Author: Show Runner

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Episode 119: Digital Marketing Analytics, with Kevin Hartman

As Google’s Chief Analytics Evangelist, Kevin Hartman is responsible for leading the design, implementation, and evolution of programs and approaches that help businesses around the world realize the opportunities presented by data. 

Kevin has a proven track record of building large, global, high-functioning analytics organizations from scratch and deep experience in leading large profit & loss centers and cross-functional teams, identifying business opportunities, and creating effective marketing programs. He has also written “Digital Marketing Analytics: In Theory And In Practice” which is now in its second edition.

Kevin’s decades of work in the digital analytics space, with most of that time spent leading large analytics teams at a major global advertising agency and Google. He has taught analytics for nearly 10 years at Universities near to his home, such as The University of Chicago, The University of Notre Dame, and The University of Illinois.

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

Episode Reboot:

look into Kevin’s course on ELVTR

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Episode 118: Converted, with Neil Hoyne

Converted, Neil Hoyne

In digital marketing, we’re all striving to do what works. Yet whether we’re in-house or at an agency, we’re basing our definition of what works on a small sample size. Honestly, none of us can zoom out far enough to the general traits of successful marketing. That is, unless you’re someone who’s tasked with measuring marketing data at the organization with the single-largest quantity of it on the planet. 

My guest has gained a lot of insight on successful sellers in his role as Google’s Chief Measurement Strategist, where he has led over 2,500 engagements with the world’s biggest advertisers. He is a Senior Fellow at Wharton and holds degrees from Purdue University and UCLA. And in his book “Converted: The Data-Driven Way to Win Customers’ Hearts” the difference (I’m simplifying here) is that the  best ones humanize their funnels for their buyers. 

“Wait,” you say, “we already know  how to treat people nicely, we’ve known how to do that since humans have been around. You’re right, yet it’s surprising how we lose the human element is when we move commercial interactions online. My guest wants us to learn – or more correctly, relearn how to make our marketing more human. 

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

Episode Reboot

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Episode 117: Marketing Artificial Intelligence, with Paul Roetzer

Marketing Artificial Intelligence

Paul Roetzer graduated with a journalism degree from the E.W. Scripps School at Ohio University and a few years afterwards he founded Ready North (formerly PR 20/20). In 2016 he founded the Marketing AI Institute. The idea for such an organization came from what Paul saw when AI began impacting his agency. He thought the only way marketers like him could work alongside AI would be by better understanding its capabilities. 

Part of their vision of educating marketers is through an annual event, and in 2019 they held their inaugural Marketing AI Conference. MAICON was on pause during lockdowns, but it came back in 2022.

In 2022, He and co-author Mike Kaput published the book we’re talking about, Marketing Artificial Intelligence. The book draws on years of research and dozens of interviews with AI marketers, executives, engineers, and entrepreneurs. He has also authored The Marketing Performance Blueprint (2014) and The Marketing Agency Blueprint (2012). Through his podcast and as a conference speaker, Paul makes AI approachable and actionable for marketers. 

He and his family live in Cleveland, Ohio. 

People, Products and Concepts in the Show:

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Episode 116: Merging GA4 with all your Marketing Data

Merging GA4 with all your marketing data

In this episode I’m giving you the process that’s used in my agency’s work to get B2B companies onto Google’s full analytics stack. This episode is split into two parts.

Installing GA4 (from 1:30 to 10:45) – For the first third of this episode, I go through the steps that companies should follow to install GA4, including setting up streams, conversions and links to Google Ads accounts.

Installing Google and third party components for consolidated analysis and visualization of your marketing data (listen for melody at 10:45 to end) – the remaining time roams through the rest of the tools that give a complete picture of your B2B funnel.

People, products & concepts mentioned in episode:

Scott Kelley

Jim Sterne

Jim Cain

David Krevitt

You may also be interested in this other reporting-related solocast:

How Dashboards Make the Whole Funnel Work, from podcast episode 9

Episode Reboot:

Another path for completing this process is to implement them together with peers in a workshop environment.  By the end of the session, you leave ready to make reports leveraging all your company’s marketing data. I am leading several two-day workshops in several Eastern states and provinces. To find out more, visit https://gafast4ward.com

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Episode 115: Optimizing experiences that convert, with Alisha Conlin-Hurd

The funnel is dead. Long live the Persuasion Experience. That’s the view of my guest today. 

Alisha Conlin Hurd did something that’s rare for people  in their 20s by turning a side hustle into an agency that she co-founded. Their firm,  Persuasion Experience, works on marketing brands that require funnels  for lead generation, SaaS, and consumer branding.

She shares experiences learned working for every kind of brand, from emergency plumbers and home builders, to Brazilian butt lifts and porn addiction counselors.

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

You may also be interested in past Funnel Reboot episodes related to this topic:

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Episode 114: Why Privacy Is Good For Marketing, with Jodi Daniels

We don’t have the right to retain our visitors’ information just because it’s possible on the internet. 

Complying with data privacy laws can be a confusing, stressful process. We help businesses embrace a new way of working with data, going beyond compliance to create a privacy-friendly strategy that builds trust with customers.

Jodi Daniels is a privacy consultant. She founded Red Clover Advisors in 2017, and through it, she assists companies to create privacy programs, build customer trust and achieve privacy law compliance. Jodi also serves as a Fractional Chief Privacy Officer to small and medium companies. Through frequent speaking appearances and her own podcast, she shares practical tips so companies can carrying on marketing, but in a way that’s compliant and ethical.

She holds a BBA and an MBA from Emory University, and lives with her family in Atlanta.

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

Episode Reboot.

Take the How Data Compliant is Your Business Quiz

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Episode 113: Website Survival, with Patrick Villemaire 

Designing Websites involves dealing with Domain Registrars, Hosting Providers, CMSs, Page templates and scripts that run forms. We haven’t even mentioned the things visitors see like text, images and audiovisual assets. It’s a lot. 

My guest has set out to take the complexity out of all this. Knowing that we learn best when we’re absorbed in a story, he rolled all his principles into a book geared for anyone who’s been handed the keys to a website or work with a web designer.  

Patrick Villemaire is the founder of Blue Eclipse Inc, a Canadian web agency. His passion is making the web a better place and he has been building websites for over 20 years.

Patrick is a graduate of McMaster University with a double major in Multimedia and Communications, and a minor in English. He lives in Ottawa with his wife, son and a barking dog. Outside of building websites, he likes to listen to music and play the occasional game of hockey.

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

Episode Reboot

Download this sample of the book, used with permission.

Website Survival Guide-promoDownload
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Episode 112: Owning the Story, with Melanie Coulson

People focus too much on posting content and not enough on asking what content they should post. We can easily get on a treadmill, writing about topic after topic. This results in treating everything as a fluff-piece, overlooking the power of content. And though this hyperactivity may look good on our status reports, and please the search engines, is that who really matters in this endeavour?  

I’m reminded of the movie Jurassic Park,  as financier John Hammond briefs mathematician Ian Malcolm on how they made the dinosaurs. Malcolm scolds him for tinkering with the building blocks of  life.

In the same way, we should think about the person consuming our content, pausing not only to ask if we can create a piece of content for them, but to ask if we should create it. 

Judging what content gets made is a time-honoured skill. News media and the publishing industry have formalized it into the role of the editor.  Today we’ll talk with someone with an editorial background, to learn how they think, so we can judge our content just like they do. 

My guest spent 16 years as senior-level journalist and editor at top Canadian newsrooms, such as The Globe and Mail, CBC.ca and the Ottawa Citizen. Melanie then directed the content for non-profits and organizations like Export Development Corporation. 

She’s happy to share what she’s learned about Digital Communications on the stage at TEDx, or as a lecturer at Carleton University, where she originally received her journalism degree. 

She has now moved into creating content under her own banner as Owner of Big Stride Media. She lives in the Ottawa suburb of Kanata, with her husband and two sons.

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

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Episode 111: Obviously Awesome, with April Dunford

There is a lot at stake when Companies develop some technological or physical product. But they face an equally high risk in getting the product positioning right. Weak positioning can mean the difference between success or failure.

When we don’t have our positioning nailed, it’s as if we’re talking to someone who doesn’t speak our language. And when they don’t acknowledge us, we repeat the same message even louder, as if that will get our point across. For those who remember John Cusack 80s films, you might be familiar with the movie Better Off Dead’s scene with a French foreign exchange student having dinner with her American host family.

Shouting doesn’t work when you’re using the wrong language, and it doesn’t work with the wrong positioning either. Luckily, someone has come up with the process for finding the best positioning for our product, saving our market from being subjected to random jargon. 

April Dunford was a startup executive, running sales, marketing and product at seven B2B technology startups over the course of 25 years. She is now a consultant who has had the privilege of bringing her positioning expertise to more than 100 companies. She codified her process in the 2019 book “Obviously Awesome,” which makes these ideas about positioning accessible to any company 

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

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Episode 110: Making Numbers Count, with Karla Starr

We humans are good at dealing with small numbers. So good, scientists have coined the word “Subitizing” to describe how we know small numbers as well as the back of our hand. The opposite is also true. We can’t differentiate big numbers. We know that 10 to the power of 10 is bigger than 10 to the power of 9, but how much bigger? Even on hearing that they differ by a factor of billions, we stumble to gauge that kind of scale. 

This puts those of us who present numbers in a pickle. Historical greats like Florence Nightingale had a terrible time presenting her data to government leaders. She broke with convention, framing everything in terms of soldiers not statistics, to argue how to prevent needless deaths in military hospitals.  The book in today’s show explains methods used by her & others to convey numbers that the brain has a hard time grasping.

Knowing tactics that worked for Florence,  should at the very least help us convince management to approve our marketing initiatives. 

Since graduating with a BA in Psychology and Philosophy from NYU, Karla Starr has written columns for Medium  and appeared on NPR and CBS Sunday Morning. She has also written for many magazines and won an award for the Best Science/Health story from the Society of Professional Journalists.

Her first book was Can You Learn to Be Lucky? Why Some People Seem to Win More Often Than Others. We’re talking today about the second book  Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers, with Chip Heath 

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show