Bye KPI. Hello, full-funnel dashboard, with Jacob Varghese

Episode 177: Bye KPI. Hello, full-funnel dashboard, with Jacob Varghese

Episode 177

Today’s talk is with a technology vendor, as a Disclaimer, please note that there’s no sponsor or affiliate relationship here. They’re simply on the show to give their perspective on our topic.

Today we’re going to talk about leveling up beyond KPIs to data that visualizes our full-funnel.

Comedian George Carlin knew how complicated things get with marketing technology. Or, you can imagine that when you hear him talk about stuff. This is the feeling we can get watching our Marketing technology evolve before our eyes. As our  software tools grow, so does the complexity. We’re beyond the point of logging into each of them to see individual KPIs. They have just become too specialized, and now we need meta-tools, crafted solely to connect with the specialized marketing systems, to extract and roll up streamlined data that we can analyze or see on a dashboard.

It’s against this backdrop that I invited today’s guest. 

Jacob Varghese hails from India, having graduated with a BA from University of Mumbai. Since moving to Canada in the 1990s, he’s focused on building marketing machines and crafting go-to-market strategies that yield repeatable, predictable, and scalable revenue. 

Following experiences as a senior executive at numerous  B2B SaaS outfits, he’s now the Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at AgencyAnalytics.  His passion for augmenting marketing and sales through data and automation comes through in the insights he shares on his blog.

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

Jacob on Twitter

Jacob is with AgencyAnalytics

Scott Brinker

Timestamps

0:00 – Intro

03:09 – Background on Jacob

09:33 – Getting to useful dashboards

26:14 – PSA

27:08 – Presenting data as a story

46:46 – Get in touch with Jacob

Visualizations that inspire action, with Lee Feinberg

Visualizations that inspire action, with Lee Feinberg

Episode 176

If your job involves numbers, you likely spend time graphically plotting it.  Whether it’s for analyzing or presenting, we usually toss our datasets into our visualization tool (mainly because it takes one button click) and start visualizing it. The problem here is that we’re making content before knowing our intent, we’re making the software master over us instead of being its master. 

Today’s guest says the visualizations that come from this won’t be intelligible, won’t make them motivated to act and won’t yield good decisions. However, he does passionately believe that when people who know how to read numbers, see it presented the right way, it’ll motivate them to make the right decisions. 

Lee Feinberg graduated from Cornell University with a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering. In 2012 founded a consultancy to help data leaders create armies of trustworthy decision makers.  He has worked in the analytics and data visualization fields for 20 years.

He is associated with Data Science programs at both NYU and the University of Chicago. When he’s not talking about visualization, Lee likes experiencing concerts – from the front row,  and also hanging out with his wife and kids.

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

Lee’s Website : https://www.DecisionViz.com 

Lee Feinberg – DecisionViz | LinkedIn

Edward Tufte

TV Show Shark Tank

Chapters:

0:00 – Intro
02:13 – What we’re doing wrong
33:46 – Lee’s framework
58:25 – Where to find Lee and visualization resources

Must-Reads for business in an all-digital world

Must-reads for business in an all-digital world

Episode 175

There were a lot of books  covered on the podcast in 2023 – 44% of this year’s shows were with book authors. Combined with previous years’ book episodes, we have reached the 60-book mark on this podcast – you can sift through them all on our site by clicking on the “books” category on the right-hand menu. 

But I’ve had the chance to read books outside of these, and found even more I’d like to feature. I’m not saying all all biz books that come out are good.  To be honest – a decent portion of them are aren’t good at all. But since I set out once per year to make a special show, I felt it time to review some of the business books that shouldn’t slip by unnoticed. 

After you hear brief reviews of these 6 books, you’ll hopefully put one or two on your To-be-read pile.

Shownotes:

Friction, by Soon Yu 

“Sell The Way You Buy” by David Priemer

Impromptu :: Amplifying Our Humanity Through AI

The Attention Merchants, by Tim Wu

The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur by John Jantsch 

The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman

Chapters:

0:00 – Intro

02:08 – Friction, Soon Yu

08:40 – Sell the Way you Buy, David Priemer

17:12 – Impromptu, Reid Hoffman

24:52 – The Attention Merchants, Tim Wu

30:40 – The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur, John Jantsch

35:30 – The Coming Wave, Mustafa Suleyman

A few of the titles reviewed in this episode

Developing sites that keep pace with customers’ needs, with Josh Garellek

Developing sites that keep pace with customers’ needs

Episode 174

The last podcast episode was a recap from a 3-part web event I took part in, called OnTap (link in notes). It’s a regular event put on by a premier web design agency, who  has helped me appreciate that There are websites and then there are websites.

Some give User Experience short shrift, slapping together generic templates that look 

Pretty, generic. Others use experts to make interfaces that are optimized for mobile and PC environments, and anticipate what users want and present their content in engaging ways. 

Some with so little security, they’re susceptible to cyber threats. Others invest heavily in cybersecurity – protecting not only themselves, but visitors as well. 

Some sites have clung to technology that’s become atrophied and prone to crashing. Others are kept up to date, and are upgradable as the company’s needs change. Some have a backend that craters when traffic spikes,while others keep humming because of their scalable infrastructure.

Some expect visitors will come back on their own initiative, others use email smartly to coax visitors back

Our guest is going to show us how to see the difference that well-developed websites can make. He knows how the value of our online presence can be unlocked to  produce experiences that lead to revenue.

Josh Garellek is co-founder & CEO of a full-service web development agency that’s spread across North America.

He grew up and started his studies in Montreal, then went on to study at New York’s Yeshiva University.

He did stints in the food service industry and e-commerce before starting  a game development studio, until he and a business partner teamed up, switching it into a web dev company called Arctic Leaf. He’s gone beyond this and started other ventures too. The drive to do all this, he’ll tell you, is probably  rooted in ADHD, or being a natural entrepreneur, or his chutzpah; probably all of these. But after knowing him for over a decade, for questions about what to do with your website, he is THE person to listen to. 

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist Period! 2.0 by Stoney deGeyter | Goodreads

Arctic Leaf’s OnTap: The Future of Data, Part 3

GA4 and the future of data, with Jason Hackenberry

GA4 and the future of data, with Jason Hackenberry

Episode 173

Today, we’re talking about the future of data with Google Analytics 4.

It’s been about 6 months since we all had Universal Analytics. It’s good to talk to others who use GA4 to do their jobs, to compare notes. Although GA4 is here to stay, it still has gaps that need bridging.

That’s why I spoke with Jason Hackenberry, Head of Partnerships from web development agency Arctic Leaf. Prior to Arctic Leaf, he held Digital Marketing and operations roles at Weatherby and Save Khaki United, along with roles in Merchandising.

What you’ll hear is from a virtual event he and I did in December 2023, on topics including

  • How Google is migrating users of its free version differently from its 360 version
  • How to capitalize on the information provided by GA4
  • The data you actually need vs. what you THINK you need
  • Tips on finding insights, reporting, conversion tracking and data retention
  • New GA4 features that can help your lead generation or e-commerce website.