Unlocking Your Marketing Success: When To Invest In An Attribution Tool

Ralph: 00:00:11

We're here with Austin Harrison, a co founder of Northbeam, one of our

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favorite third party tracking platforms.

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try not to play favorites here.

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I try to be like Switzerland on

perpetual traffic, you're here.

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We've had others, third party tracking

platforms on the show as well.

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But the question at what point do

I need a deeper level of tracking?

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When I think about businesses in general,

we run the span, like we have a very much

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a startup local regional type of customer

that we have an entire division for they.

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Do not need what we're

talking about here today.

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Cause they're not at that level.

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Would it help?

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Yes, it would help, but it

might be cost prohibitive.

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So maybe if we can explain in your

mind, at what level do you see it?

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Cause obviously North beam deals with

some massive customers like enterprise

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level, but you also have an understanding

of probably that mid market, maybe

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less so on the smaller market.

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. This isn't really the

tool necessarily for them.

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If you've got a pizza parlor down

the corner, you probably don't need

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North beam to track your customers.

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This is my guess.

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At what level Of revenue or aggressiveness

from a business owner perspective.

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Should you start to consider a third

party tracking platform because it

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starts to get muddy at a certain point,

especially when you have all types of.

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Media channels.

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You've got email, you've got

Amazon, you've got, Google, you

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got Facebook, obviously you've

got all the meta platforms.

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So talk to me about, how you view it as

a world view when a business probably

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needs something like a North beam.

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I think it's a really important topic

because, the last thing we want is.

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We don't want folks paying for

Northbeam or any other software tool

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that does attribution and what we

do now, forecasting and modeling.

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So outside of just pure attribution

is is where Northbeam is focused.

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So forecasting revenue for the month and

the future you could argue, conceptually,

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that sounds good for any business.

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But we feel that it's not really

the size of the business in terms

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of revenue, but it's their focus on

scaling our investment and scaling.

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So are you going to

invest in 5, 10 channels?

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Amazon, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest

TV, like how aggressively

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are you going to scale?

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Because if you're just going to move

along slowly, we would discourage you from

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using Northbeam or another tool, right?

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If your efficiency is really

high, And you've got your system

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dialed in and you're, you feel

like you're in a good place.

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We would also discourage you from, paying

for North beam or anything else, right?

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It's really when it's not

even the revenue size.

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It's the, when you're really

going to press on the gas and.

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And invest in scaling, right?

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And if you're a business that wants

to keep it simple, which we think is

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great, there's nothing wrong with that,

then it's nice to have North beam,

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but, or any other software tool, but

we think people can survive without it.

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You get to a level where you

all of a sudden you're no longer

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dependent on just one channel.

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So it seems like as soon as that

happens, from my perspective,

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everyone gets, brand name search

and some level of branded SEO.

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So there's going to always be

that on that side of the equation.

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But let's say if you're

running meta ads and that's it.

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And you don't have any sort

of marketing mix whatsoever.

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Maybe you've scaled up, you've gotten to

a point I have a call with a potential

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customer in a couple of hours, like

they're spending anywhere between 300,

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000 and a million dollars a month.

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And it's all on meta really,

basically, maybe a little bit

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of Google branded search and.

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things are getting a little cloudy here

because they collect emails that we talked

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about, right at the beginning of the show,

they want to be able to attribute like

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where is that email sale coming from?

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And at about a couple hundred

thousand, they want to double that.

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it's a 30 million business.

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They want to go from 30 to 60 million.

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Like they're a candidate for a third

party attribution tool, but are they

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coming to the party a little bit

late in your opinion, or should they

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have done that a little bit earlier?

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Cause.

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, it's not always an accurate picture

just on one platform, obviously,

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yeah, the advantage of a third

party tool, whether it's North team

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or something that is in our sphere

would be a longer attribution window.

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Meta's attribution window is 7

day, you've got a 7 day window.

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If you're spending that much

money and you want to see your

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return after 30 or 60 days, yeah.

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Yeah.

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That's something that is important, right?

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Especially at that spent level, right?

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Because, if you have a high AOV, right?

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So if you're selling something,

that's 8, 10 bucks, 12 bucks.

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Maybe you're capturing a lot of that value

within seven days of the spend, right?

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But if the AOV is higher and the

consideration cycle is longer, or there's

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a lot of repeat purchasing, then it's

good to implement something third party.

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But again, there's always ways

to hack it yourself, I believe,

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that may or may not be sufficient.

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Depending on how you do it, if

you're on one channel, right?

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. I don't think it's too late

to get tracking in order.

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And I think it can help you figure

out which campaigns are the ones

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to scale or which ads faster when

you're really investing in growth.

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So we have a customer

just to give you context.

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Over Labor Day weekend,

they spent 120, 000.

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On that day, and they actually wanted

to spend and they were using North beam

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to calibrate throughout the day and

then adjusting spend per campaign per

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ad based on our data flowing through.

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anD so that's on a daily basis, right?

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They're spending a lot.

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They wanted to actually spend more.

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And so whole nother can of

worms, but I think that's where

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North beam gives you signal.

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When you're really investing on big,

so like Black Friday, Cyber Monday,

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big sale periods, you're getting

very fast signal through Northeam.

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So it's attribution window.

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It's your customer life cycle

from first touch to final

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purchase is a factor here as well.

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So if it's beyond that seven

day, it's just saying the

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seven day, the meta advertiser.

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we have a fair amount of customers

that do offline conversions and use

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the 90 day window for offline, which

is super, super helpful, but in most

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cases,, 20, 30 product and people

are typically going to convert, it's

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not a higher consideration purchase.

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7 days can pretty much cover it for you.

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, you don't necessarily need it.

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All things being equal what I'm hearing.

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I think so.

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If you have a higher repurchase

rate, that could be different, right?

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I looked inside an art being.

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For one of our customers and I

looked, 18 months later at the, their

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meta ROAS on one particular ad set.

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And it was like more

than two X what it was.

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I think it went from, a two to a 4.

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3 or something like that

over an 18 months span.

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So if you're planning and doing business

planning, you're trying to figure

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out, okay, if I invest in growth now,

what's that going to look like in

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four months and six months and eight

months, if you're doing overall business

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planning even if you're AOV small,

like we're talking about, if there's

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a repeat purchase rate or upselling

or whatever the case may be, then you

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may want to have a longer window too.

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So there's exceptions to that

kind of low aid AOV rule.

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Yeah.

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, we talked to owners about this, it's

like investing in that front end,

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maybe not quite yet conversion layer.

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We call that sort of the awareness or

consideration phase not forget, like if

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you're investing in a million dollars,

a month in YouTube ads, but your life

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cycle it's a six to nine month cycle.

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That's a lot advertising

that you have to front.

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Or get from venture capital or

bootstrap on your own in order to

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make that business really work.

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So current finances present

day has a lot to do with it.

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Is this the type of conversations

that you oftentimes have?

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With North beam customers, like they're

asking you like, what should I do here?

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And the answer is always, yeah, it

depends in a lot of different scenarios,

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but how do you advise people on that?

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To be able to be comfortable with

investing today, even if they don't see

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the return, outside of the seven day

window, for example, for maybe the smaller

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businesses, but if it's 30, 60, 90 days,

like, how do you talk to them about that?

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Cause.

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You're really taking that risk.

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You never really know if that email

that you collect today is the one

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that's actually going to create the

sale 30, 60, 90 days down the road.

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Yeah.

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I'm a big fan of a lot of experimentation,

trying a lot of different things.

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THe one great thing about an RPM over the

last, four and a half years is just seeing

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brands go from, 5 million to 50 million

or 15 million to 180 million in revenue.

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We've watched a lot of brands

go through that journey of

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scale, in their scale process.

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And the common theme is

lots of experimentation with

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different channels, right?

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Meaning trying influencer, trying YouTube,

trying TikTok, trying new creative,

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trying new, really experimenting on

a micro scale with a lot of different

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things and then looking for a signal to

see, okay, what's working, what isn't.

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sometimes it's all of

those things together.

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Is what finally turns the,

where they turn the corner.

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So like you could just do

YouTube and you're doing okay.

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There's a small blip, but then

YouTube influencer, and now

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your YouTube paid is lifted by

YouTube influencer and vice versa.

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Now the two together are driving me right.

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Versus one or the other

on their own, right.

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Weren't cutting it.

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So you're looking for that media mix.

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It's not, everyone's

looking for that one thing.

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It's Oh, if I just do this one thing,

my business is going to take off.

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That's rarely the case.

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Are there exceptions?

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Sure.

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But from what I've seen, of course,

there's exceptions with products that

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go viral, but like, when you think

about the long term sustainable brands,

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they develop a mix and a playbook

that lifts overall NBR or ROAS, right?

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And they're all working

like a symphony is the idea.

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It's almost like building

your orchestra, right?

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What is my orchestra for my brand and my.

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industry, and so figuring

that out is the key.

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And of course, if you're smaller, you

want to investigate what the successful

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brands are, what is the orchestra?

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What's.

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Do I need a violin?

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Do I need a cello?

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Do I need a flute in

my particular industry?

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And then you start to experiment

within those but it's tricky, right?

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Cause it'd be nice if

it was just one thing.

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Okay.

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I'm just going to launch on this

one channel and now I'm all set.

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I'm just going to spend, can it happen?

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Yes.

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But generally speaking for the

longterm, you need to develop.

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A media mix that, that

is going to work for you.

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it's a great analogy.

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I'm I have a visualization here of,

the the conductor in the orchestra

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and then they have one violin, like

that's your first Facebook campaign.

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And then you get more

scale, you add more budget.

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Now you have two violins.

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Now you do some lateral scaling.

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You add some more.

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Audiences, get some different messaging.

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Now you've got three or four violins, but

now you've got, is when there's three or

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four violins together and nothing else.