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Dave Gerhardt (Founder of Exit Five, former CMO) and guests help you grow your career in B2B marketing. Episodes include conversations with CMOs, marketing leaders, and subject matter experts across all aspects of modern B2B marketing: planning, strategy, operations, ABM, demand gen., product marketing, brand, content, social media, and more. Join 4,400+ members in our private community at exitfive.com.
Tas Bober [00:00:00]:
1234. Exit.
Dave Gerhardt [00:00:08]:
Exit. Exit. Good to see you. You always tell me that this podcast blew up after your appearance.
Tas Bober [00:00:19]:
Yeah.
Dave Gerhardt [00:00:20]:
You're always, always in the comments saying something so completely absurd.
Tas Bober [00:00:26]:
I told you last time, the LinkedIn mullet. I'm very serious in my posts. Very educational. Okay. And then comments are where it's at. It's a mullet. I'm just joining him.
Dave Gerhardt [00:00:37]:
It's unbelievable. It seems to be a good strategy.
Tas Bober [00:00:40]:
The last couple of days. I've been very nice on your comments. So I've been. Great insight.
Dave Gerhardt [00:00:45]:
You have. Thank you. That's more of a like. That's because you're Chad GPT. You give chat GPT to your assistant, and then they post comments on your behalf. Right.
Tas Bober [00:00:53]:
I'm flattered that you think I have an assistant, but, you know, who has.
Dave Gerhardt [00:00:57]:
Time to have an assistant? That's what I want to know.
Tas Bober [00:01:00]:
Yeah. Who wants to spend their money on that? I would much rather spend my money on having an in person event for all my LinkedIn friends to come hang out.
Dave Gerhardt [00:01:10]:
No doubt.
Tas Bober [00:01:11]:
Yeah.
Dave Gerhardt [00:01:11]:
I don't even know if I could have a personal. I could never have an assistant. It would be so weird and, like, make decisions, and I feel like I would be the worst. It would be impossible. And I'm always like, let me just do it myself. Let me just email her, you know?
Tas Bober [00:01:23]:
Exactly. I'm too tight bay control. This is why my kids have never learned to do anything, because I'm like, I'll just do it. It's just easier. Just let mommy do it.
Dave Gerhardt [00:01:33]:
Well, that's your own issue, which you're gonna have to work through. Not on this podcast, but, yeah, okay, fine. You should have.
Tas Bober [00:01:38]:
I'll take it up with my channel.
Dave Gerhardt [00:01:39]:
Yeah, you should get that looked at.
Tas Bober [00:01:43]:
Three time podcast champ.
Dave Gerhardt [00:01:46]:
Congratulations.
Tas Bober [00:01:48]:
Thank you. It's a secret competition I have in my head where I'm the only one competing my favorite kinds, but here I am. I'm very excited.
Dave Gerhardt [00:01:57]:
So interesting nugget about the podcast, actually is so hatch has been making these clips for us, and everybody does clips as a distribution strategy. But I was posting clips for the longest time, and they would get no engagement or no reactions. And then I was like, something. I'm not even a big LinkedIn algorithm nerd, but it was just so obvious. When I post a clip, it'd be like ten likes and one comment. And normally it's like hundreds of likes and dozens of comments. And I was like, what the heck is going on? Is it because I'm saying podcast and episode and so the last two clips that I posted, I didn't mention that it was from the podcast. I didn't mention that it was a clip.
Dave Gerhardt [00:02:35]:
I didn't say any of that. And both of them, the engagement was way, way up. And so it's just a weird little experiment that I'm doing that I thought you would find interesting. And so we're trying to grow the podcast through clips, but I was posting clips, but nothing was really working. And so instead, I'm actually writing, like, long, thoughtful things and then also including the clip, which is not like a groundbreaking strategy, but it was just so obvious that something was not working. So maybe we'll do a good clip from this episode and it'll actually reach some people.
Tas Bober [00:03:03]:
Yeah. And I'm always the first to comment because I'm also not an algo nerd, although how does that happen?
Dave Gerhardt [00:03:09]:
How are you always the first to comment on my posts?
Tas Bober [00:03:11]:
Cause I have notifications turned on, like a good, loyal friend, so. And you post like, twice a day, don't you?
Dave Gerhardt [00:03:18]:
Yeah, I post at 07:07 and 313.
Tas Bober [00:03:23]:
Yeah, I actually don't. Three.
Dave Gerhardt [00:03:25]:
I just picked. No, I'm serious. Those are. I'm dead serious. I use a scheduler. I use a scheduler, and I pick two specific times to post, and I just like the consistency of it. And then I like picking more like human times. If you post at seven, I figure everyone posts at seven or that the top of the hour.
Dave Gerhardt [00:03:44]:
So.
Tas Bober [00:03:44]:
Yeah, but you're there twice a day. I'm there. So this is the other thing where people complain about the feed and everything, but I can't spend all my time scrolling through the feed because I have limited time. So I have notifications set for people that I like and usually engage with. Yeah. And I just go over to their profiles every day to support them. And then I ask you a question.
Dave Gerhardt [00:04:06]:
About, do you have friends? Do you have, like, friends who are not in this world and can't actually understand what on earth you're using LinkedIn for? And meanwhile, LinkedIn is the number one, like, drives the most of your business. Do you have that scenario? I have that scenario, yes.
Tas Bober [00:04:21]:
Yes. A lot. They're like, great, great Internet company. Very good. Like, my mother in law, just like, she keeps running into people at this, like, diner she works at, and she's like, oh, you need marketing help. My daughter in law is just, she's, it's like this plumber or something like that. I'm like, I mean, I can help. I guess I can help him, but it's a little bit different.
Dave Gerhardt [00:04:43]:
Yeah. They're like, oh, you use LinkedIn? It's interesting.
Tas Bober [00:04:46]:
Yeah, LinkedIn. I have to show her, like, what it is. You know?
Dave Gerhardt [00:04:50]:
Meanwhile, it's literally the number one way for you to, like, feed your family. Yeah.
Tas Bober [00:04:56]:
And it's so funny because she thinks it's, like, a little bit of a game. If I actually, when I told her that I was coming on the podcast, you know, the first time, and when it was just starting, she thinks that I run a podcast. So every time she runs into me, like, she'll come and visit. She's like, how's your podcast going? Going? I'm like, no, I don't have one. I'm just on other people.
Dave Gerhardt [00:05:17]:
No, I just go on other people's. But, like, she can't possibly understand. Like, wait, what could they even be talking about? I've been dealing with this for my parents for 15 years now. I'm saying this because I love to have that perspective. I'm like, oh, yeah, this is an interesting bubble that I'm in.
Tas Bober [00:05:31]:
Oh, yeah, totally. I mean, tomorrow LinkedIn goes down. I have to think about what I'm going to do in that regard. But I'll go annoy people on YouTube or something. I don't know.
Dave Gerhardt [00:05:40]:
Yeah, that would be a challenge. And how much has LinkedIn, on a serious note, like, how much has you treating that as your blog for your brand? You've, you know, you were in house, director of marketing, running, you know, doing marketing at a SaaS company. Like, a lot of people that will listen to this, you kind of realized, did you go out on your own? Like, what led to you going out on your own? I forget. Just bring me up to speed.
Tas Bober [00:06:04]:
I started writing on LinkedIn just for fun. I wanted to start a parenting podcast because my daughter has just. She was always been very sensitive, and I was like, okay, there's no resources for people with sensitive children who don't have, like, a medical condition. They're just temperamentally sensitive. And then I read something about podcast marketing, because I'd never done that. And it said, well, you can't just start a podcast. That's like having a house party and no one knows who you are, and you're inviting everyone to your home. They're not going to come to your home.
Tas Bober [00:06:32]:
You got to go out, socialize downtown and bring everybody in. So I was like, oh, that's a really good analogy. So I went to Twitter, and I had, like, one and a half followers. I'm like, ooh, this is not going to work. And then I went to LinkedIn and I had 1200 connections, and I'm like, yeah, it's going to be kind of weird if I come out the gate with parenting content. Gonna be like, what's going on with Taz? Is she okay? Ma'am, you good?
Dave Gerhardt [00:06:56]:
Well, it's true. Like, I think that it is a little bit tougher to come out, out of the gate with that. Where, like, on LinkedIn, if you start more talking about marketing, that makes sense.
Tas Bober [00:07:03]:
And I didn't. I started with more self development. And then actually, Anthony Pierre found me very early on, and his first message to me was like, what are you doing? Why are you posting about this? You have all this, like, marketing background. I'm like, I'm kind of burnt out. I just want to. It's more of a creative exercise. He's like, how could you not want to talk about marketing? It's the most interesting thing in the world. I'm like, is it, though? I mean, there are other interesting things.
Tas Bober [00:07:26]:
And then I started talking about marketing and some growth there. And then my company ended up doing layoffs. And so I was like, well, okay, the LinkedIn thing, people were already sending me messages asking if I wanted to consult and do other things. I'm like, well, okay, fine. Maybe this is a sign from the universe. So I started doing that, and then there's all this talk on LinkedIn about niching down and niching down. If you want to be fancy, I'm not that fancy. So I'll say niche.
Tas Bober [00:07:55]:
And you included. You were like, pick a niche. Go for it. Talk about something specific. Because I think the first time you and I talked, I was kind of like fractional head of digital. I didn't really know you were just talking about general digital and website.
Dave Gerhardt [00:08:07]:
Yeah. Now you have, like ten things on your LinkedIn profile that say digital strategy advisor. It seems like you've really found your business.
Tas Bober [00:08:15]:
Yeah, it was crazy. I went landing pages. It was kind of a good marriage between my website experience and then the distribution end with the digital stuff, and it just kind of took off. Like, the content got a lot more focused and tactical, and then people started sharing it. A lot of my growth came from there. And then I started just evolving the brand a little bit. And then people started tagging me in, posts about landing pages and stuff. I'm like, oh, okay.
Tas Bober [00:08:42]:
I guess it's resonating. And now I have some very strong povs on that and people say it back to me. So I'm like, okay, that's another indication that it's working, and it's been kind of life changing. I actually started writing a year this month. In a week, it'll be a year that I've been writing on LinkedIn. Yeah, I just told someone if they told me a year ago I'd be here today recording with Dave, have my own business, I'd be like, what are you smoking? Give me some of that.
Dave Gerhardt [00:09:14]:
Do you really feel that way? So, in your case, did it end up being a positive that you were laid off from this company? Do you think you would have gotten here on your own? Did this accelerate that? I'm curious to hear that side.
Tas Bober [00:09:27]:
I don't think I would have gotten here on my own if I hadn't started writing on LinkedIn. It wouldn't have even been an option. I would have just joined some other folks and just applied and eventually gotten another job in house, which I don't have anything against, by the way. I mean, someone asked me just today if I would ever take an in house role again. I'm like, I'm not burning that bridge. You know? It's just like, this is what I'm doing now, and it's fun. I've learned a lot. I'm refining a lot of the things that I already thought about or have never thought about in house.
Tas Bober [00:09:59]:
And then if I do ever go in house, I'll just be a much better marketer for it.
Dave Gerhardt [00:10:03]:
Well, what's cool is, like, you can actually have both this way. Like, let's just say you have a bunch of clients. One of those companies is awesome, and you actually love working on it. And then they reach out to you. Like, it's not. That company could always reach out to you and say, like, hey, should we do this more officially? And so you kind of get best of both.
Tas Bober [00:10:20]:
Yeah, that's already happening happened. I just had a client call, like, an hour before we started talking, and it was the same thing. It's like, you know, they were like, well, would you ever consider. I'm like, I don't know, maybe one day.
Dave Gerhardt [00:10:31]:
Yeah. The reason I brought all this stuff up is because I wanted people to hear from you. Like, I think when people think about, like, writing on LinkedIn or something, it often gets lumped into this, like, digital personal branding, or, like, that's what it has to be. It has to be, like, witty, pithy stuff. It has to be, like, to build your personal brand. And people always talk about that, but what you just told me is like, here's this woman who has a family, had a job, got laid off, kind of had some ideas, started writing about them there, not posting memes, not doing silly stuff, not trying to be a growth, personal brand growth. Like, that wasn't your motivation. And then you ended up getting inbound leads for a business that you could start.
Dave Gerhardt [00:11:13]:
And so because you did that, you're like, huh? I actually. Cause people get stuck when they want to leave a company and go work for themselves. The biggest thing is, like, I just can't go without no income or I don't want to do it. But when you start to get stuff coming in on LinkedIn, it's incredible. Like, for me, even when I was working at drift as a vp of marketing, there was like a period midway through my time there, halfway where I just was burnt out. And I started to get messages from companies, companies that wanted to hire me, companies that wanted to, hey, can I pick your brain? Could we hire you for an hour? Could you speak at our thing? And that was such an important moment for me because it made me realize, like, oh, yeah, what I can do is not dependent on one company. Now, I could stand on my own if I wanted to. And so if I left tomorrow, I could have three consulting clients out of the gate.
Dave Gerhardt [00:12:02]:
And that was like, what, the first thing that kind of put me onto this idea of entrepreneurship and starting my own thing, right?
Tas Bober [00:12:07]:
Yeah. And that's the other piece, too, which is, you know, I wasn't planning on it. And today there are people I talk to. I have networking calls, like every week now, and I have a bad habit of saying yes to them. But that was me not too long ago. I was in house, and I was trying to figure things out and decide if it was the right move for my family, too. And the thing is, I always tell people, I'm like, it's not about whether to start a side hustle or go out on your own or tell corporate America, like, to buzz off or whatever. It's about giving yourself some options.
Tas Bober [00:12:44]:
And those options aren't necessarily for you to abandon your career path. It's just options to be looked at with respect in your field, to learn from other people, to get on podcasts and talk about things that you're passionate about, or just pursue something on the side as more of a creative exercise versus this agenda to try and hustle and get your way out of it. I also tell people, you have to be very practical how you approach this. I did it because we were in the financial situation to afford for me to do that and take some risks that if it didn't work out for a little while, that we'd be okay. So I always tell people, don't make the jump before you're ready to make a jump, especially if you have family and things like that. You can't do that. It's not about you or just you. So you gotta make sure that you have some ducks in a row before you do that.
Tas Bober [00:13:35]:
And then when you are ready, I've had that conversation with a few people. When you are ready, reach out to me. I'm happy to help you with things, like all the things I learned to put a proper sales pitch together, how I talk to inbound leads, how I qualify companies that I talk to, how I handle my discovery process. I'll give you all that for free. Like, I don't care. I want everybody to win and be successful whenever you're ready. But you will decide at that point whether you're in a situation, circumstantially, that you can do this. And then there are people who have helped me get here faster.
Tas Bober [00:14:08]:
And it's like a Starbucks line. Everyone's buying coffee for the ones behind them. And so I'm happy to buy coffee for you when you're behind me in line. Whenever you are, you're ready. Like, I'll buy you your caramel macchiato. You know, I'll give you all the ingredients for the best drink. You just got to decide that you want to get in line.
Dave Gerhardt [00:14:27]:
Okay. And when did you decide to niche further down? You kind of were doing this fractional digital thing for a little bit. I think I saw recently that you were like, I'm niching down to landing pages for ads or something. Tell me about that. Tell me about how you whittled that down to focus on something specific.
Tas Bober [00:14:45]:
So when I did the fractional digital and website thing, I was still doing the networking calls, which I always tell people do them, because you will get golden nuggets from people who just want to meet you and just want to help. And not to bring up Anthony again, but he's the one that yells at me the most. But Anthony and I had a networking call finally in person, just like, we were just hanging out. He's like, in a panera or something. I don't know where he was. Just mouthful of food talking to me. I said, hey, how are you? How's it going? He's like, what are you even doing now? What are you even doing? I'm like, what do you mean? And he's like, let me go. To your website.
Tas Bober [00:15:16]:
I'm like, don't go to my website. He's like, aren't you the website person? I'm like, don't go to my website. I'm like, just ignore the website. And then he's like, look, Rob and I have worked with 150 companies. If anybody listening doesn't know who I'm referring to, it's Anthony Perry and his partner Rob Kominsky, who run Fletcher.
Dave Gerhardt [00:15:33]:
The website is fletchpmm.com if you want to check it out.
Tas Bober [00:15:36]:
So they help early stage B, two b horizontal startups with homepage messaging. That's how niche they are. So obviously huge advocates of the niche. And he said, look, maybe this will give you some direction, but we talk to a lot of startups and they want us to do more than just the homepage. They want us to do, like landing pages with paid ads. That's just not our forte. We play where we're good. But based on your background, I'm looking at this.
Tas Bober [00:16:03]:
You have all this, like the 400 website sites that you have worked on, attached or whatever, and then you have the digital side of things. Like, you would be such a good match to marry the paid ads and the landing pages. And looking at that, I was like, okay, well, kind of makes sense. We get off the call, I'm sitting there, I'm twiddling my thumbs, and then I was like, well, screw it. I'm going to just try it. It's not a marriage decision. Let's see what happens. And I changed my entire website, my entire LinkedIn, everything that night.
Tas Bober [00:16:36]:
The next morning, Dave, I got two messages in my inbox that screenshotted my tagline, my new tagline that said, paid ads, landing page strategy for growth, stage b, two b SaaS, and said, what's this about? And I was like, well, you know, I'm trying this new thing where I'm niching down on like, one specific problem. They're like, cool. Hey, do you want to join us on this RFP with this b two b SaaS company? And then another one's like, do you want to.
Dave Gerhardt [00:17:02]:
Somebody reached out to you?
Tas Bober [00:17:03]:
Yeah, two agencies reached out to me who were doing an RFP for two growth stage SaaS companies. And they were like, do you want to join us as the landing page person?
Dave Gerhardt [00:17:11]:
We need a freelance person who can do this.
Tas Bober [00:17:14]:
Yeah, we need someone with your background to do landing page strategy. Not just like CRO work, like landing page four b, two b. And. Yeah, so that was like my first couple. And then it's kind of snowballed since then.
Dave Gerhardt [00:17:28]:
And if you go down in a niche like this, I kind of feel like, as somebody with, like, a knowledge business like this. Right. It's tough to be like the a b to b marketing consultant because it's so broad. There's so many skills. And I did a little bit of consulting, and I struggled with this, and I think I was trying to, I think I could help in too many ways versus if I just package one thing up specifically. And so also, doesn't this help you? Because now you can go super deep on a topic and, like, really know this part, really know this thing inside and out where it's impossible to know every SaaS tool, how everything works. Like, you can just really zero in on this. Has that been a part of it?
Tas Bober [00:18:04]:
Yeah, it's kind of crazy because my first couple of engagements just that came from my network, and it was more like advising on digital and website. We'd get on calls and be like, well, what do you need my help with this month? And then it would range from, like, a campaign brief to go audit this resource center to like, can you review this? It was like the client was kind of struggling with what to give me to do because they didn't know what problems I could solve because I was like, I can solve everything.
Dave Gerhardt [00:18:34]:
It doesn't help you bring, like, repeatable, like, any repeatability to the business.
Tas Bober [00:18:38]:
So then they're sitting there going, well, I don't know if we got that much value. You know, we'll come back to you and we don't want to waste your time. And when we have something specific, and now even the discovery processes, like, we get on the calls and even just talking about the problem, they come to me and they're like, okay, so you're dealing with landing pages. Here's our problem. With our landing pages. We talk about it. I walk them through my process, and it's like, you know, typically one or two calls and a follow up email, and it's like, all right, cool. Yes or no? Let's go.
Tas Bober [00:19:07]:
Which is great. And then I immediately know what I'm supposed to do when they ask me, what's the process? What do we do after we sign the contract? I'm like, here's kickoff. Here's the next step. I'm able to, like, give them the full fledged deliverables that come from the engagement, and they're like, oh. And it opens the door, right? So now a couple of them are like, okay, after this is over, can we continue working together? Like, you know, what else can you do? So they've had that good dopamine hit experience, but that doesn't mean that's the only thing you can do or you have to do.
Dave Gerhardt [00:19:38]:
All right, let's go into the specifics of this topic now. Paid ads. Paid ads. Landing page strategy. Let's teach people in the next 20 minutes of this podcast, okay, how to get smarter and how to get better. Okay, so first of all, if we break this down, in the simplest terms, it says landing pages that you are driving paid traffic to for your business.
Tas Bober [00:19:59]:
Yes. So definitely important to level set that. These are not pages that are in your navigation on your main website. They are isolated pages that you create. Sometimes they do it with tools like unbounce and stuff. But my recommendation is always to use your own cms, but you're just going to make them non searchable. So non index, no follow by Google. And you only use distribution channels, specific distribution channels to send folks there.
Tas Bober [00:20:29]:
So it could be PPC or paid social or an email. But I only deal with the paid distribution part and there's a reason for that too.
Dave Gerhardt [00:20:38]:
All right, so first of all, what mistakes do people make? Why does somebody need to fix this?
Tas Bober [00:20:43]:
So I think that the biggest mistake is that we treat b, two b landing pages the same way as we treat b, two c landing pages, which is we think that some CRO hackery and sorcery is going to help someone make a buying decision on a five figure acv purchase a lot faster. Changing some button colors isn't going to do that. And so some of the things is, when I always ask people, I'm like when you close your eyes and you picture a landing page for that kind of purpose, for legion type purpose, how do you picture it? You got a form on the top, right? You got a little h one, there's a little text, there's a little blurb. And then it's like, download now or request a demo. So when you have a form that's right there, when you come to the page, you're asking someone to marry you before you've even dated them. Right. Which would be kind of scary if you were actually doing that with Tinder. What do the kids use these days? Do you know, I met my husband.
Dave Gerhardt [00:21:41]:
On Tinder, so I'm out of the game.
Tas Bober [00:21:43]:
Yeah, I'm very out of the game.
Dave Gerhardt [00:21:44]:
I think if I knew and answer that question, it would only serve to get me in trouble. It would not help me in any way. So I have no idea.
Tas Bober [00:21:50]:
I think we're both safe. Okay, that's good.
Dave Gerhardt [00:21:52]:
So you're working with b two B. Where are most people that you see that are spending money on ads to drive to landing pages? Where are they spending that money on? And are there any common denominators between the content and the offer? Is every company doing something different or are they kind of general patterns that most of the B two b companies that I work with are spending on these channels and they're trying to drive to these pages to do x?
Tas Bober [00:22:16]:
Yeah, there's common denominators for sure.
Dave Gerhardt [00:22:18]:
So can you give us some, like, general learnings?
Tas Bober [00:22:21]:
Yes. They are typically spending on paid search through Google, primarily.
Dave Gerhardt [00:22:27]:
Okay.
Tas Bober [00:22:27]:
LinkedIn.
Dave Gerhardt [00:22:28]:
Yep.
Tas Bober [00:22:29]:
Which is pretty standard. I mean, those are the first two I'd recommend anyway. Actually, if they were not doing anything, the first I would recommend would be just search because LinkedIn can be expensive. And then the common denominators that I see landing page wise is either two top of funnel content. So lots of gated white papers and lead magnets and things like that to just drive a huge volume of conversions, right?
Dave Gerhardt [00:22:55]:
Yep, yep.
Tas Bober [00:22:56]:
And then the other pieces, they have too many landing pages that just say nothing. And the third one, which was my favorite slash, least favorite, is just dumping everybody on the homepage. And I always use this example, which is imagine you're searching for golf pants. You're a golf pants guy, right?
Dave Gerhardt [00:23:14]:
Sure. Also just known as pants.
Tas Bober [00:23:16]:
You're looking for pants and then old navy dumps you on their homepage and you're like, okay, now I gotta navigate to the pants section. But now they're throwing hats in my face. So there's a lot that's going on there. And we do the same thing in b two B and somehow think it's okay. So those are the scenarios that I typically see. And then the other part is someone comes to me and they're like, I have 200 landing pages. I'm like, why do you have so many? So it becomes this activity thing to manage.
Dave Gerhardt [00:23:41]:
You know, basically there's a couple elements. I'm just spitting this back to you, that channels what people are doing is using mostly paid search and LinkedIn to drive to landing pages. Those are the channels. Then the content. What they're doing is they're spending to drive people to a landing page. Actually, worst case is they're spending to drive people to their homepage. Okay, so step one would be like, let's fix that and create some landing pages. But then most of the landing pages that you see are either they're driving people and then this is why they're reaching out to you, because this isn't working.
Dave Gerhardt [00:24:13]:
And working is typically defined as like we're spending money, but we're not getting customers. So this is not working. And it's not working because it's either to top of the funnel. So we're just, we're not selling our SaaS product because we're sending everyone to some ebook about five personal development tips or whatever. Five books every salesperson, we're driving LinkedIn ads to five books every salesperson should read and we're trying to sell them a CRM.
Tas Bober [00:24:37]:
Yes, exactly. You got it.
Dave Gerhardt [00:24:39]:
Okay. Or they're just, the landing page content is just not very good. And I've done this for where it's like, oh, we just gotta get a landing page up. You kind of just clone an existing one and you don't actually spend time on it. Versus like if you actually spent time and really did good product marketing and wrote a good story and wrote good copy, it'd make a big difference.
Tas Bober [00:24:56]:
Yes.
Dave Gerhardt [00:24:57]:
All right. I got my head around this. What about creative? What about the actual creative of the ad? Are you touching that? And that, wouldn't that be a piece of this, like diagnosing this funnel?
Tas Bober [00:25:06]:
It's kind of a piece. I do landing pages first because that's exactly right. We always think of it as an afterthought, right. We go through all the approvals for the ads, the targeting, what the campaign is. We have weekly meetings about that. And then someone cobbles up a landing page and throws it together. And I'm like, well, if you have the landing page first, right. Everything else should just kind of follow.
Tas Bober [00:25:28]:
And so you're looking at like a search query. First you build the landing pages. You also look at your internal documents and, you know, your product marketing components, which are super important. We can talk about that part of the process because that's a huge part of my process, actually. And then the creative is essentially going to mirror what's on the landing page. So I'm less worried about the creative. Even when we audit them, we're like, well, your creative can only do as well as like your landing pages or the query that you're trying to satisfy. So don't spend as much time proportionally on the ads themselves right away.
Tas Bober [00:26:03]:
That will naturally come if you get the other pieces together first.
Dave Gerhardt [00:26:07]:
This is great. We're getting at helping people understand why their b, two b landing pages might not be converting, which is awesome. Okay, so what should the offer be? And this is where I've kind of. I don't have good thinking of it. This is not an area that I'm strong in. But you said earlier, like, it's not like b, two c advertising, and in b, two c paid advertising. It's like, conceptually, at least to me, again, I don't have experience in this world is much easier, right? Like, hey, you visited my site. I now want to sell you deodorant.
Dave Gerhardt [00:26:36]:
Click here and buy the deodorant. Pretty simple, right? I think that's easier to optimize. Like, you might not be good at it, but, like, you. Okay, is it the price? Is it the package? It's easier to optimize that. Is it the offer in b two b? I don't have a good framework for thinking of it because it's like, well, this person, of course they're not going to buy right now. So what do we show them? And then if we just show them, like, an article, how do we then, like, track that through later? And then if we give them step one, step two, step three, it's not always linear, and it's a little bit muddier. And so how do you think about what you should be driving someone to when you're spending, when you're using paid traffic in a b two b context?
Tas Bober [00:27:16]:
I'm so glad you asked, Dave.
Dave Gerhardt [00:27:18]:
Thank you. And by the way, for people listening, like, this is what's fun about doing this podcast is, like, I don't always like to just interview someone. I think I'm trying to use this to learn, and I think that if I learn, it becomes good listening for you, as opposed to be, like, great, you know? And so that's. That's literally. I'm literally, like, to the class. I'm taking notes right now. And so this is great. Keep going.
Tas Bober [00:27:36]:
Okay. Amazing. We should do, like, a screen share thing sometime because I have so many visuals to go with this at some point.
Dave Gerhardt [00:27:42]:
Let's do it. Yeah. I'm sure you'll remind me in the comments for the.
Tas Bober [00:27:46]:
I will remind you in front of 150,000 of your followers that you need to have me on. That's how I get Dave to do things. I just call him out in his.
Dave Gerhardt [00:27:56]:
I was gonna make a note. I was literally gonna make a note to, like, follow up with Tas. And I was like, actually, no, she will let me forget.
Tas Bober [00:28:04]:
I promise I won't. Okay, so one of the other mistakes that we make is that we also try to measure the b two b landing page performance. Like b two C. The problem is with b two C, there's less risk to purchase. Right. Dave can make a decision on a new deodorant because maybe he's out of like $20 at the most. That's which would be a very expensive deodorant, by the way. But you're likely not going to make those decisions or force anybody to make those decisions.
Tas Bober [00:28:34]:
For a b two B product that is generally very expensive. It requires a lot of stakeholders. No one's making those decisions by themselves because they don't want all the accountability by themselves. And so I actually teach people how to look at the metrics to support the landing pages themselves, because just because you're not driving conversions from a landing page does not mean that it is not working. So that is the first thing.
Dave Gerhardt [00:29:02]:
Okay, I'm with you, but how do I know it's not working? Like, how do I know that? How do I prove that out?
Tas Bober [00:29:07]:
That story is a little bit harder. But I actually even posted today about how I track landing page performance. And there's just two buckets. There's consumption, because b two B is very information research driven. So how many times? And maybe, I don't know, Dave, it's been a while for you, but with me being more like mid management at SaaS companies, my boss would just say, hey, we need a new translator tool, like translator software. Can you just go, like, look at a few options? Okay, so here I am. I'm doing the research. I'm looking at the companies, I'm going to landing pages.
Tas Bober [00:29:41]:
I'm getting targeted by the ads. I'm going and looking through all of this stuff. I collect my information, right? So I'm probably not going to convert on the landing page right away. I look at the landing page, I collect the information that's on there. I take down notes. My one on one with my boss is on Thursday. I can't really make a decision to contact these companies and waste my time before I talk to her. So I leave the landing page, I'm going about my life.
Tas Bober [00:30:08]:
Four days later, I have my one on one with my boss, and then I'm like, hey, I looked at, you know, 12345 vendors here. They seem like good options. Is this still a priority? Do you want me to pursue it? Let me know, and then I'll go set up demos with them and discovery. Yeah, cool. Still a priority. Go for it. Cool. Now I go back, I can't find the landing page.
Tas Bober [00:30:30]:
So what do I do? I go back directly to the main website and I sign up for a demo there, right? That's like traditional path.
Dave Gerhardt [00:30:37]:
That's amazing. That would be like me seeing that and being like, yeah, they came through the website directly, organic search. But can you measure that? Like if you have cookied somebody or something or if they viewed your site, is that possible? You can go LinkedIn ad to view this landing page to six weeks later, sign up for a demo. Would you be able to see that history?
Tas Bober [00:30:57]:
I mean, kind of. It depends on some of the tools that allow you to do that. Like some platforms do, like view through. You know, it's like if you have viewed this ad or this page and then 21 days later you came back to the page and converted. I mean, a lot of companies do that. It's like hard to trust. But for me, in the simplest form, I'm not trying to get anybody to buy new tools and like, do all these, like, crazy analytics. You're looking for little signals, but you just have to understand where to look.
Tas Bober [00:31:25]:
And it's not always on the page itself or in the campaign itself. So what I do is I look at, here's when we launched our foundational campaigns. I call them foundational, like, not the white papers, not the accessory, like webinars and events and stuff. I'm looking at the foundational and we can talk about those frameworks. I have foundational frameworks of landing pages that you would massage over time that are very informational. Look at the launch of those and then look at the return visits to your main site if there's an uplift. So if you have generally 20% that are returned visitors to your site, but after launch that goes up to 25%. You're looking at that incremental of, like, people are coming back and having touch points with you over and over again.
Tas Bober [00:32:06]:
And according to hockey Stack, it could be 48 times on average before they become an MQL. So you want them to keep coming back 48 times. So we're looking at that return visit data as well to determine overall lift of the website.
Dave Gerhardt [00:32:22]:
Would you do anything gated? Does that matter? If you're able to track, like view through, why would you ever want to try to send somebody through a form? I'm just curious to see how you use each again. I don't know. This is not my area. So I'm straight up asking. I want to know because everybody still wants to be like, well, we want to send them to this offer so we can know that they really came in. But is that always the best thing to do? Does that convert the best is that the best experience? I don't know.
Tas Bober [00:32:50]:
No. So my process, because I have to get up to speed on the product very quickly, right. I don't have hours and weeks to give to onboarding internally, which to be honest, I don't know how many people actually did. I won't call everybody out, though. It's fine. But I created this thing called a buyer's journey canvas to help me understand the market, the ICP, the ICP's gaps in the market that your product is supposedly going to fill. What are their current approaches in the market? How do they actually fulfill this? Like, you don't exist as a company. How are they doing this today? Who are the competitors in the market? And then using actually Fletch, who was very kind to give me their value prop canvas to help me understand products.
Tas Bober [00:33:34]:
It's not me helping companies with positioning. I don't do that because I work with growth stage SaaS. You should probably already have that stuff figured out. If not do go to the Fletch guys. But I use that to understand the product and then extract the value props out of that. So I understand what that is and then understand their social proof. I go source them from other websites, not the ones that they just give me. I go get them from other sites and I see what people on Reddit say about them because Reddit will be brutally honest and then understand what the ask is.
Tas Bober [00:34:04]:
That's the biggest thing. So the ask, I don't really mess with the white papers and lead magnets and stuff, Dave, like, I'm just like, you guys got that covered, go for it. You want to do your volume of leads, light the dashboards up with hope. Go for it. I'm working on those foundational kind of like problem aware group, the like six, seven, maybe ten landing pages that you have to just keep evergreen ongoing forever and ever after. I'm long gone from your life and you're just massaging that over and over again based on the data every time. There's not like an end point in your head. You're never going to turn it off because your value props are likely not going to change often.
Tas Bober [00:34:44]:
The problems of the ICP aren't going to change often or you wouldn't exist, right. And so you're still going to keep those on, but looking for signals of like, overall lift, not just conversions on page. And so that ask is either like a free trial or scheduling a call. So my offers are always the same and they may not take me up on the offer on the page. I would love if they did that, but that's not what they do. But I look at how they're consuming the information on the page. Are they reading all the information? What block are they sitting on the most? Are they interacting with this block? Are valueprops sitting on a three tab block? They're not clicking the other two tabs. So let's change the layout of this page.
Tas Bober [00:35:23]:
Is this message resonating? Are they calling it something else? So those are the things that we're testing over time. And then that can help actually inform your main website because you're like, hey, I ran 2000 sessions to this landing page that had a value prop on it, but we rephrased it like this and it actually like helped drive engagement up. We should put that on the main product page, right? So just things like that where it anchors to like this larger value of like landing pages just being like campaign destinations.
Dave Gerhardt [00:35:50]:
What else have I not asked about? Because you're going, so keep going.
Tas Bober [00:35:55]:
You want me to keep going?
Dave Gerhardt [00:35:56]:
Okay, well, you're just, you're in like teaching mode and this is good for this podcast. So teach us.
Tas Bober [00:36:02]:
Yeah, I love that too. So please, if anybody has questions, just ask me. I also talk a lot about it in general, but yeah, I just think it's looking for the metrics the right way. And I think it's very flawed to sit here and do channel by channel marketing and roi. I know that's a much harder sell internally. I've been there. So it's easy for me to sit on my high horse outside and be like, don't measure based on a single channel. But I do think that things like paid help lift other channels up.
Tas Bober [00:36:32]:
Just like you talk about social, right? Like, it takes a while to see some traction when a founder is posting on LinkedIn, but likely a source of a lot of leads and inbound that's coming in, it's the same thing. It's that surrounding and being able to answer a question versus selling. So April Dunford style, be a guide, not a seller. That's exactly the framework of the landing pages is like not trying to oversell them on a conversion. I'm trying to give them the information in order for them to say, this guy gets it. I want to put them on the short list for evaluation. That's my goal.
Dave Gerhardt [00:37:12]:
All right, so let's say somebody works. Like, forget the fact that you do this as a business, but like, let's say you're inside of a company and this is what you do. Okay, we want to make a bunch of changes with paid ads, with our landing pages. By the way, why do they call paid ads? Why isn't it just ads? Drop the paid.
Tas Bober [00:37:28]:
You're right, it's just ads.
Dave Gerhardt [00:37:29]:
What is paid ads?
Tas Bober [00:37:31]:
You're right. I don't know. Do they think that we're going to be talking about, like all other ads, like tv ads?
Dave Gerhardt [00:37:36]:
It's not just you. Everyone says this. Paid ads. Paid advertising. Is there free advertise? There is. Like, imagine my thing was like, I'm the free advertising consultant. That'd be sick. Actually.
Dave Gerhardt [00:37:48]:
That's a nice little niche. Like, oh, what do you do? I do free adults.
Tas Bober [00:37:52]:
Also known as influence marketing.
Dave Gerhardt [00:37:54]:
Pr.
Tas Bober [00:37:54]:
It's not free. Yeah, pr.
Dave Gerhardt [00:37:56]:
So drop the page.
Tas Bober [00:37:57]:
Yeah, drop the page.
Dave Gerhardt [00:37:58]:
Oh, if you're listening. No, let's make this an industry wide thing right now. If you're listening to this podcast, you're listening. If you are one of the 5000 people that will listen to this in the next 30 days, do me a favor, stop calling it paid ads. Life is too short. Lose the paid. Let's just call it ads, all right?
Tas Bober [00:38:14]:
Or digital ads. If you want to be specific about what type of ads we're talking about.
Dave Gerhardt [00:38:18]:
I would be okay with digital ads.
Tas Bober [00:38:20]:
Okay.
Dave Gerhardt [00:38:20]:
That lets people know that you're not going to do their billboards.
Tas Bober [00:38:23]:
Yes, exactly.
Dave Gerhardt [00:38:24]:
So digital ads. Okay, I'm down with that.
Tas Bober [00:38:27]:
Yeah, digital ads. All right.
Dave Gerhardt [00:38:28]:
Anyway, but how do you know if this is working? You identify like, hey, I hire you, you're helping me with my business. You're helping us drive traffic with exit five. We're going to drive traffic from paid search and LinkedIn. We got these landing pages. How do we know that they're working? Is it, how many more customers did we get from that ad spend over the course of time? How do you measure this?
Tas Bober [00:38:48]:
I mean, if I could answer that question very, very well, I'd be also very, very rich, which is probably where the Hawk attack guys are going, right.
Dave Gerhardt [00:38:56]:
If you were selling b two c, is it just because it says b two b? Like if you were hydroflask selling water bottle, would the answer be more clear?
Tas Bober [00:39:03]:
Yes, 100%. Because the path is right there. There was a brief point where I was doing b two b to c and it was insurance. And they could actually add the marketplace insurance to their cart. And we would look at abandon rates all the time and then try to retarget those folks with the abandonment, you know, who would abandon the form and things like that, which I guess we could do some of that here. But with those long sales cycles, I mean, we're not going to see immediate rOi. Who said it the other day? Someone said it on LinkedIn, where it was like, the marketing you do today is what's impacting purchase decisions next year. And so we're not going to be doing that.
Tas Bober [00:39:38]:
But the thing is, when companies come to me, they already either have a hunch that their money's being flushed down the drain, that it's not driving what it needs to be driving. They know that their landing pages or their distribution, like, something is up or it's different. And these are companies who might have a huge volume of leads, but then when they're not closing, they're not turning into opportunities, or the quality is crappy. That's when they come over and they're like, what do we do? And we know our landing pages are crap. Our distribution is silly. It's so messy. We have so much stuff going on. We've inherited it based on these five different hands.
Tas Bober [00:40:15]:
It's shifted. We don't even know if we're doing it right. Just help us with, like, what's the foundational, like, startup pack? And I'm like, cool, I got you. So we get some clarity on what the product is. Everyone's aligned on that. And then we use a very, like, product focused, customer focused way and methodology and messaging to actually put things on the page. So I always write the page as, like, if I were a buyer, what's the information I'd need to know right before I go through that? And I think that's the benefit is having been a buyer internally for half of my career, it's just been frustrating. When I go to a page and I'm like, cool, cool, cool, cool jargon.
Tas Bober [00:40:53]:
Great. Thanks for the 250% roi that everybody's selling. Where's the product information? Like, what's the thing that you're solving for me? What's the biggest thing you enabled me to do? What is your starting price? Right? What can I expect from the sales process? If I submit my information right now, what's going to happen? Am I never going to hear from you again? Or am I going to hear from you in 24 hours? Am I going to get a demo right away? Or is someone going to harass me first? Oops, sorry for a discovery call. Those are some questions that I think we can answer beforehand. We don't need to gatekeep that information.
Dave Gerhardt [00:41:30]:
But the answer is no. We don't know how to really measure this well.
Tas Bober [00:41:33]:
Oh, yes. Back to that. I think we can it's going to take some time where it may not be something that's like direct attribution to paid. Right. Because if people are coming back to your page, you're seeing that website lift. So I look at it as you're coming back, are you getting direct, like, your overall handraisers on the website, are they increasing? Right. What's the rising tide?
Dave Gerhardt [00:41:57]:
Oh, interesting. So you're not willing to just say, let's just look at paid channels and direct conversion from those paid because you're like, damn it, I want credit for the people who came back.
Tas Bober [00:42:08]:
I don't even want credit.
Dave Gerhardt [00:42:09]:
No, no. I'm just being silly. I'm explaining that, like, the simplest terms to, like, we may have driven that. That's interesting. So that's what's challenging about b two b buying today is like, yeah. It's not. You don't control that. And so your example earlier might be perfect.
Dave Gerhardt [00:42:21]:
Like, yeah, I saw that ad so long ago, and that's how I first got on the radar. Okay, so you could also basically, then compare. What you're saying is compare overall handraiser. Like, look at each channel. But also let's look at overall handraisers during that time, because there's a possibility that that also could have gone up.
Tas Bober [00:42:40]:
Yeah. And so you could have had, you know, like 200 a month. Then you launch these foundational campaigns. Maybe a month goes by or two, you're seeing 250. So is the overall number going up? And so I know that we always say the b two b buying journey is the problem. No, it's the b two b measurement journey is the problem. It's how we're measuring our performance. It doesn't align to how buyers buy.
Tas Bober [00:43:03]:
So we're blaming the journey, but it's us. We're the problem. Hi, it's me, right? Taylor Swift. Every time I'm on your podcast, I quote some song. I think last time was Doja Cat. And so this time it's Taylor Swift, who I don't even listen to. But, yeah, so it's like, hi, I'm the problem. I'm measuring this wrong, or I'm putting all this pressure on my demand gen person.
Tas Bober [00:43:23]:
Tell me how much content syndication is driving. But it's like, how much are all of those contributing to the overall bucket? You know? And we need to look at the overall bucket. How well is marketing doing right in driving demand for our product? And I think that's what we need to be looking at. But that's what I tell them. I'm like, I'll tell you, if people are engaging on the page, their engagement level will give you a good indication of, is your message resonating or not? Are they collecting that information? I look at heat map data. I look at session recordings. I'll watch recordings, I'll watch ten minute long recordings to see what they're doing on the page because that's an indication of how much they're absorbing because it's information heavy.
Dave Gerhardt [00:44:05]:
What innovation can happen in this space? Like, if you had a company that you really wanted to just, hey, ignore all the best practices. Like, if I just gave you the exit five credit card and said, like, do you have carte blanche? What's the stuff that you'd want to do here? That's either you haven't got to do or not enough people are doing that you think would make a big difference.
Tas Bober [00:44:25]:
The biggest thing is I always tell people what's not going to solve their problem. You don't need more campaigns. Marketers don't need more stuff to do and manage and more activities, and they definitely don't need more budget, which everybody loves hearing. I'm like, you don't need to spend money. I have a client who spends $3,000 a month. I have a client who spends $500,000 a month on paid distribution. You don't need any of that. What you do need is.
Tas Bober [00:44:50]:
I know, it's insane.
Dave Gerhardt [00:44:51]:
What's the mix of that 500,000?
Tas Bober [00:44:53]:
They're both on extreme ends. Most of mine are like the middle, somewhere in the middle. Between like 31 hundred k a month. Crazy spend.
Dave Gerhardt [00:45:02]:
Yeah, $500,000 a month. Obviously, I'm not a, more like, I know businesses exist and spend that much money on digital. It's just whenever I hear it, especially now that I have a business and I think about what we spend and stuff, I'm like, oh, my God, that is, is insane. More money than we'd spend in an entire year in 30 days. Can't even.
Tas Bober [00:45:19]:
Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, but it's a big business. That's nothing for them.
Dave Gerhardt [00:45:24]:
And there you go. There's your case to hire me as enterprise CMO one day. There's no experience managing large budgets.
Tas Bober [00:45:31]:
Yeah, there you go. The reason why I do it around digital ads is because you need, see, I listen, the reason you need digital ads, ads for the landing pages to succeed is because I'm just trying to get a way to drive your ICP through targeting. Right? Drive your ICP to these pages to see how they're interacting so I look at landing pages as, like, a sandbox environment where we can play. We don't have to worry about Susie and product or, you know, Sam in sales trying to tell us what to put on the website. We have kind of a little more autonomy in the space to, like, rapid test and ship and ship and see how our ICP actually responds to the page. So I tell people, don't worry about the offer. Like, everybody wants to put the form. What if they don't see the form? Trust me, they know how to get to the form.
Tas Bober [00:46:22]:
You're fine. So it actually, the form and the ask is all the way at the bottom. I focus very much on what's in it for the buyer.
Dave Gerhardt [00:46:30]:
Very nice. All right, tess, this was great. A quick little masterclass. I even wrote this out. My first headline was paid ads landing page strategy. No, we can't use that one anymore because we can't say paid. Why? Your b two b landing pages aren't converting with task bobber. Yeah, that's a good one.
Dave Gerhardt [00:46:47]:
Hey, now, there you go.
Tas Bober [00:46:48]:
B two B. Sass is a better word to I. It's not just b two b. Because I.
Dave Gerhardt [00:46:52]:
Listen, ma'am, you come on the show now you're telling me the specific keywords you want in the headlines.
Tas Bober [00:47:00]:
It's not because of the keywords. It's because b two b can be professional services, and I'm honestly at a loss at how to help them. So that's why I say SaaS. It is very product led.
Dave Gerhardt [00:47:11]:
Most of what we cover with exit five is SaaS.
Tas Bober [00:47:14]:
Yeah.
Dave Gerhardt [00:47:14]:
Although every now and then, someone will be like, I wish you had more content about b two b non SaaS. And so that is an interesting topic.
Tas Bober [00:47:19]:
Very hard.
Dave Gerhardt [00:47:20]:
All right, Tas, good to see you. I will talk to you. I'll see you in the comments. Go and follow task. You'll see her on LinkedIn. Send her a message, connect with her. Tell her that you thought this episode was helpful. And if you haven't already, please subscribe to this podcast.
Dave Gerhardt [00:47:32]:
A lot of you listen, but haven't actually hit subscribe or follow. This is my business. We're doing something really cool here, and I'm really bullish about what we're building with exit five. And so, tass, it's people like you that come on and hang out that make this a lot of fun to do. I'm happy to have you back, and I'll see you soon, okay?
Tas Bober [00:47:48]:
Okay. See ya.
Dave Gerhardt [00:47:50]:
All right.