Episode Summary
At business intelligence agency Praxis Metrics, AJ Yager and his team harness the power of data to help e-commerce companies grow. The agency evolved from an offering AJ launched within his marketing agency Yager Media Group.
Referrals have been huge for expanding Praxis’ business in the early days — and AJ found a lot of success by being a guest on podcasts hosted by people in his network. The agency grew around 400% in 2019, which he attributes largely to being a guest on five to seven podcasts that got him in front of the right audiences.
With the help of Praxis’ Marketing Director Spencer Connell, the agency has increased inbound leads through an expanded content library. Once a lead is in the funnel, they go through the nurture sequence with the goal of getting them on a sales call. “All we’re trying to do is get people from understanding what Praxis does, get them excited about what Praxis does, and then get them on a call. That’s our marketing ideology,” he explains.
On this episode of Tech Qualified, host Justin Brown talks to the duo about their latest content strategies, which includes the launch of a new podcast and videocast series of their own as well as a potential book.
“Now what we’re doing is saying we want to own this conversation around data. We’re going to simplify the complicated subject of data,” AJ says.
Guest Profiles
- Name: AJ Yager
- What he does: AJ is the Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer of Praxis Metrics, a marketing agency that helps companies use data to increase business. He started Praxis as a digital marketing agency with a data-driven approach and has grown to be a thought leader on the subject, launching the brand Data Rich to steer the conversation surrounding data.
- Company: Praxis Metrics
- Noteworthy: “A lot of people think going from gut instinct isn't data-driven. I honestly don't think that's true because our brains are constantly looking at all the different data points.”
- Name: Spencer Connell
- What he does: Spencer serves as Marketing Director at Praxis Metrics where he has been focused on aggregating and updating the content the company has generated in the past.
- Company: Praxis Metrics
- Noteworthy: Spencer worked in B2C for about four or five years before joining Praxis and switching to B2B.
Key Insights
- When Spencer joined Praxis, he took the years of content — podcast appearances, video, blog posts etc. — the company had generated and compiled it into a highly curated ebook. Praxis uses this as a lead magnet to attract potential customers and get them on a free data strategy session. The ebook is so targeted that the sales team closes more than 30% once a prospect goes through that funnel and gets on a call.
- Sales and marketing are synergistic, AJ says. One does not exist without the other. He believes that marketing’s goal is to deliver a clear message and reach the right people, following the avatars they’ve set up. Therefore, sales has to understand these avatars as well in order to close the deal. To do this, they’ve set up a system within their online platform that maps out the steps of each funnel, marking each team with different colors. “We're constantly making sure it's one organism and that everybody sees the steps that it takes and that this is a team effort,” AJ says.
- Integrating data-driven approaches into your decisions and programs can be overwhelming, but luckily, you don’t need to be an expert. AJ says that they want clients to know that it’s okay not to understand everything. That’s why content became a necessity for Praxis, an outlet for educating people about the confusing and complex subject of data. They started by speaking at events as much as possible and then moved into videos and social media to the point that they were starting to get requests from other companies to create content. “Now what we're doing is saying we want to own this conversation around data. We're going to simplify the complicated subject of data,” AJ says.
Episode Highlights
- Helping businesses translate waste into productivity
“What we provide is insights into what’s been working so far for them. And then also areas of waste that are blocking them from scaling their business even faster. So we help them pinpoint the areas of waste that they can eliminate, and then pinpoint the areas where they’re exceeding their goals and blowing up and then help them transition the areas of waste and then move all those resources over to the areas that are killing it so they can scale rapidly and grow their business exponentially.”
- Being guests on podcasts to drive demand
“It was about getting our content in front of the audience. I had some good friends who had awesome podcasts that just happen to have our target audience. And in 2019, that was what helped turn it for us was finding those key five to seven podcasts/referral partners on the back end of ours that were able to get us in front of the audience we needed, and we had explosive like 400% growth in 2019. And that was one of the primary strategies we used.”
- Ensuring that call with sales
“We pull people in through our lead magnets, our funnels or different things, and then we’ll get them on a nurture sequence. And the entire purpose of all of that is to get them to our sales team because our sales team is just excellent. They do about a 30% conversion rate if we can get them on a call. So basically, all we’re trying to do is get people understanding what Praxis does, get them excited about what Praxis does and then get them on a call. That’s our marketing ideology.”
- Videos that give customers value
“We don’t create videos just to create a transaction; we create videos to enrich someone’s life and give them something valuable. And yes, it may lead to the next call-to-action. But we always wanted to make sure: if people are going to watch something, they get value out of it. That’s our mindset around it.”
- A self-sustaining cycle of reused content
“We created nurture sequences with different types of content. It’s changed dramatically. It’s required us to get even better, every step of the way. We’ve realized, ‘Oh, we just fixed this, but now that creates two new problems that we have to fix.’ Not really problems, but two new opportunities for us. Once we have an email nurture sequence, then all of a sudden, there’s more opportunities to generate more content for the email nurture sequences, and it just compounds and it becomes almost a self-sustaining system of the content, which then creates more demand for new content. So, it becomes a cycle.”
- Where data and intuition meet
“Data is simply information. Even though we’re not necessarily looking at graphs and charts and spreadsheets all the time, as an entrepreneur or a business owner part of that intuition is all that data you’ve accumulated over the past, and it’s just become ingrained in you. You are using data, you are using information to make those decisions even if you’re not looking at an exact graph and making the decision. So, I still think that the data-driven part plays into the intuition.”
