Category: Podcast

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Episode 95: New database technology paradigm, with Chris McLellan

Big Data has a problem. It’s not just its bigness; it’s the rigidity of the databases that hold and that force us to make data copies. Resulting problems, from privacy to fidelity loss, are so severe, we should revisit the first principles of how databases are built. Let’s be honest, if we could build our whole data infrastructure over again, would we do it differently? 

Today’s guest says we would have built data like a network. Thankfully, next-generation technology will allow us to store data in this new way while still making use of old-style databases.   

My guest is Chris McLellan. He splits his time between the nonprofit Data Collaboration Alliance, and Cinchy, the leader in enterprise data fabric technology. Coming out of Bishops University with a degree in Political Science, his career has included stints at VarageSale, and Lyft, as well as startups like Flexday and ChangeJar. He also created the go-to-market strategy for Hailo, the taxi network of 35,000 licensed drivers. 

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Episode 94: Winning People’s Buy-in by Telling Stories, with Amy Hebdon

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. You’ve taken on a marketing initiative that is finally going somewhere, and it’s now time for management to see what you’ve done and approve more funds, or give you props for  all your hard work. But on presenting your data, you’re only met with blank stares or nit-picking centred around how you put your data together. 

What’s going wrong when this happens? It’s probably that your audience couldn’t boil it down into something that makes sense to them. The universal structure that all of us use to do this is stories.  

My guest uses stories to present the performance of her marketing programs. It’s her contention that using a story-like framework works to your advantage when presenting data. Amy Hebdon has managed Google Ads Since 2004, working her way through at least a half dozen agencies.  In 2017, she and her husband James co-founded Paid Search Magic, which provides coaching, consulting, audits, reporting, and courses for those who want to get better at search engine marketing. She has lived in a handful of states and two central American countries, and she joined us today from the new “Home-base” which is in Tennessee. 

Fun Fact: she once worked for a man (named Mr. Schneer) who was in charge of the company website and didn’t know how to use the internet (he asked which was the “dot” key in typing “dotcom”)

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P-A-S framework:

  1. Problem
  2. Agitate
  3. Solution

Episode Reboot. 

Frame your statistics in a way that illustrates the impact on what your audience cares about.

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Episode 93: Visualizing & Making Data Valuable, with Eric Boissonneault

In its raw form, data’s not worth much. If refined and put together with other data, it can be worth a lot. Here are well-known brands that built their value by creating a useful visual experience out of user-generated data:

  • Notable Examples:
    • Glassdoor
    • Nest
    • Zapier
    • Mint
    • Robinhood
    • Flipboard
    • Ancestry
    • GoodReads

This episode’s guest will help us see what is possible once you have data in your hands. Eric Boissonneault grew up loving numbers, but it wasn’t until he saw a Hollywood movie about card players at age 16, that he knew how he would apply his skill. He taught himself poker and methodically played this ‘game of chance’ so well that He became a professional player through his years at University du Quebec à Montreal and beyond. 

After cashing his poker chips in, he wanted to show the business world how they could look at the data they have on-hand as the basis for decisions. In 2020 he founded data consulting company Systematik to help businesses untangle, collect, visualize and understand their data.

Listen in this episode for Eric’s explanation of how you can put a unique transformation or twist on the data you already have, and even make an application that monetizes the data. 

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How fast will you hit Google Sheets 5-million cell limit? If you have a spreadsheet with 5 tabs and each tab fills columns A to CW, and there is 10000 rows of data in each tab. It happens faster than you think.

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Episode 92: Looking at choice…from all sides, with Oz Gurtuna

Marketers help buyers make choices. Marketers must also make choices. No matter who  we are, we inevitably must make choices. Join this special conversation about how tools can be incorporated into decision-making to help out the person who’s on the hot seat. 

Oz Gurtuna has a Bachelors from Boğaziçi University, a Masters from International Space University and a Ph.D. from Concordia University. He has worked in sectors as diverse as space, solar energy and web development. Coming to his current role as an agency owner who lives in Montreal Canada. 

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Oz’s ventures:

Episode Reboot. 

Try Plumfind’s tool to help you choose your marketing platform(s) – it’s ungated for unlimited use

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Episode 91: What first party data can tell you about your Leads, with Wart Fransen

Disclaimer: Technology vendors that come on the show are not sponsors or affiliates. They’re invited on the podcast to give a broader perspective.

There is still a good deal of information that prospects give you when visiting your site.

If you use this information in the right way, instead of annoying them, you may actually provide an experience that tailors how they’re treated in such a way that may pleasantly surprise them. 

We look in our analytics at all top-line numbers for activities , but not all that often do we drill down to the individual level. This is where we can learn about how our site is or isn’t working for a particular user. 

Wart Fransen is a longtime web programmer and entrepreneur. Freelancing in his first few years after school, he found himself  helping multinationals with their websites, including finding out what they could about who was on them. Seeing company after company wanting the same thing, he set out to build several analytics products to fill these needs. In 2014 he co-founded Leadboxer, a tool that examines a website’s visitors and aims to give insights about if they are ready-to-buy.

Beyond his fascination with technology, Wart’s a father of two and a strong proponent of causes like fighting the disinformation surrounding the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He spoke to me from his home-office near Amsterdam, the Netherlands.   

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