Ep. 165 – Attribution is GARBAGE 🗑️ ? What is a HOLDOUT Group? 🎥 GREAT MOVIES: Mannequin and Notting Hill? | Ask Us ANYTHING

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Welcome to do this not that.

The podcast for marketers.

You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately. You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins and pitfalls to avoid.

Also, dig into life, pop culture and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schedelson. Let's do this, not that.

We are here for Ask Us Anything from Do this not that. This is our short episode where all week long we get in work questions and we get in ridiculous questions and we try to tackle one of each.

And if you want to submit a question, it's really easy. You go to jelson.com and there's a button that says ask us anything and you would be amazed at what we get. So let's jump right into it.

Let's go to the work question first. We got a question from Dave from Livingston, New Jersey. I was just in Livingston a few weeks ago and you know what?

I went to a diner there was called, it's called Seymour's. It was great. I got like a breakfast sandwich. It was awesome. Where I live we have horrible diners.

I think every city town in the country needs to have good diners that are like 24 7, always open. You can get like a breakfast sandwich at 2 in the morning or chocolate chip pancakes. Am I hungry? I must be hungry.

Anyway, the diners in Boca Raton stink. What's your question, Dave? All right, Jay, My company thinks last touch attribution is the right way to measure roi. Am I crazy that this is crazy?

No, I am on board with you, but let me first explain what last touch attribution is.

So last touch attribution is a way of giving all the credit for a sale or a conversion to the last marketing touch point a customer or prospect interacted with before making that purchase or asking for a demo.

So if you have been marketing to somebody for six months, okay, in social media and all sorts of different ways and search, whatever, and then you sent an email and that specific person clicked on that email, filled out your form and went into pipeline or asked for a demo or bought the pair of socks from that specific email, it's giving all the credit to that last touch, the last thing that that person did. And I think that is total and complete garbage.

I saw this stat recently from Bizarre Voice that said 41% of marketers rely primarily on last click attribution. That is stupid. First of all, in general, I know this is terrible. I think attribution is an Absolute myth. It is. It's a myth.

Marketing is surround sound. I mean, think about this podcast. You think you listen to this podcast, oh, Jay, he might have a clue.

And then you get an email from me, oh, I like what Jay said in the email. And then you see a social post from me. And then maybe a few months, I'm like, oh, wow, we need a new demand gen agency.

I'm going to reach out to that guy J because I like a lot of his content. It wasn't because of one email I sent you or one episode I did or one social post. It is surround sound.

So this idea of giving any credit to that last touch is totally ridiculous. It ignores the entire customer or prospect journey. And one of the biggest fails is that it misallocates your ad spend.

You're going to think, oh, wow, our search ads are really converting to sales or pipeline, right? Because it was the last thing the person clicked on. So what can you do about it? One of the things you can do about it is leveraging holdout groups.

And I don't think enough companies leverage holdout groups with their marketing efforts. So what is a holdout group?

Basically, it's a randomly selected subset of the target audience that you are marketing to that you intentionally exclude from receiving the different marketing campaigns that you're doing. Right? So if you have a database of 100,000 people, you would take 10%, and that's usually the number. Your holdout group usually represents about 10%.

You take 10% of your audience and you put it off to the side.

You don't let it get the retargeting ads, you don't let it get the social ads, you don't let it get the email campaigns, you don't let it get all that stuff. All right?

And then with each marketing campaign that you do, you can measure all the new customers that you've gotten, all the new pipeline that you've gotten.

You measure it against the tactics that you're doing, the email that you sent, okay, the social post that you promoted, and then you match that, the same database of net new customers to your holdout group. And you see, hey, did our holdout group also generate new customers by us doing nothing?

And then you're going to see the true lift of all your different marketing efforts. Did our marketing efforts actually result in new customers, new prospects, new pipeline?

Or if we had done nothing at all, the same outcome would have happened. And I don't think enough marketers and brands leverage holdout groups. But it doesn't cost you anything.

And it's a really simple thing, and it can benefit you long term and really help you understand where to put your ad spend. Okay?

All right, so before we get to the ridiculous question, which is totally ridiculous, I want to let you know that this podcast is sponsored by the greatest sponsor in the history of all sponsors, Marigold. That's my email sending platform. You need to check them out at me, marigold.com business, consumer, small, medium, big.

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You need this thing because zero party data, where people actually giving you the information for you to leverage is everything. Check it out@jweddleson.com Marigold all right, let's get to the ridiculous question. Question from Jessica in Miami.

I live 45 minutes north of Miami and I almost never go. Why is that? Because I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I don't care. But I care about you, Jessica. What's your question?

Jay, are you excited to watch the new movie? It ends with us with Blake Lively. And even though it's not a rom com, what are your favorite rom coms?

Well, first of all, I'm very excited about the Blake Lively movie. I talked about it earlier this week. It's going to be huge. Okay?

So I don't care if you're like some sort of like, I'm not into these emotional romantic stories. Get over it. Gonna be great. I will definitely be going this weekend. My favorite romantic comedies, in no particular order. Okay.

And some of them, you're like, that's not romantic comedy. But you're actually wrong because you don't know what you're talking about.

So obviously, Pretty Woman that came on the other day, again, I haven't seen so long. That movie is phenomenal. I mean, if there's a human being on earth that doesn't like Pretty Woman, you're a loser. Straight up facts.

Don't know what to tell you. Notting Hill. I think Hugh Grant is a funny dude. Notting Hill is a great movie. Again with Julia Roberts that's two of Julia Roberts. So there's that.

Coming to America. Do not at me and tell me Coming to America is not a rom com. It's one of the best rom coms of all time. Eddie Murphy is incredible.

So coming to America is great. Back to Hugh Grant. I would say Four Weddings and a Funeral. I think a lot of people have not seen Four Weddings and Funeral. It ages very well.

I am telling you, if you've never seen 40 Weddings and Funeral, stop listening this podcast, go watch it, quit work. This is what you should be doing today. Two others I would put on the list which are so random. Mannequin. You're like, what's mannequin?

That was a movie back in the 80s where it was like a department store and the mannequin came to life during at night and it was great. Mannequin 2 is a horrible movie, but Mannequin 1 was great. And then more recently, forgetting Sarah Marshall is a very funny movie.

Very, very funny movie. And it's a great romantic comedy. So that's a great one. You know which one's horrible is you've got Mail.

If you think you've got Mail is a good romantic comedy, I don't want to tell you. You need to get out more. That movie stinks. I just thought it was the most annoying movie of all time. Anyway, I don't know what we're talking about.

So we've covered a lot today. Thanks for being here. Come on, follow the show. Leave it a review. Why not? What else are you doing right now? Leave it a review.

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