Measuring MSP Marketing Success (EP 932)

Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast, the show for IT professionals and managed service providers, where we help you run your business better, smarter, and faster. And today we've got one of our audio podcasts, and I'm bringing back a friend from the show. It's been a little bit, but I am going to be chatting with Kristin Spiotto, co-founder of Decoded. 

Now, you may remember that name. It's changed a little bit since the last time they were on, but they are a marketing solutions company specializing in marketing for tech-focused businesses. Kristin, welcome to the show.

Hi, Uncle Marv. It's great to be here. Nice to see you after a little while. 

I think a lot has changed. A lot has changed. I would say in the world, in our business. 

It's been a big couple of years, so I'm so glad to be back. All right. Well, why don't we start first with the company name, because it is different than the last time we were on. 

I'm not sure many people would catch it, but of course I did. You are now just simply Decoded, and let's start with that. Well, yeah, we dropped the strategies, and honestly, that was really because we went through a full relaunch, rebrand earlier this year. 

We launched a bunch of new services, so we just decided it was a great time to streamline things with a new name, new look, new services. Right. So let me ask this question. 

When you do your own rebrand, how does that feel when you've probably told other people they have to rebrand? Well, I rarely tell anyone that they have to rebrand, but it was very fun to take all of the things that we tell our clients to do and to walk through that process for ourselves. So it was a great experience because we went through the process of clarifying our updated messaging. We thought through what are the goals for this launch, what are we trying to accomplish, and then what content do we want to create to support it. 

So it was just a fun thing to get to step into a different set of shoes to get to do that work for ourselves. Okay. Well, let me ask, what are the changes in services that you did? Yeah. 

Well, we have really grown and evolved in the last couple of years. When Decoded started, we really focused almost exclusively on developing clear messaging and creating good marketing content to support that. But what we recognized was companies needed more.

They oftentimes didn't know exactly what to do with their messaging. And what we began seeing more and more, they didn't know what to do with their marketing. They were trying things that were all over the place. 

So we've really expanded our services now to be much more full service, where we always are going to do messaging. We're always going to start with that clarity. But we began building these marketing roadmaps for clients that we just found were so effective for them, really taking the time to step back and say, all right, what are your business goals? Great. 

Then what are your marketing goals to support that? Okay. What is the plan? What is the roadmap to follow that's going to drive up to that? So we started doing that and then we couldn't resist when we started getting involved more comprehensively to really execute on those roadmaps. So it's much more hands-on, much more full service now. 

All right. But still tech focused, I see. Always. 

Always and forever. We could never leave our tech company. So we still focus exclusively on really complex companies that sell really complex services. 

But just the way that we support them has broadened out a little bit. All right. Now, a lot of times, most tech companies, at least in our space, managed service and stuff, we focus on branding. 

We focus on lead gen, getting those sales calls and stuff. When you talk about going full service and dealing with these complicated things, every company thinks that our services are special and they're different than all of that. But what does full service really mean for most of us in the tech space? Well, I would say full service starts with stepping back and saying, what do you want to accomplish? What are the growth goals? What are those ARR goals that you want to hit? Or how many new clients does that require? Stepping back and then saying comprehensively across the board, what's going to drive to that? A lot of companies, they start with rebranding because they think that's what they need to do. 

Or they start with lead gen because they know, hey, we need more leads, but they skip all of this other work that needs to work together holistically to get to those better leads. So when we think about being more comprehensive, we want to say, all right, here's the goals. So what does that look like from a brand awareness standpoint? What does that look like from a demand generation standpoint? How are you driving demand for your unique services? And then that can ladder over to lead generation. 

But then, okay, so we've got lead generation. Now let's look at MQL to SQL conversion numbers. So we want to look much more across the board and not just say, all right, let's put a funnel out there to try and drive some leads because it doesn't always yield the results that we want. 

So we want to really wrap our arms around the whole thing a bit more. All right. So you're talking about more things than most of us are used to. 

Most of us look at just simply the end results. How many clients does it bring us and how much in revenue is it going to bring us? So you're really talking about this from a full spectrum ROI perspective? Well, that's what you've got to do is if you think, okay, we need this many clients. That means that we need this many qualified, good leads coming in.

We want to then step back and do some reverse engineering at that point and say, all right, so then how many people do we need to get to our website? If we look at our conversion numbers, all right, let's play around with that. Okay. Then how many impressions do we need on LinkedIn or how many new connections do we need to be making every week? It's different for every company, but we can't just start over here at the end game. 

You need to have those outcomes in mind, but if you're just playing in that zone, we're not going to be filling up the funnel with the right kind of leads the way that we want. All right. I'm going to go sideways here because I know a little bit about that stuff in terms of measuring impressions and all of that stuff.

People have asked me to do it for the podcast. I see the impressions. I see the engagement. 

I don't really know how to measure that. How do you describe measuring those things for clients? Well, whenever we create roadmaps, we go through a process first of developing what we call our OKRs, which means what are our objectives? What are we trying to do? Increase brand awareness. What are the big picture things we're trying to do? Then our key results. 

What are those numerical, quantifiable key results that we are looking for that are going to push the needle? When we talk about measurement and we look at, let's say you want to be getting some results for the podcast. I would be wanting to know how many people are watching or how many people are engaging. Then maybe if you have a call to action in the podcast, if you're driving people to a landing page afterwards, how many people are getting over there? Great. 

Is there a call to action on that? How many people are taking that call to action? That's where we start and the mechanisms that we use for that. It's different for every company, but I would say Google Analytics is great. That's a great way to start taking a look at how many people are coming to your page.

How long are they staying there? Those are some numbers that we can start to do something with once we begin to get a closer look. Measuring how long does somebody stay is on the site. Does that get messed up by people that clicked on a page and then just leave it up? Can you measure beyond that? That's a good question. 

I don't know that. I haven't found those are more, I would say, anomalies that aren't going to mess up numbers too much. What I love getting to look at, especially on Google Analytics, is thinking like, okay, so if our average time on a page right now is 30 seconds, one, that gives us some really important information. 

That tells us, first of all, your messaging better be dialed in because you have like 10 seconds to get somebody's attention. So that's telling us, okay, we don't have a lot of time. And then the other thing is, okay, how do we adjust what we're writing or how we structure this page to get that time up a little bit? Because if we start to see time going up, people spending more time, great. 

We're engaging them a little bit better. Then we start to look at our conversion numbers. So are they responding to our calls to action? Are they clicking around to different pages? So that's the information. 

Once we have that and we can look at it, then we say, all right, what are the levers? Where do we want to play to think about boosting those numbers where we want them to go? So how do you sit with a client? Let's say I come to you and I'm like, look, I know I want to grow. I don't know what that means in terms of, I don't know how many endpoints, I don't know how many clients, I don't know how many impressions I need to get on my website. How do you help somebody kind of hone in on what it is they need to focus on? Because most of us, we throw up a website and ask somebody to make calls for us, right? Right. 

Right. Totally. Well, my first question is going to be, what does growth mean for you? And because that's going to be different for everybody. 

I would say for an MSP, chances are that's going to be we need five new great clients or whatever that number is, a set number of clients. And if they don't have that, they might have their revenue number. They might say, we need, we want to get to $5 million in recurring revenue every year. 

So then I'm going to say, perfect. What does that mean in terms, what does that require? Does that require five new clients? Does that require upselling three existing clients to new services? So we're going to do a little bit of that, just conversation around, tell me what growth means for you. So for you, for a podcast, that's going to be a question for me is what does growth mean? Does that mean listeners? Does that mean followers? Does that mean people that are going to your site? So once we get clear on what growth means, that's then when we start to say, all right, so what are the steps that lead to that? So we know we want this revenue number. 

Great. Okay. So now we're going to say we need five new clients. 

Great. So now what does that mean in terms of how many phone calls turn into five new clients on average? And so we just start to step by step by step, go through the process of saying, what does it require? And then ultimately getting people into that pipeline that are then going to begin converting further and further those numbers we need. So it's just a, it's just a conversation really in doing some digging, figuring out what growth actually means for them. 

All right. How hard is it to get those conversations out of techies? You know what? It's actually not that tough because techies, I'll tell you what, they want to return on investment on their marketing as they should. Right. 

So I would say, those are, those are the easy conversations. Sometimes it's hard to get people to really open up about what are the challenges, what happens if you don't hit those, those growth numbers? What is the impact going to be? Because that's the important stuff that building out growth goals in a marketing plan, that's a piece of cake, but we have to really begin to understand why is this so important? Because that's been going to be the motivating factor to actually do the work that's really needed to grow. Well, that's where I was going to go next.

The doing of the work, because I think most companies, especially if they're small, they're going to want to throw out the goals and then they kind of want it done for them. So let me first ask you, what is the typical size where you think companies actually start to understand and can truly lay out this roadmap of not only putting together their goals, but putting together and implementing the roadmap? Well, the thing is, I wouldn't say there's a typical size that understands it and needs it, but what there are, are different size companies need to do different levels of stuff. So if you're a two to five person shop, you don't need to be spending massive amounts of money on ads. 

That's what I see a lot, pumping money into different kinds of tactics that doesn't actually yield the results you want, because it doesn't actually fit within a broader roadmap that drives up to goals. And then there's not accountability in place for if it's actually working. So it's not a matter of, oh, how big do they need to be to do this? Everybody needs to be doing this. 

A solopreneur needs to do this, unless there, maybe there's some businesses that have all the business they could possibly want in the world and they're swimming in money, in which case, congratulations, you don't need to market, but everybody else needs to be very clear on this. Now, what changes is how big it is, how comprehensive it is. And so that should be right sized to the company.

But what I don't like seeing are small little companies just pumping tons of money into their marketing without a clear roadmap to follow. Well, but that's, that's kind of what we're told to do, right? We, we come into the, I mean, some are going to be mad at me because that's what's out there. It's, hey, marketing done for you spend, you know, $300, $500, a thousand dollars a month, put together this, you know, this Facebook campaign, these LinkedIn trends now, which are, you know, get a LinkedIn mailing list and make some content, throw together some ads.

That's where we start in. It's easy, but everybody complains about the results. That's what I was just going to say, like, if that works for you and I'm not knocking marketing agencies, I mean, we offer monthly retainer support, so we do it for you too.

So I'm not knocking that, but what you have to have accountability on and clarity on are, how do all of these activities ladder up to your business goals? And that's the thing that business leaders deserve to understand. What I see a lot of times is a lot of smoke and mirrors. So you're spending money and then our business leaders aren't given the insights and the reporting in a way that makes a ton of sense to them. 

And so they just feel like, well, I'll keep pumping money into this, but I'm not seeing the results, but I'm frustrated and don't understand why. So that's where we really change before we do anything. We build a roadmap before anything else happens. 

We say, this is what we want to do. These are the results that, that the whole team needs to be held accountable for. And then we're checking it along the way, because if in four months, we're not seeing moves on that, then the question is great.

What do we need to adjust? Not, oh, we're going to keep doing more of the same thing and pumping money into it. So I would say it's less a problem of investing in marketing and more, what is your relationship with your marketing agency and have they built a custom plan that really connects to your business goals? Okay. You just made a comment about, you know, the four month mark. 

I was going to ask you, you know, most of the time I've seen people say it's going to take a minimum three to six months, sometimes longer to actually start to see that return. But what I don't see is a way that people have in place, measuring those metrics to see, are we actually moving towards getting better at it? So do you have an idea of, you know, ways that we can track things so that we know, okay, month three, yeah, we haven't seen anything yet, but we're right at the tipping point or yeah, we need to start to shift because this isn't working. Totally. 

Well, that's what I'm talking about with, you know, people are just looking at how many leads are coming in and that's all they're thinking about. They're going to be flying blind knowing, are we on track for that? Do we believe that this is going to lead to this? So there's some other indicators that I want to be looking at. I want, well, I want to know website traffic for sure. 

I want to be building some funnels so I can see like, are people downloading the things that I'm putting out there? Are we getting, is our email list growing? What are our open rates looking like? What are our click-through rates looking like? If we're engaging in a LinkedIn strategy, how many new connections do we have? How many new followers do we have? What do our, what did our engagement numbers look like? So all of that, here's the thing is when I got started in business and marketing years ago, all those numbers felt really overwhelming to me because I didn't totally understand all of them. So I felt like a little nervous about them. But what we, I mean, what we do is put together like a KPI dashboard. 

That's what we call it, where it's like, those numbers are clear as day. It's in a spreadsheet we all share. We're updating it all the time so then we can start to play around and see what's happening with those numbers. 

So it just doesn't need to be scary. It doesn't need to be overwhelming. It just needs to be a well-built spreadsheet where we understand the numbers that we're looking at. 

All right. So I have heard a huge emphasis being placed on email lists once again, where people are saying it is still the highest rate of return that people can see. But I'm going to ask this question. 

So I spent, I spent probably about an hour one day just literally unsubscribing from a ton of lists. And a lot of them are vendors. And I, and I looked at it and said, man, I really don't want to do this to this vendor, but it's not reaching me and stuff. 

So in a world, I mean, we are getting hammered with emails and stuff. So how is email still that number one rate of engagement? Marv, when you went through that unsubscribe exercise, which I did the same thing two months ago, what was the criteria that you, as you, I mean, it's, it could be just like a subconscious criteria almost, but like what, what were you thinking about as you hit subscribe? Well, for me, it might be a little different because the first thing is I, so I actually went through and the first thing I did was if all that email did was invite me to webinar after webinar after webinar, it's gone. But of course there are some vendors and I'm like, well, I might want to know if they have webinars. 

So there were times where I had to evaluate, okay, where do I rank this vendor as opposed to other vendors? There were, let's see, what else did I use? Probably people that either I had never heard from in the past year, two years, people I didn't want to hear from somebody that kind of, for lack of a better phrase, upset me by something that was done out in the space or something. I mean, those were the top things that I did. A hundred percent. 

That, I mean, that's what, that's what we all do, right? It's one, are these emails that are always asking me for stuff, always trying to sell me to come and do something. That's out. Somebody who I don't actually have a relationship with, who has not opted in and somebody who is not consistent or they're just popping up for the first time in two years without warming me up to them. 

At the end of the day, email is just another form of relationship and relationships where people are only making withdrawals, asking for stuff and they're not making deposits. We don't like those kinds of relationships. The bad ones where they make us mad regularly. 

Of course, we don't want those ones. And this, the fair weather friends, when someone needs something, we don't want them either. So I believe in email, but I believe you got to treat it like a relationship, which means you are putting deposits into that relationship. 

So those emails, first of all, people need to opt in and say, I want to hear from you because you're delivering something valuable enough. And then we are consistently depositing value in those emails. That's what I, I mean, we call them nurturing emails. 

I don't even really, the newer newsletter, I think it shouldn't be about, Hey, here's what we're up to. Here's what we did on our family vacation. It should be consistently delivering value to the audience so that when they need your services, they think of you. 

So I believe in emails, but your unsubscribe pattern, if you just flip that, then that's how you can deliver some valuable emails. All right. So let's move on now and tell me, tell me about some services that we might not normally hear that you guys are doing that would really, you know, help some tech company. 

Well, I mean, I've talked about it plenty, but I would say, of course, messaging, mail that brand story. So you're not confusing your audience, get a marketing roadmap. But when you say, when you say messaging though, I want to, I want to, because really all that means to me is the colors, the logo and how you're, you know, throwing together those ads that we said that we don't want to, you know, spam people with. 

I mean, when you say messaging, what, what does that really mean? Awesome. This might be something even that we talked about last time we joined you on the podcast. So, but I want to do a little refresher. 

Okay. We have a very specific approach to messaging. And when I say messaging, I mean, what are the words, what are the words that you're using to talk about your business on your website, in your emails, in your phone calls? You know, what are the literal words that you are using to describe what you do? And a lot of times techie companies get caught in the weeds really fast, trying to compete on features, trying to compete on technical capabilities, and they lose their audience. 

And it's really tough to differentiate, especially MSPs, right? Because it's similar, really similar services. So we want to make sure that brands are equipped with a message and positioning that's going to help them cut through the noise. And we do that using the story brand framework. 

We have used it for years. We will continue to use it, but it's basically taking the time to help a brand tell a story that positions their customer as the hero of the story and the brand as the guide. So we would always want to make sure the brands are showing up as the Gandalf or the Yoda in the story, not Luke Skywalker or Frodo. 

So that's, and I, we could do a whole podcast just on the story brand framework, but that we want to take the time to say, all right, how do we build out that story? So now we've got the fuel in messaging to infuse into the rest of your marketing. We should have a conversation about using, using like chat GPT for content generation. And because it can be a lot of people do it and a lot of people do it badly, but when you have a good clear message to fuel into that, that's where it can start to be a bit more effective because you've got, you're scaling up something really powerful. 

Is that something you want to start now or you want to do it later? Because that, that AI wormhole as I see it. Yeah, let's do it. Let's follow the thread. 

So I'll say before anything else, get your messaging dialed in, have a good brand story, know what you're doing in terms of marketing. What are the, the structures that you're putting in place? And then it's a matter of executing it, which is where, you know, LMS and chat GPT and things like that. People are using that for their execution, but when they skip messaging and they skip a roadmap, they're creating a ton of noise that they are adding to a very, very noisy landscape. 

So that's why we've got to do those things first. Okay. So since you pulled on that thread, I'm going to go with it. 

First, let me say that I have gotten the sense from some of my friends out there that they're kind of stepping back a little bit from AI because they're getting mixed results where AI is giving them wrong information or taking them in a direction where they don't want to go. So a lot of people are focusing on redoing how they do their prompts and paying for the actual full version of a model instead of doing the free, because apparently you can tweak it a little bit more with information. So let's start with that in mind. 

You know that people are using it to see how much they can do without you. So how would you then approach somebody that's used chat GPT or any of the platforms that said, hey, I'm trying to put together my message. I'm trying to put together marketing. 

Something just isn't right. What do I do? Well, I feel very confidently showing up in the midst of an AI landscape. Two years ago, I didn't. 

Two years ago, I was scared thinking, oh, this is going to mess us up. But what I learned was there are some distinctly human requirements when it comes to using AI, because here's what people are experiencing. AI is the ultimate yes man. 

So you'll put something in and they'll say, yeah, great idea. That sounds awesome. And then, you know, put something else in. 

Great. Oh, sounds good. And all of a sudden, you get an hour down the road and you think, what is this? Where did we just go? So it just keeps yes ANDing you to some bizarro landscape, because there wasn't the foundation of what it is that we're trying to build and what it is we're trying to do. 

Similarly, if you don't tell it, this is our positioning. This is the message that we want to use. This is what we're saying. 

It's going to get convoluted and fuzzy fast. So I think of chat GPT as a very good assistant. They are not my strategic thought partner. 

Sometimes I'll bounce ideas back and forth, but I'm very clear that I am the one who needs to be making these critical decisions here. So, you know, one of the reasons that people are not liking the results that they're getting with AI is they're not feeding it with a clear message and a clear strategy to execute on it. So they're letting AI call the shots and who the heck knows where that is going to take us. 

So we can talk specifics about what that looks like. I do like the paid plan on chat GPT because you can set up projects which you can load with a brand messaging guide, with your roadmap, and then you can be off and running on it. But that's very different than the paid version. 

So that is an investment that is worth making. Okay. Well, let me start with the thing that you just mentioned, bouncing ideas off of chat GPT, because that's where a lot of people start. 

I know that, you know, Claude, Jim and I, Perplexity are out there as well. But how would you have somebody start with the best way to bounce an idea off? Because I think that in my mind, I'm thinking all that means is putting together a prompt that says, hey, I'm an MSP. We focus on cybersecurity and SaaS and blah, blah, blah. 

Create me a plan. But I'm going to assume that that's not the right way to begin, right? No, that's not the wrong way to go. But there's some other stuff you can do to make it a lot more effective. 

I would say, since we're talking about relationships earlier, the first thing you need to do when you're using Claude or chat GPT is to find the relationship with that chat GPT, with that tool. So it says, you know, I am founder of this company, I want you to be a collaborator as I ask you questions. I do not want you to be a yes man, be a devil's advocate, look at the other side of it. 

So I have a whole prompt set up for when I want to set up a relationship with my chat GPT that basically says, I want you to use data backed resources. Don't give me opinions based on blogs that you found. This needs to be research backed. 

So I just set my criteria a little bit stronger. And now I want to bounce some ideas back and forth, help me highlight according to industry best practices, what's effective, what's not. So it's just it's kind of really in that setup. 

I don't know that it's even more than just the prompt, but it's like, let's define what we really want here and what we don't So I don't use chat GPT, but I've heard, like you said, where you can actually put all of that information in in project style. Now, can that be saved permanently? Or do I have to do it every single time? Well, I mean, it depends on the plan. We're on like the team's plan or the business plan. 

But yeah, we yeah, you can save and I do projects for everything I do for my personal life. I do have health things. If I have a health goal, I'll create a project and I'll add in my blood work numbers, you know, I'll do that. 

I do it for my clients. So we add in their custom messaging, all of our call transcripts, message, you know, the marketing strategy, and then I just pull it all into that project. So it saves it. 

So but you could do it as a business, say, if there's an initiative, you can do that. So there's, I mean, there's a lot you can do. And that's a way that we're helping clients build out those kinds of things thinking through what is your prompt library that you want to be able to go back to again and again, so that you're not just reinventing the wheel. 

So that's an area that people we resisted it. And then we realized it was really helpful. So we help with it. 

All right. And you're trusting that with your blood work. That's we have the business account, which means we none of our data is used to train the wider models. 

So that is a reason to have a paid account is that you keep your that your data is safe. All right. That makes sense. 

Okay. I was just sitting I had a thought and I just lost my mind. But we'll move on.

Well, one of the things Marv that you asked a minute ago that I want to make sure to talk about, because you asked, like, what are some services? Like, what are some things that MSPs need? And, you know, we kind of went on that great, you know, AI tangent, right? Everybody is thinking about, but one thing that I want to make sure that especially MSP leaders are not discounting is the power of their LinkedIn presence and thinking about how do they leverage LinkedIn, not to do and mail, because we need a mail, not to just spam everybody and put up a bunch of generic content, but instead to use it really, really strategically to begin to put strong thought leadership out there that's going to drive demand for your products and services. So that's an area of service that we do now where we help facilitate that we record videos of our, you know, we'll work with one of like a founder and we'll record an hour of content of them talking and it will splice it into little videos. So that's just a thing that I do want MSP leaders thinking about is how am I leveraging LinkedIn to grow my network, but also to position myself as the go to thought leader in this industry. 

So you mentioned that LinkedIn and those in-mail things. So I'm getting a ton of those too. And I don't know what I think about that.

I'm not sure I like it. Do you pay attention to them? Well, it depends because, well, I guess the short answer is no. I don't. 

Because like you said, they're usually asking for something, you know, I hate to say this, but in my context, it's always about my MSP basically getting pitched by vendors. And if they reach out and want to connect that very first thing, if I happen to click accept within minutes, I'm getting their pitch. And I'm like, dude, stop.

Feels gross, doesn't it? Yeah. Feels gross. I hate in-mail. 

I hate it. I hate when I get it, which is why I don't do it. I don't do any marketing tactics or strategies that I don't like receiving myself. 

That's just a good filter. That's called the ick factor. And to me, not all, I mean, just in-mails in general, I just don't think they're that effective, which is the bigger problem. 

I would really focus more strategically on putting great thought leadership content out there, putting good offers. Now you can do LinkedIn campaigns. There's cool stuff you can do where you can create a really great tool, do a post on it, say, hey, if you're interested in this, DM me and I'll send it to you. 

And then you send it to them. And now you start a relationship, but they have opted in. Well, I do not like pitching stuff when people have not opted in or expressed interest in some way from hearing from me. 

All right. So when you say campaign, let me ask this because I am trying to understand. I've noticed that a lot of people are doing long posts. 

Is that kind of like a campaign? Because to me it feels like, trying to be gentle here, but it feels like the longer the post, the more I'm thinking they didn't write that. Yeah. Right. 

Right. Well, I have a belief that there's no such thing as too long of a post or too long of an email. There's only too boring.

Okay. So that's my quote. Like if it's riveting and valuable and every word counts, then sure, fine. 

That's fantastic. Usually it's not. Almost never. 

Is it really, really great content when it's really long? So length is not the problem. Value is the problem. But when I talk about campaign, that means what is a multi-touchpoint effort to get somebody further into my pipeline? So that could look like putting out some kind of lead generator on LinkedIn, giving people an opportunity to request it, and then having ready-to-go touchpoint messages that you send people to follow up with them after they get in. 

How did this work for you? What's the biggest challenge that you're seeing? And seeing if there's ways that you can engage people. That's one form of a LinkedIn campaign that I think is pretty cool because it's a built-in relationship. Is that all done with their sales manager? What do you mean? Is their sales manager doing it or are they doing it personally? Right. 

I mean, that's what I assume that their sales navigator would do. Oh, a sales navigator. Well, yeah. 

A sales navigator is a great way to do that. It's also a great way to identify people to go out and connect with and engage with their content. So it doesn't have to happen on sales navigator, but definitely a cool tool if you have bandwidth to learn it and get into it and use it. 

All right. And, of course, some of the other tools. Now you do the basic stuff. 

You actually will do website content creation. I saw somewhere where you actually would do website optimization. What's optimization of a website? Optimization of a website is basically, is your website working? Is it doing what you want it to do? If not, then let's optimize it. 

And so, I mean, basically what I'm going to be looking at is one, is traffic coming to it? Do you have things in place? SEO? What are you doing to drive traffic to it? And then step two is, are people engaging with it? Are they staying on the pages? That's what I was talking about earlier with the time on the page. Are they going to multiple pages? And are they converting? So are they booking a call or are they downloading your lead generator? Are they engaging with it? So website optimization is just a fancy way of saying, is your website doing its job? And if not, let's get it doing its job. Okay. 

I was going to end off here, but let me ask one more question because once all that's done, I always feel like everybody does the website. They'll spend thousands on their website and then complain. Nobody goes there. 

So how are people generating traffic? And I don't want you to give away a secret sauce, but I'm sure there's got to be something where it's like, okay, how do we get people to the website? Totally. Well, that's the, if you build it, they will come myth, which just unfortunately doesn't work. There's a lot of really gorgeous websites out there that sit and collect dust. 

So that is where, as we even go back and think about our marketing roadmaps, that's how are we driving demand to get to the website? So SEO, great. That's important to think about. So what kind of content are you putting out there that's going to show up in search engines? The other thing is more people are doing searches in LLMs than they do than they are Googling right now. 

So that's a whole body of work to think about. But one of the biggest things you've got to think about there is being consistent in your marketing or in your messaging, because if you're all over the place in your messaging, you're going to confuse the LLMs. So that's a piece, making sure you got that good, clear messaging. 

But then you're thinking back to LinkedIn, what are you putting out there that is driving awareness? And then you can get into even like some promoted content where you're putting a little bit of money to get in front of new eyeballs. So there's a lot that you can do there, but those are some of the basics that you want to make sure to have in place. How much do you think the LLMs are becoming the search engine of the internet? I think at a hundred percent. 

Now that doesn't mean that we abandon SEO entirely because SEO still is good. I'm not an SEO specialist and I'm not an LLM specialist, but I do know you want to really think through what are the strategies to support on both sides. But yeah, I think more people are looking in their LLM to get recommendations for things more and more. 

I was going to ask you, how do we get ourselves to show up in those LLMs, but that's a whole other show. That's another conversation. All right. 

Okay. We can do that. I meant to ask you before we got started because even though the name has changed to Decoded, the website still comes up as decodedstrategies.com. We kept our URL, still decodedstrategies.com. We didn't want to lose our friends. 

So yeah, still same URL. Okay. And the website does look different and you've got this little scrolling bar on all the pages where you talk about technology services, enterprise tech, SaaS, cybersecurity, MSP. 

Is that part of your optimization? Well, mostly it's just to let people know that they're in the right place. So I mean, optimization is just like, again, do we want people to know that they're in the right place and they want to engage with us? So yeah, absolutely. We want people to see that and say and realize, yes, if we're in that category, they can help us.

All right. So that is the website folks, decodedstrategies.com, same as before. Kristen, we didn't really come up with a call to action for you. 

So what's the one takeaway that you want people to have? And then of course, how do you want them to reach out to you? Well, I would say if any of this, you felt a little bit like, ooh, I should get my numbers in place. I should get my KPIs or I need help with messaging or even understanding what I'm doing. If any of this felt like you don't feel rock solid on the things that we talked about, book a call with me and we'll talk about it. 

So I would go to the website. You can book a call on my calendar and we can take a look at what you have going. I might be able to share some recommendations and maybe help. 

All right. And I made some notes here so we can come back and do a whole marketing with AI. Let's do it. 

Let's do it. Oh, and also like come find me on LinkedIn. We can connect with me on LinkedIn. 

I love, I love being over there and I post a ton of content about this stuff. So that might be helpful as well. All right. 

You, yeah, I did notice your last, was your last post about the cats? I like to post a mix of business, personal life, what I'm learning might've been the stress fracture that I got training for a half marathon. No, it was the, in our house, the cat dynamics are shifting. Cause we got a kitten. 

Come learn about my cats, Zelda and Geordie, as well as some other marketing tips if you want. Okay. Cause you got the cat sitting next to the pumpkin.

Uh huh. Yep. That's Geordie, Geordie LaForge.

Nice. Oh no, you didn't. Of course, Geordie, Zelda, because Zelda were big fans and my husband and I watched Star Trek next generation every night before bed. 

And Geordie is our favorite character. On the H and I channel? Uh, Paramount plus. Oh, on the Paramount plus. 

Okay. Wow. Wow.

Yeah. Anybody wants to talk Star Trek, super fan. What was on last night? Cause it's on H and I on our channel. 

I don't, they do all the Treks in a row. They start off with the TOS, Next Gen, Deep Space, Voyager and Enterprise. Do you have a favorite? Do you have a favorite series? A favorite series? Yeah.

So my favorite would be Next Generation. Yeah. Followed by Voyager, which I didn't think it would be that way when I first saw Voyager.

I love it. I think Janeway, I actually think Janeway is arguably the best captain, but I love Picard very much. But I love Janeway as a leader. 

Yeah. You are not popular among the Trekkies. Oh, well, I don't need to be popular, but we can have a whole Star Trek podcast as well to debate.

We should, we should do it. Any day of the week. We should do a Techie Trekkie show.

Dude, let's do it. And I want to hold up leadership models of what did the different captains exhibit is strong leadership. And I bet you Janeway is going to hold up pretty strong.

You know what? Okay, we got to talk afterwards because I do have a book that was made about leadership, but it was based on Jean-Luc Picard. So I need to find out those other leadership books out there on the other captain. Earl Grey Hot. 

I love that. I'll have to check out that leadership book because I love Picard. We will do that. 

All right. I guess we have a holiday show coming up, folks. Hi, Kristen Spiotta with Decoded. 

Thank you for hanging out. Thanks for having me, Mark. This was great.

All right, folks. If you want to find out how to do a marketing roadmap that actually delivers ROI, check out Kristen and Decoded. The website's there. 

Her information will be in the show notes. Of course, you go to the website, book your discovery call and find out all that you need to know. All that you need to know. 

And follow her on the LinkedIn and follow Geordi. That's it, folks. We'll be back with more from the IT Business Podcast.

Check us out in your favorite pod catchers. We'll see you soon. Holla.