Three Numbers. One Goal. That's All Your CEO Needs.

We're talking about marketing teams of one. If you got one person and you're juggling everything, the likelihood is that if you're gonna ... If you're saying, "Hey, we wanna do commercial." Your- Yeah ... CEO says, "We wanna do commercials," the first answer should probably be no. Well, and you spend a lot of time talking people out of things.

That's one of your great talents. I like to try and do that, yeah. Yeah

Welcome to the Marketing Team of One podcast, where we have conversations about the issues one-person marketing teams face when trying to meet their goals with limited time and budgets. Now here's your hosts, Eric and Mike. Good morning, Mike. Good morning. How are you? Or afternoon- Uh ... or evening, whenever- Well-

people are listening. Could be 3:00 in the morning. Yep. That's usually when I'm watching YouTube. Yeah, yeah. If I can't sleep. Today, we're gonna talk about, of course, marketing again. But, um, we're gonna talk a little bit about one of the key aspects to marketing. I always say measure, measurement, right? Yeah.

Measure it. Yep. Measure it. So that means what? Math, right? Math, or just looking at numbers. Numbers. Do you equate those as being the same? They're all scary.

The numbers are cool, but the, you know, then you gotta work with them, right? Yeah, yeah. And change things and stuff. So we're gonna talk a little bit about g- diving into those numbers, and what, what is relevant about those numbers, and the dizzying amount of numbers that you can dive into when you're into marketing.

It is overwhelming. Like, it, I, I don't know if you get overwhelmed by it, but I, i- you can definitely get really sucked in by all the different data. Like, if you're running, you know, if you're running an email campaign, and you're running paid ads, and you're looking at your website traffic and everything, there's no shortage of different numbers you can look at.

And, um, sometimes it can be fun. Yeah, yeah. I think it... and, or maybe even a little distracting. Um- Mm-hmm ... and so I think what, uh, what I'm seeing is that maybe we're putting too much emphasis on the wrong numbers and losing track of the most important numbers. When you talk to leadership, they always wanna know numbers.

They wanna know ROI. They wanna know how things are performing, and, uh, math seems to be the onl- seems to be the only way that you can actually cut through and communicate to a lot of different people in the management stack, as it were. Mm-hmm. CFOs, CMOs, CEOs, leadership, whatever that means. They are always interested in the numbers because that, they assume dollars equals performance, and that's what they're looking for- Mm-hmm

all the time. But there's a dis- you s- like you said, you got Google Analytics. You got Meta and all of the platform dynamics that you can dive in on that. You've got YouTube and all of the analytics. Everything has numbers built into it, and that's how they build the value for- Totally ... their services.

Totally. And that makes a lot of sense. But as a practitioner of the people doing all of the marketing, let's say they're building the campaigns and pushing the buttons and moving all the levers, what, uh, what, uh, are we, w- are they supposed to be looking at those numbers? Is there, are there too many numbers?

Is there an optimal amount that they should be looking at? I mean, what- I've been trying to distill things down into, like, a little bit of, like, a hierarchy of- Hmm ... of numbers, right? And, um, I think as a practitioner- You do need to know, have a really well-rounded understanding of all the numbers and where to go to get to numbers and to diagnose things, right?

Mm-hmm. But I think y- the important thing as a practitioner is to Not get too distracted by all those numbers or get too focused on certain numbers, especially if they daren't e- aren't, you're not reporting to a ultimate goal. So when I say ultimate goal, ultimately everything we're doing here is, you mentioned it, is there's a level of management or ownership that is anything we're doing for marketing is really to help support the business and the goals of the business, right

Mm-hmm. So, um, we, w- what we need to be doing is not losing sight of that and not get too distracted by some of the deeper metrics on things, and know that everything that we're doing is, is ultimately going to one big number. Mm-hmm. And you, you mentioned it. It's like, is the money we're spending on marketing driving revenue for the company?

Is, is, is the cost of... And 'cause that's what, that's what a lot of, you know, CFOs, CEOs are gonna look at. This is a cost or is it an expense. Ah, yeah. Right? That's... Yeah. And that's why when they view it that way, they're gonna be very, they're gonna be scrutinizing it the whole time- Mm-hmm ... going like, "Ugh, l- what do, can we cut expenses on this thing?"

Instead of looking at it as can we, can this be a, um, not a, a place where we dump money. An expense. But this is a thing that makes us money. And ideally it's paying for itself and then more. Yes. Yes. I think you having one big number that is y- return on marketing spend- Yeah ... and tracking that is gonna be most valuable for everybody, and it helps set the decisions all the way down.

Okay. As we, as a practitioner, you're looking at some of the other numbers, but if you're reporting to people, if you can say, "Hey, all this stuff we're doing is leading to this return on our marketing spend." The higher that number is, like is, is like we're, we got a 200%- Mm-hmm ... um, increase on our spend. 2X.

Yeah. Yeah. Like most people are gonna look at that and go, "Yeah, keep going." Mm-hmm. "Keep doing that." It's not losing money. No. No. So that's the first hurdle I guess. Yeah. So I say like w- like, and as we talked about this, we kinda looked at it as like a pyramid of like, of importance of numbers, right? Like l- layers, kinda strata of different numbers that you would wanna track, right?

Yeah. And I think when we talked about this, the strata also is built on the structure of your organization 'cause there's layers of oversight, management, however you wanna describe it. I would say that, you know, the smaller the organization, the less amount of strata there are in there. But it was a pyramid that we drew out that, you know, the bottom layers are the practitioners- Yep

they're the specialists, they're the people moving the levers and all that stuff. Then in the middle you've got- Who are those people in the middle? The top would be the CEOs, CMOs- Yeah ... the, the executive directors. Is marketing make us, making us money? Yeah. They're, they're the one- Right ... that's the one question.

Yeah. And that's why it's a pyramid. There's one number- Yeah ... up at the top there. Yep. Then you've got the middle, though, that- Yeah ... that sometimes is also the bottom, but also maybe not. I mean, who are the people in the middle there that we're- This is where the strata thing m- or based on levels of the organization- Roles, yeah

might kind of fall apart a little bit. But, um, the idea is that, like, is marketing making us money being the top, right? Yeah. The next level down are what are some other high-level numbers that show that our marketing is successful and driving towards that. Mm-hmm. Right? And so I think as I've been looking at clients we work with and trying to simplify the different reporting and not spend, you know, hours looking at different dashboards and stuff- Yeah

I think the two, two key measures is a, an awareness measure. Like, what are, how, how do we measure overall brand awareness? And I think for- Or where are we showing up? How do people see us? They could be a lot of different channels. And you could be, uh, so I think it should be channel agnostic. Okay. Right?

Like- Yep ... uh, like, and, and brand awareness might be really hard. There's a whole bunch of different things that you could do to try and judge that. But for a small business, and if you're doing any kind of digital marketing, which I assume almost everybody is doing some, right? I think that one of the best measures for that would be tracking how many new visitors are coming to your website.

Okay. That's, it's a, it's a good signal for how much awareness you're drumming up and you're getting people to at least interested one way or another. And that's a simple Google Analytics set up on your- Super, super simple number, right? And then the next thing is ideally we have some kind of intermediate action that, that your visitors are taking to give you money, right?

Mm-hmm. They, they're not directly giving you money unless it, unless you have something set up that way. You, you... A simple illustration would be I just bought those pair of shoes on your website. But- That's super simple. Yes ... but B2B is different. Yeah. Associations are different. Yep, yep. So I think the thing that we would wanna do here is, like, how many people are we getting in to be, like, well-qualified leads?

Like, what's a conversion metric that we can do? Mm-hmm. So I guess if you're, like, a service provider, you know, B2B service provider or something like that, you might have, like, a schedule a call with us- Mm-hmm ... um, to take the next step. That would be a really good thing, tracking the amount of conversions there.

Mm-hmm. So really, like, if you looked at a very simple dashboard to look and- Foster your decisions for everything is are we building awareness? Are we driving new people to our website? Mm-hmm. Or number two, how many, how many new leads are we getting out of this? What's their level of intent, basically? Yeah, yeah.

That's the test. Are we getting people closer to a level of intent? And there's a whole b- I don't wanna say we don't wanna look at a bunch of these numbers. As a practitioner, we have to. Yeah. But if we're looking at numbers to drive, we wanna do, um, we wanna drive awareness, we wanna drive conversions into- Mm

leads, and we wanna make sure all this is making money. And just to go back to speak to leadership, CEO, CEOs, that top part of the pyramid where we talked about, they're gonna be distracted by all that stuff, and they probably don't need to see any of that stuff- Yeah ... because they don't really care. They care about the one number.

Yeah. And you're now talking about a layer that feeds into that number pretty directly. Yeah. I was in a call recently where the CEO, we- we- we had established pretty clear- Mm-hmm ... KPIs on, and they were very limited. We d- we kept the scope pretty small. We're like, "Hey, we're gonna report on a few numbers."

Mm-hmm. And, um, we presented all this, and he said, "That's all well and good, but w- are- is this making us money?" Right. There you go. And so, like, that's, I mean, that's a really- Like, like that's- How dare he? ... probably the mindset for a lot of people who aren't spending time thinking- Yeah ... about marketing at all.

Yeah, exactly. Those, and you might be thinking, like, if you're in that mindset, you probably are still thinking of marketing as an expense, you know. Yeah, yeah. But I think if you c- if you're, if all your actions are driving towards proving that what you're doing is making money for the company- That sets everybody off.

E- everybody's gonna have- And- ... better feelings about everything ... a- and, and then, yeah, from top level looking down, then there's a justification for keeping that going even if business is tight or business is down. If you're self-funding the marketing or marketing is still br- bringing in more money than you're spending on it, I argue that it's still a valuable thing that you need to keep going, and it shouldn't be something that you decide we're gonna go cut.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I think that trying to distill marketing down to three key numbers for most things is an oversimplification- Yeah ... of marketing, and I don't wanna, like, if you're, if you're doing way more than that, if you, if you're more in tune with all these and you feel like you're doing a good job of, like, not getting distracted by other numbers and everything- Mm-hmm

I think that, that y- y- yeah, just this is, maybe this podcast isn't for you. But if you're, if you're spending a lot of time looking at how many likes a social post got or how many times people open a email, like, and not paying attention to those top level numbers- So you're- ... you're, uh, the, that's the point I was, I'm trying to make

you're, you're, the point you're making, so those two illustrations, examples you just said, are those bottom tier level points and data points that the practitioners and specialists they're, they should be paying attention to? 'Cause, uh, we're, we're building the pyramid because the level of numbers associates to- Yeah

as you work your way up that pyramid. The middle level doesn't need a lot of numbers either. No. And they maybe need like you suggest three or four. Yep. Max. Yeah. The practitioners and the doers of the things, they may have 15 or 20 or 50 numbers- Yeah ... in their dashboard, right? Yeah. So I think a, a really good example of this is, like, and we were talking about this, is y- if you are, let's say you're d- running or you're do- doing posts on LinkedIn, right?

Yep. And you're chasing- You're li- listening to all the LinkedIn bros for all the different hacks and all that stuff that you can do- Welcome to this. Yeah ... yeah, to, to get, um, better engagement or whatever, right? Yep. And you post something, and you see, like, like 30X impressions on that post compared to others.

30X impressions on LinkedIn only, though. I'm just saying, I'm just- Yeah ... firewalling it just on LinkedIn. Yep. Right? You're looking at it, and you're like, "Wow, that post got so much, so many impressions." And like you, I'm ... It could be flattering a little bit, like whatever you did to get the algorithm to show yours to everybody else and- To your posts.

Sure ... right? But, like if there's not anything, if you get too ... If you start chasing that engage- the impressions game, you're probably losing sight of like why you're doing that in the first place, right? Yeah, exactly. Like, again, like it needs to tie up to like, okay, are we ... Is that building towards another- Yeah

like are people sticking? Are they staying around? You know, like the engagements Would be better than impressions, right? Yeah, or are they going off the site and going now to your website and engaging with your company that way, or following? That, I mean, that's ultimately what, what- Yeah ... you know, I would wanna see out of it, out of all of it.

Yeah. And LinkedIn doesn't love that, you know? I mean- No ... they don't like you going off their site. They want you staying. Yeah. Yeah. But how many ch- business transactions take place on LinkedIn, other than just connecting with people? That's the- Yeah ... problem I have with a walled garden like LinkedIn, is that y- you know, ultimately, these numbers that you're talking about, ROI, top of the f- top of the pyramid, you can't, they don't happen on LinkedIn.

No, but they can be an im- a tool, and this is where the practitioner, like- Yeah ... th- level is. I think you do have to have important numbers for everything. Mm-hmm. I- i- that you manage and view, like, um, followers on LinkedIn, or, you know, people following your, your content, right? Yeah. That's an awareness metric.

Like, if you're run- Yeah ... if you're running things on LinkedIn, there's your awareness m- metric. Then- One of the middle numbers. Yeah, I mean, really what I'm, w- what I, what I think is, and I'm doing this kinda live, I'm like, kind of- You're riffing. You're like Jeff ... I'm riffing. Yeah. But I do think starting with almost everything you're doing, starting with a key awareness metric, a key conversion metric, and then al- making sure that those all tie towards the goal of bringing revenue- Mm-hmm

is a really strong model for anything you're kicking off. I think what th- our audience may struggle with is that they play both roles. They play that middle tier role- Mm-hmm ... who reports directly to the leadership and CEOs or CMOs, and they also play the practitioner role. Mm-hmm. And they have the dashboard with 20 different numbers on there.

Yeah. And so it's harder for them, and I think that that's maybe the controlling idea of this episode, is that don't get, those are all levels of the, and we're just illustrating a very simple model of three- Yeah ... kind of tiers- Yes ... of information here f- to simplify the story, but if you're doing both roles, the middle role and the practitioner, the bottom layer that's actually doing the marketing and building out all the campaigns and, and has to look at a dashboard of maybe 20 numbers, don't confuse that with what that middle level person, which could be the same person, needs to be paying attention to.

Put hierarchy on those three or four metrics that you just mentioned. Mm-hmm. And understand that the person above you is only caring about the one. And they may not wanna hear about numbers that happen on that- Yeah ... bottom layer of the pyramid. Yeah, I think maybe to distill this down a little further, like, this isn't like a, the numbers that we're talking about here aren't a, um, operational thing- Yeah

so to speak. It's a r- uh, reporting and- Presenting things. So like- Yeah, exactly ... like when we've talked about presentations before, right? You don't wanna just give everybody all the details, and you're just gonna watch all their eyes glaze over, right? Yeah, yeah. Like, so it's a matter of, um, filtering out important metrics- Yep

for when you talk to people about it, focusing on important metrics, but not... and not bombarding them with stuff that doesn't matter. Like, there's a whole bunch of stuff that everybody does in their day jobs all the time. Do I, do I share all the intimate details of everything I do- Right ... with you, my wife, and everything?

No, I, I, I get to the highlights that I think matter, right? And that's, that's a big part of this too. And that's a hard decision, I think, though, as somebody who may feel like they need to justify their position feels they need to import all 50 metrics into their report to the CEO. Yeah. But I argue that you should be bold and brave and just try to report a very small amount of numbers.

And then if there's questions around it or follow through or follow up on any of that, then you can dive deeper into those other numbers- Mm-hmm ... if they really wanna get into it. But- Don't start, don't lead with 50 numbers or thr- even, like- Yeah ... seven numbers or eight numbers. Like, all that stuff, like, comes back to this idea of vanity metrics, right?

Yeah. Which at this point in SEO and where the game's changing with Google and their big changes with all that and AI search and all of the cataloging that's changing now, it's really hard to get your arms around what are relevant numbers now. Because the landscape of those numbers that we had even nine months ago is probably very, on the verge of changing extreme, it- Yeah

is on the verge of s- changing dramatically due to a lot of the things that Google is doing. D- so, so you're saying, like, some of these, like, vanity metrics that might have been an indicator, the, the baselines have changed. Yeah. Yeah. I would say that, like, the numbers are still important. Like, a lot of these things, like you need to know your numbers.

Yeah. Right? You just have to be aware that, like, those baselines for some of those numbers are shifting- Yeah ... because of everything, right? An, a, an example- But- ... is, like, brand impressions, which a year ago was 11, and I think I even said that on our podcast. Like, now Google's recent research came out and said it's 43 times that your brand needs to be seen before it actually registers in people's brains.

Yeah. So that number's just exploding at this point, so that's an example of what I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The baseline's changed. Yes. Yes. Okay. I mean, I know, I know the trap that you can get into. Like, if you're, if you're monitoring the numbers and you have to report on your work- Yeah ... which is really what we're coming down to here, right?

You're, you're reporting on the fruits- Your hard work ... of what you've done, right? Yes. And how, and, and it is very much like a this is the value I'm bringing here. Right. And if you tie it down to numbers, you know- You could very easily, like, look at and use the three numbers I'm talking about, and those numbers don't look good.

True. Right? Yeah. And, well, the funny thing about numbers is you can kind of twist and dr- you know, like, you could build a story around some va- vanity metrics and all that stuff. But, but- Statistical data is malleable. Yes, yes. But, um, change the timeframe, like compare it to some other- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm ... you know, there's a whole bunch of, like, storytelling things you could do to change that.

But, like, if you're spending all your time trying to make the numbers look better instead of, like, it, like the numbers themselves by- Yeah ... slicing data instead of, like, looking at the numbers, learning from the numbers, and trying to change, but change what you're actually doing for those numbers. That, that's the distinction I wanna draw.

Like, I think you, you have to follow the chain up all the way to the, the, yes, they might be vanity metrics. Those vanity metrics ideally are com- are heading towards numbers that matter. That change ROI. That change ROI. You need to be aware of the vanity metrics. Mm. You don't, but, um, y- but don't get too caught up in chasing them.

And I would argue that staying focused on that ROI number and going into a presentation with your CEO, CMO, and just having the one number, gutsy move, yes. Very gutsy, yeah. Very hard and, and obviously you've got homework to support, but showing that one number and having yourself focused on that probably will help you as you're doing all of the 15 numbers down at the bottom level of that.

Maybe you, it helps you Get a little bit more focused on understanding what actually is working, and then optimizing for that over and over and over again- Mm-hmm ... to where you just are still working for that one number. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So you're not wasting, "I've- now I got six campaigns, and they're all doing these 15 different things and all."

Yeah. Maybe you just need two campaigns, or one campaign- Yeah ... or three. You know, I think when you talk about campaigns, I see them as a good organizing thing, and this is a sub- Yeah, they're all under- To s- uh, like, a, it's a subset of the main numbers, right? Yeah. And within each one of those campaigns, you probably should have a awareness metric, a conversion metric- Mm-hmm

and, and, and, uh, how much money is that campaign driving for the company. The- those three are a really solid thing that roll up to be your high-level marketing numbers and everything. Um, and they can all, each campaign can be promoting something different, could be, have different goals and everything. But making sure that ultimately those are feeding the- Yeah

the, the top line numbers. And it's a mindset thing. I think as we go into it, just realizing that you're not just filling a seat at, at the organization. You're there, there, you've been hired, you've got a job. Your job is to ultimately increase the revenue for the company. Yeah. And keeping sight of the key numbers that drive that is really, not lose sight of that is, I think, really important.

And you've identified the numbers that you think make the most amount of sense at that le- at that middle level, and at that top level. Yeah. Yeah, I, that's my, that's my thinking right now, especially if you're not tracking tho- those kind of- Mm ... key numbers. Starting there is a really good place to, to begin.

Think as the practitioner then, what you need to do is, it sounds like use those numbers, the, the multitude of numbers on your dashboard of all the things you've got going on, as a filter. Is that kind of what you're talking about? If you have a new initiative and you want to, and you're v- vetting whether you should do it or not, I think the first question is, how can this drive revenue?

Yeah. It, does it. Like, what is its place in it? Is it, um, I know brand awareness things, like you're talking about, like Google saying you have to see the brand 43 times, right? That's not gonna be a direct, as direct a correlation- Right ... for r- um, for revenue, but it is important. Yeah. And it should have a place, right?

But there might be other things that you're doing that just, like, like-

Yep. Um, it's not driving any awareness metrics for us. It's not, it's not driving any conversions. Like, that could be a good candidate to just stop doing it. So, I mean, we've always talked about awareness campaigns as being challenging because they're, they're sometimes harder to track. Sometimes the channels that are chosen might be, like, billboards or something like that- Yeah, yeah

that don't have any sort of dashboard, you know, relationship at all. And those are investments in just building, "Oh, I recognize that name. I've seen it- Yes ... on my drive home every day." Yeah. And there's value to that, but when you can't attach metrics to it, is that something that... How would you judge that?

How would you fix, fit that into this- That's- ... calculus? That's why I'm, I'm using, 'cause I've thought about this a lot, I think the metric that, that's where I think this new visitors to the website metric is- Hm ... is a, is the best indicator we've got for a lot of those things, right? Mm-hmm. Because almost most of the time, you're- Let's say you've got a billboard- Mm-hmm

and people are driving by, and they see it, and then eventually they get curious, right? And they're, they might not put in your website URL or anything like that, but they m- they're gonna put in the name- Mm-hmm ... the company or whatever that they saw, and ideally they're gonna go to your website to find out more.

Sure. There's your new visitor, right? Okay. You've built awareness by putting that out there. Same with, you know, it's even more direct if you've got a print ad and, and you've got a QR code. That is trackable. Yeah. You can do that. That, but, so that's where you do have the brand awareness kind of thing there, and you can track it.

But ultimately, people coming to the website that are a new visitor, that's a good indicator of this brand awareness. So I mean, let's say leadership comes in and, and they had golf the other day with one of their friends who said how, uh, cool it was that they had seen their commercial on TV. Mm-hmm. And now we should do c- commercials on TV.

You get this directive from leadership that walks in and tells you this. Do you just start, okay, working on a TV commercial? H- how would you approach this? I mean, would you, I mean, it de- obviously it depends on the culture and what, what, you know, what, what's the health of the company financially. Mm-hmm. Do they wanna invest in this?

Is this something that's not that expensive and it's not a big deal? Or is this something that is expensive for them and could be a big deal financially, but may not have the... Do you go back and argue against this? I mean, how would you handle that kind of a conversation with leadership? I think you need to get to the, the request being made, right?

Mm-hmm. Like, it, it, like, commercial time is not cheap. It's not- Right ... you know, like creating a commercial, like, you know- Production alone is- Production alone- Yeah ... placing it, long-term things. Um, there are things now, like if, like commercials aren't just on terrestrial TV. You've got YouTube. Sure. There's things where there are, you can track them better.

Um, but I would, I would really, th- this is where you have to- look at what are all those costs, and what is, how does that contribute to the overall- The big picture ... the big picture of things again. Like, so I'd look at budgets, I'd look at, you know, what you're trying to do Make a mo- a mathematical model around this potentially, and just say, "Okay, here's what you wanted.

Here's what this could result in." Or- But you might, if you've never done it before, you won't know. You'll know, it, like- Yeah ... you can get the cost to create it, but you might not know what kind of results it is. I would say that commercials can be an expensive test. And that's what's tough when people are going into new types of campaigns.

Mm-hmm. If they don't have a track record around that, that's a big risk. And that's why- Yeah ... you see a lot of, you know, organizations and companies, they choose their channels, and they stick to that. They don't- Yeah ... venture out, and you never see, you know- Yeah Some weird Super Bowl commercial for something that you're like...

I mean, they're weird commercials, but when you think about the logic behind it, you kind of get why they invested that kind of money- Yeah ... as an ultimate example. I think that, like if we're talking about, I would say that there's some of these levers that are those kind of like overall big, big brand stuff.

You know, the billboards, the commercials, the, um... Those are, for smaller companies, those could be seen as inherently wasteful- Yes ... because they cost a lot of money. They're out there. It's because they have bigger exposure for everything. Yeah. And it's not as trackable. It's a key part. It's very important, you know, for to have those elements out there.

Um, but I think that's where you have to look at the cost. If we're looking at the return on the investment, like you have to know what your numbers are and your revenue numbers are to know whether you can, can take on that risk or, or- Yeah ... something. And, uh, we're talking about marketing teams of one. If you've got one person and you're juggling everything, the likelihood is that if you're gonna...

If you're saying, "Hey, we wanna do commercial," your CEO- Yeah ... says, "We wanna do commercials," the first answer should probably be no. Well, and you spend a lot of time talking people out of things. That's one of your great talents, Mike. I like to try and do that, yeah. Yeah, you're a contrarian- Yeah ... and so you like to do that, and I think that that's good, though.

I mean, it shows that you have... You're creatively solving a g- r- for a goal. Yeah. You're not just taking an order and saying, "Okay." Yeah. "And let's hope it works," and then the customer's angry- Yeah ... because probably it didn't work, you know? So like if I had, I'm kind of playing this forward, if I had somebody come to me and say, "Hey, we wanna run commercials, and, you know, we make, you know, $5 million a year."

Hm. And, um, I would, I would say, "Well, we've never done commercials before." Mm-hmm. "It's an expensive game to get into, um, and it's gonna be har- it's gonna be kind of hard to track." Would you rather do ... I know it sounds like what we could do is do some kind of video to promote you, right? Like, maybe we find other channels that aren't as expensive to get time in.

And yes, your visibility won't be as great, but, like, so what I'm ... Like, let's put videos on YouTube. Like, like let's advertise on YouTube. YouTube rates can be a lot cheaper. Yeah. You can, um ... And as a good way to test it out. And you can target- And if that does really well- Yeah ... then you can grow into, you know, trying to get time on TV.

It's a lot easier to target on YouTube. It's a lot easier to really- Yeah ... pick a niche and, and maybe only 200 people saw it. Yeah. But of those, you got 15 calls, that's gonna be a lot better performance- Yeah ... per view than TV- Yeah ... or something that's inherently way more expensive. Yeah. I think for most of the people we deal with, um, billboards and commercials just don't make sense.

Yeah. I, I, well, you, you have to, you have to be a level of revenue and a level of, of sophistication where you know that us putting our logo all around the area- Mm ... has to have a certain fit. You, you have to have ... It just, it doesn't really make sense. Yeah. You're- So- ... you're investing in becoming part of a community that's gonna be there for a while, which means it, you can't just put it up for a week and then take it down.

Yeah. That's a huge waste of money because- Yeah ... the idea is that those are around longer term, and you're building that awareness, which eventually creates a flywheel of- Mm-hmm ... this and that, but it takes a huge investment. All right, so here's a for instance. Yeah. New client walks in the door and says, "Mike, we just wanna build a marketing campaign that builds awareness for us."

What do you, what, what's your strategy? What do you say? So, I mean, I would look at their... I would ask what the revenue is. Yeah. 'Cause really, like, let's establish a baseline. What's, what's your budget? And then, like, what are you doing now? Like, what, what's- Mm-hmm ... your level of sophistication? Now, if they are, they feel like they've been doing everything referral, word of mouth, they've just built up goodwill everywhere, but they wanna take that next step, I would focus on doing the things that, that are trackable, easily trackable, and can help prove that, that it's driving revenue.

Like, like, it builds confidence in marketing, it builds, like... And it, it sets things off on the right foot. Now- So really what you're talking about, we go back to the pyramid ... really, like, like, what, what are, what can we, what can we institute that will drive revenue? Revenue. Well, this sounds like we coulda just said that at the beginning and then closed it out.

I mean, this is a very- Yeah, I just, I wanna... It, this is a PSA. Just don't get, don't get too enamored with the vanity metrics. Right. Don't get too in the weeds on email opens, and, uh, social media likes, and stuff like that. Like- And my PSA on your PSA is we know that you probably play, play the role of the middle part and the bottom part of this triangle that we keep talking about.

Don't distract the messaging with your data that's at the bottom- Yeah ... to the top. Yep. That is yours for those practitioners, and it's hard, but try to manage that. And we know that that's important data for you- Yep ... but it's not important data as you move up that pyramid. Yeah. For sure. All right. Well, that sounds like a great place to finish off the podcast.

Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Eric. It's been fun. Always a pleasure. Yep. Thanks, everybody. Thanks, everybody. Thanks for tuning in. For more information and other episodes, subscribe to the Marketing Team of One podcast on YouTube, Apple, or Spotify podcast networks. You can also chat with us on the r/marketingteamofone subreddit, or visit marketingteamofone.com to learn more