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.
Visit us at www.marketingqualified.io or follow us on your favorite social network of choice, as long as that social network is Instagram, because we don't have anything else (and neither should you).
Marketing Qualified
The ROI Odyssey
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
ROI used to feel like a straight line: run campaigns, collect leads, prove impact. Now it feels like a maze of multi-touch attribution, platform changes, and “helpful” AI tools that can ship work fast while quietly getting key details wrong. We dig into why that’s so risky, especially when the data you collect becomes the data you use to make budget decisions six, twelve, or twenty-four months later.
We also take on the build vs buy debate for SaaS in the AI era. You’ve probably seen the hot takes claiming every company can just AI-code their own HubSpot or Salesforce replacement. We break down where building can make sense, where buying is the only sane move, and why critical systems like marketing attribution, CRM, and analytics dashboards punish you when you cut corners on expertise, maintenance, security, and adoption.
To close, we run a tier list of marketing strategies based on real-world effectiveness: why killing top-of-funnel is a dead end, why SEO and organic content compound into an S-tier channel, where paid social fits depending on your ICP, and why email marketing still delivers some of the most measurable ROI in the channel mix.
If you got value from this, subscribe, share it with a marketer who’s drowning in “AI slop,” and leave a quick review with the one channel you’d bet your pipeline on.
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The Long Road To ROI
SPEAKER_00Hey, everybody, welcome back to Marketing Qualified. I am Mike Grifflin. I'm Chris Newton. Chris, uh, we were talking just before hopping on about the Odyssey, uh world-famous classic poem by Homer of Ancient Greece. More recently, a top grossing movie at the domestic and I think international box office. My question for you out of the gate is is there a longer Odyssey than the path to ROI for marketers these days?
SPEAKER_01Um I mean, unlike the 10-year journey that I've I haven't seen the movie yet, admittedly, but unlike the 10-year journey I've been told that he takes to get home, um, I don't think that the ROI is going to take 10 years. I think it's going to take even longer.
SPEAKER_00Even longer. Yeah. Well, you got to factor in the multi, the multi-touch point attribution model, right? You got to figure in the different investment horizons for marketing. Yeah. I mean, my money's on Odysseus, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Much, much easier journey, I'm I'm sure he he had than what we you and I are facing right now.
SPEAKER_00A little bit jealous of that, actually, because it uh it's tough out there, man. It is it is tough. I think I've some some days, give me the cyclops over spinning up the report than I know.
The Design Cyclops Problem
SPEAKER_00It uh it's fucking crazy. Uh, I don't know if I shared this with you on an episode in the past, but I fancy myself a uh a design cyclops. Have we talked about that?
SPEAKER_01Uh no, we haven't. Uh let's let's hear it.
SPEAKER_00Let's I'll tell you this. It has about a 50% land rate in terms of polite chuckle versus uncomfortable blank stares back at me. Uh what I mean to convey by being a design cyclops is that I I I'm not a design expert, right? I'm not especially great at putting together like creative briefs. I trend to like let the designers that I work with bring their expertise to it and just give like directional. I think I need something that like speaks to this this angle or whatever. So when things are put in front of me and they ask me for feedback, I'm kind of just like, eh, I think it looks good. I don't think I like it's so subjective to me. I'm just like not good at it. So I tend to be uh more of the analytical go-to guy that you want, more so than like the creative, subjective feedback kind of guy. Design Cyclops is how I position that.
SPEAKER_01Uh what do you I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna steal that from you. I I I like that. That's uh I I definitely I definitely align pretty well with you as well. Like all the touchy feely like brand stuff and creative, like yeah, I'm I'm the same as you. It's like I I don't know.
SPEAKER_00I don't know. I sat at a I sat in a meeting once, it was like a weekly campaign marketing meeting where there was an actually quite heated debate about the little figure that was in. It was first some kind of like research paper that an ad was going to promote. And the debate was whether or not this guy like pulling down the lever on something was really conveying the struggle of like the angle in a better way, and then just having like gears with something like put into the cogs or something like that, was going to. I'm just sitting there sending emails to be honest, like checked out of that conversation. My time was better was better spent doing anything else. So I guess I guess know your place, at least, right? Well, yeah. Okay, thank you for thank you for your your kind words to my self my self-design uh lack of expertise description.
Today’s Agenda And Hot Takes
SPEAKER_00Uh hey, speaking of lack of expertise, we got some stuff we want to talk about today. Uh, I know we want to rip through. There's this build versus buy SaaS in the AI era item that uh honestly neither you nor I can remember if we talked about before. So at risk of being repetitive, we're gonna do it again. Uh we got a different uh tiering exercises and strategies where you're gonna give me some stuff to react to. And uh a bit of a spoiler alert to everyone, Chris is uh Chris is already pretty salty about some of the stuff, so that's always fun. It is a reaction to uh the rise of the one person million dollar business. This is a factor of fiction. This is something that Chris, I know you came across. I have absolutely zero familiarity with. So always fun getting something completely uh net new. And then a couple of other stuff. This to Senta uh company that you mentioned, um, not paying for demo requests is a topic that I wanted to just go through with you very briefly, time pending today, and and we'll see, we'll see how much that we actually get accomplished. So that's that's where we're headed. Let us the the the beginning of an odyssey starts with but a single single marketing topic.
SPEAKER_01Uh if it's anything like uh history teaches, uh we probably won't get through half this agenda. So we'll probably go off on some salty tangent somewhere, and that's gonna take up 20 minutes and then can guarantee it.
SPEAKER_00Guarantee it. Well, one thing you you were kind enough to me for the cyclops thing I'll say it to you. You you have the you have the voice of a siren. So I I look forward to hearing what uh what you have to say about this first thing. Okay, build versus buy, SaaS in the AI era, uh digame.
LinkedIn’s AI Slop Button
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I'll I'll give uh just a quick brand background on what prompted this. Uh so I'm I'm sure if you've been on LinkedIn lately, oh the see side tangent. Uh did you see that LinkedIn added an AI slot button?
SPEAKER_00I did see that. I deliberately did not add that to discuss today because I feel like that's like a special bonus episode where we just need to unload.
SPEAKER_01We could we could talk about this for a while, but uh I think it's it's brilliant. I mean, the the most brilliant thing about it is that the AI, like what so what does it actually do? Like you push it, it flags it as AI and then LinkedIn reviews it and then removes it or something.
SPEAKER_00Is that if it's like I need to remove it, it just like uses it to train the algorithm that it uses to detect if something is AI or not. And then theoretically, the idea is they the algorithm gives like less preference treatment to that stuff. Exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, I was gonna say that if if it did flag it and remove it, I mean, it would basically mean that LinkedIn doesn't exist anymore because everything is AI slop. Like exactly just like LinkedIn gets AI slopped out of existence, and like there's no more posts on LinkedIn, it would be it would be perfect. Like, that's what I want. I don't want to see any posts on LinkedIn ever again. Correct.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you know, you're exactly right. If LinkedIn and like part of the thing, okay, we're talking about it anyway, but like so so much of it like it's like a thing that AI and like the recommendations for even putting together an ad campaign and then like being able to flag this, whatever, it's like such a what what is that thing? The the the snake that eats itself, right? Just like a uh it it's really funny. It's like a self-defeating thing. And uh, I don't I if I would I rather get a million dollars of cold hard cash or a 404 error when I went to log on to LinkedIn because there's just nothing there, I uh I'll think about it and get back to you.
SPEAKER_01Um any anyway, so having said that, the reason I brought this up was if you've been on LinkedIn lately, you've probably seen, at least on a daily basis, some quote unquote air quote influencer saying that SaaS is dead and that every company is just gonna use AI coding tools to just basically code their own version of HubSpot or code their own version of Salesforce or code their own email marketing tool or you know, whatever. So we're gonna do build versus buy. Um I'm gonna read out a bunch of products and we're gonna have a discussion on whether it makes sense to buy them or build them. And yeah, we'll see if we can put this AI slop LinkedIn topic to rest.
SPEAKER_00Uh always happy to help, guys.
SPEAKER_01Yes, you ready for the uh the first uh list, the first uh product.
Build Vs Buy Attribution Setup
SPEAKER_01So first one is attribution infrastructure. So think like reporting, like getting G click capture for Google Ads, data warehouse dashboards, like all that kind of stuff. Build build it in-house using cloud code or buy an existing tool.
SPEAKER_00Uh for that one, I think I'm building in-house, and I have a recency bias here because I had to have someone help me do that recently for an existing client uh in order to accurately capture the stuff.
SPEAKER_01Um reaction. So build attribution infrastructure in-house, is that just because you think that the setup is so custom that there's not a tool that could solve for all the needs that you have?
SPEAKER_00It's mostly a statement of ignorance. I'm not immediately sure if there is an existing tool. Like, I I don't pretend to be super proficient in like Google Tag Manager or anything like that, or setting up like the script. Like I you are far more like technically uh inclined than I am. Like I'm not comfortable going in at the back end and putting like scripts in like a WordPress site or whatever where they exist. And so, yeah, recently I had to call on the cavalry for assistance in getting that done. If there was a no-code way to do it, I'd be very happy about it. Um, but that's just the the reality of where where I'm at right now. Also, not in the main question, but when you said uh the the G clit, all I thought about was our previous conversation about how for someone colundly, I think was how you pronounced it and like my bit.ly pronunciation in the back of my head. I'm like, oh that's how you say that. Not a G C L I anyway.
SPEAKER_01Uh so how how do you say it? G you say G C L I D?
SPEAKER_00I I typically don't. I don't I try not to verbalize it. I I just put it in a message, uh very strategic kind of like sidestep. You're just like our Google ads don't have any attribution at all because I refuse to say the word. That's right. That's right. I mean, like it yeah, please give me give me your reaction to you. What am I missing here?
SPEAKER_01No, I mean uh I I think that you know there is a lot of like businesses that have uh you know pretty custom setup where I think they could benefit from like a custom solution to it. That being said, if you're not an analytics expert and you vibe code like an analytics tool, then you don't really know what you're not missing, or you don't really know what you're missing or what you're not capturing. So I I look at it as like yeah, you're you're buying this tool, like whether you're using GA4 or like uh you know marketing analytics tool or whatever, you're buying something that you know is that at least gonna work and it's been tested already, like you don't have to worry about testing. And you like to think that it was built by experts who know what they're doing. I mean, that's not the case for every SaaS tool, like sometimes sometimes it's not, but um yeah, like if you're if you're not an expert in a certain area, I I would definitely be hesitant to like build instead of buying an existing solution.
SPEAKER_00What you're saying makes a lot of sense, and I guess like I perhaps uh reps in the answer in the appropriate way, because like I, like I mentioned, had to call in a dev resource to help me get like the script installed or whatever, but I was giving like directional guidance and explaining like the context around why it is we need this, what it's gonna do, and how it'll inform like investment decisions that I'll make in terms of uh you know additional ads or turning things off or whatever the case is. Uh, if it is someone that is trying to do this and they do not have the subject matter expertise about attribution, they should totally not do that. Like they absolutely need guardrails in place. And that is when an existing software existent platform, whatever the case is, makes a ton more sense because you and I were talking about this sort of async, right? Especially when you're launching things for the first time and you're getting like conversion information pushing into like LinkedIn, for example, properly. Like, if you fuck that up out of the gate, that's really difficult to recover from. And so it's pretty imperative to to get buttoned up. And yeah, that is my that's my it's my updated take for it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I I look at it the same way as like if if you're gonna be making decisions based on something and they have like real like revenue impacts and like down funnel you know, outcomes, like if you're making decisions on the wrong data, that can be disastrous. So that's why I would be hesitant to you know vibe code anything that really has like a huge potential impact on the business, even like six months, twelve months, twenty-four months down the line. Um it's the same reason that like I mean, I'm I'm a little bit biased here, but why I recommend businesses like a founder doesn't try to run his own Google ads or doesn't try to run his own meta ads, because if you're not hiring an expert to do that stuff, you can literally like just overlooking like not turning off something as simple as like search partners or something, where you could waste a bunch of budget on a bunch of like garbage. Like if you're not hiring an expert to do that, then you could burn way more money than you would need to otherwise. Where you know, ideally, like I like to think that like when somebody hires me, like they're getting me for free because like obviously they have to pay me retainer or whatever, but I save them, I I help make their ads that much more efficient that they actually like make money on them versus burning money on something that could have been avoided. Like that's why like I hire a CPA and like why if I ever you know had to sue somebody, I would hire a lawyer and like not try to sue somebody on my own, you know? It's like gonna yellow sue somebody, hope for the best.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's like you could sue someone in the same way that Michael Scott declares bankruptcy, right? Just like I sue you, shout it out into the ether. Uh yeah, everything that you're saying makes a a ton of sense. I mean, like again, something else that you and I were talking about, async, but like if you're exclusive, if you're a founder, for example, pick on them for a moment, trying to stand up your own ad campaign or whatever, like I I got bad advice from Claude recently because it did not have the most up-to-date like layout understanding of the configuration of something specific within LinkedIn campaign manager, right? Unfortunately, I had the wherewithal to know that because we've done it before, but it it's just crazy, man. Because like then, then, like you said a moment ago, you're making information or sorry, you're making decisions based on bad or outright wrong or incomplete information data, and you're screwed out of the cade, which is not great.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And a lot of these platforms change so rapidly, anyways, that you know, anytime you ask Claude or ChatGPT or anything a question, it's going based on data that could be six to twelve months outdated. Right. And right. Yeah, it's I've I've seen so many times where like I'm asking like a simple question that like any SEO or paid search expert would know just based on having any amount of experience at all. And Claude like got it wrong. So yeah. It's yep. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, anyways, let's go to say quick cloud's kind of like uh kind of like a golden retriever, right? He's got like a great like can do attitude for everything, but doesn't always nail the execution of it. Right.
SPEAKER_01Yep. As somebody who owns a golden retriever, that uh that analogy is spot on. Nice, yes, I see. Um I I have yet to see Claude like its own asshole, but you know, I'm I'm sure give give it enough time, we'll we'll probably see it. Yep, won't be long now. Um yeah, uh I mean I do I do envy how confident Claude is in everything it says. I mean, there's very few people who can lie straight to your face and like say it as confidently. I mean, one of them is sitting in the the Oval Office right now, probably passed out at his desk, but um yeah, I mean Claude's Claude's confidence is like second to none.
SPEAKER_00It is. It is. We'll give credit where it's due. Uh free credits, no token usage.
SPEAKER_01Nice, nice. Thank you. Um, all right,
Why You Should Not Build HubSpot
SPEAKER_01next tool. I'll I'll just throw you a softball here. Uh HubSpot. Build build your own HubSpot in-house or just buy HubSpot.
SPEAKER_00Uh for my enemies, I think that they should build it internally. Uh and just go completely vibe coded. For anyone that I have like a morsel of respect for, then yeah, you should totally get HubSpot or heaven forbid, like a Salesforce or a Dynamics or any other kind of like existing CRM. Dude, just just fucking do it. Your new vibe coded. I remember when um the HubSpot CRM first launched, and we had some training about how to onboard folks onto it way back in the day when you and I were still there, right? And like one of the trainers doing it is like one of the biggest uh challengers of that time was replacing just like Excel sheets, right? At the time the right wasn't sophisticated enough to try to compete with the enterprise CRMs like a Salesforce, et cetera. Um, so it was Google Sheets, and then the others, uh the other kind of like incubate that the CRM sought to deceive was the um what do you call it, the the custom made stuff. And even back then, I remember the trainer saying, like, literally no one likes their custom built CRM. It never works. It's not great at keeping up with process and stuff. It doesn't have any kind of like out-of-the-box best practices. You should not do it. I am a LinkedIn sort of like lurker. I save a lot of stuff that I think is helpful. I save a lot of stuff to bitch about to you on this podcast. Uh, every once in a while, there's something useful that I take into practice. One thing that I bothered to react to or even like comment on recently was this exact topic, right? Like the idea of people vibe coding a CRM trying to replace HubSpot to save some dough in the short term and trying to like sunset Hubso. It's a it's a bad idea. Everything's costs you so much more in the long term. 100%, man. 100%. For I mean all seriousness, like the token usage we were talking about, the security risks, like the the ability to like evolve with processes and whatever else happens, it's just it's just a bad idea. So again, I want to say for my for my enemies, uh, go ahead, knock yourself out. Everyone else, I I I wish you wouldn't. What do you what do you think?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm 100% with you on that one. Like, you also have to realize that like if if you're vibe coding something, like it's it's still gonna need support. Like, there's gonna be new vulnerabilities in whatever like framework you use, or you know, there's gonna be like any piece of software needs ongoing maintenance, like regardless of what it is. And like when you're paying for HubSpot, you're paying that's part of what you're paying for is them to maintain it and make sure that there's no issues and you know, like paying for their their support team. Like, you know, you if you have an issue, you can reach out to them and they'll get back to you. But you know, let's say that you vibe code this platform for your company, and then you know, you leave a month later and nobody else knows how to use this thing that you built. Like, that's another thing where like you know, lots of people know how to use HubSpot. You just hire somebody who knows how to use HubSpot. Nobody's gonna know how to use your vibe coded thing. And like, good luck trying to train a bunch of sales reps on this like custom CRM when they're like they barely know how to use HubSpot to begin with.
SPEAKER_00A hundred percent. I don't know if we talked about this on on the podcast before, but like one of the one of the full-time job interviews I took a while back was for like a growth marketing position. And it was like, yeah, you know, we're we're we've custom coded, we're trying to eat our own dog food as like a AI platform because of course everything is right. And they're like, we we use our own homemade stuff. And when I got to the end of the interview, I was like, so what are the things like in terms of areas of improvement you wish to be that you could have? And they were like, How much time do you have? Haha. But also most of it had to do with like data extraction that would actually allow them to make strategic decisions about the campaigns they were launching or considering launching, and how difficult it was to extract that from that custom CRM. So, in a world where everyone is so obsessed with like the velocity and shipping and how AI can expedite output and all that stuff, quite ironically, like we were talking about uh just a little while ago, it's like if you do that at the velocity that's desired and it's all fucked up, guess what? You're not gonna have any success.
SPEAKER_01Right. Agreed. Um, I'll give I'll give you one last tool and then we can uh we can move on to the next segment
CMS And Landing Pages Tradeoffs
SPEAKER_01here. Uh so this should be a fun one. Um I'm gonna just combine this all into one. So like landing page builders, so think like unbounce, uh insta page, alongside like A-B testing tools and like your CMS. So like all like pretty much all things web, like A B testing, um Landing Page tools, your your CMS, like Webflow, PubSpot CMS, like anything anything like that. Uh build in-house or purchase what already exists.
SPEAKER_00No, you should purchase what already exists. And the reason for that is because again, if you think about like time, this is like my own experience here. A lot of like the web dev resources that I've partnered with, sharp people, very helpful. But oftentimes there's a bit of like a time zone disconnect as well. So if you're really trying to move quickly and need something done fast, like the no-co type of stuff that you can do on the back end or roll stuff out on your own is really valuable there. And again, having like the governance in existence for an existing platform that does this, provides the service, the solution to however many customers, there's just like some safety in that versus trying to go in and uh maintain it all either by yourself or having to loop in someone that knows what the fuck they're doing on the back end. And that is uh that is why I think you actually save some money when it comes to like um like execution versus the uh what do you call it? I think that the the the eff the efficiencies that you gain in having a platform that you know that can do the thing when you want it to do the thing offsets any kind of like sticker shock when it comes to the cost of the platform that allows you to do that nine times out of ten. So that's that's my initial reaction.
SPEAKER_01Your thoughts. Um I I'm gonna say it depends on this one just because I think for most people, like I agree with you for for most things, like a lot of it depends on the complexity of your needs and everything. Like if you are relatively technical and you don't have like a super you know high need website or anything, I honestly think that just like vibe coding the website, like you it makes you so much faster to like just be able to go through and add stuff. Like you just ask Cloud Code to build a page, make it look like this, blah blah blah blah blah, like design the templates or whatever in Figma and give the templates caught cloud code. Um it makes it so much easier just to like add um new content. And like I'm actually facing this issue myself for for my business because like I'm admittedly like my my website's built on Hubspot CMS and it's fine. Like I was thinking like long term if I you know end up hiring somebody to help out, you know with blog posts or you know building landing pages or any of that stuff like somebody would know how to how to build it but so much of what I'm doing is like so much is changing so quickly like I need to build out landing pages and everything. I do like having the ability to have Cloud Code who like is helping me build the product and everything like has direct access to my code base. Just being able to like like I'll use like help center documentation as an example. Like let's say I build a new feature have Cloud Code summarize it into a help article and then automatically publish it to my website. I can't do that right now. So like basically what I'm doing is I'm having Cloud code generate the file then I have to copy and paste that into Hubspot which is my CMS and my like knowledge center and everything. Right. And then um make it like look better and like it's it does seem like a little bit of a handicap when I could just have it all done in like one step versus me like manually going into HubSpot and like copy and pasting and everything. So like for my needs like I think it would actually make sense to like if I could just host the website on my own and just like use cloud code to like help build it and everything and not even have to touch a CMS.
SPEAKER_00Right. So you would need basically a direct integration from Cloud code into whatever the CMS that you're using is.
SPEAKER_01Correct. Yeah and like I I could do some stuff with HubSpot like with like HubSpot like CLI and like the the command line and design manager and all that kind of stuff but it's just it would take way too long to configure it where like my current workflow works fine. It's not perfect but um I I do wish it was a little bit more streamlined. But I I do agree with you that like there's a lot of benefits of like using a CMS like security and you know um like having a CDN that like regardless of where you are in the world you know it's gonna load fast and like these are like all things that you don't need to think about when using a CMS like HubSpot or Webflow but they kind of like think about it for you in the background. And like if you're not technical you could just deploy a website and like if most of your users are in California and like you're only have like a you're only using like AWS East or whatever and you're not using a CDM then it's gonna look slower for them and it's just not a great experience. So like that's a lot of the stuff that you like you don't know what you don't know. And a lot of times unless you ask an AI like it's not going to tell you. It's just gonna do what you want.
SPEAKER_00Yeah fair they they tend to be yeah I mean that's exactly it right yeah they're gonna follow marching orders but not unless like directly prompted like one of the best things I learned to do in terms of prompting AI would be like ask me clarification questions before you do anything. Right. And that's proved to be pretty helpful in terms of catching some stuff that otherwise would have would have slipped through the crack. I'm leaving this section feeling inspired. I've dragged my feet for far too long in terms of spinning up my own website now and uh yeah anything's possible I suppose so you got to do it you have uh what is it MichaelGriffin.com? That's right yeah yeah and Jesus Christ if you've seen the Google search results for other Michael Griffins I need all the help I can get uh getting to you getting to the top of the bit there are some uh there are some unsavory characters uh not fit for polite society that show up there so is uh what I think in our next section we're probably gonna call an S tier strategy but you you give me the definitions here we got S tier A tier S tier and B tier strategies.
Ranking Marketing Strategies By Tier
SPEAKER_01Yep and then C tier F uh D tier and F tier. So I'm gonna read uh a bunch of strategies to you a bunch of marketing strategies and we're gonna talk about them and and rank them in in order of uh S T being like God tier like these are strategies that you would definitely use in every single company that you've worked for like these are like tried improving like the best strategies you can and then obviously D D and F tier being like absolute garbage you should you should never really consider.
SPEAKER_00I will say like I've always been like kind of a B student so I I guess uh some of my favorite strategies might be the B the B tier strategies but um anyways let's uh um all right so first one uh killing top of funnel reach uh that that's a I I forget the the the scale that we're grading on but that's that's a bad one so you'd say that was like a D or F tier yeah it it's D it's D or F tier for sure and the very brief elaboration on that is because like if you don't reach to the funnel if you don't create the demand then you won't be able to capture it later. Yep yeah I'm with you that's uh that's F tier for me F tier that's enough from me dog um pop-up stacked on pop-ups they don't watch your your uh your modal the first time maybe you'll get them the second time I mean that's that's a that's a hard F tier it's like there's nothing that people love more than being disrupted period and then if you add in multiple disruptions oh chef's kiss um SEO slash organic content now that's a winner that's a winner that you gotta that you gotta back. You and I have made our stance on SEO quite clear over over the course of these recordings. It's no surprise for me that makes sense you're gonna get long pay long term dividends on that and you should do it.
SPEAKER_01So you'd say that's like a A tier or an S tier?
SPEAKER_00I oh I think it's a whatever the universe the God tier one that you mentioned is yeah that's S tier yeah yeah I'm with you on that one I I agree.
SPEAKER_01And the funny thing that kind of ties in with the uh the one that we were chatting about the uh killing top of funnel awareness being in D. I think that you know with with SEO like obviously it takes a long time to compound but once it starts working it compounds pretty great and like it becomes one of your best channels. A lot of places won't invest in SEO because they need results now. Like oh we're not gonna we're not gonna invest in top of funnel because it's not converting we're we're gonna kill all awareness campaigns and just focus on bottom of the funnel. But then when bottom of the funnel dries up you don't have any you don't have anything at the top to like kind of trickle down and same thing with SEO it's like if you're not gonna invest in SEO now like you're just gonna constantly be paying for traffic and then you'll never you know get any of that that free traffic um that's 100% right.
SPEAKER_00All right next one uh paid social so think like Instagram meta Facebook LinkedIn yep this one is the middle tier one it it does completely depend I think on like the organization like for example paid social is a broad bucket probably S tier like you should have some type of like um sponsored investment somewhere but this particular channels that you're on totally depends on the company that you're in and where your ICP is is hanging out. The fact of the matter actually on behalf of one of my clients that I have right now I was looking into exactly how bad the organic reach is on meta I saw that an average organic post will reach at a maximum five percent of your total like meta page followers right so you have to pay in a lot of instances to get a shot at surfacing even to people that already have awareness of you let alone net new people and so for that reason I think it's fairly like applicable but like there's there's nuance in terms of what investments within paid social you do. What do you think?
SPEAKER_01Yeah on the line there I would say that paid social is probably like a B tier and B I think it's probably a little bit higher for like a B2C company like B2B it's probably like a B tier B2C it could be maybe like an A tier if you have like a relatively affordable product that people spontaneously purchase or whatever.
SPEAKER_00Can I just tell you on like the sponsored thing real quick I haven't done this myself but I enjoy um I think I told you I don't use the Reddit app right my wife sends me stuff and I try to view it on the web version.
SPEAKER_01So my they try to force you to use the app and it's annoying as fuck yep.
SPEAKER_00It's so fucking annoying man. It drives me insane. Uh I'm just trying to torment myself in the comment section. Let me be uh no but like my not my favorite thing but I enjoy refreshing the link to get rid of that pop-up right and seeing what new ad that I'm gonna get served on Reddit that has nothing to do with the subreddit that I'm on. That's fun. That's fun.
SPEAKER_01Just a quick set if if you refresh if if you're on your phone and you refresh it makes the app message go away. It doesn't to like temporarily to continue reading you need to download the app or whatever.
SPEAKER_00Yep yep it get rid of it it get it gets rid of it momentarily and then you'll be bothered by it again talk about pop-ups on pop-ups once you get to like slightly farther. Yeah got it yeah I mean I would say that the refresh strategy that's probably like an A tier strategy in and of itself well hey thank you yeah um all right next one uh webinars and events if you listen to any sales team I've worked with ever the event thing in particular is God tier you have to do it everyone likes the in-person shake hands component right and like I get that there there's some there's some value to that um webinars yeah probably they feel like table stakes at this point but I also think it depends on like your ICB like this oh what what kind of like B2C company is going to do a webinar on something right probably probably not uh for B2B folks if you have something helpful to say sure but don't do it for the sake of doing it.
SPEAKER_01I mean I I I think a lot of companies do it for the sake of doing it which is why I'd say webinars are probably like a C tier to me. Um and also I'm I'm convinced like tell prove prove me wrong Mike prove me wrong webinars are a way for decision makers and like higher ups to burn an hour of time and just space out and say that and make it look like they're working.
SPEAKER_00It's like oh I can't do this meeting I've got a webinar in my calendar and they're not paying attention at all during the webinar they're just like spacing out they're on their phone like whatever but it's a good way it's a good excuse for them to block off some time I think that's true and I think it is part and parcel to that a good sense of just like okay my team is doing something like I am doing something there's activity happening right and yeah yep can't prove it wrong I can't do it all right I will give uh one more email marketing we'll just keep it simple I mean I don't think it's like the most exciting thing in the world but it's not based on excitement right the scale is just based on like efficacy efficacy so yeah I think it's it's it's it's universal whatever our whatever our God tier is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah yeah I'd say S tier A tier at best or at worst um I mean email consistently is proven to have like the highest ROI it's like one of the only channels like to your point earlier where you can directly like talk to your customers and like you know obviously you know deliverability notwithstanding like assuming it does make it into their inbox like if you post something on social like you were saying like the chances are your followers aren't going to see it on meta they're probably not going to see it on LinkedIn. You're kind of just screaming into the void whereas if you email somebody like sure like open tracking is a little bit different now but difficult now but you can still see when they click on an email you can see you know it's really easy to track like if they do click through to your website and buy something like theoretically you would have like the UTMs all set up so you can see what specific email campaign they came from and everything. So I think from that standpoint it's like one of the last like good ways to communicate with your customers directly and also like makes it really easy to track the attribution. So it's it's one of those things where I I can't tell if it's like the one of the highest ROI channels just because it's one of the easiest channels to track or if it is actually like one of the highest ROI channels.
SPEAKER_00Yeah I bet it's somewhere in between honestly because to your point it is easy to do like parameters and all that kind of stuff but also just like people expect emails right and it's not like you have some level of control. You have more control I would argue over um like emails that you receive from someone or not versus like ads that you may be served right by a brand.
SPEAKER_01Yeah exactly and it's it's also a great feedback mechanism too like if you send an email and you see that your unsubscribes spike then you know that's a negative signal which you can incorporate into future campaigns.
SPEAKER_00Yeah you should say that again for some previous employers of mine.
SPEAKER_01Yeah I I will say uh I I've I'm part of this uh golf app which will remain unnamed uh that tells you like like distances to the whole and everything like that they have like an app for Apple Watch and everything.
Unsubscribes, Bad UX, And Wrap
SPEAKER_01And I should not I've unsubscribed from their market emails that I get on a daily basis probably unsubscribed five or ten times until finally like I keep getting the emails and like the unsubscribe button clearly doesn't work.
SPEAKER_00And I had to email their support email being like stop sending me emails and they got back to me very quickly they were very nice and they're like yep you're unsubscribed now and I haven't gotten any emails since but uh just gonna shout this out while we still have a minute left don't make somebody email your supports take them off the list please don't please don't uh it's a terrible experience the I'll I'll I'll leave you our our parting uh what do you call it recollection will be this I was once part of my PR agency first job postgrad someone sent along this like big client update internally it was like a really big like rah-rah look at all this work and one of their colleagues replies all and just goes unsubscribe I thought I think that's it uh it gave me a chuckle and uh bruised the gentleman's ego from what I recall but uh hey thinking uh speaking of things that were bruised hopefully we wouldn't bruise your ears or brains too much with this episode as per usual we didn't make it through everything but hey we know what ground we've got to cover when we come back next so thank you to all of you for coming back in giving Chris and I your time uh we'll do it again real sooner
