Wake up from the bad dream of ineffective marketing strategies through data attribution

Hello and welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur. And today we're gonna ask the question whether attribution is the silver bullet to understanding where your customers have been before they come to you. And to answer that question, I've got Jeremy Sacramento, who's got a name like a town in California, but is actually in Copenhagen, Denmark. Jeremy, welcome to the show.

Hi, Jim. Thanks for having me on. It's a pleasure to be here.

Look, it's a pleasure to have you from Dreamdata on because I've been following your company on LinkedIn and I want us to talk about attribution. Is it the silver bullet? Because most entrepreneurs, including myself, don't know what's happening to our customers before they get to us, let alone even while they're on the journey through our own company. So help us to understand, how do you, Dreamdata, help entrepreneurs get noticed?

Right.

Yeah.

So before I think we get into the meat of attribution, I think we should unpack what we're trying to piece together. And that is customer journey, that journey from when a customer first sets off on buying a product of your type and eventually becoming a buyer of yours or not, but it's mapping that out. And we all know how this customer journey is becoming more complex. We've got individuals spending more time browsing overabundance of content. We've got them doing so on multiple devices. We've got them using multiple channels. So whether that's, you know, LinkedIn or Facebook or Google or YouTube, you name it, they can find you somewhere. And there's this overabundance of content. All these interactions they have with all these brands is becoming more complex. And now at Dreamdata, as a B2B-focused platform, we are trying to make sense of the B2B journey. So, which I would say has an added layer of complexity. And any of your listeners who are in that space will surely resonate with this, where they've multiple users representing their company buying over a really prolonged time. Actually, we ran an analysis on our data, which found that the average B2B customer journey takes from first touch to one closed as one takes 192 days. That's over about 6 months if my math is correct. So there's a lot of interaction that is taking place with different brands on review sites, on with blog posts. And what we're trying to do is unpack all that data and make sense of what's happening there.

Yeah, that's right. And as you say, if you've got nearly 6 months or more of analysis and touchpoints, many of those touchpoints as well, companies have put out content, you say, on blogs, or maybe they've done Facebook ads or videos on YouTube or on Vimeo. How do you help an entrepreneur to consolidate all of that information? Because at the moment, I've created, for example, a dashboard from podcast downloads to email newsletters and so on. At the moment, it's a manual process in Excel. How do you help with that?

Well, it's exactly that. We're moving off Excel and trying to actually pick up all those data points. Now, what we see is entrepreneurs and Startups through to enterprises using an increasing number of tools, whether it's your email automation, your ad platform, your podcast service provider, all these are sitting on these different data silos, as we call them, which need to be pulled out, pooled together, cleaned, so that you're looking at the same customer doing all these different touches, including those that are coming, you know, your web analytics, we're talking about kind of your web tracking and Google Google Analytics type of thing. We're going to get all that data together. And then we map it out and tell you kind of where your customers are and how they're interacting at the individual level, but also at the account level, which is extremely useful. So when you've got an entrepreneur who's sending out an email newsletter, who's running a podcast, who's, you know, producing a bunch of blog posts, then we answer the question, Is that working or is it not working? That is fundamentally what we're trying to achieve.

And that's wonderful because presumably then you're helping the business owner to optimize their activities, decide what's working and what's not. Is that right, Jeremy?

Exactly. So what you'll find is whether that email newsletter you're sending has actually generated— because attribution, and we'll get now into the attribution aspect, is fundamentally linking your inputs, so your marketing efforts with revenue and actual business outcomes. So it's moving past the simple traffic metrics or simple conversion metrics, it's actually going further down the funnel and saying, okay, is this generating revenue, especially if you've got a product that you're selling. So you will then see, okay, right, my Google ad, this Google ad campaign has brought in 20 customers. Whereas this other one has has only brought in 2. You know, I know now where I want to invest my money.

Wow, that's really good. So you can really analyze and optimize the campaigns as well. You have touched on a point that I have to ask you, which is about compliance with GDPR. And of course, now iOS is having blockers as well, which make a big impact on trackability. How do you overcome that? Because that would seem to undermine, if you like, the very essence of what you're doing.

Yeah, and that is a question we get all the time, especially in the wake of Google Analytics being barred in, I think it's France or a number of European countries because they've broken GDPR compliance by sending data over to the US. So Dreamdata and most other attribution platforms use first-party data, which is consent-based cookies. When you press accept on the cookie banner that pops up and The data always resides in the EU, so it's GDPR compliant by default. And it's become a very important subject matter for all of our prospective customers and one which we are happy to say that we fulfill in its entirety.

Yeah, of course. And I'm sure that's fantastic, Jeremy, that we've reassured everybody with that. Can we just talk about how much of the customer journey takes place before the customer, B2B or consumer, actually makes a purchase? Because It seems there's been a fundamental shift in that, and that would seem to be why a platform like Dreamdata can give an awareness of the behavior and really who is that customer before they even get to talk to the salesperson or in-store or the online customer service person. Can you just tell us a bit more about how customer journeys are changing and why we'd need a platform like Dreamdata?

Well, that's absolutely correct, Jim. And I was mentioning before how the customer journey is becoming more complex and it's all this, the overall abundance of content across all these channels. And consumers are spoiled for choice. Let's face it, on all spaces. So they can spend time, they can try products, online-based products, especially like DreamVader, you know, and you get free offerings. So they might be able to research, they might be able to go into review sites, they'll spend time reading blogs, comparison articles, they'll listen to podcasts, they'll watch webinars, YouTube videos, you name it. They're going to spend all this time. They can even sign up and try a product for free, all before even coming into contact with anyone, which is insane when you think about piecing together your customer journey and knowing what's working and what isn't. All this is happening in this kind of digital space mostly. And it's fundamental to any business owner, any leader to know what is happening and whether what's happening there is working. You want to gain that competitive advantage. You want to do so efficiently. You want to spend on your ads efficiently. You want to run good email campaigns. This is all going to happen in that space. I mean, the figure that is bounced around quite often is that 60% of the customer journey is happening before that actual interaction with an individual. This is what we're helping to clarify.

Okay, Jeremy, I have a question for you. You've identified different kinds of platforms, right? So some will be my own channels, my own YouTube account or my own Facebook account, for example. But some of those, for example, Glassdoor or Trustpilot or Google Reviews, I may not have a campaign running or even have an account on some of those. How do you track the universe where there are actually some that we don't have an account on those social channels?

Yeah. So there's a number of ways that it might happen. And I guess this touches on a topic that we might want to discuss, that attribution and customer journey mapping is not a silver bullet. You know, it can't give you 100% clarity. It's impossible. But where those touchpoints are recordable, for example, typically you're using, there'll be a UTM parameter. So when that individual has been to review and jumps into your site, A UTM parameter might be added. If you're not doing so, this is good practice to make sure that it's added. And then that will then start being tracked.

Sorry, let me interrupt. What's a UTM for those of us that aren't familiar with the term?

You've probably seen when you've got a link, typically on Facebook, that you've clicked through, you'll get the website URL. So like the website name, www.unnoticed.cc, and then forward slash Source X, medium X, and that is the UTM parameter. It's kind of data on where that link has come from.

Okay. So it's some universal tracking metadata or something.

Precisely. So what you want to be doing is ensuring that wherever you've got links coming into your site where you are tracking individuals to have these parameters. For example, this is a cheap shot. Otherwise you want to have accounts and find ways to pull data out of those systems.

Okay. So what you might do is, for example, if you find you're getting data or leads from something like, you know, review sites, you might then decide to create your own review site to capitalize on that. Jeremy, this sounds very clever. How clever would I need to be to run Dreamdata? Is it beyond the remit of a humble PR guy like myself?

The short answer is no, but I guess there's 2 layers to that question. The tech side. So setting it up has kind of presents some level of complexity, but we're happy to say that our free offering is becoming one where it's self-service entirely. At the click of a button, you'll be able to do your tracking. And then there's the more tools you have, how can I put it nicely? So the more tools you have, the more messy your data is and the harder it's going to be to track and to connect it all. So I guess it's dependent on each use case that this is the tech space. So the more complicated your tech stack, the harder it's going to be to piece it all together. Now, let's hypothetically assume that everything's connected and in place. As a marketer, how marketing savvy does one have to be to use and understand attribution and Dreamdata? Well, not so much. I think it's better described as a culture shift. A lot of people aren't used to working with metrics that are revenue-based or pipeline-based. So, you know, people are very used to working with traffic, the number of visitors, bounce rates, conversion rates. But when you start, you know, exposing the marketing team or an individual to, okay, your campaigns only generated X amount of revenue, then you kind of need to grapple with what that represents, because it might have to kill some darlings.

Yeah. But I think From what I've seen of your website, actually integration is pretty much you sign up for an account and then you give it access to the data for your other platforms, right? So you just connect them and then a bit like a bank feed through the Open Banking Forum, it's automatically pulling data and then putting that into the dashboards, isn't it? So it looks like the integration is pretty straightforward, to be honest.

That's correct. Yeah. And it saves individuals from having to do all that Excel process that you were describing before. Once all the integrations are in place, once you've got all your tools on your tech stack, connected with Dreamdata, those dashboards are just going to be running and kind of modeling the data and you're going to have this nice interface which you can optimize, as you said earlier, your campaigns and your channels and make sure you're spending your money where you should be.

And I love the way that it looks as though the displays are showing sort of both a snapshot, if you like, but also over time. So a bit like having a cash flow statement and a P&L, and a balance sheet. It looks as though you're getting sort of different views of the same data, Jeremy, which is really fantastic. A question, when you talk about attribution, can you just give us your definition of attribution for those of us that are not really in that space?

So again, at its most fundamental, it's connecting your marketing efforts, your go-to-market efforts. So everything you're doing to try and sell your product with business outcomes and revenue. That is, I guess, in the abstract sense. In practice, what happens is you're assigning credit to those touches that are happening. Again, when a user clicks on a paid ad, when a user reads your newsletter, watches a podcast, you're assigning credit so that you can better understand where the better performers are, where the weaker performers are, which ones you should cut, which ones you should scale and repeat, and ultimately I guess, understand your revenue streams better.

So here's a question then for you, Jeremy. Can I actually see the names of those people or are they all anonymous? Because they're all, I guess, you know, tracking cookies, right? Or pixels of some kind. Is it anonymous or do I actually get names and addresses starting to feed into my CRM?

Yeah, well, you'll get the names and addresses and for B2B, which is one of our main target audiences, you'll get the company and this happens as soon as they identify themselves. through a form submission. Let's say they sign up to your newsletter and you've asked for their name. That will get kind of channeled through to the customer profile. Of course, it will be anonymous for as long as it needs to be given, you know, the privacy issues you've already raised. But yeah, you can get data enrichment as it's called, you know, you will get an enriched customer profile with all the relevant details that you need to improve your marketing and sales and build audiences, for example.

So Jeremy, that's fantastic. So it sounds as though with the freemium model, A company of any size could sign up and use Dreamdata to optimize their marketing and advertising content strategies. Is that right?

That is absolutely correct. Yeah, there's, there are 3 pricing tiers. We've got the free offering where you're limited in the number of integrations you can make. Basically, it's available to anyone. Again, I would limit it to the B2B space. That's what we're focusing. So especially if you're selling to businesses, then we've got a team offering with some more add-ons, and finally the business level, which is targeting, I guess, people that might not be in your audience, bigger, bigger, bigger businesses.

The large enterprises. Now you talk about our audience, Jeremy, how is Dreamdata doing its own PR and getting noticed? Because as you know, I love to hear how companies do their own work for getting noticed. So how are you doing that?

So yeah, we're running the familiar motions. We're running paid ads principally on Google, but also on LinkedIn. Again, as a B2B company, we know that our audience is lurking on LinkedIn, so it's It's an extremely valuable channel. We're also running emails, content. We've got a blog, we've got some YouTube videos. But I mean, something that tackles this, I don't know if you're aware of the dark funnel. So, you know, exposure to a brand without an actual touch taking place. We have employee advocacy. So we have, we encourage social selling. So using LinkedIn as an individual, as Jeremy, for example, to try and generate demand for Dreamdata. So like the company has a culture where you're encouraged just to, you know, spend time on LinkedIn, get your posts up. I put a couple of memes recently that went, you know, did quite well. And then people that are lurking in your followers within the space that you want to be selling to are now exposed to your brand. So we're trying to cover as much space as possible from paid to organic stuff.

I love that term, the dark funnel. Is that what it's called? I've never heard that term before. It sounds a little bit Star Wars-like, but the dark Yeah, that's correct.

I mean, it's a space, there's a couple of LinkedIn influencers that come to mind that are really pushing that term, but the, it has now become entrenched in marketing circles. It's, uh, yeah, everything that's happening on a non-touch basis. So are you exposed to certain individuals from certain brands that are kind of actually, you know, getting you to, making you aware, sorry, of their products? Yeah. The dark funnel.

Wow, Jeremy, that's fantastic. So we've been talking with you, Jeremy Sacramento, content manager at Dreamdata. .io is the website, isn't it? And talking about whether attribution is the silver bullet for understanding, you know, where your customers are before they even come and talk to you about buying from you. So Jeremy, thank you so much for joining me, Jim James, on this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur and clarifying a whole new area of work that personally I had no idea about. So thank you so much.

Thank you, Jim.

So you've been on the show with me, Jim James, and Jeremy Sacramento over in Copenhagen. And I will of course put his details and the details of dreamdata.io in the show notes. And I encourage you to have a look. And as it's a free signup, I personally am going to be trying this because I've got so many different channels to communicate that I've been desperately looking for a way to aggregate that and create a dashboard and optimize the PR that we do. And I'm sure that'll be of value to you too. So thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur. Thank you.