Lead-Gen vs. Lead Capture

Tom Nixon (00:02.614)
Well, it’s been a minute, but we are back with another episode of Bullhorns and Bullseyes. Curtis, long time no talk.

Curtis Hays (00:09.115)
It has been a little while. I can’t believe how long it’s been. More than a month, it feels like.

Tom Nixon (00:12.952)
I know we took an unscheduled hiatus around the end of August 1st of September, I should say. One of the excuses I’ll call them is I had a birthday and that birthday tends to extend into all of Labor Day weekend. So then I got back from a Labor Day weekend birthday and I was so backed up. And then you had a vacation.

Curtis Hays (00:34.449)
I had a vacation right before labor day. So, so I was out for a while and then, and then we all got back and just, got a little cold and, you know, just, don’t think anyone wanted to hear me coughing on the podcast. You know, it was very difficult to talk without, without coughing a bit for a couple of weeks. So yeah, we’re, back at it while I was on vacation, Tom, I got, I got to provide a recommendation. read an amazing book.

Tom Nixon (00:48.396)
You

Curtis Hays (01:04.166)
That was gifted to me, the long loss. had some time away. could, I could, you know, not worry about work and marketing and all those, all those kinds of things. So no, I read your book. Thank you. got another one to read still, but I finally, and I couldn’t believe actually, once I sat down to read it, like how fast of a read it was. I was halfway through it. And then I think in an afternoon, really, I was sitting on the porch. It’s beautiful Sunday, sunny afternoon and I was looking out at the lake. was like, this is, this is the perfect read, but.

You did, you did pull a zinger on me in the end. I did not see it coming. So good job. Good job.

Tom Nixon (01:39.074)
Good. good. Yeah. Well, thank you for reading it and whoever else out there reads it. Yeah. When I set down to or set out to write that book, the premise was loosely, can I write a book that the reader doesn’t know what’s going on until the very last page? And roughly, that’s, think, I pulled off. anyways. Okay, good. So that’s a little a zoomer people out there. It’s called The Long Loss. You can find it on Amazon. Anyways.

Curtis Hays (01:57.297)
Yeah. You did. I had no freaking clue. That’s pretty good. Yeah.

Tom Nixon (02:09.036)
Yeah, and then we got into our super busy season here, which is the fourth quarter coming up. then, but in the meantime, I also fit it. I didn’t know you were going to pull that book out, but I have finished a book that you recommended to me and it’s called Forget the Funnel. Authors are Georgiana Laude and Claire Sulintrop. Hope I get those names right. It’s called a customer led approach for driving predictable recurring revenue. Customer led approach, which is something that you must have known as

near and dear to my heart because we’ve talked about it both on this podcast and offline a lot.

Curtis Hays (02:41.073)
Yeah. Yeah. I came across that book and I was like, it sounds like a lot like Tom and something he’d be interested in. I had to ship that off to you and have you read it. Now I follow, I follow those gals on LinkedIn and have tuned into a couple of their podcasts. And I do have the audio version of the book. I haven’t completed it, but, there’s some good stuff there. And I think from a philosophy perspective, we’re approaching things very similarly.

Tom Nixon (03:08.854)
Yeah, I remember texting you when I was about a halfway through and I said, I feel like this is, feel like I’m reading my own manifesto because it was like everything I’ve been preaching. So it’s nice anyway, to get the validation that I’m not the only crazy one out there that there are people who agree with us. And it aligns with the approach that you and I have been taking on our collaborations, even in the real world with clients. It’s called, like I said, the main title is Forget the Funnel. And if people are unaware what the funnel is, they’re talking about the traditional sales funnel, which we’ve covered.

Curtis Hays (03:14.735)
Yeah.

Tom Nixon (03:38.284)
already in the season on this podcast. And they even have a simplified diagram of the funnel. And it’s basically what they’re describing in a funnel is the journey that a customer takes going from completely unaware of your product or service, or maybe even a category of products or services into the funnel, which is that top layer, which they’re aware. And then you and I have basically four levels, they simplified it to three, but AIDA, is that awareness that I mentioned.

Curtis Hays (03:44.466)
Mm -hmm.

Tom Nixon (04:07.19)
And then once you get some segment of the aware will become interested. And then your goal as a marketer in a sales team is to drive them from interested. I’m sorry. Yeah. From aware to interested, from interested to desire. And then from desire to that last piece, which is action. That’s what you want ultimately, right? You want the action being a purchase or a sign up or something. Usually it’s a purchase. That’s the desired action. Cause that’s where the revenue lives at the bottom of the funnel.

But as you and I have talked, too often companies get lured into that dollar sign at the bottom of the funnel and they want to start there. And it’s like, well, let’s do some lead gen. And they’re not always talking about lead gen in the way that lead gen actually works. They’re just thinking, well, I’ve seen other people talk about digital marketing and all you have to do is put a button on a website and everyone’s going to click and you’re going to convert and get rich. But it’s not really how it works, it?

Curtis Hays (05:01.411)
No, no. And I’ll say I haven’t fully understood it. I mean, I’ve been working within that. The traditional marketing and sales funnel for my entire career in, even in IT, I was supporting sales teams. I understood these concepts. I’m married to salesperson, right? So like we talk about these things at the dinner table. Yeah. Or me. So.

Tom Nixon (05:16.012)
Mm

Tom Nixon (05:20.695)
You

Greatest sale she ever made, by the way.

Yes, all right.

Curtis Hays (05:31.315)
The, but the podcast and all these conversations that we’ve been having over the last, you know, what, what is probably 12 months now have, I’ve really helped open my eyes to a lot of things that are really happening in the marketplace and what’s happening with my customers and what they’re really asking from us and what their expectation is of what’s going to come out of it. so, right. And so that, you know, purchase, which is what everybody’s

you know, hoping for, I think what digital, this is my theory is what digital has done to marketing in the last 10 plus years, what the internet has done and all of these abilities to calculate cost per acquisition and, return on ad spend and all of those things that we’ve forgotten the top of the funnel and everybody’s focused at the bottom of the funnel.

And what we know as marketers and what I’ve come to realize a lot over the last 12 months and talking to you is how important the top of the funnel actually is.

Tom Nixon (06:38.028)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, like you said often to me and on this podcast, I love the expression you say too often companies are asking their potential customers to take the last step first, which is, I put an ad on LinkedIn or digital ad somewhere. And then you click through to the page to just buy it. It’s just, no, right. And going back to the book and the funnel is that the authors are saying not that the funnel doesn’t exist or that we should throw it away.

but we’re getting too hung up on the people who we think are in the funnel and we’re ignoring why they got there, how they got there, and can you get them through those four stages because those four stages exist. It’s not like you pour gasoline into a funnel and it skips the middle and then comes out the other end, right? So just to use the analogy, it has to go through those phases.

Curtis Hays (07:26.501)
And, and, and, okay. So do they say that step one is to understand how existing customers are getting through the funnel? Like make sure you understand that. Like those who are maybe just coming through, you know, naturally or organically or those types of things, right? The first thing you got to do is understand your funnel before you can start working your funnel.

Tom Nixon (07:47.51)
Yes, so what this says, again, it’s a customer led. Those are the three most important words. Well, that’s not that important, but customer led approach is very important because I found throughout my career, and this is kind of how I, what I’ve been preaching to you. And thankfully you’re a wonderful congregation is that too often brands just make assumptions or about why somebody is buying their product, why they continue to use the product or service, why they might refer it out.

Either they’re making assumptions or I think too often they’re telling themselves what they want to hear, which is we know the customer and I’ve often said, okay, if you do know the customer, let me talk to a few of them and just validate everything you just said. And then I’ll be both of our minds when we put it in use. But what I found and what the authors find is typically when you go out and you start asking customers either who have purchased the product, service, or have not, you discover a lot of things that either your assumptions were wrong.

Or there were blind spots. You didn’t even know things were happening. And there’s not only maybe opportunities that you’re missing, but opportunities that you never knew existed. That’s why you go directly to the customer first outside of the funnel. So forget the funnel for a minute. Right? Go talk to the customers. And that, think, is where the greatest intelligence lives.

Curtis Hays (09:01.863)
Agree. And you’ve proven that to me, you know, through working with some of the clients that we’ve worked with or, yeah, some of the stories that you told me about, you know, previous work and then, you know, reading books like this or talking to some of the other professionals that we’ve talked to. If you’re not talking to your customers, you’re not listening to your customers. I’ve got clients right now that aren’t paying attention to customer reviews.

Like on Google, right? They’re not responding to the reviews. You’re not listening to your customers. Good or bad, right? There’s insights on both sides. So if you want to grow, you want to scale your business, you got to understand the why. Why are people buying from you or why are they not buying from you? And then figure out what you need to adjust if you want to replicate that with other businesses or other consumers.

Tom Nixon (09:59.016)
Exactly. again, not to sound like a broken record, but from the beginning of the season, I’ve talked about this why, how, what model and messaging, right? And so the why, how, what model maps to this funnel. Because the people who are unaware are either one of two things. They’re either problem unaware or they’re solution unaware or they’re your product unaware. What are these things? They’re unaware, right?

And so when they’re unaware that they have a problem or that there is a solution to their problem, think of startups like, you know, all of the startups that happen and came to eliminate the inbox, the email, right? It’s like people were living with email. Yeah, it was clunky, but they didn’t know another another way. Right. And so the slacks of the world had to come out there and make people aware they were already aware of the problem, but they weren’t aware of the solution or category anyway. So out there is where the why messaging lives.

Curtis Hays (10:44.374)
Mm

Tom Nixon (10:55.34)
right, because you need to get somebody’s attention and said, you don’t have to live that way any longer. I know that this is a pain or I know that you have this aspirational game. Here’s and I know what’s driving it. And so when you communicate that at the top level and you lead with their why now you’ve got their attention and you can get them into the funnel. What I find interesting will come back to messaging because not only does various messaging align with certain layers of the funnel, so do tactics.

So do advertising tactics. And so what you said at the beginning, let’s go back to that, which is at the bottom is a capture of a lead. Not a generation of a lead. It’s not even the generation of demand. So how do the various tactical things apply to this funnel as well?

Curtis Hays (11:42.739)
Yeah. So for the last 10 years, companies have been asking me to do activities like search engine optimization, SEO, paid Google ads, even social media advertising. Most of which is lead gen. And those activities in most cases are activities where they’re trying to capture somebody at that.

bottom of the funnel, right? So that’s why I’m calling it demand capture. Actually it was, was John Moran with, with tier 11. used to have an agency called solutions eight. He’s an advertiser. would say what one of the top 10 Google ads experts in the world. And, he started talking about performance max campaigns and, how performance max campaigns were really good at capturing demand and not generating demand.

And that really got me thinking not to get into the nuances of performance max. And that’s a whole nother podcast in and of itself talking about Google ads, but that the majority of activities that we’ve been doing for clients are demand capture. And, but, you know, part of the ask from a lot of clients is to grow the funnel, right. And understand what’s happening inside that funnel and understand.

The journey, the prospect journey and those types of things. say, wait a second. All of these activities we’re doing and where we’re putting all of our marketing budget is at the bottom. And if we’re not seeing success there, what you’re essentially doing is waiting for people who then be, who are problem aware, either on their own or through a competitor. And then go and do a search looking for your solution. And then you just happen to be coming up in search results. And guess what?

The highest cost, the highest CPC, the highest cost per acquisition or what that’s at the bottom of the funnel. Cause everybody wants to be active down there. Everybody’s bidding for those demand capture type activities. But what does it actually look like if we were to generate demand in your marketplace for you to communicate your Y messaging to people who don’t know you exist who.

Curtis Hays (14:03.391)
Or maybe know you exist, but don’t realize they have a problem or don’t realize that you have a solution to their problem. And you could articulate in that in a way that pulls them into your marketing funnel where you could convert them. will say there there’s a second area of this, which is in we’ve been doing a lot more account -based marketing activities where our clients know the accounts they’re going after. They’ve identified.

X number of businesses and they have the contacts and accounts for those businesses. have inside sales who are maybe you call them, will they call them like sales development reps who are actively calling and trying to nurture those leads and marketing needs to come across alongside of those needs or the alongside of those salespeople to help bring everybody into the funnel. And then we’re trying to understand, where are all of these accounts at?

If we know the companies we’re going after and they don’t know about your solution, or they don’t even know that they have a problem today, or maybe they know they have a problem, but again, they don’t know that you’re a good solution for that problem, right? We’ve got to, we’ve got to provide messaging to them that hits them wherever they’re at in their journey of solving that problem. Capture that there, just capture them into the funnel per se, and then nurture them to bring them down to where they want to request a demo.

You they want to do a discovery. They want to download a white paper and those types of things. So it does start to get more sophisticated than just running Google ads. And you know, those are search terms that people are putting in who are like, they’re already ready. They’re looking for the solution. Now they’re just comparing price features, you know, a bunch of other things.

Tom Nixon (15:39.522)
that.

Tom Nixon (15:51.124)
or yeah, so if you’re spending all of your money and efforts at that bottom of the funnel, you’re presuming that anyone who gets there, so clicks on your landing page, has already gone through all of the other phases. Some haven’t, I would submit, most haven’t. So you’re assuming they’re already well aware of your product, your brand, your differentiators, you’re assuming all of that, which I think is assuming a lot, at least for most of the clients that I work with, because they’re not household names, right? They’re not Nike, Gatorade, any of those.

Curtis Hays (16:03.036)
Right.

Tom Nixon (16:20.332)
You’re assuming that that person is not only aware of their own problem in your solution, that they are interested in solving their pain, which some people aren’t. Going back to the Slack thing, right? So they probably ran into a lot of dead ends initially because they’re like, yeah, email’s horrible, but I’m living with it, you know, or there’s lots of companies, know, startups, technology, you know, that eliminate things like Excel. Yeah, I don’t like Excel, but I’m living with it and it’s, you know, relatively free and whatever. So anyways.

You’re assuming that that person’s already said, all right, I can’t live like this anymore. I’m interested. And now you’re assuming that you are one of a number of solutions, right? That they’re vetting. So now we’re down the customer you’re presuming has gone through the interest phase and they’ve already said, yes, I do want to buy something like this. And you’re assuming that they’re already at desire and that you’ve captured them. Like you said earlier, at that magical moment with a credit card is out, their fingers are burning and all they got to do is enter a credit card and swipe, right? That presumes a lot.

So if you’re, if you are running those types of campaigns and they’re wildly successful, great, keep doing it. If you’re not, I would suggest, I think you are suggesting that we go back to the top of the funnel and start orchestrating campaigns that are all going to look a little different, maybe say a lot of different things and maybe have different outcomes as the objectives. Right? Cause if you’re going from, if you’re trying to drive awareness, I think it’s presumptuous again to say, well, now that they’re aware of us, they’re going to buy us.

So you need to change the, are you, here’s the question, are you changing the target objective along the way when you’re doing campaigns that nurture these leads down into hopefully the ultimate purchase?

Curtis Hays (17:58.491)
Okay. So great question. And Katie and I were just talking about this the other day. So I think there’s a couple of different ways you could approach this as an advertiser. think with the client, the expectation is at the top of the funnel, we’re not getting conversions. We’re not driving conversions that are KPI. Correct. Yes, exactly. So that’s what I was going to say. So the conversion, if we’re talking about the funnel is the action at the bottom, right? And so what we’re measuring at the top of the funnel is.

Tom Nixon (18:15.394)
where the conversion isn’t a purchase, Yeah.

Curtis Hays (18:28.145)
you know, more or less reach, what are their cost per impressions or how many people are we bringing to the next stage? Because now we’re, building audience segments that say, okay, we’re going to be really broad at the top. And those people who engage at the top of the funnel, we move them into layer two, the second stage of the funnel. And if that second stage of the funnel is growing, that means people are interested at the top.

They clicked to view a landing page. They interacted with an ad, they commented, you know, on an ad or a post that we had, you know, something like that, shows some positive interest, right? That second stage is some positive interest, right? And so that’s what we’re measuring there. Then at the second step, there’s, you know, hopefully maybe from interest to some level of desire or consideration, right? They subscribed in the newsletter. They want some more information.

Tom Nixon (19:02.69)
Last video.

Curtis Hays (19:23.751)
They read a case study on the website, and e -commerce, you know, they actually added the product to the cart. Maybe they didn’t get to the checkout, but you know, they were, we’re certainly looking at pricing. Right. And so, so there’s, there’s some desire there. If I’m going to go that far, maybe they didn’t create an account. Maybe they can get all the way to the cart. so I think you’re at those stages, the internal KPIs are there, but there’s this philosophy that.

You still want the, the algorithms within the ad platforms to optimize for the final action, the conversion. So we might still at the top of the funnel say, Hey, Facebook optimized for conversions. Don’t optimize for engagement that we, that we think as long as it knows what a conversion is inside the platform, because we’re measuring it on all of the campaigns. That it’s still going to do a better job of trying to get the right type of audience that will eventually lead to a conversion. Right. So.

again, you’re still gonna, you’re gonna see more conversions happen at those ads that are at the bottom of the funnel at those final stages. but we’re going to ask the platforms to still, you know, they’re the main objective of all of this advertising at the end of the day is to get revenue and grow the business. So.

Tom Nixon (20:40.822)
Right, for sure. Yeah, so as the metric changes, the key metric that you’re observing, as that changes, and now this person is traveling, is finally traveling through the funnel, then your messaging changes, right? So I mentioned why it’s not, right? In the consideration phase, as the authors put it, or that phase where they’re at least interested in maybe moving to desire.

Curtis Hays (20:55.325)
Yeah.

Tom Nixon (21:06.722)
They’re probably evaluating your product on a number of ways, either like, is this worth the money? Is this better than the other solution I looked at yesterday? Does this fit in with our company or is it going to be disruptive? Right? So now the messaging shifts to how, because how now you’re going to convey either differentiators. This is how we do it. It’s faster, it’s cheaper.

It’s going to maybe deflect some buying objections because the person is like, I’m not ready to purchase. I’m considering, right? So you might say if somebody thinks, well, this is going to be too hard to integrate. So the messaging may be changed to the easiest way to integrate blah, blah, blah into your existing blah, blah. All of that is how now because the person is at an evaluation phase. If you lead with that at the top and people aren’t problem aware, they’re not even solution aware. And you’re like, this is the easiest, fastest way to integrate such and such into your search and check. They’re not even there yet. Right.

They’re like, I don’t even have that problem. So they ignore it. But once they’re down here now, now they’ve already said, all right, I can’t live like this anymore. And I think I’m going to make some sort of purchase at some point. And now your whole messaging changes.

Curtis Hays (22:02.173)
Right.

Curtis Hays (22:12.315)
Right. Yeah. So let’s see how, if we could, let’s see how well Slack does at this. Right. So they’re, they’re headline when you go to their website, tell me if this is why messaging it says where work happens.

Tom Nixon (22:27.168)
Well, I would say no. But Slack has moved on. don’t think people, Slack doesn’t need to establish who they are or what they do anymore. I don’t think. I think most people are, if they’re even considering Slack, they’re already in the how. Right? So I would say, so that’s my caveat. So you can’t always compare to the big, but yes.

Curtis Hays (22:29.692)
Okay.

Curtis Hays (22:48.209)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you mentioned Slack. So I want to go to their website, kind of see what their journeys look like.

Tom Nixon (22:52.076)
Yes, I bet if we went back in time, would bet it was eliminate email for good or something like that.

Curtis Hays (22:57.157)
Yeah. Well, so it says your people projects, apps, and AI all on the world’s most beloved work operating system. So that’s, you know, really talks about integration and collaboration, I think is one of, been one of their bigger messaging things. But what I like about Slack as far as, cause I’ve used them in conversations before of like, if you, at the time, especially when they were just coming onto the scene.

Tom Nixon (23:12.791)
Mm

Curtis Hays (23:24.507)
I would do a Google search for like work collaboration software. And guess what? Slack wasn’t bidding on the keyword. They weren’t coming up first in Google search results, but they were the market leader. Right? So, you know, it was like everybody else was bidding on that keyword, but Slack was out there doing branding and they were doing integrations and partnerships with other platforms. like, they were building awareness.

all this at the top of the funnel and people sort of naturally then came in when they, they investigated the features, when somebody, you know, explained to them how it worked, who was already using it, you know, and those types of things. and then you get into it. like, you can do project management and they give the, sort of the case study details, 47 % increase in productivity for teams, 35 % increase in time saved due to automation.

97 minutes, you know, average time saved. So these are all these value statements, right? That you would say are at that, you know, second step. It’s like, okay, well, this definitely could be a tool that could help me solve some of my problems now. And then what we’re trying to say from an advertising perspective then as if, okay, yeah, I went through that journey on the homepage. I’ve moved now from awareness to some level of interest, but if I go to the pricing page now.

And I’m looking at pricing or I go and start reading some of that case studies. I’ve definitely moved down that funnel. Right. And so, so you got to think then as a business, as a marketer of the messaging that you’re putting on those pages. Right. That, that you’ve got to match the messaging to where a person is at in their journey of understanding what your product or service can do for them.

Tom Nixon (25:18.166)
And this is where I would suggest what messaging comes in. you mentioned, think Slack is going back to an example. I think they’re starting with how, because I think they can. What you said was the how, it was a mixture of how and what. All these various tools is a what. How we do it is all on one platform. you don’t, and that’s, you know, that’s solving the pain. So that is kind of implying some why, because you’ve got a different app for this and a different app for this and a different app for this. All of it’s not connected. So, but going back to now, once they hit the pricing page,

Curtis Hays (25:27.1)
Okay.

Tom Nixon (25:47.064)
What do you see typically on pricing page? A list of features. And you might have the three rows and it’s you get this for free, this for premium and this for pro. It’s all what’s because now that person is like, all right, what do I get for my $29 .99 a month? Right. They want to they’re at the they’ve already decided their desire, their converting desire into action because they want to know how much it costs. That’s where you have to tell them the what’s and now your what’s are going to be very explicit. Like, all right, does this come with messaging? it does.

Is there a project management? Yeah, it does. All right. Is there a calendar? Yeah. Can I assign tasks? Yeah. So now it’s like, all right, this checks off all my what’s and boom, I’m ready to add it to the cart and check out. You don’t need to have all this wide messaging. I bet they don’t have a ton of wide messaging.

Curtis Hays (26:29.331)
Well, so I went back to 2017 and way back machine and their headline is still work where work happens. And then, so the, then they say, whatever work means for you, Slack brings all the pieces and people you need together. So you can actually get things done.

Tom Nixon (26:32.672)
Okay.

Tom Nixon (26:48.408)
It’d be interesting to know what the correlating ad copy looked for when you, before you. Yeah. I bet there’s more why stuff out there, but that is sort of the why, because going back to what you said, 2017.

Curtis Hays (26:54.611)
prior to that click. Yeah.

Curtis Hays (27:02.631)
Yeah, that was points. mean, we’re talking early on. were just a couple of years in business at that point.

Tom Nixon (27:07.944)
That’s when I think people were starting to go out there and look for alternatives because now we’re so we have this huge tech stack and none of it’s connected and we’re like this is for the birds, right? And everyone’s different. So yeah, I think that speaks to a little bit more why. But I bet if you saw an ad in the wild early on when they came out, it was how do we solve the problem? Then the problem is too much, too much.

Curtis Hays (27:16.21)
Yeah.

Curtis Hays (27:27.109)
Yeah, we’re on a mission to make your working life simpler, more pleasant, and more productive.

Tom Nixon (27:33.804)
That’s the why statement. Yep, right there. That is it. So, anyway.

Curtis Hays (27:38.963)
It’s more like so where work happens is more of a tagline. Yeah.

Tom Nixon (27:43.384)
Tagline, correct. Yeah, and taglines, that’s another podcast too, because taglines are not. They do.

Curtis Hays (27:48.935)
Yeah. Well, I know people get confused by that. You say why statement and then they’re like, well, we got to create a tagline. Yeah.

Tom Nixon (27:57.408)
Yeah. And then the tagline they don’t like because it doesn’t say what we do. It’s like, what the most famous tagline in the world? What is the most famous tagline in the world? Just do it. Right. Yeah, exactly. Doesn’t say anything about shoes. Doesn’t say anything about apparel. Right. So now they’re going to use my own words against me. Yes, but they’re a huge brand, whatever, but they don’t need to. People aren’t making a purchasing decision.

Curtis Hays (28:01.351)
Yeah.

Curtis Hays (28:09.356)
Don’t quiz me on this, I don’t know. sure, Nike, yeah, yeah.

Curtis Hays (28:18.013)
Mm -hmm.

Tom Nixon (28:26.764)
based on your tagline, right? It’s like, what that is, it’s supposed to reinforce everything you told them elsewhere about what you stand for. And so when they see it, they’re like, okay, yeah, Nike is the brand that has Michael Jordan and LeBron James and Tiger Woods and all these people who are at the very top of their game. I want to be at the top of my game. I’m going to, you you would.

Curtis Hays (28:28.243)
Right.

Curtis Hays (28:45.627)
Yeah, so you want to get behind that brand. It’s like a statement that you want to get behind. Yeah.

Tom Nixon (28:49.75)
Yeah, if it were an essay, it would be the very last sentence of the essay. It wouldn’t be the headline. That’s what a tagline is. So anyways, we got off topic. anyways, so let’s get back to the funnel. So that conversion point from an ad that they saw on LinkedIn or Facebook to now they’re on that home page, that’s one of those actions that you said, which is sort of raising your hand to say, I’ve gone from aware now to interest, right? Yeah.

Curtis Hays (28:54.673)
Right.

Curtis Hays (28:58.951)
Ha

Curtis Hays (29:14.747)
I have an interest. Yeah. Yeah. And we want to take it a little bit beyond the homepage. So not just a dead click. They clicked and didn’t do anything else. We want some degree of that. showed some level of interest. and then another degree, and this will change depending on who the client is that, that path, that journey that users are taking to define that path and build these, where those people are at in the funnel.

Tom Nixon (29:27.487)
you

Curtis Hays (29:44.871)
based on the actions that they’re taking. And then you need to look at those journeys and say, okay, are we truly capturing people where they’re at? And are we showing them the things that they need to see at those points? And are we leading them onto the next appropriate stage? And ideally, you eventually get to a point where when they request a demo or something like that, at least in the lead gen,

Marketing has done a good job already selling whatever it is. And when you get to sales, you know, okay, we’re, ready for a demo. I’ve seen all this, you know, all their stuff. I’ve watched them videos. I’ve seen some case studies. Now let’s get into the specifics about my business and then let’s talk pricing and those types of things. I I had a company, it’s a company called HiRose. HiRose, the attribution platform. They help you track all your campaigns.

I got hit with YouTube ads from him probably five years ago and have been following ever since. And I built, but we have our own attribution model, very simplistic compared to HiRose. Very, very simplistic. But, I get a call. I get a cold call out of the blue, some St. Louis number yesterday. And it’s, it’s a rep at HiRose. I wasn’t, I haven’t been on their website in forever. I have seen some of their commercials recently, but they wouldn’t know that.

Tom Nixon (30:48.706)
you

Curtis Hays (31:09.819)
Not PII, they wouldn’t know that as me. I’m sure I just came up in a list of agencies to call. And I was like, yeah, I know who you are. And he’s like, you do. And I was like, yeah, you know, we had a quick conversation. And then I was like, sure, I’ll talk to a sales guy. Let’s find, let’s talk. And we had a conversation earlier today and I was like, I didn’t need to be sold on it because I knew I had already done all this education already. I know what they do. You know, we got to the very specific nitty gritty at that point, right?

And I’m sure the salesperson totally appreciated that all the marketing that business owner had done building a great website, doing all of his ads and videos and educational content on YouTube got me to a point where, yeah, it was four years later, but I might actually be interested in buying right now because I might have clients who could actually use the platform. that’s, that’s creating awareness up at the top. This guy was paying four cents a view every time he showed me a commercial for four years.

And now I’m close to buying, you know, maybe in a few months, maybe there’ll be the right fit, a product that could run anywhere from 500 to $1 a month if I were to buy it.

Tom Nixon (32:19.884)
Wow, yeah.

Curtis Hays (32:21.243)
Right. And I didn’t, I wasn’t search ads. I didn’t go, I need an attribution tool and high rose popped up. He was paying two to four cents a view, just showing me YouTube ads. And I was checking out his website and you know, things just along the way. And I was still doing my own thing. And then a sales guy happened to call me and book a demo and, know, we talked. So it could certainly work.

Tom Nixon (32:27.256)
Right.

Tom Nixon (32:43.906)
Well, that’s one of the morals of the story, I think, is the patience, which you have to have. You have to align your patience with what the natural sales cycle is for your product or service. you’re not going to, well, everything we’re talking about, I think, will expedite and facilitate somebody going through the funnel. You can’t manufacture speed to purchase, right? If somebody’s not ready, they’re not ready. So you need to be doing marketing that’s not going to pay off with the conversion being the sale.

Because if you don’t, you’re losing everything that we just talked about in this entire episode, going back to two to four cents a click or a view over four years. It’s nothing if you purchase this product. But people will say, let’s start a lead gen campaign. They’ll look 60 days in. Is this working? What do mean is it working? How long has it taken you in the past to convert, to get somebody signed up for your service? Usually takes a year or two. It’s not a time machine.

Curtis Hays (33:39.955)
So there’s some issues here and I think, I think Amy Schuster, we covered this a little bit in episode five. Amy’s a fractional CMO if you didn’t catch that episode, great episode. And I think one of the things we talked about in that episode is the turnover that exists in organizations these days with either executives or marketing professionals. I have a client that I’ve had for now going on four years who I’ve now

Tom Nixon (33:57.165)
Yeah.

Curtis Hays (34:08.563)
will probably be 14 different people in that organization that I’ve worked with in a leadership role, handling either sales or marketing in four years, only four years, that’s 14 different people. Every person that comes in is measured off performance in the first three to six months. So how do you ever get to come in, institute any sort of change and a

business be allowed to have patience, like you mentioned, to see the performance. I think today where I see it more often than not is a company like Mario’s company where it’s family run. Mario’s not going anywhere, his parents started the business. Granted, they want to see results, but I think that they have a little bit more patience than a marketing executive who’s at a larger company with private equity funding and the board of directors.

You they’re expecting results, right? And it’s not to say you, you, you don’t still need to produce results. You do, but it, it shifts some mindset that like everything has to be focused. What’d I said at the beginning, at the bottom of the funnel, and then nobody’s paying attention to the top. And so if you forget the funnel, it may not be a good thing. you, you, you gotta remember there’s still, there’s still people who are unaware that you, have to.

Tom Nixon (35:28.377)
Exactly.

Curtis Hays (35:34.705)
You have to do that.

Tom Nixon (35:36.31)
Right. You mentioned private equity. used to think P E stood for private equity. It stands for patients eliminated. They come in and they’re like, what are we doing to drive sales tomorrow? it doesn’t always happen that way. And I’m not going to name names. We’ve collaborated on a client that came to us with, inpatient metrics. And you know, this is our business season. We need to start converting right away. Okay. Well, we tried and it was fits and starts. And then we said, well, what if we did it this way?

Curtis Hays (35:42.16)
Yeah.

Tom Nixon (36:04.328)
What if we nurtured them from unaware to aware and aware to interest and interest to desire? How would that look for action at the end? Lo and behold, it’s their best lead gen history ever. But it took them six months of being impatient and doing it the wrong way or the suboptimal way. And now they’re doing it the right way and they’re super pleased. I if anyone wants that reference, I will be happy to give it to them privately and you could ask them yourselves. But it’s you just you can’t manufacture the speed.

What we’re doing is we’re optimizing the pathway, but we can’t like magically make somebody buy your product that doesn’t want it.

Curtis Hays (36:42.443)
You said that I really, really good thing to say there is, is all of this is trying to optimize the funnel. And like we, I said at the start, which is what that book’s all about. You can’t optimize the funnel until you first understand your customers and why they buy in the first place. How did they get from aware to purchase, understand that path, or at least some idea of what that path looks like for a segment of consumers who buy your product or service. And then.

You know, essentially you’re trying to replicate that in some way. You’re trying to find similar people, like -minded or, people who have the same problem. And you’re trying to match the messaging to how that previous customer responded. What messaging or what value did your product provide that they, that, that helped them, that actually helped them. They actually see value. And, I think, I think the, one of the references in the book was.

a very complicated, financial platform and they were talking all ever, they were just throwing all the features at everybody. And then they started talking to customers and then the customers were like, well, actually I just bought your product because you make it really convenient for me to collect payments. I don’t care about anything else. Yeah. So, so that was like, light bulb.

Tom Nixon (37:59.286)
Yeah. I’m not even using those other features and I probably won’t. Exactly.

Curtis Hays (38:07.623)
Let’s change our messaging to talk about this. we’ll, you know, our customer acquisition will grow because now we’re saying things that people are actually responding to and showing that value. So yeah.

Tom Nixon (38:18.892)
I’ll give people for free the most, I think the most important question I ask a client’s customers. It’s the first question I ask. I say, do you remember what life was like before you discovered my client? That’s where the why messaging lives. They’ll tell you, my God, it was so hectic and it was so disjointed. It was so whatever. They’re telling you what their why was. That’s your secret sauce right there. Cause now you’re going to lead with that when you advertise to other people like that customer profile. So.

All right, well, I’ll give you a chance. mentioned, speaking of mentioning good words, you mentioned Mario and we are pleased to announce that Mario is going to come back at the end of the season, which we are fast approaching. We’re going to get a checkup with him. We’re going to talk next up. Yep. So look forward to that one. And then you and I are going to wrap up the season here as we get into our busy season. So we’ve got just a couple more episodes left, two, three left. Any final thoughts on the funnel before we forget about it?

Curtis Hays (39:00.209)
Actually, next episode. Next episode, Tim. Yeah, it’ll be, yeah.

Curtis Hays (39:17.617)
Yeah, don’t forget about it. Forget about it, but don’t forget about it.

Tom Nixon (39:19.544)
Yes, it’s kind of. Forget it for now, but don’t forget about it, right? I think if I could paraphrase what they’re trying to say is forget the bottom of the funnel for now and let’s talk about everything else that exists. So great book. Thank you for the recommendation. You have a second book to read, so I should get you back out into the real world so you can read my second book. Yeah, shameless plug, shameless plug. Alright, well good. Well alright.

Curtis Hays (39:25.831)
That’s right.

Curtis Hays (39:31.847)
Yeah. Yup.

Curtis Hays (39:42.085)
Yes, yes.

Curtis Hays (39:45.829)
I need another vacation is what I need. And then I can, I can read that one. Yeah. Or you need to do an audio version so I can listen to it while I’m in the tractor.

Tom Nixon (39:49.442)
We’ll wait for the holidays to get here, I guess.

Tom Nixon (39:56.46)
Yeah, then I would have to read the whole thing again for the f***ing time. All right. We’ll figure something out. Good to see you again. Glad we’re back podcasting and we’ll see you next week, right? See you then. Hope it’s next week, whenever it is.

Curtis Hays (40:07.101)
See you then.