Funnel Reboot podcast

Episode 209 When it comes to initiatives humans undertake, we only need to look at a few to see how they can fail spectacularly. One example:  The iconic Sydney Opera House came from a competition won by a young Danish Architect. The board who’d commissioned him to build it was told it would be completed by 1963, but things were so chaotic and so behind schedule, he had to be fired. It is truly a marvel of design, but it’s a posterchild for poor projects because it didn’t open until 1973.    Another example: Out of a desire to research high-energy particles and potentially solve the fundamental  of physics, the US Government set out to build the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC). A site in Texas was chosen, but after 6 years they had only tunneled a fraction of the 88 kilometres, when the project was cancelled at a cost of $2B.   A last example: In 1998 NASA’s Mars Climate Observer travelled about 200M miles and was about to start researching the red planet. But the software setting its orbital altitude had been given imperial units instead of metric. This error in the code made it come in too steep, destroying the $328M probe.    These failures are so huge, it’s bound to bring out our inner cynic. It’s natural to pose questions of those leading the projects, like: “what were they thinking?”   I don’t scoff at the people who headed these projects, because I experienced something in my youth that showed me how humans sabotage missions. When I was 15 I attended a camp that took us through exercises to cultivate teamwork. I thought I knew what teamwork was; I was not prepared for what awaited. Two twenty-something Senior Counselors named Leo & Bob were in charge of it. We left the camp which was in rural New York State and drove in a van a few hours away. The van crossed into Pennsylvania, left the highway for a sideroad, then onto a dirt road and finally to a clearing somewhere in the backwoods. It was early afternoon by the time Leo dropped us off, leaving 4 of us and Bob to calmly walk for about 30 minutes, and we stopped to relax in a clearing in the forest. At that point, Bob stood facing us and told us about this simple exercise we were about to do. He said, 'you are stranded in a forest a few miles from a stationary van which contains food and medical provisions. You have to locate the help, which will signal its location by a horn-blast every 15 minutes until sundown. You’ll succeed in your mission if you reach the van by then. He didn’t tell us what would happen if we didn’t. All of this seemed doable, until Bob said one of your team is incapacitated due  an injury.' and then he closed his eyes, fell to the ground, and didn't say a word. I’s hard to be to say what the next couple of hours was like, as we tried to find the van,  carrying this 180lb man through the brush. Suddenly, it became important to recall the way we’d come, or how to lash branches together to form a stretcher, or whom among us should decide which way we should go. Each time we heard the horn, we felt a bit more exhausted and acted a bit more panicked, knowing that the horn-blasts would stop and we'd resort to screaming in the dark. The way we interacted with each other in every way, from rational to tense to hysterical. At several points in the day, I was convinced we'd never get to the van. But by some miracle we reached the van just before sunset. Each of us had time during the trip back to reflect on how we worked as a team. I no longer wonder why people have difficulty collaborating on projects, especially as the stakes get higher.  My guest also believes it’s our fault that projects fail as they do, and she’s got principles she teaches that make everyone clear on the task we’re all undertaking, significantly improving odds of success.  She is founder and CEO of Spring2 Innovation, is an award-winning design thinking and innovation expert, as well as a TEDx and TEC/Vistage speaker. With over 25 years of experience, she has driven innovation in telecommunications, application development, program management, and IT, helping public and private organizations shape strategy, drive change, and launch new products and services. Let’s go now to speak with Nilufer Erdebil.   Chapter Timestamps 0:00:00 Intro 00:06:38 Welcome Nilufer 00:10:16 Poor design in showers and on projects 00:20:12 customers' unspoken needs 00:25:07 PSA 00:25:40 Devoting more of our time to communicating 00:28:49 Mistakes stemming from bad Workflows 00:37:39 Is our UX as disorienting to customers  as a foreign language? 00:43:12 AI's potential role 00:47:55 About Nilufer, book Links to everything mentioned in the show are on the Funnel Reboot site's page for this episode.

Episode 208 People resist change. They only stop resisting when they’re convinced the change is needed. They’re only convinced change is needed when they grasp the truth. The best way to present them the truth is with data.    You might think that what works on people is a dry statistical presentation of the data in all its Indisputable, inscrutable glory.  Nope. Those avoiding change give themselves offramps by arguing about your data. History shows that to persuade people to take an action, it takes taking them through data in a way that grabs them emotionally. Some examples include: Florence Nightingale, 1854 Al Gore, 2006 Princess Diana, 1997   Numbers prove, but a story compels. This has so much to do with marketing. Here’s why. To do what we do, our bosses / clients must be convinced in how our work is yielding results. That is the core of every story that a marketing presentation tells.  Our guest is a Data Storyteller. After graduating from Massey University in 2002, she moved into data analytics. She earned a digital design degree in 2015, combining her design and analytics skills, which led her to specialize in data storytelling. In 2016, she founded Rogue Penguin, a company focused on bridging analytics and business operations.  She now leads workshops for professionals in data science, marketing, and design. And she’s the author of “the data storytelling handbook” Let’s go to New Zealand to speak with Kat Greenbrook   Chapter Timestamps 0:00:00      Intro 00:05:48    Welcome Kat 00:07:45    when data storytelling is needed 00:09:00    two ways of communicating data 00:13:55    Data stories improve communication between groups 00:26:38    PSA 00:27:18    Canvas for making time stories 00:30:05    making visuals relevant to the business 00:33:19    How to present when you only have part of story 00:39:06    Conserving data-ink 00:43:00    More you show - the less you contrast 00:48:20    Getting the book or contacting Kat Links to everything mentioned in the show are on the Funnel Reboot site's page for this episode.

Episode 206 There’s no denying that ChatGPT and other GenerativeAI’s do  amazing things. Extrapolating how far they’ve come in 3 years, many can get carried away with thinking GenerativeAI will lead to machines reaching General and even Super Intelligence. We’re impressed by how clever they sound, and we’re tempted to believe that they’ll chew through problems just like the most expert humans do.  But according to many AI experts, this isn’t what’s going to happen.   The difference between what GenerativeAI can do and what humans can do is actually quite stark. Everything that it gives you has to be proofed and fact-checked.  The reason why is embedded in how they work. It uses a LLM to crawl the vast repository of human writing and multimedia on the web. It gobbles them up and chops them all up until they’re word salad. When you give it a prompt, it measures what words it’s usually seen accompanying your words, then spits back what usually comes next in those sequences.  The output IS very impressive, so impressive that when one of these was being tested in 2022 by a Google Engineer with a Masters in Computer Science named Blake Lemoine, became convinced that he was talking with an intelligence that he characterized as having sentience. He spoke to Newsweek about it, saying:   “During my conversations with the chatbot, some of which I published on my blog, I came to the conclusion that the AI could be sentient due to the emotions that it expressed reliably and in the right context. It wasn't just spouting words.”  All the same, GenerativeAI shouldn’t be confused with what humans do. Take a published scientific article written by a human. How they would have started is not by hammering their keyboard until all the words came out, they likely started by asking a “what if”, building a hypothesis that makes inferences about something,  and they would have chained this together with reasoning by  others, leading to experimentation, which proved/disproved the original thought. The output of all that is what’s written in the article. Although GenerativeAI seems smart, you would too if you skipped all the cognitive steps that had happened prior to the finished work. This doesn’t mean General Artificial Intelligence is doomed. It means there’s more than one branch of AI - each is good at solving different kinds of problems. One branch called Causal AI doesn't just look for patterns, but instead figures out what causes things to happen  by building a model of something in the real world. That  distinguishes it from GenerativeAI, and it’s what enables this type of AI to  recommend decisions that rival the smartest humans. The types of decisions extend into business areas like marketing, making things run more efficiently, and delivering more value and ROI. My guest is the Global Head of AI at (EY) Ernst & Young, having also been an analytics executive at Gartner and CSL Behring and graduating from DePaul with an MBA.  He has written five  books. His 2024 book is about the branch of AI technology we don’t hear very much about, Causal AI. So let’s go to Chicago now to speak with John Thompson.   Chapter Timestamps 0:00:00 Intro 00:04:36 Welcome John 00:09:05 drawbacks with current Generative AI 00:16:09 problems causal AI is a good fit for 00:22:47 Way Generative AI can help with causal 00:26:50 PSA 00:28:08 How DAGs help in modeling 00:38:36 what is Causal Discovery 00:47:52 contacting John; checking out his books   Links to everything mentioned in the show are on the Funnel Reboot site's page for this episode.

Episode 204 Eyes are important. Each of us puts heavy weight on our vision when forming a mental model of the world around us.Seeing is believing. This is so important in business, almost every time people meet, some visual tool guides the discussion - this practically essential object is a presentation, specifically a data presentation. But knowing what we know about our visual senses, creating something that’s tuned for people’s minds…as well as their hearts, takes combining neuroscience, storytelling, emotion, persuasion, design and effective communication.  That’s a lot to know, but our guest can help you do it. For over a decade, she’s helped those in the digital marketing and web analytics communities transform their  presentations from snoozefests into experiences that inspire action She’s a workshop leader and keynote speaker. We’re going to talk about the book she came out with in 2024 “Present Beyond Measure.”  Let’s go south of NYC to the Jersey shore to talk with Lea Pica.   Links to everything mentioned in the show are on the Funnel Reboot site's page for this episode.   Chapter Timestamps: 0:00:00   Intro 00:04:23 Welcome Lea Pica 00:09:42 know the stakeholders you are presenting to 00:18:04 Building meeting's name around message 00:32:14 PSA 00:33:07 Parsing your content into digestible-sized ideas 00:40:08 using story arc structure to make slides 00:48:05 keeping data accurate in graphs 01:01:27 Listener-exclusive offer by Lea   Links to everything mentioned in the show are on the Funnel Reboot site's page for this episode.

Episode 203:  How many words does a message need to be for it to be useful? Would you believe under 35 words, or under 160 characters? Here are some examples: Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address: “We cannot dedicate. We cannot consecrate we cannot hallow this ground. The world will little note nor long. Remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.”  Suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst declared, “We are here not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers.” Henry David Thoreau, in his book Walden, on experiencing Nature should be accessible to all, regardless of social or economic status. “The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode”.  JFK “the goal, before this decade is out, [is] of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.” Pierre Trudeau: proposed in 1967 that Canada should decriminalize homosexuality. He said “The view we take is, there's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.” Hilary Clinton 2008  when she lost out to Barack Obama for the nomination to run for president said "we weren't able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time," but added proudly, "it's got about 18 million cracks in it," a tally of her primary votes. Having heard those, you’ll agree that this is doable.  Someone who believes a concise strategy is what it takes to lead people  What’s more, she believes we must show them this learned skill so they can craft their strategies and develop into leaders themselves.  Our guest is storyteller, a framework-maker, a brand-builder, who talks about strategy, communication skills, and how to forge your own path. She is the CMO for a security technology firm called Field Effect. Shea Cole is a wife and mom and  a 2024 Recipient Ottawa’s top 40 under forty.   Timestamps/Chapters: 00:00:00 Intro 00:04:23 Welcome Shea Cole 00:11:27 Build deck & meeting around vision 00:18:04 Slide 1 00:29:20 PSA 00:30:00 Slides 2 through 6 00:36:25 Adding parts that turn strategy into dollars 00:46:06 Contacting Shea   Links to everything mentioned in the show are on the Funnel Reboot site's page for this episode.

Episode 202 One of the most famous western philosophers of all time is GWF Hegel. He influenced other thinkers like Karl Marx, Soren Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre. He lectured at the universities of Jena, heidelberg and from 1818 until 1831, at Berlin. As a matter of fact, his lectures there drew students from all over campus, to the point that the belltower at the University would sound its bell to announce the start of Hegel’s lectures People may have flocked to hear him, but that doesn’t mean they understood Hegel. One student who went on to write a biography of him was Karl Rosenkranz, who said “His lectures were not clear and systematic presentations, but profound expositions of the inner movement of concepts, which often raised more questions than they answered”…..in another part, he said “The students often complained that Hegel was difficult to understand.” Many moons ago, I was a Political Science major, in which I had to take a philosophy course that covered Hegel - I had the toughest time understanding him and Hegel still confuses me  to this day. I read & re-read his words, but I don’t get what he’s saying.  Same with Superintelligent AI like ChatGPT - when we ask it questions, there always seems to be a randomness factor. Sometimes it gives you amazing results, while other times it leaves you scratching your head at its hallucinations…its stupidity.  If you have this problem, it might not be the AI—it might be your prompts! There are hacks to how you craft them - and this has given rise to a whole field - prompt engineering.  Our guest co-founded a 50 person marketing agency called Ladder. He has designed courses on LinkedIn Learning & Udemy that 350,000 people have taken. And he was a very early user of Large Language Models - the brains behind Generative AI.  In 2023 he came on Ep 168 of this show for the book “Marketing Memetics.” In 2024 he came out with an O’Reilly book titled: Prompt Engineering for Generative AI. Let’s go to Liverpool, England to talk with Mike Taylor.   Chapter Timestamps 0:00:00 Intro 00:03:28 Welcome Mike 00:11:27 Expressing all that's needed for a GPT to produce good response 00:20:24 Using AI context window 00:34:48 PSA 00:35:26 Training GPT on proprietary data 00:41:19 Agentic use of GPT 00:47:52 Training GPT for writing   For links to all people, products and concepts mentioned, go to Episode 202’s shownotes page.

Episode 200 Podcasts are tiny time capsules, preserving moments of wisdom and insight. Every time I revisit past episodes, I am reminded of how insightful our guests have been. Certain themes consistently emerge, echoed by guests from the very beginning of the podcast to just yesterday. The cost of ignoring these insights is so high that they bear repeating. Tune in to our latest episode where I share six aspects of marketing that I didn't know when I first started this podcast. Please listen in on these valuable pieces of wisdom.   Links to all episodes that featured the people mentioned are in the Show Notes.

Episode 199 Today’s topic is AI and ML, and though you may think this doesn’t concern marketing, we need to acknowledge how it’ll shift things. Up to now, marketing was done on the premise that for a given audience shown a message, some  average percentage, would act on it. With AI, we’re now able to look at individual audience members and predict how each of them would act upon a message, and at the opportune moment we could have the message show up to each one of them. Goodbye analyzing what happened with crude audience averages, Hello to using detailed data to predict what’s likely to happen.  With AI holding such promise, why don’t more companies hand things over to AI? I had thought it’s held up by a lack of technical people who know how to do this, but our guest says we’ve had enough technical expertise - He himself was previously one of those data people, and his expertise wasn’t enough to do the job.  He says AI initiatives are held back by those running business functions like marketing who haven’t made the business case and collaborated with the data people to implement this.  My guest is a leading consultant and former Columbia University and UVA Darden professor. He is the founder of the long-running Machine Learning Week conference series, a frequent keynote speaker, and author of the bestselling Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die. In 2023 he authored “The AI playbook” Let’s talk to Eric Siegel. Timestamps/Chapters: 0:00:00       Intro 00:01:37    Welcome Eric Siegel 00:01:56    Barrier we face isn't technical know-how 00:06:05    Despite a strong start - AI's been slow to spread 00:11:17    Process a business needs to implement ML 00:27:41    building a custom algorithm 00:29:45    PSA 00:52:32    The human-side of the switchover 00:54:03    Contacting Eric Links to all people and concepts mentioned are in the shownotes on the Funnel Reboot site.

Episode 198 A pretty widely held view in the world of B2B products is that sales has gotten harder, not easier. It’s not that buyers aren’t buying. By definition, buying is something they do. But in the example of software, some sales reps won’t even know they were being evaluated, let alone passed up for a rival’s product. Only the winning vendor knows that that account uses them for that specific function in their technology stack. All other companies are in the dark.     But are they really? Another way to look at this is that every vendor has information that could be valuable to others. You can find many buyers stacks with products having some overlap but that largely complement each other. As proof, note that lots of these products even integrate with each other because of buyer demand.    Should vendors consider collaborating with vendors they compete against? Aren’t we supposed to hate the competition?   We don’t have to. A famous example of that was Apple’s announcement in 1997 of the deal it struck with Microsoft. Steve Jobs defended the deal saying  “If we want to move forward…we have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose.”   Zooming to today’s reality, It makes a lot of sense for vendors to collaborate as part of an Ecosystem. By pooling their data together with their indirect competitors, they can see internal buying patterns. Those vendors who hitch their data wagons together get around the ‘nobody talks to our sales rep’ problem, because one of their partners already has the info that rep needs. Using this intel helps them come first in the race for their product to be selected to go in the buyer’s stack.    Our guest today got a Science & Engineering degree from Princeton University and after a stint in the investment world, he dove into co-founding startups. The first was business intelligence platform RJMetrics and the other was cloud data pipeline company Stitch, both of which he saw through to successful exits.    His latest role is as Co-Founder of a platform that safely shares data among companies for this kind of partner-based selling.   Outside of work, He is a Trustee for one of America’s top centers of science education and development And an improv comedy performer, in a  team that has performed over 100 shows together.   This husband, father of two, is very proud to call Philadelphia home. Let's head there now to meet Bob Moore.   Timestamps / Chapters 0:00:00 Intro 00:03:46 Bob’s thesis on how sales is broken 00:11:21 Ecosystems are cause for hope 00:26:13 PSA 00:26:53 Revamping corporate partner practices 00:31:38 Pooling together data 00:55:06 Contacting Bob   Links to everything mentioned in the show are on the Funnel Reboot site's page for Episode 198

Episode 197 Today, we are going to talk about how those of us who sell things find new buyers once we’ve exhausted our own audiences. We involve partners, and we can do this in a few ways. These partners may have high-traffic sites or be social media influencers. We are trying to use someone else's channel to reach their audience, hoping they will buy from us. Alternatively, we might be the ones who are influential or have a large audience that brands want to reach, so they pay us to be their marketing channel. The name for teaming up like this is affiliate marketing. Today’s guest came to affiliate marketing through dabbling in online gambling. He watched the incentives sites put out to attract players, and then in 2010, he created a website that reviewed gambling affiliate programs called Gaming Affiliates Guide. This site’s traffic led him to become, you guessed it, an affiliate. Over time, he managed several gambling affiliate sites. As you progress in this field, you always hit a ceiling with this marketing channel. No matter whether you’re the one needing traffic and paying for it, or the one who has traffic and is turning it into money, everyone gets a headache tracking it. As our guest was deeply involved at this point, getting paid to manage affiliate sites, he saw numerous problems in this industry and saw a way to solve them. There were already applications that reported affiliate activity, but he saw these technologies' shortcomings. With his engineering degree from the University of Toronto, which had taught him how to develop things, he joined up with partners to create a SaaS tool of their own: StatsDrone. Having scratched an itch he experienced earlier in his career, he now heads a team whose tool addresses affiliate challenges. Let’s go to Montreal and hear from John Wright. Chapter Timestamps: 0:00:00 Intro 00:03:35 Welcome John Wright 00:06:57 Difficulty with Affiliate tracking 00:11:27 Postbacks and tracking methods 00:18:48 tracking dynamic variables 00:23:14 PSA 00:23:54 Tracking affiliate dollars 00:42:13 Contacting John   For complete links to the People, Products and Concepts mentioned in the show, go to the episode’s page on the Funnel Reboot site.

Episode 196   There’s something we take for granted these days, something that wasn’t even possible a short while ago. Let’s go back to 2008, to the first iPhone, the 3G. What you could send & receive with one, if you could afford the data plan, was restricted to voice, text & small images. That’s because at the time, the cellular networks could transmit at around a third of a Megabyte per second, which went up to 2Mb/second when 3G was fully available. Then LTE/4G started becoming available in North America, reaching 97 percent by 2013. With those data speeds, you could watch brief standard definition videos, and social networks like Instagram & Snapchat began letting you record and send short clips. By the late twenty teens, advanced 4G infrastructure was fast enough, from 12 to 80 MPS, for people to watch 4K videos on their devices, bringing platforms like TikTok along with it. Now with 5G out, lag-free high-def video is available almost everywhere. And if you are a marketer trying to reach consumers, it means that  video must be part of the mix.    There are still quirks to these platforms that we need to figure out. Some of their ad units include ecommerce options for selling products while the ad’s in front of them. More broad that this, it’s hard to know how these platforms will react to videos you post. They know so much about a user’s privacy, it’s raised issues of which country that data’s shared with. Clearly, this calls for an expert’s help.     Our guest graduated from San Francisco State University and FIDM with a business degree and started working in-house at consumer eCommerce brands, running their digital marketing programs. After helping brands in every category from skincare & cosmetics to Books to jewelry, she built her own agency team to do this, Pennock, which is named after the rural Minnesota town where her family are from.  Let’s go to  Northern California where she lives with her husband Tyler and three kids, to talk to Nikki Lindgren.   Chapter Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:03:12 - Welcome Nikki 00:09:05 - Video on platforms like TikTok 00:23:37 - PSA 00:24:26 - Reporting to stakeholders 00:29:59 - Ad campaign optimization 00:35:05 - Contacting Nikki   Links to all the people, products and concepts mentioned in show is available on the Funnel Reboot site’s show page.

Episode 195 We all want our organization’s decisions to be driven by the numbers. Who wouldn’t want to have at their fingertips analytics that accurately show which course of action will be best.   But doing this takes analysts, and that doesn’t mean hiring them, it means managing them to function well. It means creating processes for them, Outfitting them with technology. Giving them budgets.It's hard pulling this off in a small or mid-sized organization, and even leaders of large organizations must exercise care when creating this.  But there’s no set-in-stone law that says a data team must be in-house. Another model, managed services works well for IT and it can be used to give companies access to analysts so they can still be data-driven.  We’re going to explore the outsourced analytics model with today’s guest.  Throughout his career, he has worked at the intersection of data, business, and strategy consulting. He earned his Bachelor's Degree from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Following graduation, he joined Cargill as a Data Engineer from June 2011 to November 2013. He went on to serve as the Analytics Lead at Slalom from December 2013 to February 2016, where he claims to have been Minneapolis' first Analytics Hire.  In 2017, he co-founded DataDrive, a managed service provider specializing in analytics, alongside fellow data enthusiasts. Let’s talk with Luke Komiskey. Chapter Timestamps 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:14 - Welcome Luke 00:17:38 - PSA 00:18:16 - Calculating value of having good data 00:49:29 - The MSP model 00:49:59 - Where to contact Luke   Links to everything mentioned in the show are on the Funnel Reboot site's page for this episode.

Episode 194 There’s more than one way to skin a cat. Being honest, doing something differently is often neither better or worse, it’s just different. - Playing Music with an acoustic vs electric guitar - Writing with a pen on paper vs a computer. And continuing on that theme, it could be a Mac or a PC - Programming can be done in various languages - Films can be made with a variety of filming equipment, anything from an iPhone up to an IMAX ALEXA 65mm This also applies to what we use as our analytics tool. And though Google Analytics gets a lot of attention, including in this podcast, to be fair, it is not the only game in town. The industry has a second tool,  Adobe Analytics and I wanted to talk with an expert, and to my mind, today’s guest is the person to talk to about it.  She has 15+ years of experience helping enterprise organizations solve their analytics problems holistically, no matter where they are in their digital measurement evolution or what tool set they use.  Few can go as deep on pixel implementation, tag management, and data layers as she.  As a consultant at boutique agency 33 Sticks, she helps clients streamline the implementation process and get more value out of their tools, decreasing costs and headaches for developers, project managers, and analysts alike. On the side, she’s used her background as a developer to create free industry tools like the Adobe Analytics Beacon Parser and the mobile app PocketSDR.  She loves helping and collaborating with others in the industry, and most days can be found in #measure slack or twitter doing just that. Let’s go to the Atlanta-area to talk with Jenn Kunz    Chapter Timestamps 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:21 - Welcome Jenn 00:03:37 - How Adobe's used by larger orgs 00:20:55 - PSA 00:21:32 - Navigating the Interface 00:41:48 - How to contact Jenn   Links to everything mentioned in the show are on the Funnel Reboot site's page for this episode.

Episode 193 Those of us in the digital economy think a lot about growing our business, but we don’t think as much about the tech that enables customers to interact with our business. When our sites don’t run smoothly or aren’t available, our customers suffer and it stops working as our sales and marketing engine. Terms for these episodes: the site crashed or it croaked, give us a perception that sites are either alive and well or completely dead, when its health really resembles our own human health. Meaning, a website can give off  warning signs that can be diagnosed and treated before anything really bad happens. It doesn’t take invasive tools to catch these; monitoring services that run without any special site access can detect issues.  These tools that take a site’s pulse are also good to gauge the site’s fitness - its ability to handle business growth.  Our guest has always called Ottawa Canada his home. He has also always had an entrepreneurial spirit, supporting the local startup scene since the 2000s, which is where I first met him. After earning his computer science degree, he began his career working at local web tech firms. A stint at a design agency stoked his enthusiasm for websites, and in 2010 he joined the parent company of Internet Service Provider and web host Rebel.com, and domain registrar Internic.ca.   He took on the role of CEO for both companies, where he saw first-hand how the internet fueled communication and value-creation. In 2013 he took on additional responsibility as a Director of the not-for-profit Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), where for the last decade more or less he has staunchly pushed for the internet to be used as a force for good in Canada. Workwise, after stepping away from Rebel and Internic, he returned to his technical and startup roots. Based on his observation that while websites were getting easier for non-experts to build, they could make mistakes hurting their user’s experience of their site with equal ease. That led him to launch ONIK, a product that monitors website fitness.  Let’s go talk with Rob Villeneuve   Chapter Timestamps 00:00:00 - Intro 00:03:06 - Welcome Rob 00:09:19 - Monitoring site health 00:29:09 - PSA 00:29:59 - How much access is needed to monitor a site 00:41:01 - Holding different patrs of site to different standards 00:42:12 - How alerts help 00:45:21 - Knowing when enough is being measured 00:49:50 - How large sites do monitoring 00:53:09 - About ONIK.IO, how to contact Rob Links to everything mentioned in the show are on the Funnel Reboot site's page for this episode.

We've all heard of 1970's Apollo 13 mission that was supposed to send a 3-man crew to the moon, but once NASA became aware of an on-board explosion, it became all about rescuing the crew.  Ron Howard's 1995 movie gives a glimpse of how mission control staff in Houston reacted to information about the explosion.  When an alarm on the command module flashed, signaling a power drop, Flight Director Gene Kranz (portrayed by Ed Harris) turned to the mission controller in charge of emergencies and said "is this an instrumentation problem, or are we looking at real power loss here?" That officer, named Sy Liebergot and played by the director’s brother Clive Howard said "It's, it's reading a quadruple failure - that can't happen! It's, it's got to be instrumentation." But by following their procedures, NASA confirmed it wasn't an instrumentation problem, the ship had actually suffered a devastating explosion, and at that point they swung into rescue mode.  NASA aren't the only ones who, on seeing data put in front of them, are so quick to dismiss it. Dashboards - and the work it takes to implement them - isn’t trivial. Yet many of them fail…meaning that once they’re built they never get looked at.  There are those who blame technical problems for this, but just like in Apollo 13, the main failures are due to people problems. The technology can be used to visualize  exactly the operational data that people literally  asked for…and present them with self-serve solutions, but they ignore the data, waving it away as some sort of instrumentation problem Our guest is going to tell us the right way to pull off dashboard projects.   He’ll show how to engage the stakeholders to express what metrics they really need, ones that show how the organization is tracking towards reaching its vision. Nicholas Kelly, currently the principal consultant and trainer at G&K Consulting, holds a Bachelor of Computer Science from University College Cork. Formerly a Deloitte Analytics Senior Manager, he specializes in designing and developing dashboards for major global companies, including banks and Formula 1 teams. Nick is a frequent speaker at international conferences, having trained thousands of professionals in data visualization and analytics adoption. As a management consultant, educator, and author, his focus is on teamwork, inventive methods, and bridging technical gaps to increase data literacy. He is also the creator of business board games and the author of the book "Delivering Data Analytics." Let’s go to Seattle where I caught up with Nick Kelly.    Chapter Timestamps 00:00:00 - Intro 00:03:57 - Welcome Nick 00:08:18 - Why dashboard projects fail 00:34:46 - PSA 00:35:35 - Building the dashboard 00:57:12 - Where to get book; contact Nick   Links to everything mentioned in the show are on the Funnel Reboot site's page for Episode 190.

My sister-in-law Janice works at the forefront of Medical Sonography. You may know it by the name Ultrasound, where non-invasive sound waves are sent into the body, which bounce off tissue and get displayed on a monitor. It has the ability to evaluate anatomy in an increasingly wide range of structures such as abdominal organs, the heart, vasculature and muscles in patients of all ages as well as the most commonly known purpose of obstetrical ultrasound. In the past 35 years, ultrasound has changed from a tool that was used solely by Radiology and has now expanded into being used by almost every medical disciple: cardiology, emergency medicine, anesthesia, nursing, physical therapy and more. Training these non-traditional users had a huge boom, and now ultrasound is being taught in the first year of medical school as it is known that no matter what type of medicine one chooses, ultrasound will play a part. Janice and others have shared their love and knowledge of ultrasound to help and aid the expansion of ultrasound into new realms in all areas of healthcare. In a similar way, to be better marketers, developers, or website owners, there are aspects of web behaviour that we need surfaced: specific user conversions, page views, scrolls and many other interactions. These aren’t visible to Analytics tools out-of-the-box. Our equipment must be configured to highlight them, and that’s done with tags that fire and alert our analytics software of specific interactions, the same way that medical monitors show the echoes of specific sonar frequencies. We’ve evolved from coding tags right on our sites to operating them with tag management systems, the most common one being Google Tag Manager. Without these tagging tools, our visibility into site performance would be limited the same way that doctors before ultrasound couldn’t see what was going on inside their patients. Another similarity these tools share is that they both come with ethical and safety considerations, and laws covering user privacy and data protection. Gathering insights, whether by ultrasound or tag technology, must respect the digital autonomy and privacy of users. We have a guest to take us through all facets of tag management and I hope that after hearing him, you won’t think of tagging as just some machine that should be relegated to technicians, but a tool you can use on the front-lines, as something you yourself should get hands-on with. So let's talk about tag management with Ricardo Cristofolini. With a background in Tourism and Hospitality Management and International Trade, Ricardo Cristofolini's Analytics professional journey began when he arrived in Canada in 2015 to study at Algonquin College of Applied Arts and Technology, where he earned an Ontario College Diploma in Computer Programming, Networked Environment, and Programming Languages from 2015 to 2017. There, he had the opportunity to put together previous professional knowledge with brand new one exploring multiple subjects, from Web and App Development to cloud computing, Database structure, and much more. Transitioning to the workforce, Ricardo served as a Web Developer at FilmFX from December 2017 to December 2019, gaining two years of experience. In March 2018, Ricardo expanded his skills at Pondstone Digital Marketing, specializing in WordPress, Content Management, and other relevant areas until February 2019. At this point, he had already fallen in love with Analytics and Data Tracking. His expertise continued to evolve as he took on the role of Senior Data Analytics Implementation at Bounteous Canada from July 2021 to October 2022 He currently holds the position of Napkyn Senior Implementation Specialist Data Solutions, a role he has been dedicated to since 2022. In his spare time, when not reading about Analytics and developing his knowledge (and earning a badge from Linkedin as Top Web Analytics Voice), Ricardo supports others' new adventures in this field on multiple social media platforms answering questions and providing guidance. Originating from Brazil, Ricardo Cristofolini's professional trajectory reflects a dynamic and progressively challenging path within the realms of web development, digital marketing, and data analytics implementation. Chapter Timestamps 00:00:00 - Intro 00:04:55 - Ricardo on GTM and Google Tag 00:27:40 - PSA 00:28:30 - All about Server-side Tagging 00:49:06 - Where to contact Ricardo Links to all People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show #189 is available at the Funnel Reboot site.

Episode 188 Dana DiTomaso embarked on her digital marketing journey over 20 years ago, initially working in tech support for a CRM before founding a web design company in 2002. In 2000, clients sought her expertise in increasing website traffic, propelling her into the world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). By 2012, Dana became an active participant in the SEO community, sharing insights on technical and local SEO topics. Dana, having typed her first line of code in 1982, consistently demonstrated an entrepreneurial spirit and started delivering talks and presentations since 1998. Recognizing the potential of digital-first marketing, she founded three businesses that educate entrepreneurs and organizations. As the founder and lead instructor of KP Playbook, Dana teaches the "Analytics for Agencies" course and manages a thriving learner community, emphasizing proven principles over quick tips. Notably, none of her clients have faced Google penalties to date. Dana lives in an old growth forest near Victoria BC.   Chapter Timestamps 00:00:00 - Intro 00:03:01 - Welcome Dana 00:08:18 - The unvarnished view of data given by GA4 00:16:33 - Using custom reports and exploration tab 00:22:41 - Giving other users access to Reports 00:26:39 - PSA 00:27:25 - Reporting through Looker Studio 00:35:08 - Why knowing some UX helps 00:38:54 - Pulling other data sources together with GA data 00:44:01 - Looker studio tactics 00:53:18 - Where to contact Dana   Links to everything mentioned in the show are on the Funnel Reboot site's page for Episode 188.

In numerous companies, the approach to content strategy appears to be nonexistent, marked by haphazard content creation and dissemination. A notable absence of a cohesive plan to align content with overarching marketing objectives is evident, leading to a disjointed and less effective approach. In light of these challenges, it becomes imperative for companies to recognize the critical significance of implementing a robust content strategy. The upcoming discussion will delve into a methodology that not only addresses these shortcomings but also promises to elevate content creation to a level where flawlessness becomes a tangible outcome. As we navigate through the intricacies of this approach, you will discover how a well-crafted content strategy can serve as the linchpin for achieving marketing goals and fostering a more impactful and cohesive online presence. Purna Virji is a globally recognized content strategist. She grew up in India, when her family came to the US they settled in  Philadelphia. She did her masters at Cardiff University, but returned to Philadelphia where she was a journalist and then a producer at the local TV affiliate for PBS. That experience is where She picked up expertise in creating content. She ported this communications flair into designing Pay Per Click ad campaigns for ecommerce companies and then when Microsoft’s own ads platform needed a trainer, she transitioned to working there, training both internal Microsoft teams and external groups on Microsoft ads. She went on to speak at conferences like MozCon and SMX Advanced and was ranked as the #1 Most Influential Expert in the world by PPC Hero.   She is currently the Principal Consultant for Content Solutions at LinkedIn. In 2023 she came out with the book “High Impact Content Marketing” which we’ll talk about today.   Timestamps/Chapters: 0:00:00 - Intro 00:02:42 - Welcome Purna 00:10:32 - the AGES model 00:20:38 - PSA 00:21:46 - Practical tips for high Impact content 00:35:26 - Identifying what your audience's needs are 00:46:41 - Where to get book; contact Purna For all the people, products and concepts mentioned, go to Episode 187's page on the Funnel Reboot site.

Increasingly, many Marketing teams have been forced to transform their own teams, or the Business as a whole has had to start transforming itself.  But no matter how technically sophisticated they are, no matter how many consultants they have or how many Project management meetings they hold, most companies struggle through these transformations. At best, when transformations succeed, they leave heart-ache and sore feelings  Most of them revert to the status quo they tried so hard to shake. Those leading the initiative end up demoralized, marginalized or downsized. People who say they can make transformations successful are treated with skepticism. But when that someone has skills that are so multifaceted and has pulled off this feat in multiple industries, you ought to lean in & hear them out. Susan Odle is someone whose life's journey and heritage spans three continents. Born to Guyanese parents moved first to London England, then to Toronto, Canada where she went to high school; it happened to be the same school where I went. Anyway, she moved to Ottawa to study music at University. The musician in her has been strong from then until now, evidenced by a solo project she released in 2017. Our paths crossed again years later when I moved to Ottawa. In the interim Susan had been holding pivotal roles in high tech firms, leading channel & direct sales, professional services, and ops which helped several to successful exits. Susan was honored In 2020 as one of the top 50 women in SaaS by the Software Report. She’s also owned several businesses as well. Currently, Susan specializes in operationalizing change through her consultancy, 8020CS. She’s taken her understanding of navigating successful change and literally wrote the book on it. "Successful Change," was released in 2023. Chapters & Timestamps 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:47 - Welcome Susan 00:06:46 - The chaos that comes with transformation 00:11:50 - The 8020CS Blueprint 00:21:46 - Break change down into four dimensions 00:29:38 - PSA 00:30:32 - Moving through 'gates' toward successful change 00:48:59 - Overcoming resistance 00:53:45 - Susan’s coordinate and other resources For all the people, products and concepts mentioned, go to Episode 186's page on the Funnel Reboot site.

One thing that professional services and solo subject matter experts struggle with is building an audience and influencing their purchases. Creating a content marketing engine that achieves this can take agonizingly long - years even. But virtual events that are properly marketed seem able to shorten that timespan.  My guest, Michael Tucker, has refined a program that develops virtual events for clients, and over the past 3 years it has accelerated post-event prospect discussions and sales success. Graduating from Campbellsville University in Kentucky, he now calls Florida home  Chapters/Timestamps: 0:00:00 Intro 0:01:14 Welcome Michael 0:03:44 Virtual events are good for leadgen 0:29:09 PSA 0:30:17 Running virtual event that embeds call-to-action 0:32:30 Seeding the CTA into event 0:54:50 Michael's coordinates Links to all People/Products/Concepts mentioned in the show is available on Episode 185’s page on the Funnel Reboot website.