Small Business Owners: Who Should You Hire for Marketing?

Small Business Owners: Who Should You Hire for Marketing? written by Jordan E read more at Duct Tape Marketing

When it comes to marketing, small business owners have a big decision to make: who should you hire to get the job done? The options are varied, each with its own set of benefits and challenges. Let’s break it down.

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Table of Contents

1

In-House Marketing Team

2

Outsourced Marketing

3

The Hybrid Approach: Best of Both Worlds

4

Making Your Decision

5

Choose Your Adventure

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In-House Marketing Team

Bringing marketing in-house means you get total control over everything. You can give real-time input on strategies, tweak campaigns as needed, and stay in the loop on daily tasks. Plus, your team is 100% focused on your business, so their efforts are super tailored to what you want.

Sounds great, right? Well, here’s the catch—this setup can get really expensive, really fast. Small businesses often can’t afford to hire senior-level marketers, let alone build an entire team of specialists. For example, just hiring a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Marketing Director, or VP of Marketing can set you back anywhere from $15,363 to $29,732 per month. And that’s just one person!

If you want a full team (think SEO pros, content creators, web developers, designers, etc.), you’re looking at an average of $6,348 per specialist per month. Ouch.

Key Roles & Costs:

• CMO, Marketing Director, or VP of Marketing
  • Monthly Cost: $15,363 - $29,732
  • Pros: You get a seasoned marketing expert who’s fully dedicated to your business. 
  • Cons: The cost is high, and for many small businesses, it’s just not practical.
• Marketing Implementers
  • Monthly Cost per Specialist: $6,348
  • Pros: With dedicated specialists (like social media managers, SEO experts, or designers), you get quality work in specific areas.
  • Cons: Costs add up quickly. Plus, without a unified strategy, you might end up with a marketing team that’s not always on the same page.

Outsourced Marketing

Outsourcing your marketing can be a much more budget-friendly option. You get access to outside experts without needing to hire full-time employees. But be warned: finding the right partner is key, or you could end up wasting time and money on a setup that doesn’t fit your business.

Fractional CMO (fCMO)

• Monthly Fees: $5,000 - $10,000
• Pros: A Fractional CMO brings that high-level marketing expertise but at a fraction of the cost of a full-time CMO. They offer strategic direction and leadership, which can really boost your marketing efforts.
• Cons: It’s a shift in mindset for many businesses. You’ll need to get used to a part-time leader, but with the right fit, this model can work wonders.

Marketing Agency

• Monthly Fees: $5,000 - $15,000+
• Pros: Agencies give you a team of specialists who cover everything from strategy to execution. You get a diverse set of skills, usually at a lower cost than hiring in-house.
• Cons: Some agencies use a one-size-fits-all approach, which means they might not tailor their strategies to your specific needs.

The Hybrid Approach: Best of Both Worlds

If hiring a full in-house team seems like overkill but you’re not sold on outsourcing everything, the Fractional CMO Agency Model could be your sweet spot. This setup combines the senior-level expertise of a Fractional CMO with the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of outsourcing.

Here’s why it’s worth thinking about:

Fractional CMO Agency

• Monthly Fees: $5,000 - $15,000+
• Pros:
  • Top-Tier Expertise: You get a senior-level marketer without paying a full-time salary.
  • Cost-Effective: It’s way more affordable than building an entire in-house team.
  • Full Execution Team: The agency fills in any gaps in your team, covering all aspects of marketing.
  • Integrated Strategy: With a Fractional CMO guiding both your in-house and outsourced teams, everything stays aligned with your business goals.
  • Clear Metrics: You’ll get measurable results, so you’ll know exactly what’s working (and what’s not).
• Cons: Switching to this model requires a bit of a mindset shift, but with the right partner, it can be a game-changer.

Making Your Decision

At the end of the day, the right choice depends on what your business needs, your budget, and your goals.

Whether you go all-in on an in-house team, outsource to the pros, or find a balance with the hybrid approach, it’s all about finding what works best for your business.

Take some time to weigh the pros and cons of each option, and find the perfect fit that aligns with your strategy and resources.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Fractional CMO Agency Model and how it could help your business, check out my post on Leveraging a Fractional CMO for Growth for more insights.

Still unsure? Let’s talk! Book a free discovery call and we can figure out what makes the most sense for you.

Choose Your Adventure

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Weekend Favs October 26th

Weekend Favs October 26th written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but I encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one I took on the road.

• GrowthBar is an AI-powered SEO tool that helps marketers create content designed to rank high on search engines. It provides keyword suggestions, backlink opportunities, and AI-generated content outlines for better SEO performance.

• Anyword is an AI copywriting platform that generates marketing copy for ads, social media, and emails. It offers predictive analytics to forecast how well the copy will perform based on data-driven insights.
• Outranking is an AI content optimization and research tool that helps marketers create high-ranking SEO content. It provides suggestions for structure, keywords, and SERP optimization, making content more competitive in search engines.

These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Connect with me on Linkedin!

If you want to check out more Weekend Favs you can find them here.

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How to Build Game-Changing Strategy by Choosing Your Customers and Competition

How to Build Game-Changing Strategy by Choosing Your Customers and Competition written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Seth Godin

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I had the pleasure of interviewing Marketing Hall of Famer and frequent guest, Seth Godin. A renowned expert in marketing, entrepreneurship, and strategic philosophy, Seth shares his invaluable insights once again on our show. With over 30 years of experience and multiple bestselling books to his name, Seth and I dive into my favorite topic—STRATEGY. In this episode, we explore how both businesses and individuals can transform their strategic approach for greater success.

In his latest book, This is Strategy: Make Better Plans, and a little anecdote about a chef, an electric car, and 30 years of veganism, he defines strategy as a philosophy of becoming and explains how understanding systems, the art of choosing customers, and competition can lead to long-term success.

Seth Godin challenges conventional strategy ideas, emphasizing empathy and awareness of the systems influencing customers and competitors. His thoughts on building sustainable, intentional strategies are a must-have for agencies, entrepreneurs and business leaders looking to stop running around in circles and make a meaningful impact.

 

Key Takeaways:

• Strategy Is a Philosophy of Becoming: Godin explains that strategy isn’t just about following a step-by-step plan. It’s a forward-thinking philosophy that requires systems awareness and making intentional decisions that align with the change you aim to create.
• Empathy is Key to Effective Strategy: Godin stresses the importance of empathy, not just kindness, in strategic decision-making. Understanding your customers’ needs and the systems they operate within helps businesses connect more effectively and create long-lasting relationships.
• Choose Your Customers and Competitors: Godin highlights a critical but often overlooked aspect of strategy: businesses can choose their customers and competitors. By doing so, they can avoid commoditization and focus on serving those who genuinely value their unique offerings.

These insights from Godin highlight the power of a holistic, empathetic approach to strategy. He provides actionable guidance for entrepreneurs looking to outshine the competition and build lasting value.

Questions I asked Seth Godin:

• [00:50] Define anticipatory customer experience…..

More About Seth Godin:

• Seth Godin’s Blog
• Connect with Seth on LinkedIn
• Grab a copy of This Is Strategy: Make Better Plans
  

 

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by:

Oracle

Nobody does data better than Oracle. Train your AI models at twice the speed and less than half of the cost of other clouds. If you want to do more and spend less, take a free test drive at Oracle.

Duct Tape Transcript

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Testimonial (00:00): I was like, I found it. I found it. This is what I've been looking for. I can honestly say it is genuinely changed the way I run my business. It's changed the results that I'm seeing. It's changed my engagement with clients. It's changed my engagement with the team. I couldn't be happier. Honestly. It's the best investment I ever made.

John Jantsch (00:16): What you just heard was a testimonial from a recent graduate of the Duct Tape Marketing certification intensive program for fractional CMOs marketing agencies and consultants just like them. You can choose our system to move from vendor to trusted advisor, attract only ideal clients, and confidently present your strategies to build monthly recurring revenue. Visit DTM world slash scale. Brilliant. Here we go.

(00:50): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Seth Godin, teacher, author, and entrepreneur. With over three decades of experience inspiring people to level up and make a difference. He's published 20 bestselling books translated into nearly 40 languages, including most recently, the Song of Significance, the Practice, and this is Marketing. Today we're going to talk about a new book called This is Strategy, make Better Plans. It comes out dependent upon when you're listening to this in mid-October of 2024, October 22nd, to be specific, he is a inducted into the Gorilla Marketing Hall of Fame, direct Marketing Hall of Fame, the Marketing Hall of Fame. And today I'm going to officially induct him into the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast Hall of Fame as well. So Seth, welcome to the show,

Seth Godin (01:47): John, like the actual duct tape, your podcast is really useful and it lasts. And last, thank you for having me once again.

John Jantsch (01:56): You bet. Been doing this for a while and I think that I've lost track, but this is at least your sixth appearance and I always enjoy it. Always look forward to it. Me too. So if I were to gather a panel of 10 people to put them in a room and ask them what is strategy? I know for experience, I would get 10 different answers. Maybe 12. Maybe 12. You're right. And some of them would be nuanced. Some of them would just be flatrock. So I wonder if you could, at least for a baseline, what is your definit?

Seth Godin (02:29): Right. So that's why I had to write a book and why it's called This is Strategy. I want to answer that question. It's not tactics, it's not follow all the steps in the plan and then you'll get your result. We need that. But that's not strategy. Strategy is a philosophy of becoming. It is our awareness of the systems around us and our decisions that we make to use those systems to help us Cause the change we seek to make, it is an assertion about the future and it gets better if we talk about it.

John Jantsch (03:06): Sometimes I talk about how everybody has different notions of it and a lot of the confusion, I think people come by honestly. I mean Google the term marketing strategy and you will get said lists of tactics from what is supposed to be an authority. So I really get it. But your definition, a philosophy of becoming. Do you find that, while I think that is an amazing definition, do you find that people struggle with Can't get my arms around that idea. I need something more tangible.

Seth Godin (03:38): For sure. That's why it's a book and not a blog post that people who have a strategy that is working look like they're smarter than everybody else the same way. Good waves make a surfer seem better than they are. And our blindness to the available strategies is the main reason why we get stuck. And so there are countless examples and questions that we can go through to help us see what we couldn't see before, and that once we learn to bring empathy to our work, everything about it gets easier.

John Jantsch (04:20): Yeah. So you jumped ahead of me. I was going to challenge you on the empathy word because quite frankly, I think a lot of times when people think about strategy, all they think about is how are we're going to compete? And sometimes that doesn't have a whole lot of empathy in it. So how should we be thinking rather than that limited view?

Seth Godin (04:40): Okay, so there is kindness and empathy, but I'm not making a kindness argument here. What I am saying is you might want to be the king of the world in charge of everything, but you are not

(04:53): That other individuals and organizations have agency, they can make a choice. And so when you wrote your breakthrough book about marketing, you wrote it in English that showed empathy for the reader you were seeking to serve because if you had written it in Czech, they wouldn't have been able to read it no matter how much you insisted they do. So what we have to do is acknowledge that the people we are seeking to do business with, we are here to serve them. And they don't know what we know. They don't see what we see. And that's okay. If we don't go to where they are, they're definitely not going to come to where we are. And that has to be built into our understanding of the choices and the systems and the decisions and the time as we compete because you don't have to have pity for your competitors, but it really helps to have empathy for anyone who has agency.

John Jantsch (05:51): So again, in my world, probably to some extent in your world, although yours is a little broader, more diverse maybe in some cases, audiences, I talked to a lot of marketers and so when they think strategy, it's a business strategy for gaining more customers or something along those lines. Would you also say, well no, this is something every individual needs to be thinking about. I mean, we all need people strategies.

Seth Godin (06:16): Well, from a very practical point of view, let's start with the 17-year-old who lived down the street who I helped get into college, and he just made the most expensive financial decision of his life. It's going to put him a quarter of a million dollars in debt. And he did it without a strategy. He decided to go to a place that isn't worth the money and isn't going to pay off because he was judging it on what did it feel like to visit the college campus and how will that window sticker make him feel? Well, if he had said out loud before he started, that was his goal. It would be coherent, but he didn't say it out loud. It was intuitive. He didn't really have a strategy. He was just stumbling in the dark. So we easily become the victim of a credit card company, the victim of someone in our life, in our family who isn't engaging with us in a way that's productive with our boss if we don't have a strategy.

(07:19): So when I got out of business school, my strategy was super simple. I want to get a job at the fastest growing company that will hire me. I don't care what they make because if it's the fast growing company, I'm more likely to find a smart boss and I'm more likely to get exposed to interesting problems. And that two years will set me up for the next thing I want to do. And the person sitting next to me in class, their strategy was, business school is really expensive. I'm going to go work for the most prestigious, highest paying job I can get. And time demonstrated that I probably had a better strategy because the trajectory of my career over time was different. And so when we invest in time as we make these choices, whether it's understanding what the admissions office wants or understanding what our partner wants or understanding what the customers for our locksmith company want, it's all the same thing. It's do we see the game? Do we see time? Do we see systems? And what moves are we going to make?

John Jantsch (08:27): So you mentioned system, so I was definitely going to go there as well. You talk about systems delivering value. I've gone as far as saying the system for many business is the strategy

Seth Godin (08:41): You're using system I think a little differently than me. Tell me what you mean by system.

John Jantsch (08:45): When I created Duct Tape Marketing, I actually decided people needed a marketing system. And that if I could at least come in and say, look, here's something we can do and we could repeat for a lot of folks and we're going to install a system, which people were like, why didn't I think of a system for marketing? That's how I'm using it. And that's been my body of work

Seth Godin (09:06): And that's super important. But the reason you need one is you are trying to make a change in a system outside of your company and having a persistent tool inside your company is the only way to do it. So what are the systems we're talking about an example I like to share how much should a wedding cost? And the answer is exactly what my best friend spent plus $20. And that's why weddings cost a hundred thousand dollars. Now, the wedding industrial complex is a system, all these people in the system making decisions that if the system didn't exist would seem absurd, right? But they're not absurd because they are part of something. The healthcare system in the United States does not make health. It makes treatments. And there are all these, well-meaning people in the system, but they make decisions that don't make any sense outside the system, but inside the system make perfect sense. So if we're going to dance with any existing system, we need an internal system. So we can repeatedly do our work, but we better be able to see what the system in the outside world does in order to be able to make a change there.

John Jantsch (10:24): You make what I still, I've actually said this in various ways for many years, ports that you actually as a business get to choose your customers. And you have said that, and I think a lot of people are like, that's completely wrong. That's not how it works. The customer is always right. I just have to find enough people to give me money and whatever they want I need to create. And this notion of choosing your own customers to some people seems a little elitist almost is when it comes to business. But boy, is it a much more enjoyable way to do business.

Seth Godin (10:56): Yeah, well, this is a breakthrough and of course it's elitist. You deserve that. You deserve to spend your days offering this thing. You're offering to the people who will appreciate it and engage with you in a way that's helpful. When you take anyone off the street, you have sacrificed your agency and vision for randomness. So David Chang's a famous chef and he's been in the news for many years. Before he was famous, he had a tiny restaurant in New York City called Momo Fuco and it hadn't been reviewed yet. It only had 40 seats and you could sit at the counter. I don't know how I stumbled on it is where my kids were younger, the four of us, my wife and kids would get in the electric car drive to Manhattan and go there for lunch on Saturday. And we would sit at the counter and I haven't had meat in 40 years and I would say, I would like the Brussels sprouts.

(11:53): Please leave out the bacon that benefits both of us. You don't have to waste the bacon and I can eat them. And the first three weeks we went, I loved it. And the fourth week, the guy behind the counter, I'm pretty sure it was David said, there's a vegetarian restaurant a few doors down. I think going forward, you guys would be happier there. We put this on the menu, we like bacon, thanks for coming, but don't come back. And that was the day in my book, he became David Chang because he said, I'm going to build a restaurant not for people who are hungry. There are countless restaurants for people who are hungry. I'm going to build a restaurant for people who want to see what David Chang wants to make. And you can do that in any line of work or you can be a commodity. Those are your two choices. If you want to be a commodity, you got to put up with whoever's going to give you the money. But if you pick your customers, you can pick your future.

John Jantsch (12:52): I'm not sure if there's the flip side or if this is actually to me an advancement of that same idea. You also talk about choosing your competition. And I think that one is in some ways even more brilliant because I don't think anybody thinks about that idea. It's like, no, this is who I compete with as opposed to, oh, this is the category I'm going to actually claim.

Seth Godin (13:13): Yeah, right. So a lot of your customers, John, actually want a job without a boss. There's nothing shameful in that they're freelancers at scale. They're not entrepreneurs who are claiming an unfolding future. And so they find a category where they can put out a sign and wait for the customers to come. They've already determined who their competitors are. They intuitively picked. But if you decide that you are going to compete with scammers and spammers and people who are always fast talking and racing to the bottom, you're either going to do that or you're going to fail, right? You pick them that when you decide to be a plastic surgeon in Columbus, Ohio and there's only one other plastic surgeon, your practice is going to be different than if you're a plastic surgeon in Park Avenue in New York. You pick your competitors and then you pick the standards that your customers are going to measure you by.

John Jantsch (14:16): AI might be the most important new computer technology ever. It's storming every industry and literally billions of dollars are being invested. Buckle up. The problem is that AI needs a lot of speed and processing power. So how do you compete without cost spiraling out of control? It's time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud. Oracle Cloud infrastructure or O-C-I-O-C-I is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. OCI has four to eight times the bandwidth of other clouds offers one consistent price instead of a variable regional pricing. And of course, nobody does data better than Oracle. So now you can train your AI models at twice the speed and less than half of the cost of other clouds. If you want to do more and spend less like Uber eight by eight and Databricks Mosaic, take a free test drive@ociatoracle.com slash duct tape. That's oracle.com/duct tape oracle.com/duct tape immediately. What I thought of when I read that was even in the same business marketing consultants, choosing what you're going to charge is a way to pick your competitors. There's so much competition in this bucket. Let's go over here.

Seth Godin (15:38): Exactly. That's exactly right. Positioning is a generous model. It is not differentiation. It is saying to your customers, if you are looking for this is what I have. If you're looking for that, let me give you the fun number of those people.

(15:54): And there's a story, it may be apocryphal, I don't think it is, of several of companies. Were trying to build big financial institutions, people like Fidelity, et cetera. And one of them did some research and discovered that 80% of their customer service calls were coming from 5% of their customers. And that these customers tended to have low balances. So they decided to write all of these people a very respectful letter saying, we don't think we're the place for you. We are having trouble serving this. Here are the phone numbers of three of our competitors. Please find someone who's a better fit. Well, when you move those customers away, you freed up your entire customer service team and you've established your position in the marketplace, which is we are here for people of a certain kind of resource and a certain kind of question. And those people over there, that's where you should go if you're a different kind of customer.

John Jantsch (16:49): So when it really comes down to it, people who read books, love tools, they love like, oh, this philosophy of becoming is great, but what are the 40 questions that I need to ask in order to develop my own strategy? You happen to actually have that for us. So how did you decide on what that very curated list should be?

Seth Godin (17:11): Well, it's not that curated because I could have had 40 different questions. It's designed to prompt you down the path. And the way I did it was after I wrote the first draft of the book, I made 45 videos to become a Udemy course, which is in the world now. And then I had 350 people inside the purple.space community. I gave them access to the course for free and watched them do the course. And it was very cool to be able to watch other people have interactions about it. I could see where they were getting stuck and instead of me diving in and clarifying, I just clarified it in the book. And what I have found is it asking simple questions. Who's it for? What's it for? What is the change I seek to make? Who else has done this before me? What assets do I need?

(18:05): What do I need to learn? These are very straightforward questions that we avoid every day. And I know this because I spend time talking to friends about their projects. And when I bring up any of these questions, they get slightly anxious because left unsaid, you're off the hook, left unsaid. Well, whoever needs it. But if you have to say it, then if it doesn't come true, you've made a claim that you're responsible for. But if you're going to spend your limited days on this project, please say it to just two or three people. Say it to claude.ai, own it and see what other people say back.

John Jantsch (18:49): It's funny, I work with a lot of organizations and I'm sure you have as well. You take one look at me, you're like, well, it's obvious what you need to do. And yet they have really brilliant people inside the organization that are like, oh my God, that's brilliant. Why didn't somebody tell us that? Why is it so hard for people that are in it every day to see strategy or even rather than just like, here's what we do, phone's still ringing. Keep churning.

Seth Godin (19:18): Yeah, well, so there are many differences between you and me. You are way more patient than I am.

(19:23): And that's one of the reasons why I have never done a day of consulting in my life. Because in person, when someone hires a consultant, they often want them to solve their problem. And what you have the patience to understand is only they can solve their problem and your job is to create the conditions for them to see how to do that. But I have sat with people running for president. I've sat with people who are billionaires, people who run giant organizations, friends, and they have no clue what their strategy is. And if you point out what a possible strategy might be, you can watch their eyes light up and they realize someone just showed them a path when they thought they had to go through the woods. And then inevitably they get off the path and they go back to the woods because it's hard to say no in the short run. So you can say yes in the long run, it's easier to say yes to the urgency of right now and then have to dig your way out of a hole later. You have no choice. And so strategy is this affirmative action, this decision-making to say, I have the internal discipline to turn that down so I can do that instead.

John Jantsch (20:38): Yeah, that's one of the brilliant things about having a clear view of what your strategy is. It actually helps tell you what not to do. Does it?

Seth Godin (20:48): Yeah. That's actually the hardest part.

John Jantsch (20:50): And I think that's what people are struggling, especially entrepreneurs are struggling with the most. There's so many things they can do and there's no filter for what they should do.

Seth Godin (20:59): So they end up doing mediocre this, mediocre this, but at least they did everything. So in my case, when Twitter showed up, I was early, could have had quite a big following on Twitter. And I said, but if I say yes to that, what am I going to do less of? Am I willing to become a mediocre blogger to become a pretty good twitterer? And I was like, no, that's not my choice to be there. It's my choice to be here. Let me focus on the thing that fuels my strategy as opposed to serving somebody who's decided I would make them happier if I did that instead.

John Jantsch (21:37): Yeah. And as it turns out, you were so good, you ended up having a big follow on Twitter anyway without even participating there. It was amazing. No, brilliant. So would you say that one of the things that holds people back, call it mistake, call it a choice, is that generally speaking, especially a going entity, there is going to be some pain before there is gain to actually adopt a clear strategy because you're going to have to invest. And it's not a short-term effect.

Seth Godin (22:09): I think there's already pain and you've justified the pain because doing your work and there's going to be a shift for sure, there's going to be taking a deep breath and saying, we're not going to do that anymore. So there's a lot of things to criticize about Jack Welch, but one of the smart things that Jack Welch did was their strategy is if we can't be number one or number two in a category, we're not going to do it anymore. So that's why General Electric stopped making toasters

John Jantsch (22:41): Because

Seth Godin (22:42): They said, we can make a pretty good toaster and an okay return, but let's just sell this toaster division and focus on someplace where we can win. That was painful, but it ended up, at least for a while, being a really smart move because being a meaningful specific is better than being a wandering generality that can fuel many strategy choices.

John Jantsch (23:05): So the last, I'll end up here with a timing question. The last decade at least, I mean, I've been doing this 30 years. We didn't have the internet in marketing when I started, right? I, so we can talk about how much has changed, but the last decade, I feel like as every coming decade, it just feels like the speed of change accelerates. So how big is a lot of times when people make a great strategic decision, it was just good time. So is there an element of luck to this? Because who knows what the next quarter's going to bring?

Seth Godin (23:42): There's a huge amount of luck. What we're trying to figure out is how can you make the deck as stacked as you can before you have to pick a card? And the thing about change is this systems change when they have to, not when they want to. And what forces the system to change is a shift in communications information or technology because systems depend on those things to maintain their status quo. Well, guess what? The biggest systems change in history is happening right this second. And when systems confront the combination of climate and ai, they are going to be transformed. If you show up when a system is in flux and embrace what the system is about to become, it's like being a surfer who gets a perfect wave, that learning to use the systems when they're shifting to help the system get what it's wanted all along, that two hours of work will pay off in 2000 hours of benefit. And this is the moment to do that.

John Jantsch (24:53): I said that was my last question, but then you opened up the whole box on what you're doing on climate. We could do a whole show, I'm sure you have done entire shows. Can you give sort of a one minute invitation to people to find out more about the work you're doing?

Seth Godin (25:08): So I volunteered for a year and a half full time and built the Carbon Almanac with 1900 other people. It's at the carbon almanac.org and it is a judgment free book, 97,000 words, footnoted fact-check illustrated with cartoons. And you can look up anything that's in it, and if you don't agree, but you need to know, you need see and understand what is actually going on. Carbon in the air is invisible, but easily measured, and it doesn't match the way we grew up in the world to imagine that the weather is just something that shifts back and forth. The climate is not, the weather and the climate is changing in a way that's going to create 15 million refugees without homes in the next five years. It's going to put American cities completely underwater. You don't have to like it, but it's happening. So the question is, what will we all do about it? And it's going to be really hard to make that decision in 20 years, but if you know now what's coming, it represents not just an urgency, but an enormous opportunity.

John Jantsch (26:20): Well, and if you think the wars over oil have been bad, which we see the wars over water.

Seth Godin (26:25): Yeah,

John Jantsch (26:26): We actually need water. We don't really need oil. That's going to be, I'm not sure what it's going to be anyway, Seth, as always, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop on Duct Tape Marketing podcast. And I know people can find your books anywhere, but there any place you'd want to invite people to find out more about this as stretch?

Seth Godin (26:48): I built a page at Seth's blog slash tis, and there's some videos and links and other things there. We made this really fun deck that has 5 million combinations of prompts in it. Add a collectible chocolate bar, my first one ever with a trading card and everything inside. Very fun.

John Jantsch (27:05): Well again, appreciate you taking a moment to stop by and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days again, out there on the road.

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Mobile vs. Desktop: Where Do You Convert?

Mobile vs. Desktop: Where Do You Convert? written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Steve Oriola

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Steve Oriola, CEO of Unbounce. Steve Oriola is a tenured CEO with over two decades of experience scaling dynamic B2B SaaS platforms, including Act!, Constant Contact, Pipedrive, and Julius. He recently led Unbounce through the acquisition of Insightly CRM, in which the two companies effectively merged.

We discuss the findings of a recent benchmark report on CONVERSION RATES. That’s right—we tried to get rid of email, but it looks like it has entered the chat again.

Our conversation covers the importance of simplified copy, the enduring effectiveness of email marketing, the dynamics of mobile versus desktop conversions, and the rise of Instagram as a leading platform for conversions. We also cover the significance of writing at (if you can believe it) a lower grade level for better engagement, the nuances of industry-specific language, and the role of conversion-rate optimization in marketing strategies.

 

Key Takeaways:

• Complex copy is significantly hurting conversion rates. Although industry-specific language complexity can vary, simplified language resonates better with audiences today.
• Email remains the highest converting channel despite the rise of other platforms.
• Mobile traffic is high, but desktop conversions are still more substantial.
• Instagram is outperforming Facebook in terms of conversion effectiveness.
• Adopting a mobile-first design strategy is crucial for success.
• Benchmark reports can provide valuable insights for businesses.
• Testing multiple variants is essential for optimizing conversion rates.

Chapters

[00:00] Introduction to Unbounce and Steve Oriola
[03:58] Email’s Enduring Effectiveness in Conversion
[05:59] Mobile vs. Desktop: Conversion Insights
[09:32] Writing at a Fifth to Seventh-Grade Level
[11:43] Industry-Specific Language Complexity in Conversion
[13:59] Using Benchmark Reports for Industry Insights
[16:32] Integrating Insightly with Unbounce
[18:58] Capturing and Retaining Attention in Marketing

 

More About Steve Oriola

• Check out Steve Oriola‘s Website
• Follow Steve Oriola on LinkedIn
• Check out the Conversion Benchmark Report

 

This episode of The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by:

Try ActiveCampaign free for 14 days with our special offer. Exclusive to new customers—upgrade and grow your business with ActiveCampaign today!

Duct Tape Transcript

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(01:04): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Steve Oriola. He is the CEO of Unbounce. He is a tenured CEO with more than two decades of experience scaling Dynamic B2B SaaS platforms, including Act! Boy, World Slash SThere's an oldie constant contact, Pipedrive and Julius. He recently led Unbounce through the acquisition of Insightly CRM, where the two companies effectively merged. But we're going to talk today about a benchmark report, some new research that Unbounce did on conversion. So Steve, welcome to the show.

Steve Oriola (01:43): Great, thanks for having me, John. Appreciate it.

John Jantsch (01:45): So I mentioned ACT is Act still around. That was the first CRMI ever used 25 years ago.

Steve Oriola (01:52): Act is still around, has a portion of their business desktop and a smaller portion that is SaaS. So yeah, they're still delivering.

John Jantsch (02:01): Wow, that's great. Alright, so probably let's just not bury the lead, right? The big thing that you guys have been promoting about your findings is that complex copy is herding conversion rate. So let's start there. Tell me about that.

Steve Oriola (02:15): Sure, yeah. What we're finding is that, and this is just a difference between 2020 and 2024, really over just three or four years. The actual copy that resonates in lands is now fifth to seventh grade level copy as opposed to a little bit more like ninth and 10th grade or eighth and ninth. And people aren't getting dumber. We believe the noise is increasing and you have less of an opportunity to land a message and get attention. And that's what we believe the dynamic is. And we think during Covid, people may have had a little bit more time to read possibly, but the noise is intense now and we find the difference between fifth to seventh grade language and professional language is like two X in terms of conversion. So it's a significant difference.

John Jantsch (03:08): And I imagine some of it's the filter, right? I mean, like you said, people aren't getting dumber, they just are willing to invest less time. And so it's like give it to me very quickly. Don't make me dance around and get the plot. And I suspect that's probably what's going on as much as anything, right?

Steve Oriola (03:23): Yeah, there is, but if you read the report, there's a lot of nuance in there, right? A statement like that, you go into a particular vertical and it stands on its head. So we are talking about industry wide and that's really the power of the report is to drill down into a particular vertical and see what the impact really is.

John Jantsch (03:43): So people have been trying to kill out email, kill off email for many years.

Steve Oriola (03:48): The

John Jantsch (03:48): Report shows that email is still the highest converting channel. Why do you suppose so many people want email to die? Is it just because we are sick of getting it, but we also buy stuff?

Steve Oriola (04:00): No, I think it's because we now have so many other forms of communication. People think, well, email is the old one that's going to die. Email is, you have to keep in mind email is an effective store and forward mechanism. So if you think about use cases and storing forward is preferable, sometimes it's there. You don't have to read it right away. And the other thing that might make email seem more effective is it's a bit of a lower funnel tactic and comparing it to higher in the funnel tactics for conversion, not really fair. Those higher in the funnel channels and tactics are very important, yet you might not act on them until you're in an email and have something in your

John Jantsch (04:41): Yeah, so it's an attribution issue as much as anything probably.

Steve Oriola (04:46): I think it's a bit of an, and we say that in the report, we caution people, we say, look, email is a much more effective conversion mechanism, but it might not be the first stop. That's

John Jantsch (04:57): Way. So along those same lines of conversion mobile versus desktop increasing, my clients are seeing 50, 60, 70% mobile visits, but this report found that, but that's not where people are pushing by.

Steve Oriola (05:13): Well, they are. I think they're converting on mobile, they're just converting higher on desktop. But if mobile makes up 70% of your traffic, you got to look at it in real numbers too.

(05:24): And it's probably worth grinding on that mobile conversion rate in your tactics, but understand that desktop does convert higher. I think there is, and this isn't in the report, this is sort of me, there is sort of an assumption that maybe on mobile you're not seeing everything. And in fact, that is a bit true. You do design your responsive mobile to not have everything because dealing with constraints on the device. And I think people just sort of have an understanding of that. And if they're really going to make a decision about signing up for something, they may want to be on the desktop and feel like they have access to all the information.

John Jantsch (06:07): And I think going back to our attribution thing, I think if we were able to follow journeys as thoroughly as they happen, I mean we would find a lot of people doing research, finding stuff, and then going, oh, I'm going to go to the desktop now. Right?

Steve Oriola (06:19): Exactly. Yes. That's a good point is yeah, you're sitting on the couch and there's a commercial on during the football game and you're on your phone researching a landing page vendor or something.

John Jantsch (06:30): Yeah. So Unbounce clearly sees lots of landing pages built and sees the effectiveness of those. Where do you, and maybe the research directs some of this, but where do you counsel people when it comes to this idea of mobile first? That everything needs to be designed there first and work there and be optimized there first.

Steve Oriola (06:53): We believe in that. I mean, certainly deal with the hardest constraints upfront when you're designing, and then you could probably loosen up as you get to desktop. And the reason people do that is if you start with desktop, you may not think about the constraints of mobile and then you're designing for that and it's really difficult. So just flat out in general, mobile first is the right strategy. I think from a conversion mechanism like a landing page, I think you, yes, mobile first, but I think you really need to consider the industry you're in. If you're in financial services, people will do research on mobile, but they're going to make decisions when they're in front of their computer at home. So I think it's industry specific as well. So I recommend people comb through the data in here to get that kind of guidance.

John Jantsch (07:40): One of the highlights in the report, I guess maybe I don't pay enough attention because maybe this wasn't a surprise to you all, but it was a little bit surprise to me that Instagram is outperforming Facebook in terms of being a paid, converting paid social channel. Was that surprising?

Steve Oriola (07:59): Not for me and probably not for people in their twenties. I think what's changing over time is we have different platforms by demographics being sort of dragged into adulthood in the business world. And I'm sure my daughter is more likely to do something on Instagram than Facebook for

John Jantsch (08:18): Sure.

Steve Oriola (08:19): So that certainly could be part of it. I also think Instagram just is a mobile first channel and application. And as you see mobile take over more and more of the traffic, that's probably part of the dynamic as well.

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Steve Oriola (10:17): I'm sure there are AI tools out there. We wrote our own model to score grade level

(10:23): That is not available as an external service, but I'm sure there are those out there. And our methodology was to look at a whole variety of tools or methodologies to grade level people's writing and reading and chat. GPT can help you simplify, but one of the things that's in the report is the kinds of words that will make it more complex. And the number of three syllable or greater words in your should be a below 15%. So that's all laid out in the report, and you can easily do that yourself by looking at the content. And again, gen AI can summarize and simplify and you can even ask it to, I think if you write in there, dumb it down, it will literally dumb it down for you. So there are ways to do

John Jantsch (11:18): It. Yeah, I'm terrible at writing run on sentences and I'm certain that probably gets in the way, right. Shorter sentences, probably better

Steve Oriola (11:27): Then don't be a copywriter.

John Jantsch (11:29): That's what editors are for. That's right,

Steve Oriola (11:31): That's right.

John Jantsch (11:31): So there are things in here. There were a couple of things that surprised me as I've mentioned. Were there things in here that surprised you all, especially since you've done this research before?

Steve Oriola (11:41): I think some of the spreads in conversion rates in some of the verticals were significant. I believe it's health and I think financial services as well with regards to the complexity. The language, financial services actually benefits from a little more depth of language and a little more complexity of language. I think there's an assumption there that if you're pursuing financial products, that's real impact on your life and you want to understand it a little bit more. So those kinds of departures from the median as we measured, most things were a little surprising in some of the verticals. Just the level of nuance once you get down into the verticals was surprising.

John Jantsch (12:23): I'm going to come back to the verticals, but I wonder if, I mean, you're analyzing a lot of copy that is, I don't know, top of funnel for a better word, that you're getting attention, right? With landing pages in some cases or getting people to move to a next stage in a journey. Would you agree that potentially simpler language is better there because we don't have a relationship as we get deeper and I'm starting to analyze, can you actually solve my problem? Do I want perhaps a more complex language or at least deeper language because I'm going to spend the time?

Steve Oriola (12:55): Well, landing pages are not only top of funnel. So landing pages,

John Jantsch (12:58): I knew you were going to say that

Steve Oriola (13:00): Landing pages would come into play further down the funnel, even in retargeting, even in customer marketing to your own customer base. So the closer you get to that, the more complex the language can be and probably the more information people are looking for. So I think that plays a role for sure.

John Jantsch (13:20): Yeah. So you talked a couple times about industry specific benchmarks. Would you suggest that somebody who's thinking, oh, I'm going to read this thing and see what my industry is doing, would then actually be able to draw the conclusion of, oh, okay, we're doing really well or we're doing better than people in our industry, or we need to up our game. I mean, do you feel like they can use the tool that way?

Steve Oriola (13:42): That's really the purpose of the tool.

John Jantsch (13:44): Yeah,

Steve Oriola (13:44): Exactly that. And we didn't release all of the verticals yet. We're still crunching data to write this report. We crunched a year's worth of data, 57 million conversions, over 41,000 landing pages. And the verticals that didn't show up as statistically significant. And those kinds of numbers aren't in here, so it's not going to cover everyone. I think if your vertical's not in here, you could still look at verticals, you could look at the data overall, so it will work for everyone. But if your vertical's in here, it's a benchmark,

John Jantsch (14:18): Roughly how many verticals you think covers, it's going to be tough for a specific,

Steve Oriola (14:23): Yeah, sorry, I think we did seven or eight and maybe we have that or more coming.

John Jantsch (14:27): Okay. Okay. Alright. Conversion rate optimization is obviously a huge part of landing pages of marketing in general of webpage of pretty much everything. How can we make this better, right? I think there are actually probably c-suite titles given to that function

Steve Oriola (14:46): Director level. I've seen VPs of CRO. Yep.

John Jantsch (14:50): So you talk about in this report something called simple CRO, and I think a lot of people feel like, no, it's terribly complex. So explain how that differs.

Steve Oriola (15:01): We can give a lot of capabilities. Our platform is not just for building landing pages, we have an AB testing solution and it's more than A and B, it's sort of we can create multiple variants and pick the best copy and even prior to statistical relevance, that's just a math problem. We can help and we can also maintain those variants and direct traffic to the variant that makes the most sense for you. And we're taking signals in order to make those determinations. So it's way more than a landing page platform. And I think that's an important consideration because we were designing and building a CRO platform and that's what it's about. So we would call that pretty simple because the tools are there if you want to go further beyond what our tools let you do. We have a third of our customers, I'll call them customers or agencies, and they serve well beyond our customer base. And a lot of those agencies are performance based and go quite a bit further and start optimizing for revenue and other things beyond the conversion where they have that data and usually it's their MarTech stack that we're integrated into. So there are ways to go much further beyond. We make CR os simple, but we also want our more advanced customers to be able to go further.

John Jantsch (16:31): How is Insightly the CRM showing up in the unbalanced product?

Steve Oriola (16:36): Sure. Well, it isn't yet. We've been one company since July. We are integrating the platforms and you're likely to see the landing page solution be an upsell for marketing automation, right? Insightly has both a CRM and a marketing automation platform. The data science team that we built to turn our platform into a CRO platform is now very dialed into the CR ad Insightly. So you'll see the kinds of things that we can do and have done. We'll start doing on CRM and in marketing automation. We also have an attribution solution, a company that we bought a couple of years ago called Leads rx. So we have all the makings of a pretty rich, dynamic, exciting marketing solution

John Jantsch (17:28): You take on Salesforce pretty soon, right?

Steve Oriola (17:30): There you go. Well, we know our market and we know where we're going. We hope not to always be running into Salesforce.

John Jantsch (17:41): So I think in the report, I think this is where I grabbed this, you talk about attention spans being obviously part of the issue, and I think you identified 47 seconds. I'm not sure if that came right out of the report or not. So you see a lot of marketers read that and they're like, how do we get attention fast? How do we do gimmicky things? So what are some of the best ways to capture first, I guess, and then retain attention if people are only going to give us so many seconds?

Steve Oriola (18:08): Yeah, I think it comes down to clarity, which is usually simplification in this context. It usually means simpler words, not four or five syllable words and shorter copy and test generate multiple variants and test. That's really the only answer. And we give you a platform to do that.

John Jantsch (18:32): It truly is the only answer. I can't tell you how many times I've thought, oh no, that's the winner. That's the winner for sure. And you're like, what? Yeah,

Steve Oriola (18:39): No, that's right. And some of the things, and as you comb through different verticals, some of the things are a little counterintuitive. So yeah, you got to look for that.

John Jantsch (18:47): Yeah, it turns out clarity is much harder than complexity, isn't it? It's speaking of counterintuitive, Steve, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by. Where would you invite people to connect, either with you or clearly those interested in getting the full report? Where would you send

Steve Oriola (19:02): That? Oh, go to unbound.com and you'll get directed there from the homepage. Something will probably pop up and nudge you there too. So that's where I'd start. And yeah, it's a pretty good report, so it's getting a lot of play.

John Jantsch (19:18): Again, appreciate you stopping by and taking a few moments. Hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

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