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- [00:00]
A
Hey, before we get into today's show, my marketing manager finally convinced me to run a wild experiment in this episode because he wanted to prove what the conversion engine can do for your brand. So we are giving away three of our $10,000 deep dive audits for free in this audit. And this isn't one of those audits that you get from some AI generated bot. This actually takes us two plus weeks, seven or eight of our team members, and it is incredibly in depth. It will give you insights into your media, buying, your creative, your actual business metrics, and find out exactly where the gaps are and where your growth is stalled and what we can do about it. Or what you can do about it when you get the audit. Now here's the catch. We only have three spots, so head on over to tier11.com audit right now. Fill out the form and let's see how we can scale your business in the coming year. Your agency shouldn't be reporting well, it should be performing well. If your agency is saying, hey, look at the Meta dashboard and see how great we're doing, always ask the question, is it real? The three questions that every VP of marketing should ask their agency. What would they be?
- [01:16]
B
The first question.
- [01:20]
A
You're listening to perpetual traffic. Hey, before we get into today's show, my marketing manager finally convinced me to run a wild experiment in this episode because he wanted to prove what the conversion engine can do for your brand. So we are giving away three of our $10,000 deep dive audits for free in this audit. And this isn't one of those audits that you get from some AI generated bot. This actually takes us two plus weeks, seven or eight of our team members, and it is incredibly in depth and will give you insights into your media, buying, your creative, your actual business metrics, and find out exactly where the gaps are and where your growth is stalled and what we can do about it. Or what you can do about it when you get the audit. Now here's the catch. We only have three spots, so head on over to tier11.com forward/audit right now. Fill out the form and let's see how we can scale your business in the coming year.
- [02:24]
B
Like I think like as you said earlier, like sometimes people will overextend on the reporting to make it look better. Because like again, little win. Women lie. Men lie. Numbers don't lie. But numbers sure can be manipulated. Because I can. Like, like we'll use Google Ads. You can do all conversion value versus like the actual conversion value. That's associated to it. So I think like going back to earlier with the VP has or whoever, the, the director of marketing and whoever's overseeing the marketing has a level of responsibility to know enough that you can suss out if the numbers are aligned with your true north star and having symmetry with the revenue growth for the account. Because you can manipulate and say like with attribution. If you're using a tool like Attentive that has a 28 day attribution window by default for SMS you can say like look, our stuff is contributing to 80% of your sales. When the reality is is the numbers are manipulated and it's just the dashboard looks really good and then you're able to hide behind vanity metrics and vanity reporting.
- [03:27]
A
Yeah. And on that note, for attentive for example, attentive is one component of an overall marketing strategy. Unless that's your only component. Well those emails and SMS have to come from somewhere. So the precursor to that is probably opt ins is my guess. Yeah, probably. The point is this is like every single metric needs to get measured in its own individual way. But how is it contributing to the bottom line? Yes, how is it contributing to your source of truth? And for us it's always going back to the source of truth. Whether it's the inside of your Shopify, it's your HubSpot, it's your CRM, all of that. If your agency isn't pull data from there and they're looking in app or they're looking just solely like inside the attentive app, like that unto itself will look really good. But how is the business moving forward? Are you just recycling the same customers? Are you actually getting new ones? How are your opt ins? Maybe on your social platforms that feed the attentive sale. All of this needs to get factored in and your agency needs to know what those one or two or three metrics are that are really moving the needle and to achieve your goal. Like, like we talked about before, it's like the goal is everything. If you don't know what that goal is and you're not aligned with your agency on the specific goal, could be a quarterly goal, could be a yearly goal, could be a 10 year goal if you have a long term outlook. The point is this, is that all of your metrics should be in alignment with that goal, then you sort of diagnose backwards and figure out where the holes are and where to fix those holes.
- [05:06]
B
Yeah, yeah, like going backwards to know which ones to fix and like there's pieces to it where the Agency may like, again, there's different types. So someone who's only focused on the specific service that you ask them to do, that just might be a limitation of where they are as an agency and their skills, which I'm not saying those aren't good options. It's just depending on where you are in revenue and where you are in market investment right now, you have to be mindful that someone who's only focused on what they're responsible for, which I admit at times I was, I was like, I, like, I can't be responsible for what's held after the click, but I am going to be affected by it. So you just have to be able to like let someone like a dashboard that an agency is saying, like, hey, look at what we're performing. I need to have a discussion that starts from the dashboard. Like the dashboard is a springboard, not the focus of the discussion. Because then I can identify like, is it increasing our customers, increasing our revenue, increasing our repurchase rate, increasing our average order value, what's driving lifetime value? That springboard, that springboard from the dashboard vantage point allows you to have stronger conversations such as, all right, I am looking at this product and I can see that the I'll go to E Commerce because it's easy. The product display page is converting at four and a half percent. I'd like to push that to 9%. So the dashboard allows us to have solution forward questions that the agency may not be responsible for, but they are, they have a responsibility to bring up the discussion.
- [06:40]
A
Yeah, absolutely. And I think you have to make sure that all of those metrics are accurate. They're reporting in app or in platform. That platform. Those results, like you said before, can be manipulated. Even if they don't have server side tracking. You should at least be able to have your agency go in and figure out like, okay, last week when they report to you, this is how, this is how sales were. This is how many new customers we got, this is how many repeat customers we got. Even if they the. If all you're running is Facebook ads and your Facebook ads are a 5.8 ROAS or a 3.2 ROAS. But you know that can be very easily manipulated depending on like which campaign that you're using.
- [07:26]
B
You just go down to breakdown, look at demographics and then from demographics you can see audience segments, assuming that you've defined your audience segments. If you didn't, why it takes 30 seconds anyways, you do do that and you can look at are these existing or engaged or new Audiences just by that in and of itself will give you insight of it's easy to to get a really high roas and in app roas if you're going after retargeting.
- [07:48]
A
Oh absolutely. And your roas will be off the charts and it'll look great and your business will be it's cheating.
- [07:55]
B
So but there's times I will say hold on, hold on, I'll let me, let me back like give myself a devil's advocate and just like, well, is it cheating? And if the client is not doing any other marketing initiatives to capture that same retention because then that's where like you can see like you had brought up Ralph. Like if your roas in app or even if the roas in Dashboard is showing one thing and like it looks like the numbers are growing but your Shopify store or your bank account are not, what is happening when it's, there's incongruency between the two. And if someone's like I have really strong roas in Facebook, we know that like hold on, are you probably cheating? But the only other thing is like, well, why aren't you also trying? Because if you're using a tool like Wicked Reports or Data Suite or anything else to see where that last clue can that contribution attribution is coming from, if no one else is doing, if you're not doing email marketing, if you're not doing SMS marketing, then the only reason that they're converting is from your Google TikTok and Facebook ads, for example. That'll be my devil advocate where take the credit because they're not doing the minimum effort required.
- [09:02]
A
Well, yeah, if your agency is relying on the in platform metrics, it's a warning sign. And I think we're going to go through this as far as like the weekly reporting and all that sort of stuff, the questions that you should ask, we'll, we'll talk about that in a second. But just keep in mind that every ad platform, whether it's Meta, whether it's Google, whether it's TikTok, Pinterest, Snapchat, you name it, it uses its own attribution model to assign revenue and credit for the ads that it serves. So.
- [09:31]
B
And it models that data. It models that data.
- [09:34]
A
Models that data. Like that's a key element to this whole thing. So if your agency is saying, hey, look at the Facebook Dashboard or the Meta dashboard and see how great we're doing, always ask the question, is it real? How are you double checking this versus where I'm actually collecting the money My CRM, my back end, whether it's, you know, bigcommerce, you know, Shopify, you name it, whatever it happens to be. That's the question to ask them. Because every single platform, whenever there is a conversion that happens, that platform is going to say to themselves, well, did someone who made this purchase interact with one of our ads recently and how can we get credit for that to make us look good? All the platforms do this. They try to do as much as they possibly can because they want you to invest, look good and sell more. So it's almost like it's fraud in a lot of ways. And plus, all that data in so many ways is modeled, like you said, it's not actual click data, your source of truth. It's the ultimate checks and balances for your entire business because that's where you're collecting the money.
- [10:39]
B
Sure. It's almost like the same where if an agency is like, yeah, I've got a 5x row. You're like, well it's all remarketing. And then you're like, well then why aren't you doing any efforts either? Because if I don't do this and you turn off all of my remarketing, then you will have no sales. Am I thinking that same lens where people are like, oh, Mark Zuckerberg hates me, just wants to take all my money. I'm like, I don't know if there are other companies out there that want you to have more success. And I've told you this before, I think companies like Meta are looking to just be rev share companies in your business because the more money you make, the more you spend. So it's like a bank account rev share situation without the having to manage inventory without them having to fulfill services. So these platforms want you to win because the more you win, the more you put back into the system. It's like this, never ending. Like you make a dollar for every 20 you give me. Great, give me $20 million and you'll make 20x, whatever that solution is. But to the language of fraud, it's, it's set up where they care about your chance of winning. But I think most of the time through resource capacity restrictions, people don't pay attention in setting them up for the most success. So then is it the owner's fault, the marketer's fault, or Meta's fault that they're taking like fraudulent roas when you didn't follow up with basic best practices?
- [12:05]
A
Yeah, I mean, like I said, I mean every platform wants to look good and think about it this way is be very skeptical of the platform and to a certain degree be skeptical of the agency because the agency typically wants to look good as well. They don't want to get fired. Meta doesn't want to get fired, Google doesn't want to get fired. They all want you to continue to spend money with them.
- [12:25]
B
Yeah.
- [12:26]
A
And your source of truth and your, the way that you really want to look at this is cut through all that stuff. And I do want to get into like the questions that we should be asking as a VP of marketing in order to make sure that your agency is on the straight and narrow. But I will say that so think about it this way. And I know we said this many times before in the show and if you're running ads on Meta and Google simultaneously, the reason why this happens is because in almost every brand has this situation, both platforms are looking at the same pool of customers who purchased. So if somebody you know might have seen a Meta ad on a Monday, clicked on a Google shopping ad on Thursday, purchased on a Saturday, Meta claims the credit because that's a view through conversion. They saw the ad on Monday and the person actually bought on, you know, on Saturday, maybe through an organic search. And Meta wants to take credit for that as much as possible. So but Google in that case will claim the purchase in last click attribution for their click that they got on Thursday.
- [13:33]
B
So an attentive will keep for 28 days, any purchases in a few clicks. But so like in that like you can look like questions to ask like how much are you looking at? Click Attribution vs View through Attribution that takes 5 seconds to pull out in a report inside Meta. You just go into the dashboards, you do another breakdown and then you can look at click through versus view like, like you need to understand like those small things. So when you're looking at those numbers, understanding where is that source coming from, what lens are you looking at it? Because it's if you have someone that's like I've got 5x roas and you don't just make a small adjustment like oh my gosh, it's all view through roas. No one's clicking. All you're doing is just throwing it out there and like you saw it, I get credit. Yeah, you saw it like that.
- [14:17]
A
So exactly. So in my scenario you viewed the Facebook ad, this is all within seven days. Keep in mind, I mean most of our clients, it's usually our look back period is typically is seven plus days. It's usually 30 days in most cases, just so we can sort of claim like real attribution contribution. Anyway, it's sort of a side note, but think about it this way. In that scenario, you've got Meta who saw the ad on Monday, clicked on the Google Shopping ad on a Thursday and purchased through an organic search on Saturday. Your Shopify dashboard only reports one purchase, but your platforms are actually recording two because they both want to claim credit for the same sale. And this is happening if you're a high volume business. This is happening hundreds of times a week in app. That's why you don't look in app. You look only.
- [15:07]
B
You don't only look, you look in app.
- [15:09]
A
Of course, good point. But you don't use the in app metrics as your source of truth because where you collect the money, that's where it matters most. And that's why in app Roas is a false God and is something that people cannot demigod.
- [15:28]
B
Let's give it a demigod.
- [15:29]
A
Because people are so addicted to this, to this false metric now. It used to be far more accurate way back before ATT prompts and you know, iOS 14 updates. The point is this is that this is the situation here. It's not a structural deficiency of the platforms. This is just how platform attribution works. And every platform once again is incentivized to claim as much credit as they possibly can. So you keep coming back.
- [15:56]
B
There's a big elephant in the room of this conversation. Mm. Is the tracking set up correctly?
- [16:02]
A
Oh, well, that's probably a good question to ask your agency is if you're having. This was one of the things that we used to have this checklist called the Minimize, Maximize, Optimize the MMO checklist. And it was if you're all of a sudden you stopped getting conversions inside your Facebook ad account because that's all we did way back when, 10 years ago. Check and make sure that your buy button is still on your landing page. Because we actually had a client who magically all their buy buttons disappeared one night and we're like, what is going on? So yeah, so actually make sure that is the case that people can actually purchase on your site. Like one of the other things is something like that happens. Just like a quick side note is go actually purchase something from your business, go onto your phone, experience what a new shopper is actually experiencing and then tell your agency what you thought and even go to one of your ads. Find one of your ads on Instagram, click through. Wait. My marketing manager finally convinced me to run a wild experiment in this episode. Because we want to prove what the conversion engine can do for your brand. We are giving away three of our $10,000 deep dive audits for free. We're going to look at your creative, your media buying, your actual business metrics to find exactly where your growth is stalled. This is two weeks of our best work, but we only have three spots. So go to tier11.com forward/audit right now. Fill out the form and let's see how we can scale your business. Be like a customer and then actually purchase. Because you could purchase on your own website because you're going to make the money anyway. You can do this.
- [17:52]
B
I would do this. Or make stuff your own coupon code. That's.
- [17:54]
A
I would do this. Once a week, we literally have someone on our staff that checks our application page every single week to make sure our calendar is working, to make sure all the HubSpot hookups are working. Literally they go on and act as a wait till.
- [18:07]
B
That's an agentic workflow. Because I was like once a week I was like, if you've got a large SKU store, like that's super hard. Like I, I mean one smart, like you're still.
- [18:16]
A
But at least just like one like one purchase, maybe your, your most popular high volume, you know, high gross profitability or net profitability product. Like just do it every now and then.
- [18:27]
B
Or like set a calendar. Like maybe it's like once a quarter or once every six months. Go through your shopping phase and even if you haven't made any adjustments, if you've got a WordPress site, there's so many plugins that might make it like literally the. What is it? The Small Business Expo. This is a huge organization. They do like 30 different events every single year that they aren't making like huge changes. It's the same website I remember going to two, three years ago. I got so mad because I was like, your stuff doesn't work on mobile. I was like, you just sent an email and a text message to 60,000
- [19:04]
A
people people and it doesn't even work.
- [19:07]
B
You can't submit on mobile. I was like, unbelievable business.
- [19:12]
A
Oh my God. It happens more than I'm like, I'm even uncomfortable to admit.
- [19:19]
B
So there's no changes. Like you can like do things to see. Like, are there like major changes that have gone to the website? I think it's a good litmus test that if you're a leader in your company, that if you're not, if you're time Resource restraint. You're not able to do it. Every time you have a new employee that starts your business, have them go through the journey and then have them be like, that works. That didn't work.
- [19:40]
A
Yeah, give feedback. I think it's. I think it's a great start. So at the very least do that. I mean, we take it to the extreme because there's really this one page on our site that is vital to the growth of the business. So we test that every single week? Yes. Is that an agentic AI task in the future? 100%. But just so happens it's our webmaster and takes her 10 minutes to do it every single Monday. All right, I'm interested in this question. So the title of today's show is, is your agency performing or is it just reporting? Well, what I would like to know from you is what are this? A couple of questions, maybe three questions that a VP of marketing should ask their agency on their either weekly or maybe monthly performance reviews that would make the most sense. Like the three questions that every VP of marketing should ask their agency.
- [20:36]
B
What would they be the first question that someone. So it's first 15 minutes of what should be asked by a leader of marketing? Well, I mean, like an easy one. Is the performance that happened last week, are we on par to what you expect it to be? Like, where do you feel like I want to temp check. I want to understand where you're looking at your own numbers. Where are we? And then the follow up is like, based on that answer, what is the KPI you're most focused on? Or like, what is the initiative that you are looking at doing this week to drive better value? And then the third follow up would be is based on the initiative that you're doing. What's the anticipated impact or outcome you're looking to achieve by the time we have our next call?
- [21:24]
A
Okay, so this is on a weekly call. This is how. What's the cadence?
- [21:28]
B
It depends. I mean, if it's a VP of like how big of a company, regardless of whatever it is, I want to know your temp check right now. Like, I want you to look me in the face and be like, okay, where are you? Stoplight, red, yellow, green, Add in like yellow, green and like yellow, red, Whatever those pieces are like, I want to know how do you feel, temp wise, that the performance was based on the last period you're reporting to me as? Then I want to know what are you focused on or what is your initiative right now that's going to drive like sometimes for us, like, we'll say like, hey, what's the KPI we're trying to achieve? Like if you hook rate your hold rate, like, say it's a before the click one or if it's an after the click one and we're like, hey, our conversion rate, we are trying to achieve like a 35% customer acquisition from this funnel, whatever that is. Like, I want to know what is the number you're most looking at right now that's going to drive the biggest impact and then what is the forecast or the anticipated impact from whatever your initiative focus is? Now take that aside because if it's like we're launching new campaigns and recycling all that is, I want you to look at the account as, as a large, like looking overall. I'm not looking at campaign basis when overall, what's the temp check? I want to know what is the KPI mpi or like what is the focus point task that you guys are looking at improving upon and what's the anticipated improvement number for that?
- [22:48]
A
I like it. There's an accountability inside all of those questions.
- [22:52]
B
And Wasn't that the VP's role?
- [22:53]
A
Yeah, but I think the key is here is you don't want road answers. You don't want just this fluff. You want to make them think. And I think if you can do that as a leader, and you should be doing that to all of your followers, first off, get them to think for themselves as opposed to you thinking for them. The same thing applies for an agency, is get them to think on their own and get them to think about what it is that's most important to my business. What do you know about my business and how are you actually achieving the objectives in order for me to and my team and my department and then my company to achieve the goals that we want to achieve quarterly, yearly, 10 years from now, whatever it happens to be.
- [23:35]
B
If I were to add one more, I again, like, if it's weekly, it's hard because if it's weekly, I can't imagine that a VP of marketing is meeting that often. I imagine that they've delegated off a director. But depending on, let's say that you're spending like 600 grand a week and then maybe they're just overseeing because you're in an initiative right now where you're like trying to recoup and regain momentum because it's been a slow start to the year, tariffs really impacted you in a negative way. I think. Another one that I want to know within the first 15 minutes. So if I'm thinking I'm the VP or I'm a director, I've got a team that's underneath me, and you guys are just one of the vendor solutions that I also brought into the mix, I want to know within 15 minutes, what's the biggest bottleneck for you having success in my company right now? Because I want to know, is there someone on my team that's stopping. Is there a resource, Is it tracking, which always, like, comes into it? Like, I want to know what is the agency's belief of what their, their biggest bottleneck is, Whether it's them, us. I don't, I don't. I don't care. I'm not like, in a blaming situation. I just. I want to know so that we can solutionize it. Solutionize it? Yeah, that's a word. If I'm the VP and I'm coming into a call, I want to have a graduated discussion. I don't want you to read the numbers to me. I've already read the numbers before I came into the meeting. I want you to, um, bring to me what is a challenge you're facing so that I can support you. If, especially if it's something on my end and if it's something on your end, I want to know a date that this is going to be solved by.
- [24:58]
A
I like it. Let me ask you this. On those questions, what would the wrong answers sound like? Like, what would be. What would. What would be? An answer. An answer that would raise some red flags. The blank stare into the zoom screen. I guess that's probably the first one.
- [25:16]
B
It becomes a communication thing, right? Like, I'm an I'm like a video on kind of person because I, I want to see the reaction shot. And like, for me, like, I need to see your hands a lot of the time because I like, I want to see you. If, like, you're like, you're watching YouTube. You can see, like, if I'm typing away, I'm a distracted discussion right now. Like, that's. I hate that. So what are they looking away?
- [25:39]
A
They're looking all that way and, you know they're just typing out.
- [25:42]
B
Unless you're thinking.
- [25:43]
A
Yeah.
- [25:44]
B
Unless you're like, okay, let me think. And I don't mind you taking a pause to answer.
- [25:49]
A
So first off is the visual react. I like that.
- [25:52]
B
Yeah. Are you paying attention? Did you, like. You can repeat the question back to me. If you need to buy time, you can say, okay, you can say, let me think, and then you can give it to me. But if I see you go, like, immediately typing, it's like someone else saw this for me, because I don't know. Okay, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Why are you on this call? Okay, so visual cues are red flags or kanji. Red flags, but also green flags. It can be like, okay, so what you're looking for is what is. Are the biggest bottlenecks?
- [26:22]
A
Clarifying the answer. Clarifying the question. Probably a good thing that's green.
- [26:29]
B
Could be. It depends. Like, there's different communication styles. So I don't want to say that someone has to smile for me to feel good. I just. I need to see that you're paying attention. And then I want to. I want to confirm that you understand my ask, because I want to make sure we're having a conversation at the same level. If you're not there caught up yet, I can bring it down, but I'm going to expect you to bring me back the same elevated question. And I'm using a little bit of hierarchy because of the assumptions behind someone in that leadership position. Let's assume that there's no nepotism involved. Okay, sorry.
- [27:01]
A
All right, so green light, yellow light, red light there. It's sort of like you're. You're. You're hoping for.
- [27:09]
B
I feel bad.
- [27:10]
A
Real good. You're hoping for a good visual reaction, but some people just aren't that.
- [27:14]
B
Well, I'm looking. I'm hoping for stuttering.
- [27:17]
A
Stuttering, stammering, blank stare.
- [27:19]
B
That's okay. Because again, someone might be like. Let's say that you have a very intimidating. I don't know, like, I don't fault stuttering, and I don't fault that if. As long as I know you're paying attention.
- [27:34]
A
Okay.
- [27:35]
B
And that you're seeking to understand the question.
- [27:37]
A
All right, so that's. That's the first verbal cue. Verbal, Verbal. Visual. Visual cue. All right, so then what would the wrong answer be for any of these?
- [27:47]
B
Immediately default to blame.
- [27:49]
A
Ooh, interesting.
- [27:50]
B
Okay, if I'm asking you a question of how are we going to solutionize this? Or like, what are your thoughts? And the first things that come out of your mouth are, well, you need to do like, you, you, you like whatever that blame game is. I don't. That's not what I'm talking about.
- [28:06]
A
What I want to say, I'm not getting enough creative from your team right now, so I can't really answer that question. If you're supplying creative to your agency, for example, I would like where I
- [28:15]
B
think we're capable of achieving a stronger roas. Right now, I recognize that we have a creative deficiency. So I want to call out a bottleneck right now that within the scope of our agreement, we were anticipating five to 10 creatives a month. Right now we're getting two. I can offer you, like, if I were to get five to 10 creatives, as we were talking about, I believe that I can drive better advertising. By the way, Ralph made up advertising Advertesting. Yeah, we do advertising, but the reality is, is everything is advertising because we don't know if it's going to work.
- [28:45]
A
Do you have that dot com? Actually, you should probably go up.
- [28:48]
B
Well, I'm going to do it as soon as we get off this call before this goes live.
- [28:51]
A
Good. Yeah, I know. That is pretty good. I like that.
- [28:54]
B
Thanks. Me too. So in that, like, I know that in our advertising, 90% of stuff isn't going to work. We can't, we can't do a. We're going to swing and a miss. But I want to know and understand what we're trying and I want to know and understand, like, a good answer is that you've already thought of that question and we have a plan.
- [29:14]
A
Thinking, so showing that the agency is actually thinking about this sort of stuff as opposed to just mailing it in, getting the paycheck.
- [29:22]
B
You told me there's an excuse. You're like, oh, I don't have enough creatives. Okay, that's, that's not an. That's. That's an answer. But what's the solution I'm asking you to bring to me? Like, if you say, like, well, I don't have enough creatives, so how are you solving it? Or tell me the impact the creatives have. So if you're like, I don't have enough creators, like, if I were to have an additional five creatives, or if we were able to get some more UTC content, or if we were able to get some more testimonials, I think that would be a really good move for us to measure. And what I'm looking for are sentiment numbers. What I'm looking for is socialization of those ads. And so this is what I want to do. Here's my plan for the next week. I need to make sure, like, a good answer is someone. Even if you don't have an answer, and you're like, I don't know. I want you to have known solutions because I've hired you because you've already proven that you've been able to do this at least Two or three times. So even if you don't have a specific answer, you should have an experienced solution. And I need you to draw upon that. If you cannot draw upon past experiences, then I am paying to be guinea pigged. Right.
- [30:29]
A
If you feel a lack of confidence in the answer.
- [30:35]
B
That's hard though, because people like. It's hard because Tess Bundys of the world, like, those are the serial killers. I'm like.
- [30:41]
A
I'm just saying, like any director of marketing, VP of marketing or CEO acting as a marketing person, they might not have the expertise and the insight to be able to sort of be able to read through a lot of this
- [30:54]
B
out using your language.
- [30:55]
A
Suss out. I don't think I've ever said suss out before. It's Friday. I don't know why I'm.
- [31:00]
B
It's like twice this episode.
- [31:02]
A
I know. Crazy, huh? Because I couldn't think of another word like we should Google Jet GPT. That. The point is this is that if your answer isn't satisfying to you, like I'm trying to craft, like what you're saying here is to sort of distill it down. It's not necessarily confidence because everyone can be confident about the wrong decision. You could be confident and wrong just as much as you can be confident.
- [31:28]
B
And you can. You could be. The weight because you're nervous.
- [31:35]
A
Right.
- [31:35]
B
Right. I have a lift when that come out, like, oh man, that. I sound like a five year old.
- [31:41]
A
Yeah.
- [31:43]
B
So I don't want to put. Confidence helps. I know. Because it's like Friday at like 7:00pm, right. Anyways, the. It's like confidence will go a long way. So one of my favorite things, like I do a hobby every quarter. I did improv and I did stand up. I think everyone that is client facing should take at least one improv or standup class. I think you need to have a confidence in your camera presence or confidence in your relationships. Like, that goes a long way. But I don't want to preclude that someone that is more introverted is not capable. I need you to answer that showcases your experience, your capability and comprehension.
- [32:27]
A
Well said. All right, well, I don't have three. I'm just gonna do two questions. So this is on the monthly review. Probably not. These questions aren't really for your weekly review.
- [32:38]
B
Yeah, it was like hard. You're like, weekly. I'm like, oh man, why are we micromanaging to the day by day?
- [32:43]
A
This might be. Yeah. A little bit shorter term. It depends on what you're spent. Like if you're spending a million dollars a week. These should probably.
- [32:51]
B
It's all relative.
- [32:53]
A
It's all relative. So keep that in mind.
- [32:55]
B
And what, you could be spending a million dollars a week on one initiative, but you have a $60 million a month marketing budget.
- [33:00]
A
That's true.
- [33:01]
B
I don't care enough about the million dollar.
- [33:03]
A
Absolutely. So it's like take it within context here. So this could be for your monthly check in, maybe your quarterly business review. Like these might be good questions for this. A little bit less so on the day, the day of the week, week in and week out. I mean, we typically meet with clients like once a week or when we. Once every other week. It depends. Wait. My marketing manager finally convinced me to run a wild experiment in this episode. Because we want to prove what the conversion engine can do for your brand. We are giving away three of our $10,000 deep dive audits for free. We're going to look at your creative, your media buying, your actual business metrics to find exactly where your growth is stalled. This is two weeks of our best work, but we only have three spots. So go to tier11.com audit right now. Fill out the form, and let's see how we can scale your business. So these are the types of questions that I would love to hear because we hire agencies as an agency. So this is very relevant. These are the types of questions that I'll be asking our agencies because I hadn't really thought about this specific sort of way of approaching it, but this is what I would ask. So if it's a monthly thing, what did we learn last month?
- [34:26]
B
Okay.
- [34:27]
A
And that changed how we're running things this month. So let's talk about like where we were last month. How did that affect how we're running things this month? So that shows the growth, it shows the thinking. It shows everyone sort of working together to achieve the objective. And the caveat to that is maybe this is my second question is how does that, how does that change get us closer to the goal, whatever that goal is? And I think that's an important follow up to that question because that reinforces that your agency actually has your goal as a business in mind. And like I said before, I think personally that's my most important thing. All the KPIs, the NCAC numbers, the Nov numbers, the LTV numbers, all the other sort of stuff that you're doing, those are steps along the way to achieve the goal. And like I said, your goal might differ. Like it might be a monthly goal, might be a Quarterly goal. It might be an annual goal, but you should have alignment with your agency or your internal team on that goal. And tell me what you did last month and how we change things and how are things running this month as opposed to last month, and what did we learn? So a little bit of like, how are we doing last month? How are we doing this month? What are your thoughts? Gets people to sort of think far more and keep the objective or the goal of the business in mind.
- [35:54]
B
I think what I like about the piece of what did you learn is you're giving grace because again, 90% of the stuff that we try is often not going to work. And I, I, as much as I want an agency to hit a home run every single time, and like the people that we're working with, we have to be mindful that if we are going to miss 100% of the shots we don't take. Yep. And if we're not making an effort and trying, then we're just accepting defeat. I like that. Like, what did we learn? What are we trying? I mean, there's a Runway, right. There's only so long that you can keep trying and nothing is working. Then maybe that requires us going back to the drawing board and that evaluates the relationship that you're currently in.
- [36:28]
A
Yep.
- [36:29]
B
So I like that postmortem to if you're like, hey, I'm asking my agencies this, and if the answers aren't like, I want to do this, I want to, you have to remember that it's a marathon. And the incrementality is progression over perfection. And as much as we want perfection like that, that will cause a burnout. And with that in mind of, you have to know your numbers to know how long you can keep doing it so that you can be like, okay, the numbers aren't there. How are we working to get this back? How long do you think it's going to take? So I go back to that. Adding in then, with the initiative of what you learned and what you're carrying over to it. I'm going to add the third question to you, Ralph, is what is the forecasted or the anticipated impact from that initiative going to be based on the numbers that you've seen?
- [37:12]
A
It's good, all of this. And I've got one more question that I do want to drop in here. I think the theme here is you are not doing the job of the marketing agency or the agency or the internal team. You're getting them to do their job by asking them questions. Questions and getting them to think on their own. And I think all of these questions allow for that. And if you can do that as a leader, whether it's you're the director of marketing or you're the CEO, you are leading your agency, you are not necessarily doing their work. Their job is to do their job. Your job is to do CEO stuff, VP of marketing stuff, director of marketing stuff, allow the agency to do their job. And the only way you get them to do their job is to actually get them to sell, think and solve problems on their own. And your job is to prompt them to help solve those problems on their own with your guidance in leadership. And it's not to do their job for them. Case in point, had a client that, you know, I got on a call and he was asking one of our media buyers, like really high level growth strategist, like why he wasn't doing a certain thing inside Meta Andromeda campaign, basically a creative diversification campaign. Why are we keeping those ads on when all these other ads should be getting more ad spend? Why wasn't that getting ad spend? I'm like, you know, that's actually not your job. I don't think you should be asking that question. I said it nicely. But the point is, why is he asking those questions? He should be asking, how are we getting closer to my NCAT goal? How are we getting closer to my quarterly goal, whatever it is, thinking higher level and asking questions of the agency as opposed to trying to do their job for them. So the last thing I'll say here before we close is I. But I like this, this is my favorite question because this is how I always want to think. And I'm a business owner. You're a business owner. And if you were hiring an agency to run your Mongoose Media marketing, you would probably love this question.
- [39:12]
B
And okay, here's your reaction. Sean, I'm listening. I have no idea what you're going to ask.
- [39:16]
A
If you were spending your own money in this account, what would you do differently than what we're doing right now?
- [39:23]
B
Oh, fair. I mean, I do love that question. And like there was someone, like someone that we work with the other day, let us do it because the owner kept dictating where the money would be spending and it took from like end of September. I said, this isn't working. I don't see itself liquidating. But the owner had seen something on TikTok which told them why this matters. And I was like, I don't find this to be a viable solution. And so we had to keep fall. Like it's. At one point you just had to follow what. How they want to spend the money. And then like a few weeks ago it was like, well, what would you spend if this week I was like, great, I shut down the campaigns and the assets that we didn't want to do and we nearly doubled our efficiency.
- [40:09]
A
Yeah.
- [40:10]
B
In a matter of weeks. So like, yeah, if this were your money, but so I like that only because personally this like came up. But the other thing I have a challenge with that one is though, it's never going to be their money.
- [40:22]
A
It isn't. But hypothetically, I would love to think that they think about it as if it were their own money.
- [40:28]
B
It's like a. You'll get something.
- [40:30]
A
It's. It's a bit of a slippery slope there to a certain degree. But, you know, I know that my fiduciary responsibility as an agency owner is to oversee and be a caretaker of my clients money that we're spending and their business.
- [40:48]
B
Yeah.
- [40:48]
A
And as a result of that, I'm also an owner of business. So I feel a deep conviction to that. Are the rank and file, you know, growth strategist.
- [40:58]
B
Yeah.
- [40:58]
A
Media buyer. Are they going to feel it the same way? But at least you're going to get them to think. And my whole goal, this exercise is to get people to think a little bit deeper than just, here's your report, here's the stuff that's going on. You know, a wrong answer for this one would be something like, you know, hey, that's a great question. I think we, you know, we feel really aligned with the current strategy. We test a couple of more creative formats, maybe do a little bit more on the creative diversification we're heading in the right way. That would be your blah answer. If you get stunned silence, you know, deer in a headlights, like you said before.
- [41:41]
B
Well, it might be like, that's a good question. I haven't thought about that. Can I go back to you?
- [41:45]
A
Yeah, I think that's actually a good answer is. I would rather hear that than what I just said because that if somebody gave me that answer, I'd be like, oh, my God, I think I need to look for another partner here because I'm scared.
- [42:02]
B
Yeah.
- [42:02]
A
They're like flight mode because they are not, they are not exerting that sort of fiduciary responsibility. And that basically means like, you know, they're responsible for your own money. Like they are spending your money every single day, so. Or your company's money or your department's money. The point is this, is that with all these questions here, you gotta hold your agency accountable, but also be collaborative with them and not get them to think. Get them to think.
- [42:26]
B
You want to empower them to think and you want to empower them to be their best selves, just like you are with your employees. As I look, the goal is not to sabotage or to put the relationship, whether it's an employee, an agency, a vendor, it doesn't matter, into a place where they are afraid to do their best for you. I think what's really important is that you can hold them accountable. You can push them to bring more solutions to the table, get them to think outside the box. Like, I love that you're saying, if it was your money, other ones that could be like, if I gave you a million dollars tomorrow, how would you spend it without collapsing our cost per lead? And then conversely, if I cut your budget in half, what would you do without it collapsing your performance?
- [43:07]
A
Interesting.
- [43:08]
B
Yeah, but I live in extremes, so it's true.
- [43:10]
A
I like, I like it though. I mean, we're going to like either end of the spectrum here to a certain degree. But I think the, the point is, is like a relationship with an agency has to be collaborative. And when you are looking at your dashboard and you don't see the numbers that are really moving the needle for you in your business, that's when everything that we've talked about here comes into play. And your agency shouldn't be reporting well, it should be performing well.
- [43:41]
B
And that's the best line of this because I was like, when you were talking about dashboard, I was like, you know, there are people that make way better dashboards. And I go for production over pretty like, I don't want to hyper focus.
- [43:52]
A
I'm saying that it's general.
- [43:54]
B
Yeah, it's like a reporting. It's a reporting of it.
- [43:57]
A
We have dashboard of whatever it is. Yeah, absolutely. But it's truthful. As long as it's truthful, like it's actually capturing the essence of what you guys are doing. Like, that's it. So, all right, so I'll say it again. So your agency shouldn't be reporting well, it should be performing well. So.
- [44:14]
B
And if it performance is down, they should be bringing to the conversation solutions and trying hard because it's that proactive. So yeah, if you can't perform well, you better be proactive.
- [44:27]
A
Well, how can you market that, Ralph? Proactivity. I love it. I love proactive. It's one of my favorite things. Without being asked you'll always get my highest praise. Well, we so appreciate you listening to the show here. Of course wherever you listen to podcasts, please leave us rating and review. And we really do appreciate that it helps us get out to a wider audience to teach people how to do this stuff the right way through metrics of matter and growth that scales. And also hopefully we taught a few things today about how to work alongside your agency. So of course you can check this out over at our YouTube channel@perpetualtraffic.com YouTube Lauren E. Petrulo we're going to be together next week and recording live. How exciting is that? Rigging my microphone. I won't have the hot pink microphone by the way. I will anyway. You will. Well I'm pretty excited about that so. So on behalf of my amazing co host Lauren E. Petrulo, ciao till next show. See ya.
- [45:32]
B
You've been listening to Perpetual Traffic.