How do you test and learn in marketing?

Stephan Longo (00:02)
need to find a way to measure it because at end of the day, I'm spending money and the CEO is gonna say, hey, what did we spend last week and what did we get, right? It's not what did we spend or what did we get? It's both of it.

Benjamin Ard (00:39)
Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Stefan. Stefan, welcome to the show.

Stephan Longo (00:45)
Thanks for having me, Benjamin. Appreciate it.

Benjamin Ard (00:46)
You bet.

Yeah. Stefan, I'm excited for the conversation. It's going to be a fun one. But Stefan, before we dive into that, let's get to know you. Tell us about your career and work history. And then we always ask, what do you love about content and marketing?

Stephan Longo (01:00)
Yeah, what I do love about content marketing guessing yourself on what you think is going to work versus having the data that tells you you're 50 % right, you're 100 % right, you're 0 % right. So it's neat to balance the creative and the analytics. I love that. My background is I started off in the ad agency side.

It was a great experience, was there for a couple years, got into high tech company that connected laptops to networking. I was like the 60th employee, they were called Zircon. When I left, there's 2,500 people went public. It was a phenomenal journey. I then got into the tire business, large American tire distributors.

Benjamin Ard (01:30)
Hm.

Stephan Longo (01:46)
distributor in United States. We owned and operated a franchise called Tire Pros. started out with about 100 locations. When I left, there was about 350. Awesome 13 years. I got into home services. There's a company that was based in maybe three or four DMAs. Five years later, we were 28 DMAs. Really nice scalable growth.

and great experience. I'm now in the financial sector for a couple years and it's awesome. It's just a new puzzle to solve for me.

Benjamin Ard (02:15)
I love it. So Stefan, you have this incredible experience where you have figured out how to scale and grow businesses. And we're going to talk about one of the tools that you're using for that, and that is testing and learning. So what do we mean by testing and learning? What does that mean to a marketer?

Stephan Longo (02:26)
Yeah.

You know, I think it started back even before I was in these large growth environments. I was always curious. Like we did something and I said, hey, here was the result. And you know, we weren't measuring big time back in 1995, right? Now it's all you do. So today you really have to keep your eye on what to measure. Measure the right thing, not everything.

But I was always curious if I changed something, if I changed the call to action, if I changed the setup, if I changed the content in the middle, what would happen to the result? And that's where I got kind of hooked on seeing things that way. So I utilized that because I got into a point with one company where I remember we

moved a ton of levers. We got it to the point where it was running so smoothly and you thought, I found the sweet spot, right? You three months later, you're like, well, what's happening? You know, and there's always things you need to do. So I think from my perspective, I was trying to stay ahead of the curve by this test and learn environment.

Benjamin Ard (03:35)
I love it. So when you're testing and learning, what's the framework that you use? Are you always doing like A and B, A, B, C tests? How are you doing that? Or is it one at a time? What does that look like? What do you recommend?

Stephan Longo (03:44)
Yeah

Sure. So I've been in environments where you're using one or two different mediums. Mostly what I've used is a pretty comprehensive marketing plan. So for example, in one business model, it was home services. We used TV, radio, pay-per-click, and internet. One of the things we did as we were learning

how all the pieces comprehensively was that TV and radio had a huge effect on pay-per-click. So we could spend all the money we wanted on pay-per-click, but if we weren't driving a ton of people into the top of the funnel of awareness, they're not going to go online and do a search for us, right? So say, for example, we were using

four different TV stations in each individual market. So the idea I had was, look, I'm spending different amounts with each station, almost the same, but I would say, let me measure how we're doing, how many conversions that actually set an appointment, and out of those appointments, how many people became a sale. So I tried it every month, but then I did this quarterly.

So I would take, say we were in Houston, I took these four stations and I measured all those KPIs, how many conversions, how many became actual free estimate appointment and how many became a sale. And then I would take it against how much money I spend to get a cost per acquisition. So at the end of the quarter, it doesn't matter what the TV station said, what their stats were, I knew which four stations worked best and I would rank them.

and I would literally send those to the reps of the TV stations and I'd say, hey guys, here's the ranking. This TV station came in first, second, third, fourth. So guess where I'm gonna put most of the money for the next quarter? In the station that came out first. But everybody else knew who came in second, third, and fourth. So I said, guys, help us out. I want you to make money.

We need to make money. I just need to make the plan and the buy more optimized. So we would do that. And they loved it. They loved having the transparency. They loved seeing what they could do to move the needle for us. And same with us. That's what helped us grow.

Benjamin Ard (05:58)
So you may have already kind of answered this question, but something that comes to mind when you talk to businesses that are focused on content marketing, you have concepts of social media marketing, zero-click content, all that kind of stuff going on. And really there are some mediums that feel like are hard, if not impossible to track and they influence the other ones. How do you kind of weigh that out and

make that a part of the whole scheme and figure out what is and isn't working there.

Stephan Longo (06:25)
Yeah, mean, attribution is important. Some mediums are easy to attribute to how you're doing and track. Some are not, like OTT. It's a tough one. Yes, you can set a UTM parameter in Google Analytics, and you can start seeing how many came in. And if you do have the ability, you can see started applications, completed applications. But then again, what if they don't go online and they just come visit your store?

Right? Or they buy something from you and you no tracking ability. I think the one thing I would tell, especially on the content side, look, at the end of the day, you are trying to get the right message and deliver it on the right platform and measure it in the right way so that you know what's working. nothing's going to ever change that core. there's so many tools.

for marketers. I mean, I used a tool called call tracking metrics, which was a phenomenal program. And it allowed me, it's a browser base. It's got APIs that work with Google Analytics and Google Pay Per Click. But what you can basically do with that, it's like a call center. Every time you get a call, it says, this is X station in Dallas, Fort Worth. And you know what the station is. And then when the caller takes it, they can mark.

appointment made. So you can run reports. That's beautiful. it's like, a drummer and am obsessed with sound, right? But you can go overboard and all of a sudden overproduce something that you're making. you got to be real careful how you use the tools.

So that's why don't want people to ever lose sight. At the end of the day, what you're trying to do is get an equitable lead that's good for the company that drives the bottom line. That's it. How you do that, what kind of content, that's up to you. Test all kinds of things, see what works for you. Obviously you want it to represent your brand. You got millions of options, but testing and learning to me is...

Benjamin Ard (08:04)
Yeah.

Stephan Longo (08:17)
you know, probably the last four positions I've had. Just fortunately, it's been a very entrepreneurial growth type company. And I think it was a perfect fit for me because I love that. That's probably just naturally comes to me that I don't rest on what I just did. I'm always looking forward.

Benjamin Ard (08:37)
I love that. So when you're looking at a new channel or a new opportunity, do you go into it and start testing or do you have baseline metrics that it has to actually hit to be successful? Do you give it ramp time? How do you kind of weigh out those different things?

Stephan Longo (08:53)
Wow, great question. First, I'm looking scalability. Number one, do I have enough people on my team that we could put something out all the time? Or if it's one ad, do I have a vendor that can create the audio spot? The second part is, does this make sense for me? Is this a good channel? Do I think it will fit well into what I'm doing? And maybe what I'm doing isn't perfect. So maybe this could be something that could make me rethink.

how I'm looking at the overall media plan. The third thing I would think is how do I measure success? And to your point that you said earlier is, is this something that I can measure the attribution? sometimes you have to give up something for getting something, meaning you may know this is something that could work. It could hit the target.

It has navigation tools like buying it by zip code that I need because I don't want to pay for fat. I'm not target. So I don't want it to go everywhere. I only am in these areas. So if it meets all of those,

need to find a way to measure it because at end of the day, I'm spending money and the CEO is gonna say, hey, what did we spend last week and what did we get, right? It's not what did we spend or what did we get? It's both of it.

So I do look for If I feel it may be a C plus in attribution,

I would rate it to C plus. Maybe I am looking for another angle. Can it influence another piece of media I'm using? And would it make a difference if I turned it off or turned it on? And can I measure that? So that's how I would look at it.

Benjamin Ard (10:30)
So we're running out of time. So one final question, and we're going to shift gears just a little bit, because before we hopped on this call, you were telling me a little bit about how you have the opportunity to work with students and students, you know, have this unrealistic image of what marketing might look like. I'm just curious, like, what's your take? And for any students listening to the podcast, what does the world of marketing actually look like? What would be your advice for some, you know, first time marketers?

Stephan Longo (10:55)
know, the first thing I do when you meet a group of graduating marketing students is first you have to define what marketing is, right? Sometimes they think it's a piece of that puzzle, but I'm kind of defining it on a collective thing, right? You're trying to motivate your target to do something you want, and you have to do it equitably to drive revenue to your company, bottom line.

and then there's pieces of that puzzles, but I want them to understand the pieces. And if they're specialized in it, if they're paid, they're just want to specialize on email campaigns. That's great. You want to specialize on SEO. Fantastic. You want to specialize on making media plans, tons of jobs, but I want them to understand those positions. The key thing I try to tell

I was fortunate to be in a pretty big company at one point where I got to see what the VP of marketing was doing, why they were doing that, and how I was a piece of the puzzle, but how I helped the whole puzzle, right? And how everybody else helped the puzzle. That got me to understand the logic that he was using to drive business for the company based on whatever dollars he had.

And I think it's important for everybody to see kind of that big picture. And if they're entrepreneurial and they want to start their own business, awesome. I love that about the youth today. They're very entrepreneurial and I don't want to ever motivate them not to go after that, but to see a...

a collective department for a very large company that is a growth company. There is no replacing that kind of education because you're talking to people have been there for 10, 20, 30, 40 years in the business. They've made mistakes. You're going to watch them make mistakes. You're going to watch them with the wins, but you're going to see collectively how it all works together. And I think that's essential.

Benjamin Ard (12:44)
Well, Stefan, this has been super fun. love this conversation. Super educational. I think this is amazing. So thank you for the time. If anyone wants to reach out and connect with you online, how and where can they find you?

Stephan Longo (12:55)
They can find me on LinkedIn, Stefan Lonko, L-O-N-G-O, that would be great. And Benjamin, I appreciate it, love doing this.

Benjamin Ard (13:02)
Yeah, for anyone listening, we'll link to all of Stefan's information in the show notes below. So you can click right there. Again, Stefan, thanks so much for the time today.

‍