Zach (02:07):

Yes, sir. Today, uh, we have an actual ad, uh, network, a retargeting ad platform, uh, on today's show. Today's guest is Eric Stockton. He's the general manager of perfect audience it's been around for like, Oh, well, I want to say a decade at this point, almost all decade. Uh, but uh, Eric has been, um, in the marketing space for quite some time was a president at marketing Sherpa and a director of partnerships at a marketing experiments and, uh, was also president at on it. So you've been around the block going way back. Yeah, you've been around the block. And um, and now for, for those that, that don't know, perfect audience is a part of SharpSpring.

Zach (03:01):

Uh, they acquired it from, uh,

Zach (03:05):

I'm actually a last year. Eric, I'm blanking on the name right now. Marin software in software. Yes. Thank you.

Zach (03:11):

Yeah. Um, I love

Zach (03:13):

It. So Eric, welcome to the show.

Zach (03:15):

Hey, thanks. Thanks for having me

Zach (03:18):

Get everybody up to speed on, uh, on what you're up to with perfect audience and, and also just a little bit about your background so they can have some,

Eric (03:27):

Yeah. Uh, so let's see about a year ago, uh, November 21st to be exact, uh, SharpSpring acquired perfect audience and, uh, you know, being a revenue generation platform. Um, you know, one of the things that we were looking for is a way to be able to see all of, sort of the life of the lead from beginning to end, you know, from an ad impression all the way through to, you know, a click to a, to a conversion. And so the acquisition made, made a lot of sense for us and, uh, had a ton of fun, uh, just building this super smart team over the last year and, and, uh, putting some things together, some really fun stuff that we're building for the product and, uh, and, and, and doing some, you know, doing some interesting work as awesome. Oh, you're asking me like, what did I do before this?

Eric (04:23):

Right. So, yeah. Uh, I think you just, you went back like way back in the archives here and he goes, so, uh, prior to this, uh, yeah, I, I ran a, uh, um, a group, uh, that focused exclusively on, you know, buying and selling companies, uh, portfolio style, sort of like a mini, uh, value add, you know, value based, uh, investing company. Uh, and then prior to that, uh, I, I was, uh, president of marketing Sherpa for a couple of years, uh, for anybody that's familiar with marketing sharp, it's kind of like the, uh, are not familiar. It's, uh, it's like the Gartner or Forrester research for all things marketing. Right. I mean, that's kind of the way I always looked at it. So if you're in a needed a case study or, or, you know, some kind of guide or handbook or whatever on all things marketing, you know, we, we had data on that kind of thing. Um, and, uh, so that was a ton of fun. I just, you know, we did events all over the country and, and did a ton of publications. We had six newsletters that went out each week, um, you know, data, like if you wanted data on something, we had data on it. Like those little chotskies, you know, that you would hand out, you know, at, at trade shows, we had data on how those things performed. We had, like, it was, it was all fun, lot of fun, super smart people. That's amazing.

Zach (05:49):

I love it. So give us the playbook, Eric, what is, what is the playbook for T to get a rich ad campaign going with with perfect audience these days? Yeah, that's a great question. I, so

Eric (06:06):

I think it's this sort of like ties back to what I was saying earlier. Um, the way that I have always looked at, you know, ads has, has been holistically. I mean, you just, you cannot, I say this a lot every day to customers and, and other folks, you know, you, you cannot optimize in a vacuum, right? You cannot do it and do it well. So one of the things that we always look at is, you know, how, you know, from, from an ad, you know, from an ad creative, you know, call to action copy, et cetera, how does that messaging and how does that value proposition flow all the way through, you know, congruency to add, you know, landing pages and then, and then further even deeper into the funnel. So, you know, we, we actually spend a lot of time. I, you know, I it's, it's actually not that complex.

Eric (06:58):

I mean, you guys know this, right. I mean, this stuff is not that hard. Um, and one of the things that, that I think people try to do is, is maybe over complicated a little bit, you know, they, they try to, they try to say, you know, let me, let me, uh, you know, let me just sort of slice this up. And, you know, I'm going to outsource my ads or I'm going to, I'm going to outsource my creative, or I'm going to outsource my LPO or whatever. And, and that is, uh, just a recipe for disaster, you know, sort of in my mind, you're like, you have to look at it holistically. You gotta understand. I mean, everybody, you know, who does this kind of stuff and succeeds at, it knows, you know, that it starts with the offer, right. It starts with the offer. And then you sort of build out from there. And, and so, you know, if there's a playbook, I don't know if I would even call it that, but, you know, there's a playbook, it's, it is really, you know, taking that holistic approach and then pushing, pushing that messaging all the way through to, you know, whatever your call to action is, and then on deeper into the conversion as

Zach (08:00):

Awesome. So what kind of businesses you think would be best suited for perfect audience and, and what kind of budgets should you think they should start with as they test out?

Eric (08:12):

Uh, this channel? Yeah, that's a good question. So, uh, we, we typically have, you know, the, the ones that are the most successful on the platform, or they're going to be the ones that, you know, have a, you know, a small little marketing team, you know, and have a reasonable amount of budget where, you know, they are focused on, you know, a specific goal or call to action. If, if they, you know, if we're just talking about purely branding or awareness, you know, we're probably not the platform for you. Uh, really what we're looking for are, you know, we focus on conversions, we focus on ROI and, you know, so if you have a sort of that ROI focus, uh, you know, intent, you know, to, um, you know, around your, your marketing campaigns, you know, we, we might be somebody for you. Um, I was trying to think, you know, typically, you know, what we see are, you know, marketers who, you know, sorta know what they're doing, they've already got some campaigns, they're already doing something in Google or Facebook.

Eric (09:12):

And we certainly, you know, we're happy with that. We love Google and Facebook, you know, we work with them too, but, you know, really like the one, the really busy marketer that's sort of wants to be able to understand the funnel and, and, and sort of all the different channels that are coming in, um, and, and doing that sort of Ines under one roof is, is really kind of where we Excel. So, you know, we spend a lot of time talking about attribution, you know, you got, you know, Google likes to claim the conversion on the analytics side and, you know, Facebook likes to claim the conversion and, you know, in Facebook and we sort of sit there and, you know, for obvious reasons, right. Uh, but we, we really are sort of platform channel agnostic. We don't necessarily care who gets the conversion. We just want to be sort of a single source of truth. That's that third party, you know, to be able to say, you know, independently, you know, here's where that conversion really did come from. And that helps you to be able to dial in your marketing and dial in, you know, double down on your spend in the right areas.

Dylan (10:20):

Oh man, that's attribution. That's the topic of the year. I feel like they're right. Even the amount of teams I work with, you know, we had a hundred sales and 60 on Facebook, 60 on Google, you know, something's up here. So I think it's only going to get bigger and better because, I mean, as mentioned that you mentioned earlier, you know, big companies that are really spending a pretty penny, no, every single story.

Eric (10:43):

Yeah. And multitouch is like, you know, the, the buzzword too, right. You know, everybody wants to sort of, you know, have, you know, a layer, you know, the, the, that comes on top of that, it adds more sophistication and, and SharpSpring has multi-touch attribution. Um, you know, uh, we, we, we sort of look at how these customers are spending their money and we, and we help them sort of dial in, you know, accordingly, um, you know, it's everybody, everybody sort of has their own little, you know, unique formula, but at the end of the day, you know, it's not about clicks or leads or, you know, you know, even conversions it's, you know, it's ultimately whatever it is, has to lead to revenue. And you've got to tie it back to, you know, the, the channels that are working,

Dylan (11:29):

How do y'all kind of combat, you know, I guess like the new iOS updates where it's kind of like restriction tracking a little bit, I imagine that involves y'all to have to change some y'all's process and kind of back end stuff. Maybe, maybe not.

Eric (11:40):

Yeah, no, we, we actually do. I mean, obviously, you know, we, we focus a lot on the engineering side of things for the product and, you know, there's, there's, uh, there's a lot of work that goes into, you know, making sure that what we're reporting back is, is sort of the full picture. And, you know, we spend, you know, you know, inordinate amount of dollars, you know, making sure on smart engineering people to be able to do that. So,

Dylan (12:05):

Oh, I believe that. Yeah. Well, snap, that's pretty nifty.

Zach (12:11):

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Dylan (13:27):

Check it out@funneldash.com. So I kind of want to hear a nightmare story. Okay. The poor ad segment, where I could see this all kind of going wrong. So what can you bring to the table for this poor ad segment here? Yeah, that's a good question.

Eric (13:44):

Um, I would say, um, all right, so let's go, let's go way back to March, right. I think, uh, you know, I had been, I'd been in this for, you know, three, four months, you know, at that point. And then we were even still building up a team at that, at that level. And then of course, you know, COVID comes along and we, uh, we really spent an, a lot of time, you know, doing things like this, where we would do like internal podcasts or webinars for our own customers, just sort of helping to educate people about what this new sort of landscape looked like. And we, you know, we really sit at like an interesting cross-section, it's kind of like you guys, right? I mean, you're running like thousands of, you know, different types of campaigns and, you know, spending, spending large quantities of, of ad dollars.

Eric (14:42):

We see the same thing across a really interesting cross section of, of types of customers and verticals. Uh, so very early on, we could sort of see what was, what was happening probably before it really kind of came out, um, you know, which, which campaigns are pulling back, which ones are doubling down, you know? And, and, and, um, you know, if we talk about some of the, you know, some of the more challenging ones, um, this is actually not funny, but, you know, it's, uh, so, you know, COVID came along and, and actually came in, you know, obviously, you know, sort of decimated travel and, and the hospitality, you know, vertical. And, um, but we had a customer who was in the travel, his, his, his, his, um, vertically, he was actually affiliate, you know, himself. And what he focused on was travel high high-end travel to Italy was what it was.

Eric (15:38):

And, you know, and this is a situation where, you know, he just sorta got caught, you know, in a couple of different, you know, um, you know, sort of this, the worst triangle ever, you know, and, uh, you know, he, he really like, he just, he just stopped everything. And, you know, if the story stopped there, that would sort of be the sad, you know, sort of the sad ending, but really what, you know, I'm going to kind of tell you what the other half is, and you can decide to cut this out if you want or whatever, but what, uh, what he ended up doing is he ended up pivoting completely to, you know, um, you know, looking at like, sort of like COVID hotspots that were in that area and then sort of recommending, you know, like, you know, things to stay away from before there was the lockdown before there was any of this other kind of stuff. This guy was like super smart. And like within, you know, three or four days, he had a completely different, you know, sort of pitch and offer and driving traffic completely differently. And, and, uh, you know, actually came out on the other side. So, you know, he's, he found a way, right. He found a way, and that's, that's sort of what we all do as entrepreneurs. Right.

Dylan (16:50):

That is super interesting there. So to this day, is it still kind of the same concept as it has evolved a little bit more? Cause, I mean, how does this all going? It's going up and down. I feel like it leaves definitely still feeling some RAF, for sure. Sorry. I'm kind of curious where it could be at today's it's the same concept after that, you know, four day change.

Zach (17:12):

Um, you mean after this, after we go on the other side of this? Yeah, yeah. I th I think, I mean, just talking to him. Yeah. I mean, that's his, that's his plan is like, he's, he's, he's in the travel space, right. That's his thing. That's what he's passionate about. That's what, you know, you could sort of see it in the copy and everything that he's been building over the years. Um, that's what he wants to get back to on the other side of all of this mess. Oh yeah.

Dylan (17:36):

And I could even see them having some killer content marketing approaches. Hey, these are the areas not to go, here's where to go and I can help you get there.

Zach (17:44):

It's

Dylan (17:45):

Unfortunate. But I mean, it's also an eye opener just because it opened up another door, a huge opportunity there to where it's the perfect kind of stuff.

Zach (17:52):

Yeah. I mean, you can roll up in a ball and sort of give up, right. Or you can figure out a way to sort of leverage what was going on. I mean, we've seen advertisers that are local advertisers, obviously, you know, that are restaurants that are there, you know, just getting hammered, you know, with, with, uh, with shutdown orders back in March and April, and some of the most successful ones that we saw, the successful campaigns that we saw were the ones that said, look, you know, we know that this is going to, we're going to have to sort of ride this out a little bit. And so we're going to put a little bit of time and money and add, you know, in their ads around, um, uh, just, you know, sort of bringing the community together because national chains can't do that right.

Zach (18:38):

Only, you know, you know, Luigi's pizza shop that's been there for 50 years can do that. Right. And they can sort of bring this nostalgia out and, you know, they can say, look, you know, we're all in this together, you know, and we're going to come out on the other side. And obviously in the background, they're sort of like really scrambling to do, you know, to ramp up their delivery and everything. And then, you know, when, when things sort of loosened a little bit, you know, they were there actually. I mean, they were still off on their numbers, but they weren't dead. And, um, you know, they, they have really sorta latched on to this community, you know, kind of, kind of campaign and, and it's really, you know, they've been doubling down on it ever since. So I think, you know, I'm interested really to see what happens to their business when, you know, like, let's say next spring, you know, and, and you see what, uh, you know, you see how, how these guys come back with a vengeance, that's going to be pretty cool.

Dylan (19:31):

You kind of mentioned it's different for the local business benefit, 50 years of burst a nationwide chain. What brings you to that? Is it more a buyer perception? Oh, it's burger King days probably want to make a quick buck trying to, you know, influence the community. Is it kind of how we see it or is it from their perspective

Zach (19:47):

It's perception now? Yeah, it's totally, it's totally perception, right? I mean, there's, you know, you, you look at, you know, obviously there's, you know, large chains, brands, you know, people are going to be more, um, you know, skeptical, you know, of those types of campaigns that, you know, there's a lot more of, um, you know, a lot more noise that you have to cut through as one of those, you know, one of those larger, larger chains or brands, smaller, local business, you know, that that's sort of a look and feel to it is, is, you know, definitely attractive to people who are in, you know, these kinds of situations, which, you know, everybody's, everybody's trying to figure out their own way through it. And, um, but the ones that we, the campaigns that we see the most whole, the, you know, the do the best are the ones that are the smaller local ones. Well,

Dylan (20:40):

Yeah, because that's, that's what I see in Austin. I mean, I see it all on my Facebook posts, Twitter, or, Hey, you support this local business over here, you know, been forever, but you never see

Zach (20:48):

That for the nationwide chain. So that's interesting perception, little pack there. Right. So of course we'd love to kind of dive into the final piece of the pie over here, based on your expertise experience, what kind of financial tips or principals could you kind of share with the audience? Uh, I'll tell you what I've been doing for the last, you know, month, uh, three weeks. Uh, so one of the things that, you know, I mean, obviously, you know, we're in the B2B space, right? So, you know, this, this is, um, you know, this is a business where we are, you know, we sort of operate almost like a SAS, you know, SAS operation, you know, and understanding. Um, and, and I, you know, I spent a ton of time with my team, just talking through things like LTV to CAC and, you know, what is CAC and how do we dial that in?

Zach (21:39):

And, and, uh, you know, w w how do we measure the value of these customers and what does that look like? And, you know, how do the, how does this cohort, you know, behave versus, you know, previous cohorts before the acquisition. Right. You know, like, like, what's it look like now versus then, are we doing better? Uh, and then, and then really, you know, sort of practicing what we preach. Right. So, you know, we, we talk about a lot with, with the team about, you know, focusing in, on what are the channels that are contributing to, you know, the, the goal, right. And there, the revenue goal, you know, and then working our way backwards, you know, up the, you know, uh, up the, up the funnel and, and, you know, getting that really well owned in, um, you know, again, this is sort of the first year cycle.

Zach (22:28):

Um, so when we bought the company, we had some ideas, we had some thoughts, we had some basic due diligence and metrics, but now, you know, we have a much better handle on the business. Um, so that, you know, as we, as we look at scaling the business, going into 2021, you know, this is, uh, you know, this is one of those things where, you know, we, we feel much better about investing. We feel much better about, you know, who our customer is and how they're spending, and, you know, uh, you know, sort of having that KPI driven approach is, has been sort of, I mean, just like, ah, I mean, just like everybody else, right. You know, and this year in 2020, um, uh, also being a post acquisition year, you know, which is always tough, uh, you know, you double those things up and, um, you know, you, you, these are the, like those types of holistic KPI driven approaches to our marketing and channels and, and getting the measurements. Right. And, you know, all of that kind of stuff is what, you know, is what, uh, you know, what keeps you not only stable in a year like this, but helps you grow. Um, and, and that's, you know, that's been encouraging, I think this last year 20, 22 is being fricking wacky. How

Speaker 5 (23:46):

Do y'all set it projections for the next year out of curiosity? Is it something, Hey, let's kind of just follow the curve or do you want to give her some wiggle room just in case it's not as hot or not as good kind of curious how you could, you know, a business can kind of portray that.

Zach (24:00):

Yeah, no, that's a, that's a great question. So we, we spend, uh, I mean, obviously we work on the known knowns, right? I mean, we know that there are certain things that work well. Um, I'm a huge proponent. In fact, I just did a LinkedIn post on this today, uh, where, um, you know, I was like, you know, like a lot of times, you know, cutting back and cutting out the noise of the channels that only deliver, you know, one or two or three, you know, like, like small incremental sales is really sort of a huge, um, waste of not like of opportunity cost. Right. So if you've got a campaign, for example, that is sort of doing okay, you know, and it's not losing money, it's not really making you a ton of money, but it's doing okay. Like the, there's a fear factor of people like to cut that kind of stuff.

Zach (24:53):

Um, because, you know, it's like, Oh my gosh, like, at least it's contributing and it's not losing me money. Right. But, and, and you sort of always hold out this hope sort of like a gambler in Vegas, you know, where like, Oh, you know, I'll take a couple of weeks and I'll finally get this thing to tweak. Right. And I, and I'll, I'll, it'll take off, you know, and, and I'm actually of the opposite mindset where, you know, you can, you know, you can spend a lot of cycles trying to make things work that don't have a lot of runway. Um, I would much rather cut a lot of that noise out and really double down on the, on the channels that have the ability to scale. Um, you know, and for us, again, being a more of a SAS business, you know, uh, our, our unit economics, you know, show, you know, there are certain types of channels that we do really well in.

Zach (25:37):

And, and, um, and, and really, again, sort of practicing what we preach, you know, I wanna, I want to understand who my, you know, perfect customer is. And like, what is the pain point that they have? What do they wake up with in the middle of the night? You know? And they, like, nobody wakes up in the middle of the night and says, Hey, Oh my gosh, I like, I, I can't live my life without a retargeting solution. That's not, you know, right. Nobody does that, but it, you know, that's, you know, it's, it's not about that, right. It's about the goal. It's about, you know, it's not about retargeting. It's not about, you know, the MarTech stack or whatever it is. Right. It's not, you know, uh, by the way I could go on and on about this, but, you know, the thing is, is, you know, it's, it's, it's about results, right?

Zach (26:27):

It's about driving more leads, you know, getting more conversions, you know, leading those things down the funnel to, you know, to sales and growing revenue, ultimately. Um, and I like up on my soap box here for a second, I watch marketers all the time that sort of stitched together, all of these different types of solutions, you know, uh, and you know, I'm going to, I'm going to just call them out, right? Like, so, you know, whatever your email provider is and whatever your chat bot solution is, and, you know, whatever your testing solution is for AB and whatever your, you know, uh, uh, you, you can go down this list. I mean, if I, if I had like a marketer's credit card statement, if you pulled out your credit card, right. And you look down your statement, you see all of the things, right. You see all the UC, the chat bot, and you see the email and you see the marketing automation and you see the, you know, whatever the ads are, Google and Facebook, and, you know, you'd like, it's a mile long.

Zach (27:25):

And so what we do is as marketers is we sorta, like, we try to like stitch these things together. You know, maybe we like, you know, we try to like duct tape it together with Zapier or something. And we try all of these things together, grow together. Right. And, and, but they don't talk, right. They're not native integrations. And so what ends up happening is, you know, you lose the life of the lead, right. You lose, uh, you know, like from ad impression all the way through to revenue, what is happening in a holistic sense, you know, from, you know, from, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the place you're spending the most money, you know, all the way through to, you know, the thing that kicks out revenue, our money on the, out, on the other end. And, you know, like I say this a lot and it drives me crazy, but, you know, MarTech and tools and, and those things are all great, but they're, they're built to serve you not the other way around.

Zach (28:23):

And so, you know, like we sort of, you know, we're sorta like these frenetic creatures, right. Marketers, especially like we have all these ideas and they're great ideas in our heads. Right. And then we started throwing things against the wall to see what sticks, right. We call in the name of testing by the way, uh, you know, and then, but, but going back to what I was saying earlier, it's like, you know, that holistic KPI driven, like approach really is what simplifies your life. Right. It makes your job easier. Right. You know, gives you like, uh, you, you and your team, something to sort of center around, like, you know, there's a common objective and we're not all over the place trying to work on all these different sayings. Right. It ties you to the revenue at the end of the day, it ties you to the revenue.

Zach (29:12):

Right. And if you're working for somebody else, you know, like maybe you're on a marketing team or something or whatever, right. Those are the things that get you like when you're tied to revenue, those are the things that makes you a hero with the CEO, the CFO, or whatever. Those are the things that get you promoted. Those are the things that help you in your career. If you're an entrepreneur, you know, those are the things that gets you, the new car and the house and the lifestyle that you're looking for. And, you know, that's like, it's really, at the end of the day, it's all the same. Right. I mean, it's, you know, you're, you've got to find a way to be able to tie what you're doing really simply focus to revenue. And on today's episode, we're going to talk about getting promotions.

Zach (29:58):

That's killer, man. Heck yeah. So we'll go ahead and wrap this up nicely. So give everybody an idea, kind of any cool projects, anything kind of new in the works, how can we support you? And what's the best way for people to kind of get in touch as the, if they're having more questions. Yeah. It's uh, appreciate that. Uh, so, you know, we, we are very much, you know, uh, a platform that you know, is for marketers and entrepreneurs who are trying to grow their business and tying that to revenue, you know? And so, you know, you can visit us@perfectaudience.com. You can check us out, um, you know, feel free to ping us with any kind of questions. You know, we, I mean, we are at our heart, you know, like we are marketers, you know, and we do this stuff every day. You know, we've done this in the past, you know, for our own businesses, we're doing this now, you know, with other, you know, with customers and with other advertisers. Um, and we just, we sorta just love this stuff. It's sort of in our DNA. So, you know, anything we can do to help out heck yeah. Amazing. Well, Eric, it's been an absolute pleasure, man. Thanks for jumping on.

Zach (31:04):

Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks for having me. I enjoyed it. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the rich ed or ed podcasts. If you're like me and listen to podcasts on the go, go ahead and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Richard [inaudible] dot com slash podcast. And if you absolutely love the show, go ahead and leave a review and a comment share with a friend. If you do take a copy screenshot of it, email me zach@funneldash.com. Show me you left a review. I'll give you a free copy of the rich add or ed book to learn more about the book. Go to rich ed for a.com to leave a review that a rich ed or ed.com/review. Thanks again.