Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:08 Welcome to the rogue startups podcast. We're two startup founders are sharing lessons learned and pitfalls to avoid in their online businesses. And now here's Dave and Craig. All right, welcome back to another episode of <inaudible>
Speaker 1 00:21 rogue startups. This week I'm joined by Asia Matos Asia. How are you doing?
Speaker 2 00:26 Doing awesome. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 00:28 No, my pleasure. My pleasure. Gosh, Asia and I have been talking off and on since before we joined tiny seed I guess so like six months or so and came really highly recommended to me from a fellow kind of friend in the SAS space. And so Asia, do you want to give folks kind of the quick elevator pitch on kind of who you are and what you do?
Speaker 2 00:48 I'd love to. My name is Asia and I am the CEO and founder of demand Maven where we help early stage startups reach their very first growth milestones. So thank first a hundred customers to the first thousand customers. My background is in marketing and demand gen for startups and for product companies. So I feel like it was a natural transition starting demand Maven. But I've been working with founders pretty closely, uh, ever since.
Speaker 1 01:13 Awesome. I, I think I would love your job cause I love, uh, the time, like as a business owner, the time I get to just really geek out on marketing with Denise, our marketing director, I'm just like, Oh, this is so cool. And attribution, which we're going to touch on later. And funnels and customer acquisition channels and all this kind of stuff I just think is wonderful. I think I'm turning into a marketer at heart. So I'm really excited to dig into this and, and we're calling this episode marketing two Oh one because this is not for the faint of heart. This is for folks who have some experience with marketing. And if you don't, that's okay. You'll hear things maybe that, that we might got to find or that might be a little kind of, I want to say over your head but, but a little past kind of where you might be in your journey right now. But the goal here really with, with Asia is, is she has a lot of experience with helping folks, like she said, get to get to and pass that first milestone. And for a lot of people I know Asia, like that milestone is, you know, seven figures in their business, right? I mean that these are not, uh, you know, getting to $1,000 in MRR. Right?
Speaker 2 02:10 Yeah, exactly. And going back to what you said about, uh, how cool is this job? I will say that my absolute favorite thing is just seeing the variety and the array. I'm from B to B to B to C to everything from like pure SAS to you've got like a fully scaled out sales team and you've got a demo model. Um, and even down into freemium. I mean, just the, the array has been, it's been amazing. But what's interesting is that a lot of it is the same problem over and over and over again, which I'm sure we'll probably touch on a little bit today.
Speaker 1 02:43 Do you find that the, the, the same problem kind of has a different flavor for everybody or, or are the problems kind of different?
Speaker 2 02:51 I find it's in, it's usually in the same vein. Uh, it's, it's usually in we need to diversify our acquisition strategy or we've got something working, but now we need, we've got to figure out what are some of the other things that could work for us. And then of course, looking down the funnel. So beyond just acquisition, what, what are some of the things that we can be doing around activation? And then of course retention, because what's especially like as a marketer and even a founder's job. Um, so I love hearing whenever founders love marketing because in a way they kind of take on a lot of that too. But then you start looking at the entire life cycle of your business. And as you grow that life cycle, not only does it expand, but it, it actually repeats across different segments of your market. So that's, that's what I think is so cool about marketing and that's why it, it helps a team at least scale really fast if it's working well of course. But I find that that's like, that's the similar, that's pretty much like the same journey, um, uh, across pretty much all the companies that I've worked with and for, and it's just a matter of figuring out either what's broken or what's missing. And after you figure that out, then it's, it's, you know, you just kinda guiding along the path.
Speaker 1 03:56 Yeah, no, I love it. I love it. Like I can tell you from inside the tiny seed companies, the other nine companies in this batch, all of us have the same problem essentially. And that's kind of what you're talking about, which is I just want a bunch more customers. Uh, you know, my product is good. It had, we have a pretty good degree of product market fit. Now. How do we just get 20 times the number of customers or something. And so I think that's kind of like where we're going to start is so both Dave and I are kind of platform dependent businesses, so, so mine is not dependent, but we've gotten where we are in a large degree based on kind of our platform. So me and WordPress with our podcasting plugin and Dave owns a Shopify app that helps with abandoned cart recovery.
Speaker 1 04:32 And so I think one of the, one of the questions that, that we both have is like, okay, we've, we've got this, I'll say organic platform channel, right? So like the platform is there. We're in the platform, we get some customers from that. But that's a hard thing to scale. Um, and to, to like pour fire, pour gas on the fire, right? And so I think both of us are looking at like this and saying, okay, this is great, but I both want to diversify and I want something that's, that I can accelerate, right? Like, I want to be able to spend $10,000 this one than Edwards and get $12,000 out the other end. Which would you just can't do with a WordPress plugin for, for folks like in these kinds of situations, do you find the approach to finding a new and scalable marketing channel different than a quote regular founder?
Speaker 2 05:21 The short answer, no, I actually don't find that the process is dramatically different. But I do think that, I think that the mindset is different. And for an early stage founder, so the founder who's trying to get to a hundred, you know, the 10 camera are, or even like the 50 year a hundred camera are depending on how you wanted to find early stage. Um, the mindset is usually like, I just got to find like some, I just need to figure out what tactics work when you, when you're a product ultimately depends on another's platform and or ecosystem. You're really looking at everything within that ecosystem. But the other mindset I guess that you need to have is actually more on the visionary side and more of just the where do you see this going market wise in general, because you can go ahead and start, you can kind of start setting up camp sites if you will, like outside of that and some of the other parts of the market or you can think about it much more.
Speaker 2 06:13 What are some of the other watering holes that I just need to make sure that I'm appearing in and then I'm tapping because all those things combined will in theory at least continue to help you gain market share. So if you're dependent on a Shopify for example, and everything that you're doing is in that Shopify ecosystem, I would be looking for things that are secondary to that, to that specific ecosystem. Other people talking about Shopify or partnering with Shopify that you can also partner with the essential. The idea though is what are some of the places that I can either build a relationship with or tap that bring me the big waves and droves of customers. And it's a very different mindset than very early stage obviously. But, and this is very common too, especially if if you are in accelerator programs, uh, or even in um, smaller investment programs like a tiny seed or like a Techstars, but usually the big, the big onus if you will, or the emphasis is on what are the other partnerships and or channels can you build now that a year or two from now it will give you an extra 10% of the market.
Speaker 2 07:19 And when you start thinking at that scale, that's when you really start thinking in terms of, Oh, not only gaining market share, but it's no longer percentages but it's X increases. So now you're looking at like the 10 X growth, which, which does sounds so cliche and very tired, but that is kind of where you start seeing the big waves of customers. I think the, I think the mindset is really what changes. I think the approach is still the same. You're still at the end of the day looking at your market <inaudible> at the end of the day, still constantly searching for the key players, the key influencers and just the key partnership opportunities that that might be available to you. You just don't know about.
Speaker 1 07:55 Hmm. Interesting. Do you view things like partnerships and co-marketing and and things like that as it sounds like a, like a really good way to get that, that exponential growth. We don't call it <inaudible> exponential growth. Um, as opposed to, you know, we, we've been exploring, uh, paid acquisition, Facebook and AdWords. We also do a fair amount of content marketing and looking at kind of, so different flavors of that, but, but I view, especially content marketing is not something that in the short term is going to double our business. Do you view things like partnerships and some of these other things as like those levers that can really make a big difference on the acquisition side?
Speaker 2 08:33 100000000%. And this is, this is also aware marketing really expands beyond just focusing on digital channels. This is where marketing starts to get more into that strategic development or strategic business development and just overall thinking about, Mmm, where is the business going and where are we trying to w w where are we ultimately trying to make an impact in who do we know who can help us get there? This is where you do start seeing that exponential growth. I like that way better than the 10 X. um, but, but yes, and that's, that is absolutely part of, at least in my opinion, part of marketing's job as well. Maybe not necessarily to own the entire relationship but absolutely support it. And those are the kinds of just strategic planning in that visionary thinking that has to happen between the marketing department. Uh, ideally also like if there is a sales team, the sales team, and then of course the executive, the executive leadership team.
Speaker 2 09:35 Um, and then even potentially not on the investor side as well. If, if investors are partnerships that I, I mean, yes, like to execute on them. Like you're probably looking at something marketing related, but identifying those from the get go that can help you drive some of that. Not only just awareness, but obviously at the end of the day, the demo, the trial, their install or whatever it is. But yes, I think that there are critical and I think that there's something that, I love that Rob actually said this on Twitter the other day, Rob walling, but I believe you said founders need to be thinking in five years and not just five months. And that's, that's absolutely what I push for when we're, when we're looking at, um, we're trying to get to a million. Like those are the kinds of things that I'm looking for. I'm looking for what are, what are the big partnership and strategic opportunities in the market itself that we're just not, that we're not precedent, that we're not tapping, um, that we're, we're not really building around. So yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 10:29 Yeah. Yeah. You know, I would add to that, and this is a little outside of the marketing realm, but as a founder, I put product in that longterm. How can we get to exponential growth, uh, trajectory, right? So like product and pricing, kind of those two go together. For me it was like the, the value of the, of the tool and the things you can offer there that that's, that's another lever for us to say like, okay, right now we are just a podcast hosting platform, but in the future we might be a who knows what. Right? And so like we, we look at this from a marketing perspective of like, okay, we have affiliates and what are we doing with our affiliates to really ratchet up their involvement and help them be successful along with us and other influencers in the space. But then on the product side, we also say like, okay, we charge $19 a month for our lowest plan.
Speaker 1 11:13 Now what if we could charge $1,000 a month for something? Right? And that like that, that really starts moving the needle and but, but then that, that kind of takes you back to square one with like acquisition. Cause then you're talking to a totally different type of customer. So I think that's like a, a balancing act that <inaudible> we're going through a little bit right now. And I think other people who are evolving their business to say like, okay, I've, I've kind of gotten what I want here. I'm looking, I see the market, like you're saying moving in this direction. We need to go up market, we need to go enterprise to do that and we're gonna need to talk to enterprise customers. Like, you know, a B2B relationship. But also the product needs to be ready for that too. So I think that's just one more thing to make our lives difficult.
Speaker 2 11:50 Oh yeah. There's a, there's a really amazing framework by Brian Balfour that I live and die by. I think it's, it's, to me at least, it explains this in the best way, but it's article series all about why product market fit. It's no longer just about product market fit. You also still have to think about the channels through which you're, you're actively promoting your product. And then of course the model that you have that that enables the market to purchase your product. And in the early days so much of us are obsessed with that product market fit, you know, do we have it, when do we know that we have it? And the answer is always like trust me, you'll know. And then of course after that it's, it's really thinking about, okay cool, well what are some of the other channels? And I think what a lot of teams forget about is that channels.
Speaker 2 12:34 It doesn't necessarily just have to be these like digital marketing channels. They can also be offline and they can also be relationship based. And I think that that's so important to remember. Um, and then of course if you're more on the technical side of like your product is maybe catering more to a technical audience, the integration and API space is also something to be thinking about that can help you also growth leavers to pull. But yeah, thinking of, I definitely think that when it comes to marketing two Oh one you're definitely thinking outside of the scope that you're in or outside of the context that you're in. But actually I think that the other part too is you are also taking a much finer tooth comb, if you will, through the existing customer base and cheap that you have. And sometimes one of the best ways to figure out new acquisition channels is to just go to your existing customers, especially in the newer ones that you've acquired over time. But yeah, I think that there's, there's definitely like the more strategic visionary approach. And then there's also still the, let's focus on the customers. Let's like figure out what's new there that we didn't know before.
Speaker 1 13:34 Yeah, yeah. K kind of like trying to stay within the, I'll say like shorter to medium term because I think, you know, we, we have the, the opportunity to, to think in years one because we took a small amount of investment other because we're, you know, uh, you know, a bear company and paying all the bills and all this kind of stuff. We're, we're not big like HubSpot for sure, but like, you know, we're paying the bills and so like we can afford to think in a little bit longer term, but we also try to think in, in things like what can I do this week to really move the needle? Um, and one of the, one of like the constant really healthy tensions between Denise and I in our marketing space, our marketing director is like, what is the balance of priority between organic acquisition channels, like content marketing, podcasting, YouTube, things like that and paid acquisition. And I know this is something that you and I talked about, gosh, again, six months ago is like what does this balance need to be for us to achieve kind of the growth goals that we have? There's going to be different for everybody, but how do you think about this when you're talking to your founder clients?
Speaker 2 14:37 Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I love this question because it's, it's a question of two of the most critical parts of this, you know, startup or SAS journey that you might be on, but really it's all about time and money. And also scope. So it's really the iron triangle at the end of the day. Scope meaning, um, you know, do you have the resources available or what have you, but time and money are, are always the two things that come up when it comes to paid versus organic. And organic is one of those things that you invest in SEO, you invest in content marketing and you invest in those things. And in terms of direct acquisition, you likely do see it six months from now or potentially even longer depending on how competitive it is that the keywords that you know you're going after. And there's, there's ways that, um, I hate to say hack, but there's ways that you can speed up this process and there's all kinds of tactical things I'm sure that we could talk about there.
Speaker 2 15:34 But what's interesting about paid is that paid is as soon as you have a landing page copy, as soon as you have a funnel built and ready, in theory, you can turn on paid today and generate results. Potentially. The way that I like to think about it is, well, first I, I do anticipate not only what are the annual goals, but what are the quarterly goals because there's absolutely a business case for investing in organic search or SEO. Now knowing that if we do it well and we do it right, it'll pay off in about a year paying off, meaning we're increasing traffic month over month by at least 10%, maybe even 5%, if that's um, that's usually more realistic. I think for <inaudible> it was drop companies, but even a 10% increase in organic search traffic month over month is still nothing too to be shy about.
Speaker 2 16:27 Uh, that is something that pays dividends over years. Assuming it's targeted and it's well done. Paid advertising is also, it can at least be lucrative depending on your average contract value. So if your ACV, and this is at least the business case that I make for it in the early days, if the ACB makes sense, like if you've got an ACV that is more than a thousand dollars a year, let's say the advertising could likely work for you as long as your buyback period makes sense. I like to use both, both paid advertising and investing in organic search. One because I know that without both we end up doing a lot of guessing about what's going to work content wise. But then also I've never ever, ever heard a founder ever say, man, I'm so glad we waited three years to invest in search search. So what I find is I like to leverage paid media and just paid advertising in general to test content ideas and also too yes to drive prospects into the funnel.
Speaker 2 17:33 Whether that's your free trial, your demo, what have you. Um, and then of course, I also do like to use paid advertising on the retargeting side. So if we already have a little bit of traffic or if we already have some, some clear traction in our product, then let's just make sure whatever our free trial to pay it or whatever that conversion rate looks like, that that's healthy and that it's supporting any onboarding activities, et cetera. If I'm doing a paid campaign and it's, it is to generate opportunities, aye, if it's never been done before, then it's important to approach those as tests. If you have done it before with success and you know that it can output a either a sensible buyback period or um, uh, a very sensible just ROI, just flat out ROI. Although I will say it is very hard to get ROI and in the early days just purely because of um, time in the market.
Speaker 2 18:25 But anyway, sure. I do like to use paid in that way in terms of how do we balance those things. I do think that that ultimately depends on what are the goals, how aggressive are they and when do we expect to meet those goals? That is where like if, if if we need to double in three months, then I would say, okay, well yeah let's, let's focus on paid and probably even like ABM or some sales, outbound prospecting effort. But if if in one day, two years we're looking at balls, okay, well we want here then okay maybe Senate, maybe 60% of time is focused on organic search and building up the demand gen engine there. And then on the other side we'll, we'll be running some paid campaign tests until we get something that we know works.
Speaker 1 19:07 I like it. I liked, I liked the hard numbers a, I'm going to ask you for a couple more hard numbers here. One is a, what do you feel for a sort of bootstrap or for, you know, a company like us that took a little bit of money
Speaker 2 19:18 is a reasonable payback period and SAS for paid acquisition. Oh yeah. Okay. So ideally you're, you're getting three months back, so the amount that you're spending <inaudible> and for the leads that are converting, however much that three month time span is worth. Ideally your, your cost to acquire that lead does not exceed that three month buy back period per lead. Now, it is very likely that if you're running your very first paid campaign, you've never done it before or maybe you did, but it was awful. It's going to take about two to three months to optimize that. Any way you can get it down to a month depending on the channel, but unless, unless you're really working it and watching it and you're actively contributing, you know, new copy or new landing page pages to it, it does take about two to three months, but ideally you've got a three month by that period.
Speaker 2 20:10 Now I will say that I have seen by back periods as as long as six months to a year. I do think that that's kind of where it does depend on your ultimate ACV because it might, it just might be too early, too expensive, or you just need a slightly different approach that paid media channel. But if you start getting into the six months to a year range, either need more time or the actual strategy around that page channel needs, the approach needs to be different. Maybe the funnel that you designed isn't necessarily the best funnel or the the right offer or the right content that you put in front of that particular audience. It could also be segmenting, um, challenges. So figuring out wherein you know, when that, that part is kind of broken. It really does depend on the channel. And then of course, like your, just your strategy in general, but I'd say you're looking at three months and if it's longer than that, then some optimization probably needs to happen.
Speaker 1 21:01 Yeah, super interesting. So, so kind of just for folks out there. So if you're charging 30 bucks a month, uh, you can have a total like paid customer acquisition cost of $90 all the way to acquire a paying customer. So three months at, at 30 bucks a month. Yeah. I mean this is, this is hard. We've been playing around with paid acquisition for several months now since the summer and in some channels we're, we're, we're there, we're at the three month place in it. Some that we want to play in. We're definitely not, we're at 12 months, uh, which is fine. It's not embarrassing cause we're working very hard at it. But, uh, it's, it's, it's tough to crack, you know, something that, of that we play around with a lot that, which is something I'd love to get your opinion on is, is kind of where in the customer buying journey we try to inject ourselves.
Speaker 1 21:45 So, um, you know, some people spend a lot of, uh, like I was reading a, an article about HRF where they only place they spend money on paid acquisition is to promote blog posts. So they say like, let's just get our word out to everybody and then those people will kind of filter through the natural funnel that we've built. Other people, um, target people really specifically like an ad words when they're ready to make a buying decision, figuring they can convert people right away. I think for the latter, SAS and SAS, that's a lot more difficult. Is there, like when you're thinking about developing a paid acquisition strategy, considering the buying journey, are there kind of like rules of thumb or things that people should think about when they're considering kind of where to inject themselves in that process?
Speaker 2 22:30 Yeah. I love this question because it definitely comes back to actually having a customer journey map or a buyer journey map and making sure that for every single stage of the buyer journey you have a very clear understanding of exactly what son was someone is going through when they're even, not only like figuring out the problem that they have in the first place, but there also actively looking for solutions. And in some journeys you do ended up with? Well, first of all, let me just say that customer journey is, on the one hand they do follow a very clear similar pattern and the other hand, some of those stages of the journey happens. So lightning fast that mapping out and stretching them out almost becomes nebulous in a way. Uh, I, I think, I think in terms of offering concrete, actionable advice around this is know it by heart and if you know that, Hey, bye heart, do you know exactly what
Speaker 1 23:26 <inaudible>
Speaker 2 23:27 psychological and just behavioral, what those activities look like and what that journey looks like. It is going to be relatively easy for you to come to the table with. Okay. I've noticed that a lot of the searching activity or just researching activity happens in this stage and it's about these specific things. Let's make sure that we can appear at that stage. And then you can, you can decide if there's enough search demand for that. Then maybe we can try ad words. And if you find that so much of the journey at least from like your product and what you're offering perspective, so much of your journey actually happens very top of the funnel. Then doing what like an H refs does makes a ton of sense because I anticipate that the way that they understand their buyer journey, the people who are looking for a solution or are looking for an alternative solution, they either already generally understand what H refs does in the market.
Speaker 2 24:20 Uh, I would be surprised if if people don't know the brand by now, but I think that makes sense. They can probably assume that anyone who is an SEO or a marketer, that they will understand the value that HRS provide and knowledge all that they have to do is just convince them that they're the right tool. It's very different than I'm educating the market about a problem and here's a solution. By the way, we were a solution by mine. Now you're aware. Now I just have to make sure that you come back or, or convert. But I think, I think an understanding that journey is really the, to me at least, it's the critical part. Whenever I'm designing a paid media campaign or even a strategy, something that is going to be ongoing and we're going to double down on this particular channel. I'm always thinking about, well what is that channel and is that a top of the funnel channel or is that a bottom of the funnel channel?
Speaker 2 25:07 Like is that something that I, all I got to do is just figure out what the right keywords are and that's gonna that's going to put my perfect customer in front of me. Or am I going to have to promote something that educates them first? And in terms of the journey, it's really just going to be all about, well, where are they? Uh, right now at any given time at least. And that's something that with customer research and talking to customers on the regular about what was going on in the world before, you know, they found you, that's going to help you build that customer journey. Uh, and then also help you figure out like, when did they realize that there was a problem? When did they start looking for a solution? What were the triggers around that? And that can actually help you not only figure out what content to produce around that because we're assuming that you're going to do something, whether that's landing pages or whatever. Um, but also what channel makes sense for that. Because ideally talking to customers, you'll also kind of hear when they search for something or when they talk, ask a friend or what have you. That was not a super concrete answer, but I will say that when I'm, when I'm designing that I'm always pulling out that buyer journey. I can't not like it's impossible.
Speaker 1 26:15 Yeah. Yeah. And I think that, I mean for a lot of us, different customers have different, different types of, your customers have different buying journeys and it's important to consider all those. And then you want to say like, my best customers go through this one and we're going to focus on acquiring more of those kinds of people. Um, that's at least what we do. You know, I think this is the place where the biggest difference comes between like SAS and e-commerce is e-commerce can just say red Nike air Jordans, I'm gonna bid $20 on those and I'll convert half of those people, whatever it is. And they're, you know, $50 shoes or whatever, you can make your money back in two clicks. Right? But in SAS, well, we've seen at least that is very, very, very rare. When we focus really bottom of the funnel, it's very expensive and,
Speaker 2 27:04 and it just doesn't work as well.
Speaker 1 27:05 Uh, and so we've, we've been focusing higher up in the funnel knowing that we're spending some money now <inaudible> promote our organic content and to get people in our world sooner and then kind of a little bit of hoping that they convert later on. And we have, and this kind of leads into the attribution topic, but we have some way to know some of this, but, but it gets a little less certain. Um, the higher in the funnel you get to, which is tough.
Speaker 2 27:28 Yeah. I think if, if there was like one thing I would say is just like a general rule of thumb when it comes to determining like what those channels are or, or at least where like how do you figure out what to put in front of them at any given point. I think it does come down to is your product relatively new and there aren't a ton of competitive alternatives, meaning like there you don't really have any competitors but they, but you can assume that they also always have the pain. Then you're really looking at either like more top of the funnel activity or you're trying to figure out are they paying for something that maybe doesn't have, isn't like exactly what our product is, but it's so similar and it's close enough that we could still pull them in any way. Uh, and then you're looking at something like an ad words much more bottom of the funnel.
Speaker 2 28:12 But if, if they have no clue that you exist, they also may be, aren't as aware of the problem then. Yeah. Like you, you're, you're looking at, you're looking at maybe more middle and top of the funnel channels. So you would be looking at something like a Facebook or an Instagram or LinkedIn depending on, you know, your, your market and where they hang out, but you're likely you rallying around the problem as opposed to just immediately offering them a solution. And I think that's really the biggest West Jen is Mmm. As a general rule of thumb, depending on your product, your market, your space, are there competitors or competitive alternatives then your marketing work is really either around educating them and rallying around the problem and offering solutions or it's about saying, Oh no, Hey, like there's actually already a solution that exists where the best one, you were just looking for us, you know, here it is and we can obviously take you through the marketing journey from there like on our site or whatever. I think that's really aware. I'm really determining like, okay, what am I top of the funnel channels and what am I bottom of the funnel channels? And, um, based off of what I know about the product and the market and the customer, do I have to do a lot of convincing or don't tie or is it really just there's already competitors now I just got to convince them that I'm the best one or it's did you know that you had a problem that's really kind of where,
Speaker 1 29:31 which is the, that's really hard, right? Like that's a really unenviable position to be in. And, and I know some people that are in there and like to convince the world that they first I have a problem and that you have a solution and then, Oh my solution is the best and Hey, you should buy my solution. Whether that's four, four steps to go through a Rez, I mean, in a competitive defined space like podcast hosting or abandoned cart recovery emails, people understand the problem and the solution and that there are alternatives. And now we just have to convince people that we are the problem. But, but ironically we, we focus, you know, really like there at like, okay, I need a podcast. I want to start a podcast. I know I need a hosting provider, it's Castillo's or it's Lipson, right? And we focus there.
Speaker 1 30:11 We also focus way at the top, which is like what is a podcast? Right? And what is a podcast? How to start a podcast. And I think Steli from close does the best of at this. Well, Hey, he does a very good job. I shouldn't say the best, but there's other, you look at a lot of the huge brands out there, you know, HubSpot and some of these people that just talk about the problem a ton and become an authority in their domain to where when you think about CRM, you think of clothes.com now and Steli, uh, or you think about, you know, HubSpot or whatever, just because you've seen them everywhere for it years. Right. I think that's, that's not a bad strategy there for the longterm.
Speaker 2 30:51 Yeah, it's definitely a longterm strategy. Um, and I, I totally agree. Approaching that marketing cycle, the one where you have to like educate people to the out the entire cycle. That you're right. That is a, it's a tough one, but I find it even if you can figure out who are the early adopters and where do those people hang out, I think that that's kind of how you can shorten it a little bit. But yeah, that's really figuring out where do your customers lie, where does your market lie and what makes sense for you to approach. I think that's, that's definitely a balancing act but then also both short term and long term. But yeah, that's, that's my general rule though.
Speaker 1 31:26 I like it. I like it. So on this show, we don't talk about how much money we make or religion or politics, but we do talk about marketing attribution, which I would, which I think is a hot topic equal to those other three. This is something that we've been working on a lot in the last few months and I feel like we suck big time at it. We are, uh, so kind of our attribution's stack if you will, is uh, we use obviously like Google analytics. We have like, uh, pixels for Google and Facebook and Cora on our site now. We use a lot of UTM parameters and we're just starting to use amplitude to kind of put all this together in a single place. Oh, sorry. Amplitude is like a product analytics tool. Um, and we're using it hopefully to kind of construct the whole kind of buyer journey through the funnel.
Speaker 1 32:14 So we're able to place kind of event points where if a person comes on our site and they do this and they do this and they do this and they become a customer, we're able to see that in order to see where the fall off is along the way. But I feel like one of the big questions that we have is like paid acquisition or even organic. Like we want to be able to say better, you know, where do our best customers come from? Um, and I feel like we just don't have a great approach to, and so I'd love to hear
Speaker 2 32:40 you're like out of the box cookie cutter, like, okay for attribution, do this, this and this and you're be decent at least. Cause that's, that's our, a little watermark at this point. Okay. So out of box, cookie cutter? Uh, I would say that, um, well first of all I'm super happy that you got an actual tool that can help you with measuring something product related. And I think, I think the first step is really when you're ready to invest into a tool like an amplitude and IX panel or what have you. I am not as familiar with amplitude per se, but assuming that it can help with some kind of attribution, I would say you're really looking at on a, and this does depend on your product cycle, so like how long does it take to convert into a bank customer. But you're either looking at a monthly or a quarterly just attribution reporting session if you will.
Speaker 2 33:31 And what you're doing is at any given time, this could also be weekly if, if depending on your volume, but at any given time, Hmm. You are identifying what were your absolute best customer cohorts, what do they come from and you're looking at first and last touch attribution and they're really, to me at least there, there is definitely not a right or wrong answer here. It's much more about what were the trends over time and what were the consistencies, what, what were the patterns and what were the outliers in terms of your absolute best customer cohorts. And then more generically, what were just the either weekly, monthly or quarterly, just top attribution channels of course first touch, last touch. And how did those shake out? I do like to separate out the best customer cohort but as a cohort if you will. So maybe there's a list of customers that you just have in your mind or you like you and the marketing team or the success team.
Speaker 2 34:25 Like you talk about specific core set of customers all the time. I think that there's like your man, these people are great, like whatever that list is and figuring out how do they find you. Um, from a digital perspective, I do think though it does get a little different if and when you get a sales team, but just because the sales team is obviously going to like not only have like their own outbound prospecting activities potentially, but then also they might actually, you might actually be looking at like more conferences and things like that. So the NCRM at least they might also be speaking tracking where they discovered that lead or how they met them or what have you. Uh, so understanding at least from a sales perspective, what does attribution look like there? There is a tool that I do love to use. It's not often that I get to use this in this way, but just because it's on the pricier side.
Speaker 2 35:12 So most early stage companies aren't quite ready for this unless they're funded. But HubSpot actually does in my opinion. It does a great job of showing you not only trends and patterns over time but actually helping you run attribution on closed revenue, which is, yeah, really the hardest thing for most ask perspective is it is easy to set up a goal and like Google analytics and stuff, you know, track events and figure out where they came. But when it comes to who are your best paint customers, that can be tough and you do need a tool, you know you need a tool that can, that can help you with that. Like an amplitude or a HubSpot or you got to do a lot of Google hacking, which is absolutely fine if you put in the effort. And I have personally not been done, been down that road as a marketer, I've, I usually have access to something, but that is an option. So there are some people who really just go ham on Google analytics and they've figured out how to pipe in that data and kudos to them. There's, I'm sure there's tons of articles about how to do that. But yeah, at any given time though, I'm looking at first and last touch. I'm looking at patterns and of course outliers. And ideally you've got a special customer cohort that, that you, you're constantly looking back to.
Speaker 1 36:22 Cool. So I have two questions about that. One is around first and last touch. Uh, and the other question is about defining that kind of ideal customer cohort. Let's, let's start with the, the first and last touch first. I am of the opinion that they're like first touches the most important. Right? Last. So sort of for background, first touch is like where did people originally find you last touches? What was the thing they did right before they became a paying customer? For me, like first touches the most important because like if we have a Facebook ad and they come and they read a blog post and they sign up for an email and then the email converts them over to being a paying customer, that's fine cause, but, but that's already there. That's not something I can really affect. So I feel like first touch is more important than last touch. I also don't know how to to to track both in something like amplitude it doesn't give you that and choice. That's fine. Okay. You feel like both are important I guess is kind of the question.
Speaker 2 37:12 I do feel like with reporting so and the reason why I do is because first touch really to me at least speaks to the top of the funnel and like just the overall awareness. So if you want to figure out like what are you doing from like an awareness perspective that's really working or at least giving you a customer segment that you're proud of, that you really like, they're paying money, it's awesome. I'm not sure her name then. Yeah, first off was great because you can, you can run the first report, you can figure out what was the top of the funnel activity that we did. That was great. Last touch is much more bottom of the funnel and I find I actually, I do care a lot about bottom of the funnel in the early days just purely because it really helps to know from a funnel perspective at least what was the last thing that they engaged in because that tells me what to drive all of my top of the funnel too, or at least what to make sure as part of the funnel and some kind of way if I can at least impact that.
Speaker 2 38:01 What's, what's really funny about all of the supports is that customers will take their own journey no matter what. But I think if, if you, if if awareness and if topple funnel is a challenge, then yeah, first touch is going to make a lot of sense and focusing on first touch is gonna make a lot of sense. But I do find that you need both because sometimes, sometimes the marketing funnel can in a way get away from you. And if you don't really know what the last touch is, then it's tough to say like, Oh man, like that email newsletter did actually impact a lot of revenue, but we stopped doing it for whatever reason because we didn't believe in it or whatever. Sometimes you can let things that are actually still important, uh, if you're not paying attention to the bottom of the funnel as well. But it really does of course depends. I hate to put caveats around everything, but it does kind of depend from the customer on the journey. Well, I think, I think if troubleshooting awareness is something that you're focused on, then yeah, first off just going to be your best friend for awhile.
Speaker 1 38:52 Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. And if your, your funnel is predictable, then you know, worrying about last touch is maybe not as important. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Yeah. So the other part of a about attribution is like identifying this ideal cohort. Um, and so I think in our listeners, we had an episode kind of about marketing attribution a couple weeks ago and we had a bunch of people email in and offer suggestions and feedback and stuff like that. And I appreciate everybody's offering help to me because I'm still kind of clueless about this. But one thing I still don't feel like I understand well is, okay, we get this data and now we have amplitude and we get UTM parameters and we pipe that into amplitude. And so we know kind of where people come from and what they do. But then, I don't know, like I want to be able to say this Facebook ad has an average lifetime value of $372, whereas this blog, people that came from this blog post have an average lifetime value of $712. Um, and to do that I need to get like Stripe or ProfitWell or something piped into amplitude and tie those two ends of the kind of string together. Right, right. And that's just what I need to do.
Speaker 2 39:54 Mmm. Okay. So I'm not gonna lie. I think that, uh, I think that that level of attribution it is possible. But I think that yeah, it's tough for me to say that that is gonna maybe answer the ultimate question which, um, maybe you know, back to you. So what, what is the number one question you're trying to answer with that? Is it, what is the right messaging or what was the right timing of that specific ad that led to that revenue or like
Speaker 1 40:24 yeah, guess, yeah, so, so, so like where we are is saying like, um, we get cohort based kind of analysis from Google analytics pretty easily. UTM parameters say, okay, this group of people came and they started trials, whatever. Um, but then that stops there, right? And so we have to kind of connect the dots from there, from like people came from the source, you know, first touch, right? Did this thing started a trial? Then nothing about like churn and lifetime value or even trial to paid conversion ratio because we just kind of assume like on average we convert at 15% paid I would assume is worse than organic. But I don't know how much worse, I don't know how much worse by channel and I certainly don't know how much worse by campaign or ad or ad set. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Maybe I want too much, but,
Speaker 2 41:15 well I will say that from a campaign and a channel level, yes. Like you absolutely can do that. Hooking up like a striper or something like that probably could work like and to amplitude. I do know that not to like totally plug HubSpot, but I do know that HubSpot will actually be able to do that because it also integrates with all of your P media channels and in similar way that I think a lot of marketing automation tools at least do today, but it would actually be able to tell you all the way down to the campaign
Speaker 2 41:44 what either generated or influenced revenue. But I do think that, let's say that neither of those are options you might be looking at at some point on a data integration platform just in your future. I find that when companies hit a certain scale, tools like segment and hole become critical to just like understanding not only attribution, but being able to pull those customer cohorts into those customer segments based off of a number of data points. Data integration at that point does kind of become critical for, for successful companies or I don't want to say successful companies for companies at scale that need that kind of data understanding. Um, but yeah, so you might, you might be looking at something like that or you might be looking at like the data integration platform or, uh, or trying to figure out, because these are ultimately marketing questions. Is there a marketing platform that, that you might need to be looking at? So like a HubSpot or a, I'm sure that there are others that do something similar and they can actually look at not only what paid channel, but like even like the specific copy of the ad. Uh, I know that HubSpot definitely does that out of the box. So,
Speaker 1 42:52 yeah, no, I talked to Jordan, I talked to Jordan from card hook pretty regularly and he was telling me, Oh yeah, I asked him about saturation thing. He's like, Oh yeah, it's just built in HubSpot. I was like, Oh, Jason. Yeah, thanks.
Speaker 2 43:03 Oh, it's amazing. Um, highly recommended. If it's part of the budget, which if it's not, totally understand, um, you know, you'll, you'll absolutely get there. But if, if those kinds of questions become something that actively plagues you and prevents you from making good decisions around paid not yes. And also organic too, like not just paid but both really. I would be looking at something like that cause it would just <inaudible> all the birds with
Speaker 1 43:28 once down, which sounds really morbid, but, no, no, I hear ya. Hey. So, um, so you know, I one I don't know that we kind of have this problem. It's a, it's kind of a thing that I want to have fixed. I don't know that we have a problem around this cause I mean we, we do make kind of sort of poorly educated guesses about a lot of this stuff. Uh, and so that kind of irks me that like we're probably wasting money that we don't need to be. Hmm. And so I think on some, to some degree all of us have a version of this problem, but for folks who are, you know, we're whatever, relatively small still and just starting out, like if you don't have this kind of data integration, you're not figuring out how to pipe Stripe into amplitude or something like that. How do you then kind of figure out from a, like an attribution perspective of back to that cohort thing. So like my best customers, how do you know who they are in a, in a tool like mixed panel or amplitude or Google analytics or how are you kind of grouping those people together to then go back to say, where did they come from?
Speaker 2 44:24 Yeah. Okay. So there's, there's two parts to this. There's the quality, there's the quantitative side, which is the hard numbers. So the, the app, the lifetime value, maybe this is also just months that they've been a customer or you're looking at time, lifetime value or some combination of both. I'm going to assume that you're using some kind of subscription metrics. If you're not, then we've got an analytics debt problem to solve. But assuming that you're using some kind of subscription metrics, you can pretty easily export your list of customers with their LTV. And from there, the qualitative side to this is out of the people who, who are just like far like, so there's like your average, but the for the outliers, the ones who far exceed the, the average LTV. From there, it's going to be all about the qualitative side. So, and this, this sounds, uh, I don't want to say awful, but it sounds like super basic, but uh, who do you like who comes into your support channel and you're like, man, you're not a pain in my ass.
Speaker 2 45:23 Like I'm actually really happy to talk to you and like help fix your problem. You know what I'm talking about? Because when you have a certain, when you have a certain amount of customers, um, you, you, you get to, you get to a place where you've got your favorites, then you've got your, Oh my God, I never went up. Please, please don't come through a channel. But like also keep paying, like don't cancel. So there's, you've got those and assuming that you've got some kind of team, I really do like to do what I call customer tear downs and it is literally this activity. It's exporting that list of customers. It's focusing on a very specific, uh, LTV or at least like an average of that. And then we, we go through and we talk about the ones that we really feel like love the product and we hear from them and it's not constantly like everything is burning and everything that's on fire and from a qualitative perspective are really going through.
Speaker 2 46:10 And where, I don't want to say like we're picking and choosing our favorites, but in a way it is like that. The second thing that we're doing of course, is we're also categorizing like their titles, their industry. I'm assuming that you're B to B, um, or maybe persona if you're being a C and LinkedIn is a wonderful thing. Like you can do all this, um, either manically, uh, excuse me, uh, manually or actually manically, uh, yeah, but you can, you actually do all this without bugging your customer about anything. From there though, you ideally will end up with a list of email addresses that assuming that you can do this inside of amplitude, I don't know, but you could drop that into a tool like amplitude and say, okay, I really want to understand this specific set of data. Whether that's, I don't know, customer ID, maybe it's by that, depending on what you've got piping into the platform.
Speaker 2 46:57 Yeah, it's definitely a mixture of both. Um, if you've got <inaudible> thousands of customers, then this activity really becomes more of a time like I would, I would time box it. So maybe you're only looking at the last month or even the last week, or it could actually be that you're looking six months, uh, a go because you've built a relationship with a very specific cohort of people and they signed up all this time or what have you. Like you, you could, you could tie in box and if you've got a giant list, you could also, if you've got a customer success team, go to them and say like, I need you to pick 20 to 50 of your absolute favorite customers in this category. So if you've got truly scale, then then you could approach it that way. I find that in the early days you don't have thousands of customers.
Speaker 2 47:42 It's actually really easy to do this activity even if it's only like a couple of hundred. Yeah. But yeah, I, it's definitely a mix of both. And from there it's, it's going to be, uh, I know at least some of some of my clients solve this with, um, they ultimately have a database. Like maybe they're, I mean, I think most people are using SQL or something to that effect. But th but there they are piping data into a database somewhere. So they're able to just query that specific list of emails and then figure out the first touch on the last touch does kind of the print, I think there what your data situation looks like. But that is how I do like to run that activity. And usually what you see, uh, is at least for the best paying or like the, like your absolute favorite customer cohort.
Speaker 2 48:24 It's based off of both of those know both quantitative and actual qualitative data. I find that what you uncover, especially if it's segment focused, is usually get like hard yeses and also hard nose. So you get the like, Oh man, it's so clear that everyone came in from search, but you also, or you get the like, Oh man, like it kinda was really like all over the place or, or no one really came in from referrals or what have you. Um, and that, and that's kind of where you can start to look at. Yeah. Well what were you trying to answer in the first place? Doing this activity, but that that is how I like to approach it.
Speaker 1 48:57 Awesome. Awesome. Uh, I have a lot of homework to do so that, that's all really, no, it's really is wonderful to hear. Um, I feel like we're largely kind of on the right track, but we just have a ton of work to do, so that's a, that's a good problem to have. I feel. I feel pretty decent about it. Yeah. Asia, can you give kind of folks an idea of like the types of companies and founders that you typically work with? I mean, I'm sure after this interview people are going to be like, Oh my God, this is great. I'd love to have Asia like on my sideline. Who, who do you typically work with and kind of what's that good fit look like?
Speaker 2 49:30 Yeah, I am working with early stage founders. They can be B2B, B to C. they can also be funded, bootstrapped. It really, not that, not that it doesn't matter, but I find that across the board it's usually a lot of the same challenges. They, they really need help with marketing. They don't have the time to learn it themselves. They also might actually be executing it on their own, but they just want someone who's been there, done that before there they could be a first time founder and this is their very first rodeo and they're shook, if you will, by the opportunity around marketing and also just overall go to market strategy. And so I'm, I mean I'm working with companies that I've worked with companies that were at five customers and we've taken them to a hundred. I've also worked with companies that were at the multiple thousands of customers, uh, and they're trying to figure out how to get to the next big milestone, but they are super overwhelmed and don't have a marketing or a strategy lead when it comes to that.
Speaker 2 50:24 So I am usually hand in hand right there with them rolling up my own sleeves, both from a strategic and an execution perspective and I'm helping them bridge the gap between the marketing team that they wish that they had and what is currently happening today, which is sometimes usually non-existent. But yeah, I think that the opportunities today that are available to founders who are trying to build businesses and they can't afford full time marketing, that kind of leaves them in many ways empty handed or they've got to go and hire like 10 freelancers and contractors to kind of accomplish what they want for a certain kind of company. We're working with me. Convict that.
Speaker 1 51:01 Yeah, no, I, I love it. I love it. I think what you're doing is wonderful and yeah, I think folks out there who are listening that uh, the thought that was interesting reach out to Asia, Asia, what is the, what is the best place to, to kind of have folks reach out to you and chat more about what you're doing?
Speaker 2 51:16 Yeah. Okay. So if they, uh, if you guys go to demand maven.io definitely one of the best places to just reach me, find me in general. But actually there is a marketing strategy call that listeners can take advantage of for free. Just use a promo code <inaudible> does that work? Yup. That's great. Perfect. Yeah, just use promocode Casto so you'll get a free marketing strategy call from me. It's an hour. Come pick my brain, ask me your burning questions. I can also just take a look at what you're currently doing and let you know if you're on the right track or if there's some things that we can brainstorm that, um, you know, that you can start executing on yourself or even more. I mean, it really kind of runs the gamut in terms of what we can talk about. But um, yeah, feel free to take advantage of that. Also on Twitter quite a lot. I aye do all the tweeting, uh, and lots of gift sharing. So, um, just that Asia Matos on Twitter, so you can also hit me up there if you're, if you're there as well.
Speaker 1 52:08 Awesome. This is a lot of fun. Asia, thank you so much. We're almost at an hour, which is really long for us these days. I can go for another hour geeking out about marketing, but yeah, thank you very much for your time. Really appreciate it. And uh, you know, hope to catch up soon.
Speaker 2 52:21 Thanks again. This was great.
Speaker 0 52:22 Awesome. Thanks for listening to another episode of rogue startups. If you haven't already, head over to iTunes and leave a rating and review for the show for show notes from each episode and a few extra resources to help you along your journey. Head over to rogue startups.com to learn more <inaudible>.
