The #1 Thing You’re NOT Doing Right Now to Crush It in 2025…And How to Fix It

Summary

Perpetual Traffic Episode Summary: "The #1 Thing You’re NOT Doing Right Now to Crush It in 2025…And How to Fix It"

Release Date: December 6, 2024
Hosts: Ralph Burns and Lauren E. Petrulo

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1. Introduction and Exclusive Offer

The episode kicks off with Ralph Burns addressing common frustrations among business owners and marketing professionals. Many listeners expressed dissatisfaction with their internal teams or agencies, feeling that they are the sole contributors of ideas while the implementation falls short. Ralph resonates with these experiences, emphasizing that the burden should not solely rest on the business owner.

Notable Quote:
"You are not alone. This is the number one complaint we hear from potential prospect clients who want to work with us potentially."
— Ralph Burns [00:01]

To address this, Tier 11 is offering free business audits to six lucky businesses. These audits are comprehensive, conducted by human experts who evaluate the entire business ecosystem—from ad accounts and tracking systems to email strategies and post-click activities. Additionally, recipients gain early access to the upcoming Tier 11 Data Suite, designed to enhance data transparency and tracking accuracy.

Notable Quote:
"It's an unbiased, unprejudiced viewpoint on how you're going to hit your goals in 2025."
— Ralph Burns [00:47]

Listeners interested in this opportunity are encouraged to visit tier11.com2025 to apply.

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2. Evaluating Internal Teams vs. Agencies

Ralph and Lauren delve into the critical assessment businesses must undertake regarding their current marketing teams—whether in-house or outsourced to an agency. They highlight the importance of ensuring that these teams are not only executing tasks but are strategically aligned with the company's 2025 objectives.

Notable Quote:
"Are they doing what they need to do in order to get me to my goals?"
— Lauren E. Petrulo [13:56]

The discussion underscores that December is an ideal time for businesses to reassess their marketing partnerships, evaluate performance metrics, and decide whether to continue, optimize, or terminate existing contracts. Lauren points out that many agencies revisit their client relationships during this period, leading to potential contract renewals or terminations.

Notable Quote:
"I think most agencies... have conversations with their clients in December about moving forward or terminating contracts."
— Lauren E. Petrulo [15:52]

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3. The Importance of Strategic Over Tactical Approaches

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to contrasting strategic planning with tactical execution in marketing. Ralph emphasizes that while specific marketing tactics (like email campaigns or meta ads) are essential, they must be part of a broader, cohesive strategy aimed at achieving defined business goals.

Notable Quote:
"What you're really starving for right now is strategy."
— Lauren E. Petrulo [21:05]

Ralph adds that many businesses seek "silver bullet" solutions, hoping for one strategy to resolve all issues. Instead, he advocates for a holistic approach where strategies are tailored to the unique gaps between current performance and future goals.

Notable Quote:
"Start by planning it right now. Book a call with our team today, fill out the application and let us help you scale smarter, not harder, in the coming year."
— Ralph Burns [03:00, paraphrased]

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4. Testing and Expanding Marketing Channels

The hosts discuss the critical balance between maintaining successful existing marketing channels and experimenting with new ones. They caution against diverting resources from proven channels to test new platforms without a clear strategic rationale.

Notable Quote:
"You can't stop what's working. You have to work on making what's working even better while testing new opportunities in isolation."
— Ralph Burns [34:00, paraphrased]

Lauren supports this by highlighting the necessity of structured testing with defined budgets and success metrics, ensuring that new initiatives do not detract from established revenue streams.

Notable Quote:
"You have to partner because they have to share capabilities and resources."
— Lauren E. Petrulo [25:40]

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5. Building Effective Partnerships and Communication

Effective collaboration between business owners and their marketing teams or agencies is paramount. Ralph and Lauren stress the importance of clear communication, mutual understanding of goals, and the ability to ask and answer insightful questions to foster a productive partnership.

Notable Quote:
"Ask your team... who is our ideal client? Who can we be the best in the world at?"
— Ralph Burns [30:08]

Lauren emphasizes the role of asking smart questions to ensure that team members fully comprehend and align with the business objectives, promoting a unified approach to achieving success.

Notable Quote:
"Have people on your team who can ask the smart questions to get to the hone of the message."
— Lauren E. Petrulo [41:07]

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6. Navigating Economic Uncertainty and Political Stability

The conversation shifts to the broader economic and political landscape, touching upon uncertainties following the election cycle. Ralph reflects on how political shifts can influence economic indicators and business confidence, impacting marketing strategies and investment decisions.

Notable Quote:
"The economy is looking positive, but there's still an undercurrent of suspicion about sustainability."
— Ralph Burns [18:01]

They discuss how businesses might respond to these dynamics by adjusting their marketing strategies to better align with changing consumer behaviors and economic sentiments.

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7. Final Thoughts and Takeaways

As the episode wraps up, Ralph and Lauren encourage listeners to reflect on their 2024 performance and strategically plan for 2025. They reiterate the importance of aligning marketing efforts with overarching business goals, fostering strong partnerships, and maintaining flexibility to adapt to new opportunities.

Notable Quote:
"Make 2025 the best year yet. Start by planning it right now."
— Ralph Burns [20:16]

They conclude by inviting listeners to engage with them through applications for business audits and to stay tuned for upcoming content, including reviews and new resources.

Notable Quote:
"Leave us a review, we will read it on air. You'll become podcast famous for about 15 seconds."
— Ralph Burns [46:20]

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Key Insights:

• Strategic Alignment: Ensure that all marketing efforts are strategically aligned with clear business objectives rather than relying solely on individual tactics.

• Comprehensive Audits: Utilize comprehensive business audits to identify and address gaps in marketing performance and overall business operations.

• Effective Partnerships: Foster strong, communicative partnerships with marketing teams or agencies to collaboratively achieve goals.

• Structured Testing: Balance maintaining successful marketing channels with experimenting on new platforms through structured and isolated testing.

• Adaptability: Remain adaptable to economic and political changes, adjusting strategies to maintain resilience and capitalize on new opportunities.

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Conclusion

This episode of Perpetual Traffic provides valuable guidance for businesses aiming to enhance their marketing strategies for 2025. By emphasizing strategic planning, effective partnerships, and balanced experimentation, Ralph Burns and Lauren E. Petrulo offer actionable insights to help listeners navigate the complexities of digital marketing and achieve sustained growth.

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For more resources and to apply for the exclusive business audit, visit tier11.com2025.

Transcript

[Ralph Burns]

Do you feel like you could have done so much better in 2024? Do you feel like you left so much money on the table? Or maybe your internal team or your agency just wasn't getting it done for you? You were maybe the one that was coming up with all the ideas and then they were doing the implementation. That is not how it's supposed to work. If you're the boss, your internal team or your agency is supposed to direct you and tell you what to do to scale and grow your brand, let me tell you, you are not alone. This is the number one complaint we hear from potential prospect clients who want to work with us potentially. They say their agency or their internal teams have run out of steam and they're the ones who are giving them all the ideas. Well, that's the reason why we put together a very special offer for you for 11 lucky businesses. And quite honestly, ever since we announced this promotion just or four days ago, we've already filled up five of them. We have six of these left. And the reason we're only giving away 11 with 6 left is because my internal team, I have to give them some time off in December and we want to get this done for you before the end of the year. So much so, in fact, my sales team has actually opened up more time to book these calls with you, the business owner, with you, the director of marketing, you, the person that's frustrated with the results that you got in 2024 and you feel like you can do better in the coming year. Well, we are offering 11. Well, now six, because we've already given away five of them. Free business audits for six lucky businesses. And this is not an audit that's done by AI. It is done by actual humans, where they go in and they actually look at your entire business, not just your ad accounts. They look at your tracking, they look at your after the click, they analyze your emails, they analyze all of your ad accounts, everything that you're doing within your business. And we figure out where the holes are. And usually there are plenty of holes and areas of improvement. Yeah, you need an unbiased, unprejudiced viewpoint on how you're going to hit your goals in 2025. And that's what this business audit is for. So if you are interested in being one of the lucky six remaining, there was 11. Now there's six remaining businesses who qualify for this business audit. Head on over to tier11.com2025, fill out the application and we'd love to see how we can help you scale and grow. And oh by the way, you will also get first mover access to the Tier 11 data suite, which we haven't even launched to the world yet and we'll be doing so in January. So you'll get early access to that. One of the greatest things about the Tier 11 data suite is you know, all those unattributeds, all those unknowns, all those directs inside your Google Analytics, or if you're using Triple Whale or if you're using Hiros, well, this lifts the veil on all of those. Up to 99% of your unattributed and your unknowns in your direct are now going to be known in the knowns that are going into individual channels. Your Google, your meta, your organic, your email. Those are more accurate. That's how great datasuite is. It lifts the veil finally, for data tracking unlike anything we've ever seen because it uses three Martech tools pieced together with an integration that we wrote here at tier 11. And you will get early bird access to that as well. When you fill out the application over at tier11.com forward/2025. Make 2025 the best year yet. Start by planning it right now. Book a call with our team today, fill out the application and let us help you scale smarter, not harder, in the coming year. Hey folks, Ralph here with something that could seriously upgrade your Top of Funnel ad game. If you've been a PT listener for any period of time, you know that we talk about Top of Funnel all the time and how challenging it is for you to get quality Top of Funnel clients or leads or customers and then convert them typically at bottom of Funnel. Well, TV advertising is one of those areas that we haven't discussed here on PT all that much. But our friends over at Ad Critter have figured this stuff out. They do connected TV ads so you can be everywhere without spend spending millions on super bowl ads. But they pair it with display retargeting so you're hitting the audiences with a complete approach. You reach them, then you remind them and then you collect the revenue. It's a strategy designed to deliver and let me tell you, it really works. We're testing this at tier 11 and so far the results have been very impressive. Now with AdCritter, creating custom audiences are so easy. You don't need to reformat files, you don't need to mess around with complex spreadsheets. You just upload any file in any format and you're ready to go. And the match rate is awesome. They make it easy to connect with the right people, the actual people that have interacted with your ads in the past and then allow them to naturally flow through your funnel so you can convert them at bottom of funnel. Now the folks at Adcrator, we twisted their arm to get us a great deal for you, the PT listener. They are offering a special deal for y'all and that is you can get a $500 campaign credit, meaning $500 in free money to test out the plaque platform or dollar for dollar matching on any TV campaign. Up to five grand. Imagine the impact of that match. Spend five grand, they'll add another five grand in display. That's a huge opportunity here. Now it's only offered to you, the PT listener. Head over to AdCritter.com PT and check it out. You're listening to Perpetual Traffic. Hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic podcast. This is your host, Ralph Burns, the founder and CEO of Tier 11, alongside.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

My awesome co host, Lauren E. Patul, the founder of Mongoose Media.

[Ralph Burns]

So glad you joined us here today and pretty excited because you and I are going to be live next week in Florida, hopefully knocking out like a bunch of year end episodes. I know a lot of people are thinking about year end. They're planning for 25. They just got through Black Friday, you know, wiping the sweat off their brow cramped fingers by, you know, optimizing their campaigns. We're in that sort of period between Black Friday, Cyber Monday before the holiday and I say the holiday because, you know, not everybody is Christian and does the Christmas thing. I am dual. I don't know if you realize this, but Jen is Jewish. I am casual Catholic.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

I was like cafeteria Catholic.

[Ralph Burns]

Cafeteria Catholic. I sort of pick and choose what I like, but I don't go to church. So that's why a lot of the reviews are like don't say the word JC like we used to get a lot of those because I say that sort of. But anyway, I can say that as a Catholic. But anyway, I'm not going to say it here.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Is this like the. Never mind. I'm not going to go down that route. But okay.

[Ralph Burns]

But anyway, so I was a. I'm a casual Catholic. Gave it up in college.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

So anyway, wait, like Lent in college but permanently?

[Ralph Burns]

I gave up church because I was always hungover on Sundays. I think that was it that started in college.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

You have to keep drinking.

[Ralph Burns]

I had to keep drinking. That was the problem. I became sober. What the hell was I thinking in college anyway? And then sort of moved on and married a Jewish girl who was raised Catholic turned Protestant and then went Jewish. So we do both holidays, which is awesome. So my kids are Jewish, the jewelics. Yeah, that's right. So anyway. And we never go to temple either. So we're probably horrifying all these people that are listening to the show that.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Are, look, your relationship with God or Zeus or whoever you call master, plural, whatever that is, that's private. That's with you. That's on you. And putting in the reps. You don't have to treat church like a gym. Like no one's going to judge you.

[Ralph Burns]

That's good, because you're back in church all the time now. Or wait a second. Did you go away from it? Were you always there? We've never even had this conversation.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

I know people, like, with how dirty Lauren's jokes are. No. Yeah. I mean, no. You have your phases. When I was in college, I was at church five days a week.

[Ralph Burns]

Wow.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Now I go at least once a week.

[Ralph Burns]

Holy cow. I mean, the most I ever went to church in a week, I think, was three times in a week because I went on Sundays, and then I had, like, a mass that I had to do, and then I had, like, the high Mass, which you got paid to do because I was an altar boy for 10 years.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Oh, yeah, Same. I was an altar server.

[Ralph Burns]

Yeah. Not molested, as far as I know. Glad that's been cleared up in Massachusetts. You never know.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Got it.

[Ralph Burns]

Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah. Massachusetts was pretty. Pretty bad for that. The point is, yeah, three times. That was max. But I was getting compensated, I think, 20 bucks. Bucks for a wedding. Yeah. That was big money. Back. Way back in the days of the dinosaur pre Depression era when I was that age.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

That's a lot of money.

[Ralph Burns]

It's a lot of money. It was. And then you got tipped on top of it, and you got to drink the holy wine when the priest wasn't looking. So it's like, I need to think.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

About, like, my growing up in the Chicago Archdiocese. Like, did I get paid? I just remember those robes smelled.

[Ralph Burns]

They always did. They smelled of incense.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

But I loved it when I got to do the incense because there was, like, three different roles we had at the church I grew up in in Chicago, St. Gertrude. Shout out to that school where I went for seven years. But, yeah, St. Gertz. Fun fact that I just learned, by the way, like, two, three years ago. So I have five brothers. Three from my dad's first marriage. No, no. But I did learn that there's another brother.

[Ralph Burns]

Okay.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

My dad and this woman that he served in Vietnam with. I don't know all the details because it was so casually said. And when I was like, wait, I'm sorry, you just told me I have another brother by some woman named Gertrude. And then I was like, what? And so there's a brother out there somewhere whose mom's name is Gertrude. I think they were like in Virginia. Like, that's literally all I got. And then I asked my mom about it and I was like, did you know? He's like, of course I knew. I was like the woman. The mother's name was Gertrude. I went to a school called Saint Gertrude. That was never like a weird thing. Like, that's not a common name.

[Ralph Burns]

Holy cow. Yeah, Gertrude is not a common name. Like that's sort of like a. It's one of those names that was like, I don't know, like a depression era name. And you don't meet many Gertrudes. Do you know any Gertrudes, like in your age range?

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

No, but my mom was born in 1940. She just turned 80 years old yesterday. No, sorry. She was born in 44. My dad was born in 1940. So like, he did always date older women. So she legit could have been born during the depression, probably.

[Ralph Burns]

Yeah, it's good. Well, shout out to her for 80 years. That's awesome. Fantastic. So I don't know what we were getting to in this, but it was the time between Cyber Monday and Christmas, which I think I was trying to get to the point where Hanukkah actually falls on Christmas this year. It starts on Christmas. So it's great Christmas season for me. It lasts all throughout the first week in January because of course we do Hanukkah as well as Christmas. Why not? So anyway, I love having that in that sort of dual household. But anyway, right now, for a lot of businesses, take that holiday stuff aside, you're probably thinking, all right, let me do a little bit of an assessment here as to how I fared on Black Friday Cyber Monday. How is my Christmas season going to be? Do I have a business that has a huge uptick or maybe a slow season after the first of the year? There's a lot of stuff to consider. So from what we're doing inside tier 11, and I know a lot of businesses are doing this right now is that they're planning, planning for 2025 and they're trying to figure out, okay, is my internal team that I'm doing, I'm using right now in all areas of My business, is it performing up to expectations? Do I need to make some changes? If I have an agency, for example, are they doing what they need to do in order to get me to my goals, whatever my goals is in 2025, and right now is a really good time to do that because we find that this is a bit of a. I don't know, it's a bit of a lull time unless you have a huge Christmas surge. But really, I mean, if you're doing anything online, selling anything online, or really in person, like, a lot of that sort of ends the 22nd, 23rd at the very latest in a lot of cases. Well, prior to that, especially on the E. Com side, depending on what your shipping is and everything else.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Sure.

[Ralph Burns]

So. And then there's that sort of lull in between. Q5. Yeah. So it's Q5. So I think what we want to talk about here today is for those of you who are thinking about how to change things and how to step things up in 2025, how do you do that? Like, if you have an agency right now, are they really aligned with what your goals are? If you have an internal team, this goes the same for an internal team. Because whenever we talk about an agency, we always say, all right, if you have an internal team or you're doing it yourself or you're thinking about, like, adding resources, now is a good time to assess that and to figure out, okay, what are my next steps? So we were talking about this before we hit record here today, is that there's a big part of all this, which I think a lot of businesses miss, and they hire for specific tasks as opposed to something which I think is far more important. We've talked about this a lot on the show. The marketing performance indicators, which we've given out this URL so many times. If you haven't gotten it by now, just get it, for crying out loud. It's over.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

It should be like a drinking game at this point. Your holiday drink.

[Ralph Burns]

Every time we say perpetualtraffic.com MPI the point is, get all that. The point you need to have. One of the things I think that businesses are reassessing and the ones that I've talked to just recently are that they're reassessing their relationships with their internal teams, but also with their agency to align better as opposed to just keeping them siloed. Is that something that you're hearing in your conversations? Talk to me about that whole subject, just in general.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Oh, for sure. I mean, it's a good Time to reevaluate. You survived the Black Friday and you're doing your annual planning. So depending on the relationships you have and what your contracts you're looking at financially, what is your commitment? So some agencies, like, before they connect with a prospect, they're going to talk about their mle, their minimum level of engagement, and then you're looking at, hey, what am I committed to for the next year? I have an annual contract. I'm looking at $20,000 a month coursing it out. So if you're trying to build what is your Runway of cash, it's really easy to look at agencies, especially when they have higher retainers, as seeing, is it worth to bring in house? Are we seeing the impact that we expected from the investment we provided with them? Is it also an opportunity for them to take over additional work besides just what they've been delivering on? Because they are aligned with where we're going and additional pieces? I mean, it's just the time of the year you're, like looking at, hey, does this make sense with what we're doing now and where we want to go next? And I think most agencies, at least we've experienced this for sure. And I think it's true for most of my friends, it's like December is the time of, if you're not investing and like, reconnecting with your existing clients, they are. This is a conversation they're having no matter what. Like, I think more contracts terminate in December than any other month of the year.

[Ralph Burns]

I also think on the flip side of that is that we have had an abundance of folks that have been thinking about making a switch because of the uncertainties in the political side, political venue, that they don't really know exactly what to expect. And at least now, whether or not the candidate won or didn't win, and I've said this before on the show, there's a level of stability now, depending on what your outlook really is. But at least people now know. And that has been sort of a game changer because a lot of that tension, a lot of that uncertainty is now released. And I think there's, from my standpoint, like, the economy, like, all the economic indicators are looking positive, but there's still an under. There's some kind of undercurrent of suspicion that is this sustainable. Why did Trump win is a big question that I always get because I didn't vote for him and I can't stand the guy, but he's now our president, and I have to accept that fact. The point Is that I think he won because he tapped into this underlying insecurity about hey, the economic indicators and the stock market and all that stuff. All that stuff looks great, air quotes, but I ain't seen it. You know, the price of eggs is still higher now than it was four years ago. Like that's what people are really looking at. And I think that's the reason why he won. So there is this like this undercurrent of, you know, especially of the haves and have nots. You know, to a lesser degree probably the haves but to a greater degree the people that are like the working class, like they're still feeling the pinch. So is that economic uncertainty going to businesses and to marketing professionals, people that we talk to? I still see a bit of that. I think there was a bit of a release I think right after the election, but now we're still seeing that there is sort of an underlying uncertainty. Even though the stock market, the s and P500 is at this all time high right now.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Yes, if you are investing, it's been.

[Ralph Burns]

A good, it's been a very good year. It's up 28% I think as of this recording here, which is crazy. So the point is there's something there. So what is it that we were talking about? How do people make decisions now? Prepping for 25 if your 24 was okay or let me feel like you were leaving money on the table. What's the biggest thing that you're seeing that they're coming to you saying this is what we're missing?

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

I think a lot of it's where you're hired to be the expert. And so what they're asking or what they're missing is why wasn't this year as good as they expected it? Or like what are they missing out on to make it even better? It's just like this is going to sound weird but like a lot of it's just a silver bullet that's like give me this one strategy that's going to change everything else. And it goes to the bigger thing of like what are they looking for? Is strategy on like beyond just the marketing tactics. But like how do I restructure my offer to accommodate an environment where people are spending two to three times longer before making a high ticket purchase decision? When people are more reserved about frequent purchases like mrrs, like people that are doing groups that have like a hundred dollar plus recurring, like the churn rate's even worse than it has been before. And then with the advent of school games like there's just so many subscriptions that people are doing and it's people are coming a lot more to figure out how do they evolve their product to meet current market conditions and how do they ensure that it has high value in the current market landscape.

[Ralph Burns]

So I think you said something really important there is that. I think if you're looking for a piece of it all to solve your problem, it's like, oh, I just need email. Oh, I just need meta ads. Oh, I just need Google. It's like what I'm seeing in that, what we try to portray or at least relay as far as value goes is all right, that's important. But let's take a look at the overall strategy. What are you trying to achieve? Let's start there. Like, where do you want to go and what's the gap? Where's the gap right now? Where you want to be.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Yeah.

[Ralph Burns]

And let's figure out together, let's work this out, let's work it out. Like start to finish, what is it going to take? And you're coming to us because we know every channel, okay. We know all of the additional things. Usually it's channel related and it's creative and it's after the click, which could be anything from website conversion rates to SMS to email, all that. You could also lump that into the traffic side of the equation too, depending on sort of what your outlook is. Then there's sort of this overlay of data. Is your data clear enough so that you can make these types of decisions? That's all tactical, really. Those are all tools in the toolbox. But I find what people really want, what they really need and what they're starving for right now is strategy.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Yeah. What's the thing that's going to drive the impact? What's the order of launches that we're going to do? If it's going to be email, how many emails and when. How does that fit in with my YouTube level strategy? I also need to do blogs. Like, I think that going to that strategy, a lot of it's like shiny object down everywhere. Like, I need to do this, I need to do this. Like, I hate the word should. It really irks me in a lot of different ways. But like, it's like I should, I should, I should, I should. Like you have a laundry list of things you should do because everyone's saying to have a perfect environment. It's just you're present on every ad channel. You just can't do everything all at once. So even sometimes that strategy is what to prioritize, what KPIs to hold it accountable and then what resources are required to do that at a minimum viable product, like, what is the MVP rollout? Because creating saying, like, yeah, I need to do more emails. If you were to start doing emails and like, I should be doing five emails a week because someone told me to do it, and then you start five emails, you're going to potentially mess up your sender reputation. You might not have the resources to do that sustainably. You might not have enough content to do it. Like, you have to plan appropriately. And a lot of that goes into the strategy of how do I allocate my resources, how do I prioritize and how do I hold it accountable to realistic numbers? Which is where like people go to agencies because we're overseeing so many different industries and managing portfolios of very different sizes. Like, we have clients doing under a million a year. We have clients doing buckets of millions a year.

[Ralph Burns]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think, you know, if you look at our entire portfolio and the clients that we have now and the ones that we've had in the past is that I don't think any strategy is the same. I mean, there are similar strategies that are used for specific types of industries, but there's no one size fits all cookie cutter approach. It's not meta for everyone, it's not Google for everyone. It's not after the click for everyone. It's not sms. It's a combination. You have to look at everything holistically. Where are the holes? Start to finish with the goal in mind, going Back to the MPIs. And by the way, the goal has to be tied to business metrics and not like marketing tactics. And those business metrics are the things that really move the needle and are going to impress your boss. If you're a cmo, if you're a CEO, chances are you're probably looking at your P and L all the time and you're wondering, why do I have the same or flat growth year over year and I'm paying this whole team to move the needle on it for me to stay flat or down or whatever your condition is right now. Maybe you had great growth in 2024 and you feel, you still feel like most business owners always feel. I always feel. It's like I left money on the table here.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

The greatest Showman song Never Enough.

[Ralph Burns]

We were on our pipeline call yesterday and my VP of sales is like, yeah, doesn't this look great? I'm like, it's never enough.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

It's like a never ending moving goalpost.

[Ralph Burns]

It's, it's never enough because we have very specific goals for 2025 which I want to achieve and like what I look at right now. So yeah, setting the groundwork for what could be a very good 2025, that's great, but it's not enough. So the point is, I know there's dissatisfaction out there in the marketplace. I will say this. So, for example, we've got a fair amount of customers that are just Google only because they're starting there. But the plan is to start there, lock that in and then plan for the next step, which I think is okay. So in that case you're using kind of one particular tool in the toolbox. I mean it's mixed with our tier 11 data suite and all that sort of stuff. So you're getting really, really good data. Fine, you start there. But the idea is that we're like, all right, well we're going to get you there. But we're also going to think about what other products can you do, what other line extensions can you do? Can you go after a different market within the market that you're doing right now? That's a strategy session. I met with a client two weeks ago and we were talking about that like how can we brainstorm like where what the next step is not just continuing to do Google, which is producing a great return for them because we've improved an awful lot with John's two step strategy which we've talked about here many, many, many times. Point is like that's step one. They are also looking towards the future. And while we're planning for 2025 and that's when the relationship becomes less transactional. Yes, it becomes more of a partnership. And I hate to say it because it's so trite to say that, but.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

It has to be a partnership because like you have, you can provide guidance on the KPIs and they can provide guidance on their capabilities. Like it's, if they're not able to do launch, you're saying tapping into additional marketplaces like Lunar New Year is early this year, it's in January. So like if you have an Asian population, this is their Black Friday, this is their Super Bowl. And so if you're, if you already have customers, an easy way to look at it, like you could. Chen is the most popular, popular last name in the world. It's like one in four individuals in China have the last name Chen, for example, Kim park. Like they're really common last names that you could just look in your CRM and if you see that representation there, if you know your client base is celebrating it, you put all this attention into the holidays. Chris Mahana Kwanzaka but like you neglect a holiday celebrated by like 2 billion people in the world. I mean, it's not just China, it's Lunar New Year and stuff like that. Like, there's opportunities for you to tap into better connections with your audience. And that when you come into strategy, like when you're planning this stuff out, like, it's important to know what are the key dates. And you have to partner together because an agency can say, yeah, do a Lunar New Year campaign. Gucci's been doing it for years. It's very, very productive and it can be an amazing opportunity for you. But if you don't have the resources, you don't have a creative team, you don't have someone to update the landing pages or whatever those things are. If you're not partnering with them, you're just throwing a bunch of new shiny objects with them. So you have to partner because they have to share capabilities and what like, resources they'll have available. And then you have to share KPIs to make sure that it's on track and aligned with the actual business goals. Doing Lunar New Year for Lunar New Year's sake is all hunky dory, but if it's not going to be something that's authentic to your brand or authentic to your bottom line, you can divest your resources elsewhere.

[Ralph Burns]

If you have a business called Asian Beauty Essentials, I would imagine. Imagine.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

I mean, yes, but then you have like Chuseok, which is like Korean Thanksgiving. Like there's a whole host of different holidays that you can tap into, knowing your audience. For Asian Beauty Essentials, we have, it's like predominantly Spanish speaking individuals. Like we do so much in the Spanish market. You have to be mindful of who your customers are. But like I go back to, we talk about strategy. So this is just something that Idaho does this really well. Ryan Dice, he harps in and like when you're starting, like he's attract, convert, ascend, monetize. Like he like breaks stuff up. Like if you're building a blueprint for your business, he has things in those four places and a lot of people go straight to the conversion side. But if they're not attracting new customers, where, like in the conversion side, like, do you have an ideal offer? Like, I've said this a million times, there's two things that make you successful at marketing you have a sexy offer for an obvious audience. And in the attract stage, he's really good at being like, do you have an ideal client? Do you know who your ideal client customer is? Do you have multiple ideal client profiles, ICPs, or like customer avatars, however you want to call it. If you don't have that foundationally and you don't know how to communicate to those strategically, you're not going to have a sexy offer. Because when you talk to everyone, no one's end up listening. So a lot of things that we're talking about right now and planning for the New Year's, who are the avatars that we want to go after? What, where are they present? It's not Google Ads, it's not Facebook ads. Meta ads are your solution. Like, you're saying Baidu is a different search engine. Go. If your audience is a predominantly older, wealthier demographic, Bing is a really good place. Like, you just have to start strategically. Who are we going after? Why are we going after them? Did we evaluate them? Do we know? Are we guessing? Like, those type of things come into a bigger part of the conversation where the partnership can't take place. If the owner who's been on the front lines or the marketing director who's been there for a while knows is a sales team providing feedback on what they're hearing on the conversations, it's a social media response team providing feedback of what they're seeing or hearing when they're doing social listening. Like that. It has to be a partnership.

[Ralph Burns]

Great point. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to boil down what you just said, because first off, it always comes back to Dice. As far as I'm concerned, so much of everything that we talk about here. You know, it's no surprise that this podcast did start with digital marketer way back when with Ryan Dice. But this is a question you should be asking your internal team or your agency, who is our ideal client? Who do I make the most money on? Gross profitability, net profitability, and who do we enjoy serving the most?

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

The last one's good.

[Ralph Burns]

And even most importantly, it's like, what? What can we be the best in the world at? Like, think bigger and ask your team, ask your media buying team this, ask your internal team this, ask your agency team this. If they come back and they say, I don't know, like, notice you're not saying what my business can be. The question is really, this is a we question. This is where you as a business owner, a cmo, a director, of marketing. You know, somebody runs a business or has an internal team. You're doing it yourself. Ask yourself these questions. And I think that's the key to everything, because that's the goal. And then you pin it with the goal. Like, whatever the goal Is, whether it's 25 million in sales next year or double what you did this year. Like, we have a client who, like, did 8 million for the first time. Like, they start off 2 million, and now they're 8 million. Now they want 16 million. Like, we know that. So we're talking about who their ideal. Who their ideal client is. Who can they be the best in the world at? Who do you best serve? You know, who really loves your stuff the most?

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Yes.

[Ralph Burns]

Who can you get more of? And we had this conversation with this client who's actually volunteered to be on Perpetual Traffic. We won't say who they are, but they're in the hospitality space. And we asked them this question. We had this conversation. It's like, who is your best customer? Well, your best customer is one that rents from you for five to seven days, and they're typically on a vacation. And the alternative is like, I go to, sorry, Disney World or some expensive place.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Wait, why are you saying sorry for Disney is how I ended up in Orlando?

[Ralph Burns]

All right, well, anyway, I know you're, like, a Disney loyalist, but the point is. And these are the people that we make the most money off of, and we do the best work for, and we enjoy.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

But you know that if you know that about that, they knew it.

[Ralph Burns]

And then we're like, all right, well, how can you make that experience even better? And fortunately for this group, they had ideas, and we bounced a lot of ideas off. And the point is, that's going to be our plan. We've got a plan moving forward. I'm not going to say what it is, but the point is, it's very Airbnb, like, for a lot of ways. The point is that that's the question you should be asking your internal team. Not, like, what's my cpa? What's my ROAS on my Facebook ads this week? That's all tactical stuff you can get in a weekly report. But right now is the time you should be talking about these things. And this is when we talk about, like, a strategy partnership. Because otherwise, you're not getting the juice that you want out of your internal team, and you're not empowering them to do their best work. Because what you're doing is you're probably dictating. You're Saying, oh, you know, I serve a younger demographic, we should start doing TikTok ads. Well, maybe you should ask your team what they think too. Or maybe your agency, maybe that is a good idea.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Maybe like a budget, that's a test budget and be like, hey, cool, I try this. And you have to in that partnership, like, I'm absolutely welcome and able to try it. But we need to set parameters. So what does success look like? And we need to isolate that against the rest of our campaigns if it doesn't do well, because to hold us accountable, like, we're absolutely happy to launch, happy to test, but we need to have guardrails. And in a lot of.

[Ralph Burns]

I agree, but I'm going to disagree with you on that.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

I agree, but that's, that's what a cop out.

[Ralph Burns]

I agree, that's, that's great. But my question would be, does that get you closer to your goal?

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Goal, good question.

[Ralph Burns]

Adding TikTok ads, does it really get you closer to your goal? Let's talk about this. Okay, let's look at who is buying right now. Is it really there? Like, if they do have insights into their business. Yeah, maybe that is a good suggestion. However, can you actually do more of what's already working on your meta channels, on Instagram, maybe on YouTube, all the things that you're currently working on, or maybe on your Google Ads specifically? So I would say yes and but if we are going to.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Now you're just listing words yes and.

[Ralph Burns]

But or yeah, but if you actually do go down that road, you are going to test it in its own environment and mitigate the downside risk.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

I think testing is key. I think having there's ways that you're going to invest in, ways that you're going to scale your business horizontally or vertically. Like you have exactly what they did with the train industry and was steal and all that stuff. Like you launching in a new marketplace and having a test is amazing. And when you can do that, I do recommend it, but it has to be isolated as a test. And I think the biggest piece of what I agree with you on and what you're saying is you can't stop what's working. You can't shift and say, I'm going to move attention away from what's already working and see if this new item is going to work even better. Because what I see so often is someone's like, okay, now I'm going to launch into Google Ads. And then they neglect their social media ads or they're like, hey, I'm going to go deeper on this Reddit opportunity because my demographic is predominantly male and they're in this age range. So like going into those pieces, you can't stop the train from moving. And you want to, when you're testing, have equanimity in the tests for new as in the tests for developing. So expanding in the existing channels that you're doing, you can just say, I'm not going to test in the meta ecosystem. I'm only going to test in TikTok. And you establish a $10,000 a month budget to test TikTok ads to give it viability. But you're not testing ways to make matter equally stronger. Like that should be a comparison because if you're doing like a 10 and a 10 test, you can see was that investment. Should I go deeper on meta, as you're saying, or is it like, hey, I'm getting a halo lift. There's growth going on both sides. Let's continue. Now Instead of that $10,000 test, that addition thousand dollar has been an established and now I'm going to give additional testing to go deeper into those marketplaces or we introduce another channel, things of that nature. That's where it's like you have to look at the bigger picture, which you always go back to. Does it help move the business? I'm just going to go to and distill down your distillery. You can't stop what's working.

[Ralph Burns]

All right, so we're distilling the distilling of the distillation. All right, so you are coming to my.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Now it tastes like church wine.

[Ralph Burns]

Yeah, now it tastes like there's. Oh my God. No, that's not refined. That came from like a screw top bottle. Although a lot of good screw top wines these days. The point is, yeah, you should double down on the stuff that's working first off. But like for this client, perfect example of me agreeing with you but also disagreeing at the same time. Is that all right? For their new products that they want, like, it's a great idea. And they were like, did you come up with it? We hashed it out together and they asked. I was like, listen, I will tell you if I think your idea sucks, but I am telling you right now, it's a great idea. However, they're like, yeah, we're going to launch it in half the country. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Launch it in one region in your best market. And which this is a seasonal product, so launch it in a non seasonal area. Okay, so you're gonna Get a, a level of. Did you say equanimity before equanimity? Yeah, I'm just going to use that word here and let's test it there and see like handcraft it before you scale it. Don't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. Let's do like I think I actually said a $10,000 budget. The point is it didn't really matter because like I didn't know specifically what state, how much we were spending in that state. I was like 10% of whatever we're spending in that state date. So let's say it's 100k per month. 10k per month. There you go. Perfect way of testing it out. So that's the way that you test out sort of to scale laterally. All the while we're scaling vertically. Like we're doing more in that market. We're not stopping doing what we're doing on the Google side of the equation. Doing like very high intent based keyword search for specific terms.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Yeah.

[Ralph Burns]

And using strategies and tactics and all these other sorts of things. But it's like once you have these conversations, if we take a step back, like what we're talking about is strategic conversations, not tactical. Like, oh my roas on TikTok all of a sudden tanked. Like why are, why is. My people don't even use this terminology. My cost to acquire a new customer. They say CPA because it's basically new and returning because they don't know any better because they haven't downloaded our checklist, by the way. Shot, shot, nut shot, shots. Everybody do a shot. The point is these are conversations that are higher level. This is what you should aspire to in 2025 with your team. And if you're dictatorial, like I can sometimes be. I get it. But set your ego aside. Actually ask your people what they think because you know what, you might be really surprised at what they tell you and surprised. I mean in a good way.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

In a good way. I will say some of you had said a really good point about like it's try and it's like what you're going to go towards. Because like we're humans, not everyone is perfect. There's opportunities to test and there's things that you can do to like try. It's for me, at the end of the day, it's about incrementality. You want to have an improvement and you may not get the atypical return that you want right away. But when you're launching new stuff, like also have patience and grace with Yourself.

[Ralph Burns]

Good point.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Team with how you're communicating and then see how the market responds. I just think a lot of it is, especially coming out of Black Friday. So anyone who's like, wow, we just had an amazing weekend. Awesome, congratulations, well done.

[Ralph Burns]

Yeah. 14 MER.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Yeah, it'd be like, really hard to, like, bring it back down. I've seen a lot of, like, I need to keep this going. And it's like moving the marathon goalpost. And you started this out doing like 42k, and then all of a sudden they said, no, we're going to run 50. And for anyone that knows that you're running and you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Oh my God, my legs are about to collapse. What do you mean I have to do more? I just say that of have patience and kindness with your team and with those. The most important thing is that there's established KPIs, you have alignment. And like you said, is this going towards your business objectives? And I'm not saying, like, if someone messes up, like, that's what I'm just trying to say. I'm just saying, like, a lot of people come out of this holiday season with heavy, intense energy when a lot of the other people are, like you said at the beginning, exhausted, their fingers are blistering. That's just my only, like, please be nice to people this holiday season. There's a lot of opportunity out there and going and testing and all these things. And realigning towards your goals is exciting. Getting them on board is amazing. Validating that. Make sure you validate from them and you hear validation, because if they don't call back to you, like, you have to stop. You've done. Every single person, Please explain to me what you understand our goals are. If you can't get them to validate what you've been saying, you're going to be going in two different directions and you're going to look like geese that are flying south for the winter.

[Ralph Burns]

Yeah. Or if they don't know what the goal is, shame on you.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Oh, so shame on you for not articulating it well. Or is it.

[Ralph Burns]

Yeah, because how are they supposed to know if you don't articulate it?

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

So there's this podcast I listened to earlier this week. It's called Two Bobs. And they had this awesome episode where they said that the smartest person. I'm like, distilling it down. Haha. They said how, like, the really good individuals ask good questions. So I'm not going to say that full ownership is on the person for not articulating it well. But you want to have people on your team that can ask the smart questions to get to the hone of the message, because then that's also a way that you can confirm that they understood it. So in that they're like, don't just tell someone what the goal is. Ask them like, how do you see this goal being alignment? And try to get validation that they understood it. If they don't understand it right away, then ask good questions to see if they got there and they're just poorly articulating it back.

[Ralph Burns]

You're far more Thanksgiving.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Okay, I'm in. I'm in Thanksgiving mood. I'm really happy. A lot of our clients had such good weekends. And it's like, oh, me too.

[Ralph Burns]

Yeah, it's great. It's been great. It's.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

It's Giving Tuesday. Okay, we're recording this on Giving Tuesday.

[Ralph Burns]

Giving Tuesday.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

You're.

[Ralph Burns]

You're asking for forgiveness. I'm just sort of taking more of a hard line.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

I'm asking for kindness.

[Ralph Burns]

Kindness. Kindness. Kindness is in short supply these days. So I appreciate that and I think that's far better than my methodology here. But the point is, is like, maybe you find some sort of balance in between depending on what your personality is. Like, you can go for kind or you can go for hard line, but. But you should be asking questions at the very least. And also, you brought up a really good point because I know time is short here, is that when you are testing new things, give your team a grace period. Okay?

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Yes.

[Ralph Burns]

I told this customer. I was like, listen, I think your new product idea is freaking fabulous. However, it's not going to work at first. So give it time. Gather data, make good decisions, figure out where the problems are, figure out where the holes are, figure out where in the sales funnel, like where your holes in the bucket are. And then iterate and give it time, but also do it smart. Allocate yourself a specific amount of budget for it. Test it out, but don't expect success in the first try because oftentimes, well, as we know, most new products really do fail, especially in the first iteration. But you refine it over time, over time, over time, time. And every product online or that was ever sold is pretty much the same way.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Or any software released, it's like the thousandth version. Oh, my list is coming out strong. But the Hoover vacuum, it took like 900 vacuums before one hit. We want to launch out the gate with success. It's really easy to see on social media. Someone's like oh I hit a million dollars. Like it's like the jackpot of product launching. So yeah, giving the team a grace period. But I'm also going to be really bullish on giving the team KPIs of what does success look like? You have to define success before you launch. A lot of people will define success during the launch and it doesn't allow the micro wins and it doesn't allow the realignment for when you're way off base. And you have to do that through multiple sides on platform business metrics. Like you have to know at what point do you see that this is working and when this is not working it might be like in that metrics say you're launching a new channel. Do you have high click through rate? Do you have long sustainability and page like time on page for the website? Do you have a relatively positive conversion metric? Do you see comments and like what are the things that will tell you early on? What are your early indicators of sustainable performance that can then be scalable performance?

[Ralph Burns]

I couldn't agree more. Well, hopefully this gives you some room for pause. I think just to consider and reflect a little bit on 2024 and also how you're going to manage your team and or your agency or your business in the coming year. Very high level thoughts and conversations here, but hopefully this made an impact on how you're sort of thinking at this point in time. Hopefully you had a great 2024. Here's to an awesome 2025 and we're here to help. Of course, between ourselves, Tier 11 and Mongoose Media, however we possibly can. So we did not mention one of our brand new ratings on the show. We will do that next week. By the way, we got caught up in some kind of religious conversation to start things off. I don't know how that went down.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

But anyway, because you're not coming to my standup show.

[Ralph Burns]

I know, I know. I'm coming the wrong week now. Somebody's going to videotape it though and we are going to put it up on site for sure.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Oh wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

[Ralph Burns]

I didn't know. Hold on.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Look, my set brings in a lot of religious stuff and brings in a lot of opposite religious stuff. So I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I think it's like you have to be there, Ralph.

[Ralph Burns]

It's all good. I know. At least you know we'll screen it here. We'll make sure Kevin screens it. Kevin, our producer. Anyway, make sure that wherever you listen to podcasts, you leave us a reading and a review, we will read it on air. You'll become podcast famous for about 15 seconds, which is what Andy Warhol said.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

So unless you write a really long long.

[Ralph Burns]

That's true. The longer and the better. And the more stars, the more time you get on air. So anyway, we'll read that right at the top of the show, the next one we do here. So thank you for all of you who've done that recently. Really appreciate it. And of course, all the resources and everything that we mentioned here in today's show is [e-mail] so on behalf of my awesome co host, Lauren E. Petrulo.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Be kind and chow.

[Ralph Burns]

Till next show. See ya. You've been listening to Perpetual Traffic.