Why Traffic Is Down but Leads Are Up, and How to Read the Signals With Charlie Grinnell Artwork

The Best SEO Podcast: Defining the Future of Search with LLM Visibility™

The Best SEO Podcast: Defining the Future of Search with LLM Visibility™

With over 5 million downloads, The Best SEO Podcast has been the go-to show for digital marketers, business owners, and entrepreneurs wanting real-world strategies to grow online.

Now, host Matthew Bertram — creator of LLM Visibility™ and the LLM Visibility Stack™, and Lead Strategist at EWR Digital — takes the conversation beyond traditional SEO into the AI era of discoverability.

Each week, Matthew dives into the tactics, frameworks, and insights that matter most in a world where search engines, large language models, and answer engines are reshaping how people find, trust, and choose businesses. From SEO and AI-driven marketing to executive-level growth strategy, you’ll hear expert interviews, deep-dive discussions, and actionable strategies to help you stay ahead of the curve.

Whether you’re a C-suite leader, marketing professional, or founder building your brand, this podcast is your guide to understanding the evolution of SEO into LLM Visibility™ — because if you’re not visible to the models, you won’t be visible to the market.

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The Best SEO Podcast: Defining the Future of Search with LLM Visibility™

Why Traffic Is Down but Leads Are Up, and How to Read the Signals With Charlie Grinnell

February 08, 2026 • MatthewBertram.com

0:00 | 50:24

We unpack how AI finally lets marketers count what matters, why attribution is broken across platforms, and how to use behavioral insight and benchmarking to choose better bets. We share a simple playbook: listen in niche communities, test in organic, scale what pops, and measure outcomes not vanity.

• AI compressing the cost of data integration and analysis
• Platform bias, privacy limits and pixel gaps in attribution
• Traffic down, leads up as signal quality improves
• Behavioral personas outperforming demographic personas
• Niche communities seeding mainstream trends with delay
• Organic as a testbed to inform paid investments
• Benchmarking growth against the category, not just yourself
• Operational discipline for clean data and controlled spend
• Directional signals over false precision to act faster

Guest Contact Information:

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/charliegrinnell

Website: rightmetric.co

Instagram: instagram.com/charliegrinnell

Twitter/X: x.com/CharlieGrinnell

Setting The AI And Data Agenda

SPEAKER_03 0:02

I'll clip the beginning here.

SPEAKER_00 0:04

So This is the unknown secrets of internet marketing. Your insider guide to the strategies top marketers use to crush the competition. Ready to unlock your business full potential. Let's get started.

SPEAKER_03 0:20

Howdy, welcome to another episode of the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. I'm your host, Matt Bertram. As you know, I've been trying to get that changed. Our intro and the name of the podcast, I've been doing it for 12 years roughly. Like so it's it's very ingrained in how we do it. But um, you know, we are focused on uh LLM visibility and the changing world and how uh AI is impacting search. And one of the biggest use cases that I've found for search is well, data analysis and pattern recognition and really taking all the different data sets that we have, whether it be you know SimwarWeb or now there's like SparkTuro and you know uh Google Analytics and like pulling them all together and and figuring out uh a lot more about that customer journey, that target persona and the things that get people to buy. I think data-driven uh digital marketing or or SEO is just so powerful. And there's been a shift of people getting more comfortable with analytics. And I'm on a couple like large, like large teams for companies where I bring the data set and you know, the traditional marketers are like all want to see the data and understand it. And um, you know, it it's a great time to be alive. And and so I wanted to bring on uh Charlie Grinnell uh from Wright Metric. He's taken a bunch of different data and brought it all together and does data research and has got some really interesting insights and trends for us today. So, Charlie, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Hey, thank you very much for having me. It's great to be here.

SPEAKER_03 1:52

Yeah, so I'm I'm excited to just uh you you get to see um big swaths of data. I love uh when I get to talk to people that have access to like click metrics and you know the the the data stream and and they get to they get to do all kinds of fun stuff with the data. I think I think the the name of the game is Data's Oil, Data's the New Oil. And I feel like prior to LOMs, uh the excitement got slowed down a lot because you were talking about data hygiene so much. And uh it was taking a long time to like clean up the data. So like a lot of the excitement for marketers uh maybe wasn't there uh when when you were setting up data lakes and stuff like that. And um, you know, I think now it's just fast and furious, and and there's so many cool things happening from a consulting standpoint, from a data analytics standpoint. And you know, I'd love to just kind of let you set the table of like where you see the market going and some of the interesting insights you're finding.

Counting What Was Uncountable

SPEAKER_01 2:47

Yeah, so I think what you just said there around there's this excitement again around data, I think is absolutely true. And I think I'll use an analogy, right? For the last 10 or 15 years in marketing, we've been told to like use our data, right? Use your data, use your data, right? And people go, yeah, yeah, totally, that sounds good. And then they kind of like go away and be like, okay, but now what? Oh wow, this is really complicated or time consuming or expensive, etc. And so when I think about and I think where we're going is we've been kind of sold this dream of like going to the moon, so to speak, with data. But then that kind of gap that we've run into is like, okay, but like, do we have a launch platform? Do we have spacesuits? Do we have like engines? Do we have boosters, like all of that sort of stuff? And I think now what's super exciting with what we're seeing on the AI side of things is a lot of that underlying infrastructure that was expensive, time consuming, and not really sexy, the cost and resource needed to actually make a lot of that stuff happen is getting compressed, which is awesome. So, you know, what you and I, I think, have been talking about before we started recording was this idea of being able to count things now that we previously haven't been able to count because they've been cost prohibitive or time prohibitive. So I think that's really, really exciting. Like, yeah, of course, AI can create video for us and do all these different things, but I think what's really interesting is like there have been all these underlying things that we're about to learn about society as a whole, and then specifically in marketing that we're about to learn about our customers because we can now count and pull meaning from all of these different signals that previously have been around us and just kind of hiding in plain sight.

Attribution Gaps And Platform Bias

Strategy Over Execution And Data Hygiene

SPEAKER_03 4:25

Yeah, I mean, I think that that's the biggest thing and my biggest kind of like, I guess, pet peeve, I don't know if that's the right word, but essentially, how many different platforms did I typically have to log into, right? To to try to get meaning. And then if you're running multiple campaigns, you know, it you're you're buying like an ad roll or something like that to to easily roll them all together because and then run it into a dashboard and like figure out like, okay, where's my attribution really? Which that's a still a huge issue, right? Of like what converted white. And AdWords always got the last attribution. So people dump more money into AdWords, but it's like, man, the discovery probably happened on Facebook or social. And and I I feel like that's what's kind of happened in the data recently, is it's just kind of left Google and Facebook and it's gone everywhere. And so now like it's starting over to figure out what that customer journey looks like. Even the data set of like, okay, someone had to see your ad 11 times before they converted. I recently saw data on the B2B side that it's 30. Okay. So there's like there's 30 touch points that happen before somebody dies. It's not that simple of I'm just gonna run some ad words and I'm gonna get business, right? And here's the crazy thing I saw. This is a little bit uh one off to what I'm talking about, but I've been seeing in my social media feeds, you know, people post like these affiliate numbers, right? And I'm not in the affiliate space, but they post these affiliate numbers of how much money they're making. I saw a video of a buddy that I know was showing how to write the prompts to create that where it's all fictitious. So all this data of like, so so we're in a world today to kind of bring it back where you can't trust anything, you gotta verify it, right? Yeah, if like and so it's like, okay, what are the data sources? What are you using? Like, even for me, I would tend to lean towards search console data over GA4 data. One is okay, I gotta get recertified in GA4. Okay, that was like one, they keep moving stuff around, they got some good stuff in there, but okay, but what I was finding is we were running like ad data to a couple clients that I was trying to get them to upgrade their servers. Okay, I was like, hey, your your data is like your servers are slow, core web vitals, whatever. And um, I could show them the data of like how many people were getting driven to the website and then how many times the pixel fired, and there was a huge delta. And I was like, people are coming to the website and they're bouncing before the pixel can even load and fire. Like understanding how all these things work and connect is is you know, two-thirds of the game, I almost feel like, because once you figure out where the data is and what you need to do, so you get you could get you can take the data, you could get the analysis, and now the execution is the easiest part. And a lot of people spend so much money on the execution, and they spend almost no money on the strategy. So they're like, you know, they're the little mouse trying to make to try to climb out of what is that analogy? They're trying to climb out of the bucket, they're trying to turn the milk into cheese, right? And they're like spending so much money and effort. I'm finding that a lot on the AI visibility side. People don't know what to do, so they're doing like a bunch of everything. And then I come in and I'm like, okay, there's a lot of noise here. Like you're you're just trying to survive. Like, let's slow down, figure out what the plan is, and then move in that direction. I don't know. And I I just feel like what you do is the the the engine on that train, right? Like you got to have the the data figured out.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Yeah, well, it's it's there's a few things you said there that I want to touch on. So the first one being the example that you just gave where you showed a client where the pixel wasn't firing and all of that. I think what's really interesting, and I'd be curious your take on this is we've kind of had this pendulum, right? So as soon as kind of performance marketing started to come into style, so to so to say, it was like, oh, we can track everything, therefore, x equals 10. And I think we as marketers, like the pendulum swung over there to be like, what's our ROAS? What's our ROI? We're only doing things if we can attribute them, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:46

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

And then we look at like, okay, the Cambridge Analytica thing happened, you know, so there was like some some weird feeling around that, you know, some of the social APIs kind of cut back on what they were showing, all for good reason. Then you have all the whole like GDPR data privacy compliance stuff. Yeah. Um, and then and then you and California.

SPEAKER_03 9:07

I want to call out California because no one talks about California, and people just say, in the US, you're able to operate no problem. And they they don't mention California.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

So so totally. So there's so so what we've seen is kind of this like pendulum of like, let's track everything to now. It's actually kind of swung back the other way because it's like, well, we actually can't see everything anymore. And even the stuff we can see, to your point, it's biased because Google's gonna say it came from Google, Meta's gonna say it came from Meta. You know, everyone's trying to get that piece of the attribution pie to be like, I was the one that actually did that. And so the kind of the narrator's voice is like, everybody's lying. Um, you know, like that's kind of the thing, and and the the answer is it's it depends. And so then you get into your own data. Oh, well, people coming to our site, the way a visit or a or a session is calculated on every single website is different. Plus, there's bot traffic, plus there's etc. etc. Right. So, like to your point, it's complicated.

Privacy Shifts And The Pendulum Swing

SPEAKER_03 10:05

Um yeah, so so just to add, like bot traffic is something that a lot of clients don't rule out when they're setting up their analytics, right? Or their own their own IP address, right? So you got people at the company, it it it it really creates a lot of noise uh in the data. And I I would I I would even say, what was I gonna say? I was gonna say something um that was pretty thoughtful, but I can't remember what it was. So keep keep keep keep going.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

Yeah, what so so what I would say is from that, like from that data perspective, um, like that has just been a really interesting thing to navigate within organizations, right? Like how we as marketers approach data. What is our level of trust there? So that's kind of like bucket number one. Bucket number two, I think, that is really interesting, is for the last up until kind of like you know, the advent of all these AI tools in the last 24 months, call it we as marketers have basically let the tools drive what we count. And I actually think that's wrong. I actually think what we need to do is we need to figure out what is the right thing to count and then have tooling go after that. And I think what's happened is with AI now, you can create tooling in a fairly lightweight way based on the value of the countability of something. And that is really, really interesting.

Measure What Matters, Not What’s Easy

SPEAKER_03 11:31

Yeah, I I think you're dead on. And as a broader concept, that's what I've seen lack in most of the tools, is there's things you can measure. So, so AI on the organic side of things has completely been flipped upside down, right? Like they've flipped over the cart, there's no attribution, like you know, you have to rethink what you're doing. And people are like, oh, it's just good SEO, and and that is a portion of it. Um and it's gonna get you, let's say 70% or whatever the way there. But there's still differences and there's still things that need to happen. But when you think about, okay, what do I need to do? Um, it's not about traffic anymore. Okay. That's that's the thing. That's the biggest thing. It's like there's an inverse correlation now. It's like traffic's going down, leads are going up, right? And so people are using this traffic measurement. And like, I mean, there was some kind of update recently, and traffic just dropped again, right? And then like everybody freaks out, and it's like, okay, well, what is happening? How are things evolving? Where are things moving to? And we're not tracking the right things, like we're tracking what we know how to track, but even keyword ranking, okay, because now you're talking about customization, like it's very hard to figure out attribution, but I do think it's easier to understand who your target audience is and how they search and go, what should we be doing to be in the way of this? And I think what I was gonna say earlier was how people are searching, what I'm finding is when you were saying, Oh, it could be Facebook, it could be Google, it could be both, and it could be simultaneously because maybe there's like something streaming, okay, and then they're on their phone. And like, I mean, so a lot of these, a lot of these like um clear customer journey path is not what it looks like at all. I mean, they came out with a study a couple years, it was like 2003 or something like that, where it was it looked like um like an atom or something like that. It was like you would you would go out, you would come back, you would, you know, it it was very messy. Um and and I and I think as marketers, I guess, or storytelling, you you want to explain it for the client really easily. And it's just like, here's the funnels and here's the steps, and we just gate them and move them along, and you know, this is what it is, but it but all this getting flipped upside down is forcing us to rethink and also how people are searching is is evolving as well, right? Because um, I'm finding what one of the things you we were talking about, you know, some of the competitors of the uh uh the tool that you have. One uh I I do use one of those tools, and essentially what I was seeing in the data is where were people, where was the referral traffic going from some of these sites? The referral traffic was going to chat GBT, the referral traffic was going to grow because they they find you somehow, like maybe it's a Facebook, whatever. Um, they find you or Reddit or whatever, they go to a website, they check it out. What do they do now? Now they verify. So they're gonna Google you, they're gonna, you know, chat GBT you, they're gonna figure out what is the AI saying. And we've landed some clients recently that are like, we don't like what the AI says about us. Can you help us fix that? And I was like, Yeah, we can definitely do that. But like reputation management in that category was never request because there was never AIs that were doing it. And then like people are starting to tell me too, hey, I usually went to Google, but now I'm starting to go to Chat GPT and I'm like, oh, you're coming across the river, right? And I'm like, that number keeps going up. So I it's I think it's just a fun world to be in. I mean, what are some of the things that you're seeing in in the data that were kind of um like a standout to you or kind of shocking to you that you wouldn't expect?

Traffic Down, Leads Up

SPEAKER_01 15:35

Yeah, so I mean, that diversification that you're talking about, yes, that's absolutely in the data across every industry, whether it's financial services, whether it's B2B, whether it's retail, like you you name it. I think what one of the big things that that we're starting to see is um these niche communities rise up and punch disproportionately above their weight. So I'll give an example. Um, let's say in the you know, mountain biking space, there might be a big Reddit thread about mountain biking. Cool. Now that means our our advice to a customer that's a mountain biking brand isn't, hey, go get on Reddit. It's watch what's happening here, watch what's being talked about here, and then can you use this stuff in your content, in your activations, and how you you put yourself out into the world? But I think what's really interesting is like these smaller communities are having a disproportionate impact on the behaviors of the larger community with a delay. So, you know, the way that when Reddit describes itself as like the front page of the internet, the way we also describe it to customers is like, you know, that thing you're seeing now on Instagram that happened three months ago on Reddit. And I think what we're seeing is 4chan likes, yeah, 4chan, like whatever.

SPEAKER_03 16:47

Like so just for same, same, say, same, same concept. Like uh for everyone that's listening, uh, it's like how culture gets developed from Europe to New York to California to maybe the rest of the world. And then also what you're saying, like what you saw on Instagram, I've seen this on the international side more than anything else. Like, I love when clients are like multinational and I'm like, oh, we got to run ads in South America. I'm like, all right, like I already know exactly what's gonna work because it's what worked in the last two years here that's no longer working now, is working there. It's just kind of like a waterfall effect of where it flows from and too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

Totally. So I think that that diversification is really actually driven by people's behavior, right? And so I think that's the thing is like what we're seeing is that diversification of behavior. Yes, people are still going to the big platforms, absolutely. But when we look at where else are they spending time, it's much more broad and diverse. And a lot of organizations aren't necessarily set up to monitor or even understand that, right? Like it's one thing, and and again, when I say monitor and understand that, notice that I didn't say show up there and be active. Like I think that's the other thing, is like, you know, when when someone hears me say Reddit, you know, I'm not saying go start spin up a Reddit like presence as a brand. I'm just saying understand that the people's attention that you're trying to earn, that is where they're spending time. So you as a brand, the the activity on Reddit might be an intelligence gathering thing that you build into your workflow, not necessarily we're gonna show up there. And so I think that's like where the nuance is.

SPEAKER_03 18:21

That's a big shift because I have had clients go, oh, the LLMs, we need to be on core on Reddit. And they go jump in out there, they don't understand the culture, like right, they've getting they get banned, you know, or whatever. And it's clear self-promotion. And totally that's not what these communities want, but you should go and um what is it called? Lurk, like go lurk around and and understand what's going on. And from an intelligence gathering, you now know what's going to hit your broader market sooner. It's kind of the you know, the the the wellspring of of whatever you're gonna do. I I think that that's a great, great takeaway and a great kind of mind shift for people. Um what else?

Multi‑Touch Journeys And Verification

SPEAKER_01 19:03

I think I think the well, so so I think with that, like like separating, separating when when when we think about marketing, right? Like there's like the activation output, but then there's also like operationally, what are we setting up for for? And so I think like that's why I always call that thing out, because it's like, oh, there's this big diversification of channels. And most people go, oh yeah, we need to, we need to go be on that channel. And it's like, no, no, no. You just need to be aware of that channel and you need to set up the infrastructure to understand what's happening there so that you can be better prepared to plan whatever's next. So I think, yeah, that's how I would summarize that. Um, the next one, this is I don't know if this is, I'm curious your take on this. I think most brands have organic social completely backwards. And what I mean by that is the rise of performance marketing and you know, paid, Facebook, Google, et cetera, has changed the hierarchy internally, where that's where a lot of the resource and focus and attention and like political capital behind the scenes. Within marketing organizations have gone, right? So when I sat on the social team at Red Bull, at Aritzia, and when I worked in marketing RTRX, like all of a sudden we're pouring tons and tons of money into ads. Internally, I might say, hey, this is an idea, but the person running you know 10 million bucks in ads, their opinion's gonna trump me because, like, oh, well, that's where the majority of our investment is going. And so we've seen this play out with, hey, we've made these campaigns, we've run these ads, and like off we go. And then usually what happens is like that creative just gets shoveled over to the social team and is like, hey, yeah, post this. That is completely backwards.

SPEAKER_03 20:36

For sure. I mean, uh, Gary, yeah, go ahead. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

That's probably the same thing that Gary talks about. Organic social needs to be your petri dish, where what you actually need to do is publish as much content as possible on organic social, establish what a baseline performance is, and anything that pops from that, that's what you double down on and throw ad dollars on and get after.

Niche Communities Drive Mainstream Trends

Listen Before You Post

SPEAKER_03 20:56

100%. I I think what you're saying has been like the conversation for SEOs for so long, right? Like it fits into social as well. Yeah, is is just like you got the attribution on the ads, so you know, you you you see that clear line, so you throw more money at ads, and so it's been disproportional how much money people spend on ads. And you know, and and we we're we're I'm seeing it in all kinds of models on the pay per click just get bit up to where the model breaks, and it's like this doesn't even work anymore from a customer acquisition standpoint. Now we have to think about new channels and new strategies and workflows and you know, all these sort of things. And and so, yeah, I mean, that's that that's what I keep hearing Gary say. And I I we were doing that for a long time before he even started saying that because like you could put it out there on Twitter, you could put it out there on Instagram, and like here's the thing like I posted a post on LinkedIn recently, and I knew based on how it responded, and I posted on Facebook as well. I knew based on how it like wouldn't give me access to the analytics, and they're like, we're still trying to figure it out. I was like, Oh yeah, this one's going viral, right? Like and and so so it's you know, it's like boom, and it's like 30,000 views like in the first like three days. And so I think that these kind of wins as well, showing those to management, saying, Hey, how would much would it cost to get this kind of uh impression uh you know reach? And also these are the right type of customers and we're getting the right kind of engagement. And it's like, let's spend our time on what is the narrative that we want to communicate and get involved in that. And um you're you're actually not gonna have to spend as much on ads on the back end to convert. I mean, there's so much data out there that said if people know your brand, they like your brand, they're gonna buy from you and you just got to use the ads to remind them. But if you're trying to use the ads to like full life cycle, get them from awareness to purchasing, it's very expensive. And not to say that brands can't do it, but you know, um, I I just I think that all this turnover uh with with AI is forcing people to rethink and start over from the ground up. And and I just think it's such a good thing. Now I'm finding that a lot of brands aren't making that change fast enough and are just getting smashed or are getting smashed. Like, and and you know, now everybody's like, oh, we're digitally transformed. We understand that we need to be posted on social. And then it's like, well, now you got to figure out AI. So good luck. You know, and yeah, and so I I I don't know. I I I'm a constant learner and I love talking to people and hearing what they're doing. And um, I mean, it's you know, you have to, if you're running a business, understand the impact and how technology and social media and and all this stuff fits into it, or you or you're really running blind. Um, I mean, the world has changed so much. I I would tell you, I I I won't speak the name, but I was I sat down with the head of AI and uh a director at like a large like Fortune 500 yesterday, and we were talking about prospecting. Okay, we were talking about sales, we were talking about prospecting. They're not allowed to use AI, okay? They're they're not allowed to use lead gen, they're not allowed to, they're not able to have any homegrown assets, they're not able to build landing pages. And I said, like, what are y'all doing? And they're like, Well, we're calling and I go, Can you use LinkedIn navigator? Nope. I was like, So what are you doing? Well, the old school way, we're calling people we know, we're setting up meetings, we're going to meet them, and you know, we're you know, closing deals, and and they only eat what they kill. And I'm like, Y'all are scaring me. Like, I was like, I was like, I couldn't, I couldn't handle that environment anymore to know that there's people competing with you that have AI and everything else leveraged up to to challenge you, and these big brands that are sitting on their logos and and and the brand that they've developed for whatever years, like um what there I forget the name of the tool. Uh, it was like a vibe coding tool, Wix just bought them. Uh, I think they sold for 40 million. It was a one person uh Israel, Israeli guy that created this whole thing in Wix bought 40 million dollars, just one person.

SPEAKER_01 25:33

What's lovable? Lovable's, I think they're under 50 people and they're a hundred million ARR, and they've done it in the fastest time in the history of business. Under 50 people, 100 million ARR. So you want to talk about a valuation on top of that?

SPEAKER_03 25:45

Like, yeah, well, well, think about the businesses that are trying to go head to head with these guys.

SPEAKER_01 25:51

Like, like there's I mean, it sounds like the company that you were talking to yesterday, uh, based on that behavior.

SPEAKER_03 25:57

They base base 22, the uh Wix bottom, base I think base 22. Yeah, they go right head-to-headed with lovable.

SPEAKER_01 26:03

Yeah, but I think about the Fortune 500 that you just mentioned that you well, you don't have to mention that, but I'm like, that to me sounds like sounds like Blockbuster right before it went away. Like, that's crazy because there is that story about Blockbuster where it was like people love coming into our stores, they love the serendipity of running into their neighbor in the aisle while they're browsing for a movie. And then Netflix was like, you know what people actually like? Being naked in their bed watching their show, binging it. Like, that's actually what people want, right? So it's so interesting to see like that behavior is still being incentivized at these huge organizations, to your point. And then we're having the rise of these little giants. And I think that's actually gonna be the future. We are gonna see this little giant thing where we are gonna have, you know, a 10-person billion dollar company. I think we're gonna get to the point where it's a one-person billion dollar company or like a three-person billion dollar company with all of this technology.

Organic As Petri Dish For Paid

SPEAKER_03 26:55

Oh, I I think that that's coming, and a lot of people have kind of predicted that. I mean, I think that like um right metric gives you those superpowers, right? Like it gives you the that data set to figure out like I'm not just gonna what what it whatever the ad um the the saying is like I you know, I I spend 100% of my budget and I you know I know where 50% went, or 50%, yeah, yeah. Yeah, or something like that. Which 50% worked or whatever it is. But I mean, like if you know laser focused, you know, where your customers are at, what they like, how to communicate with them, and how to position yourself as a brand, and then get in front of them, like these are superpowers, these are legit superpowers. Like people, I even like I'm talking about AI. I'm like, you have like a PhD in every single like whatever sitting next to you as your co-pilot, right? As Microsoft did a good job of like at everything you do, like that changes the game, like it changes the clarity, right? And so now so now it's like, okay, well, uh, I'm working in like N8N right now, and I'm like, okay, what tools, what access to data, what APIs can I plug in this thing to get it even more data to just absolutely crush it, right? And I mean, we're we're we're living in an interesting time. So tell tell me a little bit more about your tools so so the audience can understand kind of what the problem was that you saw with what was out there, and then what was what was the spot that you were trying to fix?

Little Giants And AI Leverage

SPEAKER_01 28:30

Yeah, so um before I co-founded this company eight years ago, I worked on the brand side. So I worked in-house at Aritzia, which is a women's fashion company. Before that, which is hilarious for those of you watching, because I'm a bald bearded guy. Um before that, I worked in marketing at Red Bull um on the global social team. And then before that, I was actually in video production at Arterix on the brand team. And so um I worked in-house of these big brands, and I was uh the the turning point for Wright Metric was when I was working at Aritzia actually. So um we had these monthly meetings with the CEO and where we were, you know, come in and talk about like what happened last month, what was going well. And so we had just had a kick-ass month on the social side. And so I come into this meeting and you know, thinking I'm hot shit, and uh, you know, all of our numbers are up into the right, and I'm like, this is today's gonna be a great day. And I get in there, we start explaining, you know, kind of our results and like what we've done and whatever. And uh CEO Brian Hill says to me, Okay, how much did the category grow though? You're saying you grew this like 20%. How much did the category grow? And I was like, Well, I don't know, I don't I don't have that data. He's like, Well, if the category grew five percent, I should give you a raise, but if the category grew 80%, I should fire you right now. And I was like, that's not how I thought this was gonna go. But you know what? He was right, and so here I was, and my dashboards were telling me a story because this is what we set up to count, but there was no external reference point of if we were winning or not. Because at the end of the day, we are trying to build our own brand, but we are also competing against Zara, Club Monaco, J. Crew, Lululemon, etc. And so, like, we needed to have that point of view to get an understanding is are we actually doing good or not? And are we can we actually not just mark our own homework? So benchmarking.

SPEAKER_03 30:20

Yeah, no, I I I think that most people are not benchmarking, like they're not keeping track of the market and they're not looking at seasonal stuff, right? Like, um, I have one client that, you know, I'm providing the LOM visibility for them, okay. So I'm not running the paid ads, but they're doing weekly stand-ups and they're doing sprints, and it's awesome. Okay, they're doing great, they're they're very productive, they're creating a lot of stuff. The reporting on the paid ad side is week over week. And I'm like, I was like, this data is not helpful at all.

SPEAKER_02 30:56

Like, I'm just like, it went up by this much this week, it went by this week, and I'm like, this doesn't matter. Like, this doesn't matter at all.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

Like, that's nice that you've just you're like patting yourself on the back. Look at how great we are, right?

SPEAKER_03 31:08

Like, yeah, I'm like, I don't know what this means in reference to everything else, right?

SPEAKER_01 31:12

So totally, but I think that goes back to the the point that I made earlier where it's like we just count things because we've always counted them that way because of how easy they were to count, right? So it's so it actually goes to like, is this thing actually relevant for us to count? And if not, let's jettison it and let's figure out what is the right, no pun intended, right metric to count. And then cool, we can use AI to build tooling to start to count that thing. That's great. But I think about this, you know, this benchmarking conversation. I actually wonder, I'd be curious your take. I feel like a lot of marketers don't do it. One, because they're they're stretched thin. We get it, like marketers are stretched thin. Two, I actually think there's a huge ego part there where they don't want to benchmark. I've dealt with some people who the last thing they wanted to do was benchmark, and ultimately their business suffers because of it. And I think that's a whole other topic of conversation is like, oh, I don't know, I'm over here kind of doing this, and maybe if we benchmark, that would actually go against the narrative that I've been peddling for five years in this organization. Right? And so I think about this like idea meritocracy, like the Ray Dalio type thing. How are we actually thinking about that in marketing? Because now it's just too competitive. We have to get to that point because it is too competitive, it is too hard. Budgets are going under the microscope. And so I don't know, that's maybe a spiky point of view that some people might not like.

SPEAKER_03 32:28

Um, but you know, well, I'll have to have you back on, Charlie. We can we can go down that rabbit hole because I feel like if we open that up, like that's gonna be a soapbox and we're gonna go like way off.

SPEAKER_01 32:41

Different talk show, different talk show.

Benchmarking Beyond Your Own Dashboard

Operational Discipline Beats Ad Spend

Write Metric Origin Story

SPEAKER_03 32:43

Exactly. Um, I can I can tell you just uh a quick response to that is I think that resources are stretched really thin. Okay. Um, I think that people underquote stuff all the time. Um the expectation of uh or or the alignment of of what it takes to get to XYZ, um, and and what I I'm even seeing compression happening from clients thinking, okay, you're leveraging AI, so I want it, I want it just as good or better for cheaper and faster. Okay. And it's like, okay, well, if we benchmarked um where where the the the resources were prior to this, um like it was just getting it back into balance. Uh, and now you're talking about more compression. And I'm I'm even seeing the the whole model for agencies um kind of shift. And so again, we're we're opening up uh kind of a whole ball of wax or I don't know, a can of worms, a can of worms, not a ball of wax, a can of worms. Uh we got all uh but uh I I think that we could we could save that for later to talk about um how we're dealing with that. A lot of coaching that I do, it's it's really interesting. So I'm not like officially coaching. Um I keep saying I will, and I and I do have a certification coming out that I I am working on, but all the people that have like like forced in and said, hey, we want to hire you and and and and they want me to coach them, I'm excited because I'm like, oh, I'm gonna help you like do better in your SEO or whatever. It always goes back to like operationally, how are you running the business? Here are all the here are the things that I'm dealing with. And so like again, the more you can see on how other people are operating to bring it back to benchmarking to know, well, this is what's working, and these guys are making money, and how you're doing it might not be the right way, that helps you, gives you insight into what's going on. And and also I think that you know, don't follow the lemmings off the cliff, right? So like if someone's running an ad and you look at it and you're like, okay, they've been running this ad for a long time, and this ad must be working, so we're gonna like copy it, like use that as a starting point. But like sometimes, like, I mean, I've seen ad campaigns where like they're advertising all across the country and it's just running wild. Like some people don't even know that they they don't even have have access to ad spin that's on some credit card that's like running wild. Like what we started, what we started doing is setting up virtual cards for every client, okay, and then like putting caps on it. So so if we're running ads for them, like I know where the ad spin is, we're shutting it down. That's an operational thing, but man, people are just moving so fast to get to the next thing, they they don't have time to to to really look at it and to really do the research. And so tools that help you do that are tools really, I think the the biggest need in the space, in my opinion, is taking all these different inputs and bringing them together, like bringing that data together where you can actually analyze and do something with it, like you know, and there's inherent concerns with MPC servers, like if you don't know what black box you're getting attached to, what people are doing with your data. And you know, I would just tell you like Chat GBT, like I mean, I like if you will listen to podcasts, like they're doing something with your data, okay? And then Facebook, what did they announce on the 16th? So this is probably coming out after the 16th. Did you know that Facebook, and I think LinkedIn already did this, they are now saying, uh, we're gonna do AI, everything with your data, all the stuff that that's on any of our platforms, we're loading it to the AI, we're gonna build like a model uh about you and around you unless you uncheck that box. Like, yes, that's bad, and like there's a certain degree of like it's inevitable if you're using these platforms, you you are the product, but I don't think they've ever been able to leverage the data. Like they were collecting all the data knewing this day would come. That's what I think, right? They've been they've been collecting all this data, but now the insights that you can get um are just incredible, but you got to have all that data together and you have to have it cleaned up in a way that like the LLMs can can understand and analyze it. And so tools like yours help um bring all that data into one house. Uh, and then you can you put a gentic wrapper inside your tool. And you know, there's just gonna be a lot of things that are coming that I don't think people are prepared for, but are gonna be really, really powerful and are gonna create that disproportionate leverage to the people that invest in this. And I think that digital marketers, again, I'm on a soapbox a little bit, are well positioned because things continue to change for them. So they're normal with this kind of like modus apparendi. And so I think it's a huge uh advantage for anybody that's listening, that's a marketing agency to go, okay, it's changing again. Like, don't get burnt out by that. Get excited about that because if you start competing in adjacent businesses to this, uh you're gonna be unmatched because uh not everybody wants to keep reinventing the wheel. And once they've figured out how to do something, what I've seen in a lot of these uh legacy businesses or you know, Fortune 500 companies, like not all of them, but a lot of them have like a culture that's stuck in its ways, and they're they just think that they can operate the same way that they've always been operating, and they can just outspend and they can outbrand, which like TV ads are like non existent, like even terrestrial radio. I had an old client that was spending a million dollars a month on terrestrial radio and like what was it twenty thousand dollars or something or thirty thousand dollars on paid ads, and then even less on that on SEO. And I was like, I understand that this is what you've always done, but I'm telling you, this is not the right way to go. And you know, they wouldn't listen, and then I got the filings that they're they you know they're getting dissolved, so you know um or yeah, yeah, shocker, exactly. Um, but anyway, so I would love we're we're kind of getting close to time, but I would love for you to like rapid fire, maybe share some interesting insights or things that you found in the data that people might not know. We could cliche say it's like the unknown secrets of internet marketing, or what are some internet marketing secrets that you can share of things that people might not know, but you know because you see the data. Um, I would love to hear kind of rapid fire some of those things, and then totally if you could share um how people can find out uh more about what you're talking about and uh check out the product because I know it's dot co, not dot com, which yeah, which is is and dot co is what what country is it you know? What what country is it actually?

SPEAKER_01 39:40

I actually don't know.

SPEAKER_03 39:41

Oh, it's actually a country, it's actually a country link. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

I'm like, what yeah, what is I'm like, is it isn't it Colorado?

SPEAKER_02 39:48

Oh yeah, there you go. Exactly. We're so like US centric here, like we have no like concept of totally. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:55

I'm like, I don't know what dot co is. I think so so one thing I would say just more. More broadly around people and behaviors. We work with a lot of big, big brands, and a lot of people on the brand side tend to think about personas, and when they think about personas, they think about them demographically. And we think that's a massive mistake. You need to think about them behaviorally. And I'll give an example. This is a quick story about my mom and I. So my mom, love you, mom, she's 67, just said her name out loud or her age out loud. She'd be pissed if she was sitting here. Okay, so I'm over at my mom's house, and we're talking in her kitchen. And on her kitchen counter, she has an iPad. Okay. So we're talking, and she goes, she's forgetting something, and she's like, ah, that's gonna bug me if I don't look this up. I'm gonna Google that. So she walks over to the iPad, and me being the like digital behavior nerd, I'm kind of kicking back like this, being like, okay, she walks over, she opens the YouTube app, and and I'm going like, I'm like, there's no way my 67-year-old mother, who's an accountant, knows that Google owns YouTube. There's no way she knows that. And she goes, just let me Google that. So she types in her query, hits search, and right before she's about to touch a video, I go, Mom, stop, stop. What are you doing? And she goes, What? I'm Googling. And I'm like, you're on YouTube. And she goes, Oh, Charlie, I don't want to read, I want to watch.

SPEAKER_05 41:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:20

And that behavior, what I just described, would typically be associated with ADHD 20-year-olds. My mom is 67. She's scrolling like a 21-year-old. And that actually, that that story is so important because what we're actually seeing in all the data is these behaviors don't just attach to demographics, they attach to much broader groups of people.

Behavioral Personas Over Demographics

SPEAKER_03 41:47

So Charlie, I got uh interesting uh story for you like that. I'll be brief. My uh business partner's wife uh wanted to become an influencer online and wanted some attention online, I guess. And uh, you know, to grow her business, of course, she has a spa and she, you know, she had to grow, she wanted to grow her business. So we started using like data analytics and we started doing research. And what I came up with was like this was six years ago, okay, like five, six years ago. And I said, We need to get on TikTok. And that was when everybody was like, TikToks for you know, uh, all these you know, tweens and all this kind of stuff. And I said, I said, the search and and so basically I also had to identify like what do we want to talk about? Metapause. So metapause on TikTok years ago over a million followers now. Like 300,000 on Facebook. Like we basically, like, we said, okay, like here's demand that's not being serviced here. Um, there's like low quality, there's not a lot of uh a lot of videos to serve. Let's start creating videos for this. We followed the data, and then from there we got all this visibility, and then we started to fan out uh on what we were doing. And oh, by the way, dot co is Columbia. So Columbia, okay, there we go. And people use it as I guess corporation or company, but I I looked it up. Co is originally was originally representing for Columbia, but has been relaunched as a global domain for companies, startups, individuals, blah, blah, blah, blah, like how you're using it.

SPEAKER_01 43:24

Um, there we go.

SPEAKER_03 43:25

Right? Right, but random, random facts. Um, very random.

SPEAKER_01 43:28

That story, though, is crazy. Like what you just said about like the the finding finding the attention and then uh supplying that demand with something that's valuable. Like, yes.

Data‑Led Bet Picking And Focus

SPEAKER_03 43:40

You know, but I wouldn't like no one would have guessed that. No one would have guessed like this is how we're gonna build, like, uh unless you have the data, like the data helped inform the decision. Um, I was actually uh in a client's office yesterday, and they have a couple different uh service areas they wanted to go after. And basically we were going through search data, uh uh cost per click, how difficulty it is to rank. Um, we were thinking about some uh demographics. I was asking some questions because I didn't know enough of what it was. Um, we were using another tool as well, and and basically I was like, okay, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. This this is a decent amount of volume. Uh, the cost per click is similar to what you want to go after, but it better aligns with your brand. So, you know, this is probably what we should go after. And it's actually what they originally wanted to go after, but we went through that whole life cycle process to determine this is the right uh fit, this is the right brand, and this is what we need to do. So it gave it a lot more confidence to like, okay, let's kick it into full gear. But, you know, there was a lot of like I think that a lot of people get paralyzed today because there's too many options or they want optionality. I feel like everybody wants optionality, and so they don't lean into what they need. And the data plus the analysis gets you to that point to to know that, okay, I'm on the right track. I can I can focus on that, I can lean into it without too much debate. I don't know. Totally.

SPEAKER_01 45:11

Well, and I think to the point that I made earlier, I think we actually need to loosen our grip a little bit. And what I mean by that is this whole attribution performance marketing x equals 10, what's my row as? We need to loosen that grip and just directionally. So to your point about like TikTok or Metapause or whatever it is, finding the thing, the right thing to talk about doesn't have to be, oh, I need 17 different data points to back this up. It's like, hey, this one quantifies attention. It might be video views, it might be engagements, it might be whatever the thing is. All of those three things, if we zoom out a little bit, those three things are saying that, like, hey, there's some attention here. Cool, let's go after that.

SPEAKER_05 45:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:52

Right? Like, I think that's also the thing is like we as that to your point about like analysis paralysis, is like we we get out and we're like, oh, it has to be exact. And I actually don't think it has to be exact, it just has to be directionally correct because even if it is exact, that that's what you should do, there's still going to be different nuances and variables in the creative, in the targeting, in the spend, in all of those different things that it's never going to be perfect. And so I actually think we need to loosen our grip a little bit and still use this stuff as signal for what it is and use it to guide us, but also not be so like, oh, and now I'm not saying don't be rigorous with it. There's a there's a balance, right? And so I think it's that fine balance of of loosening up the grip, listening to the right signals, and then being a marketer and being creative to then try and problem solve to create something that drives the outcome that we want.

SPEAKER_03 46:44

Charlie, great point. I think it's a great point to end on. I think uh I I've really enjoyed our discussion. And I I think you're a great educator. I I I I would love to appreciate you saying that. Yeah, I would love to hear kind of maybe any speaking talks you have coming up, uh, where you're on social, uh, how do people find out more, follow you? Because I think you have some really great insights to share.

SPEAKER_01 47:07

Well, I appreciate you having me on. Yeah, the best place to follow me is on LinkedIn. I'm very active there. I publish a, I think I publish right now a new video every single day. Um, so yeah, if you want to continue to hear my awful voice, you can go there. Um and I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but I put my email on LinkedIn. So if people have questions, they can shoot me an email there. That's a that's a very I don't know if I it was a good idea at the time.

Loosen The Grip, Follow Signals

SPEAKER_03 47:30

I I wish I I'm I'm setting up a workflow to help me sort emails because I would love to have the time to respond to to everyone. Um I I just need to help doing it because I I think this time right now is is so difficult and I just get flooded with with all kinds of stuff. And sometimes I miss it with all the kind of um you know noise that's out there. And so so I I I I hats off to you for being able to do that. Um, you know, uh if they want to check out your your platform, uh write metric.co. Um tell us a little bit about the platform, give me the elevator pitch real quick before we go.

SPEAKER_01 48:07

Yeah, so basically what we've done is uh focus on three types of research audience research, competitive benchmarking, and content insight. Um, and so what we've done is we've basically bought access to over 30 different data tools. We pull all that stuff into one place, and then we have a team of analysts and strategists that actually work with you to scope out what your research questions are and turn things around quite quickly, because we've also built our own proprietary tooling behind the scenes to be able to enrich some of that data that we already have access to. Um, and it's funny, some of the things that you said, like having uh what is it, a problem half well stated is a problem half solved. We spend a lot of our time working with customers actually getting clear on what are the underlying business questions, because that's gonna actually dictate the types of research that you need. And oftentimes when people come at us, they have, oh, I need to look at this, and we're like, Yeah, we can totally answer that for you. But what is this actually laddering up to? And then they go, Oh my gosh, I actually need this and this and this and this and this. And that's not because we want to sell them more, it's just more so like answer the question, like actually just get the question answered so that you can go on with your day and move forward as a business. So um, yeah, we've been doing it for gosh, eight years now. Um, we primarily work uh in the consumer space. We are doing more B2B now because there are some better data sets coming online for that sort of thing. Um, but our main focus is like how can we harness all of these external data sources? Um, you know, most brands have their internal house in order, they can know what's going on in their ecosystem, but we're able to give them that holistic picture into what's happening outside of their ecosystem in an aggregated way.

How Write Metric Works And Closing

SPEAKER_03 49:41

Awesome. Well, Charlie, thanks so much for coming on. Uh, it was a pleasure having you. Uh, everyone, if you want to grow your business with the largest, most powerful planet tool on the planet, the internet, but now I feel like LOMs maybe like are uh outshining it to a certain degree, right? Like I think there's an AI revolution coming. Um reach out to EWR for more revenue in your business. Uh, check out uh uh Write Metric uh for more insights into your business. Uh until the next time, my name is Matt Bertram. Bye bye for now.

Matt Bertram

Host