the third thing isthat you can never have enough
people that are talking aboutyou and talking about your
product, and that the number onething you should do is get
(21:45):
people a video. We're on a videopodcast right now. Video podcast
wasn't even a thing a couple ofyears ago. This is all brand
new. Podcasting has been aroundfor a long time, but the video
component is new because peopleare realizing that people don't
just like to listen, they alsolike to watch. And video is what
(22:06):
drives all of this social media.It's what's driving your
audience. And so the more peopleyou can have talking about how
much they love your product,that's the best thing. So I
would say, get moretestimonials.
Justine Reichman: (22:21):
Number one, testimonials. Okay, so I'm
curious now because you broughtup the differentiation between
the podcast and the video cast.The podcast, whether it's on
your on iTunes, iHeartRadio,etcetera, it's really kind of
clear how we can reach out topeople and can engage, and get
more listeners and viewers. ButI'd say it's a little different
(22:43):
in the YouTube space. What doyou know about the YouTube space
and leveraging your video oryour content on YouTube to be
able to get more of a community,and a community that's engaged,
that's liking, that's askingquestions, that's connecting?
Jeff Greenfield: (22:58):
I think the tough thing with YouTube is that
when you create a communitythere, it's really not your
community. It's Google'scommunity. You could have 10
million subscribers. But if yourvideos aren't as engaging as
they once were, meaning there'snot as many people watching,
(23:18):
they're not watching as long, sothere's not an opportunity for
them to generate enoughadvertising. Those subscribers
of yours are not going to be asup to date as they were with
you, because the algorithm isgoing to shift. So you're always
at the mercy of that algorithm.The advantage of Facebook or
(23:40):
Instagram, is that most of thecontent is very short form. It's
Justine Reichman: (23:44):
When you talk about substack and you're
a lot shorter and stuff likethat. For folks that are looking
to create a true community thathas video, and also folks that
creating this community there,and you're comparing it to a
have the capability to actuallywrite and are good writers, and
they like to tell stories,platforms like substack are
evolving. Because back in theearly days of the internet, the
(24:07):
way that brands would create acommunity is they would have a
website and would have adiscussion forum that they owned
themselves. And that way, thatwas their community. They could
communicate out a message topeople. They would get it. They
were in complete control. WhenFacebook first came around, a
(24:30):
lot of those communities likefolks in dog rescue and
different organizations moved toFacebook because there was no
technical hurdles. It was soeasy to take care of it. And
then they've noticed over theyears these shifts and the algorithm.
(24:54):
newsletter, let's just say,because it does have a
newsletter, it has the abilityto allow the community to engage
and connect with each other,which is what a lot of people
want. How much more work andtime does it take to set up a
substack and make sure that itis constantly fresh?
Jeff Greenfield: (25:13):
Well, in order to do that, you have to add the
content to it. You have tocreate the content. So that's
why I say this solution isviable for someone who loves to
write, who likes to put outcontent, someone who could write
out an email newsletter to theirfans every single day, something
like that. Well, I would saysubstack is not necessarily
(25:35):
everyday. Substack is more likea monthly or depends upon how
often you would want to updatethem. You could do it even
weekly.
Justine Reichman: (25:42):
What would you say impact differential
between doing it once a weekversus once a month, and then
creating other engagement withinit?
Jeff Greenfield: (25:52):
I would think now that we're talking about it.
If you're out every day on thesocial programs, platforms,
driving people to sign up atyour substack as long as you're
timely with it and you'reupdating it, let's say monthly,
with the big update. But I thinkthe nice thing now, because we
talked about video, I believeyou can add video now to
(26:13):
substack and doing a videoupdate, which you can do with
your iPhone very easily, is sosimple. Sometimes, a lot easier
than writing a long blog post. Iwould say, if it was me and I
was an emerging brand, I wouldbe doing it probably on a weekly
basis.
Justine Reichman: (26:31):
Jeff, awesome. So many great insights,
so many great tools. My lastquestion for you is, maybe you
could share a story about one ofyour clients that you've seen
where the impact has really beengreat, and maybe share some
statistics around it so thatpeople can really get the
gravity of what you're talkingabout the impact it can have.
(26:53):
So as we sort of wrap things up, are there any
Jeff Greenfield: (26:53):
Yeah. I think one of the greatest stories is
tools for analytics that youmight recommend for some of our
for a large multi billion dollarretailer who was following the
numbers, they were followingwhat their analytics was telling
them, and the majority of theirspend was on search. So people
searching for an item, and youcould click on it right there,
(27:14):
which is very expensive becauseyou're in an environment where
everyone is competing, and theprices keep going up. And they
had tried things like connectedtelevision, podcast advertising
and things like that, but thenumbers were never able to prove
them out. And as a result, the Clevel executives wouldn't
(27:35):
support that increase in budget.And so we came in with our
platform and did an analysis ofthe last year, and we were able
to demonstrate for them thatthey had overspent with search
to the point where they wereactually losing money. They were
losing almost 50 cents of everydollar that they were spending
(27:57):
in search, which was shocking tothem. We showed them that those
little tests that they had donewith connected television and
podcast advertising wereactually had amazing impact. So
the end result was we had themshift the dollars that they were
losing in search, and move themover to more of these awareness
(28:19):
type tactics at the top of thefunnel. Because when somebody
talks about a brand on apodcast, there's nothing for
them to click on. They're justhearing it. And same thing as
with connected television. Andthe end result for them was that
in the quarter following themmaking those changes, it
(28:39):
resulted in an incremental $15million in profit. Because when
you start to think that, hey,I'm for every dollar I spend in
advertising, I'm expecting like$3 or $8 back in return. But
when you're losing money onthose dollars, when you shift it
to something where you'regetting that type of return,
(29:00):
that adds up to a significantsum of money really, really fast.
viewers or listeners that aretuning in today?
Yeah. What I would say is the most important
thing as you start to dabble indigital marketing is everyone is
(29:22):
addicted to the click becauseit's something that you can
count on. And what ends uphappening is that most
marketers, they will calculatehow much each click cost them,
how many clicks they got perday. And it's important to
remember that the way marketingworks is that you invest
(29:42):
dollars, not to buy clicks. Youinvest dollars to buy eyeballs,
right? And that job is thoseeyeballs, you're trying to build
awareness. And when awareness isbuilt up to a high enough level,
people will walk into yourstore. If your store happens to
be online, well, then that willbe the clicks.
Justine Reichman: (30:05):
That being said, Jeff, so great to have you
on today. What a plethora ofresources and insight. I know I
learned myself, which I alwayslove on these podcasts. There's
always a takeaway for me. I feelthat there are takeaways,
there's so many other peoplethat are gonna feel that there
are takeaways, so I want tothank you for sharing that. I
want to thank our guests fortuning in, and those that were
(30:26):
new. Thank you for joining us.Thank you for joining the
community. And just say thateach week, we have a new guest
on our podcast with newinnovations, new resources,
something to inspire ourcommunity to build a better for
you future, whether it's for ourhealth, our wellness or the
planet, but it's a great placeto tune in each week to be
(30:49):
inspired. We hope this inspiredyou, and we hope this inspires
you both, whether you're makingpersonal changes or you're
innovating in the space. Eitherway, it's all about being able
to make more informed choices.So thank you again for tuning in
to our guests. Thank you, Jeff,for being such a great guest. We
hope to see you here again nextweek.
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