S3

Bonus Episode 5

Strategies for Success in Marketing Financial Services

Illustration of Daniel Allocca, Partner and Head of Digital and Integrated Marketing at Prosek Partners

About This Episode

July 12, 2023

We explore trends shaping the finance industry and share strategies for marketers to apply to their next financial marketing campaign.

Daniel Allocca | Partner and Head of Digital and Integrated Marketing, Prosek Partners

Alli Van Spankeren | Vice President of Digital and Integrated Marketing, Prosek Partners

Sam Jensen | Manager, Client Services, StackAdapt

00:00

Transcript

Episode Introduction (00:00:00)

It’s like the classic if you have nothing to say it takes longer to say, and some brands are saying too many things and therefore get no push through. And I actually think this is where digital gets weaponized because it’s like I can take this message and send it to a bunch of different audiences and have as many variants as I want and test them. But in that you can lose the lead a little bit, right, but what’s the strategy? Oftentimes, I think the data being used as a negative outcome is when people look at a report and make a lot of assumptions about what is without thinking about what isn’t there.

How Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:27)

But then you think about the social landscape. The research and data is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touchpoints. So that long term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to leads to sales, gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting, and really is what’s going to set you apart if you’re tuning in to How Agencies Thrive podcast.

Sneha (00:00:52)

Lots happening this year. Economic changes vary in demographics and innovations in technology. But these are all areas financial services brands will need to address with their marketing efforts. We have experts from the field of financial services marketing joining us today, and we’re going to discuss how brands will need to demonstrate their value to stay and grow their businesses. Hello, and welcome to the How Agencies Thrive Podcast. I’m Sneha Suhas from StackAdapt. Right now joining us we have Daniel Allocca, Partner and Head of Digital and Integrated Marketing from Prosek. And Alli Van Spankeren, Vice President Digital and Integrated Marketing, also from Prosek. With them, we have StackAdapt’s very own Sam Jensen Manager Client Services. Firstly, thank you so much for joining us. It’s great to have you here. And secondly, I will pass it to you for a round of introductions. Please tell us about your professional background, your area of expertise, and also introduce Prosek to the listener. I’ll start with you, Alli.

Alli (00:02:02)

Yeah, definitely, thank you for having us. I think we can start with Prosek. So we’re, you know, a financial services focus firm, I think they’ve started as a PR Agency. And, you know, we’ve really kind of turned into a full services marketing firm with you know, we have our digital and integrated marketing capacity, you know, content, creative brand, kind of the full spectrum. And definitely focus within financial services. But I have clients kind of in all different verticals throughout. And I’ve been at Prosek for about three and a half years. And I’m the vice president on the digital and integrated marketing team, and really focus on our paid advertising clients. So leading the paid media strategy, planning, you know, execution campaigns, reporting, all that jazz. And prior to Prosek, I worked at an online reputation management startup. So really focusing on how we can kind of manipulate SEO to help with you know, reputation management.

Sneha (00:03:00)

Now welcome, Alli. Once again, thank you so much for making time for this. And I will pass it to Daniel.

Daniel (00:03:06)

Yeah, thank thanks so much for having us. So, my name is Daniel Allocca, I run our Digital and Integrated Marketing Practice at Prosek. We really focus on three things. One is helping brands through organic and paid strategies on social social management. The second is really helping executives do that, and getting their voice out on social and the last. And obviously, what we’re going to talk about the most today is paid media. And we’re an advertising agency of record for a number of brands in the financial services space, as Alli mentioned, but professional services more broadly, where we’re really helping brands build an enhanced reputation, drive revenue, and the like. So thanks again for having us. Look forward to the chat.

Sneha (00:03:47)

Welcome to the show. Daniel, thank you so much for joining us. I will now pass it to Sam.

Sam (00:03:52)

Sure. Yeah, thanks, Sneha. And yeah, super excited to have Prosek partners here. My name is Sam Jensen. I’m a manager of Client Services over a StackAdapt. So I head up a team of account managers here. I was an account manager myself working on the Prosek account for I think, since late 2021. So it’s been just a little over a year and a half with the partnership. And I’ve also been in space for the better part of a decade doing a mainly B2B programmatic strategy. So really excited to be here. And I think at this point, I’ve, I’ve experienced a ton of financial services related campaigns on both the consumer and the business side. It’s very interesting to just see how they differ so kinda excited to dive into the niche audience targeting and executions that Prosek really specializes in, especially with the B2B vertical.

Sneha (00:04:46)

That is a lot of experience on the show today. Thank you so much for joining us. I am going to jump right into the first question we have what consists of financial services marketing, how would you define it? And could you also tell us about some rules and regulations regarding this?

Daniel (00:05:05)

Yeah, sure. So I mean, the financial landscape is definitely very commingle with the regulatory landscape. And everything we do, we have to be considered of the laws, rules, regulations, you know, like many industries, I think that’s the case. And like many industries, the role of branding is very, very important in the financial services space, I think most financial firms are ultimately having to sell trust, you know, it’s a relationship that they’re building for the long term with clients. And therefore, they want to make sure that their brand is known and understood by clients and prospects, and also that their capabilities and products are understood to the extent relevant. So I think in that sense, it’s like all other marketing, I think where our roles get a bit unique, we’re doing highly targeted marketing, and in some cases, to very, very small populations of people. And we like to joke around that if you if you can figure out how to market in our space, you could probably almost market to anybody, anything anywhere, because we’ve gotten so good at doing that highly targeted work.

Sneha (00:06:08)

So what would you say are some of the performance benchmarks you’d look at to measure success? If one could say that B2B financial services marketing have longer sales cycles? And how do you set expectations for this?

Daniel (00:06:23)

Yeah, I mean, for us, it’s usually about building brand and building brands, always a long term proposition. And because of that, the best brands we work with, I think, understand and recognize that and set up brand health tracking, to really make sure that we’re tracking over the long term, so many brands are using third-party research that show them how their brand attributes are trending with their target audiences, or subscribing to other custom research that helps show them very specific attributes. So that’s at the highest level in terms of measuring brand also relates that it’s customer experience, and perception studies that really, really strong brands are doing that, that we partner with. And then naturally as we start to move kind of farther down the funnel, we start to care a lot about impression quality impression, click through what happens when someone’s getting to our clients’ websites. And we love it when we can get conversion in a B2B campaign, like subscribing to something, download a white paper, looking at product pages, and to the extent those are part of a campaign, we’d absolutely prioritize and pull those through throughout.

Alli (00:07:33)

I think, too, because it’s such a long sales cycle, I think we have to act more as you know, like a function of an actual company than sometimes I see. I think I’m, you know, consumer where it’s easier to just say, you know, this is what we’ve done, this is what we got back and it’s more transactional, I think we really need to be integrated into everything our clients are doing, you know, have alignment with their Salesforce, how are they messaging it? What do they do with, you know, what we’re doing? And because of that, we just need to be fully in lockstep it kind of every decision if, if we’re going to have a successful campaign, because it’s such a long sales cycle.

Sneha (00:08:11)

You already mentioned some challenges. But if I could take this in the direction of the impact of AI on marketing, financial services, what do you think some of the challenges are? And the second part is, what are the tips to overcome them? And maybe even see this as an opportunity?

Alli (00:08:30)

Yeah, I think, I mean, we did talk about some of the challenges long sales cycle, I think the educational component is definitely there, I think, sometimes there can be a bit of a resistance to new technology or just a, you know, it takes longer to get it onboarded to understand it to see how we can, you know, use it as a value and, you know, addition for our work. I think, as far as the impact of AI goes, I mean, I think a lot of companies have been using or, you know, leveraging AI powered content for a few years now, it’s definitely just more in the forefront. And I think, you know, for us, we think about it as any other tool like in our tech stack, it’s something that we definitely want to have at our disposal to make us more nimble, but kind of think it’s, you know, as helpful and useful as, you know, you as a user can make it and I think for us, you know, an area where I see it being you know, another tool is when we think through personalized content. And because we have such, you know, niche targeted audiences, it’s really important that we have smart messaging to each of these different groups because they can be so different and respond to different things. And, you know, I think that’s an area where AI can be really useful and you know, analyzing those audiences those data what makes up those groups and thinking through, you know, how we can offer more tailored messaging to reach them.

Sam (00:09:55)

For sure. Yeah, and I’m no stranger to you know, contextual tools that a lot of DSPs, especially in a programmatic space, tout a contextual tool of some kind where they really prioritize serving users, while they’re in the mindset to maybe receive an advertisement. And what I often see there and kind of going back to the long sales cycle pieces, you might not get a direct click through when somebody’s you know, in the zone reading through an article, they’re on Investopedia, for example, or maybe just reading the news, you might not see a click-through necessarily right away, but being able to track like you guys said, site activity after the fact, you can tie that back to those contextual plays to say, okay, like, are we showing up at the right time for a lot of these users.

Daniel (00:10:44)

No, I agree with you entirely. And, you know, I think, when we talk about challenges, I think it’s actually challenging. All advertising and marketing more broadly, is the advent of digital and improved measurement. I think it’s also created a little bit of a false narrative that everything being measured is everything. There’s all these other things that happen, that really drive outcome. And oftentimes, I think the data being used with mal-intent, but nonetheless, sometimes has a negative outcome is when people look at a report and make a lot of assumptions about what is without thinking about what isn’t there. And that’s one of the things we talked about challenges that I think we spend time dealing with, with clients as well.

Sam (00:11:29)

Yeah. Would you say that you find clients, you know, because the attribution is so advanced, and the targeting is so nuanced on a lot of these digital platforms, do you find that the client tends to micro-focus on a specific channel, for example, to deliver some type of real ads or, or overall revenue? Because, just for context, I think that’s something that we run into a lot just in terms of expectation setting. And what I always go back to is sort of the fundamentals of marketing, right? Like, though the times have changed, and the mediums and the vessels through which we deliver ads have changed, the concept stays the same. We want to get in front of users across as many channels as we possibly can, and deliver some sort of continuity between them. What I see is people, you know, with the advanced measurement, they start to say, How can I tie this back to a dollar? I gotta show my boss that there’s revenue in this and maybe not see the full picture.

Daniel (00:12:30)

First things first is, I agree entirely that the fundamentals have not changed, you know, since the beginning of time, the need to like sell and market was there the beginning of commerce, and I think the fundamentals are identical. It’s just, there’s more tools and ways to do it now. So conflating the two is dangerous. And yes, we definitely see clients who see things like, you know, search, as driving clicks into a website, therefore the most valuable and if driving sales within a group of people looking for your product is the most important, then absolutely no argument there. But that obvious starts to get into direct conflict, then when goals are finding new clients, building a market for a product where clients maybe don’t even know you exist, yet, you’re trying to create need, that’s obviously where you have to start moving up and out into all sorts of other channels that are much less measurable, much less likely to drive a click, because you’re having to build brand and compel over time. And that’s where I think a lot of counseling education is needed. And sometimes even the most disciplined and well, sort of educated marketers struggle with that, because they also stakeholders, they have to kind of keep happy as well, right?

Alli (00:13:39)

Yeah, I think another thing too, when there’s so many, like, there’s almost so many things we can do in different tools and different ways to go that can excite people, which is awesome. But also, I think it can lead to like a brand continuity issue where people almost want to do too much. And they’re like, well, we want to be known for this and known for this. And we’ll do this here and this year and this year. And it’s like, what are we actually doing? And sometimes I feel like it sort of backfires. And then, you know, we’ve done so much, but you know, at the end of the day, like what was the goal? And are we really known for any of it? Or do we just have, you know, all this noise, and I think there’s a lot of competition in the space and like needing to find that white space is important. And it’s it just the brand consistency can sometimes get a little crazy, because there’s so much like we could do. Yeah, I totally agree with that.

Daniel (00:14:30)

Yeah, I think it’s like the classic if you have nothing to say it takes longer say and some brands are saying too many things and therefore get no push-through. And it’s something we see a lot and I actually think this is where digital gets weaponized, right? Because it’s like I can take this message and send it to different bunch of different audiences and have as many variants as I want and test them but in that you can lose the lead a little bit of like, right but what’s the strategy and big picture if I had to put this thing on TV, old school or on the cover of the newspaper, old school, what’s it going to be? And, you know, I think the death of that like madmen of marketing, some bad things happen. And I think that’s definitely one of them without question.

Sneha (00:15:11)

On that interesting note, it is time for a short break. We’ll be back soon. And in the next part, we are discussing customer journey for financial services, scaling and some emerging trends in the financial services industry right now. Stay tuned. We’ll be right back. Welcome back. And thank you for staying tuned. You’re still listening to the How Agencies Thrive podcast, and we were talking about financial services marketing, as promised, my next question was going to be about customer journeys. So jumping right into it. Daniel, Alli, Sam, could you tell us about the customer journey for financial services marketing? How difficult or easy it is to scale and maybe throw light and personalization throughout this journey?

Daniel (00:15:56)

Absolutely. Yeah, we tend to build our journeys starting from the bottom up. So we try to figure out, what does conversion look like. And that can obviously mean a lot of different things, depending on the use case. But once we have that in a good place, we start there. And we start to fan out that kind of classic marketing funnel bottom up of saying, what are the channels and messages that we want to communicate to educate clients on what we do, engage clients in what we do and how we do it and then reach that conversion stage. As we all know, it’s a long sales cycle. So conversion doesn’t typically happen on visit number one. So we really like to use a lot of retargeting tactics to make sure that we stay in front of clients. And we really, really like to use sequential messaging tactics across, not just our programmatic display, and video, but all of our channels so that we can kind of continue to tell our brand story on a sustained basis. The other thing we really like to do is, if you think of a funnel, we kind of use this hourglass funnel methodology. So it’s like, what are all the things you do with the users you already have? So we with long sales cycle clients think a lot about cross-selling, getting them in the next product, using CRM data, in those sorts of strategies as well.

Sam (00:17:11)

All right, well, yeah, I think that’s spot on Dan. And a lot of that goes back to what you were just saying prior with clients wanting to maybe throw too much at you at once. The challenge almost becomes, okay, like, what is the goal? Is it a conversion? Are you trying to fill out a form, have somebody become, you know, a marketing qualified lead, eventually sales, qualified lead, and working out from there some important things that I see, at least in the programmatic space beyond not testing too much at a time to really get insights on where to optimize. But another thing that I see a lot of with customer journey is continuity between channels. And that’s something that you know, I see Prosek doing you, you, you run across multiple channels, like you said, your cross-selling in the video, static and animated channels. And what I think that actually allows you to do is build sort of a funnel, where you can conceptuAllize it just like you wouldn’t traditional marketing. Video is sort of your initial introduction to a user just like a commercial would be. And using tactics like retargeting people who complete the videos, or people who skip the videos with static channels in order to encourage them, not just to hear your message, but maybe actually take another step and go read a blog, or go click through an ad, right? And it doesn’t happen right away. It happens with repeat messaging over time. So that might look like your awareness message at the video channel, you might shoot them a blog post via native to get them to interact again. And then your display campaign might just literally be your strict call to action, you know, sign up?

Sam (00:18:52)

So that’s how that’s how I see it structured, oftentimes, at least in the B2B space.

Daniel (00:18:57)

Yeah, no, you know, we talked about challenges around this. I think one of them for us sometimes is, we love when we can control the whole strategy in the in own this entire kind of lifecycle that we’re talking about. But sometimes we don’t. And we’re often given creative that doesn’t necessarily naturally Alligned with the stated goals. Right. So like, like you said, building brand and getting known, like, video is amazing. But sometimes we might be handed assets that aren’t that. And I think one of the things we’ve gotten really good at is trying to find ways to use what we get to really deliver on goals that clients have and try to get creative and and how we do that. And Alli spends a lot of time doing this as well.

Alli (00:19:35)

I do and I was gonna say it’s funny, Sam, I feel like we have this framework that you said is exactly what we think through if we do control of it. It’s like, you know, how do we inform we like video, how do we educate? Is there content or blog and then how do we convert like, how do we get them to click-through and I think something else we run into is, you know, if if we do want to get a lead and generate that, you know, if we click through have a website? Is it set up for success or are we just, you know, pushing something through, and we’ll lose them right away. And I think that goes back to how we, we really need to be integrated into a client’s you know, entire department there to think through every stage of it. And it’s like, if we’ve done 98% of it, and then we get them there. And, you know, we lose it because of, you know, kind of user experience on the site, which may not be something that we, you know, control or not our mandate, but it’s like something we have to think about and account for, and figure out how to be a good partner to that client. And, you know, making sure we can kind of do the full cycle.

Sam (00:20:36)

And one thing I really want to touch on, before we hop to the next question is how does this continuity look across platforms? How do you guys utilize insights, maybe from a programmatic buy to inform a LinkedIn buy, for example, because that’s another thing we see often going back to the siloed performance pieces, you know, should I choose one or the other. And what I always recommend is both the insights you can use from LinkedIn could fuel the top of your funnel and vice versa.

Alli (00:21:03)

Yeah, I think it everything informs each other. And I think we have, you know, there are platforms we like for certain things, and tactics that we use, depending on the goal, like for programmatic is great for us to scale and generate awareness, and then, you know, we maybe move to something else where we’re looking for, you know, if we have a long-form piece of content, how are we going to use that, like, LinkedIn is really great for us, because you know, we are in the B2B space, you know, it’s a platform, we know, and trust people more accurately enter their information, and we’re able to target by job title and get really niche there. And so we definitely have, I think, you know, there’s a time and a place for each sort of platform and tactic. And I think, like you said, you know, both when they all work together is, I think when things are the most successful for us, when we’re able to reach someone at multiple points throughout their day on, you know, the sites they go to naturally, instead of just one is always, you know, going to work out better for us.

Sam (00:22:05)

Yeah, I just want to add one more piece to this. But what I think a really great example of this, that I see, often, and then I think Prosek does this a lot, too, is you know, for example, you’re running some type of B2B, targeted or ABM campaign, you might get that list of accounts you want to target from LinkedIn from, from what you’ve seen on the platform perform. And like you said, you want to scale to other people at that company who have the same job title. And it can work in reverse, right, you could target a whole bunch of businesses within an industry broadly, and see which ones are driving the engagement metrics. And then that informs your LinkedIn campaign on how to be, you know, more nuanced with your targeting or refined.

Daniel (00:22:48)

Definitely, this goes back to the context piece, too, I think, in the role that the channels play, psychologically. And I think that’s another thing that often gets forgotten about is, what state of mind is the person most likely and when they’re engaging on all these channels, right? And we try to think about that, when we start to guide the creative process. So you’re, you’re reading the news, you’re an information gathering mode, you’re sipping your cup of coffee, you’re on social media, you want to see what’s going on with your network, with your friends, with the companies, you follow. And I think because of that, we have to think about the format of the content that performs well there. And then the nature of the content, too. So is it time to sell? Is it time to educate? Is it time to get people to engage. And I think a lot of times that gets forgotten at the creative step of this big idea is made. And it’s a great big idea. But people haven’t sat down and thought about how’s this thing going to come to life in a way that matters? Because exactly zero people wake up in the morning, thinking about your brand. Zero people wake up in the morning, you know, wanting to do business with yet another partner. So we often think about how do you get someone to stop you or interrupt their day. And to do that, you have to really be respectful of that time and get to the point. So that’s a lot of counsel we provide to clients is that is no not just know your audience and know your concept, but know where they are and how they’re thinking to produce a really strong media plan.

Sneha (00:24:19)

So what are the emerging trends right now in the financial services industry? And it’ll also be great if you can maybe give an informed prediction about what’s gonna happen in the next 18 months. And looking at these trends. What are some of the channels you’d recommend within programmatic? And how would you fit this into a full funnel strategy with paid search and social? Also, is there a formula you’d recommend for this? Because that would be really great. And I know we discussed contextual so would you like to throw some light on maybe going cookieless and focusing on contextual options? What’s that looking like?

Daniel (00:24:58)

The cookieless piece is obviously a mega trend that affects everybody. And in some ways, I think it affects us in a positive way. Because it, it forces us to actually think be more thoughtful in how we plan. I think unquestionably a mega trend in the financial space is moving more and more away from linear channels and more to programmatic channels, you know, inclusive of connected television, obviously, more programmatic audio and podcasts. And I think what we’re seeing a lot of is the desire to use education more and more as the main driver for for building brands. So we see a lot of interest in sponsoring things being part of the content, whether that be audio or written content, and therefore contextual Asana rise more and more as an area of interest. So how do we get our content in places where we know people are interested about that content? I think the great news is it’s a level playing field for everybody. In terms of the cookie list piece, I think the harder news for a lot of our financial clients that work with really, really small and niche audiences is certain channels might become, I don’t want to say less relevant, but less targeted, and they may have to get comfortable with that or not. I think that’s one of the things that we’re going to be working through together. I’ll get your thoughts there as well.

Alli (00:26:15)

Yeah, I think, I mean, on the cookie list thing, I think for us, I mean, we contextual targeting, I think that was always kind of what was most important for us and what we were doing. I mean, definitely can rely more on first-party data there as well. But as far as trends go, I think something we’re seeing, and we’re doing a lot of Prosek to is, you know, a lot of influencer work, which I think is, you know, has been in the financial services realm, but it’s, you know, might not be on tick tock but definitely something that we’re we’re seeing more as far as I think trust is really important, building trust with these audiences. And, and doing that kind of even, you know, through what Dan said, where it’s being more integrated in sponsorships being seen as cohesive versus, you know, we’re paying money to sponsor this, but it’s we’re part of the conversation, you know, we’re with these people that you know, and trust, and kind of using influencer work or more kind of those creative partnerships as a way to do that.

Sam (00:27:13)

Yeah, I love that. I think what it sounds like and not to paraphrase, but at a high level, old things are sort of becoming new again. And like I said, well, the medium of which we’re delivering it has changed a lot of the stuff like sponsorships, testimonials, contextual plays, serving on connected television, all of those things are not new things, right. But with the debt, the impending doom of the cookie, we’re sort of going back to that and realizing there is value in that. And there is a reason people spend, you know, clamour over each other to spend money on commercials, I would say that, that’s sort of a big piece that we’re seeing. And, and one thing I want to add to that is, a lot of marketers right now are panicked about the cookie going away, which can sometimes lead to paralysis by over-analysis, right? The cookie is not gone yet. It looks like we’re going to be having it into 2024. So with the signals and the capabilities you have at your disposal now, what can you do to prove yourself in the future, right, you still have the signals and data points available to you now. So I always recommend, you know, sure, we can move to a cookie list strategy now. But why would you do that when you still have all the capabilities in front of you to be highly targeted? Or?

Daniel (00:28:32)

Absolutely, yeah. And I mean, as you know, there were brands that did that two or three years ago, and I’d argue, left tons of enterprise and business value on the table, because they put themselves at a disadvantage before they had to. And who knows what’s going to happen next, right, these dates moved. So many times that for all we know, it’ll move again, I think to the playing field is going to be level for every brand, every marketer, every technology, every agency. So I almost view it as a neutral point. It’s not like one’s going to have something and someone else’s not. And that’s why what we’ve done on the tools front is, for us, it’s about working with platforms where we feel like we get great service and that are adapting. And it’s not about having every single tool in the truck. It’s about having five or six tools that you know how to use really well, because at the end of the day, you’re being paid to like build the building, no one cares how it got built on the client side. And that’s how we think about all these things. And the role of data and the role of the cookie and the role of the platform is there tools. And outcomes is what cheques get written for. Right. So that’s what we’re trying to spend most of our time.

Sam (00:29:47)

Yeah, that said, it will be very interesting to see how those, you know, how measurement and performance will change over time. I imagine that there’ll be a lot more internal data modeling going on. or some type of estimation of like, if I drive a user to the site, just getting a net new user to my site? What is like the average value of that? You know? So I imagine that we’re going to see a lot more like data science internally, with a lot of agencies and trying to figure out how do we ascribe value when we no longer can?

Daniel (00:30:20)

Absolutely. And I mean, in that sense, in many ways, it’s like, the more things change, the more they say the same. I think even the most advanced data and analytics models now struggle to deliver on that. Did this drive truly? Can we take credit for sale? Yeah, so I think it’s an evolution there for sure.

Sneha (00:30:40)

Wow, change is constant, for sure. And that is a lot that you have to keep yourself updated with. So if somebody is entering the field right now, what are some of the recommendations that you’d like to give them in terms of how they can stay educated? Stay ahead, maybe stay ahead of the curve? What is your recommendation to them?

Daniel (00:31:01)

I think like any discipline, understanding the fundamentals is so important. So like we talked about earlier, the fundamentals of sales and marketing have not changed, really, ever they come down to deep-rooted human psychology and how people buy things and trusts and all those behaviours are just moving online. And you know, who knows? Where will the move next. So I think understanding that is super important, because it gives you then a foundation to translate all these new things that are coming your way back to something very concrete. You know, we hear we spend a lot of time talking with vendors like, like you guys, I think you’re at the forefront, and it helps us stay current. We’re watching, you know, videos, and YouTube and all that sort of thing, too. But we’re also taking a lot of guidance from clients, because they’re asking business questions that put us in that tough spot of like, Wait, we don’t know the answer. I’m going to do a lot of research there. Because we’re hearing need and demand. So I think that’s another place to challenge Alli, I’d love to hear from you too on this.

Alli (00:32:00)

Yeah. And I think it can be hard to working in digital and being on all the social platforms. It’s just constant updates, news, different opinions. I mean, I was 20 Vernors. Like, I feel like there’s always something different. And I feel like I get exhausted keeping up with it. And it’s like, I need to keep up with it to some extent because it’s my job. But sometimes I just, I feel like, being inundated with information isn’t helpful. And the same thing where we’re like, clients trying to do so much I don’t do anything. Sometimes I’m like, I don’t know what’s going on, because I just see too much. So for me, I think, you know, it’s about having, you know, one or two sites or newsletters that I trust, and I’m like, This is what I’m gonna read, I’m gonna formulate my opinion, ears are open, but I just I, I can’t take in every single thing. And you because it just moves too fast. And I just I find like, I get overwhelmed, and it’s not helpful for me. So I think being cognizant of everything that’s happening, but also taking a step back and kind of watching things play out and formulating your own opinion and how that affects, you know, your clients, you know, the platform’s your business, I think is is really important.

Sam (00:33:13)

Yeah, there comes a point where things move so fast that almost everything someone says it’s true, like there is validity to a lot, I see that in programmatic all the time different takes about oh, Metis failing, Oh, Matt is doing fine. It’s a perfect example of things that I see all the time and in the digital world. Oh, Google is gonna get rid of the cookie. Oh, no, they’re not. So I agree, it’s more or less, there is validity to all things. And you just have to keep that in your back pocket. So when a strategy doesn’t work at the campaign level, maybe you could test the other side of that theory, and go against your initial opinion.

Alli (00:33:49)

Definitely. Yeah, I think it’s easy to make, like snap decisions, even with the cookie thing, you know, the people who pulled out too early, it’s easy to just make that decision. I think our job, as you know, being strategic partners to our clients is, you know, having an opinion and giving our counsel, but also making sure that, you know, we don’t get hyped up in the news of what’s happening at that hour, because three hours later, something could shift in the point of view, and our recommendation could shift. So definitely, like giving time and making sure that, you know, we’re thinking through what the future is going to look like and not just like what’s happening at that very minute.

Daniel (00:34:26)

I think to like the role that we play in the value chain, with clients, we always have to keep in mind. We’re practitioners, we’re not engineers. And I think it’s like, we need to make sure we let the right people worry about the right things. This is what you guys are here for right to think about. Where’s the platform need to advance and how’s the technology changing and we need to worry about all those things. I think it’s like if you think about what you guys do is like engineering the car like it’s our job is to drive the car, and that’s what we try to get really good at is Is that part of the value chain? And I think a lot of digital practitioners get way too lost in trying to know everything about everything. And then therefore know nothing about a lot of things. And we try to avoid that trap I think a bit.

Sneha (00:35:13)

And on that note, we have come to the end of this amazing episode. Lots of information, so many insights. Always great to have experts on the show. Thank you, Daniel, Alli and Sam for joining us today. And to you, the one listening thank you for sticking around till the very end. We have episodes releasing on alternate Wednesdays so make sure you subscribe and follow the podcast to catch the episode right when it drops. If you want to get in touch Write to us at academy@stackadapt.com That is academy@stackadapt.com. Until then, this has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. See you in the next episode.

Episode Outro (00:35:56)

Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there’s three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can us at StackAapt.com. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time.

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