Ep. 184: How to Leverage Actionable Metrics to Drive Predictable Growth

Kenny Ridgell (Founder, Ridge Media LLC) shared tried and tested strategies on how to leverage actionable metrics to drive predictable growth. Kenny emphasized the importance of understanding a company’s sales cycle, prioritizing high-impact metrics, and simplifying data analysis. He also elaborated on how integrating CRM systems can improve marketing attribution and enable full-funnel visibility.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Many marketing teams strugglewith leveraging data to achieve

(00:03):
tangible business outcomes.They're caught up in the cycle
of analysis paralysis, or evenend up looking at data that
doesn't really drive growth. Alot of it comes down to having
the right strategy,understanding what the goals
are, and making sense of thedata. So how can B2B arketers
measure what counts and leverageactionable metrics that drive

(00:26):
profit. Welcome to this episodeof the B2B Marketers in the
Mission podcast, and I'm yourhost, Christian Klepp. Today,
I'll be talking to KennyRidgell, who will be answering
this question. He's the founderof Ridge Media LLC that aims to
overcome the digital marketingchaos. Tune in to find out more
about what this B2B marketersmission is. Off we go. Mr. Kenny

(00:49):
Ridgell, welcome to the show, Sir.
Yes, sir. Thank you. Christian,happy to be here.
Man, it's great to have you onthe show. We had a fantastic pre
interview conversation wherewe're talking about fatherhood
and crying babies and sleepdeprivation and all that good
stuff, right?
All the fun stuff that everyonehas to either look forward to or

(01:10):
reminisce upon.
Yeah, or they look back at itand go, Yeah, I'm glad that's
passed. I'm glad that ship hassailed right.
Exactly, either reminiscing uponor lack of sleep, or looking
forward to the lack of sleep,and nothing can prepare you.
Exactly, exactly. Or thecomments like, oh, yeah, I
Exactly. It's like, I don't evenremember how bad it was six
remember those days

(01:34):
months ago. I think part of itis that amnesia that occurs.
It's like, oh, it's not thatbad.
Yeah. It's a bit of a brain fog,exactly. Great. Kenny, but
moving on now, from fatherhoodto B2B marketing, Man, I'm
really looking forward to thisconversation because, let's be
honest, it's a conversation thatI think is something that needs

(01:55):
to be had within an organizationin order to drive that success.
So what am I talking about,ladies and gentlemen, well,
let's just dive right in. Okay,so you're on a mission to
simplify marketing analytics,where you assist founders and
CEOs in leveraging data forevidence based decisions that
drive revenue. I hope I got thatright. But for this

(02:17):
conversation, let's zero in onthis topic, how to measure what
counts and leverage actionablemetrics to drive profit. Now
people are probably thinkinglike, measure what counts. Hmm.
Wonder what that means. Butlet's, let's kick off the
conversation with two questionshere. Okay, and I'm happy to
repeat them. Why do you think somany marketing teams struggle

(02:38):
with using data to achievetangible business outcomes, and
what do you think is the rootcause of these issues?
I'll go inverse. I'll start withthe second question. First, I
think the root cause kind ofstems from like a lack of
understanding truly the industryor the business that you're
talking to. And what is thesales cycle like? How long does

(02:59):
it take to get the clothes. Whatdoes the conversation and
process look like? I mean, atthe end of the day, if you take
a manufacturer versus thelandscaper, right? You're going
to have a landscaping like,visit, you're going to audit the
property, you're going to comeback with a proposal pretty
quickly. It's going to be brief.You might be able to close
within like, you know, a week tothree weeks, Max, maybe six or
as a manufacturing opportunity,a lot of times, like, say,

(03:22):
somebody's coming in, they'rebuilding something custom.
There's gonna be engineersinvolved, there's gonna be spec
involved. There's gonna bemultiple site business involved.
It's probably a year along totwo year long buying process
before they actually purchasethat equipment. I think the long
the wrong video can get obsessedwith is the incorrect metric
from that right?
So take impressions, forexample, I call marketing a lot
of times smoke and mirrors,because I think a lot of people

(03:44):
can do it that song and dancethey can do, like the pony show.
But at the end of the day, whatactually matters to this
business owner money in theirpocket. So if you back it up
and, like, reverse engineer thesituation the manufacturer, take
that for example, how manyeyeballs actually quantify of
like, a quality buyer. There'sprobably only a limited pool of

(04:05):
people who are going to bebuying this. You should not be
measuring impressions as like,one of your like, Okay, we got
100,000 impressions. There'sprobably not 100,000 people that
are actively shopping for thatpiece of equipment at all. You
don't need to be looking atthat. It needs to be much more
like, of a less of a shotgunapproach and more of a rifle
specific, I think, the old adageof, you know, throwing the
spaghetti against the wall andseeing what sticks that that may

(04:27):
work in, like a B2C or retailtype situation, but it B2B, it's
cutthroat. You got competitorswho either, like, you know, in
front of your customer already,and they're already working with
them, or they're courting theiryour customer right now. So you
got to be aft. You got to bequick. You got to be agile, and
you got to really make sure thatyou're telling the story
directly to these people and notjust measuring. Oh, well, what

(04:47):
was their engagement? Did theycome to my site and spend a lot
of time on there?
It's no, it's like, What pagedid they spend a lot of time on?
How can we feed that type ofinformation back to our sales
team through the CRM (CustomerRelationship Management)? How
can we, like, connect the data?I think a lot of times, and the
B2B world, there's just adisconnect between what your
sales team and there's like yourCRM is telling you and the
updated refresh data versus whatyou're learning on the other

(05:09):
end. You need to be trying tounderstand this customer user
journey. So we take Christian aslike a prospective buyer. He
looks at a Google ad. We nowknow that, you know, he has a
device ID tag. He's going to ourLinkedIn. He's going to our
website. We already have him onour CRM, his emails there. He
finally calls in, you know, offof a meta ad. Okay, well, did

(05:30):
Christian come from Facebookbecause that was the last place
he saw, or was it the entireuser journey that mattered? What
steps did it take? The full costisn't the cost per click on
meta. The full cost is theGoogle cost per click, the cost
of the SEO (Search EngineOptimization) campaign to find

(05:51):
it again, the cost of yourLinkedIn campaign, your email
marketing drip, your sales guywho touched on again before he
came to meta. And you want toknow that whole pathway. And
then you got to understand,like, you know what? What could
we done to maybe shorten thepathway so it's not as
expensive?
And then number two, how can werepeat that pathway for a future
prospective customer, becausethis is someone who found this
walk through the whole path andthen delivered. You've got to
make sure you connect the dotsall the way through the journey,
or else you're missing out. Youknow, say, we could have said,

(06:13):
Oh, meta was the best play here.Well, at the end of the day,
without the other pieces oflineage, they would never have
made it to meta. They probablynever made it to the purchasing
decision that might have justbeen like that, like a straw
that broke the camel's back. Soyou know, to answer your second
question. First, I think theproblem is that people focusing
on the wrong, they focus on thewrong piece of basically,
analytics, and then they threwthat focus on the wrong channels

(06:38):
and trying to focus on the wrongmetrics. And at the end of the
day, people, what people need tobe focusing on is customer
profile data and connecting yoursales team to your marketing
team.
Absolutely, absolutely. So goinggoing to that first question
like, Why do so many teamsstruggle with using data? I
guess a big part of it is like,what you said, it's just the
failure to understand whothey're targeting, where they're

(07:02):
coming from, and do you feel? Doyou feel a big part of it, at
least, I've seen this in myexperience, people tend to like
over complicate things when itcomes to data analysis?
Yeah, we always say, be moredirect with your data and
simplify. And I think direct istheir number one key, because
some people can just, you know,they talk in these airy ideas,
kind of like, you know, you canhear multiple sales pitches now

(07:25):
from Instagram that come to mindwhere it's like, I kind of, I
even sell this stuff, but Idon't really understand what
he's talking about. Because Ithink some people want to just,
like, over complicate it, makeit sound more dense than it
needs to. And I think the end ofthe day, tracking too many
things is part of the problem.Like, whenever we hire new media
buyers, we always talk about,you know, they'll set up their

(07:46):
conversion tracking, forexample, and they'll track like,
oh, five to six different thingsas conversions. Like a website
click as a conversion, going tothe Contact Us page is a
conversion like, no, no, no,let's get back to the root of
it. What is a true conversion?What do we add that value to?
And then let's try and focus onthe proper metrics. Of course,
tracking everything is good, butfocusing your conversions on

(08:07):
just what are contact points,especially in B2B marketing, who
filled out a form and who calledus.
Most importantly, anything elseis not valuable. And then taking
a
it one step further with aprogram like Call Rail you can
actually record the call, andyou can make sure that the
length of the length of the callis good. So we actually have
somebody manually, like, go backand listen to these calls at the
end of the day, you can, you canhire a virtual assistant for

(08:28):
your team. You can plug in callrough like, 100 bucks a month,
probably over $1,000 total cost,all in you can have a call
recording system. You can have aperson who's monitoring all the
calls giving you true feedback.And then the end of the day, you
export that data to your CRM.Here's our here are good calls,
a script for your team, or maybeyou should stop answering the
here's their phone number andtheir emails and their names.
You send it to your CRM, put itin a ChatGPT or AI tool, and you

(08:48):
basically like, compare your CRMand who's who closed versus your
calls. Okay, now we see whichones overlap, and you're truly
like connecting the data. Ittakes a little bit of manual
work, but somebody listening toall these calls, giving their
phone number and their names,then using your CRM to basically
phone. I mean, we have somepeople like, where it's like,
connect the data and pipelineshows you what your ROI (Return
on Investment) is. And I thinkif you don't do that last step,

(09:08):
then a lot of times we think,Oh, we're getting a lot of good
calls. And then you look down athow much ROI actually came from
it, even if they're talking thephone to two three minutes, they
were shopping, they didn't havethe budget, they you know, oh,
we're concepting. We're a yearout from buying that, you know,
the you might actually not begetting quality calls, even if
the calls are just long. Got totake the extra step of manually

(09:28):
listening to it
you know, they just had a dialtone go, and it would just go to

(10:14):
the next person, next person inthe company, tells my answer so
it always end up in the ownersand hands he'd be like out in
the field, sir, I think you needto have a team around you to

(10:43):
help answer the phone. You're amulti million dollar business.
It's time to step back from yourphone lines.
Yeah, you've got to find acouple tools that talk to each
other, right. And, I mean, atthe end of the day, the thing
that's probably the hardestthing to do in today's market is
determining what softwareprogram to buy. I would say

(11:05):
right now that Call Rail ispretty much the biggest
component to what we do, becauseit does, like the form tracking.
It does integrate directly intoyour like call recording
capabilities, and it actuallyhas an AI transcriber that would
transcribe the notes and qualifythe leads good or bad, and it's
reasonably cost, and it actuallyties in a majority of CRMs. So a

(11:26):
lot of that, like manual pieces,can be done. So we use go high
level, and at the end of theday, I think it's a company like
that where it's one singulardashboard. You're placing all of
your information, both your CRMyour email marketing,
everything's tied in throughthere. You can actually layer in
a program called, like a PearlDiver. So as soon as you get
people who are actually typingin like, it does a website

(11:46):
identifier.
So based on keywords orcompetitors or searches, you can
get their phone number in theiremail, and you can just create,
like, a cycle or a system whereit goes back to it like, so
like, basically I would getChristian's email because he
typed in marketing Greenville,South Carolina, I would get
populated into my CRM. Our CRMis going to automatically, like,
you know, start dripping himemails, and then Call Rail is

(12:07):
going to record when he callsin, hopefully, and then when it
ties the two together. But Ithink the main thing is making
sure you choose a couple robustsystems. I think fragmented
approaches are outdated, andit's too hard to make the
programs talk to each other.You've got to find one or two
programs that can do a lot ofwhat you're looking for. So the
more programs. I mean, we'vebeen there as a company, and

(12:28):
there's no shame in that we'vehad like five or six programs,
and you're like, trying to buildFrankenstein online.
Frankenstein, Frankenstein worksabout like Frankenstein. It's
slow, it's clunky, it doesn'treally work. Of course, it takes
investment and time to get tothat level. But once you make
the step and investment into thetrue, proper software, hiring
the professional set it up, onceyou have the system, it's, it's

(12:50):
unbelievable the clockwork theycan do for you. But I think too
many people are cheap on thefront end. They like, kind of
like piecemeal together, andthen they start, like, just
sticking new things on top,instead of just saying, all
right, we got to scratch thisand go back to square one.
Yeah, exactly. And once they dothat, then they start yelling,

(13:10):
it's alive.
Exactly.
Fantastic. I'm gonna move us onto the next question about key
pitfalls. And you've mentionedsome of them already, but like
key pitfalls that B2B marketersneed to avoid, and what should
I think social media is a hugekey pitfall that a lot of B2B
they be doing instead?
people fall into the trap of,unless you know your customer
100% as a buyer that's going tobe on social media, think that

(13:30):
there's a time and a place toinvest that energy and resources
onto other channels. I mean, yougot streaming capabilities, you
got display campaigns, you gotnative ads, you got, I mean,
even radio, I would think wouldwork better because you're doing
more of a one to one approach. Iwould not recommend doing this.
Social media goes back to like,it's a lot of time to create all
your strategy. A lot of it's notgoing to be directly relevant to

(13:53):
your customer. Because, I mean,how many times can you post
about the same product over andover and over again? For even if
you have a vast line of to like,say, your manufacturer, you have
like, we have five dozenproducts. Well, what product do
you feature on your socialmedia? Well, how do you like
highlight that individual? Ithink so many people get
obsessed with like, we need tobe on social media. We got to be

(14:15):
on social media. And that is abig mistake for B2B companies. I
think LinkedIn is a good placefor you to I think it's a, you
know, one of those platformswhere you can be on there, you
can be more of a thought leader,you can create yourself as an
expert. But it's not, it's notgreat to be on some of the other
I mean, I just know themanufacturer the other day in
social media platforms. And Isee that like resource waste heavily.
Australia, and, you know, he'sheavy leveraged into meta ads,

(14:36):
and he's getting a lot of leads,but they're not a lot of quality
leads. And he's like, look, nowmy problem is, I have 2000
leads, and I only have like, 20of these people are gonna buy
this year. I know based on myfacts of how much, like, you
know, how many sales we're gonnahave, 12 to 30. So I've got 2000
people. I've got to filterthrough. How do I get and so he
made his form longer and longer,right? He's like, I am hoping.

(14:57):
I'm like, well, at the end ofthe day, your form might stop
some people that also may bequalified leader buyers, because
they don't want to have to fillout this extremely lengthy form.
So he's obsessed with meta. AndI'm like, you know, I get
there's a time and place, andyou don't want to back away from
it, but the amount that you'reinvesting there, it can go so
much further for you, if you canbe very specific about who these

(15:19):
people are and leveraging thisacross other networks. I mean,
take LinkedIn, for example, justbuy ads they're on there to
strictly job titles and peoplein certain locations, and you're
gonna have a better result thanjust going on Facebook and doing
it interest based, because, Imean, Facebook and Instagram and
Tiktok, they're all interestbased, they're not title based,
or they're not profession based,so it's all different algorithm.

(15:41):
Yeah, no, that's absolutelyright. That's absolutely right.
Talk to us about the importance,I mean, like, I know you know
that it's important, but talk tous about why it's crucial to
have the right strategy andapproach to leverage actionable
metrics and data, and why youshouldn't just wing it. Right?
I have one of my favoritecustomer stories from a guy that

(16:03):
I met a while ago that I wouldknow he would hate, he laughs at
it now, but he said that, youknow, every year he would just,
he managed his own ads. So hewould just, but he was just
trying and starting and stoppingold campaigns within weeks, you
know. So he would, he was like,AB test, and I do it over, like,
four or five days, and at theend of the day he, you know, he
used probably every bell andwhistle on meta. He used every

(16:26):
bell and whistle and Microsofton Bing on Google. And he was
like, I don't think any of itworks. I tried it all, and I
went back and read all of it.And he, he was just starting and
stopping campaigns every week ortwo. And I'm like, like, you
know, at the other day, one ofmy favorite stories for that is
just be patient with this stuff.It's not like I always say, it's

(16:48):
not feeling the dreams. Youcan't just build it and they
will come like you gotta be. Yougotta really fine tune it. You
gotta spend your time diligentlylooking through it. And I do
think there's a there'ssometimes a place of, like, just
a little bit of patience goes along way in this game. Because,
I mean, it's allexperimentation, right? It's a
game we're gamifying an entirelike, a marketing experience and

(17:08):
exposure, but making sure thatyou're playing the game with
patience. It's not, it's notlike you're gonna step in the
batter's box in a baseball gameand hit a home run the first
time. Like, yeah, take some,take some batting practice. Get
warmed up.
Absolutely, absolutely remindsme of a client we worked with
about two years ago in the homefurnishing industry, so things

(17:30):
like window shutters, forexample, right? And we were
launching a campaign for him. Aweek later, he goes, I have no
web traffic. I'm like, well,it's only been a week. You know
what I mean? Like, did youexpect this like, you know, you
switch it on and then suddenlypeople are, like, flocking to
your like, showroom.

(17:52):
fire. My favorite, my favoritequote for that as a guy spoke in
my NBA class who ran a bigagency called brains on fire.
And he said, the Clemson NBAcame to him, and they said,
Look, we'd like to, you know,make an announcement about
opening up an NBA school indowntown. We have a $5,000
budget. And he looked at himdead the face to the dean, and
he said, If all you have is$5,000 you need to go buy a

(18:13):
wagon, get the remaining cash in$1 bills, pour gasoline on and
push it down main street. That'sgonna be the best press you can
get for your $5,000
Oh, I am pretty sure they didnot appreciate that answer.
They probably realized he wasright.

(18:36):
The best part is, I heard thisat the MBA school. They had that
Yeah, exactly. They didn't pushthe cart down Main Street, but
they should have.
They probably should have, yeah,exactly, exactly. All right, so
guy come back and speak. And Iwas like, I'm surprised they
Kenny, based on your experience,and also based on all the things
that we've been talking about inpast couple of minutes, how can

(18:58):
B2B marketers leverage this dataand also hopefully a bit of
creativity and strategy toachieve these tangible business
even let you come back andspeak.
outcomes. So how can they bemore creative in their approach?
Because I think that's importanttoo, and what are the key steps
that they need to take? Justwalk us through that.
I would say one of the biggestthings is going to different
industry trade shows outside ofyour specific industries. So if

(19:20):
you're trying to innovatewithin, like, you know, the
marketing space, right? Ifyou're a manufacturer, don't go
to your manufacturing show.Looking for marketing
innovation. Go to an ad agencyshow. Go to some of these
hospitality shows. I mean, Ithink hospitality has to be very
innovative in their approach. Imean, you know, like some of
these B2C companies, they'revery, very edgy, and you can
take a lot from it. Like, youknow, at the end of the day,

(19:41):
Nike might be a B2C customer,but they also has a lot of
messaging and materials thatthey use in their marketing that
can be very impactful. So Ithink going outside of your
industry to take some knowledge,it's almost like traveling right
when you go to Europe and you goexperience different things, you
can bring back some what you sawto your clients and to your
clientele. Same idea andapproach goes into your business
line. Go away from yourindustry. Go learn other thought

(20:03):
leaders. Think about what thekind of approach they're taking
and the trend. See what you canbring back. And think that you
know being patient, but alsolike having a timeline that
you're comfortable spending.
I always say, start small. Do anexperimentation. Do something
you're comfortable, and thenknow the data is value and make
sure you're collecting it,because as long as you're
leveraging it should be alearning experiment. It's not a

(20:24):
failure. So, you know, say,Bring it. I always tell people
like, for, you know, take, takeit. A simple approach, in terms
of, like, you know, I think ofeach channel as a bucket. Let's
take three or four channels, orthree or four buckets. Let's
spend the same amount of money,even if it's $1,000 on each
let's run an experiment for ninedays so we know we have
patience. Okay? That means we'regonna run you each one's $1,000

(20:44):
a month. You're 4 your nine daysor 12 dozen dollars. Okay, even
if you need to do that four moretimes throughout the year,
you're gonna spend $50,000you're gonna test all these
different strategies. You'regonna have tested all these
different channels. You're gonnahave a general idea and what
usually happens after nine days,you're like, one of those four.
Two of those four worked. Okay,let's cancel the other two.
Let's try and spend, you know,an equivalent amount of money on

(21:06):
two new channels, if you keepjust diligently AB testing,
collecting the data and learningfrom what happened, I think
that's the best play possible.
So many people were rushed inthere and rushed out of there
like I've seen my one of myfavorite campaign success
stories is, you know, we had a90 day trial going with a
client. It was day, like, 82he's like, just pull the plug.
We hadn't gotten anything fromit. And I'm like, man, you're

(21:35):
selling stuff that's over$100,000 a piece. If we just get
one client in the next eightdays, you're not gonna fire me.
And we want to spend $10,000 Ithink he was spending like
$3,000 a month. On the 87th day.He had like, a $250,000 close,
and he's still a client today.But, I mean, we were five days,
and I think we battled him everyday during those last five days,
but the end of the day, once wefound that one channel that
works. Now we've canceled otherco channels or our other
buckets. We poured the waterout, poured water in a different
bucket, and then tested it outmethodically, scientifically,

(21:58):
approach, use the data, and thenmake sure it ties back to money.
Because if you're not collectingthe data and you're not tying it
back to the money, then youdon't know what's working. And
you're stuck in that 50% of mymarketing dollars work and 50%
of my marketing dollars don'twork. The problem is, I don't
know which 50%. That is the lastplace you want to be stuck,
especially in today's digitalage.
And I, you know, I agree with, Iagree with what you said. Um,

(22:20):
I'm just gonna throw this one inthere, because I'm pretty sure
you've, you've come across thesituation more times than you
care to count. But um, how doyou get buy in for what you just
suggested? Like, even thingslike, Okay, let's go to a trade
show that's not linked to ourindustry. Let's do something
that's unconventional, dosomething that's a little bit

(22:40):
more creative. Because, I mean,let's, let's be because, I mean,
let's, let's be honest in B2B,that's a that can be a really
tough sell, especially, andnothing against business owners,
and nothing against seniormanagement. But, you know, look,
a lot of these guys don't have amarketing background. They're
either, they're either somebodyin finance or somebody in, you
know, that's a bit more, youknow, has a bit more of a

(23:01):
technical background, and, youknow, mentioning to them, okay,
well, why don't we just spendmoney and go to a trade show
that's not linked to ourindustry? They'll look at you
like you're crazy. So, how doyou how do you get buy in from
that?
I would say the way that I'vedone in the past is probably not
the most economical, but I'vejust gone myself to the
conferences,go, I usually I'm kind of using

(23:31):
myselfcouple trucking logistical
clients, but I learned somedifferent other stuff in terms
of, like, AI agents and some CRMmanagement at different
techniques they were using to,like, monitor their, like,

(24:03):
basically all their trucks onthe road, and how they're trying
But I think the hardest part ofgetting management to buy in, in
to get loads coming back. I usethat for a bunch of our home
terms of thinking out of the boxis you've got to get a small win
somehow. So, like, I mean, if assoon as you have a win or
something under your belt whereyou can, like, say, Look, this
actually works, you have a lotmore leniency from those like,
service clients. I was like, Oh,that software could be cool for
you know, staff members orsenior management people to buy
into your idea. So my fate, oneof my favorite thing is, is just

(24:24):
trying to, like, you know,that's why taking those calls,
listening to them, monitoringthem, finding a key win and
getting access to the data. Asan agency, you've got to get
access to the data. So, like,I'll go through a logistical
over here. And then the otherday, it was one of those things
client we had, you know, thebeginning, they're like, We
don't... I don't think this isworking a ton, you know, we're
not seeing a ton of difference.We're not seeing how it's going.
I'm like, Just give me access toyour salesforce. It was a big

(24:45):
tug of pole. I'm like, Look,just let me look at your
salesforce. Set me up as asalesperson. I'll bring you a
piece of business. I don't care.And so I ended up referring a
couple people to them trying toget a business, got into their
salesforce. I was able to, like,you know, connect the dots
between because they weren'tdoing the connection. So I
where I was able to, like, youknow, piecemeal different
listen to all the calls. Iconnected the dots. I found that
eight people in the last 30 daysthat actually come through our

(25:05):
ad campaign and bought from themthat had never bought from them
before, one of which was, like,a one and a half million dollar
client. So I came back to him,and, you know, this is a meeting
a week before, they're like,basically firing me, saying,
like, this isn't working. Stopit. I come back a week later and
I'm like, actually, in the last30 days, you drove like, $2.2
concepts and bring it back.
million of the business here toyour accounts, mainly $1.5 of it
came from this one key, this onekey woman. And they're like,

(25:27):
that lady, that's it that camefrom y'all, I'm like, yes, so
they went from we're gonna firey'all, we're not seeing that big
And of course, then the debatecame. Well, we'd actually been
of a difference, to like, oh,the biggest piece of business we
trying to contact a woman we hadnever been able to get our
won in the last 30 days was formeals ad campaign.
business in the last two years.Maybe we finally just got it.
I'm like, well, or maybe wehelped push over the edge. But
the idea is that we wenttogether, you know, like, it's
not our of y'all winner. We win.It's like we're selling your

(25:49):
service, and we've got to justtry to be walking the horse to
the water we hope they drink.Yeah, we're both trying to talk
the horse into drinking. But atthe other day, we got the horse
to the water, and she drank thistime. And it's a really good
deal, but it's funny, you know,because they're ready just to
throw the towel in. And now,once I got a little bit of wind,
I was able to, like, coat theminto getting a little more

(26:12):
innovative, try and get out ofthe box, like, how we do some
different things. Because Iwould say they've always been
very, very traditional in theiradvertisement being billboard
centric, news centric. And we,you know, we've been able to
introduce more and more conceptsin terms of automation. We've
tied their CRM into aprogrammatic campaign now. So
we're like, for example, iftheir CRM moves people through

(26:33):
deal stages, it actually willserve them different ads.
So based on specifically whattheir sales team puts it in
there, say they're like, they'rerefrigerated trucking, or these
people are automotive trucking,they're gonna fall directly into
an ad campaign category that'sgonna serve them as specific to
whatever service it is. As soonas they fall like, the sales
team moves them from like, we'rejust a warm lead to where, like,

(26:54):
we're 75% to close, or 90% toclose. They're actually getting
more specific ads tailored towhatever they're trying to
whatever they're talking abouttheir notes. So the ads are set
up to trigger. And if peopledon't open the emails and they
fall back, or if they fall youknow, if they start stalling,
they fall back. It within thefunnel. But it's all AI
connected to where the CRM tiesin, and people just go, you

(27:14):
know, stage to stage to stagethrough. But at the end of day,
like, trying to convince thetrucking industry to, hey, let's
set up your CRM to automate adsto go stage by stages or sales.
But I just come in there at dayone, he didn't, like, No, I'm
like, what that's, what's thatgonna cost? And I don't lie,
like, What's that even mean?Whereas, in the beginning we got
a win, we slowly built him in,and now he's actually coming

(27:35):
with me to a hospitalityconference here since, so at the
end of the day, I'm like, wegot, we got him. Like, he's
bought he's bought in, he'slooked in. But I mean we had to
get the big win first.
Yeah, so it's going back to whatyou said earlier. It's, it's,
you've got to bring them someproof or evidence. Sorry, this
sounds like a detective storyhere, but, yeah, just prove to

(27:56):
them that it works, right?
Exactly like they want, fact,they don't want a gut feeling
like, you know, this has to thishat. The line has to be direct.
Exactly, exactly. Okay, myfriend, we get to the point in
the conversation where we'retalking about actionable tips,
and, man, you have given usplenty already, right? But just

(28:16):
imagine there is a B2B marketerout there that's listening to
this conversation, and you wantthem to take action on what
you've been talking about. Sowhat are the three to five
things that you could tell B2Bmarketers to do right now.
I would look into Call Rail setthat up on your computer. I
mean, set that up on yourprogram of me try and tie it

(28:37):
into your CRM. You know, maybethat's step two. Number three, I
would try and find either apartner or get your own seat at
Stack Adapt. It's the one thatI've talked about where it ties
directly into your CRM. So it'sa programmatic ad buy campaign
in the minimums, like 1000 or2000 time ton, you can actually
set it up to where it triggersall the CRM. It'll do your email

(28:57):
campaigns through there. Numberfour, I'll try and potentially
invest in a go high levelaccount or something along those
lines, some campaign where it'sgoing to basically pull all this
data together into one dashboardto where your CRM is all linked
with everything in the I've goneon. And then number five, I
would set aside a budget eachmonth for experimentation. And I
get, if your budget is tight issmall, I wouldn't say don't

(29:19):
spend like $500 not gonna get alot of results there, but every
month, just because yourcampaigns working. Now we want
10% or carved out where this isexperimentation. You know, I
would say that's the huge don'tstop experimenting. Don't stop
learning. If you can be thefirst mover, if you can get that
blue ocean strategy, then youreally gonna if you can be the
first thought leader in Tiktok,for example, five years goes

(29:42):
like an influencer. Think abouthow much money that person made
as a B2B market. We got, we gotto be thinking the same thing.
There's Tiktok ads next. What isnext? Is Microsoft ads next? You
know what? What are the playshere? How do we get ahead?
Because if we can get part ofthe market share on this new
platform, this new technique, wecan explode our business. So
just keep trying. Keep it. Keepbusy. Imaging. Go implement some
different tools and starttracking a day on what kind of

(30:04):
revenue you're making.
Fantastic, fantastic. I love it.Here comes the Love it or hate
it, question. But man, we'vebeen talking about data, so it
would be foolish for me not tobring up metrics, right metrics,
which metrics? And I know, Iknow we talked about this at the
beginning of the conversation,you could go down this deep

(30:24):
rabbit hole and just drown inthis like, sea of data and
ubiquity and what have you. Butlike, what are some of the key
metrics that marketers should bepaying attention to?
Specifically in the B2B world? Ithink the key metrics that we
I know some of these products inB2B world can be very
need to be paying attention tois number of number of contacts

(30:44):
in our pipelines. I think that'sa huge thing. It's got to be
continually refreshed. Got to bepaying attention to client like
detailed information. I thinkthat's a metric that is like
interesting and very likedetailed. Make sure that you are
overlooked, and it's almost likedata input. You know, equals
data output, make sure your datainput is extremely clean. Number
presenting the information tothe buyer, because you only have
three, I'd be really focused onindividually counting your calls

(31:07):
in your form. I think this is ahuge way where you're going to
be tied back in. And I wouldsay, if you monitor your revenue
a lot of times, if you see yourcalls tick up, your forms tick
up, the same percentage yourrevenue will typically tick up
and the other the last piece oflike, you know, metrical advice
limited number of buyers onceyou get them on the website,
that I would give you, would bemonitoring your engagement rate

(31:29):
once they get on that web page,if they spend less than a minute
per page on your site. Figureout where people are bouncing
off and on what pages, and keepupdating and fine tuning those
individual pages on yourwebsite. Maybe you have to do an
E brochure. Maybe you have to doan explainer video about the products.

(31:50):
or two minutes on thatindividual like products page,
you've missed something. Makesure that all your specs are
there, all your details thereany information they could
possibly find. Really, really,really, really, deep dive into
those sessions, per page,engagement rates. That's like a
very granular level ofinformation. But I think that's

(32:11):
something like, that's what B2Bmarketers get paid to do. We're
not looking at just, oh, CocaCola. How many people saw our
ads. We're paying attention tohow many people saw this
individual X, Y or Z product.How much time do they spend on
that page? Why'd they bounce?What happened? There's a program
called Crazy Egg. You canactually record and see what
people are doing on yourwebsite. It'll record their
individual interactions. You canrecord just individual pages if

(32:32):
you realize, okay, people arereally bouncing off of this,
like products page, plug, callrail on there. Record that page.
Figure out what everybody, likeanybody who bounced off their
watch their sessions. It'll ifyou get a whole you like, heat
map, a whole wave of like, wherethey scroll around what they
did, and it actually gives youartificial intelligence, give
you insights into, like, whatyou could do on that page, or

(32:54):
what people may or may not belooking for. It's like $79 a
month plug call rail in. There'sthat's like something I can't
preach enough to B2B marketers.It's like you've got to pay
attention to your per pagesessions.
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely,yeah, I've heard of Crazy Eggs.
So that's a that's a good one.And I think you've mentioned
call rail a couple of times now,like, so definitely, um, just,
just to quickly recap, number ofcontacts in pipeline, client

(33:14):
detailed info, um, data inputand output, call and form leads
and engagement rate per page, Iguess, right so per page on the
site?
Correct. Yeah.
Fantastic, fantastic.
Sorry, I talked pretty quick.You did good to keep up with
that. Yeah, I'm the antithesisof the southerner that talks
slow.

(33:37):
Don't worry. We can, we can slowthe video down a little bit.
But we might need to. Everyone'slike, breathe, remember to
breathe.
Goodness. Thank goodness forvideo post production. All
right, a status quo in your areaof expertise that you

(33:57):
passionately disagree with, andwhy?
It goes back to social media. Ithink post like, quantity of
post is like the status quo thatI think is. I'll go even further
into I dislike social media. Andknow, how can misalign. Take a
manufacturer they like, theymight post about birthdays, they
might be posting about, youknow, X, Y or Z, and think about
it from a customer perspective.You want you go to trade show in

(34:18):
like Shanghai, you meet somebodythere who has this great
product. All you wanna do is golook at it and show some money
on your staff about thisproduct. You go to their
Facebook page. That's somebody'sbirthday. The next post down is
like, what day for lunch? Thenext post down is about, like,
their company retreat. The nextpost down is like, you're like,
I'm just looking for a pictureof the product that I was shown.

(34:40):
And then now your Facebook hasactually helped un-helping you
sell right? It's not helpingadvance your message. And so the
idea is, like, you don't have topost all the time just to work
with the algorithm through andbe make sure your top four to
five, your last post on yourgrid, if you want to call it
that are very, very relevant,and it's. Said, just make sure
that you're posting quality, notquantity as an individual. It's

(35:01):
not about telling a story youcan. Of course, there's a time
and a place to like, humanizethe brand. It might be better
suited in a video where you havelike, individual people, and you
can do, I always like, go backto like the old Gary V saying
the jab, jab, punch. So you cando co jabs here that are like,
not call to actions and then alittle punch of the call to
action, but I would make surethat it's customer relevant. If

(35:23):
you think about this guy orgirl, who's you just met at a
trade show, what are theylooking to see on your social
media? Make sure that's whatyour post. Don't waste the space
in the time posting aboutsomething else. I think there's
a status quo. Like, I've got topost four times a week. I gotta
go on stories. I gotta, like,have a presence. I gotta be a I
gotta have people, I got to showfaces. Yes, yes, yes, all that

(35:44):
is correct. But no, no, no. Ifyou're not, if you can't keep it
consistently about your brand orabout what you're selling, don't
waste your customers time, anddon't waste the space or energy
resources of doing that.
Yeah, yeah, no, I totally agreewith that. I mean, like, you
know, just posting for the sakeof posting, especially about
stuffabout. It's just a waste of time

(36:05):
and energy.
Exactly, yeah, and it's honestlyprobably hurting your brand more
Yeah, yeah, absolutely,absolutely. Okay. Here comes the
bonus question on the topic oftraveling. Well, if you were
than helping your brand.
stuck on a desert island, threethings that you would bring with
Is there a chance to get off thedesert island?
you, and what are they? And whywould you bring them?

(36:29):
you're gonna be stuck there fora while, and eventually,
I mean, I think you got, I thinkyou gotta say, like, a pot, a
eventually, like Tom Hanks inthat movie, right? Like some
container ship will pass by himand pick you up.
flint and a knife.

(36:49):
Okay?
Because you can at least make afire and, like, boil some water
and keep yourself alive, and youcan at least cook some food
using the pot as well, startyour fire with your flint, your
knife. Maybe that's veryconservative, or, like,
realistic answer, but this isstrict survival response.
That's a great answer. Like, Iwould cringe if you would have
said, like, oh, you know, my mymy iPad and and my Netflix

(37:15):
subscription or some nonsenselike that, right?
Or, I mean, I'm a little likecity, so I almost said my tent,
but I think a pot might be moreimportant than the tent.
Absolutely. Man. Kenny, this hasbeen a great conversation, man.
So thanks so much for coming onthe show and for sharing your
expertise and experience withthe listeners. So uh, please

(37:36):
quick Introduce yourself on howfolks out there can get in touch
with you.
Yeah, I'm Kenny Ridgell withRidge Media. Our website is
https://ridgemediallc.com/ go onthere. Check out our case study.
Follow us on social media.Promise not to post random stuff
that doesn't is not relevant toyou, and feel free to reach out.
We always offer free brandaudit. Well, happy to meet with
you. Just brainstorm good ideasout there. A lot of that comes

(37:58):
from just like my passionateenergy for marketing as a whole,
not looking to just basicallymake money everywhere we go and
say we want to share ideas,create value and hopefully make
new relationships. Look forwardto hearing from you.
Fantastic, fantastic. So onceagain, Kenny, thanks for coming
on and take care, stay safe andtalk to you soon.
Absolutely. Thank you, man.
All right. Bye for now.