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What are the best brands doing to stay relevant, build trust, and create content smarter?
At Share Your Genius, we have the same questions, so we're tapping the best in the space for their answers—one voicemail at a time.
Join us each week for quick hits of insights from b2b marketers and leaders.
[00:00:00]
[00:00:09] Rachel Elsts Downey: We've hit peak data. Brands are collecting more of it, likes timestamps, impressions. Social media has taught us marketers to chase those shiny objects that seem like insights, but they don't actually tell you much. But that mindset has seeped into our B2B land, where impact is defined by what's easiest to measure, not what actually moves the needle.
[00:00:33] Rachel Elsts Downey: More importantly, what actually moves people. And that's the gap I wanted to explore, so I called Austen Clark. He's the co-founder of Adatha Group, and he has built his career around understanding people. After moving to Italy as a kid and navigating language barriers, he's learned intuitively how to connect first before actually communicating at all. You see, connection is communication. And his people first approach from what he learned, even as a young kid,
[00:01:01] Rachel Elsts Downey: shapes how he shows up today in his role as a co-founder. And in that role, he's run over 600 events where those inside jokes, the connection, the conversation, those human-centric things that sometimes feel intangible are what makes more revenue than any data insight or attribution model that you can come up with.
[00:01:25] Rachel Elsts Downey: He's the guy who remembers the story behind the data. So I had to ask him, "How should brands be using data in an impactful way?" Here's what he had to say.
[00:01:37]
[00:01:47] Austen Clark: Hey Rachel. Hope you're doing well. How should brands be using data in an impactful way? I think it's important to understand the power of data more than anything else, and also the different types of data.
[00:02:00] Austen Clark: A lot of individuals nowadays are focusing too much on the spreadsheet form of data, and I think we're in a data overload right now.
[00:02:09] Austen Clark: In order to create impactful content, rather than just trying to understand, "Oh, this individual's a VP of sales with an X company, chances are he takes care of X, Y, and Z team. Double down and find out the human elements of that individual."
[00:02:25] Austen Clark: So find out, do they write a blog? Do they have a podcast? Do they have a foot in the local community? And those, I think, are more impactful data points that you should be doubling down on.
[00:02:36] Austen Clark: I think this obsession with data more than ever has really stemmed from the social media side of things. When people would look at how many likes they got, what time did individuals like their post, where were they based in the world?
[00:02:52] Austen Clark: We've gotten to the point that everybody has data on something and a lot of it is just a hot mess.
[00:02:58] Austen Clark: It's important to remember the data that you have in front of you needs to be used in a very targeted way rather than just spraying and praying.
[00:03:07] Austen Clark: As much as you can drown in data, don't forget that you deal with humans first. It's not data that makes the decision for you. It's not AI, it's not tech. It's always the human at the other end of the phone, at the other end of the computer, or it's the face-to-face.
[00:03:22] Austen Clark: They're the ones that are feeling the impact, rather than you having figured out that they log on at 10 past nine in the morning and they take an Americano for their coffee. The game changer's going to be actually taking the time and understanding the human element first.
[00:03:39] Austen Clark: So I, as an individual have executed around 600 in-person and virtual events.
[00:03:44] Austen Clark: I actually got asked by my co-founder, " How do you connect so well with people?" And I'm like, "My little trick is you create inside jokes nice and early."
[00:03:52] Austen Clark: It's the laughter, it's the spilling a glass of wine and then talking about it three months later. It's like, "Oh, remember that time?" Those are the things that really happen at events.
[00:04:01] Austen Clark: Now the executives and the decision makers are starting to come up and they're getting a lot younger. They're in their thirties, 35, forties, and they aren't the individuals that are so rugged, they're a lot more open-minded and adaptive, but they are also led by data points. And they haven't experienced yet the human element simply because we've been brought in through an age of hardcore social media, if you will, that we haven't experienced fully what the benefits of human to human connection can be.
[00:04:32] Austen Clark: I'll end it with this as a little personal story. I grew up in England and I moved to Italy when I was seven years old. I didn't speak a word of Italian, and my parents threw me into an Italian school, and I was the only English person there.
[00:04:46] Austen Clark: I spent the first two weeks in class crying, and the Italian teacher didn't know what to do with me, so she brought in the English teacher to try and calm me down and be like, "Everything's gonna be okay. You're gonna get better. You're gonna learn Italian." The only thing that I could do is be as personal as possible.
[00:05:02] Austen Clark: And when you are also working beyond the language barrier, the human to human element goes so far beyond just communication. Friendships can happen. Connections can happen. That's what I think I learned from myself at a very young age, that you have to take the time to connect with individuals. That's really what longevity will bring. Data's not gonna bring longevity. The actual networking relationship is what you can double down on in five, 10 years. But that's everything from me, Rachel. Listen, you've got my details, so if you wanna reach out, feel free to do that.