A Unique Take On CRO: Consumption Rate Optimization Feat. Tas Bober | S2 Ep 7

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (00:01.624)
Hi everyone, welcome to the Optimize Your Marketing podcast. I'm your host, Ian Binek and today I'm joined by a spectacular guest. She is a LinkedIn queen, pulling hundreds of likes on her social media posts on explicitly LinkedIn, which is wild. And she's a landing page expert, absolute genius. I hope you enjoy today's session with the one and the only Tas Bober Tas, how are you doing today? Thanks so much for being on.

Tas Bober (00:28.238)
you

Tas Bober (00:32.11)
I am doing wonderful. Thank you for asking. Thank you for that amazing intro. I always am curious to see what people say about me, but LinkedIn Queen is new. I'll say LinkedIn, like rising star, hopefully, because there are people who are way bigger than I am. But, you know, I have more of like an engaged and niche kind of audience. So I guess that helps, but appreciate it. Very excited to be here.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (00:59.576)
Well, we're happy to have you. I will say this, it's very intimidating having you on, especially knowing that you've been on the Exit 5 podcast twice. A huge podcast for the listeners that don't know. Dave Gerhart, he runs this podcast. Huge name in the LinkedIn space and just marketing space in general. So I feel a little bit like I have imposter syndrome here interviewing you, but hopefully we can keep this pretty organic.

Tas Bober (01:24.59)
Yeah, don't don't feel that way. Because, first of all, my mom says that I've never met a stranger. So I will talk to anybody like I've known them 1000 years. And so in this moment for this hour, you're my best friend and talk to me like I'm your best friend, you know, let's spill, spill secrets, rumors, gossip, sharing truths. Let's do it. I'm ready for it all.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (01:49.688)
Awesome. Cool. Well, before we get into the questions, I want to address the listeners real quick. So this is going to be a 30 -ish minute podcast. We're going to be talking to Tas about her experience co -founding Delphinium Solutions and just diving into some hot takes about the landing page space. She's an expert, so it's going to be really cool to get her opinion on things. This isn't going to be your standard AI response you get when you ask chat to BT things. This will be some really good opinions here that are rooted

in data and experience. So I'm really excited to get into this. So with that being said, Tas, are you ready to get started?

Tas Bober (02:25.646)
I'm ready. Let's go.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (02:27.96)
Cool. So question one is sort of, I guess you would say crucial to your role right now, and that is, could you just describe the importance of landing page optimization?

Tas Bober (02:43.49)
So first to level set, I focus on landing pages specifically for B2B companies and even further B2B SaaS companies. And they have a lot of, they have a lot of components and use cases for why we need landing pages. Right. And I'm also talking about landing pages in terms of traffic driven from paid ads.

to these landing pages. So we're not talking about emails, we're not talking about organic social or any of those other channels. This is purely from a paid ads perspective, driving users to B2B landing pages. And one of the things that we talk about a lot, we even talked about a little bit on this podcast is we're always looking at optimizing landing pages. And we try to do that from an on -page perspective, which is...

If I wonder if I change the color here, I change the CTA, whether that's going to generate more engagement or more conversions for me, right? Hence conversion rate optimization. But I think in B2B, that's a little bit of a lost concept because the buying journey is even less linear than it ever has been. Too many stakeholders, big buying decision, right? Multiple approvals, multiple processes like

InfoSec, legal, the buying committee is huge. So you're dealing with a lot, the buyer is dealing with a lot, and there's a lot of risk in making this decision. And so I am almost against CRO from that perspective on landing pages. But I'm going to say it's CRO with a twist for B2B, which is instead of conversion rate optimization, it's consumption rate optimization.

how are users consuming the information on the page because likely they're collecting a lot of information prior to going back and running through approval processes or putting you on the short list for evaluation. So that's kind of the focus of my area, right? And the reason why I even came up with this was because 95 % of my career was in -house as the head of digital and website. I had to do a lot of purchasing.

Tas Bober (05:03.15)
For software, I had a million dollar budget just in software purchases myself. And so I had to go through the same stuff. But that doesn't mean a campaign isn't working or a landing page isn't working because I'm not converting in that instant. I just have to go through a lot of hoops before I can come to you. And so my whole philosophy is we need to be guides, not sellers, and give them all the information they need in order to self -qualify and eventually come to you.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (05:22.328)
Mm -hmm.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (05:33.944)
That's so interesting. One, I love your take on consumption rate optimization. Never heard that before, but very unique. That's something that, yes, honestly, you should buy that domain right now. But yeah, I mean, I was a CRO a couple times actually in my career when I was working in -house as well. And I think they were all in the B2B sense, right? And I totally understand what you're saying.

Tas Bober (05:41.582)
TM.

Tas Bober (05:45.582)
you

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (06:02.744)
In the B2B world, someone's not going to go to the landing page and just because their CTA is green and not blue, then they're going to buy your thing or even reach out to you. I think talking about the consumption, just prioritizing time on page and or time on owned assets maybe is even a better calculation there is what makes it really interesting whenever we do landing pages for clients. We do some paid media.

essentially like we're always putting the YouTube on the landing page. We're like, hey, if you like this, check out more. Because the way I look at it is in the B2B world, if someone is in Google, they come from a Google ad, they're looking for a vendor that will serve them the fastest and the best. And so if I don't give them an opportunity to digest more content, then they're just going to go to the next person down on the list.

and go to their website, review it, and fill out their form. And whoever reaches out faster will have a higher chance of actually closing that deal potentially. And so if I give them an opportunity to go to YouTube or Spotify or watch a podcast, great. That's the win there. So I love that take. And honestly, I've had it in my head, but I don't think I've ever formally conceptualized it. So that was such a cool answer.

Tas Bober (07:28.174)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think consumption, when I talk about it and I introduced the concept on LinkedIn, everyone was like, well, okay, but you know, I'm not going to, how do we explain that to leadership that it's consumption, you know, versus conversions or whatever. And I'm like, well, it's not versus, but in a B2B context, they are very information and research driven.

so in that case, if they're not consuming the information that you're putting out there, that conversion will never come. So it's not a conversion versus consumption. It's consumption leads to conversions. And that's what we're looking at. So with B2B, because the sales cycles are so long and I always use the statistic in like every podcast, every post I can, which hockey stack did a report and they said for low ACV product.

It could take 34 on average, 34 website touch points before someone is even an MQL. Okay. Not anything else, not even a, like a purchased product, right? Not even a sold and closed one deal. 34 to just contact you, which means that they're very, very research heavy. And if you're not providing all that information that they need in order to make a decision, someone else is, and that's who they're going for.

And so that's where it's like, you can't measure on conversions on direct conversions on a page as an indicator of success. You have to look at the positive and negative indicators of consumption, focus on what you can control, which is giving them the information, making it readily available, removing the friction to that content. And then looking at things like return visits on the site, you know, overall raising, overall increase in number of hand raisers.

on the website and understanding that people are going to return and at some point come in through a direct channel and convert.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (09:27.352)
Exactly. It's important to have those pixels on there so you know exactly what's going on. I'm sure in your Google Analytics, you look at your attribution report, you probably see that plus 50 touch points before someone comes through. That's so cool. You mentioned reducing friction. I wanted to ask, are you a big gate kind of person or an ungated kind of person? Because I think that's a pretty hot topic as well.

Tas Bober (09:48.462)
Thanks for watching!

So I have a resource hub with all of my like landing page links and information, all that other stuff. And it is gated, you know, I, but I only ask for like an email address. And the only reason I do, I don't have a newsletter or anything, at least not yet. And I'm not sending them emails. I'm not doing notary sequences, none of that. The only reason I collected that is because I wanted a direct number to see how many people were interested in this asset. And if I should create more, that was more of the data point behind that.

So I'm not anti gated assets. I think that most times when the company gets an asset, the transaction and the payoff isn't equal. So you're asking someone for something precious at that state, which is their digital currency, their information. And essentially someone is saying, yes, you may have access to me, which is the worst thing someone wants to give to a random company. And then they get this asset that's kind of crappy.

And you go through and you're like, there was nothing in here. I couldn't have found in a blog post. There was nothing new. So sometimes I will encourage people to utilize something that's a immediately actionable thing that someone could take away. So like hockey sector, that incredible report, it's not gated. It's on a blog in their lab. Like it's not a big deal. Chili Piper did an amazing one on demand Jen a while ago. It's a blog on their website. So.

I think that gating can be good if the content is actually good, but the content is not good like 90 % of the time. For the landing pages that I do, I typically focus on foundational ones because I think that companies over place an overemphasis on top of funnel, you know, like white papers, events, that kind of stuff. And then they don't have any foundations in place. They don't have a really good landing page that talks about the product. There's don't.

Tas Bober (11:49.806)
not in a way that makes sense. They always have the form up top and they're trying to force you to convert, but they're not giving you enough information to make that transaction. So for me, I focus on foundational ones, which is they're comparing it to other solutions, a pricing landing page, a demo landing page, a product landing page. Those are the types of pages I'm talking about. That's always on. They never have to turn it off. It massages over time. And they're seeing how people are consuming information about their product.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (11:50.808)
Yeah.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (12:20.152)
Yeah, no, that's 100 % needed. And also as someone who is, I'm more on the paid media side, so I completely understand what you're talking about. Having these evergreen top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel campaigns running, whether that's on LinkedIn or on other channels, yeah, you can't just send someone to the schedule demo page from the beginning. And if you're missing those crucial product or solution,

Tas Bober (12:42.446)
Mm -hmm.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (12:46.712)
pages in the middle of the funnel, then you're never going to get people to get to the bottom. And it's kind of interesting whenever, sometimes we work with like really small clients. They've never done ads before and they want us to turn ads on and they want to get results immediately. And when I tell them, you know, you mentioned the Honky Stack report. I have a similar thing that I always mentioned, which is like Google's like 7 -11 -4 rule, which I'm sure you've probably heard of, but it's like seven touch points, 11 minutes.

Tas Bober (12:50.574)
Mm -hmm.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (13:15.96)
or seven, gosh, I'm gonna blank on this now. Seven platforms, 11 different touchpoints on four different channels. Yeah, it's something like that. You get what I'm putting down, right? And gosh, I used to reference this all the time and I haven't in a while. That's probably why I just butchered it. But that is what I tell clients and it takes a while to see results, especially if you don't have.

Tas Bober (13:25.614)
Wow. Okay. Okay. We're just going down. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (13:44.312)
any social presence. You don't have anything like any pixels installed on your site. You're not posting organically. So I love that you're kind of talking about how it just takes this many touch points and how you need these other levers to actually have successful paid media campaigns in general. So that's great.

I think I want to dive a little deeper into that actually. So I know you're primarily focused on landing pages in the B2B space from paid media. Can you kind of give an example of a client that you've helped recently or in the past that, you know, they saw really great results from what you implemented and how you kind of like iteratively approach the situation?

Tas Bober (14:30.542)
Yeah, I can give you a couple of examples. So I have a good mix of like PLG versus SLG clients. Obviously the SLG is gonna have a harder road ahead of them because there's just a lot more in the sales process versus offering a free trial or even a paid product that can be a little bit more cost efficient and doesn't take a lot of like deciding, right? If you're going after individuals. And so,

One thing I don't do is ever promise conversions. And I think sometimes I get on calls with clients and they're like, we've been looking for a CRO expert forever. And I'm like, okay, well, I'm not that person. I can refer you to tons of really good people who I know who are in the CRO space, but my positioning is really against the CRO, right? For B2B. I don't promise that, but I'm focused on driving quality leads. So if you want a thousand leads, we can buy some for 17 cents a piece tomorrow.

I can deliver a tumor within 24 hours, right? But I'm focused on getting you quality, people who are genuinely interested in your product and it might take some time. So with that said though, the two examples that I'm going to share with you, both PLG, SLG side within a week of implementing the changes and this general framework of being very product focused.

customer focused, right? Bio focused first. The PLG client is, I think I can talk about them because we did post about it a while ago, but it was in partnership with an agency, Dragon 360, who is running a campaign for technical writers for Snagit, the screenshot tool. I built the landing pages for that or the landing page strategy. And within the first week, they had a 265 % increase in purchases, not trials.

not conversions, purchases. And that's kind of my end goal is trying to go towards that. I would never walk into a sales call and be like, okay, this was my result from that. So within six days, I'm going to turn your business around. It just happened to be that situation where if you're going to be honest and straightforward, you're going to see results. Now let's shift to the SLG client. SLG is now it's a, it's a software who's

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (16:38.232)
Yeah.

Tas Bober (16:53.134)
targeting InfoSec and security teams. Very, very difficult segment. Very difficult segment. They are risk averse. They are cautious. They take a long time to make a decision. The call to action was to book a meeting directly with a Calendly link. Right? And so we had to do the strategy that was a little bit different. Again, very information heavy. But within a week, she sent me a screenshot.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (17:10.424)
Yeah.

Tas Bober (17:21.326)
of a message that she had sent to a CFO asking for more budget for landing pages and the paid ads cleanup and consulting. Because we went from a 0 .13 % conversion rate, which was that book a meeting to the 3 .43 % again, within a week. I don't know what the one week thing is about.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (17:40.28)
What?

Tas Bober (17:43.886)
Obviously I'm very, sometimes honestly, Ian, like sometimes I'm shocked at the results myself because I'm so focused on being like the buyer's advocate. I'm not trying to promise you a bunch of conversions. And then I see results like that. I'm like, wait, I did that. That was cool. That's cool. That's nice. so I'm equally humbled and shocked and honored by that. But again, it's not something that I'm going to be like, I'm going to get you. You know, a 200 % ROI in a week. I'm more like evangelizing the concept that.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (17:57.112)
Yeah.

Tas Bober (18:13.838)
Marketing in B2B is a long game. You can control what you can control. You're likely going to see some positive results from it. But we're supposed to be scientists, not like accountants with a definitive answer. We are scientists with testing hypotheses, right? So that's kind of my framework and my mindset going into it.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (18:34.04)
Yeah

I love the scientist part. I won't go into it, but my background was very heavy in the engineering space. I actually went to Georgia Tech to be a chemical engineer, and then I came out as a business student, which someone would think that, chemical engineering was too hard. But honestly, it's just, I kind of got really interested in the marketing space because of how much data was there and how scientific it actually was.

So I love that at the end, what you were talking about there. The SLG client, I'm really curious. Just want to pry a little bit more in terms of that booking rate and that increase. So yes, they're in the cybersecurity space, they're in the info -sec space, so very risk averse, like you mentioned. You said that the CTA was a book and meeting link. Did you keep the CTA the same or did you change it?

Tas Bober (19:14.606)
Thank you.

Go ahead.

Tas Bober (19:34.094)
No, I kept it the same. It was more, I mean, like maybe changed from like book meeting to schedule a call or schedule a conversation, talk to an expert. I mean, vernacular matters, right? Like you're going to see a higher conversion rate on like talk to an expert versus talk to sales. There's lots of data around that. No one wants to talk to sales. but yeah, we just did like talk to an expert, but one of the things that I think lowers the friction.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (19:36.248)
Okay.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (19:41.848)
Okay.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (19:55.512)
Yeah.

Tas Bober (20:02.958)
too, that I do and I don't see honestly on any landing page is there's no expectations set for what the user gets in return for their time. So how many times you see it floating around on LinkedIn where it's like, Hey, I signed up for this demo and the person never reached out to me. The company never reached out to me, right? Marketing works so hard to bring in these qualified leads. And then we just don't follow up with them once they submit.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (20:15.672)
Mm -hmm.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (20:30.904)
Yeah.

Tas Bober (20:31.15)
And so, one of the things I work with all of my customers is what can the user expect if they do this ask that you're making of them and they'll say, okay, typically within 24 hours and SDR will review the lead. They'll reach out to them with an email and say, Hey, let's book a call. They book a call. Then they get on there. They talk about the discovery. I'm like, okay, so they're not actually getting a demo in the first call. That means we should not be promising a demo. So.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (20:40.408)
Mm -hmm.

Tas Bober (21:00.942)
it could be like talk to an expert, cool. And then I lay out the process. So the process will say something like, what happens after you submit the form? Here's what you can expect. Someone will reach out, someone on our team will reach out to you within 24 hours and set up a meeting. The first meeting will walk through your specific use cases, maybe a light demo of the product. But then the next meeting will actually customize it based on your use cases. If you like it, we'll set up a

A POC for you that you can take to your internal teams. So at least it gives them the steps of like, what's going to happen at least two or three steps down the line. So they understand the process. And I think that lowers the friction too, because especially for a difficult, hard to set a hard to target ICP, they need that. My husband is in data analytics and he plans like three generations ahead.

So he does not like things that are unexpected. He does not like inefficient calls. So just one small tweak like that helps set the stage up for what they can expect and you're respecting their time by telling them. So that's something that I like to focus is just being very, very, very respectful of the buyer.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (21:55.544)
Yeah.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (22:13.368)
Absolutely. It's funny, again, it's one of those things that like hovers in my head and we always include like, this is what to expect, but usually that is like not right underneath the form or right before the form. It's maybe in the middle of the page. And I think having it, or at least maybe a great AV test, which I know is sort of in the CRO space, let's stay away from that. But what a great AV test would be to place it maybe like right by the form or right next to it.

Tas Bober (22:28.302)
Mm.

Tas Bober (22:42.318)
Mm -hmm.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (22:42.68)
and see how that actually performs. I love that. And I'm probably going to employ that.

Tas Bober (22:46.286)
And I do like the, so like my process working with clients is like a three part process. And so the first part is I actually map out the entire buyer's journey, all the touch points that a potential buyer could have prior to coming, you know, submitting a form or whatever it is. And then the second part is building the wireframes. But then the third component, which is, you know, like a last sprint is running.

the test on this initial hypothesis because the page that I put together for them is one giant hypothesis, right? It is what I am looking at their value propositions, the problem statements and understanding. Okay, these sound like they're the most compelling to me, but the buyer is going to eventually tell me. So we're starting with that. And there are some CRO components. Have I ever...

been in a situation where I'm going to test a button color? Probably not. And maybe other people are like, well, there's so much data to support that. I'm like, yeah, sure. Not in B2B. It could be orange, green, or blue, or yellow, or whatever. If they're not ready, they're not ready. But I think that there is a component of testing from a messaging perspective that you can absolutely do based on consumption data, like heat maps, recordings. So I think I mentioned this before, but one of the spots that they hang out with

on the most, you know, blocks wise is testimonials and FAQs. And there's a lot of times FAQs are not on the pages. For Snagit, we added FAQ blocks to two of the landing pages that we did from May to June. And those two blocks, I just did the reporting yesterday, got an additional like 290 clicks within the FAQs. Yeah.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (24:27.992)
That's awesome.

Tas Bober (24:28.046)
So people like to have their questions answered and it's a good way to answer objections.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (24:34.968)
Yeah, and it's so easy too to make. I mean, from a design standpoint, you can whip that up in a day probably, or less. I mean, dang. I love that. Those are great insights.

Tas Bober (24:40.11)
Yeah.

Tas Bober (24:45.55)
Yeah.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (24:47.544)
I want to move a little bit away from the client work now and I want to talk a little bit more about your agency and your consulting and what you're doing. We have a lot of agency owners that listen to this podcast and so I would love to hear from you what you think your biggest driver is of maybe revenue for your agency and your firm.

Tas Bober (25:12.634)
I don't classify myself as an agency, more like a consultancy because I do partner with a lot of agencies. So I don't want them to feel like I'm competing with them, which is fine. Like, let's say it's a niche consulting business is more of it because I think it's a gap I can fill. There's a lot of paid media agencies and they're like, eh, landing pages aren't our like strong suit.

Like we kind of do it, right? But it's like not the only thing we focus on. So they bring me in and I partner with them and I have a lot of relationships with them. in terms of growth, I think that the biggest piece for me was when I niche down. So when I first went out on my own, I was doing like fractional head of digital website. And I had a lot of people inquire about that, but it was more people I'd worked with in the past, you know, when I was in house, that kind of thing, people who already knew me.

I was already writing on LinkedIn for about six months at the time. And so inbound wasn't like huge. It was just a couple of companies here and there. And I was like, cool. Amazing. But I would get on these calls with them for the discovery. And I talk about this on exit five as well, but it's like, we're just sitting there looking at each other and it's like, well, what problems do you have with the digital and website side? And they're like, well, here's some things that you could do.

So then it just ended up being like half of it was dilly -dallying on the call. And then I didn't know necessarily what to give them from a proposal standpoint. The deals would move slower. I would not close them, whatever it was. And then I had a conversation with a friend, a LinkedIn friend who also has a very niche consultancy. And he's like, you need to just really niche down. And I'm like, well, I can do all of these things in digital. Why would I just pick one thing?

And he's like, well, you don't have to change your entire business, but it could also just be an intro offer. So you're niching down on the problem that you're solving for someone. I'm like, okay. So that day I was like twiddling my thumbs. Finally it shifted. I changed everything to landing pages. And the next day I got a couple of leads already. And then all of my content, I was thinking, man, if I really niche down, I'm not going to be able to have enough content to pump out. And it's incredible how much your brain works.

Tas Bober (27:29.902)
to pump out content because I had more ideas for fresh content. Once I got super focused and then I started doing the infographics and then things just started taking off from there growth wise. And, and then, yeah, so like today I'm working with big companies, small companies, but anywhere from like series a, like the security company I was talking to you about, all the way to like, you know, series D E whatever, whatever's beyond that.

you know, and, and companies like Calendly and stuff. So all of that coming in from niching down and working through, those components as, as far as just being focused. So that's something that's really driven my success in terms of like split with, I was actually doing, I'm such a math person just because I come from like digital website growth, like data is my, my reason for being, I'll make a spreadsheet just cause like, I think it's fun, but,

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (28:00.472)
And yeah.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (28:28.76)
Yeah.

Tas Bober (28:29.774)
Right. So looking at like my inbound, I would say most of it is landing pages, about like 50 ish percent. People come to me for landing pages, another 30 for more like general digital and website advising. Some of it will be partnerships, either influencer or content partnerships. And then I have one outlier client that I help with from a content strategy perspective.

So that's kind of my mix there. And then in terms of business coming to me inbound is like roughly 60 % from LinkedIn. And then about 30 % is referrals through agency partners who have either worked with me or just know of my content. They're like, Hey, I have a client they're looking for landing page help. And you're the person I thought of. And again, it's that niche thing where I own that space in someone's head. When someone says landing page, they like think of me.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (29:28.152)
Mm -hmm.

Tas Bober (29:29.422)
So there's that and, what else? Like I have like my pipeline doc and it's all in here, like by month, by source, by deal. and let's see. Let's take four. Okay. Network inbound referral, outbound referral inbound. that's kind of like how I have them classified.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (29:36.888)
Sir.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (29:42.936)
that

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (29:51.288)
That's super helpful. I think hearing your whole process, right? I didn't expect like that in depth in terms of like the percentages, but that's awesome. And like, I don't even think I have those numbers. So like that's incredible. And so I love hearing that because I think it goes to show that as an agency, not agency owner, right? Not consultancy, right? You can get it.

like a ton of referral and word of mouth just through content and just through your inbound if you niche down enough. And for you, yes, you are very niche. Like honestly, like you are serving a very specific need, but at the same time, that's how you get those big clients, like Calendly They come to you, you're the expert. And so I love that. I think personally, like with our agency, we have gone back and forth.

Tas Bober (30:23.95)
Yes.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (30:45.656)
We have gone very broad, we've gone very niche, and I'm still finding my way. I'm not going to lie. With Optimize, we're really good at identifying growth tactics early on. But when you try to sell those as a service without having a major audience to start with, it does get a little hard in terms of getting it in front of people. And because if someone's not searching for it, there's no search volume. So you can't do PPC.

Tas Bober (31:12.206)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (31:14.072)
And you can kind of predict and hypothesize, okay, maybe CMOs would like this at, you know, 200 to 500 employee companies. So maybe we can run ads, but it's a big risk, you know? And it's like, maybe we don't need to do that. So I love your answer. I think the quick and dirty is that content is a huge driver for you and your strategy in terms of like how you niche down really impacted your business as a whole.

Tas Bober (31:38.35)
That and a third level, which is, I also, there's a lot happening behind the scenes on LinkedIn. I always say like my DMs are alive with the sound of music. I make sure that when people reach out, regardless of whether I have partnership potential with them or not, I am kind and respectful and I have a bunch of networking calls. I try to bucket like,

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (31:52.696)
Yeah

Tas Bober (32:06.798)
one or two a week, even though I'm busy, but I try to meet with people and either try to help them regardless or, you know, and then that stuff like, and I'm not doing it with any agenda other than like, I was a lost puppy once and, and I'm still finding my way. I've just might be a few steps ahead in the jungle. And I'm just like, kind of making a path for everybody who wants to follow behind me. But I think that's the piece too is like just

building a lot of relationships on the back end, referring people when I can, they refer me. So there's a lot of that. There's a book I read many, many, many, many years ago. And it's called, a mentor of mine gave it to me, but it's not a go -getter. It's like, shoot, what is it? The go -giver? I think it's go -giver. Yeah, the go -giver. Yeah.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (32:56.536)
you

Go give her. I think I've heard of that, yeah.

Tas Bober (33:03.246)
It's a little bit cheesy, but like the concept is there, which is serve people or approach people with a service mindset. Even if you have nothing to gain from it. And that's something that's always been kind of a philosophy of mine. And my husband's like, yeah, but then you trust so many people and they let you down. I'm like, sure. But you know what? It's like, it's like maybe two to 5 % let me down, but

the 90 % will remember you for being human and kind and respectful and building a relationship and you giving them the time of day when like maybe nobody else would or they didn't think you would. And I think that did a lot for me as well is that I just feel like a huge net of support with my network outside of just like posting content out there. And I'm like, okay, cool. I'm just giving you educational content and not building any relationships. So

I think that's like the third lever is the relationship actually going out there and building a relationship with people, is super important, you know, outside of that, but a hundred percent niche down because if you came to me tomorrow, Ian, and you were like, like today, if someone said LinkedIn ads, B2B LinkedIn ads agency, who do you think of? Are you allowed to talk about competitors on this podcast?

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (34:06.584)
Yeah.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (34:23.032)
I don't mind because I think there's plenty of people out there that need services, but I know exactly who you're thinking, which would be probably, it's probably impactable, right? Yeah.

Tas Bober (34:28.974)
Yeah, you know exactly.

Tas Bober (34:34.03)
Okay, all right. Homepage messaging.

I don't know how active you are on LinkedIn, but in the LinkedIn world, if someone says homepage messaging, they're going to think Anthony Pierre, Robert Kraminski, Fletch, PMM, right? If someone thinks positioning, April Dunford. If someone says anti -paid ads, Chris Walker, right? Yeah. Yeah. B2B, the B2B marketing community. Who's the best one?

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (34:49.272)
Hmm.

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (34:57.368)
Yeah.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (35:01.88)
Okay, this is great. Yeah.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (35:11.352)
Dave Gerhardt, or maybe, yeah. Yeah, not sure.

Tas Bober (35:11.918)
Okay. Right. Yeah. Who else? What other community is there? Yeah. So that's, it's about owning a specific part in someone's brain for that, right? Like once Impactable has someone in the door for B2B LinkedIn ads, then I know for a fact he does paid search too. He talks about it here and there kind of introing it a little bit. He probably upsells his clients and says, Hey, I can do both for you.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (35:25.464)
Mm -hmm.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (35:37.752)
Yeah.

Tas Bober (35:41.038)
So for me, landing pages are not the only thing that I can do. And I think that's the fear is that people think that it's the only thing. What if that's the only thing they think I can do? Almost every engagement of mine ends with, my gosh, this was great. do you do more? Can you help me with my competitive campaigns? Can you help me with my competitive landing pages? Do you do just general digital and website advising? Hey, we have a website redesign. Can you advise on that?

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (35:58.52)
Yeah.

Tas Bober (36:09.518)
Hey, can you be a fractional head of growth?

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (36:13.24)
This is so actually, I love that you're saying this because I see it in my business, right? We start with a client, they want paid ads. And then we're like, hey, like there's this new inbound, let outbound approach where you're doing all of these like cold email sequences, which we do for our own agency. And we think it could help you and you're not doing it. So we can set it up for you. And then we start like getting into these other services. And I think where I'm or where our agency is, it's like,

we're putting this emphasis on like, we need to classify ourselves as we do this and this and this, which is like you're saying, making us diluted in the market. So I love this. This is like a really practical workshop for me. And then anyone listening, I'm sure will be like, wow, like that makes sense.

Tas Bober (37:02.382)
I love that there's another book I'll recommend that you read or any agency owner reads or maybe you already have, but have you heard of Built to Sell?

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (37:09.272)
Mm -hmm.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (37:13.176)
I feel like I've heard of it, but definitely have not read it.

Tas Bober (37:16.27)
built to sell by I'm terrible at remembering author's names. John Warlow. my gosh. I'm totally gonna butcher this, but built to sell. and he basically walks through the life of an agency owner. He is bogged down. He has one or two anchor clients who pay him a ton of money, but they want him to do different stuff every time. So his whole team's like.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (37:23.0)
Who would?

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (37:27.064)
That's fine.

Tas Bober (37:43.086)
working on a different project, they pivot, they're doing a brochure one time, they're doing an event, da da da, right? Life of an agency. And he wants to sell and move on, but like he can't leave the business. It's so highly dependent on him. And then he meets with a mentor and he's like, Hey, I want to really sell my agency for like $5 million. He's like, okay. what is like a process or something that you've done that works well? And then he talks about how.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (37:49.08)
Yeah.

Tas Bober (38:09.198)
He's done a couple of logo designs for clients and that's been really well. He's like, okay, go outline the process of this logo design. And then they just become a logo design agency. And they talk about how the path to selling is only a problem. Look at Impactable. Impactable B2B LinkedIn ads, right? They went and just bought a CRO agency who only does CRO. I'm not saying that I want to be sold or any, like I have a pure lifestyle business. I'm not trying to build some like million dollar agency.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (38:20.216)
Yeah.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (38:32.792)
Yeah.

Tas Bober (38:39.118)
But that's something to also think about and consider is like, what's the path for the agency? Are you happy? Are you happy being small and like serving a small set of clients and doing whatever for them? Cool. Do you want to sell and grow? Then you're likely going to have to focus on something, at least as an introductory, you know, offer.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (38:56.472)
Mm -hmm.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (39:02.072)
That's an amazing insight. I'm going to take that away personally, but I'm sure there are plenty of other people listening that will find that useful. So thank you, Tas That's really helpful.

Tas Bober (39:10.958)
Yeah, you're welcome. Okay, what else?

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (39:14.2)
Cool. Well, I know I have a couple other questions. Maybe we can rapid fire these ones because I know we're getting a little bit up there on time. I want to talk about AI real quick. I think AI is a little scary. I think a lot of people are a little scared of AI. Obviously, the most informed people are maybe less scared. And so as someone who is very informed and very deep in your niche, what are your thoughts on AI? How do you think it's going to impact you and other maybe landing page experts in the future?

Tas Bober (39:44.974)
Yeah. So every time something new happens, and I think on the digital and website side, we are far more open and accustomed to doing this than other areas because we are a little more technical, right? We're the more technical marketers. And so for me, anytime something new came out when they were like GA4, the first thing I did was just take a masterclass on GA4. So when AI and the whole craze came out, I'm like, okay, I don't understand this fully or how to utilize it.

So I need to just do a course or do something on this. So I went and did this huge like Udemy thing. My company at the time had a huge subscription. I did the most highly rated Udemy AI master class. And I'm like, there's tons of use cases here. This is cool. This is where I could use it. This is where I can. And then I go into experimentation mode, which is what can I send? But also it's so important to me because I am

a very personality driven kind of person that I don't think AI can replicate the way I write, the way I talk yet. Maybe one day if there's a model just trained on me, perhaps. I don't think we're there yet. From like a landing page perspective and output, like marketing output perspective, I think it gives you a good starting point. So for example, I do this like buyer's journey canvas for my clients where we map out, you know,

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (40:56.44)
Sure.

Tas Bober (41:12.238)
Like I told you, the competitors, the market, the product, the ICP, their problems, the proof points, understanding what the ask is, all of those things. And I can take all of that information and say, okay, here's what I've collected from the client. give me like the problem statements that you see within, you know, this ICP and it'll say, okay, based on

this information, here are some problem statements. And I'll look at it, obviously edit it down completely, and then be like, OK, these sound like they're the three most compelling to me. So this is what I'm going to use on the landing page first. And then the other four, if it's given me seven, the other four I put on like a self -building testing roadmap that I'm like, I'm going to test these problem statements in the future. So.

It's a good like consolidation, summarization, initial like brainstorming tool, but it still requires a lot of human intervention. And honestly, I think both of those together, what you can automate gives you a good starting point. So you're not doing it from scratch. And then married with human intervention is where AI can really excel is that it just needs it's as good as its master. So if you rely on it to be the

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (42:29.208)
Mm -hmm.

Tas Bober (42:30.446)
end all be all, that's how you see the comments and posts on LinkedIn. You're like, this is clearly written by AI versus like, Whoa, that's really insightful. Or, you know, so I have a lot of prompts that I use, but it requires so much intervention. And sometimes it's worth just doing it from scratch because it just doesn't get it, you know? But other times I'm like, okay. I actually didn't think about it that way. So it's almost like an intern.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (42:36.152)
Yeah.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (42:52.024)
Yeah.

Tas Bober (42:56.558)
versus a tool and you got to treat it as such. You wouldn't just give an intern a bunch of information and be like, okay, go write me a landing page. And they're going to come back like, I have zero experience and I don't know what you want from me. And so you got to give it a lot of direction and you have to be clear. And this is a really funny thing. Someone made fun of me for this, but I'm so polite and nice to AI because I have that intern mind frame. So when I tell them something I'm like, Hey,

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (43:05.912)
if

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (43:22.04)
Mm -hmm.

Tas Bober (43:23.406)
Okay, next time, can you try to do it this way? Thank you for doing that so fast. It's just funny because I just like, I'm just so nice. I'm like one day it's going to be like machines rolling us and I want to be on their good side. So yeah, she was really nice to us. Yeah.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (43:28.792)
Hahaha.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (43:34.488)
Yeah, they'll remember you. They'll be like, she was nice to us. Yeah. I think my comment on your answer, which I think is a great answer, by the way, I think the comment that I have is there are softwares out there right now that incorporate automation and AI, and they will create landing pages and websites for you even very quickly. But the big differentiator is that the writing and the messaging

on those landing pages, like you said, are only as good as the prompts that you give it and the external information that you're feeding it. So I think a lot of people get hung up and they say, my job's gone. Like this AI can make a landing page in two seconds. When in reality, the landing page messaging is probably the most important part, like you're talking about here. And so I love that. I think that's a good thing for people to be aware of at least.

Tas Bober (44:26.03)
yeah.

Tas Bober (44:32.782)
Yeah. And, and I will say this, I've had a couple of landing page companies who came to me and they want to partner and they want to put my frameworks into their products. I've had a couple of AI copywriting companies come to me. They want to partner and train their AI on how I write landing pages or have me use their product to write my landing pages. I have turned those down.

because I feel like the essence of what I do would be missing. Especially from the AI copywriting side, I tried, I attempted to use the product and I said, I will not promote or talk about or utilize a product that I don't personally believe in or think that it can do a good enough job. That is just absolutely not something I'm going to do. And I didn't think that it could. And it took me twice as long to try to give it the right prompt to have the right output. There were just too many limitations.

On the landing page side, they had like decent inputs, but like there was not enough room for me to put in like all the product information that I'd want to. And so I just, it's just not a good use case for me. And that's just maybe one day I'll build a landing page. I don't know. I'm not like in any mode for that, but, but I think that's the piece is like 90 % of landing pages have nothing to do with landing pages. It has everything to do about, you know, with your.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (45:58.296)
Yeah.

Tas Bober (46:00.206)
value proposition, your differentiated value in the market, the customer research, all the information you have at your fingertips before you even ever put out a landing page or really any marketing asset. So that's kind of my framing is that I just don't think it's there. I don't think people have the right mindset to build that out with a product in mind.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (46:24.984)
That makes sense. Yeah, I love that you kind of mentioned you might make a SaaS in the future, maybe. We'll leave it out there. You heard it here first, folks. Join the wait list. Awesome. All right, Tas last question. I normally asked, what is the most overrated digital marketing strategy or tactic in 2024? But I'm actually, if we are time sensitive here,

Tas Bober (46:29.006)
Eh. Eh, I just threw that out there. Yeah, I just threw it out there. Yeah, right?

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (46:53.944)
I wanted to learn more about your most underrated. I want to understand what you think is the most underrated strategy or tactic right now in 2024. You can choose either one you'd like to answer, but I would love to hear the underrated one. Maybe if you want to answer that one, that'd be great.

Tas Bober (47:09.358)
I think that it goes back to things that don't necessarily scale. I mean, I don't think I understood the value of organic social content until I started writing, just more of a creative exercise. And then I saw it actually generate revenue for myself and gave me options outside of an in -house corporate job. And the light bulb kind of went off. So...

I would encourage anyone, especially agencies, and if you're offering a ton of services, you're going to have to showcase your expertise and stand out in some shape or form. Because there's a billion that you're competing with that are all offering everything under the sun. So you can either race to the bottom on price, try to build a brand, which takes a long time.

but also just making sure that you have something meaningful and valuable. So I think more people are catching on. So I don't know if it's the most underrated thing, but I think doing it well is the most underrated thing. Like not doing ghost writers or anything, it has to be your voice. And then having a very strong POV, not just like shouting more how -to content out into the void, but actually having a strong POV, like my consumption rate optimization thing. People say it back to me.

And I'm like, okay, it's resonating because I totally made that up. And it just happened to start with a C. I'm like, this is great. That was a coincidence and it's amazing. And so that's just become my thing. So what is going to be your thing? You know what I mean? So that's that. And then overrated is like,

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (48:35.256)
Yeah. Yeah.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (48:52.888)
Mm -hmm.

Tas Bober (48:55.534)
I think we can stop with all the like content syndication programmatic stuff. It's like, it's junk. It just leaks money as a business owner myself. Now I cannot like imagine spending money on something that is just going to like, you know, it's just a glorified like lead purchase is all it is. so I think that we can stop with that. And the other last part about AI is the editing comes from me.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (49:16.184)
Mm -hmm.

Tas Bober (49:23.342)
You know, like AI is trained on how things have been done historically and how things have been done historically for B2B is using jargon and buzzwords, you know, in copy. And I think that what I have to edit in AI is train it to speak in simple and clear terms. And so that's one thing where I'm like, okay, you can have a tool, a landing page tool that is AI driven right now and can pop out a landing page in five minutes, but it's going to look like literally every page that has not performed for you.

So I think there's a lot of unlearning that needs to happen. And I think that's probably the biggest, the biggest hack right now is just like everything you know, assume you don't know and start again.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (49:53.816)
Yeah.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (50:06.808)
I love that. I think it's interesting because our previous guest talked about how a lot of people are not learning anymore because of AI. And you're mentioning that there needs to be a little bit of unlearning, which I guess in a sense is learning, right? Like you're unlearning. So it's like a learning process. That's cool. Very interesting.

Tas Bober (50:19.374)
unlearning. Yeah. Totally. Yeah.

Tas Bober (50:26.734)
Yeah.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (50:30.04)
Well, Tas, that's all I have for you. Loved talking to you. I feel like we have amazing content opportunities from this, and I just can't wait to see what our listeners have to say. So thank you so much for being on today. I really enjoyed it.

Tas Bober (50:37.838)
yeah, totally.

Tas Bober (50:44.366)
Yeah, absolutely. Find me. I'm very active on LinkedIn and send me a DM if you listen to this. I love getting those messages that say, Hey, I heard you on so and so's podcast. And that's really fun because I actually love doing guest podcasting. It's one of my favorite things to do as part of my business. And so, or just like just chatting with people. So hit me up and happy to answer any other questions.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (51:11.0)
Thanks, Tas. Real quick, we're gonna end, address the listeners real quick. So, if you've listened all the way through, I greatly appreciate you, and if you aren't already following the podcast, then I invite you to follow and rate it. It takes literally two seconds, but it really helps out. We have three to four podcasts per month with awesome guests like Tas. Not as cool as her, but awesome guests to say the least.

And so I'd love for you to follow us and don't miss out on these expert opinions. So with that being said, that's all I got. Hope you enjoy the rest of your morning, afternoon, or evening, and I'll see you in the next podcast.

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