Transcript

Chapters

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Transcript

Jason Mlicki (00:01.922)
All right, Jeff, I’m changing up the intro. It’s not so Jeff. It’s all right, Jeff. This topic is your fault.

Jason Mlicki (00:14.562)
You know, I get this spreadsheet and it’s a list of stuff we talked about that we want to talk about. And it says, we’re going to talk about measurements, know, measuring marketing versus measuring brand. And it’s in the spreadsheet and you’re not doing anything about it. Even though you pick the topic, there’s like, there’s like two word prompts in there and like, like one sentence each. What am I supposed to do with this? So I spent, you know, a good hour yesterday, trying to think it through, come up with an outline of what we want to talk about. And then we get on the call today and you say, no, no, Jason, this was your top.

It was never my topic. So all of sudden, and you asked me, why are we doing this? And I’m like, what’s going on here? So all right, Jeff, what are we going to do with this topic? We’re talking about measurement. What to measure, how to measure, why to measure, what are we talking about?

Jeff (01:01.693)
I just, it’s good to know that if I put something into our spreadsheet, it becomes gospel. It’s like once it’s in, it’s in.

Jason Mlicki (01:02.254)
And this is your fault.

Jason Mlicki (01:07.242)
Hahaha

you know you’re a religious man only the gospel is gospel

Jeff (01:16.823)
So yeah, it’s funny. Before we hit record, listening audience, I said, let’s just call this the whatever happens episode because we don’t know what it’s about or where it’s going. But we know it’s very, very important.

Of course it is, we’re talking about measurement.

Jason Mlicki (01:43.15)
Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,

Jeff (01:49.163)
Yeah, except you have a point of view about that.

Jason Mlicki (01:54.358)
I don’t know. I’ve been on every side of the fence about this. you know, I jumped in with two feet on the marketing automation movement over 15 years ago. And I kind of bought it kind of hook, line and sinker, this idea that you could measure everything. And for the first time ever, marketing was fully measurable and you never had to question it again. And I just think that was a bunch of baloney and it’s been proven as a bunch of baloney again and again and again.

And I think our fixation on performance and measurement has made us lose sight of what marketing is really about and what’s important. So not that I don’t have a point of view at this at all, really.

Jeff (02:39.905)
Well, you only jumped in with two feet. jumped in two feet, two hands, head, eyes, ears. I still am a fan of marketing automation. I think it has its place. You know, in our interview with Scott Brinker, we kind of talked about how all these technologies are kind of converging sales and marketing, even delivery.

Jason Mlicki (02:47.182)
Yeah.

Jeff (03:06.743)
are all coming together. So it’s important, but like we’ve talked about, marketing ruins everything. And measurement is one of those things that it ruined. And just because something can be measured doesn’t mean it needs to be measured. I mean, that’s a cliche, right? But that didn’t stop us from trying to measure everything.

and I, and I think it probably came out of, you know, a, a business necessity, right? Firms are investing real money to get a return of some kind, right? You don’t just spend money for the sake of spending it. And to the degree you can actually see a direct correlation between what you’re spending, what you’re not. Who wouldn’t want to do that? it makes.

It makes perfect sense. But you know what I think the sea change was on this whole measurement front? Gartner put out a slide that was the modern B2B sale. Do you remember that? I’ll see if I can track it down. We’ll put it in the show notes. That’s when measurement blew up.

Jason Mlicki (04:24.001)
I love that slide. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The buying process. Yeah.

Jeff (04:32.747)
You know, when we’re talking about first attribution, first touch attribution, last touch attribution, and, then now we, then we started giving them weights and all this other stuff. Like we were really scientific and it’s, and it’s not at all.

Jason Mlicki (04:49.55)
Well, and you think about the connection to that, slide you’re talking about, it’s this, it’s basically, I’ll describe it to listeners if they’ve never seen it. So I guess the theory of marketing the last 10 years was the funnel model, right? This idea of the top of the funnel and the middle of the funnel and the bottom of the funnel and the, and the buying progression and this, this, you know, very linear direction that a client goes through from, you know, discovery to inquiry to purchase and all this kind of stuff.

And Gardner just kind of blew that whole thing up and just had this giant kind of mess, like a spaghetti map of chaos that bounces. I mean, in and out of like four, you know, modes of buying, but it bounces around and kind of scatter shot fashion. And it’s sort of like to your, to your point, it does blow up the notion of the, the, of the funnel, which is also great. Cause now I used to get, I actually want to get.

ill when I would get a prospect that would call me and say, what’s talk? We need more tofu content. I’m like, Oh my God, I there’s, there is not a single acronym. think I hate more than tofu, mofu, both. Like that is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. It’s so annoying. And I just like, Oh, like, please don’t talk like that. Please, please don’t talk like that. Like, let’s just talk about like, how you’re going to deliver insights that are valuable to your clients and how you’re going to move them to a conversation. And you know, so anyway, so if we get rid of that, I’m all for it.

Jeff (05:54.194)
It’s in the tofu.

Jason Mlicki (06:13.358)
So where were we? What were we talking about? Measurement? OK.

Jeff (06:13.991)
I know, we’re talking about new nicknames for Jason and you just gave yourself your nickname, Tofu.

Jason Mlicki (06:19.208)
Hahaha!

Jason Mlicki (06:25.286)
God, tofu, that’s the worst. By the way, tofu is the most disgusting food ever made. So on top of that, you you take like a nasty food and apply it to a terrible idea. So what could possibly go wrong with this? Anyway, back to measurement. Sorry, back to measurement.

Jeff (06:27.645)
I love it.

Jeff (06:42.207)
Are you gonna explain to the audience that don’t know what tofu is?

Jason Mlicki (06:47.828)
What’s the food or the content?

Jeff (06:50.367)
the marketing acronym. Perhaps it’s not an acronym. What is it?

Jason Mlicki (06:52.968)
okay. Yeah. So, well, it’s top of the funnel, right? So, so the idea was that, that the buyer’s process was a funnel and that you needed content to bring people into the top of the funnel. And then you needed different types of content to kind of nurture them down the funnel into a conversation. And a lot of us, mean, even I was like, yeah, it makes tons of sense. I mean, I’m not like, you know, we’re going to act like I was some, you know, sage who saw through it.

But there’s still some value to that thinking, this idea of how do you build a relationship with someone that you don’t know at all, and how do you nurture them towards a conversation? There’s nothing wrong with that. But the slide you referenced is how Gartner kind of blew that up and said it’s just not that simple and linear. I it’s just way more chaotic. How we buy things is way more sporadic. And even big enterprise purchases, believe it or not, have impulse proportions to them.

not dissimilar to picking up that Twix candy bar at the last second at the point of sale. There is an impulse aspect of B2B bio, but we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about measurements.

Jeff (08:03.007)
Can I’m going to write a gospel in the spreadsheet based on what you just said. I am going on the record here now, so I can’t retract this. I’m going to, as a matter of fact, I may have already done this, put in an episode to have a behavioral economist on to talk about buyer’s journeys.

Jason Mlicki (08:08.791)
gosh, gosh. boy.

Jason Mlicki (08:27.724)
A what?

Jason Mlicki (08:34.655)
You’ve been talking about this for years.

Jeff (08:34.657)
We’re going to do that. I just got to find one that knows their stuff. anyway, all right, back to measurement. So you’re like, stop measuring everything. It’s ridiculous. Just stop measuring anything. And besides, I really think that was just a SAS model or a product model. When you’re moving somebody from a funnel, it’s like, all right, they’re consideration. Now they’re looking at these features and that. And I don’t know that that

Jason Mlicki (08:38.572)
Yeah, yeah, I know.

Jason Mlicki (08:54.349)
Yeah.

Jeff (09:03.351)
is a one-to-one correlation with professional services, but they tried to force fit that model into pro services. And I think it didn’t do it justice.

Jason Mlicki (09:16.14)
Well, our episode we did on professional services marketing ahead or behind, and this is a perfect example where they’re clearly ahead. They recognize that their job is to enable the buyer, not to force them into a buying process against their will. It’s just what B2B SaaS companies essentially were trying to do at the time.

Yeah, no, that was my sense. mean, I just found myself, if I look back over the last 10 years, we would have way too many conversations with clients about stuff that really wasn’t that important. You know, they’re fixated on an open rate or a click through rate. And we would spend hours and hours and hours talking about this super granular thing. And I’m not saying that’s not important. I’m not saying it doesn’t matter that you shouldn’t be thinking about those things. I’m just saying that, that it would become like way too big of a conversation. It would be.

consuming all the air in the room. And it’s like, well, time out. why are we, what are we really trying to do here? What is the big picture objective of this? I guess I’m going to come off the cuff here and say, come back to years ago, I just wrote this down. It’s, know, modern marketing is educated. So when you come back to that belief system that, you know, if you’re marketing and your goal is to educate, then all of sudden,

your fixation on measuring every little detail sort of washes away a little.

Jeff (10:42.771)
in what you’re measuring should be different, right? If I read a book…

Jeff (10:53.077)
The metric isn’t, did I read a book? The metric is, what did I learn from reading the book? And there’s not one metric in the marketing arsenal that really looks at, have I succeeded in educating or expanding the understanding of the buyer that I want to engage? I don’t think marketers think that way.

Most salespeople don’t think that way. Delivery people probably don’t think in terms of educating as much as they do, you know, just get into the result. mean, that’s why the subject, the topic of black box, right, exists. We’re not there to teach. We’re just there to magically get stuff done. So I love that definition. I think it’s a very good one.

Jason Mlicki (11:39.671)
Yeah.

Jason Mlicki (11:50.766)
Well, it’s funny as you were talking, what also came to mind was, you remember Blair Enns, we’ve had him on the show and he’s a sales consultant, sales trainer. And he talks about this idea that his model for selling is change management. And the idea is that when a buyer is actually going to buy something of consequence or substance, they have to go through change. It’s a change management experience. And so…

to your point, if you were going to try to measure something, the one thing you’d really love to be able to measure is, you know, whether or not a point of view or a thought leadership marketing initiative actually influences the way someone thinks or behaves. And we actually had any impact on the way people are thinking about the world. because that’s probably the most important thing is that leads into your brand, your brand preference drivers, right?

mean, at the end of the day, that’s what leads to brand preference is I see the world the way that Jeff does. hence I want to do business with Jeff. And if you can shape that worldview, that’s the most important thing marketing can do for a firm. But instead, you know, we get dragged into conversations about, you know, engagement on page, which is like a kind of a loose.

proxy indicator of that. If people spend more time with our stuff, then we’re influencing their worldview. Well, maybe, maybe not. Maybe they just left the browser open. know, it’s like, anyway.

Jeff (13:23.127)
Damn!

You shouldn’t have said that. That’s how I influence.

Jason Mlicki (13:29.47)
That’s high influence. So anyway, I just think we got a little bit off course, maybe in the episode too, but anyway.

Jeff (13:38.475)
We started off course, but the world is round. So we’ll come back to where we need to be. So if we’re not gonna measure all that tofu and funnel progression and the minutia that goes with it, what really should we be measuring in order to get feedback?

that what we’re doing is working. Because that’s the whole point of measurement is just feedback and learning. And if we’re trying to educate or we’re trying to create an opportunity for a conversation, how are we performing in that way and how should that be measured? surely you have some ideas on it. know you know my ideas, but I’d like to know yours.

Jason Mlicki (14:36.75)
Well, let’s hear your ideas.

Jeff (14:37.131)
on this program.

I don’t want to see you roll your eyes again.

Jason Mlicki (14:40.526)
Who says I know your ideas? Are you just going to go back to your brand framework?

Jeff (14:48.855)
I actually, would, it’s my go-to-market framework. And I just published a white paper on it. I’ll put a link in it, in the show notes to this white paper as well. I think the ultimate metric that really to a large degree overcomes the limitations of everything you just discussed.

it takes a longer term perspective for sure is brand preference of being the preferred brand in the category you want to play in, right? The market segment you want to attack. And however you define market segment, you know, that depends on your marketing strategy. But the goal is in professional services, right? Be the preferred brand.

And why do you want to be a preferred brand? You get pricing power. You don’t have to discount. You get more sole sourced, right? You don’t have to enter into competitive RFPs every time and hope you win. know, sales cycles speed up because your brand is already trusted. You don’t have to rationalize it in this

complex validation of along the buyer’s journey that creates all that different chaos because people are like, well, I’m not sure about that or this or that. It’s uncertainty. But if you’re a preferred brand, you remove a lot of that uncertainty. And there are just a lot of other benefits of being the go to brand.

And research study after research study shows what drives brand preference.

Jason Mlicki (16:48.558)
Okay, I’m gonna I want to I want to cut you off because I don’t want you to go there quite yet. So real quick, I you are 1000 million percent correct.

Jeff (16:52.961)
So.

Jason Mlicki (17:02.706)
And when you said that in the pre-call, when you said, only thing that matters is brand preference, I was like, yeah, you’re absolutely right. Now, let’s not worry about how you create brand preference quite yet. Let’s talk about how do you actually conceptually go about measuring brand preference? So, you know, before you can derive it, you have to think about how you would actually say, well, how do we construct a measurement model?

How do we determine whether or not we have preference? What would be the approach? Let’s talk about the approach before we talk about the levers. If we talk about the levers. We may not talk about the levers today, because we talk about the levers a lot.

Jeff (17:45.707)
Yeah, yeah. So.

Jeff (17:52.041)
As you were describing that, I hadn’t given this any thought until you just triggered it. I see kind of a pyramid of metrics.

Jason Mlicki (18:05.123)
Yeah.

Jeff (18:09.671)
And let’s just say, I’ll say the middle layer are the levers. And you have to look at how am I performing those three levers, right? So I can individually look at lever one and how do I stand up vis-a-vis the competition on lever one. I can look at lever two and say, how do I stand up against the competition on lever two?

And then level three, or lever three might be a little harder. But how do I perform there? There are certain metrics we can get at, already have, but maybe haven’t thought of them in that context. So.

Jason Mlicki (18:54.286)
So just for clarity for listeners, lever one is expertise, lever two is results, and lever three is sepateco, which Jeff sort of defines as sort of like coalescing worldviews. So, OK.

But how? Do you do it in a survey? Do you use customer satisfaction data, NPS data? How? How do you actually quantify that?

combination of all the above. Yeah, you come back. think about Rykjald’s conversation and our con with Fred, Fred Rykjald, this idea, the only metric in his mind, the only metric that matters is, customer love, you know, do, do your customers love you? And in his mind, you, you, you originally that, you know, he had discovered the NPS score as the way to determine that. But, but more recently he’s focused on sort of like, I can’t remember the actual word for it. think it’s.

Jeff (19:36.043)
I do.

Jason Mlicki (20:04.014)
It’s not recurring revenue, but it’s of like, know, revenue that comes back, you know, people that either refer you or come back to you. You know, so for firms, you think about the client that has been with four employers and has hired you four times. That’s a perfect example. They clearly love you because they come back every chance they get. So anyway.

Jeff (20:12.535)
the referrals and yeah.

Jason Mlicki (20:31.527)
Is it a single metric or is it a combination of things?

Jeff (20:35.765)
Yes. Yes. One could argue, and I would argue there’s not a single answer. It differs by company. And Fred Reichel said that, right? Because NPS is not a metric. It’s a way of being. Right. And that’s a, that’s a big distinction. And I think that’s really important. Maybe that’s the most important takeaway for, for this whole conversation is

How do you measure the impact of the way you’re being as a firm? In the white paper, I talk about how firms need to show up as their best selves. And that’s gonna be different from every firm, right? The way an Edward Jones person shows up as their best self on the main street is gonna be very different than the way a Goldman Sachs person shows up on Wall Street.

But those could be two very preferred brands in their spaces. But the NPS, I think, is nebulous enough to say, we want our clients recommending us and in love with us. What drives that love is going to be different from business to business. So if we just say NPS is at the peak of the measurement, and we call it the love quotient,

instead of NPS, right? Or the preferred quotient, whatever you want to call it. And then underneath that, I think there are really tangible financial things that you can look at. Like you just alluded to with Fred Reichelt talking about referral, revenue, lifetime value of a client, those types of things are

very tangible and real measures. Pricing power is another one that would be really important. If you’re always discounting and your fees are lower than your competitors, that is a risk compensation or a quality compensation that the market is putting on you. You can look at those things every day and formulate some conclusions.

Jeff (23:05.239)
are they perfect? No, but they give you a good indication of whether or not you’ve got a strong brand. And then you can drop down to the levers. All right. Let’s look at the individual levers. If you look at expertise, right. and we were talking about this a little bit earlier in the prep about, McKinsey and why they invest in thought leadership and what their mindset is. but if you’re looking at expertise and you’re a thought leader,

The market lets you know that. And there are indicators from the market that says, yes, you’re a thought leader. You’re the firm that gets called by the press. You’re the firm that gets called to be on the big stage. You’re not submitting to present at events. You’re being asked to speak at events.

So there’s those kind of telltale signs that you can look at to see the strength of what’s happening on some of those individual levers. And then you could drop down again if you wanted to get more tactical, what’s the engagement level around a given issue or result that you’re trying to take to market or capability that you want to be known for? And you can start to look at those things as well.

And then there’s, and then there’s, as you said, just straight out research, have a research firm, call your clients and just say, you know, who’s the strongest brand? Who’s your preferred brand? I mean, you can kind of do that stuff. That’s expensive and time consuming, but it would tell you what’s going on.

Jason Mlicki (24:50.956)
What I find interesting about that by the

my experience, I’m curious if you found the same thing, is most firms are afraid to ask their clients what they think and they’re afraid to let someone do it. They don’t want to share their client data even with their marketers sometimes. They’re afraid to let their marketers have access to client data, which is kind of crazy. And they’re even more afraid to ask non-clients to get a research partner to go ask sort of people that look like your clients.

and get that real input. So I guess, is that your experience? Do you find that firms are extremely reticent to get that type of marketplace insight? And because to me, it just seems logical. It’s like, let’s get a baseline. Let’s understand where we are right now. Do people know of us? Do they think of us? Do they prefer us?

What are their perceptions? Cause you talked a lot about expertise in that conversation, but I think from a brand perspective, it’s more about the perception of expertise than it is actual expertise. Just because you’re getting invited to speak doesn’t mean you’ve got the chops. It just means the perception is you have the chops. And you know, that’s the job of the marketing unit is to figure out how to make the marketplace perceive that the firm has expertise in certain areas. It’s the results quadrant of your, of your, of your model where we have to show up and deliver.

and actually deliver the outcomes we claim we can. So anyway, I don’t know, was there a question in there? I might’ve asked a question. Lost track. I think the question was, do you agree? Do you find it that few firms want to get that type of feedback?

Jeff (26:38.143)
Absolutely. Professional services firms are filled with human beings. Who wants negative feedback? Very few people, except there are two types of people that like that negative feedback. Masochists and high performers. Because high performers are like, okay, where can I improve? Where can I can get better? You know, where can I realign?

Jason Mlicki (26:56.436)
yeah.

Jeff (27:09.207)
And that’s what separates the top firms from all the others, is they’re willing to take that feedback. And this is why having confidence as a firm is so important, right? It’s give me the feedback. I don’t really want negative feedback, but I can use it as fuel.

if I have confidence, I can, I can take it in and assess it, learn from it, and then make changes. You know, I just had this conversation with a very sharp woman that used to work for me at several firms. She went on to be CMO of a firm in her own right. And she didn’t see eye to eye with the CEO. And it came.

to confrontation and CEO said, all right, maybe it’s time for you to go. And she was like, okay. And I met with her and she was taking a little on the chin. Like I failed. You did not fail. You stood your ground. You had a different view of this. You tried to work on it. It didn’t work.

Take the time, self-examine, learn what you can, and then move on. And no more than that.

Right? It’s when you start to ruminate on that negative feedback that it’s not good to get the feedback. You’d be better just don’t have it. But if you if you have the capacity to take it in and reflect on it to the proper degree, incorporate it, get better from it and move on, I don’t know why you wouldn’t be seeking that feedback every day.

Jason Mlicki (29:15.49)
Yeah. No, I agree a hundred percent. And, I, I do feel like we’ve kind of come to a bit of an answer. mean, I know that, like you said, there’s no one answer, but there kind of is. And I think you laid it out there and it’s that, you know, if you, if you’re fixating on measurement and you’re thinking about what should we measure to know if our marketing is working or not. The answer to your, to your point, I think is quite simple. It’s like, well, we just need to measure brand preference.

Are we driving brand preference? Because if you do that, all kinds of good things fall. Shorten sales cycles, better margins, more opportunity, all kinds of good things. So the only question I think that’s left for the listener is that, well, if that’s what we want to measure, you have to figure out how you measure it in your firm. And that how you measure it is always unique and always going to be different.

But that’s essentially what you’re trying to understand is, do we have brand preference? And if we do, then great. Things are working.

Jeff (30:26.295)
gonna blow up something you just said though. You attributed brand preference

Jason Mlicki (30:28.174)
Okay.

Jeff (30:34.571)
I think I heard you say this to marketing.

Jason Mlicki (30:38.358)
Well, you’re not understanding your own models well enough. Let me explain your models to you.

Jeff (30:45.397)
No, no, I understand my motto, but I thought I heard you say, and our listeners may have heard that marketing main metric and their responsibility for driving is brand preference. I, okay.

Jason Mlicki (30:51.351)
Yes.

Jason Mlicki (31:02.424)
So let me explain again your misunderstanding your models. I’m talking about marketing with a big Jeff, not marketing with a little

Jeff (31:12.599)
Hahahaha

Jason Mlicki (31:14.324)
So let’s be clear, you’re conflating your own models. So yes, marketing with a big M’s job is to build brand preference.

Jeff (31:25.857)
Yes, yes. And when you look at the white paper, you’ll see who owns what one of those attributes, because I assign responsibility for each one of those brand preference drive. should say primary responsibility within the firm. But the whole firm owns the delivery of brand preference, but certain sub segments of it are owned by the other functions.

Jason Mlicki (31:53.036)
which as you’ve pointed out well is big marketing. So, all right, well.

Jeff (31:56.779)
Big marketing. Yeah.

Jeff (32:02.945)
So what’s the takeaway here?

Jason Mlicki (32:04.366)
I was just going to ask you, we’re going to go to wrap, but what’s the takeaway? To me, the takeaway is that I don’t want people to think that I don’t think you should measure things. I’m not saying don’t measure things. In fact, a lot of times it’s super interesting to dive into some very minutiae type tactic. I ripped on open rates and click through rates.

That’s a great indicator as to whether or not your thinking is resonating. So there are moments in time when you want to look at that data. We did a lot of that work over the last 12 months to understand is our weekly newsletter connecting with people or not. And we found that as we really worked hard on that and thought about it, we’ve seen our click through rates and open rates dramatically increase. So it was a good indicator of something that was important to us, but it’s not the end all be all. So just don’t get sort of like in the weeds too much, kind of.

keep sight of the big picture and recognize that whether or not this content asset performed or whether or not this campaign led to X amount of leads or these leads were better than those leads or that event drove X amount of revenue. Don’t get, I guess, too fixated on that. Focus on the bigger picture. Focus on, I really like your notion of brand preference. Think about that.

or all the things we’re doing laddering up to that. Because I can see where you could take that model and say, goal is brand preference. Now let’s look at each one of these levers. And you could drill down into Simpatico and say, inside of Simpatico, I want to know, we shaping people’s world views? And there’s a lot of different ways you could think about how to measure that. Growth in subscribers, are more people engaging with us. That’s a great way to look at that.

Anyway, that’s my takeaway is maybe start from the big picture and then work your way down into what you should be measuring versus starting with a minutia and then assuming it all ladders back up.

Jeff (34:04.161)
Yeah, I would sum it up this way.

Yes, measurement is important. You cannot be in business. You cannot improve. I don’t care if it’s it’s business or tennis or cycling without, as you said, setting a baseline, trying things to move the ball and measuring improvement of of what you’re doing. So measurement is good. But the second thing is you have to measure the right thing.

Jason Mlicki (34:29.464)
Yes.

Jeff (34:41.301)
and the right thing measures the result you’re trying to achieve. And you gave the great example of marketing’s job is to educate. Are we educating? Nobody measures that. But now when you have the right question, you can get to the answer that you need in order to measure the right thing. And that’s gonna be different for every firm, as we said.

and his brilliance on that front. And then the third thing, this one is critical. You have to move away from the short term lead gen thinking. It’s destroying your effectiveness and it creates an intention and an anxiety that just produces negative behaviors and negative choices that actually

negatively impact the long-term result that you’re trying to achieve. If you start compromising just to generate leads in the short term, but the way you go about doing that impacts the perception and your reputation, you don’t achieve brand preference. So you have to make smart short-term decisions

Jason Mlicki (36:05.25)
Yeah.

Jeff (36:10.155)
But you have to do that in the context of the long-term impact. And Brian Cafferrelty is the man who knows that better than anybody. So listen to him talk on some of our.

Jason Mlicki (36:14.807)
Yeah.

Jason Mlicki (36:21.898)
Well, I’ll give, I want to underline something you said to take us to wrap. that is that I don’t, I’m going to assume what you’re saying. There’s nothing wrong with having programs to drive leads in the short term, as long as you’re doing it the right way. And I’ll give examples of good and bad real quick. A good way might be, Hey, we’ve got this really good thought leadership program and we’re going to run some paid media to try to get it into the hands of more decision makers that could use, find value in it. Okay.

That’s fabulous. A bad way might be the text message I got the other week from some guy saying that he uses SMS to hammer people until they have meetings with you. Right. That might damage your reputation in the long run. Right. So there’s, there’s, I don’t think the takeaway is don’t do lead. It’s more just make sure that the lead Jen that you’re going to do ladders up to the long-term goal of brand preference. And it’s sort of like just both generating leads now and it’s keeping sight of the goal for tomorrow as well. And.

And as long as you do that, you’ll be OK. So yeah.

Jeff (37:24.279)
I want to you a plug and rattle back a plug on that front.

Jason Mlicki (37:28.2)
I love when you give me good feedback. Don’t give me any negative feedback. I can’t take it. I’m too fragile.

Jeff (37:31.733)
Okay. Okay. All right. This is all positive. And I think this is this, the way you set that up is so consistent with your worldview. And it’s a great way for our listeners to think about it. Another way of thinking about preference and what you can look like, but don’t over-engineer it is client experience. Right? That that’s kind of what we’re talking about, but, but keep that kind of loose.

And it dovetails with what you’re talking about, lead gen and demand gen, and why the concept of a branded content experience is so valuable. Because it’s long-term, it is differentiated, it is educating. A branded content experience is like the quintessential marketing tactic

for what we’re talking about here.

And it’s why it makes such great sense. And Rattleback does that so incredibly well. So I think that’s a good way. We don’t normally do commercials here, but I think that kind of comes full circle.

Jason Mlicki (38:51.569)
Ha

Jason Mlicki (38:56.174)
Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Let’s actually take it to wrap. There’s a lot I could say about that that I think is really interesting, but I do appreciate that. And I think this was a great episode. I really enjoyed the conversation. I think we both went into it not knowing where to even start or where we would end up, but I thought it was a really good one because it’s important. We have to come back to this topic of measurement again and again because it’s a changing one.

I know I think about it radically different than I did 10 years ago or 20 years ago. And I have a hunch you do too. So cool. Thanks. I’ll talk to next week.

Jeff (39:37.815)
See you, buddy.