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The surveys dropping lately show a staggering trend towards the hottest and most concerning topic out there: data. A recent survey by B2B Marketing and The MX Group identified the differences between top performing and poor performing B2B marketers. CMO identifies data ownership as the top most important subject to marketers. Yet another survey by ClickZ and ChatMeter reveals people’s main concerns to be machine learning, personalization and data privacy.
Data ownership is a game changer. We know that data in and of itself is not a competitive advantage–everyone is collecting data. You have to own the data about the customer. Marketing executives understand this is a differentiator for personalized experiences for customers.
It’s what you learn from those customers and how you mobilize it that makes the biggest difference in determining if that data can provide value to you.
Is it time to confront your own data head on? Stop ignoring it, stop questioning it, start acknowledging that you may be struggling and work to utilize that data.
0:00 Intro
2:22 What are the attributes of top performing organizations?
11:28 Why data ownership is a top priority for brands around the world
18:45 Why CMOS are planning to use that data for AI, personalization and predictive analytics
29:20 Outro
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Originally posted on SoloSegment
Transcript
Tim Peter: Hi, I’m Tim Peter and welcome to SearchChat. SoloSegment’s podcast dedicated to all things search, AI and content marketing related.
Tim Peter: Who is SoloSegment? Well we’re a technology company focused on site search analytics and AI driven content discovery to improve search results, increase customer satisfaction and unlock revenue for your company.
Tim Peter: SoloSegment, make your search smarter.
Tim Peter: You can learn more at solosegment.com.
Tim Peter: On today’s episode of SearchChat, SoloSegment’s CEO, Steve Zakur and I discuss the distinguishing attributes of top performing marketing organizations and the role that data plays in enabling those organizations to achieve their objectives. We also explain why data ownership is a top priority for brands all around the world. And we explain why CMOs are planning to use that data for AI, personalization and predictive analytics.
Tim Peter: All that and more on SearchChat, coming at you now.
Tim Peter: Well, hi Steve.
Steve Zakur: Hey Tim. How you doing man?
Tim Peter: I’m doing really well. How’s your week been?
Steve Zakur: It’s been good. Good. Busy, as usual, but I didn’t have to travel this week. You had to travel.
Tim Peter: I did. I did the vaunted fly to LA, get there at 9:00 at night, have my meeting in the morning and then hop on a plane and fly back and arrive back on the east coast at 9:00 at night. The 24 hour turnaround to LA.
Steve Zakur: Always the best.
Tim Peter: Always the best. I will tell you, I’m a little more jet lagged than is normal for what is just a one night trip. I think the combination of a flight to LA and the time change, to say nothing of, having turned a milestone age not long ago.
Steve Zakur: Getting younger has been a problem.
Tim Peter: Getting younger.
Steve Zakur: Yeah.
Tim Peter: Exactly. Exactly. The Benjamin Button jet lag problem.
Steve Zakur: Oh boy.
Tim Peter: As we all have experienced many times.
Steve Zakur: Yes indeed. Yes indeed.
Tim Peter: It’s funny because, those all come together as some interesting data. How’s that for a segue?
Steve Zakur: Aw, that’s great. That’s nice. Very smooth. Very smooth.
Tim Peter: I do what I can.
Tim Peter: Well, there was this recent survey by B2B Marketing and The MX Group that talked about the differences … that tried to identify the differences between top performing and poor performing B2B marketers. We’ll post a link in the show notes. This was all summarized on business2community.com.
Tim Peter: But I thought this was really, really fascinating. The biggest finding that they had, that 100%, 100% of the top performing marketers identified in this study said that having good, clean, quality data is absolutely necessary to effective B2B marketing. Versus only 27% of poor performers who said that that was necessary. It was the widest gap in the study.
Steve Zakur: Right.
Tim Peter: I thought that was really fascinating. I had a hunch you might have a point of view on that. I’d love to hear what you were thinking.
Steve Zakur: Metrics, me? An opinion?
Tim Peter: Yeah, I know, crazy right?
Steve Zakur: It is crazy, but I might have an opinion.
Steve Zakur: Well, it continues to amaze me that this is a new discovery to sentient humans. And maybe, again, this is probably not new for these guys. They’ve been doing this survey and they’ve probably … I don’t know what their results are over past years, but I would imagine that this is an ongoing trend.
Steve Zakur: I think of just in my own personal life, we had a marketing meeting yesterday afternoon and we were going through the numbers and the places where I felt most uncomfortable where were the numbers were either … well, certainly where there were gaps in performance, but where the numbers were fuzzy.
Tim Peter: Yeah.
Steve Zakur: We couldn’t quite put our finger on what they meant. I had a lot of discomfort and I’d like to understand them better.
Steve Zakur: And so, I think it’s … and again, I’m not ringing my bell as a top performer, although I’d like to think I’m above the mean, but it’s that desire to understand what’s going on in your environment that I think distinguishes.
Tim Peter: Yeah.
Steve Zakur: That curiosity, but curiosity that’s grounded, not in the fluffy stuff, but that’s really grounded in facts. I think real … it’s a no brainer that it distinguishes top performers from those at the bottom. And certainly, that data proves it out that poor performers weren’t thinking about their performance in a fact based way. And that’s what data does for you.
Tim Peter: It is interesting. Yeah. I heard somebody the other day use the term random acts of marketing as how they had approached things for many years.
Steve Zakur: Yeah.
Tim Peter: And I think that really is key to this idea of, you’re flying blind sometimes.
Steve Zakur: Oh yeah.
Tim Peter: Unfortunately, unfortunately, even in digital today, there are still a number of areas where the data’s not as good and it’s not as clean as we would like it to be. We see this all the time.
Tim Peter: It’s astonishing to me that when you can get access to data, the people who want to bury their heads in the sand or want to not look at that. I just think that’s really fascinating.
Tim Peter: You had a funny interaction earlier in the week that you were telling me about the other day and I think this is a great story, if you don’t mind sharing it.
Steve Zakur: Yeah. As you well know Tim, part of what we do is search metrics and search success metrics.
Tim Peter: Yeah. Yeah.
Steve Zakur: We do a lot of free trials on this product, just so people can get an understanding. And our real interest, we certainly want to make search better, but what we really want to do is use data to make search better. And data to make the customer experience better. So how can we mobilize that search data downstream in the customer experience to continue to have this data bear fruit as people go along in their journey?
Steve Zakur: Anyway, those trials always follow a very interesting pattern. I had the opportunity, they’re an important prospect for us, and so I had the opportunity to sit in a meeting this week with the early trial results.
Steve Zakur: No surprise, site search is a place where a lot of companies don’t spend a lot of money, resource, attention, mind-share, and the results were poor and they’re always poor. They’re always poor when people first get started.
Tim Peter: Right. Right.
Steve Zakur: Because they’ve been ignoring it. They certainly fit into that 27%.
Tim Peter: Right.
Steve Zakur: They’re poor performers and they have poor data. No surprise.
Tim Peter: Right.
Steve Zakur: But you know, it struck me as I was listening to the discussion and as I was reflecting on it afterwards, it’s almost like the five stages of grief. In order to get the trial started, you have to get over the denial.
Tim Peter: Yeah. Yeah.
Steve Zakur: You have to recognize you have a problem, and when you see that early data, it’s the first, the next two stages come fast, it’s anger and bargaining. It’s like, no, no, there’s no way that’s true. And then it’s, wait a minute, how do you measure that? And that can’t possibly be right.
Tim Peter: Oh yeah, sure, sure.
Steve Zakur: So then you get into this, well what if we tweak this that way and this the other way and do we…? And it’s like, you bet, we could do all that tweaking, but guess what? If I give you 100% of the value that those tweaks will give you, your performance still just goes up two percentage points.
Tim Peter: Yeah.
Steve Zakur: It goes up nothing. What you really have to do is get to very … as quickly as possible, acceptance. To a point where you have embraced it and, in my mind, I think of that acceptance stage as the action stage.
Tim Peter: Yeah.
Steve Zakur: Which is yeah, I accept that these measurements are correct. I accept that they are going to help shape and frame the actions that I’m going to take. And then you actually take the actions.
Tim Peter: Yeah.
Steve Zakur: And so, again, it just struck me interesting as I thought about how people deal with data, especially when they’ve been part of that 27% for so long. Because I think if you’re a top performer you might have a very quick evaluation of, did these metrics have more value to me then other metrics? And are the actions that these metrics are going to drive for me have more value than say the actions that it…?
Steve Zakur: Having the discussion with people who are in that top set, it’s always very interesting because you’re having a value discussion. People who have never seen the data before have almost actively ignored it and really aren’t driven by the facts. You do get into this bargaining that can require some tough love and it’s hard to do when you’re in sales mode to have the tough love discussion.
Tim Peter: Oh yeah.
Steve Zakur: But it’s like … so we’re going to have that discussion over the next week or two and I have to come back to them and say, listen, even if I seed all the points you’ve made, you’re still way below average.
Tim Peter: Right.
Steve Zakur: Way below average of the poor performers, much less below average of the good performers.
Steve Zakur: Again, it’s just interesting that clearly top performers, they get that the data’s important and they’re doing trade offs of resource attention and investment and that’s the appropriate discussion to have. But it’s these bottom performers who really have to get beyond the questioning of the data and the process and just embrace because, if you’re at the bottom, you’ve got a long way to go and bargaining is not the way to spend your time.
Tim Peter: Absolutely. You know, it’s funny that you say that. I had an experience in the very early days of the company. We talked to a client who, very smart marketer, very sharp individual. I’m keeping this as anonymous as I possibly can because their original numbers were very poor. And to your point, I think this is a sign of a top performer. He said to his team, who were definitely in the denial, anger or bargaining stage, who said, the leader said, if we were 50% better, if these numbers are wrong by 50%, we’d still be terrible.
Steve Zakur: Yes.
Tim Peter: It was … because the numbers were bad enough that the point of view was, a little better doesn’t make us good.
Steve Zakur: Yes.
Tim Peter: A lot better doesn’t make us good. We have to be way better before we can remotely start to get to kinda average.
Steve Zakur: Order of magnitude gaps in performance.
Tim Peter: Right. So, yeah, maybe there’s a problem. And, he was taking the argument of, maybe there’s a problem with their methodology. That’s possibly true, but you know what, it’s probably close enough to accurate that it’s, even if it were wrong, it’s still a sign of how far from correct we are. And it just made such a huge difference and the changes made a difference in their business over time.
Steve Zakur: Sure.
Tim Peter: It’s that willingness to get behind it and say, yeah, this is something that we need to take ownership of.
Steve Zakur: Yeah, absolutely.
Tim Peter: So, speaking of ownership, there was another study that was on cmo.com. This was from Adobe, and they talked to folks about what their top priorities are going forward. And the number one answer, by far, was data ownership. They feel that to succeed in marketing today you have to own the data about the customer. That was just a remarkable finding when you think about marketers who are saying, data ownership is really important to us and really drives where we’re going.
Steve Zakur: Right.
Tim Peter: Just love to hear your thoughts on that.
Steve Zakur: Part of it certainly has to be driven on kind of …. and we’ll talk about this in a little bit I think is, there is a lot of external pressure right now on third party data.
Steve Zakur: And by the way, we … I get this all the time, hey, do you want to buy this list? It’s like, sure, I’d love to buy that list. But you know, how much of it is good? And then by the way, what regulations am I violating by buying your list?
Tim Peter: Besides all of them.
Steve Zakur: Yes, exactly. That’s essentially it, right?
Tim Peter: Right. Right.
Steve Zakur: Data ownership is a big issue because of that.
Tim Peter: Yeah.
Steve Zakur: But I think the actual … the bigger issue is, data is a competitive advantage. Data is … if you have really good first party data that you know about your customers, about the people who come to your website, et cetera.
Steve Zakur: And by the way, that probably means you have a really effective top of funnel marketing machine that is gathering email addresses, gathering contact, good trade for value at the top of the funnel. So probably indicates that you’re going to be very successful further on because you’ve had a good value proposition trade for value as you’ve done your prospecting, as you’ve done your demand generation.
Steve Zakur: But more importantly, now you have, not only those great contacts at the top of the funnel, but you have great information about them and now you get to mobilize that in interesting ways. And for us, as we think about how we’re taking data about search experiences and journeys that come off of search, and the metadata, and the content. Everybody I talked to you automatically gets the behavioral personalization opportunity because, if you know what your content is about, and you know what your visitors are about, and you know you’ve been able to extract intent from your site search data, now you have your own data that is going to help you mobilize, deploy that data in very effective ways downstream.
Steve Zakur: And by the way, the technology to do that already exists in a large part. You’ve already made the investment in your marketing technology stack so you have this platform that is waiting for great data. And so, yeah, I think this trend for better first party, better ownership of data is an important one because, I do think more and more, companies who get ahead of the fact that third party data … I mean, is it going away? Probably not. But is it going to be less important? I think, absolutely. Especially as we see some of the court cases in the European Union-
Tim Peter: Oh yeah.
Steve Zakur: -crash out and we really get some clarity on what’s allowed and what’s not allowed. Yeah, owning your data is critically important, but I think marketing execs who understand that is an important competitive weapon, an important differentiator in the customer experience, an important differentiator in their ability to personalize the experience and drive conversions. Yeah, I think that’s a winning play.
Tim Peter: I think you made it such a great point a moment ago, and I want to come back to the personalization question. I want to come back to the regulatory question in just a second.
Tim Peter: I also think you made such a key point a moment ago, and I’m going to slightly amend what you said a moment ago to emphasize the point you made, because I think it’s so critical that people miss this. I actually have started saying recently, and I think you will agree with this, that data in and of itself is not a competitive advantage. Everybody has data.
Steve Zakur: Yeah.
Tim Peter: Everybody’s building data. Everybody’s building their data sets. They’re doing the sorts of things you would expect people to do in terms of data links and the like to get the data to a usable state.
Steve Zakur: Yes.
Tim Peter: What is the competitive advantage though is, as soon as you get some data in a usable state, it’s that mobilizing it, it’s not deploying it.
Steve Zakur: Yeah.
Tim Peter: That’s really the competitive advantage.
Steve Zakur: Yes.
Tim Peter: It’s not just having the data, it’s not just laying the groundwork. I realize this may be a subtle distinction and maybe I’m hammering too narrowly on a semantic point, but it’s this idea of, why are you getting the data? And, what are you doing with that data? That’s really the thing that’s going to provide the competitive differentiation because, let’s face it, most companies that we work with, most companies out there, your customers are customers of other people too, right?
Steve Zakur: Yes.
Tim Peter: They buy other things, often from your competitors.
Steve Zakur: Yep.
Tim Peter: And it’s not … so you all have a customer list, you probably have many of the same names on that customer list. But it’s what you learn from those customers, and more importantly, how you deploy that, how you mobilize it. I love that word. How you mobilize it, I think is going to make the biggest difference in terms of that data actually providing value to you. I don’t think enough companies have really thought through that next step. They’re still trying to figure out the frameworks and the ground work.
Steve Zakur: Yeah. It’s interesting when we talk about our new product Guide Box, which is in Beta right now. Not ready for prime time, still doing some experimentation with it.
Tim Peter: Yeah.
Steve Zakur: But it’s interesting when I show people Guide Box, one of the questions that marketing executives ask is, hey, how can I bring that data into my stack?
Tim Peter: Yeah.
Steve Zakur: So yeah, sure you can … if you could deliver me this experience and improve progression, decrease bounces, decrease exits, great, but I’d like to take it … because they can automatically see the power and I really like talking and working with those people because they get the mobilization question.
Tim Peter: Yeah.
Steve Zakur: So yeah, they dig what the product does for them, but they also can see forward and see what the data does for them.
Steve Zakur: That’s the thing that I think is required is that vision and that instinct to be able to see, oh, here’s how I can put this data to work, versus, oh, here’s how I can normalize my data in my data lake. It’s like, okay, yeah, that’s nice, but, let’s focus on where’s the value that you’re going to extract from the business by putting this to work. And again, it’s just … I always know the people who are a part of our tribe when they say, yeah, I like that, but, do you have an API so it can use that data elsewhere?
Tim Peter: For sure.
Steve Zakur: That’s when it’s really neat.
Tim Peter: It’s a shame we’re on an audio program only at the moment because I’m nodding so aggressively right now. I’m going to give myself a concusion.
Steve Zakur: We’ve been talking about doing video with this. Maybe we should. Who knows.
Tim Peter: That’s fantastic.
Tim Peter: So speaking of that and going back to those points I said I wanted to come back to. There was another survey on marketing charts, it was done by ClickZ and Chat Meter, where they talk to the search trends that are on marketers’ minds. Obviously, we do an immense amount of work around search so I thought I would bring this up.
Tim Peter: Three of the top five trends that they brought up, number two on their list, cited by 42% of the respondents, were data protection, privacy and regulation.
Steve Zakur: I bet.
Tim Peter: Number four on the list, by 33%, was … with 33% of the respondents, was machine learning.
Steve Zakur: Yep.
Tim Peter: And number five on the list, with 31% of the respondents, was personalization. It’s interesting that … and probably a good sign for us that the things you were just talking about are among three of the top five of the top issues when we talk about search trends.
Tim Peter: We’ve given a lot of thought to this and I’d just love to hear you articulate some of how that applies as we think about it.
Steve Zakur: Yeah. Well you know, the state of protection and privacy, again, everybody is paranoid about that. If you’re paranoid dial wasn’t set to 15 two years ago because people were stealing data, now it’s set to 25 because of GDPR-
Tim Peter: Right.
Steve Zakur: -and what’s going on in California and what’s probably going to be going on everywhere before long.
Steve Zakur: I was talking to an insurance company exec earlier this week and he talked about the fact that they weren’t all that excited about, no matter what the value was, about SaaS offerings because, not only were they paranoid because of the financial services regulations aspect of it, but they were paranoid because of GDPR and everything else.
Tim Peter: I’m sure.
Steve Zakur: And so they were … so we had that conversation about, hey, can we do a private cloud and put your tech in there? And so on and so what not. But this is table stakes right now. This is table stakes.
Tim Peter: Yeah.
Steve Zakur: If you aren’t not thinking about this as a vendor. Certainly we think about it. And you are not thinking about how do you gather and store and maintain data, you’re just not doing your job. That is … and by the way, we’re not where I want to be on this, but we where we need to be right now and it’s going to be a constant journey as we go forward to make sure that we’ve got good game in this area. But it really is table stakes.
Steve Zakur: Yeah.
Tim Peter: Yeah.
Steve Zakur: The other two areas, machine learning and personalization, it’s funny, we were just on a call with a client. These guys are … I think they’re our most forward leaning client, I think, is the best way to describe them.
Tim Peter: Yeah, I think that’s right.
Steve Zakur: They’re really, … they lean into experimentation and what not and going way back to something we were talking about 20 minutes ago, which is, they are definitely a measurement heavy organization.
Tim Peter: Oh, yeah, for sure.
Steve Zakur: How does … how does … again, it’s kind of interesting to see, they got good game and measurements and they got good game in looking forward and thinking about how do we improve it.
Steve Zakur: But it was funny, we were talking about machine learning with them and we’ve got a couple of capabilities that have machine learning built into them. It was funny, they were like, we’ve liked that just because, well, part of it I think was checking some box internally that they have for first quarter goals. So great.
Tim Peter: Sure.
Steve Zakur: We’re going to help them achieve … get their bonus for the first quarter. But the other piece was, they knew that they could probably spend the next nine months thinking about how to get started, but why not just get started? Why not just pick something?
Steve Zakur: I’ve talked about this in the past, right, which is, pick an area you know, and start small, and just figure it out as you go. I think that, yeah, machine learning is important, but it is intimidating.
Tim Peter: Yeah.
Steve Zakur: Because data sciences are expensive and this stuff feels like pixie dust and it doesn’t seem real. So I think that this is … it’s top of mind, that’s great to hear, but it’s got to be top of action. It’s got to be places where you are making and executing bets that … you’re going to learn and see how things go and you’re going to experiment. Because, I think big bangs … think if you’re going to spend $1 million on a vendor because they told you they have machine learning magic, okay fine. Probably better to spend $100,000 and do something small and learn and then expand as you go along.
Steve Zakur: And by the way, personalization, it’s just interesting that those two things are together. I think personalization is a great place to get started. It’s certainly area where we’re focusing, which is, how do you bring the data, the patterns in the data and the power of the machine together to deliver a better personalized experience?
Tim Peter: Yeah, for sure. So, a lot of trends. What a segue.
Steve Zakur: It’s almost like we talked about this before the podcast.
Steve Zakur: Never take them behind the curtain Steve, never take them behind.
Tim Peter: The funny thing about this is … and by the way, this is the day of surveys for us.
Steve Zakur: Yes.
Tim Peter: But there was another survey. This was on marketing charts. It was work done by the CMO Survey. And what was the top use for AI? Well it was personalization and it was predictive analytics. 57%, I’m rounding up. 56 and a half percent said they were using it for content personalization. Another 56 and a half percent, or rather 56 and a half percent of the survey respondents, also said they were using it for predictive analytics. Those were the top two answers. Those were seven points higher than the next item on the list, and a full 17 points higher than the third biggest item on the list.
Tim Peter: So, again, very gratifying for us.
Steve Zakur: Yeah.
Tim Peter: But, also I think incredibly valuable for folks who listen to this show, and marketers generally to think about, where are people going with this? Where are your competitors going with this?
Steve Zakur: Yeah.
Tim Peter: Where are the places you need to be thinking about this? Well …
Steve Zakur: That’s kind of where the game is.
Tim Peter: Oh absolutely.
Steve Zakur: And back to this start with what you know.
Steve Zakur: Every marketer understands personalization.
Tim Peter: Yeah. That’s right.
Steve Zakur: So it’s such a great place to get started. And, these areas are rich with data you understand so you’re going to be able to sniff out the BS AI from the real AI. The AI that’s driving value. And by the way, there’s a lot of BS AI out there.
Steve Zakur: So what if …
Tim Peter: What? No.
Steve Zakur: I know, it’s shocking. It’s shocking.
Steve Zakur: I was really excited when I saw these numbers because it told me that we’re coming out of the trough of disillusionment, perhaps. Maybe not.
Tim Peter: Yeah.
Steve Zakur: But you know, these people are out there working on it and doing something.
Tim Peter: Yeah.
Steve Zakur: I think, again, some of this stuff probably doesn’t pass the sniff test, but at least we see some action out there. And that was really, really encouraging because I think until AI becomes practical and actionable in your business day to day, quite frankly, it becomes a lot less pixie dust and magical and a lot more, oh, it’s just the tool sitting in the toolbox, and sometimes I’m going to do rules-based personalization and sometimes I’m going to need some smarts because the data is complex and I don’t understand it, or whatever. But it’s just another tool and this gives me … encourages me that AI, ML, et cetera, is becoming more of just one of those tools that you have in your toolbox and it’s actually getting put to use in the market.
Tim Peter: Well, it’s funny, we did a show, it may have been our last show, about how the CEOs who think that AI is going to be bigger than the internet.
Steve Zakur: Yes.
Tim Peter: I think it’s right. I also think it’s true that … you talk to people today, they don’t talk about the internet. They talk about a mobile app. They talk about their website. They talk about personalization. They talk about email marketing. They talk about search. They talk about the applications that depend upon the internet to work, but the internet is just there. It’s just underneath the hood of all of these other things that we know to be effective marketing techniques.
Steve Zakur: Sure.
Tim Peter: Right next to effective marketing tactics. And I think that same thing will be true of AI. It won’t be that it’s, we have an AI application. It’s that AI will be built into the application because of course that’s the right thing to do.
Steve Zakur: We have an awesome personalization engine.
Tim Peter: Right.
Steve Zakur: And you know what, there’s lots of tech under the hood that will run it, and AI is going to be one of them.
Tim Peter: Exactly. And the same will be true for predictive analytics. And the same will be true for customer segmentation. And the same will be true by optimizing content marketing. These are all just pieces of a hole where AI will play a role.
Steve Zakur: Right.
Tim Peter: In some cases the role’s going to be larger. In some cases the role’s going to be smaller. It’s really about, are you using it to drive that great customer experience? And are you using it to understand your data more effectively so that you can … to bring this full circle, so that you can mobilize that data and actually create the right kind of customer experience?
Steve Zakur: Yeah, you bet. And when that is true, we will have a whole new set of buzzwords that we can use to sell the next generation of whatever it is we’re selling.
Tim Peter: Blockchain. 5G.
Steve Zakur: Absolutely. You bet.
Tim Peter: Absolutely. Well I look forward to that day, Steve.
Steve Zakur: Indeed. Indeed.
Tim Peter: That’s going to be a lot of fun.
Tim Peter: Well, looking at the clock on the wall I think we’ve wrapped up all the things we wanted to talk about this week, but any parting thoughts you want to leave folks with before we go?
Steve Zakur: Yeah, just get to work. Get started. Good Lord. We talk a lot about this stuff and I did a blog post a week or so, maybe it’s even earlier this week, I don’t remember, but it was this like, you know, hey time’s ticking on the first quarter. What have you done? What have you achieved? Are you getting there? And part of it is, first quarters in a lot of business are slow.
Tim Peter: Yeah.
Steve Zakur: And so, okay, so now we’ve gotten through the first quarter hopefully we’ve hit the softball objectives we put out there. But, so much of this is “get started.” Start with where you know and experiment, measure, monitor the output, understand the value, rinse and repeat. And so yeah, I guess, you know, first quarter’s running out, hopefully you’ve got some good objectives for the second quarter and just get started.
Tim Peter: Words of wisdom. Excellent. Steve, as ever, a pleasure. Look forward to catching up with the next time.
Steve Zakur: You bet. Take care Time.
Tim Peter: Take care.
Steve Zakur: SearchChat is brought to you by SoloSegment. SoloSegment is a technology company focused on site search analytics and AI driven content discovery to improve search results, increase customer satisfaction and unlock revenue for your company.
Steve Zakur: SoloSegment. Make your search smarter.
Steve Zakur: And learn more at solosegment.com.
Steve Zakur: If you like what you’ve heard today, click on the subscribe links you can find at solosegment.com/podcast, on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or wherever fine podcasts can be found.
Steve Zakur: You can also find us on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/company/solosegment. On Facebook at facebook.com/solosegment. On Twitter using the Twitter handle @solosegment. Or you can drop us an email at info@solosegment.com. Again, that’s info@solosegment.com.
Steve Zakur: For SearchChat, I’m Tim Peter. I hope you have a great rest of the week. Thanks so much for joining us and we’ll look forward to chatting with you next time here on SearchChat. Until then, take care everybody.
