Ralph and Lauren are discussing the critical moments of business planning and how to evaluate and improve team dynamics, agency partnerships, and overall strategies heading into the new year. Get ready to explore the nuances of prioritizing resources, testing new initiatives, and aligning goals to achieve scalable success. Their strategy over tactics approach offers information you can use to maximize opportunities for your business(es) in 2025!

Chapters

• 00:00:00 The Starting Line: Welcome to the Show
• 00:00:34 Holiday Chaos and Quirky Traditions
• 00:05:53 Crystal Ball Time: Plotting the 2025 Vision
• 00:07:24 Is Your Team Crushing It or Coasting?
• 00:13:54 Strategy Isn’t Just a Buzzword—It’s the Game
• 00:20:02 Lunar New Year, Anyone? Cultural Marketing Wins
• 00:22:29 Finding Your Goldmine Clients (Hint: They’re Loyal)
• 00:23:04 Meta vs. Google: Which Channel Deserves Your Love?
• 00:24:59 Big Goals, Tiny Steps: The Secret to Crushing 2025
• 00:27:12 Test It, Scale It, But Don’t Break It
• 00:32:15 Post-Mortem on 2024: Wins, Fails, and WTF Moments
• 00:39:05 Signing Off: Kind Words and Big Plans

LINKS AND RESOURCES:

• Get Your Marketing Performance Indicators™ Checklist Now!
• Agency Freedom Live
• Tier 11 Jobs
• Perpetual Traffic on YouTube
• Tiereleven.com
• Mongoose Media
• Perpetual Traffic Survey
• Perpetual Traffic Website
• Follow Perpetual Traffic on Twitter
• Connect with Lauren on Instagram and Connect with Ralph on LinkedIn

Thanks so much for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to Perpetual Traffic? Have some feedback you’d like to share? Connect with us on iTunes and leave us a review!

Mentioned in this episode:

AdCritter for Agencies

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Read the Transcript below:

The #1 Thing You’re NOT Doing Right Now to Crush It in 2025…And How to Fix It

Ralph: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the perpetual traffic podcast. This is your host, Ralph burns, the founder and CEO of tier 11, alongside my awesome cohost,

Lauren: Lauren E. Petrullo, the founder of Mongoose Media.

Ralph: So glad you joined us here today, and pretty excited because you and I are going to be live next week

Lauren: Yeah.

Ralph: in

Ralph: Florida, hopefully knocking out like a bunch of year end episodes. I know a lot of people are thinking about year end, they’re planning for 25, they just got through Black Friday, you know, wiping the sweat off their brow.

Ralph: Cramped fingers by, you know, optimizing their campaigns. We’re in that sort of period between Black Friday, Cyber Monday, before the holiday, and, um, I say the holiday cause you know, not everybody is [00:01:00] Christian and does the Christmas thing. However, Hanukkah, I am dual. I don’t know if you realize this, but Jen is Jewish.

Ralph: I am casual Catholic

Lauren: I was like, cafeteria. Catholic.

Ralph: cafeteria. God’s like, I sort of pick and choose what I like, but I don’t go to church. So that’s why a lot of the reviews are like, don’t say the word JC. Like we used to get a lot of those. Cause I say that sort of, but anyway, I can say that as a Catholic, but anyway, I’m not going to say it here.

Lauren: But is this like the, nevermind, I’m not going to go down that route, but okay.

Ralph: But anyway, so I was a, I’m a, I’m a casual Catholic, gave it up in college. So anyway,

Lauren: Wait, like lent you

Ralph: I gave up

Lauren: college, but permanently.

Ralph: I gave up church cause I was always hung over on Sundays. I think that was it. That started in college.

Lauren: to keep drinking

Ralph: I had to keep drinking. That was the problem. I was, I became sober. What the hell was I thinking in college?

Ralph: Anyway, and then sort of moved on and married a Jewish girl who [00:02:00] was, it was raised Catholic. Turned Protestant and then went Jewish. So we do both holidays, which is awesome. So my kids are Jew ish.

Lauren: the Julex.

Ralph: That’s right. So anyway, and we never go to Temple either, so, we’re probably horrifying. All these, people that are listening to the show that are,

Lauren: your relationship with

Ralph: or

Lauren: G. O. D. or Zeus or whoever you call Master, plural, whatever that is, that’s private. That’s with you. That’s on you. And, um, Putting in the reps, you don’t have to treat church like a gym, like, no one’s going to judge you.

Ralph: that’s good because you’re, back in church all the time now. Wait a second. Did you go away from it were you always there? We’ve never even had this conversation.

Lauren: I know, people are going to be like, with how dirty Lauren’s jokes are. Uh, no, yeah, well, I mean, no, you have your phases. When I was in college, I was at church, five days a week. no, now go at least [00:03:00] once a week.

Ralph: Holy cow. I mean, the most I ever went to church in a week, I think it was three times in a week because I went on Sundays and then I had like a mass that I had to do. And then I had like the high mass, which you got paid to do. Cause I was an altar boy for

Lauren: oh, yeah, same, I was an altar

Lauren: server.

Ralph: Yeah. Not molested as far as I know.

Lauren: that, glad that’s been cleared

Lauren: up.

Ralph: And Massachusetts, you never know.

Ralph: Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. Massachusetts was pretty, pretty bad for that. Uh, the point is, is, uh, yeah, three times that was max, but I was getting compensated. I think 20 bucks for a wedding.

Lauren: Whoa,

Ralph: That was big money back way back in the days of the dinosaur pre depression era when I was that age.

Ralph: Um,

Lauren: that’s a lot of money.

Ralph: It’s a lot of money and then you got tipped on top of it and you got to drink the holy one. The priest wasn’t looking. So it’s

Lauren: I didn’t even think about like my growing up in the Chicago archdiocese like what did I get paid? I just remember those robes smelled,

Ralph: they always did. They [00:04:00] smelled of incense.

Lauren: but I loved it when I got to do the incense because there was like three different roles we had at the church I grew up in, in Chicago, St. Gertrude, shout out to that school, where I went for seven years, but, yeah, St.

Lauren: Gertrude, fun fact that I just learned, by the way, like two, three years ago, so I have five brothers, three

Lauren: from

Lauren: my dad’s first marriage, no, no, but I did learn that there’s another brother. Yeah. Yeah.

Ralph: Okay.

Lauren: My dad and this woman that he served in Vietnam with, I don’t know all the details because it was so casually said.

Lauren: And when I was like, wait, I’m sorry. You just told me I have another brother by some woman named Gertrude. I was like, what? And so there’s, a brother out there somewhere. His mom’s name is Gertrude. I think they were like in Virginia. Like that’s literally all I got. And then I asked my mom about it.

Lauren: And I was like, did you know? He’s like, of course I knew. I was like the woman, the mother’s name was Gertrude. I went to a school called St. Gertrude. That was never like a weird thing. Like that’s not a common

Lauren: name.

Ralph: Holy cow. Yeah, Gertrude is not a common name, like that’s sort of like a, it’s one [00:05:00] of those names that was like, I don’t know, like a depression era name and you don’t meet many Gertrudes,

Ralph: but you know, any Gertrudes, like in

Ralph: your age range,

Lauren: No, but my mom was born in 1940. She just turned 80 years old yesterday. No, sorry. She was born 44. My dad was born in 1940. So like, He did always date older women. So she legit could have been born during the depression.

Ralph: it’s probably, it’s good. Well, shout out to her for 80 years. That’s awesome. fantastic. so I don’t know what we were getting to in this, but what’s. The time between Cyber Monday and Christmas, which I think I was trying to get to the point where Hanukkah actually falls on Christmas this year. It starts on Christmas,

Ralph: so it’s like Christmas season for me, it like lasts all throughout the first week in January, because of course we do Hanukkah as well as Christmas.

Ralph: Like, why not? So anyway, I love having that in that sort of dual household. But anyway, right now, for a lot of businesses, take that holiday stuff aside, you’re probably [00:06:00] thinking, all right, let me do a little bit of an assessment here as to how I fared on Black Friday, Cyber Monday. How is my Christmas season going to be?

Ralph: Do I have a business that has a huge uptick or maybe a slow season after the first of the year? There’s a lot of stuff. Stuff to consider. So from what we’re doing inside tier 11, and I know a lot of businesses are doing this right now is that they’re planning for 2025 and they’re trying to figure out, okay, is my internal team that I’m doing, I’m using right now in all areas of my business, is it performing up to expectations?

Ralph: Do I need to make some changes? If I have an agency, for example, are they doing what? They need to do in order to get me to my goals, where my goals is in 2025. And right now is a really good time to do that because we find that this is a bit of a, I don’t know, it’s a bit of a lull time unless you have a huge Christmas surge, but really, I mean, if you’re doing anything online, selling anything online, or really in person, like a lot of that sort of ends the [00:07:00] 22nd, 23rd at the very latest, a lot of cases, well, prior to that, especially on the e com side, depending on what your shipping is and everything else.

Ralph: So. And then there’s that sort of lull in between. So, yeah, so it’s Q5. so I think what we want to talk about here today is for those of you who are thinking about how to change things and how to step things up in 2025, how do you do that? Like, if you have an agency right now, are they really aligned with what your goals are?

Ralph: you have a. Internal team. This goes the same for an internal team. Because whenever we talk about an agency, we always say, all right, if you have an internal team or you’re doing it yourself or you’re thinking about like adding resources, now is a good time to assess that and to figure out, okay, what are my next steps?

Ralph: So we were talking about this before we hit record here today is that there’s a big part of all this, which I think a lot of businesses miss. And they hire for specific tasks, as opposed to something [00:08:00] which I think is far more important. We’ve talked about this a lot on the show, the marketing performance indicators, which we’ve given out this URL so many times.

Ralph: If you haven’t gotten it by now, just get it for crying out loud. It’s

Lauren: It should be like a drinking game at this point, your holiday

Ralph: every time every time we say perpetual traffic. com forward slash MPI. the point is,

Ralph: is get all that the point you, you need to have, one of the things I think that businesses are reassessing and the ones that I’ve talked to just recently are that they’re reassessing their relationships with their internal teams, but also with their agency.

Ralph: To align better, as opposed to just keeping them siloed. Is that something that you’re hearing in your conversations? Talk to me about that whole subject, just in general.

Lauren: Oh, for sure. I mean, it’s, a good time to reevaluate. You survived the black Friday and you’re, doing your annual planning. So depending on the relationships you have and what your contracts you’re looking at financially, what is your [00:09:00] commitment?

Lauren: so some agencies like before they connect with a prospect, they’re going to talk about their MLE, their minimum level of engagement. And then you’re looking at, Hey, what am I committed to for the next year? I have an annual contract. I’m looking at, 20, 000 a month coursing it out.

Lauren: So if you’re trying to build what is your runway of cash, it’s really easy to look at agencies, especially when they have higher retainers, as seeing is it worth to bring in house? Are we seeing the impact that we expected from the investment we provided with them? Is it also an opportunity for them to take over additional work besides just what they’ve been delivering on because they are aligned with where we’re going in additional pieces?

Lauren: I mean, it’s just the time of the year. You’re like looking at, Hey, does this make sense with what we’re doing now and where we want to go next? And I think most agencies, at least we’ve experienced this for sure. And I think it’s. For most of my friends, it’s like December is the time of, if you’re not investing in like reconnecting with your existing clients, they are, this is a conversation they’re [00:10:00] having no matter what, like, I think more contracts, terminate in December than any other month of the year.

Ralph: I also think on the flip side of that is that. We have had an abundance of folks that have been thinking about making a switch because of the uncertainties in the political side, the political venue that they don’t really know exactly what to expect. And at least now, whether or not the candidate won or didn’t win, and I’ve said this before on the show, there’s a level of stability now, depending on what your outlook really is, but at least people now know.

Ralph: And that has been. Sort of a game changer, because a lot of that tension, a lot of that uncertainty is now released. And I think there’s, from my standpoint, like the economy, like all the economic indicators are looking positive, but there’s still an under, there’s some kind of undercurrent of [00:11:00] suspicion that is this sustainable.

Lauren: Hmm.

Ralph: why did Trump win? You know, it’s a big question that I always sort of get because I didn’t vote for him, and I can’t stand the guy, but he’s now our president. And I have to accept that fact. The point is, is that I think he won because he tapped into this underlying insecurity about, Hey, you know, the economic indicators and the stock market and all that stuff, all that stuff is like, Looks great air quotes, but I ain’t seeing it.

Ralph: You know, the price of eggs is still higher, now than it was four years ago, like that’s what people are really looking at. I think that’s the reason why he won. So there is this, like this under current of, you know, especially of the haves and have nots. You know, to a lesser degree, probably the haves, but to a greater degree, the people that are like the working class, like they’re still feeling the pinch.

Ralph: So is that economic uncertainty going to businesses, into marketing [00:12:00] professionals, people that we talk to, I still see a bit of that. I think there was a bit of a release thing right after the election, but now we’re still seeing that there is sort of an underlying uncertainty, even though the stock market has some P 500 is at this all time high right now.

Lauren: Yes.

Lauren: If you are investing, it’s been a good

Ralph: it’s been a very good year that’s up 28%, I think, as of this recording here, which is crazy. So the point is, is like, there’s something there. So what is it that, that we were like, we were talking about, like, how do people make decisions now prepping for 25, if you’re 24 was okay. Or let me, we feel like you were leaving money on the table.

Ralph: What’s the biggest thing that you’re seeing that they’re sort of coming to you saying, this is what we’re missing.

Lauren: I think a lot of like, it’s where, you know, you’re hired to be the expert. And so what they’re asking or what they’re missing is, why wasn’t this year as good as they expected it? Or like, what are they missing out on to make it [00:13:00] even better? It’s like, this is gonna sound weird, but like a lot of it’s just a silver bullet.

Lauren: That’s like, give me this one strategy that’s going to change everything else. And it goes to the bigger thing of like, what are they looking for is strategy on like beyond just the marketing tactics, but like, how do I restructure my offer to accommodate An environment where people are spending two to three times longer before making a high ticket purchase decision when people are more reserved about frequent purchases, like MRRs, like people that are doing groups that have like 100 plus recurring, like the churn rate’s even worse than it has been before.

Lauren: And then with the advent of school games, like there’s just so many subscriptions that people are doing and it’s, people are coming a lot more to figure out, How do they evolve their product to meet, , current market conditions? And how do they ensure that it has high value in the current market landscape?

Ralph: Hmm. So think you said something really important there is that I think if you’re looking for a, [00:14:00] like a piece of it all to solve your problem, it’s like, Oh, I just need email. Oh, I just need meta ads. Oh, I just need Google. It’s like what you, what I’m seeing in that, what we try to, For tray or at least relay as far as value goes is all right, that’s important.

Ralph: But let’s take a look at the overall strategy. what are you trying to achieve? Let’s start there. Like, where do you want to go? And what’s the gap? Where’s the gap right now where you want to be? And let’s figure out together. let’s work this out. Let’s work it out. Like start to finish. What is it going to take?

Ralph: And you’re coming to us because we know every channel. Okay. We know all of the additional things, but usually it’s channel related. And it’s creative and it’s after the click, which could be anything from website conversion rates to SMS, to email, all that. You could also bump that into [00:15:00] the traffic side of the equation too, depending on sort of what your outlook is.

Ralph: Then there’s sort of this overlay of data. Is your data clear enough so that you can make these types of decisions? That’s all tactical. Really? Those are all tools in the toolbox, but I find what people really want, what they really need and what they’re starving for right now is strategy. Give

Lauren: What’s the thing that’s going to drive the impact? what’s the order of, launches that we’re going to do? If it’s going to be email, how many emails and when, how does that fit in with my YouTube level strategy? I also need to do blogs. Like I think that going to that strategy, a lot of it’s like shiny object down everywhere.

Lauren: Like I need to do this. I need to do this. Like I hate the word should. It really irks me in a lot of different ways, but like, it’s like, I should, I should, I should, I should, like, you have a laundry list of things you should do because everyone’s saying to have a perfect environment, it’s just, you’re present on every ad channel, you just can’t do everything all at once.

Lauren: So even sometimes that strategy is what to prioritize. What kpi is to hold it accountable [00:16:00] and then what resources are required to do that? At a minimum viable product like what is the mvp rollout because creating saying like yeah I need to do more emails if you were to start doing emails and like I should be doing five emails a week because someone told me to do it And then you start five emails.

Lauren: You’re going to potentially mess up your sender reputation You might not have the resources to do that sustainably. You might not have enough content to do it. Like you have to plan You Appropriately. And a lot of that goes into the strategy of how do I allocate my resources? How do I prioritize and how do I hold it accountable to realistic numbers?

Lauren: Which is where like people go to agencies because we’re overseeing so many different industries and managing portfolios of very different sizes. Like we have clients doing under a million a year. We have clients doing buckets of millions a year.

Ralph: Yeah. I mean, I, think, you know, if you look at our entire portfolio and the clients that we have now, and the ones that we’ve had in the past is that I don’t think any strategy is the same. I mean, there are [00:17:00] similar strategies that are used for. Specific types of industries, but there’s no one size fits all cookie cutter approach.

Ralph: It’s not meta for everyone. It’s not Google for everyone. It’s not after the click for everyone. It’s not SMS. It’s a combination. You have to look at everything holistically. Where are the holes start to finish with the goal in mind. Going back to the MPIs and by the way, the goal has to be tied to business metrics and not like marketing tactics and those

Ralph: business metrics are the things that really move the needle and are going to impress your boss.

Ralph: If you’re a CMO, if you’re a CEO, chances are you’re probably looking at your PNL all the time and you’re wondering, why do I have. The same or flat growth year over year. And I’m paying this whole team to move the needle on it for me to stay flat or down or whatever your condition is right now. Maybe you had great growth in 2024 and you feel you still feel like most business [00:18:00] owners always feel.

Ralph: I always feel it’s like I left money on the table here, here,

Ralph: and here.

Ralph: Never.

Lauren: showman song. It’s never

Lauren: enough.

Lauren: I’m

Ralph: Is it? We were on our pipeline call yesterday and I, VP of sales is like, yeah, doesn’t this look great? I’m like, it’s never enough.

Lauren: it’s like a never ending moving goalpost

Ralph: it’s it’s never enough because we have very specific goals for 2025, which I want to achieve and like what I look at right now, yeah, setting the groundwork for what could be a very good 2025.

Ralph: That’s great, but it’s not enough. So the point is, is like, I know there’s dissatisfaction out there in the marketplace, I will say this. So for example, like we’ve got a lot of, we’ve got a fair amount of customers that are just Google only because they’re starting their plan is to start their lock that in and then plan for the next step, which I think is okay.

Ralph: So in that case, you’re using kind of one, one particular tool in the toolbox. I mean, it’s mixed with, you know, [00:19:00] arterial and data suite and all that sort of stuff. So you’re getting really, really good data. Fine. You start there, but the idea is that we’re like, all right, well, we’re going to get you there, but we’re also going to think about what other products can you do?

Ralph: What other line extensions can you do? Can you go after a different market within the market that you’re doing right now? Like that’s a strategy session. I met with a client two weeks ago and we were talking about that. Like how can we brainstorm like where, what the next step is not just continuing to do Google, which is.

Ralph: Producing a great return for them because we’ve improved an awful lot with John’s two step strategy, which we’ve talked about here many, many, many times point is, is like, that’s step one. They are also looking towards the future and while we’re planning for 2025, and that’s when the relationship becomes less. transactional,

Ralph: it becomes more of a partnership. And I hate to say it because it’s so trite to say that

Lauren: but it has to be a partnership because like you have, you can provide guidance on the KPIs [00:20:00] and they can provide guidance on their capabilities. Like it’s if they’re not able to do launch, you’re saying tapping into additional marketplaces like Lunar New Year is early this year. It’s in January. So like, if you have, an Asian population, this is their black Friday.

Lauren: This is their Superbowl. And so if you’re, if you already have customers, an easy way to look at it, like you could, Chen is the most popular last name in the world. It’s like one in four individuals in China have the last name Chen, for example, Kim Park, like they’re really common last names that you could just look in your CRM.

Lauren: And if you see that representation there, if you know your client base, is celebrating it, you put all this attention. Into the holidays. Chris Mohana Kwanzaka, but like you neglect a holiday celebrated by like two billion people in the world. I mean, it’s not just China. It’s Lunar New Year and stuff like that.

Lauren: Like, there’s opportunities for you to, tap into better connections with your audience. That when you come into strategy, like when you’re planning the stuff out, like it’s important to know what are the key dates and you have to partner together because an [00:21:00] agency can say, yeah, do a lunar new year campaign.

Lauren: Gucci’s been doing it for years. it’s very, very productive and it can be an amazing opportunity for you. But if you don’t have the resources, you don’t have a creative team. You don’t have someone to update the landing pages or whatever those things are. If you’re not partnering with them, you’re just throwing a bunch of new shiny objects with them.

Lauren: So you have to partner because they have to share capabilities and what like resources they’ll have available. And then you have to share KPIs to make sure that it’s on track and aligned with the actual business goals. Doing Lunar New Year for Lunar New Year’s sake is all hunky dory, but if it’s not going to be something that’s authentic to your brand or authentic to your bottom line, You can divest your resources elsewhere.

Ralph: if you have a business called Asian beauty essentials, I would imagine, imagine living here is probably pretty

Ralph: important for you,

Lauren: yes. Uh, but then you have like Chuseok, which is like Korean Thanksgiving. Like there’s a whole host of different holidays that you can tap into. Know your audience for Asian food essentials. We have, it’s like predominantly [00:22:00] Spanish speaking individuals. Like we do so much in the Spanish market.

Lauren: you have to be mindful of who your customers are. But like, I go back to we talk about strategy. So this is just something that, You know who does this really well? Ryan Dice. he harps in on like, when you’re starting, like he has attract, convert, ascend, monetize.

Lauren: Like he like, Break stuff up. Like if you’re building a blueprint for your business, he has things in those fourth places and a lot of people go straight to the conversion side, but if they’re not attracting new customers, we’re like in the conversion side, like, do you have an ideal offer? Like I’ve said this a million times, there’s two things that make you successful at marketing.

Lauren: You have a sexy offer for an obvious audience and in the attract stage, he’s really good at being like, do you have an ideal client? Do you know who your ideal client customer is? Do you have multiple ideal client profiles, ICPs or like customer avatars, however you want to call it. if you don’t have that foundationally and you don’t know how to communicate to those strategically, you’re not going to have a sexy offer.

Lauren: Cause when you talk to everyone, no one’s end up listening. So a lot of things that we’re talking about right now and planning for the new [00:23:00] years, who are the avatars that we want to go after? What, where are they present? It’s not Google ads. It’s not. Facebook ads, meta ads are your solution, like you’re saying.

Lauren: Baidu is a different search engine than Luck. Go. If your audience is a predominantly, uh, older, wealthier demographic, Bing is a really good place. Like, you just have to start strategically. Who are we going after? Why are we going after them? Did we evaluate them? Do we know? Are we guessing? Like those type of things come into a bigger part of the conversation where the partnership can’t take place if the owner who’s been on the front lines or the marketing director who’s been there for a while knows.

Lauren: Is the sales team providing feedback on what they’re hearing on the conversations? Is the social media response team providing feedback of what they’re seeing or hearing when they’re doing social listening? Like that, it has to be a partnership.

Ralph: Great

Ralph: points. You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to boil down what you just said, because first off, it always comes back to Dice as far as it’s concerned. So much of everything that we talk about here, [00:24:00] you know, it’s no surprise that this podcast did start with Digital Marketer way back when with Ryan Dice. This is a question you should be asking your internal team or your agency. Who is our ideal client? Who do I make the most money on? gross profitability, net profitability, and who do we enjoy serving the most

Ralph: and

Lauren: that last one’s good.

Ralph: And even most importantly, it’s like, what can we be the best in the world at? Like think bigger and ask your team, ask your media buying team.

Ralph: This asked your internal team. That’s asked your agency team. This, if they come back and they say, uh, I don’t know. Like notice, you’re not saying what my business can be. The question is really, this is a we question. This is where you as a business owner, a CMO, a director of marketing, you know, somebody runs a business or has an internal thing, you’re doing it yourself.

Ralph: Ask yourself these questions. And I think that’s the key to everything because that’s the goal. [00:25:00] and then you Do you pin it with the goal? Like whatever the goal is, whether it’s 25 million in sales next year or double what you did this year, like we have a client of like did 8 million for the first time, like they start off 2 million and now they’re at 8 million.

Ralph: Now they want 16 million. Like we know that. So we’re

Ralph: talking about like who their idea and who their ideal client is. Who can they be the best in the world at? Who do you best serve? You know, who really loves your stuff the most?

Ralph: Who can you get more of? And we had this conversation with this. Client has actually volunteered to be on perpetual traffic.

Ralph: We won’t say who they are, but they’re in the hospitality space. We asked them this question. We had this conversation. Who is your best customer? Well, your best customer is one that rents from you for five to seven days. And they’re typically on a vacation. And the alternative is like, I go to sorry, Disney world or some expensive place.

Lauren: Wait, why are you saying sorry for Disney? It’s how I ended up in Orlando.

Ralph: Anyway, I [00:26:00] know you’re like a Disney loyalist. Uh, but the point is, is, and these are the people that we make the most money off of and we do the best work for. And we enjoy

Lauren: But you know, that if you know that

Lauren: about

Ralph: and they knew it. And then we’re like, all right, well, how can you make that experience even better? And fortunately for this group, they had ideas and we bounced a lot of ideas off and the point is, it’s like, that’s going to be our plan.

Ralph: We’ve got a plan moving forward. I’m not going to say what it is, but the point is, it’s, it’s very Airbnb like for a lot of ways, the point is, is that. That’s the question you should be asking your internal team. Not like what’s my CPA on my, what’s my ROAS on my Facebook ads this week. Like that’s all tactical stuff you can get in a weekly report, but right now is the time you should be talking about these things.

Ralph: And this is when we talk about like a strategy partnership, because otherwise you’re not getting the juice that you want out of your internal team and you’re not empowering them to do their best work. Cause what you’re doing is you’re probably [00:27:00] dictating. You’re saying, Oh, you know, I serve a younger demographic.

Ralph: We should start doing Tik TOK ads. Well, maybe you should ask your team what they think too, or maybe your agency. Maybe that is a good idea. Maybe

Lauren: can have like a budget that’s a test budget and be like, Hey, cool. I try this and you have to, in that partnership, like I’m absolutely welcome and able to try it, but we need to set parameters. So what does success look like? And we need to isolate that against the rest of our campaigns if it doesn’t do well, because to hold us accountable, like we’re absolutely happy to launch, happy to test, but we need to have guardrails and In a lot of like

Ralph: agree, but I’m going to disagree with you on

Lauren: I agree, but that’s that’s

Lauren: what a cop

Ralph: I

Lauren: I agree,

Ralph: That’s, That’s, great. But my question would be, does that get you closer to your goal?

Lauren: Good question.

Lauren: I mean,

Ralph: adding, tech talk ads. Does it really get you closer to your goal? let’s talk about this. Okay. Let’s look at who is buying right now. Is it really there?

Ralph: I guess they do have insights into their business. Yeah, maybe that is a good suggestion. [00:28:00] However, can you actually do more of what’s already working on your meta channels maybe on YouTube, all the things that you’re currently working on, or maybe on your Google ads specifically. So I would say yes, and.

Ralph: But if we

Lauren: Now you’re just listing words and but or

Ralph: yeah, but if you actually do go down that road, you are going to test it in its own environment and mitigate the downside risk.

Lauren: I think testing is key I think having and there’s ways that you’re going to invest in ways that you’re going to scale your business Horizontally or vertically like you have exactly what they did with the train industry and was steel and all that stuff like you launching in a new marketplace and having a test Is amazing.

Lauren: And when you can do that, I do recommend it, but it has to be isolated as a test. And I think the biggest piece of what I agree with you on and what you’re saying is, , you can’t stop what’s working. You can’t shift and say, I’m going to move attention away from what’s already working and see if this new [00:29:00] item is going to work even better.

Lauren: Because what I see so often is someone’s like, okay, now I’m going to launch into Google ads. And then they neglect their social media ads or they’re like, Hey, I’m, I’m going to go deeper on this Reddit opportunity because my demographic is predominantly male and they’re in this age range. So like going into those pieces, you can’t stop the train from moving.

Lauren: And you want to, when you’re testing, have equinamity in the tests for new, as in the tests for developing. So, expanding in the existing channels that you’re doing, you can’t just say, I’m not going to test in the meta ecosystem, I’m only going to test in TikTok. And you establish a 10, 000 a month budget to test TikTok ads to give it viability, but you’re not testing ways to make meta Equally stronger like that should be a comparison because if you’re doing like 10 test You can see was that investment should I go deeper on meta as you’re saying?

Lauren: Or is it like hey, i’m getting a halo lift. There’s growth going on both sides Let’s continue now instead of that ten thousand dollar test that [00:30:00] additional ten thousand dollar has been in a stupor And now I’m going to give additional testing to go deeper into those marketplaces or we introduce another channel, things of that nature.

Lauren: That’s where it’s like, you have to look at the bigger picture, which you always go back to. Does it help move the business? I’m just going to go to. And distill down your distillery. You can’t stop. What’s working

Ralph: All right. So we’re distilling the distilling of this distillation. all right. So you are coming to my

Ralph: point of view on

Ralph: that. Yeah. Now it tastes like, Oh my God, no, that’s not refined. Is that came from like a. a screw top bottle, a lot of good screw top wines these days. Uh, the point is, is yeah, you should double down on the stuff that’s working first off, but like for this client, perfect example of me agreeing with but also disagreeing at the same time is that.

Ralph: All right, for their new products that they want, like It’s a great idea. And

Lauren: Did you come up with it

Ralph: We hashed it out together. And they asked, I was like, listen, I will [00:31:00] tell you if I think your idea sucks, but I am telling you right now, it’s a great idea. However, they’re like, yeah, we’re going to launch it in half the country.

Ralph: I’m like, no, no, no, no, no. Launch it in one region in your best market. And which this is a seasonal product, so launch it in a non seasonal area. Okay. So you’re going to get a level of, did you say equanimity

Lauren: I couldn’t have any

Ralph: I’m just going to use that word here and let’s test it there and see, like, Handcraft it before you scale it.

Ralph: Don’t spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. Let’s do like exit. I think I actually set a 10, 000 budget. The point is, is it didn’t really matter. Cause it was like, I didn’t know specifically what state, how much we were spending in that state. I was like 10 percent of whatever we’re spending in that state.

Ralph: So let’s say it’s a hundred K per month, 10 K per month. There you go. Perfect way of testing it out. So that’s the way that you test out sort of to scale laterally. All the while we’re [00:32:00] scaling vertically, like we’re doing more in that market. We’re not stopping doing what we’re doing on the Google side of the equation, doing.

Ralph: Like very high intent based keyword search for specific terms and using strategies and tactics and all these other sorts of things. But it’s like, once you have these conversations, if we take a step back, like what we’re talking about is strategic conversations, not tactical. Like, Oh, my, my row has on Tik TOK, all of a sudden tanks.

Ralph: Like why, why is my people don’t even use this terminology, my cost to acquire a new customer, they say CPA, because it’s basically new and returning because they don’t know any better. Cause they haven’t downloaded our checklist, by the way,

Lauren: shot chat

Ralph: that shot shots, everybody has to do a shot. Um, the point is, is like, these are conversations that are higher level.

Ralph: This is what you should aspire to in 2025 with your team. And if you’re dictatorial, like I can sometimes be, I get it. But set your ego aside, actually ask your people what they think. Cause you know what? You might be [00:33:00] really surprised at what they tell you and surprised. I mean, in a good way.

Lauren: in a good way. I will say, some of like, you had said a really good point about like, it’s try and it’s like what you’re going to go to it’s because like we’re humans, not everyone is perfect, there’s opportunities to test and there’s things that you can do to like, try it for me, the end of the day, it’s about incrementality.

Lauren: You want to have an improvement and you may not get the atypical return that you want right away. But when you’re launching new stuff, like also have patience and grace with yourself,

Ralph: Good

Lauren: the team, with how you’re communicating, and then see how the market responds. I just think a lot of it is especially coming out of black Friday.

Lauren: So anyone who’s like, wow, we just had an amazing weekend. Awesome. Congratulations. Well done.

Ralph: 14 mirror.

Lauren: It’d be like really hard to like, bring it back down. I’ve seen a lot of like, I need to keep this [00:34:00] going. And it’s like moving the marathon goalposts and you started this out doing like 42 K and then all of a sudden they said, no, we’re going to run 50.

Lauren: And for anyone that knows that you’re running and you’re like, Whoa, Oh my God, my legs are about to collapse. What do you mean? I have to do more. I just say that of have patience and kindness with your team. And with those, the most important thing is that there’s established KPIs. You have alignment. And like you said, is this going towards your business objectives?

Lauren: And I’m not saying like if someone messes up, like that’s not I’m just trying to say, I’m just saying like a lot of people come out of this holiday season with heavy, intense energy when a lot of the other people are like you said at the beginning, exhausted, their fingers are are blistering. that’s just my only like, please be nice to people this holiday season.

Lauren: There’s a lot of opportunity out there. Um, and going and testing and all these things and, and realigning towards your goals is exciting. Getting them on board is amazing. Validating that, make sure you validate from them and you hear validation because if they don’t call [00:35:00] back to you, like you have to stop.

Lauren: If that’s every single person, please. Explains me what you understand our goals are if you can’t get them to validate what you’ve been saying You’re gonna be going in two different directions and you’re gonna look like geese that are flying south for the winter.

Ralph: Or if, if they don’t know what the goal is, shame on you.

Lauren: Oh, whoa. So shame on you for not articulating it. Well, or is it

Ralph: Yeah. Cause how are they supposed to know if you don’t articulate it?

Lauren: So there’s this podcast I listened to earlier this week, it’s called Two Bobs. And they had this awesome episode where they said that the smartest person, I’m like, just stealing it down. They had said how like the really good individuals ask good questions. So I’m not going to say that full ownership is on the person for not articulating it well, but you want to have people on your team that can ask the smart questions to get to the hone of the message, because then that’s also a way that you can confirm that they understood it.

Lauren: So in that they’re like, Don’t just tell someone what the goal is. Ask them like, how [00:36:00] do you see this goal being alignment and, try to get validation that they understood it. If they don’t understand it right away, then ask good questions to see if they got there. And they’re just poorly articulating it back.

Ralph: You’re far

Ralph: more forgiving Okay. I’m in, I’m in Thanksgiving mood. I’m really happy. A lot of our clients had such good weekends and

Lauren: it’s

Ralph: Oh, me too. Yeah. It’s great. It’s been great. That’s,

Lauren: giving Tuesday. Okay. We’re recording this on Giving

Ralph: It’s Giving

Ralph: Tuesday.

Ralph: You’re, you’re asking for forgiveness. I’m just sort of taking more of a hard line.

Lauren: I’m asking for kindness.

Ralph: kindness.

Ralph: kindness, kindness is in short supply these days. So I, I appreciate that. And I think that’s far better than my methodology here.

Ralph: But the point is, is like, maybe you find some sort of balance in between, depending on what your personality is, like you can go for kind, or you can go for hard line, but you should be asking questions at

Ralph: the very least. And also you brought up a really good point because I know time is short here is that when you are testing new things, give your team a grace period.[00:37:00]

Ralph: Okay.

Ralph: I told this customer, I was like, listen, I think your new product idea is, freaking fabulous. However, it’s not going to work at first. So give it time, gather data, make good decisions, figure out where the problems are, figure out where the holes are, figure out where in the sales funnel, like where your holes in the bucket are, and then iterate and, and give it time, but also do it smart.

Ralph: allocate yourself a specific amount of budget for it, test it out, but don’t expect success in the first try, because oftentimes, well, as we know, most new products really do fail, especially in the first iteration, but you’ve refined it over time, over time, over time, , and every product online or that was ever sold is pretty much the same way or any software

Lauren: It’s like a thousandth version. Oh, my life’s coming out strong. But the Hoover vacuum, it took like 900 vacuums before one hit. we want to launch out the gate with success. It’s really easy [00:38:00] to see on social media. Someone’s like, Oh, I hit a million dollars. Like, it’s like the pot of product launching.

Lauren: , so yeah, giving the team a grace period, but I’m also going to be really bullish on giving the team KPIs of what does success look like. You have to define success before you launch because a lot of people will define success during the launch and it doesn’t allow the micro wins and it doesn’t allow the realignment for when you’re way off.

Lauren: base. And you have to do that through multiple sides on platform business metrics. Like you have to know, at what point do you see that this is working and when this is not working, it might be like, the in app metrics say you’re launching a new channel. Do you have high click through rate? Do you have.

Lauren: Long sustainability and page like time on page for the website. Do you have a, a relatively positive conversion metric? do you see comments and like, , what are the things that will tell you early on, what are your early indicators of sustainable? [00:39:00] Performance that can then be scalable performance.

Ralph: I couldn’t agree more. Well, hopefully this, uh, gives you some room for pause, I think, just to consider and reflect a little bit on 2024 and also how you’re going to manage your team and or your agency or your business in the coming year, a very high level. Thoughts and conversations here, but hopefully this made an impact on how you’re sort of thinking at this point in time.

Ralph: Hopefully you had a great 2024. Here’s to an awesome 2025. And, we’re here to help, of course, between ourselves to your 11 and mongoose media. However, we possibly can. So, We did not mention one of our brand new, ratings, on the show. We will

Ralph: do that next week, by the way, we got caught up in some kind of religious conversation to start things off.

Ralph: I don’t know how that went down, but anyway, uh, we

Lauren: because you’re not coming to my stand up

Ralph: I know, I know I’m coming

Ralph: the wrong

Lauren: week

Lauren: instead. I

Ralph: [00:40:00] just cause somebody’s going to videotape it though. And we are going to put it up on site for sure.

Lauren: Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,

Ralph: yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s all good. I

Lauren: Look, my set brings in a lot of religious stuff and brings in a lot of opposite religious stuff, so I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. I think it’s like you have to be there, Ralph. I know.

Ralph: know. at least, you know, we’ll screen it here. We’ll make sure Kevin screens at Kevin, our producer. Uh, anyway, Make sure that wherever you listen to podcasts, you leave us reading in a review. We will read it on air.

Ralph: You’ll become podcast famous for about 15 seconds, which is what Andy Warhol said.

Lauren: Unless you write a really long

Ralph: That’s true.

Ralph: The longer and the better and the more stars, the more time you get on air. So anyway, we’ll read that right at the top of the show. The next one we do here. Uh, so thank you for all of you who’ve done that recently.

Ralph: Really appreciate it. And of course, all the resources and everything that we mentioned here in today’s show is over at perpetual traffic. com. So on behalf of my awesome cohost, Lauren E. Petrulo,[00:41:00]

Lauren: Be kind. And ciao!

Ralph: till next show. See ya.