[EO Colorado] Data-Driven Digital Marketing Strategies That Actually Convert With Tyler Lane
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 17:23
You know, I love how you think about that because it comes from a fundamental strategy piece, right? Because the tactics will change and it goes into what won’t change. And I’ve heard, you know, Jeff Bezos talk about that, which is and that’s kind of some of the things he was thinking about with Amazon is like, what won’t change? People will never go, I want to pay more for this. They’ll want to less expensive and they’ll never say, I hope it takes longer to get to me, right?
They want it faster, as fast as possible. So I love that thought process when it comes to SEO or or any business for that matter.
Tyler Lane: 18:03
Yeah, it’s just it’s leading with intentionality. It’s leading with just value. You know, there’s definitely a lot of words to say, but like trust and transparency, that’s how we’ve been able to build great relationships. And it’s not arbitrary upselling. It’s it’s value based strategies to help adhere to your goals.
Right. And that’s that’s really where we want to come into play. And and if we’re not a fit in terms of our model or our structure around SEO, we’ll refer you out. Right? I think that’s the big thing is we want to make sure you’re getting as much value as possible with your strategic relationship with us.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 18:40
I’m going to we’ll get into some other examples. I know credit unions, there’s e-commerce companies, there’s a variety of companies. But what I think about is you have an interesting trajectory in your career. And and we were talking SEO paid search. And from the agency side, I’m wondering kind of the evolution of the services.
But even before that, I just want to give a quick overview of your we could we could speed through it. Right. But you just I mean, at one point you worked at IBM, right? And a fun fact, I didn’t realize, you know, from my research that you actually played rugby in college, but walk just fast forward me through your career a little bit like IBM. What were you doing there and what was after that?
Tyler Lane: 19:34
Yeah, let’s let’s be clear. Like I was working for IBM, but I was I just graduated and I, I felt I was like, oh, okay, I’m gonna get a job. And I got a job. And it was obviously, you know, at IBM in Essex, Vermont, Essex Junction, Vermont. And I literally was pushing a cart of pens and pencils to different areas across this massive plant.
And, you know, I slowly got into some graphic design and I got into, you know, offering some other skill sets around marketing. But yeah, that was a interesting place to be. But a great perspective and showed me where I don’t want to be. But it also really why is that?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:14
Just because the corporate world.
Tyler Lane: 20:17
More like yeah, it was a wafer manufacturing plant. Really interesting place at the time. That plant was responsible for like any chip that was in a cell phone was coming out of that plant. So I got to go into the wafer, the clean rooms, and got to go take a look at all these different cool things about what was happening. Which was which again, unique perspective.
It said cool. That’s awesome. People were had been there for 30, 40 years, which was really impressive, some really brilliant minds. That’s when Watson was coming about too. So.
But that really allowed me to to say like, this is not what I want. I’m not an engineer either. So I wanted to be more creative and and a little bit more, a little more flexible than, than that was offering there.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 21:05
So fast forward me through. So IBM then what what after that.
Tyler Lane: 21:10
IBM and then I, I knew I needed I had a desire to move to mountains. So I, I was in Vermont at the time. I’m from Maine originally and I, my sister was living in Colorado and I she she would invite me out periodically. I’d scrounge up what money I had and go visit her. And, you know, you go you go from skiing at Stowe, Vermont to Vail, Colorado.
It’s it’s a difference. And so initially, I wanted to be a ski bum. I’m like, I’m going to go out there and and be a ski bum. And I just and I quickly found out Ski Bum doesn’t really pay that well. So I continued.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 21:43
Going to teach classes or what were you going to do?
Tyler Lane: 21:45
Yeah. You know, I mean, I was thinking about being an instructor or things like that, but that didn’t really interest me. So I decided to reach out and kind of move. I moved into my sister’s for a couple of months and found a job and started consulting a little bit on the marketing side and then and then ultimately got a job client side doing doing marketing for health and wellness company.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 22:09
So talk about the evolution of your services. When you first started, what did you decide to do and then how did that evolve?
Tyler Lane: 22:18
Yeah, I love that journey. I mean, I think I’ll back up even more a little bit, just like my the health and wellness company that I started out, they allowed me to get a ton of exposure to different things through PR, through SEO, paid media, traditional media, you name it. Because we we were contracting with a lot of different agencies at the time. So that exposure was was incredibly attractive to me. And I was like, whoa.
I immediately gravitated to analytics and SEO and other things. Fast forward after I went through a number of agencies, I, I realized that, you know, I’m going to test my I’m going to test this out and see if I can consult. And to be totally honest, I got let go. I got fired from three different agencies here in Denver. And it’s and it’s a story I don’t really tell very often, but it’s something I, I’m, I’m actually proud of.
I have great relationships with them still some more than others, but I learn different things from different agencies. And then ultimately the last agency location three, which I was at, let me go. And they, you know, they gave me a month or so and they were really kind to me. And they’re good people over there. But and then I was like, all right, I’m going to test my network out and see what happens.
I’m going to test I’m going to do some consulting here and there, some analytics work, some SEO, CRO and it, it it took, it got I got some traction. And within the first year it was it was going really well. I got I got really lucky.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 23:38
I don’t know about lucky but yeah when hard work meets opportunity. Sure. Yeah. Yeah yeah. You know, and if it’s personal, you don’t have to share it.
But I’m curious, like, you’re an upstanding guy. I know you, you’re detail oriented, you’re smart, you’re hardworking. Why were you fired?
Tyler Lane: 23:56
Yeah, no, I think so. The first one was Intelligent Demand. I was there for about eight months. John Common runs that. He’s.
He’s a prolific individual, really compelling guy. Did a lot with marketing automation. I was just, you know, didn’t have a lot of experience. I was trying to cut my teeth in certain things around SEO, and they didn’t have any SEO specific clients. Right.
So we were actively selling them when I got on board. So the need for, for my services really dried up. So that was a short stint there. The second one was Burns Marketing, and I helped help create their digital departments, and I really enjoyed building that CRO analytics, SEO offerings. And we were building clients as well.
And they took a pivot, right? They wanted to revert back back to more traditional avenues around marketing Kidding. And and and essentially eliminated my position. And then lastly was location three account director there. And I really, really was fixated more on the strategy side versus what they needed, which is really more project management.
And, and I think everyone on my team and people that interact with me and my skill sets are definitely not around project management. So.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 25:07
Yeah, that kind of thing. Well, thanks for sharing that. I mean, it’s like finding the right fit of someone what they like to do, the skill set and what the company needs. And then that path is, is key. I want to talk about culture.
And we were talking before we hit record about teams and staff. And how do you keep especially staff as people who have been on your team for a long time, how do you keep them engaged and excited over the work?
Tyler Lane: 25:36
Yeah, this is a great topic. And I think, you know, as entrepreneurs and starting businesses from scratch, we’ve we’ve all made mistakes across the board and I. you know. And then it also brings up a timely topic. I was just at a local agency meetup here or conference or other agency con here in Denver.
Kent Lewis spoke there. Natalie Henley, who runs volume nine. Those are two individuals that we’re talking a lot about retention and culture and what that means. And Natalie had some really good points around, you know, culture is not the the happy hour or the the pizza party that you’re having. Right.
It’s it’s about making sure that you are establishing clear goals, and you have open communication and you’re really incentivizing and incorporate collaboration with people. And I think, you know, we’re evolving and we’ve we’ve definitely made some mistakes. And we want to make sure that we’re ensuring that people that come on board at session have their own personal goals. And then we also, of course, their have their their goals in their job description. And we want to make sure they’re actively growing at session.
And I’ll say this to my team and I’ll say this to, to anyone that we, we, we potentially interview is that we want to make sure you adhere to those goals and you’re actively growing. And the second you’re not growing, we like let’s let’s figure out why. And if it’s outside of session you, there’s a title that you want and we don’t offer that at session. Well we how can we get you there at a different company. You know, and that’s just the rapport that we take with our with our employees.
And the same thing that we take, the same stance we take with our clients to if it’s not with us, let’s let’s make sure you’re successful with another agency.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 27:23
Yeah. Shout out to Kent. Yeah, he’s a great speaker. And I got I think a couple people gave me this advice. Jason Swenk did too, about doing a quarterly meeting with all the staff.
And I may not do it with each of the staff, but it’s reported back to us on what do you want to keep doing? Stop doing, you know, and or do more of, you know. And so the start doing is an interesting one where we found that we didn’t know, oh, I want to do more video editing or oh, we didn’t even know you wanted to do that. So it was like about keeping people engaged and like, hey, let’s throw them a project so they can do something they want to, like, really start doing. And they’re passionate about, even though maybe they’re doing something totally different.
So obviously if they have the, the, you know, the acumen to do that, but sometimes we just find skills that we didn’t realize they even had because that’s not what we hired them.
Tyler Lane: 28:23
Yeah. And I think the traditional is like, oh, we’ll do an annual review. And that’s not beneficial to anyone. And so it’s like twice a year. And it’s and it’s more, you know, Ken and Natalie are really advocates of more quarterly those stay interviews or you know, how often are you having those.
So we’re we’re actively revamping a lot of that here. But I’d love to hear that you’re doing that.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 28:43
Arise talk about you know, we talked about the credit union. But I’m always curious. And it kind of shows that these the strategy and everything kind of goes across different genres and channels here. But Skullcandy.
Tyler Lane: 29:02
Yeah, Skullcandy I should probably should be wearing headphones right now. But what a cool, brand fun one. That resonated with me personally because I’m a snowboarder and I would wear their headphones in college. And you know, I love the brand. Travis Rice was a part of that.
He was a pro snowboarder. Tony Hawk is still a part of it. It’s really cool what they’re doing and the products. It changed a lot. It’s evolved a lot.
It’s a really, really cool stuff. So we got an opportunity to run their SEO and still do, and really being able to showcase and flex our skill set around e-commerce, which is a target vertical of ours, and helping them launch new products, helping them revolutionize, helping them just establish better credibility with their collaborations. They do a ton of collabs with, you know, influencers and athletes and things like that. So there’s so much opportunity there. And they’re there’s such a fun brand to work with and incredibly passionate people about their outdoor industry.
So it’s all a lot of success. They’re actually putting together a formalized case study for them now and and a lot, a lot of big plans with them moving forward.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:10
First of all, tell her it’s always great chatting with you. I have one last question before I ask it. I want to point people to check out SessionInteractive.Com to learn more. And this kind of parlays into this question which is some of your favorite resources.
Right. It could be podcasts, it could be software, it could be books. But start with your podcast and a couple favorite guests that you’ve had on and then, you know, just rattle off some of your favorite software, podcasts or books.
Tyler Lane: 30:45
Yeah, I appreciate that, Jeremy. And again, you’re you’ve been an inspiration to me in a lot of ways, not just on the podcast front, but on a lot of other things. Just with your, your, your knack for for being inquisitive and and really developing relationships. So I really appreciate that. So our podcast is is being launched here soon.
It’s called Built to Convert. And we’ve had a number of guests already. We’ve had some great, exciting conversations, some really cool people from exciting industries that were that were really, really pumped to share a couple of guests there. Mark Minton, he’s here based in Colorado. He runs Gravity Global, their mid-market division, which is a global agency specializing in a lot of different things, from search to website generation to all sorts of other creative, etc. he’s been he’s a mentor of mine, and he he gives me a lot of inspiration.
He leads the AI Council over there too, so we collaborate a lot there. Ryan Levander, he’s he runs Red Navel Consulting. They do some pretty cool stuff on analytics and CRO. Technically they’re a competitor competitor of ours. But hey, there’s there’s enough business out there and he does some just great progressive stuff with analytics and CRO and just immersing himself in the data.
As far as some tools that I’m really excited about right now, you know that we are bullish on AI. We’re but we’re we’re really important that there’s an essential component around making sure humans involved using tools like SuperWhisperer are really cool. We love that. I’ll be honest, I’m not really typing as much these days. I’m using SuperWhisperer to dictate.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 32:25
I’ve never heard of that one.
Tyler Lane: 32:26
Yeah, it’s a great it integrates with pretty much everything and it customizes everything. It links to OpenAI and other AI tools, and then you’re essentially just speaking to it, and it customizes email responses and things, things for whatever you need in terms of long form, long form content, it’s really helpful. We’re also, you know, we’re using a variety of AI tools that we really gravitate towards and creating custom gpts for clients and building those out. So those have been really exciting and fun to work with. And then we’re also really excited about the Google Sheets integration with with GPT.
That’s that’s not new, but we’re really taking that a lot further with Make.com and creating automations, which has been a game changer for a lot of ways. Again, not to replace anyone to to essentially make them more efficient at what they do on a daily basis.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 33:18
What about podcasts? Any podcasts or audiobooks or.
Tyler Lane: 33:21
Yeah. So I really I love you know, we’re we’re, you know audible I’m constantly on there looking for, you know, business books and then you know how to guides and things like that. One of the brands that I follow closely is Sparktoro Rand Fishkin. I think you’ve interviewed Rand.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 33:40
Yeah, he’s been on the podcast. Yeah.
Tyler Lane: 33:42
Yeah. And Amanda over there are amazing people. And just, like, subscribing to what they’re what they’re doing. Cyrus Shepard is on the SEO community. He’s he’s always influential in terms of his perspective.
There’s probably another ten plus people that I really love and follow and really respect their outlooks. Wil Reynolds absolutely. Again, I already mentioned him, but Seer Interactive is just intentionality. Is value. His the culture he’s been able to establish and his just overall mindset and vibe is is is awesome.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 34:12
So I have a couple audible credits. Any recommendations? Your favorites?
Tyler Lane: 34:18
Put me on the spot. Yeah, two books right away. I think you probably Dan Martel’s book Buy Back Your Time is an essential read for any entrepreneur. The other one is Die With Zero by Bill Perkins, one of the one of the best books I’ve read in the last couple of years.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 34:33
I think I actually have the physical version because someone sent it to me, but I do not read, I only listen, so I think I have to get that on audible.
Tyler Lane: 34:41
Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s those those two in particular are awesome.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 34:49
Tyler, first of all, I wanted people to check out Session Interactive. I typically don’t do this on camera. Okay. But I have a, let’s say a special self proclaimed talent. Okay.
And self proclaimed that I could spot celebrity look alikes. Sometimes it just jumps out at me. Okay. And when I tell people to check out Tyler what he’s doing. And so you’ll show this to your wife and and see if she agrees or not.
But typically I just do this off camera, but I just figured it’d be fun. Yeah, I think Tyler has a doppelganger. It may be, I don’t know, like 85%. Okay, so Whoever’s listening could tell me I’m totally off or I’m not okay with this. But this is.
This is my.
Tyler Lane: 35:48
Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 35:49
Doppelganger for Tyler. Okay. Yeah. Colin Farrell. So I’m like, oh, you’ll meet Tyler.
He looks like Colin Farrell. So someone could disagree or agree with me. That’s fine. But really, what matters is if. If Tyler’s wife agrees with me or not.
So.
Tyler Lane: 36:05
But buddy buddies will likely joke that I’m more the the penguin. He’s.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 36:12
I didn’t see that character, so I don’t know, but but no thank you everyone. Check out Session Interactive and more episodes of the podcast and and we’ll see everyone next time. Tyler, thanks so much.
Tyler Lane: 36:24
Thanks, Jeremy. Appreciate your time.
Outro: 36:25
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