Payer marketers aren't "over-reliant on Google" because they love it. They're trapped there because last-click attribution makes it the only channel that looks defensible to finance. The path beyond Google isn't "run more channels." It's building an operating model for multi-touch attribution, audience orchestration, and CRO that's credible enough to survive CFO scrutiny. This episode breaks down how real performance teams move beyond intent: by redefining what counts as proof, designing 5-10% pilots that stair-step to scale, and using customer journey data to earn permission to spend where the actual origination happens, not just where the last click lands.
💡 Episode Summary
Payer marketers aren't "over-reliant on Google" because they love it. They're trapped there because last-click attribution makes it the only channel that looks defensible to finance. The path beyond Google isn't "run more channels." It's building an operating model for multi-touch attribution, audience orchestration, and CRO that's credible enough to survive CFO scrutiny. This episode breaks down how real performance teams move beyond intent: by redefining what counts as proof, designing 5-10% pilots that stair-step to scale, and using customer journey data to earn permission to spend where the actual origination happens, not just where the last click lands.
👉 Check out the actionable guide based on this episode
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⏱️ Episode Timestamps
*(01:19) - The biggest lie in healthcare marketing: Why last-click attribution is killing your strategy
*(07:58) - How intent channels create false confidence and hide origination points
*(13:18) - Moving beyond intent channels
*(15:24) - Why CTV and upper funnel campaigns fail
*(28:05) - Building better attribution
*(33:57) - Running effective pilots
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💬 Quote
“ Everything that they're looking at in their data is, in most cases for people that I've talked to across the industry and even other industries, most of the time they're only looking at last click attribution. They end up giving way more credit to one channel or another than needs to be. And then more importantly, they're neglecting other channels and pulling spend from those other channels and even specific platforms where that's actually where a lot of the origination of their customer journeys are starting.” – Jeric Griffin
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🔗 Links
Connect with Jeric Griffin on LinkedIn
Connect with Ray Mina on LinkedIn
Learn more about Caspian Studios
[00:00:00] Jeric Griffin: Everything that they're looking at in their data is, in most cases, for people that I've talked to across the industry and even other industries. Most of the time they're only looking at last click attribution, and so they end up giving way more credit to one channel or another than needs to be, and then more importantly, they're neglecting other channels and pulling spend from those other channels and even specific platforms where that's actually where a lot of their, the, the origination of their customer journeys are starting.
[00:00:39] Ray Mina: Future growth for payers isn't simply run more channels. It's really about building an operating model for audiences, orchestration and attribution that's credible enough to survive financial scrutiny.
[00:00:51] Ray Mina: Jeric Griffin is Director of Performance Marketing at Blue Cross of North Carolina, and he joins me today to talk about how payer performance marketing teams move beyond intent in an incredible way. Jeric, it's great to see you. Thanks for, thanks for joining me.
[00:01:05] Jeric Griffin: Absolutely, man. Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.
[00:01:07] Ray Mina: So I'm gonna start with a bit of a spicy take to make sure, like anyone who's listening to this isn't distracted and like they're, they, they ignore their kids for a minute in their car and they like say, whoa, what's this all about? I guess the start is like, what, what do you view as the biggest lie healthcare marketing tells itself about performance?
[00:01:26] Jeric Griffin: That their last click credits are everything. So everything that they're looking at in their data is, in most cases, for people that I've talked to across the industry and even other industries. Most of the time they're only looking at last click attribution, and so they end up giving way more credit to one channel or another than needs to be, and then more importantly, they're neglecting other channels and pulling spend from those other channels and even specific platforms where that's actually where a lot of their, the, the origination of their customer journeys are starting.
[00:02:04] Ray Mina: Yeah. The, this is almost universal. I was part of, I was on a virtual conference where they pulled the audience and it was something like 65% of the audience was still, you know, leveraging last click attribution as, as their main, their main metric.
[00:02:18] Ray Mina: Yeah. When people, like a lot of people are obviously thinking in a data-driven way, and, and people will make the claim that, you know, we're a data-driven organization. When you're having a conversation with somebody and you hear them say that, what do you immediately wanna ask them to understand? Like how far that goes for them?
[00:02:36] Jeric Griffin: Well, the first thing I wanna understand is what, what does your data look like? Like the data that you're, that is driving your decisions. Is it good data or not? Because I would say, you know, they, they say however many percentage of statistics are made up and I, but I would say like in my opinion, my experience, like I think roughly 80% of the people I talk to, if they're, if it's a, if it's someone I can get into that deep of a conversation with, 80% of the time I look at it and go, well, the data that's driving your decisions shouldn't be because it's not data that's helping you make the best decisions for optimization, efficiency, and ultimately ROI.
[00:03:15] Jeric Griffin: And so that's the number one question is, is the data that, that you're looking at? Is it valuable? Is it helpful? And then like to specifically answer your question, I'll ask them like, You say you're a data-driven organization or you're a data-driven person, team, et cetera, but how deep does that go? Like are we looking at surface level data that you're getting in a PDF from your agency, or are you like really diving into, you know, customer journeys and how those customer journeys are connected, or maybe in some cases not connected to your buying funnel?
[00:03:45] Jeric Griffin: And at that point, I mean, you know, you're, you can really start to either really turn hard left or not in the conversation depending on. What they have, what they've looked at, the experience that they had with it so far, and if it's made any impact for them, whether positive or negative.
[00:04:02] Ray Mina: One thing I've been surprised, I don't know if you have this experience, is that when people say data driven and, and I ask those questions, a lot of times the data I get back is ad platform data, like specific to what the ad platform is telling them, ver versus that holistic view of the organization. Do you, do you see some of that as well?
[00:04:20] Jeric Griffin: Oh yeah, I would say that's a vast majority of the time it's ad platform data. And there are some cases where some platforms versus others have, you know, different attribution models that you can, that you can look at, which is super helpful. I mean, that's much better than just looking at whatever they have out of the box.
[00:04:37] Jeric Griffin: But at the same time, and everybody knows that most ad platforms, if not all of them, are gonna take more credit than they should for each conversion. And so then you end up with, you know, some duplication or probably more like triplecation. I dunno if that's a, if that's a word or not, but you end up double or even triple counting some, some conversions depending on how many different channels or platforms that you're using and how many touch points there were in any specific customer journey.
[00:05:02] Jeric Griffin: But I would say, yeah, most of the time people are looking at ad platform data and are not diving into the deep settings that are intentionally hidden in a lot of those ad platforms to try to make that data more usable than just last click. Here's what we drove to you.
[00:05:19] Ray Mina: Yeah, last click is pretty, pretty easy for people to utilize, especially when you're looking at platform data that optimizes, you know, showing you those results.
[00:05:28] Ray Mina: What, what would you say, like for those teams that are data-driven, what do you, what have you seen as like the clearest sign the team is confusing that last click efficiency with, with actual real efficiency?
[00:05:41] Jeric Griffin: Well, at the, at the risk of, I think the kids say dunking on any of the individual platforms or channels, like I, I, I pay search has been a huge positive driver for most campaigns that I've run in a variety of industries and verticals. But that's also usually the last touch point in a customer's journey, especially in the healthcare space. And so if you go with last click, and if you go with the specific platform data like we were talking about earlier, that's generally the one that will trip people up the most often.
[00:06:15] Jeric Griffin: Because you'll get in a conversation with someone and they'll say, well, we need to just put, instead of putting 70% of our budget into paid search, which we already are, we need to just put all of it in there and just completely take out everything else.
[00:06:32] Jeric Griffin: And like we were saying earlier, without, you know, that multi-touch attribution look or a customer journey view, if you're backing up, you know, 5,000 feet further, figuratively, then you're gonna make those types of decisions, and those decisions are gonna end up, you know, biting them in the butt because when it's over and they go back and look and say, well, we made those changes based off of the data that was driving our decisions, why are our sales down?
[00:06:52] Jeric Griffin: They'll never be able to figure out why their sales were down. If they don't look at the data, at least look at the same data through a different lens, if not different data altogether.
[00:07:01] Ray Mina: Yeah, I think that's right. I was, I was talking to someone else recently and yeah, they made the logical argument is that you, you, you have KPIs and metrics for intent channels, but like, why would you expect that those KPI metrics are the things that you should evaluate the rest of your, like funnel the rest of your strategies.
[00:07:20] Ray Mina: There's different ways to measure different things, so yeah, you've called that out. The, the other piece to this, Jeric, is that intent is finite, right? Like you may have like a very large addressable market of consumers, but it doesn't mean the entire addressable market of consumers is in intent channels at any given moment.
[00:07:37] Ray Mina: And so eventually you will, like there is a finite amount of spend that you can throw at something like Google paid search before it just starts getting more expensive because Google won't stop taking your money. They'll just start charging you more per, per result. What are some of the, before it's too late, but you know the, it's too late when you start to see like dollar in diminishing results.
[00:07:58] Ray Mina: But what are some of the leading indicators that a team might see to give them an indication they're approaching a ceiling in, in their intent channels?
[00:08:07] Jeric Griffin: Well, I think, I mean, you could take the phrase that you just mentioned and you could use Google and even, or you could replace Google with virtually any ad platform, like they're gonna keep spending your money if you're, if you're putting it in there.
[00:08:19] Jeric Griffin: But I think, you know, whether, whether using Google or Meta or anybody else as your example. The cost pers for your intent-based campaigns is obviously gonna be your, your North Star, if you will, or some of your primary KPIs. So you know, your, if you have, if it's leads or if they're filling out a specific form on your site, or if it's a sale, you know, may, maybe even a cost per sale aspect.
[00:08:41] Jeric Griffin: I'd say those are the things that you're gonna see first and foremost. And I mean, then you can start going into your contextual KPIs, so your click through rates and your cost per clicks and things like that. But I think that's probably a really good example of how people actually get tripped up because I've, I've had dozens of conversations with people throughout my career, and especially in recent years when attributions really become more of a, a heavy topic for, you know, more surface level marketers, I would say. And they always get tripped up on the things like cost per click specifically, or even CPM.
[00:09:16] Jeric Griffin: And a lot of times what I see is they will tend to optimize everything they're doing to try to lower that specific KPI. And sometimes it's a political thing by a leader that may just, they, they don't know any better because they're not a media marketer or they're not an advertiser and they end up pushing too far down that path.
[00:09:33] Jeric Griffin: And that ultimately hurts their efficiency because multiple times in my career at different companies, at different verticals, we've made changes to really focus on our cost per actual result. Again, in context of ROI, and oftentimes that will actually. Somewhat intentionally inflate your cost per click or your CPM and you end up seeing people go, oh gosh, we gotta stop what you're doing.
[00:10:01] Jeric Griffin: You know, we're making a mistake because our CPC is going up, our CPMs going up, and it's almost comical in the, in those discussions because I'll say, guys, I don't care if the CPM goes up or if the cost per click goes up, because a, as long as our ROI metrics are going in the right direction, because those generally are seesaws, they, they hardly ever go kind of in the same direction.
[00:10:27] Jeric Griffin: And I, I say hardly ever, 'cause it's not an ultimatum. But that's definitely a huge trend that I see.
[00:10:33] Ray Mina: This is one of the things I've, I've actually, we've actually worked with organizations that only could see up to like cost per lead, you know, at the form fill level. And then when we help them get down to the actual result level, whether that's an appointment or a pair of eyeglasses or whatever their service is, they have seen times where it goes both ways.
[00:10:53] Ray Mina: Either a campaign that they viewed having a higher CPL actually has better. Result unit economics than other campaigns. So they didn't have that line of sight or the opposite. Wow, this campaign kills it from a CPL standpoint, but oh my gosh, the CAC is 2X what we thought it was. So that's a really great observation is that sometimes, once again, we get tied to the platform data and the platform data could be useful and directional, but if we're not able to look at the result data, we may may be making decisions that are just burning away money.
[00:11:26] Jeric Griffin: Yeah, and everything's in context, right? Because you can, you can apply the general philosophy to what you just said, which is, you know, very, is not very specific, but is more tailored to healthcare and healthcare adjacent industries. But the same philosophy applies to others because that philosophy comes from like an e-commerce industry where you would, you would have your cost per sale and your cost per sale you make can drive that down into the dirt. But if your average order value is also going down while the cost per sale is going down, then you're not doing yourselves any favor. So you apply that same philosophy to what you just said, where sometimes your cost per lead and your CAC may be offsetting plus or minus.
[00:12:10] Jeric Griffin: And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, it's just what you said is the is the key. And that's that you have to have that context in every decision that you make. And that's kind of the theme of our conversation all the way through so far is like. Every decision that you make has to have whatever KPI or media metric, or even if it's not a media, whatever metric it is in general that you're looking at.
[00:12:30] Jeric Griffin: You have to have that through a, per a perspective lens of the entire context, because without that, you know, like you said, you'll start chasing one specific rabbit and then you miss the forest for the trees. I think that's three metaphors in one sentence. So I'll, I'll stop right there before we get too deep.
[00:12:46] Ray Mina: It's so, it's so good. Yeah. I think we both aligned that like these intent channels have a critical part. They play a critical role in our strategy, making sure that you are actually like measuring them correctly, understanding how they're impacting your strategy. And then the next part then is like, how do you move beyond, like, not, not, not remove them entirely, just build on top of those intent channels.
[00:13:09] Ray Mina: Because that bottom of funnel strategy is so, is so critical in, in how we build and capture demand when. When you start to think about, when teams start to think about moving beyond intent, easy to measure, what are the major objections that you see teams facing to get that buy-in internally?
[00:13:30] Jeric Griffin: Well, I think it's the, the primary objection is budget, right? You know, it's, well, we're going off of last year's cost per whatever KPI is, and if we're doing the math backwards, then we need exactly this much money or this much of our ad spend budget to hit our goal for this year. Which, I mean, it's great for everybody to have that metric to go off, but to your point, I mean, I think it's kind of a, it's a, it's a larger view, right?
[00:13:55] Jeric Griffin: Because they, they tend to neglect the upper part of the funnel, first and foremost, and then more, more so than neglect the middle part of the funnel. Because what happens is in a lot of, not every case, but a lot of case, you end up having this upper funnel campaign that is great. Maybe it's getting good results and then it stops.
[00:14:16] Jeric Griffin: And then you move into a lower funnel campaign and they don't run simultaneously and there's no middle of the funnel piece to connect them from a campaign perspective. And on top of that, there's no data that's connecting the people that saw, or more importantly, engaged with your upper funnel campaign to the rest of your campaigns that are, to your point, more intent based, more bottom of the funnel.
[00:14:38] Jeric Griffin: And so the funnel aspect of it, I think is number one, is the number one problem. 'cause there's so much neglect that happens there, and a lot of that just comes from I guess ignorance is maybe the right word. I know I don't mean that in a derogatory way whatsoever, but just people maybe don't know any better because they're not looking at the data through the right perspective.
[00:14:55] Jeric Griffin: And then so that, that's problem number one. And then without that, there's no way to optimize your customer journey and that, and that doesn't matter if you're, you know, whether you're selling shoes or eyeglasses or health insurance or anything else. If you don't have that first strategy, you know, really locked down, you're never gonna be able to even view your customer journey through, you know, e even a, even a lens that is accurate, much less be able to optimize it.
[00:15:24] Ray Mina: To get a bit granular for a second, because you, you, you talking, you're talking about these stop of funnel strategies that generally create awareness and engagement and maybe aren't designed for, generally they can, but they're generally not designed at like capturing the bottom of funnel intent.
[00:15:40] Ray Mina: If you're talking to a marketing team, they're like, Hey, we tried, you know, I'll pick one, we tried CTV and it just didn't work for us. What do you immediately suspect went wrong? Like where, where does your head go when you hear that?
[00:15:52] Jeric Griffin: I think that they, two things. Number one, they didn't track it correctly. So going back to the attribution, like when they say we didn't get anything from it, okay, well, what do we mean by that? How were you tracking that? What attribution lens were you looking at through that? And number two is was it connected to anything that was intent based? Because if CTV was the only thing that you were running and you were expecting a lot of directly attributable actions from that, that, I mean, we're, we're, you know, we're, we're, we're trying to paint with a pencil, you're, you're using the wrong tool.
[00:16:23] Jeric Griffin: We're, we're, we're on the wrong off, on the wrong foot to begin with. So I'd say that that's, that's the primary thing and that's what I run into in a lot of cases. And most of the time, well, I should say most of the time, but a lot of the time I'll see people try to actually merge the two together. So CTV is actually a perfect example of this.
[00:16:42] Jeric Griffin: They'll take CTV and they'll put a QR code or a vanity URL or a CallRail phone number that, a vanity phone number that that's going through and either of those three things. And so they're trying to make this upper funnel or something that's maybe even could be considered middle of the funnel campaign, and they're trying to force it to become a lower funnel and they're saying, well, we didn't get very much out of it because we were expecting, you know, X number of directly attributable conversions, whatever your conversion may be in that scenario, then obviously they're not gonna get it. And so then going back to our conversation earlier, they'd then neglect that channel for the future.
[00:17:17] Jeric Griffin: Because they think, well, it doesn't do anything for us. When they were trying to put a square peg in a round hole the whole time.
[00:17:23] Ray Mina: Yeah, it's the classic, like, I'm gonna take this channel that's really about rich level of education awareness and put a QR code on it to make it transactional. What, like, just quickly, what, what would be a better approach?
[00:17:35] Ray Mina: Like, I'm, I'm, Hey, I've never done CTV, I've got buy-in from leadership to take, you know, 10% of my spend to do an experiment. What would be a better approach? Like what, what would you recommend a, a team do?
[00:17:47] Jeric Griffin: I mean, just in a very high level, I think having the QR code on there is great, and I think, I think they absolutely should have that, but just don't make that your end all be all.
[00:17:56] Jeric Griffin: I mean, there are all kinds of, you know, kind of tests or pilot campaign types out there. So as I was actually having a conversation just in a hallway earlier with somebody about this, where like if you're watching a show on Amazon Prime and you get an ad, a lot of times if you're watching it on a smart TV or your phone.
[00:18:15] Jeric Griffin: It'll actually have a button you can press to take you directly to that product to buy on Amazon if you're logged into the same account on both. And that's not applicable to every industry. It's not applicable to every marketer. But that's, that's a a pilot type thing that you could do. And I would say if you don't have a pilot, then using CTV as the example, have your QR code there. Absolutely.
[00:18:34] Jeric Griffin: But you've gotta have something tied to that CTV campaign that is transactional but is designed to be so. So that could be something as simple as you're retargeting those people with, you know, performance Max on Google, or a retargeting ad on Facebook or TikTok or where, wherever or whatever you may be using.
[00:18:56] Jeric Griffin: Having something that actually takes that user who does engage with your CTV ad at any capacity. And that could be something as simple as they just watch the whole thing through without skipping it. Then engage them in some other other way. Because I mean, you can even back this conversation up 30,000 feet and start getting, going back to the the traditional frequency conversation.
[00:19:14] Jeric Griffin: Well, if you saw the CTV ad one time, whether or not there was a QR code in it or whatever the intent was, if it was just that one time, there are gonna be a few people that, that may hold for them. That one frequency or that one impression may be all you need, but majority of people, that's not gonna be the case.
[00:19:31] Jeric Griffin: I mean, you've got three layers of things that you can do or solutions that you could do differently to actually get something out of that CTV campaign that you're trying for the first time.
[00:19:41] Ray Mina: I love the picture you just painted because like when you think about intent channels, like paid search is very, it just, the way it works is very transactional. It's like the old Ogilvy, back in the days. Ogilvy like would basically send these letters by mail with a call to action. And the call to action was for you to send a check back with it, which is the, you know, original Google ads. But like the campaigns you're talking about, right?
[00:20:08] Ray Mina: That's the old school Google ad. The campaigns you're talking about require, which you talked about, you know, when last time I connected with you is really orchestration, it's it, you know, you're not gonna run a CTV ad most likely in a vacuum, and that's gonna drive results. It has to be orchestrated with other touchpoints along the way.
[00:20:26] Jeric Griffin: Yeah, and I think the touchpoints is the key because your touchpoint don't necessarily always line up with your customer journey, but they usually give you a pretty good indicator. And so I, I know you've heard me say this example, and a lot of other folks at Freshpaint have heard me give this example of you have a user who clicks on a Facebook ad and then, you know, the phone rings that they're looking at, or kids break something, somebody knocks or whatever happens in their life, life happens and then they, they don't end up converting through that ad that maybe they would have otherwise. So they don't do that. Well then a good marketer is gonna have some sort of retargeting set up for that.
[00:21:08] Jeric Griffin: And so let's say that same person later sees, but doesn't necessarily click on a CTV ad or a display ad that comes from an entirely different, it's a different channel ahead. It's a different platform. And then seeing that triggers them, oh yeah, I was gonna buy that thing that I saw that Facebook ad for.
[00:21:25] Jeric Griffin: Well, they're not gonna go back to their phone 'cause that, or their, their Facebook account. 'cause that ad is gone on Facebook. So what do they do? They go to search, they're gonna go to Google and search for it. And so they're gonna come back either through paid search or organic search, but either way they're coming back and ultimately converting through a spot to where if you only are looking at last click attribution to go full circle in our conversation, then you say, okay, well clearly that CTV ad that we were running or that display a we were running didn't do anything for us.
[00:21:51] Jeric Griffin: But if you look at the multitouch and you look at the whole view through, you say, okay, well depending on first click versus last click, if we wanna look at linear and give it all the same credit, or if we want to even look at a reverse J aspect and say, well, they came to us originally through the Facebook ad.
[00:22:08] Jeric Griffin: Like, that obviously changes your spend allocation and your, and your, you know, channel allocation. But depending on the depth of that data, and I would even say the, the depth and the length of that data. So how, how much of it do you have and then what are the different data points within that you could even adjust your customer journey?
[00:22:26] Jeric Griffin: You know, I, I've, I made this joke recently, but it was actually something that we really considered doing was actually changing the creative in one of those touchpoints because there was so much data flowing through this exact same customer journey, like 60% of your customers were having the same touch points along the way.
[00:22:45] Jeric Griffin: And, and that's not always the case, but if it is, like you could even have some sort of tongue in cheek, you know, line in your display a like, Hey, don't wait to go search for us. Just click here and finish your journey now. I mean, I know I'm, I'm being facetious as a marketer, but those, those are ways that you can, you can actually optimize your customer journey in a way to, uh, be more intimate, for lack of a better word, with your, with your customer because they know what they're about to do. And if you can kind of get there with them and make a joke out of it along the way, like that, that adds trust for your brand, which may not, may not even have been something that was a preliminary goal of the campaign, but, you know, if we can.
[00:23:25] Jeric Griffin: What, what do, what do they say now? Feed two birds with one scone. That's the politically correct way to say that. I mean, that's,
[00:23:31] Ray Mina: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. I like scones when they're not too dry, so that's okay.
[00:23:37] Jeric Griffin: Exactly. Yeah. Same man, who doesn’t?
[00:23:40] Ray Mina: So you, we've been talking about you getting, getting to what you just described is like that journey requires the ability to get to attribution. It's the ability to paint a picture of that journey. And I think we'll both agree that even when you have the skill and the fortitude, it's never perfect. And for a lot of teams, they just look at it as, oh my God, this is too hard. What are, what are strong teams relying on?
[00:24:05] Ray Mina: Like, how, how, what do they need to rely on to make, you know, make these sound decisions like you just outlined?
[00:24:10] Jeric Griffin: Well, I mean, they've gotta have either a really robust data slash analytics team that can put those things together for them, which is. Very few and far between, especially for smaller businesses or they have to have a tool that they, that they buy or partner with.
[00:24:27] Jeric Griffin: So, I mean, you know, I I, I'm not, not paid to say this whatsoever, but I mean like the insights tool with Freshpaint that you guys just recently launched is something that I know I've talked to people obviously in our organization and then others as well to say, Hey, this, this could be a game changer for you if this is, if you've only been looking at last click attribution.
[00:24:47] Jeric Griffin: And to, to your point of what you just said, if you don't have a way to do it yourself, if it's too hard, you don't have the resources, what, whatever the the case may be, this is something that can, can bridge that gap for you. And even if it doesn't give you, based on your data, even if this specific tool or a similar tool, it doesn't give you like complete total view, top to bottom, direct mail, all that stuff included, but at least will give you a way better view of what you have versus what you've been looking at, which is last click only.
[00:25:19] Ray Mina: Not buying a tool, not buying software. Just pretend that that's not in my, in my, in my like capabilities right now. I've got, I've got ad platforms that have, you know, last click attribution. Where should I start? I know I need to move past intent channels and I wanna start to experiment, but I know before I start experimenting, I have to align with stakeholders on how we're gonna measure it. Like what, what are my, what's my MVP approach here?
[00:25:47] Jeric Griffin: In that, in that context, I mean, you've gotta have the data that's coming from your ad platform, so after, after the clicks when they get to you. So really your website or app data and or app data. So whether you're using a GA4 or Adobe Analytics or what, whatever your analytic tool is out there, like those things have got to be flowing perfectly for starters.
[00:26:10] Jeric Griffin: Because those tools will give you a multi-touch attribution view that's not as robust as just, we can roll it out and it's done completely and totally. We can base every dollar we spend in the future off of that. But it will give you, to your point, way more signals than just looking at whatever the last click data is showing in each of the app platforms.
[00:26:32] Jeric Griffin: Because if you go, if you open one of those tools and you say, okay, for all these conversions, like if we go by linear, to use that as an example, linear attribution view, what, what, what is, what data, how does that data change if we do that? And then of course your, you know, your paid search is gonna go way down for your conversions being attributed versus last click.
[00:26:55] Jeric Griffin: And then who knows what else you may have that was virtually zero that may start coming up. And so, that is the primary signal, or I guess that's a collection of signals, if you will. And I'd say that would be step one. And to get there, you've gotta have really robust tag management. So whether you use something that's out of the box, like one of those tools provides like a Google Tag Manager, or you use, you know, a, a different tool such as I got, you know, Freshpaint does a lot of that.
[00:27:24] Jeric Griffin: Like those, those are, I'd just say table stakes to getting to have some of those signals to where you can get an actual view of what you're actually getting versus just taking all the ad platforms word for it.
[00:27:37] Ray Mina: I love that. Yeah. One thing I know that you and I are really aligned on, I'm, I'm, I, I like to think that product marketing is one of my superpowers, especially when it comes to understanding people that we're trying to reach and understanding our audience.
[00:27:50] Ray Mina: And I much prefer being able to do that because there's a lot of optionality once you understand your audience and where to reach them versus just renting and paid search all the timely, you just have so many more possibilities. When, and I know this is important to you as well, when, when you think about non-search channels and teams that are moving beyond non-search channels, they really have to get serious about audiences in a way that they haven't before. Why is that? Why do you, why do you think that's the case?
[00:28:19] Jeric Griffin: Well, because in general, if you're only doing paid search, you don't have a lot of audiences, right? I mean, if you're in the, you know, the Google bubble, then you have paid search. And if, if you're using the other Google tools like Tag Manager and GA4, then you can put everything together in that Google bubble. But to your point, like that doesn't include your audience elements from elsewhere.
[00:28:46] Jeric Griffin: And that Google bubble is also not gonna give you a super clear picture on how even your paid search interacts with your organic search, which goes through the same company. It is part of the same ecosystem, but they intentionally don't give you all that data because I mean, why would they? So, I mean, that's, that's kind of step number one. So audiences become so much more important.
[00:29:04] Jeric Griffin: If and when you're able to take that data in that ecosystem, and then data from other ecosystems, so your Metas and your TikToks and your CTVs, and any other programmatic DSD or SSP that you're working with. If you can start to mix those things together and you see audience trends that are that really supersede what happens inside just one of those ecosystems that, that could, to your point, that could change, could, maybe, not necessarily, but it could change your entire view of your customer base as a whole, because then your, your majorities and your minorities may change and, you know, we've, we've kind of used that same analogy for a lot of the different attribution conversations that we've had so far.
[00:29:46] Jeric Griffin: But those are things that if you have those and you're able to start to make this cycle of audiences and these ecosystems all flowing together into one larger ecosystem that belongs to you versus the ad platforms, then all of your marketing dollars become more efficient.
[00:30:03] Ray Mina: Makes total sense. You, we talked, you, you really put it in a, in a really clear way about if I'm running CTV and I'm running it in a vacuum and there's no orchestration, like what happens to the audience that like highly engages, you know, with those assets? What do I do with that becomes a, a more, you know, maybe the first audience is quite broad, and now that second audience that's highly engaged, you know, watches an entire video end to end that becomes a more narrow audience.
[00:30:33] Ray Mina: I was, I was being snarky on LinkedIn recently. I think that's what you're supposed to do to get attention. And I, and I said, what's the difference between abandoned cart and abandoned appointment? Like why, why doesn't, or abandoned service line or abandoned whatever in healthcare. That's kind of what we're talking about.
[00:30:50] Ray Mina: I, I went to the extreme, obviously, like this is steps before that, but yeah, like what is the, what is the healthcare equivalent is of, of abandoned cart for e-commerce? Is it what you're talking about is like continuing to funnel the audience and narrow it, narrow it until it is in a logical place where you can offer your service.
[00:31:10] Jeric Griffin: Yeah, I would, I would say it's similar. So I mean, you know, for health insurance, like during the enrollment period, obviously it's, you know, you have an abandoned application of someone applying for, you know, Medicare or what, whatever they're applying for during that enrollment period. For healthcare in general, I mean, an abandoned appointment I would say happens all the time and I, and I, I see that in like my peers ads and ads when I was in very specific healthcare space working for hospital systems.
[00:31:38] Jeric Griffin: Where we would see different customer journeys and, and those were aligned to, you know, different campaigns. We had to have different parts of the funnel where users were going and abandoning those online appointment scheduling. And to your point, if you have all of that different audience data together, then you can start to make assumptions that may or may not change your advertising strategy, but they could definitely change your user experience and your customer journey.
[00:32:02] Jeric Griffin: Because if you see a lot of those users, let's say a vast majority of them are abandoning their appointment scheduling, and most of those people are orthopedic, or maybe most of those people are cardiovascular, but you're not seeing that trend in your other service lines. So then maybe you look at that and say, okay, well what's the difference?
[00:32:23] Jeric Griffin: Is there a difference in the application process? Are there, are there maybe too many questions for ortho compared to cardio or vice versa? I mean, there's a thousand different questions that you can ask, and you're kind of, you're kind of getting into the CRO space at that, at that point.
[00:32:40] Jeric Griffin: But those are the types of things that once you accomplish that, then you can kinda work backwards to your audience from your advertising and say, okay, now that we've got this straight, now that we know, whatever that takeaway or group of takeaways is about that specific audience, how do we start that journey and make it better for them in step one, which is their first touchpoint with us, which could be a CTV ad, a Facebook ad, a linear TV ad even.
[00:33:03] Jeric Griffin: I mean, what, whatever that thing is, let's make sure that we optimize that customer journey or that patient journey at the end, let's optimize it from the beginning. But you have to have that piece to start that and kind of work your way backwards.
[00:33:19] Ray Mina: Yeah. I love, I love that. That makes, that makes a lot of sense to me. I wanna leave, I wanna make sure we leave everyone who's listening with practical tip of like, I think the one thing that I'm taking away from you too is like, you used the word specifically about pilot, like running experiments. Like Totally. You don't have to. You don't have to take big risks, but if you can find a way with leadership to carve out an even small amount to start testing, what, maybe we can give some practical things.
[00:33:48] Ray Mina: I know it's very tactical, but like how much, if you have 100% of spend or most of that in search and paid search and bottom of funnel, what's a reasonable amount to carve away as a percentage to start, like utilizing for a pilot? Is there, is there some kind of like framework you have in mind?
[00:34:05] Jeric Griffin: Yeah, I would say anybody, no matter how small their budget is, like they could carve out 5 to 10% for something like that, and the 5 to 10% would is a very small example because the A/B test or the pilot doesn't have to be something earth shattering or something that's really gonna change your operations or your outcomes.
[00:34:22] Jeric Griffin: It could be something as simple as just landing page optimization, like you could have a dynamic landing page that changes depend on if a user comes through a page channel or an organic channel. That's one of my favorite A/B tests to do. That's super small. You don't have to spend much on that. You have outcomes right away to know which one's better.
[00:34:39] Jeric Griffin: So you don't have to run your A/B test for 30 days for something like that in a few days. You, you'll know in most cases what's working well for you. If you can't do a dynamic landing page, like make two separate landing pages, and while we're all here being good marketers, if you do that, make sure at least one of those is canonicalized to the other.
[00:34:55] Jeric Griffin: So you don't hurt yourself from an SEO perspective. But then drive your ads to those two different pages and figure, you know, figure out which one is working better for you. And that may be going back to the, the button color or the button size, the button placement, or you know, titles at the top of the screen.
[00:35:11] Jeric Griffin: You know, whether our call to actions at the top or the bottom, do we change it as the creative? There you can do all those different things. I would say don't A/B test all nine of those things at once because then you don't know what or, but all those things are super. They're small but effective starting points.
[00:35:29] Jeric Griffin: And then, you know, maybe eventually you do get to something where you're testing, you know, half a million dollars on an an Amazon CTV that clicks and takes you directly to the product if you're in the e-commerce space. But I would say don't look at those two things and think, oh my gosh, it's David versus Goliath.
[00:35:45] Jeric Griffin: Do whichever one is more applicable for you. Just because a pilot exists doesn't mean that it's, it's made for or will be meaningful for your specific company or even your specific right product or service that you're marketing at that moment in time.
[00:36:00] Ray Mina: Yeah. You kind of have to start with what is, what is your goal? What is the thing that you're trying to build towards? And some of these goals, intent isn't the best channel, it is not the best tool for the job. So then what is, you know, where do you, back to the audiences part. Where, where can you reach your audience? How do you, you know, what's the best way to get in front of them if, if that's the challenge for you is, which is like, Hey, I've got intent.
[00:36:20] Ray Mina: It's working over here, but there's an audience that I don't think I'm able to reach as effectively, and maybe I have some qualitative data to, to indicate that my strategy isn't reaching them effectively. And that's, so that's net new. I need to cast a web outside. It's away from conversion rate optimization.
[00:36:37] Ray Mina: It's, it's more of a targeted approach. How would you think about that pilot? Like how would you think about that in that 5 to 10%? I know I have to start small. What would be some, what would be some ways you would go about that?
[00:36:49] Jeric Griffin: So we do a lot of, I, I would say, I said earlier that my favorite A/B test was the landing page dynamic, but the test that I do most often is exactly what you're describing. And so that is, we have our audience that's tried and true. We maybe have another audience that we have tested before and now we're trying to expand it a little bit. Then maybe we have a third, so I guess A/B/C test, if you will. Okay. You have three, three different audiences there. And that third one is what you're saying, like it's a, it's a new area.
[00:37:16] Jeric Griffin: We're, we're to use the biblical metaphor, we're putting the net on the other side of the boat and we're gonna see, you know what, what's over there. Or maybe to your point, we have a small amount of dataset that suggests we should try to go after this new area or this, this new audience. I would always A/B test those against each other in a, a controlled experiment.
[00:37:38] Jeric Griffin: Make sure it's the right amount of budget. Make sure that, you know, you're creative and your landing page and all those things are lined up correctly and look at it from an efficiency perspective. And I would tell everybody the same thing that kind of dictates all of my experiments and a lot of this is from trial and error over the years for, so here, here's your example of what not to do.
[00:37:56] Jeric Griffin: I would say make sure that you use the efficiency in context. So if you have 5% of your spend on this new audience and it performs really well on your sink and great, we've just had this huge unlocker and now it's gonna do wonders for our business on this, this new area. Don't just assume blindly that that will scale to the same level as your trying to true audience, stair-step it.
[00:38:19] Jeric Griffin: So your A/B tests, I guess, to leave with your A/B tests should be these never ending kind of spinoffs. So you should have that initial A/B test, prove that the efficiency is there, and then stair-step that scalability until you find your point of no return. As a young marketer, I was very excited about, you know, mad scientists, A/B testing things and we, and we did that and we found a lot of efficiency and I tried to just scale it to a hundred overnight.
[00:38:45] Jeric Griffin: And needless to say, that backfired. So don't, don't make the same mistake, stair-step into that. But to your point, you can absolutely do that in a small scale environment and figure out new areas or new unlocks without it harming your overall campaign goals or media spend.
[00:39:04] Ray Mina: I love that. Yeah, it's like it, there's two parts to this. The first part is, does this work effectively at all in a pilot? And then what's the, what's the headroom? Everything like we just talked about, intent channels have headroom, there's a ceiling to all these other channels, and maybe over time you're just establishing new audiences and new channels that you know are not a hundred percent of your efforts, but become an integral part of the foundation that you're building.
[00:39:30] Jeric Griffin: Yeah, and I would say correlations come into a big piece of that. So if you have the three audiences in the A/B test that we just described, like that newer or that new one, the, that you've just maybe unlocked. It doesn't necessarily have to be this thing all on its own, depending on your, your specific campaign or your service or your product.
[00:39:48] Jeric Griffin: It may have to be its own thing and that's totally fine. And, and I honestly really good in some cases, but if it's a new audience that you're now saying, Okay, great, these people can apply to the same product or service if, if you just have one or maybe a narrowed arsenal of, of product or services, maybe you can start to overlay some of those together with your tried and true, and it doesn't necessarily have to be just, well, we take this one and stack it on top and hope that it's peanut butter and jelly.
[00:40:16] Jeric Griffin: Maybe you say, Okay, well there's 80% overlap between our tried and true audience and this audience. So what if we pull that out? So that's kind of one of the spinoffs I was talking about. What if we pull that overlay out and now we have a, a new phase of our A/B test and then in those cases, like sometimes you may get to where something is now your new tried and true audience, like the definition of that has changed.
[00:40:39] Jeric Griffin: And if that doesn't happen, that doesn't mean that you failed in the A/B test, but that's one of many positive outcomes that you can get from doing that.
[00:40:48] Ray Mina: I love it. Yeah, really practical advice. You don't, you know, five to 10% of your budget for testing. There's lots of simple ways that you can do testing and make sure you're testing for effectiveness and then secondary is after that testing for scale. Don't assume that you know this thing at a small pilot is gonna go further than that. You have to go through that second level. Jeric, I really appreciate you being on Marketing Rounds with me. This is really informative and I think people have some really good takeaways from it today.
[00:41:16] Jeric Griffin: I hope so, man, if, like I said earlier, if nothing else, they can learn not to do the things that were, I made mistakes along the way, but I appreciate you having me on.
[00:41:24] Producer: Today's episode is brought to you by Freshpaint. If you're a healthcare marketer under pressure to do more with less, Freshpaint helps you stretch fixed budgets, prove what's working, and protect the strategies that drive growth. Freshpaint brings performance and privacy together in one platform so you can see real outcomes across channels and double down where ROI is highest. With Freshpaint, privacy becomes your performance advantage. Turn better data into smarter decisions, find more high value patients, and keep your growth plans on track. Learn more@freshpaint.io.