Attendees
Ben Fitzpatrick – CSO at Webprofits
Nital Shah – COO at Mavlers
Transcript
[00:00:00] Nital: What are the most common mistakes brand made towards mid to lower funnel stages?
[00:00:05] Ben: The funnel was a really good model for us for many years. That is something that I think was a really strong model for us to be thinking through, but I don’t think it really fits the approach to marketing that works right now.
[00:00:17] Nital: How do you keep the balance? Between acquisition and retention,
[00:00:21] Ben: it’s not just like a linear, you focus on retention more the more you grow. Actually having product market fit, actually having something that people wanna buy, that there’s a demand in market for that. When they get your product, they’re happy and they’re leaving good reviews.
[00:00:36] Ben: That’s the table stakes.
[00:00:37] Nital: How will audience improve their attribution model to capture. They’re multitouch and omnichannel interaction.
[00:00:44] Ben: You should have a really clear visibility of pretty much everything impacting your growth.
[00:00:50] Nital: What initial steps would you recommend to streamline the tech stack to improve operational efficiency?
[00:00:57] Ben: First of all, I would just recognize that this is extraordinarily [00:01:00] hard right now ’cause there’s a lot of change, in the technology.
[00:01:03] Nital: How do you measure the ROI of customer value optimization initiatives across multiple channels for e-commerce brand?
[00:01:11] Ben: Have a model that any business can build out. Taking your average order value, your conversion rate, your customers, all the different metrics that actually are levers for growth.
[00:01:26] Nital: Hello everyone. Good morning today. We have a pleasure speaking with Ben, the Chief Strategy Officer at Web Profit. web Profit is a leading GoTo agency for DDC and e-commerce marketing based out of Australia, but now serving not just Australian brands, but some amazing global brands. Ben has been instrumental in driving growth.
[00:01:49] Nital: For brands like Logitech, LG Sharp, bringing, over a decade of experience in e-commerce and DTC space, his work has lead award-winning [00:02:00] campaigns, right? Including bringing success to some amazing global brands. And his, his approach about turning data-driven strategy into real impactful results, which is kind of a DNA at web profit.
[00:02:13] Nital: So we are very excited to hear. your strategy around, scaling high growth brands and balancing customer acquisition and long value as well. While optimizing complex multichannel campaigns. So without further ado, let’s start with questions. Ben, welcome on board, first of all.
[00:02:33] Ben: Awesome. I’m, really excited to be here.
[00:02:35] Ben: Thanks so much.
[00:02:36] Nital: Yeah. Okay, let’s get started. So, thinking about strategic foundation and ROI, yeah. As a chief strategy officer at. Right. You work closely with clients aligning that strategic direction with data driven decisions. Help us share a step-by-step approach for businesses looking to unify that [00:03:00] data for smarter and faster decision making.
[00:03:03] Ben: I mean, I think, you know, any of these types of questions always depend on where the business is in their phase of growth, right? Like the way that you can unify data. When your early phase growth is very different from when you’re scaling and spending a hundred thousand dollars a month on meta and, you know, looking for the insights that are going to, you know, feed that next level of scale.
[00:03:26] Ben: so I think it’s important to kind of call that out from the start that there’s some principles that can work across the board, but you’re never gonna get one size fits all solutions for most of the questions really that, that we’ll probably talk through today. One thing that I think is just. The biggest change that I’ve seen probably on the data and analytics side in digital and performance marketing in my career has been the movement away from an analytics platform to an attribution platform.
[00:03:56] Ben: And I think this is one of the areas where I. [00:04:00] The transition to GA four just accelerated it massively because everybody hates GA four. It’s just been a nightmare for all of us to to navigate. And it’s also just in the process made a lot of people question the data that we’ve relied on, within that platform.
[00:04:16] Ben: So in the mix within that, there’ve been a lot of new attribution platforms that have come into play. Now we rely on for our single source of truth. Mm-hmm. And I think that is like one of the first areas that I would start with is just having a place that you can turn to as your single source of truth for attribution across all your marketing.
[00:04:36] Ben: So we often work with, triple oil, the business, but there’s a whole bunch of them that are, you know, that, that are pretty strong and, you know, so that, that’s one thing where you can be looking at meta klaviyo. HubSpot, you know, that’s more on the e-commerce side, but you can also be looking on the customer acquisition side for a place to unify and, you know, and say this is how each of my marketing channels is [00:05:00] performing against each other.
[00:05:01] Ben: Mm-hmm. you know, if you’re looking in platform and meta and you’re looking in platform and Google ads and you’re looking in platform and Klaviyo or HubSpot or wherever. They’re all gonna tell you the best version of the data that they have. Right. And like, so that’s the, that’s the one thing. So if you have this, then you can be in a position to make good decisions about marketing.
[00:05:22] Ben: And I think like that is, it’s one of the areas for marketing leaders. That I think can be missed in terms of like how important it is to be able to make day-to-day good decisions within marketing, because that’s the most, that’s the, the easiest way to be efficient is to make the best decision first, right?
[00:05:41] Ben: And so if you have data in front of you that is, you know, powerful, that actually gives you clarity on, you know, the, the performance between what you’re doing or down to a granular level, whatever the case may be, then you can make those better decisions. Within whatever strategy you’re working in. So I think that is, you know, it’s not always [00:06:00] where, you know, everyone starts.
[00:06:01] Ben: It’s just like, I need a single source of truth data platform or, or place. You know, if you’re, you know, if you’re still scale, like at startup, you could do this in a spreadsheet. Like there’s, and you can look at marketing efficiency ratio and you can just look at your data and live in it and understand, you know, the dynamics of it.
[00:06:18] Ben: As you start to grow, you want to get onto a platform that, you know, that does this and leverages AI and can give you insights and all, all of those pieces. So I guess I would say there’s a lot more into that question, but that is, that is where I would, I would definitely start. And then you’re, and then you’re setting yourself up for, for success?
[00:06:35] Nital: No. Great. And, and like you mentioned, conceptually following. That lens of having that single source of truth and all your attribution being tracked at one place, yes, even if you are not at a scale to use attribution platform, even starting with Google Sheet as simple as that. But conceptually, start looking at your marketing activities.
[00:06:57] Nital: Bringing that single source of truth view [00:07:00] so that all your future strategy and growth strategy shall be aligned towards what’s been working and what’s been at to your business. And
[00:07:08] Ben: and to, to, because I mean, I think it’s real, like every e-commerce business in particular, but I think probably all businesses.
[00:07:14] Ben: Should have an idea of like a marketing efficiency ratio, you know, your overall revenue over your marketing investment. You know, like that’s something that is a, is a really important metric to understand because there is no, there’s no such thing as correct attribution. Like that isn’t like there’s, there’s never gonna be a case that we actually understand how much any of our marketing channels.
[00:07:38] Ben: Like specifically have, have, have driven, because that’s not how this works. So one thing that we’ve noticed, just as a, as an example, is we run a lot of meta ads and we run, you know, really big meta ad campaigns for some of our scaling clients and we’ve started to see the brand impact. On running meta ads at that scale [00:08:00] is dramatic, and so we’re talking about, you know, yes, we’re, we’re a performance driven, sales driven business, but we also ran a campaign that had.
[00:08:09] Ben: Close to a half billion impressions that had, you know, 8 million clicks, right? Scaled this all down for different businesses. But the point is you can look at search trends and you can see the brand grow, right? So like there’s no attribution for that. The only way you can be looking at that is if you look at the overall business growth against the marketing investment and understand that dynamic.
[00:08:30] Ben: Of course, you need to be optimizing within it, and that’s where, you know, having that attribution helps you to make good decisions. But like trying to understand attribution as one thing that tells you a clear answer is, is going to, is gonna lead to the wrong decisions in and of itself.
[00:08:46] Nital: So true. So true, so true.
[00:08:48] Nital: Well, thanks Ben. I think I’ve also noticed on a strategy led Pro podcast, right, you have explored customer value optimization. Yes. I [00:09:00] would love to know how, how do you measure the ROI of customer value optimization initiatives? Like it’s still relatively very new to me personally as well, so would love to know across multiple channels for e-commerce brand, how do you actually measure the ROI and.
[00:09:22] Nital: How an agencies managing client account attribution growth, like over COV? Like CO, sorry. Still fumbling it up because it’s a relatively new term. So how do you see the affords when providing each channels. Impact and measuring ROI of customer value optimization.
[00:09:42] Ben: So first I would just say, I mean, Valentine, Valentine’s a legend.
[00:09:46] Ben: Anybody out there, I highly recommend follow Valentine Radu on LinkedIn. I’ve, I, I’ve been connected with him for a number of years now. He’s taught me so much, about not just CBO, but marketing in general. So I would just put that plug in. He’s also [00:10:00] genuinely one of the nice people in the world. So you won’t go wrong by, connecting with Valentine.
[00:10:06] Ben: He’s also a pioneer of this, you know, of this area of marketing, customer value optimization, which is something that Web Profits has strategically invested in now in building our capability around for, I guess three, four years. and so the idea behind customer values optimization fundamentally is that for, you know, a business, once you’ve, reached a certain level of scale.
[00:10:30] Ben: The opportunity for growth lies as much or more within your customer base as it does within new customer acquisition and taking the strategic and data-driven and algorithm and, you know, performance marketing mindset. I. Towards growing through your customers. Ha you know, has, will, will drive significant revenue, you know, upside.
[00:10:52] Ben: Like, that’s the kind of fundamental insight that I think took rad, Valentine down to build out a lot of it. Not, not him exclusively, but to [00:11:00] build out, you know, a lot of. these processes. Now he has built out a very formal CBO process, which is something, you know, they have, his business is Omni Convert.
[00:11:09] Ben: They have a tool called Reveal. You know, you can install free on Shopify and get a whole bunch of insights about your customers. any e-commerce business can do that, and it’ll give you what’s called RFM segmentation, and that’s the kind of fundamental principle of CBO. The RFM is recency frequency and monetary value.
[00:11:27] Ben: So how re, how, how recently did someone buy? How often have they purchased from you and how much have they spent? And you score based on those three principles, the most recent purchasers that have purchased the most frequency. The most frequent that have purchased the most are your whales. Those are your absolute, you know, best customers and you want to know as much as you can about them in order to, you know, find more of them, grow more through them, stuff like that.
[00:11:54] Ben: That, I mean, like at, its at its core. That’s what CVO is about. And also to say, [00:12:00] let’s find out who are the tire kickers people that buy our least, you know, least expensive product that we have the worst margin on that never buy again, and let’s not waste too much of our marketing spend on that and everything in between.
[00:12:11] Ben: That’s kind of the what CVO is about. Now, our journey on CVO has definitely taught me that the principle of it and the implementation of it are two very different things. Because when you think about CVO, conceptually, you can start to think about, you know, these different audiences and it gets really interesting.
[00:12:29] Ben: It’s, you got these audiences of. Best customers and people that could be your best customers and everything in between. And you can think of how you would implement different, you know, email sequences and promotions and all this stuff to these, integrate that with your ads and all of that. And then you get to actually try to do it and you sell a product.
[00:12:48] Ben: Say you’re a, we, we work with Ninja Kitchen, a lot. so they, they sell homeware. So we sold someone an air fryer, we could put them into one of these CVO sequences. Or we could go try to sell them a [00:13:00] blender, a grill, a another air fryer, a bigger air fryer, I mean like, or we could actually just look at the products and run really good like category and product based marketing.
[00:13:10] Ben: So the second, which like CVO leads us into an idea of segmentation that will immediately come up against all the other ways you want to segment. Your marketing, and like this is where the implementation of it gets really complicated, but also where you can take the, the kind of nuggets within it and then start to apply it in.
[00:13:31] Ben: So you can say, I’m not gonna implement the whole CBO framework, but I’m gonna do specific stuff based on the biggest opportunities that it shows me. So I know I have a set of customers that have bought twice. And if I get someone to buy three times, they’re gonna be loyal to me for a long time. Let me give them a really strong offer.
[00:13:52] Ben: So just get them to make that third purchase that would be like a CVO insight that could drive real actionable revenue growth. [00:14:00] and so I think that’s, that’s been the interesting part of our journey on it. I think we started with the idea that we were gonna build out a CVO service that comes in and just executes on customer value optimization within businesses.
[00:14:12] Ben: And what it’s really come in to become is we come in and we deliver customer lifecycle marketing, email marketing, you know, and then a lot of times we’re consulting and working to find those opportunities so that we can go in and go all in on, on those, you know, those pieces that, that, that we explore.
[00:14:28] Ben: So it’s also just like, if I could say it’s like a marketer’s dream. It’s so much fun. It’s all about finding. A way to deliver more and better value to your customers so that they purchase more of your products. So it’s a real, also, it’s just like win-win marketing. You know, the customer gets more value, they’re happier.
[00:14:47] Ben: We’re selling to the right customers more often. We’re succeeding, they’re getting more value. It’s just like, it is actually kind of what I think we’re all trying to do here. So, yeah, it’s good.
[00:14:56] Nital: No, amazing. Amazing. So it’s basically, it’s. You [00:15:00] go further down beyond lifecycle marketing. So lifecycle marketing is all about nurturing and looking at the entire lifecycle.
[00:15:08] Nital: This is not just looking at from a vanilla lens, it’s also looking at from specific behavioral aspects and customer value perspective, and then defining that entire life cycle based on who’s more potential to your brand, who’s more engaged and inclined to your brands, and who’s more loyal. To your brand.
[00:15:31] Nital: Yeah. And driving that behavior and segments based on that, which is very,
[00:15:35] Ben: I I, I smile here because it, we’ve, we built CVO within our customer lifecycle team, and like, honestly, we only came to the insight that you’ve just had about a month and a half ago, that actually it doesn’t, it shouldn’t be in customer lifecycle.
[00:15:48] Ben: It’s actually a strategy service. That should be informing customer lifecycle alongside other areas of, and so anyway, I’m glad you picked up on that. It took me a long time to get [00:16:00] understanding of it, and it’s, but it’s really important, in, in terms of how you get the value out of it. For sure.
[00:16:06] Nital: Amazing. Amazing. Okay. What initial steps, Ben, would you recommend to streamline the tech stack to improve operational efficiency? I have been speaking with a lot of agency folks and a lot of marketers around the globe.
[00:16:21] Ben: Yeah.
[00:16:22] Nital: And from last, at least a year and a half or two, I’m hearing more. Than ever before long, like introducing new tech stacks, like bringing new tools to enhance their overall operational marketing and revenue operations ecosystem.
[00:16:42] Nital: So we’d love to know what are, what are your recommendations and suggestions on streamlining that because it has also been relatively chaotic market now and very difficult to choose which text takes to pick for what.
[00:16:57] Ben: First of all, I would just recognize that this is [00:17:00] extraordinarily hard right now ’cause there’s a lot of change.
[00:17:02] Ben: In the technology. and so we’re all kind of working with stuff that we’re not yet experts in, to some degree. so we need to, you know, we, we need to just understand that I hate the advice I’m gonna give right now, like I hate it. but it’s, it’s advice that I think has paid off. It was from our co-founder, Alex Clan, this, he gave it to me directly and he said, when you can work with a billion dollar company, you know you’re not gonna go wrong.
[00:17:30] Ben: Working with Klaviyo or working with Shopify or working with HubSpot or like they, and you know, we’re seeing it right now. The smaller companies are coming out with these incredible tools and then the bigger companies just integrate it right into the platform six months later. And I mean, like, it sucks.
[00:17:47] Ben: I hate it. I don’t like giving this advice, but if I would, if I’m making decisions around where we’re gonna invest. That’s often a principle that we’re, that we’re gonna follow and then, and then we’ll make exceptions. And there are like, the [00:18:00] exceptions are the exciting part because these are the places where you’re saying we’re gonna make a strategic decision to go take a chance on a platform that may give us a real, you know, a real opportunity.
[00:18:11] Ben: Like for example, there’s a. Loyalty platform that we’re piloting right now called Rise, ai. Mm-hmm. so there’s just, they, they have a very, it’s like a token based loyalty program. It’s really interesting. It’s very different from other programs that we, that we’ve worked with. I’m not gonna pretend to be an expert in it, but also like, part of being good at what we do is also being able to systematically test out new tools in order to validate whether they.
[00:18:37] Ben: You know, are, are worthwhile kind of building in, to our tech stack. So, I know I gave that advice, you know, about the work with the billion dollar company, you won’t always be able to do that, right? There always will be other, you know, tools that you’re gonna need. you like, if I look at our, you know, my day to day, I work with a tool called Supermetrics.
[00:18:56] Ben: Every single day of my, like every single day of [00:19:00] my career for the last eight years I’ve used Supermetrics, right? Like, I love this tool more than anything else in marketing. And I would always build that into my tech stack. Just that’s like a, you know, there’s always gonna be those types of, of businesses or of, of tools that you need.
[00:19:15] Ben: but if you’re gonna be investing heavily. If this is gonna be at the center of what you do, taking a chance on that new CRM that just launched, you know, three months ago and has some big, bold claims, like that’s, that’s a real, there’s a lot of, risk, involved in that. So I, I guess that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s the advice I would give.
[00:19:36] Ben: I, I just don’t like it. Um.
[00:19:40] Nital: It’s a bitter truth and I think you mostly get, get positive outcome if you, if you follow that. So I hear you all.
[00:19:48] Ben: Yeah.
[00:19:48] Nital: Great Ben. Another very interesting, and always debatable topic is omnichannel and bringing your message consistency. So what are the top [00:20:00] tips for maintaining cohesive message across multiple channel, like email, social, paid ads?
[00:20:08] Nital: I’m sure at web profit when you go, when you guys work majorly with e-commerce and DTC brands. Yeah. This becomes more challenging than any other industry because the consumer behavior is now distributed across so many different platforms. Yeah. And you get a purchase after so many different touch points.
[00:20:32] Nital: So how do you, how do you maintain that and what are the tips and suggestions you have? To
[00:20:38] Ben: keep that consistent. I mean, I think, I think the first thing I would say is that I’m a performance marketer and so the level to which I care is going to be driven a lot more by the brand than by myself. because the first thing, first and foremost, what I’m trying to do is grow businesses.
[00:20:55] Ben: And yeah, I definitely want consistency between our marketing. [00:21:00] I also wanna move fast and break things, and I know, you know, 90% there and faster is going to perform better than perfect and a month later. So, you know, I, like I, you know, I believe in this, because I also know how important brand is. But things are changing in this area a lot.
[00:21:19] Ben: Like look at the type of creative that performs. You know, right now it’s very hard to take that type of creative and necessarily even recreate it on other platforms in a way that would be consistent, right? So, so this is where I’m like. The consistency on, on the, in some areas. the messaging piece, like the opportunity there for me is much more about passing learnings between channels to, to iterate and get better.
[00:21:45] Ben: and I think this is where, you know, so we, at Web Profits, we’ve recently developed, a new, analytics platform measuring meta adss, performance. in order for us to actually dig down into the detail of. All [00:22:00] of the different elements of our messaging to know in real time what’s performing so that we can actually use those insights across all of our other marketing and then iterate quickly within, within meta.
[00:22:10] Ben: So I think that’s like for me, that’s where I. When I’m allowed to. I’m much more focused there than on the consistency side. Now that being said, my clients want a consistent message, a consistent brand, and this is important to them for all other reasons that are outside of my area of expertise. And one thing that I’ve found that actually is just really simple and effective is to do an overall, like especially if we’re running, if we’re talking about like one promotion or.
[00:22:40] Ben: A product launch or a campaign or you know, or this is how we’re gonna run our product ads through the year, or our carousel, whatever the case may be, is to get buy into an overarching design direction. So just say, here, we’re gonna, this is our Black Friday sale. Here’s the overall design direction that’s gonna inform everything [00:23:00] that we do across, you know, across email, across, our ads, across, you know, ideally, you know, our point of sale in store, if you’re a retail brand, all of those different pieces, and have all the conversations about that first, right?
[00:23:13] Ben: The worst thing you can do is get into the point where you’re developing all the assets. Then be getting the feedback about, you know, I don’t really like the way that the background of this one, you know, is against the, the, the text or whatever, you know, all these types of things. Have those conversations first, get everyone on the same, on the same page that you can then just deliver within that framework.
[00:23:36] Ben: And it’s not always possible, but when it is, I, I think that’s probably the, the simplest way that, that we’ve been able to, to do it. And then I guess, you know, if you’re working across multiple agencies. One agency needs to be accountable. unless you have like the capability in-house to project manage effectively, you know, on the brand, you know, on the brand side yourself.
[00:23:56] Ben: Like one agency needs to be accountable for delivery of kind of, you know, the, the [00:24:00] whole, the whole framework. otherwise you’ll just be all over the place. and that’s, we’ve all been there.
[00:24:06] Nital: Okay. No thanks. Thanks. Great. Great advice and great insight. Okay, the next one I would love to know, things around balancing customer acquisition and retention, right?
[00:24:18] Nital: You, you often talk on LinkedIn about importance of getting the basics right, like balancing the customer acquisition with delivering the real value. To your existing customer as well. Mm-hmm. So in your experience scaling brands at Web Profit, how do you keep the balance between acquisition and retention and what’s your approach ensuring Lifecycle marketing stays strong.
[00:24:44] Nital: Even when your focus is on fast growth, because in my few recent interaction with current global economic situation, right, tighter budget businesses been [00:25:00] conservative on their spend in marketing.
[00:25:03] Ben: Yeah, a lot more
[00:25:03] Nital: focus.
[00:25:07] Nital: Retention and nurture of your existing customer base, not just focus on acquisition, while acquisition is still important for fast growing business. Yeah. So in your experience, what are your suggestions on balancing these two? Good.
[00:25:23] Ben: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s, again, this probably goes to where we started is like where you are in your growth is a, is a big driver of the answer to the question.
[00:25:34] Ben: I would say though it may not be as, it’s not just like a linear, you focus on retention more the more you grow. Yeah. The first thing you focus on is that Right? So like actually having product market fit, actually having something that people wanna buy, that there’s a demand in market for that. When they get your product, they’re happy and they’re leaving good reviews.
[00:25:57] Ben: That’s the table stakes here, right? Like if you don’t have [00:26:00] that, anything that we’ve talked about today does not matter, right? like you need a great product that people want, that you can communicate well to the market and that you can also deliver a good experience around. So that’s actually the foundation of everything we’re talking about.
[00:26:14] Ben: Once you have that. You can go do good marketing, right? And then you can start to focus on, and then your problem is 100% customer acquisition, acquisition, and customer acquisition is, you know, we say this to every business. If you’re in e-commerce primarily. Customer acquisition is gonna be through meta.
[00:26:31] Ben: If you’re in, if you’re a customer acquisition, like lead gen, type business, your customer acquisition is probably gonna be through Google, primarily your growth channel. So you should be 80% focused on getting that right. You know, and like, so you will be, you know, heavily indexed towards the customer acquisition side.
[00:26:50] Ben: There’s a tipping point and I don’t think it’s just a revenue number for every business because like what that tipping point in terms of when you start to look at retention in a different [00:27:00] way, you know it’s gonna look different for a. A mattress company that has an eight year lifecycle, you know, versus a supplement company that has, you know, a month, a lifecycle, right?
[00:27:11] Ben: So like, but there’s a point where customer acquisition is bringing you to a point where you have enough customers that actually an increase in. So you can, but this is great. Like you can look at this number, you can look at the data, you can model it. This is also going back to, to what we were talking about with, CBO, like Valentine Radu, and Omnicon Convert.
[00:27:31] Ben: Have a model that like, and a spreadsheet that any business can build out basically. And what this is, is basically taking your average order value, your conversion rate, your customers, all the different metrics that actually. Our levers for growth and using those to say, if we increase your average order value by 10%.
[00:27:50] Ben: How much more revenue do you get? And if the answer to that is a thousand dollars more revenue, then that’s probably not gonna be something that you’re ready to go [00:28:00] all in on because it’s not gonna have the big impact. But when a 10% increase in your average order value is all of a sudden driving 50, 60, 70, $80,000 a month, more revenue through your business.
[00:28:12] Ben: Then you can see, oh, okay, well let’s look what can we do there? And then you can get your retention rate a little bit lower or you know, a little bit higher, and then all of a sudden that has incremental, you know, real growth. Right? And so like, it’s about being able to model those numbers, because if you understand those dynamics, then it’ll become very clear.
[00:28:30] Ben: When retention becomes a place that has a lot of upside and it’s all gonna be about, you know, if you’re on the acquisition side, what are the metrics that you can, that you can impact to drive growth? My cost per click. My conversion rate, you know, I mean basically it’s your, it’s your cost per click and your conversion rate.
[00:28:47] Ben: Fundamentally, when you’re on the, on the retention side, it’s average order value, it’s return rate, it’s retention rate. And you know, and, and I mean, and to some degree conversion rate is what,
[00:28:59] Nital: and overall [00:29:00] LT v like the lifetime.
[00:29:01] Ben: Exactly. And overall the, the di all the metrics that go into lifetime value.
[00:29:05] Ben: Exactly. Yeah. And so like when you model this, and every e-commerce business can model this, like the numbers are all just top line numbers that you have. It just becomes very clear, like retention now is something that, like, investing here will have a big upside for us. And you’re never gonna stop investing in acquisition, right?
[00:29:22] Ben: Like that’s an engine. And if you’re not feeding that engine, then you know, you, you, you’ll slowly, decline. you know, that, that, I think that’s just kind of. The reality of e-commerce, at least. and probably digi, you know, businesses that are, that are, you know, rely on digital for growth. Like if you, if you grow through community or you grow through other ways that you’re building more of a moat around your business.
[00:29:47] Ben: Like you could, you may have ways that you could look to move away from having an acquisition, you know, like a consistent acquisition engine. But for most businesses, it’s really not realistic. So it’s, it will, it will always be about. As we grow, coming more [00:30:00] onto the retention side, maybe not pulling back as much on acquisition realistically as, as one might hope.
[00:30:06] Nital: Yeah. Well, interesting. Interesting. Great. Moving on, I know that web profit has been always very focused towards. Funnel optimization and the journey of a customer. Yeah. So what’s, so, in your observation, what are the common, most common mistakes brand make towards mid to lower funnel stages? Yeah.
[00:30:29] Nital: Where the actual conversion or the probability of conversion is very, very crucial.
[00:30:35] Ben: I think the mistake is actually that the funnel is dead. The funnel was a really good model for us for many, many years. I mean, I, over my 11 years at Web Profits, I cannot, I, I mean, I’m sure I’ve had hundreds of presentations that I’ve delivered.
[00:30:52] Ben: You know, with a funnel model and what we’re gonna be doing at each stage of that funnel, and some of those strategies have delivered dramatic results. so [00:31:00] like that is something that I think was a really strong model for us to be thinking through. but I don’t think it really fits the approach to marketing that works right now.
[00:31:09] Ben: I mean, first and foremost. The best targeting on meta right now for any ad you’re running is broad targeting, right? I think most marketers probably know that at this point. and so everything that we were talking about two, three years ago in terms of targeting just isn’t the case anymore. Broad targeting is what works best and creative is how you target, you target through actually the messaging and the creative that you develop.
[00:31:32] Ben: And what that means is. You just want to be like developing the best possible creative that talks to your customers directly about your product or service in a way that communicates the value of your business and your USPS and what you do. I mean, like it is that fundamental, but you have to do that exceptionally at the best, you know, some of the best possible.
[00:31:54] Ben: Like the best creative is the only thing that matters. and I think it’s just like trying to think of, is [00:32:00] this awareness creative? You know, is this conversion, creative is the wrong way of thinking about it. Like, we need to, we’re gonna have three second, we’re gonna have, you know, a half a second to get people to convince people to even watch our ad.
[00:32:12] Ben: We’re gonna have three seconds to even convince them to finish, you know, to even like give it a chance. And then we’ve got a very small amount of time to get them to. You know, move into the, you know, consideration to, to take whatever action we want, right? And so like, that just needs to be awesome. Like, and, and like, there’s, like there’s frameworks for it.
[00:32:35] Ben: There’s different, you know, hooks and, and, and types of promotions and all these different things that we use. But even within all of that, and I think this is something that, that gets lost so easily within all the frameworks and the structure. Individually, every single piece of creative that we’re talking about just needs to be awesome and like speak to your products really well and speak to the customers really well.
[00:32:54] Ben: ’cause that’s all that matters. It’s, it’s actually all that matters. And so I really have stopped thinking about, [00:33:00] and I guess the other thing that I’ve seen is we’ve done so much of what you might call lower funnel advertising that has driven dramatic brand growth. I also think we should be thinking inverted backup than what we would’ve called that funnel as well.
[00:33:14] Ben: That what we do at the bottom of the funnel actually has a lot of the is, is, is impacting the goals that we would’ve set at the top. And so, I mean, that’s exciting because we kind of need, we can kind of free ourselves from, you know, that side and just get down to understanding our customers and finding ways to really, you know, communicate well with them.
[00:33:35] Ben: Based on what we know. And, and then you can kind of, and the last thing I’d say here is then you can almost think of the funnel as the customers, right? Mm-hmm. So you may have a certain customer segment that is very high intent because they have, you know, one of your USPS really speaks to them. And so the type of ads that you can develop for that.
[00:33:53] Ben: For that group would be very different than the type of ads for another customer set that actually maybe is just category aware, [00:34:00] but doesn’t have as strong, right? So like it isn’t to say that you aren’t thinking about, you know, how do I move them through a customer journey. But that’s all much more based on your understanding of the customers than it is this, you know, this formula.
[00:34:14] Ben: so yeah, it’s, anyway, that’s been a journey as well, right? Like we’re all kind of figuring this out, but, well,
[00:34:21] Nital: I think, I think it’s, it’s more about. Different stages of the journey. Intents are different.
[00:34:27] Ben: Yeah.
[00:34:27] Nital: slightly there is a variations with the persona in, in that problem statement or, or the need they hold.
[00:34:34] Nital: So, yes, I, I hear you out like it’s very important to. Not just look at that entire funnel as one one funnel flow. It’s about segmenting that as well based on Yeah, I think, I think that’s
[00:34:49] Ben: right. Like I think that’s a way you could look at it, that that would, you know, I mean like every audience segment to some degree does have a funnel or a journey that they, you know, that they are on.[00:35:00]
[00:35:00] Ben: Um. The main thing is, I, I, I guess one thing, and this might be a separate conversation, is like, I also am trying to, it is weird with an e-commerce to say this, but I’m also, I try to really effectively separate marketing and sales because the things that actually impact sales are a whole other set of factors from the things that impact, marketing.
[00:35:21] Ben: And so, you know, I, I, I guess I’m just, you know, on when I’m developing creative and what we’re. To do there, there I’m not necessarily saying I, oh, and this creative needs to do everything right. Like this creative needs to achieve a very specific marketing goal that we have. and then we have a whole ecosystem that is involved in driving the sales.
[00:35:42] Ben: Yes. side of that. And, and I think that’s also just kind of, you know, where a lot of times these funnel diagrams. Only have marketing channels in it. They only have, you know, meta Google email in them and they’re not talking about, you know, kind of actually how the [00:36:00] consumer is interacting with the website or, or the, you know, the broader, you know, the reviews, the broader marketing ecosystem.
[00:36:06] Nital: Very true, very true. Then I think another one on attribution, we, we. So in your LinkedIn podcast, and overall, even on your LinkedIn post as well, you have shared insights on navigation complex customer journey and measuring campaign performance.
[00:36:28] Ben: Yeah.
[00:36:28] Nital: How can a audience listening, today improve their attribution model to capture their multi-touch and omni-channel interaction?
[00:36:39] Nital: Are there any practical framework or any suggestions for them to build more accurate customer attribution system?
[00:36:48] Ben: It’s hard. I’ll, I’ll start there. You know, and, and I guess it, again, it does depend on the ecosystem that you’re, that you’re talking about. You know, we have a number of clients that have tv.
[00:36:59] Ben: [00:37:00] Ads, you know, that, that they run and trying to build an attribution model that includes the TV ads. Side note, I had a business, this is about five years ago, that what they decided to do was they actually set up their Google Analytics platform for five. They actually were to upload the times that they ran their TV ads, and then within analytics, five minutes during and after any ad it would just get attributed to the tv.
[00:37:25] Ben: It’s a terrible approach. It doesn’t make any sense actually, when you think about it, but this is what people do to try to figure out how to do this, this type of attribution. It’s really hard, and I think the worst thing you can do is try to get it perfect because you’ll just run around in circles and not, and not get anywhere again.
[00:37:41] Ben: I mean, I. It depends on, it depends on if you are a direct to consumer brand, you, you’re not in retail. Mm-hmm. You’re not doing a big partnership play, you’re not doing tv. You don’t have above the line. You should have a really clear visibility. I. Of pretty much everything impacting your growth, [00:38:00] you know, and, and that that’s up to, and including, you know, what’s going on.
[00:38:04] Ben: Just, you know, in, you know, people are talking about with your brand what’s being shared organically. You know, all the different things that could be actually driving your growth. And you should be able to have a pretty good feel for it and not just feel for it. Excuse me. Data around, especially if you have an attribution tool, data that can showcase you know, where, you know, where, where you’re, you’re, you’re having driving performance and how they’re working together.
[00:38:26] Ben: And that should help you to be able to make good decisions. Most businesses, it’s not that clean, especially once you re reach a certain point, you know, maybe you’re gonna wholesale a little bit through one store or another. Maybe, you know, all, all of a sudden your sales channels will start to get more complicated.
[00:38:42] Ben: And so as that happens, then you need to start. First of all, modeling, and I think modeling does not need to be, we’re spending a hundred thousand dollars on a consulting project with a mixed marketing model. You know, all of these different pieces. Modeling can be just saying ballpark. We [00:39:00] assume that probably in retail we’re getting a 0.5% conversion rate on traffic that’s going over there.
[00:39:05] Ben: So we can make some assumptions and let’s see if we can get within 10% of what the numbers would be. We can still make some good decisions with that kind of visibility, right? So like that’s where, again, trying to be perfect is gonna hold you back. But having even just a ballpark idea of how the different channels work together can really help to, to help make the right decisions.
[00:39:27] Ben: Then I guess I would say trust and good marketing. So there’s a lot of times when we know we don’t have visibility on the end result, right? So, like, I worked, I worked in baby formula marketing for about seven years. We were, we grew, the business Bellamy Organic from about 25 million. I. To a one and a half billion dollar acquisition over a seven year period.
[00:39:47] Ben: It’s one of the most, incredible growth experiences that I’ve had in my career. And I got to lead all of the marketing, you know, performance side on the agency side for it. And in baby formula, first of all, I mean, first of all, you actually can’t market [00:40:00] baby formula. The World Health Organization has very clear guidelines.
[00:40:04] Ben: You can never talk about the product. Keep that aside. That’s a whole challenge in and of itself. But also like people don’t buy baby formula online. You buy baby formula at the grocery store. Grocery store. So all the marketing that, that this brand Bellamy’s Organic did through, was through digital.
[00:40:18] Ben: Like literally all their growth was through digital. Eventually they did a little bit of tv, but we grow, grew the business through digital without visibility on the final sales channel because we knew 95% are gonna go through retail. We what? We did everything that we could to find ways to connect the data, to find ways to create an attribution.
[00:40:38] Ben: But we also just had to trust in good marketing. And I think there’s a way that, you know, we can kind of convince ourselves if we don’t have the data not to trust in what we know. If you’ve done something and it’s worked within a model. Where we do have the data and then you’re going into a model where, you know, you won’t have the data at the end.
[00:40:56] Ben: You still can trust in what you know. And I think that’s [00:41:00] also just like where we can kind of un, you know, get unstuck a bit when we’re in these situations. so yeah, that, that’s my best advice in a tough, you know, a tough challenge.
[00:41:09] Nital: Yeah. Yeah. No. Amazing. so, Ben, last question. you have been amazing instrumental, giving great insight.
[00:41:18] Nital: Last question, very specific to upcoming new e-commerce businesses who are looking to scale. so you guys have profits, growth playbook, but it’s, I can correlate. Those brands who has a good sizable budget there, there are ways, for them to reach up to the larger scales growing beyond 1 million a month.
[00:41:42] Ben: Yeah.
[00:41:42] Nital: Are there any specific strategy or quick wins for any upcoming brands who are willing to scale but with smaller budget? Yeah, how they can leverage web profit’s, growth, marketing playbook, but still get a good faster results.
[00:41:57] Ben: A hundred percent. So I think first and [00:42:00] foremost what we talked about, like the product market fit.
[00:42:02] Ben: Like if you’re not sure if you have a product that people are, you know, want to buy, if you’re not, if you don’t have something that actually works yet, that’s all that matters, right? So like, I wouldn’t say that you’re ready to even be talking about marketing, okay? Mm-hmm. So like, make sure you’re at that phase and then we’re talking about.
[00:42:19] Ben: You know, scaling and growing when you, once you have that, this is the way that I look at it and it is marketing and sales. First of all, there’s the elements of sales in e-commerce that you just need to have, right? You know, there’s a, there’s a, an approach to PDP, your product detail pages on your website.
[00:42:37] Ben: That needs to be right. It needs to have reviews, it needs to have all these different elements. Get that right. You need to have certain email sequences set up. That could be your, your abandoned card sequence, your post-purchase flow. You need to have a welcome offer. There’s all these fundamentals of e-commerce sales that you do not want to be thinking about while you’re trying to grow.
[00:42:58] Ben: Get those fundamentals set [00:43:00] up so that you can have all your focus on finding new customers and feeding them into something that is at least. 80% optimized for performance, right? So like, do that, all right. Get the fundamentals right. And that does include having a way of measuring at the, what we started with, measuring and reporting on your performance.
[00:43:18] Ben: So that as you’re investing, you have very clear idea of what, you know, of the impact that you’re having. Once you have that, spend all your time getting meta, right? Meta ads was how you’ll scale your business in e-commerce if you’re, I mean, unless you have a really good idea that is, that is unique to your business, right?
[00:43:38] Ben: And that does exist. There are businesses that say there’s a whole community out there that I could go find a way to get in with my products and there’s a whole, you know, I can scale up differently, right? Like. And I love those opportunities. And like if you are one of those businesses, you know that, right?
[00:43:53] Ben: So don’t you know thi this isn’t, this doesn’t preclude that, but for most e-commerce businesses, all of your [00:44:00] potential customers on Meta, that’s Facebook and Instagram, they’re all there. And it is the absolute best platform for. Generating demand for a product across all of marketing. I mean across, but you know, beyond tv, beyond anything.
[00:44:15] Ben: Meta Ads is where you can generate demand for a product, go out and find customers and get them interested in buying your product and getting that right is the whole game. Because if you can get that right and you can build something that you can actually just put more marketing investment into, and it’s bringing more customers in.
[00:44:34] Ben: Then you’re growing, then all of a sudden you’re unlocking, that’s the whole next phase. And then you’re unlocking, you know, all the conversations about retention and all those other pieces. But like that could be, you know, some business, you could spend two years there because that’s, it’s really hard, right?
[00:44:50] Ben: Like there’s, it’s very competitive. There’s a lot of businesses out there offering very similar things. So, you know, this could be something you get right relatively quickly. It could be something that takes quite a long [00:45:00] time. But if you haven’t gotten meta right. Like, that’s kind of all that matters.
[00:45:05] Ben: There isn’t something else that you can go to. Somebody may come and say, Hey, let’s go try TikTok. Well, you know, if you haven’t been able to get meta right, then what makes you think you’re gonna get a platform that’s even harder to scale? Yeah. right. You know, unless you have a product that’s specifically focused on a, you know, an audience that’s there.
[00:45:22] Ben: Right. So, so that’s it. I mean, for me it’s like keep things simple. Focus as much as possible. Get the fundamentals right. And then you need to just be focused on, on how you can get meta ads to perform. because if you get that right, then you have a machine, then you have this marketing acquisition machine that you can really work with to unlock a ton of other, opportunities.
[00:45:43] Nital: Great. Great. Ben, really, really appreciate your time today. A. I’m sure it’s gonna be instrumental to lot of e-commerce DDC brand who are willing to and in this competitive landscape [00:46:00] and still a mystery attribution and many other aspects are still unclear to a lot of businesses who are willing to scale through that journey.
[00:46:11] Nital: So, great, great insights. Really appreciate your time. Thanks a lot. Have a good one. And stay in touch.
[00:46:17] Ben: Yeah, you too. Thanks so much. This has been awesome, man. I’m looking forward to doing it again.
[00:46:21] Nital: Yep. Perfect. Thanks. Bye for now.