Rand Fishkin's video on why digital attribution is going to die
Andy and Gary dissect the aftermath of privacy updates on digital attribution and how this impacts B2B Software and Services companies in the lower middle market. In this episode we dive deeper on the insights of transitioning to a media mix and efficiency model, where we consider everything from monetary to effort 'spend'—like the dedication it takes to craft this very podcast for brand elevation.
Our discussion focuses on the precision needed in targeting marketing efforts. It's about fostering an always-on systems thinking program that keeps you aligned with your buyers through always listening them and competitor analysis. We unpack various targeting tactics, from the expansive reach of LinkedIn to the intimate, issue-specific strategies that resonate with your target buyer. Balance is key—especially when aligning marketing initiatives with the expectations of a CEO or board—so we're here breaking down the transformative approach needed to understand your buyers before funneling resources into your campaigns.
Dive into the concept of unaided awareness, its growth over time, and how marketing efforts across all customer lifecycle stages can be harnessed to drive revenue. This episode promises to equip marketers and revenue leaders with the foresight to align their marketing tactics with the needs and journey of their buyers, paving the way for sustainable growth and brand presence.
Rand Fishkin's video on why digital attribution is going to die
Andy and Gary dissect the aftermath of privacy updates on digital attribution and how this impacts B2B Software and Services companies in the lower middle market. In this episode we dive deeper on the insights of transitioning to a media mix and efficiency model, where we consider everything from monetary to effort 'spend'—like the dedication it takes to craft this very podcast for brand elevation.
Our discussion focuses on the precision needed in targeting marketing efforts. It's about fostering an always-on systems thinking program that keeps you aligned with your buyers through always listening them and competitor analysis. We unpack various targeting tactics, from the expansive reach of LinkedIn to the intimate, issue-specific strategies that resonate with your target buyer. Balance is key—especially when aligning marketing initiatives with the expectations of a CEO or board—so we're here breaking down the transformative approach needed to understand your buyers before funneling resources into your campaigns.
Dive into the concept of unaided awareness, its growth over time, and how marketing efforts across all customer lifecycle stages can be harnessed to drive revenue. This episode promises to equip marketers and revenue leaders with the foresight to align their marketing tactics with the needs and journey of their buyers, paving the way for sustainable growth and brand presence.
Welcome to the GTM Pro Podcast, your essential audio resource for mastering go-to-market discussions in the boardroom. Here we share insights for revenue leaders at B2B Software and Services companies, especially those with less than 50 million in revenue. Why? Because the challenges faced by companies of this size are unique. They are too big to be small and too small to be big. This dynamic pushes revenue leaders into executive leadership without a lot of help or support. We are here to provide that support. Your journey to boardroom excellence starts now.
Gary:The whole point of the discussion is around measuring marketing's impact, and the catalyst for this was this video that I met a data, actually, I think was the channel, but Rand Fischkin was the presenter, and it was around the end of digital attribution. So I think everybody's feeling that and now, especially as we frankly it comes out of this 2020 planning, which is 2020. Which is? We hear this all the time if you had another million dollars, how would you spend it? That's the vending machine approach. What campaigns would you run? Where would you go? What would you look for?
Gary:You know, show me that you can put a dollar in and get three dollars out, and I think that, especially in lower middle market companies like that is such a trap anymore because of the end of digital attribution, like the ability to track that I did an ad here and it turned into revenue here directly is not only challenging but getting harder by the day, and you know he goes through a bunch of things. It's actually very well done in terms of the evolution of how we got here, but you can see it in the paid channels. The iOS I think it was iOS 14, was when the first update happened with the do not track. You've got the removal of cookies, all of which, by the way, are to the benefit of the platforms of a walled garden approach Absolutely.
Gary:We get less and less and less visibility, in the name of privacy, on what's happening. And the other side of it, then, is if you look at where people are, the watering holes where people are spending time, it's on these very walled gardens, social platforms that want to keep you there, because if they can keep you there, that means that you're not linking out and going to different places. It also means that the only way to get in front of people is to spend time there yourself or spend your ad dollars there to get in front of them, which, by the way, they won't actually let you attribute back. So it's amazing how this all benefits the platforms. But then to the point of how do we take some of this advice and make it relevant for lower middle market companies, for revenue leaders at those companies? Because part of what we start to go back to, if you will, back to the future, is this whole idea of media mix and media efficiency and looking at it more holistically as a portfolio spend rather than the individual like one to one. I spent a dollar here. I get $3 here. My question, andy, is what is the minimum spend required to be able to really do that? Well, I think that's probably one of the bigger challenges is that that makes starts to make sense when you get critical mass and all these different channels and you're able to turn it on here and turn it off there.
Gary:And the analogy that Rand provides is in 1960, coca-cola runs a massive billboard on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. And well, why did they do that? How did they make that selection? And it's well done. But the challenge is that, well, first of all, they have a very specific audience that they know they are reaching by virtue of geography. This is pre-digital, and they have the ability to. You don't do kind of a billboard on Michigan Avenue, you're either all in or you're not at all. And so that, I think, is going to be the challenge, as we hear about this, is media mix and media efficiency and the lift that you see in different things. You need a certain amount of spend in order to make that even realistic.
Andy:Spend. You could almost put in air quotes as well too, right. So there's like what we're doing right now, this is spend for us in a way. We hope at one point what we're doing today pays off and that people know us as GTM Pro, people know us by our names. That's spend. We're not physically spending dollars here, at least not in the near term, but that's a way to get this brand recognition, you know.
Andy:And the Coke example is great because we talk about being the Coca-Cola in our industry, which industry really being segment, and we can really narrow that down as we narrow down our ICP, which may be multiple segments, but it's become a brand marketing game unless you are 10x better than your competitor's product, which in our spaces, is never the case, like they're all very comparable, but you're playing a brand game there where you are going to a very specific audience to say I am your best option given this scenario, and I know a lot about you and you're these things, and that's why this fits like a glove with this scenario and you should choose this over all others for this reason very specific, right, uncomfortably specific. That's a brand game, though that's a marketing game, and so, in terms of how much you should spend there, it really depends on how much you're boxing that in there right out of the gate. I'm targeting it down this much and I'm being this specific and I'm trying to impact this audience with this message and that's how much I need to spend, so that later on we're just talking about, right, they know me, they know my brand, I'm like my physical brand, and they come back when they're ready Cause I'm on their day. One consideration list you love that term, right, like, I've created that awareness that I am this very specific solution to this problem for this type of company, this side, this employee situation, whatever it is, and so that's being the Coca-Cola of your industry, your segment, that segment, and so I would just say you know it's the classic BS consulting answer, which is it depends on what you're trying to impact there, because, again, a branded paid search campaign is it's not the starting point, that's the ending point, that's the demand capture. They don't just conjure your brand and decide to search for you. They have had to find you somewhere else, and so that's the genesis of that and we're just I was just talking with someone about LinkedIn and this cold to warm strategy.
Andy:Right, you can kind of create a set of awareness, a set of people that you know you're enticing, if you will I hate that word but you're getting them to come to a set of content that's really really around a very specific problem that you're solving and you give them that and you know you're getting them to engage and understand you as a potential solution for that. But you're not pitching hard or anything, but they're in your orbit and then you're retargeting on that and you're kind of creating this almost like this virtual nurture cycle that's happening independent of email, even could eventually involve email as people opt in maybe to other things. But that's expensive, that is expensive, right. So, depending on the venue you're in as well, right, like to just even get the ball rolling on creating this critical mass around.
Andy:People knowing you for something on LinkedIn hate to pick on them, but they deserve it because it's expensive to even get the ball rolling in any kind of critical mass. So it depends on, I think, the channel. It depends on how tightly you're targeting who you're speaking to, and we would argue you really wanna start very tight to test the concept, to test that channel, to test your messaging and is that resonating and does that eventually turn into? And ideally we'll get into this more you're able to measure the people that came to you there. Do they matriculate later on, do they come back, do they consume more content and so on, and there's tools with which to do that that are not Google Analytics, yeah, and so unpacking that as you think about.
Gary:Okay, great, I'm a marketing leader. What do I do with that? I'm sitting 24, I'm been asked to put a budget together. Where do I spend? You hit on something where in the whole idea of Coca-Cola in your industry segment it really starts with. You really have to have an unbelievably tight definition of your segment, especially again for lower middle market companies, that even if you have a horizontal product that are serving a variety of it, don't think of it as industry, but the type of customer that you serve you.
Gary:There has to be unanimous, Cross-functional, company-wide agreement absolutely on what segment that you serve, because you cannot afford To not have that nailed down right. That's the first step. Then the second step is We've seen some CEOs really lean into this it is we. Now, once we have that defined, we have to have an always-on, ongoing on Intelligence program of our, of our buyer, and that is Conversations it's listening to, calls, its interviews, its surveys, it's competitor analysis, it. There's a lot of these things that happen Periodically.
Gary:All right, there's the occasional win-loss. You know, all of a sudden we need to do win-loss because the board asked for it, or and product wants to do some research on a new feature, and so they go down their launch, but having it literally be always on and then democratize inside the organization. So you, you, you are in the heads of your users and your buyers is Is going to tell you what to say and what value to provide. And then, and only then, does the brand building begin. I think that term brand when you use things like Coca-Cola as an example not you specifically, andy, but when we or anybody any consumer brand, that's what we tend to think about is that it's. They have this presence in our mind and and when I'm thirsty, I, you know, go to Coca-Cola, but in the in the B2B world and lower-middle market, it is that you have very firmly associated you with that group of people, very, very specifically defined and how you help.
Gary:Yeah, and that comes by giving, by offering help, and now, now you can begin to form your quote-unquote media strategy, which is Okay. Well, what if I'm going to produce this? What is the information that becomes helpful and how now do I distribute it to them? Are there ways that we can do it through? And back to your point about demand capture. Yes, there is absolutely a point of this. Where people are in market, they are looking for a solution and you want to be in front of that. In most segments, there are a hundred and fifty alternatives to you Totally, and so if you aren't very specific in whom you serve and why, and the value you provide, you're likely going to get drowned out by the 800 pound gorillas in the space.
Andy:I think it's worth mentioning this whole top-down, bottom-up targeting thing here as well, too, as part of this line of conversation, which is, top-down targeting is what we can do on a platform. Let's take LinkedIn as another example. It's what, it's how I can target an audience. Now, sometimes you can do it one-to-one with a custom audience. I know the list of you know it's a VM, if you will. It's a list of Like companies that I want to go after and then within that it's the actual job roles that I want to speak to, and you can do that pretty well. Most, most, most of the time, certainly from an intent basis, you're only getting in a sandbox Right, which is like I'm pretty close, like I know this is. There's a lot of Firmagraphics involved. In a lot of times there's there's other factors there that you just literally won't know about.
Andy:The other piece of targeting, the bottom up, is, is how you specifically solve a problem for that person, and some of that's time Based like there's got to be incentive moment. They have to have a trigger why? Why they're like suddenly like this pain is so great. I want to do something about that, but you can't water that piece down. That's your position. You can't water that piece down because there's a hundred others that do the same thing.
Andy:So you have to be super specific there to say like, if you're this very specific scenario and your pain is this, you twinge on that. This is, this is what you can do about it, and you talk about the solution to the problem in general, but it's in General, meaning like it doesn't necessarily have to do with your product, but it's very specific around what that solution is, who it's for, how you go about solving it and so on. And that's the bottom up targeting, which is you're extracting out out of that sandbox the people that have that very specific problem and again, going back to then, you associate yourself with. You associate yourself with a solution to that specific problem and that's how you then build the brand and that's how you're, that's how you're present as a day one option, day one being. I've realized I have this Acute pain, I need a solution for it and I remember this entity that Does that sort of thing so, in this era of again trying to bring this down to okay, understand, but how do I, how do I manage?
Gary:How do I, as a marketing leader, manage, through the request of my CEO and board that wants to see return on ad spend? And I think the this is where it's going to take time for organizations to transform and this is why I think, starting with that order of operation segment, do we have a clue to find that? Secondly, okay, if we now have a segment, do we understand the buyer and everything that they need? Now you can start to talk about the deployment of capital, people, programs. What have you that help you determine how we believe we are going to get our information in front of them? Now, how do we measure the efficacy of that? So, at one extreme, there probably is, there definitely is a portion of the spend that can absolutely be. Can traditional direct response measurement. People are really low in the funnel. They're looking for a solution. They want a demo of something and they're gonna click the ad. They're gonna find the landing page, it's gonna be relevant, they're gonna see the video and then they're gonna click through. Right, great example right.
Andy:A great example that's not paid search is the comparison website, right. So if you're, if you go, if you get in front of that right where somebody's searching in a category of product they have, they likely have that pain. They're very high in tent and I would still argue you want to be incredibly specific around your positioning in that environment because, lo and behold, they see you, they say, wow, like the storefront you present here on name, the site is. That's exactly my scenario and I, oh, there's a demo form, I'm good and it's really, it's really high in tent and you're in front of that and you're in front of that with the right message. So, yeah, I well so.
Gary:So with that, but that that is an example of a larger strategy where the a fantastic, well done competitor comparison page is the core around which both an organic and a paid strategy exists right and so that's, that's where I was going with.
Gary:That is when you are reporting out to the board. I think, as you think about your quote, unquote paid spend, I believe where most organizations or most marketing leaders go astray, especially at this size, is they lump it all together as paid spend, when in reality, if we're really thoughtful about how we're doing this and we tie it back to the whole goal of paid spend, depends on where we are trying to intercept the buyer. And so if we are trying to intercept a, a ICP buyer who has intent by the way, they're telling us they have intent, we don't know they have intent then that is an absolute strategy. Frankly, it should be the core of where you start, right. If you're, if you're not doing that well and you're not picking that off and there aren't good economics there, then go fix that, because that is, that is demand that is out there already and you may not have actually done anything to create it.
Gary:You're just you know, you're you're, you're throwing your line in the water. But then there's the other aspects of a thoughtful paid strategy that are further up the consideration funnel, where I may be still in the problem evaluation formation stage to try to understand well, what, what exactly am I trying to solve for and what are the all the alternatives. And therefore I I'm using paid to bring you to an asset of some form, an experience of form that actually helps you, but you're not going to click a demo and go on and buy right, and so you might, you might depend on that, but but that's not the goal of that campaign, and so that's my point is if ROAS or whatever vending machine metric that we want to see for all of paid digital is the the measurement, then we're going to stop doing stuff like that and we're only going to spend our time and energy on the stuff that we can.
Gary:That is picking off demand that's already there, that we had nothing to do with, and we're not creating something that's repeatable and scalable and creating additional new demand, new, new awareness, new, you know, putting ourselves on that day. One consideration set.
Andy:Yeah, well, and that's that's where I was going really with the comparison websites and so on. Is even there not even there, like there is as much as anywhere else? You have to be differentiated where you have to be speaking to your ideal customer, if you will, very specifically. So when you, when you're talking about creating that awareness upstream, the worst thing you can do is a very general, general problem statement, value proposition, if you will like, talking about a broad problem. You need to be, you need to talk about it very specifically because, first of all, that's the only thing that's going to really create value for that individual who's in that situation. Very general answers don't help them and therefore they're not associating you with you know, a real solution. It doesn't help you, is my point there. Well, you have to be really tight, even upstream. It sounds like. Well, I could be more general upstream because it's like you know, I'm just kind of getting awareness out there. No, the only way you get awareness is by being specific.
Gary:Right, right, yeah, yes, but again going back to okay. So as I am putting a plan together to deploy resources and I need to present that to the board and the board wants to see okay, you're going to spend X dollars, what can I expect in return? The I think the reality is the predictability of that gets lower and lower by the day, right, and so it becomes borrowing from our consumer packaged goods brethren. It becomes a constant iteration of test and learn, and that way, what would be refreshing would be to see, as a board member, what would be refreshing is to see a plan, not just like here's my budget, I'm going to spend this much on these programs, this much on these programs and that's going to deliver X number of leads, and we're going to go here because that's frankly, there's more and more. It's underpants, nobs. I'm going to do this and there's a big question mark in the middle of how it's actually going to work and then it's going to produce these results.
Gary:The challenge with that, of course, is that we're relying on those results, and so what I really want to know is what is the level of confidence in the inputs? And to be okay with not having clarity on the inputs, but how are we going to be able to know that it's working? And presenting a plan that says we know we have to reach a group, a very specific group. We've all agreed that this is the group we're going to go reach and that this is our value prop and this is the problem we're solving and therefore, we're going to go out into the world to your point and be very specific with that message and we are going to get into, we're going to get mindshare from the people that will, at one point in time, buy from us. There's a whole group of motions around that and I don't want to hear about metrics.
Gary:I don't want to hear about. We're going to do a webinar, we're going to do this, we're going to do that. Those are the tactics associated with that objective. Then there are people who we know will, for one reason or another, be in a consideration phase and we want to make sure that we are, when the time comes, when they move from consideration to selection, that we are on that list and that we are earning credibility through the way.
Andy:On the margin. How do you know you're getting to be more on that list? I think that's an objective and that's a realistic objective that will ultimately matriculate. When you say this is very soft, you're talking about content marketing and stuff that's not going to result in leads that our sales team can close. Actually it will. How do you know? Is by when you're doing those activities you're saying, well, there might be an email. Do they open the email? Do they consume? Do they click With a paid click? We know they click, but are they reading?
Andy:We take the example of retention. A lot Somebody is already a customer and in our year one retention we have a fall off. And how do we change that? How do we bend that curve? You can't just use retention as your metric and then wait a year to see if what you did worked from a customer success perspective. You have to have leading indicators like product instrumenting, your product being a great example. Are they using the product more than they did before? This cohort versus that cohort? Okay, that's arguably going to bend the retention curve if it's significant.
Andy:Similarly with problem marketing, with content marketing upstream, where you're trying to create more awareness and consideration for you as a solution generally to a particular problem or a segment. Right, you're doing something similar to that product instrumentation, which is, I'm instrumenting my site, I'm instrumenting that content to know they consume the video on there. That's like my studio product demo that shows that they're just reading that content or they're coming back and reading similar additional content. That's of a similar ilk to the one I brought them in on. They're coming back, they're reading, they're there for two minutes as opposed to one minute. You can measure those things and that's showing efficacy. The obvious example is email. We see it all the time. Do they open it? Do they click on any of the links? There's all those analogies out there, either on a micro or macro basis, that you should be measuring.
Andy:I would argue being pretty specific about the type of content people are consuming, certainly how long they're doing that and whether they're coming back and whether you can see those incremental loops of repetitive visits. That's an indication that what you're saying is resonating. Of course, if you look at an entire waterfall of web traffic, right, there's going to be patterns and metrics of how people matriculate into leads at the end of the day, if you raise that lake and you don't do it through just crappy clicks, like I just put up a display campaign, of course I got more web traffic. That's not going to help you because most of those are going to bounce and so on.
Andy:If you feel need of it, I am raising the lake up. I can tell this is the right type of audience, either because I targeted it that way, or they're consuming the right kind of content. And then the people that are coming in as leads the quality is consistent and the type of customers consistent, so we'll call those micro conversions. I think that's where we throw around a little bit. But those are the things you need to pay attention to to know that you're raising the lake and you're increasing that gravitational pull.
Gary:Yeah, I think that, as you describe that, the challenge from a board perspective is that it's almost bespoke measurement and therefore I don't know what good is, but I don't have benchmarks against that and that's. I honestly believe that's. We're in the middle of that. That's just reality and we're going to have to modify that. But you make a really good point which is coming in with okay, this is how we built our system, this is how we built our strategy. This is why this thinks make, why we think this makes sense, and what we're trying to accomplish. Now let's discuss. If that's true, then what evidence will we see that we are headed in the right direction? What? Where should that reveal itself? To your point, well, we see that when people come to our site, they're visiting these pages, they're spending more time here, they're consuming, they're, they're subscribing to our YouTube channel, they're subscribing to our email, they're, they're, we're having, you know, we're being well. Actually reminded me of another thing as well, which is so.
Gary:Bill Misaitis is a marketing advisor board advisor now but former SVP of marketing at Salesforce, former CMO at Zendesk, former CMO at Slack, and he I think it was probably a couple of years ago we did a marketing and sales summit for the Boathouse portfolio.
Gary:And one thing that he mentioned and referenced was and he brought this from his consumer days at Fox, the Fox Broadcasting is really around unaided awareness, like he brought a lot of consumer principles to now, granted, these are big companies and you know they're the huge budgets and so but, but I think that that principle applies, which is there, you, we can measure where what is the progression of mindshare that we have with our particular universe?
Gary:And, and what's more important, is less the absolute measure and more the trend like is it headed in the right direction? And, and I think that's the other thing too for companies of this size, is that success lies rarely in any one thing that you do. It is two and three percent improvements across the food change that come around on themselves to contribute to, first of all, significant growth, but also, incredibly, capital fishing growth and a foundation upon which you can build. And so often we go after the silver bullet, the thing that may actually produce results, but, like any campaign law of shitty click-throughs, it will reach its point of marginal diminishing returns and it's not something we can build on. So now we need to go out and find the next silver bullet and then the next silver bullet, whereas if we think across the system, then we can make these modest improvements at every point and the whole thing becomes you have the ability to compound that.
Andy:Yeah, I mean, it's just incredibly difficult now and we're talking a little bit about the higher consideration, higher ACV purchases Like you are not going to create a campaign, start spending money getting people to a landing page which may say very great things about you and your product and has a forum that says you know, come see a demo now. You're not going to spend a bunch of money and get that to pay for itself on its own. It's just, it's literally not going to happen. If you start getting those conversions, I would argue it's because of other things you've done before. Like we use the example of the branded campaign on paid search. Right, that's a demand capture. Nobody's just out of the blue coming to your brand and then saying, yeah, I want a demo. Like that doesn't just happen.
Andy:So you did something ahead of time that created that awareness. They know your brand from something and they came to you. They've probably been to your site and they've probably been to your site a number of times. Maybe they've spoken to someone, maybe they saw you at a trade show, maybe they did a webinar. That happened ahead of time and we got to get better at measuring that, which we can talk about. But so, therefore, when you do a campaign out of the blue on a non-branded basis well-targeted and, again, great landing page but the condition is going to be very similar, especially if it's a big, highly considered purchase the condition is going to be very analogous to the branded campaign.
Andy:They aren't just going to come like oh wow, this landing page is so compelling that I'm going to think about investing my six-figure budget for this program and go right out of the blue and sign up for that demo. It's unlikely. So that's why we just need to holistically think about well, what's going to move the needle on getting people to the point to say I am willing to consider my budget toward this product specifically. Why? What about that product? What do they do? What do they solve for people just like me? That is compelling. That's what we need to explain much more and much further up front to become part of that consideration.
Gary:So you know, land in this plane, I think, from a measurement perspective, in terms of you think about presenting your plan for 24 as a marketer or revenue leader. We've said it a hundred times marketing is the only part of the organization that touches every aspect of the revenue generating machine, from very top of funnel all the way down to expansion. They're involved in some way, shape or form and I think that because those activities aren't necessarily directly related to this happen. Therefore, revenue happened that it. It's easy for that to get lost, that impact to get lost inside the organization. So, as you're presenting that plan and you're thinking about all of the stages of the customer lifecycle, instead of presenting it as we're doing these email campaigns and we have these paid campaigns, and we're doing this event, and we're doing like back it up and what are we trying to accomplish? Who is our buyer? What do they need to know and how do we connect the dots between what they need and what we offer? And starting at the very top all the way through the bottom.
Gary:And it may very well be that you're talking about paid campaigns five and six times, because there's one that's very top of funnel, there's one that's, you know, taking you from the problem evaluation to consideration phase. There's one that is supporting the sales cycle to for quote unquote air cover during potentially a complex sales cycle. There may be others where we're trying to get even existing customers to adopt new features or what have you. They all have different objectives and therefore should be measured differently. You can roll all that up into what paid is going to look like then at the end, but if you start with paid at the beginning, then all of that stuff gets averaged together and somebody's going to say, well, that's a crappy burrow, as we should, that we're not spending efficiently. So and then, if you think about, the same goes for other programs where we're investing in content, in events, where we deploying our people and our resources and looking at those points of leverage and doing it like we talked about.
Gary:If we haven't, we don't feel like from the moment somebody visits our website to the moment that they sign up and get to a moment of value in our product, if we don't have every aspect of that completely nailed, chances are that's the better place to spend our time and energy Doesn't mean that we can't. We can ignore the compounding effects of quote unquote. Building brand by delivering solid information and value-added content to our tightly defined audience. But and that's almost a we got to think about how we make that an always-on effort that continues to expand as we go. But really rolling up our sleeves to solve the leaky points in that process is for, again, companies in the lower middle market. That's where the majority of the growth potential exists, in my humble opinion.
Andy:Yeah, I think. I think that that nailed it and that's gonna be the case. It's gonna be the best bet for you and you know, since we're speaking of measurement, that's gonna be a place that you're going to be able to see those impacts on a micro conversion basis, just what you're trying to do. You know, the two and three percent's add up, compound, I should say, and but what? But when you're even doing further upstream things, you have to have a hypothesis which Is it's going to have to be. I'm not, it's gonna have to not be. I'm spending this money and I'm expecting these leads to come from it. That's not going to happen. So there has to be a hypothesis which isn't that, which is likely.
Andy:I'm trying to create some, some orbit here, some gravitational pull from these types of customers, these types of prospects. I should say I'm targeting it in this manner and I'd really love to see these metrics associated with it around the content consumption. That would be a great starting point to say, and then would be even better is I can then follow them Over the course of time, over the next 30, 60 days, to see if they come back, to see if a handful of them do end up becoming Handraisers and fill out a form and so on. That that's a. That's a much more thoughtful plan than just saying I want to spend this money and have it be a vending machine for leads and come out at the end with, you know, things that my sales team can go after.
Gary:Yeah, yep.
Tiana:Agreed me about.
Tiana:What you're saying is basically that you need to think about everything at the same time and not to the exact result of paid advertisement. We talked about ICP, that you have to have it clearly nailed down in order to have your messaging Perfectly adjusted to this specific type of people, so that you can start thinking about the moment when they find you and they you create the brand Awareness, until the moment that they actually decide to take any type of action that indicates that they're interested in your product, and then we go on after to reaching out to them, and then we go until Until the. What I'm saying is the only way to actually make relevant your paid Advertisement is to actually thinking about the whole global market engine in itself, and it's from the first moment that you actually encounter the customer, or that the customer encounters you, up until the end of it. So the only way to actually make paid ads even less expensive that that they are right now is to actually being present before, so that when they actually get to see you, you're relevant already to them.
Gary:Yeah, yes, yes, yes, okay. Well, we probably ought to wrap this up. I'm there, we're gonna be talking all year about this because I think that we're this, we're we talked about this, I guess, a little bit of day in the last year we're in a new world order and I believe that it's gonna necessitate a whole, a bunch of different measurements. That's something that, frankly, where we're finding I mean as a board, as as board members ourselves, and thinking really also as good market leaders, what we want to be focused on the inputs that drive outputs, and measuring those. We're in a different world. So we have some work to do, honestly, to help provide some of those frameworks, and I'm excited about Us working together to be able to put those out and provide some additional guidance.
Gary:So, thank you for spending your time with us and, until next week, bye. Thank you for tuning in to GTM Pro, where you become the pro. We're here to foster your growth as revenue leader, offering the insights you need to thrive. For further guidance, visit GTM pro dot co and continue your path to becoming board ready with us. Share this journey, subscribe, engage and elevate your go-to-market skills. Until next time, go, be a pro.