How Trust is Replacing The Marketing Funnel

**Jake:** [00:00:00] Here we go. Carol Lawson, welcome to What Gets Measured. How are you today?

**Carole Lawson:** Good. Thank you. How are you? Thank you so much for having me

**Jake:** my gosh, and before we hit record, I was just telling, uh, Carol how m- what a delight it is to follow her on LinkedIn and to read all of her stuff, and to have you here is a pleasure, so thank you

**Carole Lawson:** You're very welcome

**Jake:** So, um, tell me more. I, uh, y- I, I wanna know about your experience because nobody just throws Arnold Schwarzenegger into their bio casually. I was like Um, so give me just, uh, you know, the Reader's Digest version of your history and what led you to this current iteration of your career. It's amazing

**Carole Lawson:** Well, thank you. So, um, I was working for the State of California when governor became governor, and, um, I was working in the, the technology area and at kind of a, an upper mid-manager sort of person, but always working on [00:01:00] the edge of innovation, even in the data centers and that sort of thing, which is hard when you're working in state service.

**Carole Lawson:** So, um, governor discovered that the State of California was 47th in the nation according to Brown University, um, as far as their website rankings were concerned. He's a little bit competitive and didn't like that too much, and really wanted to win the Center for Digital Government's Best of the Web.

**Carole Lawson:** That's really the marquee award for state and local government.

**Jake:** Okay

**Carole Lawson:** Um, and everybody else was too scared to do it. So-

**Jake:** task. I mean, it's just like these websites are what they are. Is that

**Carole Lawson:** Y- y- y- yeah, and, and the general thinking was, well, we'll just hire a vendor and,

**Jake:** Right,

**Carole Lawson:** the, the, the vendor will save us. And, um, I thought that that was silly. And so what I pitched was we're at a point in time where the, um, this is 2006.

**Jake:** Right.

**Carole Lawson:** [00:02:00] So, so there was a pivot between a frames environment which was the classic website structure at the time, cascading style sheet, CSS was just coming out.

**Jake:** Mm-hmm.

**Carole Lawson:** it was a great opportunity to transition the entire state to CSS.

**Jake:** Hmm.

**Carole Lawson:** Um, and I had no idea what I was getting myself into but, um, pitched it anyway. Loved the idea and so I thought that they were just gonna take that and somebody else would lead it. No.

**Jake:** Oh, no. Oh, I've, I've discovered that so many times. The minute you have an idea, it's yours.

**Carole Lawson:** Yes

**Jake:** What magic is this? Great idea, so now it's yours.

**Carole Lawson:** So, so now it's mine and I'm looking at, um, 400 webpages. Um,

**Jake:** how

**Carole Lawson:** or, or so four- 400

**Jake:** did...

**Carole Lawson:** websites, about 4 million webpages,

**Jake:** right? Hello

**Carole Lawson:** 1,200 webmasters who didn't report to me, um, and a lot of pressure [00:03:00] from the e- e- established folks to just bring in a vendor and have the vendor do it for us and have the, you know, everybody plugs into the California look and feel.

**Carole Lawson:** And, um, and we just-- we don't need all these webmasters. We'll have the single vendor. And I didn't wanna do that because my concern was we would lose the thing that's most precious to us, and that's our own creativity, and that's our own way of thinking about the environments. And the DMV is very different than Water Resources, which is very different than Health and Human Services.

**Carole Lawson:** And there's something to be said for being able to maintain that kind of cultural influence, even if you have to be consistent

**Jake:** Hmm. Oh, hmm. The cost of consistency. Oh, okay. Yes. This is so great. Keep going

**Carole Lawson:** Okay. So, um, what I did instead is I rounded up a couple of people that I knew were as crazy as I was, and, um, we created a webmaster user group. [00:04:00] And in that webmaster user group, which met every single week, um, we taught the webmasters cascading style sheets. We developed the templates for the state of California.

**Carole Lawson:** We created a forum, and this was at a time where crowdsourcing was just beginning to emerge,

**Jake:** Yeah

**Carole Lawson:** but they didn't have the platforms that we have now. So we basically crowdsourced the development of the state of California's websites, the design, the colors, all of the stuff through old school forums and this webmaster user group.

**Carole Lawson:** At the time, um, Gardner was keeping an eye on us because they had heard all the f- the hoopla from the vendors. Yes. Yes.

**Jake:** ah

**Carole Lawson:** Andre DeMaio of Gardner said he'd never seen anything like it in the world, that we had created this whole community that was driving in one direction. At the same time, that the websites, in fact, did get [00:05:00] completely redesigned within nine months.

**Carole Lawson:** And we, we went from 47th to, in the nation, to about third. And then it, it, it took a couple of years to get to number one, but we did that before governor left office

**Jake:** Oh. It's just, and the data-driven marketers out here are crying because, like, you, the work is so insane,

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** the return on that investment wasn't necessarily capital. was something so much more intangible. I love that you said it's gonna kill our originality and creativity as a state. The brand of California is at risk.

**Jake:** I mean, I, I, uh, m- most people in public service probably don't think like this. Um, uh, w- was there any sort of pushback, um,

**Carole Lawson:** yes.

**Jake:** Oh, yeah.

**Carole Lawson:** Yeah

**Jake:** because of this is gonna take... And it only took nine months? I'm seeing, like, two, three years, you know? Um-

**Carole Lawson:** s- so we had an advantage, [00:06:00] right? Um, we had an advantage in that at the time, there was a lot of excitement around the web itself.

**Jake:** Mm-hmm.

**Carole Lawson:** was changing, and the, the people who chose to be webmasters did it for the love of that technology and what it could do. We were also at a time where most of the leadership didn't understand what in the world they did, so they kind of stayed out of it.

**Carole Lawson:** So just saying.

**Jake:** And they admitted that? And they

**Carole Lawson:** No, no, they didn't. They didn't, but we all knew, and so, you know, take advantage of the circumstance you have. Um, we also had a couple of people that were extraordinary that maintained communications. We had someone whose entire job was to watch the forum, um, be the place where emails could be sent, connect people together when they're asking questions.

**Carole Lawson:** It was just kind of that coordinator person, and that was unusual. We also had, um, the governor, and Governor Schwarzenegger was, "Get out of the way. If it's innovation, get out of the way." [00:07:00] So I, you know, either had to stand or fall pretty much on my own because he was clearing the path and saying, "Okay, run."

**Carole Lawson:** It's like,

**Jake:** But you had

**Carole Lawson:** well

**Jake:** of stand on that innovation that you weren't quite sure of. It just

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** of a macro version of a microcosm event that's happening in marketers'

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** like throughout, um, you know, the land, throughout Marketaria, wherever we live. You know what I mean? Like, need a Schwarzenegger in a way, um, but we also need some strong people and somebody with a passion to hold the line.

**Jake:** Uh, so, uh, well, before we get off of this, I mean, i- is there a takeaway for just the marketers on this, uh, instance in your career? Which is just insane. I love this story

**Carole Lawson:** So everything in my career has been kind of this way.

**Jake:** Mm-hmm.

**Carole Lawson:** and it all root- goes back to when I was young, I used to stress about a lot of stuff. I [00:08:00] used to feel like I had to plan everything out, and my dad said, "Well, first of all, whatever you think is gonna happen is not gonna happen because your brain's not big enough.

**Carole Lawson:** It's just not gonna happen that way. Second thing is, your job isn't to figure out the entire world. Your job is to make the next best decision." So that freed me up from a lot of the, I need a three-year plan, I need a five-year plan, I gotta map it all out.

**Jake:** Lots

**Carole Lawson:** Right.

**Jake:** yeah

**Carole Lawson:** Right. So it was just really about what's the next right thing to do?

**Carole Lawson:** What's the next best decision we can make? And, and thankfully, culturally, because of the excitement around the web and the newness and all the emergence, there were a lot of people that were willing to go along on that ride

**Jake:** And I love, I, that's one cate- uh, the category growth was, um, an, uh, uh,

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** factor in the success of your marketing strategy, which most people don't think. They don't

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** that a category is going, so then I'm succeeding. But they think that they're succeeding on their own. They might not be [00:09:00] aware of the category lift.

**Jake:** I love that you had that thought. in the middle of of energy,

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** lots of momentum, you know? So a lot of marketing tactics and strategies are a result of momentum, sometimes that we know and sometimes that we can't see. So I love that you were able to s- see those things that weren't, uh, uh, uh, efficiently minded.

**Jake:** This is an effectiveness play, but some efficiency person would shoot you out of the sky. You know what

**Carole Lawson:** Well, see, y- y- yeah. Well, so I think we ruin everything by trying to be too efficient because creativity doesn't come from efficiency. Creati-

**Jake:** And if it did, you would read a cookbook and be a perfect chef after that

**Carole Lawson:** Yes, you would. And you know what? I am not. I went to culinary school and I am not a great chef. I ended up in the wine program

**Jake:** Hey, that's okay. Better drinks. Uh,

**Carole Lawson:** Aha. So, w- um, at that moment in [00:10:00] time, you could... Things were changing so much. There was so much innovation around. Um, Google was new, Facebook was new, YouTube was new, Twitter was new. There was... You could almost touch the air. And when we started this company in 2018, I had that same feeling around AI, that there was so much change going on that you could almost touch the air.

**Carole Lawson:** And I, I could feel that we were on the very beginning of a new wave, of a new momentum that's literally gonna change everything we know about interacting with one another and interacting with the internet itself. And that tied into the, um, the bent of research that I got on when I started working with Governor, which is, um, behavioral dynamics, behavioral economics, particularly as it relates to technology and how humans integrate with technology, and how technology changes humans, and how humans then change the technology itself.

**Jake:** Oh, God. I mean, she's so juicy. [00:11:00] And, and if people are sort of like, "Oh, this sounds out," you're living it right now. You're being

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** through the pasta machine. We're being extruded

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm

**Jake:** and I love that Carol has her finger on some of these strings. And one of those things was traditional approaches, like the marketing funnel, which is the focus of

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** um,

**Carole Lawson:** Right

**Jake:** breaking down.

**Jake:** Um, and I, I, I'm, I'm in and out of AI because I'm like, "Oh, it's amazing. Oh, wait, it's missing some pieces. Oh, wait, we're missing some pieces." Um, you know, so it's like a weird dance. Sometimes these things are broken, sometimes they're not, but AI is showing us, and you write so beautifully about this. So I just wanna...

**Jake:** Y- you- you've taken it upon yourself to say that

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** traditional m- marketing funnel's breaking down. Explain that maybe, you know, as we use the AI as a trampoline. and most people are still using funnel metrics.[00:12:00]

**Carole Lawson:** Yep.

**Jake:** so, so explain the funnel being broken, and then what should we be measuring?

**Carole Lawson:** So let's, let's roll back to 2020

**Jake:** Hey, good

**Carole Lawson:** So you go back to 2020 and, um, it's the pandemic era. Everything has changed. People are using the internet completely differently. Even Google noticed that everything was different, and they were trying to figure it out. They commissioned a big study from Boston Consulting Group to understand what was going on with the internet, and they came out with the replacement of the funnel, which is called the messy middle

**Jake:** Oh, I allow you, I remember the messy middle

**Carole Lawson:** It, it's interesting to me that people didn't pay attention to it, but to me that, that was seminal research. Because what that told us was people are no longer coming to the internet, looking for something, going down the trail, making their decision, and moving on.

**Jake:** Right

**Carole Lawson:** we're living there now.

**Jake:** Mm-hmm.

**Carole Lawson:** And so everything that Google has done [00:13:00] since 2020 has been because of what they discovered with the messy middle.

**Carole Lawson:** Layer on top of that AI. So now all of a sudden you have people who are following their own paths, and the opportunity for AI to bring people into that lower funnel, that lower place where the decision's made

**Jake:** Right

**Carole Lawson:** so that they convert on the Google platform

**Jake:** Mm-mm. Do you know what I

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** taking it seriously because they

**Carole Lawson:** Yeah

**Jake:** of money in there. And, uh, Les Binet, who's a really amazing marketing effectiveness, um, researcher, he recently has been hired by Think with Google, you know,

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** sort of think tank.

**Jake:** Um, and they're sort of headed towards, you know, media mix modeling, incrementality, you know, these sort of softer words that a lot of the higher marketing science professionals have been telling you. Ehrenberg Bass has been telling you.

**Carole Lawson:** Hmm. Mm-hmm

**Jake:** you know, all of these [00:14:00] people have been telling you. It's interesting, the messy middle. Yeah, well, and also, COVID didn't reset ad budgets. It's like we thought everybody was always gonna be per- perennially funnel capital online, and then they kind of stopped. I mean, so 2020's a pivot point. What do

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** the marketing funnel is working now if the messy middle was six years ago?

**Carole Lawson:** So the messy middle began six years ago, and it's gotten messier and messier and messier

**Jake:** ah.

**Carole Lawson:** because we've gotten messier. So, uh, and then you go back to the predictions of how people are gonna use AI. The prediction was, the prediction was AI is gonna take all of our jobs. Okay, that didn't happen.

**Carole Lawson:** The prediction was that AI was going to be the thing that gave us all the answers, and we would just sit there. That didn't happen either. People are using AI differently than anticipated, and because of that, that captive [00:15:00] audience that, that Google and others expected in AI is not as captive as they think.

**Carole Lawson:** That's a research point, and then people move on and go back out again. And so now the messy middle is swirling even harder. What I say to people is think about how you use the internet.

**Jake:** Mm-hmm.

**Carole Lawson:** So if, for example, you had some... And I'm just gonna pick on a big purchase just because. All right. So say you're in home services y- or say, say you have a, a, a problem with your HVAC.

**Carole Lawson:** You... It's 90 degrees outside. You walk in your house, it's 80 degrees. Your thermostat says it's 72. You don't immediately search for, "How do I replace my HVAC system?" You try to figure out what's wrong So part of what's happened is we've become more in... I'm trying to think of the right word, more quizzical.

**Carole Lawson:** Um, we've wanted to dig deeper. [00:16:00] We've wanted to understand things more. We take a longer time. And because we know that that information is gonna be there, it's in time blocks, not all at once. So we'll start thinking of something, and then, you know, dinner's gotta be made, and the kids have gotta get off to soccer, and,

**Jake:** All

**Carole Lawson:** and we'll, we'll come back around again at midnight, and we'll continue our thought.

**Carole Lawson:** And then, then, you know, life goes on, and then we'll come back again. And so what we understood to be the funnel, that action from beginning to end where you start the thought and go all the way through and complete it, that no longer exists in any of our lives

**Jake:** Well, and, and you brought up something really interesting, rip and replace. Like, um, is the thought, um, from most advertisers and marketers that you will get someone to rip and replace their whatever, HVAC or, you know, CPG or whatever, SaaS widget doodle bang doodle? is, is that people are so quizzical, people are so mercurial, people [00:17:00] are so floating.

**Jake:** They are very rarely, uh, the right person at the right time, and I don't think anybody wakes up hoping that they get the right message, you

**Carole Lawson:** Y-y-yeah. Well, and so I think part of what's happening too is there's a shift that we're not talking about a lot as marketers, and that is, um, we used to think if I could get enough impressions out there, then we'll bring the person in. And those impressions

**Jake:** Carol? Don't ruin this for me

**Carole Lawson:** It's-- So impressions at the right place and the right time are true, but it's no longer a, um, a traffic economy like it used to be.

**Carole Lawson:** It used to be the thing that was valuable was getting those impressions and bringing people in down the funnel.

**Jake:** Right

**Carole Lawson:** what we're looking at is a trust economy. So there are so many ads in front of us. Depending upon which research study you look at, it's either like 3,500 a [00:18:00] day or 5,000 a day, and there are some that say even more than that.

**Jake:** Yeah, I've seen that

**Carole Lawson:** So when you get that much input, the-- you, you're not really relying on, "I've seen this five times, and now I'm gonna buy it." You have to develop that trust, and the trust develops when you get in front of people with the right message at the right time, and it's not necessarily about frequency anymore

**Jake:** Mm. Well, is that sh- being borne out in, in the evidence? I mean,

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** I wonder if trust, uh, memory is trust. 'Cause I, I'm, I'm try-

**Carole Lawson:** S-

**Jake:** to figure out trust is the new currency, hands down,

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** well then what does trust look like in the data layer? Like, if I had to point to a metric and say,

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** like, what does that look like?

**Carole Lawson:** So w-we track-- We work in the programmatic space, we being MarketStorm, my company.

**Jake:** Yeah, yeah, yeah

**Carole Lawson:** and, um, and, and we do things a little bit differently. We write custom algorithms for our clients rather than [00:19:00] relying on third-party audiences. So, um, so our, our audiences are more specific to each one of our clients, even, even if they're smaller.

**Carole Lawson:** So... But that's not the conversation today. We can talk about that another day. But what we're able to do is we're able to track the date and time of each impression, how many impressions, um, what it took to get somebody to click to the website, and then what it took to get someone to convert regardless of where they converted.

**Carole Lawson:** So what it took meaning how many ads over how many days. And what we're finding is that, um, we can... And I'm just gonna go back to the home services g- example because we started there.

**Jake:** Fine

**Carole Lawson:** So people think, um, a-a-and a lot of the, the, um, website companies who do the, the Google Ads and all that for a company of that nature will say it-- from 24 hours from the time they have a [00:20:00] problem, they're going to be, or 48 hours from the time they have a problem, they're gonna convert and be your client.

**Carole Lawson:** It's only 48 hours on Google. It's not for the rest of their journey. And what we find is it's about 45 days and 35 touches.

**Carole Lawson:** So the way that our algor-algorithms are written is they are looking for people when their frame of mind is right. So it doesn't matter if it's a display ad, a native ad, connected TV, connected audio, whatever that is, we're all in different mindsets at different times of the day, and we're in different mindsets as we, we interface with different medium, and no two of us are exactly the same.

**Jake:** That's true

**Carole Lawson:** So the AI starts learning the behavior of when you're looking, when you're open, and then serves the ad in front of you at the right time. That develops the trust over time, and then brings you down into that lower funnel. Chances are the final conversion is gonna happen in [00:21:00] something like Google, a business profile or a Google ad, or even something like a Facebook, something that's very lower funnel.

**Carole Lawson:** But the decision was made long before that. So then let's roll back to the conversation of the messy middle. The research was showing in 2020 that that was the direction that people were going. People were going toward the direction of making a decision before they got to even the Google Ads and the final click.

**Carole Lawson:** Part of that research also says at the time it was 49% of the time you could change someone's mind, even if they started their search with a brand in mind

**Jake:** I, I just saw something real shocking about AI. Um, and again, these, I think these people are selling AI, so you can't quite believe what they're

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** it was that started out with an intent on a B2B search, 65%

**Carole Lawson:** Right

**Jake:** another competitor, which you're like, "Uh

**Carole Lawson:** So that's, that's actually correct though. [00:22:00] Today, um, Google's own research says almost 70% of the time someone who starts with an intent for a particular brand will change their mind if you get in front of them in the right place at the right time in that messy middle.

**Jake:** And

**Carole Lawson:** It doesn't

**Jake:** wait. So if the marketing funnel is broken,

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** mark, but then why are we still talking about... I- is the marketing funnel maybe not something that they go through, but something that we need, a structure that we just have to have?

**Carole Lawson:** So I, I, I kind of think that we need to have a way to explain it, but I don't think it's a thing that people go through.

**Jake:** middle, right, Carol?

**Carole Lawson:** You're right.

**Jake:** real messy in the middle." These

**Carole Lawson:** Well, it, it...

**Jake:** like that

**Carole Lawson:** No, they don't. But what I talk about is, um, so you have your initial intent, right? So you have your, your initial prospecting, and then you have everything that happens in the middle, and then you have the decision.

**Carole Lawson:** And so I'm not doing the [00:23:00] multiple funnels. I'm doing the initial intent, and I'm doing the middle.

**Jake:** I

**Carole Lawson:** then I talk about what happens in the middle, and in the middle is where you develop that trust. And when people start feeling comfortable, when they start trusting what they're seeing, when it's consistent, they flip to the website and it all looks the same.

**Carole Lawson:** They've gone to the business profile and it all looks the same. It's... You start developing that comfort level. That's when they make the decision of who to go with, even if... Go ahead.

**Jake:** No, no, no, no. Even if

**Carole Lawson:** Even if they started, you know, we've always used brand A in our family.

**Jake:** Right, that kind of thing

**Carole Lawson:** Right, but brand B has been here, and brand B is, um, answering my questions.

**Carole Lawson:** The personalization now with AI is really important because if somebody is looking for something specific, we can get that specific ad in front of them that has the content that is answering the question i- in one or two words without it being a [00:24:00] content piece that they have to read, just something that their mind can pick up on, and that develops the trust.

**Jake:** I love it. Well, and

**Carole Lawson:** If

**Jake:** it's futuristic, but it's also sounds sort of traditional.

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** mean, it kind of smacks of a traditional trusted brand that's in your head showing up at appropriate times, but backed up by some sort of experience with it. Like, I, I ... Do you think people are, are switching? I don't know who these people are, but I went in here looking for these people, and brand X, I don't know who they are, but that's it. Boom. I'm, I'm also wondering do, do they have probably some formal relationship or memory with that thing that they just chose out of the blue? Like

**Carole Lawson:** But so here's what's really interesting, and this is where you get to the behavioral dynamics.

**Jake:** get into it

**Carole Lawson:** So we saw the same phenomenon when television [00:25:00] first came out.

**Jake:** Hmm

**Carole Lawson:** People would, you know, Joe's down the street is who we always go to. The advertising on television changed people's minds because it was in their living room.

**Carole Lawson:** 60% of the time they would change their minds if you got in front of them in the comfort of their own home

**Jake:** Or in a magazine or on a radio station,

**Carole Lawson:** my goodness. Right.

**Jake:** their home

**Carole Lawson:** You were in their home. And so, and then, then we all kind of got used to that, and the inter- the internet came out, and then we had this way that we worked with it. We were looking at it as, I'm going out there, I'm searching for information, I'm getting my information, I'm moving on.

**Jake:** Right

**Carole Lawson:** But what happened with the pandemic is the internet ended up in our homes in the same way as television did. It ended up in our lives the same way that television did. It became incorporated into it. We n- we may not be running home and saying, "Seven o'clock, my favorite [00:26:00] program's on," but we have those times in our lives that we block out where we're searching or we're scrolling or we're streaming or whatever it is

**Jake:** Yeah. Or, or, or somebody sharing, I mean,

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** I, I've looked at people's text message, um, exchanges, um, in between. Um, and some- somebody was saying, "All we do is send Instagram posts to each other." Like, "This is you. That reminds me of you.

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** This is, this is so like you." you were like, and it isn't necessarily about the medium, it's about the expression in a shared relationship.

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** I, I... But I, I'm wondering if, if, if there's a place for us to think about relationships and building

**Carole Lawson:** Hmm.

**Jake:** Um, what we're, we're creating all of these content, you know, with AI. Um, uh, but I love this behavioral awareness of how people are using things and how maybe what you think is here is here.

**Jake:** W-

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** there [00:27:00] some way that you're using or thinking about AI, and how marketers should rely on it? If this funnel's broken, if there's a messy middle, where do you think they should use their skills? Should I be like, human judgment, uh,

**Carole Lawson:** Yeah

**Jake:** how? You know, help us use AI a little bit better here to get to this trust

**Carole Lawson:** S- s- so, uh, it kind of starts with what you pay attention to.

**Jake:** Hmm.

**Carole Lawson:** what I always say is you can measure what's easy or you can measure what matters. You- it's so easy to measure the last click. It's so easy to measure what Google gives you. Is that what matters? Right. Right. It's right there. And we have our dashboards, and we're comfortable with our dashboards, and it's pretty, and we don't have to think, and we can move on

**Jake:** done, Karen

**Carole Lawson:** Y- right, but you know what?

**Carole Lawson:** It doesn't always matter. So what does matter? And the way you understand what matters is you watch the trends. [00:28:00] So for example, we will say, um, that's great. Uh, we start... You're my new client, all right?

**Jake:** Hi

**Carole Lawson:** We are running ads for your business, and our specialty is anything that costs a lot of money and is a long, longer decision.

**Carole Lawson:** So, um, I don't care what your widget is. So you're, you, you've got your widget for sale, and it's like $30,000. Um, it's pretty easy to look and say, "Well, my business profile is the one that's bringing in all my widget sales." All right. Well, let's impact, let's baseline that, and then let's see what the impacts of that are when we put ads out across the available web outside of that Google sphere.

**Carole Lawson:** What changes in your business profile? So some of this is manage- is monitoring change and tracking change rather than tracking the numbers that they give you, because what we're talking about is influence. [00:29:00] People talk about performance marketing, and it's really not that as much as it is as influence marketing in my mind.

**Carole Lawson:** What we're trying to do is we're trying to influence people's decisions by influencing what they feel comfortable with, by building trust and influencing what they trust And that shows up in what happens in that last click. The changes in the last click, not the last click counting that last click itself

**Jake:** Well, see, I'm, I... But already, like, the data isn't evidence, it's not analysis. It's, it's like, it's just a data point. It's, it, it's not information, and it's definitely not knowledge. But I wonder how many people are really bringing human judgment to these stats? I mean, what, give us, give us... Of course,

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** are horrible at looking at data and stuff. Tell me what you see with marketers who have a great sense about stats and data, or they ask good questions. What's going on in those type of [00:30:00] marketers' brains?

**Carole Lawson:** So we white label for, um, a lot of more traditional agencies. This is all, this piece is all that we do. And so we'll plug into what the rest of that agency does, and they understand that this is an entire ecosystem. It's not the programmatic and then the Google ads and then the Facebook ads. It's everything together.

**Carole Lawson:** Right. Right. And so what they're looking at is putting pressure in different areas, and that pressure is marketing spend or particular types of ads to drive revenue. And if your focus at the end of the day is revenue, then you can look at the inputs that drive the revenue.

**Jake:** Mm-hmm.

**Carole Lawson:** think of the, the, um, I'm thinking the visualizations where you've got multiple strings that come and then they get smaller and smaller, then you can see how it goes down to a single revenue.

**Carole Lawson:** Well, then, then you have the ability to do some predictives around if I change this revenue stream by this much [00:31:00] and I'm getting this kind of an outcome or, or this ad stream by this much, I'm getting this kind of an outcome, how is that likely to impact my revenue stream? And what else does it impact along the way?

**Jake:** Hmm.

**Carole Lawson:** And s-

**Jake:** is that likely? What else will this impact? Is that sort of, that's, that's Are these people often, are they unicorns? I, I've known some of them

**Carole Lawson:** So I think that they're, um, they're unicorn-ish right now. But I think more and more people in marketing are beginning to understand that this is not linear. It's not linear anymore. It's not, it's not a vending machine.

**Jake:** You know what I

**Carole Lawson:** No, yeah

**Jake:** And I think, I think AI has kind of blown down

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** silo walls. It's

**Carole Lawson:** Yep

**Jake:** down some kind of, if you wanted it to. Mm-hmm. If you only wanna just keep on the click-through rate, if you only wanna keep on the KPIs that you're comfortable with, that are easy.

**Jake:** I love that you said that. Um, but what matters, I [00:32:00] love human judgment. I, I still think, like, uh, I love that your, you know, connection with the web, uh, overhaul for the entire state of California was around let's not lose the stuff that makes us us.

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** how do you, what's your thought on human judgment and AI and creating all these contents?

**Jake:** Like, um, um, you know, AI content, AI bid streams, whatever this is. Human judgment, what makes you you? Is, is, is that, do you think that's important? I mean, most people

**Carole Lawson:** I, uh

**Jake:** about marketing other than make the number go up

**Carole Lawson:** Well, I think it's really important. I think it's really important. I think that if you don't have that sense of being human, um, you're not gonna build trust. People are beginning to get a little numb to just the AI messages, and there are nuances that we understand as humans. There are emotional reactions that we understand as humans that can be s- y- you can build statistics around it, but you can't really understand it the same way.

**Carole Lawson:** [00:33:00] Some of this is intuition, and I feel like even though there's been all these projections about how AI's gonna take a marketer's job,

**Jake:** Right

**Carole Lawson:** thi- I think an A- AI's gonna take some of the things that we used to do, but I don't think it's gonna take a marketer's job. So here's an example.

**Jake:** Hmm.

**Carole Lawson:** I think AI, and already it has, is gonna take the four hours away that I used to sit with an Excel spreadsheet when I have all of these, uh, line items of what was spent and where the clicks came from and all of that, and I s- I ask it to give me an overview of what's influencing what

**Jake:** J- and that would have taken how long? How many tabs, you know, in that data thing? You

**Carole Lawson:** Right. Right

**Jake:** you love going through all those numbers like a computer? Well, no, I didn't. But it was, it, it,

**Carole Lawson:** It was necessary.

**Jake:** it

**Carole Lawson:** It was

**Jake:** for you to guide it. Like, without [00:34:00] you opening those tabs, do you think your intuition allowed you to get those four hours back, or did your just savvy use of technology? You know,

**Carole Lawson:** So I think it was survival.

**Jake:** Talk about it

**Carole Lawson:** yeah, I mean, so we, we only have so much time during the day.

**Jake:** You

**Carole Lawson:** We have a, we have a company that's growing.

**Jake:** I'm busy. I'm busy. Carol's busy

**Carole Lawson:** I g- I gotta find efficiency someplace. I, I could hire somebody, but I have this tool that everybody is saying can do some thinking and it's not rudimentary, but it's also not creative.

**Jake:** Hmm.

**Carole Lawson:** exactly what I needed was rudimentary but not creative.

**Jake:** And I,

**Carole Lawson:** so,

**Jake:** yeah, rudimentary, not creative. Okay, keep

**Carole Lawson:** yeah. And but it was also detailed. So it's, it's, it's difficult to find a human that has all of those perspectives. AI's perfect for that kind of thing.

**Jake:** Right

**Carole Lawson:** then it gives me back answers that I can [00:35:00] look at or my team can look at and say, "All right, this makes me question this.

**Carole Lawson:** So what about that?"

**Jake:** E- e- you said something that just kind of really cooked my noodle because it was like advertising is the thing you do to get marketing success.

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** do a bunch of ads, then you get marketing success. But what you're sort of teasing out is advertising is now almost a testing mechanism. Like it's some kind of bellwether system, which it always has been if you were paying attention. But I love that you're like, "Pay attention to what's happening after ads go." Not just this number, did we sell a bunch? 'Cause a lot of people are like, "Scrap the campaign. It didn't sell within 30 seconds of it

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** done, agency. Why don't you get me R- ROI?" Um, I just, I'm just kind of testing.

**Jake:** Advertising is testing. I- that just sounds super interesting to me[00:36:00]

**Carole Lawson:** So i-it goes back to how long is that conversion journey really? And we were talking about 45 days and 30-some-odd ads. It's not that very simple I put an ad out, somebody saw my ad, they clicked through and bought.

**Jake:** Do f-,

**Carole Lawson:** People really, really... Right. People really wanna believe that, and what I always go back to is how do you use the internet?

**Carole Lawson:** Do you click through every ad, even if it's something that you want?

**Jake:** Yeah, who are you, you weird people? And also thank you. Keep clicking.

**Carole Lawson:** Yeah.

**Jake:** like, "They're clicking. That's my mom clicking on all those ads, Carol. Um, no,

**Carole Lawson:** Right

**Jake:** she loves to do it. Give her something to do. No, um, I, so let's land this plane. I'm thinking that so much that people need to consider about the messy middle, behavior management, I mean,

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** of these amazing things that you were talking about, like trust and building that [00:37:00] through, through consistency.

**Jake:** Um, all the things we have to question and consider. Just imagine there's somebody out there, and they're sitting there looking, and they're wondering what the next step should be. You know? I mean, you're a mar- maybe you work for a brand or something, you know. What, what would be your, like, three things, like, f- from all of the experience that you've had. People are feeling like they're in this digital transformation. What's your three pieces of advice for people who are saying like, "Man, shit's different. It's way different today than it ever has been." What's your three things that you wanna keep them anchored and keep them propelled towards the future?

**Carole Lawson:** So the first thing is to understand the more time you spend looking in the rearview mirror, the less time you're gonna spend moving forward. So you can't rely on everything the way it was. We've done this for 10 years. We know what we're doing. Uh, you have to stay on top of what those changes are and [00:38:00] understand the dynamics in the marketplace.

**Jake:** Bye-bye

**Carole Lawson:** And there's two places that you can do that. There's Think with Google, which I love and I read all the time,

**Jake:** Yeah

**Carole Lawson:** and we intentionally created Think with MarketStorm, because what that is is the, the counterpart to the Think with Google. So Google's talking about everything in their realm. We're trying to talk about everything outside of it and how what Google is doing is impacting the rest of us.

**Jake:** Totally

**Carole Lawson:** um, thinkwithmarketstorm.com, thinkwithgoogle.com. That's number two. The third thing is as you're watching the data, as you're watching things change, you will develop an intuition. You will begin to see kind of beyond the lines.

**Jake:** Mm-hmm.

**Carole Lawson:** Trust that. Don't roll back and expect AI to do everything for you. Don't kinda hide from it.

**Carole Lawson:** Lean into yourself and your own intuition. That's where creativity comes from, and that's where I believe real success comes from

**Jake:** I love that. And though, is it, is it just a [00:39:00] voice in your head, or is it ... It's, it's usually like, "That shouldn't look like that."

**Carole Lawson:** Yeah

**Jake:** how do you ca- how do you, how do you notice intuition? I, well, it seems so stupid, but really

**Carole Lawson:** So people think it's this voice or it's this big thing, and it's not.

**Jake:** Oh

**Carole Lawson:** It, it really is what you were talking about. You just look at something and it's like, "That doesn't look right. That doesn't sound right. I don't know, I'm kinda thinking this."

**Jake:** Right

**Carole Lawson:** those really small, quiet things, and you follow those small, quiet things that are definitively you, and that will bring you to a place that you probably didn't expect

**Jake:** I love, I love, but trust, tr- if trust is a new currency, give yourself an

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** Give yourself some money too. Don't,

**Carole Lawson:** Yeah

**Jake:** in a piggy bank. Like, that's beautiful. I really... I mean, I'm, I'm a creative musician, and I'm, I'm always being, I'm always trusting myself with the silliest ideas. Um, [00:40:00] but I'm like, let me see." I, I love that. Ah

**Carole Lawson:** We've built our entire business on that. So I may be a data scientist and a researcher, but there's still something about that human behavior element, that thing that you bring in that is just you. My business partner, Rick Brown, he has that too from a business sense and being able to see kind of around corners and what's happening in the business in the future, and we do a lot of things that people think are crazy.

**Carole Lawson:** It's okay. It's worked out so far

**Jake:** Which I'm saying, if you thought this game was about blending into the wall,

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** not gonna be a prom queen because Carol's out here telling you how to really do it, and she's got all these amazing resources. And please follow her online. Uh, uh, Carol, if people wanna connect with you and learn more, you gave us those resources.

**Jake:** How can they connect with you online?

**Carole Lawson:** So LinkedIn, I, I actually do answer people who [00:41:00] connect with me on LinkedIn. It's Carole with an E, last name Lawson. I do answer when people connect with MarketStorm on LinkedIn, and then you have Think with MarketStorm, and I do answer those

**Jake:** Boom. Okay, I'm not gonna let you go until we play a game called Cheese or Chocolate, where I give you two options and you gotta choose one. Are you ready?

**Carole Lawson:** Sure

**Jake:** Cheese or chocolate?

**Carole Lawson:** Chocolate

**Jake:** Hmm. No, not even thinking about it. Move

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** Okay, folding a fitted sheet, do you do it or do you give up?

**Carole Lawson:** I fold it

**Jake:** Um, Carol's a real one. People, I, it's just like you have the stick-to-it-ness, I think, which people need. Okay, that says a lot. All right, moving on. Hang gliding or no dang way I'm gliding

**Carole Lawson:** Oh, yeah

**Jake:** Intuition trust? You're just jumping off a mountain?

**Carole Lawson:** I've done it. I've done it.

**Jake:** You have.

**Carole Lawson:** Yeah

**Jake:** How did I know? I [00:42:00] didn't know

**Carole Lawson:** So it's also you have to be adventurous, right? You can't be afraid of everything. And if the, that, it looked like something that was so much fun, and it was. W- am I out doing it every weekend? No. But I did it once and it was fun

**Jake:** There you go. See, s- she's not hang gliding to work, okay? All right? So okay, that's good. Good, uh, caveat there. All right, uh, three more. Oreo or Chips Ahoy?

**Carole Lawson:** Oreo

**Jake:** Straight up. Get those things out of here. Okay, um, optimize or minimize

**Carole Lawson:** That's a difficult one because my answer's in the middle

**Jake:** You, you data people, you're always like that. Well, what is it then? I guess I'll

**Carole Lawson:** Okay. So I will say optimize with a caveat, and the optimize isn't optimized toward what everybody else thinks is optimal. It's optimizing toward what you see as the outcome you're trying to go for

**Jake:** I like that. [00:43:00] That's good. Minimize, you might throw away something you like. You

**Carole Lawson:** Mm-hmm.

**Jake:** Don't Marie Kondo too much. Okay. All right. Finally, honk the horn often or rarely

**Carole Lawson:** Rarely

**Jake:** You're just, you're too nice

**Carole Lawson:** W- every, why? I mean, what is it gonna really do for me?

**Jake:** I, I do a little boop. A little boop sometimes, no?

**Carole Lawson:** Oh, rarely

**Jake:** phone, Carol. Somebody's on their phone in front of you, boo-boo, right?

**Carole Lawson:** If they're sitting at a light and they're not going and they've had, you know, m- more amount of time than my husband would give them, then maybe. But no

**Jake:** your fuse, you know,

**Carole Lawson:** Ye- yeah, generally no

**Jake:** I think you're right. You're just nice. Pass. Uh, just go collect 200 bucks. All right, let me stop this. Um, we'll end-

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