How To Get B2B Attribution Right The Easy Way

0:00um speaking of attribution i have another topic here on attribution how to get b2b attribution right so literally literally this guy Cody Schneider tweets this obsession with attribution is in B2B is rookie okay focus on blended CAC decreasing over time layer marketing channel pixel conversion event plus UTMs plus a required how did you hear about us form you have a 90 % accurate picture without crazy tech I don't know about 90 % but it's certainly more accurate but what we're basically saying here is like yes okay yes you want to have pixels in your website measuring conversions yes have UTM tracking okay that helps looking at source, your campaign and all that.

0:36But what I really like is how did you hear about us? But even that's not good enough because oftentimes people, they forget. And you mentioned that your guys will interview them a lot more and people will just kind of make something up when it's like, how did you hear about us when it's required? Yep. Yeah, no, look, I agree with you. On a side note, on your sheet, you have something here. I just clicked on it. I have a lot on my sheet. Yeah, I know you. Today is a great day. I barely had to put anything in the sheet because eric that was risky because you only had four going and then when i came in i like deployed it all no no but at that moment i was adding stuff to the sheet yeah oh then i came in oh okay and that's why i texted you i'm like hey i think i erased your top one to add it back yeah but eric has this linkedin message it's from robert darrow and it says ai is shaping retail traffic chat gpg is quickly becoming a major traffic a major force in online shopping referrals in august it drove 20 % of Walmart's referral traffic, 20 plus percent for Etsy, 15 % for Target, 10 % for eBay.

1:32And he's citing a blog post from modernretail.co. And keep in mind, this is not 20 % of their total traffic. This is just of their referral traffic. I don't believe ChatGPT drove 20 % of Walmart's referral traffic in one month. Well, you have this other one over here that's related to it, talking about, so Google traffic's actually gone up, right? 0.22 % versus ChatGPT has gone up 0.03%. But also keep in mind that when we look at search, Google's 41.35%. ChatGPT is only 0.24%, right? So this is from - Tim Solo. Tim Solo, yeah, from Ahrefs. And they took a lot of analytics data from a lot of different sites.

2:1560 ,000. And they ended up breaking down that ChatGPT driving roughly 0.24 % of traffic. Now, I get Walmart's a really big brand, but we have access to analytics for literally million plus websites. It's actually well into the millions. I think it's like at three-ish million at this point. We don't see ChatGPT driving 1 % of people's traffic. And we have everything from, when we aggregate the data, we have big brands to small brands. We rarely ever see it more than 1%. So for them to say that ChatGPT is driving 20 % of almost referral traffic, not total traffic. What Tim and I are talking about here is percentage of total traffic.

2:55Even referral traffic, just 20 % of referral traffic, I just think that number is way too high based on the data I'm seeing. But it is a popular referral source and it converts really highly. It's just 20 % is just way too high. I think 20 % seems high to me, but I also think it depends because when I was looking at my analytics earlier in the last seven days, because I was curious, I was like, I do see it moving up into the right. I'm like, oh, 4 ,000 visitors from these AI services. I was like, sure, at a high point, we're getting like 400, 500 ,000 visitors a month, but now it's like 80 ,000, something like that.

3:29So that's a pretty sizable chunk, right? But I think it just depends. So that's only one sample. Yeah, but 20 % is high. 20 % is too high. Especially for a big brand. Because the bigger the brand, the more diverse their traffic sources tend to be. You know, their biggest channel is typically going to be brand name because, you know, that's what happens with all multi hundred plus billion dollar companies. But outside of brand name, they're mentioned everywhere across the web. Yeah. You know, there's no way that one traffic source is bringing in 20%. I'd be keen to see you do one of those like data visualization studies on the different niches and like what percent of Chats TV is driving referral traffic.

4:07Dude, we should actually do that. See? Look at that. That's a good idea. This podcast is useful. That's a good idea. That's right. I'll actually have my team break something down. Speaking of which, I think it's helpful for us, before we pick other topics here, to reflect on our HubSpot experience because you and I have been texting on it. Is there something wrong with your eyes? No, just itchy. So Neil and I spoke. Neil spoke on the main stage HubSpot's event. I think you had a couple thousand people on the main stage. It capped out at 7 ,500. I feel like you probably had like... There's no way there's 7 ,500.

4:36It could fit 7 ,500. Oh, got it. But how many people do you think were watching? I don't know. Because you can see the whole stage. I was in the middle of the stage too. I don't know. There was in the thousands for sure. It's a great event. I'm not trying to bash HubSwap, by the way, but there was quite a few people. I just don't know. I think you had like 3 ,500, 4 ,000, something like that. Okay. Okay. Now you and I did a marking school session together at HubSwap's Inbound. Great event. And I think we probably had that room could fit 2 ,000. Let's say we had, I don't know, 1 ,500, something like that.

5:04And then my solo session, 1 ,000. And then your session, if you're comfortable revealing, 4.7. Yeah. Right? If you're comfortable revealing. Yeah, a good 4.7. Sure. You look like you're comfortable, so I just said it. And then our session together was a 4, and then my solo session was a 4. Last year, my solo session was like a 4.5. Was our solo was a 4.3 or no, the average was 4.3? Average was like 4.4. I think average was 4.3. Was it? 4.3 or something like that. I don't remember that. Yeah, you'd have to check that. But we have a couple of lessons to impart here. And wait, your solo session was a 4 or 4.5?

5:41Four. Last year was 4.5. Okay. This year dropped to four. And so I'll just tell you some of my lessons from the two sessions that we did, right? One is we're never going to do a Q &A again. Q &A, at least at HubSpot, inbound. Again, great event. But we've noticed whenever we've done Q &A, the churn, the audience churn is insane. Like people drop them off. And we can tell from the comments too, people don't care for the Q &A as much as just us talk. They don't. Yeah. Even though we love doing Q &A. I think it's like at other conferences we do it and then most people stick around. It's just different here.

6:11The other thing I'll say is with my talk specifically, I rewatched it and we just posted it to YouTube the other day. I was like, yeah, I was way too technical. Remember we talked about how - Wait, your talk this time or your talk about - My solo talk, my last year talk was simplified and that's why it went over well, right? And then I want to come to you in a second, but my talk was about MCPs and how they work and how we're making these agentic workflows, these sub-agents. The thing is my topic was too technical, but it was also covering too many subjects. because I was so excited, right? And we talked about this before.

6:42When Steve Jobs did marketing, he wanted to have five messages in his ad and his ad person was like, no. And he threw like one paper at him and caught it. When he threw five papers, Steve like didn't catch anything. And so it's really important. This is like a mistake that I've made before, but sometimes you make the same mistakes. It's just like, keep it simple to one message and simplify it, which goes to Neil's session to 4.7. It was just about graphs and data. Yeah, 30 charts that I'll show you where the marketing is going or the future of marketing. Yeah. I'll flip it to you for a second.

7:14Go ahead. But see, the way you speak at conferences is the way I used to speak at conferences like five to 10 years ago, somewhere in that timeframe. And what I learned is because I used to give technical talks and I would like to show step by step. This one was too technical. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And when I used to go step by step and talk about different SEO tactics and how to change a code or do things through javascript yeah what would end up happening is is you lose most of the room uh-huh and what i found out from a business standpoint there was a guy who worked for us for a bit and then uh went off and did his own thing michael graham i'm probably butchering his last name uh british dude good guy and when he would give talks and we both talk i believe it was an internal summit for Adobe or one of our customers, he would be really high level in strategy and I would be more how-tos and tactical.

8:12And what I learned from that experience working with him was if you're trying to generate revenue and you want to win over people, give the concepts and the strategies and the data, simplify things, and then if they want more, they'll come to you. But when you give them the step-by-step, there's a lot of people in the room that you'll just lose. You'll get the people who are the implementers, but some people in the room aren't implementers. When you give data and strategies from a high level, whether someone's an implementer or an executive, it's valuable to them because if they want to go and implement, they'll go and dig deeper.

8:57but everyone in the room can understand the strategies and the concepts and it's useful to them to a certain extent. Right. Which is why the year before I kept a high level, just data, right? Just charts and things like that. 4.5. Oh my God. Amazing. Right. Neil, I remember I was walking with Neil. He got stopped a couple of times. Oh my God. I really love the charts. Right. I'm like, I bet you, I bet you did. And so I think it's, it's to Neil's point, that's exactly how I've been in the past. But this time I think I got too excited because I naturally assumed that If I knew it, most people would know it, right?

9:28That's just not the case. But it's not just this time. It was also the YPO marketing event, but different crowd. I would actually put it into something very specific. Because you're so into AI right now, and I know a lot of people are, but Eric's in the weeds testing, playing coaches, which I think is really valuable and smart for him to do. You love talking about the stuff that you're doing yourself. And most people can't relate. Because, one, they don't understand. Two, when you try to break it down for them, they're never going to do it. That talk was interesting. So if you've ever built a website, you know how tough it can be to keep a strong design while ensuring site performance is fast.

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11:53If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into a game with Shopify on your side. Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash marketing school. Go to shopify.com slash marketing school. Shopify.com slash marketing school. I know everyone's ratings from that talk and from that conference right and so um the two that did better be than me was um Sharon who now works for acquisition.com and then uh Kat Cole right and they were more like strategic high level I know I know you were there too so they scored number one and Kat was number one Sharon was number two I was number three overall right yeah um and so it just it's also to the point that you're making too it's also different crowd because when you have a crowd of entrepreneurs they're more down to like try these things right but I do think that your way of doing it where it's, it's, it's not necessarily your way, but it's more like you keep a high level data and then like get them asking for more.

12:48Um, that is the way to do it. And that's how I did it exactly at HubSpot last year. Yeah. I've always found that to work for most audiences. Um, and then when you go too specific, like the YPO event, I gave a talk specifically for agencies. You're going to neglect half the people in the room. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Because I think they wanted my talk to be focused around agencies or something like that for topic. Well, here's the thing with that event. I think 40 % of attendees are agencies. Yeah. But you talked about global expansion and all that. So it's, yeah. Yeah. But mostly it was centered around agencies, which would be hard for most people to relate to.

13:26Yeah. I don't know. It's just like, for us, we're saying we're not going to do Q &A as much if we're welcome back to HubSpot in the future. But it's like we learned your audience over time. Yes. Anything else that you want to share on that before we move on? Also, think about what's your goal. If your goal is to have clippable moments for Instagram, then give a talk where you're giving some wowing stuff where people are going to be shocked so that way you have clippable moments. You need stories, yeah. Yeah. My purpose of a talk is, at least the HubSpot one very specifically, I gave a talk to a I educate and build brand awareness for my agency to the people in that crowd because a lot of them work at corporations and eventually they will, even though we have an S &B division, most of the people in the room aren't a fit for working with us from an agency perspective.

14:27But a lot of them will eventually go to work for a Fortune 500 company because when the job market gets tough or whatnot, the big corporations typically have money. I'm not saying they're always going to hire. So the brand awareness helps us potentially get included into future RFPs. And we see that. So I'll give a talk to a lot of people that work at smaller businesses. Eventually, someone will go to large corporations like, I wanted to work with you at this other company. We didn't have the budget. But now I'm at Oracle or wherever it may be. And now I can include you in a pitch. Not guaranteed to get the money, but at least it helps build up our pipe two to three years later.

15:02This is part of the reason why we do this, because 99 % of people aren't ready to buy. And like, you just have to stay top of mind. And this is one of those things that you can stay top of mind. Plus, you're going to put it on your channel too. You might clip some stuff too. And so in my opinion, it's like, sure, you might generate some immediate leads now, but long term, I think this is going to help the longer tail. So in Brazil, I gave a speech at Web Summit Rio. Yeah. And I've been giving speech for them for a while. Someone in the audience saw the speech years ago. They now moved to a corporation that's in the pharmaceutical industry, massively large.

15:36Everyone knows who they are. You may not know the company name, but you know some of the drug names. And they ended up moving to a different company. And at the current company, they included us in a pitch because now they had a budget while their previous company was too small. And that's what happens when I speak. Like, I know that my goal is to just build a relationship with people who are in marketing. Eventually, they'll grow older, get promoted, move around different companies, and we'll get included in pitches if you like what we have to say. And one thing, too, I mean, just to make this more relatable to everyone, too, it's you can start speaking at small things first.

16:13Eventually, for the larger, you'll get invited to a bunch of things eventually. And then what you're going to have to do is speak at a larger conference. Sometimes you're invited to, like, maybe speak at these PE or VC, you know, private events. But some of these you can just apply to, too. So as you get better over time, you can make a sizzle reel of you speaking. You'll probably get selected at some point. One funny thing that we saw in the comments, too. So Neil and I, we tend to bicker a lot. And the audience really didn't like to bicker this time. No. Yeah. And we bicker in a loving way, like brothers, not in a we're hating on each other.

16:44Yeah, no, not at all. We only want to see each other succeed. Yeah. So that was funny. But again, you have to know your audience. Anyway, you can pick the next one. The 300 billion man hates the worship of wealth. I don't know who's worth 300 billion. That sounds good. Okay, let me get, so Andrew Carnegie, you know Andrew Carnegie, right? I think he did trains back in the day, right? I think it was trains or steel. It was something like that. Okay, one did steel, one did oil, one did trains. So here's what he said. So Andrew Carnegie at age 33, his aspiration was to retire in a year or two with$100 ,000 per month passive income.

17:19At the time,$100 ,000, a lot of money. That's a lot of money. I think that's worth like, let's just say his net worth was like$80 million or something, and he's won like$2 to$5 million a year, something like that, right? Which is significant. So his whole thing was to study philosophy and become a poster. But instead, he ended up pioneering the steel industry, that's what you said, and building a$300 billion fortune. So here's what he said in this thing. This might be interesting to you. So he said, look, man must have an idol. The amassing of wealth is one of the worst species of idolatry. No idol more debasing than the worship of money.

17:53Whatever I engage in, I must push inordinately. Therefore, should I be careful to choose that life which will be the most elevating in its character? To continue much longer overwhelmed by business cares, and with most of my thoughts wholly upon the way to make money in the shortest time, must degrade me beyond hope of permanent recovery. I will resign business at 35, but during the two ensuing years, I wish to spend the afternoons in receiving instruction and reading systematically. And then he builds a$300 billion fortune. I'm assuming$300 billion in today's time is what it would be worth. Yeah.

18:28But I think this is wise, right? I mean, I'm curious to know what changed after, and maybe I'll go find a book around it. But I do believe that the worship of money, and I don't know, I feel like you've changed on this too, is probably the worst thing. Because the money's not going to follow you. I used to worship money. I love money and my only goal was to try to make money. Big time. And Eric's right. It was all I dreamed about, obsessed about. And I still want to make more money. I still want to build a bigger company. But as I got older, I realized that money isn't everything. You can't replace a loved one with money.

19:11And I have a friend who's child is sick and they're spending whatever they can. If someone told me what I sell my business and everything I had to make sure that my kids could live longer and not feel any pain, I would. I don't care if I'm broke or living in a shoebox. It is what it is. Money has purposes. You need it to survive. But I think people go through different stages in life. When you don't have money, you want it. When you feel like you have enough, you realize there's other things like, you know, I have back pain so my kids we call it surfing every night when I'm home and I put them to bed all they stand on you they stand on my back and they surf and they think it's fun yeah although they're starting to learn they can jump on my back oh I do not like and that hurts more I used to surf on my mom's back yeah yeah it's like it in Asian cultures they do that I never jumped on her though no but my kids think it's funny no like they'll just jump like jump up yeah and then their bottoms will hit my like lower back or upper back which it's painful and they know it's painful and they think it's funny.

20:14They learn from you. No, I never would do that. When I would walk on my parents' back or my uncle's back, I would not walk on the spine, on the edges. But would I be willing to worth less money right now to have better health? Yes, I would do it in a heartbeat. Yeah. Well, honestly, okay, health is obviously really important, but the most important thing long-term is never money. It's just relational wealth. Yes. And like we I think you and I both know people that are like billions and billions and they're miserable. There's a reason for that is because they they obsess the idolized money. And and I think remember I sent you that thing about how like none of this matters if like your two kids hate you at age like when they're 20 years old.

20:59Your extra IRR of like five, 10 percent doesn't matter. Yeah. So Eric sent me a tweet from someone and it was talking about how making extra 10, 20 % a year doesn't matter if your kids don't want to hang out with you. And what the tweet said is, if you don't hang out with your kids now, when they get older, why would you expect them to want to hang out with you then? And they'll hit you up for money. But other than that, why would they want to hang out with you at all? And I think that is spot on. And what I've learned is hang out with them now, build their relationships. You won't be worth as much.

21:38And that's a sacrifice. Some people are built for just making money like Elon Musk. But I do think he tries to spend time with his kids. He does. And some people, like my brother-in-law, he wants to be there for all moments, be there with him. And he does work. But like, he's a much more attentive father than I ever would be. He's changed way more diapers than I have too. How many have you changed? I can count on one hand probably. A few maybe. No, I've done more than one, but it's not much more than that. Yeah. But I think it depends per person. And what I found is like, I have a friend who's on the Forbes list, does really, really well.

22:18And when I say he's on the Forbes list, I'm not talking about a billion or$2 billion, like substantially more. and his kids are off to college. I think one is graduated. They don't ever want to hang out with him. Oh, is this the guy that we talked about before? Maybe. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know who you're talking about. And when you look at it, it's just like, you have all this money. What are you going to do with it? Well, not to go into any details on him, but it's like when you talk about him, it kind of seems empty. Yes. There's a lot of emptiness. Yes. Yeah. And don't get me wrong, I got a great relationship with this person, but who cares if you have all this money and no one wants to hang out with you?

23:02If your family doesn't care to talk to you or whatever, maybe, what are you going to do with the money? You can't buy relationships. The ones you buy, they're fake. Let me ask you this. So I never asked you this before, but ever since I first met you, I knew you were obsessed with money in the beginning, right? Yeah. There's always a story to it. So what was the reason for you? Was it just you didn't have money, you became obsessed with it? Or was there some type of chip on your shoulder? I'm going to show you. No, I always wanted a better life because I didn't grow up with a great life. I didn't grow up with a bad life.

23:29When I was really young, we were in low-income housing, but we weren't poor, poor. Yes, my parents would save up money and they were losing more money each month than their expenses. But we have an amazing family and my dad's siblings helped us out and my mom's siblings helped us out. So we had a lot of love and family who helped us out and get through tough times. So I don't think we really struggled because struggling is when you're spending more than you make and you have no other options. Like, yeah, struggling is like you're about to get evicted. Yeah. Yeah. My dad's brother and sister helped us out and my mom's brothers helped us out.

24:09So it's like we weren't really struggling. Yes, financially, they weren't doing well, but, you know, we had help. But the point I'm getting at is when I was younger, my parents did well, middle class well. Yeah. Right. And when we were struggling, it wasn't because my parents didn't have any ability. It was we were moving to the United States and starting from scratch. And we had savings to help us out. So it wasn't too bad. And when we were middle class, we didn't struggle at all. Mom and dad bought us a car. They paid for food, paid for groceries. college we had uh grants or scholarships depending on if it was me or my sister and for whatever wasn't covered parents covered right we started a business yeah i think my parents gave us around 200 and something thousand dollars wow so it wasn't like yeah it wasn't like i really struggled like my parents did fine yeah they don't live in the biggest house but they saved a lot of money they just never spent it so you might actually have the same thing i have where it's like well if somebody else can do all this and they have all these things i want to have it too.

25:13Yeah, I wanted a better life. I wanted the luxuries. And my parents weren't broke at all. For them to give me 200 grand, that's a lot. And you're talking about 24 years ago? 200 grand back then is a lot. You could buy a home for 500 grand. Yeah. Right? In Southern California. Was that for ACS? The funding was for Crazy Egg. Okay. Wow. So it was partly ACS, but it started adding up. And then between my business partner, brother-in-law, parents combined gave us more money between his dad and my parents. It was over a million bucks at one point. You guys got initial funding. And so that's why they get dividend checks, basically.

25:51Yeah, we don't really give them dividend checks, but yes, they don't ever have to work again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They take care of them. But it was more so I wanted to do well. And if you actually look at a lot of the entrepreneurs that have done well, there's a guy who lives in this building. His name is Michael. he works at a company called Wellington and he does private equity. And he was telling me an interesting stat. He's like, if you actually look at a lot of the successful entrepreneurs, they come from well-educated, affluent backgrounds where, you know, they had a leg up from relationships, money, whatever, maybe education.