EP. 93 Get To Know Your Customers & Scale Your Business

Trevor: Yo , what's going on ? This is the Unstoppable Marketer Podcast , with me , as always , mark Goldhart .

Mark: Hello .

Trevor: The world's greatest co-host .

Mark: The world's greatest co host . Well , thank you .

Trevor: I think it's true . I've never had another one , but Me neither . So you're it .

Mark: Well , you're it for me .

Trevor: Look at us Bestie . Yeah , exactly , cutie Bestie , bestie , bestie yeah exactly , cutie bestie , bestie bff .

Mark: How are you , sir ? Good , what's new ? Testing out the uh eight . Sleep pod four .

Trevor: Yes yes tell everybody what this is .

Mark: This is a free promotion for free promotion for uh eight sleep , eight sleep , so I am testing it out . I am not sold yet , but I will let you in on my sleep journey yeah , well , you already kind of have let me in , you've I have .

Trevor: Yeah , I've just been waking up a lot yeah , been waking up a lot cools your bed down heats it up , yeah , so the pod is basically a cover that goes over your bed , cools it and heats .

Mark: It monitors your sleep , so you know how much deep sleep you're getting REM sleep or whatever . Brought to you by Brought to you by 8sleep , but I've had it for two nights . First night wasn't great . Made a few adjustments , made it cooler .

Trevor: Okay .

Mark: Last night my score went up quite a bit .

Trevor: Really .

Mark: Improved my deep sleep by from 40 minutes to an hour and a half .

Trevor: That's big time .

Mark: Yeah .

Trevor: It's over 100% .

Mark: Yeah , it is . That's awesome , it's good , and my , uh , my rem sleep or rem , whatever you want to call it is up nice 100 too , geez . So so far , so good . I don't feel that great today to be honest well , I don't think one night like I think it's because my schedule is still kind of out of whack . I think the older .

Trevor: like you need multiple nights of good sleep for you to feel better it can't just be like yeah .

Mark: I slept in today . I'm great .

Trevor: Yeah , like you used to be , you know . Yeah , I hate that .

Mark: Oh , the days of just one . Sleep in and you're back to 100% . Those days Long , 100% . Those days long . Gone now , yeah , but anyways it's going great so far . So I'll let you guys all know in a couple weeks if I'm feeling 100% love it , love it .

Trevor: What are we talking about today ?

Mark: get your sleep , everybody .

Trevor: Sleep is important by sleep 8sleep sponsored by 8sleep sponsored by 8sleep .

Mark: No , I'll let you know if it's worth it . I don't know .

Trevor: It could be and he says he'll let me know if it's worth it , because they cost a lot of money they cost a lot of money .

Mark: How ? Much , but they cost they cost uh like 2400 bucks . Oh he's there you go .

Trevor: So like a mattress , really nice mattress that is yeah , that is a lot of money , but does it also have a grounding thing that grounds you ? You hear of those grounding mats .

Mark: No , it doesn't ground you .

Trevor: Have you guys gotten one of those ? No ?

Mark: No .

Trevor: We have a grounding mat . I don't know if it works , but we have one who was on the podcast that talked about grounding mats ?

Mark: I think it was Mushroom man .

Trevor: I don't think it was Mush man . I don't think it was mushroom man . It was . No , it wasn't mushroom man . It was a while ago . Mushroom man was recent . Mushroom man podcast was actually one of my favorite ones , just to listen to you guys talk . Yeah , it was much more about mushrooms than it was about marketing . I was very interested mushrooms and marketing consumer . Let's think what we named the podcast .

Mark: It was something like Mushrooms and marketing , marketing . Yeah , hey , mushrooms Trippy .

Trevor: Yeah , that was a good one . Go listen to it If you want to Learn more about Uh , uh , not , it's not pathogens , uh , pathogens , what's it called ? Um , what are they called ? What are they called ?

Mark: What are mushrooms , like Fungi , I know they're called fungi but there's like a hat . Are you talking about , like the mycelium ? Oh , adaptogens .

Trevor: Adaptogens that's what I was looking for .

Mark: Adaptogens . Yeah , interestingly enough , I learned that Beatrix Potter . Do you know who that is ?

Trevor: Harry Potter's mom .

Mark: No , she's the original JK Rowling . She wrote Peter Rabbit .

Trevor: Okay .

Mark: I think technically she's the most successful children's author of all time .

Trevor: Technically .

Mark: Technically , I think she is . She sold over 250 million copies up to this point . Okay , now she's long since passed RIP , but she was pretty phenomenal woman . She also was an expert in mycelium and fungi .

Trevor: Interesting .

Mark: Bought a bunch of farms had like prize winning sheep , really . Yeah , she was an interesting woman .

Trevor: Ever since that podcast has come out , I've actually had several other dietary supplement companies that deal with adaptogens reach out to me like we want to be on your podcast .

Mark: We do adaptogens too . That was so great .

Trevor: Well , come on , I probably had like five or six Come on in Since then and I think that episode was one of our most recent . Yeah , it probably had like five or six since then and I think that episode was one of our most recent .

Mark: Yeah , it was really recent . Hey , if you send me an adaptogen product , I'll try it . Did you try theirs ?

Trevor: Yeah , did you notice anything ?

Mark: I think I did , but again , I use Lion's Mane pretty frequently .

Trevor: I think they sent us Reishi .

Mark: So yeah , the Reishi is what they gave us . It felt like it did help with sleep though yeah , I actually felt the same way . Like it did feel , like I had a smoother night .

Trevor: Yeah , well , there you go . Sponsored by Troop .

Mark: Trytroopcom .

Trevor: Let's talk about . I think what we want to talk about today , guys , is we want to talk about the customer , More specifically , first party data .

Mark: First party data .

Trevor: AKA zero party data .

Mark: Yeah , whatever .

Trevor: Whatever you want to call it , aka , qualitative .

Mark: Qualitative .

Trevor: Ish .

Mark: Yeah .

Trevor: AKA anecdotal , that one's a little more out there .

Mark: It can be anecdotal , but hopefully you guys are moving beyond anecdotal .

Trevor: Yes , so what we mean by first party data , so first party data .

Mark: And really quick Please . Anecdotal , Please yes . Go ahead , let's just go back to school really quick . Anecdotal evidence is oh , my friend told me , yes , I observed in my approximate sphere something .

Trevor: So the reason why I say anecdotal is because you're saying oh , my customer told me this . Yes , so you can kind of but far too often companies go .

Mark: My friend , who's also a target demographic of ours , told me this meaning therefore , we should try that .

Trevor: So a good example . This would be like hey , I want to start a product . I'm thinking about creating bedazzled dog leashes , and I talked to my mom she loved it who ? Has a dog and she loved it . She loved the idea , so therefore it's a good idea . Yes , and that's where anecdotal has somewhat of a negative connotation to it which is as it should this could like . It could be it should . This could like it could be .

Mark: It should be a very negative connotation . It could be good Because when you're getting here's the problem with advice right , and this is what you have to be really careful about when talking to customers directly is far too often companies , do you know , random , not random , but just they'll do in-house market research efforts .

Trevor: Market research efforts yes , right . Quote market research efforts which would be like what we just said we talk to , or they'll even try to run a true focus panel or like a focus group or you know whatever it might be .

Mark: But the problem with all of those is often times you don't know how to ask the right questions . You're already leading it in with some biases . If somebody's talking to you directly , as a founder , for example , they are going to most likely cater to your feelings yeah , yes , so , oh , yeah , I like that idea . It's like cool , you like that idea , but would you pay this much for it ? Right ? Those are two different questions . So a lot of times when we've talked to founders or companies and they're going off of anecdotal evidence , it's oh well , this person told me this Very dangerous yeah . It's in my target . They said they loved it . I got 10 people to tell me they loved it and it's like , yeah , but do they love it because they think they're going to get it half off from you ?

Trevor: Yeah , or do they love it ? Do they love it because they want to hurt your feelings ?

Mark: Do they love it ? Because they want to support ? Yeah , like , are they going to pay 150 for it ? Yeah , yep , very different , 100 . So what we're talking about is is sure , like it . It's not to just , it's not to say that you can't take anecdotal points of reference to then turn into a deeper dive into true meaning , but trying to quantify it , but sometimes people take the anecdotal and just make a jump , just move with it yeah , yeah think so .

Trevor: So the reason we want to talk about this is because so often , um , I have this conversation . That happens all the time . And when I say all the time , I'm not just being , I'm not just exaggerating and saying it happens all the time . It literally happens all the time , if we ever . Usually , when we talk to a new somebody in the e-commerce space , and one of the one of the first questions I I ask people and I know you do too , when we're just getting to know somebody is why does someone buy from you ? What , what , what makes you different ? Why is somebody buying from you ? And , without fail , if you're talking to a founder and operator , it doesn't matter either , or it always sounds something like this Um , and it's silence for a second and they have to think about it , and then they'll say something , oftentimes very basic , which would be something like they like our variety . Oh , we have really good pricing mm-hmm you know what I mean .

Mark: Or we have this feature .

Trevor: Yes .

Mark: Yeah . But usually when said it's not , and sometimes they just have a hard time articulating what they know in their gut . True , true yeah .

Trevor: And oftentimes it's said without much confidence yeah , so how do you ? How do you figure ? How do you figure that out ? Like , what are ways to figure out the motivating reason that somebody put their credit card information in and click submit ?

Mark: Well , you got to ask .

Trevor: Yeah , and we realize , guys , this is . You all know that . Well , most people who are listening to this that know that we own a tool called Bestie , which is a survey tool that does exactly what we're talking about . This is not meant to . I shouldn't say this is not meant . Let's be honest . There's a little bit of promoting here , but the conversation is so important that this podcast isn't meant to be a promotion of it . The podcast is meant to explain how to use it , why you should be using things like this yeah , and how it can actually move the needle for you well , for sure , there's a little promoting .

Mark: I mean , we're wearing bestie attire , yeah , but they will be honest with you guys . Of course we're promoting something . But we're bringing this up now because we have talked with now five founders in the last couple of days about how survey data around motivations and other things , attributions and whatever has really transformed their business .

Trevor: Yeah , I mean literally , I got a text message from a guy yesterday , Two days ago , sorry , I was at a baseball game with my family and he texts me and he's like hey , I think I'm having I think it's a user error here . I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong . Can you walk me through something with Bestie ? And I called him and sure enough it was a user error . But as we're talking , as I'm walking him through something , he's sitting there and you heard him on speakerphone and he was like dude , everybody I talked to in the e-commerce space , everybody I talk to in the e-commerce space , one of the very first things I tell them is you have to download Bestie and you have to start talking to your customers , because it just saved us $100,000 last year . So it's like those are the conversations we're having and right now , in the current landscape of e-commerce and the economy is like everything is so pricing wise , so far up , that brands are now making decisions to consolidate and to save money and we need any sort of hack or tool that's going to help us either one , save money or two , make us more money . So that's fact . So that's why I'm like we've had this tool for a long time , but we've avoided talking about it for the sake of self-promotion . But we're hearing it just so much and seeing how little people are actually using it . When I say how little people , I mean for how many bestie customers we have . There are still hundreds of thousands of e-commerce companies who have never even heard of us . Correct Right .

Mark: And the others right , and there's other survey tools out there .

Trevor: Yeah .

Mark: And we just want to make sure that people are getting the value out of what they're using currently , or to use us to get that value Totally . Yeah , so we're not going to sit there and tell you to buy it today , yeah . But just the importance of gathering qualitative information , because , unfortunately , one of the biggest mistakes that a lot of businesses and marketers make is relying too much on quantitative data right , which is just the metrics they see in Facebook , the metrics they see on Shopify , but they don't really have a story behind those metrics to then shape the message , to impact those metrics , and that's why qualitative becomes important . It's the other side of the coin .

Trevor: Yeah , it's like quantitative is the what and qualitative is oftentimes the why .

Mark: The why or the who .

Trevor: Yep exactly .

Mark: And the how .

Trevor: So you need them both both you do , and to just look at qualitative data alone can be very scary , and to just look at quantitative data alone can sometimes get you nowhere because quantitative is so easy .

Mark: When I say so easy , but quantitative is what it is , yeah , so it doesn't take as much . My website , yes , and four people bought but qualitative is tricky because sometimes you could ask someone hey , why are you guys buying ? Let's say you're selling a backpack and you say , hey , what's your main motivation today for buying this backpack ? People might say stuff like I like the design , or it's back to school month . Back to school month , yeah . Or you know how do you interpret I like the design , yeah , that's more . That's , that's a little more tricky , right , yeah , so I think that's why some people avoid the qualitative side is because it becomes more ambiguous and it does require a little bit more cleaning yeah , cleaning testing , yeah , yeah .

Trevor: And just to let everybody know what we're talking about , is there ? So we're talking about surveying your customers , like there are ways that you can talk to them , obviously face-to-face , one-on-one group messages or group would be more like focus groups . There are other ways to do this .

Mark: Or Instagram polls yeah , Instagram polls . Don't be afraid to use Instagram polls .

Trevor: Which is what probably the majority of people do when it comes to talking to your customers . But what we're talking about in particular is surveying , and , to get even more granular , there are certain times to survey customers . There are certain times that are better than others because of how engaged somebody might be yes , yeah . So , for example , we're talking about in a post-purchase experience , which would be on a thank you page . So when somebody checks out , what's the very first thing a company wants to do , and the very first thing the customer wants to do is make sure the company wants to make sure that it validates the customer , that their , their credit card information has been accepted and the payment has gone through . And so what will happen is it will send your customer and everyone's experiences before who's bought something online to what's called the thank you page and it'll say something like this Thank you , trevor Crump . Order number G7XW72 has been submitted or approved or confirmed , and it'll have my address and the details of my purchase . That is such an engaged position because everybody wants to make sure that happened , and so that's where we're talking about pulling in this survey data . It's a really , really good spot to say hey . Can we ask you a couple questions ?

Mark: Right Yep or on the order confirmation email .

Trevor: Yes , or on the order confirmation email .

Mark: Which tends to be one of the most opened emails .

Trevor: It is the most opened email , not even tends . I can almost guarantee that there is no other email that is more open from any company than the it is according to Trevor . This podcast episode is brought to you by Bestie . Bestie is the first ever AI powered post purchase survey platform . Bestie is revolutionizing the way you understand your customers . Are you uncertain about what motivates your customers to choose your products , unsure how customers are discovering your brand or which marketing channels are most effective in driving sales to your website ? Or do you know how long it takes your customers to make a purchase decision ? Look no further , because Bestie is the ultimate solution for you . With Bestie's cutting edge AI feature , you can effortlessly create comprehensive surveys in just a matter of seconds , without the need for any of your valuable time . And that is not all . Bestie's automated insights will regularly provide you with actionable information , week over week , giving you the tools to drive your business forward . Now , with the holiday season in full swing , there is no better time to start gathering valuable customer data . Bestie is offering an exclusive 30% discount for Q4 , alongside a 14-day free trial . Do not miss out on this opportunity to supercharge your business and truly get to know your customers . As e-commerce owners and agency owners ourselves , we use Bestie every single day to help us make better decisions on how we communicate , acquire and grow our customers . Visit Bestie AI or check out appsshopifycom forward . Slash bestietoday to secure your Q4 pricing . Don't wait Start making data driven decisions with bestie today . Anecdotally , it is so so all the accounts we've seen .

Mark: Yeah .

Trevor: I have never not seen it higher , although yeah , yeah , anyways , so , um , so what ? What should we be asking ? What are some things that what ? What are some like things that we've seen people do , that they've seen success ? So the first one like that I think is is very interesting . Like , for example , this company that that we were talking to said , hey , they saved us a hundred thousand dollars . Example this company that that we were talking to said , hey , they saved us a hundred thousand dollars . What he was telling us was , hey , we created a survey that was a qualitative attribution survey . So attribution would be usually like an attribution survey is usually two to three questions . Questions like , hey , how did you first hear about us ? What brought you ? So first is like , okay , how do you , how do you actually discover ?

Mark: was a friend ? Was it a family ? Did you see it online ? Was it an ad ? Did you see it in instagram ? An ?

Trevor: influencer . Second is okay , well then , what brought you to buy today ? Like what ? Where did you come from an email ? Did you come from an ad ? Did you just remember us ? You know what was it , excuse me . And then third question is oftentimes , how long have you known about us , just to understand that whole attribution life cycle ? So , from the time they heard about you , okay , 30 days later I'm coming now from an email , so you kind of understand that whole system . And he said that we were having a really , really hard time growing because we were putting all of our ad spend over into google because meta wasn't showing that it was working correct and so because we weren't seeing the attribution in google analytics . And then we weren't growing when we were putting spend over here . Because you can only put , you can definitely grow on google , but depending on the brand , you have to have other things happening to .

Mark: Yeah , incrementality tends to just be harder in google because there's factors like if you're using pmax , you have brand . If you exclude your brand , you still have terms that aren't your brand , but are your brand , sometimes depending on your company . Yep , so like a product is still kind of your brand yeah , exactly so yeah yep , so , but .

Trevor: But the more you spend in paid social areas , the more trend search you generally tend to see if you're doing it right , right yeah , and so , and there's another factor here , which is this brand has a higher price point .

Mark: Yep , and how long people had known about them tended to skew further away than those seven-day 30-day attribution windows yes yes , very true . So the ad platform wasn't getting any of that attribution after so long , and so he was like , oh , it's not working , yep .

Trevor: But they implement post-purchase surveys and find out that the number one way someone's hearing about them is not through Google , which is where all their ad spend's going to , but actually in fact Meta . So they take a risk , put the money into Meta and all of a sudden their revenue goes up and their spend actually starts doing something for them . Correct , and they went into and they felt like they were in a spot that they couldn't spend any more money . They had to kind of flatline and now they're like well , we can just continue to spend and feed the engine and then it produces . So that's one way .

Mark: And just a word of advice for people that are running surveys is just remember that qualitative data is great in generalities , right , but when you're trying to get too specific with it , it because it can become a lot more inaccurate because of false positives false negatives depending on how much data you're getting coming through your shop and people answering the surveys and how many people will actually complete . Because there's an effect we're not going to go into like academic terms , but basically , the longer your survey gets , the less likely people are to finish it . So then you get bias that's getting introduced into the survey after people go through too many questions , sure , so the more granular you get , the more risk you get at having some of these biases take into place , meaning somebody's just going to want to get through it . Well , yeah , there's people that just like taking surveys . Yep , that doesn't really represent your entire customer demographic .

Trevor: Yeah .

Mark: But generalities tend to be hey , this guy discovered meta Facebook Instagram was actually his primary driver . It didn't tell him what ad was working , right Right . It didn't tell him what ad set was the best ad set or what targeting feature . It's just saying hey , meta is where your customer journey begins . Yep , your customer journey is actually like three to six months long , so people aren't just jumping in and buying , yeah , and Google is just where they go back to find you or get to your website .

Trevor: Which means that when you you know if you just take your scenario , meta is the discovery three to six months then people go to Google to buy , which means that now you have this bigger window to say hey , if we start increasing spend in meta and we don't see an increase within seven days , does that mean that was a bad thing ? And the answer is no .

Mark: Well , because most people aren't making a decision that fast days .

Trevor: does that mean that was a bad thing ?

Mark: and the answer is no well , because , because you've discovered people aren't making a decision that they make .

Trevor: They're not making that decision , so you've got to be able to have longer test .

Mark: So there's all sorts of information and bits and pieces that you can gleam , and now from a survey like that exactly , and if I was the head of marketing of a company like that , the things I would do personally off of that information are what can I test to try to improve it , to shorten that window ? So how do we first ? Okay , cool , we know where people hear about us , we know this , we made the budget . But now is there a way to shrink that three to six month window ? How do we make people more confident in our product ? Yes , it's high price point , sometimes it is what it is . Confident in our product ? Yes , it's high price point , sometimes it is what it is . But is there a way to give people more assurance or , on our side , a better experience ? to shorten that consideration window .

Trevor: Can I feed them with more social proof to see that they need ?

Mark: education what is ?

Trevor: it . Yeah , exactly , especially if you're like a oftentimes higher price pointed items have longer consideration times , you know , know . So if you can start hitting people from a retargeting perspective , from an email perspective , from whatever it is , with more hey , look at like 700 000 people bought this product , you know , and this is what they're saying about it , you know like you can start to validate that this person's like okay , cool , this thousand dollars is going to be well spent because so many people are saying that they're okay with it .

Mark: Or here's a guarantee Yep Like , for example , 8Sleep .

Trevor: Yeah , this is a good one , yeah .

Mark: I bought an 8Sleep because it had a 30-day risk-free trial . It's a big purchase , you know , but if I can see a benefit in those 30 days , it was enough for me to say , oh yeah , sure , whatever Like , I'll , totally , I'll try it out , cause 2,500 bucks is worth it to me over the course of a year If I can get much better sleep . Sure , I'm not saying that's worth it for everybody . Right , there's some people that just won't buy it , it or try it . But I'm willing to try that because they gave me the assurance that I can try it , make sure that it works for me and then , if you even want , you could throw on after pay for four months yeah and go zero interest , so you don't actually fork out 2500 up front totally . So they're making it a little easier for the consideration window .

Trevor: They plus have celebrity endorsements now . How long did you consider the Eight Sleep ?

Mark: Well see , and this is another good question to put on surveys right Is because there's a difference between hearing about something and considering buying it . But I've heard about Eight Sleep for like over a year . I've been considering it for three months .

Trevor: Okay .

Mark: And I ordered it two months ago . What ? And it was delayed a month .

Trevor: Okay , what ended up being the thing that made you say let's buy it Was the problem was so bad and this just seemed like they had the answers to the solution .

Mark: They had the answers to my particular problem , which is I'm married , I share a bed . I tend to get hot . My wife doesn't , okay , so every time I was waking up in the night . And then also there's a factor of kids . We have little kids that have woken me up a lot , and so I . There's a factor of kids , we have little kids that have woken me up a lot , and so I almost have a habit of getting up . And then each time I get up I feel hot too .

Trevor: Yeah yeah , you could be hot , and A-Sleep controls the temperature .

Mark: So I said , hey , if this can cool my side of the bed and fix my sleep and give me the information I need to fix my sleep and get the best sleep I need , then that's worth it .

Trevor: Okay , so I want to let let's .

Mark: let's go into another especially because I've I like to listen to specific kinds of podcasts . Some of those podcasts have gone really deep into sleep and the importance of sleep for your longevity , for your health , for your focus and how there's really no replacing a good night's sleep . So that has been at the priority for me in the last six months of like I need to get better sleep . That's the only thing that really matters . Like , yes , exercise is good , I do that , Eating is important , but sleep has been like if I can fix my sleep , that's going to be the biggest force multiplier in my life .

Trevor: Yeah , so this is an interesting thing , because eight sleep they might be doing this . They could be asking their customers questions like this to really figure out who their customer is . But so let's say , like , let's say that , oh , we , we created eight sleep . The reason why people buy us is because they get hot at night and they want temperature regulation . That seems pretty , pretty narrow focused . But you said something that's a little bit more interesting and it's something that I experienced too , which is I can't tell you how many times I've woken up at night because I had to pee . So it wasn't , it wasn't heat that woke me up , it wasn't the coolness , it wasn't temperature , temperature , it was I have to pee . But right when I woke up , I was like sweating and I could . I couldn't fall back asleep because I was so hot . Does that make sense ? That's a , that's a . That's almost like a , like another layer of heat , right . Yeah , that you can kind of narrow into so , so , so let's , here's this . This leads me into another way that a lot of people and brands can use post-purchase surveys , which is the motivation side of things . What motivated you to buy and why ? You know , or why , or , or . Another question would be why are you buying us versus them ? Like that could be interesting as well .

Mark: Why are you buying us versus them , like that could be interesting as well . And eight , sleep has great marketing because if you look at their ads , they have just got you ads , yeah , which don't go into a whole lot , like one of them was sleep . So good , you'll get a tattoo . And it was like a guy tells the story about a guy who got a tattoo who said he'd get a tattoo of it of their logo if his sleep got better and it did so he went and got a tattoo .

Trevor: So they take funny stories .

Mark: So they kind of take like liquid death style marketing . Yeah , a little bit . A little bit , I think , just to shout out what they're doing in their marketing and whoever like , maybe we can get their marketer on . We need to have them on the podcast .

Trevor: Everyone can introduce us .

Mark: But they're not so worried about their brand that they're not willing to do some things that look .

Trevor: A little different . A little different .

Mark: Because I'm sure they have the consumer insights and they've just tried a lot of things to say yeah , they're a big company . Hey , like , we don't . Not everything has to look perfect and curated . Like they literally have a picture of the dude's tattoo like as an ad . That's awesome .

Trevor: So let have a picture of the dude's tattoo , like as an ad . That's awesome , so , so , let's , let's . Let's take another example , because I know that , like we can say , hey , motivation is a good reason , but let's , let's give you a real life example . So there's one . I won't call out the brand , but I'll call out what they do . So there's a brand , um , that was running ads , and they are a potty training aid brand , so they help kids with potty training which can save you money yep , and their two main reasons that they felt like people were buying from them was it saves them money so they don't have to buy diapers , because we all know , as if anyone's a parent who like saves money .

Mark: Diapers cost money right ?

Trevor: yep , so it's going to save you money . Number one and number two is it's going to save the environment . Right , because diapers for those of you guys who don't know this diapers take like 15 years to decompose , or 10 years , or something like that , to decompose in a dump . Yeah , it's like hey , why do people buy from us ? Those are are the two reasons .

Mark: Saves money , saves the environment and it can save some time .

Trevor: Yeah , so those are the main two reasons . So instead they decide to validate it , and that's what all their ad creative says , right , and what they do is they decide to validate it and they put those two questions in , and then they put a handful of other responses , potential responses , and they leave , like an other , open as well to say hey other and come to find out that it was like 5% of people said that saving the environment was the reason why they bought . So , once again , that was their number one , that was one of their number ones , and only 5% of people were less than . And then less than . 7% of people were saying money , and money just seems very logical , right ? Yeah , I want to save money , but the number one reason , which was 55 plus percent do you remember what it was ? As child's confidence no , that was their second one child's confidence . Like 25 , the number one was to shorten the window in which it takes me to potty train my kid .

Mark: Yeah , that's what it was . That's right , yep . It was to shorten that window , so time confidence and then everything else was unrecognized , like it was just yeah , it was nil . Minuscule yeah .

Trevor: So instead it was hey , I don't want my six-year-old wetting the bed anymore . How do I take it from having my six-year-old ? It took him X amount . My oldest , you know , was six by the time he was potty trained . How do I get my youngest to be three and that's ? And so they change that creative . And then what happens ? Everything explodes for them . Yep , yep . And then the same thing was child confidence and the same thing with confidence .

Mark: yeah .

Trevor: Confidence was huge . 25% is a really big number Because if you have a child , that has struggled with potty training .

Mark: You know it's a massive . You try to protect their confidence .

Trevor: Oh yeah , and anything you can do .

Mark: Yeah , cause you don't want them to feel lesser than because , because sometimes you know potty training is just something like some kids . I know there's some hormones or there's a chemical like there's sometimes it's medical right .

Trevor: Sometimes it's something with their back , you know yeah .

Mark: And you don't see a chiropractor . So yeah , it worked great . And once they changed that , I mean their ad performance went up 35% to 60% overnight , yep . But they'd been so Because people could see their problem in the ads and in the marketing .

Trevor: Yeah .

Mark: Rather than having to place themselves into it .

Trevor: Yeah . So now , instead you're saying hey , as you're talking to UGC creators , it's like , hey , these are the things you should talk about . Don't talk about the environment , even though we love it , Don't talk about .

Mark: And no one cares though .

Trevor: Don't talk about money , you know , because , even though we all want to save money , well , see , the environment's a great one .

Mark: Just to go on a little tangent here Everyone , if they have an environmental bent to their product , tries to talk about the environment . Yeah , but the environment is the cherry on top at the end . Yes , someone can feel good about themselves for doing it Totally , but how many people have bought a Tesla for the environment ? Aoc no that's what she says she would if she really cared about the environment . I don't know , maybe she should have bought a . Nissan Leaf or something right ? No , it's because most people buy Tesla's cuz they're cool , that's why ? But you feel cool about you , feel better about yourself , and in fact that was their whole business plan was hey , we're going to create roadsters that are super fast and make it cool , so a bunch of rich guys were buying them . They did the roadster model and then eventually they've got more efficient , more practical over time . But it was always start off cool and then we'll solve the problem as we go down you know what's interesting .

Trevor: I'd be super curious what the actual stats would be if they ran that survey but you would put , because I think most people would think that the same two things it's going to save me gas money and it's good for the environment and that's what most companies would lead with from a marketing perspective . But , but the main , motivation .

Mark: It's cool it saves .

Trevor: It's a club . It saves me gas .

Mark: Yeah , it saves me gas money . Yeah , like it goes , like cool . Now I can justify it with the gas money , exactly , and I can justify it with Emotional oh also , I'm helping the environment , so emotional is cool . Yep .

Trevor: Justification is your logic . Yes , right , the money is the justification logic .

Mark: Justification logic , and that is the buyer's journey . Everyone buys off of an emotional need or want , and then justifies it with logic . Yep , nobody , hardly anyone . Actually buys logically , and then no , I mean . It becomes emotional .

Trevor: Yeah , no , you're right . You're right . I was trying to combat you for a second , but my example didn't work .

Mark: Yeah , no , that's proven . So that's why motivations are so important is because , again , you're trying to get to what is the emotional trigger for these people and then how do you justify it to them in the process ? Right , because emotional is . They see themselves , and this is how I frame it when you're good at understanding their emotional motivations , then you can put themselves in the ad , so they can see themselves in the ad , rather than them having to do the mental work of saying , oh , that could work for me in this situation , or in my situation , I can now see myself in this .

Trevor: Yeah . So another example this could be we're working with somebody who does home delivery meals . There's a bunch of these going around right now . So the emotional is I'm a working mom and I have no time to make a home-cooked meal and I want my kids to have a home-cooked meal . I want my kids to feel that part-cooked meal like . I want my kids to feel that part of Home . That's emotional , right the justification .

Mark: I don't want to feel bad I don't want to feel bad yeah . I don't want to fast food or because I'm trying to do two things .

Trevor: Yeah , I'm trying to do both . I don't have that mom guilt , right . So that's the emotion , and the justification is hey , this is $4.50 per serving , which is only $0.50 more than if I bought it directly from the grocery store so there's your justification .

Mark: There's your justification like you're not losing out on a lot of money . It's not like going out and eating yeah , it's not like you're paying $10 a meal right and in the motivation the emotional motivation here is the way you're trying to catch people is you can show them the aspirational which is hey , now you have more time , totally . This gives you time back now that you don't have to sit there and prepare every little piece of the meal .

Trevor: Yep , now , when you get home from work , rather than and you don't have to feel bad about you're spending time with your kids while it's already cooking for you , exactly , yeah . So there's all sorts of marks , see what we're saying , like these responses . If you figure out that that the number one reason somebody is buying from you is because they are a busy working mom , there are so many marketing campaigns , content creation ideas , copy ideas that you can get from that . So that's what , like I actually tell people that , like a motivation survey is so much more critical than an attribution survey .

Mark: Yeah , you have to understand the customer journey , but I think the mistake people make with qualitative data goes back to the granularity is the more granular you try to make it like , the worse it gets . Yeah , in my opinion yeah because you don't know , like , if you want to get granular , you need to bring in focus groups . There's methodology behind this .

Trevor: It's not as easy as just like hitting up 10 friends , it's gonna cost a lot more money , take a lot more time yes , if you really really want to do it , that way .

Mark: But if you're trying , hey , I need to know where my people are , where they hear about me , what motivates them . Right , you can get very great information to act on .

Trevor: Yeah , yeah , I agree .

Mark: And improve your business overnight .

Trevor: Another thing you mentioned the customer journey . So we kind of talked attribution and there's a little bit of journey in there which is how long have you known about us and what . But there's there's other journeys and this was a very interesting one , that it goes away from your standard surveys that most people like . When you talk post-purchase survey , everyone's like oh , attribution , yeah , you know , people think surveys , oh , nps , you know like those are the obvious surveys you run .

Mark: Attribution and NPS . Yeah , obvious surveys you run attribution and nps .

Trevor: Yeah , very obvious , even maybe demographic like . If I want to like get a better hold of like who it is , how old they are , little things about them . But the other one was like a little bit more of a journey . So there was one brand whose aov was around four plus thousand dollars and they were selling , they're selling they're kind of in the e-bike and they were selling , they're selling they're kind of in the e-bike space , right . E-bike , e-moto motocross , that kind of stuff . And they wanted to know , not how long . Someone knew about e-bikes . Hey , how did you first hear about e-bikes ? So that was , that was one question . Where did you go ? Cause they already discovered how long it had taken them to buy and their buying cycle was six to 12 months , right , so it was . How did you first hear about e-bikes ? Where did you go to do your research ? Because usually when you have products that cost that much money , you there's a research . The reason why , the reason why it's a six to twelve month delay , isn't because people are just sitting in front of a window window shopping for 12 months . It's because they're oftentimes either one saving up for it to um , when it's a bigger priced product .

Mark: You just want there's a little more due diligence of like am I getting the most out of my money ?

Trevor: yeah , if I buy this , 35 hat , I'm not out much . If it breaks tomorrow , right right . But if I buy this , you're not happy . But yeah but if I buy this 35 000 car and it's a lemon it's a lemon and you're pretty mad , I'm upset . Or if I get a new roof , that's going to cost me $20,000 .

Mark: Yes .

Trevor: And it starts leaking . What is their warranty ? What is that ? So you do these research right , you start to research .

Mark: So they asked okay , for me when I decided to buy a camping trailer . It took me six months of research to pull the trigger .

Trevor: And you were probably talking to people who had owned one .

Mark: Yeah , because there's like a lot of times with those bigger price products , it's not like you're trying to make sure it fits your life too . Yeah , like I don't want to buy something that's priced at whatever the price is .

Trevor: Because it sounds like a good idea . Now I want to make sure I'm going to be able to use it yeah , am I going to use it over the long term ?

Mark: is it going to fit my lifestyle ?

Trevor: is it going to be a yeah , do I need to prep my yard to be able to store it ?

Mark: I mean , there's so many things that go into things like that yeah , because like part of what my process or like my journey of buying a trailer , it was okay , I need to make sure that I don't want to upgrade my vehicle . Yeah , I don't want to like have to get a truck now big truck v8 . I want to use my forerunner yeah I also want to make sure that I can modify it , yeah , over time to fit my family . Yeah , I also need to make sure that , oh , I want to get solar capabilities because I want to run starlink . Yeah , so I can work off the grid . Yeah , and that means a solar generator , which that was a whole other purchase that I did a bunch of research on ended up going with goal zero here locally for my my generator , but each one of those steps took time x amount of time .

Trevor: So back to this , right , okay . Okay , how are you ? How did you first hear about the trailer ? How did you first hear about these e-bikes , whatever ? And then , where did you go to do that research ? What were all the places that you went to do their , your research ?

Mark: yeah , because my journey with the trailer was similar to the e-bike .

Trevor: It was youtube yeah , so that was what they found , right , they discovered . So the first question was hey , how did you hear about an e-bike ? And the two big responses were we either saw it on social media , whether that be paid ads or just like a content creator using it , or we saw somebody riding it , so more of like the referral it could be somebody they didn't know . They just saw riding it . Hey , that's cool , or a friend , or they're out on the trails and they saw someone , whatever , any bike , yeah . So that was cool and that was validating for them because they were really good at that . They were great at paid search ads . They were really good . They're good at organic content creation . So it's like , okay , there's not a whole ton more we can do . Obviously you can spend more and you can test more and you can create more , but we've got that down pretty good right you know you can't do much about referrals outside of selling more product . Right , the more product you sell , the more people are going to see it , the more they're going to refer . So they're like okay , we're feeling confident about unless you're great at incentives .

Mark: Yeah yeah and referral programs which , uh , most people , most people aren't um .

Trevor: So then the next question is where do you do your research ? And it was overwhelming . It was like 70 plus percent was youtube , and that was a huge bummer and eye-opener for these guys , because they had no youtube strategy . So the bummer is oh my gosh , we are doing tons of research , we're , we're doing we're introducing the bikes to a lot of people , but not but we're not capturing .

Mark: So how many people could we be ?

Trevor: losing here ? Yeah , okay . And then the third question was okay , where are you then going to make the purchase ? Where do you go back to ? Oh , I remembered , I remembered the brand . I'm jumping in Google , I'm jumping in YouTube , whatever . And the majority of people said Google . So I'm like social media , friend or family referral , I research on YouTube , I make my purchase through Google , boom , boom , boom . And the reason why you're making purchase through Google is because I'm typing in that bike that I want and seeing which of the providers have the best offer . Is it free shipping ? Is there a discount going ? Is there a buy one , get something free ? What's going on ? And so they were nailing the top of the funnel . And the bottom and the bottom of the funnel . But they nailing the top of the funnel and the bottom and the bottom of the funnel but they had this massive part of the funnel , which is the majority where people did their research and made their final decision exactly , and so they developed a youtube strategy , hired a youtube team and almost instantaneously , overnight , captured like 30 more sales . Yeah , and .

Mark: Yeah , and I like this story too , because a lot of people when they a lot of companies when they see that , oh , my customer journey is taking a detour somewhere and I don't have a strategy over there . Therefore , I'm going to overthink it for like seven months .

Trevor: Yeah .

Mark: Which , by the way , this brand did overthink it for a little too long . It was like three , four months . But once they made a decision to finally capture that , it did not take long to make that video .

Trevor: No .

Mark: Right , it wasn't long for them to finally just crank out some videos on YouTube . It wasn't perfect .

Trevor: Yeah .

Mark: But they went through the research right . We helped them gather that research and curate what those videos should talk about . Yep and yeah . Overnight they literally doubled their daily sales so cool .

Trevor: Yeah , had their highest single day sales of the entire year with very minimal within a couple of days investment .

Mark: Comparative sure like if you're talking about what the additional delta is on spend and expenditure right right , right , right . Yep , you're probably looking at like 100x , roi . Yeah , for sure so on the additional spin , yep , you know . So like overall , they're sitting pretty at like a 15 , 20 roi yeah but that's the point is , you got to capture people where they are , you got to understand their journey , but you you know data points , quantitative data coming in . Attribution is important . It helps you understand a lot of things , but it does not under help you understand what , who your customer actually is and why they're buying Right . It doesn't help you understand what their journey looked like .

Trevor: Yeah , yeah , it's just a piece of the puzzle .

Mark: Because journeys are far longer than you realize .

Trevor: Yeah , and a couple other things to note about surveys is you don't need a lot of data for things to start to be statistically significant . I think this is a pretty common misconception that a lot of people have when it's yeah , general yes . Yes , when it's general , but people sometimes think I need a thousand responses to start understanding it . Yeah , when really you're , it's more like a hundred .

Mark: You know , and you can make an argument that's less than that so , depending if you're using like yeah , p test or t test , yeah , so you guys can google that if you want .

Trevor: But we kind of do that within bestie yeah , so you can run , and so you can brands should be running . You know you can be running multiple surveys at once . You can be running attribution . You should be running motivation . I mean it all depends on how many orders you have and how big you are . If you're only getting 200 orders a month , you probably don't want to be running more than one survey at a time , because that data will take a long time . Because yeah , because you're obviously not going to get everybody who is going to respond to your surveys . Depending on if your demographics older , you're obviously not going to get everybody who is going to respond to your surveys . Depending on if your demographic's older , you're going to have a higher response rate . If they're women , you'll have a higher response rate . If they're men , you're going to have a lower response . You know there's factors depending on who your customer is .

Mark: There are demographic factors , yeah , and you can motivate them .

Trevor: Absolutely , you can incentivize , you can motivate , offer , discounts , promo codes , etc .

Mark: Which is less painful when you're already captured the customer .

Trevor: Totally and also potential to improve LTV down the line . So great opportunities ahead . And we can go into several other stories that we hear from plenty of people . I mean we've had people come to us and say , hey , we started asking people what type of music they listen to and what they started to do was this brand saw like an overwhelmingly large amount of people say indie , like indie pop music . For this brand it was a Gen Z brand . I mean it was like 80% , that was their number one music choice and so they decided to put indie pop into every single one of their ads . So now and so they decided to put indie pop into every single one of their ads so that now , like it was indie pop music and guess what clicks and view times went up on their ads . Yeah , there's just , there's so many . I would have never thought about that one , you know , but there's so many little things you can do to just discover yeah , it is .

Mark: it's beautiful when you can start understanding and curating a more personal experience for your target demographic , because if your customer is Gen Z and they listen to Indie Pop , well , now again they're seeing themselves in the ad or hearing themselves in the ad .

Trevor: Yeah , yeah , it's so much more relatable .

Mark: It's more relatable . And that's all you're trying to do as a marketer is relate to people on a human basis , which is emotional .

Trevor: Yeah , I love talking to customers because right now , like I said , it's just a hard time . Business is hard right now . There's probably not a single person listening to this podcast right now who's feeling I got things on lockdown 100% . There's some brands that are definitely feeling it more than others , for sure , and we've talked about those types of brands , but , Kyle , you're in it . We're all in a time right now , that learning more about your customer is only going to benefit you .

Mark: And it doesn't have to cost you an arm and a leg .

Trevor: No , not at all Like . Like , if you came to me and said I've been married for 15 years this September , so my wife and I have 15 years there's an argument to say that there is not much . I don't know about her and we knew each other for years before we got married . I know her better than her parents know her . However , we still go on a walk every single morning and I ask her about her her day and she asks what , what she has going on , what I've got going on . We go on a walk every single night and we talk after we put our kids down for another hour . You know so my wife and I have two plus hours of unadulterated another hour . You know so my wife and I have two plus hours of unadulterated . Not to mention we're talking when we go to bed and , like you , don't just stop unadulterated unadulterated time pun intended , pun intended you know , um , but yeah , like I'm always talking to her and learning more about what she does , and not only is that validating to her , but it's also like , oh , I didn't realize that she was struggling with that . Therefore , I'm going to change my behavior so that she feels better during those times . Hey , I'm really stressed during dinner time because the kids are making a mess and I feel like all I'm doing all day is cleaning up . It's like , oh , what if I start cleaning up dinner now instead of her either ? I mean , it's just like I know it's not apples to apples , but like the more you learn about the people in your life , the better you can make those situations .

Mark: And yeah , it's not apples to apples , but the tie-in as a company is . I think a lot of brands start off hot or they have these streaks where they're really capturing the moment , and then the moment leaves because the audience interests have changed , what they're interested in has changed , but the branding doesn't change . The message doesn't change . Yeah , they stay the same , and that's why it's always important to be talking and have an open line of communication because , you could be on a high right now , but guess what , like people's interests and what they want to see , is going to change .

Trevor: Yeah , I agree .

Mark: And in any relationship , right . Like my wife's interests , yes , and the general interests are the same , like she's still the same person .

Trevor: Right .

Mark: Right , she's still the same target demographic , yeah , but her problems change . But her problems have changed and , like , what she's interested in now is not what she was interested in five years ago .

Trevor: Yeah .

Mark: Like she's more interested in .

Trevor: Well , she's more interested in well , and she's had a big life change .

Mark: Right , you guys have a one-year-old now well , yeah , we have kids , but also she was diagnosed with celiac disease . Yeah , so , like her circumstances have changed dramatically over the last eight years . But you know , like , if we're not having an open line of communication of like , oh well , my kids still want gluten every once in a while , so I make those meals right , but if you're , if you're not in tune with the needs of someone that you have a relationship with , you're going to miss the mark 100% . And that's what it's no different with branding . Yeah , Like it's a relationship People feel like they have . It's not as intimate as a , you know , human , human connection , but people feel like they have a relationship with brands . It's not the same , but it is .

Trevor: And how much more important is that relationship for brands who have repeat customers too ? Incredibly important , right so ? Think about it like an apparel brand . If you're a shirt company , if you're a pants company , if you're a shoe brand , your competition is higher than anybody outside of the CPG space , right so if these pants I can buy , like , I'm wearing standard issue pants right now and you're wearing Lululemon pants and at the end of the day , they both do the same thing right , they do Technically , technically , yes , exactly , they cover our nakedness , yeah . So if one of these companies is more focused on the customer and touching them from a touchpoint perspective don't be nasty then Clothes are very intimate . Then you've got a better , they've got a better chance at winning in the long run and forgetting yeah , yeah , they do .

Mark: And what is it ? That's what you've got to understand about your customer . We can't answer that for you , but you can answer that for yourself pretty easily 100% A lot more% . It's a lot more easy than you would think .

Trevor: Yeah .

Mark: Just start .

Trevor: And this is not . Yeah , there's not heavy lift Like Bestie , for example . There is next to zero heavy lift with it .

Mark: It will create the surveys for you .

Trevor: It creates everything for you , it will create the questions for you , it onboards you , it asks you a couple of questions , you download it . If you download it in Shopify on your e-com site , I mean , you will have a survey built within less than four minutes . I have done it several times . I've gotten down to like two minutes as I've . Yeah , you're timing yourself . Yeah , nice , that was for marketing material , you know .

Mark: Got the timer ? Yeah , but I got the timer . Yeah , but I'll double less than two minutes . I'll give you four okay , it's easy it is yeah , but really it is four or five minutes or go out and research your other .

Trevor: What other post purchase surveys ?

Mark: right , just be doing it do it , be doing something , do it nike sponsored by nike brand sponsors .

Trevor: We had a lot of , we had a lot of awesome brand sponsors yeah , we did .

Mark: We gotta give a shout out to everybody . Shout out to uh everyone , we're going to get Eight . Sleep on the pod .

Trevor: Yeah , I think they need to , maybe send me one .

Mark: So they should just give me mine now .

Trevor: Yeah , use a Goldheart 30 .

Mark: and get 30% off your Eight Sleep . Just kidding , don't do that . Like I said , we'll document it . Over the next three weeks I'll tell you .

Trevor: Okay .

Mark: Tell you how I feel I'll talk about my scores . I love it . We'll see what eight sleep does .

Trevor: All right , everybody . Thank you so much for joining us and we will see you guys next Tuesday Next Tuesday . Have a great summer . Thank you so much for listening to the Unstoppable Marketer podcast . Please go rate and subscribe the podcast , whether it's good or bad . We want to hear from you because we always want to make this podcast better . If you want to get in touch with me or give me any direct feedback , please go follow me and get in touch with me . I am at the Trevor Crump on both Instagram and TikTok . Thank you , and we will see you next week .