🍺🔍 Suds & Search 172 | Daniel Russell, Board Member at Go Fish Digital

Speaker A: Foreign. This week's episode of SUSN Search is Daniel Russell, board member at Go Fish Digital. Daniel is a veteran digital marketer. During his time at Go Fish Digital, he's worked on campaigns for the New York Times, Wikipedia, General Electric, and many other iconic brands. He's an in demand conference presenter. A few places you might have heard Daniel speak include searchlove, Content Marketing Conference Inbound and the Digital Summit series. Oftentimes, digital marketing conversations and conference presentations fail to emphasize that you're going to need buy in from the C Suite. The C Suite is less enamored with metrics we're accustomed to using. What they care about is profit. Daniel has served in a variety of leadership roles, including positions outside of search. This experience makes him a great person to talk to about stakeholder buy in. We'll have a wide ranging conversation about how marketers can speak more persuasively to key stakeholders and just as importantly, what not to do. Grab something cold to drink and join me for a conversation with Daniel Russell. We'll chat about the importance of speaking about profits, not just vanity metrics. We'll spend a little time talking about the messy world of attribution. And I'm going to ask him about the importance of forecasts and predictions. All right, Daniel Russell, welcome M to Suds and Search. How you doing?

Speaker B: Doing great, doing great. Excited to be here.

Speaker A: I'm excited to have you here. So I watched your talk at SearchLove. It was about getting executive buy in. I love this topic. I think it's super important. Um, even if we know a ton about SEO, if none of our changes get implemented, what good was having that knowledge? So let's start here. Um, you have a story about crr. What does CRR stand for and what might that have to do with getting buy in from the C suite?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So crr, um, was an acronym that I heard in a client meeting about a decade ago. And, uh, we went into that client meeting. It was an end of year presentation, so we were summarizing everything that had happened throughout the year. Um, we went into that meeting feeling pretty good because, uh, in terms of pretty much all SEO metrics, we were doing really well. Rankings were up, organic traffic was up, leads from organic was up. Um, we were even able to track a decent amount of revenue coming from organic as well. And so, um, overall I'd still, even by today's, you know, my more mature standards, uh, you know, a decade later, I'd still gauge it as being, uh, in a good spot in an Effective place. However, um, the VP of marketing, who is sitting right next to me, she, uh, started asking some, some more, you know, pointed questions, uh, like, how does this compare to the leads that we were bringing in from this one initiative last year? And I had to say, I, I don't know, I don't know much about that initiative. And then she said, and what's been the CRR on SEO for this year? And I had no clue what it meant. And so I had to say, well, we'll have to look into that with the plan on looking it up on the Internet later. Um, but CRR is the cost of revenue ratio. So, uh, basically what you're doing is you're taking the cost that it took to acquire that revenue over the actual dollar amount of that revenue. And so your goal, obviously is to have revenue far outnumber the cost it took to get there. You, um, want that, you want that ratio to be as minuscule as possible. Right? You want the cost relative to the revenue to be as low as possible. And, um, it, the reason why it was a good eye opener for me is because one, it helped me see that I needed to familiarize myself with some non marketing, non SEO, uh, jargon. Right. But then also especially I needed to, uh, make sure that everything I was doing was tied back as closely as possible to the dollar effectiveness of what we were doing, because that's what the C Suite cared about.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. And I think there's one thing, if there's one thing I really liked about it, it's you're taking a responsibility a lot. So you're saying, you know, like, if they don't understand what we're talking about, that's our fault. Or if they do understand what we're talking about and they just don't care, that's our fault. So you're not passing this, this hot potato, um, in either scenario, you're taking accountability. So I hear a lot of SEOs point out that they're introverts. Right. Or they can be defensive. I'm telling them the correct things. Why should people really take that, that responsibility? Why is that so important to really see, see this as like, it's not just about, you know, technical SEO and all that stuff is about taking responsibility for really communicating and, uh, making sure that people are understanding you.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think, uh, I mean, I think at the end of the day, one of the traps that anybody can fall into, not just SEOs, but, you know, anybody in any position can fall into, is thinking that what you do is in a silo or in a bubble, you know, so thinking that all I have to take care of is my little bubble. And if I'm doing that, doesn't matter who understands outside of my bubble what I'm working on, I'm doing a good job. And uh, the truth is that communication is still important. And uh, it's very unlikely unless you are a solopreneur with just your website, it's very unlikely that what you do is fully in a silo or in a bubble. Instead it needs to connect to a greater purpose, a greater goal. And for most companies, and I think this is where sometimes I hear a lot of SEOs get tripped up too, which is you don't necessarily want to feel like a cog in the profit machine. Does that make sense? You don't want to feel like you're just working for the man. Um, but the truth is that we are. You know, that's, that's why SEO exists. Um, I think I've given a talk before about Google's motivations even and I think I, I've seen Googlers, you know, uh, uh, misappropriate their role and their, their day to day to something that's not accurate either. Uh, because what Google will talk about how their goal is to make all information in the world findable. Right that, right that they have all these other uh, really good intentions for the world and for humanity. And I don't doubt that some of those intentions are there. But the truth is that Google's here to make money, you know, and so um, and our employers are too. And so there's that relationship that I think we sometimes forget and when we forget about it it actually comes back to bite us. And uh, so if we, if we think that we can just worry about you know, making our client or uh, our employer's website faster and ranking higher and more effective, but not worry about the money side of it, unfortunately. It's just a little, you know, naive, nearsighted. And so I think giving the attention to communicate what you're doing in non SEO terms to the outside world, outside of your bubble is very worthwhile.

Speaker A: I like it. And the other thing you do really well is that you're able to have empathy for the CEO. So you know, up to this point we talked about executive, but to be more specific we're talking about the CEO and we're talking about um, the person at the top of the food chain. So as an SEO, you know, one of the things I've realized about this Job is you might meet with any number of stakeholders on any number of engagement. You meet with the Marketing Director on this one, you meet with the VP of Sales on this one, but you get the CEO. I think, and I think it would be worth talking about it for just a minute. What's going on in their brain that might be different than the other stakeholders SEOs are used to? How are they thinking in ways that are different from like a VP of Marketing or something like that?

Speaker B: Yeah. Uh, so one thing I think unique to a CEO, uh, and I think a lot of other stakeholders, uh, and department leads and heads will have this viewpoint too. But in terms of it being unique to the CEO, I think the CEO has to think this way or else they'll get fired, basically, which is they think in terms of profit and loss. And that's where everything comes down to. Um, obviously, uh, one of the big financial reports that a CEO gets regularly, uh, is a P and L, a profit and loss statement. And uh, that's how they're perceiving the company. In fact, a lot of CEOs I know, and then even in terms of uh, myself and my partners leading Go Fish Digital, um, that P and L statement is one of the most important documents in terms of the business. And so, uh, that is, I think a big key to understanding how the CEO is approaching things is P and L. And um, you know, as an example, uh, in fact I use this example in my talk as well. We had a client where we were able to report to the CEO. It was in the pharmaceutical space. He, um, was a long term pharmaceutical executive who had split off to start his own startup. Uh, they had significant funding. Um, they were in a really good position to take advantage of everything that was going on with COVID in terms of actually having a product that could help. And so a lot of good things were coming together for them. Um, and uh, it was one of those things where they saw the opportunity and they knew that their web presence was going to be a big important part of that. So we got brought in and in theory it would have been just a really great SEO client relationship set up. Um, the problem that we ran into was he, the CEO, thought that he knew enough about SEO to tell us exactly where to focus. And uh, where he told us to focus was to send traffic to the moon. Other CEOs that maybe are a little bit less familiar with SEO, they might not necessarily know to say I want keyword rankings up this amount and I want traffic up this amount compared to last year. Um, instead they might just say, hey, I want to see this amount of money out of SEO. And honestly, that would be better, in my opinion, that would be, uh, a better directive from a CEO. But instead, he told us, hey, I'm very, very familiar with SEO. I want traffic to the moon. I want rankings up. Here's the keyword set, like, let's get at it. And we said, great. And almost immediately, looking at the keyword set, we found a lot of pages within their existing blog content that was on the cusp of page one. We saw a lot that were close to getting in the top three rankings. And we thought, all right, here's a lot of stuff we can move the needle on fast. And it honestly didn't take long. It only took, uh, you know, about two, three, four months before we started seeing some major jumps in organic. And to the point where one of the reports that we sent over to them, I think it was like our fifth month working with them, uh, the year over year for that month. I think it was like April, the April of that year compared to April of the previous year, organic was up 1,100 something percent. And, yeah, so it. If I was just, yeah, case study stuff. And if I was just in my little SEO bubble, um, which unfortunately, you know, his directive was as well, I would have thought, we are destroying it, we are killing it. And, and that is only thinking about the SEO itself. The problem was is that SEO needs to be connected back to the business case and the bottom line and the profit. And I, because he said, like, I know SEO. This is what we need to do, I was taking him for his word and thinking, yeah, that is all right. He knows what we need to do. That's all we need to do. And I wasn't doing my own due diligence of how this was impacting the bottom line. And then I got a message from him not too long after sending over that report that saying, you know, basically, Daniel, hey, we need a pause. You know, this is some impressive stuff, but we need a pause. The board is putting some pressure on me to drive revenue from this. And he never told us about the revenue part, but we needed to have implied that. And so that was one of those cases where I was not thinking in terms of profit and loss. Um, I was purely thinking of traffic. And that traffic, while great, maybe very like, top of level exposure value stuff, you know, maybe the value is there, but it wasn't converting traffic, and, uh, it was in terms of converting the dollars. And so that, that was ultimately uh, the reason for our pause, to his credit, they came back, uh, they came back, I think five, six months later, uh, and re engaged with us. And, and you know, we had, now we knew and, and I started calling it the Trojan horse of SEO because he said, hey, we want rankings. But really what he wanted was money. That was what was hidden inside the horse. And so for that next round of engagement, I knew, like, all right, time to focus on actually driving profit. But that first time was a surprise.

Speaker A: I love that you call that the trap. Like there's these traps. I'll tell you things, but avoid it. I like that a lot. So, you know, one of the things that you drive home in the speech is that, you know, we have to have these conversations about profit and about money. Um, so, so here's where we get into that messy world of attribution. Um, so, like, in simple terms, yes, showing profit would be by far the best way to speak to a CEO. Real life. Sometimes it's hard to tell who should get the credit and why. And there can be these little turf battles between SEO and PBC or CRO and it's like a pox on all our houses. I want to have these financial conversations with the CEO. What tips do you have about making sure we avoid some of those potential landmines, that we're not. That we're doing this intelligently and that these are non controversial kinds of, uh, numbers that we're looking at?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I definitely think, um, I definitely think that perfect attribution is almost always a mirage. Right. Like it's not. Can't ever quite reach it. Um, I do think that there's a lot of steps that we can do to better ourselves in the space. And um, unfortunately what it relies on is us just taking full responsibility to get exactly everything we need. And I think sometimes when we, uh, start with a client or we start a new project, um, with our employer, we just expect that they will be able to give us what we need. Right? Like, uh, you know, they hired me to be on their SEO team or they hired us to be their agency. Clearly they, you know, they're giving me money or giving us money, they are going to be invested in it and give us what we need to succeed. And um, very often even just from an SEO standpoint, that's not the case. But definitely from an attribution reporting standpoint, that's often not the case. And so I think, uh, an important key when you kick off any project like that is, uh, an audit of any analytics setup I'm blown away at how often um, very robust marketing initiatives and companies have analytics set up. And then it's misfiring somehow, it's miscounting conversions or not counting any conversions. And there's just all sorts of problems that could arise. So an audit of the analytics set up, making sure that that's set up properly and then the other is uh, really digging deep on um, the business or client end to ask how are you tracking leads, how are you tracking conversions, how are you tracking the money that's coming through? And more often than not the answer to those questions is some sort of CRM M. Uh, you know, it's like a salesforce, it's something like that that they're using. And so after auditing analytics, I want to get full access to their CRM and uh, larger, larger companies, especially enterprise level, they, you know, they'll have silos for that. They won't always allow you to have all access. And if that's not possible, then I need direct access to the person that has all access. You know, like if you're not going to give us all access, I need the person that has all access and they need to be willing to, you know, pull reports for me when I need them. And so that uh, doing, doing those two big things right at the start it requires setting expectations, saying, you know, hey, at the start here it's going to be laying the groundwork to make sure we, we actually understand what's happening. But it will pay dividends long into the future. Um, and, and so setting that expectation can be important. But, but yeah, analytics, audit, CRM access, uh, go a long way.

Speaker A: Well, I like this. And it, it goes to the next point which is, you know, CEOs like forecasts, they like predictions. You know this, this phrase that we're so fond of in, in SEO, you know, it depends. That doesn't fly with, with CEO, they want you to make a call. So it's hard people listening to this. I'm sure gonna go. SEO is volatile. It's, it's subject to change all the time. For market, for market forces are at work that are totally out of our control. Um, you recommend you have a lot of good recommendations. One of them is like a forward looking statement. Um, other ways of just like settling down and going. CEOs get that there's a lot of uncertainty in the world. Just uh, live in that world with them. What advice do you have? I thought that was a really important part of the talk was about forecasts. Predictive, uh, Predicting things into the future and getting this to speak the love language of CEOs. Really?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Uh, the forward looking statement is a term of art that is used in a lot of earnings calls and financial forecasts. And um, just anytime a company is speaking to people outside of the business, they'll often use that term. And the reason they like that term is because it helps give uh, context to the claims they're making. Right. So they're saying we're going to make a million dollars next year. But this is a forward looking statement and it's based off of, you know, how the current circumstances, the risks that we already outlined to you. If things change, we'll update that statement. And I think it's something that we as marketers should borrow, uh, and start implementing in the way that we report. And um, you know, say at the beginning of the year we're kicking off with uh, the initiative or with the team, we, we should give a forward looking statement and say, hey, this is based off of uh, what we see right now. This is where we think we'll be and this is a forward looking statement. Things may change and when they do, we'll update it. And I think that's a big part too that sometimes marketers are nervous about, which is once I say this, I am bound, I'm bound to this forever. And I will say I personally have worked with some leaders that do feel like they can bind you to it forever. Um, one thing that has helped even in those cases though is to use that same lingo in terms of looking at things right now. This is what we predict, this is what we project, but things may change and when they do, we'll give you an updated forecast. Um, what that does is it helps set their expectation that the projection you gave them may change. Then the onus then falls back onto you to make sure that you're paying attention to the situation and providing an updated forecast. Because sometimes I think people forget that they never told people that things have changed. Hey, this new up, this algorithm update just rolled out and it's totally changed everything. But then they don't really tell them until it's time to report. And then, and then they say, well, but you told me it was going to be different. We said, well, but this update just happened. So, so instead of waiting for when it's time to report, take that ownership over your projection and update it when things change and say sometimes you get to update it for the better too. Sometimes you get to say, hey, I know I said we'd be at this spot. But guess what? We're 10% further. And this is why. And I've given you an updated projection because of that. Um, and the final thing I'd say is that there's always this temptation to, um, to kind of spin negative things and then take credit for positive things. Right? There's always that temptation. Um, good executives will be able to tell. And, um, most of them that I know appreciate when you shoot straight, but they don't appreciate when you. The difference between shooting straight and giving an excuse. They don't appreciate excuses is an excuse is just saying we didn't hit it. And this is why, um, shooting straight is saying we didn't hit it. This is why. And this is how we're adjusting. Right. It's just that one additional step that makes it no longer an excuse. Instead, I've identified the issue and here's the solution. I've already thought about it. Here's the solution. I. Updated forecast. Um, and that, that goes a long way and, and makes it from something they don't like into something that they tolerate.

Speaker A: It's a. It's a really good. It's a really good point along the same lines. So you've got to give. You talk about you're going to have to give some bad news eventually. Sometimes you're gonna have to say no. Right? Like, sometimes the expectation gets out of whack or, um, you. I, I was really interested. I want to kind of unpack that. You know, getting into traps where you could have a misalignment, you know, some. Some months down the road between the original expectations and what's been delivered. I, I wonder, how do you tell a CEO who's like, controlling all your. Your paycheck. Okay, I understand that you want to rank number one for the term money. You're not going to, uh, you know, like. No. Uh. How do you have these candid conversations with CEOs who are used to getting their way, frankly?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think there's. There's certainly some leaders out there that can't be reasoned with. And, um, in those cases, there's. There's not there. You know, there's honestly nothing that can be done. It's gonna unfortunately probably go awry one way or the other for. For most the others. And I think it's a good majority. Luckily, um, I, I have found that being. Speaking from a place of authority and experience is a big key. And the wise and the authoritative won't ever say yes to everything because they know better. Right. Because they are wise. And so oftentimes, uh, uh, an indicator that someone knows what they're talking about is that they will draw the limit. They'll draw the line and say, that is off limits. And here's why. And I think that here's why is the big key. Um, and that's what helps you differentiate between just not wanting to do it versus knowing you can't because you're wise. You've got that experience. Um, and so saying no. In my experience, telling somebody something's not possible and explaining why often raises my stock with them. They think, oh, Daniel knows what he's talking about. You know, not only he's bold, he was willing to tell me no. And clearly he's knowledgeable. Right? And it came because. And it came because I understand. I told him, hey, I understand why that's an attractive goal. Uh, it's not possible. And here's why. What I would recommend instead is X, you know, and, uh, or, you know, basically saying no, explaining why, and then giving an alternative recommendation, um, is. Is the best route to go, I've found, to say no.

Speaker A: Wonderful. And this is a, this is the last, uh, last question from the talk is it feels to me like there's a psychology switch that needs to go on sometimes. So you're really changing the mindset of an SEO from being a person who does SEO. So we'll talk about the report, we'll talk about what the metrics are doing to really being more of a business advisor. And a business advisor, um, helps you with things that maybe aren't even about SEO. Maybe don't help the company, but you're just, um, you're looking out because you're involved in profit conversations, you're involved in finance conversations. Uh, you've earned their trust because you don't always, like, try and nickel and dime here and there. Um, you're not trying to confuse or obfuscate in the way that you speak to them. Uh, it's about leveling up from just being in this SEO or even marketing silo to being at a seat where you're a trusted business advisor. Does that sound like I've summed up your position, or is there more to unpack there?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think, uh, SEO as an industry has often felt relegated as kind of like this side, uh, show type of thing, where it's like, all right, you know, uh, traditional advertising, paid search, that's. That's more of what we consider marketing. SEO is kind of this little side thing. Luckily, I think that's changed, um, over the years and, and the pandemic definitely pushed that along as well because people had to shut down their stores and rely on their websites more than ever. Um, but part of it, part of the reason why I think that's been the case is because of our, uh, proclivity to not think about profit and not think about ourselves as business advisors. And so if we really want a seat at the big kids table, if we want to be taken more seriously with the other branches of marketing, the other branches of business, uh, yeah, I think that, um, we need to start reforming and rethinking about what we do from just rankings and website updates and more of driving the business forward. And if we, if we can reshape our thinking in that way, then we'll talk more like, you know, we're thinking about the business as a whole and not just SEO, and we'll report more on it. Um, and honestly, one of the things that, uh, I've mentioned before is that sometimes focusing on profit feels like a cop out, you know, or it feels like we're not being true to SEO. Or again, back to what we were talking about before, it feels like you're just working for the man. But the truth is that, ah, a profit focus actually improves SEO results. Yeah, um, it actually makes us better SEOs. And so, uh, definitely, I think treating it, treating ourselves as business advisors, um, will definitely elevate us and elevate SEO generally in, in the business landscape.

Speaker A: What an important point. It's not, it's. It will improve the SEO too. That's the, that's the other side.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Wonderful. Well, well, listen, Daniel, I've had your, your teammate, Chris Long on the podcast. Go Fish Digital is winning some insane amount of awards and everything like that. What if people want to learn more about. You want to learn more about Go Fish Digital? I know there's a newsletter we can link to. What's the best, best, uh, way to stay in touch with you guys? What's your favorite social media? Those sorts of details.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, obviously you mentioned Chris. A lot of people know about Chris Long. Um, the newsletter that he runs, uh, as part of Go Fish is called the Splash. Definitely recommend subscribing to that. Uh, he summarizes all the biggest news pieces from the past week and then adds in some of the research that we're doing at the agency as well. Um, and then, uh, yeah, definitely happy to connect with anybody on LinkedIn. Uh, you know, pretty easy to find. Daniel Russell, Go Fish and then Twitter as well. My handle there is DNL Russell. Um, but yeah, awesome.

Speaker A: Well, listen, I've really enjoyed it. I like this conversation a lot. It is a nice, uh, selfishly, I do this every single week and it was a nice break from chat. GBT and.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I believe that.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I appreciate, I appreciate the rest of it, but I, I think this is, this is the job. I hate to say it, like, as much as we talk at cover speeches and on blogs about a lot of tactical stuff, this is where the rubber meets the road for, for me in my career. So I thought it was really an impressive talk and important topic. So, uh, thanks for coming on and exposing it to our audience.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Glad you liked it. And I, I will say, um, I, you know, you can't, you can't judge everything off of, you know, compliments and what people say after a talk. But I will say that of most of the talks I've given, this one seemed to really hit home with the executives that were present in the audience. There was a couple, um, CEOs and CEOs of, uh, companies, especially tech focused companies in the audience. And they came up to me afterwards and said, you're speaking our language, man. This is good stuff. You know, they said, please keep at it. Keep preaching that. Um, and so it's something that they clearly want us to pay attention to. So.

Speaker A: Awesome. Well, uh, I've enjoyed the conversation. I'm going to give you a virtual cheers for everyone else. I will be back next week with another episode of Susan Search. Thanks a lot, Daniel.

Speaker B: My pleasure. Thanks, Mark.