November 13, 2020 • 58 mins
We all know data is important for our business. How can you make decisions if you don’t know what your customer does on your site or how they feel about interacting with your brand? But gathering the data and knowing how to use it effectively—without forcing it to do something for you—is slightly harder to grasp. On this episode of the ROI Online Podcast, Steve talks with Mike Olson about quantitative and qualitative data, what using it to better listen to your customers, and how that allows you to make better decisions and succeed in business.
Mike started his career in both radio and singing. In his touring and traveling days he took up marketing for the group and started diving into it to get better. That led him to gathering massive amounts of data over the years and learning how to use it to better run a business.
Even if a lead doesn’t convert, you can still gather data about the interaction and learn from the experience. Finding out what you do well is just as important as knowing where you went wrong and it’s all quantifiable—if you’re using the right tools. The key is to make sure you’re able to look at the data objectively rather than forcing something to come out of it all.
From Mike’s perspective, data is just a way to understand your customer better. If you always keep in mind who your audience is, and stay away from the mindset of needing to “squeeze one more dime out of this consumer,” you’re more likely to find and maintain your success.
Mike’s best advice is to always keep in mind what’s happening with your first-time customers. To do so, sit down with a group of friends who have never interacted with your company before and ask them to interact with your website. Take note of how they click, where they get stuck, what makes them leave. You’ll gain incredibly valuable insights into how people use your site and be able to update it accordingly. Things you think are obvious might not be to someone who’d not as deep in the weeds with your company as you are.
You can learn more about Mike here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeolson18/
Enroll in the QuickStart Academy today to learn how to develop and implement a proven growth strategy that grows your ROI, your business, and your confidence. Learn more HERE.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Mike Olson (00:02):
Part of the reason that I was happy to step out and
start moving into being able todo this as a consultative effort
is because you find yourself intoo many conversations with too
many C level folks and, andlegal concern saying, how close
(00:25):
to this line can we actually getin our conversation? And once
once you're thinking in thatregard, I think I think you've
lost sight of your consumer,basically, to exactly your point
you, I think you said it reallywell, you've pulled this mask
over them. And it doesn't just,it doesn't just change your
relationship with them from howmuch you know them, it changes
your relationship with them fromhow you think of them. They're
(00:48):
not that human being anymore.
They're just, they're just theperson that you're just
squeezing that one more littledrop of blood out of him.
Steve Brown (00:55):
Hi, everybody.
Welcome to the ROI onlinepodcast where we believe you,
the courageous entrepreneurs ofour day, are the invisible
heroes of our economy. You notonly improve our world with your
ideas, your grit and yourpassion, but you make our world
better. I'm Steve Brown. Andthis is a place where we have
great conversations with winnersjust like you while we laugh and
(01:18):
learn together. Michaelson,welcome to the ROI online
podcast. Steve Brown is such apleasure.
Mike Olson (01:29):
Thank you very much.
Steve Brown (01:31):
Now listen, listen to this voice. immediately gets
your attention. But it's notonly does he have the voice,
he's got user psychologybubbling around in there, he's
got conversion data, he's gottenmarketing mic, a little bit
(01:51):
about your background, why whythis beautiful voice and why the
data
Mike Olson (01:58):
I think bubbling around in there is the right way
to have said that That's funny.
Um, I you know, of all things.
Way back when when I was incollege, I was a vocal
performance major. And so my, mycareer actually started out both
in radio and in singing. Andafter about 10 years of being
(02:19):
out on the road and gettingmarried and having kids and
realizing that I wanted my kidsto recognize me, when I was
around, it was time to make alittle bit of a change. And so I
needed to come home and all of asudden, I had a resume that
basically said, you know, sticka mic in front of this kid, or
he doesn't know what to do. And,and I had had a little
experience while we were touringand traveling, doing some
(02:42):
marketing for my own group. Itwasn't very good, but it was
marketing. And, and I'm nothingif not stubborn. So I started
diving into it, just to kind ofunderstand how to get better at
it even then. And so when Istarted looking for a gig, the
only thing I could even attachmy name to was marketing at that
point in time. And I worked myway into basically an admin gig.
(03:04):
I was getting coffee and tea fora team of people. I spent about
10 years at that company. And bythe time I left, I was their
creative director.
Steve Brown (03:14):
So before we go further, what's the name of this
group? This group, right? Yeah,she's so busy for so long.
Mike Olson (03:21):
Um, it was it was an acapella group of all things.
They You know, there's, there'snot many people who need a voice
like this in our group, but butacapella did, back when nobody
knew what one of those was. Andit was, it was a group called
lmnop. We still to this day,maybe once a year or so we'll
get together and just goofaround and sing a concert like
(03:41):
in our hometown or somethinglike that. It was it was a lot
of fun. We had a good time. Doesthat. So is this a Denver based
group? Well, we were alloriginally actually from Fort
Collins about an hour north ofthere. But yeah, we kind of
headquartered out of Denver, butfor the better part of a decade.
We sing we sang and toured andrecorded all over the country
(04:03):
and actually even all over theworld. So we were we were pretty
lucky we had a really good timeof it back then.
Steve Brown (04:09):
Well, how do you get so I'm not from that world.
And so these questions may sounddumb or naive, no, no, please
but how how does an acapellagroup stay busy and on tour.
Mike Olson (04:22):
You know, it's it was kind of funny. The way that
we stumbled into it. We all wentto high school together and then
we all went our separate ways.
But as we were getting get intothe mid to latter stages of
college, everybody wasgravitating back towards town.
We had all done this in uniquegroups. And you start seeing the
weak spots and you start wishingfor you know, just that right
(04:46):
voice to plug into just thatright place. And this this for
me kind of dream group of thefive of us got together and it
was just funny how quickly itcould clicked, how quickly we
were doing shows that I hadnever been able to do before.
Just because of I, we justthere's so many talented folks
(05:08):
involved. And more thananything, just just able to
start putting some piecestogether that way in terms of
our ability to both improve, dobetter. This is a theme, I guess
that kind of runs throughout mylife and, and start to put
ourselves in a position tosucceed. For folks in auditions
(05:30):
and things of that nature.
Suddenly, we're touring all overour state, and we start getting
some notice that way. So then westart getting some national
gigs, that picks up enoughattention that a radio station
(05:50):
out of one of the places we'rein starts playing us, and that
gets us enough attention that westart doing some recording for a
small label. And, and I'm notsure how that just kept building
momentum, especially forsomething that people didn't
know very well. But suddenly,we're doing paid gigs at, you
know, colleges and, and smalltown arts venues and things like
(06:12):
that, that just, it just kept usgoing. We you'd never heard of
us. But there's a lot ofmusicians out there that make a
decent living just just outthere, you know, entertaining on
the road, and we were having aball doing it. It was just fun.
Steve Brown (06:26):
So it seems like with your voice with your
experience, you would have beena natural fit in radio
somewhere. No,
Mike Olson (06:33):
it was actually that was how I would fill in the
blanks. You know, we'd be out onthe road about it depended, you
know, it built over the years, Ithink our busiest year, we were
at well over half the year. And,and in between, I still had to
fill in cracks for my paychecks,basically. So yeah, I do a lot
of I do a lot of voiceover work,either live on radio, or, you
(06:58):
know, audiobooks weren't as biga thing back then. But I still
have a little experience in thatregard as well. And, yeah, I
just got really lucky a coupleof folks in my family have very
deep voices before me. And Ithink I just got the genetics,
you know? Yeah.
Steve Brown (07:13):
Yeah. So the way you're talking about the label,
I just, I think about thisBoston song, know that the guys
smoked a big fat cigar andbattle that car and, boy, the
spans out of sight. And is thatthe experience that happened?
Mike Olson (07:31):
You know, it's it's funny, it's kind of how it
worked out? Yeah, is we weredoing a show where we ended up
opening for a much larger group.
America, actually, and, and justa couple of folks who came to
the gig actually had come to seethem, but actually wanted to
talk to them about somerecording and pieces like that.
(07:53):
And they saw us and they went,Oh, well, wow, let's look at
something like that. Right. Wealso had a couple of folks from
a different angle, coming out ofsimilarly. And so it, it
actually made for some decisionson our part as to what we were
going to do and who we weregoing to go with it was it was
(08:15):
pretty. It was a very headytime. This is not something that
happens to most people. Andyeah, I'm just a young kid not
really knowing any better. Sothe label that ended up
approaching us was called shadowmountain records. And, and they,
they we did our first album withthem. And it was it was really
cool. It was really fun. So Socan people find your album on
(08:38):
like amazon music or primemusic? Or they can actually I
would imagine anyway, lmnop isspelled a little differently.
But starts it starts with an Eif you start e l e, you'll find
the rest of it. All right.
Steve Brown (08:53):
Yeah. Yeah. The le.
Mike Olson (08:56):
Le Yeah.
Steve Brown (08:57):
So your title after your name is kind of mysterious
and appealing. It's c x. Oh,yeah. Like, who wouldn't want an
X in the title of their jobthere?
Mike Olson (09:14):
Yeah, one of my kids calls me the x men. I you know,
and and I was a comic book geekas a kid. So it makes me laugh.
But, but yeah, chief experienceofficer and and this is just a,
frankly, a very small concern ofme and a couple of buddies who
have come to find over theseyears. There's there's just as
(09:37):
much education in this space tobe done as there is actual work.
You know, there's a lot of folkswho don't really understand so
much how to play the game ofactually online experience and
how to blend qualitative andquantitative into, you know,
actual feedback. Actually, thisis what my consumers are telling
(09:58):
me. This is what I should bedoing. To take action on that
thing, and then how tothoughtfully take action in that
direction. And, and I just, I'vebeen really lucky, over the
years, I stumbled my way into,you know that that gig and
marketing, but there was so mucharound the creative that I just
didn't get, I just didn'tunderstand when I, you know, I
(10:21):
do five, something's for, forpeople to choose between and
some Alpha Dog walks into a roomwith five other people and goes,
I like the blue one. And yousay, I, oh, okay, why why is
that the right one? And by thenthey're already gone out of the
room and you think, are we evenmaking the right choice. And so
learning some of this processmyself, I was lucky to start
(10:43):
working for a company where Igot to do qualitative and
quantitative at a scale thatmost people never see in their
careers. So it just, it taughtme so much about the space. And
then when you get out and youstart talking to people about
how these things actually work,there's so many interesting
misconceptions that I do, I findmyself talking about it as much
(11:05):
from an educational perspective,as I do just in getting people
kind of set up in their spaces.
So me and a couple of buddiesare helping some pretty decently
sized companies out that waythese days. And it's it's a lot
of fun. It's, it's reallyinteresting to me, so I'm a
little geeky about it.
Steve Brown (11:22):
Well, let's, let's do this. So, I believe that
instead of focusing on SEO,Search Engine Optimization, we
actually shouldn't be focusingon Hto human experience,
optimization, right? It isexactly right. And so, you know,
all these big brands arebasically teaching our consumers
(11:46):
or clients or prospects, what toexpect when they come online.
And, and this thing in ourbrain, the brainstem, I call it
the bodyguard is in play at thattime, and there are certain
sites, there are certain shopsor whatever, where we walk in,
and we just feel at home, wefeel understood, we feel safe.
(12:09):
Right? And, and it's notsomething necessarily you can
guess that. And so for the folksthat listen, we you know, I've
got business owners, I've gotmarketing directors, I'm, I've
got students, you know, thesestory brand guides, but here's
our problem. You're running abusiness, and you're trying to,
(12:32):
you don't have time to dig deepinto mountains of data to make a
educated call. And so that thatscene that you you were talking
about where the guy comes in,and just goes, I like the blue
one, and he's either have anybackstory even. And more, more
than that, he doesn't have thetime to really dig into that.
(12:54):
But how does what you do reallybecome legitimate. And so
here's, we'll take a stab at AVtesting, but to really get
clarity on AV testing, which is,so you're going to show a
version, and then the nextvisitors going to see the B
version. And we're onlymeasuring one little piece, and
(13:18):
we're going to see which one ismore effective over a period of
time and a sampling. And thenwe're going to focus on another
thing. Well, you know what thatmeans? That means you have to
have thousands of visits to getreally good data and guess what
small business websites don'thave.
Mike Olson (13:32):
They don't have.
Yeah, they don't have thatquantitative capability,
basically. And so in that way,the only way that I've seen
small businesses usequantitative really effectively
that way is to be payingattention to the only times they
touch something in their stack,that actually makes the needle
move enough, right? If you stilllook at that from a from from a
(13:56):
sheer stat StG perspective, youstill might see things on
occasion, typically things likecalls to action, either in your
headlines or your buttons orwhatever. Those are the places
that you're still going to seethose of seismic jolts, right
when you do something. And andone of the things that's tough
(14:17):
for those small businesses tounderstand is oftentimes the
first few times you touch thosethings. Those seismic jolts do
not move this direction, right.
They don't they're not about,you know, they're there. They
die if they take a big nosedive.
Right. And that's when peopletypically walk away from
quantitative very quickly. Theygo everything I did mess things
(14:37):
up. Yeah, right. And, and, and Iunderstand that what your
consumer was telling you,though, and this is I have to
talk to big companies about thisjust as much as small companies
because everybody's really proudof how often they don't lose,
right? But losses are actuallythe way that your consumer is at
least telling you this thingmatters. To me, this is very
(14:59):
important to me. That's, that'simportant knowledge to have. And
it's an important button ifyou've got it even as a small
business to kind of keep pokingat because one of those guesses
is going to make that jump theother direction. And, and you've
got to have the stomach to keeptrying it if what you're looking
to do is improve that way. Butwhat you do have still is you
(15:23):
got qualitative, you know,you've still got your consumer
feedback. So you need to figureout then instead, how do I use
those channels, effectively withmy consumers to engage them in a
conversation? Not, you know, youdon't, you still can't, if
you're, if you're approachingthem in a relationship, you
still can't approach thembasically by saying, here's what
(15:44):
I need from you. You need toengage them in conversation to
say, What is it you need fromme? Basically, right. And that's
the big difference in in how youget qualitative to not only stay
effective, but actuallysomething that you continue to
converse back and forth withyour consumer about. So you hear
them as to why they keep banginginto walls. And that's how
(16:08):
that's how companies get to thatmore intuitive, safer, I
understand you space that you'retalking about basically,
Steve Brown (16:16):
right? So let's cover a little vocabulary, just
sure for me. So we said statSIG,
Mike Olson (16:23):
yellow statistical significance, sorry,
statistically significant.
Meaning that the way a stat SIGcalculator works is basically to
remove randomization from thepicture. Right. And so you
talked about thousands ofconsumers on each side. And
typically, that is true, you formost static measures, what
(16:44):
you're changing is a smallenough change that it doesn't
make a big enough disruption foryou to say, I have flipped a
coin this many times. And theresults that I have gotten are
telling me right, the way I endup teaching this in a class is
actually very noisy, because Iwill sit down with a group of 50
to 100 people, and I'll havethem all flip the coin 10 times
(17:06):
and keep track of their results,right. And you look at the
different results across theroom. And somebody in that room.
I've had folks actually, veryrarely, but flip heads or tails
10 times in a row. Right? Thethe conversation you have
quickly is okay, you got sevenheads and three tails, can you
expect heads to land at 70% forthe rest of your life, and and
(17:29):
and they immediately understandthat that's not going to happen.
That's not the way that works.
And what that means is at leastin that example, you've not
flipped that coin enough times,right. But it also doesn't mean
that you, if you do see 10heads, and then you see 20 heads
and then you see you know, 27out of 30 or heads, there's a
(17:51):
point in there that astatistically significant
calculator is going to say,that's, that's not random. I
don't know if it's as big or assmall as as what you're
initially seeing. But that iscertainly not random. And that's
how you use it to at least kindof feel around in the dark that
way and say, Okay, I foundwhat's important, these are at
(18:12):
least the spaces that I can keepchanging until I find a
headline, I find a call toaction I find meaningful copy
that tells my consumer, this iswhere you thought you were gonna
be, basically.
Steve Brown (18:24):
Okay, so then there's so that is leads us to
quantitative, meaning that I'lllet you explain it but
Mike Olson (18:32):
you bet quantitative is, you know, a B testing is a
great example of exactly whatyou were talking about. And
there's there's other types.
There's multivariate testing,there's there's multi armed
bandit testing, there's, there'sdifferent methods into this idea
of I show unique presentationsto a consumer. And then I lock
them into that presentationevery time they come back so
(18:55):
that they have that sameexperience, because sometimes I
don't convert them the firsttime that they come, you know,
sometimes it's the second orthird time they come. So I make
sure that I lock them into thatexperience so that I understand
how they're responding to it.
Somebody else has a differentexperience, I watch enough of
those to basically have thatmathematics in the background.
(19:18):
And that stats a calculator,say, Here's something, here's
something that is unique, andthat's actually standing out,
basically, so, so quantitativeis basically it's that asking
the consumer, which of thesethings do you prefer more, and
then watching enough peoplerespond to it until you actually
feel like you've got an answerto the question.
Steve Brown (19:39):
And the advantage in this case is that you're not
Mike Olson (19:41):
asking them where they're actually thinking and
trying to guess what answer youwant to hear. They're reacting
to presentations. It's exactlyyou know, this is not this is
certainly soft science. When youlook at it this way, right? A
typical scientist would look ata lot of this and say you've got
a lot of Holes in how you'reexamining this, but you're at
(20:02):
least examining it from ascientific perspective. And in
this case, the person who ishaving this experience does not
know, as they're having theexperience that they're
basically being watched in thatregard as to how they respond to
that. Whereas qualitative, andI'm sure that, you know,
(20:22):
wherever you don't don't mind,that's where we were probably
headed. Qualitative is more theconversation actively engaged,
right? I want to know what youlike, I want to know what you
dislike this is, this is whereyou have to be much more careful
to not lead your consumer withyour own opinions, basically,
right? This is why you have tonot go to your consumer and say
(20:44):
something like, why does thispage suck? Basically, right?
Because then the consumer looksat that page from the
perspective of, oh, that pagesucks, actually, okay, why is
that? what's what's wrong withit, I'm only going to give you
feedback now of why I thinksomething is wrong with it. You
know, and companies don't thinkso much about how they influence
(21:05):
their consumers, when they havethat conversation when they talk
to them, because they're so busytrying to get what they want out
of the conversation thatoftentimes they don't think
about the human being on the farside of that, and how their
responses are going to go. Andyou've got to be careful with
these types of studies. I mean,I'm just seeing your logo,
influences the people who are atleast pleasers in that crowd,
(21:28):
and just want to tell you, Ilove your site, there's nothing
wrong with it. Everything'sperfect. That's why I come back
here time after time. Well,that's beautiful to hear. Right?
It doesn't help me get better,basically, right. And so you
want to be careful about how youapproach that consumer and say,
you know, what, what was yourexperience? What can we do
(21:48):
better? What did we do great atI you know, you want to hear
those things, but you want toreally be thoughtful about not
leading them into your opinion,basically.
Steve Brown (22:00):
So this is excellent. here's, here's the
struggle, though, for 98% of thebusinesses in the States at
least, have 20 or lessemployees. And so what that
means is the owner of thecompany, or the leader of the
company, seven wear all thesehats, okay, data, assuming
(22:22):
they're engaged, they reallywant to do this data can be
extremely misleading, and youcan miss read it and make all
these mistakes. And yet, we'recompeting against organizations
that have highly weaponized,armies, artificial intelligence,
data, technology, harvesting,all of these inside, they even
(22:47):
have all the visits. Sure. Andso that's the big, giant villain
that we're finding gets here.
And what I'm excited about inthis conversation is someone
that's been in that realm haspaid the dues, done the reps,
you start to see commonalitiesor fundamentals that start to
(23:10):
reveal themselves that couldactually be in play without
eating all of this wrong.
Mike Olson (23:16):
Actually, no, that's exactly it. And that's exactly.
You know, I love how you saidthat, because there's really a
ton of practical application inthis, frankly, not just in my
opinion in business, but inlife. There's there's a lot of
ways that this these principles,just from what we've talked
(23:37):
about, from an overarchingperspective can be applied to
how you come at your businessdecision making how you come at
your consumers, and and how youcontinually improve this way. I
think you're absolutely right,that there are mountains of
data, and it's easy to make poorchoices, and poor guesses, and
(24:02):
all of that. And I thinksometimes that's because we are
still not thoughtful andmethodical in how we approach
those steps, we will take afirst step of say, qualitative
data. And we'll see three out of20 consumers tell us that, you
know, I really hate thatheadline. And suddenly, we're
just fixated on a headline thatdo you expect more than 17 out
(24:28):
of 20 people to be in love withthe way that you talk to them?
You know, that's, that's, that'smaybe not something that you
necessarily need to be spendingthat time on. If if you're only
getting that level of feedback,if seven out of 20 told you, I'm
not sure I care for how youphrased this, that's probably
(24:48):
something more than you know.
And so it's still thatthoughtful moment of saying what
did the data actually tell me asopposed to looking at the data
and saying I have to getsomething out of This data
doesn't tell you something everytime. There's there's not an
answer. Every time. You'relooking you're ferreting around
for what matters, basically. Andand it is it's, it's a long
(25:11):
exercise and it can be anexercise in frustration. But
even at that level, even with 20employees, you know, your
consumers are giving youfeedback. If if they are not
converting, they're still givingyou some form of feedback. You
know, there are some reallysimple, thoughtful, free tools
out there to be able to at leastreach out to them and say, Hey,
(25:34):
you have just a couple minutesto tell me why you're leaving to
tell me why you didn't completethe cart to tell me, you know,
where we got close? Where did wego wrong, basically
Steve Brown (25:49):
want to pause here just for a moment and talk to
you about a program that we havejust released, called the ROI
quickstart Academy for authors.
Every day, I talk to businessowners just like you who
struggle with quickly gettingtheir fundamentals in place, we
want to create a greatfoundation, and we want to grow
our business. But the thingsthat are in our way, our lack of
(26:12):
knowledge about the specifics,we should put in place, what
kind of technology what kind ofmessaging and what kind of
campaigns and that problemexists for authors as well. And
we just chill so good withauthors because, well, I'm an
author, and I understandeverything that you struggle
with, you have a great idea, youhave a great book, but what do
(26:34):
you want to do, you want to getyour book in front of more
people, you want to make it easyfor them to find you learn how
they can schedule a time to talkwith you hire you for a
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Imagine working with a smallgroup of like minded authors,
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(26:59):
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Academy for authors, you canvisit ROI online.com or click in
the link in the show notesbelow. And now back to this
(27:23):
episode. No, I'm just thinking,the trap. Here we are where
we've got humans coming andexperiencing whatever our
platform is just like if theywalked into your store, there's
a virtual representation of yourstore or your your office or
(27:46):
whatever it is. And yet thereare humans and that brain is in
play. But here's the problem.
The trap is being too logicaland too consumed with the
analytics and the data where ittakes you into an anti human
(28:06):
mindset. Yeah, you could beactually leading or misleading
the expectations of the data andtotally overlook what is human
with the brain in the name andour hopes and dreams and a
family is needing from you whenthat moment.
Mike Olson (28:23):
Yeah, I you know, it's it's funny, as you say that
bit, I actually find that to beeven far more the province of
the big company, the largecompany tends to lose track of
who their consumer is, they tendto lose track of that that part
of the equation, they've becomethe 800 pound gorilla more often
(28:45):
than not to the point of justbasically saying, here's my
thing, take it or not, you know,because because they've
graduated to a point that thatconversion at a much smaller
levels still still make thebusiness roll, you know, they
can think about bigger, broaderthings that way. I tend to find
that small businesses that atleast have gotten to a point of
(29:07):
past sole proprietorship, youknow, even when you're getting
into that five or 10 range, ninetimes out of 10. Those are the
folks that really understandtheir consumer, and they really
understand their consumer base,they may not know how to have
that conversation with them.
That's a very different animal,mate, but they they know that
they know what they're lookingfor. They know who their core
(29:27):
audience is. Sometimes it's that20 to 50. It's that 20 to 100.
That gets to be a challengebecause you know who your core
audience is, but they're onlybig enough to get you to. Now I
need 20 bodies to run this. Ifyou want to be a business that
needs 100 bodies to run it.
(29:48):
Sometimes you've got to go outand then find those other
audiences who need your offeringand just don't know it yet, and
that's where it gets that'sthat's where all this comes in.
You know,
Steve Brown (29:58):
I would argue There's this tipping point in
organization, when it gets acertain size, it stopped seeing
the people that are buying theirproducts or appreciating what
they do are really drawn to themand stop seeing them as humans,
and starts to put this consumercostume on it, which covers
(30:19):
their face. And so make somefaceless, nameless credit, they
have credit cards that we howare we going to exploit this
potential? consumer. And that'swhere it gets off the rails. And
I think that's where marketingis broken.
Mike Olson (30:38):
I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more, I
think. I think so many times inthat particular aspect, as you
start really rooting around forhow do I squeeze one more dime
out of this consumer? You know,how do I get one more something
one more month subscription, youknow, out of this consumer, we
(31:02):
part of the reason that I washappy to step out and start
moving into being able to dothis as a consultative effort is
because you find yourself in toomany conversations with too many
C level folks and, and legalconcerns saying, how close to
(31:25):
this line? Can we actually getin our conversation? And once
once you're thinking in thatregard, I think I think you've
lost sight of your consumer,basically, to exactly your
point, you've I think you saidit really well, you've pulled
this mask over them. And itdoesn't just, it doesn't just
change your relationship withthem from how much you know
them, it changes yourrelationship with them from how
(31:46):
you think of them. They're notthat human being anymore.
They're just they're just theperson that you're just
squeezing that one more littledrop of blood out of and I you
know, I'll tell you, the folksthat I think are always doing it
best are the ones that are notthat short sighted are the ones
that understand that this has tobe a mutually beneficial
(32:07):
something between us. For it tobe long lasting for it to be
something that long term, youhave faith and trust in me. So
Steve Brown (32:17):
yeah, that's, I think that's there is just this,
once you stop seeing that humanthere Think, think about your
mindset, I'm in charge ofwriting, copy or designing some
asset that we're going to bepresenting to these faceless,
nameless consumers. Think abouthow you would approach it, and
what energy you would put intotheir insights to be way
(32:39):
different than if you weredesigning them for your buddy
that you're gonna have sit andhave a beer with later. Yeah,
you're gonna design two verydifferent assets. And yet, yeah,
guess who's really evaluatingyour assets?
Mike Olson (32:53):
Yeah. Well, and it's a slippery slope, right? I mean,
yeah, when you when you get towhere you want to be, you know,
that that day down the road, andyou really are seeing millions
of consumers coming through yoursite, it's, it's almost
impossible to not lose track ofthat face a little bit. Because
now all of a sudden, it's well,this is this group broadly fits
(33:13):
into this category, or this isthis is true about all of this
group of people and you start toblur those lines. It's, it's
interesting. I, I argue, so thatI always say our world has
become industrialized. So it'sour marketing or the way that
communication General has becomeindustrialized. And I believe
(33:34):
it's happening at that pointwhere
Steve Brown (33:38):
I'm when I say industrialized, as like, your
brain wants to be free range andjust run amok and, and eat
grasshoppers at its own. And yetwe're wanting to herd them into
this industrialized milkingstation, that you're allowed.
And if you have a credit card,because we're just gonna, we're
just gonna machine and machineeyes this.
Mike Olson (34:02):
It's exactly right.
It's exactly true. And, andbecause of that, loss of sight
of who you're treating and howyou're treating them. It really
does get to be sort of aprocessing, lather, rinse,
repeat, you're not so concernedabout who you lost as long as
you gained more than you lost.
(34:24):
And, and I watched it be a veryaffecting thing. It's, it's, it
was even more disheartening.
Sometimes when you do some ofthose tests and you'd see a
psychology work on an audiencefor a while. And then that
psychology would go away as, aspeople get smarter and wiser up
to the tactics that are behindthat original thought, right.
(34:48):
And so in a long way, it gets tobe a bit of a chess game. And
there's a lot that there's,there's a lot of dehumanization
to that you're you're basicallysaying, Well, if if you're not
going to buy now that I'm goingto take this this half step
further. Right, and and that's,that's a tough game to keep
playing over the long haul. Soyeah, it's it's very true if
(35:10):
you're absolutely right.
Steve Brown (35:13):
So let's say that you, you were our buddy, and you
knew we had a company and oneday, we got a couple of beers in
you and convince you to comeover. And yes, just helped me
revealed several fundamentalsthat are always in play, no
matter the size of sampling,what is given three valuable
(35:38):
things that we can pull in andapply pretty much in most cases.
Mike Olson (35:45):
In most cases, you can always, I don't, I don't
care how good you think you areat it, you can always do a
better job of listening to yourconsumer. I am shocked at how
often and I mean, 90 pluspercent of the time, companies
(36:07):
tend to be presenting from thepoint of here's what I need from
you, instead of instead ofhere's what I am offering you. I
think there's always room tocontinue to improve in that
regard. And that is, that's ahuge piece of the puzzle, just
in understanding that consumerbase, I think I think that is
(36:31):
always a truth. Give us
Steve Brown (36:33):
some examples how we can do that.
Mike Olson (36:36):
That's absolutely, when I, when you've got whether
it's a product or an offering ora service, more often than not,
the way that that has beenpieced together and presented is
by you and your team. talkingthrough, here's who we are,
here's what we have to offer.
Here's, you know, we're going toput our best face forward on
(37:00):
this idea, whether that is aphysical or whatever sort of a
product. It is so rare for thatteam that has been so far down
that rabbit hole that has madeall of these assumptions about
here's everything we've learnedin our expertise. And here's all
we know, it is so rare for thatto then be turned around and
(37:26):
presented as. And here's how Iwould say that to somebody who
is seeing it for the very firsttime. Mm hmm. Basically, right.
And so the curse
Steve Brown (37:40):
of knowledge. Yeah, exactly. Right.
Mike Olson (37:41):
Yeah, you you, you'd now know, you've you've been in
the apple, basically, right? Andyou cannot unknow as it were,
it's it's a real trick. It's areal habit for folks who sit in
professions like mine to trylike crazy. When you're looking
at something for the thousandthtime to kind of shake that up,
just sketch and try to be therefor the first time again. And
(38:05):
that's why invariably, you needto understand what's happening
with your first time consumer.
And if that's just you sittingdown with a group of your
friends in your living room tosay, I want to see you interact
with my website. And then you'vegot to be smart enough to get
out of their way and actuallylet that happen. Watch them make
those mistakes, watch themstumble in spots, that the
(38:28):
interaction doesn't work wellfor them. Watch them get
confused. And stand far enoughback from that in whatever
regard you can to basically,watch people have a hard time
with the things that you thoughtwere obvious.
Steve Brown (38:46):
Yeah. So you can't be sensitive. You can. Like
that's my baby. Yeah. Andanother trap, I've noticed is
you can fall into would you giveme a nice testimonial back? I'm
right. Instead of like, Where'sthis baby ugly?
Mike Olson (39:06):
Yeah. Yeah. And I think well, and I think the
funny thing is, you know,relationship marketing actually
offers you a great opportunityat some of this type of
qualitative feedback. It's notas if this needs to just be
strictly a research effort, aslog. You know, this can be a
(39:27):
part of just your typicalinteraction with your consumer
where you're saying, Hey, I'mgoing to give you x for doing
why this can all be folded intothat part of the relationship
where it can be a much morecongenial, collegial, hey, just
just tell us how we're doing.
Right? Because more often thannot, that not only gets you a
few of those quotes from thefans who are saying, I can't
(39:49):
live a day without your product.
Those are that type of socialproof is important stuff to get
up in front of your consumer.
Right You know, if somebodylikes it As much maybe I will,
too. So I definitely understandwhat people are driving for
that. But in that sameconversation, if you just step
it back to this degree to justsay, tell us how we did, you're
also going to have a few folkswho come in see that experience
(40:12):
that that happy, shinyexperience and go, this was not
for me. And they're going totell you why. And if you can get
even just a few of those, you'regoing to get some good thinking
and opinions around, here's howI can improve this to still keep
capturing even more of thatfringe, you know, unless you're
getting 100% of your folks. It'sa conversation worth having.
Steve Brown (40:35):
Alright, so that was a good number one. Good.
Mike Olson (40:40):
I, I am very much, you know, you you had
illustrated very well, howquantitative can be such a
difficult piece of the puzzlefor a small business who is
getting such such small feedbackthat way, but I,
Steve Brown (41:01):
I hate to interrupt you, can I give you an example
of why
Mike Olson (41:03):
I'd love that, please.
Steve Brown (41:05):
So we have all these visits, and one of the
things you look at it is yourbounce rate. Oh, your bounce
rate so high or whatever. But ifyou're a small business, and
people are going to the phonebooks anymore, how do you know
they're not just showing up tosee what the phone number is to
call you?
Mike Olson (41:23):
That's exactly it.
So I think something else that Ihave seen become really powerful
these days. And this is kind ofa blend, you know, we've talked
about qualitative andquantitative, this is kind of a
blend of the two sight recordingtools. There are a ton of them
out there these days. And itused to be only a spot that the
big dogs could play in becauseevery last one of them that came
(41:45):
out in you know, 10 years ago tofive years ago was so expensive.
And and was such a heavy lift toput onto your website. And I'll
I'll say a little bit more aboutit, because a lot of folks may
not know what I'm talking about.
But basically, it's justsomething that sits in the
background and watches howpeople interact with your site
(42:07):
from a click perspective, from atime on task perspective. From
a, you know, if they're tryingto get something to go through,
did somebody click on this thing15 times because it made them
angry. It just gives littleinsights into how people are
actually interacting with yoursite. And you can see things
like what you're talking about,you can say, Oh my gosh, I not
(42:30):
only 40% of my bounce rate, orwhat I was calling my bounce
rate giving air quotes here isactually somebody just coming to
figure out how to call me. Youknow, that ends up being really
good news. It doesn't mean thatthat's the end of what you
should do with that piece offeedback, right? Because if you
didn't look at that, andrealize, Oh, crap, I should have
(42:53):
my phone number at the very topof my page, because I just made
everybody scroll down to findit. And that's why everybody's
been bouncing. Okay, take takethat piece of data, do something
with it, try this thing and seeif you don't actually not only
reduce your bounce rate, but butactually have people getting
through to you more more easilymore frequently. Heck, go out,
(43:16):
go out to Google and get asecondary phone number. Try that
on your website and move that tothe top and see how many people
start calling it. There's stillthere's still data to be had out
there. Even even in the onesie.
twosie sort of a sort of a way,you know,
Steve Brown (43:33):
I'm so we have what's called Lucky Orange.
Mike Olson (43:36):
Yeah, they're good.
Steve Brown (43:38):
Yeah, yeah. But truthfully, you know, I don't I
don't know how to really takeadvantage of the insights on
there I am, you know, I'mconfessing I'm in this business.
We have it on our site. Yeah. Ilove looking in there, but don't
truth me. Here's my here's whatI struggle with. I see an
insight there. And then I go tomy designer, and they push back.
(44:03):
Right? And I'm so I don't know,I don't have this authority. I
don't have all this experience.
I'm not clear. And it's not thatthey push back. What I'm saying
is how can they take that dataand not be sensitive about their
design and really become thisbeautiful, human oriented
designer for online experiences?
(44:30):
It's
Mike Olson (44:31):
you know, it's the first time I ever saw the phrase
was actually breeding some someStephen King, he was talking
about writing but he you reallydo have to be ready to kill your
darlings. You know, in thiscase, you can't be married to
that thing. And, and believe me,I come out of the design field
as I come into this so I, Iunderstand that feeling of I
(44:54):
really loved that. I pouredmyself into that thing. That
doesn't mean that that's goingto work best for your consumer.
I've, over the years and all ofthose tests, I have often come
to find that at least withcertain audiences, you have got
to design down. You know, if itlooks too slick, if it looks too
inviting with certain audiences,it turns them off. They, they
(45:18):
they come into this thing, andthey think, oh, you're just
trying to, you know, sell meinto something, then and I
don't, I don't have time forthis level. It's like, Is it
safe? Yeah, it does not.
Exactly. It doesn't, it doesn'tgive me that warm fuzzy that
makes me want to hang out withthis trigger. And, and so the
way that, frankly, I tend to, Irun into this problem in more
(45:41):
spaces than just with designers,right? It's not just designers
that want to push back. I mean,heck, you get to big enough
companies. Now you're talking tothe legal department who's
saying we can never try that. Wecan never say that. And, and so
the way that I tend to pullanybody who's not into this
process in is making them aconspirator, making them a
(46:04):
collaborator, basically, right?
saying, look, here's what,here's the feedback we're
getting. You are a creativesoul, helped me figure out how
we're going to make this happen.
And suddenly, you're in thisfight together. It's not you
coming and saying, Hey, what isthis design suck right here?
Basically, right? It's more yousaying, okay, we're, we're big
(46:27):
enough that I've been able tohire you, I've got enough of a
crew. I mean, we figured some ofthis out. But we want to keep
going. Here's what we're tryingto get to. How do we take what
you've already done? and makethis happen even further. And
that's, that's where theconversation, that's where it
gets fun, actually, and Andrew,great tip, you almost never, you
(46:50):
know, and so that, you know, thesession recording tools, I think
is tip number two, I think youcan learn so much from out of
that stuff, even even at thelevel that you're looking at it,
Steve and sure there's are therea lot more deep dive insights to
be had for a company that hassomebody that can just sit and
(47:11):
route around and that stuff allday? Probably. But these tools
similar to what we talked aboutin quantitative are primarily
designed to give you the here'sthe biggest stuff. Here's what
the numbers are telling me,somebody, you they call them
rage clicks that that click,click, click, click, click
click, I can't get this to work,right? Yeah. Like, I see, I see
(47:34):
what you know, 10% of yourtraffic rage clicking in this
space, you're going to get somefeedback from your tool about
that. Right. And that's animportant something to know. I
think that that's a powerfulsomething there. And then, you
know, I, I think you were youwere already kind of pointing in
this direction as we werewrapping up that last piece but
(47:57):
but to me, number three, that Ithink is really important for
for small companies to get theirarms around this way is that
it's it's constantly in motion.
And it is about that conspiratorpiece together, because what
everybody needs to understand inthis game. Well, here's here's a
(48:18):
better way for me to approachthis. Over the course of my
career. Now, just from aquantitative perspective, I've
run almost 18,000 av tests. Overthe course of my career, right,
I've seen I've seen a lot. I'veseen, I've seen a little too
much that way. And I have runthousands and thousands of
qualitative tests as well. And,and the math that bubbles up out
(48:41):
of that, at the end of the day,is that you are wrong. Far more
often than you're right. And youneed to understand that walking
into this is that even if you'vegot the right idea, oftentimes,
you're going to take the wrongexecution The first time you do
it, that doesn't mean it's a badidea. It means that you need to
(49:02):
keep thinking through how to getthat to click with your consumer
until you do and, you know, alot of companies even if they do
have the opportunity to doquantitative and qualitative,
they will walk away from a winor a loss the first time as if
it's everything that they couldhave gotten out of that piece of
(49:22):
data. You know, have you haveyou ever tried moving the button
to the other side of the page?
We tried that and it lost? Okay,how many times did you try it?
How many ways Did you try it?
Well, no, if that was somethingimportant, exactly. If that was
something important, right? Orwe tried that and it won and
(49:42):
that's why it's sitting there.
Cool. Did you try to get anymore out of that? When does you
know if your consumer liked it?
10% the first time is thereanother five 810 percent to
squeeze out of that on top ofthat because they've already
told you this matters to me.
Right? So be ready to do thisfrom the person spective of,
you're going to lose more oftenthan you win. The second you
(50:05):
lose, stop. But keep going untilyou find that win in there. It
doesn't mean it was a bad idea,it means that you just got to
give it a few tries. So,
Steve Brown (50:17):
you know, I think one thing that can help someone
that doesn't have the luxury ofsomeone liking a C x, oh, Ryan
and doesn't have all thesevisits, you can go steal good
ideas from big weaponizedwebsites. Absolutely. The trap
is you say, here's a law firm.
So show me some websites thatyou like, and they go, Well, I
(50:40):
like law firm, whatever,offering whatever what those
websites are, maybe you likethem, but they could be just a
bunch of guessing. But you'reinsisting on that when you go
look at a website is totallydisconnected. But you study your
buttons, their colors where theyput them. There's a lot of
stuff, great ideas you cansteal?
Mike Olson (51:03):
Absolutely. I would say that the places you want to
steal from aren't always yourcompetition. And don't get me
wrong, competitive review is100% unnecessary step in all of
this, and trying what you seeother people trying in that
regard. If you have theopportunity, you should
(51:24):
absolutely be doing that withyour competition, because if
they have stumbled acrosssomething, they're just handing
it to you basically to try,right. But I think the place
that you want to spend as muchtime as you can, whether it's in
your space or not, is where youraudience is. Right? What are the
(51:46):
messages they're listening to?
What is the design style thatseems to be working for them?
What What is accessibility meanto them? Right? You know, if
your consumer is sitting in the60s or 70s? Why does every site
they visit have larger text onit? I mean, and I, you know, I
say that tongue in cheek with asmile on my face, but it's but
(52:07):
it's just the fact right? It'sjust the truth. You know, just
just think about who you'retalking to, and stop going back
and saying, well, I really likethis site. Well, that's true,
but their audience doesn't matchyours at all right? In the
slightest, right? Think, thinkabout who the conversation is
with and go see where thosepeople are gravitating to see
(52:28):
where they're converting. Startthinking about why you think
that's true. Don't just go well,you know, let's let's go back to
that same example. Well, a RPhas, you know, burgundy buttons
all over their sight. So now I'mgoing to burgundy buttons.
That's that's not the point. Youknow, why? And the same Cialis,
my good one. But why? Why isthat working? You know, why is
(52:54):
that working for them? Whatabout the approach is making
that accessible? And what can Ilearn from that? And how can I
apply it to my own space?
Steve Brown (53:07):
All right. So where would this have been? I really
enjoyed this conversation.
You're a great guest.
Mike Olson (53:14):
Oh, you're very kind. Thank you. I've enjoyed
your show. I've listened severaltimes over. And then once we
hooked up this way, we prettywell ran the gamut. So.
Steve Brown (53:23):
So what's like, what's, like a great question
that I should have asked what Idid? Oh, gosh.
Mike Olson (53:35):
That's a good one, you have a really thorough
today. Um, I think I think thebiggest thing, and we touched on
this in that last point, butthis is this is hard. And this
is a slog, but it is 100% worthit. It is literally compound
interest in motion, right?
Anything that you can do to makethese improvements when you when
(53:57):
you experience those losses, aspainful as they are, you can
shut them off and walk away fromthem and understand still that
you're dealing with somethingsensitive to your consumer. But
every time you put one of thesewinds into your experience from
a conversion revenue, just keptmy consumer longer perspective.
(54:21):
You're dealing with the compoundinterest of continuing to do
that with your consumer timeover time, and that will only
continue to build on itself. Andand that's, that's the game, you
know, you even even out of thegates you're going to be wrong.
60 70% of the time, if you'redoing it thousands of times,
(54:45):
you're going to be wrong 80 to90% of the time because you're
going to be covering ground thatyou've routed around and that if
you can win 10% of the time.
You're going to make money. Youjust got to know when to show
Got it off when to move alongand when to step on the gas. And
(55:08):
and it's it can definitely getto be a lot of minutiae. And and
I understand that that may notappeal to folks. But the answers
are in there, and they're theretelling them to you.
Steve Brown (55:24):
I'm curious one more question. Yeah. So when you
go to a website, or an onlineplatform, is it really obvious
to you, they, they've hung outin this area that you're in?
Mike Olson (55:39):
Typically, yes, typically, I can see when I've
hit a site that is has has donesome testing, you know, more
often than not, though, I cheata little bit in that regard,
because there's always tags intheir code. So I have been doing
this a little too long. Thatway, I just I just tend to do it
that way. But yeah, more oftenthan not, you can typically see
(56:02):
when folks have spent some timehaving this conversation,
somehow, you know, what,whatever measures they have,
they've, they've made somedistance that way. But that
said, you know, people do landin a very positive spot for
themselves all the time. It'snot as if, you know, these folks
that we're talking about thathave not experienced this,
(56:23):
they've built this business,somehow they do have some of
this understanding. It's justnow trying to get to how do I
how do I get to that next step?
So it's, it's not always thatit's not always that obvious.
Sometimes people just get theirconsumer and they landed in a
good spot to start.
Steve Brown (56:40):
So folks that listen to this, I'm sure there's
a handful of them that arecurious and maybe want to talk
to you can you can you kind ofSing us a little bit how they
can contact you or find you.
Mike Olson (56:53):
You know, I think the way that I always kind of
easily slide out of this is, youknow, the bass never sings the
lyrics, actually, the bassalways sings just these words
like bomb and digga, and do andall of those things. And so, I
think that would be boring foreveryone. But I am, first off I
am easily found on LinkedIn, wehave just gotten the business
(57:16):
off the ground. So I do not haveeven the website formulated, we
it's funny. We've we've startedwith enough clients that we're
we're too busy working to putthe rest of the pieces together.
But I suppose that's a betterway to go at it than the other
way around. So so I'm hopingthat we're going to have our
(57:38):
site up in the next couplemonths to basically be able to
be better contacted in theinterim, because I wanted
something to do with visiblejust so I'm easily found. If you
don't find me on LinkedIn, whichis pretty easily done. You can
also reach me at visiblemike@gmail.com I'm pretty easy
to touch base with and I love totalk about this stuff all day.
Steve Brown (58:03):
So yeah, so michelsen visible insights. Can
you do your kids say daddy'sthing basin and Mama's seeing
dinner?
Mike Olson (58:14):
You know, it's it's funny. My my kids have beautiful
voices as as does my wife. Butmy kids are with my x. And she
and I were both VocalPerformance majors actually. So
she she sang pretty low Alto,she was close enough to tenor. I
guess we could have done thatsong. If I'd thought that'd have
(58:36):
been fun.
Steve Brown (58:38):
All right, Mike, did a great guest. Thank you for
being on the
Mike Olson (58:42):
ROI on line. I really appreciate it, Steve. I
love what you're up to. Andthanks so much for including me.
All
Steve Brown (58:48):
right, that's a wrap.
Thanks for listening to anotherfun episode of the ROI online
podcast. For more, be sure tocheck out the show notes of this
episode. And feel free toconnect with me on LinkedIn
where we can chat and I can helpdirect you to the resources
(59:11):
you're searching for. To learnmore about how you can grow your
business better. Be sure to pickup your copy of my book, The
Golden toilet at surprise, thatgolden toilet.com I'm Steve
Brown, and we'll see you nextweek on another fun episode of
the ROI online podcast.
Part of the reason that I was happy to step out and
start moving into being able todo this as a consultative effort
is because you find yourself intoo many conversations with too
many C level folks and, andlegal concern saying, how close
(00:25):
to this line can we actually getin our conversation? And once
once you're thinking in thatregard, I think I think you've
lost sight of your consumer,basically, to exactly your point
you, I think you said it reallywell, you've pulled this mask
over them. And it doesn't just,it doesn't just change your
relationship with them from howmuch you know them, it changes
your relationship with them fromhow you think of them. They're
(00:48):
not that human being anymore.
They're just, they're just theperson that you're just
squeezing that one more littledrop of blood out of him.
Steve Brown (00:55):
Hi, everybody.
Welcome to the ROI onlinepodcast where we believe you,
the courageous entrepreneurs ofour day, are the invisible
heroes of our economy. You notonly improve our world with your
ideas, your grit and yourpassion, but you make our world
better. I'm Steve Brown. Andthis is a place where we have
great conversations with winnersjust like you while we laugh and
(01:18):
learn together. Michaelson,welcome to the ROI online
podcast. Steve Brown is such apleasure.
Mike Olson (01:29):
Thank you very much.
Steve Brown (01:31):
Now listen, listen to this voice. immediately gets
your attention. But it's notonly does he have the voice,
he's got user psychologybubbling around in there, he's
got conversion data, he's gottenmarketing mic, a little bit
(01:51):
about your background, why whythis beautiful voice and why the
data
Mike Olson (01:58):
I think bubbling around in there is the right way
to have said that That's funny.
Um, I you know, of all things.
Way back when when I was incollege, I was a vocal
performance major. And so my, mycareer actually started out both
in radio and in singing. Andafter about 10 years of being
(02:19):
out on the road and gettingmarried and having kids and
realizing that I wanted my kidsto recognize me, when I was
around, it was time to make alittle bit of a change. And so I
needed to come home and all of asudden, I had a resume that
basically said, you know, sticka mic in front of this kid, or
he doesn't know what to do. And,and I had had a little
experience while we were touringand traveling, doing some
(02:42):
marketing for my own group. Itwasn't very good, but it was
marketing. And, and I'm nothingif not stubborn. So I started
diving into it, just to kind ofunderstand how to get better at
it even then. And so when Istarted looking for a gig, the
only thing I could even attachmy name to was marketing at that
point in time. And I worked myway into basically an admin gig.
(03:04):
I was getting coffee and tea fora team of people. I spent about
10 years at that company. And bythe time I left, I was their
creative director.
Steve Brown (03:14):
So before we go further, what's the name of this
group? This group, right? Yeah,she's so busy for so long.
Mike Olson (03:21):
Um, it was it was an acapella group of all things.
They You know, there's, there'snot many people who need a voice
like this in our group, but butacapella did, back when nobody
knew what one of those was. Andit was, it was a group called
lmnop. We still to this day,maybe once a year or so we'll
get together and just goofaround and sing a concert like
(03:41):
in our hometown or somethinglike that. It was it was a lot
of fun. We had a good time. Doesthat. So is this a Denver based
group? Well, we were alloriginally actually from Fort
Collins about an hour north ofthere. But yeah, we kind of
headquartered out of Denver, butfor the better part of a decade.
We sing we sang and toured andrecorded all over the country
(04:03):
and actually even all over theworld. So we were we were pretty
lucky we had a really good timeof it back then.
Steve Brown (04:09):
Well, how do you get so I'm not from that world.
And so these questions may sounddumb or naive, no, no, please
but how how does an acapellagroup stay busy and on tour.
Mike Olson (04:22):
You know, it's it was kind of funny. The way that
we stumbled into it. We all wentto high school together and then
we all went our separate ways.
But as we were getting get intothe mid to latter stages of
college, everybody wasgravitating back towards town.
We had all done this in uniquegroups. And you start seeing the
weak spots and you start wishingfor you know, just that right
(04:46):
voice to plug into just thatright place. And this this for
me kind of dream group of thefive of us got together and it
was just funny how quickly itcould clicked, how quickly we
were doing shows that I hadnever been able to do before.
Just because of I, we justthere's so many talented folks
(05:08):
involved. And more thananything, just just able to
start putting some piecestogether that way in terms of
our ability to both improve, dobetter. This is a theme, I guess
that kind of runs throughout mylife and, and start to put
ourselves in a position tosucceed. For folks in auditions
(05:30):
and things of that nature.
Suddenly, we're touring all overour state, and we start getting
some notice that way. So then westart getting some national
gigs, that picks up enoughattention that a radio station
(05:50):
out of one of the places we'rein starts playing us, and that
gets us enough attention that westart doing some recording for a
small label. And, and I'm notsure how that just kept building
momentum, especially forsomething that people didn't
know very well. But suddenly,we're doing paid gigs at, you
know, colleges and, and smalltown arts venues and things like
(06:12):
that, that just, it just kept usgoing. We you'd never heard of
us. But there's a lot ofmusicians out there that make a
decent living just just outthere, you know, entertaining on
the road, and we were having aball doing it. It was just fun.
Steve Brown (06:26):
So it seems like with your voice with your
experience, you would have beena natural fit in radio
somewhere. No,
Mike Olson (06:33):
it was actually that was how I would fill in the
blanks. You know, we'd be out onthe road about it depended, you
know, it built over the years, Ithink our busiest year, we were
at well over half the year. And,and in between, I still had to
fill in cracks for my paychecks,basically. So yeah, I do a lot
of I do a lot of voiceover work,either live on radio, or, you
(06:58):
know, audiobooks weren't as biga thing back then. But I still
have a little experience in thatregard as well. And, yeah, I
just got really lucky a coupleof folks in my family have very
deep voices before me. And Ithink I just got the genetics,
you know? Yeah.
Steve Brown (07:13):
Yeah. So the way you're talking about the label,
I just, I think about thisBoston song, know that the guys
smoked a big fat cigar andbattle that car and, boy, the
spans out of sight. And is thatthe experience that happened?
Mike Olson (07:31):
You know, it's it's funny, it's kind of how it
worked out? Yeah, is we weredoing a show where we ended up
opening for a much larger group.
America, actually, and, and justa couple of folks who came to
the gig actually had come to seethem, but actually wanted to
talk to them about somerecording and pieces like that.
(07:53):
And they saw us and they went,Oh, well, wow, let's look at
something like that. Right. Wealso had a couple of folks from
a different angle, coming out ofsimilarly. And so it, it
actually made for some decisionson our part as to what we were
going to do and who we weregoing to go with it was it was
(08:15):
pretty. It was a very headytime. This is not something that
happens to most people. Andyeah, I'm just a young kid not
really knowing any better. Sothe label that ended up
approaching us was called shadowmountain records. And, and they,
they we did our first album withthem. And it was it was really
cool. It was really fun. So Socan people find your album on
(08:38):
like amazon music or primemusic? Or they can actually I
would imagine anyway, lmnop isspelled a little differently.
But starts it starts with an Eif you start e l e, you'll find
the rest of it. All right.
Steve Brown (08:53):
Yeah. Yeah. The le.
Mike Olson (08:56):
Le Yeah.
Steve Brown (08:57):
So your title after your name is kind of mysterious
and appealing. It's c x. Oh,yeah. Like, who wouldn't want an
X in the title of their jobthere?
Mike Olson (09:14):
Yeah, one of my kids calls me the x men. I you know,
and and I was a comic book geekas a kid. So it makes me laugh.
But, but yeah, chief experienceofficer and and this is just a,
frankly, a very small concern ofme and a couple of buddies who
have come to find over theseyears. There's there's just as
(09:37):
much education in this space tobe done as there is actual work.
You know, there's a lot of folkswho don't really understand so
much how to play the game ofactually online experience and
how to blend qualitative andquantitative into, you know,
actual feedback. Actually, thisis what my consumers are telling
(09:58):
me. This is what I should bedoing. To take action on that
thing, and then how tothoughtfully take action in that
direction. And, and I just, I'vebeen really lucky, over the
years, I stumbled my way into,you know that that gig and
marketing, but there was so mucharound the creative that I just
didn't get, I just didn'tunderstand when I, you know, I
(10:21):
do five, something's for, forpeople to choose between and
some Alpha Dog walks into a roomwith five other people and goes,
I like the blue one. And yousay, I, oh, okay, why why is
that the right one? And by thenthey're already gone out of the
room and you think, are we evenmaking the right choice. And so
learning some of this processmyself, I was lucky to start
(10:43):
working for a company where Igot to do qualitative and
quantitative at a scale thatmost people never see in their
careers. So it just, it taughtme so much about the space. And
then when you get out and youstart talking to people about
how these things actually work,there's so many interesting
misconceptions that I do, I findmyself talking about it as much
(11:05):
from an educational perspective,as I do just in getting people
kind of set up in their spaces.
So me and a couple of buddiesare helping some pretty decently
sized companies out that waythese days. And it's it's a lot
of fun. It's, it's reallyinteresting to me, so I'm a
little geeky about it.
Steve Brown (11:22):
Well, let's, let's do this. So, I believe that
instead of focusing on SEO,Search Engine Optimization, we
actually shouldn't be focusingon Hto human experience,
optimization, right? It isexactly right. And so, you know,
all these big brands arebasically teaching our consumers
(11:46):
or clients or prospects, what toexpect when they come online.
And, and this thing in ourbrain, the brainstem, I call it
the bodyguard is in play at thattime, and there are certain
sites, there are certain shopsor whatever, where we walk in,
and we just feel at home, wefeel understood, we feel safe.
(12:09):
Right? And, and it's notsomething necessarily you can
guess that. And so for the folksthat listen, we you know, I've
got business owners, I've gotmarketing directors, I'm, I've
got students, you know, thesestory brand guides, but here's
our problem. You're running abusiness, and you're trying to,
(12:32):
you don't have time to dig deepinto mountains of data to make a
educated call. And so that thatscene that you you were talking
about where the guy comes in,and just goes, I like the blue
one, and he's either have anybackstory even. And more, more
than that, he doesn't have thetime to really dig into that.
(12:54):
But how does what you do reallybecome legitimate. And so
here's, we'll take a stab at AVtesting, but to really get
clarity on AV testing, which is,so you're going to show a
version, and then the nextvisitors going to see the B
version. And we're onlymeasuring one little piece, and
(13:18):
we're going to see which one ismore effective over a period of
time and a sampling. And thenwe're going to focus on another
thing. Well, you know what thatmeans? That means you have to
have thousands of visits to getreally good data and guess what
small business websites don'thave.
Mike Olson (13:32):
They don't have.
Yeah, they don't have thatquantitative capability,
basically. And so in that way,the only way that I've seen
small businesses usequantitative really effectively
that way is to be payingattention to the only times they
touch something in their stack,that actually makes the needle
move enough, right? If you stilllook at that from a from from a
(13:56):
sheer stat StG perspective, youstill might see things on
occasion, typically things likecalls to action, either in your
headlines or your buttons orwhatever. Those are the places
that you're still going to seethose of seismic jolts, right
when you do something. And andone of the things that's tough
(14:17):
for those small businesses tounderstand is oftentimes the
first few times you touch thosethings. Those seismic jolts do
not move this direction, right.
They don't they're not about,you know, they're there. They
die if they take a big nosedive.
Right. And that's when peopletypically walk away from
quantitative very quickly. Theygo everything I did mess things
(14:37):
up. Yeah, right. And, and, and Iunderstand that what your
consumer was telling you,though, and this is I have to
talk to big companies about thisjust as much as small companies
because everybody's really proudof how often they don't lose,
right? But losses are actuallythe way that your consumer is at
least telling you this thingmatters. To me, this is very
(14:59):
important to me. That's, that'simportant knowledge to have. And
it's an important button ifyou've got it even as a small
business to kind of keep pokingat because one of those guesses
is going to make that jump theother direction. And, and you've
got to have the stomach to keeptrying it if what you're looking
to do is improve that way. Butwhat you do have still is you
(15:23):
got qualitative, you know,you've still got your consumer
feedback. So you need to figureout then instead, how do I use
those channels, effectively withmy consumers to engage them in a
conversation? Not, you know, youdon't, you still can't, if
you're, if you're approachingthem in a relationship, you
still can't approach thembasically by saying, here's what
(15:44):
I need from you. You need toengage them in conversation to
say, What is it you need fromme? Basically, right. And that's
the big difference in in how youget qualitative to not only stay
effective, but actuallysomething that you continue to
converse back and forth withyour consumer about. So you hear
them as to why they keep banginginto walls. And that's how
(16:08):
that's how companies get to thatmore intuitive, safer, I
understand you space that you'retalking about basically,
Steve Brown (16:16):
right? So let's cover a little vocabulary, just
sure for me. So we said statSIG,
Mike Olson (16:23):
yellow statistical significance, sorry,
statistically significant.
Meaning that the way a stat SIGcalculator works is basically to
remove randomization from thepicture. Right. And so you
talked about thousands ofconsumers on each side. And
typically, that is true, you formost static measures, what
(16:44):
you're changing is a smallenough change that it doesn't
make a big enough disruption foryou to say, I have flipped a
coin this many times. And theresults that I have gotten are
telling me right, the way I endup teaching this in a class is
actually very noisy, because Iwill sit down with a group of 50
to 100 people, and I'll havethem all flip the coin 10 times
(17:06):
and keep track of their results,right. And you look at the
different results across theroom. And somebody in that room.
I've had folks actually, veryrarely, but flip heads or tails
10 times in a row. Right? Thethe conversation you have
quickly is okay, you got sevenheads and three tails, can you
expect heads to land at 70% forthe rest of your life, and and
(17:29):
and they immediately understandthat that's not going to happen.
That's not the way that works.
And what that means is at leastin that example, you've not
flipped that coin enough times,right. But it also doesn't mean
that you, if you do see 10heads, and then you see 20 heads
and then you see you know, 27out of 30 or heads, there's a
(17:51):
point in there that astatistically significant
calculator is going to say,that's, that's not random. I
don't know if it's as big or assmall as as what you're
initially seeing. But that iscertainly not random. And that's
how you use it to at least kindof feel around in the dark that
way and say, Okay, I foundwhat's important, these are at
(18:12):
least the spaces that I can keepchanging until I find a
headline, I find a call toaction I find meaningful copy
that tells my consumer, this iswhere you thought you were gonna
be, basically.
Steve Brown (18:24):
Okay, so then there's so that is leads us to
quantitative, meaning that I'lllet you explain it but
Mike Olson (18:32):
you bet quantitative is, you know, a B testing is a
great example of exactly whatyou were talking about. And
there's there's other types.
There's multivariate testing,there's there's multi armed
bandit testing, there's, there'sdifferent methods into this idea
of I show unique presentationsto a consumer. And then I lock
them into that presentationevery time they come back so
(18:55):
that they have that sameexperience, because sometimes I
don't convert them the firsttime that they come, you know,
sometimes it's the second orthird time they come. So I make
sure that I lock them into thatexperience so that I understand
how they're responding to it.
Somebody else has a differentexperience, I watch enough of
those to basically have thatmathematics in the background.
(19:18):
And that stats a calculator,say, Here's something, here's
something that is unique, andthat's actually standing out,
basically, so, so quantitativeis basically it's that asking
the consumer, which of thesethings do you prefer more, and
then watching enough peoplerespond to it until you actually
feel like you've got an answerto the question.
Steve Brown (19:39):
And the advantage in this case is that you're not
Mike Olson (19:41):
asking them where they're actually thinking and
trying to guess what answer youwant to hear. They're reacting
to presentations. It's exactlyyou know, this is not this is
certainly soft science. When youlook at it this way, right? A
typical scientist would look ata lot of this and say you've got
a lot of Holes in how you'reexamining this, but you're at
(20:02):
least examining it from ascientific perspective. And in
this case, the person who ishaving this experience does not
know, as they're having theexperience that they're
basically being watched in thatregard as to how they respond to
that. Whereas qualitative, andI'm sure that, you know,
(20:22):
wherever you don't don't mind,that's where we were probably
headed. Qualitative is more theconversation actively engaged,
right? I want to know what youlike, I want to know what you
dislike this is, this is whereyou have to be much more careful
to not lead your consumer withyour own opinions, basically,
right? This is why you have tonot go to your consumer and say
(20:44):
something like, why does thispage suck? Basically, right?
Because then the consumer looksat that page from the
perspective of, oh, that pagesucks, actually, okay, why is
that? what's what's wrong withit, I'm only going to give you
feedback now of why I thinksomething is wrong with it. You
know, and companies don't thinkso much about how they influence
(21:05):
their consumers, when they havethat conversation when they talk
to them, because they're so busytrying to get what they want out
of the conversation thatoftentimes they don't think
about the human being on the farside of that, and how their
responses are going to go. Andyou've got to be careful with
these types of studies. I mean,I'm just seeing your logo,
influences the people who are atleast pleasers in that crowd,
(21:28):
and just want to tell you, Ilove your site, there's nothing
wrong with it. Everything'sperfect. That's why I come back
here time after time. Well,that's beautiful to hear. Right?
It doesn't help me get better,basically, right. And so you
want to be careful about how youapproach that consumer and say,
you know, what, what was yourexperience? What can we do
(21:48):
better? What did we do great atI you know, you want to hear
those things, but you want toreally be thoughtful about not
leading them into your opinion,basically.
Steve Brown (22:00):
So this is excellent. here's, here's the
struggle, though, for 98% of thebusinesses in the States at
least, have 20 or lessemployees. And so what that
means is the owner of thecompany, or the leader of the
company, seven wear all thesehats, okay, data, assuming
(22:22):
they're engaged, they reallywant to do this data can be
extremely misleading, and youcan miss read it and make all
these mistakes. And yet, we'recompeting against organizations
that have highly weaponized,armies, artificial intelligence,
data, technology, harvesting,all of these inside, they even
(22:47):
have all the visits. Sure. Andso that's the big, giant villain
that we're finding gets here.
And what I'm excited about inthis conversation is someone
that's been in that realm haspaid the dues, done the reps,
you start to see commonalitiesor fundamentals that start to
(23:10):
reveal themselves that couldactually be in play without
eating all of this wrong.
Mike Olson (23:16):
Actually, no, that's exactly it. And that's exactly.
You know, I love how you saidthat, because there's really a
ton of practical application inthis, frankly, not just in my
opinion in business, but inlife. There's there's a lot of
ways that this these principles,just from what we've talked
(23:37):
about, from an overarchingperspective can be applied to
how you come at your businessdecision making how you come at
your consumers, and and how youcontinually improve this way. I
think you're absolutely right,that there are mountains of
data, and it's easy to make poorchoices, and poor guesses, and
(24:02):
all of that. And I thinksometimes that's because we are
still not thoughtful andmethodical in how we approach
those steps, we will take afirst step of say, qualitative
data. And we'll see three out of20 consumers tell us that, you
know, I really hate thatheadline. And suddenly, we're
just fixated on a headline thatdo you expect more than 17 out
(24:28):
of 20 people to be in love withthe way that you talk to them?
You know, that's, that's, that'smaybe not something that you
necessarily need to be spendingthat time on. If if you're only
getting that level of feedback,if seven out of 20 told you, I'm
not sure I care for how youphrased this, that's probably
(24:48):
something more than you know.
And so it's still thatthoughtful moment of saying what
did the data actually tell me asopposed to looking at the data
and saying I have to getsomething out of This data
doesn't tell you something everytime. There's there's not an
answer. Every time. You'relooking you're ferreting around
for what matters, basically. Andand it is it's, it's a long
(25:11):
exercise and it can be anexercise in frustration. But
even at that level, even with 20employees, you know, your
consumers are giving youfeedback. If if they are not
converting, they're still givingyou some form of feedback. You
know, there are some reallysimple, thoughtful, free tools
out there to be able to at leastreach out to them and say, Hey,
(25:34):
you have just a couple minutesto tell me why you're leaving to
tell me why you didn't completethe cart to tell me, you know,
where we got close? Where did wego wrong, basically
Steve Brown (25:49):
want to pause here just for a moment and talk to
you about a program that we havejust released, called the ROI
quickstart Academy for authors.
Every day, I talk to businessowners just like you who
struggle with quickly gettingtheir fundamentals in place, we
want to create a greatfoundation, and we want to grow
our business. But the thingsthat are in our way, our lack of
(26:12):
knowledge about the specifics,we should put in place, what
kind of technology what kind ofmessaging and what kind of
campaigns and that problemexists for authors as well. And
we just chill so good withauthors because, well, I'm an
author, and I understandeverything that you struggle
with, you have a great idea, youhave a great book, but what do
(26:34):
you want to do, you want to getyour book in front of more
people, you want to make it easyfor them to find you learn how
they can schedule a time to talkwith you hire you for a
conference, or maybe sign up forthe services that your book
promotes. So what is theQuickstart Academy for authors?
Imagine working with a smallgroup of like minded authors,
and the experts from the ROIquickstart team, it's a great
(26:59):
way to get your messaging clearto be confident with the
technology in your marketingautomation, and how to run a
strategic campaign to get youmore of what you want from the
investment of your book. Tolearn more about the Quickstart
Academy for authors, you canvisit ROI online.com or click in
the link in the show notesbelow. And now back to this
(27:23):
episode. No, I'm just thinking,the trap. Here we are where
we've got humans coming andexperiencing whatever our
platform is just like if theywalked into your store, there's
a virtual representation of yourstore or your your office or
(27:46):
whatever it is. And yet thereare humans and that brain is in
play. But here's the problem.
The trap is being too logicaland too consumed with the
analytics and the data where ittakes you into an anti human
(28:06):
mindset. Yeah, you could beactually leading or misleading
the expectations of the data andtotally overlook what is human
with the brain in the name andour hopes and dreams and a
family is needing from you whenthat moment.
Mike Olson (28:23):
Yeah, I you know, it's it's funny, as you say that
bit, I actually find that to beeven far more the province of
the big company, the largecompany tends to lose track of
who their consumer is, they tendto lose track of that that part
of the equation, they've becomethe 800 pound gorilla more often
(28:45):
than not to the point of justbasically saying, here's my
thing, take it or not, you know,because because they've
graduated to a point that thatconversion at a much smaller
levels still still make thebusiness roll, you know, they
can think about bigger, broaderthings that way. I tend to find
that small businesses that atleast have gotten to a point of
(29:07):
past sole proprietorship, youknow, even when you're getting
into that five or 10 range, ninetimes out of 10. Those are the
folks that really understandtheir consumer, and they really
understand their consumer base,they may not know how to have
that conversation with them.
That's a very different animal,mate, but they they know that
they know what they're lookingfor. They know who their core
(29:27):
audience is. Sometimes it's that20 to 50. It's that 20 to 100.
That gets to be a challengebecause you know who your core
audience is, but they're onlybig enough to get you to. Now I
need 20 bodies to run this. Ifyou want to be a business that
needs 100 bodies to run it.
(29:48):
Sometimes you've got to go outand then find those other
audiences who need your offeringand just don't know it yet, and
that's where it gets that'sthat's where all this comes in.
You know,
Steve Brown (29:58):
I would argue There's this tipping point in
organization, when it gets acertain size, it stopped seeing
the people that are buying theirproducts or appreciating what
they do are really drawn to themand stop seeing them as humans,
and starts to put this consumercostume on it, which covers
(30:19):
their face. And so make somefaceless, nameless credit, they
have credit cards that we howare we going to exploit this
potential? consumer. And that'swhere it gets off the rails. And
I think that's where marketingis broken.
Mike Olson (30:38):
I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more, I
think. I think so many times inthat particular aspect, as you
start really rooting around forhow do I squeeze one more dime
out of this consumer? You know,how do I get one more something
one more month subscription, youknow, out of this consumer, we
(31:02):
part of the reason that I washappy to step out and start
moving into being able to dothis as a consultative effort is
because you find yourself in toomany conversations with too many
C level folks and, and legalconcerns saying, how close to
(31:25):
this line? Can we actually getin our conversation? And once
once you're thinking in thatregard, I think I think you've
lost sight of your consumer,basically, to exactly your
point, you've I think you saidit really well, you've pulled
this mask over them. And itdoesn't just, it doesn't just
change your relationship withthem from how much you know
them, it changes yourrelationship with them from how
(31:46):
you think of them. They're notthat human being anymore.
They're just they're just theperson that you're just
squeezing that one more littledrop of blood out of and I you
know, I'll tell you, the folksthat I think are always doing it
best are the ones that are notthat short sighted are the ones
that understand that this has tobe a mutually beneficial
(32:07):
something between us. For it tobe long lasting for it to be
something that long term, youhave faith and trust in me. So
Steve Brown (32:17):
yeah, that's, I think that's there is just this,
once you stop seeing that humanthere Think, think about your
mindset, I'm in charge ofwriting, copy or designing some
asset that we're going to bepresenting to these faceless,
nameless consumers. Think abouthow you would approach it, and
what energy you would put intotheir insights to be way
(32:39):
different than if you weredesigning them for your buddy
that you're gonna have sit andhave a beer with later. Yeah,
you're gonna design two verydifferent assets. And yet, yeah,
guess who's really evaluatingyour assets?
Mike Olson (32:53):
Yeah. Well, and it's a slippery slope, right? I mean,
yeah, when you when you get towhere you want to be, you know,
that that day down the road, andyou really are seeing millions
of consumers coming through yoursite, it's, it's almost
impossible to not lose track ofthat face a little bit. Because
now all of a sudden, it's well,this is this group broadly fits
(33:13):
into this category, or this isthis is true about all of this
group of people and you start toblur those lines. It's, it's
interesting. I, I argue, so thatI always say our world has
become industrialized. So it'sour marketing or the way that
communication General has becomeindustrialized. And I believe
(33:34):
it's happening at that pointwhere
Steve Brown (33:38):
I'm when I say industrialized, as like, your
brain wants to be free range andjust run amok and, and eat
grasshoppers at its own. And yetwe're wanting to herd them into
this industrialized milkingstation, that you're allowed.
And if you have a credit card,because we're just gonna, we're
just gonna machine and machineeyes this.
Mike Olson (34:02):
It's exactly right.
It's exactly true. And, andbecause of that, loss of sight
of who you're treating and howyou're treating them. It really
does get to be sort of aprocessing, lather, rinse,
repeat, you're not so concernedabout who you lost as long as
you gained more than you lost.
(34:24):
And, and I watched it be a veryaffecting thing. It's, it's, it
was even more disheartening.
Sometimes when you do some ofthose tests and you'd see a
psychology work on an audiencefor a while. And then that
psychology would go away as, aspeople get smarter and wiser up
to the tactics that are behindthat original thought, right.
(34:48):
And so in a long way, it gets tobe a bit of a chess game. And
there's a lot that there's,there's a lot of dehumanization
to that you're you're basicallysaying, Well, if if you're not
going to buy now that I'm goingto take this this half step
further. Right, and and that's,that's a tough game to keep
playing over the long haul. Soyeah, it's it's very true if
(35:10):
you're absolutely right.
Steve Brown (35:13):
So let's say that you, you were our buddy, and you
knew we had a company and oneday, we got a couple of beers in
you and convince you to comeover. And yes, just helped me
revealed several fundamentalsthat are always in play, no
matter the size of sampling,what is given three valuable
(35:38):
things that we can pull in andapply pretty much in most cases.
Mike Olson (35:45):
In most cases, you can always, I don't, I don't
care how good you think you areat it, you can always do a
better job of listening to yourconsumer. I am shocked at how
often and I mean, 90 pluspercent of the time, companies
(36:07):
tend to be presenting from thepoint of here's what I need from
you, instead of instead ofhere's what I am offering you. I
think there's always room tocontinue to improve in that
regard. And that is, that's ahuge piece of the puzzle, just
in understanding that consumerbase, I think I think that is
(36:31):
always a truth. Give us
Steve Brown (36:33):
some examples how we can do that.
Mike Olson (36:36):
That's absolutely, when I, when you've got whether
it's a product or an offering ora service, more often than not,
the way that that has beenpieced together and presented is
by you and your team. talkingthrough, here's who we are,
here's what we have to offer.
Here's, you know, we're going toput our best face forward on
(37:00):
this idea, whether that is aphysical or whatever sort of a
product. It is so rare for thatteam that has been so far down
that rabbit hole that has madeall of these assumptions about
here's everything we've learnedin our expertise. And here's all
we know, it is so rare for thatto then be turned around and
(37:26):
presented as. And here's how Iwould say that to somebody who
is seeing it for the very firsttime. Mm hmm. Basically, right.
And so the curse
Steve Brown (37:40):
of knowledge. Yeah, exactly. Right.
Mike Olson (37:41):
Yeah, you you, you'd now know, you've you've been in
the apple, basically, right? Andyou cannot unknow as it were,
it's it's a real trick. It's areal habit for folks who sit in
professions like mine to trylike crazy. When you're looking
at something for the thousandthtime to kind of shake that up,
just sketch and try to be therefor the first time again. And
(38:05):
that's why invariably, you needto understand what's happening
with your first time consumer.
And if that's just you sittingdown with a group of your
friends in your living room tosay, I want to see you interact
with my website. And then you'vegot to be smart enough to get
out of their way and actuallylet that happen. Watch them make
those mistakes, watch themstumble in spots, that the
(38:28):
interaction doesn't work wellfor them. Watch them get
confused. And stand far enoughback from that in whatever
regard you can to basically,watch people have a hard time
with the things that you thoughtwere obvious.
Steve Brown (38:46):
Yeah. So you can't be sensitive. You can. Like
that's my baby. Yeah. Andanother trap, I've noticed is
you can fall into would you giveme a nice testimonial back? I'm
right. Instead of like, Where'sthis baby ugly?
Mike Olson (39:06):
Yeah. Yeah. And I think well, and I think the
funny thing is, you know,relationship marketing actually
offers you a great opportunityat some of this type of
qualitative feedback. It's notas if this needs to just be
strictly a research effort, aslog. You know, this can be a
(39:27):
part of just your typicalinteraction with your consumer
where you're saying, Hey, I'mgoing to give you x for doing
why this can all be folded intothat part of the relationship
where it can be a much morecongenial, collegial, hey, just
just tell us how we're doing.
Right? Because more often thannot, that not only gets you a
few of those quotes from thefans who are saying, I can't
(39:49):
live a day without your product.
Those are that type of socialproof is important stuff to get
up in front of your consumer.
Right You know, if somebodylikes it As much maybe I will,
too. So I definitely understandwhat people are driving for
that. But in that sameconversation, if you just step
it back to this degree to justsay, tell us how we did, you're
also going to have a few folkswho come in see that experience
(40:12):
that that happy, shinyexperience and go, this was not
for me. And they're going totell you why. And if you can get
even just a few of those, you'regoing to get some good thinking
and opinions around, here's howI can improve this to still keep
capturing even more of thatfringe, you know, unless you're
getting 100% of your folks. It'sa conversation worth having.
Steve Brown (40:35):
Alright, so that was a good number one. Good.
Mike Olson (40:40):
I, I am very much, you know, you you had
illustrated very well, howquantitative can be such a
difficult piece of the puzzlefor a small business who is
getting such such small feedbackthat way, but I,
Steve Brown (41:01):
I hate to interrupt you, can I give you an example
of why
Mike Olson (41:03):
I'd love that, please.
Steve Brown (41:05):
So we have all these visits, and one of the
things you look at it is yourbounce rate. Oh, your bounce
rate so high or whatever. But ifyou're a small business, and
people are going to the phonebooks anymore, how do you know
they're not just showing up tosee what the phone number is to
call you?
Mike Olson (41:23):
That's exactly it.
So I think something else that Ihave seen become really powerful
these days. And this is kind ofa blend, you know, we've talked
about qualitative andquantitative, this is kind of a
blend of the two sight recordingtools. There are a ton of them
out there these days. And itused to be only a spot that the
big dogs could play in becauseevery last one of them that came
(41:45):
out in you know, 10 years ago tofive years ago was so expensive.
And and was such a heavy lift toput onto your website. And I'll
I'll say a little bit more aboutit, because a lot of folks may
not know what I'm talking about.
But basically, it's justsomething that sits in the
background and watches howpeople interact with your site
(42:07):
from a click perspective, from atime on task perspective. From
a, you know, if they're tryingto get something to go through,
did somebody click on this thing15 times because it made them
angry. It just gives littleinsights into how people are
actually interacting with yoursite. And you can see things
like what you're talking about,you can say, Oh my gosh, I not
(42:30):
only 40% of my bounce rate, orwhat I was calling my bounce
rate giving air quotes here isactually somebody just coming to
figure out how to call me. Youknow, that ends up being really
good news. It doesn't mean thatthat's the end of what you
should do with that piece offeedback, right? Because if you
didn't look at that, andrealize, Oh, crap, I should have
(42:53):
my phone number at the very topof my page, because I just made
everybody scroll down to findit. And that's why everybody's
been bouncing. Okay, take takethat piece of data, do something
with it, try this thing and seeif you don't actually not only
reduce your bounce rate, but butactually have people getting
through to you more more easilymore frequently. Heck, go out,
(43:16):
go out to Google and get asecondary phone number. Try that
on your website and move that tothe top and see how many people
start calling it. There's stillthere's still data to be had out
there. Even even in the onesie.
twosie sort of a sort of a way,you know,
Steve Brown (43:33):
I'm so we have what's called Lucky Orange.
Mike Olson (43:36):
Yeah, they're good.
Steve Brown (43:38):
Yeah, yeah. But truthfully, you know, I don't I
don't know how to really takeadvantage of the insights on
there I am, you know, I'mconfessing I'm in this business.
We have it on our site. Yeah. Ilove looking in there, but don't
truth me. Here's my here's whatI struggle with. I see an
insight there. And then I go tomy designer, and they push back.
(44:03):
Right? And I'm so I don't know,I don't have this authority. I
don't have all this experience.
I'm not clear. And it's not thatthey push back. What I'm saying
is how can they take that dataand not be sensitive about their
design and really become thisbeautiful, human oriented
designer for online experiences?
(44:30):
It's
Mike Olson (44:31):
you know, it's the first time I ever saw the phrase
was actually breeding some someStephen King, he was talking
about writing but he you reallydo have to be ready to kill your
darlings. You know, in thiscase, you can't be married to
that thing. And, and believe me,I come out of the design field
as I come into this so I, Iunderstand that feeling of I
(44:54):
really loved that. I pouredmyself into that thing. That
doesn't mean that that's goingto work best for your consumer.
I've, over the years and all ofthose tests, I have often come
to find that at least withcertain audiences, you have got
to design down. You know, if itlooks too slick, if it looks too
inviting with certain audiences,it turns them off. They, they
(45:18):
they come into this thing, andthey think, oh, you're just
trying to, you know, sell meinto something, then and I
don't, I don't have time forthis level. It's like, Is it
safe? Yeah, it does not.
Exactly. It doesn't, it doesn'tgive me that warm fuzzy that
makes me want to hang out withthis trigger. And, and so the
way that, frankly, I tend to, Irun into this problem in more
(45:41):
spaces than just with designers,right? It's not just designers
that want to push back. I mean,heck, you get to big enough
companies. Now you're talking tothe legal department who's
saying we can never try that. Wecan never say that. And, and so
the way that I tend to pullanybody who's not into this
process in is making them aconspirator, making them a
(46:04):
collaborator, basically, right?
saying, look, here's what,here's the feedback we're
getting. You are a creativesoul, helped me figure out how
we're going to make this happen.
And suddenly, you're in thisfight together. It's not you
coming and saying, Hey, what isthis design suck right here?
Basically, right? It's more yousaying, okay, we're, we're big
(46:27):
enough that I've been able tohire you, I've got enough of a
crew. I mean, we figured some ofthis out. But we want to keep
going. Here's what we're tryingto get to. How do we take what
you've already done? and makethis happen even further. And
that's, that's where theconversation, that's where it
gets fun, actually, and Andrew,great tip, you almost never, you
(46:50):
know, and so that, you know, thesession recording tools, I think
is tip number two, I think youcan learn so much from out of
that stuff, even even at thelevel that you're looking at it,
Steve and sure there's are therea lot more deep dive insights to
be had for a company that hassomebody that can just sit and
(47:11):
route around and that stuff allday? Probably. But these tools
similar to what we talked aboutin quantitative are primarily
designed to give you the here'sthe biggest stuff. Here's what
the numbers are telling me,somebody, you they call them
rage clicks that that click,click, click, click, click
click, I can't get this to work,right? Yeah. Like, I see, I see
(47:34):
what you know, 10% of yourtraffic rage clicking in this
space, you're going to get somefeedback from your tool about
that. Right. And that's animportant something to know. I
think that that's a powerfulsomething there. And then, you
know, I, I think you were youwere already kind of pointing in
this direction as we werewrapping up that last piece but
(47:57):
but to me, number three, that Ithink is really important for
for small companies to get theirarms around this way is that
it's it's constantly in motion.
And it is about that conspiratorpiece together, because what
everybody needs to understand inthis game. Well, here's here's a
(48:18):
better way for me to approachthis. Over the course of my
career. Now, just from aquantitative perspective, I've
run almost 18,000 av tests. Overthe course of my career, right,
I've seen I've seen a lot. I'veseen, I've seen a little too
much that way. And I have runthousands and thousands of
qualitative tests as well. And,and the math that bubbles up out
(48:41):
of that, at the end of the day,is that you are wrong. Far more
often than you're right. And youneed to understand that walking
into this is that even if you'vegot the right idea, oftentimes,
you're going to take the wrongexecution The first time you do
it, that doesn't mean it's a badidea. It means that you need to
(49:02):
keep thinking through how to getthat to click with your consumer
until you do and, you know, alot of companies even if they do
have the opportunity to doquantitative and qualitative,
they will walk away from a winor a loss the first time as if
it's everything that they couldhave gotten out of that piece of
(49:22):
data. You know, have you haveyou ever tried moving the button
to the other side of the page?
We tried that and it lost? Okay,how many times did you try it?
How many ways Did you try it?
Well, no, if that was somethingimportant, exactly. If that was
something important, right? Orwe tried that and it won and
(49:42):
that's why it's sitting there.
Cool. Did you try to get anymore out of that? When does you
know if your consumer liked it?
10% the first time is thereanother five 810 percent to
squeeze out of that on top ofthat because they've already
told you this matters to me.
Right? So be ready to do thisfrom the person spective of,
you're going to lose more oftenthan you win. The second you
(50:05):
lose, stop. But keep going untilyou find that win in there. It
doesn't mean it was a bad idea,it means that you just got to
give it a few tries. So,
Steve Brown (50:17):
you know, I think one thing that can help someone
that doesn't have the luxury ofsomeone liking a C x, oh, Ryan
and doesn't have all thesevisits, you can go steal good
ideas from big weaponizedwebsites. Absolutely. The trap
is you say, here's a law firm.
So show me some websites thatyou like, and they go, Well, I
(50:40):
like law firm, whatever,offering whatever what those
websites are, maybe you likethem, but they could be just a
bunch of guessing. But you'reinsisting on that when you go
look at a website is totallydisconnected. But you study your
buttons, their colors where theyput them. There's a lot of
stuff, great ideas you cansteal?
Mike Olson (51:03):
Absolutely. I would say that the places you want to
steal from aren't always yourcompetition. And don't get me
wrong, competitive review is100% unnecessary step in all of
this, and trying what you seeother people trying in that
regard. If you have theopportunity, you should
(51:24):
absolutely be doing that withyour competition, because if
they have stumbled acrosssomething, they're just handing
it to you basically to try,right. But I think the place
that you want to spend as muchtime as you can, whether it's in
your space or not, is where youraudience is. Right? What are the
(51:46):
messages they're listening to?
What is the design style thatseems to be working for them?
What What is accessibility meanto them? Right? You know, if
your consumer is sitting in the60s or 70s? Why does every site
they visit have larger text onit? I mean, and I, you know, I
say that tongue in cheek with asmile on my face, but it's but
(52:07):
it's just the fact right? It'sjust the truth. You know, just
just think about who you'retalking to, and stop going back
and saying, well, I really likethis site. Well, that's true,
but their audience doesn't matchyours at all right? In the
slightest, right? Think, thinkabout who the conversation is
with and go see where thosepeople are gravitating to see
(52:28):
where they're converting. Startthinking about why you think
that's true. Don't just go well,you know, let's let's go back to
that same example. Well, a RPhas, you know, burgundy buttons
all over their sight. So now I'mgoing to burgundy buttons.
That's that's not the point. Youknow, why? And the same Cialis,
my good one. But why? Why isthat working? You know, why is
(52:54):
that working for them? Whatabout the approach is making
that accessible? And what can Ilearn from that? And how can I
apply it to my own space?
Steve Brown (53:07):
All right. So where would this have been? I really
enjoyed this conversation.
You're a great guest.
Mike Olson (53:14):
Oh, you're very kind. Thank you. I've enjoyed
your show. I've listened severaltimes over. And then once we
hooked up this way, we prettywell ran the gamut. So.
Steve Brown (53:23):
So what's like, what's, like a great question
that I should have asked what Idid? Oh, gosh.
Mike Olson (53:35):
That's a good one, you have a really thorough
today. Um, I think I think thebiggest thing, and we touched on
this in that last point, butthis is this is hard. And this
is a slog, but it is 100% worthit. It is literally compound
interest in motion, right?
Anything that you can do to makethese improvements when you when
(53:57):
you experience those losses, aspainful as they are, you can
shut them off and walk away fromthem and understand still that
you're dealing with somethingsensitive to your consumer. But
every time you put one of thesewinds into your experience from
a conversion revenue, just keptmy consumer longer perspective.
(54:21):
You're dealing with the compoundinterest of continuing to do
that with your consumer timeover time, and that will only
continue to build on itself. Andand that's, that's the game, you
know, you even even out of thegates you're going to be wrong.
60 70% of the time, if you'redoing it thousands of times,
(54:45):
you're going to be wrong 80 to90% of the time because you're
going to be covering ground thatyou've routed around and that if
you can win 10% of the time.
You're going to make money. Youjust got to know when to show
Got it off when to move alongand when to step on the gas. And
(55:08):
and it's it can definitely getto be a lot of minutiae. And and
I understand that that may notappeal to folks. But the answers
are in there, and they're theretelling them to you.
Steve Brown (55:24):
I'm curious one more question. Yeah. So when you
go to a website, or an onlineplatform, is it really obvious
to you, they, they've hung outin this area that you're in?
Mike Olson (55:39):
Typically, yes, typically, I can see when I've
hit a site that is has has donesome testing, you know, more
often than not, though, I cheata little bit in that regard,
because there's always tags intheir code. So I have been doing
this a little too long. Thatway, I just I just tend to do it
that way. But yeah, more oftenthan not, you can typically see
(56:02):
when folks have spent some timehaving this conversation,
somehow, you know, what,whatever measures they have,
they've, they've made somedistance that way. But that
said, you know, people do landin a very positive spot for
themselves all the time. It'snot as if, you know, these folks
that we're talking about thathave not experienced this,
(56:23):
they've built this business,somehow they do have some of
this understanding. It's justnow trying to get to how do I
how do I get to that next step?
So it's, it's not always thatit's not always that obvious.
Sometimes people just get theirconsumer and they landed in a
good spot to start.
Steve Brown (56:40):
So folks that listen to this, I'm sure there's
a handful of them that arecurious and maybe want to talk
to you can you can you kind ofSing us a little bit how they
can contact you or find you.
Mike Olson (56:53):
You know, I think the way that I always kind of
easily slide out of this is, youknow, the bass never sings the
lyrics, actually, the bassalways sings just these words
like bomb and digga, and do andall of those things. And so, I
think that would be boring foreveryone. But I am, first off I
am easily found on LinkedIn, wehave just gotten the business
(57:16):
off the ground. So I do not haveeven the website formulated, we
it's funny. We've we've startedwith enough clients that we're
we're too busy working to putthe rest of the pieces together.
But I suppose that's a betterway to go at it than the other
way around. So so I'm hopingthat we're going to have our
(57:38):
site up in the next couplemonths to basically be able to
be better contacted in theinterim, because I wanted
something to do with visiblejust so I'm easily found. If you
don't find me on LinkedIn, whichis pretty easily done. You can
also reach me at visiblemike@gmail.com I'm pretty easy
to touch base with and I love totalk about this stuff all day.
Steve Brown (58:03):
So yeah, so michelsen visible insights. Can
you do your kids say daddy'sthing basin and Mama's seeing
dinner?
Mike Olson (58:14):
You know, it's it's funny. My my kids have beautiful
voices as as does my wife. Butmy kids are with my x. And she
and I were both VocalPerformance majors actually. So
she she sang pretty low Alto,she was close enough to tenor. I
guess we could have done thatsong. If I'd thought that'd have
(58:36):
been fun.
Steve Brown (58:38):
All right, Mike, did a great guest. Thank you for
being on the
Mike Olson (58:42):
ROI on line. I really appreciate it, Steve. I
love what you're up to. Andthanks so much for including me.
All
Steve Brown (58:48):
right, that's a wrap.
Thanks for listening to anotherfun episode of the ROI online
podcast. For more, be sure tocheck out the show notes of this
episode. And feel free toconnect with me on LinkedIn
where we can chat and I can helpdirect you to the resources
(59:11):
you're searching for. To learnmore about how you can grow your
business better. Be sure to pickup your copy of my book, The
Golden toilet at surprise, thatgolden toilet.com I'm Steve
Brown, and we'll see you nextweek on another fun episode of
the ROI online podcast.
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