August 4, 2025 • 18 mins
In this episode of the B2B Brand180 podcast, Linda interviews Justin Rashidi from SeedX on the importance of data science in understanding and optimizing B2B marketing efforts.
The discussion covers key topics such as the significance of accurate attribution tracking, the necessity of a well-defined Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), and the potential misconceptions about the effectiveness of various marketing channels. Justin also shares insights on the value of integrating online and in-person marketing efforts and details on how to leverage CRM tools for better marketing outcomes.
This episode is a must-listen for marketers seeking to align their campaigns more effectively with business growth.
02:14 The Science Behind Marketing Success
03:25 Real-World Marketing Challenges and Solutions
04:30 Effective Campaign Strategies and Testing
13:37 Understanding CRM and Attribution Tracking
16:17 The Value of In-Person Marketing
https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-rashidi/
Linda's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindafanaras/
Millennium Agency: Brand Strategy | Marketing | Web Design: https://mill.agency
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@mill.agency/
Linda's Books:
Claim Your White Space
https://www.amazon.com/CLAIM-YOUR-WHITE-SPACE-CRITICAL-ebook/dp/B0CLK8VLYV
Passion + Profits: Fueling Business And Brand Success
https://www.amazon.com/Passion-Profits-Fueling-Business-Success-ebook/dp/B0CLLDDSNX/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Linda Fanaras (00:00):
Welcome to the B2B Brand 180 podcast where
we'll discuss branding andmarketing tools for business.
My goal here today is to provideyou with some transformative and
innovative approaches that canhelp you make 180 degree shift
in your marketing.
So I'm Linda Fanaras and theowner of Millennium Agency, a
branding and growth strategyfirm, and host a B2B Brand 180
(00:21):
podcast, and I'm bringing inJustin Rashidi.
He's the founder of SeedX.
I'm super excited to talk tohim.
He has a digital marketing firm.
He takes a real unique andscientific approach to
marketing.
He comes from a science andengineering background, and he
has an analytical mindset, whichworks out great when it comes to
marketing, and that seems to behis backbone to his success.
(00:42):
Applying these methods to hissuccess.
So, welcome Justin.
I'd love for you to take acouple minutes and tell the
audience about yourself.
Justin Rashidi (00:52):
Hello, my name's Justin, as Linda said at SeedX.
I lead basically data scienceand then strategy.
And so what that means is wework with organizations that
help them better understand, howto structure their data, how to
understand attribution, how tounderstand reporting, and
ultimately how to activate thatdata into marketing channels.
Linda Fanaras (01:11):
That's perfect.
So today you'll betterunderstand, he'll show you how
to use the brains built-intriggers to get more people to
say yes to your ideas.
Really taking a look at some ofthe logical components of this
and tying it back into, theemotion to really drive those
purchasing decisions.
And you'll just learned a littlebit more about how to get more
people to say yes.
(01:32):
So let's talk about building anICP.
It's your Ideal CustomerProfile.
And I think what's key is maybetrying to figure out when you
are building out thesecampaigns, is that an important
factor?
Justin Rashidi (01:44):
Yeah, of course.
yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, the answer is yes, it'svery important.
Yeah.
Can you, I mean, from amessaging standpoint to make
sure that I, mean, yeah.
I think brand positioning in themarket and how the consumers see
your brand in the marketcompared to others, and what
that messaging is, actuallyquite important.
Especially if you're in asaturated field or there's
(02:07):
dominant players and you're anup and coming player and you
really need to differentiateyourself from, the established
market.
Linda Fanaras (02:13):
Yeah, that's great.
So when you're talking abouttaking a scientific approach to
marketing, I know marketing iscreativity and science all
pulled together.
When you speak about that, whatdo you mean exactly?
Justin Rashidi (02:23):
For us, what it means is, from a B2B
perspective, it's actually beingable to track how deals are
being created and what campaignsare actually generating those.
So a lot of organizations theyrely on in platform metrics in
order to help inform them orthey rely on impressions, click
through rates and metrics thatoften aren't always indicative
(02:46):
of business growth.
We see a lot of organizationsthat they feel like we're, doing
paid social, we're doing paidsearch, we're doing LinkedIn,
we're doing organic, we'redoing, whatever activity.
And all those channels look goodwhen they're, everyone's
reporting all the teams report.
But the leadership team feelsthe opposite, that like they're
not actually growing and it'susually because there's a
disconnect between what'sactually functioning correctly
(03:07):
and driving growth and what'sbeing reported.
And so from us, that's usuallywhat it means.
It's like trying to connect thewhole cycle so that way
marketing activities actuallydrive business growth.
Linda Fanaras (03:16):
Right?
Because there are so manydifferent strategies and
although there seems to be a lotof activity during one, from one
strategy, maybe it's just notreally driving growth.
So do you have any examples ofmaybe situation where that's
occurred, like maybe tryingdifferent tactics where you, one
looks like it's working reallygreat, but it's not, and you've
been able to maybe uncoversomething that makes more sense.
Justin Rashidi (03:37):
Yeah, I mean, we see this every day.
This one is like as of lastweek, we were just onboarding a
new customer.
They're running paid social,they're spending about 50 to a
hundred thousand dollars amonth, and they view that
certain campaigns thatintuitively they feel that these
campaigns are, bringing in leadsand, the platform metrics show
that these campaigns are doingwell.
(03:58):
What we did though is we endedup tracking the leads from these
campaigns all the way to whatactually closed as customers.
And what we actually uncoveredwas that the campaigns that
seemed to be doing so, so wereactually the ones that were
generating the new business.
And the ones that they thoughtthat were doing so great, were
not actually generating the newbusiness.
And that's interesting.
This can based off of Yeah.
Creative or audience targeting.
(04:19):
Right.
And so we see this quite a bit,that there's a disconnect
between the platform metrics andthen what actually is generating
book calls or actual deals.
Linda Fanaras (04:28):
Yeah.
Leads.
Yeah.
So how do you look at that?
Because from a digital marketingperspective, if that's what your
focus is, you've gotta look atthe messaging, you've gotta look
at the creative, you've gottalook at how you're setting up
your campaigns.
You've gotta look at the ROI.
Are there certain things thatyou think your customer or a
marketer should prioritize whenthey start to look at these
campaigns?
Justin Rashidi (04:48):
Start to prioritize.
In my personal opinion, I thinkthe best thing to prioritize is
actually understanding how youare connecting to the end result
that the business wants toachieve.
And I think that requiresusually for marketers to go
beyond like a typicalunderstanding of marketing and
actually be more of a businessmind.
And so I think people who Ireally respected marketing,
(05:10):
they're actually businessleaders first and functional
specialists.
Second, and so they're takinginto account the growth or the
direction of the business, andthen they're applying their
function to it in a successfulmanner.
I think that is actually likethe approach I usually would
recommend people to think aboutfrom a marketing perspective.
Linda Fanaras (05:28):
Yeah.
So you've, worked with a lot oflarge size companies.
What do you think kind ofdifferentiates what you guys do
versus other companies?
Justin Rashidi (05:35):
Every company at different stage just has
different types of problems,right?
And so generally, yeah, like ifwe're dealing with a smaller
company, usually they don't evenknow what metrics to be
tracking, how they should bethinking about those metrics.
and then you get to likeslightly larger where they kind
of are tracking it, but it's notgreat.
And then you get to like reallylarge organizations where they
have so much data, they don'tactually know how to stitch it
(05:57):
together and make.
A story out of what is actuallyhappening.
Linda Fanaras (06:01):
Yeah.
Are there different approachesthat you use that maybe other
digital firms don't use?
I mean, there's so manydifferent things to choose from
out there, and I think thatmight be part of the challenge
for our clients that are outthere trying to pick a medium
and trying to figure out whatstrategy to use.
Do you have any insight on that?
Justin Rashidi (06:19):
I mean, the answer is no.
Every company that we haveworked with, or I've interacted
with the channels that aresuccessful for them, sometimes
they're similar, but oftentimesyou'll find, oh, Google search
works great here and horriblefor this company.
Yeah, LinkedIn is great here andgood for this company.
Event marketing in personmarketing, right outbound.
Can be actually vary dependingon the market, like the space.
(06:41):
And I think this kind of tiesback to your first question of
like, messaging IP and right.
Do you believe that yourcustomer will actually convert
from that specific marketingactivity?
Right?
And so there's some obvious oneslike, you know, you probably
don't need to post that much onTikTok if you're like targeting
like this very specific B2Bbuyer.
But I think then the more narrowone is actually, there are
specific industries and marketsthat outreach doesn't work as
(07:04):
successfully.
And actually Google, like, youknow, SEO generative engine now
and stuff are actually much moresuccessful for their companies.
And yeah, I think people alwayswanna take default advice.
Right.
They're like, oh, I hearLinkedIn's good.
So we should be on LinkedIn andYeah.
Oh, I hear this is great.
Right.
So we should be there andusually I'm just like, it could
be true or could not be true.
(07:24):
Right?
Like, you really have toactually test and run a campaign
pretty rigorously to remove theidea that whether it'll be
successful or not successful.
Linda Fanaras (07:34):
Yeah.
You have to run it for a while,is what you're saying.
Justin Rashidi (07:36):
I think the problem is that, there's so many
problems in marketing,
Linda Fanaras (07:39):
but
Justin Rashidi (07:41):
in terms of like channel testing, I think, I've
seen two problems where the onethat I see quite often is that
we believe that this channel, itcould be successful for you, but
it was previously ran in a waywhere like the messaging wasn't
correct.
Our audience target wasn'tcorrect.
You were sending to like alanding page that like didn't
actually make sense for likethis customer, right?
And so the organizationbelieves, oh, this channel
(08:03):
doesn't work for us.
In actuality, like you didn'treally run the campaign that
well.
Right.
And so that gets into do youbelieve that you ran the
campaign successfully?
And if so, then does thatchannel not work for you?
It's usually the questions thatpeople have to debate.
Linda Fanaras (08:19):
Right.
And that's actually a greatpoint.
So if you were to kind of backthis up for our audience a
little bit, and like I saidearlier, like I was asking you
earlier about the ICP, I feellike there's some certain steps
that need to be taken, like.
Who are you trying to go after?
What are you trying to achieve?
What do you need to say?
How are you positioning yourselfin the market?
You know, is there somethingdownloadable?
(08:39):
Is there a landing page?
What are the different mediumsthat make sense for your market?
Do you have a certain basicprocess?
The questions that you would askaround that, that you think
would make sense for a marketerto know?
Like maybe, and those might bethe questions, I'm not sure.
But, just from theirperspective, if they had a
takeaway and you said, well, youshould definitely think about
what your messaging is, numberone, you better make sure that
(09:00):
you're targeting the rightmarket.
Number two, so maybe there'ssome takeaways on that you could
share.
Justin Rashidi (09:05):
I agree with all of those.
I, think the only one that Iwould additionally add is where
in the funnel are you expectingthis person to be?
Right?
And so when you can have greatmessaging for your ideal
customer, but are you reallytrying to push them to get on a
demo and like you actuallyreally need to be warming them
up.
They need to actually get moreinformation about you.
They should be watching a videoor, like you're saying,
(09:27):
downloading a PDF or a leadmagnet of some sort.
I think a lot of companies, theytreat marketing like sales,
which is like this eager beaver,like, oh, they're gonna close
right away.
And good marketing in myopinion.
Like Al also has like the ideathat you are reaching like your
entire addressable market, notjust like the small percentage
(09:47):
of people who are in market.
And I think besides what you'retalking about with messaging
landing page, it's like.
Is this campaign reaching thetop of the funnel and truly
awareness?
Is it middle of the funnelpeople who are kind of like in
the search phase?
Or is it people who are reallyunderstanding like the product
space and they're looking to geta solution soon?
And I think that's the last, andthat usually ties into how you
(10:08):
build messaging out too.
Linda Fanaras (10:09):
Right.
Now, that makes sense.
What's your thought process,because I keep hearing
contradictory data on likelanding pages versus creating
the call to action within theexisting website.
Do you have any thoughts andfeedback on that, or does it
vary?
Justin Rashidi (10:21):
Yeah, it varies obviously.
So standard, typical advice isthat landing pages perform
better than a website page, butmy personal experience has not
proven that to be content astrue.
Yeah.
So I find in my personal, likeme as an individual too.
I like, being able to discoverall the information.
I think that this idea ofsqueeze pages, and maybe this is
(10:43):
like pretty anti, what peoplegenerally say is people believe
that there's no attention spanand people will just need to see
one form and they'll submit it.
Right.
And I have never really had thathappen.
I usually, it's like for us,what I see work is video
content, long form articlesexplaining things, different
types of like demos or likeinteractive tools.
(11:05):
And then they can browse thewebsite and then submit the form
on the website.
And usually from qualitystandpoint, you don't wanna be
like tricking a bunch of peopleto try to submit the form.
It's like you wanna get peoplewho are actually interested in
like buying.
And so, right.
I don't know.
Do you have a different opinion?
Is your experience different?
Linda Fanaras (11:24):
you know, I could be totally wrong, but I always
felt like if you could build acontact us on the top of an
existing website page, so let'ssay you're driving them to a
specific page within the websitethat you're actually trying to
market.
If you can create a sticky head.
Yeah, a sticky header orsomething on the top.
That would be your best bet.
I mean, we've done landing pagesbefore and we haven't had the
(11:46):
best luck with that.
Or at least if we do them, weneed to make sure that the
contact us form is above thefold.
Right?
So there's some key things liketakeaway.
Some people will build outlanding pages and the contact us
is at the bottom of the page.
It's like, to your point, noattention span.
So you've gotta figure all thatinto play as well.
So I'm not sure if you've alsoexperienced that.
Justin Rashidi (12:05):
Yeah, I don't know.
I, just see, when we're lookingat like time on page and these
different types of things, likeI see people spend more.
If we're thinking about what isa quality touchpoint, isn't it
someone who's interacting for alonger period of time?
Like visiting more things,reading like more content.
And so I just always haveyelling the, problem with
landing pages is they'resupposed to purposely not guide
(12:26):
you anywhere, right?
Like you're supposed to just behere and it's like a yes no.
Right?
Linda Fanaras (12:30):
Right.
Justin Rashidi (12:30):
And so does that lower like the audience trust,
like when you're trying to likeforce this behavior?
And I think consumers aresmarter.
Linda Fanaras (12:39):
Yeah.
Justin Rashidi (12:40):
On the front end Yeah.
And so from like a landing pageperspective, again, the answer
though is test, right?
Like, you should test a landingpage.
Yeah.
Right?
You should test like web, awebsite and just test them both.
So that's, but I've tested it alot against a lot of campaigns
and unless we're just really badat landing pages, which could be
true the results that wegenerally see is that, yeah,
like having some type of easyaccess form where they can
(13:02):
peruse and get information andthen submit whenever they want
performance better.
Linda Fanaras (13:06):
Yeah, but to your point, I think if they're on the
website, they can get as muchmore, you know, they can get a
lot more information that theywant.
Otherwise, like they may get alanding page and then they have
to figure out where the websiteis and they may toggle back and
forth and by that time they'resick of it.
So I think, to your point, thatmakes sense.
So are there any otherstrategies or tactics that you
think would be valuable to sharethat you think, when you talk
(13:28):
about attribution and thingslike that and the analytics
component and tying that intothe creativity, can you speak a
little bit about that?
Maybe things that you foundreally work well or don't work?
Justin Rashidi (13:37):
For us depending on the business side, there's
two things that we're usuallylike talking about.
It's like how you're setting upthe CRM or how you're like
interacting with like a datawarehouse.
And so, for most companies, theyaren't understanding that their
CRM should actually help them alot with attribution.
Linda Fanaras (13:55):
Yep.
Justin Rashidi (13:55):
And so, the advice is really like, you
should understand your CRMprobably better than you think
you should under understand yourCRM.
And it should be a moreimpactful tool in your
organization than, if you have aCRM, it's just sitting there,
not doing much.
Then like you're probablyactually not running your
marketing campaigns to the besteffect because
Linda Fanaras (14:13):
Right, right.
Yeah.
Justin Rashidi (14:15):
Most attribution tracking whether you're using
HubSpot or Salesforce orDynamics.
Right.
I have a preference for HubSpotbecause I like their
attribution.
Like that's built in.
Yeah.
But all of them can doattribution tracking with
different types of setups, but alot of people don't.
Know that, they should be likeutilizing it in that way.
They think about it fromtracking deals and these things,
(14:35):
right.
But if you're leveraging yourCRM correctly in marketing, it
actually is like your major hubfor attribution tracking.
Linda Fanaras (14:44):
Can you explain to the audience what attribution
tracking is?
Justin Rashidi (14:48):
Yeah.
So attribution tracking is, saywe're running an ad on LinkedIn,
they click this ad.
We should be able to understandwhat was the campaign, what was
the audience, what was thecreative that actually got that
person to the website and, madethem convert into a contact.
Additionally, attribution shouldbe multi-touch, right?
So if you, yes, you shouldunderstand.
(15:09):
Okay.
Like their first touch was this.
Right?
So what's driving a first touchpoint and then what's driving a
second touch point?
Right.
And so some of the big ones,and, no, I'll add one more on
that is we see where, okay, likethe first touch point was a
branded search.
And well, like that's onlybecause it was like click based.
What actually happened wasthere, there was another
impression somewhere in thatlike customer journey that
(15:31):
actually made them go to Googleand track that.
Right.
And so another part ofattribution is we also like
self-reported attribution.
So how did you hear about us?
And then we like to understandbasically, what do we see in the
CRM from these attributiontouchpoints?
What do we see in the marketingplatforms?
Like what it's attributing,right.
What are self-reporting?
How does that reflect against.
(15:51):
These things.
And all of it's to just helpdrive better understanding of
what is effective.
Linda Fanaras (15:57):
Yeah.
What's working and what's not.
So you can double down on what'sworking.
Yep.
Awesome.
No, that's great.
That's great.
so I think that's been great.
Thank you so much, Justin.
Are there any other key factorsthat you think would be helpful
to our audience that we haven'tcovered today?
Justin Rashidi (16:12):
Ooh, in general
Linda Fanaras (16:14):
trick question.
Huh.
Justin Rashidi (16:17):
Yeah, I don't know.
I was gonna say, one of the onesthat I think I have been talking
to organizations more about, isgetting off of online and
actually like being in person.
Linda Fanaras (16:29):
Okay.
Yeah.
Justin Rashidi (16:30):
Like, wow.
Linda Fanaras (16:31):
that's interesting.
Okay.
Justin Rashidi (16:33):
Yeah.
that, that, that's like the, Imean, I believe a lot, obviously
I do a lot of online marketing,so I believe.
But I've seen in-person eventsjust really outcompete, like
when you think about like theinvestment, like this investment
of$40,000 or something, right?
Yeah.
And if you took the sameinvestment and put it into an
(16:54):
online channel.
But a lot of times we do seethat in-person events actually
will outperform, onlinecampaigns.
Right.
And so, yeah, I think from likea general business building
perspective, I think that peopleonline feels easy.
But maybe it's, also gettingcompetitive, right?
And so I think thinking aboutyour business and other ways
outside of online marketing isactually important as well now.
Linda Fanaras (17:16):
Yeah, and I think, if you can double down
and you can actually do online,let's say, so you have a client
going to a conference and you'reactually doing some geotargeting
around a conference, and thenyou're, actually going around to
the conference areas, to thebooths and doing introductions
and things like that, so you'rejust, you're hitting them
multiple times from differentdirections, which is always key
to marketing anyway.
(17:37):
So things like that I think makecomplete sense.
And I, agree with you.
I think there's gonna be more ofthat.
I think, digital can bechallenging.
I think it works great in a lotof instances, but some, it's
more difficult.
But, yeah.
No, absolutely.
So that's been great.
So thank you so much, Justin.
It's been great to hear from youtoday.
I appreciate all the insightthat you gave to our audience.
(17:57):
So I would love for you to sharewith everybody how they can get
in touch with you and youragency.
Justin Rashidi (18:02):
Yeah, you can just email me at Justin@SeedX.us
if you are interested in havinga conversation with us.
Linda Fanaras (18:08):
That's awesome.
All right, well thank you forlistening into the B2B Brand 180
podcast today.
I hope you got some greatdigital marketing insight and
you can take that, put that towork as soon as possible.
If you need to get in touch withme, you can visit me@Mill.Agency
or connect with me on LinkedIn.
Thank you.
(18:29):
And happy marketing.
Welcome to the B2B Brand 180 podcast where
we'll discuss branding andmarketing tools for business.
My goal here today is to provideyou with some transformative and
innovative approaches that canhelp you make 180 degree shift
in your marketing.
So I'm Linda Fanaras and theowner of Millennium Agency, a
branding and growth strategyfirm, and host a B2B Brand 180
(00:21):
podcast, and I'm bringing inJustin Rashidi.
He's the founder of SeedX.
I'm super excited to talk tohim.
He has a digital marketing firm.
He takes a real unique andscientific approach to
marketing.
He comes from a science andengineering background, and he
has an analytical mindset, whichworks out great when it comes to
marketing, and that seems to behis backbone to his success.
(00:42):
Applying these methods to hissuccess.
So, welcome Justin.
I'd love for you to take acouple minutes and tell the
audience about yourself.
Justin Rashidi (00:52):
Hello, my name's Justin, as Linda said at SeedX.
I lead basically data scienceand then strategy.
And so what that means is wework with organizations that
help them better understand, howto structure their data, how to
understand attribution, how tounderstand reporting, and
ultimately how to activate thatdata into marketing channels.
Linda Fanaras (01:11):
That's perfect.
So today you'll betterunderstand, he'll show you how
to use the brains built-intriggers to get more people to
say yes to your ideas.
Really taking a look at some ofthe logical components of this
and tying it back into, theemotion to really drive those
purchasing decisions.
And you'll just learned a littlebit more about how to get more
people to say yes.
(01:32):
So let's talk about building anICP.
It's your Ideal CustomerProfile.
And I think what's key is maybetrying to figure out when you
are building out thesecampaigns, is that an important
factor?
Justin Rashidi (01:44):
Yeah, of course.
yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, the answer is yes, it'svery important.
Yeah.
Can you, I mean, from amessaging standpoint to make
sure that I, mean, yeah.
I think brand positioning in themarket and how the consumers see
your brand in the marketcompared to others, and what
that messaging is, actuallyquite important.
Especially if you're in asaturated field or there's
(02:07):
dominant players and you're anup and coming player and you
really need to differentiateyourself from, the established
market.
Linda Fanaras (02:13):
Yeah, that's great.
So when you're talking abouttaking a scientific approach to
marketing, I know marketing iscreativity and science all
pulled together.
When you speak about that, whatdo you mean exactly?
Justin Rashidi (02:23):
For us, what it means is, from a B2B
perspective, it's actually beingable to track how deals are
being created and what campaignsare actually generating those.
So a lot of organizations theyrely on in platform metrics in
order to help inform them orthey rely on impressions, click
through rates and metrics thatoften aren't always indicative
(02:46):
of business growth.
We see a lot of organizationsthat they feel like we're, doing
paid social, we're doing paidsearch, we're doing LinkedIn,
we're doing organic, we'redoing, whatever activity.
And all those channels look goodwhen they're, everyone's
reporting all the teams report.
But the leadership team feelsthe opposite, that like they're
not actually growing and it'susually because there's a
disconnect between what'sactually functioning correctly
(03:07):
and driving growth and what'sbeing reported.
And so from us, that's usuallywhat it means.
It's like trying to connect thewhole cycle so that way
marketing activities actuallydrive business growth.
Linda Fanaras (03:16):
Right?
Because there are so manydifferent strategies and
although there seems to be a lotof activity during one, from one
strategy, maybe it's just notreally driving growth.
So do you have any examples ofmaybe situation where that's
occurred, like maybe tryingdifferent tactics where you, one
looks like it's working reallygreat, but it's not, and you've
been able to maybe uncoversomething that makes more sense.
Justin Rashidi (03:37):
Yeah, I mean, we see this every day.
This one is like as of lastweek, we were just onboarding a
new customer.
They're running paid social,they're spending about 50 to a
hundred thousand dollars amonth, and they view that
certain campaigns thatintuitively they feel that these
campaigns are, bringing in leadsand, the platform metrics show
that these campaigns are doingwell.
(03:58):
What we did though is we endedup tracking the leads from these
campaigns all the way to whatactually closed as customers.
And what we actually uncoveredwas that the campaigns that
seemed to be doing so, so wereactually the ones that were
generating the new business.
And the ones that they thoughtthat were doing so great, were
not actually generating the newbusiness.
And that's interesting.
This can based off of Yeah.
Creative or audience targeting.
(04:19):
Right.
And so we see this quite a bit,that there's a disconnect
between the platform metrics andthen what actually is generating
book calls or actual deals.
Linda Fanaras (04:28):
Yeah.
Leads.
Yeah.
So how do you look at that?
Because from a digital marketingperspective, if that's what your
focus is, you've gotta look atthe messaging, you've gotta look
at the creative, you've gottalook at how you're setting up
your campaigns.
You've gotta look at the ROI.
Are there certain things thatyou think your customer or a
marketer should prioritize whenthey start to look at these
campaigns?
Justin Rashidi (04:48):
Start to prioritize.
In my personal opinion, I thinkthe best thing to prioritize is
actually understanding how youare connecting to the end result
that the business wants toachieve.
And I think that requiresusually for marketers to go
beyond like a typicalunderstanding of marketing and
actually be more of a businessmind.
And so I think people who Ireally respected marketing,
(05:10):
they're actually businessleaders first and functional
specialists.
Second, and so they're takinginto account the growth or the
direction of the business, andthen they're applying their
function to it in a successfulmanner.
I think that is actually likethe approach I usually would
recommend people to think aboutfrom a marketing perspective.
Linda Fanaras (05:28):
Yeah.
So you've, worked with a lot oflarge size companies.
What do you think kind ofdifferentiates what you guys do
versus other companies?
Justin Rashidi (05:35):
Every company at different stage just has
different types of problems,right?
And so generally, yeah, like ifwe're dealing with a smaller
company, usually they don't evenknow what metrics to be
tracking, how they should bethinking about those metrics.
and then you get to likeslightly larger where they kind
of are tracking it, but it's notgreat.
And then you get to like reallylarge organizations where they
have so much data, they don'tactually know how to stitch it
(05:57):
together and make.
A story out of what is actuallyhappening.
Linda Fanaras (06:01):
Yeah.
Are there different approachesthat you use that maybe other
digital firms don't use?
I mean, there's so manydifferent things to choose from
out there, and I think thatmight be part of the challenge
for our clients that are outthere trying to pick a medium
and trying to figure out whatstrategy to use.
Do you have any insight on that?
Justin Rashidi (06:19):
I mean, the answer is no.
Every company that we haveworked with, or I've interacted
with the channels that aresuccessful for them, sometimes
they're similar, but oftentimesyou'll find, oh, Google search
works great here and horriblefor this company.
Yeah, LinkedIn is great here andgood for this company.
Event marketing in personmarketing, right outbound.
Can be actually vary dependingon the market, like the space.
(06:41):
And I think this kind of tiesback to your first question of
like, messaging IP and right.
Do you believe that yourcustomer will actually convert
from that specific marketingactivity?
Right?
And so there's some obvious oneslike, you know, you probably
don't need to post that much onTikTok if you're like targeting
like this very specific B2Bbuyer.
But I think then the more narrowone is actually, there are
specific industries and marketsthat outreach doesn't work as
(07:04):
successfully.
And actually Google, like, youknow, SEO generative engine now
and stuff are actually much moresuccessful for their companies.
And yeah, I think people alwayswanna take default advice.
Right.
They're like, oh, I hearLinkedIn's good.
So we should be on LinkedIn andYeah.
Oh, I hear this is great.
Right.
So we should be there andusually I'm just like, it could
be true or could not be true.
(07:24):
Right?
Like, you really have toactually test and run a campaign
pretty rigorously to remove theidea that whether it'll be
successful or not successful.
Linda Fanaras (07:34):
Yeah.
You have to run it for a while,is what you're saying.
Justin Rashidi (07:36):
I think the problem is that, there's so many
problems in marketing,
Linda Fanaras (07:39):
but
Justin Rashidi (07:41):
in terms of like channel testing, I think, I've
seen two problems where the onethat I see quite often is that
we believe that this channel, itcould be successful for you, but
it was previously ran in a waywhere like the messaging wasn't
correct.
Our audience target wasn'tcorrect.
You were sending to like alanding page that like didn't
actually make sense for likethis customer, right?
And so the organizationbelieves, oh, this channel
(08:03):
doesn't work for us.
In actuality, like you didn'treally run the campaign that
well.
Right.
And so that gets into do youbelieve that you ran the
campaign successfully?
And if so, then does thatchannel not work for you?
It's usually the questions thatpeople have to debate.
Linda Fanaras (08:19):
Right.
And that's actually a greatpoint.
So if you were to kind of backthis up for our audience a
little bit, and like I saidearlier, like I was asking you
earlier about the ICP, I feellike there's some certain steps
that need to be taken, like.
Who are you trying to go after?
What are you trying to achieve?
What do you need to say?
How are you positioning yourselfin the market?
You know, is there somethingdownloadable?
(08:39):
Is there a landing page?
What are the different mediumsthat make sense for your market?
Do you have a certain basicprocess?
The questions that you would askaround that, that you think
would make sense for a marketerto know?
Like maybe, and those might bethe questions, I'm not sure.
But, just from theirperspective, if they had a
takeaway and you said, well, youshould definitely think about
what your messaging is, numberone, you better make sure that
(09:00):
you're targeting the rightmarket.
Number two, so maybe there'ssome takeaways on that you could
share.
Justin Rashidi (09:05):
I agree with all of those.
I, think the only one that Iwould additionally add is where
in the funnel are you expectingthis person to be?
Right?
And so when you can have greatmessaging for your ideal
customer, but are you reallytrying to push them to get on a
demo and like you actuallyreally need to be warming them
up.
They need to actually get moreinformation about you.
They should be watching a videoor, like you're saying,
(09:27):
downloading a PDF or a leadmagnet of some sort.
I think a lot of companies, theytreat marketing like sales,
which is like this eager beaver,like, oh, they're gonna close
right away.
And good marketing in myopinion.
Like Al also has like the ideathat you are reaching like your
entire addressable market, notjust like the small percentage
(09:47):
of people who are in market.
And I think besides what you'retalking about with messaging
landing page, it's like.
Is this campaign reaching thetop of the funnel and truly
awareness?
Is it middle of the funnelpeople who are kind of like in
the search phase?
Or is it people who are reallyunderstanding like the product
space and they're looking to geta solution soon?
And I think that's the last, andthat usually ties into how you
(10:08):
build messaging out too.
Linda Fanaras (10:09):
Right.
Now, that makes sense.
What's your thought process,because I keep hearing
contradictory data on likelanding pages versus creating
the call to action within theexisting website.
Do you have any thoughts andfeedback on that, or does it
vary?
Justin Rashidi (10:21):
Yeah, it varies obviously.
So standard, typical advice isthat landing pages perform
better than a website page, butmy personal experience has not
proven that to be content astrue.
Yeah.
So I find in my personal, likeme as an individual too.
I like, being able to discoverall the information.
I think that this idea ofsqueeze pages, and maybe this is
(10:43):
like pretty anti, what peoplegenerally say is people believe
that there's no attention spanand people will just need to see
one form and they'll submit it.
Right.
And I have never really had thathappen.
I usually, it's like for us,what I see work is video
content, long form articlesexplaining things, different
types of like demos or likeinteractive tools.
(11:05):
And then they can browse thewebsite and then submit the form
on the website.
And usually from qualitystandpoint, you don't wanna be
like tricking a bunch of peopleto try to submit the form.
It's like you wanna get peoplewho are actually interested in
like buying.
And so, right.
I don't know.
Do you have a different opinion?
Is your experience different?
Linda Fanaras (11:24):
you know, I could be totally wrong, but I always
felt like if you could build acontact us on the top of an
existing website page, so let'ssay you're driving them to a
specific page within the websitethat you're actually trying to
market.
If you can create a sticky head.
Yeah, a sticky header orsomething on the top.
That would be your best bet.
I mean, we've done landing pagesbefore and we haven't had the
(11:46):
best luck with that.
Or at least if we do them, weneed to make sure that the
contact us form is above thefold.
Right?
So there's some key things liketakeaway.
Some people will build outlanding pages and the contact us
is at the bottom of the page.
It's like, to your point, noattention span.
So you've gotta figure all thatinto play as well.
So I'm not sure if you've alsoexperienced that.
Justin Rashidi (12:05):
Yeah, I don't know.
I, just see, when we're lookingat like time on page and these
different types of things, likeI see people spend more.
If we're thinking about what isa quality touchpoint, isn't it
someone who's interacting for alonger period of time?
Like visiting more things,reading like more content.
And so I just always haveyelling the, problem with
landing pages is they'resupposed to purposely not guide
(12:26):
you anywhere, right?
Like you're supposed to just behere and it's like a yes no.
Right?
Linda Fanaras (12:30):
Right.
Justin Rashidi (12:30):
And so does that lower like the audience trust,
like when you're trying to likeforce this behavior?
And I think consumers aresmarter.
Linda Fanaras (12:39):
Yeah.
Justin Rashidi (12:40):
On the front end Yeah.
And so from like a landing pageperspective, again, the answer
though is test, right?
Like, you should test a landingpage.
Yeah.
Right?
You should test like web, awebsite and just test them both.
So that's, but I've tested it alot against a lot of campaigns
and unless we're just really badat landing pages, which could be
true the results that wegenerally see is that, yeah,
like having some type of easyaccess form where they can
(13:02):
peruse and get information andthen submit whenever they want
performance better.
Linda Fanaras (13:06):
Yeah, but to your point, I think if they're on the
website, they can get as muchmore, you know, they can get a
lot more information that theywant.
Otherwise, like they may get alanding page and then they have
to figure out where the websiteis and they may toggle back and
forth and by that time they'resick of it.
So I think, to your point, thatmakes sense.
So are there any otherstrategies or tactics that you
think would be valuable to sharethat you think, when you talk
(13:28):
about attribution and thingslike that and the analytics
component and tying that intothe creativity, can you speak a
little bit about that?
Maybe things that you foundreally work well or don't work?
Justin Rashidi (13:37):
For us depending on the business side, there's
two things that we're usuallylike talking about.
It's like how you're setting upthe CRM or how you're like
interacting with like a datawarehouse.
And so, for most companies, theyaren't understanding that their
CRM should actually help them alot with attribution.
Linda Fanaras (13:55):
Yep.
Justin Rashidi (13:55):
And so, the advice is really like, you
should understand your CRMprobably better than you think
you should under understand yourCRM.
And it should be a moreimpactful tool in your
organization than, if you have aCRM, it's just sitting there,
not doing much.
Then like you're probablyactually not running your
marketing campaigns to the besteffect because
Linda Fanaras (14:13):
Right, right.
Yeah.
Justin Rashidi (14:15):
Most attribution tracking whether you're using
HubSpot or Salesforce orDynamics.
Right.
I have a preference for HubSpotbecause I like their
attribution.
Like that's built in.
Yeah.
But all of them can doattribution tracking with
different types of setups, but alot of people don't.
Know that, they should be likeutilizing it in that way.
They think about it fromtracking deals and these things,
(14:35):
right.
But if you're leveraging yourCRM correctly in marketing, it
actually is like your major hubfor attribution tracking.
Linda Fanaras (14:44):
Can you explain to the audience what attribution
tracking is?
Justin Rashidi (14:48):
Yeah.
So attribution tracking is, saywe're running an ad on LinkedIn,
they click this ad.
We should be able to understandwhat was the campaign, what was
the audience, what was thecreative that actually got that
person to the website and, madethem convert into a contact.
Additionally, attribution shouldbe multi-touch, right?
So if you, yes, you shouldunderstand.
(15:09):
Okay.
Like their first touch was this.
Right?
So what's driving a first touchpoint and then what's driving a
second touch point?
Right.
And so some of the big ones,and, no, I'll add one more on
that is we see where, okay, likethe first touch point was a
branded search.
And well, like that's onlybecause it was like click based.
What actually happened wasthere, there was another
impression somewhere in thatlike customer journey that
(15:31):
actually made them go to Googleand track that.
Right.
And so another part ofattribution is we also like
self-reported attribution.
So how did you hear about us?
And then we like to understandbasically, what do we see in the
CRM from these attributiontouchpoints?
What do we see in the marketingplatforms?
Like what it's attributing,right.
What are self-reporting?
How does that reflect against.
(15:51):
These things.
And all of it's to just helpdrive better understanding of
what is effective.
Linda Fanaras (15:57):
Yeah.
What's working and what's not.
So you can double down on what'sworking.
Yep.
Awesome.
No, that's great.
That's great.
so I think that's been great.
Thank you so much, Justin.
Are there any other key factorsthat you think would be helpful
to our audience that we haven'tcovered today?
Justin Rashidi (16:12):
Ooh, in general
Linda Fanaras (16:14):
trick question.
Huh.
Justin Rashidi (16:17):
Yeah, I don't know.
I was gonna say, one of the onesthat I think I have been talking
to organizations more about, isgetting off of online and
actually like being in person.
Linda Fanaras (16:29):
Okay.
Yeah.
Justin Rashidi (16:30):
Like, wow.
Linda Fanaras (16:31):
that's interesting.
Okay.
Justin Rashidi (16:33):
Yeah.
that, that, that's like the, Imean, I believe a lot, obviously
I do a lot of online marketing,so I believe.
But I've seen in-person eventsjust really outcompete, like
when you think about like theinvestment, like this investment
of$40,000 or something, right?
Yeah.
And if you took the sameinvestment and put it into an
(16:54):
online channel.
But a lot of times we do seethat in-person events actually
will outperform, onlinecampaigns.
Right.
And so, yeah, I think from likea general business building
perspective, I think that peopleonline feels easy.
But maybe it's, also gettingcompetitive, right?
And so I think thinking aboutyour business and other ways
outside of online marketing isactually important as well now.
Linda Fanaras (17:16):
Yeah, and I think, if you can double down
and you can actually do online,let's say, so you have a client
going to a conference and you'reactually doing some geotargeting
around a conference, and thenyou're, actually going around to
the conference areas, to thebooths and doing introductions
and things like that, so you'rejust, you're hitting them
multiple times from differentdirections, which is always key
to marketing anyway.
(17:37):
So things like that I think makecomplete sense.
And I, agree with you.
I think there's gonna be more ofthat.
I think, digital can bechallenging.
I think it works great in a lotof instances, but some, it's
more difficult.
But, yeah.
No, absolutely.
So that's been great.
So thank you so much, Justin.
It's been great to hear from youtoday.
I appreciate all the insightthat you gave to our audience.
(17:57):
So I would love for you to sharewith everybody how they can get
in touch with you and youragency.
Justin Rashidi (18:02):
Yeah, you can just email me at Justin@SeedX.us
if you are interested in havinga conversation with us.
Linda Fanaras (18:08):
That's awesome.
All right, well thank you forlistening into the B2B Brand 180
podcast today.
I hope you got some greatdigital marketing insight and
you can take that, put that towork as soon as possible.
If you need to get in touch withme, you can visit me@Mill.Agency
or connect with me on LinkedIn.
Thank you.
(18:29):
And happy marketing.
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