October 29, 2024 • 24 mins
Join Anthony Karls and James Patterson of Rocket Clicks as they dive into leveraging measurement tracking to buy data and conduct market research. Discover the importance of waterfall reporting, how to refine prospecting strategies, and how to effectively utilize programmatic advertising for local entrepreneurs.
00:00 Introduction to Revenue Roadmap
00:13 Meet James Patterson: Digital Marketing Expert
02:23 Understanding the Concept of Buying Data
05:47 The Importance of Waterfall Reporting
08:39 Leveraging CRM Data for Marketing Success
11:50 Executing Data-Driven Marketing Strategies
18:30 The Role of Attribution in Marketing
23:18 Conclusion and Key Takeaways
#DigitalMarketing #Data #BusinessGrowth
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Anthony Karls (00:00):
All right, here we go.
This is Revenue Roadmap, wherewe talk about sales and
marketing for localentrepreneurs.
So I am Anthony Carls, presidentof RocketClicks, and I got Mr.
James Patterson again with ustoday.
So last time we talked, James,uh, we talked about measurement
tracking, uh, So we want tobuild off of that from our last
(00:23):
conversation and kind of getinto how we leverage that to buy
data and do market research.
But before we get into that, uh,if you could tell our, tell our
audience again, we're just alittle bit about yourself, what
you do here at Rocket Clicks,what your background looks like.
So you can have a little, littlestreet cred before you start
yammering.
James Patterson (00:44):
yeah, absolutely.
So, um, yeah, thanks for theintro, Tony.
My name is James.
I've kind of got my started andgot my start in digital
marketing back in 2017 workedfor a little small R and D
company that was, uh, looking tosave a few dollars, I think, on
their marketing program and tooka took a gamble on a college
kid.
Um, was great for me because Igot to really touch everything
(01:05):
and got a lot of opportunity totest around and find out what I
liked, um, that ultimately ledme to working with a larger
corporation here in Wisconsin.
got, you know, kind of anaccelerated program in terms of
what interests me in digitalmarketing, did some SEO, um, but
ultimately landed on paid beingkind of my preferred avenue
within digital marketing.
(01:26):
from there I wanted to work witha larger team of kind of, you
know, You know, uh, experts inthe field who are on the latest
and greatest trends of, ofdigital marketing and paid
specific.
So started looking at agenciesto work for and ended up here at
RocketClicks.
And so I've been here sinceJanuary, 2021.
Anthony Karls (01:45):
And what are you, what are you doing now here at
RC?
James Patterson (01:48):
Yep.
So at RocketClicks now I'm anaccount manager.
So I get the opportunity to workwith our B2C local team.
And we work with a variety ofdifferent local businesses and
help them grow and crush their,Right now, 2024 revenue goals.
So it's a lot of fun to get toimpact their business, both on
the SEO side and paid side.
And we get to impact even someareas outside of your kind of
(02:11):
quote unquote, normal, um,digital marketing avenues.
We get to look at their salesprocess.
Ui ux, um really just makeimpact across their entire
business.
So it's a lot of fun.
Anthony Karls (02:22):
Cool.
So like I said, we, uh, lasttime we talked, we talked about
measurement tracking, why it'simportant.
We run into, uh, we run intothis a lot with our, with our
clients.
We got to teach them how tothink about this.
And, um, one of the, one of thebig reasons why is obviously
when we, when we do this, we cantrack ROI and understand whether
(02:43):
or not what we're doing isworking, um, but there's a
downstream impact around, youknow, Buying data, uh, and going
back to market with ourlearning.
So can you, you talk a littlebit about what it means to buy
data and paid media, what the,what are the opportunities look
like?
What does this, what does thismean?
What does this look like?
James Patterson (03:02):
Yeah, absolutely um, this is one of
those concepts within marketingand I think a lot of um, You
know, I think a lot of agenciesdon't do a good job explaining
to clients and I think a lot ofclients know, as a result, don't
really fully understand.
Um, know, especially as it looksto, you know, getting a really
great strategy Online, right?
Like one of the first thingsthat you need to do is obviously
(03:22):
build out those differentchannels Build out your accounts
things like that A lot of timeswhen people are doing that
they're expecting kind ofinstant results, right?
Like we're gonna make this be ayou know A huge part of our
business and we're gonna nail itand everything's gonna be go,
you know Good and golden and alot of times it ends up not
being the case You Um, reasonfor that is because a lot of
times it's just that expectationset, um, setting from kind of
(03:45):
the beginning, you know, when welook at building out accounts
here, rocket clicks, we do haveprinciples that we like to kind
of abide by kind of a sharedlanguage in terms of what
strategies we like to startwith.
We'll always start with that.
Um, but really what wecommunicate with clients when
we're starting out, especiallyin new channels is that data
that's coming in.
We're actually buying that it'snot really spending the money to
(04:06):
acquire new customers.
That's actually a result ofbuying that data that we can
then learn from.
So, you know, a lot of theclients that we work with that
have the most success online,it's really those that have
bought a lot of data over timeand has used that data to
ultimately get smarter.
And then ultimately again, as aresult, drive more business to
them.
So it's been, it's been reallyfun, you know, especially
(04:27):
working with, um, newerbusinesses that are still kind
of trying to learn what, youknow, maybe a Google ads
platform looks like and stufflike that, and kind of show them
that this is the right way tolook at it.
And a lot of times it's thatpatience and kind of
understanding that we're reallypurchasing that data to learn
from that ultimately leads tosuccessful.
Yeah,
Anthony Karls (04:47):
you're, so there's really two things to
take away here.
One is like the concept ofbuying data.
That's how we talk about it.
Building out new channels, um,the by product of buying data,
if we're doing it right andgetting the data is, uh, is
revenue, right?
And the better, the more weunderstand about our data.
The better we're going togenerate revenue from that.
(05:10):
Um, so that's one, that's oneaspect that you're talking
about.
And that's more of aphilosophical approach than a,
like technically buying data.
So like when we're doing that,what are the things that were,
that are really important tolike actually gaining learnings
from taking, taking the approachof like buying data revenue is
(05:30):
the by product so that we're,we're ROI positive, we're
driving results.
We're making an impact on thebusiness.
Like, what do we need to do?
To make sure we're doing thatright.
Because like you can buy dataand waste a lot of money or you
can buy data and you canactually learn stuff.
So like talk a little bit aboutthat.
James Patterson (05:47):
it honestly goes back to a lot of our, our
last episode where it's socritical to have, um, waterfall
reporting, um, implementedwithin your business.
I mean, if you can't look atyour own business and understand
kind of what it takes to gofrom, you know, a user entering
the site to how much, you know,it costs to acquire a lead
coming in.
So ultimately, you know, makingit through the kind of
opportunity or, or, um, youknow, sales qualified stage to
(06:10):
ultimately becoming a customerfor your business.
It's going to be really hard togo back to those channels and
really make an evaluation to seeif, you know, in a sense that
data you purchase is going toultimately lead to revenue, you
know, driving revenue long termfor that strategy.
Um, so a lot of times what welike to do is we'll actually
start again with that waterfall,um, reporting, getting the sales
(06:32):
data.
So,
Anthony Karls (06:33):
So what is, what is waterfall reporting mean?
Cause that's a term we useinternally.
That's not run.
James Patterson (06:39):
If you've already internal, yeah.
Um, leads.
Uh, so when we talk aboutwaterfall reporting, it's really
basically thinking about.
In some ways, basically startingfrom the top of the funnel.
So like users engaging with yoursite and ultimately coming all
the way down.
Um, what, what does that trickledown effect?
So what you can do by that is bygetting, um, business metrics
like your leads, um,opportunities, or a lot of
(07:00):
times, again, will be kind ofconsidered sales qualified
leads.
So basically somebody that camein through your intake team,
ultimately talked to maybe asales member or something like
that, and actually gone throughthe kind of qualification
process to understand that theyare a good fit for your service.
So driving those folks andgetting that metric and then
ultimately customers.
So people that went from thatsales qualified position to
ultimately doing business withyou and then the revenue that
(07:23):
comes from those customers.
By having all of those, um,inputs, you can then kind of
build what we like to refer toas the waterfall, which again,
shows this kind of trickle downeffect.
What the beauty is there is thatyou can back up into all these
different numbers, right?
So if you know now, you know,the average revenue you drove
over the last, you know, two tothree years, we can segment that
(07:43):
by the month.
We can segment that by then eachindividual sale that comes in.
So what's your average customervalue, bring them down to your
average, uh, qualified set, uh,you know, sales qualified lead.
Your average value for a leadand so on and so forth.
So you can actually see kind ofhow it all fits together and
ultimately make sure that you'reevaluating platforms the right
way.
Anthony Karls (08:03):
So what are, so how do I start thinking about
doing that?
Like, well, how do, what do Ineed to do to actually track
that stuff?
Because that, this is some ofthe stuff that we actually run
into as, as issues that would behelpful to drive better growth
over the long term if weactually were capturing these,
these different data points.
So like, what do those looklike?
What's important?
(08:24):
To make sure we get and like inwhat portion of the waterfall
should we get them and how doesthat tie back into like, you
know, buying data by testing newchannels or literally buying
data by going to data platformsand purchasing things.
James Patterson (08:39):
Yeah.
So, so, um, you know, the bestplace to pull those kinds of
metrics and to share it withyour agency partner or whoever
is managing, um, kind of yourdigital marketing strategy, um,
is to go right into your CRM.
So like a lot of times, youknow, depending on what system
you're using, you can pulldifferent views and reports.
Um, as you should know.
So, you know, like we said, weusually like to say about two to
three years is best.
(09:00):
Um, it's kind of a side tangenton that is a lot of times people
want to make decisions off avery short periods of window,
you know, very short period oftime.
So, um, it goes back to thedata, um, you know, purchasing
data and making decisions off ofthat.
We don't want to make anydecisions based off of just a
small portion of time.
We want to look big picture.
Um, so it goes the same for thewaterfall reporting when look at
(09:21):
2 to 3 years.
Pull in leads, um, you know,sales, qualified leads,
customers, and revenue right outof your CRM.
Of course, you know, somebusinesses will have multiple
systems, but basically that, youknow, for a lot of businesses,
you're going to be able to pullthat right out of your CRM.
Anthony Karls (09:36):
Yeah.
So what, what are the datapoints of the, that we need to
be capturing in our CRM so thatwe know what we're doing as
well.
James Patterson (09:45):
Yeah.
So, I mean, it's going to varydepending on your business type,
but, um, to give it as broadlyas possible, every meaningful
step within that process.
So what I mean by that is like,you're obviously gonna have an
intro step, right?
Somebody's coming in.
Ultimately, they made contactwith you on your site.
Or maybe they saw your phonenumber on a, you know, map
listing, something like that.
Obviously, a lead makes contactwith your intake team or
(10:06):
automatically gets answered ifthey come in through a form.
Capturing that step, I think, isone of the most important ones.
And then, of course, you'reprobably, um, other even more so
important one would be thenactually the customers coming
in.
Because everything along theline, right?
There's all these little, youknow, little conversions that
happen throughout.
So usually what, the way we liketo look at it is that we, we're
(10:28):
going to need leads.
So again, how they're coming in.
Um, usually we're going to callit a marketing qualified lead.
Of course, it's going to be alittle bit different.
So like if you're a law firm,um, that's usually going to be
like an eval, right?
So somebody made contact with,um, again, an intake member,
they're saying, Hey, I'minterested in this and that, you
know, I want a personal injury.
Well, we don't do personalinjury.
So then they're out, but we wantto capture those types of things
(10:50):
to make sure that again, Whenwe're buying data on the front
end, we can say, Hey, look, theleads that we're driving through
this data purchase through thesedifferent strategies that we're
implementing, we're getting moreof not that and more people
making their, their way all theway through.
so it's, it's that marketingqualified lead.
And then, you know, salesqualified league, like I've
talked about a lot of timesthat's then making contact with
(11:10):
the sales team member.
then, I said, ultimately, dothey become a customer from
there?
Um, every business is going tovary a little bit about what's
in the middle there.
Um, but ultimately it's at leastthose four steps or some
combination of that.
and again, it's very criticalbecause a lot of times you can
learn a lot in those in betweenphases, although, you know,
obviously net new leads and netnew customers is often, you
(11:32):
know, the, the ones you hear themost about.
Anthony Karls (11:36):
So if we, if we're capturing, you know, name
and email and phone number andaddress, we're tracking this all
the way through.
What can we then do with thatdata once we have a significant
data set?
Like, what's, what's possiblethere?
James Patterson (11:50):
Yeah.
So, so one of the, one of thecoolest things that you can do
once you start to accrue some ofthat data is, is really refine
your prospecting strategies,right?
Like there is no better datasource.
To show what does my customeractually look like then your
customers, right?
So like that is the most purestform of data that exists out
there.
Obviously, you know, google'schanged their uh, Their tune in
(12:12):
terms of uh, depreciatingcookies and things like that But
you know first party data isalways going to be the the true
premium.
Um, you know, you got you You'vealready established that so
pulling data sets out of yourcrm like, you know, you
mentioned Usually it's going tobe some combination of first
name last name email phone YouUm, address can be applicable
to, and some of these, you canactually go to other, um,
(12:34):
platforms and learn about yourcustomers.
Um, one of the ones that we useis working with Experian.
They offer this, um, sobasically, uh, matching your
customer records to, uh, creditcard data.
And they will actually build outa, basically a profile on what
the different groups kind ofcome out of your data from your
customers.
And it can be so impactful,right?
So a lot of times when you'remaking decisions about how to
(12:57):
prospect to people who youthink, right, kind of make up
your target audience, well, youcan take the thinking out of it
because now you're getting somereally hard facts, right?
There's no, I don't think, Idon't think the credit card
companies have any data thatnobody, you know, that they have
the.
The absolute monopoly on thatstuff.
And, um, it can be really,really powerful to, again, take
the guesswork out of it.
(13:18):
So, you know, one thing that youcould do then is you get, you
get the report back and some ofthe programmatic platforms, you
can actually target thosespecific profiles.
So you go from learning aboutall of the kind of makeup, you
know, what does the profile kindof, you know, look like from a
demographic or a behavior,lifestyle, psycho, you know,
psychographic, things like that.
Yeah.
Um, that can be great for kindof like building, you know, kind
(13:41):
of a group of those differenttargeting settings and other
platforms in some platforms, youcan actually target that
specific experience profile.
So it can be really impactfulbecause you know, the, I think
probably the most wasted spendthat goes out in marketing,
right.
Is guessing at who you thinkyour customer is.
Anthony Karls (13:55):
Yeah.
James Patterson (13:55):
takes them out of that.
Now you get to say, nah, I'mgoing to target.
Basically exactly who mycustomers are, who aren't
currently my customers.
So it's a, it's a reallypowerful tool to, to utilize
that.
I think a lot of, a lot ofbusinesses.
Um, unfortunately overlook howmuch value they have and all
that historical data that theyaccrue from building up their
business over time.
Anthony Karls (14:16):
Yeah, so at its simplest point, if we're, if
we're starting a business, youknow, starting in, you know,
like, at least for the BTC localteam that we run, which that's
very targeted on professionalservices, we're very, very
likely to start in Google, we'regoing to start buying data
through organic search and paidsearch and start capturing all
(14:37):
of that in our CRM.
And ideally, like we're, we'rebeing very detailed about what
we're capturing so that in.
Call it two years after doingthis and like refining it and
getting better and optimizingthat we can then take that and
like learn even more.
And then we can go to the top ofthe funnel where it's cheaper
and leverage some very cooltactics because, you know, like
(15:01):
you said, like you getpsychographic and demographic
information, but that impactsmessaging.
It impacts images and impacts ishow you think about delivering
assets.
To those customers, um, orpotential clients and, um, it's
all backed by credit card datanow, and it's, it's no longer a
guess.
It's like, oh, I think they looklike this.
James Patterson (15:22):
Yep.
Yeah.
A lot of guessing in theindustry for sure.
And you bring up a reallypowerful point too, as it
relates to creative, right?
So.
As a lot of businesses guess whothey think are probably, you
know, their typical audience ifyou will well then you're also
guessing in your creative andyour messaging and Probably
impacts other areas of your kindof overall marketing strategy
(15:43):
that you can refine based offthat data you get back
Anthony Karls (15:47):
Yeah, and when we, so when we talk about going
to these different platforms,um, now that we're like, you
know, we've purchased a bunch ofdata on the front end.
We've now done a, we've now donesome market research.
What are some of the deliveryoptions that we have in terms of
assets like using this becauseit's we're not talking search
anymore when we're talking aboutthis.
(16:07):
We're talking other asset typeswith very specific audiences.
Like, what do those?
What do those look like?
James Patterson (16:14):
Yeah, so generally in terms of like
really executing on that data.
It's going to be dsp's Um, sothat's going to be programmatic
advertising.
So a lot of times that's goingto be display ads.
So everybody sees these all thetime.
If you're not in that, in theadvertising industry, you may
not have realized it, butdisplay ads are just essentially
image ads of different sizesthat then you can optimize for
different placements of tablet,desktop, mobile, um, native,
(16:37):
which is another similar form todisplay, except there's no
image.
Um, so a lot of times it lookslike search ads on websites.
So outside of the search resultspage.
Um, and then you also have, um,other forms of video media.
So, um, OTT, CTV, uh, pre roll,which those are, you know, the
videos, if you ever been on anews side or ESPN, you start a
(16:59):
video, you think you're startinga video about, you know, Aaron
Rodgers on the jets and all of asudden an advertisement starts
before it goes, you can get allthose placements.
And again, you know, becauseyou've gotten this really great.
data set for you know, reallybased off your customers Like
you can make sure you're gettingthose placements on the right
websites that are reallyrelevant to to your you know
audience So it's really powerfulthat way.
Anthony Karls (17:21):
Yeah, and you'd be doing that instead of going
to your local ESPN.
James Patterson (17:26):
Yep.
Anthony Karls (17:27):
Wheeler and saying, all right, I got to, I
got to drop 15 K and hope thatthis does something.
James Patterson (17:33):
Yeah, and and you know to keep bringing it
back And I hope my customers useespn, right?
It takes out all that guessworkUm, it's really cool with some
of the DSPs too.
You can kind of work with themand make it more, um, audience
based inventory model.
So it's going to go after thataudience specifically.
It's not going to, you're not,you're not going to have to
select what inventory you wantbased off where the audience
(17:55):
goes, you know, maybe youthought everybody is on ESPN,
but really they're watching alot of videos on food network,
right?
Like you, if you went all in onESPN, you'd be missing out on a
big.
Big opportunity there.
So it's really great for that.
And like I said, I think, uh,you know, I think every business
right wants to strike that goodbalance between marketing spend
and obviously the return thatcomes from it, doing things like
(18:18):
this, tapping into your customerlists to then understand who
they really are through aservice like Experian.
Is really going to drive a lotof benefit for you to ultimately
cut down on, on wasted marketingspend.
Anthony Karls (18:30):
Yeah.
When we, when you talk about,when you talk about that, how
do, uh, when we go to marketwith these different platforms,
we like to build thesewaterfalls first.
Can you talk a little bit aboutthe why and how attribution, uh,
why we do that and howattribution is reliable or
(18:51):
unreliable in this circumstance?
James Patterson (18:54):
Yeah.
So, I mean, I think, uh, when itcomes to measurement, right.
There's no business that you'llwork with.
That's, uh, not going to askyou, you know, well, how do I
know if my ads are doing welland stuff like that?
Right.
you know, there's obviouslymetrics in the platform that can
give you directional evidence interms of, you know, are things
going well or not.
Right.
So it's not to say that there'sno value in paying attention to
(19:15):
those metrics.
But the reason why we start withthe waterfall is ultimately,
although we do want to make surethat our channels are doing the
right things, right?
Finding ways to measurestrategies.
Ultimately, the waterfall isgoing to tell us exactly if
we're doing the right things.
So starting there andunderstanding that marketing
isn't these little silochannels, it's really this You
know, overarching holisticstrategy that all impacts each
(19:38):
other.
You know, there's no platformthat can say nine out of 10
times, you know, that, um, youknow, paid specifically drove
this.
A lot of what you find is it ismodeled.
Like if you go into a lot of theresources and stuff, a lot of
these different platforms aremodeling a lot of that data
anyways.
So having the waterfall toreally be your, you
Anthony Karls (19:57):
So when you say, when you say model, what does
that mean?
James Patterson (20:00):
yeah.
So basically what they're doingis using AI and machine learning
to basically say, based off ofhis, you know, historical data
in your account, we know onaverage, it takes this many
clicks or add interactions tolead to a conversion.
So some of the platforms willactually take those kind of
historical data points and say,well, I'm going to count a
conversion for them.
Um, so one way you can fightagainst this modeling, right.
(20:22):
That I think a lot of peoplearen't necessarily always privy
to is use offline, um,conversion importing, which can
be incredibly powerful to pullit back and it's still not going
to be a hundred percent, right?
Like the reality is, is there's,there's a lot of touch points to
any given.
customer that comes into yourbusiness.
Right.
Especially, you know, therethere's few services out there,
right.
That we're, you're the only onethat offers it.
(20:43):
Like, you know, there's, there'soften competition.
There's a lot of differentthings and different noise and
distractions out there having areally good marketing strategy.
That's that is kind of coveringall bases.
There can help you really lookat the waterfall and say, Hey,
when I'm have.
know, maybe a specific channellike Bing, which maybe doesn't
look like it's doing very wellin, in, um, you know, auction
(21:05):
and enabled, we actually see alower cost per lead, but the,
the platform itself might showyou that, uh, maybe this isn't
the right platform for me.
So being really intentionalthere about like what data
you're bringing back to theplatforms is first and foremost,
really important.
having that waterfall there tolike really show you like when
we turn things on and off, likewhat impact does it have
actually on the business thatshould ultimately be the, you
(21:27):
know, the main area that you'reusing to, to really measure and
evaluate, you know, is thismarketing tactic working or not?
Anthony Karls (21:33):
Yeah.
So in practical terms, havingthe waterfall and then going
from, all right, currently ourstrategy is we got, we got paid
search and we're running someLSAs and we got some map stuff
going and we got organic searchand we're going to introduce
programmatic based on all ourdata because we've started
capturing this stuff.
Well, we're going to, we'regoing to watch the waterfall and
(21:54):
what, what happens.
Like, do we keep the ROI thatare, that we're targeting is
our, our metrics going up?
Are we, is the spend that we'remaking in this platform actually
working?
Um, we're going to measure,we're going to like look for
signals in the platform, butwhat we actually care most about
is like, what's, what happenedwith this.
With this waterfall.
James Patterson (22:15):
Yeah, absolutely.
And, and, you know, generally asan agency, what we like to do is
we'll have kind of two forms ofthis, right?
Like we'll have the waterfallitself.
And then we'll have an executivedashboard.
So like that goes more untillike, we, you know, we're, we
run media ourselves as anagency, like we understand you
do need to have some gauge onlike, is this channel doing what
we want it to do?
Um, it's just being veryintentional to the fact that
(22:38):
those metrics that we see inplatform aren't always going to
be super accurate, knowing it'smodeled, knowing it's not seeing
the full picture that somebodyactually, You know, saw your
organic listing the other day,and that's really what spurred
all of their investigation toyour brand.
Um, the, the waterfallultimately is going to let you
know, you know, if, if, uh, toyour example, you know, if you
launch something brand new, andall of a sudden you're starting
(23:00):
to see more leads come in, andmaybe it's, you know, coming in
through something like indirector unknown in, in Google
Analytics, right?
You may not really know whereit's coming from.
Well, then it doesn't matterbecause you have the waterfall
reporting there to really tellyou and, and let you know, a
hundred percent, like, is thismaking the positive impact that
we expect?
Anthony Karls (23:18):
Awesome.
Appreciate it.
Appreciate it.
James dropping a little bit inhere.
So look forward to our nextcombo, but big picture we talked
about today.
If you're going to, if you'regoing to market and you're
investing in, you're investingin your marketing and use it,
like you should use that word,you're buying data and you're
learning from data.
So you can, you can build a, youcan build the empire you want
(23:41):
to.
Like, really continue learning,uh, and doing it well has long
term results, compound thoseeffects.
So, appreciate it, sir.
James Patterson (23:54):
Yeah.
Thanks.
Seven.
All right, here we go.
This is Revenue Roadmap, wherewe talk about sales and
marketing for localentrepreneurs.
So I am Anthony Carls, presidentof RocketClicks, and I got Mr.
James Patterson again with ustoday.
So last time we talked, James,uh, we talked about measurement
tracking, uh, So we want tobuild off of that from our last
(00:23):
conversation and kind of getinto how we leverage that to buy
data and do market research.
But before we get into that, uh,if you could tell our, tell our
audience again, we're just alittle bit about yourself, what
you do here at Rocket Clicks,what your background looks like.
So you can have a little, littlestreet cred before you start
yammering.
James Patterson (00:44):
yeah, absolutely.
So, um, yeah, thanks for theintro, Tony.
My name is James.
I've kind of got my started andgot my start in digital
marketing back in 2017 workedfor a little small R and D
company that was, uh, looking tosave a few dollars, I think, on
their marketing program and tooka took a gamble on a college
kid.
Um, was great for me because Igot to really touch everything
(01:05):
and got a lot of opportunity totest around and find out what I
liked, um, that ultimately ledme to working with a larger
corporation here in Wisconsin.
got, you know, kind of anaccelerated program in terms of
what interests me in digitalmarketing, did some SEO, um, but
ultimately landed on paid beingkind of my preferred avenue
within digital marketing.
(01:26):
from there I wanted to work witha larger team of kind of, you
know, You know, uh, experts inthe field who are on the latest
and greatest trends of, ofdigital marketing and paid
specific.
So started looking at agenciesto work for and ended up here at
RocketClicks.
And so I've been here sinceJanuary, 2021.
Anthony Karls (01:45):
And what are you, what are you doing now here at
RC?
James Patterson (01:48):
Yep.
So at RocketClicks now I'm anaccount manager.
So I get the opportunity to workwith our B2C local team.
And we work with a variety ofdifferent local businesses and
help them grow and crush their,Right now, 2024 revenue goals.
So it's a lot of fun to get toimpact their business, both on
the SEO side and paid side.
And we get to impact even someareas outside of your kind of
(02:11):
quote unquote, normal, um,digital marketing avenues.
We get to look at their salesprocess.
Ui ux, um really just makeimpact across their entire
business.
So it's a lot of fun.
Anthony Karls (02:22):
Cool.
So like I said, we, uh, lasttime we talked, we talked about
measurement tracking, why it'simportant.
We run into, uh, we run intothis a lot with our, with our
clients.
We got to teach them how tothink about this.
And, um, one of the, one of thebig reasons why is obviously
when we, when we do this, we cantrack ROI and understand whether
(02:43):
or not what we're doing isworking, um, but there's a
downstream impact around, youknow, Buying data, uh, and going
back to market with ourlearning.
So can you, you talk a littlebit about what it means to buy
data and paid media, what the,what are the opportunities look
like?
What does this, what does thismean?
What does this look like?
James Patterson (03:02):
Yeah, absolutely um, this is one of
those concepts within marketingand I think a lot of um, You
know, I think a lot of agenciesdon't do a good job explaining
to clients and I think a lot ofclients know, as a result, don't
really fully understand.
Um, know, especially as it looksto, you know, getting a really
great strategy Online, right?
Like one of the first thingsthat you need to do is obviously
(03:22):
build out those differentchannels Build out your accounts
things like that A lot of timeswhen people are doing that
they're expecting kind ofinstant results, right?
Like we're gonna make this be ayou know A huge part of our
business and we're gonna nail itand everything's gonna be go,
you know Good and golden and alot of times it ends up not
being the case You Um, reasonfor that is because a lot of
times it's just that expectationset, um, setting from kind of
(03:45):
the beginning, you know, when welook at building out accounts
here, rocket clicks, we do haveprinciples that we like to kind
of abide by kind of a sharedlanguage in terms of what
strategies we like to startwith.
We'll always start with that.
Um, but really what wecommunicate with clients when
we're starting out, especiallyin new channels is that data
that's coming in.
We're actually buying that it'snot really spending the money to
(04:06):
acquire new customers.
That's actually a result ofbuying that data that we can
then learn from.
So, you know, a lot of theclients that we work with that
have the most success online,it's really those that have
bought a lot of data over timeand has used that data to
ultimately get smarter.
And then ultimately again, as aresult, drive more business to
them.
So it's been, it's been reallyfun, you know, especially
(04:27):
working with, um, newerbusinesses that are still kind
of trying to learn what, youknow, maybe a Google ads
platform looks like and stufflike that, and kind of show them
that this is the right way tolook at it.
And a lot of times it's thatpatience and kind of
understanding that we're reallypurchasing that data to learn
from that ultimately leads tosuccessful.
Yeah,
Anthony Karls (04:47):
you're, so there's really two things to
take away here.
One is like the concept ofbuying data.
That's how we talk about it.
Building out new channels, um,the by product of buying data,
if we're doing it right andgetting the data is, uh, is
revenue, right?
And the better, the more weunderstand about our data.
The better we're going togenerate revenue from that.
(05:10):
Um, so that's one, that's oneaspect that you're talking
about.
And that's more of aphilosophical approach than a,
like technically buying data.
So like when we're doing that,what are the things that were,
that are really important tolike actually gaining learnings
from taking, taking the approachof like buying data revenue is
(05:30):
the by product so that we're,we're ROI positive, we're
driving results.
We're making an impact on thebusiness.
Like, what do we need to do?
To make sure we're doing thatright.
Because like you can buy dataand waste a lot of money or you
can buy data and you canactually learn stuff.
So like talk a little bit aboutthat.
James Patterson (05:47):
it honestly goes back to a lot of our, our
last episode where it's socritical to have, um, waterfall
reporting, um, implementedwithin your business.
I mean, if you can't look atyour own business and understand
kind of what it takes to gofrom, you know, a user entering
the site to how much, you know,it costs to acquire a lead
coming in.
So ultimately, you know, makingit through the kind of
opportunity or, or, um, youknow, sales qualified stage to
(06:10):
ultimately becoming a customerfor your business.
It's going to be really hard togo back to those channels and
really make an evaluation to seeif, you know, in a sense that
data you purchase is going toultimately lead to revenue, you
know, driving revenue long termfor that strategy.
Um, so a lot of times what welike to do is we'll actually
start again with that waterfall,um, reporting, getting the sales
(06:32):
data.
So,
Anthony Karls (06:33):
So what is, what is waterfall reporting mean?
Cause that's a term we useinternally.
That's not run.
James Patterson (06:39):
If you've already internal, yeah.
Um, leads.
Uh, so when we talk aboutwaterfall reporting, it's really
basically thinking about.
In some ways, basically startingfrom the top of the funnel.
So like users engaging with yoursite and ultimately coming all
the way down.
Um, what, what does that trickledown effect?
So what you can do by that is bygetting, um, business metrics
like your leads, um,opportunities, or a lot of
(07:00):
times, again, will be kind ofconsidered sales qualified
leads.
So basically somebody that camein through your intake team,
ultimately talked to maybe asales member or something like
that, and actually gone throughthe kind of qualification
process to understand that theyare a good fit for your service.
So driving those folks andgetting that metric and then
ultimately customers.
So people that went from thatsales qualified position to
ultimately doing business withyou and then the revenue that
(07:23):
comes from those customers.
By having all of those, um,inputs, you can then kind of
build what we like to refer toas the waterfall, which again,
shows this kind of trickle downeffect.
What the beauty is there is thatyou can back up into all these
different numbers, right?
So if you know now, you know,the average revenue you drove
over the last, you know, two tothree years, we can segment that
(07:43):
by the month.
We can segment that by then eachindividual sale that comes in.
So what's your average customervalue, bring them down to your
average, uh, qualified set, uh,you know, sales qualified lead.
Your average value for a leadand so on and so forth.
So you can actually see kind ofhow it all fits together and
ultimately make sure that you'reevaluating platforms the right
way.
Anthony Karls (08:03):
So what are, so how do I start thinking about
doing that?
Like, well, how do, what do Ineed to do to actually track
that stuff?
Because that, this is some ofthe stuff that we actually run
into as, as issues that would behelpful to drive better growth
over the long term if weactually were capturing these,
these different data points.
So like, what do those looklike?
What's important?
(08:24):
To make sure we get and like inwhat portion of the waterfall
should we get them and how doesthat tie back into like, you
know, buying data by testing newchannels or literally buying
data by going to data platformsand purchasing things.
James Patterson (08:39):
Yeah.
So, so, um, you know, the bestplace to pull those kinds of
metrics and to share it withyour agency partner or whoever
is managing, um, kind of yourdigital marketing strategy, um,
is to go right into your CRM.
So like a lot of times, youknow, depending on what system
you're using, you can pulldifferent views and reports.
Um, as you should know.
So, you know, like we said, weusually like to say about two to
three years is best.
(09:00):
Um, it's kind of a side tangenton that is a lot of times people
want to make decisions off avery short periods of window,
you know, very short period oftime.
So, um, it goes back to thedata, um, you know, purchasing
data and making decisions off ofthat.
We don't want to make anydecisions based off of just a
small portion of time.
We want to look big picture.
Um, so it goes the same for thewaterfall reporting when look at
(09:21):
2 to 3 years.
Pull in leads, um, you know,sales, qualified leads,
customers, and revenue right outof your CRM.
Of course, you know, somebusinesses will have multiple
systems, but basically that, youknow, for a lot of businesses,
you're going to be able to pullthat right out of your CRM.
Anthony Karls (09:36):
Yeah.
So what, what are the datapoints of the, that we need to
be capturing in our CRM so thatwe know what we're doing as
well.
James Patterson (09:45):
Yeah.
So, I mean, it's going to varydepending on your business type,
but, um, to give it as broadlyas possible, every meaningful
step within that process.
So what I mean by that is like,you're obviously gonna have an
intro step, right?
Somebody's coming in.
Ultimately, they made contactwith you on your site.
Or maybe they saw your phonenumber on a, you know, map
listing, something like that.
Obviously, a lead makes contactwith your intake team or
(10:06):
automatically gets answered ifthey come in through a form.
Capturing that step, I think, isone of the most important ones.
And then, of course, you'reprobably, um, other even more so
important one would be thenactually the customers coming
in.
Because everything along theline, right?
There's all these little, youknow, little conversions that
happen throughout.
So usually what, the way we liketo look at it is that we, we're
(10:28):
going to need leads.
So again, how they're coming in.
Um, usually we're going to callit a marketing qualified lead.
Of course, it's going to be alittle bit different.
So like if you're a law firm,um, that's usually going to be
like an eval, right?
So somebody made contact with,um, again, an intake member,
they're saying, Hey, I'minterested in this and that, you
know, I want a personal injury.
Well, we don't do personalinjury.
So then they're out, but we wantto capture those types of things
(10:50):
to make sure that again, Whenwe're buying data on the front
end, we can say, Hey, look, theleads that we're driving through
this data purchase through thesedifferent strategies that we're
implementing, we're getting moreof not that and more people
making their, their way all theway through.
so it's, it's that marketingqualified lead.
And then, you know, salesqualified league, like I've
talked about a lot of timesthat's then making contact with
(11:10):
the sales team member.
then, I said, ultimately, dothey become a customer from
there?
Um, every business is going tovary a little bit about what's
in the middle there.
Um, but ultimately it's at leastthose four steps or some
combination of that.
and again, it's very criticalbecause a lot of times you can
learn a lot in those in betweenphases, although, you know,
obviously net new leads and netnew customers is often, you
(11:32):
know, the, the ones you hear themost about.
Anthony Karls (11:36):
So if we, if we're capturing, you know, name
and email and phone number andaddress, we're tracking this all
the way through.
What can we then do with thatdata once we have a significant
data set?
Like, what's, what's possiblethere?
James Patterson (11:50):
Yeah.
So, so one of the, one of thecoolest things that you can do
once you start to accrue some ofthat data is, is really refine
your prospecting strategies,right?
Like there is no better datasource.
To show what does my customeractually look like then your
customers, right?
So like that is the most purestform of data that exists out
there.
Obviously, you know, google'schanged their uh, Their tune in
(12:12):
terms of uh, depreciatingcookies and things like that But
you know first party data isalways going to be the the true
premium.
Um, you know, you got you You'vealready established that so
pulling data sets out of yourcrm like, you know, you
mentioned Usually it's going tobe some combination of first
name last name email phone YouUm, address can be applicable
to, and some of these, you canactually go to other, um,
(12:34):
platforms and learn about yourcustomers.
Um, one of the ones that we useis working with Experian.
They offer this, um, sobasically, uh, matching your
customer records to, uh, creditcard data.
And they will actually build outa, basically a profile on what
the different groups kind ofcome out of your data from your
customers.
And it can be so impactful,right?
So a lot of times when you'remaking decisions about how to
(12:57):
prospect to people who youthink, right, kind of make up
your target audience, well, youcan take the thinking out of it
because now you're getting somereally hard facts, right?
There's no, I don't think, Idon't think the credit card
companies have any data thatnobody, you know, that they have
the.
The absolute monopoly on thatstuff.
And, um, it can be really,really powerful to, again, take
the guesswork out of it.
(13:18):
So, you know, one thing that youcould do then is you get, you
get the report back and some ofthe programmatic platforms, you
can actually target thosespecific profiles.
So you go from learning aboutall of the kind of makeup, you
know, what does the profile kindof, you know, look like from a
demographic or a behavior,lifestyle, psycho, you know,
psychographic, things like that.
Yeah.
Um, that can be great for kindof like building, you know, kind
(13:41):
of a group of those differenttargeting settings and other
platforms in some platforms, youcan actually target that
specific experience profile.
So it can be really impactfulbecause you know, the, I think
probably the most wasted spendthat goes out in marketing,
right.
Is guessing at who you thinkyour customer is.
Anthony Karls (13:55):
Yeah.
James Patterson (13:55):
takes them out of that.
Now you get to say, nah, I'mgoing to target.
Basically exactly who mycustomers are, who aren't
currently my customers.
So it's a, it's a reallypowerful tool to, to utilize
that.
I think a lot of, a lot ofbusinesses.
Um, unfortunately overlook howmuch value they have and all
that historical data that theyaccrue from building up their
business over time.
Anthony Karls (14:16):
Yeah, so at its simplest point, if we're, if
we're starting a business, youknow, starting in, you know,
like, at least for the BTC localteam that we run, which that's
very targeted on professionalservices, we're very, very
likely to start in Google, we'regoing to start buying data
through organic search and paidsearch and start capturing all
(14:37):
of that in our CRM.
And ideally, like we're, we'rebeing very detailed about what
we're capturing so that in.
Call it two years after doingthis and like refining it and
getting better and optimizingthat we can then take that and
like learn even more.
And then we can go to the top ofthe funnel where it's cheaper
and leverage some very cooltactics because, you know, like
(15:01):
you said, like you getpsychographic and demographic
information, but that impactsmessaging.
It impacts images and impacts ishow you think about delivering
assets.
To those customers, um, orpotential clients and, um, it's
all backed by credit card datanow, and it's, it's no longer a
guess.
It's like, oh, I think they looklike this.
James Patterson (15:22):
Yep.
Yeah.
A lot of guessing in theindustry for sure.
And you bring up a reallypowerful point too, as it
relates to creative, right?
So.
As a lot of businesses guess whothey think are probably, you
know, their typical audience ifyou will well then you're also
guessing in your creative andyour messaging and Probably
impacts other areas of your kindof overall marketing strategy
(15:43):
that you can refine based offthat data you get back
Anthony Karls (15:47):
Yeah, and when we, so when we talk about going
to these different platforms,um, now that we're like, you
know, we've purchased a bunch ofdata on the front end.
We've now done a, we've now donesome market research.
What are some of the deliveryoptions that we have in terms of
assets like using this becauseit's we're not talking search
anymore when we're talking aboutthis.
(16:07):
We're talking other asset typeswith very specific audiences.
Like, what do those?
What do those look like?
James Patterson (16:14):
Yeah, so generally in terms of like
really executing on that data.
It's going to be dsp's Um, sothat's going to be programmatic
advertising.
So a lot of times that's goingto be display ads.
So everybody sees these all thetime.
If you're not in that, in theadvertising industry, you may
not have realized it, butdisplay ads are just essentially
image ads of different sizesthat then you can optimize for
different placements of tablet,desktop, mobile, um, native,
(16:37):
which is another similar form todisplay, except there's no
image.
Um, so a lot of times it lookslike search ads on websites.
So outside of the search resultspage.
Um, and then you also have, um,other forms of video media.
So, um, OTT, CTV, uh, pre roll,which those are, you know, the
videos, if you ever been on anews side or ESPN, you start a
(16:59):
video, you think you're startinga video about, you know, Aaron
Rodgers on the jets and all of asudden an advertisement starts
before it goes, you can get allthose placements.
And again, you know, becauseyou've gotten this really great.
data set for you know, reallybased off your customers Like
you can make sure you're gettingthose placements on the right
websites that are reallyrelevant to to your you know
audience So it's really powerfulthat way.
Anthony Karls (17:21):
Yeah, and you'd be doing that instead of going
to your local ESPN.
James Patterson (17:26):
Yep.
Anthony Karls (17:27):
Wheeler and saying, all right, I got to, I
got to drop 15 K and hope thatthis does something.
James Patterson (17:33):
Yeah, and and you know to keep bringing it
back And I hope my customers useespn, right?
It takes out all that guessworkUm, it's really cool with some
of the DSPs too.
You can kind of work with themand make it more, um, audience
based inventory model.
So it's going to go after thataudience specifically.
It's not going to, you're not,you're not going to have to
select what inventory you wantbased off where the audience
(17:55):
goes, you know, maybe youthought everybody is on ESPN,
but really they're watching alot of videos on food network,
right?
Like you, if you went all in onESPN, you'd be missing out on a
big.
Big opportunity there.
So it's really great for that.
And like I said, I think, uh,you know, I think every business
right wants to strike that goodbalance between marketing spend
and obviously the return thatcomes from it, doing things like
(18:18):
this, tapping into your customerlists to then understand who
they really are through aservice like Experian.
Is really going to drive a lotof benefit for you to ultimately
cut down on, on wasted marketingspend.
Anthony Karls (18:30):
Yeah.
When we, when you talk about,when you talk about that, how
do, uh, when we go to marketwith these different platforms,
we like to build thesewaterfalls first.
Can you talk a little bit aboutthe why and how attribution, uh,
why we do that and howattribution is reliable or
(18:51):
unreliable in this circumstance?
James Patterson (18:54):
Yeah.
So, I mean, I think, uh, when itcomes to measurement, right.
There's no business that you'llwork with.
That's, uh, not going to askyou, you know, well, how do I
know if my ads are doing welland stuff like that?
Right.
you know, there's obviouslymetrics in the platform that can
give you directional evidence interms of, you know, are things
going well or not.
Right.
So it's not to say that there'sno value in paying attention to
(19:15):
those metrics.
But the reason why we start withthe waterfall is ultimately,
although we do want to make surethat our channels are doing the
right things, right?
Finding ways to measurestrategies.
Ultimately, the waterfall isgoing to tell us exactly if
we're doing the right things.
So starting there andunderstanding that marketing
isn't these little silochannels, it's really this You
know, overarching holisticstrategy that all impacts each
(19:38):
other.
You know, there's no platformthat can say nine out of 10
times, you know, that, um, youknow, paid specifically drove
this.
A lot of what you find is it ismodeled.
Like if you go into a lot of theresources and stuff, a lot of
these different platforms aremodeling a lot of that data
anyways.
So having the waterfall toreally be your, you
Anthony Karls (19:57):
So when you say, when you say model, what does
that mean?
James Patterson (20:00):
yeah.
So basically what they're doingis using AI and machine learning
to basically say, based off ofhis, you know, historical data
in your account, we know onaverage, it takes this many
clicks or add interactions tolead to a conversion.
So some of the platforms willactually take those kind of
historical data points and say,well, I'm going to count a
conversion for them.
Um, so one way you can fightagainst this modeling, right.
(20:22):
That I think a lot of peoplearen't necessarily always privy
to is use offline, um,conversion importing, which can
be incredibly powerful to pullit back and it's still not going
to be a hundred percent, right?
Like the reality is, is there's,there's a lot of touch points to
any given.
customer that comes into yourbusiness.
Right.
Especially, you know, therethere's few services out there,
right.
That we're, you're the only onethat offers it.
(20:43):
Like, you know, there's, there'soften competition.
There's a lot of differentthings and different noise and
distractions out there having areally good marketing strategy.
That's that is kind of coveringall bases.
There can help you really lookat the waterfall and say, Hey,
when I'm have.
know, maybe a specific channellike Bing, which maybe doesn't
look like it's doing very wellin, in, um, you know, auction
(21:05):
and enabled, we actually see alower cost per lead, but the,
the platform itself might showyou that, uh, maybe this isn't
the right platform for me.
So being really intentionalthere about like what data
you're bringing back to theplatforms is first and foremost,
really important.
having that waterfall there tolike really show you like when
we turn things on and off, likewhat impact does it have
actually on the business thatshould ultimately be the, you
(21:27):
know, the main area that you'reusing to, to really measure and
evaluate, you know, is thismarketing tactic working or not?
Anthony Karls (21:33):
Yeah.
So in practical terms, havingthe waterfall and then going
from, all right, currently ourstrategy is we got, we got paid
search and we're running someLSAs and we got some map stuff
going and we got organic searchand we're going to introduce
programmatic based on all ourdata because we've started
capturing this stuff.
Well, we're going to, we'regoing to watch the waterfall and
(21:54):
what, what happens.
Like, do we keep the ROI thatare, that we're targeting is
our, our metrics going up?
Are we, is the spend that we'remaking in this platform actually
working?
Um, we're going to measure,we're going to like look for
signals in the platform, butwhat we actually care most about
is like, what's, what happenedwith this.
With this waterfall.
James Patterson (22:15):
Yeah, absolutely.
And, and, you know, generally asan agency, what we like to do is
we'll have kind of two forms ofthis, right?
Like we'll have the waterfallitself.
And then we'll have an executivedashboard.
So like that goes more untillike, we, you know, we're, we
run media ourselves as anagency, like we understand you
do need to have some gauge onlike, is this channel doing what
we want it to do?
Um, it's just being veryintentional to the fact that
(22:38):
those metrics that we see inplatform aren't always going to
be super accurate, knowing it'smodeled, knowing it's not seeing
the full picture that somebodyactually, You know, saw your
organic listing the other day,and that's really what spurred
all of their investigation toyour brand.
Um, the, the waterfallultimately is going to let you
know, you know, if, if, uh, toyour example, you know, if you
launch something brand new, andall of a sudden you're starting
(23:00):
to see more leads come in, andmaybe it's, you know, coming in
through something like indirector unknown in, in Google
Analytics, right?
You may not really know whereit's coming from.
Well, then it doesn't matterbecause you have the waterfall
reporting there to really tellyou and, and let you know, a
hundred percent, like, is thismaking the positive impact that
we expect?
Anthony Karls (23:18):
Awesome.
Appreciate it.
Appreciate it.
James dropping a little bit inhere.
So look forward to our nextcombo, but big picture we talked
about today.
If you're going to, if you'regoing to market and you're
investing in, you're investingin your marketing and use it,
like you should use that word,you're buying data and you're
learning from data.
So you can, you can build a, youcan build the empire you want
(23:41):
to.
Like, really continue learning,uh, and doing it well has long
term results, compound thoseeffects.
So, appreciate it, sir.
James Patterson (23:54):
Yeah.
Thanks.
Seven.
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