Author: Show Runner

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Episode 89: Sustainable Analytics, with Jason Thompson

What does it mean to be doing analytics right? It doesn’t mean only that a company’s analysts are being accurate, it has to do with how our company makes decisions. The data guiding those decisions doesn’t just spring up out of nowhere, there’s got to be a functional team analyzing it. What’s the composition of that team? What kind of process do they follow? Do outsourced partners get involved? What technology is used? Leaders that don’t put enough thought into this can burn through both people and budgets, and their organizations never become data-driven like they’d hoped. To borrow a term from environmentalists, their analytics function was unsustainable.

Jason Thompson thought he’d grow up to be a geologist. By college though, he chose to go into Information Systems and came out of college to work at the once-mighty Novell. Over the course of several years, Novell shrank and then laid off his group. He switched to implementing Omniture web analytics for various companies; which showed him both the highs and lows of the consulting firm model. He then went to a brand with a popular web-based business, which caused him to question the value analytics really offered an organization. While there he met coworker Hila Dehan. They started imagining what analytics done right would look like and in March 2013 they started their own analytics shop 33 Sticks. 

There’s more to the story of them working together, such as how they came up with their company’s name, but I’ll let him tell you that. 

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

5 Analytics sub-disciplines
Architecture & Implementation
Tag Management & Data Layer
Reporting
Analysis & Insights
Optimization

Jason’s LinkedIn profile and Twitter profile

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Episode 88: Getting Marketing Projects Funded, with Kevin Dieny

When you want to improve some part of your marketing. You quickly start thinking about how you’re going to get your boss to agree to it. It’s not the easiest thing, but it is possible. 

And I know this because our guest today has done it many times. In his own words, Kevin Dieny is a true marketing nerd who  works in the marketing team at CallSource. I met him at a national marketing event where he gave a presentation about justifying the Money needed for Marketing Projects. This is one of his passions, along with Paid Search, Marketing Analytics and in particular, using data to show ROI. 

He holds a Bachelor’s degree from California State & an MBA from University of Redlands. When not working, Kevin likes wrestling with his four kids, loves cooking, and enjoys everything Batman. He is also the host of Close the Loop, which is a podcast designed specifically for small and medium businesses who are trying to improve their marketing.

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Episode Reboot. 

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Episode 87: How to resource marketing amid the Great Reset, with Kelly Rusk

The pandemic changed much in our world, and though some routines will subside, one change that’s going to remain with us is work from home. It was even clear the year after COVID hit that people were reevaluating going into an office. Pundits like Adam Grant said many were questioning their jobs as a whole. As he put it in a WSJ article, “the taste of freedom left us hungry for more.” Meaning  more than the flexibility to choose what K-Cup flavour of coffee on hand in the lunchroom. Grant goes much further, saying this “Flexibility is more than choosing the place where you work. It’s having freedom to decide your purpose, your people, and your priorities.”

That’s all fine and good, but how does an employer make this work? How do those of us responsible give rank and file marketers this flexibility while still getting work done?

My guest today has great insights into how marketing leaders can deal with all this. She’s witnessed first-hand the changes that Covid has brought to the marketing function. She has opinions on what will and what won’t work in the future.

Kelly Rusk is a marketing consultant who supports mid-sized companies trying to grow their marketing and PR capabilities. The first few years of her career she worked for Ottawa-based technologies companies as a marketing and communications pro. Then she went to the agency side for a decade, finishing with the full-service firm Banfield as digital director and partner. Kelly is always contributing to her profession, holding board positions with IABC and Girl Geek Dinners and being an Instructor in the Digital Marketing Certificate Program at the University of Ottawa. 

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

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Episode 86: Video Ads with Cory Henke

You can break down advertising by the medium of communication, and since we all started with text ads, we’re comfortable with that format. We’ve also become comfortable with image ads. But there’s one format that can throw a lot of us – video. Of course, the production cost put into videos can vary wildly, and ad platforms like youtube have a huge number of options and nuances to know, but the one thing all video has in common is it makes a human to human connection that other media formats cannot hold a candle to.

To demystify this field, we’re talking with the founder of Variable.media

One of the nicest people you’ll ever meet in the PPC industry

He has appeared on Edge of the Web and the Inbound Success podcasts. He has also spoken at HeroConf, A4, SMX, IIeX and many regional digital marketing events on three different continents.

He got his degree from California Lutheran, where he also distinguished himself as a walk-on for the basketball squad.

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Episode 85: Growing Paid Media to Enterprise-size, with Julia Vyse

We know what our paid media marketing looks like within the walls of organizations of our size. We could be talking about monthly spends of $1,000, $10,000 or maybe $50,000. But what does it look like when it grows to enterprise-size, with budgets of $100,000 or even millions per month? You start seeing media buys that act in concert. Known as omni-channel marketing, the consumer receives messages from all sides. This is only one of the hat techniques that can be used. I have the perfect guest to tell us what it’s like  when you are working with scale.

So about my guest. Around 2014 I stumbled on something the Pay-Per-Click community did on twitter every week. It was a lunchhour discussion called PPCChat and at that time I didn’t know anyone else who worked in PPC. That was when I met Julia Vyse in the Twitter chat, although she’d been airing her views there for 5 years before I came along. In my opinion, she is one of the OG digital marketers on Twitter. 

But that’s not all she’s been up to since growing up in Canada’s Capital Region. She started working for marketing agencies, first in Montreal in la belle province of Quebec. Now she lives in BC with her jazz-playing husband and cat in tow. 

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

Episode Reboot.

Try making up a rubric for the different objectives you aim to hit with your campaigns.