Speaker 0: To MarDreamin. We are very excited to have you today. My name is Angelica. I am with the Sercante team. We have Alp that’s gonna be presenting today. Before we get started, I do just wanna go over a few housekeeping items. Yes. Of course, these sessions are gonna be recorded. They will be available to you twenty four hours after our dreaming event ends. So our last day is tomorrow. Um, so they’ll be available by Monday for you. And, secondly, if you have any questions, um, we’re a little tight for time today. We have about thirty minutes, and Alp’s got a bunch of great content for us. So if you have any questions, throw them in the q and a tab. Otherwise, Alp, I will pass things over to you, and you can take it from here.

Speaker 1: Thank you, Angelica. Um, you could see my screen, Angelica?

Speaker 0: Sure can.

Speaker 1: Perfect. So thank you to our sponsors. And today, I’ll be speaking about, um, how to invest properly in ad tech, advertising incrementality, building out your MarTech stack, uh, thinking what’s really actually what’s really causing the sale, um, and the some of the statistics and some case studies behind it, and talk about some execution best practices. So there’s a lot of, uh, cool things happening in the advertising space. There’s over 225,000,000,000 spent on Google advertising. There’s there’s lots of cool ad tech from Ad Studio, Google Analytics. What is really driving the sale? Is it did someone click the ad, um, and then they purchased? Does that mean the ad caused the sale, or were they gonna buy anyways? How can you see what your true ROI is so you can invest your marketing dollars better in the right channel, right campaign, the right ad tech to really impact the bottom line? Often in in marketing, you need to consider that some people would often buy without advertising or some marketing touch point. And when you run a controlled experiment, um, the ROI can shrink. So one important thing to consider is incrementality. What is really causing the sale? And number two, the cost accounting. So if you just put the AdWord cost in there, um, it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s gonna be a couple dollars, um, and then it’s gonna be massive ROI. If you just include AdWord expense plus, um, cost of goods sold, you’re leaving out OPEX, you’re leaving out the the cost of the tech stack, uh, the ROI is gonna be inflated. Same if you’re purchasing ad tech tool. If they say, um, buying this ad tech tool will help you save a thousand hours times $80, uh, and you spend the money and you find only one team’s adopting it, um, it might not hit the desired ROI. So I’ll be walking through some examples, um, that talk through to consider incrementality. So you need to focus on what matters and assess the right metrics. So I’m gonna get more tactical here and and walk through a a case study. Say so you have a website. Someone sees your product. Uh, they see your home page. They leave. They come back a week later. They see an ad on Google, Facebook, another channel. Um, they click the ad, then they purchase. Was it the ad that caused the sale? What is the counterfactual? So scenario a is what happened. The counterfactual is what if that ad touch point didn’t happen? What if they didn’t receive that email from Pardot? What if they didn’t receive that direct mail? Um, would that outcome still have happened? So I’m gonna walk through a case study of eBay and how they were spending tens of millions of advertising and how they they were able to achieve, uh, incrementality. So eBay was running a paid search for company name and then product. So company name, eBay, eBay shoes. Say, I’m shopping for eBay shoes and eBay x, and the ad pops ups, I click. And then the person purchases. So that was getting a lot of traffic. So what eBay made a hypothesis, they turned off the paid advertising in some areas, not fully off because, uh, they wanted to run a a test. And then all, uh, the blue line here is, uh, paid, which goes down. And as soon as they turn off paid, everybody starts coming directly through organic search and direct navigation. So what started happening is 99% of this traffic started coming for free. So they didn’t need to spend money on paid advertising. They can invest it into another source, uh, to drive incremental uplift. So the outcome here was the paid advertising, uh, was being interacted in with a lot of purchases, um, but it was not incremental. So the outcome was stop brand keywords and invest that into non brand keywords, uh, because that can all come through organic. EBay is a well known brand. People know their products. So this example of click does not mean, uh, can cause inflated ROI when you’re looking at through your marketing touch point. Just because they engage with your marketing touch point there through Pardot Marketing Cloud and ad, uh, doesn’t mean it’s incremental. So a lot of money is spent in marketing. You need to identify what’s working, what’s not working so you could drive more, uh, sales uplift. So a non branded keyword now. No company, uh, name included in the search. Gibson Les Paul is a a brand of guitar. Someone wants to buy that, um, then ad pops up, uh, from eBay. Uh, eBay is notifying the person, hey. We have this guitar. There’s Guitar Center. There’s many other people. So this is non brand. Uh, branded means there’s company name, non branded, uh, no company name. So paid paid search impact for, uh, non brand, uh, the highest area of impact when someone’s searching for a used item. I don’t know. You wanna choose a new laptop, something. The highest area of impact was on people that made zero purchases or less than three. Uh, this is the graph a user frequency. And once you go beyond, uh, three purchase in the past twelve months, someone might be engaging with the advertising, but it’s not positive ROI. So if you do false attribution, you’ll be spending money in in the the wrong places, um, thinking things are working when you could be spending it elsewhere. Um, and there’s the blue line is the confidence interval, uh, 95%. So if we see the highest confidence, uh, ROI spot is the zero and the red dot’s the estimate. So what works best? In this example, someone that has not purchased in the last twelve months, bringing them back. Um, as you see, if if someone stopped purchasing the past ninety days or past sixty days, uh, they left for some reason. That’s the advertising can be a negative. So the best results come, they don’t know what your company is, what your company offers. They have zero historical purchases. It’s a first impression. Um, their this audience, uh, this segment has higher chance of being profitable than if I’m going to eBay buying 100 times a year. I know all their items, what their company has. I still might be engaging the advertising, but it’s not gonna be, uh, causing any sales uplift. Glancing if there was any questions. So this graph here says the the people that are most likely to engage in advertising are your high volume, high frequency buyers. So high volume, high frequency is most likely to engage. So people purchasing over 50 times, uh, a year in eBay or a 100 times. If if I’m purchasing over over a 100 times on eBay in the last twelve months, I will engage with paid advertising, um, roughly 22, 23% of the time. If it’s 50 to a 20% of the time. So a lot of these ad clicks are already coming from people that were already gonna buy. They were gonna purchase without advertising, without that touch point. And then zero to three, people that are probably the the people that were the incremental, uh, in this case, those those, they engage less. So you need to get your segmentation right. You need to get your measurement design. You need to work with data science, analytics, and finance to set up the, uh, the right measurement framework to really tell what is incremental, what is not incremental. And, uh, the red bars are are paid search buyers, and, uh, blue is total buyers. And then when you take the red bar, uh, divide it by the blue bar, that’s where the green comes out for and that’s why it peaks in the top right because people purchasing over a 100 times a year are just typing eBay shoes, eBay, uh, a non branded word, clicking there. Um, and they’re they’re just advertising is not driving any sales uplift, so you need to be careful. Industry attribution models can often confuse purchases and think they’re causal, so your your money will not be invested in places that are truly impacting the customer experience or driving sales uplift. And the same comes for ad tech too. You need to think of ad tech when you’re purchasing ad tech too or adding to your stack. Um, is it gonna give the ROI? Because advertisers and ad tech, they want your ROI to be high because you’ll throw more money then. And another point, uh, is I’m not saying Google Ads is bad or advertising is bad. Google Ads is great. Google Analytics is great. Ad studio is great. Um, point here is think about incrementality, what’s really causing the sell, and be smart about how you spend your your butt, uh, your money and your budget so you could, uh, drive more sales. So a company sees your product page, you retarget them on Facebook, they click the ad. Um, so they don’t purchase. They they come back couple days. They click the ad, then they purchase. Did the Facebook ad really cause it? So because I I see the click. I have conversion tracking, and now Google, uh, Google Ads or or Facebook is saying, hey. This person clicked and bought, and and they’re putting a a dollar amount there. What is the expected profit? So as we talked, um, I walked you guys through scenario b. No matter what the touch point was, uh, John Doe or Jane Doe buys irrespective. We wanna avoid this situation because you say does not get touched by, uh, marketing cloud or your ad. Uh, I mean, does or does not their their end outcome is the same. Uh, we we the goal is scenario a, um, where the touch point that we we do with the customer, it changes their behavior, causes purchase, and gets them to their next step, and it’s truly incremental. So scenario a is positive ROI. Scenario b is negative ROI, which was the company name branded word, um, targeting people that, you know, purchased 100 times in the past year, targeting people that um, last bought sixty days ago. So that’s that’s scenario b. Scenario a, positive. Uh, scenario b is negative in mute. We wanna avoid that scenario. So the point is think about the counterfactual. I’m touching someone with, uh, a journey in marketing cloud. What would have what would have happened if they didn’t get touched by that journey? Would they have still purchased without that email, direct mail, ad? Does economic value apply? Is there incremental profit? Glance the questions. So two scenarios, a and b. So the best targeting that comes from marketing cloud or advertising is it can compare two scenarios, a and b, a control and a test or a control and a treatment. Uh, what happens if this scenario happens and what happens if this scenario doesn’t happen. So you’re you’re looking at both scenarios, um, and then you’re you’re seeing if economic value applies. And here’s a more clear example. So say I launch I have Pardot or Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Um, I wanna launch a campaign, which is spend and save. Spend a thousand bucks, get 10% off. Um, control, I keep everything the same. Um, I work with my data science and analytics team, and then I have my offer. I send the offer via email, uh, my my, uh, ecommerce tool, which only shows to that that group, uh, pop up, and other ways. So I have a control and a a treatment, or treatment is also referred to as test. And there, at the very end of the the test period, I’ll have a pre and a post period, and I’ll be able to see, um, the difference in purchases, um, by having a control and a test. And I’m able to observe scenario a, scenario b, uh, when the customer is targeted and a similar customer that was not targeted, what’s the difference in sales? Then I could tell if it’s incremental, um, and if economic value applies. Glancing at the questions. Common mistakes people make when building out their MarTech stack is, you know, working on the wrong things that may not drive, uh, business value, not revenue true revenue uplift. Signing one, two contracts, hoping they will sign solve everything, and then they they’re stuck in the two year, three year contract, and then you’re kind of forced to implement. Um, so you need to be deliberate and thoughtful of of, um, what, uh, technologies you add. Uh, next is is getting the road map correct. I mean, you could use a do it yourself or get a service vendor, but you need to see what’s my current state, future state, how am I gonna get from current to future, what are my gaps, what are my opportunities, and build out a road map and have cross functional alignment with IT and engineering and have, you know, the quick wins in the long term. Uh, execution is important, uh, driving the change, and having the right measurement design. And the right measurement design isn’t, hey. Just let’s go buy this analytics tool. But I think it’s really aligning with finance, data science analytics. Um, how can we measure certain campaigns to see if they’re doing true incremental uplift? You prove the value, and then you get more money, and you’re you’re you’re launching things and driving touch points that truly affect the customer experience. So the the tech strategy needs to be driven internally, not by a a software vendor. Um, they shouldn’t be telling you, hey. We have 20 products. You have three. Add two more. You’re gonna be, uh, successful. You need to be thinking internally what tools are really best for you. And it it ideally, maybe not even a service vendor unless you hire that service vendor to do an assessment blueprint printing road map. The tech strategy should be driven internally. Because what happens is you’re one one of these large vendors, um, they’ll you’ll have five of their products. Let’s say product one to five, the sales rep can expand on accounts, but he can sell you more products. So and then the more products you add, you’re you’re stuck in these long contracts, and then they become more difficult to implement, and then it becomes a sunk cost, then it takes away your energy, then you realize you’re not getting the true value. So the tech strategy needs to be internal driven, not by a vendor. You need to align on your company’s north star. Um, make sure you have the right measurement design so you could understand what’s really driving true sales uplift. And that that comes from, you know, working with finance, data science, uh, understanding the statistics, the economics behind the campaigns, and and really testing and learning the right way. Often, I come to a company, and they think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. It that may be true sometimes when there’s a lot of tech debt, but switching from one vendor to another, I mean, it creates a lot of optimism. And but you need to think what’s the problem statement. If it’s really I’m trying to drive pipeline or I’m trying to drive sales or revenue, switching from a to b of one email marketing tool, uh, might not drive that, uh, sales uplift. So you need to make sure you have the right operating model, right strategy, right campaigns, right creative, um, targeting the right people. So sometimes it’s best to make the most of your current state, build your internal team of experts. Uh, switching technologies is might not unlock value always. So I would decide that internally or or consult with a service vendor. Uh, another thing that’s helpful is, um, speaking to a vendor once every every three months. Uh, I know I’m kind of going a little bit against what I’m saying or a service. This helps you stay up to date and just learn. Even if you don’t have no plans of purchasing, um, speaking to that service vendor, speaking to that software vendor can keep you up to date on best practices and what’s happening. So I would maybe have those conversations when you’re at a conference or or once a quarter to learn of new things that are coming, uh, across the martech industry. Um, when you’re adding new technologies, it it often seems very simple in the demo. And some technologies are really simple, like like Pardot, but some technologies can require extra head headcount. Implementation doesn’t become easy. You can’t just buy the technology, hire the professional service, and then, you know, things will go on. Um, so you need to think of what’s the true cost of operating expenses, uh, core corporate expenses, and the software license to really get this running. Because once you’re doing that, it’s taking away from your time from doing other value add stuff. So build versus buy is important. What what I found in the industry is there’s some things you can buy, um, but there’s there’s some things that just don’t exist and don’t fit your business needs. So you might have Salesforce marketing cloud. You might need to build something custom on top of it, or you might need to build something, you know, custom completely. Um, so you need to have that alignment across IT and engineering, um, long term, short term to get the the build strategy, um, that aligns to the buy strategy because you’ll you’ll find things are some things can’t be, uh, purchased, but, you know, I mean, you don’t wanna do things too custom, so you need to have a build versus buy strategy for your MarTech. Next, you need to have the right operating model, Strategic, operational, and tactical of internally, uh, how you’re prioritizing value. That that’s just one example of, you know, driving incrementality, driving sales uplift. Um, second is what’s the operating model for the the tech stack? Global versus regional, um, you need to have the right operating model to drive adoption in in the the technology stack, extract value, and launch the right use cases. So each company is it’s gonna be different, the build versus buy and the operating model, but the important things to think about and align at a VP level, director level, and a hands on level, um, where you have the right governance, uh, and plan. And operating model also might mean centralized or decentralized for the tech stack. And how do we purchase new technologies? Can I sign a a a three year contract of of some analytics tool and then resign in in two weeks, and then then everyone else has to implement it? So what’s our operating model for purchasing new technologies that’s not bureaucratic, that enables people do their jobs, and complements the entire tech stack comprehensively? So I’m talking about the email, uh, channel. Um, Marketing Cloud, great tool. Pardot, great tool. PFL, great tool. Some of this common sense, I I think many people are advanced here. Uh, the tools are only good as the data, the strategy, the people, the campaigns, uh, the audience, and data you put into them. Uh, one thing about email is, yeah, you could automate both the life cycle, but email might not be the, uh, right channel for some people, uh, because, one, you just can’t reach them even if they’re subscribed. They’re they’re getting too many emails. They have Gmail. So for some people, uh, email might not be the best channel. You might have to get them via direct mail. You might have to get them, which is, uh, PFL. Uh, you might have to get them via SMS. For some buyers, there’ll be no digital channels that work for them. I might be a a CXO at a company, and I’ve fully, you know, walled myself off. It might have to be through a sales rep, targeted events, friend or referral. So you need to think of the right channel expansion strategy when when building out your MarTechs, uh, stack. Uh, automation is gonna be important and and building out that onboarding, uh, the life cycle nurture. But there needs to be cross channel alignment. Uh, as as I kind of discussed, Google Ads is a great tool. Um, how do I get email, ads, sales, events, all working consist in a consistent, uh, strong customer experience to really push buyers to the next step in their journey and along with the website. So channel activation, getting it right, automating it, scaling out, putting all the right inputs, getting the right channel expansion, um, you know, PFL and other type tools, adding that to your tech stack, uh, where, you know, you could send someone a wine bottle. Um, so, yeah, email’s a pretty straightforward channel. For marketing stack, to really deliver the right, uh, customer experience, you need to think about the end to end architecture, which is your your current tech stack, the data, the campaigns, integrations, uh, where you’re planning on maturing it. And that end to end architecture will will define how, uh, customers see your customer experience. So to deliver a consistent and personalized experience, you need to get the right end to end architecture across IT, engineering, the marketing teams, um, and then you can evolve their personalization. So end to end architecture, end to end data, getting the right wiring, uh, is very important. Reducing time to do things, whether that’s I have a campaign, the the measurement design, how I work with finance, how I launch the campaigns, reducing campaign production time, um, and accelerating the learning, um, getting that down to a a a quicker state can can help drive, uh, faster efficiency, so you there’s less, uh, headcount that has to be added. And then another thing is reducing checkbox work checkbox work, so avoiding technical, uh, technical debt. So you hire a service agency. You wanna reduce checkbox work because that the person is giving you what you want, but missing some few important things, and that will cause your tech stack to languish in the long term once the vendor, uh, leaves. Summary. Uh, investing money in the right places that drive the right sales uplift is very important. Incrementality is important. To do this, you need to partner properly with data science, analytics, the finance team. It’s just not, hey. Let’s go purchase one analytics tool and then set up a dashboard. Really, truly thinking about the counterfactual. Like, what’s the counterfactual? What would have happened if that touchpoint didn’t happen? What’s the a? What’s the b? Looking at that through, like, control and test, um, and then you could really invest money in the right places versus doing a false correlation, which will, you know, turbocharge your ROI in in a in a wrong way. So you’ll put money there thinking it’s it’s the right place, but it’s not. So, um, and that goes for adding your your MarTech stack too. You need to invest money in the right places because then you’re on the hook. And then you need to think about when you’re repurchasing a tool, the numbers that they’re saying, hey. You buy this, you’re gonna you’re spending 5,000,000 a year. Uh, you pay me a 100,000, I’ll help you save 500 k. Are are the numbers really true that the vendor is saying? And and is the demo, uh, really gonna is is the tool really as easy as demo? Uh, number two, you need to build out a flexible platform that can adapt to market changes, uh, strategy changes with strong end to end architecture and data. So having the right operating model, uh, right, uh, alignment, right people, having that flexible platform that can do the channel activation, cross channel orchestration, and and drive the measurement, learn, and get the right campaigns out the door, uh, that’s very important. The MarTech strategy needs to be internally led. If you’re getting if it’s being if you’re working off a vendor’s recommendations, hey. You have one of my tools. You add these other two tools. You’re probably gonna end up signing some two, three year, uh, contracts that, uh, you might purchase tool end up shutting it down or not getting value. So, um, or you use a service agency, and then you they could do a blueprint for you. But, ideally, um, it needs to be internally led, the the tech stack strategy of, hey. I have Pardot. I have MarketingCloud. I have Ad Studio. I wanna add these things. You should be driving that internally. There needs to be a road map that delivers on time to value. And and by by having that road the road map that delivers on time to value, you have the right technology, integrations, campaigns, data, analytics, and measurements that’s delivering value every quarter, every month, and has a long range plan where you’re working on the right things that impact the customers the most. So my name is Almi Marlu. Happy to do some, uh, one on ones. Um, if you wanna bounce ideas off, uh, connect to me on LinkedIn or email. Happy to grab a, you know, a fifteen minute call, and uh, it was great seeing everybody. Um, we’re almost at time. Um, but, yeah, happy to have a conversation and talk about your specific use case. And, uh, Yeah. Always great to meet people. Um, and, yeah, happy to shoot me if you have any questions, shoot me an email. Uh, we could jump on a call or set up some time. And if you think of something down the line, happy to jump on a call too. Uh, it’s great meeting, uh, everybody, and thank you for joining. And thank you, uh, Marjorie, me and Angelica. Angelica, anything, uh, you wanna say before your time?

Speaker 0: Oh, we’re about to end here. Everybody enjoy the rest of your day.