Today, we’re talking with Bryant Garvin about all things CRO. With over a decade worth of experience, he’s got a ton of insight to share.

Highlights & Takeaways

• True CRO is about optimizing the user experience and user interface throughout the entire process.
• Sending qualified traffic isn’t enough. If the users aren’t converting, it seems like the marketing isn’t working.
• If your website or landing page is terrible, AdWords won’t help you sell.
• Mobile devices often show the lowest conversion rates, and there are small things you can do to drastically improve the mobile user experience, thus increasing your conversions.
• To understand why you’re not converting, you must test for problems and actually address and fix what you find.

 

Show Notes

Amy: All right, Bryant. Thank you so much for being on the show, I’m really excited to talk to you about conversion rate optimization, and mobile.

Bryant: Absolutely, and I’m excited to be with you today.

Amy: Let’s take this off by talking about CRO. What is conversion rate optimization?

 

What is conversion rate optimization?

Bryant: Well, what’s funny is you say CRO and I’ve asked that when I’ve spoken before. What does CRO stand for? I get everything from chief revenue officer to whatever, and so when we talk about CRO, we’re really talking about conversion rate optimization. And for me, conversion rate optimization is more than just changing which side of the page your form is on, right? Or changing the color of a button. For me, conversion rate optimization is really an optimization more of the user experience and the user interface throughout the whole process. Just changing the color of a button if everything else on the page sucks isn’t going to make your conversions get any better at all.

 

Just changing the color of a button if everything else on the page sucks isn’t going to make your conversions get any better at all.

 

Amy: How did you get involved in the CRO aspect of a paid search?

Bryant: My story is really similar to a lot of people that have been in the industry for any amount of time. I’ve been in over 10 years, and when I first started, it was really all about, hey, I can send as much qualified traffic as you want, but it’s your job to convert it. What happens is that companies, agencies, other people, whatever, they start saying, “Well, no, it’s the AdWords problem. AdWords doesn’t work.” Or, “Bing doesn’t work.” Or Facebook or display or video or whatever it is, right? It’s the marketing that’s not working, whereas if somebody is ready to put money in hand and it’s a bad user experience, they’re just going to bounce. And they’re going to go somewhere else where it’s easier for them to accept their money.

 

If your website sucks, AdWords can’t help you.

 

A couple years ago, I had a client come to me and was like, “Hey, our AdWords sucks.” I’m like, “Yes, it really kind of does, but more than that, your website sucks, and the only way I’m going to work with you is if we completely retool your website because that’s your biggest issue right now.” They actually decided to go with it, completely changed it, and we just saw some phenomenal changes. I was always passionate about it, but it allowed me to really put my foot down as to what we needed to do.

Amy: How did you get to the point where you’re able to look at a website and say, “This is not an AdWords problem, this is a landing page problem or a website problem.” How do you get that knowledge of what that needs?

Bryant: I think one of the biggest things that we have a problem with as marketers is putting ourselves in the consumer’s shoes. I have a focus group of one, my wife, that is the consummate consumer. I’ll usually look at stuff, but the first place that I actually look for stuff is on mobile. If the mobile experience sucks, the desktop usually does as well. But going through that whole checkout process usually, for e-commerce as an example, I want to see how the flow is. And if I find it frustrating or hard or to understand, then I know that the average person is going to.

 

I have a focus group of one, my wife, that is the consummate consumer.

So if it’s complicated in any way, if it makes you think too much … I have a phrase. Everybody’s heard of the KISS principle, right? Keep it simple, stupid. I actually changed it up to keep it stupid simple. You want it ridiculously simple. If you make people have to think, they’re going to bounce. They’re going to go somewhere else. They really don’t want that. They just want you to say, “Yes, this is the right product for you. This is how much it costs, and here’s an easy way for you to purchase it.” They don’t want to have to think about those things.

Amy: I like that and I found that to be true as well. I have many clients who don’t seem to subscribe to that, who believe that their customer is particularly sophisticated or knowledgeable, and so you’re really doing them a disservice by dumbing it down, or they’re interested in these things that you know that they’re actually not. That your client is just too in their own head, they’ve got the cursive knowledge, and so they assume everyone else knows about these things that they actually don’t. Do you have any tips on how you would talk someone out of that, when they’re like, “Oh, our customer doesn’t want bullets. Our customer doesn’t want simple sentences. They want long paragraphs.” How do you talk them out of that?

Bryant: I think the easiest thing to do is to find a way to get them to test, right? One of the tools that every single company that I work with now, I require for them install, is Hotjar. Have you ever heard of Hotjar?

 

One of the tools that every single company that I work with now, I require for them install, is Hotjar.

 

Amy: I have not.

Bryant: Okay. So Hotjar is … Think of it as a cheaper version of Crazy Egg or one of those tools like that. But it is freaking awesome. It does heat maps so you can see where they scroll on the page, where they click, they hover, all of that stuff, but it goes one step further. It also does user recordings. So it literally records the session, so it sees them moving their mouse, clicking on stuff, scrolling on mobile, going back to different pages, where they go. If they come to the site and then they go up and actually do a search, even though they came into a specific landing page, that’s a problem.

 

In order to solve a problem, you need to first understand it.

I found that by showing companies those actual user recordings, they’re like, “Well, why are they clicking on that? Why are they doing that?” I’m like, “Well, because they think something’s supposed to happen. So maybe we should make something happen there.” If it says … One client had all of their headlines, for each section of their page, it was a dark blue. So it almost looked like a hyperlink should have been, or hyperlinked text. And they’re like, “Why do people keep clicking on those?” I’m like, because they expect to find out more … It’s supposed to lead to somewhere else to find out more information. And they’re like, “Oh, well, they shouldn’t be.” And I’m like, “But they are.”

Amy: Right.

Bryant: So now we need to do something to fix that problem. And some, they aren’t willing to. They were not willing to change that and make new pages to actually either change the headline there, or to lead to somewhere that had more in-depth information on that particular topic. Others see it and they’re like, “Oh, well, I didn’t even realize that was an issue.” And it’s really eye-opening for them. That’s my favorite tool to get some data and to really get people moving down the path of, oh, well maybe this isn’t best for my user. Maybe if I did do this. And then once you get that, then you can start testing a little bit. You’re like, all right, we’ve seen what they’re doing right now. Let me just try one or two things. We’re not going to change the actual page right now. Let’s get a landing page software, a visual website optimizer, an Unbounce, something in place that we can just test a landing page with simple text or smaller sentences, or breaking it up with more images or whatever it is. And then the results from that usually speak to it.
And I always say, “You know what? You could be 100% right. But let’s test it. We have nothing to lose by testing it. And if the test is successful, we’ve gained something. If it’s not, then we’ve also gained something from that.”

Amy: Yeah. Marketing Experiments, I believe, that will always say it’s better to get a learning than a lift. It’s important to really understand how everything works.

Bryant: Yeah. If you get a lift but you don’t know why, you can’t duplicate that. Whereas if you change this one thing, ’cause that’s another thing. A lot of the times, and there are times like with that one client that came to me to do their AdWords stuff, we completely changed the whole site. It wasn’t just one thing because I knew that the mobile experience was so bad, we needed to completely just redesign it. But there are instances where you just want to test one thing at a time, because if you test multiple things, you don’t know which one it was that actually made the change. And if you try implementing some things that you thought made the change but it was really something else, you’re not going to get the same results down the road.

Amy: Yeah. So what you’re describing is basically your success, you’re attributing not just to AdWords pro, but almost UX and testing as well. Would you say you have to have all of those to be successful with paid search?

 

AdWords + Customer Experience + Testing = Success

 

Bryant: In this day and age, yes. I think there was a point in time when you didn’t have to be. But the internet’s been around long enough, AdWords is 15 years old or whatever it is. So there’s definitely … And consumers expect a lot more. The e-commerce experience on Amazon is ridiculous. It’s so freaking easy, I push one button and then I’ve bought a product. As we’ve gone along, people expect it to be easier and easier to do what they want to do. We’ve gone, for the most part, past the point of I’m worried about putting in my credit card online now, right? Everybody’s cool with that now. But now they want to make sure it’s easy to do.

And if you don’t have that, it’s a problem. You can have the best product in the world, but if you don’t portray it in a good way or make it easy for them to understand and purchase or interact with, it doesn’t matter. It is a part of marketing. You’ve got to be able to present the product and have the user experience and all of that in a very simplified fashion that’s going to make it easy for the consumer to actually want to interact with you.

Amy: Yeah, definitely. I keep on telling my clients lately, more and more, if it’s not on your website, if it’s not on the page, it’s not true. I don’t care … If I ask you about your product and you tell me five great things about it, but it’s not on a landing page, how will your consumers ever know in order to want to purchase? And yet there still remains this chasm between what the client knows about the product and what someone would be able to know about the product by going to that webpage.

Bryant: Yeah. They do an FAQ but it covers only half the questions that you hear your customer service team answer on a daily basis, and they’re not in depth. If you give them all of that information upfront, it definitely helps with that process, for sure.

Amy: Yeah. So many agencies, I guess, don’t do UX and don’t do testing. They’re completely different, right? We do paid search for you and then if you want results, I guess maybe you go somewhere else. In your experience, why do you think so many agencies keep those two things separate?

Bryant: I think one of the reasons why is simplicity. If you’re really good at paid search and that’s your wheelhouse, that’s where you live and what you breathe and eat and die and can do amazing things with, it’s kind of hard, uncomfortable to step outside of that. Because I think the biggest thing with conversion rate optimization, with testing, with working on UX and site and user experience and all of that stuff is that there are going to be failings. Much more so than just restructuring an AdWords account, right? There are some things that we just know every single time are going to usually work in an AdWords account, 95% of the time. With websites and user experience, it is completely different even with companies that are in the same industry, something that works for one doesn’t necessarily work for the other, and part of that is product positioning, pricing, whatever it may be. There’s some little thing that’s a little bit different, and it makes a completely big difference.

I think UX and CRO and design and all of that type of stuff is not as concrete and analytical in some ways as the other … It’s more into the psychology. It gets more into human behavior, which humans are erratic. We never do the same thing twice. And I think that that’s where a lot of agencies have a problem with doing that. Plus, a lot of them don’t want to jump into something without having the full knowledge set. But they’re unwilling to hire or unwilling to start off with somewhere. I didn’t come into this being an expert on conversion rate and UX and stuff like that. I’ve just spent years studying and learning and testing to get to this point.

Amy: Sure. So if someone is in that situation, that they are doing PPC and not doing much on the post-click performance or optimization, and they’re interested in learning about that, how would they get started? Do they just say to the client, “Hey, let’s try an Unbounce page,” or what would you recommend for someone who doesn’t know much about CRO but would like to learn?

Bryant: I think there’s a lot of good resources out there. You’ve got Tim Ash and all of these guys that have conversion websites, that have conferences, that do stuff like that, that you can always go learn. There’s books you can pick up, there’s plenty of blogs, and that’s … And I’m more self-taught along those lines, but also just starting to get into it. Like I said, I think Hotjar is a great place to start. It’s fairly cheap, it’s less than a hundred bucks a month. For most people, agencies, companies, that’s not a big deal. And you can start seeing how users are acting, and that can start getting your brain thinking a little bit differently.

Because that’s one of the things. You do kind of have to rewire the way you think. And for every client or every company or every experience, it’s going to be a little bit different, and that’s why I always start with the Hotjar, because a best practice in paid search is usually a best practice. A best practice when it comes to website design, when it comes to user experience, when it comes to the checkout flow or whatever you’re doing means it’s something you should test. It doesn’t mean that it’s always going to work. And I think that’s a big issue that a lot of people run into when they start getting into CROs, doing that.

But so if you start with Hotjar, and then find an easy solution like Unbounce or find an agency to partner with, right? There are plenty of agencies that only do UX or design, or CRO, and don’t really want to handle the paid search part of stuff. So find some agencies to partner with that you can either white label or have a referral arrangement with them to handle that as well.

Amy: So by partnering … I’m just going to push this a little bit further, because I imagine that there’s a lot of people who are involved in paid search who are like, “I know that what’s going on on the landing page is huge, but I don’t know what to do, and I want to be able to know what to do.”

Bryant: Yeah.

Amy: So by partnering with an agency, would someone get additional experience with that, that it could start applying and learning from?

Bryant: Yeah, absolutely. If you don’t know something, what’s the easiest way to learn it? To work with someone that knows it, right? That’s how for thousands of years, we’ve had apprenticeship programs or other things like that. I think that if you actually work with a partner agency, you don’t just pass it off, but you’re actually working with them, having regular calls, finding out what they’re doing and seeing that process as it’s happening, the wins, the losses, the learnings. Then if you’re halfway decent at your job and brilliant, you’ll start picking that stuff up and you’ll be able to start applying that. And even offering suggestions to clients down the road as you go along.

Amy: Yeah. I’ll just follow up with that with one more question because this is actually something that I have run into, that I have experience with landing page optimization and CRO, but my suggestions could fall on deaf ears because, well, you’re the paid search agency, right? We’ll go somewhere else for CRO or for testing. And within my particular company, it’s not a problem because we do offer those services, but just as a paid search person, to be able to get the street cred of being able to make recommendations, even if they’re just as valid as what a different specialist would come in to say. I guess how did you get taken seriously if you have these ideas, but you also have the title of PPC and not CRO or UX?

Bryant: I think that goes back to storytelling, a little bit. In this aspect, you need to be a salesperson. I really do believe that every person should have some sell skills, and if you don’t have them, you should spend some time learning them. Really, all sell skills are is a way to be able to help answer people’s questions or tell information in a way that helps them understand what you’re trying to convey and get the point across.

The way that I got started with it is I’ve got experience doing this for years. I’ve seen companies that have succeeded, I’ve seen ones that haven’t. And the biggest difference between the companies that have succeeded and the ones that haven’t isn’t me. It’s not just because I’m working on all of them. The biggest difference I’ve seen is their website. The landing pages that we’re driving to, the user experience that they’re seeing. The ones that are willing to invest time, resources, and money to fix those things are the ones that have phenomenal success. All it takes is one or two wins, plus a couple of losses, to show people that haven’t been willing to what’s happened.

 

I’ve seen companies that have succeeded, I’ve seen ones that haven’t. The biggest difference I’ve seen is their website.

 

Everybody’s worked with … especially if you’re working with in-house people, they’ve all worked somewhere where they’ve bounced from agency to agency to agency, every six months, like clockwork. And they always think that they’re going to find the next magic sauce at the next agency that’s going to make everything happen, but they probably never looked at their website or the conversion process or anything like that, and so telling that story of the company that went from agency to agency to agency, and it’s not that they worked with bad agencies or with bad consultants or had bad in-house people. It’s that their focus was on the marketing as opposed to the conversion.

And telling that story about hey, yeah, I can drive somebody that has money in hand to your website, but if you make it hard for them to give you that money, they’re not going to do it. If you walked into a store and were ignored, and you couldn’t find the product that you were looking for, are you going to stay in that store? No, of course not. You’re going to move on. You’re going to go out, you’re going to go to another store where somebody’s going to help you or make it easier for you to actually find what you want to do.

Amy: Yeah, that’s a really good way to put it. I appreciate you taking the time to elaborate on that, ’cause I think that’s a really helpful framing.

Bryant: Absolutely.

 

Why does mobile often show the lowest conversion rate?

Amy: In terms of conversion rates across different device types, mobile will often have the lowest conversion rate. I’m sure that’s not true for every industry and not true for every instance, but it is a very common occurrence. Why do you think that is, that mobile tends to convert at a lower rate?

Bryant: There’s a bunch of different reasons why that that happens. I think part of it is that most companies use responsive design, but they use it in the wrong way. When developers and designers originally designed responsive design, they didn’t mean that that big, huge, 2000 by 600 hero image that you have on your home page, on mobile you shrink it down to where you can’t read it. Right? They meant that it’s a responsive experience, depending upon the screen size and the device that they are using. For a lot of people, responsive is just we shrink it down. We rearrange it maybe a little. And the mobile user experience is completely different. You’re not even using a mouse or a keyboard. It’s all finger, it’s all touch. You’ve got to start thinking about that thumb reach. How far across are you wanting them to reach? Can they do it one-handed? Little things like that make a big difference.

The other thing is, on mobile, I’m sure you’ve been to websites that have great … and I’m using e-commerce as an example because I think it’s the quickest way to get the point across. When you have to enter your credit card information and they bring up the qwerty keyboard, I think hell no. That’s not happening. There’s no way my big fat fingers are putting in 16 digits using the qwerty keyboard, right?

Amy: Right.

Bryant: But there’s other sites that it brings up the beautiful 10 key and it’s perfect and it’s easy, and you can easily put it in there and there’s no problem. I’m fine doing that all day long. So I think that that’s a big part of it, too, is there’s some really simple fixes that you can do on your forms that make it easier for people to actually give you their credit card information, as an example.

Amy: Yeah, so the examples that you used have to do with how a person is going to react to the device in front of them and not necessarily about the psychology behind I’m comfortable searching on my mobile phone, but then I’m more comfortable purchasing on a desktop or anything like that. Would you say that as we can just make the experience easier and better to purchase, that we’ll see better conversion rate on mobile as we go that route?

Bryant: Yeah, I absolutely believe that, and I’ve seen that as well. That one client that I told you, they came to me and wanted me to fix their AdWords account, and I told them they needed to completely redesign their site. When they came to me, they were spending about $150,000 a month on just AdWords. Their mobile was their highest CPA in product by 25%. And so we completely redesigned the process, and it was one that they had to put in a credit card. And by the time I moved on and let them handle stuff internally, we had grown their AdWords account to almost half a million dollars a month in spend.

Amy: Wow.

Bryant: Their mobile was actually their lowest CPA product now. Now, the conversion rate was a little bit less than desktop, but because you could get so much more qualified traffic on mobile right now and nobody’s doing it right, they were able to actually have a lower cost per acquisition on mobile than anything else. So they went from 19% of their conversions being on mobile to 54%.

Amy: Nice.

Bryant: Yeah. There is a huge difference there. Going into the user experience, I do think there are some people that are like, oh, I don’t want to purchase on my mobile. They’re still … Kind of like internet back 10 years ago, where people didn’t want to put credit cards in.

Amy: Right.

Bryant: I’ve run into a few people like that, but it’s the exception, not the rule. And I think the biggest reason why they don’t want to do that is because the experience is so bad. They want it easy. So if they can jump on their desktop and put in their credit card information in 30 seconds or sit on their mobile and spend five minutes trying to checkout, which one are you going to do?

Amy: Yeah. We’ve been talking a lot about e-commerce. For lead gen, where there’s no numbers but you still would have to potentially fill out a form, and some forms are really easy to fill out, right?

Bryant: Yup.

Amy: And this is for desktop or mobile, some forms are just easy, some forms take a long time.

Bryant: Yup.

 

Optimizing forms for mobile devices

Amy: But do you have any suggestions for how to optimize a form experience for mobile?

Bryant: Yeah, absolutely. The first thing, I think, is get rid of anything that you don’t absolutely need. If you have one of those forms that asks 100 questions, nobody’s going to fill that out on mobile. They barely fill it out on desktop. So get the crucial information that you need from somebody, eliminate anything that you don’t. If you’re not going to be mailing them a product, you probably don’t need their physical address at this point in time. If you are going to be emailing them something, maybe you don’t need their phone number. Simplifying what you actually want from the user in that moment, I think, is the biggest piece to that.

But also, in form fields, there’s a really simple field called input type. I don’t have the link on me right now, but I wrote an article on Search Engine Journal last year about the three things that you can do to really increase your mobile conversion rates by tomorrow, and focusing in on the input type makes a big difference. A lot of developers don’t even understand the input type functions, and I was curious as to, well, why on some sites do I get the beautiful 10 key and others, I end up getting the qwerty keyboard? And it all is just in how they change that input type.

So if the input type equals text, it’s going to be that qwerty keyboard. If the input type equals NUM for number, it’s going to be the qwerty keyboard with the numbers at the top, which still isn’t beautiful, but if you do input type equals TEL for telephone, it brings up that beautiful 10 key. So there’s some really simple things that you could do that can make the process that much easier. For email, just simply putting input type equals email instead of text allows that @ symbol and the dot to be put in there, which makes it that much easier for somebody to actually input that information.

Amy: Thank you. Those are good tips. Switching gears just a little bit to your employment. You recently took on a job at Purple, is that right?

Bryant: Yeah, I did. I’m in-house now, director of marketing for Purple.

Amy: Awesome. What is the best part for you of having the job that you have?

Bryant: One of the things that I’ve … why I love this industry is there’s a real opportunity to never be bored. There’s always something changing. For Purple, the biggest draw for me was first off, they have an amazing product. They’re willing to really allow the marketing team some flexibility in how that’s marketed, have a fun atmosphere in our interactions with consumers and stuff like that, but there’s also a ton of untapped potential and a willingness to try new things, things outside of the normal. Most of our revenue right now actually comes from video advertising. That’s the exception to the rule.

Amy: Right.

Bryant: You think most people start with search and SEO, right? We started on the other side, because our product is so different we had to create demand. Search only captures what demand is already there. If you don’t have any demand for a product, if nobody knows it exists, they’re not going to go search for it. So we spent a lot of money and a lot of time building great videos, great experiences on the front end, and really driving a lot of traffic that way to build that search experience there. So I love that. It’s fun.

 

Tips on advancing your PPC career

Amy: Awesome. I usually end up asking people if they want to … If someone wants to be where you are professionally, what steps do they take to get there? I’m going to ask the same question of you, but I don’t just mean in terms of your current job, but over the last decade, where you’ve been able to be in the industry with both speaking at conferences, getting authority around your own person, and being involved in just the paid search community as well as what you’re doing as employment. What steps would someone take to get where you are?

Bryant: I think the very first thing is recognizing if you actually really want a career in this, right? If you don’t, then find something that you’re really passionate about. I started in this career, actually, on the sell side of things. I was basically a AdWords rep back in the day, and one of the things that I learned was that if I actually learned how to manage my clients’ accounts and did it well, I would actually make more money because they would spend more with me. That’s how I transitioned into the more account management, active stuff, then moved in-house. I consumed probably three hours of information back in the day when it was ClickZ and some of those other blogs back in the day. I literally spent 3+ hours just reading and consuming information.

And even today, I probably spend at least an hour every day just reading what’s going on in the industry. Even if it’s skimming, what’s happening. Making sure that I have my Twitter feed setup and my news alerts and stuff like that, so that I can see what’s happening and what my peers are sharing, getting involved in conversations, on Twitter, chats, or Reddit, maybe some of the sub-Reddits there around more specific marketing topics. And then just really digging in. And figuring out what you want. Some people are completely happy being behind the scenes and just working on accounts and doing that. Others want to be able to grow into more of a management position or more of a leadership role, be able to speak at conferences.

For me, speaking at a conference wasn’t a natural thing. I’m definitely an introvert, which most people wouldn’t realize that. But I know that I have to be an extrovert in some situations, in order to grow my brand and in order to help people. ‘Cause I really enjoy teaching people and helping people, and that’s one of the reasons why I like to speak, is because I’m able to … When that lightbulb moment, when you see it in the crowd and they’re like, oh, wow, okay, cool. When that clicks? That’s such an awesome feeling. That’s why I like training people and growing teams and doing things like that.

Again, find out what you’re passionate about. It doesn’t necessarily just have to be search, right? Maybe it’s search combined with you like analytics or you get search combined with you really like training people and helping people and seeing them progress and grow. Find out what you’re passionate about and just really dig in and don’t take no for an answer. Just keep pushing. If you can’t get the resources that you want, if you don’t have the growth opportunity where you’re at currently, maybe it’s time to find somewhere else where they will let you grow, where they will let you try new things.

I know no company wants to hear you say that. Everybody that owns a company or manages people right now is like, “Bryant, shut up! Don’t say that!” But the thing is, it’s true. Even if my employees, right? If they can’t get what they want to be happy and to grow and progress with me, then go find it somewhere else, and I’ll help you do that, because I understand. That’s been one of the biggest reasons why I have left jobs in the past. I either got bored, or there wasn’t an opportunity for me to continue learning and growing. When you’re stagnant is when you get bored with life and life becomes miserable for you. But when you’re constantly growing and learning and progressing and doing things like that, it’s usually … Even though it’s challenging, it’s not easy. I’ve worked plenty of 70 hour weeks over the last ten years. But, I wanted to really improve my skillset and really do that stuff.

And surround yourself with awesome people. I think that’s the other really big thing, right? I’m not me because I did it all on my own. I connected with a bunch of awesome people. I went to conferences, I read blogs, I learned from other people. If you want to learn something, find somebody who’s already doing it and start learning how they did it, what they’re doing, mimic what they have. That can help you get where you want to be.

Amy: Those are some great suggestions, and I do think to your point, this is a great industry that really does favor people who are interested in learning and growing. Because it’s still relatively in its infancy, right?

Bryant: Yeah.

Amy: And so if you can potentially hire someone who is excited to be learning new things, there’s a lot of opportunity that still exists for those people. It’s not like we’re just tapped out.

Bryant: Yeah, absolutely. How many unfilled positions are there at every agency and company right now in this field specifically? And it’s mostly because there’s not the skillset there or the people to fill it. So a lot of times, I’ve hired people that had no prior online marketing experience. But they were analytical, they were inquisitive, and they were super curious and driven to learn and grow. And those were the qualities I knew … ’cause I could teach the technical skillset, right? But I can’t give somebody curiosity. That’s not something you can teach somebody, to be curious, necessarily, or very easily, at least.

Amy: Yeah. So I do want to just ask this one other question before I let you go …

Bryant: Of course.

Amy: Because what you said, it’s something I’ve been thinking about. In terms of if someone is interested in mostly being behind the scenes, would you consider that a hiring liability? Would you want to bring someone onto your team who’s not comfortable speaking with clients, not comfortable interacting with other people, who just wants to kind of lay low? Do you think there’s a space for those people, too?

Bryant: I absolutely think there is a space for those people. A lot of us know them as the developers in the IT department, right?

Amy: Uh-huh.

Bryant: But even in paid search online marketing, other things like that, there are some people that just like to sit down at a computer and code, or design, or do things like that, and don’t necessarily want to interact with people on a regular basis. Now, I do firmly believe that everybody needs to have some interpersonal skillsets, and if they don’t have those, you can learn a lot of that. So I’m willing to coach people. Because they are going to have to interact, if not with customers, it’s with internal clients. And if you can’t communicate what you’re trained to get across to an internal client, they can’t communicate it to the external client. And there’s going to be some issues there. So I do think that communication is a huge skill, and it’s one that can be learned.

A lot of people don’t know, but I scored a 37 on the Asperger scale, on the autism spectrum. I haven’t been formally diagnosed, but I’m not naturally a communicator. I had to teach myself how to do it. Because I knew that it was just a big part of life. So there is that opportunity there. I am an introvert, though, so I do like just putting my head down and doing stuff also, and not interacting with people, but I know that that’s such an important piece to everything else. I can’t know what my client wants if I don’t ever talk to them, right?

Amy: Mm-hmm.

Bryant: So you either need to be able to talk to people a little bit externally, or know how to talk and get the information that you need from your internal counterparts. You do have to have some of those things. It doesn’t mean that most of the day you can’t be head down, but when it comes time to actually get the information that you need, you need to be able to do that.

Amy: Yeah. No, Bryant, I think you brought up a really good point, that this is a skill that can be learned, and we’ll definitely link up into the show notes any resources that you have for people for how they can … You mentioned that this is something that you put effort into learning and just anything you could suggest for people to get there. Do you have anything off the top of your head that we could include in the podcast?

Bryant: I think one of the first things is a book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. It just kind of goes into the psychology of how to talk to people. I know it’s kind of cliché, a lot of people talk about it, but if you don’t really know how to interact with people, it will help walk you through how you interact with people. Not necessarily step by step, but it gives a lot of really good examples that almost anybody can pick up. So that’s one of my favorite books for basically anybody, ’cause no matter who you are, what you are doing, you have to sell yourself or something at some point in your life. Whether that be selling the girl that you really want to marry that she should marry you, or selling a product or a service or something else.

Even internally, selling … A lot of times, when you work internally, you have to sell upper management on why something should be done. The reasons behind it, why they should do it, why should they invest in that software? Why should they invest in this skillset? Why should we hire somebody new? And so you have to learn how to sell those things, and that book definitely goes into that a lot.

Amy: Yeah, so much of it just comes back to empathy, right?

Bryant: Yeah.

Amy: Taking a minute to put yourself in someone else’s shoes instead of just what you want. What’s in it for the other person?

Bryant: And that’s not easy, ’cause it’s not natural, right? We naturally are all selfish creatures.

Amy: Right.

Bryant: So trying to get into the mind of somebody else takes a lot of practice. And I think the biggest thing is learning how to listen, and really listen, not listen and think about what you’re going to respond with, but actually listening to what they’re saying and trying to figure out what they mean by that. And if you don’t understand, asking another question. Most people are willing to explain a little bit further if you sincerely say, “You know what? I’m not sure I really understand what you mean by that.”

Amy: No, that’s a really great point. Well, Bryant, thank you so much for being on the episode. I have learned a lot from you, so I have really enjoyed discussing conversion rate optimization and mobile and then just how to get ahead in business. It’s been really cool.

Bryant: Awesome. I’m glad that you had me on, Amy, thanks.

Amy: All right, thanks so much.

 

Resources

Book: How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Bryant’s website

 

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