Data vs. Gut: Finding Balance

The delicate balance between gut instinct and data analysis takes center stage in this illuminating exploration of modern marketing strategy. As business owners protect their "babies," they must navigate a complex landscape where numbers tell only part of the story. Audience behaviors, social trends, and market shifts demand awareness beyond what analytics alone can provide.

Through candid observations about ready-to-drink beverage brands that burst onto the scene only to quickly fade, we see how visibility doesn't guarantee longevity. The changing consumption habits of Gen Z—moving away from traditional alcoholic beverages entirely or shifting to alternatives—further illustrates why adaptability trumps rigid data adherence.

Marketing success requires understanding multiple data streams: traffic patterns revealing how users find you, keyword research for content optimization, backlinks serving as digital "thumbs up," competitor insights exposing market opportunities, and content metrics preventing "thin" pages. Yet technical SEO shouldn't overshadow what truly matters—meaningful communication with your audience through proper tone, voice, and excellent user experience. When your content speaks "derp-a-derp," even perfect SEO can't save you.

Ultimately, conversion rates reveal where improvements are needed, reminding us that "free" organic marketing actually demands significant expertise and effort. Your marketing team deserves recognition for navigating these complex waters. Remember: it takes a village to raise a brand, balancing analytical insights with the human intuition that drives successful business decisions.

Visit nerdbrandagency.com/podcast to subscribe, share with friends, and keep your brand strategy strong in an increasingly data-driven world.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Episode Whatever
• 1:13 Data vs. Gut in Business Decisions
• 3:19 RTD Brands and Market Shifts
• 6:03 Important Types of Marketing Data
• 10:23 Technical SEO and Conversion Rates
• 14:37 Closing Thoughts and Call to Action

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of the NerdBrand podcast, where I post a podcast late. You know why? Because we have been busy and so let's get to it. Let's see what we're going to talk about today. Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of the NerdBrand Podcast, where it's number 200, episode 245, 4, 6. I don't know, I've lost count.

Speaker 1: 0:48

Anyways, I'm working on getting some of the nerds to come back on because they've been busy. We've got a lot of projects, got a lot of stuff going on, and I usually don't talk about it, mostly because I don't remember very well and everything has been a blur. What year is it? Is it 2025 or 2026? Yeah, I don't know. Anyways, data, data, data.

Speaker 1: 1:13

There's always a decision that needs to be made using data, but I would argue there is merit for using your gut. There's just some times where you look at the data and everything is good and great, but your gut tells you something else, and I use a little bit of a both, a bit of a both, and I'll say it that way. Well, it's a matter of being a business owner and you're kind of protecting your baby, right? I think many can relate. So you do have to be aware of circumstances, to be aware of people, personalities, social trends, political trends. You just kind of have to watch things in order to make a decision that is best for your business because you want it to have a future. So let's go over some data. And I know we talk a lot about SEO, or at least I talk about SEO a lot lately. I would also encourage anyone that is focused and hyper-focused on SEO do not forget the power of UX, User experience, design is right there with it. You know you have to have both, just like you have to have an organic strategy and a paid strategy when it comes to your brand and its awareness, because you want to keep that lift, you want to be top of mind, right. We've kind of gotten away from that, I think, because we've gotten so far into data and analytics and AI and we kind of forget we're advertising to people, you're talking to people, you're helping people, you're servicing, you know people. Uh, if you're in a, you know a business model of that sort. So you kind of got to get realizing that that you can't predict sometimes some behaviors you can predict, but others you can't.

Speaker 1: 2:57

So I watched the journey of a lot of these ready to drink brands over the years and I'm going to try to avoid naming names because I don't know if that would cause problems or not. I'm sure they wouldn't care. It's a small podcast that you know, not that many probably listen. So whatever. However, I will say a certain drink that mixes, you know, tea and vodka, um, and I'll let you figure out who we're talking about.

Speaker 1: 3:26

But they kind of bursted onto the scene. They were the cool kids, you know. They were like the underdogs, but they had the celebrity endorsements and I don't know if it's worked out for them, since I haven't heard much from them since that era, and this was probably late 2023. And so it was just. They were everywhere. They were even here in my hometown here, and I met one of their regional reps and great guy, you know. But then again, all of a sudden, he moves on to something else. I mean, I even brought the guy to a nice nonprofit um breakfast to meet a lot of other influential people and um, quite often, and I find that when I do that, I'm hoping that they can buzz around the room and make some connections and go like hey, jason, thanks a lot. We appreciate that.

Speaker 1: 4:10

I didn't really get a whole lot of that um, afterward Cause I don't think they really met a lot of people because I think they figured they were punching above their weight perhaps, maybe, um, so it's a, it's a bit of a, it's a bit of a shock, like a lot of these RTD brands. I mean they're really, they're fighting now. I mean it's, it's, yeah, I won't, I wouldn't say it's going to replace bourbon, but definitely up there I see a lot of younger people going towards these brands, drinking bourbon less. Perhaps there's been a big article, there's a lot of articles out there about how Gen Z is like moving away from that and not drinking at all, even you know. So that puts a crimp in a lot of things when it comes to people that kind of built their business around wine, spirits and bourbon. But also don't forget the energy drinks. There's a certain energy drink that was bottled here in Louisville, kentucky, that was sold in, I think it's billions of dollars B as in boy, and they're already starting to revamp their brand.

Speaker 1: 4:59

So the name recognition to the product and everything else. I'm fairly certain that organic SEO is probably the last on their list to think about, and the reason is it's a fair reason if it is because when you have brand awareness and you're putting content out there that people like and you have a good brand with a good reputation, it's recognizable. The graphics, the logo, everything about it visibly is professionally clean and good looking, then you know SEO is sort of like the reward you get. You know, when we were kids, if you didn't cause mom a problem going to the store, she might buy you that thing in the aisle that's that impulse aisle. You might get a little bit of something there and not a problem. Otherwise you're just kind of throwing a tantrum in the middle of the aisle while mom is three aisles over trying to figure out. You know, does she want the Quaker Oats, traditional or regular? Like you know, at least that's how I remember moms, anyways, moving on. So I want to think about that.

Speaker 1: 6:03

So what types of data are important? Well, you know, first of all have a strategy, because you can start to look at the data and you kind of get lost in it. You know you get lost. I learned all these things and I see all this stuff and I see all these verticals, but at the end of the day you don't really have any idea how it will even correlate to what either the brand is about. Maybe you're finding data that doesn't match the brand's purpose. That's a bad one, especially if you're like, oh my God, all these people are in their teens and twenties and I'm selling B2B services to people in their forties and fifties and this is the crowd I'm attracting Maybe need to reevaluate my brand strategy and whatever else I'm doing. Right, because you know you could have a lot of traffic data. You got all the keywords, you got all the backlinks, but then you're like, oh crap, it's not the audience that I need and that's a really a big red flag. And so traffic data is organic traffic, direct traffic, referral traffic and paid traffic. Those are the three, those are the traffics. Got all the traffic there? No-transcript. You might want to work on your brand awareness more. That's your key. So and that is not a signal to quit the other this is, I can't stress enough For some reason, business owners usually take the one thing and they run with that one thing, and I'm like it's usually about 10 things that you need to pay attention to. And you know your marketing manager, your marketing directors, that's that's their job is to work with an agency, kind of know one called Nerdbrand. You can reach us at nerdbrandagencycom. See how I did that. And yeah, it takes a village to raise a brand. So that's sort of what's required.

Speaker 1: 7:55

Keyword research data Everybody still gets into keywords. It's kind of funny to me. It's important Terms and phrases that people use to find your website. That's important. It's critical when you're thinking about content planning and on-page optimization. You've got to use the phrases and the keywords in there. But as a brand agency, you've got to have the right tone and voice and vibe for that audience so that it's relatable. Otherwise, you're saying a bunch of things and they just hear derp-a-derp and they don't know what you're saying or what you mean. So you've got to think about that. They just hear derp-a-derp and they don't know what you're saying or what you mean, so you got to think about that.

Speaker 1: 8:28

Backlink data is really good. I see a lot of backlink data. That seems it's okay. Some brands that we monitor have toxic ones and we go in and disavow. But it's like yeah, these are links from other websites to yours. Is what these are, and the search engine will consider them a sign of trust and authority, like a thumbs up. We've heard this before where, hey, I like that guy. He cut my hair and he didn't make me look like an idiot. Thumbs up and go to that barber. It's literally what the backlinks will do if they're good ones.

Speaker 1: 8:56

Then you have your competitor data. Did you know that you could see your competitor's performance and strategies? Did you know that you could even probably find out in the same geographical area how they're doing with their ads? You just never know what's out there. If you really want to spend the money and if it's in a certain sector because other sectors it's just private you just ain't going to find that. But at the end of the day, it helps you identify opportunities or maybe a threat in the area you're in. So competitor data is important.

Speaker 1: 9:26

And then you have content data. You know that's the information that your website's content, your images, your videos, the words on the page. It's not great, meaning that the word count is thin, like we need a paragraph of about 300 or 500 words, minimum-ish, and you think, well, is that the key? I need to make sure every page has that, not really? No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying if you got like two images, that's sort of the minimum you want to go to, if that's all you got to show people when they go to your webpage, um, and so you don't want thin website pages. That's, thin pages are bad. But uh, you know, readability is another one. So I'm not a copywriter, but I know that when a copy for a web page is written and I put it in, and I look at Yoast and I look at another SEO tool and it's like the readability of this is like that of a 12th grader. Well, that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. But if it's got a lot of problems with the grammar, if it's using a lot of sentence structures that just don't make sense or are complex, if the sentences are more than 20 words, let's say, or anything like that, like really long, probably going to get dinged on that. Hire a copywriter. Because what will happen is you'll pop that stuff in and you'll go like, oh my God, that sentence makes so much sense when I read it back. Because if you read yourself out loud, you will find you'll probably be a little bit embarrassed about what you wrote. I am every time, trust me, moving on User behavior.

Speaker 1: 10:50

This is a big one. User behavior. Do people like red shirts, blue shirts, short sleeve, long sleeve? Don't really know. Maybe I should not sell long sleeve. People like short sleeves, right, it's sort of that. It's just kind of looks at your bounce rate and session duration and you know, this is where I get into the content and effectiveness and whether or not if it's like a good piece of content, like if you're trying to put stuff out there.

Speaker 1: 11:14

I think the last podcast I talked about topics. If it's a topic that your site's not familiar with, you're going to attract a different audience and you're going to kind of, you know, make the current one. You've already spent all the time and money getting go away. Um, because now they're like well, I guess they're on that and not that it's fair, but you don't want, you don't want to do that. Audiences are very, very fickle. So you want to pay attention to your user behavior.

Speaker 1: 11:36

Um, some people say like, oh, pay attention to the bounce rate. Well, maybe they found what they found and that was it. Found what they found and that was it. Maybe you have one of those sites or businesses where it's like informational they found what they found, they got the number, they got the name, they got the address, they're good to go Bang, they're off. Okay, yeah, okay, there's other ways to figure out the attrition whether or not. If that's the case, I'm assuming, but I would say, if that's the case, if that's an example, then yes, you should have other metrics that are available for you to see if that's true.

Speaker 1: 12:02

But you know, never, ever, ever, forget that with behavioral data, as you're gathering it and working with it, user experience is very important, aka UX, and so this is where data and SEO and UX collide, and so make sure you got a website that's easy to use, easy to understand, easy to fill out, straightforward. Don't hide things. Understand Easy to fill out, straightforward. Don't hide things. Hiding content is bad, bad, bad, bad. You get a D if you do that. So technical SEO data Now this is the one where everybody hears technical SEO and they go ooh and it's like well, hold on a minute, pump the brakes.

Speaker 1: 12:39

This is giving information that's on your site its performance, page load speed, mobile friendliness. This is stuff the search engine sees and the search engine likes. I do not recommend you move this to the top of the list. It is something you should think about, but if you put it at the top of the list, it could become such a block on you focusing on what is it you're wanting to communicate through your site or your content that you want people to engage with, because visibility and ranking are not necessarily the same. So, especially if you start comparing yourself to competitors, who's going to appear first? It's not necessarily a ranking thing, it could be just the fact is, maybe locationally you're closer, or it could be some other thing.

Speaker 1: 13:23

Look up visibility when results to SEO. Read up on that. You'll find some amazing stuff and all of a sudden you'll realize maybe it doesn't really matter that my site doesn't have as big of a score on the technical side as I want it to, because I got this backlink data, competitor data, content data. I've got all this other stuff traffic, keywords. Technical is a small portion of it, and if you're doing really good on that, you're great. It's the other stuff that you might be deficient on. It's causing problems, and then you have the big one. This is the big one. All right, we're going to wrap up with this Conversion rate.

Speaker 1: 14:01

Conversion rate data Based on your desired outcomes. Conversion rate tells you where you need to improve and how you can optimize for better results, because, at the end of the day, you're spending money on paid campaigns and you're spending money on organic. Even though organic we often think free, it's not. Somebody is going through blood, sweat and tears. Walk past your director of marketing's office and if they look like they're about to bang their head into the table, take them to lunch Because, wow, it's a thing I mean. They're doing their best to make this work, to get the best outcome, because they're looking at conversion rate, and so help them out.

Speaker 1: 14:37

Anyways, that's this for this episode of the NerdBrand podcast. If you enjoy it, go to nerdbrandagencycom like, subscribe, do the things. You'll see that page there. On nerdbrandagencycom slash podcast. Find your favorite podcast app, download it, tell your friends about it. Tell your friends about it and if you see me on the street, say hey, jason Nerdbrand, and I will probably freak out because I'll be like there's no way that person heard me. So, surprise me, be safe out there as everybody's doing the derby things. And you know, remember, keep your nerdbrand strong.