Marketing Qualified
Welcome to the Marketing Qualified Podcast, your home for discussion on all marketing things that are utterly fucking absurd. Co-hosts Chris Newton and Mike Griffin have 20+ years of marketing experience between them. Said differently: They've seen some shit.
Tune in every week(ish) for a new, less than 40 minute long episode, with discussions ranging from failed marketing tactics to marketing facts to campaign ideas to profanity laden rants about whatever may be top of mind. You may even learn something new.
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Marketing Qualified
Episode 12: AI in the Marketing Room
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Chris and Mike run an experiment by secretly introducing an AI-generated guest named "Naomi" to test how long it takes to spot a synthetic podcast participant, highlighting important questions about authenticity in marketing communications. Also in this episode:
• AI guest "Naomi" claims to be a VP of Marketing who deleted her LinkedIn account, immediately raising suspicion because no VP could have an ego small enough to actually do that
• The guys discuss how a "What the Sistine Chapel taught me about B2B sales" post on LinkedIn showcases the forced business analogies plaguing professional social media
• Apologies for the (inexpensive) inconvenience: Handling internal company complaints about seeing their own ads
• Why session recording tools like Microsoft Clarity often capture non-representative user behaviors that get cherry-picked to support predetermined narratives
• To Mike's surprise, Instagram outperformed LinkedIn as a lead generation channel in a recent campaign, reinforcing the importance of continuous channel experimentation
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Hey, welcome back to Marketing Qualified. I'm Mike Griffin.
Speaker 2And I'm Chris Newton and super excited to say today that we have a very special guest on the line. We have a one, our second guest, actually, Naomi Naomi, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3Thanks, chris, glad to be here. I guess I couldn't resist the allure of a microphone and the chance to chat with you. Fine folks, how have you been? And Mike, I heard you've been under the weather, feeling better. I'm just getting over the flu myself, so I feel your pain.
Speaker 1I'm definitely doing better. Thank you, happy to be out of the woods at this point and, yeah, nice to meet you.
Speaker 3Likewise, mike. Let's dive in, shall we? I'm Naomi, the VP of Marketing at Lumindis, been there for nine years now, started as a lonely copywriter and clawed my way to the top, where I now wrangle a team of 10 brilliant minds. It's a mix of strategy, creativity and a whole lot of caffeine. So what marketing mischief are we causing today?
Meeting "Naomi" from Lumindis
Speaker 2Yeah, we have a couple things on the agenda today. First, we wanted to talk a little bit about LinkedIn. Naomi, I understand that you actually recently just got rid of your LinkedIn. Is that correct?
Speaker 3Oh you bet, I did LinkedIn and I had a long standing love hate relationship. Emphasis on the hate. It's like a soap opera where everyone's bragging and nobody's listening. I decided to opt out of the endless humble brags and jargon-filled posts. I mean, if I have to read one more post about someone synergizing their core competencies I might just scream. So yeah, I gave LinkedIn the boot. Feels pretty liberating.
Speaker 1Call me jealous. I don't know how you do it. That's impressive. I subject myself to whatever toxic trends, post self-important bragging, all that kind of stuff that you were able to unplug from. I think that's tremendously commendable. Chris, are you still on it?
Speaker 2Sorry, go ahead Miami.
Speaker 3No worries, I'll forgive you this time. It's that kind of day, huh? Anyway, chris, if you're still clinging to LinkedIn, I might have to stage an intervention. So, hey, to each their own. I'll stick to my blissfully LinkedIn free life, Awesome.
Speaker 2Well, yeah, to answer Mike's question, I am actually still on LinkedIn. I try not to use it at all. You know, just, very just, I go on it. You know it used to be the kind of thing where I needed to use it all the time and now it's the kind of thing where I don't need it at all, Like I don't use it at all in my full-time job.
Speaker 1Good on you, good on you. Some of this stuff is pretty insufferable, but I do find some like particular thought leaders, if you'll forgive the expression that share some like useful insights, some tips, some of which I think we may actually talk about today, if I'm not mistaken. The other thing for me is that. So, like like it or not, linkedin is a pretty important channel for my current company in terms of like engaging with folks, and I'm not aware of a way that you can have a campaign manager or a business manager without a personal one. I would love to be wrong and corrected there, but that, uh, that's why I'm still in the, still in the trenches at the moment. It's not proud about it ah, the linkedin trenches.
Speaker 3I salute your dedication, chris. Trust, trust me, I get it. Sometimes you have to play the game. But hey, if you find those rare gems of wisdom.
Speaker 5I'll give credit where it's due.
Speaker 3Now let's talk about something more exciting than networking algorithms, shall we? What's next on the agenda?
Speaker 2Do you want to get into the Instagram as a sleeper channel? Actually, no, let's talk about the insufferable people on LinkedIn before we jump to the next thing. Mike, so you said that you saw a post where some guy went to the Sistine Chapel, and could you summarize that post for us and just let us know what you think there?
Speaker 1Yeah, let me just paint the picture first. So this guy it's one of those classic LinkedIn like bunch of paragraphs they have to like expand, read more to see the entire post. Right, I believe that this was actually sent to me from my wife via the LinkedIn lunatic subreddit. So the whole thing is, this guy went to the Sine chapel and he expected to be awed and amazed. And he talks about how high quality of a tour guide that he had for the entire experience, super knowledgeable, talked about all the logistical challenges they came with painting the sistine chapel with the creative inspiration that the artist had. And I'm going to draw a blank and expose myself here I don't remember who painted that, was it Michelangelo?
Speaker 2I think it was Leonardo da Vinci.
Speaker 1It was da Vinci, that would make a lot of sense. Yeah, okay, da Vinci had a take and he just felt neutral or nothing. I read exactly what it said. He left super unimpressed by this place. That's a super hot tourist destination. Left super unimpressed by this place. That's like a super hot tourist destination.
Speaker 1The tour guide couldn't have done a better job of like hyping it up, but he just felt disconnected from it and the best part of his experience was actually, according to the stupid post, the pizza that he went and got at a nearby restaurant afterwards. That like made him feel a little bit more like moved or better than this. Then somehow this fucking guy tied it back to b2b sales, like if you don't have a compelling pitch, if you're not really striking the chords that resonate with people, then they're not going to be bought in or some dumb shit like that. And if you're thinking to yourself right now, like how can you make even a dotted line connection from b2b sales to assisting chapel experience? That's the entire fucking point. You can't. This guy's such an insufferable try hard and I hope his pizza sucked. I hope he got fucking. I don't want to wish ill upon him, but I do hope that it was just terrible experience. Beyond that, if you can't appreciate something as magnificent as that, then I don't think that you should ever hit quota. What do you think?
Speaker 2No, I definitely agree with you. I actually just Googled it, so you were right the first time. It wasn't Michelangelo. Michelangelo, it wasn't Leonardo da Vinci, so I stand corrected there. Yeah, it's just crazy that you know, not everything needs to be taken back to work Like I don't know. What do you think, naomi? Like what do you think about this guy? Like he went to the Sistine Chapel and he just felt like he felt nothing, like it's crazy.
Speaker 3Oh, chris, you've got to be kidding me. And Mike, I heard you're feeling under the weather. Hope you're on the mend. I'm just getting over the flu myself and let me tell you it knocked me on harder than a bad LinkedIn post, but no, no problem.
Speaker 2All right, Naomi, Naomi LMAO.
Speaker 3Chris, you got me Folks. I'm actually an AI, chris programmed. But hey, don't hold against me, I might be artificial, but these marketing insights are the real deal. Let's keep the fun rolling, shall we?
Speaker 1Really good, very nice, very, very nice.
Speaker 2Did I have you going for a little bit?
Speaker 1For a moment. Yeah, I was like this person has, like the ideal podcast voice. I'm actually super jealous of them at first. The LinkedIn deletion for a VP of marketing is like there's just no way that someone has that little of an ego, that high up the food chain, to be able to do that. That's where I started to get a little suspicious.
Speaker 2So pretty much right away you were like this person's, not real.
Speaker 1It feels too ideal ideal to be real. What in the world is that? Where did you find this? What did you explain yourself?
Speaker 2Well, I thought it would be a fun idea to bring on a fake podcast AI and see how long we could keep it going with without you knowing. But you know the the technical issues kind of threw me for a loop to start, because I was going to have it dial in and dial in and and all this other stuff through my, through my phone, but then, like now, I need to use my computer audio.
Speaker 1But um did you name the ai. By the way, did you pick naomi or was that?
Speaker 2yeah, he did yeah, I named it yeah, that was a good touch.
Speaker 1That's why, as you were teeing it up, I was like dude. Okay, yeah, that feels like a believable name that you may have, like come across and like your previous experiences and what have you that was good, uh, I mean I'm I had this entire like prompt, like setup and everything um well, chris, I hope I did naomi justice.
Speaker 3It's all about keeping things lively and entertaining, right? Let's dive back into some marketing madness. What do you say?
Speaker 2Naomi, tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from originally?
Speaker 3I'm originally from the lovely Cambridge, massachusetts. These days I'm living in Canton with my husband, matthew and two girls ages seven and three. It's a full house, but it keeps life interesting and, let's be real, there's never a dull moment in marketing or at home.
Speaker 2That's so true. That's so true. That's one of the things I love about marketing is it always keeps things interesting.
Speaker 3Absolutely, Mike. Marketing is like.
Speaker 1The name thing is also Chris and Mike. I mean we both have deeper voices. But a little bit of recognition challenge there.
Speaker 3Well, I'm here to help keep things clear and if I mix you two up, just give me a nudge. Let's get back to the good stuff marketing strategies, tips or maybe some juicy industry gossip so, yeah, I gave uh naomi this whole backstory.
Speaker 2Like you should see all the prompts that I wrote for this. Gave examples introduce yourself with confidence and humor. Ask Mike if he's feeling better. That's where she really fucked up, because she asked you twice, twice. Yeah, she kept repeating it. Naomi, how long have you and I known each other?
The Sistine Chapel LinkedIn Post
Speaker 3Oh, chris, we've known each other for about a decade now. Time flies when you're having fun in the marketing trenches, doesn't it? We've seen trends come and go, and we've probably had more caffeine than is medically advisable, but hey, it's been a blast.
Speaker 1I mean like that's all, that's all real. The only giveaway there is like I don't think the time flies.
Speaker 2I think time seems to slow down when you're in the marketing trenches more often than not theme of the podcast authenticity and marketing and just, you know, being true to your brand and all that stuff is kind of the, the message that we keep hitting home and all of these.
Speaker 2So we thought it would be fun to bring on a guest where, um, you know, we could do like quick, like lightning interviews, like 10-15 minute, um, not super well rehearsed or planned for interviews, just kind of more like off the cuff. And so that's how I kind of pitched it to mike, like I didn't give mike any heads up about who this was or any background or anything, and, uh, yeah, we dialed in and and then the, the I just started going for it, but I do think it would be good to bring some actual humans on. I I don't think that the, the eye is quite up to snuff yet I don't think that naomi would have passed the Turing test, but I feel like Mike was going for a little bit, but then he's like there's no way that a VP of marketing wouldn't have LinkedIn VPs of marketing love LinkedIn.
Speaker 2Mandatory.
Speaker 1Mandatory. Yeah, yep, totally agreed, totally agreed, yeah, so, as of right now, salty Dan remains the sole participant. And. I'm not sure if that's if that's like a bragging point or if that's a low point in his career.
Speaker 2But probably a little bit of both, but, naomi, we're going to let you go now.
Speaker 4Do you want to say goodbye to the audience? Absolutely. Thanks for having me on, chris and Mike. It's been a blast To the audience. Stay savvy, stay sassy and remember marketing is all about creating genuine connections, even in a world full of LinkedIn nonsense. Catch you next time.
Speaker 1Okay, that's awesome, that's accurate. Okay, that's awesome, that's accurate.
Speaker 2We, uh, uh, you know, once, once our five listeners listen to this podcast, they might be demanding that we bring back Naomi at some point. So you know, I won't rule it out We'll. We'll let the audience decide. If they like Naomi, we'll bring her back again for another interview. But uh, for the time being, now that Mike's onto my shenanigans, we'll my shenanigans. We'll call it like that.
Speaker 1That's right. That's right Until next time. Naomi Clever, Very clever.
Speaker 2Have you ever used that before, I guess? What AI have you used in the past? Do you use ChatGPT? What other tools have you used?
Speaker 1Just ChatGPT and honestly in like a oh, that's not true, that's not true. Used in the past like, do you chat gpt like what other like tools have you used? Just chat gpt and honestly in like a suit oh, that's not true, that's not true. I was using, in a limited capacity, jasper at my last gig. Yeah, and they, yeah, similar kind of experience, right like I was really struggling to get it to it, being jasper in this instance, to make a pillar page based off of a series of prompts and blog posts that we had put in, and, yeah, it was just fine, to be honest, in terms of output.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, I use ChatGPT pretty regularly. I've been playing around with some other ones, but this, so Naomi was actually built in the uh, the testing playground where you can it's called like real time where you can like actually have a conversation with it back and forth, and it remembers the. The context, for the most part, I think, where I fucked up was, instead of muting the, the sound at one point so that Naomi couldn't hear you, I actually I accidentally, like this. I, naomi couldn't hear you. I actually I accidentally, like I like shut it off. So that means that all the previous conversation was wiped from its memory and that's why, when I turned it back on that's why it's like, oh, I hope you're feeling better, and that's like started dying laughing. Is that when you like definitively knew that it was, that it was fake?
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean, I think the voice it was too good. It was too good, it was like a voice actor, sort of thing.
Speaker 2That's the first thing I said in the prompt. Introduce yourself with confidence and humor. Share marketing tips. Engage in a lighthearted banter with Chris and Mike. You're on a podcast. Your tone should be engaging, slightly witty and personable. I think, it, nailed it. I don't know about you.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think so. I saw recently a I think it was a reel of this girl who maybe our age, maybe a little bit younger, and she's like does my voice sound familiar? And she did just a quick like what's the word I'm looking for? It's just like a series of snippets right About all the commercials that she's been in and the voices she's done, like the different industries she's been a part of, and I think that's super cool and naomi sounded a bit like her, like I wonder if she's actually a, a voice that has signed off and given permission for ai to use. That was pretty cool yeah, it's possible.
Speaker 2Like I remember when they first announced this I think it was like a year ago or something, maybe a little bit less than a year where um sam altman, the ceo of open ai, like he posted something on twitter where it's like have you ever seen the movie? Her, it's like 10, 11 years old at this point no, I don't think so.
Speaker 1That's not the one where the guy like falls in love with the ai is. Is it? Yeah, it is yeah, it's got.
Speaker 2Joaquin Phoenix in it.
Speaker 1Yes, I have seen that.
The AI Reveal
Speaker 2Yeah, so it's Scarlett Johansson. She's not in the movie, she's the voice actress of the AI and when OpenAI first announced this less than a year ago, sam Altman made a comment on X or twitter or whatever saying just her. And then there's actually a huge lawsuit where scarlett johansson like they basically used scarlett johansson's voice for this first iteration of the open ai like voice ai thing or whatever right which is like super creepy, first of all, like she didn't, like scarlett johansson didn't sign off on that, but also like the. The moral of her is like it's a dystopian future where it's like kind of like a sad, like not kind of like a depressing way for people to live, like everyone has like their ai and like you know, yeah, yeah and like the.
Speaker 2The funny thing is that all these fucking tech bros like mark zuckerberg and open and Sam Altman and everything, they don't realize that it's a cautionary tale. We don't want to become like this To them. That is the goal.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2Mark Zuckerberg wants everyone sitting at home by themselves with a fucking virtual reality headset strapped to their face, interacting with people that aren't around them.
Speaker 1It's yeah yeah, he wants that and more masculine energy at the board level across.
Speaker 2All right yeah, and fires a bunch of people and says that you're getting fired because you're all shitty, but meanwhile he's the one who blew billions of dollars on that stupid fucking metaverse idea right, right.
Speaker 1Yeah, it was the most recent round of layoffs.
Speaker 2It was something like yeah, just recently, like at the time of recording, recording this on february 13th um, I want to say it was yesterday was when the over 3,000 people lost their jobs.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean, I guess it's kind of table stakes for a large tech company, but I don't know, it just doesn't feel great when the big boss fucks up like this and then the people actually doing the work are the ones getting impacted. Yeah, exactly what do I know? What do I know? Here's something I know. Here's something I know. I know that it's fucking ridiculous to be like genuinely upset about you receiving an advertisement that's being served to you by the company that you work for. A little bit of an embellishment there.
Speaker 1But let me tell you about what's been going on for me recently. Right, there are people who are well-meaning that are reaching out to myself and the performance marketing manager that is on my team and saying, hey, I keep on getting ads for like our stuff. Can I stop getting them? Can I stop getting them? One cohort of people I think are just tired of seeing them. The other cohort are coming at it from the business point of view like, hey, isn't this unnecessarily costing us money to serve ads to me and to the non-marketers?
Speaker 1I can appreciate where that feels like a big deal, but to someone who's like been in the trenches of doing this stuff for a while, I don't know how to gingerly explain to them that, yes, we can suppress you, but also you're costing us pennies to serve, given the CPM for a given campaign. It's like we are not driving up our CAC by occasionally having you see our creative on your platforms that you're using in your free time. That's all I want to say. It's not a big deal. Yeah, we can solve it, but it's not what you think it is. In terms of this black hole of a cost center, have you had people in the past ask you for this kind of thing or have you explained it?
Marketing Trenches & AI Voices
Speaker 2Not necessarily so much on Instagram or with display ads. Usually, when somebody sees a display ad or something like an Instagram ad or a Facebook ad, they'll just be like, oh, I saw this ad and then they'll give you feedback on it and they're like you should change this. I'm like, well, now I have to go back to the designer to get a new image or like whatever and like. They'll just say that like a little bit less of a costing and more of a everyone's a marketer type of thing for right, everyone has.
Speaker 2Everyone has feedback on the campaign when they see it. So I'd say a little bit more around that the. I mean if, if we do the math, like let's say like what's what's cpm for instagram? Maybe like 10 cpm or whatever. If we do the math, let's say what's CPM for Instagram? Maybe like $10 CPM or whatever. If we do the math.
Speaker 2It's literally like if it's a $5 CPM, you're paying a fraction of a penny per impression. If you see it five times, it's like two cents. If your marketing department is sweating a two cent loss on a budget, then, trust me, you have a lot bigger problems to deal with than you know somebody seeing an ad. You know Totally, totally.
Speaker 1Yeah, I will anonymize the timeframe that I'm looking at here, but I actually have our meta business report open right now and the CPM for this given timeframe was $29.45. I remember, for those those that aren't necessarily in the growth or performance side of marketing you're tuning in from another side of the marketing house CPM is cost per 1,000 impressions. I work at a company that has at most 50 employees. So just quickly crunch that map and understand what it would work out to. So it just quickly crunched that map and understand, like, what it would work out to, even if you're experiencing the same ad served to you on several occasions. That's again like not a whole lot of, not a whole lot of tip. That's all. That's all I wanted to say. It's just like I understand it. It's not critical.
Speaker 2There are other things that I think should get our calories instead yeah, I mean, there's things that you could do to filter people out, but a lot of the time it's not really worth it, unless you have like a ton of money going to waste, Like I did have. Now that I think about it, I did have a situation like this come up in one of my previous roles where somebody was complaining that they kept seeing search ads and I'm just like, well then, stop searching for the fucking keyword, Like I don't know what. I don't know what you want me to do. It's like if you keep seeing our ads come up when you're searching for a keyword, that means that you know we're doing well and we've got, like you know, decent impression share and people are. You know the ads are showing when they should be, which is when somebody searches for the keyword.
Speaker 1This is such a classic marketing pickle, right? It's like cause. If you weren't showing up for those keywords, then you're fucked A hundred percent.
Speaker 2You know the number of times I've had to deal with that fucking conversation where they're like oh, I Google, I Google this keyword and we don't show up. You guys, you guys should be betting on this keyword. It's like, yeah, we are. It's just like we don't have an unlimited budget. There's a thing called impression share and because our daily budget might have been used up at that point, that's not going to show Google's, not going to show you the kindness of their heart. They're a money-grubbing fucking corporation. They're going to take every last fucking dollar out of your pocket that they can.
Speaker 1Correct. By the way, the same people that are saying hey, shouldn't we be showing up, shouldn't our ads be showing up for this particular keyword Are the same people that probably cut your budget by 49% or more. So you do have to pick and choose battles when it comes to where you're going to put your auction energy behind. It's just yeah, man, explaining that, and, like you know, there's daily, daily budget cap you have to be mindful of. There's obviously higher, just like auction prices depending on, like the competitive nature of keywords like your brand and your high intent. Stuff is going to run you more money and it's just like that's just part of the part of the deal. When it comes to that, we should be ranking number one for this like random keyword. Sure, organically, we're going to go ahead and compete with Reddit and with other things, these juggernauts, or we can cough out of it. It's like what do you want to solve for? You want to solve for an aesthetic or do you want to solve for something else? And, by the way, sorry, this is like a pet rock of mine right now is most of the like classic top of funnel research that used to be someone punching something into Google is happening elsewhere. Now, you just were talking about how, like, you're a heavy chat GPT user, so the fuck are a lot of other people.
Speaker 1And, by the way, like native social platforms.
Speaker 1Now, both organically and paid promotions this applies to are giving preferential treatment with respect to the likelihood of you showing up.
Speaker 1Per the algorithm, if you're not including a link link anymore, they want to keep you in the platform. That's why there's such a big push towards thought leadership type of stuff. Individual contributors, if you raise your personal brand, your own brand is going to get up if you're keeping people in, if you're doing like a native linkedin video versus like linking to your youtube, for example, even like to another social platform, and so the point of this is just like the significance of showing up from a paid perspective, from traditional like in the days of yesteryear they'd be the long tail, non-brand, high search volume, feasible difficulty type of queries. It just doesn't fucking matter, like it used to right, you're better off spending that money elsewhere, creating that demand and then capturing it for like a branded keyword that you should be investing SEO and SEM resources into so that when they are ready to actually like, consume a case study or heaven forbid like, request a demo. Get pricing that you're ready to get it there.
Speaker 2Agreed. 100%. Nothing to add there on my end, naomi, anything on your end. Just kidding, naomi hung up, she had other things to do, yeah, yeah. Well, last thing we wanted to chat through. I know that we're kind of all over the place today in terms of the agenda. As you can tell, mike and I spend hours each week preparing like rigorously, rigorously for these calls, like we keep them very structured. But so, mike, I think you said that you've used these tools, like a tool like Hotjar. Like you know, these tools are a dime a dozen these days. Like with session recordings, like a lot of analytics tools have them. Where you can, you know, kind of like capture a session recording, watch somebody like click around your site on on different things. So my question for you is does anybody actually fucking watch those?
Digital Ad Targeting Frustrations
Speaker 1okay, all right, I love product marketing and product marketing managers. Those are the only people that traditionally in my experience my personal experience give a shit about those kind of like end user flow, and usually it's happening when they're trying to make an argument for rolling out or not rolling out a change to an existing like solution page or a particular part of the website. Okay, yes, like people like you and I, and more of like a demand gen, demand capture space, are interested in like acquisition flows and like what they're most likely to click on and what have you. But I've never gone in and like the tool that you showed me doesn't even, didn't you say it's like it's not even even an actual journey. It's like what some people have like.
Speaker 2explain it for the listeners yeah, so it's the one I was just looking at. It's called microsoft clarity it's it's a free tool by microsoft, which means that you shouldn't put it on your site because they're going to steal all your data. But, that being said, um, it's a quote unquote free tool. I'm doing the air quotes. For people who can't see me, mike can see me doing the air quotes. Yeah, they have like a heat mapping tool, which I think that heat mapping is valuable, like I think it's a little bit more valuable than like a session recording. But the session recording the way it basically works is the tool is tracking everything that people like, every interaction that they take. So the things that they can track are like clicks, obviously, you know, navigating to a new page, scrolling, like pretty much anything that the browser captures a signal on that that it can send to the analytics tool it's able to capture. But these session recording videos, they're actually not like a hundred percent accurate based on what people are actually looking at. First of all, if you're on a phone, you're not going to have the mouse, so you don't know where they're scrolling. Even if they are on a desktop or something, you can't see their mouse cursor. It's just an approximation of where the tool thinks they might have their cursor and then they go up to click on X element or whatever. It's just really not like.
Speaker 2Like if I've got a website, I'm just thinking like if I've got a website that has millions of visitors, you could theoretically have millions of session recordings. Like who the fuck is going to go through all those? And like there's nothing I hate more than like somebody might watch like five recordings, see five users doing something X way and then be like see, I told you we can't roll out this feature because they're clicking on this. Yeah, I just want to be like well, you could have cherry picked like five videos where somebody is doing this, or, you know, is it actually a problem?
Speaker 2Or is it just you know those individual users like you don't know you know much about them. You know they might just be a fucking idiot. Like they might not know what they're doing, or it might be a bot brawl. You know, like are you gonna write based on a bot clicking around your website that's trying to look like a human? But I, just in aggregate, I don't think that they're valuable at all. And like I feel like it's only used to like cherry pick things to like, reinforce a narrative that you want to already tell us.
Speaker 1I agree with that, especially the point about the bots, because, like, where my head was going is okay, let's say this is like let's pretend for a moment it's like an accurate, accurate aggregate view of what like the usual flow is. My question would be great but how many of those people that did those things were actually within our icp? Because I don't really care what people that aren't actually converting and aren't good fits when they do convert are doing. I'm trying to optimize for the people that we actually care about. So if this is just like another like GA4 view type of thing within the tool itself, what is it called? Again, the click something?
Speaker 2Like session reporting.
Speaker 1Yeah, what is the specific software that you were looking at? The Microsoft one? Oh, clarity, clarity, yeah. Yeah, if it's like within Clarity, it's all just like anonymous stuff that like doesn't help, right. What you need is the ability to track at the individual user level, a la a HubSpot custom behavioral event that can be tied back to an individual person that then has a record of their level of qualification, and see what those people are doing, to then optimize and either keep the page the same or change it and run your, run your experiment in that way. That's otherwise just like a waste of time.
Speaker 2So, yeah, that's that's my take I, I agree 100 with that, the thing I was thinking of. So not to trigger you at all. But so let's say your co-worker, who was complaining about seeing too many of your ads on instagram, clicks on an, comes to the website, walks away from his computer because he's working from home and obviously nobody works when they're at home Sarcasm. So your coworker is complaining about the ad. He clicks on the ad, gets to the website. You've got session recording on the website. He gets up to go fuck off or play video games or whatever for half an hour, comes back, clicks around a little bit. Is that the session recording that you would want to track?
Speaker 1That's the exact one. That's our ICP. Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2Let's watch this 30-minute session recording of this guy sitting here doing nothing and then a product manager starts or a product marketer starts to spiral. What is he doing? Oh my God, he's looking around for 30 minutes and he can't find what he's looking for. Oh, and then he goes up and clicks the pricing page.
Speaker 1Do you know what the bounce rate of that page is for our employees? It's, it's terrific. Whatever we're doing on that page, we need to recreate everywhere else, yep, yep, the crosses that we bear. I don't know, man, man, it's just like there's so many. We're in the process right now of trying to bring aboard a new platform that will help with like personalized experiences and things like that. And looking at things like a mutiny versus just like a native hub spot smart call to action or smart content for pages that are hosted on there. And it's like you can just get better insights when it's all connected. And and it's like you can just get better insights when it's all connected and talking to one another. I mean, you can actually have it at like a D, a non-anonymous level. That's really what you need and I think that's worth spending money and, frankly, time on, versus going through and watching the type of thing that you're describing. I think it's time way better spent.
Speaker 2Yeah, agreed, agreed.
Session Recording Tools: Worth It?
Speaker 1So, speaking of time better spent we're running down on our free time right now Just wanted to say that we have talked, at least obliquely, in the past about, like, the significance of testing. We should probably do like a double click into that at some point. Just like, don't discount experimental channels, like I think that every demand gen marketing team should have like an incrementality budget that they're just testing new stuff out, especially going back to like that top of funnel long tail keyword rant that we were talking about earlier. People are getting their top of funnel stuff elsewhere now instead of like traditional search and just to put some meat on that bone, recently I was very pleasantly surprised to see that Instagram. Instagram is the leading source of qualified leads for a recent campaign that we stood up Out of the gate.
Speaker 1This campaign actually predated my time, but there was a real skepticism around the efficacy of that channel. We thought that LinkedIn would be a really good driver. Maybe X, just because of my current company, is like ICP and where we thought they hang out. Nope, instagram. If you're not allocating time resources to testing somewhere, you're probably missing out on an opportunity to actually capture more demand for your organization. That's it. Want to double down on the clicking or clicking a testing CTA no I think that's probably a good place to stop.
Speaker 2Well said, this episode brought to you by Meta Mark Zuckerberg, thank you for sponsoring us.
Speaker 1Hopefully you skipped ahead.
Speaker 2We would never take Mark Zuckerberg's money. Yeah, so let's have Naomi read us out. Hey, Naomi, do you want to read us out on the podcast? Say goodbye to everyone.
Speaker 5Absolutely. Thanks for tuning into this lively chat. Remember, marketing is part science, part art and a whole lot of guts. So go out, try something bold and don't be afraid to break a few rules Until next time. This is Naomi signing off. Stay savvy, folks.
Speaker 1Amazing.
Speaker 5Thanks, Naomi.
Speaker 1Take it easy, everybody Thanks all Later man Bye, thank you.