Podcasts about google data studio

Expandir um negócio é uma ambição comum, mas também um desafio, especialmente quando se trata de manter o controle e o desempenho em diversas unidades espalhadas geograficamente. A seguir, exploramos estratégias eficazes para superar esse desafio e assegurar a qualidade, mesmo à distância.Superando o Medo da ExpansãoMuitos empresários hesitam em abrir novas unidades, temendo a perda de controle e a queda na qualidade. Garantir padrões consistentes e acompanhar o desempenho sem estar fisicamente presente são os maiores desafios.1. Foco na Experiência do ClienteUm crescimento sustentável começa pela experiência do cliente. É essencial documentar toda a jornada do consumidor, desde o primeiro contato até a fidelização.Passos essenciais:Identificar os pontos de contato do cliente (ex.: descoberta da marca).Mapear e documentar as interações.Assegurar a replicabilidade da experiência em todas as unidades.2. Ferramentas de GestãoSistemas ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)Implementar um ERP centraliza informações como vendas, estoque e finanças, fornecendo dados precisos para tomadas de decisão.Benefícios:Centralização dos dados.Relatórios detalhados e em tempo real.Suporte estratégico na análise de indicadores.Dashboards PersonalizadosFerramentas como Power BI e Google Data Studio criam painéis dinâmicos para monitorar vendas, despesas e outros KPIs em tempo real.Vantagens:Visualização instantânea do desempenho.Rapidez na identificação de problemas.Comparação entre unidades para detectar tendências.3. Comunicação EficienteUma comunicação clara é vital para manter a equipe alinhada. Plataformas como Google Workspace organizam documentos, treinamentos e facilitam o acesso a informações.4. Monitoramento de KPIs (Indicadores de Desempenho)Escolher os KPIs certos é crucial para avaliar e melhorar o desempenho de cada unidade.KPIs importantes:Faturamento e Lucratividade: Indicadores financeiros básicos.NPS (Net Promoter Score): Mede a satisfação do cliente.Taxa de Turnover: Monitora a rotatividade da equipe.Conformidade Operacional: Garantida por auditorias regulares.5. Treinamento ContínuoProgramas regulares de capacitação asseguram que todas as unidades mantenham os padrões da marca.Métodos de treinamento:Vídeoaulas e webinars.Consultorias periódicas.Treinamentos voltados à uniformidade de processos.Benefícios:Melhoria na performance dos colaboradores.Redução de erros operacionais.Preservação da identidade da marca.6. Central de AtendimentoCriar uma central de atendimento, com sistemas de tickets, facilita a resolução rápida de dúvidas e problemas dos gerentes e franqueados.ConclusãoCom foco na experiência do cliente, ferramentas de gestão, KPIs claros, treinamento contínuo e comunicação eficiente, é possível expandir e gerenciar unidades à distância com segurança e controle. Essas estratégias ajudam a replicar o sucesso em novas localidades, garantindo o desempenho uniforme em todas as operações.Para mais insights sobre como fortalecer e expandir o seu negócio, inscreva-se no canal e compartilhe este conteúdo com outros empresários!...Siga a Nova Era Estratégia em todas as redes:SITE: https://www.novaeraestrategia.comINSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/novaeraestrategiaPODCAST: https://www.novaeraestrategia.com/podcastTIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@novaera.estrategiaBLOG: https://www.novaeraestrategia.com/blogMEDIUM: https://medium.com/@novaeraestrategiaLINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/company/novaeraestrategiaPINTEREST: https://www.pinterest.com/novaeraestrategiaX: https://www.x.com/novaeraestrategTHREADS: https://www.threads.net/@novaeraestrategiaRUMBLE: https://www.rumble.com/c/novaeraestrategiaYOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@novaeraestrategiaQuem é João Cânovas e Nova Era Estratégia?JOÃO CÂNOVAS é Fundador da Consultoria Nova Era Estratégia, Graduado em Publicidade e Propaganda; MBA em Marketing pela Fundação Getúlio Vargas; Especialista em Franquias pela Franchising University e Especialista em Administração Estratégica e Gestão de Negócios pela FIA-USP; Colunista na Revista Franquia; Mentor em Universidades Corporativas; tem quase 20 anos de mercado com experiência acumulada nos bastidores do marketing e da expansão de grandes franqueadoras do Brasil, entre elas a maior franqueadora do mundo de Ensino Profissionalizante e a maior do mundo no segmento de piscinas; possui Mais de 35 Redes de Franquias atendidas que somam quase 5.000 unidades; prestou suporte para mais de 1.500 franqueados; treinou mais de 400 franqueados individualmente; tem mais de 2.000 alunos on-line, autor de 7 livros e 7 ebooks.A NOVA ERA ESTRATÉGIA é uma consultoria de negócios especializada em franchising que ajuda empresários a organizarem seus negócios para crescer.Fale com João Cânovas:EMAIL: joao@neestrategia.com.brWHATSAPP: https://wa.me/551732316976

In this episode of Digital Learning Today, Jeffrey Bradbury and Diane Manser discuss the significance of data collection in education. They explore various methods for gathering data, the importance of needs assessments, and how to build relationships with teachers through data-driven conversations. The conversation emphasizes practical strategies for data collection and analysis, aiming to enhance instructional coaching and improve student outcomes. If you are a new listener to TeacherCast, we would love to hear from you.  Please visit our Contact Page and let us know how we can help you today! In This Episode … Why Teachers Should Collect Their Own Classroom Data Empowers data-driven decision making Provides immediate insights into student performance Allows for personalized instruction and interventions Helps track progress over time Facilitates communication with parents and administrators Ways to Collect and Analyze Classroom Data Google Workspace Google Forms for quick surveys and assessments Google Sheets for data organization and visualization Google Data Studio for creating interactive dashboards Microsoft Tools Microsoft Forms for quizzes and feedback collection Excel for advanced data analysis and charting Power BI for comprehensive data visualization Notion Databases for organizing student information and performance data Kanban boards for tracking student progress on projects Linked databases for connecting various data points Applications of Classroom Data Collection Identifying learning gaps Tailoring lesson plans to student needs Monitoring attendance and engagement patterns Assessing the effectiveness of teaching strategies Creating data-backed reports for stakeholders Conversation Takeaways Data collection is essential for understanding student needs. Needs assessments can guide instructional coaching effectively. Building relationships with teachers enhances data utilization. Spreadsheets are a valuable tool for data analysis. Formative assessments provide ongoing insights into student learning. Data should inform instructional decisions and resource allocation. Teachers should focus on skills and concepts rather than just tools. Regular data collection promotes accountability in teaching practices. Effective data analysis leads to improved student outcomes. Collaboration and communication are key in data-driven environments. Data collection is essential for effective teaching and coaching. Visualizing data can enhance understanding and communication of student progress. Integrating technology can streamline data collection and analysis. Data should inform lesson planning and instructional strategies. Coaches need to demonstrate their impact through data-driven narratives. Emotional challenges in teaching require support and understanding. Using tools like Notion can revolutionize data management in education. Data helps clarify learning objectives and outcomes. Regular feedback and assessment are crucial for continuous improvement. Building a community around data can foster collaboration and growth. Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Data in Education 05:02 The Importance of Data...

In this episode I reveal my thoughts on the all important topic "how high to lace your kicks".  I also talk about some upcoming New Balance, Metroidvanias, Google's latest core algo update and it's effects on my website and Google Data Studio.  Finally, I talk some more about Bone Thugs and the "clean" sound that damaged a lot of otherwise good records in the late 90s and 2000s. Thanks as always for listening AFS Squad! Shoutout to the Patrons: Kyle M, Kingsley G, Tristan S, Brian D, Joshua N, John You can support this podcast, get your name listed above and get early access to episodes (paid tier) at: Patreon.com/ActualFanOfSneakers

Hablamos en la herramienta de hoy de este episodio donde los martes lo dedicamos a herramientas a Google Looker Studio, el antiguo Google Data Studio que incluye algunos extras como la predicción de datos con el impulso de la IA. Vemos cómo puedes disponer de casi 900 fuentes de datos, tanto de Google como externas tipo Facebook o Shopify, para crear tus propios informes personalizables de visualización de datos o directamente disponer de plantillas prediseñadas para que puedas gestionar todos tus informes en un único lugar. Newsletter: https://ecosistemaecommerce.com/newsletter/ Web: https://ecosistemaecommerce.com/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/javierlopezrod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Ecosistema-Ecommerce/61550625909016/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ecosistemaecomm Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ecosistemaecommerce Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ecosistemaecommerce/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE2zroaDzTVZRwNOh5Ma9cg

Tune in to this riveting episode of PT Pintcast with your host Jimmy McKayand returning guest, Sharif Zeid of MW Therapy. Today's topic covers a crucial, yet often overlooked aspect of physical therapy practice—Financial Health. We're discussing six cost-free, actionable strategies you can implement immediately to up your financial game.Key Takeaways:Idea #1: Implement a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) DashboardThe Idea: Create a visual dashboard to display crucial financial and operational metrics.Why It Works:Data-Driven Decisions: Real-time metrics guide better decision-making.Focus on Priorities: Metrics help keep your team aligned to your practice's objectives.Background: Free tools like Google Data Studio can make this happen effortlessly.Idea #2: Conduct a Financial Audit of Your PracticeThe Idea: Review all income and expenses to discover inefficiencies and potential savings.Why It Works:Identify Leaks: Uncover unnecessary spending and tighten up your budget.Financial Health: Improve your practice's overall financial performance.Background: A self-assessment helps streamline your operations and allocate resources more efficiently.Idea #3: Establish a Financial Training Session for Your TeamThe Idea: Hold a one-hour session to educate your team on basic financial terms and practice-specific goals.Why It Works:Team Alignment: Ensure everyone is on the same page regarding financial targets.Financial Literacy: Equip your team with the knowledge to make financially responsible decisions.Background: Educated staff contribute to a healthier bottom line.Idea #4: Implement a 'Zero-Based Budgeting' Approach for a MonthThe Idea: Start each month with a zero budget, allocating only to essential expenses.Why It Works:Resource Optimization: Forces you to scrutinize each line item, ensuring you get the most from your budget.Expense Tracking: Gain a clearer understanding of your spending habits.Background: This method provides unparalleled insights into your spending patterns, allowing for future optimizations.

Zusammenfassung In dieser Episode diskutieren Björn und Stephan die Google Search Console und deren Vorteile gegenüber kostenpflichtigen Tools. Sie erörtern den Einrichtungsprozess und wichtige Berichte, die zu überprüfen sind. Sie vertiefen sich in den Indexabdeckungsbericht, die Benachrichtigung "Ausgeschlossen durch Noindex-Tag" und die Benachrichtigung "Index Kein Block durch Robots.txt". Sie betonen die Wichtigkeit, diese Benachrichtigungen zu verstehen und zu interpretieren, um angemessene Maßnahmen zu ergreifen. Das Gespräch deckt verschiedene Themen im Zusammenhang mit der Google Search Console ab. Es beginnt mit einer Diskussion über Suchergebnisse und Leistungskennzahlen wie Klicks, Impressionen, CTA und Durchschnittsposition. Danach geht es um die Daten in der Google Search Console, einschließlich der Zeitzone und der Datenbeschränkungen. Das Kapitel über die Seitenerfahrung konzentriert sich auf den Erfahrungs-Tab und die Berichte zu den Core Web Vitals. Im Kapitel über den Linkbericht werden die Einblicke erörtert, die durch die Analyse externer und interner Links gewonnen werden können. Das Gespräch endet mit einer Diskussion über die Verwendung von Google Data Studio mit der Google Search Console zur Erstellung von Dashboards. In diesem Gespräch diskutieren Stephan und Björn verschiedene Aspekte von SEO und Google-Updates. Sie betonen die Wichtigkeit, SEO-Strategien zukunftssicher zu machen und sich nicht zu sehr um spezifische Google-Updates zu sorgen, wenn der Gesamtansatz solide ist. Sie sprechen auch über manuelle Maßnahmen und algorithmische Strafen, teilen ihre Erfahrungen und warnen vor der Beteiligung an spammy Praktiken. Das Gespräch endet mit einer Diskussion über die Herausforderungen von Benachrichtigungen der Google Search Console und den gewünschten Verbesserungen am Tool. Wichtige Erkenntnisse Die Google Search Console liefert wertvolle Daten über Crawling, Indexierung und Leistung, die andere Tools möglicherweise nicht erfassen. Die Einrichtung der Search Console auf Domainebene und dann das Hinzufügen spezifischer URL-Präfixe ermöglichen eine detaillierte Analyse verschiedener Bereiche einer Website. Wichtige zu überprüfende Berichte in der Search Console sind der Indexabdeckungsbericht, der den Indexierungsstatus von Seiten zeigt, und die Benachrichtigungen "Ausgeschlossen durch Noindex-Tag" und "Index Kein Block durch Robots.txt". Es ist entscheidend, diese Benachrichtigungen im Kontext der Website zu interpretieren und angemessene Maßnahmen zu ergreifen, um eine optimale Indexierung und Leistung zu gewährleisten. Die Google Search Console liefert wertvolle Daten zu Suchergebnissen und Leistungskennzahlen. Das Verständnis der Daten in der Google Search Console erfordert Kenntnisse über die Zeitzone und die Datenbeschränkungen. Der Bereich Seitenerfahrung in der Google Search Console umfasst den Erfahrungs-Tab und die Berichte zu den Core Web Vitals. Der Linkbericht in der Google Search Console liefert Einblicke in externe und interne Links. Google Data Studio kann verwendet werden, um Dashboards mit Daten aus der Google Search Console zu erstellen. Kapitel 00:00 Einführung und technische Schwierigkeiten 01:43 Vorstellung des Gasts und Diskussion über SEO-Com 03:20 Vorteile der Google Search Console gegenüber kostenpflichtigen Tools 07:29 Einrichtung der Search Console 10:55 Wichtige Berichte zur Überprüfung 12:39 Verständnis des Indexabdeckungsberichts 20:39 Ausgeschlossen durch Noindex-Tag 22:05 Index Kein Block durch Robots.txt 24:37 Interpretation von Benachrichtigungen und Nachrichten 27:28 Suchergebnisse und Leistung 28:23 Daten in der Google Search Console 29:29 Zeitzone in der Google Search Console 30:16 Verzögerung in den Core Web Vitals Berichten 31:26 Verschiedene Suchtypen 32:11 Vertikale in der Google Search Console 33:25 Datenbeschränkungen in der Google Search Console 34:41 Globale Daten in der Google Search Console 35:46 Segmentierung und Filter

This episode of the SEO Podcast by #SEOSLY is an exclusive interview where SEO consultant Olga Zarr of SEOSLY sits down with rising SEO star Ewelina Westcott to discuss their journeys and insights into mastering SEO. Olga and Ewelina deliver an insightful SEO discussion, transparency about setbacks, and advice to inspire SEOs at any stage of their journey. They discuss starting out in affiliate marketing and transitioning into technical SEO roles and agency work. Ewelina shares how a series of redundancies unexpectedly advanced her SEO career. Olga talks about taking a hands-on SEO training course where she learned on-page optimization techniques that delivered results. She also implemented successful local SEO strategies for a client. They explore the power of data analysis for SEO, with Ewelina detailing her training in Excel, Google Data Studio, and Power BI. She explains how to clean data and visualize/report on it to drive business decisions. Ewelina highlights how learning Python allows automating many SEO tasks like generating targeted keyword lists. She provides examples of scripts that can save time with internal linking and more. Sharing their SEO obsessions, Olga and Ewelina reveal their curiosity for constant learning. They try new training courses and techniques constantly to expand their expertise. As busy but avid runners, they also discuss sports and how important work-life balance is for productivity. Ewelina previews her plans to launch an SEO consultancy focused on tailored, hands-on services. Other topics include their favorite SEO tools, striking a work-life balance through sports like running and triathlon, and plans for Ewelina to launch her own consultancy focused on bespoke SEO services. They also touch on black hat techniques, working at agencies, and key learnings like how to prioritize impactful SEO actions over trying countless tactics. Overall, their genuine discussion provides an insider's view into thriving as an SEO consultant. Their stories and advice offer inspiration for anyone interested in forging their own SEO career and mastery. The SEO Podcast by #SEOSLY is sponsored by JetOctopus Follow SEO Consultant Olga Zarr or hire Olga to help you with SEO Follow Olga Zarr Twitter Follow Olga Zarr on LinkedIn The best SEO newsletter The best SEO podcast SEO consultant

Adam Christopher English, J.D. is a Web3 Keynote Speaker ( EMEA & US), Blockchain Consultant & Subject-Matter Expert , dApp Developer- Ethereum Smart Contracts, and the Host of Spotify's “Crypto With English".He has Consulted, Co-founded and Partnered with startup companies and larger ventures across the Blockchain and broader Web3 Industry.Among the most notable of his certifications include:• IBM Foundation Blockchain Developer• Certified Smart Contracts Developer ( Blockchain Council )• Certified Metaverse Expert ( Blockchain Council )TECHNICAL SKILLS•Programming:Proficient in Solidity, Python and JavaScript• Open-Source Frameworks:Hadoop, Apache Spark• Platforms:HubSpot, Google Analytics, Google Data Studio, Docker• Research tools:Lexis Nexus Advance, Westlaw Next MEDIAPUBLIC SPEAKINGAs a Keynote Guest speaker at over a dozen industry conferences covering blockchain and Web3 at domestic and international locations (Berlin, NYC, Cannes, Dubai, Barcelona, Doha, Lisbon, Vienna, and Miami)- here are some of the featured Panels:• “Fireside Chat with Edward Snowden”- DeData Salon Berlin Blockchain Week- Berlin, Germany. Sept.2022• “Autopsy of a Fallen Idol – FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried”- NFT Week Medellin- Medellin, Colombia.Dec. 2022• “Blockchain Powered Democracy: From DAO to Self-Sovereignty”- D4A – Barcelona, Spain, Nov.2022"Startup Success in 3 Tenets: Innovation, Data Privacy, and Identify"- WOW Lisbon (World of Web3) Lisbon, Portugal. Nov.2022• “Smart Cities - Changing the Paradigm: How can every citizen participate and be accountable?” – D4A- Barcelona,Spain. Nov.2022• “The Art of Hype & Building a Web3 Brand” – W3BX – Las Vegas, Nevada, Oct. 2022.LIVESTREAM & PODCAST "CRYPTO WITH ENGLISH"With a focus on Global Audiences , Adam provides a straightforward and engaging dialog with Public Figures and Entrepreneurs in the Blockchain Industry.“ Crypto With English” has vastly expanded beyond its genesis audiences based in New York City & Miami to overseas with major followings in Berlin, Barcelona, Seoul, Mumbai, Lisbon, Dubai, Doha, Zurich, Vienna, Abu Dhabi, and London, just to name a few.You can catch Livestream and Podcast Episodes on :Spotify, Twitter, Apple Podcasts, LinkedIn Live --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/crypto-hipster-podcast/support

Compra tu entrada AQUÍ MISMO para DSM Valencia y conoce a Fernando Rubio entre otros muchos profesionales del sector.Fernando Rubio es consultor de marketing digital especializado en analítica digital. Es profesor, ponente y escritor de 2 libros, así como una buena gente por todos sus costados, alguien que merece mucho la pena conocer. En la entrevista de hoy hablaremos de marketing de contenidos y analítica digital.¿Quién es Fernando Rubio pero en su faceta más personal?¿Cuándo descubres tu pasión por la enseñanza? ¿Qué es el neuromarketing? ¿Cómo diseñar una estrategia de contenidos para impulsar una marca o una marca personal?¿Cuáles son los pasos imprescindibles para diseñar una estrategia de contenidos?¿Cuáles son los formatos, contenidos o canales que más son tendencia ahora?¿Cómo se te queda el cuerpo cuando escribes un libro de una herramienta y le cambian el nombre? Google Data Studio a Looker Studio.¿Cuáles son tus herramientas favoritas para inspirarte, crear contenido, programar y medir resultados?¿Qué importancia tiene diseñar un plan de analítica digital hoy?Pros y contras de migrar a GA4.¿Qué tal fue el evento Promarketing Day?Película, serie y grupo de música favorito.No te pierdas DSM Valencia, un evento que este año lo hacemos frente al mar en uno de los hoteles más lujosos de Valencia. ¿Te gustaría conocer a Fernando Rubio? pues compra tu entrada presencial ya que él será uno de los asistentes que tendrá el evento y podrás charlar con él y por qué no generar sinergias y colaboraciones.

Back in February 2020, Google acquired the platform Looker with the intention to offer data and analytics to enterprise companies. In October of 2022, Google rebranded Google Data Studio to "Looker Studio" to combine the strengths of both products and help customers redefine the way they work with data. In this episode, our host, Taylor Karg is joined by Simon Mandel, Director of Data and Analytics at Americaneagle.com. They discuss the ins and outs of the transformation from Google Data Studio to Looker Studio, the differences in capabilities between the two platforms, and along with breaking down the limitations that the new platform offers. This podcast is brought to you by Americaneagle.com Studios. Connect with: Modern Marketing Messages: Website // Twitter // Instagram // Facebook // YouTube Taylor Karg: LinkedIn Simon Mandel: LinkedIn

What makes a stellar Google Data Studio dashboard? Michele Kiss has the answer. She is a recognised digital analytics leader, with expertise across web, mobile, and marketing analytics. She is a Senior Partner at Analytics Demystified, where she works with clients on analysis, training, and process, to help them draw insight from their digital data. Google Data Studio is Michele's go-to tool, and after hearing about its interactive nature, the visualization options it provides, and the way in which it allows one to craft captivating data stories with relative ease, it's not hard to understand why! >> VIEW SHOW NOTES + RESOURCES  In This Episode, You'll Learn… The multitude of benefits of using Google Data Studio. The different ways in which Google Data Studio dashboards can be optimized. How to make the most of the interactive nature of Data Studio. Her favorite places for finding Google Data Studio templates and best practices. Why Michele opts for more presentation slides with less information on each slide when presenting data. Michele's favorite Data Studio data visualization strategies. The difference between the Data Studio dashboards and Data Studio reports. Why simplification is key when it comes to data presentations and how to do it.  People, Blogs, and Resources Mentioned Looker Studio Blog Google Data Studio Online Course Measure Slack chat Analytics Power Hour My free 30-second online assessment to find out and overcome the #1 silent killer of your data presentation success

SEO for Photographers - Episode 51Migrating to Google's G4 AnalyticsIn this episode...[1:37] What is Google Analytics [3:07] Why we HATE the G4 Analytics[7:05] Another Reason We Need Analytics [8:38] Google Data Studio for G4 Analytics[9:45] I Created My Own Analytics Dashboard[10:58] How to Move to G4 Analytics[14:47] What I Recommended You Do Now Try the dashboard I created for my own projects:SEO Dashboard (visit the dashboard I created for G4 Analytics)Meredith's husband said..."Without analytics, you're just shooting in the dark." Connect… meredithshusband.start.pagewww.MeredithsHusband.com

Have you ever considered becoming a Facebook and Instagram ads manager? This episode is for you! Even if you aren't offering this service, there are some golden nuggets in this episode you won't want to miss. In this episode of Serve Scale Soar®, I sat down with one of my Conversions for Clients students, Becky. She's a Facebook and Instagram ads manager and I am so excited to share her story with you today. She came from a corporate background and never saw herself in entrepreneurship. She discovered Meta ads management and now has a thriving business. Becky G. Mariano is a Facebook and Instagram Ad Strategist helping local and online businesses and entrepreneurs increase their reach and revenue through hyper-targeted digital advertising.When Becky joined Conversions for Clients, she already had some experience. She joined the program so that she could expand her skills and better serve her new clients. She also found a supportive community that has helped to get the support she needs as she grows. Becky's story is so inspiring and I think you're going to love her advice and transparency. Tune in to learn more about Becky's business, data analytics, the importance of getting referrals, and so much more.  Find the full show notes at www.brandimowles.com/175Resources Mentioned:Visit Becky's website: https://mariano-media.com/Follow Becky on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marianomediasocial/Connect with Becky on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beckygmariano/Check out the course on Google Data Studio – https://brandimowles.com/dataLearn more about Conversions for Clients: https://brandimowles.com/cfc-waitlistAdditional Resources:Ready to scale to consistent 10k months without growing a team, hiring contractors or creating a course? Then it's time for you to Scale with Simplicity®.  Find out more >> https://brandimowles.com/join-serve-scale-soarFollow the Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/serve-scale-soar/id1477998650Follow Brandi on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brandimowlesFollow Brandi on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Brandiandcompany

Digtective helps advertisers identify and cut their wasted ad spend, optimize ad performance, and invest the savings in profitable ads to scale growth. It's a challenge across multiple ad platforms, campaigns, and ad groups to collect data, report against your revenue data, and spot the winners and losers. Digtective integrates server-side cookieless, to your ad platforms, web server, CRM, and Order Management system to collect all your marketing, sales, and conversion data in one place, for easy reporting in Excel, Google Data Studio, or your data warehouse via our API. Connect with Yann

Episode 51 of MoreVisibility's Eye on Digital Marketing podcast, we cover the rebrand and new changes of Looker Studio (formerly known as Google Data Studio) including data blending and the amount of sources you are allowed to use without further assistance.  Looking for more tips or how we can help your analytics strategy? Contact us at info@morevisibility.com. 

Market Proof Marketing · Transparency Of Home Listings Kevin Oakley, Julie Jarnagin, and Becca Thomas discuss the balance of transparency in a home listing, knowing when to shift marketing priorities, and understanding the seasonality of the home building industry.Story Time Becca shares the story around a building being cautious with too pretty of photos. Julie reminds you to shift your priorities with the shifting market.Kevin discusses the seasonality of the market along with a video he received on LinkedIn.Supporting PartnerThe Market Proof Marketing Podcast is brought to you in partnership with Opendoor. Opendoor partners with homebuilders across the country in over 2,000 sales offices and has helped help generate more than $4 billion in new construction home sales. Visit Opendoor.com/doyouconvert to learn more about how you can partner with Opendoor. In The News (25:45)Do You Convert: All AccessAdvertisers are split on whether they'll spend less in 2023, according to survey (marketingbrew.com)It's painful how hellbent Mark Zuckerberg is on convincing us that VR is a thing (techcrunch.com)Why mass marketing will not work on Gen Z – it's all about subcultures (digiday.com)Google Data Studio now known as Looker Studio (searchengineland.com)Questions? Comments? Email show@doyouconvert.com or call 404-369-2595 and we'll address them on the next episode. More insights, discussions, and opportunities can be found at Do You Convert All Access or on the Market Proof Marketing Facebook group.Subscribe on iTunesFollow on SpotifyListen On Stitcher A weekly new home marketing podcast for home builders and developers. Each week Kevin Oakley, Andrew Peek, Jackie Lipinski, Julie Jarnagin, and other team members from Do You Convert will break down the headlines, share best practices and stories from the front line, and perform a deep dive on a relevant marketing topic. We're here to help you – not to sell you!Opendoor is a supporting partner of the Market Proof Marketing Podcast. Visit Opendoor.com/doyouconvert to learn more about how you can partner with Opendoor. Offer eligibility varies. Opendoor is represented by Opendoor Brokerage Inc., License 02061130, in California and Opendoor Brokerage LLC in its other markets. The post Ep 244: The Transparency Of Home Listings appeared first on Online Sales and Marketing for Home Builders - DYC.

1. Facebook Retires ‘Instant Articles' - Originally launched in 2015, Instant Articles were designed to provide publishers with a more engaging, fast-loading way to present their articles on Facebook, helping to maximize reader engagement within the app. As reported by Axios, Meta's ending support for Instant Articles as it works to better align with user preferences, which, increasingly, see video being its most engaging content format.2. TikTok Adds Photo Mode - Now TikTok has copied Instagram (perhaps in retaliation for IG copying all of its stuff) and launched  a new ‘Photo Mode' for still images in the app. Photo Mode looks exactly like Instagram, with users able to post carousels of still images that users can scroll through in the app. Per TikTok:“Photo Mode allows you to share carousel posts of still images that automatically display one after another. You can add music to soundtrack the images, which viewers can swipe through at their own pace.”3. YouTube Launches @handles For Channels - YouTube's moving more into line with other social networks with the addition of @handles for channels, which will make it easier to drive traffic to your profile, and promote your channel in the app.“Handles are a new unique identifier (example @youtubecreators) & ALL YouTube channels will have one. Your unique @handle will help people find & interact with you & your YouTube channel. And because handles are unique (unlike channel names), it's easy to confirm if you're engaging with the right person or not.”Your @handle, which will be unique to your channel (unlike Channel names), will directly connect people to your content, like it does on Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, etc. @handles will also function as a unique channel URL, providing another branding opportunity. Up till now, custom channel URLs have only been available to creators with 100 subscriptions, but now, YouTube's making the option available to all users in the app. @handles will also make it easier and faster to mention channels in comments, community posts and video descriptions.“For example, creators can be shouted out in a mention in comments or tagged in the title of a recent collab, helping them increase visibility and reach with new audiences.”Part of the idea here is to better promote channels, in alignment with habitual trends, with a key consideration likely being Shorts and helping to maximize Shorts channel growth by making it easier to follow creators. Another element that YouTube's looking to tackle is the rise of copycat channels, where scammers create channels that look similar to popular YouTubers', often by using the same channel name. By ensuring that each channel has a unique @handle, which they can promote direct, that will make it harder to create replica channels, and trick users with uploads and scams.4. Google Data Studio Is Now Looker Studio - Google launched Data Studio in March 2016 as part of the enterprise Google Analytics 360 suite, with a free version that lets you turn your data into informative, easy-to-read, easy-to-share, and fully customizable dashboards and reports. There are easy-to-use drag-and-drop features to customize reports from various data sources, including Search Console, Google Analytics, Google Ads, and much more. Now Google has renamed the popular analytics and data platform from Google Data Studio to Looker Studio. Google wrote “starting today, Data Studio is now Looker Studio.” “With this complete enterprise business intelligence suite, we will help you go beyond dashboards and infuse your workflows and applications with the intelligence needed to help make data-driven decisions,” Google added.Google also announced a Pro, paid, version of Looker Studio named Looker Studio Pro. Google said that the Pro version will get new enterprise management features, team collaboration capabilities, and SLAs. Google said that is just the first release and the company has “developed a roadmap of capabilities, starting with Dataplex integration for data lineage and metadata visibility, that our enterprise customers have been asking for.”You can learn more about this change on the Google blog.5. Google Swaps Title Tags With Site Names For Mobile Homepage Results - Google is now only showing the generic site name in mobile search results that are for the entire website, such as for the home page. Google is using site names in order to make it easier for users to identify the specific website in the search results. Here is what Google published in the official announcement:  “Today, Search is introducing site names on mobile search results to make it easier to identify the website that's associated with each result…”This new feature is available in the English, French, Japanese, and German languages and will begin showing up in other languages over the next few months. Google is recommending the use of the WebSite structured data type because Google is using the WebSite structured data type, specifically the “name” property, to understand what the site name of a website is. So it is best that your site has the following: WebSite structured data Title tag Headings (H1, H2, etc.) Open Graph Protocol meta data, specifically the og:site_name You can read the official announcement here and the Search Central Documentation here. 6. Google Renames Webmaster Guidelines To Search Essentials & Some Changes - Google has renamed the Google Webmaster Guidelines to Google Search Essentials. The name change is Google's ongoing efforts to remove the term "webmaster" so that these tools and documentation do not narrow the focus to just "webmasters," but expands it to publishers, site owners, developers, creators, and so on. Google also changed the overall format, added clearer terms and examples and also tried to simplify them for easier consumption. Google explained they updated the: Technical requirements: It is a new section to help people understand how to publish content in a format that Google can index and access.  Spam policies: Google updated its guidance for its policies against spam, to help site owners avoid creating content that isn't helpful for people using Google Search. Google explained that most of the content in these spam policies has already existed on Google Search Central in the "Quality Guidelines", Google did make a few additions to provide clearer guidance and concrete examples for issues like deceptive behavior, link spam, online harassment, and scam and fraud.  Key best practices: Google published new guidance with key best practices that people can consider when creating sites, to create content that serves people and will help a site be more easily found through Google Search. 7. Google Announces Search Central Live Conference - Google announced live conference series called Search Central Live previously known as Webmaster Conference. The conference is scheduled for November 24, 2022 in Singapore. Registration for a limited amount of seats is currently open until November 15th, with ticket confirmation set to begin on November 17. Admission to the event is free. Per Google:“Before you buy your transcontinental plane ticket, keep in mind that we do plan to have more of these events in the future, and some might be closer to your base. Stay tuned for these updates on the Search Central Live event page or on Twitter.”Here is the official announcement.8. Microsoft Bing Launches Image Creator - An AI Image Generator - Microsoft has launched Image Creator - an AI image generator to its Bing search engine, which enables users to create digital art from text input. Let's say a picture of a Shiba Inu as an astronaut would go perfectly with a blog post you're writing. You turn to the search engines for a free-to-use image, but you can't find one that matches your criteria. With the new Image Creator tool coming to Microsoft Bing, you can generate the exact image you need by inputting descriptive text.Image Creator is powered by DALL-E 2 image generator technology developed by OpenAI. Microsoft says Image Creator can assist searchers with creating images that don't exist yet.9. Google's Stance On The Use Of AI Images - Google's John Mueller and Lizzi Sassman discussed the topic of using AI Images on your site in Episode 48 of the Search Off The Record podcast. Although autogenerated text content is prohibited/limited for ranking in Google Search, surprisingly there was no similar prohibition or caveat discussed about AI generated images and ranking in Google Images.10. Google Updates Image Structured Data - Google has added three new structured data properties to be used with the ImageObject type in order to add support for credit, copyright and image creator information via structured data. Google's developer support changelog states:“Added support for image credits to the Image Metadata structured data documentation. Previously, you could only provide image credit information with IPTC photo metadata. When you specify image metadata, Google Images can show more details about the image, such as who the creator is, how people can use an image, and credit information. ”This is what the new structured data types are for, according to Schema.org: creditText - Text that can be used to credit person(s) and/or organization(s) associated with a published Creative Work. creator - The creator/author of this CreativeWork. This is the same as the Author property for CreativeWork. copyrightNotice - Text of a notice appropriate for describing the copyright aspects of this Creative Work, ideally indicating the owner of the copyright for the Work.” 11. Google's Advice On How to Write Good Alt Text - The purpose of alternative text (alt text) in images is to provide audiences with screen readers a way to understand the images. In Episode 48 of the Search Off The Record podcast, John Muller and Lizzi Sassman gave the following advice on how to write Good Alt text:“Imagine that you're reading the web page aloud over the phone to someone who needs to understand the page. This should help you decide what (if any) information or function the images have. If they appear to have no informative value and aren't links or buttons, it's probably safe to treat them as decorative.From an SEO point of view, my recommendation is always to provide context for the image as well in the alt text. So if you have a picture of a beach, don't just be like, ‘Oh, this is a photo of a beach.' But rather like, ‘This is the beach before the chemical spill happened.' And… Because it's very different context if someone is searching for a beach for a holiday, it's like, ‘Oh, I want to see a beautiful beach. I'll go there on vacation.' And if you notice, well actually, this is before the chemical spill happened, then it's like, ‘Well, maybe like that would lend itself to different kinds of Search queries.'Because ultimately, when you're talking about Image Search, it's not that people want an image, but rather they want information which is attached to that image. They want kind of to understand a specific topic to find some information. And that additional context is something that you can provide in the alt text. And that's something that they might be searching for. And if they're searching for it, then make it easy for them to find that.”12. 3 New Examples From Google On How To Write Product Reviews - There has been a lot of confusion about the types of sites that may be impacted by the product reviews algorithm updates. This algorithm was designed to look at sites that offer product reviews, not necessarily e-commerce sites that have reviews on the product listing pages. So Google has added three new examples to the top of the “how to write product reviews” help document, clarifying more types of sites that may be impacted by the product reviews algorithm updates. The 3 example are: An expert staff member of a merchant that guides shoppers between competing products. A blogger that provides independent opinions of products. An editorial staff member at a news or other publishing site. These examples provide additional guidance on what types of sites may be impacted by this set of algorithm updates. In short, it is about content where someone is doing a review of a product, either as a comparison or a deeper dive into a specific product. This can include merchant sites, shopper guides, bloggers that share their opinion, news or publishing sites doing reviews, and more.As Alan Kent of Google recently said on Twitter “a merchant's product page with user reviews is not considered a “product review page” in this context.”Google also recently clarified that structured data may help Google identify product review-type content, but it is one of many ways Google identifies such content. Danny Sullivan wrote, “as for structured data, it might help us better identify if something is a product review, but we do not solely depend on it.”13. Google Still Does Not Use HTML Lang Attribute - Google's John Mueller https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1577945097693532166re-confirmed that Google Search does not use the HTML lang attribute. He said many screen readers do and Microsoft Bing might use it as well, but Google Search still does not.This is a similar statement to what he said several years ago in a video response - “We don't use that at all. So we use the hreflang links if you have that if you have different language versions. But the language attribute within the HTML markup is something we don't use at all. We've found that this language markup is something that is almost always wrong. So we tend to ignore that.”14. Google: SEO Is A Long Game - We all know that ranking well for competitive terms in Google Search is not as easy, or even a fraction as easy, as it was two decades ago. This is because of many variables including but not limited to Google's algorithms getting better and there being a lot more competition.John Mueller of Google responded to a complaint about SEO being too hard for news businesses to even bother trying. The question was "is SEO dead? I mean, starting with a new website these days it is basically impossible to outrank high authority websites. So many high DA showing up in the SERP. What can we do with a new website?"John's response was solid, he said "If you mean it should be trivial to out-rank long-existing, legitimate businesses with some SEO tricks, then yes, that kind of SEO is long dead. It's not enough to throw some keywords on a page to make it useful to users."But that does not mean SEO is dead or you should give up and not try to start a competing business with others. You just need to take the time and effort to compete. The same logic applies to offline success as it does with online success. You can't just start a new brand of soda and expect to compete with Pepsi or Cola overnight, it takes time, resources, marketing and a good product.15. Google: Do This To Get New Content Indexed Quickly - Google's John Mueller said that pinging Google that your sitemap file has been updated can help Google index your new content quickly. He said it is simply Google practice to ping Google with when your sitemap file is updated.Of course, this does not guarantee indexing. Google still does not index everything, so just because you might ping Google about a new URL, it does not mean Google will index it.John Mueller wrote on Twitter "Pinging a sitemap is a bit different than just providing it in the robots.txt -- by pinging, you're actively flagging a change in the sitemap file. If you're keen on having new content indexed quickly, that's a good practice."According to Google developers guide "Google doesn't check a sitemap every time a site is crawled; a sitemap is checked only the first time that we notice it, and thereafter only when you ping us to let us know that it's changed. Alert Google about a sitemap only when it's new or updated; don't submit or ping unchanged sitemaps multiple times."To use the ping tool, send a GET request in your browser or the command line to google.com, specifying the full URL of the sitemap. Make sure that the sitemap file is accessible. E.g: https://www.google.com/ping?sitemap=FULL_URL_OF_SITEMAP16. Google Ads Launches Content Suitability Center - Google has launched a new content suitability center in Google Ads where you can manage your suitability settings for all campaigns on YouTube and the Google Display Network.Google wrote, “previously, managing suitability settings was done in multiple, segregated sections of Google Ads and the experience differed across Google platforms.” “This led to a time-consuming and cumbersome implementation process, along with misconceptions and misuse of the controls. While exclusions can be helpful tools, brands also want to be mindful of the types of content they choose to exclude. Over-exclusion can negatively impact your cost and reach. It can also unintentionally exclude great, brand-safe content or content relevant to diverse communities,” Google added.When you enter the new suitability center in Google Ads, you can now select one of the three inventory modes. Inventory modes “cater to your preferences for various sensitive themes, such as profanity, sexual suggestiveness and violence,” Google explained. You can fine-tune additional exclusions from that point. Once you have designated your preferences at the account level, Google Ads will now automatically apply these settings to your future campaigns.17. Google Ads Will Remove Some Content Targeting In YouTube Conversion Campaigns In 2023 - A major benefit of YouTube ads has been the powerful targeting options, many of which will now be removed early next year according to a Google Ads help article. The help article, “Optimize your Video campaign for more conversions” contains a content targeting section that recommends avoiding the addition of content targeting (by keywords, topics or placements) in campaigns.These content targeting options are beloved by many advertisers due to the granularity they provide. Placements could target YouTube Channels, specific videos, video lineups, URLs, Apps, or collections.With the current targeting, advertisers could match ads to channels/videos to deliver more customized messages to audiences. This change will effectively put an end to the hyper-targeting that made YouTube so appealing for ad dollars.Another major blow is the loss of keyword targeting on the self-proclaimed 2nd largest search engine in the world. The removal of query targeting on a (video) search engine hurts.While keywords on YouTube haven't historically been as powerful as traditional search, it has been a way for advertisers to help answer queries with their video content. There is no doubt that advertisers will need to get more creative in order to hit their target audience.Advertisers running YouTube content targeting campaigns that leverage keywords, topics or placements will have the targeting removed.If you are running ads using content targeting options, you should stay tuned to updates as those targeting settings will be automatically removed from your campaigns. With less targeting, you'll reach a larger audience and may spend more on less qualified users.

[0:52] How does Google Analytics metric work? [3:19] Facebook and LinkedIn don't work with Google Analytics. What site information can be incorporated? [6:04] Does Google rank video the same as written content? [8:09] Should you only link to your own website, or should you link to other people's websites? [11:29] Should financial institutions have web pages on multiple platforms? [14:33] Best ways to use Google Data Studio. [17:09] Is it necessary to get information from Facebook and LinkedIn to use in Google Data Studio? [19:49] Photos or Videos? What gains more engagement on social media? [25:19] Is Canva a good product to use for social media marketing? [28:21] Limitations of WordPress. [31:51] Updating/Patching plugins. [35:07] Did Meta remove the when your fans are online feature? In this week's episode, Eric Cook with WSI Digital answers some common questions from his webinar tilted, Measure It to Manage It: Understanding Analytics & How to Determine Online Success. Register and learn more here: https://fin-ed.info/3SpV1Ie Podcast listeners can also use coupon code BUSINESSWRITING for 10% off this timely webinar. This coupon is valid through December 2022. Check out these links for more info! Webinar Registration: https://fin-ed.info/3SpV1Ie Speaker's Website: https://www.wsiworld.com/ Questions? support@cuwebtraining.com Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cuwn Like us Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cuwebinars Tweet us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cuwebinars Read our blog: https://cuwebtraining.com/blog

“You can't manage what you can't measure.” – Peter Drucker   Jason A. Duprat, Entrepreneur, Healthcare Practitioner, and Host of the Healthcare Entrepreneur Academy podcast, talks about the importance of dashboards in measuring your business metrics. In this episode, Jason explains different metrics such as KPIs & KRIs and other key takeaways from a business program he enrolled in. Tune in until the end to hear more about an exciting mastermind Jason and his team have been planning about.   3 KEY POINTS: Identify what metrics you should be tracking. Create dashboards to measure each metric. Monitor your metrics for any potential issues.   EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Jason is in a program called the 10,000 Small Businesses Program by Goldman Sachs in conjunction with Babson College. Metrics are important for your business, your business environment, each department in your business, and life in general. A dashboard is a board with visual representations to help you keep track of metrics. Analogy: Inside a car, you have a dashboard measuring Fuel, RPMs, and any indicators for critical issues. Two metrics you should be tracking: KPI - Key Performance Indicator: Indicates progress toward an intended result. (Ex. Number of leads generated) KRI - Key Reportable Indicator: A lagging indicator/the end result. (Ex. Total Sales) In your dashboard, when you notice the numbers dropping in lead generation (one of your KPIs), you can make the necessary changes. Monitor each KPI in your dashboard and investigate any potential issues. Google Data Studio - free software for creating dashboards and connects to various payment systems. Templates can be imported as well. Other platforms: 9spokes.com, corelytics.com, dasheroo.com, klipfolio.com   TWEETABLE QUOTES: “Your dashboard shows you the vital signs of your business and helps you diagnose for potential issues.” – Jason A. Duprat “You can't manage what you can't measure.” – Peter Drucker   CONNECT WITH JASON DUPRAT LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram | Youtube Email: support@jasonduprat.com   RESOURCES Are you a high-level entrepreneur looking to connect with other like-minded and experienced business owners? Email me at info@jasonduprat.com to join the mastermind waitlist! Want to become an IV Nutritional Therapy provider? JOIN our FREE masterclass: https://www.ivtherapyacademy.com/podcast Have a healthcare business question? Want to request a podcast topic? Text me at 407-972-0084 and I'll add you to my contacts. Occasionally, I'll share important announcements and answer your questions as well. I'm excited to connect with you! Do you enjoy our podcast? Leave a rating and review: https://lovethepodcast.com/hea Don't want to miss an episode? Subscribe and follow: https://followthepodcast.com/hea   RELATED EPISODES: #180: TACTICAL TUESDAY: USING KPIS TO MEASURE BUSINESS SUCCESS #190: TACTICAL TUESDAY: BOOSTING PREDICTABILITY TO SELL MORE ONLINE COURSES #152: TACTICAL TUESDAY: 7 TIPS FOR MITIGATING DATA BREACHES & HACKS   #HealthcareEntrepreneurAcademy #healthcare #HealthcareBoss #entrepreneur #entrepreneurship #podcast #businessgrowth #teamgrowth #digitalbusiness

ReThink Council is a gathering of the top agents in the BHHS agents around the nation. In this meeting, the members take a deep dive into multiple aspects of real estate, from generating referrals and social media to other up-and-coming tactics realtors should look to integrate into their businesses. Responsibility In The Real Estate Space Tracking numbers within the business, whether as an individual or a team, is critical.  Agents are accountable for their own numbers. As independent contractors, they have a responsibility to know their own numbers. Each week, have a team meeting. Use a checklist for yourself to ensure you do all your necessary activities. This way you know how far in advance to call, when to follow up, etc. Four Disciplines Of Execution Discussed During Meetings Lagging indicators - Things that already happened. Active listings Units pending Pending Volume Additional Things Discussed During Meetings It's a great opportunity to celebrate victories and keep agents motivated. They also pick leading indicators to track like open houses, to see if it correlates to better performance. When tracking, use a free or paid data reporting application like Google Data Studio to have a clear and concise way to see where your numbers are at. Reward people who meet their quarterly goals. Approaching early-stage prospects Using postcards or other mediums to explain the buying process: Sending information explaining the buying process in clear language (with an offer to explain more in a meeting) is a great way to remain top-of-mind for early-stage prospects. Explain how to get pre-approved, provide potential lender's contact information, and how to find a home, submit an offer, and go through the inspection process. What best practices are they using to stay connected and build relationships with clients? There is a big difference when someone introduces you to someone as their realtor as opposed to introducing you as their friend.  Take a positive approach to your client events. Don't bother speaking real estate, just celebrate them.  As a closing gift, offer to throw a housewarming party for them and invite the neighbors. Invite them to bring another 3 couples, and develop a relationship with them. These 3 couples can potentially offer you great opportunities. Get to know them even as you are helping them buy a home. Remember something they enjoy, like a favorite beer and bring this to them when you bring their keys.  Provide them a closing gift that they can cherish, enjoy, and remember you buy. Give your clients gifts when they offer a referral.  Do you have a video or content idea perfect for your business? Share it with Jimmy! Connect with Jimmy Burgess on LinkedIn and Facebook and his YouTube channel.  If you like what you heard today, we'd love it if you'd share a rating or review and then subscribe to the podcast and tell others about it. You can find The Real Estate Sales Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, and our website, The Real Estate Sales Podcast.

Noah Learner is the Vice President of Product for Two Octobers, a digital marketing services firm. He joined the digital marketing world after 20 years in cycling retail, where he built an SEO advantage for his employers using readily available tools and data. His specialty is building the tools and automations to make digital marketing more efficient and scalable. We're talking data pipelines or data warehouses, Google Sheets Add-ons, PPC feed automations, world class Google Data Studio visualizations and reporting solutions, digital marketing process automation and more. And if you're not impressed yet, he also speaks at conferences, webinars, meetups, and am a frequent guest on SEO + marketing podcasts. BONUS: Noah shares how he overcame the anxiety, panic attacks, and imposter syndrome he felt before speaking engagements. Show Notes & Transcript: https://www.netwisedata.com/advance-your-marketing-career-as-a-builder-helper-ft-noah-learner/ Sign up for the Data-Driven Marketer Newsletter Come hang out in the Data Basement on Slack More NetWise: Twitter | Linkedin | Web I Blog+Newsletter | TikTok --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/datadriven/message

In the past few episodes, we've discussed the SEO and organic tracking implications of the switch from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4, but how does GA 4 help with paid campaigns, affiliate campaigns, Google Ads, campaign tracking with IDs, etc.?  Krista Seiden of KS Digital and former VP at Quantcast joined me on the SEJ Show to discuss the benefits and advantages of GA 4 for paid campaigns plus other opportunities digital marketers will face with the sunsetting of Google Analytics UA.   One of the misconceptions is that this product just isn't there yet, and I would push back a little bit and say it's constantly evolving, and a lot of new things have come out. So take the time to know how to use the tool and understand what's actually there. –Krista Seiden, 4:55 Don't expect your data to be precisely the same between UA and GA4. So even things like sessions and user accounts will be different because GA4 calculates these things in different ways than Universal Analytics. –Krista Seiden, 44:41 I do not think that this deadline is going to change. I would suggest taking this one seriously. If you don't start moving now, you'll probably not be able to pull your year-over data within GA4. The sooner that you get it implemented, the more historical data you will have in GA4 to be able to compare to. –Krista Seiden, 22:09 [00:00] - About Krista & her in-house background at Google Analytics. [03:23] - Common misconceptions about GA4. [05:20] - Is there more customization with GA4? [07:10] - Hesitations with the transfer. [08:42] - New feature releases with GA4. [12:57] - Why build reports with GA4 if you can utilize Google Data Studio? [16:08] - How is GA4 concerning GDPR? [19:33] - Differences in transition with GA360 and GA4360. [24:30] - What to expect with GA4. [26:18] - Can you define direct traffic better with GA4? [27:22] - Changes that affect PPC. [30:53] - Differences between goals and conversions. [34:15] - Reason why the data retention period is only two months by default in GA4. [35:18] - Recommendations to get started with GA4. [41:04] - Does Krista recommend a fallback?   Resources mentioned: https://ksdigital.co/academy/ https://join.measure.chat   It's nice that we now have this ability to actually customize the UI of GA4. So, for example, we can choose what reports to show or not for people in our organizations. –Krista Seiden, 5:44 GA4 is a heck of a lot more privacy-centric than Universal Analytics. –Krista Seiden, 16:41 I'm sure there's gonna be a lot of people waiting until the last minute. So do not wait till the last minute. Like we said, if anything, just go ahead and drop that tag on your site now. –Loren Baker, 49:18   For more content like this, subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/searchenginejournal Are you looking to keep up with current and effective digital marketing today? Check out https://www.searchenginejournal.com for everything you need to know within the digital marketing space and improve your skills as an internet marketer.   Connect with Krista Seiden: Krista Seiden is a savvy, experienced analytics leader who has led teams at Adobe and Google. In addition, she has led optimization initiatives for companies such as The Apollo Group and Quantcast. As an analytics and optimization methodology expert, she has become one of the most sought-after consultants in the industry. Her expertise led her to start KS Digital, an analytics consultancy in 2019, which helps businesses optimize their digital marketing and analytics investments. In addition to being dedicated and hardworking, she also contributes occasional guest posts to top industry publications such as Google Analytics Blog. When she is not working, she enjoys traveling as much as possible! Connect with Krista on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristaseiden/ Follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kristaseiden Visit her website: https://www.kristaseiden.com/ Connect with Loren Baker, Founder of Search Engine Journal: Follow him on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/lorenbaker Connect with him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorenbaker

Google produces some pretty amazing free tools, especially for small business owners. In today's episode, Fiona talks about free tools that can help you and your business. Tune in!

In episode #2172, we share a list of the best free SEO tools for anyone starting out with an online business. If you want to hear about tools for video, keywords, email collection, and more, you have come to the right place. Tune in to hear the complete list and boost your traffic today! TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:20] Today's topic: The Best Free SEO Tools for Beginners. [00:27] A little bit of self-promotion for Ubersuggest! [01:04] Why you should check out Google Search Console. [01:19] Video SEO tools such as vidIQ, and TubeBuddy. [01:41] Tracking metrics with Google Data Studio in order to get clear on ROI.  [02:00] How AnswerThePublic can help you find the most popular questions being asked. [02:22] Examples of email collection tools and how these can boost your reach. [02:52] A reminder about the power of Backlinko's Exploding Topics! [03:07] Why brands need to keep an eye on Google Trends. [03:38] That's it for today! [03:40] Go to https://www.marketingschool.io/live to apply for our live event! Links Mentioned in Today's Episode:   Subscribe to our premium podcast (with tons of goodies!): https://www.marketingschool.io/pro Ubersuggest  Google Search Console vidIQ TubeBuddy  Google Data Studio  AnswerThePublic  OptinMonster Hello Bar Sumo  Exploding Topics Banklinko Google Trends   Leave Some Feedback:     What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review.     Connect with Us:      Neilpatel.com Quick Sprout  Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel  Twitter @ericosiu    

Donna Dube, founder of Productivity Plus, is one of the lucky ones who has found her “Zone of Genius” and made the most of it. The mother of two teen-agers has a thriving practice helping high-level entrepreneurs bring their goals to life. What differentiates her from other business coaches? Her passion for the metrics. Donna has never met a spreadsheet she didn't like and looking at Google analytics makes her heart skip a beat – in a good way! On this episode, Donna is walking us through the strategies she uses to help business leaders go beyond defining their vision to measuring for actual progress along the way to achieving success. She also introduces suggestions to get us past any hesitation or intimidation about the numbers, including tracking tools, time audit exercises and the SAP Method to Streamline, Assign or Pause projects based on their relative merits. You'll come away from this conversation feeling motivated to face down the data because, as Donna points out, it's not that scary and in fact (once we remove the mental block) can be fun (not to mention hugely informative)! And don't forget to schedule that family hour or yoga class into your day. There's an app for that – and just about every other business function you can think of – so no more excuses. This productivity guru will motivate you to get organized and reap the rewards! Want to check out Donna's amazing Productivity Tracker? Click here to give it a free test drive. You can also schedule a complimentary discovery call or click here to download her free manual, "10 KPIs You Can Measure Today." Click here to listen to, rate and review this or previous She Turned Entrepreneur episodes. Here are key takeaways from the conversation:· Do you take pride in your incomparable ability to organize or mastermind a spreadsheet? It's a valuable skill set known as project management!· If you aren't creating measurable goals, there's no way to know how your business is truly doing.· Looking at data does not have to be scary! Think of it as gathering answers to questions.· Once you start showing positive results on your dashboard, it's exciting! You'll look forward to reading your own metrics!· If you've got the entrepreneurial bug, go for it. But start small and make a plan! Here's a quick look into the episode:· Donna started out as a nurse working 12-hour shifts in the ICU, then pivoted to online project management after the birth of her kids. · About finding her “Zone of Genius” in data, analysis and fostering efficiencies of all kinds!· About Donna's process and how she works with her clients:o A one-on-one project-based approach.o Articulate the high-level vision for the next six to 12 months.o Identify which projects are top priority within that timeframe.o Establish metrics to determine whether goals are on track.o Set up a dashboard to monitor and analyze business outcomes.· Data is an ally that can provide key indicators like:o How are people getting to your website?o What actions are they taking when they get there?· Donna shares a fascinating anecdote about how she leveraged Google analytics to help her client figure out which of her social media channels were actually generating business conversions and how.· About the SAP Method and how it can be applied to increase efficiencies.· Donna shares actionable tips:o When it comes to tracking metrics, start small. No more than a dozen at a time.o Identify which information will be most helpful in advancing the business.o Build a simple spreadsheet to help track indicators month over month.o Check out tools that will help automate the tracking process.o Free tools include: Google analytics, Google Data Studio.· About the elusive work-life balance: Donna believes in setting clear boundaries and then sticking to them, including calendaring family time and “me” time.· Words of wisdom for women pondering an entrepreneurial venture:o If you've got the itch, go for it!o But have a plan!o Start small. It can begin as a side hustle.

On this week's podcast, Grace and Liel discuss Google's continuing algorithmic problems, new creative possibilities for display advertising, and why Google Data Studio dashboards are your law firm's best friends. They also look at Instagram's Subscriptions, a revenue tool for creators, and how it might signal a change in how social media platforms function. And if you're still unsure whether or not to start your own podcast at your law firm, there are some tips on what software to use to sound and produce like a pro. Get ready to get an update on what's going on in the digital marketing world because we are about to drop some knowledge. Resources mentioned in our episode: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-confirms-indexing-issue-affecting-large-number-of-sites/457767/ (Google Ongoing Issue With Its Search Index) https://searchengineland.com/instagram-subscriptions-test-adds-3-new-features-386523 (Instagram Subscriptions test adds 3 new features) http://squadcast.fm (SquadCast, easily record podcasts) Send us your questions at ask@incamerapodcast.com Enjoy the show? Please don't forget to subscribe, tell your coworkers, and leave us a review!

On the PRmoment Podcast this week with me Ben Smith we're talking to Darryl Sparey, co-founder of Hard Numbers about how to measure the impact of your PRDarryl believes the opportunity is ripe for communicators everywhere to accurately measure their results through sales software like Hubspot and the like.And today Darryl is going to give his insight into the techniques and tools that he's found most useful in taking that approach.Hard Numbers is a B2B tech PR firm with a fee income of £1.4 m in the last financial year and 18 employees. Darryl co-founded the business in 2020 with Paul Stollery.Don't forget you can become a PRmoment Podcast Patreon - just follow the link on the page where you listen to this podcast. From just £5 a month we have three different Patron Tiers - The Daney Parker Tier, The Chadlington Tier and Edward Bernays Tier.Here's a summary of what Darryl and I discussed:3 mins Are most B2B PR campaigns still not properly integrated with the sales process? Aren't we a bit beyond that now? 4.30 mins Why PR people need to spend more time with chief revenue officers6 mins “PR measurement is (mainly based on) content analysis, not what impacts the business.”8.30 mins Darryl talks about the wonder of the B2B space: you can target content specifically to your buyer.10 mins Why B2B PR firms must have read-only access to their client's CRM and Google Analytics - otherwise they can't do their job.12 mins Darryl's advice for PR people: “Ask the CRO/Head of Sales: What are the most commonly held reasons why you don't win business?”14.30 mins A discussion of the best CRM, data and business intelligence tools13 mins How to cost-effectively bring your data together from multiple sources15 mins The customer's data journey will enable you to see the content ecosystem that they operate in and the cost per acquisition of the content.18 mins “Did that activity lead to an opportunity in the CRM and did it close?”19 mins Darryl's PR: sales impact tools of choice: Google Analytics, paid media channels, the clients CRM, the agency CRM (Darryl uses Hubspot), Google Data Studio, Databox, Microsoft's Power BI.23 mins Everyone has access to the tools: the secret source is how you bring them together in an accessible dashboard.25 mins Darryl's most popular impact KPIs: Leads, leads and leads27 mins How to link content to results: links, links links28 mins “50% of our coverage for a client, as a minimum, must have a link - if it does we can do all the clever measurement stuff. If you don't have a link the measurement is a lot harder.”30 mins “If you don't get a link (in coverage) to demonstrate a referral traffic, you can use branded search stats to help show the impact of a campaign”31 mins Why Darryl is trying to move PR down the funnel!

Hey there, everybody. Today on the Know, Like & Trust Show, we will discuss why you should measure the results of your sales funnel and the best ways to do it properly. I hope this episode will be a jumping point for your business so that you can understand how to be confident in your ... Read more The post Measuring Your Sales Funnel's Success with Google Data Studio Dashboards #198 appeared first on Content Strategy + Marketing Strategist Britney Gardner.

Today we have another episode of Better Done Than Perfect. Listen in as we talk with Julian Juenemann, founder of MeasureSchool and a Google Analytics expert. You'll learn how Google Analytics has evolved over the years, the benefits of organizing your data, tips when using Google's entire suite of data tools, and more.Please head over to the episode page for the detailed recap and key takeaways.Show notesMeasureSchool — Julian's membership companyMixpanel, Kissmetrics, Amplitude — popular analytics toolsGA4 — the new version of Google AnalyticsGoogle Tag Manager, Google Data Studio, Google Search Console — adjacent Google data productsMeasure Masters — Julian's MeasureSchool membership programSubscribe to the MeasureSchool YouTube ChannelFollow Julian on TwitterFollow MeasureSchool on TwitterSponsorThis show is brought to you by Userlist — an email automation platform for SaaS companies. It matches the complexity of your customer data, including many-to-many relationships between users and companies. Book your demo call today at userlist.com.Interested in sponsoring an episode? Learn more here.Leave a ReviewReviews are hugely important because they help new people discover this podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, please leave a review on iTunes. Here's how.

How do we make the most of our data in Google Analytics? It's free and extremely powerful, but also intimidating. In this episode, we talk to Julian Juenemann, founder of MeasureSchool and a Google Analytics expert. You'll learn how Google Analytics has evolved over the years, the benefits of organizing your data, tips when using Google's entire suite of data tools, and more.Visit our website for the detailed episode recap with key learnings.MeasureSchool — Julian's membership companyMixpanel, Kissmetrics, Amplitude — popular analytics toolsGA4 — the new version of Google AnalyticsGoogle Tag Manager, Google Data Studio, Google Search Console — adjacent Google data productsMeasure Masters — Julian's MeasureSchool membership programSubscribe to the MeasureSchool YouTube ChannelFollow Julian on TwitterFollow MeasureSchool on TwitterThanks for listening! If you found the episode useful, please spread the word about the show on Twitter mentioning @userlist, or leave us a review on iTunes.SponsorThis show is brought to you by Userlist — an email automation platform for SaaS companies. It matches the complexity of your customer data, including many-to-many relationships between users and companies. Book your demo call today at userlist.com.

Supermetrics, a Helsinki SaaS data integration tool that automates resource-consuming data delivery has announced the creation of up to 100 new jobs over the next two years alongside its investment in a dedicated Dublin office. The expansion of its Dublin operations demonstrates Supermetrics' commitment to the region, while strengthening the company's international capabilities and delivery model, built for clients that are focused on growth and scaling globally. Welcoming the announcement Minister of State for Business, Employment and Retail Damien English TD said “Congratulations to the Supermetrics team on their expansion, which will see the creation of 100 new jobs in Dublin. This announcement further underscores Ireland's position as a global hub for the world's leading tech companies. I have no doubt that Dublin will play a significant role in supporting the growth of the business – we have a track record as an established tech hub in Europe with a skilled workforce. I wish them the very best of luck with their exciting expansion plans.” Founded in Finland in 2013 by Mikael Thuneberg, Supermetrics specialises in marketing data integration tools that make it easy for marketing analysts and business intelligence teams to move and integrate data to data warehouses, BI tools, and easy-to-use applications such as Google Data Studio, Google Sheets, and Microsoft Excel. The company has grown organically since the beginning, generating a profit since day one. In addition to its new Dublin space, Supermetrics has offices in Helsinki, Vilnius, Atlanta and Singapore.In March 2022, Viva Technology selected Supermetrics for its European Top 100 Unicorns list, which predicts non-listed companies with prospects to reach a valuation of more than $1 billion. “Ireland has established itself as one of the world's leading tech hubs. In addition to some of the biggest names in technology, many of whom are Supermetrics clients, it is renowned for its highly skilled workforce and strong ties with the US, all of which were critical factors in our decision to expand our Dublin operations,” says Mikael Thuneberg, CEO & Founder of Supermetrics, stating “We are constantly recruiting new talent in response to growing demand and Ireland is the perfect market to help us achieve this. By the end of this year we project to double the size of the company and grow our revenues by at least 50%, as we place greater emphasis on the US market.” Martin Shanahan, CEO, IDA Ireland said “Dublin remains a leading destination city for fast growing companies to establish operations here in order to serve and grow their customer base in the region. Ireland has a track record of being an attractive location for Software as a Service (SaaS) companies looking to access a well-established talent pool to scale quickly. I wish Supermetrics every success with this investment and offer the ongoing support of IDA Ireland.” Supermetrics Group has experienced strong growth, with its workforce increasing by 90%, from 137 employees at the end of 2020 to 260 today, while turnover reached EUR 36.1 million, resulting in a EUR 6.1 million profit. To support its continued expansion, the company's workforce is projected to grow to 400 people by the end of 2022. The data integration tool has achieved a solid position among its target audience of marketing teams, agencies and enterprise customers around the world and is today one of the most successful companies in its industry. Supermetrics is pioneering the creation of user-friendly data tools: while traditional data tools have been designed mainly for engineers, Supermetrics makes it easy for anyone to organize massive amounts of data. In this way, it has democratised data in companies, making it available to technical and non-technical workers alike. “When Mikael first showed me the Supermetrics platform I was awed by the ability of Supermetrics software to simplify the truly complex data problems marketers face every day. I wante...

Automation is booming in efforts to reduce mundane tasks and focus our time on things that truly have an impact. Porter is built to let any marketer without previous knowledge of Google Data Studio automates reporting in a few minutes. In a nutshell, Porter is built for marketers who don't code, want to do things by themselves, appreciate personalized support and hate bureaucracy. The Head of Content Marketing, Paula Velandia reminds us of the power of helping customers rather than just selling to them. With tutorials, guides, templates, valuable CTAs, and quality and educational content Paula and the team greatly support their customers' buying journey.

Show Resources Here were the resources we covered in the episode: Data Studio dashboard that Anna Shutko and AJ created together @AnnaShutko on twitter Marketing Analytics Show LinkedIN: Send DM and posting NEW LinkedIn Learning course about LinkedIn Ads by AJ Wilcox Contact us at Podcast@B2Linked.com with ideas for what you'd like AJ to cover.   Show Transcript Have you heard of Supermetrics? If you're a LinkedIn advertiser, it's your new best friend. We're covering the capabilities on this week's episode of the LinkedIn Ads Show. Welcome to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Here's your host, AJ Wilcox. AJ Wilcox Hey there LinkedIn Ads fanatics. So we're highlighting another tool today in the LinkedIn advertisers arsenal. We're discussing a tool that I've been using now for years. It's absolutely indispensable for our team, because we're managing so many different accounts. And we're dealing with so much data. That tool is called Super metrics. And it's a very simple way of getting all of your ads data into a spreadsheet, or visualization tool for better reporting and analysis. I'm excited to welcome Anna Shutko from Supermetrics to answer my questions, and give you the inside scoop on what's coming. Anna and I go way back. And we've even collaborated on a free dashboard for LinkedIn advertisers, that you'll all get here in the show notes and I think you'll enjoy it. Without further ado, let's jump into the interview. Okay, I'm really excited here to have Anna Shutko from Supermetrics. She is the Brand Strategist at Supermetrics. She's also host of the awesome podcast, The Marketing Analytics Show, make sure you go and subscribe to that right now,if you're not already. She is based in Helsinki, Finland. And she was number seven on the Supermetrics team. She has been there over five and a half years she is one of the OGs for sure. She's also an avid cyclist and skier. Anna, I'm so excited to have you on the show. We've been friends for a long time. Thanks so much for joining us. Anna Shutko 1:42 I know, right?! Thank you so so much for having me. I'm super excited to be on the show. AJ Wilcox 1:49 I'm just as excited to have you I have so many great questions for you. Well, I'm the host. And so if I say that they're great, it's a little bit biased, but didn't really have some questions I think are gonna be really good for you. And for those of us who are listening, tell us anything about yourself that you want anything I may not have covered in your intro. Anna Shutko 2:05 Yeah, sure. So I think you nailed my bio. So I did a piece of furniture with Supermetrics. As I like to joke about it. I've been at the company for quite a while now more than five years. Wow. It's crazy when you think about it. So what people usually find interesting because I sometimes go in client calls and then when my colleagues introduce me, they're like, yeah, she's been here with us for such a long time. And people who knows Supermetrics are very, very surprised, because I guess not so many people like me have been with the company for a long time. We were a tiny team back then. Now we've grown fantastically. And we've grown so fast. Now we're over 250 people. It's crazy. So yeah, it's been a wild ride. And yeah, like I said, I've been moving between different areas of marketing between different departments. So I started as a growth marketer, then I went on to become a product marketing manager. I was also product manager, I was managing the relays and different connectors. And then I moved on to brand marketing. And now I'm super excited about my new role. So I'm building the brand measurement system, and I'm pretty sure we're gonna hear more about it. But yeah, that's a little bit about me. So many different areas. It's super exciting to see the company grow. It's super exciting to change all these different roles and learn more about connectors, including or favorite LinkedIn connectors. So that's a bit of a thing. AJ Wilcox 3:39 Oh, beautiful. And I am a fan of the LinkedIn connectors for sure. So thank you for your great work on those. Let's go ahead and start in here on the first question. So for those who are not already familiar with Supermetrics, what are the challenges that Supermetrics solve. Why is Supermetrics originally in business? Anna Shutko 3:58 Yeah, definitely. So Supermetrics essentially, is a data pipeline tool, as I like to call it. So we transfer data from a variety of different data sources or connectors, how we call them interchangeably. And these are LinkedIn Ads, Facebook Ads, Google Analytics, HubSpot, e-commerce platforms like Shopify. We cover over 80 different platforms. And like I said, literally any most popular and big marketing platform, you name it. And we transfer all this data to set up different data destinations. So we have sub categorized them into spreadsheets. So these are your Google Sheets and your Excel. Then there are different data visualization tools like Google Data Studio, or Power BI, Tableau, so data analytics/data visualization tools. And the third group is our data warehousing clusters. So we transfer data to different data warehouses like Azure, Google BigQuery, etc., etc., etc., And data links so you can combine your all your data in one place and store it securely. So that's a little bit about Supermetrics. So because we cover a lot of data destinations, and we connect to many different platforms and transfer the data, we cover a variety of different scenarios here. And this is actually historically has been the challenging part within product marketing, which also makes it very, very interesting that because we have so many products, we can help you cover multiple scenarios of what you want to do with your data. So you can have your reporting and dashboarding. So these are your client facing reports for agencies. And if you're an in house marketer, you can create your so called boss pacing reports, you have to create within your team. So these can be done in tools like Google Sheets, there are lots of writers who take advantage of Google Sheets and Excel and the formulas they can create there. And also, of course, do the visualization tools like Google Data Studio, super easy to add connectors there, it's super easy to create beautiful reports there and share them with your team. Then there are some cases of ad hoc analyses. And these are usually related to the questions you need to answer right now. So for example, why is my LinkedIn Ad spend so high and I have not seen the results? Or why does target audience A perform better than target audience B? So if you have this question and you really want to quickly acquire your data to answer the specific question, Supermetrics for Google Sheets can be a really good tool because we have the sideboard technology where you can select the metrics and dimensions you want to pick, and then it will pull the data into the spreadsheet, so that you can quickly answer very pressing questions. And another use case we have is the data warehousing use case where you can tie data across multiple different sources. So instead of just looking at one or two, or three or five data sources, you can create really complex models. But in order to create these models, you need to store your data in one place in order to join all this data. So here, you can pull all the data into your Google big query and then visualize it with a helpful view. But you can also perform the necessary data transformations within this data warehouse. So for example, you can compare the performance of your ad networks such as Google versus Facebook, again, you can segment and test different audiences, you can join data in the way you want to see sequel. And also you can report on the whole user journey. So for example, your clients started by clicking on your LinkedIn ads campaign, and they went to your website. And then you capture their website behavior with Google Analytics, maybe some of this data is coming from your CRM. And then with the help of a data warehouse, you can store all these data and then inquiry to connect the pieces together and see the whole user journey. So here are our most popular use cases. AJ Wilcox 8:20 Okay, so just out of curiosity for being able to track the whole buyer journey. What sort of software or tools do you need in place in order to I guess, get that journey across all the different platforms? Is that requiring that they're in a CRM or something that's already natively tracking all of that? Anna Shutko 8:36 Yeah, so usually depends on the company. Some companies might not necessarily have the budget or the need for a CRM. Of course, having a CRM is ideal. So if you have something like HubSpot, or it's Salesforce, it's really, really good also because their API's are so robust. They allow you to create custom dimensions and custom metrics to track your unique use cases. So for example, your users have, like I said, clicked on your LinkedIn Ads, and then they land on a website. And then they have to fill in a form. And the form might be somewhere, like on a different website, maybe it's an event and you're hosting a registration on Eventbrite, say for example. So when they put their data into Eventbrite or somewhere else, you also need to somehow capture this data within your CRM. So an alternative solution here could be to build a web page there where they would fill all their details. And then you can store all this data within the server ad. And then at the same time, you can combine it with the data coming from LinkedIn Ads. So it really depends. I would recommend starting with a combination of like ad networks, and reporting on that data and then combining it with data from Google Analytics. This can be the easiest when you're using a CRM, but at the same time, you can already start seeing a better overview of your user journey, and then connect to your CRM and then build on top these custom goals and metrics to create more of a reporting system. AJ Wilcox 10:16 Very cool. This is a topic that's been really top of mind for me, as I'm thinking about, as cookie apocalypse continues, and we losing our dependence on third party cookies. How effective are we as marketers going to be being able to track someone across the whole user journey when we know that, that cookies disappearing? This is fascinating to me So thanks for helping us out with that. So those are the problems that Supermetrics solves. Why is Supermetrics in such a good position to solve this problem? Why not, you know, Google themselves, just replace you with having a simple tool that just spits out their data. Same thing with LinkedIn? Like, why is Supermetrics solving this problem and not anyone else? Anna Shutko 10:57 Yeah, that's definitely a really, really good question. I can talk about this for hours. But we only have a limited amount of time, I guess. So first of all, Google is one of our partners. So Google, of course, is a massive, massive company and they have an amazing set of tools, but they are not the whole ecosystem. So there are lots of other players like Facebook, like LinkedIn, like Twitter, like HubSpot. And they also provide a set of really, really good API's, which allow you to export the data on the campaigns that are run. So super metrics, like mentioned, helps combine all this data and then we push this data to a number of different destinations. These are not just Google Sheets, these are Excel, for example. So for example, if your company is using Microsoft and you are required to use the office space, then Supermetrics can be a real really good tool because we can help push this data to your Excel desktop, say you set up your inquiries, and then you go offline completely. And then you can analyze your data using Excel. So like I said, we don't only connect to Google platforms. We help connect different players within the ecosystem together. And another good example is our Data Studio product. So Google Data Studio is a free data visualization tool for those of you who do not know. And they have native integrations with Google Analytics, Google Ads and other Google platforms, that is true. But for example, many marketers use Supermetrics to get data from Facebook or LinkedIn to the same data visualization tool. And if you're running ads on multiple different platforms, it would be a little bit silly to just analyze your Google Ads data without analyzing what you're doing on your LinkedIn as a platform, kind of like together. So we help marketers gain a very holistic view of their performance in the tools they already know, in the tools they already can use in the tools they already know how to use. So for example, if you know how to use Google Sheets, you can just install Supermetrics add on. And then you can continue using your favorite tool without this learning curve without the need to learn a new tool, and just query the data from the platform you want, say LinkedIn Ads, and just create the reports there. Or you can use these tools in combination. So we have a native Data Studio connector for our required products, for example, you've combined the data from multiple different sources in your inquiry project, and then you want to visualize this data. So you can use our Data Studio connector to do this. And the names of metrics and dimensions will have clear descriptions to to be very easy for you to understand what kind of metric you're visualizing, and how you can create a better report using all these tools together. AJ Wilcox 13:54 Oh, I like it. Alright, thanks for sharing that. I definitely think I'm of the same opinion you are that any of the other networks or channels could easily come out with a product that allows easier access to the data they have. But the Supermetrics advantage here is just being able to aggregate from all of these different connectors, regardless of whether or not any of them come out with an easier way for us to do it ourselves. Tell us about your relationship with LinkedIn, as well as the other platforms. What do you get from that partnership? How long have you been partners, that kind of thing? Anna Shutko 14:26 Yeah, sure, definitely. So with LinkedIn, we've been partners for quite some time. And there are many, many marketers, 1000s of marketers, is what we're talking about that reported their LinkedIn Ads. And then concrete budget pacing reports with Supermetrics. So we've recently demoed our product to your team. And like I said, we have really, really good and close collaboration there. And in addition to LinkedIn, we partner with Stack Adapt, HubSpot, Google, like I mentioned, AdRoll and many, many other data source and data destination companies. So when we partner with a company, we try to create the best possible value for the end user, of course. So we love creating templates for Data Studio especially. We've created some with the HubSpot. So we sit together with their product managers and think, Okay, what kind of metrics would be great to visualize for users. And we create completely free reporting templates with all the needed metrics and dimensions that our user can use as they are, or they can just take them as a blueprint for their own reports, they can tweak the metrics, they can tweak dimensions they can do that they want. And it's really amazing to partner with these companies, because we can combine the best of both both worlds so to say, so we have the reporting and analytics and data consolidation expertise, and the platform's bring their own know how, their knowledge to the table. So AJ you and I created this really, really good LinkedIn Ads dashboard. And this is one very good example of how your know how or some platform managers know how can be combined with Supermetrics know how. AJ Wilcox 16:20 Which is beautiful, we are going to link to that dashboard down below in the show notes so everyone can get access to it. But, Anna I'm so glad you brought this up. Because this has been a couple years ago, or a few years ago now. But we worked for about six months, I think on creating this dashboard, we call it the ultimate LinkedIn Ads dashboard. It's in Data Studio, it's totally free, like you mentioned, and anyone out there can go and get really complex analysis of their LinkedIn Ads. And that was because of you and I working so hard on that. I'm a big fan, I hope everyone goes and grabs that. Just to make it clear as to what Supermetrics is doing for LinkedIn advertisers. I mean, it's it's cool that you guys aggregate all of the different data and channels together into one spot. I think marketers who are responsible for more than one channel would love that. But for LinkedIn, specifically, you advertisers who are listening, you know how hard it is to get data out of LinkedIn. If every time you want to do a report, you have to go and click the export feature inside of campaign manager, and then put it into Excel, and then you know, do whatever formatting changes, you need to do, create pivot tables, then all of a sudden, all of that data is it's a snapshot of it, you can't do anything else with it. And so the next time your boss asks for a report, you're going and doing it again. What Supermetrics does is it will take, even on a schedule, this is my favorite part about it, you can say I want this data going into Excel or into Google Sheets, and I want it every day at 2am. I want it to go pull the next day's data. And then it's always there any report any pivot table that you build, all you have to do is just refresh. And now you'd never have to build that same report ever again. So, so cool. We'll talk about more of my favorite features of Supermetrics here a little bit later. But I just wanted everyone to know like, this is why it's so valuable for you. This is why I'm doing this tool spotlight on Supermetrics. Because there just is no other way to do with LinkedIn, what Supermetrics does. So I want to hear from you. What are the capabilities of Supermetrics, especially as it pertains to LinkedIn advertisers? Anna Shutko 18:28 Yeah, definitely. So I've mentioned a couple of capabilities. And like I said, because we have a product umbrella, it allows us to help customers solve multiple reporting and reporting related issues. So we have your ad hoc reporting, where we can acquire the data on the fly. And this is your Google Sheets, Excel products. We help with the data consolidation. These are your data warehousing products, building beautiful data visualizations, or you can have little exploration in Looker or Tableau or Power BI. Another really interesting thing I'd like to highlight here is that as you know, LinkedIn ads API constantly changes will always constantly change. LinkedIn is always coming up with new features. And he was right, you mentioned that it's challenging to export the data out of LinkedIn Ads. And this is something we're really help with, but it will also help you export this data in the right format. And we can help you create reports with really, really high data granularity. So what it means in practice is that you can test and report on many different pieces of a LinkedIn Ads campaign audiences. You have your campaign types, creatives, objectives, and you can break down your campaign into different pieces, pass these pieces individually or perform an AB test, and then make really, really smart optimizations. So this is one thing that I really, really like and would like to highlight here. And typically, we help achieve this with our Google Sheets product. And one very precise example is, again, the dashboard AJ and I have built. Belt. So you can report on not one, but four different types of spend. So there are formulas that help you calculate your total spend, projected spend, goal spend, as in the amount of you have to spend without under over spending. And then the cumulative spend to something you've spent overall. And here, we've taken one metric, which is spend, and then your budget goal, and then transformed into four different kinds of spend. And this brings me to my earlier point about data granularity, you can report on really granular data. So you can break down your spend by day, you know, Google Sheet, then create these calculations to have these four different types of spends. And then think about it holistically for not one, but four different viewpoints. And then create your budget pacer that can help you allocate budgets. Because LinkedIn Ads is a very costly platform, as we all know. So having these different types of spend calculating these different types of spend is really, really helpful. And the same thing goes with audiences and can campaign types. You can break all these spend down by multiple different dimensions, like what kind of audience brings the best ROI, what kind of campaign type performs better than the other campaign types. What kind of creative helps me get more clicks? So you can get really, really nerdy with your data. And this is something I really, really love. And another beautiful thing is that you can then combine this data. So if you don't want to look at it in a very granular way, you can also combine all this data in Google Data Studio report. And again, this is something that we've tried and tested, and it worked. So after you've analyzed all these types of spend, you can push them into the to see the dashboard to see bigger trends. So for example, you've noticed that your projected spend during this month is higher than your projected spend over the last couple of months. And you can start thinking, why you can understand what might be like bigger drivers behind this change. And in addition to this, you can add all different types of other data. For example, you can add your data on AB testing to see which campaigns have performed better historically. Or you can even add your data from LinkedIn Pages. Because if you use LinkedIn Ads and LinkedIn Pages in combination with can be a very, very powerful duo. It can help you uncover many sides on your audience. So there are a lot of different ways in which Supermetrics can help you slice and dice your LinkedIn Ads data. But also create really, really good reports that can help you get a general overview. AJ Wilcox 23:02 I love this, there's no data that you can get from campaign manager that you can't get within Supermetrics. And you own the data, you get to do whatever you want with it. So just like what Anna was talking about, with the ability to break down your spend by ad type and by audience, all these things are fantastic. But then you realize you could have a Google sheet or a page in your Data Studio dashboard that allows you to see the AB tests you're running, and another page that might show you just your budget, like what Anna was talking about. And another one that could be just your metrics at a glance like, hey, how are my general click through rates, or my general conversion rates, all of this you can do, it's super easy. And just in the dashboard that Anna and I built for you here a couple years ago, all of that is like already set up for you. So very, very cool. Anything else you want to share about the capabilities that we should go over? Anna Shutko 23:58 Yeah, definitely. Also, we have real really nice use cases. There is a tab on our website where you can read more about what other clients are doing. And I know it's useful for a fact because our customer success managers have found it very useful. So you can also learn from other people and you can check what some other guys are doing with their Facebook Ads campaign and apply the same ideas to your LinkedIn Ads reporting, which I think is super super exciting, because understand and basically steal ideas in the best possible way. Understand how others are running their reports. Another really, really good feature is the automated way of reporting. For example, once you've set your LinkedIn Ads budget tracker in spreadsheet, you can say, hey, I want to update my data and if my spend increases, and if it crosses you know the threshold to XYZ amount, send me an email. There is literally no human error unless you set up the query correctly. So you can easily get the data you want, whenever you want. And you can also set up rules and get customized alerts whenever something goes wrong. So you don't need to monitor your ad campaign on a daily basis. You don't need to worry about this, you set the report once, and then you forget about it. And then you can think about creatives, audience testing, whatever you want, whatever is on your table. So that allows you to focus on more interesting problems, which has always been the case for me, for example, when I'm using Supermetrics, I noticed that every single time I'm able to automate something, I can use this time on something else, which is something more exciting. And also, you can report in your campaigns faster, which of course, is a great thing, since you save a lot of time and then can spend it on something else. And yeah, like I said, we help cover pretty much a variety of reporting use cases, we also have a template gallery. So you can check it out on Supermetrics.com. We have our Google Sheets template gallery, we have our Data Studio template gallery, and we're gonna link to the dashboard AJ and I created so you can see how you can visualize your LinkedIn Ads data. AJ Wilcox 26:17 Oh, I love it. Thanks for sharing those. So what are some of the results that your customers have seen for their LinkedIn Ads because they are using Supermetrics? Anna Shutko 26:26 Yeah, definitely. So first of all, they are seeing improved targeting. Like I mentioned, once are able to really select your data in a variety of different ways. You can dig deeper into it, and then understand what exactly is working and what exactly is not working. So imagine, if you're diagnosing a patient, and you have only one, two, or maybe tools, that's not really going to give you enough information into what's wrong. And a campaign cannot really tell you what's wrong about it. So once you have a whole tool set being maybe Supermetrics for Google Sheets, data warehousing, etc, etc. You can slice and dice your data in a variety of different ways. Now you can diagnose your patient much better. You can pinpoint exactly what's wrong, whether it's the campaign type, or the spend, or the audience, or maybe creative, or maybe something else. And then you can really, really understand how exactly we're going to go about this. So of course, all that leads to increase ROI, time saved, and improved communication. What we've seen within the teams, because instead of arguing, you know, oh, you've adjusted this spend in a wrong way, no we should have increased these bids, you have much more intelligent conversations. And hopefully your team dynamic improves, because you can just look at the numbers. And this is something we also use internally. We just pull up a dashboard, we just check the numbers and the numbers never lie, and then they tell you the direction you need to take. And we just go from there. So it's very, very cool to use data to your advantage. AJ Wilcox 28:16 Amen to that. And how much does Supermetrics cost for these advertisers who want to use it for their LinkedIn campaigns and haven't used it before? Anna Shutko 28:24 Yeah, definitely. So it really depends on the product. So I don't want to provide inaccurate information. So the best way to check it is to go to Supetmetrics.com and then check the data destinations you want to use. And then check how you want to report on your LinkedIn Ads campaigns. So the price for Google Sheets is of course different from the price you are going to have for your data warehouse. But if you need a custom solution, our sales team is of course happy to help you. So you can select not just LinkedIn Ads, but a variety of different connectors. And this is what I normally would recommend. So don't just pick LinkedIn Ads, you can pick Google Analytics, or LinkedIn Ads, and LinkedIn Pages, for example. You can combine these data with our ad data plus google analytics connector for our Google Data Studio destination. There is a massive combination, all different data sources and the different data destinations you can potentially have so the price of course depends on that. And also, the pricing is relatively simple. You know, it might not sound as simple when I'm trying to describe it. But once you pick your destination, once you pick your connectors, you just pick the number of your accounts and how often you want to refresh your data. But that's about it. Once you know all these factors, once you understand which one wants to go with, then it's pretty simple. AJ Wilcox 29:54 And it is really reasonably priced. I've been using the tool now for years. Absolutely love. That's why I'm doing a tool spotlight on Supermetrics when there are plenty of other LinkedIn tools that I'm probably not going to cover. So thanks for providing such an awesome tool at good pricing. All right, here's a quick sponsor break, and then we'll dive right back in the LinkedIn Speaker 4 30:13 The LinkedIn Ads Show is proudly brought to you by B2Linked. com, the LinkedIn Ads experts. AJ Wilcox 30:22 If the performance of your LinkedIn Ads is important to you, B2Linked is the partner agency you'll want to work with. We've spent over $150 million on LinkedIn Ads, and no one outperforms us on getting you the lowest cost per lead and the utmost scale. We're official LinkedIn partners, and you'll deal only with LinkedIn Ads experts from day one. Fill out the contact form on any page of B2Linked.com to chat about your campaigns, and we'd absolutely love the opportunity to get to work with you. AJ Wilcox 30:51 Alright, let's jump right back into the interview. Let me ask you, we've talked a lot about the capabilities of the platform and the company. What's your favorite feature of Supermetrics? Like, you're obviously a marketer yourself and a dang good one? What is the most helpful aspect of it to you? Anna Shutko 31:06 Yeah, sure. So first of all, I really, really love that we collaborate with our data destination partners very closely. And that allows us to develop product which sits within a data destination so to say, in most cases. Not all our products need data destinations, but most do. And I'm talking about all our Google Data Studio we co developed together with Google's team, working very closely with their engineers. So you can go to Google Data Studio, you can create any kind of report with Supermetrics, without ever leaving Google Data Studio. And this is amazing. You don't have to go from one page to another page to the next page. You just go to your Data Studio, you select LinkedIn Ads as a connector, where you connect it to your dashboard. And that's it. You can basically query data and create beautiful reports. So the experience is very, very intuitive. It's very smooth. And same thing applies to our Excel and Google Sheet product. So we have a sidebar, where you can take metrics and dimensions you want to pull. And then some magic happens here and your data just appears within a spreadsheet. So the adoption is very, very fast. I remember when I first saw our Google Sheets product, I fell in love it it instant, and it happened more than five years ago. But it's still remember it because the experience was so good, even back then. And another really, really useful feature is perhaps the ability to pull data from and report on multiple accounts easily. So I'm not talking about data sources here. But accounts, for example, you are an agency, and you're running campaigns on 50,60, 70, 100, different LinkedIn Ads accounts. And you have a really, really big client. And then they have 70 accounts. And imagine connecting these accounts one by one to your dashboard would be a complete nightmare. With Supermetrics, you can just select them all at once or then pull them all into the same spreadsheet all into one database, to a one to one Data Studio report. And then with the drop down selection, you can just take which accounts you want to see date the data from and this data will appear. It's very, very, very helpful for our agency friends over there. And the same thing happens with all the other data sources. So Google's accounts and if you want to combine your LinkedIn Ads with Google Analytics data, it's very, very easy to report on. AJ Wilcox 33:55 Very nice, I'll tell you, I have several things that I absolutely love about Super metrics. I've played with a lot inside of Data Studio. And what I love is number one, it's fast. When you're in Data Studio, and you're using Supermetrics as your data source, the pages just load nearly instantly. It's super, super fast. It's also really easy to use, like I use LinkedIn API. And I know what that's like to be looking at these metrics on the back end that have a name, and you're going I don't know what that name is. Supermetrics calls them things like every column, every source, every metric, every KPI, they're all named in ways that even just a very, very basic marketer, like brand new to the industry could still understand what it was they were building. If you've ever tried to take data directly from LinkedIn. So you export it to a CSV, and then you try to put that into Data Studio. What you'll notice is the columns aren't of the right data types, and you have to keep going into your spreadsheet and making changes when you use Data Studio or Google Sheets, but especially Data Studio with the Supermetrics connector, everything already comes in and exactly the right data types, you're never going to have to worry about, oh, my dates aren't showing up because Excel didn't recognize it was a date. And then Data Studio didn't recognize that it was either, you never have to worry about that. Something else that I love, let's say you go into campaign manager, you do an export to CSV. And it's a, let's say, an ADS report or campaigns report, when you look at that column of like, click through rate or cost per click, as soon as you try to combine that or do some kind of like an average, those averages don't mean anything. If you try to do an average of a whole bunch of percentages, it will make some kind of an average, but it'll be wrong. And Supermetrics fixes all those like every time we export something with Supermetrics. All of the columns are accurate all the time in a way that they wouldn't be from LinkedIn directly. I'll also mention one more thing, which is there was a metric that I wanted to see inside of super metrics that I knew LinkedIn had access to it was a new one. And I mentioned something to you, Anna. And you said, Oh, let me message the engineering team. And I want to say it was within like, a couple hours, you've messaged me back and said, Hey, check it, we should have that data available now. And so it's fast, like Supermetrics is always on top of new changes. Anna Shutko 36:23 I think we should definitely hire you, AJ, if you're ready to move to Helsinki, just know, just let me know, I have a spot for you on the team. AJ Wilcox 36:32 I am very good in cold weather. So we should talk about it. Let me ask what's coming up in the future that you're super excited about with Supermetrics? Anna Shutko 36:40 Yeah, so there are so many things that are coming up. First of all, we have multiple new data warehousing destinations for all of you data nerds out there. So you can store your LinkedIn Ads data in more places. And also, we are always developing our data sources, and then pattern paths for now. So you can then combine this one connects data with a variety of data sources. And that's been on the product side. I am always very excited about the new product developments. But also, I'm very exciting about The Marketing Analytics Show. This is the podcast that I host. We're gonna interview really, really cool guest. You're going to hear more about the first party data. So something AJ and I briefly talked about at the beginning of this podcast, and how you can tag your data correctly before you cleanse your data warehouse, and many, many other cool topics. And every single time I talk to these guests on super, super excited because the share very interesting viewpoint about this industry. AJ Wilcox 37:52 I love it. I'm a subscriber of the podcast, make sure you all go back and listen to episode four, because yours truly was on there. Just kidding. You don't have to listen to that particular episode, go listen to something that you don't already know super well. If you're listening to the show, you probably get everything that we talked about. Something that you mentioned, that I think is so helpful is that if you're making all of your decisions, from the data that you get directly from LinkedIn, you will find that you're making the wrong decisions. What I mean by that is like the data you get from LinkedIn on things like even conversions, leads, means next to nothing, until you find out whether those are qualified leads, whether those leads are actually turning into sales. And so Anna, what you mentioned that is so cool is this direction of moving into the data warehousing solutions. So now you have access to what LinkedIn has. But then with other CRMs and other data partners and data warehouses, you're able to then combine that with the data that you can find only from your CRM, or other sources that can report to you on number of qualified leads and other elements of lead quality, how many proposals sent, closed deals, what the deal closed for, and you can actually report on what really matters. So that makes me really excited. So final question. This might be something you've already answered. But what are you most excited about either personally or professionally, yourself? Anna Shutko 39:15 Yeah, sure. I am excited about a few things in general. And like mentioned, there have been really, really exciting product developments at Supermetrics. But one thing I wanted to pinpoint is that right now I'm building the brand measurement system. And this is basically a series of data transformations and dashboards that help combine all the data about our brand and how it's performing. And I'd like to say we drink our own champagne, it's a Supermetrics. So of course, we're using Supermetrics to consolidate all this data. So it's really exciting to work in this project. And it's really exciting to see how our product works from the client perspective. And of course, whenever I'm ready, I'm happy to share all the insights and all the learnings. AJ Wilcox 40:09 Wonderful. Well, as you're coming out with that stuff, how can people follow you? How can people obviously I would say, make sure you subscribe to The Marketing Analytics Show. But how else can people find out this stuff as you're releasing it? Anna Shutko 40:21 Yeah, sure. So I am on Twitter. So it's @AnnaShutko on Twitter. And you can just follow me there. I promise you, I really promise that I will post more and I will post more updates on the podcast and insights that are learned after building this system. And another way to connect with me is to follow me on LinkedIn, you can connect with me there, you can send me a DM and I will also be posting some of the updates there. AJ Wilcox 40:54 Oh, I love it. Okay, we'll put all those links here in the show notes below. So make sure you do follow Anna, reach out to her if you have questions. Anna, thanks so much for coming on the show. I think it's very obvious that I'm a huge Supermetrics fan. I really just appreciate our collaboration in the past, and everything you've shared. Is there anything else that you want to share with us before we jump off? Anna Shutko 41:15 Yeah, sure. Thank you so much, AJ, for inviting me, it was a very, very interesting conversation, great questions. And I love being interviewed by fellow podcast host. So one more thing before we leave. So I'll ask AJ to link the article we co-wrote in the show notes. So you can follow how exactly we came up with these four different types of spend you can monitor, and how you can report on AB test for your LinkedIn Ads campaign, there was a lot of good stuff there. So also, this article contains really practical instructions and how you can connect your LinkedIn Ads, and then create this superpower spreadsheet and then connect that spreadsheet to Data Studio dashboards so you can also use different charts and visualizations. So not only will you learn how to approach LinkedIn Ad spend reporting. You will also learn a bunch of different tools, hopefully. So check it out. I really hope you enjoy it. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us. And I'm really, really happy to be part of this LinkedIn Ads community. AJ Wilcox 42:27 Wonderful. Well, thanks, Anna. I will definitely link to all of that. And just a big shout out to you everything that you're building is awesome for us marketers. So a huge thank you from the LinkedIn Ads community. Anna Shutko 42:37 Thank you so much. I'm so happy you are enjoying. AJ Wilcox 42:39 All right, I've got the episode resources for you coming right up. So stick around Speaker 4 42:49 Thank you for listening to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Hungry for more AJ Wilcox, take it away. AJ Wilcox 43:00 Okay, like we talked about during the show, I have the Data Studio dashboard that Anna Shutko and I created together. So check the link there in the show notes, you'll absolutely love that I'm sure. There's a killer template for budget tracking inside of Google Sheets, as well as the full Data Studio dashboard that we created together. You'll also see the link to Anna Shutko on Twitter, as well as her LinkedIn profile. So as she said, send her a DM, follow her, connect with her all that good stuff. She's also the host of The Marketing Analytics Show so you will see a link to that. Because all of you are podcast listeners, obviously, you'll definitely want to go check that out and get subscribed. Any of you who are looking to learn more about LinkedIn Ads, or maybe you have a colleague that you're training or something like that, check out the course that I did with LinkedIn on LinkedIn Learning. It's by far the least expensive and the best quality training out there and it's next to no dollars. It's pretty cheap compared to any other training. You'll enjoy it. Please do look down whatever podcast player you're listening on and make sure you hit that subscribe button. We'd love to have you back here next week. Also, please rate and review the podcast. Honestly, I say it way too much. But it really means a lot. It makes a difference to me. So please, please, please go leave us a review. We'd love that with any suggestions, questions, feedback, anything like that. Reach out to us at Podcast@B2Linked.com. And with that being said, we'll see you back here next week, cheering you on in your LinkedIn Ads initiatives.

Imagine if someone just handed you a list of every single tool you need to effectively measure the performance of your marketing.  On today's episode, co-hosts Ralph Burns and Kasim Aslam sit down once again with Chris Mercer, founder of http://measurementmarketing.io/ (MeasurementMarketing.io). This time he's got a whole tech stack he's going to share with us from start to finish, the whole kit and caboodle. Seriously, he's giving away the farm here. It's easy to over-complicate things, Mercer says. The skill is to make things simple. How do we keep it simple? Every measurement system has to do 3 things: 1.) Collect information to get answers to questions. 2.) Store that information to access later. And 3.) Build reports on that data. If you don't know how to measure, all the tools in the world won't help you. “Measurement is how we listen,” he says. “Marketing is how we respond.” Listen in as he walks us through the powerful skill of measurement—simple step by simple step. IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL LEARN: How to figure out the true traffic sources of your ROAS (when everybody's claiming it) 3 free (and powerful) Google tools (and how/when to use them) Why customer journeys aren't one-size-fits-all (and how to choose the right one) How learning measurement can keep you out of jail (literally) LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: http://measurementmarketing.io/perpetual (FREE Measurement Toolbox) from MeasurementMarketing.io http://measurementmarketing.io/youtube (Free Measurement Training on YouTube) https://measurementmarketing.io/ (MeasurementMarketing.io) https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/provision/#/provision (Google Analytics) https://tagmanager.google.com/#/home (Google Tag Manager) https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/data-studio/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=japac-AU-all-en-dr-bkws-all-all-trial-b-dr-1009882&utm_content=text-ad-none-none-DEV_c-CRE_505019811580-ADGP_Hybrid+%7C+BKWS+-+PHR+%7C+Txt+~+Data+Analytics+~+Google+Data+Studio_Data+Studio-KWID_43700065771651843-aud-1596662390334:kwd-191996340734&userloc_9052825-network_g&utm_term=KW_google%20data%20studio&gclid=Cj0KCQjw3v6SBhCsARIsACyrRAnOndyZwp5quSBjlJJvJsRI0NLKlyhqm12zA3MoVh4r7-bWWsbfCEgaAphNEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds (Google Data Studio) https://perpetualtraffic.com/podcast/episode-376-metas-solutions-architect-shares-how-to-improve-your-campaigns/ (Ep. 376 (all about CAPI Gateway)) https://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Incerto/dp/0812979680/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=antifragile+by+nassim+taleb&qid=1650474959&s=books&sprefix=antifragile%2Cstripbooks%2C90&sr=1-1 (Antifragile) (book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb) https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSckM3KvhZMagQN6SbG1GMzJt9mzcemoGMIeL1XztQGWNTleXQ/viewform (Perpetual Traffic Survey) Follow https://twitter.com/perpetualtraf (Perpetual Traffic on Twitter) Connect with https://twitter.com/ralphhb (Ralph) and https://twitter.com/kasimaslam (Kasim) on Twitter OUR PARTNERS: https://bkacontent.com/perpetual (Get a Free Month of Blogs from BKA Content) https://conversionfanatics.com/freebook (Get a Free book on how to optimize your website Conversion Fanatics) https://botwebinar.com/ (Learn how bots can automate your lead flow from BotBuilders) https://scalable.co/7-levels-assessment/?utm_source=perpetual-traffic&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=lead-gen (7 Levels of Scale workbook) https://scalable.co/books/zero-down/?utm_source=perpetual+traffic&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=lead+gen (Get Roland's book, Zero Down, FREE) Find out your Leadership Trust Score at https://readytolead.com/ (Ready to Lead). Register for our free https://scalable.co/mastermind/founders-board/?utm_source=perpetual+traffic&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=lead+gen (Founders Board workshop) Thanks so much for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to Perpetual Traffic?...

Google's Local help files have been updated to note that providing real time inventory via Merchant Center will result in increased rank. Anecdotally, we are seeing the 3- Pack populated with more real time inventory over the past several weeks. Google, often accused of self-preferencing, did so again by highlighting their own Point POS product as the only solution. At LocalU's last virtual event, Joy Hawkins shared insights spam prevalence by vertical and whether agencies should continue to fight it, as a service. Curtis Boyd described the results of a 1000 review case study of takedown and what worked and what didn't. And there was a discussion of a new update to the Vicinity update which allowed many businesses to gain more visibility. GApocalypse will soon be upon us and Google Universal Analytics will soon be sunset and replaced with GA4. Since GA4 is so bad and agencies seem to have developed reporting chops with Google Data Studio, is it time to look at other base analytics programs and build your own reporting dashboard?The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.EP 59 Near Memo

Today we'll discuss a bubble chart that can help you understand which queries are performing well for your site, and which could be improved.Data Studio Visualizationshttps://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/04/performance-optimization-bubble-chart  AI Content against Google Guidelineshttps://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-says-ai-generated-content-is-against-guidelines/444916/Wayback Machine archiving Ukrainian Internethttps://spectrum.ieee.org/internet-archive-ukraineConference Organizer, Vasil Azarov died earlier this week at age 40. Details of his death are unavailable at this time. Vasil organized the Brand Growth, B2B Growth, and the Growth Marketing Conference. He was also a community advocate and fundraiser.Google My Business App is being discontinuedhttps://www.seroundtable.com/google-my-business-app-going-away-33198.htmlFacebook WiFihttps://www.facebook.com/facebook-wifi/getting-startedZuck Bucks – like Whoopie Goldberg's Flooz but backed by a multi-billion dollar corporationhttps://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/04/07/1528241/meta-is-making-zuck-buckshttps://www.theverge.com/2022/4/6/23013896/meta-facebook-zuck-bucks-finance-financial-services-productsElon's Twitterhttps://www.searchenginejournal.com/elon-musk-twitter-impact/444860/https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/04/twitter-shares-soar-more-than-25percent-after-elon-musk-takes-9percent-stake-in-social-media-company.htmlGoogle doesn't care who produces content as long as it's good quality contenthttps://www.seroundtable.com/google-seo-outsource-content-33205.htmlSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Getting to know PPC takes time and effort. Can't seem to find the answer you're looking for? Search Engine Journal can help! Our industry is constantly evolving, and PPC is no exception. So, to provide answers to your burning questions about PPC best practices and strategies, we asked our resident expert. PPC expert Navah Hopkins joined me on the SEJ Show to answer all your PPC questions in 2022. The era of PPC professionals being able to do account management is dead. You're not going to be able to get away with that anymore. We are truly responsible for understanding the profitability of a given product or service and understanding if a given channel will serve it well. We are also responsible for understanding that user behavior component. – Navah Hopkins, 2:15 Keep it simple; keep it clean. Let your paid traffic be a paid experience, let your organic traffic be an organic experience, and make everyone happy. – Navah Hopkins, 34:32 Yes, there's a lot of really interesting tools. Yes, there's a lot of great automation. Yes, we are no longer pulling all the levers all the time. That means that we have our time freed up to think about strategic CRO initiatives, strategic creative initiatives, and solving business problems. – Navah Hopkins, 53:33 [00:00] - About Navah [05:27] - What does the user journey look like? [06:44] - UA sunsetting: tips for GA4. [12:13] - What is Google studio? [15:25] - Smart bidding: is it worthwhile to set a manual PPC on particular keyword ad groups? [19:35] - Is it worth keeping a budget and bidding software? [21:52] - Does Navah use Performance Max? [26:07] - Tips for building successful Google Map ad campaigns. [27:55] - How important is Google Guarantee to Google Local Services ad campaigns? [29:30] - Do Facebook pixels harm a website's performance? [34:38] - What ad solutions overlap with Google Shopping? [39:34] - How important are custom audiences when targeting higher-quality leads? [43:09] - How impactful are Microsoft ads? [47:22] - Can you advertise on LinkedIn through Microsoft Advertising? [50:03] - Can you target game consoles and gameplay through Microsoft Ads? [54:27] - Other platforms people can look into. Resources mentioned: Navah's PPC Automation Course at Semrush: https://www.semrush.com/academy/courses/ppc-automation-course-with-navah-hopkins Microsoft Clarity: https://clarity.microsoft.com/ Google Data Studio: https://datastudio.google.com/ Navah's site: https://www.navahhopkins.com/ Keyword Tool io: https://keywordtool.io/ Keywords Everywhere: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/keywords-everywhere-keywo/hbapdpeemoojbophdfndmlgdhppljgmp?hl=en Keyword Planner:  https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/ Set aside maybe two to three hours every week to play in GA4. Get a domain that you like. You care about, Nothing to be scared of. It's very easy to get into the habit. – Navah Hopkins, 8:56 You do not just want to think about the messaging to the audience. You also want to think about the timing and which channel is best suited to that ad being served. – Navah Hopkins, 41:30 My most extensive advice is that everyone has access to that merchant center, and there's complete transparency on any changes made there. Not having the categories line up within the merchant center can be death for a campaign. – Navah Hopkins, 36:35 For more content like this, subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/searchenginejournal Are you looking to keep up with current and effective digital marketing today? Check out https://www.searchenginejournal.com for everything you need to know within the digital marketing space and improve your skills as an internet marketer. Connect with Navah Hopkins Navah Hopkins is a seasoned marketing professional who began her career as an SEO in 2008, transitioning to PPC several years later. During this time, she has made it a point to share valuable insights with others, speak at local universities, and teach on the international circuit. In addition, her contributions to SEMrush, WordStream, and SEJ have continued. As a member of the Paid Search Association, she intends to make tomorrow's PPC practitioners better and serve as a resource for anyone looking to learn more. ​​Connect with Navah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/navahhopkins/ Follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/navahf   Connect with Loren Baker, Founder of Search Engine Journal: Follow him on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/lorenbaker Connect with him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorenbaker

Zahlen und Daten gibt es in SEO und in der Webanalyse reichlich. Nur werden sie selten so aufbereitet, dass man damit auch effizient arbeiten kann. Geschweige denn der Führungsebene erklären kann, was es konkret gebracht hat. Genau damit beschäftigen wir uns in dieser Podcast-Folge. Aus unserer Sicht braucht jedes Marketing-Team ein SEO-Dashboard, das drei zentrale Funktionen erfüllt: - Kompaktes Reporting der wichtigsten Kennzahlen - Detailliertes Monitoring der laufenden Arbeit - Anlaufstelle für konkrete To-Dos Für ein solches SEO-Dashboard nutzen wir Google Data Studio. Dort führen wir die Zahlen aus Google Analytics und der Google Search Console zusammen und erweitern sie durch gezielte Filter. Über den Link findest Du noch mehr Infos und Screenshots: https://www.jaeckert-odaniel.com/seo-dashboard-wie-du-effizent-an-seo-arbeitest-und-der-ceo-es-versteht/?utm_source=podcatcher&utm_medium=referral Hier kannst du dich für unseren Newsletter anmelden: https://www.jaeckert-odaniel.com/newsletter/?utm_source=podcatcher&utm_medium=referral Bleibe auf LinkedIn mit uns in Kontakt: Fabian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabianjaeckert/ Benjamin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-o-daniel/

How to set up Google Data Studio for better decision-making? In this quick tips episode, Laura Kukemelk walks you through the process of creating a new marketing report, adding data and building charts. Connect with Laura Kukemelk on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-kukemelk/ Connect with Mari-Liis Vaher on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vahermariliis/

„How to use your metrics and data for better decision-making?“ is something that many business owners contemplate. Tune in to this quick tips episode to hear Laura Kukemelk share the 3 most important reasons why you should consider setting up Google Data Studio. Connect with Laura Kukemelk on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-kukemelk/

This week, we are discussing how to incorporate voice and choice in EdTech in our classrooms and how to avoid the silo. We'll get into voice and choice of EdTech tools for both teachers AND students as well as share some ideas around collaborating with colleagues to learn new EdTech tools. If you like what you hear, we would love it if you could share this episode with a colleague or friend. And make sure you subscribe so that you don't miss out on any new content! And consider supporting the show by buying us a coffee or two!We would love to hear from you – leave a comment on our website OR check out our FLIPGRID!Featured Content**For detailed show notes, please visit our website at https://edugals.com/72**Feedback from Frank Ferraiuolo, Assistive Technology TOSA on E069 - Alternative Approaches to Professional LearningJob-embedded PD within the teaching dayWhat's good for one is good for all - assistive tech is beneficial for all studentsCoaches can help!Chris Nesi - House of EdTech PodcastWe're taking a break and we'll be back with a new episode on Jan 4th, 2022!Tech is changing all the time - avoid the silo and keep your options openLearning about new options:Collaboration and sharing via PLCsCommunication around student privacy and usageConsider a blended learning teamTeacher-created and teacher-led PD (unconference format)Curate tech tools, host learning & create mini-courses via your school libraryCollaborative database (create via Google Data Studio using Forms & Sheets)Student Choice in EdTech:Suggest tools but also be open to other tools suggested by studentsCheck out E067 for screencasting tool suggestionsKeep in mind, students might be using different browsersUse a choice board Keep choices to a minimum. Avoid the overwhelm!Conferencing with students about choices (mastery-based learning)When selecting tools, think about the goal first!Possible presentation tools: Google Slides, Genial.ly, Prezi, Canva and many, many moreCuration of EdTech tools (software catalogues): Should be done based on goal and not by tool (think choose your own adventure) to find your options more easilyWould reduce overwhelmPossible Whiteboard tools: Google Jamboard, Microsoft Whiteboard, whiteboard.fi, whiteboard.chat, Explain Everything and many morePerhaps try rotating through 2-3 different tools within each categoryPossible Gamification tools: Kahoot!, Blooket, Quizizz, Quizlet Live, Gimkit (Free plan is now better!)Support the show (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/edugals)

In episode 108, host Eric Dickmann interviews Chris Mercer. Over the years, Chris has been helping companies measure their marketing metrics, so they know what's working and what's not. Today, Chris serves as a Measurement Marketer at MeasurementMarketing.io.MeasurementMarketing.io helps businesses know their numbers to secure better, profit-generating results. Their services are focused on Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Data Studio, and Measurement Strategy. Chris Mercer is recognized for his ability to simplify even the most complex ideas for his audience. He can be found speaking at various conferences and events across the country.For more information and access to the resources mentioned in this episode, visit:https://fiveechelon.com/marketing-metrics-insights-outcomes-s7ep8/A fractional CMO can help build out a comprehensive marketing strategy and execute targeted campaigns designed to increase awareness and generate demand for your business...without the expense of a full-time hire. The Five Echelon Group - Fractional CMO and strategic marketing advisory services designed for SMBs looking to grow. Learn more at: https://fiveechelon.com

Francis "Ted" Fay is a marketing leader with strategic vision and a hands-on approach. He's the founder of 2 Find Marketing where he helps his clients as a digital strategist, combining business plans, short term needs, marketing technology, team and partner capabilities to deliver digital transformation programs.He's comfortable working with both public companies and those in private equity environments. Prior to founding his firm, he's had experience in managing P&L, including capital, marketing advertising, and staffing budgets.Ted has deep, broad based marketing experience from strategic planning and new product development through product launch, sales training, new customer acquisition and lead generation programs, and channel management. Equally familiar with local, dealer and franchise marketing requirements as with international needs.He's a digital and e-commerce leader, developing and implementing successful marketing programs and technologies including: search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC), social media management (SMM), product information management (PIM), content management systems (CMS), web analysis and analysis (Google Marketing Platform's Google Analytics, Google Optimize, Google Tag Manager and Google Data Studio). Reach Ted at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tedfayhttps://www.2findmarketing.comtedfay@gmail.com***************************************************************************If you'd like to talk to Terry McDougall about coaching or being a guest on Marketing Mambo, here's how you can reach her:https://www.terrybmcdougall.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/terrybmcdougallTerry@Terrybmcdougall.comHer book Winning the Game of Work: Career Happiness and Success on Your Own Terms is available at Amazon. 

This week on the Azeem Digital Asks podcast, we're talking about the potential of YouTube advertising, as well as the value of data visualisations with Power BI. My guest is the amazing Cory Henke, someone I consider to be a real thought leader in both of these spaces. Cory is a Speaker, BI Consultant, and Agency Founder - and you'll often find him on Clubhouse sharing knowledge from his years of expertise. It was a no brainer for me to have him involved on the show, especially if you are one of the people who don't yet have access to Clubhouse - I've got you covered! We discuss: Common pushbacks when recommending YouTube to clients, and how to overcome them. Explaining the ROI of YouTube. Some case studies that Cory recommends, as well as how simple it is to get started with YouTube. Where to get started with Power BI. The differences he's noted between Power BI and Google Data Studio. Where people can go to start learning about Power BI. ...and so much more! This is definitely an episode not to be missed if you're interested in learning more about video advertising and data visualisation - from one of the pro's! As always, please tell a friend to tell a friend, and like, rate, share, and subscribe to the podcast - it all helps! Useful Links: Podcast Anchor Page: https://anchor.fm/azeemdigitalasks My Twitter page: https://twitter.com/AzeemDigital My website: https://www.iamazeemdigital.com/ Cory's Twitter Page: https://www.twitter.com/coryhenke

This edWeb podcast is sponsored by CatchOn, An ENA Affiliate.The edLeader Panel recording can be accessed here. Listen to Eric Butash, Director of Education Technology and Data Integration for Foster-Glocester Regional School District in Rhode Island, as he outlines his district's strategy for leveraging data analytics to ensure students are engaged and on track. In this edWeb podcast, he describes Foster-Glocester's instruction vision, processes, and data-integration blueprint for enabling educators and administrators to develop the most impactful learning pathways for students. Listeners learn how the integration of analytics programs like CatchOn with Google Data Studio can be utilized to inform best practices and boost student engagement. This edWeb podcast is of interest to school and district leaders of the K-12 and higher education levels.CatchOn, an ENA Affiliate Data analytics tool providing admin leaders efficacy of their tech investments and integrations.

Find out how to track everything Pinterest that matters...Top pins, top posts, how effective your Communities in Tailwind are, and of course conversions!

Join the staff from Local University as they discuss some of the most significant and interesting developments Last Week in Local Search.Mike's Links:NYC saw most chain store closures in over a decade in 2020 https://www.retaildive.com/news/nyc-saw-most-chain-store-closures-in-over-a-decade-in-2020-report/592884/   Family Video to close all stores as last-ditch effort comes up short https://www.retaildive.com/news/family-video-to-close-all-stores-as-last-ditch-effort-comes-up-short/592897/   Apple Glass' prototype reportedly enters second stage of production https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/01/06/apple-glass-prototype-reportedly-enters-second-stage-of-production   Facebook Smart Glasses Coming ‘Sooner Than Later' Without AR https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-06/facebook-smart-glasses-coming-sooner-than-later-without-ar   Google My Business launches new performance reporting https://searchengineland.com/google-my-business-launches-new-performance-reporting-345252   Getting started with Google Data Studio https://www.deepcrawl.com/blog/best-practice/getting-started-with-google-data-studio/   State of Online Reviews 2021 Webinar 2 pm this Thursday with Mike Blumenthal at GatherUp  https://gatherup.com/blog/webinar-state-of-online-reviews-2021/   Deep Dive: Google's Question Hub Overview https://questionhub.google.com/questions#0   Jamie Indigo Question Hub needs Gmail Not G-Suite email - Twitter https://twitter.com/Jammer_Volts/status/1346174334457544704?s=20 Mary's Links:Google Maps' Moat is Evaporating https://joemorrison.medium.com/google-maps-moat-is-evaporating-6e5f0b3a900 OpenStreetMap is Having a Moment https://joemorrison.substack.com/p/openstreetmap-is-having-a-moment-dcc7eef1bb01 Expert Local SEO Predictions for 2021 – BrightLocal https://www.brightlocal.com/blog/expert-local-seo-predictions-for-2021/ The digital marketing forecast for 2021 – ClickZ https://www.clickz.com/the-digital-marketing-forecast-for-2021/264287/ 2021 Local SEO Success: Expert Tips & Predictions https://moz.com/blog/2021-local-seo-success Today's Deep Dive:  Google Question Hub Overview https://questionhub.google.com/questions#0 Jamie Indigo Question Hub needs Gmail Not G-Suite email – Twitter https://twitter.com/Jammer_Volts/status/1346174334457544704?s=20

This edWeb podcast is sponsored by CatchOn An ENA Affiliate.The edLeader Panel recording can be accessed here.Data is everywhere. Data is powerful—but only if it can be analyzed and then presented in such a way that it tells a story. While Google Forms and Sheets have some quite powerful data analysis features, Google Data Studio takes it to the next level. This free tool allows users to visualize, connect, share, and collaborate and present their data and tell their story. Therefore, teams can make accurate, data-driven decisions. Using the drag-and-drop report editor, users can create customized and interactive reports with ease. Create beautiful, easy-to-read data visualizations that tell a story and inspire action. All of this and more is possible in Google Data Studio. Learn how Google Data Studio works with CatchOn, a powerful and expansive data analytics tool, to give you visibility into your EdTech efficacy and remote learning. Learning outcomes of this edWeb podcast include:Define Google Data Studio and identify use casesExplore the Google Data Studio interfaceConnect data sourcesCreate a reportExplore chart types and identify when to use each typeConfigure report controlsExplore data visualization basicsCreate a templateLearn how to integrate Google Data Studio with an expansive data analytics tool (CatchOn)This edWeb podcast is of interest to elementary through high school teachers and school and district leaders.CatchOn, an ENA Affiliate Data analytics tool providing admin leaders efficacy of their tech investments and integrations.

FULL SHOW NOTES[music]00:08 Aaron Weiche: Episode 15, a big recap of 2019 and looking forward to 2020.00:16 INTRO: Welcome to the SaaS Venture Podcast. Sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins and losses shared in each episode. From Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.00:43 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture Podcast, I'm Aaron.00:45 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.00:47 AW: And we have made it to the end of another year. Just a couple of weeks away from turning over the calendar and Darren and I thought it would be fun to take a look back at 2019 as a whole. A year in which we started podcasting together. We got in... This is our 15th episode and a number of other things, and take a look at what's gone on in the calendar year for us and what we're looking forward to the next year.01:15 DS: Yeah, it sounds great. I think it's really good to look back, understand what we've learned over the past year, look at some of the challenges and our accomplishments, and look forward to 2020. It sounds like the future. Hey? 2020.01:30 AW: It is... It is an exciting year to talk about, right? 01:32 DS: Yeah.01:33 AW: Plenty of plays on words with having 2020 vision for the future whatever that might be.01:39 DS: Yeah, it's been a full year. Our first episode was recorded on January 15th. So it's been just exactly a year, we've been doing this thing.01:48 AW: Yeah.01:48 DS: Yep.01:48 AW: Wait was it like last December when we decided something that we had talked about months earlier, when we were like, "Alright, let's do this, let's get it going." And then we got all of the ducks in a row, and then just started hitting record on. I think we were hoping... I think I was hoping we'd maybe get past 20 episodes. But I'm also... Considering what we've both had going on this year, I also look at like, "Alright, 15 episodes. We at least got one in every month." We didn't do too shabby.02:19 DS: Yeah, more than one per month I think is alright. And, I don't know, 2020 is shaping up to be pretty busy too. But so... Maybe we can try to get a few more in next year.02:27 AW: Yeah... And looking at that, what are you takeaways from 15 episodes, a calendar year of a podcast, maybe you've listened back to a few of them. What's your feeling on what we've done with the SaaS Venture? 02:43 DS: Yeah, I think personally, for me, it's been really incredible to have... To carve out those moments where, "Okay, we know we're doing an episode on"... Let's say, support, or sales and to really like... Okay, before the podcast, I take some time to think about what are our challenges in sales, what are our accomplishments, what are the things that we're trying to do and just having that time to think about it the podcast has been really helpful for me to take that step back and think about it. And think about how do I wanna communicate what we're doing. And so, that's been really amazing as a driver of new learning and growth for my company. So the podcast has been really helpful for that. And then, of course, it's amazing just having the opportunity to chat with you once a month, plus. Because I think that that collaboration I have learnt do much from you through doing this podcast. It's just been... It's been wonderful. I'm really glad that we decided to do it. And it's been a super fun time.03:46 AW: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I've enjoyed getting your perspective on all of these different things. I also... Just the ability to talk out loud about some of these things is like... I don't know if it's therapeutic or just helpful to hear yourself say some of these things. But I've learned from stating them out loud and every now and then listening... I'll go and listen back, partly because I wanna... Alright, how can I be better? How often am I saying "umm" or "yeah"? 04:16 DS: Right, yeah.04:17 AW: Or repetitious words. But also just hearing my perspective, especially when I dive back into an episode from mid-summer or early on, and then just thinking, "Alright, is that the same way I still feel about it? Did my perspective change? Have I done something different with it after talking about it as a challenge, or looking how well we're doing with it?" Yeah, it's been so...04:42 DS: I've actually taken a number of things that we discuss on the podcast, and started implementing at the company. And it's been great. It's been... Everything is just... Feels like we're tightening up a lot of the areas that we were a little loose in and just constantly growing and improving. It's been really good.05:00 AW: Nice. Maybe... Just maybe some of our listeners have been able to do a little bit of that too. And I would say, if any of you have, if there's anything that we have sparked an idea or you took a piece of process or whatever else, man, I would love to hear from you on Twitter, email, through our website, thesaasventure.com, anything else. That would be really cool to talk about that or speak to anything that anyone's willing to share on a few SaaS Venture episodes.05:25 DS: Same. Yes please, feedback requested.05:28 AW: Yeah, alright. And just as my last thought with it is, it just... It gets into just how much, time is a commodity. There are so many times where we've wanted to record something, do whatever else... One of us has to slide because of whatever... I feel like we've done a really great job of being flexible with each other. We both had our moments we're like, "Yep, it's not gonna work for me today." We gotta push a couple of days or push next week. But yeah, making the time for it really is the hardest part. Once we're on, talking is easy, but just carving out an hour and saying, "Yep, I can make it work, I'll have some prep done." Any of that that that's the hard part.06:03 DS: Yeah, talking is definitely easy. Keeping it short and succinct is hard.06:08 AW: Yeah.[laughter]06:10 AW: Absolutely on that. Alright, outside of the podcast, and just since we last talked, spoke in November, what's new with you? What's going on in the day-to-day of Whitespark? 06:23 DS: What's going on? Let's see. Well, we've hired a lot of people recently. We transitioned our citation team through an in-house team, so we've been kind of busy with a lot of stuff around that over the last quarter.06:39 AW: What was behind the move to go from the outside team to internal? 06:44 DS: Well, control was a big part of it, so there were a lot of things that we wanted to do with our citation processes and our work that were not... It was harder to work with the third party on that. If we owned it completely, then we could do whatever we want, and we didn't have to try and convince the third party that this is the way things should be done, and so control over quality and control over specific things that we wanted to be tracking in the process was a big part of it. Also, heating up competition, I guess, in the space. So trying to be a bit more profitable and competitive that way has been a big driving factor for it as well.07:28 DS: And all of those things have been accomplished by taking it in-house. And so, I think that can happen with a lot of businesses where your partner with the third party, and then eventually, you're like, "It would just be so much better if we did this ourselves." And so, we eventually got to that point where we had to pull the trigger and do it, and it was tough. And we had a great relationship with our previous partner for citations for ages, but it was just time to have complete control over that.07:57 AW: Yeah, and then how has that transition been? 08:00 DS: It's been great. Yeah, so everything is going good. We're a little bit behind on orders, our capacity is a little bit low, and that's what's been driving the hiring, but it takes time to get people up to speed, right? We're having a little bit of a growing pain with orders being late, but mostly getting there. I'm pleased with the hiring process, and who we've been able to bring on. Upwork has been awesome, too. We just recently put a job out to Upwork, and so we're gonna use it as a training ground. So you do a project, and you get five people do that project, and the two that did the best job are the ones that are gonna get a full-time contract. I think Upwork has been a really helpful... Discovering that this year has been a big one.08:45 AW: Nice. Anything else? 08:47 DS: Anything else right now? Well, we're just plugging away at trying to finish up our platform, our new account system, so that's coming together so beautifully. I'm thrilled with it. I cannot wait to launch that in Q1. I'd like to push for January, but you know how software development goes, so it might be February, but it's really coming together. It's all of my dreams coming true, Aaron. I cannot wait to have this thing, it's gonna be amazing. And I'm also really thrilled about our rank tracker development. How that has... We basically rewrote the whole thing. And so now that we have this thing, we can iterate faster on, and we have a new guy working on it, too. So I'm excited about that.09:30 AW: Yeah, I know.09:31 DS: We got some great new processes in our support team like a new onboarding process that we just rolled out, which is, I think really helpful. And this actually... A lot of these ideas were somewhat driven from stuff we talked about on the podcast. And so, when we have someone sign up, we actually have a customer support person look at how they set up their campaign and look for any key things that they might have missed or made a mistake on, and then we proactively reach out to them. So we're doing that with every campaign. Anyone that signs up for a rank tracker campaign, we check it out. We watch how they're doing, because this is a huge thing for reducing churn.10:08 DS: If people are setting up their campaigns wrong, then they don't get the data, and then they cancel, and lots of times, they don't tell us. So by proactively looking at every single campaign that gets set up, we're catching that in advance and fixing it for them. They really appreciate us reaching out to them, and they're like, "Oh, thanks a lot. You fix up my campaign, now I get it." And so, that's really helpful to reduce churn. And so, I think that that's a really good initiative that we've started doing.10:37 AW: Yeah, that's awesome. I'll be excited to maybe hear the data or the results behind what that looks like 60-90 days from now. So it sounds really awesome.10:46 DS: That's all that's new for me. What's going on with you, I know you had some big news.10:51 AW: Yeah, well, since the last time we talked, it became public that GatherUp has been acquired.10:58 DS: Huge! 10:58 AW: Yeah, very huge. Roughly about four months in the background of the deal fully coming together from the signal that, between offer and all of those pieces and everything else. So definitely a very intense, daunting, unknown process. I haven't led a company being acquired before, so I kind of equate it to running a sprint through a pitch black tunnel, and part of you is kind of waiting to get hit in the head with a low beam or something else, and then when the other end shows up, it's just like daylight, and you shoot out the other side.11:41 DS: That's a great analogy.11:43 AW: Yeah, very, very interesting. I'm happy to be through it. Very grateful, thankful, excited about what's next. And not to go too far, you and I have already discussed with this that we're gonna do at least a couple of episodes about this in January, 'cause there is so much to break down with it. But I can say just the high level is one, we are interested in someone acquiring us that was gonna help us grow faster. We felt like the company buying us was gonna help us achieve that. We wanted our team to be able to stay intact, and we're able to accomplish that. And then the third is that we felt like we'd still have the right leeway and dedication to what our vision is for the product, and that was accomplished well. We got a very healthy, multiple and... Yeah, all those things are really good so...12:40 AW: A lot has gone in to that, and then once everything is kind of finalized there's so much of internal communication with your team, then with your clients, then the last step is kind of the public PR and that announcement stuff and that really kinda helps close that off and then I'm staying on the CEO, so then I have to dig right into a whole lot of transition work and that's really been my last 60 days and it'll be my next 60 days.13:06 DS: Unbelievable. It's kind of cool that in our first year of podcasting this has happened for you. It is such a goal I know for most SaaS company owners, is like that dream that one day you'll be acquired. And so it's gonna be amazing fodder for our next couple episodes so listeners stay tuned. We're gonna have some exciting episodes coming up.13:31 AW: Yes. That will be fun to re-cap and I don't even know I'm already at the point, so much was happening at the time. Man, am I even gonna be able to speak to all these aspects of whatever, but I think a lot of what I wanna just share is just some of the emotional journey through it and when you have... We had four main shareholders in the decision-making process and what that looks like and then just the hard part of understanding something that you haven't done before, but has just such high stakes attached to it. It's one thing when you're trying something new. You've never ice skated before and you're gonna go out there. It's another thing when there's some serious money involved and you're trying not to screw it up or have something go wrong or get the most out of it 'cause you can't go in resell the business again after selling it. It's a one-time deal so you really need to make sure you're getting things right.14:27 DS: I like that analogy too. You just walking out of the ice with the shaky legs, trying to get it figured out, and then eventually, you're skating.14:35 AW: Yeah, and there's no helmet for an acquisition and you kind of need it but, anyway. Well, we'll dive into a number of those things but yeah, just super grateful for what we've been able to accomplish, our team, our customers, all those things and looking forward to what 2020 is gonna look like.14:56 DS: Yeah, so besides the big accomplishment, the acquisition what else you looking back at 2019? What do you think were some of GatherUp's biggest accomplishment that you're most proud of? 15:05 AW: When I spend a few minutes thinking about this, one is first and foremost our team we really... I think we added 6 members in 2019 bringing our total to just a little over 20 and a lot of just really solid. We got some great hires, like our VP of Customer Success. One of our founders kind of rolled back and being a product manager and we brought on a new product manager, so that's a very key and an important role. I finally got my sales team hired, two sales people, and starting to catch a little bit with that, so definitely some really big hires and for the most part all these people just gelled really really well together as a team and being able to... We had our all company retreat in October, where everybody got together from our North American team. And then, a month and a half later, we were all together again because of the acquisition where our acquire flew everybody to Seattle where they're based so we all got to see each other again so yeah, that was a lot of fun to have that face time and we normally get it once a year. Team is a really big accomplishment. I'm proud of a lot of the features we're able to roll out. Text back or inbound SMS feature, our insights report that's powered by IBM Watson.16:36 DS: Yeah, those are huge.16:37 AW: Fundamentally, we put almost two years worth of work into really kind of rebuilding that the platform, with the theory of things that kind of started from a bottom up and we needed... We kind of finished finally getting to a top-down build with everything.16:55 DS: What do you mean by that? 16:57 AW: So, when GatherUp started, originally as GetFiveStars, the original build that the guys put together was really focused on single location small business and a lot of that was born out of... They hadn't worked with 200 or 500 or 5000 location company so they weren't able to see it through that lens, it was just something that they weren't aware of, and that was one area where that's where I had worked a lot and then when I got in and started selling to some of these larger ones, I could see how that was limited, so we really had to look at alright, how do we keep inching towards this and flip this upside down that instead of everything being built off the location, it's really built off the brand but filters all the way down to the location.17:47 DS: Right, right, right.17:49 AW: Yeah, so a lot of work into that and most of that is really all tied up so we had to do that in increments.17:55 DS: Yeah, we're in a similar position right now with the design and development of our platform and so I'm trying to think about it from both angles. I want it to be easy for a single location business to come in, but it also needs to accommodate the enterprise businesses and so I think we've been thinking about it from both angles as we developed this so should be good for us I'm excited.18:16 AW: Yeah.18:17 DS: Yeah.18:17 AW: Yeah, yep. Now, it's just really important 'cause in some parts, it's great victory and really exciting but I also know we had to burn a lot of dev cycles kind of redoing things. We were still finding wins and how we redid it and making it better, but at the same time there's certain pieces that if you do them right the first time their shelf life is much longer before you have to re-touch them or reconfigure, and then you can build more new things.18:46 DS: Yeah, that's an interesting topic for another episode. It's just that concept of burning dev cycles and how do you reduce that, reduce the burn so that you're actually developing cleaner, without so much waste. I feel like we often waste a lot of dev cycles at Whitespark. It'd be good to fix that.19:05 AW: Yeah, I often feel the same way. You're not alone.19:07 DS: Everyone that runs a software company, I think yeah.19:11 AW: And I'd say lastly, the one other big thing, making the Fortune 5000 list, it was really great. I know we touched on this in one of our other podcasts but if anything, it was just such a big accomplishment internally that really made our team feel like hey, we're much more than a startup. 'cause now you get to see yourself alongside, numerically with other companies and you realize alright, we're doing something quite exceptional here. We're making a list of very high growth, fast-growing companies and we're right in the middle of this list. We weren't 4999, we're in the low 2000s and I think that was really an eye-opener from our team that...19:55 AW: In a startup, new company, small software company, you're so heads-down and you don't get a lot of these legitimacy things that make you feel like oh no, we are for real and especially with employees, if they haven't been around that type of thing before, there's just this giant gap in how they view what we're doing compared to a giant software company like Salesforce or something like that.20:24 AW: So it was really great to get that and just see the pride of our team in that accomplishment and what they got out of it as far as self-value and reflecting on what they've helped achieve and it's something they could take to their friends and family and be like no, what I do is legit. Here's the very credible list that we're on. That was really cool.20:44 DS: Yeah, it's a really great badge to put on your company, put on your website. It's really probably helpful for trust and sales with new companies looking at you as an option and I really do get that piece where, that company morale, where it's just like "Yeah, we're legit. We're a for real company. Look at it, we made the Fortune 5000." I really get that. In Canada there isn't one so I couldn't apply for this Fortune 5000 but there's a Canadian list that I guess I could get on but you know, it's Canada.[laughter]21:18 DS: I'll do eventually.21:19 AW: Yeah. There's a list somewhere you can get on out there.21:22 DS: Yeah, sure, I'll try to get on one of those lists.21:24 AW: There you go. What about you? What's been the big accomplishments for yourself and for Whitespark? 21:29 DS: Yeah, I think I've touched on a couple of them before. The transition of the citation team I think has been a lot of work and a big accomplishment that's been good for the company so I'm really pleased with that. Our GMB management service has really, in my mind, been a massive success. I had this vision to build a really straightforward well-defined service, recurring service that would scale nicely and so far, that has proven to be very true and huge props to Ally who directs and runs that team. She's doing an amazing job of getting everything in place and getting the people trained and it's growing really nicely under her leadership and so I'm really pleased with that, really grateful for having Ally in that position. She's doing a great job.22:19 DS: But that team is growing. Like we're up to 60 clients now. We just put out another job posting so we'll have four people on that team now and it's growing at a rate of 10 to 15 clients per month and then, it just has this potential to explode and with that rate, I expect to be at around 200 plus clients by the end of 2020.22:43 DS: So it's growing beautifully. I think it's a wonderful service. It's gonna be an amazing complement to the software we're developing so all of that is coming together so nicely. We grew our team a lot last year too. We added 10 new people in 2019 so a lot of those are on the citation team.23:00 AW: Awesome! 23:00 DS: A few of them on our GMB team so that's been some great growth for the company. We're up to 29 people now. We have two job postings out right now too. The Rank Tracker rebuild, that had been a long time coming so I'm really pleased to have that finally out the door, being able to iterate on that. We launched a cool little tool called, The Review Checker, which is a great little tool that allows you to see all of your review ratings across the web and it's just a free little simple tool. We talked about that in some earlier episodes but I'm pleased to have that out the door.23:38 DS: Rewriting our templates and support, our new onboarding process and support. I don't know, it's just been a great year. I'm really happy with how 2019 has gone and gosh, I'm thrilled about what we've got coming for 2020. It's been a good year, yeah.23:52 AW: Well, I think if I look at combining ours, the two themes are great people and great features, right? 24:01 DS: Yeah.24:02 AW: That's probably a couple of main ingredients to a successful...24:06 DS: That's the formula right there everybody. Great people, great features. Your PR motto for the podcast.24:11 AW: There you go, that...24:11 DS: Yeah.24:13 AW: So what about Darren on the challenging side? What are a couple of big challenges you faced this year? And are you winning currently against those challenges? Did you lose those challenges? What does that look like? 24:27 DS: I feel like we failed pretty bad on the software dev side, it's just so slow. You think you're gonna have this thing out the door in July and here we are in December and it's still a couple months away and then that couple of months turns into more months and it's just that frustration of dev cycles, this concept of burning dev cycles because you worked on something but you gotta go back to the drawing board or you just didn't properly scope it. You couldn't see how big it was until you started diving in and that's one of the biggest challenges for sure that we face at Whitespark. It's been really tough to try and develop things faster.25:09 DS: I think, the biggest problem we have is that we've got a fairly small development team. We've got new initiatives that we're working on but we have to continually be maintaining and supporting and fixing problems with the existing systems and so our capacity to develop something new is reduced to 30% of my total Dev teams capacity because they're always getting distracted by these little things that come up. My dream would be to have two teams. I got the Maintenance Team and I got the New Dev Team and the New Dev Team is pushing hard on the new stuff and not getting distracted. They're staying focused, they're staying on task and working on new software. While the Maintenance Team is fixing all the little things that come up or adding the little things that need to be added. That's the dream, I wanna get there.25:58 AW: Yeah, I can tell you, from listening to you, almost all the same words could come out of my mouth and I think every SaaS business might feel the same way. I can't remember who I read it from, if it was in a tweet or whatever else but they basically broke down SaaS as this. It's ship, code, sell. Ship, code, sell. Ship, code, sell and yeah, when you're not shipping code, it does. It just starts to wear on you and we had some of the same. We had like...26:29 AW: The first seven months of the year were so fast and so furious and really big features and getting things aligned and whatever else and then after that, it was like... I know the team felt a little bit burned out. We had some mis-steps within a few things. Details were missed. Some of those kind of pieces with it and that all kinda added up and then it kind of put us on pause for a month or two for everybody to get their feet back under them and now we're kinda in the same cycle where we have a lot of things starting to slope for like a January release and I feel like we're hitting this build up of things again that's not gonna be healthy for our team and it's a little harder to market because they all come at once.27:14 AW: We actually just had some meetings yesterday and we're trying to figure out how do we get our sprint cycles to be a little bit cleaner and better and our product manager Mark, had some really good ideas on that because at the end of the day, that's the biggest thing I care about; is shipping features and it's this balance of some of the things you ship are things you have to build into the product, they're not sexy, they're not gonna help you in marketing but the product needs them.27:44 AW: But ultimately, as a CEO and as a CEO that is helping a lot in sales and marketing, I need things, give me the marketing, give me the sexy features, the things that I can talk about. So it's finding that balance. I try to talk to our team about that. You have to understand this from the perspective of, we have to make news, we have to make a splash, we have to get people excited and certain things that we do or if they're about more of the plumbing of the system and things like that, that's not gonna turn heads, we have to balance those things.28:16 DS: Yeah, that's a really good thing to think about. Like what... Maybe, I think you touched on the idea that your product manager and you're looking at these sprints. I mean, how do we spread these out so that we're injecting some of these splashy things in between all the must-do-not-so-exciting things? And that's a pretty good model to follow, really. If you lay out the next three months of development and say okay, we're gonna push for this exciting launch in January, push for this exciting launch in February and we're also gonna do these other little things just to get them done." It's a good... Keep the wheel turning. Continually marketing and pushing out new exciting things.28:57 AW: Yup and I totally agree with you on the maintenance side. I just referred to this yesterday in a meeting, is like this is the undercurrent, right? No one can see it but there's so much to do and the more customers you have, the more small requests and we get a lot of integration requests and all these things and yeah, it just becomes really, really difficult with that and so I get back to the hardest thing of running a SaaS company is prioritization.29:27 DS: Yeah. Huge.29:28 AW: Right? Yeah. What to build over what, who to say no to? It's so hard to say no. We definitely have a yes-can-do culture in our company.29:36 DS: Yeah. Same.29:38 AW: And it's really hard because whatever I'm saying no to, matters a lot to someone in our company. It's a CS rep who has a customer or customers that are pinging them about it or a sales rep or an engineer that would feel a lot better if that was re-factored. So it's like you have all those things that when you give that no, there's multiple people taking a loss on it and then there's others on the team that are then getting a win because what they're rooting for, what they want to have happen can actually get some love, make it into the product...30:10 DS: Yeah. I think I've gotten better at that in 2019. Someone comes through support and they're like, "Does the tool do this thing? I need it to do this thing, otherwise I can't do it." A big one that comes up occasionally is integrating a rank tracker with Google Data Studio. I'm always faced with this option. Do I drop the other things that we're working on so we can build this? Is that a splashy thing? And so the thing I'm always trying to balance when I see these feature options, potential things that we could build, is how many customers will this effect and how much money could this thing make us if we actually built it.30:48 DS: And then based off of my assessment, I throw it on the list. It always makes it on to our task list but if it's something that's only gonna affect a handful of people and it's only gonna benefit a handful of people, it goes lower on the list and so I've been getting better at prioritizing that, I think. I feel better about it. Saying no more for sure has been a theme in 2019.31:14 AW: Yeah. I don't know if I'm getting better at it. It's happening more often. I think just because the request and the things that are there happening more often. I did comment I think, I don't know if it was in one of our management team meetings or an all-team meeting but I kinda made a comment that was funny to me where for so long, there's definitely plenty of people that almost beg you to say no to things, especially your engineering team.31:36 DS: Yeah, definitely.31:38 AW: But then once you start saying no to things, then some of them are bummed out that now you're actually saying no, right? So it's this flip like alright, what way makes you happy? And it's like the answer is neither. It just depends on their position on that feature, on that issue, whatever it might be but yeah, there's always work to be done there. I feel like prioritization is probably a good topic for us in the future to talk about a lot deeper in just as you outlined, what do you use to help make those decisions, data, financials, all those 10 pieces and...32:05 DS: It's mostly my gut. [chuckle] That's what it mostly is.32:19 AW: Yeah and where do you draw the line with those things? Within your business, what is it? Is it if two customers ask, 10 customers, 30 customers. What is the dollar amount that makes it seem worth it to you to do a one-off? So...32:36 DS: And sometimes it depends on the customer. It's like oh, well massive brand wants this thing so I guess we're gonna do it.32:43 DS: Yeah, yeah. Such difficult decisions that just have ramifications all the time. Everything comes...[overlapping conversation]32:50 DS: I think another challenge that we had in 2019 was custom projects. Well, I'd say I'm pretty good at saying no to feature requests that maybe don't affect a lot of people. I have taken on a couple of really big things that have slowed us down. It slowed me down personally, where lots of stuff that I personally wanted to accomplish, maybe more research, writing, speaking had to take a back seat because I've been so busy with custom projects, things that I personally am taking on and so that's a bit of a learning thing that...33:27 DS: The payout for those projects was good and the money is good but what was the cost? What is the cost in productivity in other areas of the business? That's the thing I'm trying to understand and learn from and in 2020, I'm gonna make a commitment to really stick to our core competencies and not take things that are outside of our typical realm of expertise.33:51 AW: Yeah. No, definitely a valid item. I think for me the last thing... And this will be a 2020 challenge for me as well. We started the conversation in the summer this year but just around pricing. The last time we raised our prices for gather-up was three years ago. We grandfathered others in and we've seen our market continue to elevate up above us. We are one of the cheapest solution and based on the features that we have and what we offer, we're definitely in that area and it's such an interesting thing because it just brings in so many emotional things for people on how do they individually value the product, how do they think through, okay when you go and talk to a customer about a pricing increase, are they gonna be mad at you and then how does that make you feel? Do you disappoint them?"34:44 AW: It's really hard to get your management team wrapped around this, right? And get them understanding and when we did a team survey on a number of things on just kinda do like, "How do you feel leadership was for the year or management or some of these different things?" I did ask everyone to name a price. If you're a one-location business, what's the price of our product? 35:10 AW: It was really interesting to see that variation from just a little bit more than what we charge right now, to three or four times more than what we charge right now. It's so interesting and it's such a psychological exercise internally and ultimately, externally as well.35:28 DS: Yeah, are you saying that if you... You grandfather people in but you also mentioned communicating a price increase to existing customers. If you have an existing customer that has, let's say, 20 locations in the system, do they only grandfather for those 20 but any new locations they add would be at the new price, is that how you do it? 35:49 AW: No, the account itself when we did it before just ends up grandfathered. So that customer can continue to make the amounts for that through that entire time. It becomes really tough right? And you're building a SaaS product that... Alright, if someone who's been with us four or five years, they have realized hundreds of updates, right? And you're not reconciling for those updates at all and when you look at the market, alright, if you were to go buy a similar tool, you would pay 2X or 3X of what our price is.36:24 AW: It's all these pieces and all of those things and so, we started talks early on this. It helps people get their arms around it, helps with the psychological part but it's something that is gonna happen for us in 2020 and that'll bring its own set of challenges on finalizing it, communicating it, just a... Our company is built to make everyone happy. We have great customer service. The minute anyone's remotely wrong, multiple people are on that problem but this is gonna be a hard one because it will... Price increases, no matter what, always ruffle some feathers when you have thousands of customers and this is something that's hard for every SaaS, right? 37:07 AW: And you hear, it's like... Man I've listened to so many podcasts and read so many articles on pricing strategies and structures and communication alone and there's so many that they just say like, "You have to do this or you will not be successful. You will not survive unless you're doing this on a frequent basis." And even sometimes some say, "You have to condition your customer that this is a constant. Tool gets better and the price gets better."37:33 DS: That's right. You mentioned that people that started with you five years ago, they were paying for a much more reduced feature set than what the system offers now and so, price increase makes sense. So would you then, are you saying that a person that did sign up five years ago, they might not get grandfathered in with a new price increase? 37:50 AW: Don't know any of those details yet.37:52 DS: Sure.37:53 AW: It's really looking into it. A lot of it is... Step one is getting the psychology around it and then the second step is figuring out alright, what do we need to do that's healthy for our business? That gives us the margins we need to continue to make the investments, continue to do those things as you get bigger and support your customers? That's the hard thing for... Some of your really good customers, they totally get it. They're like "Hey, I get it. If you're not making money, you're not a tool that's gonna keep growing and I can't use you so I want you." But it's that right balance, right? So yeah. I don't know any of those details yet other than... Those discussions started last year, they will likely... Hopefully, some time this spring we will arrive and figure out where we're going with it but it's just, it's a very big undertaking.38:44 DS: For sure, I got a pricing meeting today. We're gonna be talking about pricing for our new stuff that's coming out. I'm trying to figure that out.38:51 AW: There you go. Yup.[overlapping conversation]38:51 AW: [38:51] ____ your challenge as well.38:53 DS: So what are you excited about for 2020? 38:55 AW: Yeah, the new working environment we have, right? With having a parent company. The grouping were in, right? We were acquired by a group that owns seven other marketing SaaS technology companies and they even own one of our competitors and that was one of the things we liked. Yeah.39:15 DS: Weird.39:15 AW: But we saw how they could grow our competitor so that was really hands-on like alright, they know our space well. They understand the pulls and the levers in there and now we get to understand how those companies are operated. To me, that's what I'm really excited about to be able to not just know what my company is doing and how things are going and decisions being made but I'll see this for seven other companies. Yeah.39:40 DS: Amazing, yeah. Great learning opportunity.39:41 AW: Absolutely.39:41 DS: Talk to all those other founders.39:44 AW: Yup and then our team is now part of a larger team so now everybody in every position has a new set of peers doing the same type of customer success work or engineering work or sales work but on a different product so they have someone to learn from and collaborate with and pick someone's brain and everything else so I think that's really awesome. We've laid down, we have some really hefty goals so we're looking at some much bigger growth in 2020 so I'm excited for that and then yeah, just some of the challenges we're talking about like... And you put it best, right? 40:21 AW: Challenges are the uncomfortable things that stretch you further and push you further so I am excited about some of the challenges even though I know they're going to be hard and they're gonna push on me and all of those things but it's like alright, how much better will I be? What will I learn? How will it stretch what I've gone through? I'm excited for what those challenges are gonna be.40:43 DS: Yeah, totally. It sounds awesome.40:46 AW: What about you? What's on the 2020 docket? What are you excited about? 40:49 DS: Yeah well, we're just on the cusp of launching a few things. I'm really excited about those. I feel like these launches will really take our company to another level with the way we've got our software development coming up. That's our new accounts platform, our new integrated stuff that we're building. I think that's gonna be really huge for us. Our rank tracker will continue to evolve, our GMB Service will continue to grow. I don't know, it just feels like a huge growth year for us and I cannot wait to get some of these things out the door.41:21 DS: They're really close right now so, I've mentioned that meeting today. We're gonna be looking at a lot of the stuff and figuring out how we're gonna price it and what are the features... The different plans actually is a big part of what we're meeting today; is to figure out what's included at the different levels and so that stuff is so close and man, we're gonna launch that. It's gonna be amazing. I can't wait. It's gonna be good.41:46 DS: I don't know. In general, 2019 felt like a little bit of a flat growth year. There was a bit of growth but 2020, I'm expecting some hockey stick so I'm excited about that.42:00 AW: Nice. Well, I Can't wait to be talking on maybe even more regular basis and hearing how all of those things are going for you and especially your integration of everything together. I think there's gonna be so much for us to talk about on how that's progressing for you and the wins and the challenges and all of those things. Like that...42:20 DS: Oh yeah.42:20 AW: That to me is gonna be really exciting to dig in and hear how that's going for you.42:24 DS: Yup, yeah. I'm pumped. It's gonna be great, 2020 bring it on.42:29 AW: Bring it on. But before that relax, enjoy the holidays, enjoy the family. We were discussing in our chatter before hitting record like this is the best time of year to just kinda recalibrate, get a little down time, get some family time so that you're ready to charge ahead once things kick over.42:50 DS: Totally, yes. Same to you. I hope you have a good holiday break. This is a nice downtime. I'm definitely taking the full two weeks off over Christmas there and I'll be back on January 2nd to get back to it.43:04 AW: Pretty much the same. I'm on a plane tomorrow. We're doing a quick snowboarding and ski trip into the Rockies before Christmas.43:12 DS: Nice.43:12 AW: Yeah and then enjoying Christmas and family and some quiet time and then yeah, I'll be amped and ready to go come Jan.43:21 DS: Yup! 43:23 AW: Alright. Well hey man, I wanna thank you for everything this past year, the podcast, so many of our talks both recorded and unrecorded. I have benefited so much. I'm really glad we took the plunge on this and I also... I hope our listeners are glad we took the plunge on this too.43:40 DS: Yeah, well same to you. It's been amazing to chat with you and learn from you and to discuss all of these things about running a SaaS business together. This podcast has been a real blessing to me and my business and your friendship has been a real blessing too. It's been great Aaron, thank you.44:00 AW: You bet, virtual fist bump my friend.44:02 DS: Virtual fist bump.[laughter]44:02 AW: Alright, with that we'll wrap it up. I hope everyone listening, hope you've had a fabulous 2019. Hope you have a great Christmas and holiday season with your loved ones to take some time to relax and reflect. If you're working in this industry, you're likely working your tail off on a daily basis. Don't burn yourself out and looking forward to talking to you in a Happy New Year in 2020.44:31 DS: Yup, I echo all of Aaron's sentiments to our great listeners. Thanks for listening.44:36 AW: Thanks everybody. Have a good one Darren.44:37 DS: Okay, you too. Bye bye.44:46 AW: Bye bye.[OUTRO music]

Helpful links from the episode: Zoom Pipedrive Copper Typeform FULL SHOW NOTES:[intro music]00:02 Aaron Weiche: Episode 13: Running a Great Sales Demo.00:06 INTRO: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins and losses shared in each episode. From Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.[music]00:32 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. I'm Aaron.00:36 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.00:37 AW: And this week, we are gonna dive into what goes in to running a great sales demo. How do you demo your SaaS product and break down a number of aspects regarding that. A very important piece really, I view it as kind of the absolute cornerstone and the biggest value prop within the sales process. And we'll break that down but first, Darren, let's play a little bit of catchup. What have you been up to lately? 01:08 DS: What have I been up to? Well, lately, I've done a couple auto dealer conferences, I had one in beautiful Banff, Alberta so right in the Rocky Mountains there. That was fantastic.01:19 AW: That place, I have not physically been there but every time I have a friend go there, and they post their photos to Facebook, I'm like, "That place cannot be real."01:27 DS: It's insane, it's so beautiful and it is like... The conference was held at the Banff Springs Hotel, which is basically this amazing castle in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. It's so beautiful. So yeah, it was wonderful, I brought the family, we drove down and spent a few days there, the conference was easy, I spoke to a bunch of auto dealers about getting the most out of Google My Business, and it's been nice 'cause I have this run. So I did the one in Banff and I just got back from Montreal, also a fantastic Canadian city. I did another auto dealer conference in Montreal for a brand called Kijiji. They have this thing, Kijiji Autos. And then I go tomorrow to fly to Vegas for DrivingSales Executive Summit, which is another auto dealer conference. I'm now officially the new Greg Gifford of local search.[laughter]02:25 AW: And Vegas, Vegas baby! 02:27 DS: Yeah, that's right. All I'm doing is auto dealer conferences, it's just been like this string of three in a row, but it's nice 'cause then you can use the same deck, right? So that's fantastic.02:36 AW: Yeah. Well, when we go to promote this podcast, I'm definitely gonna put out a tweet that says there's a new Greg Gifford of the auto industry, and that will quickly catch his attention. That's awesome.02:45 DS: Definitely. Yeah. So I've been dealing with that and that's over and I'll have a lot of free time not doing any more conference speaking probably until January, February, so that'll be nice to have this really good break where I can just be in the office focused on the business. We're building an API for our rank tracking software so a lot of people wanna just pull that data into their own systems or into Google Data Studio, so we're working on that. That should be done right away here, where we're putting the finishing touches. We are also working on a revision of our Local Citation Finder software, it hasn't been updated in a long time. We've had new designs, actually a whole new system built on staging. It's been sitting for months while the team has been distracted with other things. And so once this API is out the door, we're shifting to get that thing done. So I'm excited about launching that.03:41 DS: Another thing that we've been really working on is some customer service things. We've been reviewing our template reports. So if someone asks about this or that, we have these like, "Oh, well, here's some information on that," and then we often end it with like, "Well, please let us know if you have any more questions." And it's like, we really need to do a better job of being like, "When can I set up a demo?" That's a good question. "Can we jump on a call next week?" Being more proactive with encouraging that next step with a customer 'cause so many of our customer support requests that are coming in are actually sales leads, these are people that are like, "I'm interested in that service or product you have, I want some more information on pricing, or whatever." They give them the information, they're like, "High five. Good luck to you. Hopefully one day you become our customer." Rather than hoping for it, we're working on our language and especially how we're closing all those emails to move it to the next stage of the sales process. So I'm excited about that, too.04:46 AW: Yeah, that singular question is actually just a buying signal that you need to capitalize on that like, "Yeah, here's the answer for that, but let's jump on a demo and take a look at things as a whole, as well as dive into your specific question."05:00 DS: Exactly, exactly. Yeah. How about you? What's up? 05:02 AW: Oh, man, I have been wearing out runways around the country. I'm on the end of seven different conferences in six weeks. So yeah, between all those. I just got home yesterday from Philly. I was at a client's conference where I gave three talks in one day there, that was at least nice and concise, and I was only gone from home three days this week. Next week, I'm gone all week, Monday through Friday with three more talks. It's one of those, it's like when I said yes to these, it's like one asked me in January, so I said yes to it in September, and then one asked me in March and so I said yes to it, and then a couple other things, a client travel sprinkles in and then a new conference pops in, it's like, "Oh, that'd be really great exposure." I have over-committed massively and I'm not gonna do this again, I've survived it and there's been a number of great things that come out of it, but when you are spending so much time creating different decks and customizing them and all those things, just way too much at once, I really made it hard on myself.06:13 DS: Yeah, wow, that's a busy schedule. Packed it on. And then it's tough to manage all of the other stuff that's coming up in the business when you're traveling so much. I was like...06:22 AW: Yep.06:22 DS: I was feeling stressed for the last week just because like, "Ahh." You wanna be at the conference and talking to people, but your emails are piling up at the same time. You got all these employees that have questions for you and customers that have questions, so yeah, there's just a lot to deal with.06:37 AW: Well, and the life balance with it, too. It's like, I have four kids, and so, I'm gone Monday through Friday. My wife, that's the real CEO in my house. She's getting everyone to their sports, all kinds of other things, whatever else. And then, when I'm getting home on the weekend, I'm so behind that I'm going into the office for full days on Saturday and Sunday, if not more. And so, I'm not getting quality times with the kids, I'm not helping my wife out. Yeah, so it's just one of those... Luckily, we have a couple of family getaways that I've promised I will be offline, I will be trying to make up... Let my kids remember they have a dad, and get caught up in that side of life. But it's a lot to balance, and I really... I gotta learn to say no. It's great to have those opportunities and to take advantage of them, but I do need to balance it out.07:28 DS: So, are you working from home at all? Or are you mostly are in the office? 07:32 AW: I have an office that's all of 5 miles from my house. I need to have a focused space because with four kids, ... I have one in high school, one in junior high, one in elementary, and one not even in school yet, they're spread out everywhere. But my elementary aged daughter will come home... She gets home at 2:30 in the afternoon, and it's like, I still have three hours of work to put in. So yeah, I have to have a focused space, for sure.08:01 DS: I have that, too. I work from home 100% of the time, I love working from home. And when my daughter gets home from school, I always love to take that... I try to time my coffee break, when I go downstairs and make myself a cup of coffee around when she gets home so I can hang out and just see her. And then I go to back to work. And she does a really good job of respecting my office. When Daddy's working, you gotta leave him alone. It works pretty good.08:27 AW: Yeah, that's good. And good for you. One thing... I admire a ton of things about you professionally, and us being friends over the years, but you are such a good dad. I'm around you when we're on the road and I watch how you communicate with her and that you make time for calls with her. So, you could do a dad best practices podcast and completely...[overlapping conversation]08:48 DS: We should do that together 'cause honestly, I think the same thing about you. I'm always like, "You're my dad inspiration." I'm always ____ you're such a great dad, too.08:58 AW: I have quantity going for me. [chuckle]09:00 DS: Yeah. Well, maybe we'll just switch the SaaS Venture to be the Dad Venture. [chuckle] New podcast.09:06 AW: Yeah. There you go. Well, maybe let's just do an episode sometimes that has to do with being a dad when you're trying to lead and grow a company. Both are very demanding jobs. Right? 09:16 DS: Yeah, being a parent while trying to run a company. That's a great, great episode, yeah. Alright, well...09:22 AW: Alright, coming up.09:23 DS: What else is going on? [chuckle]09:26 AW: Yeah, well, one of the things in the middle of all this is, just two weeks ago, we had our company summit.09:31 DS: Oh, yeah.09:32 AW: All of our North American employees, which totals 13... Actually, would be... We just hired another customer success team member yesterday, we got our signed agreement, so excited about that. We had 14 of our team all together. This is the second year where we've brought them all into... They all fly into Minneapolis, and then we go about three hours north to a resort. Everybody is in two giant cabins. We eat every meal together, we do a lot of... 9:00 to 4:00, we do work stuff, but it's a lot more collaborative, exercises, ideas, things like that. And then, just getting to know each other when you fully work remote.10:19 DS: Wow.10:19 AW: It's one of my favorite weeks of the year. We have a great time, so many laughs, so many... The normal inside office jokes and banter that most people build on a daily basis, we jam all that into a week. We came out of it, we have a new currency in our office now, our product manager did an exercise where you had to buy features that are on our roadmap, and he made these... His name's Mark, and so he made these Mark bucks. Now, everything in our world... Our devs wanna turn Mark bucks into cryptocurrency. Yeah, we're trying to buy people off on things with Mark bucks. Somebody's going to Vegas with friends and we told them not to spend all their Mark bucks on the craps tables.11:04 DS: That's smart.11:05 AW: It's fun.11:06 DS: For example, sales and customer support, they're always pushing for features. And so now, they have to spend their Mark bucks in order to move features up the priority list? Is that the concept? 11:17 AW: Yeah, that exercise is just really looking at, like, "Here's everything we have on our roadmap," and it was tied into year-end, like, "What can we get done in the year-end?" And he basically assigned like, "Here's what this item would cost." And then, the currency was limited, so you actually had to pool together with other people to get enough money to "buy that feature" get it done.11:37 DS: That is so clever. I love that idea.11:39 AW: Yes. It was a really great exercise. And that's just one example. Product had one of those, customer success had one of those, sales... We just had all these different things and just more interactive and fun ways to look at things, get everyone on the same page. Yeah, it's so good. I love our team, and to have that week together and to do so much together both professionally and personally, I have a ton of gratitude for it. It was a great time.12:09 DS: Yeah, I wanna do that stuff. Alright, and what else? Anything else to report on the news when we talk about demos? 12:18 AW: Yeah, one last thing to put out there that I'm sure anyone building a SaaS product, especially when you're hooking into other platform services, things like that, we are waiting on such a small update with Facebook right now. We have the feature and we've had it in their hands to be able to reply to Facebook recommendations right out of GatherUp. We already have a Facebook authorization for monitoring recommendations when they switched and they put recommendations behind a wall, which they have now sub-sequentially pulled out behind the wall. But then, when they added to their API the ability to reply to Facebook review/recommendations, we've added that in. And you have to update your apps with them and we have both our direct app and then the white label app. And it literally has been horrible back and forth. And so, this feature is done waiting in their approval process, and it's just sat there for weeks. And that's super frustrating when you do the work, you get it done and then you're just dependent on this outside party to be able to push it across.13:28 DS: Totally, and it's such an important future for your business. All of your clients that wanna be able to reply to Facebook right within the customer activity feed, that, that's so valuable. Instead of that jumping off to Facebook every time, so yeah, I can see that that is frustrating.13:44 AW: Yeah, it reminds me of what used to be really frustrating to me when I ran agencies is when we would build iOS apps and when you'd submit them to Apple, and then it could be four or five days, which would be a dream world when they approved it and it could go into the App Store, but depending upon their backlog and whatever else, you could totally end up with an app that you were done with, but three weeks later, it would finally hit the App Store, and that was just so frustrating.14:10 DS: Yeah, totally. You're so excited, you're like, "Yeah, launch day. Oh, wait. Launch day in three weeks." Yeah.14:15 AW: Yeah. Hold your bet. And that's what it is right now. Everyday, I'm asking my product manager, "Has Mark Zuckerberg emailed us yet?"[chuckle]14:24 AW: And he's like, "No."14:24 DS: Maybe you should try...14:25 AW: And I'm like, "Can you... "14:26 DS: To spend your Mark bucks. Send them over to...14:27 AW: Exactly! I was gonna say, "Can you buy him off with Mark bucks? I wanna get this out."14:32 DS: Yeah, definitely.14:34 AW: Oh, anyway. Alright, well, let's talk about things that we have more control over, and that's our focus topic today in looking at demos and breaking down a number of things. For us, it's most prevalent in our sales process and as we do a demo with the customer, but let's dive in. Where do you wanna start with demos, Darren? 14:57 DS: Well, I've got a lot of questions for you, basically. It's something I've been thinking about a lot as we look at this customer service stuff and as we're trying to encourage more demos. Demos have really been on my mind lately, and I think about how we do them and how we can improve them. And so, I thought you might have some ideas. Where do I wanna start? I wanna start with software. What do you use, first of all, to record your demos? Have you tried other things? I know what we use. Let's hear it, what do you guys use? 15:25 AW: Yeah, we have migrated through a few different things. Started originally with just one or two users or just maybe a company account with GoTo, when the team could be counted on one hand. Then, when we had to expand to at least five licenses or so, we used Join.me. And I'm pretty sure Join.me now has been purchased by GoTo. But it was easy and straightforward, but we definitely... We had a few people that had a few performance issues with it here and there.15:57 DS: Really? 15:57 AW: Yeah. And then, just like cutting out, audio quality, things like that, weren't always awesome with it.16:03 DS: Right, interesting.16:05 AW: And then a year ago, then we switched to Zoom. We had just expanded into, I think we're around 15 licenses now: Sales, customer success, exec team, everything else. And for the most part, on the meeting side, it's great, it does everything it should. The one thing we've had trouble adapting is when we switched for our monthly customer webinars or agency webinars. Zoom's webinar product is not killer. It's got a lot of finicky, little nuances that we were learning on the fly 'cause we just thought, "Oh, it'll be similar. We're using GoTo webinar." And yeah, not as polished there, and you gotta ride that bike a few times, otherwise, you kinda crash on it a little bit. That part's been hard, but the regular, just conference calls and those pieces, Zoom has worked for us pretty well.16:56 DS: That's interesting. It's also very interesting to me that you have 15 licenses. At Whitespark, we have one, two people that really do demos, and we just share the one account, so it's like... We certainly aren't at that level. And so that makes me wonder, you must be banging out demos all over the place. You have a number of people doing it. We're currently using Join.me and it seems to work pretty good. One of the things that we like is, we will record the demo and then we send the client a link to it after. If they wanted to review something in the software, they have a recording of it. Do you do that with Zoom? Do you have a follow-up and a recording, right? 17:37 AW: Yep, absolutely. Yep, absolutely, we record it. And then, I've also found it, too, when we were training salespeople, I sent them a bunch of my sales recordings.17:45 DS: Yeah, totally.17:46 AW: It lets them hear the history of things that we've been doing. And then, vice versa, I'd have them record their early sales calls and then send them to me. So then, when I had time, I could listen back and offer some talking points and some feedback on those. So yeah, super valuable to be able to record those calls.18:05 DS: Yeah. How many demos are you doing per week, would you estimate? 18:11 AW: Yeah, so we have things bucketed into few different ways. It's like, if you look at... And it falls in line with our segment, our customer segments. On one side is our small businesses; single-location, small business comes to our website and we have call to actions all over our website on request a demo, so they sign up and yeah, we basically have... I don't... This is sad, I don't even know the exact 'cause it doesn't fall directly under my wing, but I'm gonna guess we have somewhere around two to four set demo times every week. We reply to them and say, "Hey, great, you're interested. Here's the upcoming demo times this week." And so, we're trying to do a one-to-many demo with those. We used to do personal one-on-ones, but it got to the point where we were doing so many that it's like, "Alright, we need to have five, 10, 15 of these businesses in this demo, and we're just gonna do them every... Two on Tuesday, one on Thursday, and let's get as many people to those within that time frame."19:16 DS: That's interesting, yeah. So, that's smart. You've mentioned that on a previous episode, where for the SMBs, you'll do them all at the same time. In that case, you're not really trying to address specific pain points by showing specific features, you're kinda just walking through the script of, "This is the tool, this is what you can do, and here are the features." Is that right? Yeah.19:40 AW: Yep, yep. A lot of just education on the product, acknowledging what the landscape looks like, and addressing these are probably some of the problems you're having, and it's why you're looking at us. Here's the benefits, and then here's the features that make those benefits happen. And then allowing some Q&A and follow-up at the end for 'em, but that was one of our hard things, 'cause when you're doing one-to-one, you could be like, "Alright, what type of business are you? Oh, you're a plumber. Well, great, let's talk about some things specifically that I know are helpful in your industry." You lose that a little bit, but once you start hitting certain things, you're like, "Okay, based on price point and scaling this, and what we need to be putting our time on... " Those are just some of the things that you figure out what are we prioritizing to make this happen.20:28 DS: Right, that's really interesting. I think that's a key takeaway from this podcast episode for listeners is that concept of pooling your individual clients. Obviously, like any large multi-location deal, you're gonna wanna do a customized demo, but pooling them is really smart.20:46 AW: Yeah, so after the small business one... And those are done by our customer success team. There's two members of our customer success team that rotate or help each other out with those, but they're the ones that are doing that, they're incredibly well-equipped to do it. And for how we run things, that process for us isn't a high sales process. We follow up with, "Here's what we reviewed, here's the link to go and sign up, let us know if there's anything else you need." But it's much more of a low-touch format with what's there with them. And we've even talked about the next step for us to automate more if we felt like we couldn't get to it, is just to go to an on-demand recorded webinar, where from our side, we'd still want them to say, "Hey, here's who I am, here's my name and email address and my business," so that we can follow up with them and understand who they are. But then that would give them access to like, "Alright, great, here's a 30-minute pre-recorded demo that you can watch."21:46 DS: Is the demo when you have it with let's say 10 to 15 SMBs participating in this Tuesday or Thursday demo, is it interactive in any way? Can they ask questions? Or...21:57 AW: Yep. Yeah, they can totally use the question or the chat feature to ask questions when they're on it. Yep, still able to answer those questions, and that's where a recording wouldn't even allow you to be able to do that, and we just... It was the right step for us not to go all the way to a recorded. I know there's plenty of SaaS tools that do it. Depending upon what type of product you're selling, that might work for you, but in our case, we just know they have questions, we need to dive deeper on certain things and it works best for us.22:28 DS: Sure. And so you will address the questions interactively on the demo as they pop up? 22:33 AW: Yep.22:34 DS: Okay. 'Cause you could still have the recording, but have a chat open where someone's just sitting there answering the questions. [chuckle]22:40 AW: Yeah, yeah, totally, that could be done but then they'd be not paying attention to what the next section is 'cause they're interacting with the chatroom. But who knows? Someday we might be busy enough where we get to that, where it's like, "Alright, that's really what we need to do." Then the next segment with agencies, here we do one-to-one demo, so our agency sales rep, Chris, between demo requests and pricing requests, he's trying to move them to get them into a demo. He does a one-on-one demo with them, he answers a lot of questions. If anything, as we continue to grow, we look at with him, that he probably goes too far in the demo, and it becomes more of a customer success session than a sales. Our customers love it, but when you start looking at certain volume things, that's where it gets really tricky. How much time is too much time? And how do you cut that off? 23:37 AW: And I would say on average what we like to see on Chris' plate is closer to 10 to 15 demos a week for him based on what our inbound is and numbers that we'd like to hit. Some could be slower, some could be even faster with that. I know he's had some good marathon days where he's doing five, six, seven, eight demos within a day. But that's where it's even more important to have discipline on, these need to be 45-minute demos, and you're not trying to boil the ocean with it, as compared to somebody... Somebody can easily drag you into a two or three-hour demo just by wanting every question answered. I think that's something important for people to think about when you're early and starting off, yeah, invest all the time you can, but as you grow and hit some maturity, you do have to be conscious with, we need to have this be concise, still incredibly valuable, but have it be concise and try to move them to the next step in the sales process.24:38 DS: For sure. Is that the number, 45? Is that what you try to keep your demos to? Or the half hour, what is it usually? 24:44 AW: Yeah, so me personally, the ones that I'm doing with multi-locations, we schedule an hour call. And I really wanna have... And this one, since I'm the one doing it, I can speak to it a lot more accurately, but what we do with our multi-location calls is, we have a deck of about 30 slides that takes you about 30 minutes to run through. Then I'll have a browser set up with a bunch of tabs all related to the back end of the product, "Here's review widgets on sites, you can see it, here's a number of other features." And I really let that second section based on what they ask questions in the slides, that's where I go to like, "Alright, here's where you have these questions, now let's look at how this works either in the product or how this surfaces on your website, or in the search results, or whatever that might be."25:33 DS: That's interesting, I did not realize you did that. When someone books a demo with Whitespark, it's like, we get on a call, I have some questions for them, and then I show them the software, and we talk about their pain points and hear how we can solve those. You have a deck? Like you actually present a slide deck? 25:50 AW: Yes, yep, so what we hit upon is kind of... And I should back up, 'cause you just touched upon something that we just evolved to, it's really important. When it was just me doing these sales, I had a set routine of questions I knew I wanted to ask. And when I went to formalize our sales process more and build more structure for our sales new hires, we actually created a pre-demo questionnaire. We send them a 10-question form that hits upon things like, "Why are you coming to us? How many locations do you have? Have you used a reputation management solution before? What CRMs do you have?" We're asking the 10 most important questions that really help us understand how we might customize our pitch and what we spend time on, what are their pain points, how familiar are they with what we do, that kind of stuff, and that really helps. Yeah, that really helps inform that, and make sure that we capture those things. 'Cause even in my demos, in winging it sometimes, I'll forget to ask that question and it's like, "Ah, now I have to follow up in an email to find that," and it's just getting even further to delivering our price or a proposal, or whatever that could be.27:03 DS: For sure. Interesting. Alright, cool, I wanna see that deck. Actually, I think I might sign up for your regular SMB demo. I wanna get on that...27:14 AW: There you go.27:14 DS: And watch your demo and see how you do it, 'cause it's something that we're trying to work on here at Whitespark, improve our demos, and so I think...27:21 AW: Well, I would say for any business, sign up and be sold to. And it gives you a lot of ideas on what you do and don't like. Funny enough, we have sat in on a couple of competitors' demos, only from the standpoint that they buy lists and they end up emailing us when they bought the list to say like, "Hey, you should... "27:42 DS: "Hey, want a demo?" [chuckle]27:43 AW: Yeah. Yeah, whatever, we're like, "Yeah, sure, you emailed us about it. It's not us sneakily creating our John Smith account."27:51 DS: Yeah, totally.27:53 AW: Yeah, but it shows, especially for bigger ones, just how blind they are to what they're putting out there. It's a total shotgun spray approach. Put as much out there as possible and see what bites.28:04 DS: Who the heck buys lists? It's actually the worst marketing strategy.28:09 AW: I get emails weekly on, "Here's your competitors, buy their list." And then when they're really bad at it, and they say like, "We have all these competitors." When they're really bad at it they have you on it as well.[laughter]28:21 DS: Yeah, totally.28:22 AW: It's like, yeah...28:22 DS: You know you can segment the list.28:25 AW: Yeah. That's us, so good job.28:26 DS: Yeah, totally. [chuckle]28:28 AW: Or we re-branded over a year ago now and they'll still... It'll be a GetFiveStars email address are sent to us instead of GatherUp and the opening is there, "I've been following your company closely... "[chuckle]28:43 AW: It's like, "Really? Well, you seem to be about a year behind."28:48 DS: That's right. Yeah.28:49 AW: Yeah. So, yeah, and then, like I said, the slide deck is pretty static, answer questions in it, but it allows us to get our main talking points across, how we see the space, what's unique about us, here's the features that are there. And it's pretty much the same deck that our SMB delivers, but we just talk about it differently. The talk track and the story to it is a lot different. And then after that, like I said, the browser stuff, then I wanna jump into the product where they hag questions or interest. And I really wanna drive home with them, like, "Hey, you're interested in how you request reviews? Great, let's go in and look at how the email is basically a drip campaign and there's automations, and you control the settings and things like that with it," reporting, things like that that just translate much better visually. I wanna show that living, breathing in them.29:37 DS: Yeah, and I think the review feed, I think that's a huge thing. Whenever I demo Reputation Builder, which is GatherUp, I've always really drill into that customer activity feed. So you can say, "Here's all your reviews for all your locations. It's so nice, you can manage this all in one place," and that is what I find, I [29:57] ____ up there, their eyes light up.29:58 AW: Totally. I use that... Yeah, I'm like, this is a working screen for you, right? You have 6000 customers in here, but let's look at your ones that gave you one or two stars and that you haven't replied to them.30:12 DS: Yeah. All that culture.30:12 AW: And then they're like, "Oh, wow. Yeah, this makes it a working scenario for me so that I can make sure we're doing the right things."30:18 DS: Yeah, totally.30:19 AW: Yeah, so once the demo's done, then our process for me at multi-locations is, I'm gonna follow up, I'm gonna give them a PDF of the deck we reviewed, I'm gonna send them the recording. If there's any specific questions that I needed to get back that we weren't able to answer, send those. I'll usually try to send a case study. So I really make that reach back email super valuable to them and just kind of pepper them with like, "Alright, wow, all my bases are covered, I have all this." And then try to deliver them pricing and say, "Great, can we put in a statement of work together for you based on everything that we've shown you?" And it seems like we're...30:56 DS: Do you have a system? So, okay, you send this great email at the end that has all of the... Everything they would need so all their questions are answered, that's smart, and then do you set something up where it's like, okay, in four days an automatic follow-up needs to get sent out? Or do you put something on a calendar, in your CRM, like, "Okay, make sure we follow up with them in four days"? 31:18 AW: Yeah, we don't, but we should. At least, I can't speak for myself, but, yeah, we absolutely have the availability to do that in Pipedrive. Sometimes, I will set those, but I'm definitely not consistent with it. I've always said, like, "Man, I am the biggest failure of a CRM ever, and I just try to train my employees...31:40 DS: To do it better. Yeah.31:41 AW: And our teams to be way better than what we do. So I'm like, "Don't be me." I definitely get the deal info in there, but as far as every last detail and the back and forth, I could totally do a better job, and I could use built-in features like the reminders and next item and tasks.32:00 DS: I feel the exact same. It's like, I go through these waves where I'm really good at being on top of sales. And in my CRM, we use a system called Copper. And I'm really on top of it for a good couple of weeks and then I just get busy. It's like, these conference things will come up, and then things just start falling off and I'm not doing as good a job as I was before. What can you do? Can't do it all.32:22 AW: Yeah, no, it becomes hard. And I think if anything there... And you'll see, as you grow and you expand past just you doing it, that's where you see the real big value. It's like, "Oh, this gives me so much visibility," I can look at the team and say, "Here's what's in each of their... " We have five sales stages, and so I can see what deals are in what stage, so I can forecast better, it allows me to help, like, "Alright, why don't we have enough within this segment, within this phase of the sales process?" That visibility is a really good thing, and it's accountability for each person too, right? 32:54 DS: Definitely. Yep.32:56 AW: They see what they have in there, and then I can say like, "Hey, here's someone else's pipeline, do you see the massive difference here? And let's talk about how do we get this... Where are we missing the mark with getting in or progressing people to the next stage?"33:10 DS: Yeah, definitely. Cool. Alright, I got more questions here. Let's say, questions are coming in on support, they didn't explicitly request a demo. How heavily are you pushing demos in those customer support questions? Like new leads that come in, they have questions. Do you then proactively try to suggest demos on a regular basis? Are you pushing demos as your primary thing? Or do you suggest you get on a call? Or is a call always a demo? 33:40 AW: Yeah. We offer a lot of leeway, especially to our CS team, if those are coming in through those general channels, but we usually see a pretty... For those that are pre-sales, we are gonna try to funnel them to a demo. We basically tell them like, "This is the best way to get to know the product and really understand the concepts," because even if somebody comes in and says they have this one or two very specific questions, it's great to answer those, but you also have to realize they might be asking this specific question with a complete misnomer on the high level strategy to it. Right? 34:18 DS: Right.34:19 AW: So we always wanna route them back into... If they're not a customer with us, we absolutely wanna get them to a demo, and if we understand they're a small business or a multi-location or agency, we wanna get them to the right person to get them into the right demo. So yeah, we definitely wanna route 'em that way. When it's an existing customer, then we wanna do exactly what we can to answer those questions for them, that gets more into customer success support stuff and things like that. But being helpful, giving them the help guide article that they might need, jumping on a call if that's what they need to resolve it, all of those different pieces, whatever it is to satisfy that direct ask.35:02 DS: Yeah. How many demos are you personally doing for larger enterprise-y type client? 35:09 AW: Yeah, on average, I would probably say two to four a week.35:16 DS: That's a lot.35:17 AW: It is a lot, it's a good thing. I'm starting to... Now with having the sales team, I'm probably closer to the two, so it's gonna be very large ones that I also know will be very sophisticated. As we continue to ramp our team, the more experience our sales team has between our two outbound reps in multi-locations, that's made it a lot easier on me, but I still... The ones that are in the hundreds or possibly even thousands of locations, I'm handling those directly. Sometimes, I will have them... They still will ride along with those based on what's here. It's been harder to do lately because man, working these in amongst how crazy my travel schedule is and whatever else, that has been a nightmare and been really hard. And even with some of those, it's allowed me to pass off. It just makes it easier for me to delegate and be like, "Alright, sweet, I'm CC-ing this person on our sales team." And the minute you reply, "Yeah, let's schedule this demo," they're jumping in to be like, "Great," and they handle it from there.36:23 DS: Nice. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, because what are you gonna do? Are you gonna go to a Starbucks and do a demo? 36:31 AW: Yeah, totally. Plenty from my hotel rooms as of recently.36:33 DS: Sure, yeah. That works. That works fine.36:36 AW: Yeah. But yeah, I wanna get to the point where I'm really only involved in extremely high level pitches or the sales team is asking me to come to a super key demo, because they know it will help bring the customer on. I wanna be a tool for them as success instead of part of the process to get that customer.36:54 DS: Yeah, I like your pre-demo questionnaire. That's a great idea, we're gonna hook that up. Definitely get that.37:00 AW: It's such an easy thing to do, right? 37:01 DS: Yeah, exactly.37:01 AW: We use Typeform for it and when we're scheduling the demo, we're like, "Great, we're all set, I'm gonna send you a Zoom invite for the meeting on your calendar, and here's a quick 10-question survey to fill up before the demo so we can best customize it to your needs." And yeah, it gets filled out and it's also great 'cause our entire sales team can see all the results that come in so you can see what other customers are citing as their background, their big goals, what CRMs they're using, things like that. It's actually building up a good repository of pre-sales data for us.37:34 DS: Cool. What kind of post-sale demos do you do? Any at all? A customer just came through, signed up, they've been using the tool for a few days and they have a bunch of questions. Do you ever say, "Hey, well, let's jump on a demo and I can show you that stuff"? Is that... Or you wouldn't even call that a demo, you would just call that...37:56 AW: Yeah, we wouldn't really call it a demo. Customer success will totally do that and, "Hey, let's just jump on a call real quick, share our screen and be able to walk you through so you can see exactly how this works." On the sales side, sometimes, we'll have some secondary demos so it might be the person who's required to go do the leg work and identify possible solutions. And then the next time will be like, "Okay, now my boss and my boss's boss, these are the people involved, and now we need to do a demo for them." That, on the sales side, that's more likely in multi-locations, where we get into that. And now, the decision makers are at the table, which it's much better when they're all there day one. I usually try an early email communication to be like, who's gonna be there and things like that, and try to get all those people to the table.38:52 AW: But sometimes in bigger orgs like that, that will have to happen and then I should throw out there, for certain ones, too, I just tell them after a demo sometimes if there's gonna be more, like, "Can I get on a plane?" and "Do you guys wanna have a meeting?" If it's the right kind of deal and I know it'll go a long way, let's do this demo in person. I'm more than willing to like, let's build a relationship, let's build trust, the size of the account warrants it. Yeah, we're selling software but let's get a relationship going." And I find that that's a great secret weapon, 'cause there's so many companies not willing to invest into that or do that. And when you do that, then they're just like, "Wow, you were really eager to work with us, and I trust you, and I feel good, and you answered all of our questions while we're sitting there face-to-face. We're gonna go with you."39:42 DS: That is nice. You're lucky to be in Minneapolis, it's a good hub for getting anywhere.39:47 AW: It does make going anywhere a little bit easier, for sure. I would have never thought... Once upon a time, I would have loved to be able to live anywhere I want, and now, running a remote company, I actually could, but yeah, I cannot live an hour away from a direct main airport because that would just drive me crazy.40:10 DS: Totally. And Minneapolis is so beautifully situated in the center of the country, kind of.40:16 AW: Yes.40:16 DS: You can easily... You can pretty much have a flight anywhere where you can fly in the morning, you're working on the plane the whole time anyways, you go and have a two-hour meeting and then you're home in the afternoon.40:28 AW: Yup, it does make it a lot easier.40:30 DS: Yeah, that's great.40:32 AW: Darren, what do you think... I wanna ask you a question. What do you feel like in your process that you haven't... What has it been that has kept you from getting more of a like, how do we get what our customers are asking about and get in front of a living, breathing environment like a demo for them? What's kept you from doing it? 40:49 DS: Well, it's not like we don't do it, we definitely do it. It's just opportunities to improve our process there, things like the pre-demo questionnaire is really clever. We gotta do that. And I think another big one is this slide deck idea, so the flow of your demo is very interesting to me, and so I think we can improve process there. We do a lot of demos, so we have a lot of customers that come in and they ask for a demo, we schedule them, we do them, but we just haven't put in the time to build a good process around it. And so I know that this episode is very valuable for me from that perspective so I hope that a lot of listeners are picking up some ideas here, too, 'cause there's lots of opportunities to optimize that process. And so that's what I wanna do, I wanna improve all of these things.41:45 DS: Maybe Zoom, it might be better. So we might even change our software, we'll build a deck, and then we'll have a post-demo follow-up process. You know what? It really speaks to our last podcast episode around process. We don't have a good demo process, we're just winging it, it's like, "Oh, someone wants a demo? Sure. Yeah, we get on a call with them and we show them the tool." It's like, everything that you're describing is a very structured process on how you can optimize and improve your demos. And so that's what we need to do, that's what you have to do to take to the next level. And it's funny to think about that, right? You just think about demos as this one thing you do but you can put a process on everything to make it so much better. And I think it sounds to me like you've done a really good job of doing that.42:33 AW: Yeah, well, as always noted, there's always room for improvement. Some of the things we're doing, we literally just put some of the... The pre-demo questionnaire, that just came about 60 days ago as we grew and needed more process on the sales side. It is never ending, but yeah, I look at that structure and I look at that, the deck has always allowed us to make sure the demo is about the customer. You wanna personalize it, you wanna have to be about them, but it is about how do you communicate your value proposition, how you're different, and how you wanna help them, what's important to you, how do you do that in a consistent and concise way. And I found out early on before we had that, we didn't have that, where it's just jumping into the product that, then you really allowed the customer to completely control all of it within some ways. And while that is great, a lot of times, you would miss out on a number of things because of time constraint and where they took the conversation that you never had a chance to set the table on, "Here's what this looks like, here is what is important, here's what we wanna deliver in business value, here's how you're gonna benefit, here's the features that make it happen." And so we weren't getting that flow in a consistent basis, that was really important to be able to nail.43:57 DS: Absolutely. I think that's a really good comment, is being able to set the table. It's like you wanna make sure that all of these really valuable features and benefits get conveyed on the demo and it can completely get derailed if you don't have a structure in place. They'll have a question and then you could spend the next like half hour talking about schema markup rather than actually demoing the product.44:22 AW: Yes, and those things can still happen.44:25 DS: Yeah, definitely. Definitely, yeah.44:28 AW: What do you find? What's one thing that you have found surprising or consistent that you didn't think would be in the demos you do? What's something that you're like, "I would have never bet on this, but this is something that I continually see or a takeaway from, when I interact with customers in pre-sales demos"? 44:49 DS: Oh, man, you ask me this question 'cause I think you probably have an answer for it, but I can't think of anything. Our demo process is, I try to really focus the demo on their specific pain points. Whenever they get on a call with me, I wanna ask them like, "What are the things you're having a problem with? Are you currently using a vendor for this? What are the struggles you're having? What are the challenges?" And then from there, I'll show them all of the features. As you just mentioned, I probably miss out on showing them other really great stuff because I'm too focused on that one thing, but that is why they came to us, so I think there was a benefit there. I don't have a good answer.45:31 AW: Yeah. Maybe I can ask the question better. How well do you feel that they understand what you deliver? 45:38 DS: Yeah, so I think I would rate it... It's a C. On a letter grade scale, I would grade us a C. And I think we could get to an A with a better process because I think they understand pieces of it but not the whole picture, and that's just a really great way to look at it. If someone comes in, they want a demo, that's an opportunity for you to show them how great your solution could be, and if you don't use that time properly, you could only be showing them 60% of what the potential is. And then if you only show them 60%, someone else shows them 100%, then they're gonna get the sale and not you. So yeah, it's a really interesting way to look at it.46:24 AW: Yeah, no. And that's I guess what it's [46:27] ____, it's like, alright, they know the terms to be able to ask the questions around a citation or around a review and things like that, but what we found is a lot of times, they're missing the strategical part, and we see that so key, as like, "Let us help you think about this because the tactical decisions are endless and you have a lot of options," but unless you're rooted into, "Here is why these things matter, here's how we approach them." To me, that's the biggest sale you're trying to get, is them to buy into how you view what takes place, not so much the tactical. "What mode? Are you gonna request reviews via SMS or email?" I look at... If that's the only things they're making their decision off of, then there's a million solutions that can help them. But if you're able to convey, "This is why we've built these tactical things 'cause they weave into this strategical outlook," those are the ones that will sign up, will stay with us, become loyal repeat customers, and refer us to other people, because in the easy way to put it, like they're drinking the Kool-Aid.47:34 DS: Yeah, totally. And it's not actually Kool-Aid, it's the real stuff. You are subject matter experts and it's helpful to educate the customers on that and you establish yourself as people that they can trust to help answer that. You're not just going through the motions of like, "We have this feature. Look, you can toggle that on or off." That's not that exciting to people. What's exciting to people is, "I have this bigger problem which is much bigger than sending feedback request via SMS or email, it's like, how do we improve our business?" And so you're really tackling it at the high level, which I think is valuable in the demo, and it could be a piece of our demos that we're currently missing.48:19 AW: Yeah. Well, I think you made a great point in there of an overall, no matter what you're doing in a demo or a sales call, keep your customer engaged. If you are boring them to death, [chuckle] if you're not delivering value, teaching them, giving them insight, yeah, you're likely going to lose them or they're gonna be typing emails while your demo's playing. So yeah, that's definitely an important piece. And in that same line, boy, we as always, we're getting close to a pretty long time on here. We should probably cut ourselves off once again so that our podcast listeners stay engaged. We might have to revisit this one. There's still plenty to talk about.49:00 DS: There is, yeah. For sure. Alright.49:02 AW: Alright. Well, awesome. Thanks everyone. We appreciate you joining us again on The SaaS Venture. Darren, anything of note coming up for you personally or professionally in the coming weeks that you wanted to touch on as we sign off? 49:16 DS: Nothing too much. I'm looking forward to launching the new Local Citation Finder. I think that's gonna be great for us, it's our biggest SaaS product, we have more subscribers to that and we have a lot of churn there. So the new Local Citation Finder should improve that churn, reduce the churn, and I'm really looking forward to that. It's sort of the biggest thing that I wanna focus on [49:40] ____ in a while. I also actually need to get back to doing the local search ranking factors, so I'll be putting that together in the next month as well.49:51 AW: Nice. Yeah, those are a couple of big things I'll be excited to hear about. Hopefully, you can keep us up to date on if retooling that does help your churn and some of the things you learn in that, that'll be awesome.50:03 DS: Definitely. I'll have to make sure that we set it up properly to track and really measure the difference, the impact that we see from doing that.50:10 AW: Coolio.50:11 DS: Coolio.50:12 AW: Alright. Well, thanks, everyone, for listening. We'll wrap things up, and thanks, Darren, always a pleasure.50:18 DS: In turn, always a pleasure. We'll talk to you all next time.50:20 AW: Alright. Yup. See you everybody next time.[outro music]