Digital Strategies to Transform your Marketing Decisions

Leigh Smout:                    As a result of COVID, businesses are realizing that they actually have to manage their workforce virtually. They need to find new customers without being able to go to a trade show. They need to manage disrupted supply chains. RAP has been designed by the Toronto Region Board of Trade to help companies improve their digital maturity during these challenging times.

                                           A participant in the program will have their Digital Needs Assessment done, their DNA. Once we have their DNA, we are able to direct them into the programs that help educate companies, help them create a plan, help them get it in touch with the resources, that are going to support them as they manage through these challenges. 

                                           The program is about long term improvement for businesses, about running your business more efficiently, even after the pandemic, that is going to be a critical thing for any business. And in this case, it's going to make all of those businesses stronger. A business can sign up for the program simply by registering at our website, and then we'll get them into that Digital Needs Assessment.

Michael Cascone:            All right, good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us today. My name is Michael Cascone and I am the senior director of the Scale-Up Institute Toronto. Welcome to the latest installment of our RAP webcast series. We are partnering with our good friends today at Rogers Sports & Media, to talk about digital strategies to transform your marketing decisions. 

                                           We're going to have some great focus on very concrete tips and tricks that your small business can implement immediately. It is some fantastic content. So thanks for coming. It's really good having our friends from Rogers Sports & Media here. They're some people who can commiserate with me about the early demise of the Toronto Blue Jays season. I'm still not emotionally over it yet, but we're going to have to get there. 

                                           This series wouldn't be possible without the support of our Scale-Up Institute Toronto sponsors. So Innovate Cities, our RAP program sponsors Cisco Designed, Rogers for Business, Scotiabank and Xero, as well as funding from the government of Canada and the government of Ontario. Our partnerships are with the board's principal sponsors are also critical for this. So the Global Mail, Scotiabank and the University of Toronto. So thank you to all of our sponsors and partners.

                                           A couple tech notes right off the top for all the viewers. If your video is lagging or freezes, there is another stream that can be accessed by clicking the switch stream button on the right side of your screen. For any other technical issues, click request help in the bottom right corner of your screen and someone will be in touch immediately. To submit questions at any point, please click on the questions tab. And finally, a recording of this webcast will be available on supportbusiness.bot.com. 

                                           Now, before we dive into today's important discussion, I'd like to tell you about the Toronto Region Board of Trades recovery activation program, otherwise known as RAP. So you saw the video off the top there that gave you a little bit of information, but RAP is an in-depth series of program streams for Ontario businesses who are looking to emerge from the pandemic economy stronger than before. 

                                           We've actually hit a new milestone this week. So very exciting for the team here, the Scale-Up Institute. So through our online workshops and personalized mentorship sessions with industry experts, RAP has now helped over 1700 Ontario businesses and over 30 industries adapt digitally and build a reliable path towards future growth. 

                                           If you're wondering how to get started, it's very simple. All you got to do is visit rap.bot.com and take our Digital Needs Assessment. That's rap.bot.com. It takes about 20 minutes to complete the survey and assess the digital maturity of your business and how it ranks relative to your industry and your location, and the best part about all of this, thanks to all the support from our partners, there is no cost to participate in any of the RAP programming for businesses all across Ontario. 

                                           So I strongly encourage you to join the other 1700 Ontario businesses that we've worked with so far and have benefited from the program and visit rap.bot.com. I also wanted you to know these programs don't stay still. We are constantly evolving our content with our partners to ensure that your business is getting the support it needs in a very quickly changing landscape. 

                                           It's a great program and hope that you're all able to join us. So onto today's program, I will begin by introducing our fantastic moderator, Erin Bury, CEO, and co-founder of Willful. She's going to be leading our panel of experts through today's discussion.

                                           Named one of marketing magazines top 30 under 30, Erin Bury's an entrepreneur, marketer, startup advisor, and investor. She's also a frequent speaker for Speaker Spotlight, a monthly calmness for the financial post, a tech commentator on CTV News and has been published in the New York Times, Forbes and CNN. It's great to have you here again. I forgot to mention Erin, you are the heartbeat over this program stream. So it's always great for you to join us. We need to include that in your introduction.

Erin Bury:                          I'll adjust my bio, Michael.

Michael Cascone:            Please do.

Erin Bury:                          Thank you so much for that kind intro. And yes, I'm happy to be back. Not sure which number of RAP webcast this is for me, but it's been so great for me to moderate these sessions because I've had a chance to learn from so many experts on a variety of small business topics, which helps me with my own company. 

                                           I am also a small business owner who is facing the exact same challenges as everyone watching today. And I'm really excited, especially for today's conversation because I have a background in marketing and so it's a topic that's very close to my heart. I'm much more educated on marketing than I am on the outcome of the Blue Jays season. So I'll leave that to Michael and we'll turn our attention instead to the excellent panel of experts we have today from Roger Sports & Media.

                                           So I'll do a quick intro of each of them. And then we're going to dive into some conversation about marketing and please do submit any questions that you have. I know that there's always so many questions about small business marketing, and we'll leave lots of time at the end to get to your audience questions. 

                                           So first I'd like to introduce Peter Kambo. He leads the media sales research and insights team. A marketer at heart, he's been in the media industry for 20 years, spending 15 of those years on the media agency side, helping clients with media strategy, planning and measurement. His curiosity for human behavior and decision making drives him in his current role of understanding consumer habits, media consumption, and marketing impact for Roger Sports & Media clients. 

                                           Next, we have Rose Hutchison, the director of advanced advertising sales solutions. Rose oversees the RSM National Programmatic and data driven advertising sales across all platforms, and is responsible for the evolution of Rogers enabled data solutions. As a known numbers person, Rose is the person I'm going to turn to for all of my metrics questions. She oversees sales and go to market strategy at training and capabilities development, in addition to managing a dedicated programmatic and data ad sales team. 

                                           Next, we have Meaghan Brophy, the director of small business and digital direct sales. Over the past 12 years, Meaghan has been dedicated to partnering with small businesses and National Direct Businesses to deliver insights and data driven solutions to help businesses meet identified marketing and business objectives. 

                                           Meaghan oversees Roger Sports & Media's digital strategy focusing on delivering products and services that will help small businesses and National Direct Businesses effectively reach Canadian consumers and compete in market. And finally, we have a wonderful entrepreneur with us today from Sugar Daddies Bakery, possibly my favorite bakery name that I've heard in a long time.

                                           We have co-owner Greg Gardner with a background in data analytics, traditional background for a baker. Over the past three years, Greg and his team have grown Sugar Daddies Bakery from a small home kitchen operation to a national brand with products in Sobeys, Foodland and Farm Boy across Canada. 

                                           Greg continues to look for opportunities to enhance his bakery assortment to meet the sugar free low carb keto category. And Greg, as someone who is almost nine months pregnant, now you have me very hungry and I'm going to have to go seek out some of these products after the today's session. 

                                           So thank you very much to everybody for joining us on this panel. I'm going to kick things off with Peter. How have Canadians changed their consumption habits when it comes to digital media due to the pandemic? And I know for myself, the answer is I've watched a lot more Netflix.

Peter Kambo:                   That's totally true. And I think a lot of us who are here and joining us for this webinar can just look at our own habits and how they've changed. Overall our entire media, the way we consume media in general has changed and Canadians during the pandemic, mostly in 2020, will look at that is the amount of time we spent with media was over 10 and a half hours a day. 

                                           Just think about that, 10 and a half hours a day. It's almost half of our day consuming media. And one of the biggest winners out of that was the digital ecosystem. I was looking back at some data because that's what I do. In 2019, we spent just under five hours online, five hours working online, consuming media, Facebook, social media, watching videos as you mentioned.

                                           And during the pandemic that jumped by almost 35 minutes. We're spending five and a half hours a day online. That is a lot of time and it doesn't seem like. You're like thinking a half hour, well a half hour's not a lot in a day, but it is when you talk about media consumption. So that's been a big number and a big increase.

                                           As we start to move out of this pandemic and we slowly are opening up, we have seen little bit of a dip. We're just at about five hours, 20 minutes. That's where the average Canadian spending with digital media. And again, not a huge dip, but it's still way more than 2019. I think a lot of us probably saw these trends happening even before the pandemic, the pandemics just accelerated it and increased it lot faster than we thought.

                                           They're not going away. So these new behaviors have essentially become habits. Once something becomes a habit, it's really hard to break. So I expect digital actually continue to grow as we move forward. And as we saw now is 50% of all of our time consuming media is on a digital device and a digital platform.

Erin Bury:                          Well, I certainly see myself reflected in those stats, Peter, for better or for worse. And I think when Facebook's properties went down recently, we all noticed how reliant we've become on these online properties as well. Found myself having to read a book like the old fashioned days. 

                                           Why does time spent matter though? If I'm a small business owner and I'm thinking about where to place my online dollars or even just where to spend my time marketing, what can I actually take away from these changing consumption habits to inform my own marketing strategy?

Peter Kambo:                   The easy answer to that is time spent's going to really direct you to where the consumer, the Canadian, the person you're going after is engaged and where they're spending their time. Indirectly the important part of that is time spent leads to engagement, engagement leads to more, as we would call it in the research world, more recall, more memorability. So the more engaged you are with a TV show, a series, the more you remember what happened versus if you just watched a certain clip or not. And that's why time spent becomes very important when thinking about media platforms.

Erin Bury:                          For sure and I would imagine there's a difference between B2B businesses who are targeting other business owners, who might be spending more time on LinkedIn or on different platforms versus direct to consumer platforms where maybe they're spending more of their time on social platforms like Instagram or TikTok.

Peter Kambo:                   Most definitely.

Erin Bury:                          Great. Well, thank you so much for those insights. Very interesting. Now let's turn to Megan. Megan, what infrastructure should small businesses have in place and think about before investing heavily in the digital landscape. I love this question because I think it's every small business owner's inclination to just dive in feet first, right into the deep end of digital marketing and to try to be everywhere, and to boil the ocean almost by having a presence on every digital platform. 

                                           We don't often talk about preparing ourselves to be ready to do that. So can you speak a little bit about what should a small business do before they ever even put up their first social post?

Meaghan Brophy:           Yeah, absolutely. Thanks Erin and it's great to be part of this event. So thank you for having us. As Peter mentioned already, we've seen that shift in consumption habits, and that shift along with the evolution of technology and data has also shifted our marketing behaviors. It shifted from a primarily arts driven approach to more of a science driven approach, now with data capture tools, analytics programs, and so on. 

                                           So the ecosystem has also become more fragmented. And so a business really needs to consider what are the avenues of digital marketing that are going to best suit the outcomes that I'm looking for. And that can range from search engine marketing, search engine optimization, content marketing, influencer marketing, social media marketing, and it just goes on and on and on. 

                                           But I think the point we need to make here is before you can get there, it's really, really important for businesses to audit their user experience of your site or your app. So are you set up to capture the time and attention of users who have either landed on your site through a search query or through an action taken on a marketing campaign that you may have live? 

                                           So the health of your website is a really important part before you dive deep into the digital ecosystem. And you can look at in a few different ways. There's kind of the technical side, there's the content side, and then there's visibility. So what I mean by technical side is things like site speed. How long does it take your site or app to load? 

                                           We have to remember that consumers are fickle and they won't necessarily wait for a long time if you've got slow load times. So what ends up happening is that you could lose a user quite quickly if you don't have the infrastructure and the technical side of your site set up properly. There's a stat out there that says, 50 plus percent of visitors will abandon your site if it doesn't load within three seconds. 

                                           So that's kind of something to consider. Another area of the technical side is, is your site mobile friendly? Are you optimized? We know so much traffic comes in and people are using their smartphones. Is your site set up and optimized for that positive mobile user experience? So another thing to consider.

                                           The site architecture can also be very important. So we don't want to come across a user land on your page and then suddenly it's a 404 page because that 404 page will elicit a negative user experience. And right then and there, you've kind of lost them and they'll likely bounce somewhere else.

                                           So that's another area to consider. Other things like is your site or your app easy to navigate? Is it easy to go around? Do you offer functions that keep the time and attention of that user, for example, the opportunity for a chat function, or is it easy to find information of how to contact customer service? Do you offer a reservation system if it's a different type of business? 

                                           So making sure that those technical things are in place is really important. From the content perspective, you'd want to look at things like duplicate content. Do you have the same content in various parts of that site or app? What is the quality of that content? Is it useful and engaging for that user to be there? How are items organized across the site? 

                                           Also something to be really mindful of as well as things like image quality and optimization for that to drive that user attention. On the other side of it, I think all of this is to say is that to ensure your investment in digital marketing is going to be a positive experience, you need to make sure that the health of your site and the digital user experience for your site is really, really well done. 

                                           Marketing campaigns will absolutely drive users to that environment, but you can quickly lose them or not actually capture them in a meaningful way if you don't have the infrastructure in place. So I think to kind of wrap it up, I would say, SMBs need to make it really easy for customers to do business with you. You really want to create that seamless customer experience that starts with the user experience and the digital ecosystem.

Erin Bury:                          Those are great points, Meaghan, thank you. And it's so important. I think when we think about marketing as small business owners, it's all about how can we get new folks into the funnel. How can we get new visitors to our website, generate leads? But a lot of us don't think about, okay, when they actually land on our website, what is that experience like? 

                                           Is it optimal? And to your point, are we set up to actually collect those leads, whether that's a contact form or a live chat button. So some really great takeaways there, and for anyone in the audience who isn't technical and doesn't know how to set up some of those site speed things, Meaghan, what do you recommend in terms of resources?

Meaghan Brophy:           Yeah, that's great. Listen, it's actually not even something that we do on our side of the business, building websites, that type of stuff, but it is something that I would always start my conversations with any small business about. We take a look at that first to ensure that you're set up, that when you start to invest everything that we drive to your site, whether you're looking for increased site traffic, if you're looking for somebody to make a purchase, if you're looking for somebody to sign up for an event, are you really there that will we drive audiences to you that you can capture them? 

                                           So I would say there's partners all across the market that specialize in understanding how to build websites correctly, who can audit the site that you may currently have and give you some pointers of where some investment is required and it doesn't have to be an, an expensive endeavor. You can look for two or three things that could really improve the user experience once they get to your environment. And those things can go a really long way.

Erin Bury:                          We saw that in practice at Willful, we actually had someone do a bit of an audit around site speed and they identified it as an issue. And to your point, I mean, it's shocking to think that people can't wait three seconds for a site to load, but I think about my own behavior and if it's not loading right away, my attention is turning elsewhere. So to your point, a few simple tweaks can really improve that user experience. 

                                           Now I'd like to move on to Rose. Rose, Meaghan alluded to all of the different tactics that a small business owner can use when it comes to digital marketing from influencer to social, to digital advertising. It can be overwhelming to think about all of the places that you can spend your time and attention. How does a small business owner choose which tactics are best for their company?

Rose Hutchinson:            Yeah, it's a really great question and I think it's one that SMBs all the way to national advertisers are trying to solve on a constant basis with their campaign. I would say there's really two approaches that we recommend. The first one is to, of course, start with data. And when I say the word data, it can all also be quite overwhelming. But when I say data, what I really mean is audience data. 

                                           So it's a great directional tool to help you really understand from a media planning perspective, what are the types of audiences that can be reached? Where are they found? How do they engage best? And when I think about the actual data self, like what does that include? 

                                           Going back to Peter and the information he just shared, market and panel based data and research data. It's a really great tool to leverage, to understand media consumption behaviors, where audiences are going to be. The second one is looking at your own internal data. So things like sales data, your website, and customer data, what do you know about your current customer base? And have you looked at profiling them to understand who they are and understanding then who they are, how do you reach more of them? And then of course, working with partners like Roger Sports & Media and others who have their own first party data. 

                                           So to an SMB that would be considered third party data, but working with third party data sets to understand those media consumption behaviors. So one way is starting with the data, understanding who the audience is, and then using that information to actually reach them. And that's a more strategic narrow approach where you're going after specific group that you've already pre-identified. 

                                           The second approach is really starting broad and a little bit to what you said, Erin, about boiling the ocean. Maybe not that big, but maybe starting with a pretty broad holistic campaign across certain platforms and then using data and analytics to understand performance. So that will help you understand who's engaging, how they're engaging, how often they are engaging and those are indicators that you can use to optimize campaigns against different platforms. 

                                           So if you see that your display campaign is driving engagement and time spent with the ad unit itself, that may be a really great indicator that display is an active way to reach more audiences. Video, of course, across all audio assets, there's multiple ways to test solutions, but using data to actually measure that performance is a great way to then plan out a future campaign. 

                                           So then you can say, I know what works best. I'm going to double down and heavy up in those areas. So really it's about how you sort of leverage that data. And I know that access to data can be a challenge. And working with partners is one way to sort of get over that hurdle to access research data, access other first party data from partners to start somewhere, to get that audience understanding.

Erin Bury:                          Thanks Rose. I think it can be overwhelming when small business owners, especially non-technical small business owners hear data, but I think what you're really saying is learn from your existing customer base if you have one, who are they, where do they spend time and how did they come to you? And then test out new channels and see which audiences are responding best. 

                                           And an example from our own business, our biggest audience is new parents. I'm right in line with becoming one of those soon which is great. But we know that most people coming to our site are new parents. And so we target a lot of our digital marketing around that, knowing that they're the folks who resonate, how did we learn that? Well, just as Rose said, we actually surveyed our customers. We just said, what life event brought you to our site today? And that was as simple as putting together a free survey and emailing it out.

                                           So it doesn't have to be overwhelming. And if you don't have a robust data set or you don't have a partner yet in that, you can either seek out a third party or just do the old fashioned ask your users and they will tell you as a way to get started.

Rose Hutchinson:            Precisely.

Erin Bury:                          Great. Well, moving from the Rogers Sports & Media team's insights to Greg, who is a small business owner, who is practicing this every day. So while I wish I could hear half an hour about your story of how you went from an analytics background to running a bakery, I will ask you instead about just how your experience with the bakery has been during the pandemic, how your business model changed and what key learnings you were taking away from that to inform the next few years of your business.

Greg Gardner-Or...:        That's a great question and always a nice story to share. So my analytics background is where my base career is, and the bakery was supposed to be just a little side gig. It started off with a $65 craft table and is now grown into multimillion dollar specialty bakery. So what ends up happening is when the pandemic hit, things happened very, very quickly, especially for a small business that was just starting. 

                                           We ended up going back to basics and we originally had a website where people would order from before we had a store. And so when things were closing up and the store was no longer an option for us to sell in, we went back to our website and we turned everything on that we had turned off previously and started looking at where the customers were coming to our website to even search. 

                                           We weren't doing any marketing at that point. And some of the analytics that were coming out were surprising us with what types of people were even coming to our website. We ended up moving things back to online, and that's where we're at now. We're able to meet a lot of growing demand in markets that we traditionally couldn't reach with a bricks and mortar.

                                           Then we also started noticing that people were ... It was talked about before, high expectations of being on a mobile device and being able to communicate while you're walking down the street or something like that. They don't want to be on the phone. So we implemented some digital tools that you were able to talk directly with us and order directly with us from your mobile device. 

                                           That is when things started taking off. So there's a ton of data now that comes in and we've found a new market for ourselves, which is in the diabetic community, because our bakery is a sugar free gluten free bakery. And we were targeting people that were following a ketogenic diet, but we're noticing more of our market is now being moved over to the diabetic community and dieticians and things like that.

Erin Bury:                          Great. Well, thank you for sharing. It's a really incredible story and congrats on all your growth thus far. As a follow up question. I'm wondering when you were just getting started, how did you prioritize your own marketing tactics? I think Rose just spoke about how to kind of define where to spend your time. Meaghan alluded to all of these various ways you could have your time influencer, social, et cetera. 

                                           So what did you do when just starting out and how has that evolved? Thanks to the pandemic. You mentioned moving more online, giving people the ability to maybe live chat, connect with you more directly, but would love your thoughts.

Greg Gardner-Or...:        It's really interesting because when you very first start out and a lot of small businesses, you're being bombarded with a ton of things that you need to prioritize throughout the day. You can't get everything done that needs to be done as a small business owner. And so when you're prioritizing marketing, you don't see a return on that right away. So it might be something that you put off and you decide that you want to do later. 

                                           But really the marketing is the number one thing, because if you don't get that right, you're not going to have a business six months from now. They say, give someone that's busy all this work and they'll get it done faster than someone that has nothing to do. And so my business partner, David, what we decided to do was go online with our lives live.

                                           So this is what you see, this is what we're doing. We're engaging with our people. We were in a life journey ourselves following a ketogenic diet, taking sugar out of our diet. And we were sharing our experiences live with our audience who ended up being a lot of them our customers. And we've continued that even today, because it has been so successful.

                                           Every Saturday morning at 9:45, we go live on camera, whether my hair is done or not, here I am. Half the time it turns into a comedy show, but that's what people like to see. They like to see what's going on behind the scenes with the business and engaging with your customers with stories and personal experiences are really, really key. A

                                           I think a level of being genuine, it's fine to have influencers but a lot of times people can see right through that. Whereas when they see you for Thanksgiving, back in the kitchen, actually making, stuffing, because you're so busy, they like that and they can connect with it. That's kind of what I would recommend.

Erin Bury:                          That's a great point. I always say that as small business owners, our secret weapon is our story, not our origin story, but also the day to day behind the scenes of growing a business. Everyone wants to root for small businesses to succeed, especially in the context of COVID. I love those tips about being real and sharing a bit of the behind the scenes, and that means sharing the wins, but also the struggles. And ultimately you're talking about the power of storytelling, which every small business owner should absolutely be investing in. So thanks Greg for that. 

                                           Wonderful. Well, that brings us to the end of my questions. Now I'd like to move to some audience questions. We have several that have come in here. So I'm going to start with Peter, a question about market research. Why does effective marketing need consumer insights and what are the benefits of investing in market research to understand your audience better?

Peter Kambo:                   So again, we'll go back to what Rose had said is it really helps you understand the landscape you're working in and the audience or the customer you need to go after. We've done a couple of studies for clients internally that have needed help. And one client was a larger client, but they were new to the market. They didn't know where that landscape was and who their competitors were, what the opportunity was in that market and who presented the greatest growth for that consumer. And so we did that research for them. 

                                           We found the data, we found the insight. And then from that, we looked at how we can help them again, to Rose's point find those people based on their actions, where are they spending their media time? Who are they? Do we have this audience and worked cohesively together with the client on a media plan, which we thought would drive their business.

                                           And so that's the importance of doing research as much as you can. It also allows you to understand if you start it off and you do it on a constant basis, how you're performing. Is what you're doing making headway. And are you seeing again, growth and uplift from your activities that you're doing? It doesn't have to necessarily be a marketing activity. It could have been looking at your website analytics to what Greg was talking about, or people watching these content videos. 

                                           Are they streaming us live, trying to engage with what we're putting out there from the content perspective? Do they enjoy it? How can we improve it? All that kind of research allows you not only help you with your marketing plan, but also a better experience for the consumers you currently engage with

Erin Bury:                          Great points. And to your point, I think it's not just about discovering those insights, it's about benchmarking and comparing them over time to see how things have changed and hopefully how you've moved the needle on whatever your core mission is.

                                           Moving over to Rose. You talked a lot about having data. And so there's a question from someone who wants to know about whether they need to have their own customer data to make use of data strategies, excuse me, that will help target potential consumers. What if they don't have the original data? So you spoke a little bit about third party data sets, but maybe breaking that down a bit more, what's first party data versus third party? Can I get started if I don't have any of my own,

Rose Hutchinson:            So to answer the second piece first, first party data to an advertiser is their own data. Third party data to an advertiser is partner data. So for example, the data that Roger Sports & Media has. It's a great question. And it's one that we often deal with. And I think Peter alluded to an example, we do this a lot where a client will come to us and they don't have data. And a great example is with a travel client that we worked with recently, as you can imagine, nobody was traveling. 

                                           So they had very little data about who was actually going to be interested in traveling when the time came. So we tapped into our own first party data set, which was telco data based on location. And we looked at where are consumers going in the real world within Canada from a domestic travel perspective.

                                           So we started to track activity around places like Whistler, Prince Edward County, Banff, just to see are people actually leaving their homes and going to these domestic travel locations to spend time in a travel capacity? And those insights were really important for the travel advertiser, because it allowed them to understand a few things, who are these people? How long are they going? How often are they going? And essentially we created an audience for them that was going to be the first people to take that step when travel opened up. 

                                           So now they know more about who are the first travelers in market, and then they could use that to create a media plan across multiple platforms. It's really about if you don't have data, there's a lot of data out there and to partner with a company on their first party data, it's important to look for trusted partners, of course. Partners who have first party to them, customer opted in data Canadian data. 

                                           Those are all relevant things to think about when you're partnering on data for your own initiatives, but they're really great tools. And there's a lot of different levers that could be pulled to create that audience profile, to then use for planning and activation in a digital media campaign.

Erin Bury:                          That's a great example, it's always nice to have a case study to kind of illustrate what you're referring to. So great example of travel. And I can say as someone who's based in Prince Edward county, I don't need data to tell me this is a hot spot this summer. Great, I have a question for Meaghan next. This is a great one, actually. What are some of the misconceptions when it comes to the digital landscape that SMBs should be weary of when focused on brand building and engaging with new potential customers?

Meaghan Brophy:           That's a great question. I would say it's really important to remember that the full marketing funnel is really important. So right from the top of brand building an awareness to that kind of middle funnel intent consideration engagement, right down to the lower funnel of that evaluation and purchase. 

                                           So when you're shifting focus over to the digital landscape and with a focus on data driven, scientific, measurable approaches to marketing, it's important not to lose sight of that mid and upper funnel part of the customer journey, and those touch points when developing those marketing plans.

                                           There was a really great cartoon and I actually think it came from one of Peter's insights presentations, but it showed a user being exposed and this was inclusive of digital media or sorry, of traditional media. But it showed a user being exposed to various parts of a campaign. So that user saw a television campaign. They saw a radio campaign, they saw maybe an out of home placement. They may have seen something in print, and then there's the digital campaign via mobile. 

                                           I think the caption on the cartoon I'm paraphrasing says something along the lines of move all my money to mobile. The reason for that was because the analytics showed that the final conversion or action was driven through that mobile marketing component. But what you don't want to lose sight of is that the reason that they were there is because that pool of audiences was captured from all the different types of activations that happened that moved that user down that funnel to take an action. 

                                           Even if you were move traditional media and you concentrate just within the digital ecosystem, it's important to make sure that you're doing things that capture the time and attention from top of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel. And we talked about it here, so that you're feeding that audience pool for users who will eventually take that action. And again, those actions can be defined as coming to a website, making a reservation, signing up for an event, signing up for a newsletter, signing up for a loyalty program, purchasing a product. 

                                           But again, if you're only looking at that final touch point and you shift all of your dollars into that area, you're only concentrating on a very small pool, and you're forgetting that you're looking a customer journey to drive new customers into that funnel so that you can continuously expand and build your business.

Erin Bury:                          Great point.

Peter Kambo:                   Can I add something to that one as well?

Erin Bury:                          Sure, please Peter.

Peter Kambo:                   And I would say one of the biggest misconceptions of digital when it comes to advertising is the click through rate. If it didn't click through or something and people think it was a bad campaign or it didn't work, and that's totally not true. You have to go beyond that, work with your partners, whoever you're working with and figure out how you're going to measure the campaign, what the KPI is because to Rose's or sorry to Meagan's point right now is just because someone didn't click on the ad and come to the website right away, or the click through rate was low, doesn't mean it didn't have an impact on them. 

                                           It didn't influence them somewhere down the road to later on come to the website, or even if you have a brick and mortar location go to your location, and sometimes you can't track it. That's one of the biggest misconceptions I want to put out there is it's not all about the click through rate. And we get really a tunnel vision when we think of that, because then there's a direct number there that shows us if it's good or not but it's not always the end all.

Erin Bury:                          For sure. It doesn't always tell the full story. So Greg, coming back to you, we have a question about how to measure the success of marketing dollars. If you are spending on a certain channel, how are you evaluating whether those things were successful? To Peter's point, there are metrics like click through rate and conversion rate and cost per click and all of these things that we could be looking at, but what are you looking at when you're measuring success and what makes you sit up and say, oh, yes, that was an incredibly successful campaign?

Greg Gardner-Or...:        Great quest because we don't traditionally look at all of those detail metrics, mainly because small business prioritization. What we do look at though is where the customers are ordering from. There's still data that's being used, but more from ... We target a certain city with different promotions. And then we look to see did the orders from that city increase compared to the data set that we had before. 

                                           So it's really, really simple to know that if overall your sales increased one week by 10%, but in another specific city, they increased by 15 or 20%, that the campaign was successful for that area. So it's really more on a simple metric to determine if it's successful or not that we are looking at. And that's just simply because of the time that we have. I'm sure if we went even deeper into the data, you would see some different insights that are coming out.

                                           But I would definitely recommend if somebody is planning on doing some sort of marketing, whether it be you on the socials or anything like that, that is really accessible for small business owners to have in mind what you're going to measure to determine if it's successful or not before you even start. Because it's very easy to just keep pressing buttons on some of the ad centers and advertising to like all of Canada. 

                                           Well, that's not going to help you be able to determine if it was successful or not. So pinpoint where you're planning on seeing some results and then measure those results after.

Erin Bury:                          That's a great point, Greg. Again, it goes back to not trying to boil the ocean. If you have a limited marketing budget, which most small businesses do, pick one area that's informed by customer insights or market research ideally. Focus there and know exactly what you want to get out of it and how you'll measure success. Great tips.

Meaghan Brophy:           Can I just add one?

Erin Bury:                          Yeah Meaghan.

Meaghan Brophy:           I think the other side, and Greg let me know if you agree, don't be afraid to AB test. Don't be afraid to test whether or not something works and then figure out let's compare that to something else we've tried. Really that AB testing, that learning journey as Rose likes to call it is something that's really important to SMB so that you really get a gauge and you understand what success looks like in comparison to your other benchmarks, to your own internal benchmarks of success.

Greg Gardner-Or...:        Yeah. I'm going to give an example, actually, Peter touched on it a little bit with just because the click through rates aren't showing what you were expecting, it doesn't mean that the campaign's not successful. We have a perfect example of that where we partnered with the Canadian Mental Health Association, and we did a fundraiser with our pizzas. 

                                           So we had pizzas available on Thursday and Friday night. And a percentage of those sales went to Canadian Mental Health Association. The click through rates on those ads were really, really low. And so initially we thought, it's not going to be that busy. Maybe we didn't word things properly or something and we were slammed. 

                                           We ran out of pizza, had lineups of the door. And I think it just goes to show that when people were reading that there was nothing for them to do, other than think, I need to go here. This is such a great cause, I need to go and support this. But there was no purchase at the time for them to make or a click that they needed. And that was really eye opening for us as well. Peter, I'm glad you mentioned that because it definitely is something to consider.

Erin Bury:                          That's a great point, Greg. Some days I wish that I was selling pizza online instead of Wills, because pizza's always easy to get people intrigued in. I know we could continue this conversation all day, but we are coming up to time. I want to first say thank you so much to Peter, Meaghan, Rose and Greg for such an insightful conversation and for taking questions from our audience. Greg, good luck with the big Thanksgiving baking rush this weekend and all the best in the future with your business. 

                                           Before we sign off day, I wanted to remind everyone about the Digital Needs Assessment or DNA for short, that Leigh mentioned at the start of today's program. This online tool takes only 20 minutes to complete and assesses the core competencies and gaps in the digital capacity of your business, and how it ranks relative to your industry. I took the digital needs assessment a little while ago. It did not take me long at all and I got some really great insights from it.

                                           If you are interested in taking it, you can simply log, click on the graphic to the right of your screen in the info tab or visit rap.bot.com. To register for all of our upcoming webcasts, please visit so supportbusiness.dot com and select webinars and videos. So one minute past when I was supposed to be done, I think this is a record for almost being on time. 

                                           I will say thank you so much to everyone who's watching today. Hopefully you've taken away some great tips that are actionable in your own business. Thanks to the Rogers Sports & Media team for being here and to Greg from Sugar Daddies Bakery. And of course, to the Board of Trade team for having me as your moderator. Thanks for joining us and have a great day.