[EO Colorado] Data-Driven Digital Marketing Strategies That Actually Convert With Tyler Lane

Tyler Lane is the Founder and CEO of Session Interactive, a Denver-based digital marketing consultancy specializing in SEO, analytics, paid search, and content strategy for mid-market and enterprise brands. With over 11 years of experience in digital marketing, Tyler leads a team of seasoned professionals who deliver data-driven solutions to help clients achieve measurable growth. Under his leadership, Session Interactive has become a trusted partner across industries such as finance, healthcare, technology, and travel and is known for its strategic thinking and flawless execution.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[3:46] Tyler Lane talks about Session Interactive’s focus on SEO, paid media, and analytics
[5:02] Common mistakes companies make with analytics and attribution
[7:12] Tyler explains how Session helped Canvas Credit Union 5x their conversion traffic
[9:12] Strategies for improving local visibility using SEO and paid search
[14:10] How Tyler maps customer journeys and adapts analytics to shifting business goals
[15:03] The impact of generative engine optimization and AI on search strategy
[25:36] Approaches to building a strong agency culture and retaining top talent
[30:45] Recommended tools, podcasts, and books for digital marketers and entrepreneurs

In this episode…

Digital marketing efforts often fall flat — not because the tactics are wrong, but because the data behind them is unclear or ignored. How do high-performing brands use analytics to not only understand their audience but convert them more effectively?

According to Tyler Lane, a data-focused marketing strategist, successful campaigns begin with fixing analytics infrastructure and gaining true visibility into performance. He highlights that most companies operate with flawed attribution models and missing conversion tracking, which leads to misguided decisions. Clean data fuels smarter strategies, like reallocating budgets to high-performing channels and customizing dashboards for each stakeholder. When marketing teams can trust their data, they make faster, more confident decisions that drive measurable growth.

In this episode of the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Tyler Lane, Founder and CEO of Session Interactive, to talk about building data-driven digital marketing strategies that actually convert. They discuss how clean analytics can transform campaigns, the role of SEO and paid media in boosting visibility, and why understanding the customer journey is critical. Tyler also shares how AI is reshaping the future of SEO.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Quotable Moments

“It really is around trust. It starts with the conversion values to make sure people are understanding.”
“We’re catering to the audience. We’re catering to the user. So call it whatever you want.”
“We want to make sure you’re getting as much value as possible with your strategic relationship with us.”
“Customer journey is massive within our discovery process and how things evolve as their website evolves.”
“The second you’re not growing, let’s figure out why. And if it’s outside of Session, great.”

Action Steps

Audit your analytics setup regularly: Ensuring clean, accurate data helps eliminate misattribution and supports smarter marketing decisions.
Map your customer journey end-to-end: Understanding how users engage across touchpoints reveals key opportunities to improve conversion and retention.
Integrate SEO, paid media, and analytics: A unified strategy across these channels drives greater efficiency and amplifies your campaign results.
Customize data dashboards for decision-makers: Tailored views empower stakeholders to act quickly and confidently without digging into complex analytics platforms.
Stay user-focused in evolving SEO landscapes: Prioritizing audience needs over algorithm changes ensures lasting relevance and long-term search visibility.

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Episode Transcript:

Intro: 00:03

Welcome to the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, where we feature top founders and entrepreneurs and their journey. Now let’s get started with the show.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 00:13

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, Founder of InspiredInsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have Tyler Lane of Session Interactive and Tyler, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out, since this is part of the top agency series. I have some cool agency ones. Todd Taskey. Todd Taskey helps pair agencies with private equity.

Okay. He has a Second Bite Podcast because he finds that sometimes when people sell to private equity and then private equity sells again, they make more sometimes on the second bite than they do on the first. And so we talked about the M&A space the agency space, valuation space. Great episode, great podcast. He’s become a good friend as well.

Jason Swenk, we have to mention Jason Swenk. I mean, Tyler and I dominated people in in bags. We’re very competitive and we met it through Jason Swenk and his group. He’s got two episodes. One of them is like how he built his agency up to eight figures and sold it.

And it was really interesting episode again, just like some of the growth things that he did and some of his recommendations, which was great. There was another one, Tyler, Kevin Hourigan, he’s been had an agency since 1995. So it was really interesting to hear the landscape of the internet and agency and everything in between with the.com bust and how that affected him. And so he’s a good guy and just really experienced. That was a great episode.

So check me out on InspiredInsider.com. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help businesses give to and connect to your dream relationships and partnerships. How do we do that?

We do that in two ways. One, we help companies launch and run a podcast. We’re an easy button for a company to do that. We do the strategy, accountability and the full execution and production. And number two, we’re an easy button for companies gifting.

So we make gifting and staying top of mind to your clients and partners and prospects easy and even staff Tyler. So like people will send us their address list. We will literally curate the gifts. We’ll put their branding on the box, we’ll send it to them in a campaign over sometimes years. So we call ourselves kind of the magic elves that run in the background to make it easy for a company to build amazing relationships.

You know? Because for me, the number one thing is in my life is relationships. And I found no better way over the past decade to profile the people I admire and the companies on the podcast and send them sweet treats in the mail. So, Tyler, I don’t know if you’ve gotten any, but you probably will.

Tyler Lane: 02:56

So yeah, but I’m looking forward to it.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 02:57

Okay, cool. I am excited to introduce Tyler Lane. He’s the Founder and CEO of Session Interactive. Session Interactive is a results driven digital marketing agency which transforms how brands grow online, and he has over 15 years of success in SEO marketing automation. I mean, you name it.

When I look at his website and what he’s done, he helps companies do this and he builds really a data driven campaign to outperform the industry benchmarks. He’s all about data, right. And so we’re going to get into that. Tyler thanks for joining me.

Tyler Lane: 03:34

Thanks, Jeremy. Good to see you. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 03:36

Yeah. So just start off and talk about Session Interactive and what you do. And while you do that I’m going to pull up the website. We’re going to poke around.

Tyler Lane: 03:46

Let’s do it. Yeah. So Session is a search forward agency fixating on three main departments, primarily SEO and which is a broad acronym. It’s changing rapidly in the space with AI and a number of other things getting into generative engine optimization, technical optimization, off page work, content marketing, you name it. Then we have our paid media department, which is primarily paid search, paid social with a bit of programmatic.

And then lastly, which is definitely our core differentiator amongst our our experience, but is around analytics. That’s primarily web analytics, immersion across Google, Google products, Adobe products, you name it. We’re we’re immersed in there providing value and attribution based insights.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 04:39

Talk about the analytics for a second. I know that you geek out on analytics and everything goes back to really analytics. And when we talk about truly running data driven campaigns, it’s all about the analytics. What have you seen. Because you look under the hood right.

You go in there, you look under the hood. What are the mistakes people are making with. In the analytics realm?

Tyler Lane: 05:02

Yeah, that’s a great question. I think, you know, I’ll just start off first is we recognize that as just a massive differentiator in the space where there’s a lot of paid media agencies and SEO, but their competency around analytics was was pretty limited, and it wasn’t really coming full circle at all. So, you know, to really answer your question around some of the mistakes that we see, clients, every single instance of analytics, Google Analytics or Adobe that we’ve encountered has massive gaps, massive discrepancies of issues in terms of cleanliness, attribution problems, you name it. I think there’s probably a maybe a handful that have been in like a really good place, but still has opportunities. And, you know, it really is around trust.

It starts with the the conversion values to make sure people are understanding and attributing success to their campaigns correctly. And oftentimes some of those elements are maybe configured correctly, but they’re really not understanding the the full funnel as people walk through and digest content and go through specific items within the website. So making sure events are configured correctly so you can kind of understand people’s user behavior and make strategic business decisions around how you allocate money across channels. And we want to simplify it for our clients. I think there’s a big intimidation gap to people are not in the platforms as much.

So we really want to utilize data lakes and backup things and then pipe everything into custom data visualization platforms. So they don’t have to go into analytics necessarily. They can see what they need to make the decisions that they need to within a a real time dashboard.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:47

You can customize the dashboard for them so they can just see it.

Tyler Lane: 06:50

Yeah.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:51

Well maybe we’ll talk about an example. And I was looking at your website and I found canvas Credit Union and multiplies conversion traffic five times. Can you walk us through what happened there? Because I’m sure everyone’s like, I want to multiply my conversion traffic.

Tyler Lane: 07:12

Yeah, the credit union space has just been it’s been thrilling, to be honest. I I’ll say this, I said this on a podcast a number of months ago about just the passion that these individuals have. It’s it’s unmatched in terms of their, their particular.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:27

Why do you think because it’s more community based or.

Tyler Lane: 07:30

Yeah, it’s community based. It’s it’s really it’s you’re you’re impacting people at these pivotal decisions in their lives right around, you know, buying their first vehicle or buying their first home or buying their second home or vacation properties, you name it. And they’re they’re trying to really establish great relationships. They’re trying to, of course, give them the best rates that they can possible and make sure they have this, this fluid, Transparent integration with their financial institution and which is which is awesome. And you can the passion with these, with these individuals is really, really impressive to see.

So when we first got in with canvas, it was evident that they had no real core SEO strategy. They had no real what.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:14

Were they coming to you with? Like what was the issue? Were they saying, I just want more clients or customers or what.

Tyler Lane: 08:20

They had recognized that they they needed SEO help. They realized they didn’t have a comprehensive strategy. They they realized they didn’t really have a pulse on their organic search program. And organic search with with these brands is is should be dominant, right? It should be a really top channel.

And it it was but they weren’t fully optimizing it. No pun intended there. But they really weren’t harnessing the true power of a content strategy of a technical infrastructure that adheres to to users first. So those are things that we you know, we started off with an audit and then really a sound strategy from there and a comprehensive roadmap. They’ve been a long, long standing client client of ours.

And it’s been it’s been an awesome fruit, fruit, fruit fruitful relationship.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 09:07

What kind of things like SEO. Are there anything else you do with them?

Tyler Lane: 09:12

Yeah. So they’re a multi-service client. They initially started with SEO fixating on on local SEO. So building those local platforms and making sure individuals in the local designated marketing area can find a location. Right.

And then we we help supplement organic growth with paid media and primarily paid search, which is perform incredibly well for again, their local designated market area, which is all of Colorado. They’re they’re about 30 plus locations now and really need to differentiate themselves and make sure that, you know, they’re they’re a they’re the go to brand when people are looking for a financial institution.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 09:49

When you go into a company like that or any company, what’s you know, when you say technical infrastructure. I imagine there’s a lot of stuff maybe they’re not doing on the page. What’s one example of like a low hanging fruit opportunity that people should maybe go check because maybe they’re not doing it and it’s so obvious to you, but not to others?

Tyler Lane: 10:10

Yeah, I think, you know, it’s kind of a it’s a good question. It’s a loaded question too, because I think we we want to ensure there’s a custom strategy. I think oftentimes SEOs will go into a website and judge things very quickly to say like, oh, x, y, z needs to be fixed. And we don’t understand the history. You don’t understand why that hasn’t been fixed.

Maybe it was an oversight, or maybe it was has been planned as a release, but there’s been some limitations. So it’s it takes, you know, it takes a thoughtful response to tread lightly. There’s people that have been building website infrastructure or a custom CMS, certain things like that. So you need to, you know, try to tread lightly there. I will say, you know, certain things around usability, speed to a certain extent, making sure that, you know, those core aspects are are tenants within your strategy.

Back to the analytics. Really quick outside of SEO. Well, it it it integrates with SEO but is really around conversion tracking correctly and making sure that’s set up and integrated. When we had first onboarded canvas and a number of clients like them too, they their attribution from an application, that’s really what what’s their goal right is to ensure.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 11:27

They want someone coming on. They want applying for a loan or something like that.

Tyler Lane: 11:32

Yep. Yeah. And they want to then nurture those individuals, get them in to establish the rapport. And the attribution was not set up at the channel level. So they would just they were getting click data like someone clicked on this button.

Right. They weren’t getting full funnel, okay. They they converted on this particular application. And they ultimately came through and became a customer. And it was attributed to XYZ channel or a group, a group of those channels.

So that’s what we really helped do for them to make sure that was streamlined and and reallocate marketing funds to more efficient channels and more efficient multi-channel activities.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 12:09

I’m curious, what’s an example of something you changed based on what you saw with the analytics or something else with with? I mean, it could be with them or anyone because I’m thinking, well, oh yeah, maybe through the analytics you saw this is in the wrong place. Like people are looking over here. I don’t know, what are some of the things that you had to change to help them optimize?

Tyler Lane: 12:35

Yeah, I love that. I think that that’s applicable to pretty much every client we work with. I mentioned that word intimidation. Google analytics has gone through a variety of changes. The most recent change or update is Google Analytics four.

And it’s become you know, it’s very people are very frustrated in the community because it got away from the old instance, which is a lot more simplistic, a lot more user friendly. And so now with analytics, we are experiencing again, people are being are becoming a lot more intimidated by going into the infrastructure. It’s not as intuitive. So really wanting to educate clients in how to utilize the data more effectively. We want to make ensure it’s simplistic and we want to help them analyze.

And ultimately it’s the questions that we we ask them like how is you know, what’s going to be beneficial to your day to day in your your particular job? These are individual questions. And how can we make it easier for you to make make those decisions faster? And that’s how we want to customize the instance. So we get away from some of that fluff that is just, you know, you can pull the same report a few different times or a few different ways.

Excuse me. And and it gets incredibly confusing. So one team member is doing the same thing perceivably as another, but they’re pulling different things. So it gets immensely confusing. So a little bit of governance, a governance.

A little bit of strategic planning and making sure they’re able to assess and analyze data correctly on the reports that that make the most sense for them.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 14:01

So on the front end, are you it sounds like you may be mapping out the consumer, the customer journey a little bit so that you know what’s important to them.

Tyler Lane: 14:10

Yeah. Customer journey is is massive within our discovery process. And then how things evolve as their website evolves as their ICP changes. So we need to be adaptable and make sure that we are hearing and customize their customizing their instance as needed. I think that’s the big thing with analytics, is that we’ve evolved significantly at session, from being just implementers to being more strategist, and on the analytics side, being more strategists and and providing insights and analysis that can empower channels that we don’t necessarily manage.

It’s just ultimately, how can we provide better unique value to the client?

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 14:51

I’m curious. You know, you mentioned AI. I mean, that’s such a hot topic, obviously. And no one knows. But I’m curious, like, how do you see AI changing SEO?

Tyler Lane: 15:03

Sure. Yeah. That’s a that’s a big one. I, you know, shout out to Will Reynolds, Jeff Haas at Seer Interactive. These are individuals that we really look up to.

Seer Interactive’s is a is really changing the game and and and being a really a steward for how AI is changing certain things. A lot of people are mentioning the acronym generative engine optimization. And, you know, ultimately things are changing.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 15:31

Is that what is.

That what it is? Right. Do you think that’s going to catch on?

Tyler Lane: 15:35

I, I kind of hope geo generative. You know, I want to get back to another.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 15:41

Maybe we should. Create one on this call that’s like coined by by Tyler.

Whatever that is, I don’t know. We’ll have to think about that. Yeah.

Tyler Lane: 15:49

Eli Schwartz I think his last name is. He wrote a book called Product-Led SEO. He had a great post the other day at LinkedIn that I definitely agreed to. It’s like SEO, whatever acronym you want to pick, it’s ultimately it’s it’s we’re catering to the audience. We’re catering to the user.

So what? Call it whatever you want. The foundational elements aren’t necessarily changing there. You know, we’re just trying to benefit the audience in a new platform. And, you know, how do we structure that accordingly?

It’s it’s always been the user that’s not going to change. I mean, it may change until we’re marketing to chatbots or marketing AI bots eventually, but really is for now is really fixating as much as possible on on the user. And that’s really just been our focus always. Things change, algorithms are introduced and things are people are sweating the nuance around that. But ultimately we’re trying to stay true to what the user wants.

And that really becomes outside of just the tactics with SEO. It’s like, how do we immerse ourselves deeper in these client relationships to provide insights on the analytics level? Insights on search. Reddit is making a push, obviously, LMS from from deep sea to ChatGPT to to grok to cloud. You know, there’s so many now and it’s it’s becoming like, you know, there’s definitely.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 17:17

Changing every week.

Tyler Lane: 17:18

It is, it is. It’s impossible to keep up. But you know, you need to get in the game.

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[EO Colorado] Data-Driven Digital Marketing Strategies That Actually Convert With Tyler Lane

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

In this episode…

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Quotable Moments

Action Steps

Sponsor for this episode…

#1 Our Predictable Podcast ROI Program

#2 Our Comprehensive Corporate Gifting Program

Episode Transcript:

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