# 24 Customer value optimisation and why it matters for ads managers with Jason Chappel

Aggie Meroni: 0:00

Hello welcome to the freelance ads club podcast with me your host Aggie Meroni. Whether you're a seasoned freelance ads manager, or just thinking about taking the leap into self employment, this podcast is for you. Every week, I'll be releasing a bite sized episode, I'll be sharing mistakes I've made and lessons I've learned from my own freelance business. I'll be showcasing some of the amazingly talented freelancers in the freelance ads club. And I also will be speaking to some incredible guests who generously be sharing their knowledge with us to help us keep updated with industry trends. And I really hope that after listening to this podcast, you will come away full of confidence on how to win great clients, how to charge correctly, and most importantly, retain those dream clients so that you build a successful and sustainable business. Welcome to this week's episode of the freelance as club Podcast. Today, I'm joined by Jason Chappell from defined agency. Jason is a specialist in customer value optimization, CVO, Jason, like me, is a specialist in E commerce. And we've met at various events over the last few months. And I just thought, it's such a good topic to talk about for ads managers, because there are so many things that impacts the results our clients get. So it's not just the ads, we have to educate them, or our clients on what else they need to be thinking about in order to get the biggest return for their buck. This isn't just for econ brands, either. There is a lot to be said for lead generation as well. So whatever business you support with your ads, there will be things to take away from listening to what Jason shared. So take a listen and let me know what you think. Hi, Jason, thank you so much for joining me today.

Unknown: 2:02

Hey, Aggie, sorry, I almost interrupted you there.

Aggie Meroni: 2:05

So as you know, my first question, whenever I start a podcast chat, it's just ask you, who you are, and how you ended up where you are today.

Unknown: 2:15

Oh, man. So I am Jason. I am the founder of defiant and we are customer value optimization specialists. And I guess they're like everybody else probably got a bit of a bit of a backstory. But the the potted, the potted history is, you know, I ran an agency for for quite some time, which I sold back in 2017. And then decided that actually it'd be far easier being being an employee and not having to worry about, you know, anybody else's rent or mortgage or, or anything like that. And then I kind of went on a bit of a bit of a journey, really a bit of a bit of a trip working for for various people in various industries. Before I kind of found my my home in E commerce, I think. And then I ended up working for a couple of the UK's leading Shopify Plus agencies doing various roles. But ultimately, strategy was the thing that really kind of lit that fire in me, and led me to start in starting my own business again, getting back on that road, you know, and wanting to do something for myself.

Aggie Meroni: 3:25

The reason I always ask this question when I start is because so many people that listen to this podcast have very squiggly careers. So a lot of people didn't start off in ADS management, they did something else before, usually something very different like me. And so it's always just interesting to hear. But it's not that normal anymore to go into a career, and then just stay there forever. Like the world changes so quickly. People just adapt and change all the time. And I think so many people are just following what they enjoy more, rather than what they feel they need to do. So. That's why I asked just to so people.

Unknown: 4:02

I think squiggly is probably a really good term for it. And I'm sure there's a book out there. You know about squiggly career. There's a couple of women I think who wrote that? I did

Aggie Meroni: 4:11

not Yeah, I can't take credit for that. No, that is where I heard it from.

Unknown: 4:15

Okay, cool. Yeah, it's a it's quite a good read.

Aggie Meroni: 4:18

So how we met just to give backstory is we go to the same EECOM networking event every month, our paths crossed that way. So we are focused more on E commerce but we are going to touch on lead generation for this as well. So just before we kind of dive in John to give us what You class as customer value optimization.

Unknown: 4:40

Sure, I think it's probably a term that's been around a little while, but it's maybe starting to get a bit more traction. You know, recently I think there's there's been a lot of focus, you know, on things like conversion rate optimization, in E commerce and I think that, that probably only paints part of the, you know, the picture like things like row class, and you know, customer acquisition costs and all, they're all pieces of the same puzzle. But customer value optimization is really that kind of holistic view over all of those numbers, and all of those metrics. So taking into account acquisition costs, taking into account traffic volumes, and gross margin and conversion rate, and kind of aggregating all of those numbers, meaning that merchants specifically, you know, businesses, I guess, are able to understand their numbers in their entirety, so that they can understand who their best customers are, how much they can afford to spend on acquiring them, how much money they actually make in profit for, you know, from each sale, you know, and I think the terrifying thing at the moment is, with, you know, customer acquisition costs being so high, that lots of brands aren't making a profit on that first sale. You know, and taking a two dimensional view on that is very, very difficult. And I think customer value optimization, really takes much more of a holistic view, looks at customer lifetime value, and says, okay, at what point one, are our customers profitable for us? And really, how much can we invest in them? You know, long term, it kind of changes, a lot of the brands thinking from, how much is this customer worth, to me and extracting value from them. And it changes the conversation into how much is the business worth to the customer, and how much value can the customer extract from the business, the more value you're providing, the more likely people are to come back and engage with you and spend more. So it's kind of that that infinite loop, where if you are providing, you know, a great product and a great service, that people are probably more likely to come back and spend more over time. And, you know, really kind of engage with a brand longer term, rather than just taking the traditional approach of right, let's get as much traffic as we can convert them at the highest conversion rate that we can and then not worry about what happens after that. That was fine. When acquisition was cheap, you know, you could spend money on on Facebook ads and Google ads and you'd get like a 10x return that EMA you know better than anybody else, that that's not the case anymore. So, you know, it's really taken a much more holistic view of, you know, their, their surroundings and what's going on for them as a business.

Aggie Meroni: 7:54

I think from an ads manager perspective, we come across the challenge that a lot of businesses hire us thinking that we're going to be solely responsible for generating all the business for the brand. But you know, that a lot of the weight is put on the ads manager shoulders saying, Oh, you need to bring the traffic you need to bring the new customers. And as you say, before, iOS 14 Really, probably was okay, like it was still, like, you know, not great, because you shouldn't just rely on one revenue source. But since I was 14, I personally have seen that so much reeducation needs to happen, particularly with clients I work with. And that is the challenge for me, I can carry on running my ads, that's fine. It's more having a more holistic view. So I don't think good ads managers today only know about ads, they have a good understanding of other things that happen. And that impacts the return on that adspend. Now as an ads manager, trying to imagine yourself as an ads manager what would be the things that you think would move the needle the most for a brand? So after they've acquired that customer? First off, what would you say are the things they need to just flag to clients to say, you know, you would get more back if you did this, this and this maybe like the top three things, maybe that could really help them?

Unknown: 9:25

I think it's really interesting because I think there's there's a whole host of I mean, it's like a domino effect, right? What as soon as you've brought somebody on site, you rely then on the site to convert people and then the, you know, fulfilment and shipping piece to you know, to be seamless and do their job and then you require the retention piece to also be smooth, so that that customers have an a good experience, end to end. But I think you know, Oh, you can't just acquire traffic, that, you know, from an ADS management perspective, you can go out and do, absolutely, you know, you can, but then you're almost let down by the next link in the chain, you know, if the conversion on site is poor, then they're going to, you know, look to the ads manager and say, Well look, you know, the quality of traffic that we're acquiring, or, but it isn't good enough, or it's not enough, when the reality is the pain point actually laced somewhere else, and you've got to be able to find that. So everybody's inextricably linked to one another, you know, in an infinite loop. And, you know, you can be doing the best job possible as an ads manager, but if you're let down by the conversion on the site, or then the retention efforts, you know, it reflects badly on you. So really, I think what you want to be doing as it is kind of breaking down those silos, and I think that exists in, in so many brands and businesses that everybody's working in, in their area, and are responsible for their their own metrics, but really breaking down those barriers and, and, you know, working with the retention side of things, and interrogating that customer database and saying, Who are our best customers? You know, what, what does that ideal customer profile look like? What is their value to the business? How much can we afford to spend on acquiring those people, because taking that data and bringing that back to, you know, the ads that you're managing, you can then hyperfocus your targeting. So that, you know, we're not spending acquisition budget on or value customers. But you know, that that then said, as soon as you know, as soon as you're, you're driving, good quality traffic that needs to be converted. And so, you know, being able to then talk to, you know, design and Dev agencies or, or in house teams to find the pain point or the friction on site, that's stopping those customers who are probably your ideal customers, or somewhere near what's stopping them converting and buying, you know, how do we break all of those things down. And there's, there's a, there's a kind of overarching strategy, you know, behind all of that, and that needs to just be tied together. So, I don't know, if it's as simple as, like, let's, let's do three things that, you know, are gonna are gonna kind of help, I think the biggest thing is communication. You know, and, and breaking down those barriers between each of those departments really,

Aggie Meroni: 12:53

is so true, like I always say, can't take the human element out of business, and working with different brands, who are like, you know, eight figure businesses to just found a lead, you know, they have very different setups. So sometimes it'd be a whole team of freelancers who are just doing their own little thing. And as soon as you question or what you opt in the email side, people can get a bit defensive. So why do you need to know, it's like, because it really impacts the ads. So find out what campaigns you're running, I can run complimentary ads to help support those campaigns, and what other social media campaigns you're running? Why do you need to know? Because I can help you, like, boost that. And you know, we can use the same creatives? And yeah, it is, it can be frustrating. And I know, this isn't something that is exclusively an issue of freelancers. I know that happens internally.

Unknown: 13:45

It happens. I mean, I've I've worked in some big, big agencies, and oh, my goodness, you wouldn't believe the kind of silos that they exist. I know, you know, your background as well, as you've, you know, you've seen that. I think it's part and parcel of running a business, but recognising that they exist, and making an effort, you know, to bridge those gaps, I think is is a huge stride forward.

Aggie Meroni: 14:10

Yeah, I think as well, something that can work really well is when everyone has the common goal and sites, because I know that a lot of brands if they work with different specialist agencies, because I know that some people work with a PPC agency, and then a paid social agency or freelancers. And everyone's claiming the win. So I'll know though, that Google Ads got the sale. No, the Facebook ad got the sale. No, the emails are always making all the revenue is that actually everyone contributed to this. But it's hard, isn't it when everyone's trying to justify why the the why they're there. So that's an issue as well.

Unknown: 14:44

It's really different court. And, you know, I think you raise a really good point that everybody wants that when I did spend some time with a client a little while back, looking at all of the wins that they've got. And if everybody you know had delivered all of the wins They weren't, they were creating their revenue would have doubled or something. So it didn't quite add up. So I think everybody's got to be realistic about it. And Gone are the days where it's like a single touch and somebody will convert, there's so many touches going on brand building isn't just a one dimensional thing, somebody's seen somebody seen an ad, you know, they might have gone on the site before, but they didn't by actually, do you know, what they signed up for the email newsletter, they got that, then their friend mentioned something to them, which retriggered a thought in their mind, which then led them to click on another ad, which brought them to the site, where, who gets to, you know, that attribution for for that sale, so many people were involved in, and if you are just doing one, you know, one thing or working in one channel, you know, you're probably not going to get that sale. So you need to be diverse in, in what you're doing. And there needs to be some in a realistic sort of application of attribution. You know, that's, that's going on, and it will be a bit fuzzy. But you know, as long as everybody's driving things forward, then, you know, I'd say that's a win and, and then maybe you just have to aggregate some of the, you know, some of those numbers and some of those costs, to say that our whole customer acquisition cost might be$30 $50. You know what, whatever that looks like, it doesn't really matter where it's come from, we know that we can afford to spend that on acquiring a customer because their lifetime value is $100 $300 Doesn't you put whatever multiple on that you want, that you're you're happy with.

Aggie Meroni: 16:38

So when you go in and you look at, say, a brand's health, like financial health, or how it's growing, what are the metrics that you're usually check or that you monitor,

Unknown: 16:50

there's probably some some key metrics that we really look at. So traffic is a, you know, the number one, if you've got nobody coming coming to your site, and you're absolutely not going to be making any sales, we're looking at conversion rate. Because once you bring in that traffic, and you want to know how much of it is actually converting and buying, we want to look at at your gross margin. So you know, really looking at how much it costs you to deliver a product in almost end to end, we want to look at acquisition cost, we want to look at purchase frequency, and all all of these things come together to give a customer lifetime value number, you know, and you can you can average that across your your database of customers. But if you're if you're really smart, you can you can segment your customer base, and each of them is going to have a different lifetime value in and that's going to help you with your with your budgeting, you know, ultimately knowing knowing the values of those segments, you're not going to pour as much as much money into trying to acquire somebody who's in a low value segment, or even trying to retain somebody in a low value segment, you're going to put all your efforts towards the highest value, highest return customers, and be laser focused on on that side of things. So there's there's a lot of metrics that that come into play. And I think loads of brands are sitting on a goldmine of data, that they just don't know how to mine and bring in specialists in you know, specialists, ad managers, specialist agencies for design and Dev specialist, email marketing agencies. They're all great, but everybody's doing their own their own thing and, and nobody's really kind of overlooking or overseeing what's what's going on. For these brands. And this is where I saw a gap in the market from, you know, for myself, that I don't want to provide those services. But I know how they work, and I know how they should hang together, getting them to hang together, as you know, is where the challenge comes in. And I think that's that's what a lot of brands face.

Aggie Meroni: 19:09

So when it comes to lifetime value. How do you calculate that because I spoke to someone recently, and Shopify does have it in their dashboard. But they were questioning whether that was actually a valid metric. And they're saying it's not it's a bit skewed, it's not accurate. So what would you how would you advise someone to monitor that?

Unknown: 19:33

I guess first and foremost, just having one one number that you know Shopify or whatever has has in there in a dashboard is dangerous. I talk a lot with clients and and probably far too much on LinkedIn about how averages are dangerous, because, you know, I saw there was there was something I saw where somebody said I've you know the average you As a town, whatever the average salary was $50,000, what would happen? If Warren Buffett moved in? Well, all of a sudden, the average would go up. But it's not actually representative of, you know, what those what those people are earning. So averages can be enormously dangerous. And whilst I like them, you know, you got to take them, take them with a pinch of salt, in terms of calculating it, it can be, it can be relatively simple, it can be relatively complex, like, like many things. But I think really digging into how I mean, the length of time that you want to calculate your lifetime value. It's kind of misleading, because we call it lifetime value, but you could say, Okay, what's my 30 day, 60, day, 90 day, 12 month value. Or you might go two years in in terms of calculating that and it can be misleading for brands, because sometimes they need a cache hit now, and they need to get money in now. So knowing what a customer's worth to me in 12 months time doesn't really help, because I'm struggling now. And I need to know how much I can get in. But, you know, in terms of calculating it, we take all those metrics that that I mentioned, and then we just start to layer in, how long is that? You know, is that customer with us? How long is it between, you know, what's that? What's the average days between their transactions, and then we can look at how we can start to influence that, can we bring that down by selling a supplementary product, or educating somebody on actually using and getting value from something that they've purchased? You know, and then acquisition costs, ad costs, all play a factor in that. So you know, if if you can bring ad costs down, you know, that's, that's going to help in in terms of influencing those numbers, but I'm a big advocate for for not trying to lower acquisition costs, because I don't think it's actually very healthy as as a as a goal. You know, I think, actually, your acquisition costs, what your acquisition cost is, but if you more targeted with your spend, you know, if you targeted only your ideal customer profile, you know, because we're breaking down silos between, you know, all of those departments, if we can be super targeted with that spend, actually, do you know what, you can probably afford to spend a little bit more because you're targeting customers with a higher lifetime value. And then you can probably outspend your competitors, because they can't afford to keep up. So it's kind of a win win, but you got to be smart, and there's got to be strategy in around what what you do and, and then you have to, you know, be able to calculate that, that that number, and manipulate it into something that you can leverage, rather than it just being a goal to, you know, increase my customer lifetime value by$5 $10. You know, what, whatever that looks like,

Aggie Meroni: 23:21

I guess, as well, when you have all that data broken down, and you're being so targeted, you'll even know like, what products they bought from you, and maybe they're due to buy again, or there's something additional that would help them with that products that you can just email those specific people. But without that data, and without analysing it, you wouldn't have seen the opportunity. So that's kind of a benefit of really being that analytical as well, isn't it, but you, but the service that you are 100%,

Unknown: 23:48

I think, is so important. And it's often overlooked the relevance of the first product that somebody buys, and you really kind of need to dig into the data. I don't want to sound like a massive data nerd here, but you really kind of have to drill into that, and interrogate what are people buying? What's causing them to buy it? And like you say, Are there replenishable oils that that they need it you know, is it is it something like coffee or loo roll, you know, any of these things that that people use and will need to replenish and rebuy or, you know and over what time period? Because we see a lot subscriptions coming out and things like that. But very often you get like you can choose between two weeks or a month or three months. Well, what if there's one person in my household or what if there's five, it's not accounting for, you know, how quickly we might go through that. And there are some great tools out there that you know that that helped with that sort of thing. But then, you know, you touched on it, or this supplement Three things that that somebody needs to buy, you know, some, maybe somebody's bought diffuser, and they need oil for that diffuser, over what time period? Do they need that? Do you? Do you tailor messaging for, you know, certain certain times a year, you know, do you do you want a festive themed or scented oil for your, you know, diffuser, that's, that's just going to help a reorder rates really and help customers come back. And not only that, with those supplementary sales that you're making, you're really kind of helping somebody find the value in their initial purchase. So they're far more likely to, you know, come back or recommend or repurchase.

Aggie Meroni: 25:44

That's so true for one of my clients, they have a very, very high value item. So you know, it's I guess it's similar to challenges people might have that sell kitchens or whatever. Once you've bought that big thing, they're not going to buy the same big thing again, because they only need one. So what things can you sell a smaller that can be added on to that thing that they bought? So you know, maybe it's an outdoor heater, maybe it's some furniture outdoors, that kind of stuff that they can kind of add to that initial purchase? You kind of touched on this just now about existing customers recommending you recommending the brand? Is that something that you kind of include when you think of customer value optimization, sort of that referral business that you could win?

Unknown: 26:33

Yeah, absolutely. I think, again, it's probably really undervalued channel. Ultimately, it's another sales channel. And I'm a big advocate for giving product away. Because I think if you look at how much you are spending on ads, you know, and if you break that down, per customer, not even per customer, just break that down across all the traffic that that is brought in, how much are you really spending on doing that? Well, chances are, it's more than the product actually costs that business. So, you know, I think referrals are great, and I think businesses should think about giving product away in a referral. So, you know, if if I've made a purchase, and I think that's great, and I want to recommend you Aggie, I can say to that brand, look, this is what I want to do and and they can send you a product, get it in your hands. You know, as long as it's not a one time thing, you know, patio heater, you know, I don't think they're going to be giving away patio heaters, but you know, if they can get makeup or some sort of, you know, consumer packaged goods in your hand that you can try live for free, you're likely, if it's any good if they believe in their product to come back and actually order it, that at that point, they don't have to give you a discount. They don't have to give anybody any money off. They can reward the referrer for you know, that referral, they can give them a you know, some money off or or, you know, they can have a free product. But I think it's massively underutilised that that referral piece and I think just giving somebody a discount saying, Oh, your friends referred you for this, here's 10 pounds off. That's not really an incentive for me. If somebody gave me a product, and I was able to use it, and see the value of it in ICU posting about what was it eyeliner? I see you posted about your Victoria Beckham eyeliner, which I'm yet to try. But, you know, if somebody got that in your hands before then and you could try it, you probably would have made that purchase way earlier. And you know what you would have used it and he would have bought again. So the actual cost of the product for the merchant is pretty negligible most of the time. And let's let's cut out the unnecessary spend and, you know, on on people who aren't going to convert on site, and let's get it directly into, you know, a high intent consumers house.

Aggie Meroni: 29:26

Yeah, I think it's just so challenging to do that with some founders and some business owners is definitely a mindset thing. I think the from my experience, the brands that really succeed and do amazingly well, are the ones where the founders are just open to things. So the thing about giving away free stuff, free products, most brands would probably say no, like we're not giving stuff away. However, the brands I know that have done this have been very successful with it. So I think from an ADS Freelancer To manage perspective, it's so important to really be selective about who you work with, because it will really make your life easier if your boss or whoever, how have you called them, your client, your boss, whatever. If they're open to your suggestions and trust you on other tactics that other brands are using, that could be a great way to help them with their, their costs, their marketing.

Unknown: 30:24

Absolutely, I mean, that's probably a nice segue into things like discounting. Because lots of brands will discount, you know, and they'll give you money off or, or things like that. But what I don't think lots of merchants think about is that, in doing that discount, you're not just giving, I don't know, 20% off the product as a whole, you're chopping that straight off your profit, because all those other costs don't exist. So they're still there. You know, and if you're only making 20% profit net, on that item, and you've given somebody 20% off, what's the point, you're just a charity at that point. And so I think, just taking a different view, as to how you can actually acquire customers, you know, is really important. But circling back to, to our point earlier, you need to be active in, in so many touch points in order to be able to make that work. So it's not a case of trading one for the other, it's saying, can we be super smart about what we're doing, and knowing all of our data, all of our metrics, unit economics of products, and, and those sorts of things, and making it work for us, rather than guessing, you know, let's leverage the data and make it actually work for us as a brand, giving product away, it's not going to work for everybody. Cutting discounts is not going to work for everybody. But, you know, finding what works for that specific business, and working with the right founder or manager or, you know, whoever that is, in that business, who's open to those ideas, you know, definitely helps. And, you know, I think knowing the numbers really helps, in that argument, being able to leverage metrics, and data to be able to argue your point, and move away from just bias that people have towards I don't like doing this, I don't think it will work or, you know, I've tried it before it didn't work. Well, why let's, let's really dig into some of those, some of those things and get to the seed of the problem, you know, and to your, to your point, I think right at the beginning, what's the ultimate goal, and are all of the people that are involved aligned regularly towards that goal, because we all set off on a path, you know, to a destination. And inevitably, we kind of lose our way a bit, or get sidetracked or head towards something that's shiny and new. And we just need to get back together every now and then and say, okay, where? Where is it? We're actually heading? What does the landscape look like now? Because things have inevitably changed? And are we all going in that same direction? You know, let's get back on board, and make sure that we are aligned to what that goal is?

Aggie Meroni: 33:23

Absolutely. And I think, even though we're both econ kind of specialists, that's where most of our work is. This massively applies to service based businesses as well, isn't it? That, you know, just because they've bought one service from you. So you know, you've run that at lead gen ads, they've signed up, they, you know, maybe they've booked a consultation with you, or maybe that you're on a retainer with them for your services, even if that relationship ends in the capacity that you had, initially. There are other ways such as email marketing, social media, marketing, personal DMS, there's all these different touch points where you can still keep in touch with people isn't there just to continue a good relationship and continue generating revenue from those people?

Unknown: 34:11

Yeah, absolutely. And I think the principles apply, regardless of what what business you're in, that if you are customer centric, in your thought, and in your process within your business, then it's all about how much value your customer can extract from you. And people will remember how you made them feel. And if you provided a good service or good product and and they'll come back, they will come back, whether they need you right now, or whether they need you in 612 months time. They'll come back and I think you know, for service based businesses, people move jobs, people recommend people network, you know, All of these things go into defining and delivering a strong lifetime value for a customer. And, you know, there's even that that kind of extended value that somebody provides, when they recommend, for example, you know, if you recommend five people, okay, that that, that customer only spent, I don't know, whatever it was 1000 pounds with us, but they've recommended five other people who have gone on to spend another 1000 pounds or 2000 pounds each, well, the value of that customer has just gone up from 1000 pounds to significantly more. So all of the same principles apply, you know, everywhere. And I think it's just a mindset change for, you know, lots of lots of businesses and brands, that it's not about extracting value from their customer base, like, you've got to flip that on its head, you know, really think about how much value can I give, because that's going to be reciprocated, we have this kind of weird human nature that we want to reciprocate all the time. And, you know, when somebody gives you something, you feel this kind of obligation to give something back, you know, regardless of, of what that is. And so really, we're just kind of playing on human nature and, and not in a bad way, you know, it's, it's a win win for everybody is, it's a really positive way to do business, regardless of, you know, whether you're like a kind of startup, or whether you're a massive corporate, if you're delivering value for people that now keep coming back.

Aggie Meroni: 36:40

Yeah, absolutely. Well, this has been so interesting, just the Econ geek in me. But also, I just wanted to know just a bit more about how you work with clients, and who you work with, like what your processes.

Unknown: 36:56

So I guess my process is a very consultative one, it's probably one that the ad managers are gonna recognise, you know, sort of straight off that, really, I, when I work with a client, the first thing I do is, understand what their goals are. You know, and that's not, that's not their income goal, or, or anything like that, or their sales goal is what's your business goal? You know, where do you want to be? What's the goal for this year? Let's start there, you know, so, for 2023, will, she'll go? How are we going to get there? And then let's start to break that down into, okay, in six months time, where does that mean? We need to be in three months time, where does that need to be? And it's not, you know, it's not going to be a straight line, because the seasonality of business. And, you know, we have wonderful things in econ like Black Friday, and Cyber Monday, and all of these sorts of things that skew numbers massively. So it, you know, it's very much a case of what's realistic, and what's the next step. And then it's really a case of getting on board with them and ingesting all of that data. Because they are sitting on a goldmine, whether they know it or not sitting on a goldmine. And everything that they need to grow is already sitting within their business and with all of their suppliers, you know, and then the next part for me, then it's really a case of, okay, let's, let's speak to these other suppliers. So let's speak to anybody who's working in, you know, acquisition, anybody who's working on design and Dev on the site, anybody who's working in the retention side of things, email marketing, or SMS, or anything like that. And let's start a conversation with all of those people. Whilst that's going on, I'm working in the background, defining ideal customer profiles and doing customer segmentation. Looking at unit economics is a big one, because I think lots of brands don't understand the unit economics how much it actually costs them to create a product and run their business and keep the lights on and ship it and deal with returns. And then they've got ad cost and your packaging, you know, all of these things start to come together. And when you point out all of these costs, all of a sudden, the metrics just start to explode. And you see people's eyes get really wide. And, you know, they start having that moment where it's a case of, okay, we're actually running a business at this moment in time, you know, and then but taking all of that data and not wanting to just scare people with it, but leverage it to say, Okay, it's good that we know this good or bad, you know, whatever that that data looks like. It's good that we know it because now we can take step forward, a positive step forward, in the direction of growth. And then it for me It's just about working on on a monthly basis to review the data that's constantly shifting and changing and touching base with, with all of those partners that exist to say, Okay, what does this look like, from your perspective? What's going on? Here's the data from the retention side of things, does this impact what you're doing from an acquisition standpoint? Okay, we're getting all this traffic on site design and Dev agency, these are the things that we need to be doing, that are going to help, you know, to leverage the level of traffic that we now have. And you know, hopefully, that quality is going up all the time. And really, it's just making sure that there's that infinite loop of feedback going on, that we're learning from the data that we have all the time. And that making sure that what we do next month is better than what we did last month. Because it's never going to be perfect. It's never done. It's never complete, you know, you must see that from from an ADS perspective, that way, you have you have learnings from one month to the next and it just shifts what you do. And you know, your thought process and and where that goes. Yeah, it's

Aggie Meroni: 41:09

it does still shock me, when I kind of do the ad budget calculator with my clients, and they don't know their numbers. I'm like, how, how are you profitable? If you don't know. But it's so common, and I don't think that's an issue that is sort of just for smaller brands, bigger brands also are uncomfortable, not confident with the sort of going down into the numbers of their business. So yeah, that's good to know that it's not just the client side work. That

Unknown: 41:38

no do, you know, I think some of the bigger ones can be can be the worst in that respect, because they just see money in the bank, you know, and when it has a lot of zeros, great, we've got money in the bank, well, that doesn't mean it's profit, it just means you've got cash running through your business. So helping, you know, helping anybody of any size, understand those numbers. And I think this is where, you know, even smaller businesses potentially have an advantage. Because those numbers aren't quite so wild. You know, you can get you can get grip on them pretty quickly. And you can impact them pretty quickly. So it's not a case of, okay, we know this, and it's going to take six or 12 months to, you know, to get some wins. There are some really quick wins that you can get from understanding your numbers straight off the bat. And when you realise how much it's actually costing you to retain a customer or acquire a customer. It's right to question it. Because as soon as you start questioning it, you can improve.

Aggie Meroni: 42:39

Definitely, well, I'm sure when people listening to this, they're gonna be thinking, right, I need to really scrutinise all my client accounts to make sure that the numbers they've given me all right, thank you so much for coming and talking to me today. If people want to follow up with you or have any questions, where can they come and find you?

Unknown: 42:58

Well ask a question. You can find me on LinkedIn. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. I am Jason Chappell, double P E, L. Because there's an infinite way number of ways to spell Chappell apparently. And I've given up trying to correct people when they just type it, I just accept that that's, that's what they give me. Or you can check out our site, which is we are defiant.io

Aggie Meroni: 43:25

perfects, I'll add those links in the show notes as well so people can get in touch with you if they want to follow up on today. Well, once again, Jason, thank you so much for your time I have lovingly for having me. And I know that we'll be in touch.

Unknown: 43:44

I'm sure I will see you very soon.

Aggie Meroni: 43:46

Take care. Thanks. If you enjoyed listening to this episode today, then please hit subscribe or follow depending on where you're listening. It really helps other people find us. Also, if you're a freelance ads manager, and you're looking for a lovely community of other ads managers to support you as you grow your business, then check out the show notes and apply to join us. And if you're a brand or agency that are looking for talent, support your new projects. There's also an application form for you in the show notes to tap into the talent in our community. So thanks again for listening in. And I will see you on the next episode.