Christian Klepp  00:00

Many marketing teams struggle with leveraging data to achieve tangible business outcomes. They’re caught up in the cycle of analysis paralysis, or even end up looking at data that doesn’t really drive growth. A lot of it comes down to having the right strategy, understanding what the goals are, and making sense of the data. So how can B2B marketers measure what counts and leverage actionable metrics that drive profit. Welcome to this episode of the B2B Marketers in the Mission podcast, and I’m your host, Christian Klepp. Today, I’ll be talking to Kenny Ridgell, who will be answering this question. He’s the founder of Ridge Media LLC that aims to overcome the digital marketing chaos. Tune in to find out more about what this B2B marketers mission is. Off we go. Mr. Kenny Ridgell, welcome to the show, Sir. 

Kenny Ridgell  00:51

Yes, sir. Thank you. Christian, happy to be here. 

Christian Klepp  00:55

Man, it’s great to have you on the show. We had a fantastic pre interview conversation where we’re talking about fatherhood and crying babies and sleep deprivation and all that good stuff, right? 

Kenny Ridgell  01:07

All the fun stuff that everyone has to either look forward to or reminisce upon.

Christian Klepp  01:11

Yeah, or they look back at it and go, Yeah, I’m glad that’s passed. I’m glad that ship has sailed right.

Kenny Ridgell  01:16

Exactly, either reminiscing upon or lack of sleep, or looking forward to the lack of sleep, and nothing can prepare you.

Christian Klepp  01:23

Exactly, exactly. Or the comments like, oh, yeah, I remember those days.

Kenny Ridgell  01:24

Exactly. It’s like, I don’t even remember how bad it was six months ago. I think part of it is that amnesia that occurs. It’s like, oh, it’s not that bad.

Christian Klepp  01:38

Yeah. It’s a bit of a brain fog, exactly. Great. Kenny, but moving on now, from fatherhood to B2B marketing, Man, I’m really looking forward to this conversation because, let’s be honest, it’s a conversation that I think is something that needs to be had within an organization in order to drive that success. So what am I talking about, ladies and gentlemen, well, let’s just dive right in. Okay, so you’re on a mission to simplify marketing analytics, where you assist founders and CEOs in leveraging data for evidence based decisions that drive revenue. I hope I got that right. But for this conversation, let’s zero in on this topic, how to measure what counts and leverage actionable metrics to drive profit. Now people are probably thinking like, measure what counts. Hmm. Wonder what that means. But let’s kick off the conversation with two questions here. Okay, and I’m happy to repeat them. Why do you think so many marketing teams struggle with using data to achieve tangible business outcomes, and what do you think is the root cause of these issues?

Kenny Ridgell  02:45

I’ll go inverse. I’ll start with the second question. First, I think the root cause kind of stems from like a lack of understanding truly the industry or the business that you’re talking to. And what is the sales cycle like? How long does it take to get the clothes. What does the conversation and process look like? I mean, at the end of the day, if you take a manufacturer versus the landscaper, right? You’re going to have a landscaping like, visit, you’re going to audit the property, you’re going to come back with a proposal pretty quickly. It’s going to be brief. You might be able to close within like, you know, a week to three weeks, Max, maybe six or as a manufacturing opportunity, a lot of times, like, say, somebody’s coming in, they’re building something custom. There’s gonna be engineers involved, there’s gonna be spec involved. There’s gonna be multiple site business involved. It’s probably a year along two year long buying process before they actually purchase that equipment. I think the wrong video can get obsessed with is the incorrect metric from that right? 

Kenny Ridgell  03:39

So take impressions, for example, I call marketing a lot of times smoke and mirrors, because I think a lot of people can do it that song and dance they can do, like the pony show. But at the end of the day, what actually matters to this business owner money in their pocket. So if you back it up and, like, reverse engineer the situation the manufacturer, take that for example, how many eyeballs actually quantify of like, a quality buyer. There’s probably only a limited pool of people who are going to be buying this. You should not be measuring impressions as like, one of your like, Okay, we got 100,000 impressions. There’s probably not 100,000 people that are actively shopping for that piece of equipment at all. You don’t need to be looking at that. It needs to be much more like, of a less of a shotgun approach and more of a rifle specific, I think, the old adage of, you know, throwing the spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks that that may work in, like a B2C or retail type situation, but it B2B, it’s cutthroat. You got competitors who either, like, you know, in front of your customer already, and they’re already working with them, or they’re courting their your customer right now. So you got to be aft. You got to be quick. You got to be agile, and you got to really make sure that you’re telling the story directly to these people and not just measuring. Oh, well, what was their engagement? Did they come to my site and spend a lot of time on there? 

Kenny Ridgell  04:50

It’s no, it’s like, What page did they spend a lot of time on? How can we feed that type of information back to our sales team through the CRM (Customer Relationship Management)? How can we, like, connect the data? I think a lot of times, and the B2B world, there’s just a disconnect between what your sales team and there’s like your CRM is telling you and the updated refresh data versus what you’re learning on the other end. You need to be trying to understand this customer user journey. So we take Christian as like a prospective buyer. He looks at a Google ad. We now know that, you know, he has a device ID tag. He’s going to our LinkedIn. He’s going to our website. We already have him on our CRM, his emails there. He finally calls in, you know, off of a meta ad. Okay, well, did Christian come from Facebook because that was the last place he saw, or was it the entire user journey that mattered? What steps did it take? The full cost isn’t the cost per click on meta. The full cost is the Google cost per click, the cost of the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) campaign to find it again, the cost of your LinkedIn campaign, your email marketing drip, your sales guy who touched on again before he came to meta. And you want to know that whole pathway. And then you got to understand, like, you know what? What could we done to maybe shorten the pathway so it’s not as expensive? 

Kenny Ridgell  05:58

And then number two, how can we repeat that pathway for a future prospective customer, because this is someone who found this walk through the whole path and then delivered. You’ve got to make sure you connect the dots all the way through the journey, or else you’re missing out. You know, say, we could have said, Oh, meta was the best play here. Well, at the end of the day, without the other pieces of lineage, they would never have made it to meta. They probably never made it to the purchasing decision that might have just been like that, like a straw that broke the camel’s back. So you know, to answer your second question. First, I think the problem is that people focusing on the wrong, they focus on the wrong piece of basically, analytics, and then they threw that focus on the wrong channels and trying to focus on the wrong metrics. And at the end of the day, people, what people need to be focusing on is customer profile data and connecting your sales team to your marketing team. 

Christian Klepp  06:48

Absolutely, absolutely. So going to that first question like, Why do so many teams struggle with using data? I guess a big part of it is like, what you said, it’s just the failure to understand who they’re targeting, where they’re coming from, and do you feel? Do you feel a big part of it, at least, I’ve seen this in my experience, people tend to like over complicate things when it comes to data analysis?

Kenny Ridgell  07:13

Yeah, we always say, be more direct with your data and simplify. And I think direct is their number one key, because some people can just, you know, they talk in these airy ideas, kind of like, you know, you can hear multiple sales pitches now from Instagram that come to mind where it’s like, I kind of, I even sell this stuff, but I don’t really understand what he’s talking about. Because I think some people want to just, like, over complicate it, make it sound more dense than it needs to. And I think the end of the day, tracking too many things is part of the problem. Like, whenever we hire new media buyers, we always talk about, you know, they’ll set up their conversion tracking, for example, and they’ll track like, oh, five to six different things as conversions. Like a website click as a conversion, going to the Contact Us page is a conversion like, no, no, no, let’s get back to the root of it. What is a true conversion? What do we add that value to? And then let’s try and focus on the proper metrics. Of course, tracking everything is good, but focusing your conversions on just what are contact points, especially in B2B marketing, who filled out a form and who called us. 

Kenny Ridgell  08:11

Most importantly, anything else is not valuable. And then taking it one step further with a program like Call Rail you can actually record the call, and you can make sure that the length of the length of the call is good. So we actually have somebody manually, like, go back and listen to these calls at the end of the day, you can, you can hire a virtual assistant for your team. You can plug in call rough like, 100 bucks a month, probably over $1,000 total cost, all in you can have a call recording system. You can have a person who’s monitoring all the calls giving you true feedback. And then the end of the day, you export that data to your CRM. Here’s our here are good calls, here’s their phone number and their emails and their names. You send it to your CRM, put it in a ChatGPT or AI tool, and you basically like, compare your CRM and who’s who closed versus your calls. Okay, now we see which ones overlap, and you’re truly like connecting the data. It takes a little bit of manual work, but somebody listening to all these calls, giving their phone number and their names, then using your CRM to basically connect the data and pipeline shows you what your ROI (Return on Investment) is. And I think if you don’t do that last step, then a lot of times we think, Oh, we’re getting a lot of good calls. And then you look down at how much ROI actually came from it, even if they’re talking the phone to two three minutes, they were shopping, they didn’t have the budget, they you know, oh, we’re concepting. We’re a year out from buying that, you know, the you might actually not be getting quality calls, even if the calls are just long. Got to take the extra step of manually listening to it

Christian Klepp  08:11

I think so. I think so. I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier. Kenny. How can marketers leverage all this, all these vast amount of data that they’re collecting to help them understand the buyers journey better? Because that’s always that can be, at times, a tricky piece of work.

Christian Klepp  08:19

Absolutely, absolutely. It’s amazing what you can do with technology these days. I remember back then, when we were working together with sales and there wasn’t that technology didn’t quite exist yet where you can record the sales calls and then give that, like, feedback so called, right? Like, and it was very easy for people to just bluff their way through it, right? Like, oh yeah, they weren’t interested. Or, or, or they were very demanding, or things of that nature. But then so it’s hard to, it’s hard to tell, like, whether the person is telling the truth or not, right?

Christian Klepp  08:40

Exactly cuts through the fluff if you have that direct recording. And honestly, at the end of the day, it ties into where you end up being, like a sales consultant, because you’re like, we might need a script for your team, or maybe you should stop answering the phone. I mean, we have some people like, where it’s like, you know, they just had a dial tone go, and it would just go to the next person, next person in the company, tells my answer so it always end up in the owners and hands he’d be like out in the field, sir, I think you need to have a team around you to help answer the phone. You’re a multi million dollar business. It’s time to step back from your phone lines.

Kenny Ridgell  10:53

Yeah, you’ve got to find a couple tools that talk to each other, right. And, I mean, at the end of the day, the thing that’s probably the hardest thing to do in today’s market is determining what software program to buy. I would say right now that Call Rail is pretty much the biggest component to what we do, because it does, like the form tracking. It does integrate directly into your like call recording capabilities, and it actually has an AI transcriber that would transcribe the notes and qualify the leads good or bad, and it’s reasonably cost, and it actually ties in a majority of CRMs. So a lot of that, like manual pieces, can be done. So we use go high level, and at the end of the day, I think it’s a company like that where it’s one singular dashboard. You’re placing all of your information, both your CRM your email marketing, everything’s tied in through there. You can actually layer in a program called, like a Pearl Diver. So as soon as you get people who are actually typing in like, it does a website identifier. 

Kenny Ridgell  11:47

So based on keywords or competitors or searches, you can get their phone number in their email, and you can just create, like, a cycle or a system where it goes back to it like, so like, basically I would get Christian’s email because he typed in marketing Greenville, South Carolina, I would get populated into my CRM. Our CRM is going to automatically, like, you know, start dripping him emails, and then Call Rail is going to record when he calls in, hopefully, and then when it ties the two together. But I think the main thing is making sure you choose a couple robust systems. I think fragmented approaches are outdated, and it’s too hard to make the programs talk to each other. You’ve got to find one or two programs that can do a lot of what you’re looking for. So the more programs. I mean, we’ve been there as a company, and there’s no shame in that we’ve had like five or six programs, and you’re like, trying to build Frankenstein online. Frankenstein, Frankenstein works about like Frankenstein. It’s slow, it’s clunky, it doesn’t really work. Of course, it takes investment and time to get to that level. But once you make the step and investment into the true, proper software, hiring the professional set it up, once you have the system, it’s unbelievable the clockwork they can do for you. But I think too many people are cheap on the front end. They like, kind of like piecemeal together, and then they start, like, just sticking new things on top, instead of just saying, all right, we got to scratch this and go back to square one.

Christian Klepp  13:07

Yeah, exactly. And once they do that, then they start yelling, it’s alive. 

Kenny Ridgell  13:10

Exactly. 

Christian Klepp  13:11

Fantastic. I’m gonna move us on to the next question about key pitfalls. And you’ve mentioned some of them already, but like key pitfalls that B2B marketers need to avoid, and what should they be doing instead?

Kenny Ridgell  13:21

I think social media is a huge key pitfall that a lot of B2B people fall into the trap of, unless you know your customer 100% as a buyer that’s going to be on social media, think that there’s a time and a place to invest that energy and resources onto other channels. I mean, you got streaming capabilities, you got display campaigns, you got native ads, you got, I mean, even radio, I would think would work better because you’re doing more of a one to one approach. I would not recommend doing this. Social media goes back to like, it’s a lot of time to create all your strategy. A lot of it’s not going to be directly relevant to your customer. Because, I mean, how many times can you post about the same product over and over and over again? For even if you have a vast line of to like, say, your manufacturer, you have like, we have five dozen products. Well, what product do you feature on your social media? Well, how do you like highlight that individual? I think so many people get obsessed with like, we need to be on social media. We got to be on social media. And that is a big mistake for B2B companies. I think LinkedIn is a good place for you to I think it’s a, you know, one of those platforms where you can be on there, you can be more of a thought leader, you can create yourself as an expert. But it’s not, it’s not great to be on some of the other social media platforms. And I see that like resource waste heavily. 

Kenny Ridgell  14:31

I mean, I just know the manufacturer the other day in Australia, and, you know, he’s heavy leveraged into meta ads, and he’s getting a lot of leads, but they’re not a lot of quality leads. And he’s like, look, now my problem is, I have 2000 leads, and I only have like, 20 of these people are gonna buy this year. I know based on my facts of how much, like, you know, how many sales we’re gonna have, 12 to 30. So I’ve got 2000 people. I’ve got to filter through. How do I get and so he made his form longer and longer, right? He’s like, I am hoping. I’m like, well, at the end of the day, your form might stop some people that also may be qualified leader buyers, because they don’t want to have to fill out this extremely lengthy form. So he’s obsessed with meta. And I’m like, you know, I get there’s a time and place, and you don’t want to back away from it, but the amount that you’re investing there, it can go so much further for you, if you can be very specific about who these people are and leveraging this across other networks. I mean, take LinkedIn, for example, just buy ads they’re on there to strictly job titles and people in certain locations, and you’re gonna have a better result than just going on Facebook and doing it interest based, because, I mean, Facebook and Instagram and Tiktok, they’re all interest based, they’re not title based, or they’re not profession based, so it’s all different algorithm.

Christian Klepp  15:41

Yeah, no, that’s absolutely right. That’s absolutely right. Talk to us about the importance, I mean, like, I know you know that it’s important, but talk to us about why it’s crucial to have the right strategy and approach to leverage actionable metrics and data, and why you shouldn’t just wing it. Right? 

Kenny Ridgell  15:57

I have one of my favorite customer stories from a guy that I met a while ago that I would know he would hate, he laughs at it now, but he said that, you know, every year he would just, he managed his own ads. So he would just, but he was just trying and starting and stopping old campaigns within weeks, you know. So he would, he was like, AB test, and I do it over, like, four or five days, and at the end of the day he, you know, he used probably every bell and whistle on meta. He used every bell and whistle and Microsoft on Bing on Google. And he was like, I don’t think any of it works. I tried it all, and I went back and read all of it. And he was just starting and stopping campaigns every week or two. And I’m like, like, you know, at the other day, one of my favorite stories for that is just be patient with this stuff. It’s not like I always say, it’s not feeling the dreams. You can’t just build it and they will come like you gotta be. You gotta really fine tune it. You gotta spend your time diligently looking through it. And I do think there’s sometimes a place of, like, just a little bit of patience goes a long way in this game. Because, I mean, it’s all experimentation, right? It’s a game we’re gamifying an entire like, a marketing experience and exposure, but making sure that you’re playing the game with patience. It’s not, it’s not like you’re gonna step in the batter’s box in a baseball game and hit a home run the first time. Like, yeah, take some, take some batting practice. Get warmed up.

Christian Klepp  17:21

Absolutely, absolutely reminds me of a client we worked with about two years ago in the home furnishing industry, so things like window shutters, for example, right? And we were launching a campaign for him. A week later, he goes, I have no web traffic. I’m like, well, it’s only been a week. You know what I mean? Like, did you expect this like, you know, you switch it on and then suddenly people are, like, flocking to your like, showroom. I mean, like, it doesn’t work that way, right?

Kenny Ridgell  17:52

It’s not a fire. My favorite, my favorite quote for that as a guy spoke in my NBA class who ran a big agency called brains on fire. And he said, the Clemson NBA came to him, and they said, Look, we’d like to, you know, make an announcement about opening up an NBA school in downtown. We have a $5,000 budget. And he looked at him dead the face to the dean, and he said, If all you have is $5,000 you need to go buy a wagon, get the remaining cash in $1 bills, pour gasoline on and push it down main street. That’s gonna be the best press you can get for your $5,000

Christian Klepp  18:24

Oh, I am pretty sure they did not appreciate that answer. 

Christian Klepp  18:32

They probably realized he was right. 

Kenny Ridgell  18:36

The best part is, I heard this at the MBA school. They had that guy come back and speak. And I was like, I’m surprised they even let you come back and speak. 

Kenny Ridgell  18:43

Yeah, exactly. They didn’t push the cart down Main Street, but they should have.

Christian Klepp  18:48

Yeah. They probably should have, yeah, exactly, exactly. All right, so Kenny, based on your experience, and also based on all the things that we’ve been talking about in past couple of minutes, how can B2B marketers leverage this data and also hopefully a bit of creativity and strategy to achieve these tangible business outcomes. So how can they be more creative in their approach? Because I think that’s important too, and what are the key steps that they need to take? Just walk us through that.

Kenny Ridgell  19:14

I would say one of the biggest things is going to different industry trade shows outside of your specific industries. So if you’re trying to innovate within, like, you know, the marketing space, right? If you’re a manufacturer, don’t go to your manufacturing show. Looking for marketing innovation. Go to an ad agency show. Go to some of these hospitality shows. I mean, I think hospitality has to be very innovative in their approach. I mean, you know, like some of these B2C companies, they’re very, very edgy, and you can take a lot from it. Like, you know, at the end of the day, Nike might be a B2C customer, but they also has a lot of messaging and materials that they use in their marketing that can be very impactful. So I think going outside of your industry to take some knowledge, it’s almost like traveling right when you go to Europe and you go experience different things, you can bring back some what you saw to your clients and to your clientele. Same idea and approach goes into your business line. Go away from your industry. Go learn other thought leaders. Think about what the kind of approach they’re taking and the trend. See what you can bring back. And think that you know being patient, but also like having a timeline that you’re comfortable spending. 

Kenny Ridgell  20:13

I always say, start small. Do an experimentation. Do something you’re comfortable, and then know the data is value and make sure you’re collecting it, because as long as you’re leveraging it should be a learning experiment. It’s not a failure. So, you know, say, Bring it. I always tell people like, for, you know, take, take it. A simple approach, in terms of, like, you know, I think of each channel as a bucket. Let’s take three or four channels, or three or four buckets. Let’s spend the same amount of money, even if it’s $1,000 on each let’s run an experiment for nine days so we know we have patience. Okay? That means we’re gonna run you each one’s $1,000 a month. You’re 4 your nine days or 12 dozen dollars. Okay, even if you need to do that four more times throughout the year, you’re gonna spend $50,000 you’re gonna test all these different strategies. You’re gonna have tested all these different channels. You’re gonna have a general idea and what usually happens after nine days, you’re like, one of those four. Two of those four worked. Okay, let’s cancel the other two. Let’s try and spend, you know, an equivalent amount of money on two new channels, if you keep just diligently AB testing, collecting the data and learning from what happened, I think that’s the best play possible. 

Kenny Ridgell  21:13

So many people were rushed in there and rushed out of there like I’ve seen my one of my favorite campaign success stories is, you know, we had a 90 day trial going with a client. It was day, like, 82 he’s like, just pull the plug. We hadn’t gotten anything from it. And I’m like, man, you’re selling stuff that’s over $100,000 a piece. If we just get one client in the next eight days, you’re not gonna fire me. And we want to spend $10,000 I think he was spending like $3,000 a month. On the 87th day. He had like, a $250,000 close, and he’s still a client today. But, I mean, we were five days, and I think we battled him every day during those last five days, but the end of the day, once we found that one channel that works. Now we’ve canceled other co channels or our other buckets. We poured the water out, poured water in a different bucket, and then tested it out methodically, scientifically, approach, use the data, and then make sure it ties back to money. Because if you’re not collecting the data and you’re not tying it back to the money, then you don’t know what’s working. And you’re stuck in that 50% of my marketing dollars work and 50% of my marketing dollars don’t work. The problem is, I don’t know which 50%. That is the last place you want to be stuck, especially in today’s digital age.

Christian Klepp  22:18

Absolutely, absolutely. And I, you know, I agree with, I agree with what you said. Um, I’m just gonna throw this one in there, because I’m pretty sure you’ve, you’ve come across the situation more times than you care to count. But um, how do you get buy in for what you just suggested? Like, even things like, Okay, let’s go to a trade show that’s not linked to our industry. Let’s do something that’s unconventional, do something that’s a little bit more creative. Because, I mean, let’s, let’s be because, I mean, let’s, let’s be honest in B2B, that’s a that can be a really tough sell, especially, and nothing against business owners, and nothing against senior management. But, you know, look, a lot of these guys don’t have a marketing background. They’re either, they’re either somebody in finance or somebody in, you know, that’s a bit more, you know, has a bit more of a technical background, and, you know, mentioning to them, okay, well, why don’t we just spend money and go to a trade show that’s not linked to our industry? They’ll look at you like you’re crazy. So, how do you get buy in from that?

Kenny Ridgell  23:14

I would say the way that I’ve done in the past is probably not the most economical, but I’ve just gone myself to the conferences, and then brought ideas back and be like next year you need to come. Here’s some ideas on how it could apply to yours. And so in a good way, when I go, I usually I’m kind of using myself as the guinea pig. And being like, I went to, for example, went to the trucking show this year. We were often at Louisville. I spoke at a conference for related to hospitality. The trucking show was there. It was right next door. So I went over to the convention center. Went to the trucking show. We do a couple truck couple trucking logistical clients, but I learned some different other stuff in terms of, like, AI agents and some CRM management at different techniques they were using to, like, monitor their, like, basically all their trucks on the road, and how they’re trying to get loads coming back. I use that for a bunch of our home service clients. I was like, Oh, that software could be cool for over here. And then the other day, it was one of those things where I was able to, like, you know, piecemeal different concepts and bring it back. 

Kenny Ridgell  24:06

But I think the hardest part of getting management to buy in, in terms of thinking out of the box is you’ve got to get a small win somehow. So, like, I mean, if as soon as you have a win or something  under your belt where you can, like, say, Look, this actually works, you have a lot more leniency from those like, you know, staff members or senior management people to buy into your idea. So my fate, one of my favorite thing is, is just trying to, like, you know, that’s why taking those calls, listening to them, monitoring them, finding a key win and getting access to the data. As an agency, you’ve got to get access to the data. So, like, I’ll go through a logistical client we had, you know, the beginning, they’re like, We don’t… I don’t think this is working a ton, you know, we’re not seeing a ton of difference. We’re not seeing how it’s going. I’m like, Just give me access to your salesforce. It was a big tug of pole. I’m like, Look, just let me look at your salesforce. Set me up as a salesperson. I’ll bring you a piece of business. I don’t care. And so I ended up referring a couple people to them trying to get a business, got into their salesforce. I was able to, like, you know, connect the dots between because they weren’t doing the connection. So I listen to all the calls. I connected the dots. I found that eight people in the last 30 days that actually come through our ad campaign and bought from them that had never bought from them before, one of which was, like, a one and a half million dollar client. So I came back to him, and, you know, this is a meeting a week before, they’re like, basically firing me, saying, like, this isn’t working. Stop it. I come back a week later and I’m like, actually, in the last 30 days, you drove like, $2.2 million of the business here to your accounts, mainly $1.5 of it came from this one key, this one key woman. And they’re like, that lady, that’s it that came from y’all, I’m like, yes, so they went from we’re gonna fire y’all, we’re not seeing that big of a difference, to like, oh, the biggest piece of business we won in the last 30 days was for meals ad campaign. 

Kenny Ridgell  25:31

And of course, then the debate came. Well, we’d actually been trying to contact a woman we had never been able to get our business in the last two years. Maybe we finally just got it. I’m like, well, or maybe we helped push over the edge. But the idea is that we went together, you know, like, it’s not our of y’all winner. We win. It’s like we’re selling your service, and we’ve got to just try to be walking the horse to the water we hope they drink. Yeah, we’re both trying to talk the horse into drinking. But at the other day, we got the horse to the water, and she drank this time. And it’s a really good deal, but it’s funny, you know, because they’re ready just to throw the towel in. And now, once I got a little bit of wind, I was able to, like, coat them into getting a little more innovative, try and get out of the box, like, how we do some different things. Because I would say they’ve always been very, very traditional in their advertisement being billboard centric, news centric. And we, you know, we’ve been able to introduce more and more concepts in terms of automation. We’ve tied their CRM into a programmatic campaign now. So we’re like, for example, if their CRM moves people through deal stages, it actually will serve them different ads. 

Kenny Ridgell  26:36

So based on specifically what their sales team puts it in there, say they’re like, they’re refrigerated trucking, or these people are automotive trucking, they’re gonna fall directly into an ad campaign category that’s gonna serve them as specific to whatever service it is. As soon as they fall like, the sales team moves them from like, we’re just a warm lead to where, like, we’re 75% to close, or 90% to close. They’re actually getting more specific ads tailored to whatever they’re trying to whatever they’re talking about their notes. So the ads are set up to trigger. And if people don’t open the emails and they fall back, or if they fall you know, if they start stalling, they fall back. It within the funnel. But it’s all AI connected to where the CRM ties in, and people just go, you know, stage to stage to stage through. But at the end of day, like, trying to convince the trucking industry to, hey, let’s set up your CRM to automate ads to go stage by stages or sales. But I just come in there at day one, he didn’t, like, No, I’m like, what that’s, what’s that gonna cost? And I don’t lie, like, What’s that even mean? Whereas, in the beginning we got a win, we slowly built him in, and now he’s actually coming with me to a hospitality conference here since, so at the end of the day, I’m like, we got, we got him. Like, he’s bought he’s bought in, he’s looked in. But I mean we had to get the big win first.

Christian Klepp  27:44

Yeah, so it’s going back to what you said earlier. It’s, it’s, you’ve got to bring them some proof or evidence. Sorry, this sounds like a detective story here, but, yeah, just prove to them that it works, right?

Kenny Ridgell  27:57

Exactly like they want, fact, they don’t want a gut feeling like, you know, this has to this hat. The line has to be direct.

Christian Klepp  28:05

Exactly, exactly. Okay, my friend, we get to the point in the conversation where we’re talking about actionable tips, and, man, you have given us plenty already, right? But just imagine there is a B2B marketer out there that’s listening to this conversation, and you want them to take action on what you’ve been talking about. So what are the three to five things that you could tell B2B marketers to do right now.

Kenny Ridgell  28:29

I would look into Call Rail set that up on your computer. I mean, set that up on your program of me try and tie it into your CRM. You know, maybe that’s step two. Number three, I would try and find either a partner or get your own seat at Stack Adapt. It’s the one that I’ve talked about where it ties directly into your CRM. So it’s a programmatic ad buy campaign in the minimums, like 1000 or 2000 time ton, you can actually set it up to where it triggers all the CRM. It’ll do your email campaigns through there. Number four, I’ll try and potentially invest in a go high level account or something along those lines, some campaign where it’s going to basically pull all this data together into one dashboard to where your CRM is all linked with everything in the I’ve gone on. And then number five, I would set aside a budget each month for experimentation. And I get, if your budget is tight is small, I wouldn’t say don’t spend like $500 not gonna get a lot of results there, but every month, just because your campaigns working. Now we want 10% or carved out where this is experimentation. You know, I would say that’s the huge don’t stop experimenting. Don’t stop learning. If you can be the first mover, if you can get that blue ocean strategy, then you really gonna if you can be the first thought leader in Tiktok, for example, five years goes like an influencer. Think about how much money that person made as a B2B market. We got, we got to be thinking the same thing. There’s Tiktok ads next. What is next? Is Microsoft ads next? You know what? What are the plays here? How do we get ahead? Because if we can get part of the market share on this new platform, this new technique, we can explode our business. So just keep trying. Keep it. Keep busy. Imaging. Go implement some different tools and start tracking a day on what kind of revenue you’re making.

Christian Klepp  30:05

Fantastic, fantastic. I love it. Here comes the Love it or hate it, question. But man, we’ve been talking about data, so it would be foolish for me not to bring up metrics, right metrics, which metrics? And I know, I know we talked about this at the beginning of the conversation, you could go down this deep rabbit hole and just drown in this like, sea of data and ubiquity and what have you. But like, what are some of the key metrics that marketers should be paying attention to?

Kenny Ridgell  30:37

Specifically in the B2B world? I think the key metrics that we need to be paying attention to is number of number of contacts in our pipelines. I think that’s a huge thing. It’s got to be continually refreshed. Got to be paying attention to client like detailed information. I think that’s a metric that is like overlooked, and it’s almost like data input. You know, equals data output, make sure your data input is extremely clean. Number three, I’d be really focused on individually counting your calls in your form. I think this is a huge way where you’re going to be tied back in. And I would say, if you monitor your revenue a lot of times, if you see your calls tick up, your forms tick up, the same percentage your revenue will typically tick up and the other the last piece of like, you know, metrical advice that I would give you, would be monitoring your engagement rate per page on your site. Figure out where people are bouncing off and on what pages, and keep updating and fine tuning those individual pages on your website. Maybe you have to do an E brochure. Maybe you have to do an explainer video about the products. 

Kenny Ridgell  30:37

I know some of these products in B2B world can be very interesting and very like detailed. Make sure that you are presenting the information to the buyer, because you only have limited number of buyers once you get them on the website, once they get on that web page, if they spend less than a minute or two minutes on that individual like products page, you’ve missed something. Make sure that all your specs are there, all your details there any information they could possibly find. Really, really, really, really, deep dive into those sessions, per page, engagement rates. That’s like a very granular level of information. But I think that’s something like, that’s what B2B marketers get paid to do. We’re not looking at just, oh, Coca Cola. How many people saw our ads. We’re paying attention to how many people saw this individual X, Y or Z product. How much time do they spend on that page? Why’d they bounce? What happened? There’s a program called Crazy Egg. You can actually record and see what people are doing on your website. It’ll record their individual interactions. You can record just individual pages if you realize, okay, people are really bouncing off of this, like products page, plug, call rail on there. Record that page. Figure out what everybody, like anybody who bounced off their watch their sessions. It’ll if you get a whole you like, heat map, a whole wave of like, where they scroll around what they did, and it actually gives you artificial intelligence, give you insights into, like, what you could do on that page, or what people may or may not be looking for. It’s like $79 a month plug call rail in. There’s that’s like something I can’t preach enough to B2B marketers. It’s like you’ve got to pay attention to your per page sessions.

Christian Klepp  33:01

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, yeah, I’ve heard of Crazy Eggs. So that’s a good one. And I think you’ve mentioned call rail a couple of times now, like, so definitely, um, just, just to quickly recap, number of contacts in pipeline, client detailed info, um, data input and output, call and form leads and engagement rate per page, I guess, right so per page on the site? 

Kenny Ridgell  33:24

Correct. Yeah. 

Christian Klepp  33:25

Fantastic, fantastic. 

Kenny Ridgell  33:27

Sorry, I talked pretty quick. You did good to keep up with that. Yeah, I’m the antithesis of the southerner that talks slow.

Christian Klepp  33:37

Don’t worry. We can, we can slow the video down a little bit.

Kenny Ridgell  33:39

But we might need to. Everyone’s like, breathe, remember to breathe.

Christian Klepp  33:45

Goodness. Thank goodness for video post production. All right, a status quo in your area of expertise that you passionately disagree with, and why?

Kenny Ridgell  34:00

It goes back to social media. I think post like, quantity of post is like the status quo that I think is. I’ll go even further into I dislike social media. And know, how can misalign. Take a manufacturer they like, they might post about birthdays, they might be posting about, you know, X, Y or Z, and think about it from a customer perspective. You want you go to trade show in like Shanghai, you meet somebody there who has this great product. All you wanna do is go look at it and show some money on your staff about this product. You go to their Facebook page. That’s somebody’s birthday. The next post down is like, what day for lunch? The next post down is about, like, their company retreat. The next post down is like, you’re like, I’m just looking for a picture of the product that I was shown. And then now your Facebook has actually helped un-helping you sell right? It’s not helping advance your message. And so the idea is, like, you don’t have to post all the time just to work with the algorithm through and be make sure your top four to five, your last post on your grid, if you want to call it that are very, very relevant, and it’s. Said, just make sure that you’re posting quality, not quantity as an individual. It’s not about telling a story you can. Of course, there’s a time and a place to like, humanize the brand. It might be better suited in a video where you have like, individual people, and you can do, I always like, go back to like the old Gary V saying the jab, jab, punch. So you can do co jabs here that are like, not call to actions and then a little punch of the call to action, but I would make sure that it’s customer relevant. If you think about this guy or girl, who’s you just met at a trade show, what are they looking to see on your social media? Make sure that’s what your post. Don’t waste the space in the time posting about something else. I think there’s a status quo. Like, I’ve got to post four times a week. I gotta go on stories. I gotta, like, have a presence. I gotta be a I gotta have people, I got to show faces. Yes, yes, yes, all that is correct. But no, no, no. If you’re not, if you can’t keep it consistently about your brand or about what you’re selling, don’t waste your customers time, and don’t waste the space or energy resources of doing that.

Christian Klepp  35:55

Yeah, yeah, no, I totally agree with that. I mean, like, you know, just posting for the sake of posting, especially about stuff that your customer potentially is not going to care about. It’s just a waste of time and energy.

Kenny Ridgell  36:06

Exactly, yeah, and it’s honestly probably hurting your brand more than helping your brand. 

Christian Klepp  36:10

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Okay. Here comes the bonus question on the topic of traveling. Well, if you were stuck on a desert island, three things that you would bring with you, and what are they? And why would you bring them?

Kenny Ridgell  36:22

Is there a chance to get off the desert island? 

Christian Klepp  36:29

Let’s just say that you’re gonna be stuck there for a while, and eventually, eventually, like Tom Hanks in that movie, right? Like some container ship will pass by him and pick you up.

Kenny Ridgell  36:35

I mean, I think you got, I think you gotta say, like, a pot, a flint and a knife. 

Christian Klepp  36:49

Okay? 

Kenny Ridgell  36:50

Because you can at least make a fire and, like, boil some water and keep yourself alive, and you can at least cook some food using the pot as well, start your fire with your flint, your knife. Maybe that’s very conservative, or, like, realistic answer, but this is strict survival response.

Christian Klepp  37:05

That’s a great answer. Like, I would cringe if you would have said, like, oh, you know, my iPad and my Netflix subscription or some nonsense like that, right? 

Kenny Ridgell  37:18

Or, I mean, I’m a little like city, so I almost said my tent, but I think a pot might be more important than the tent.

Christian Klepp  37:26

Absolutely. Man. Kenny, this has been a great conversation, man. So thanks so much for coming on the show and for sharing your expertise and experience with the listeners. So uh, please quick Introduce yourself on how folks out there can get in touch with you. 

Kenny Ridgell  37:39

Yeah, I’m Kenny Ridgell with Ridge Media. Our website is https://ridgemediallc.com/ go on there. Check out our case study. Follow us on social media. Promise not to post random stuff that doesn’t is not relevant to you, and feel free to reach out. We always offer free brand audit. Well, happy to meet with you. Just brainstorm good ideas out there. A lot of that comes from just like my passionate energy for marketing as a whole, not looking to just basically make money everywhere we go and say we want to share ideas, create value and hopefully make new relationships. Look forward to hearing from you.

Christian Klepp  38:09

Fantastic, fantastic. So once again, Kenny, thanks for coming on and take care, stay safe and talk to you soon. 

Kenny Ridgell  38:14

Absolutely. Thank you, man. 

Christian Klepp  38:16

All right. Bye for now.