
Behind the Curtain · 2026-06-10 · 32 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
29 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
This episode tackles the central question of what genuinely moves the needle in modern marketing versus what wastes budget. The panel unanimously identifies first-party data and lifecycle marketing as the most underlevered asset in marketing - retaining existing customers costs 5-25x less than acquiring new ones, yet most companies still over-invest in acquisition. Email marketing, when personalized and data-driven, consistently outperforms spray-and-pray tactics. The conversation then pivots to AI's role in marketing, with the team emphasizing that AI should be treated as an intern (checked, guided, not given full autonomy) rather than a replacement for strategic thinking. They warn against tool stacking, lazy AI implementation that produces obviously generated content, and companies falsely promising AI will solve all problems. Luke Draper brings production expertise from 25 years in television and film; Shane Adair contributes 20+ years in sales and demand generation (particularly email); Jonathan Puri shares six years of digital marketing agency experience across diverse clients. The consensus: embrace AI intentionally for friction reduction and personalization, but never let it replace human judgment or customer relationships.
First-party data and lifecycle marketing campaigns - re-engaging existing customers with personalized, data-driven messaging - consistently outperform new customer acquisition. Email marketing, when done with segmentation and relevance, is also significantly underutilized and effective.
Be intentional about what problem you're solving before buying any AI tool; avoid tool stacking single-purpose subscriptions; use AI for content ideation, segmentation, and low-value automation rather than final deliverables; always review and check AI output before customer contact; treat it like a capable intern, not a replacement for human judgment.
They lack authentic human connection and emotional resonance - audiences can immediately spot obviously AI-written copy, it feels generic and impersonal, and it ignores the fact that marketing is fundamentally human and emotional work that AI alone cannot replicate effectively.
Retaining and marketing to existing customers costs 5-25 times less than converting and acquiring new customers, yet most companies allocate more budget to new acquisition despite the massive efficiency advantage of customer retention.
They treat data as fragmented and dirty - spread across five disconnected systems with no integration - which makes the principle of 'garbage in, garbage out' inevitable; clean, unified first-party data is essential before any marketing can be effective.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The episode contains a handful of genuinely useful points - AI tool-stacking costs, the danger of unchecked post-click user experience, and treating AI as a quality-limiter not just an amplifier - but they are buried under extended banter, generic platitudes ('be intentional,' 'know your audience'), and mutual validation loops. The ratio of novel ideas per minute is low.
Your own first party data isn't limited to just marketing to those customers. There's additional ways that you can leverage that data, building lookalike audiences, finding geographic patterns.
if you don't know what the page looks like that they're going to land on, if you don't know that your employees are dialed and they know what your advertisement is...it's going to hurt you and it's going to kill you in the long run
Almost every idea here is a widely circulated marketing truism: retention is cheaper than acquisition, first-party data is underused, AI is a tool not a replacement. The lone mildly contrarian moment - AI validating 'confident idiots' - is not developed beyond a soundbite. Nothing would surprise a working practitioner.
I see some really, really, really confident idiots. Right. Because they're getting their assumptions and they're getting their worldviews and they're getting their preconceived ideas really well validated by AI.
marketing to your own customers and retaining your own customers is going to cost you anywhere from five to twenty five times less
All three guests are employees of the same small agency (Oz Marketing), not independent senior operators who have built or scaled notable B2B programs. Experience levels are real but modest - 6 years in digital, agency creative director, mid-level account management - and the panel dynamic is collegial rather than expert-to-expert.
I have been in the digital marketing space now for about just over six years.
we went to 12,000 customers in four months. And they said, stop, whatever you're doing, stop. There's too many. We can't handle this many.
The episode is almost entirely abstract. The one concrete anecdote (bank growing from 4,000 to 12,000 customers in four months) omits what tactics actually drove it. The 5 - 25x retention cost figure is a widely repeated industry stat with no source. No campaign metrics, no budgets, no named client results or benchmarks are provided.
we had a goal of 4,000 new customers in a year...we went to 12,000 customers in four months
marketing to your own customers and retaining your own customers is going to cost you anywhere from five to twenty five times less
The host asks broad, pre-distributed questions with no real follow-ups, and guests are never pressed when answers stay vague. The format is a friendly internal roundtable with heavy banter and mutual praise rather than a probing interview; claims go unchallenged throughout.
what tactics are you guys seeing right now they're quietly outperforming everyone else in the industry
You're absolutely right on the money...I actually came to the same same decision, right?
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
Tim Genovesi hosts Behind the Curtain with guests Luke Draper, Shane Adair, and Jonathan Puri to cut through the noise and reveal which marketing tactics still work: first‑party data, personalized email, founder‑led creative, targeted video, and smart AI use. They share practical advice: clean and centralize customer data, optimize the post‑click experience and processes before increasing ad spend, and use AI intentionally as an assistant - not a replacement - to amplify creativity and efficiency.
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
I asked Claude this question and it said that AI is good under every circumstance, should always be trusted more than human thought. I bet that's what it said. Customer is ignoring your marketing because your message is bad or because your tactics are outdated. How much of modern marketing is strategy and how much is just noise?
In a world flooded with ads, algorithms, and AI generated content, what actually still breaks through? Why is my left foot a full size larger than my right? These are questions that plague the modern era of advertising, most of them anyway. My name is Tim Genovese, I've been in marketing for about 15 years and questions like this still keep me up at night.
So I've gathered some of the brightest minds I know, and Shane, to pull back the curtain on these marketing mysteries so that I might finally get a good night's sleep. This is Behind the Curtain. Today we're answering the question, what is actually working in marketing right now and what is dead? With me today, you can't have an ad agency, at least not since 2005, without a draper at the helm of creative.
With me today, our creative director, Luke Draper. Luke? Yes. Great to have you.
We have Shane Adair. Shane, I cracked a joke a little bit earlier ago and I'm so terribly sorry. It's true, I don't mind. I hope you know how much I respect and admire expertise.
Shane Adair, with Oz Marketing, is our account rep manager, manages all of our account representatives. And then Jonathan Puri, he... No, you said it right. Thank goodness.
Jonathan Puri, with our digital marketing team, digital marketing specialist and team lead over our digital marketing team. I'd like to take just a minute just to get our audience to know you guys a little bit better. I'd love for you to take each a couple of minutes and just explain a little bit about yourselves, about your background, where you come from and why any of us should care about what you have to say. We'll start with Luke.
Yeah, so my name is Luke Draper and I'm the creative director here at Oz Marketing. I've had about 25 years in media production, from news to documentaries, broadcasts, TV commercials, all over the place. Since being at Oz Marketing and our production company, we've over 10 telly awards. So my background, again, has been in mostly production television.
I did have a few years there at teaching film at Dixie State University, now changed its name, but that's why. Oh, Luke, you and I have worked together for a very, very long time, at least what I've been in-house for 10 years now. So we've worked together for a very long time. And what I will tell everybody is where Luke might be short on words, he is heavy, heavy, heavy in talent and does a fantastic job, has done an amazing job leading this agency in production and just creating an award-winning team for us.
You know, you see any of his work out there, you'll recognize it, you'll hear his voice, you'll know him when you hear him. So Luke, we're very happy to have you on the podcast. Thank you. Shane, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?
I'm the least qualified to be here. So just Tim pointed that out, I want to make sure I'm crystal clear on that. You're brilliant. As long as you understand that, that's the important part.
I've got kind of a varied background. I've got 20 plus years in sales and sales leadership, a lot of technology sales and leading sales teams. And so in that, I had an opportunity to jump into the marketing side of it and realizing that they really are two complete things because coming up, you kind of hear, oh, sales and marketing, sales and marketing. Well, they're totally different, right?
I mean, one's frontline, one is actually bringing the bulk of those leads in. And so I was able to learn. I've spent some time in direct mail companies. I was an advertising director for several different publications along the way and then a marketing director at a commercial bank.
So we weren't really sure exactly what was going to happen with it, but we had a goal of 4,000 new customers in a year, which was great. We thought that was a stretch. Well, through some of the testing and some of the things that I handled, we went to 12,000 customers in four months. And they said, stop, whatever you're doing, stop.
There's too many. We can't handle this many. The floodgates are open. So that's kind of my background.
I've been a director of demand generation and I kind of like to hang my hat on email. I have quite a bit of background in email and I know how it works and I know it can be effective when used right. And that's it. Tim, you came to us a couple of years ago, and I remember you, the job that you interviewed for, we didn't end up hiring you for, but we saw, you know, we had your interview and we looked at your resume and we're like, we've got to get this guy somewhere.
We've got it. We've got to figure out how we can make this work. And so we brought you on and the rest has been history. You've you've done such a fantastic job for us.
You've kind of changed the game for us. And just in terms of how our account rep team works and what their focus is and how they service our clients, you've done an amazing job. So we're very happy to have you on the podcast. I'm very excited to hear your takes on some of the questions we have today.
Last, Jonathan. Yeah, last, but definitely not least. No, my name is Jonathan Puri, as you had mentioned earlier. I am a voice actor.
You may have heard me on in movies like Shrek or how to train your dragon. No, I wish. No, I have been in the digital marketing space now for about just over six years. And before that, I also was in sales and sales leadership.
But unlike Shane here, I couldn't hack it. So I decided to sit in the back and type away on a computer while other people spoke to people. No, really, for me, it was being in sales and being frustrated at the leads that were coming through. I kind of decided that was something I wanted to change for other people and give them a better opportunity to make money.
And me make money and in the process, which is why I got into digital marketing. But yeah, but before coming here to Oz marketing, I had my own small digital marketing agency and it worked for other digital marketing agencies. Something I guess notable about me is that I have run campaigns for everything from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints all the way to Cheech and Chong. Nice.
I had as a client at one point, which was really cool. But anyway, that's phenomenal. Yes, it was. It was.
It's amazing how organized a bunch of stoners can be. Let me tell you. Well, and I have to assume that that that breadth of experience and breadth of clientele that you've been able to work with has probably been much to our benefit, just in terms of the insights that you've brought to us and some of the changes that you've helped us to make with our teams and just kind of take us to the next level. So, again, very happy to have you and excited to hear your take on some of these questions as well.
So we talked about a little bit earlier. What what is actually working in marketing right now and what is dead? And it is a weird time right now for marketing. It's a weird time everywhere, right?
Things are changing so quickly. It seems like it's everywhere. It's taking over. And it's really, really hard to know what's working and what is not.
So I want to start off with a pretty broad question. And that I'll ask to the group and whoever wants to take it. Let's just jump in and tackle it. But what tactics are you guys seeing right now?
They're quietly outperforming everyone else in the industry. I think kind of a big thing is your first party data and then using it in a life cycle, like your life cycle with marketing. So you've got a group of contacts that you've either done business with in the past. They've been in contact with you.
You've you've some point in time, they either converted or they fell off or whatever, but they came through your door at some point in time and you've captured their data. And I think that's massively underused. But that's what people are having really a lot of success with is because you're not going to go find somebody. You guys figure out your strategy and your your best practices and processes to to reengage and reactivate or to continue that relationship through, I think, very, very specific, personalized, targeted campaigns.
You're absolutely right on the money. Like we all had these questions in advance. We all had some time to think, think through these before we came to chat. And I actually came to the same same decision, right?
That the most undervalued and underleveraged media asset that any companies have right is their own customer database. Right. Marketing to your own customers and retaining your own customers is going to cost you anywhere from five to twenty five times less than converting and acquiring new customers. So it's kind of a no brainer, but it's you see it an awful lot out there.
A lot of companies focus more on new acquisitions than they do on retention, and it's a huge, huge mistake. And I think to your point, one of the big things that I think affects that, especially I feel like we've seen it so much more since the pandemic is people are starving for connection and relationship. Right. And I think that as I was kind of looking through and thinking about this question, I mean, I came up with a lot of similar conclusions.
I think with email is something that's really it's not always the sexiest of marketing funnels, but it's one that if done properly, if you're using the right data and you're presenting a message to a former client or a prospect that, hey, we recognize it's not generic. It's not a one size fits all. It feels personal to them. And I think that makes a huge difference.
And as you alluded to as well, Tim, it makes a big difference on the bottom line because you're spending a lot less money to get someone who's already more engaged than your than your average prospect. And it takes a little bit of work, right? You've got to know your audience. You've got to do a little bit of research.
You've got to know who your customers are. You've got to understand purchase histories and buying signals. And there's so many AI tools. There's a lot of programmatic advertising tools and things like that.
But once you've got that figured out, it's pretty easy to stay in their inbox. It's pretty easy to keep in front of them on social media, running those programmatic buys and hitting them in a timely manner with relevant creative. So I agree totally, 100%. I think one thing that people are, to your point, Jonathan, is just like founders on camera, people, the owners connecting with people.
And one way that I've seen people, things outperforming that way is actually seeing that happen. And making that connection directly to that founder who's so passionate about this thing, so much going on there. The personalization and delivering it at the right time in front of people who are looking, it's so easy to do now that in the past, it wasn't that easy to do, right? I mean, I've been around a long time.
I'm old. I got a great beard. I've been I've been doing this for a while. And it's funny because it even goes back into like some of the sales strategies.
Right. It's when you've got clients that you can build breadth and depth with. So talking about not just your first part, so you're using, you've got a client. But in the sales world, if I've got a client and they work for a company, there's another department that's got a need, too.
So I don't have to leave that company. And I'm still staying within that. So there's that there's that initial person. But then the referral, if you build that relationship of trust with them, right, and you've had a good relationship with them, you can drive down.
But it all starts with that first party, just that that information that you own and that you know. And your own first party data isn't limited to, you know, just marketing to those customers. There's additional ways that you can leverage that data, building lookalike audiences, finding geographic patterns. You could there's a lot that you can do to use that data to actually acquire new customers as well.
Yeah. Right. And there's just plenty you can do with it. But none of it really matters if that data is dirty.
Right. If it's dirty, if it's fragmented, if it's sitting in five disconnected, disconnected systems, garbage in, garbage out is the moniker. Right. And it holds true today as firm as it ever has.
With that, though, what are you guys seeing? And I'll avoid keeping this a toss up. And I'm going to I'm going to ask Jonathan because he works in probably the most technical side of our business. But what hot trends do you see that people are wasting or companies are wasting the most money on right now?
So I've always been a big believer that is as important as targeting and the technical side is that messaging is really important. One thing that I feel like is we we're seeing more and more of and it's becoming, in my opinion, less and less attractive. Is this like spray and pray ads? You know, we just, you know, throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks.
Right. I watched I literally just barely when I was watching a YouTube video had a, you know, on a YouTube ad pop up that was supposed to be someone giving a TED talk. But it was it was very blatantly. And what they were saying, you could tell was like a script written by Chachi B.
T. Like nothing against Chachi B.T. I'm sorry.
It's the A.I. God's going to strike you down. Yes.
No, but but seriously, again, I think this goes back to what we were just talking about, relationships, connection. People when people feel disconnected, they don't listen to the message. Right. And so I think one of the things that, you know, it's exciting, it's a great tool.
But I feel like people are being lazy with it 100 percent. And marketing is human and marketing is emotional. Right. And you can't I don't feel like you can just hand that over to A.
I. and expect it to do as good a job as a person would. But you're right. You see it.
You scroll tick tock, you scroll Instagram, whatever. You see it every third ad. Right. It's just some weird A.
I. generated ad. And you can spot it right away. And it'll maybe it'll get better.
Maybe it'll it'll improve and get better in time. It probably will. But right now it's just weird. I'm noticing the same thing with A.
I. tools right now. I wouldn't say that A.I.
tools are a waste of money, but there are so many conditions that can make them wasteful. Your implementation strategy is absolutely critical. So a couple of things that I would say is if you're going to use A.I.
tools, keep in mind how you use them. Right. I can't and how you implement them. I can't even tell you how many times I have been on an A.
I. chat with a company and either just been lost to whatever, lost, lost in the ether, not had my question answered directly and not been able to get a real human being on the line. Right. These aren't set it and forget it kind of tools.
You've got to be intentional with them and you've got to you have to act intentionally with them and you have to know what you're doing. And then saturation or tool stacking. Everybody's got an A.I.
tool these days. Right. And they're coming in and selling them to every single company to solve any number of problems. And they might be solving a problem you don't even have.
Look, you're paying somebody's license for every A.I. tool that you have. So if you got five tools, you're paying five different companies, A.
I. licenses. And a lot of these subscriptions will solve one problem well, but they won't solve it as well as a good integrated workflow will solve it. So I would I would say if you're purchasing A.
I. generator tools, they're a great investment. But look for resources that aren't really unit taskers. Right.
Look for something that's going to solve multiple problems and make sure you're intentional about it. Make sure that it's a problem that needs actually needs to be solved. And I think another thing to look out for when you do that is if you have an A.I.
company telling you that that they're going to solve all of your problems and start replacing your your people, you should run away. We've seen it with some of our clients. And then you hear, you know, six months later, I don't even know what this thing's doing. I don't know what my R.
O.I. on it is. It feels like nothing's changed.
And I'm getting the same results that I got with a person, but I'm spending three times more on that topic, though. So we're talking about A.I. How should a business do you guys feel be prepared or actively be integrating artificial intelligence into their market?
So some of the notes I put on this, because I think, you know, you get like, hey, how do we use A.I.? Right. I don't think you need to be asking how do we use A.
I., but where can you use it? Like where where do we have friction? Where do we have repetition or bottlenecks?
You know, it's what can we do to speed up our execution and improve personalizations or remove some low value manual work, like something that doesn't necessarily need to be done. It can be automated. I think there's a lot of action verbs that takes place on this, like content ideation or variations, testing, segmentation, summaries, workflows, like some of those things that you can make it. It's not necessarily producing your final piece, but it's used along the way and helps.
And I think, yeah, it's great. But if you don't use it right and you just think, hey, I've been A.I. Yeah, because I think like we embrace A.
I. and what we do, there's things that we do or it helps in a ton of ways. But if you just rely on it to do your job, it's not there. And you may you just don't want your job very well if you're going to do that, because it will replace you, but it will replace you with another human that doesn't.
Well, it's funny you said it amplifies competence. Right. But it also does a great job of highlighting incompetence. Right.
And what I see, what I see occasionally lately is some really, really, really confident idiots. Right. Because they're getting their they're getting their assumptions and they're getting their worldviews and they're getting their their preconceived ideas really well validated by A.I.
And then they're they're coming to the table as though they've got something really smart to say and they have nothing behind it. They've got nothing to back it other than the assertions that, hey, you're right, because I'm an A.I. bot and I'm going to I'm going to validate you.
So I would say you got to be intentional. First of all, you absolutely got to be intentional about how you intend to use A.I. I said earlier, it should be a problem solver and it should solve problems that that actually exist.
Right. Don't get seduced and sold something that just is really sexy and sounds cool. You've got to know what problem you're trying to solve before you can implement a solution for it and before, especially before you can implement an A.I.
solution for it. But I have always treated A.I. and I will continue to treat it as though it's a pretty capable intern.
Right. I will give it things to do all day long. But I will not give it too much responsibility. I will limit its interactions with my customers and I will always check its work.
It can't replace thinking, right? I mean, as a company, you got to have some clean data, strong systems. You need to have some clear processes. But then you still have that human that's making the final decisions.
So like you said, as an intern, like an intern doesn't feel when you have all those things in place, but they are if you just be like, hey, do whatever you want, man. And here you go. Don't let them take control of it. Yeah.
End of the day, as a business owner, you're working with human beings and your business, whatever your business is, it's a human business. And your A.I. solutions cannot replace and should not replace that human interaction and the human touch that makes your business stand out.
So, yeah, absolutely. You know, A.I. is inevitable.
It's not going anywhere. It's here. And if you're not using it, your competitors are. So you got to embrace it.
You just have to be smart about how you do it. You've got to be intentional. And hopefully it can make it better. Even, you know, I use it all the time just with scripting.
It's huge for me. Just and not not saying that it writes my scripts, but that, you know, if I'm trying to get a point across some some emotional capacity and my words just aren't coming out, the suggestions that can help spawn those those thoughts come out. It's amazing. Like, it's good to brain dump.
Like, I want to bring everything in here because I'm not great at organizing. Like, yeah, I can make an outline or whatever. But like when it comes down to it, like some of the very I know where some of my shortcomings are. Yeah.
And if I just say, here's what's in my head and I can type it out or I can speak, you know, whatever I get, and it helps out so much in in that for me anyway, for how I think, you know what you want it to do. You know what you want out of it. You just need some prodding, some help, some. And what's interesting about that is sometimes you give it a something and it doesn't get it right, but it helps refining your head.
OK, that's not the direction. But now I know no better which direction I do want it to go in, because I know it's not that direction. But it's weird because I asked Claude this question and it said that AI is good under every circumstance, should always be trusted more than human thought. That's what it said.
I mean, I'm vibing with everything you guys are saying. That's just not what I told me. Thank the robot gods. Yeah, I've actually.
So the piece of advice I've heard for creative work in particular, I mean, I'm in some writing groups and the consensus that I've gotten out of a lot of those groups is AI is a terrible writer. It's a terrible writer. It's a pretty good critic, right? You write something, pass it through AI.
It'll probably give you some pretty good advice on how you can improve it, how you can change it. But it's never going to write as good as you, unless you're a crap writer. It might. If you're a crap writer, it might.
I'm sorry to all the crap writers out there. You know, it's wild as you say that because I'm a pretty crap writer. Like my emails, I just put stuff out. And I love now because we use Gmail, right?
And so Gemini is right there. Yeah. And it'll point out like, hey, and I look at my. Yeah, that does sound better.
Yeah, I did mess up that. I wasn't great in the English with the right way. Grammar is supposed to fit in and where things were supposed to fit. And punctuation sometimes.
And so I was like, oh, yeah, that's right. That's how it's supposed to go. And so that's been fantastic for me, at least. It makes my emails at least more readable for those receiving it.
Yeah. It makes mine like three paragraphs short. Yeah. I'm like writing a sauna over here in my emails.
So let's sum that up. So we're saying AI is inevitable. Right. Embrace it.
You've got to you've got to be with it or your competitors are going to be with it. Don't fear it. Right. Embrace it, but be smart about it.
Right. Just be intentional. Make sure you know what problems you're trying to solve and don't let it do all of your work. You know, it's a double edged sword.
Yeah. And it's going to be the wild west, I think, for a little while longer. Right. It's going to be the wild west for the foreseeable future, but it'll come around one day.
I mean, the Internet was crazy at one point in time. Still is. But so moving on, let's let's let's move on to kind of channel selection, guys. What channels are you guys seeing that are oversaturated versus underpriced?
Who? Not Google. Someone who's a Google ad specialist is definitely Google's great. Always use Google.
Yeah, I love YouTube. I think YouTube's underpriced. You get video is an amazing tool that can that move mountains. And YouTube is can be very cheap and get a lot of eyes on.
Yeah, I think, again, it goes back to that first party data, right? Customer reactivation, owned audiences, getting that message out, using the stuff you already have and even like text, you know, if used correctly and you're doing the right things because that's one thing you can get in trouble with, like, oh, we're going to send text messages. Great. And then you all of a sudden you're shut down because you've done everything illegal that you were supposed to do.
And now you can't use your number anymore. But it's definitely I think it's a it's a very I don't know under you, but I think it definitely can has the right place in the funnel. And I don't think it's used enough sometimes in the follow up in the in your. I think email probably falls under both.
Oh, yeah, it's right. A little oversaturated and underpriced. It's it's pretty cheap to get an email out. It's it's not terribly expensive to run email campaigns.
But again, it's it's one of those things you've got to be really, really intentional about because it's super, super easy to get just lost in somebody's inbox. You've got to know, hey, what are the right times a day to send this? When am I seeing the highest open rates? You've got to A B test some some subject lines.
There's a lot that you've got to do to get it dialed in. If you can get it dialed in, it is a cheap method of advertising for sure. The thing that as you guys were talking, the thing that keeps coming into my mind is that it's less to do with the channel and it's more understanding who you're your target consumer is and where they are. Right.
I recently had to was helping our team put together a proposal for our did what we would do for the catering company, and I put it together and I had, you know, a few different channels on there. But one of the questions that was asked right away when I presented it was, oh, why didn't you put any expense towards Metta? And the thought that the reason my reasoning behind that, it was business to business. They're trying to get corporate events and they had a limited budget.
And it just didn't make sense for them to be advertising so heavily, heavily with paid ads on Metta. For us, we're a lot of what we're doing is automotive. It's power sports. We're reaching out more to consumers, the end consumer, rather than, you know, business to business.
And so for us, Metta ton of sense. And so I think when it comes down to it, if you are if you don't have a clear understanding of who you're who your client is and who your target audience is, any channel can be oversaturated and overpriced. Yeah. And that's huge.
Right. What you just said about the B2B marketing is totally different than B2C marketing. The magic behind the scenes may all be kind of the same thing, but it's the man behind the curtain, maybe almost Oscar. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Oz Pinhead. Yes, Oz Pinhead. So read Dorothy and whatever the Oz books and you'll realize that one.
It's totally different. But when I was at the bank, I was at his commercial banking and everything we did was to reach businesses. And it's yes, you're using email. Yes, you're using different channels for your digital marketing, but it's just a different strategy.
But it comes down to, again, your segmentation, right? I can blast cold emails all day long. They're ineffective. But if I email to a specific group or target or people that I know have been on my whatever it is that I have a connection with somehow, some way or they're that lookalike audience, I built that out.
I know that I've had success in this segment. I have a lot better chance than me, just like you said, throwing spaghetti against the wall, you know, seeing what sticks. It's just what you just said. Everybody just said the same thing.
Well, let's take the let's take the food maker. What is it called? Caterer. Caterer.
Yes. Let's take the caterer, actually, as an example. And where you would build that campaign out. Well, good question, Tim.
Let me face the camera for this. Primarily what I did in this particular circumstance, I looked at to the two channels I looked at was primarily Google ads. And then the second one was LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn is can be a great channel if you have the right content, which I think, in my opinion, when it comes to that type of thing, visual content, super effective.
I don't know about you, but when I see a good, beautiful steak being cooked, my mouth starts to water. Right. But anyway, so it's great for that. But it is expensive.
I'm not going to lie. But it does get to be it's a great B2B advertising platform. But sorry, go ahead. Oh, I was just going to say the state of the Internet these days.
I see a steak being cooked online. I have to wonder if it's steak or cake. I've been tricked so many times. All right, well, let's move on to the last question.
And this is kind of a more comprehensive one, I guess. If you had to build a pipeline from scratch today, what would you prioritize first? Shane, I'm looking at you. We're just building a pipeline.
Just building a pipeline. So we don't have anybody. We just we need the pipeline. Alaska to Texas.
First of all, you got to have I think it kind of goes two ways, right? I mean, I think the very, very first is you've got to have content that someone wants to consume or is looking to consume because you've got to capture. I think they go hand in hand, right? The content and the capture, because you've got to capture attention and then you've got to have something that captures their information.
So I think you go content one and and then capture so your lead forms, whatever that might be, your landing pages, your opt ins, all of that type of stuff. You have to have a really, really good, clean process for doing that to get the data into your CRM or whatever, you know, you're using. However, you're using it. So you're telling me that I've got to know what happens after a customer interacts with my ad?
Yeah. I think to that point, though, one of the things I see so many businesses do wrong is they spend so much money and time on ads, but their end user experience is horrendous. And so they get all these leads and they spend all this money, but they don't get the ROI because if they're an online business, their website process, their their user experience is terrible. And so I think that's making sure that wherever again, to your point, where are people going when they click on this ad?
You got you have to figure that out and have that taken care of. Before you even start creating the ads, it's funny because of my notes, I had these listed out my the kind of steps. But the first two I look at is the processes. Like you have to have your processes in place.
And that's that's what I wrote on my, you know, you capture. It doesn't matter if you capture it, if you don't. Once you capture it, what do you do with it? Yeah.
How what does that experience look like for the customer after you've got their information and how do you use that and how do you use it effectively and add value to that person who just trusted you with their information? What do you do next? Well, it's a huge, huge oversight. I think that a lot of businesses make is to not consider the experience, the the on site experience.
That means on site in your brick and mortar. That means on site on your website. That means the experience that your customers have speaking with your employees or with your salespeople. It's a huge mistake to not consider that a part of the marketing process.
Right. Because if you're thinking about branding as branding should be thought of, which is which is a promise, right? Your brand is a promise that you're making to your customer. That experience is how you're delivering on that promise.
And it's all one system, right? It's all one one big system that has to work really cohesively together. And any point of it that fails, that's going to be basically that the weakest spot is going to be the point that fails. And if the weakest spot is the user experience, if you don't know what happens after the customer clicks on your ad, if you don't know what the page looks like that they're going to land on, if you don't know that your your employees are dialed and they know what your advertisement is, they don't they know what your sales are.
They know what you're what you're promoting. If you don't know that stuff, just it's going to hurt you and it's going to kill you in the long run. They say I think it was John Wanamaker is this mythical marketer. Right.
Back in the day, said 50 percent of my ad spend is wasted. But I don't know what 50 percent. And that's the 50 percent. A hundred percent.
That's a hundred percent. That's the 50 percent that's wasted. That's where you waste your ad spend, right? That's where you waste your ad spend is not understanding what happens after the customer interacts with your ad.
So, well, guys, there you have it. I think we've answered a lot of great questions. My shoe size, still a mystery. I do think I'll sleep well tonight.
So I want to thank you guys for joining me today. This has been a wonderful conversation. And thank you, listener, our one listener for giving us some 35 minutes of your time. We'd love to hear what questions are causing you to lose sleep.
So please, please email us at info at Oz team dot com so that we can cover your topics. We'll see you next time. Peace. Dan and Wyo.
Other episodes covering the same guests and topics, from across The B2B Podcast Index.