Automated Analytics Podcast

Automated Analytics Podcast: Removing the Mundane with Mark Beavan

• Automated Analytics • Season 1 • Episode 7

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Join us for an insightful conversation as Mark Taylor, CEO of Automated Analytics, sits down with Mark Beavan - a standout marketeer he’s proudly worked with not once, but twice. Known for his strategic thinking and no-nonsense approach to solving real marketing challenges, Mark Beavan shares how he’s leveraged Automated Analytics to eliminate time-consuming tasks and focus on what really matters: delivering value.

From his early days running PPC campaigns at Phones 4 U in 2008 to leading high-impact marketing in sectors like e-commerce, telecoms, and most recently private care, Mark has always been ahead of the curve. In this episode, he discusses:

  • The evolution of marketing over the last 15 years
  • Why repetitive tasks slow down progress - and how automation fixes that
  • The real-world impact of Automated Analytics on business outcomes
  • What it takes to lead marketing strategy across fast-paced industries

Mark Beavan is a true pioneer in adopting smart solutions that cut through inefficiency. Whether you’re a CMO, a marketing exec, or just passionate about growth, this episode offers sharp insights into how tech transforms marketing at every level.

Speaker 1:

Hi and welcome to this episode of the Automated Analytics podcast. Today we're going to meet Mark Bevan, one of the strongest marketeers I've met and had the pleasure of working for twice now. He's a brilliant marketeer and I'm sure you'll enjoy this episode. If you do, don't forget to like and subscribe. Today's podcast is all about getting to know Mark and understanding what solutions he solved by using our platform. So tell us, mark, a little bit about yourself. I know you very well because I've known you for about four or five years, but let's let the listeners hear about you.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, so originally started out in the world of PPC, so I worked for Foams for you back in 2008. So right at the start of the PPC journey, managing Yahoo, Bing and Google, and then from there I've moved into various CD marketing roles, through telecoms, through utilities, e-commerce, done a bit of travel and then more recently, in private care Excellent stuff.

Speaker 1:

So you call yourself like a seasoned marketing pro. You've got a bit of a sales background too as well, because your phone's for you at Spirits yeah, I suppose so so yeah, if you work for a call-to-run organisation, you obviously get sales training.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, I think my previous role at Helping Hands helped me cut my cloth managing call centers and, uh, and understanding how they work and why is it that marketing, yeah, what gets you up in in the morning for as a marketing director?

Speaker 2:

um, I suppose for me personally, it's all that uh, constant improvement, uh, kaiser, and I suppose that, again, those little things to um that you make, then little things that you make, those little changes that you make, that add up to a big goal. But I think, more recently in my career, I spent five years with, or nearly five years with, helping Hands, a domiciliary care provider, and I think it taught me that I really like working for organisations with purpose, yep. So Helping Hands helped elderly people and people with disabilities and helped them have care at home. So, although, yes, we're a private organisation, we're here to ultimately grow and make money.

Speaker 1:

It had a purpose and there was ultimately positive stories coming out of that and positive things happening for humans, which is a great thing, and it's a great product to market as a service like Domiciliary Care. Now what you haven't told us about is you outside of work, which little burtley told me that you're a birmingham city fan mark, unfortunately for my sins, but we are doing very well.

Speaker 2:

Now are you in lebanon um, but yes, um, I am birmingham city fan so actually being an aston villa fan um?

Speaker 1:

do you know, the 21 team knock you out the cup did that actually happen this year?

Speaker 2:

possibly I do. I do remember beating you, though, and then we went on to win the car in the car many years ago. That's true. At least we have a trophy, that's very true.

Speaker 1:

Certainly exactly. At least we have a trophy. I mean, how long have I been playing with Clyde and I? As me being an Aston Villa fan, I think I that was good, okay. So, and outside of work, I know you've got a passion for cars as well, and you recently got married yeah, so spend time with my wife, go travelling.

Speaker 2:

I love motor racing, f1, british touring cars. I've got sports cars much to my wife's anger when I purchased that and outside of that I do lots of sports, so cycling, scuba diving, that sort of stuff and I'm actually chairman of a local scuba diving club oh, brilliant, that's fair time, excellent. So we teach people how to how to dive and then go on lots of trips.

Speaker 1:

Brilliant, sounds fun, sounds fun. So bringing it back to work. So obviously there's a lot of talk in the industry about ai, uh and, and you were actually one of our pioneers of our, of our ai at four. So, as a marketing person, where where have you seen industry gone in terms of ai and its adoption of ai?

Speaker 2:

um, I think the the everybody talks about ai has been this big scary thing right. And then you, then you know, the GPTs come out and everyone starts using it for mundane tasks, all of that sort of stuff. But I think where it really starts solving problems for me is going how can you take those really time-consuming tasks that you do and almost get the AI to do those for you so that you get the insight that you would have got, but you get it quicker and on the fly. So that's where I think for me, that's where it's added the most value. Um, you know and and I admit openly a big user of chat gpt, always using it to polish stuff and use it to give me ideas, use it to give me challenges on. You know, what do I think my finance person is going to say if I put this idea across? You know you can, you can create personas and stuff.

Speaker 1:

So it's quite and you do quite a few things got you, and so when you approached us, it was primarily around marketing attribution. Yes, there's a large proportion of your sales for you know it's the fertility clinic actually come through the phone line or the phone fills that you generate. You're actually outbounding those phone fills, is that right?

Speaker 2:

yeah, so um, tfp fertility. I'll tell you a little bit about tfp. So we are a um fertility um supplier for uh patients. We have um been around for about 30 years, um 30 years plus. We have eight clinics in the uk and we have a couple of clinics in poland and a couple in the netherlands as well, so across three countries, and we look after thousands and thousands of patients every single year, creating thousands and thousands of babies. So it's you know, it's fantastic organization doing really amazing things for people um who are struggling to conceive.

Speaker 2:

My role within that, ultimately, is to bring in new patients. So when I started back in January 2023, it was all about I shouldn't know January 2024?, let's start again. When I started back in 2024, the task was to how do we get more patients through the door to talk to an appointment with us so we can hopefully help them? And part of that was looking at the budget that we were spending, analyzing the supplies that we had, analyzing all of the data we had to us, and what was really profound was we had lots of data within the organization but actually we had very little sort of marketing attribution data. We weren't able to really go.

Speaker 2:

That's the thing that's driving our customers? Yep, and what was really evident was that search is a huge part in the journey for our customers. So, whether it be, um, uh, people searching right at the start of their journey, trying to understand why they might be struggling to conceive, or whether it be that they're trying to understand, you know, different symptoms, or whether they're looking for a clinic or trying to understand what the process is, there is a lot of searching that goes on. It's quite a long, long journey. So, yeah, first thing was is going right, how do we make sure we appear as much as possible for all of these people? But also, we want to make sure we're putting it in front of the right people and not existing customers coming back who are just trying to call us for a service call for example.

Speaker 1:

So you don't really want your AdWords campaign generating customer service calls. You want it generating new inquiry space.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely so. If you imagine, when I joined there, we you know we were spending x amount of money, we were getting x amounts of um of calls in the call center and we get x amount of form fills. What I couldn't tell you was which call came from what and which form fill came from what. So I suppose the next challenge was going how do we stitch together those two things? First of all, um to go how many calls and form fills are those campaigns delivering? And then the next stage was going how do we measure the quality of those form fills? Yep, and those phone calls, so that we can go and optimize towards the ones that we want?

Speaker 1:

yeah, if that makes sense yeah, because I think the challenge we have with a what I would call a form fill campaign so a lead generation campaign or classic lead generation campaign is look, you're generating all these form fills, but how many of them are actually turning into sales? And unless you're measuring that outbound journey which, right, I've got a form fill, I'm measuring the outbound call, you've got really this data that tells you, right, I've had 100 form fills today. You don't know of those 100 form fills exactly. Had 100 form fills today. You don't know of those 100 form fills exactly which ones have turned into an inquiry, a sale. You know an appointment and therefore tracking that back to the keyword and then, obviously, the g-clip with the adwords, you just can't do it unless you're doing the measurement well, that bit's reasonably straightforward.

Speaker 2:

The bit that's not straightforward is understanding why that form converted better than another form and and why was it that that outbound call worked better than that outbound call. And I suppose we're getting into traditions of the traditional call center management style stuff. Yes, once you layer on AI tech, you can get it to analyze your outbound calls, understand types of language that you use when you do get a conversion. Yeah, it helps.

Speaker 1:

Point calls the call center managers into the right place to go and have a look and listen so you can understand better what's working and what's not and I guess that the the, the temperament, the tone of the person on a call such as you know, promoting what basically idea, yeah, you, you know you've got to have a certain pitch. You can't. You know, it's not like booking an mot or calling someone to to close a car service.

Speaker 2:

You've got to have empathy on that call and I'm guessing you could lose some of that just by not showing empathy to that so that formful yeah, and I, you know, I'm confident that all of all of the agents within the call center do show, uh, empathy on every single call. And I think the key is here we get thousands of phone calls every week and, um, you know, I always say to my advisor you remember, each one of those calls are deeply personal to that person. So just because you're doing lots of calls, actually that call is backed by probably quite a lot of anxiety, um, you know, worry, um excitement, various different emotions. So you need to, you know, treat that customer with the utmost respect, really listen to them and hopefully help them to move on to the next stage so plugging that, if you like, that attribution gap of understanding right or what calls what form flaws.

Speaker 1:

Then what's happened to those form flaws? Obviously you've been using our product, call 360. How's it gone so far?

Speaker 2:

so I think this has been probably the most, probably the most revolutionary thing that we've done since have joined. So stitching inbound, the inbound call to our google ids allows us to know what page they were on um, potentially what journey they were doing um, what clinic they were they were looking at, and we understand what um they were doing, what clinic they were looking at, and we understand what they hit on the IVR, what number they hit on the recorded messaging system. And actually what we can do now is we can feed back what the outcome of the call was. So it's really clever. It essentially listens, the AI listens to the phone call, it extracts and turns that into a um, into text, and then what it does is it analyzes that text, works out who said what and then, using the ai, it basically makes a guess on oh, we think the outcome of this call is this.

Speaker 2:

Now, it takes a little bit of time to train it to do the right thing, so you're always gonna have mistakes at first. So it's about human going in and going oh, that was a bit wrong, that was a bit wrong. But it's pretty good actually at learning reasonably quickly. Once you've got a bunch of data, it just sort of gets better and better. But the key here is now we're able to go that keyword on that day on that page drove a phone call that actually was a either a nice, a warm conversation about somebody wanting treatment, or a warm conversation about something what somebody wanted to do egg freezing, or a warm conversation about.

Speaker 2:

Or it was a booking it was. We took, you know, we took details and it was booked in and it was all agreed. Or it was a oh, this call actually was. As you do in every business, you get calls you're like oh, this wasn't even to my business. Was it a mistake call? Was it something about donation? Was it a customer service call? So we probably get four times as many customer service calls as we do sales calls. So we need to make sure that our marketing is focused on trying to bring new people through that journey, rather than the people that already got in clinic who are going through treatment, because those people should just be able to pick up the phone and talk to us.

Speaker 1:

Because I'm guessing if you're just measuring the volume of calls that you're getting, your brand campaign might look like it's your most successful. But once you understand the contents of the call and actually understand that some of those brand campaign keywords were driving customer service calls actually the cost per lead or all new inquiry isn't so good absolutely.

Speaker 2:

I think what the key thing is here is you've got call 360 ai and how we're allocating or defining what the outcome of those calls were. It's how you then feed that back in. What you've got to remember is on the other side of the coin, you've got google and all of its automated bidding and campaigns. You need to feed it with the best possible data. So this allows us to feed it with the best possible data and let it do its thing ultimately to get us more customers.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, because if you're not pushing in G-Click, so if your business relies on phone calls or has got more than 20% of its business coming from phone calls, if you're not pushing that back into Google as a G-click, as a conversion, you're missing out on optimizing your Google Ads account by 20, 30, 40, 80%. We've got some clients that even have 80% of their sales come from a phone call.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and pre-using this, essentially the only calls we were recording was click-to-call and the majority of those were, um, uh, click to calls were existing customers trying to get hold of the clinic to talk to them about something.

Speaker 1:

got you so in terms of your, your metrics, so in terms of your, your cost per lead and and you know you're the kpi's cost cost performance, I'm guessing is is where you kpi's let's call 360 done to those so I think two, two things really.

Speaker 2:

You've got in marketing. You have the dreaded, I suppose diminishing returns curve, right. So you, you get to a certain spend and you just don't seem to be getting more. I think the the targets that we were given. I simply had to be able to break through that and we sort of, as we became more intelligent with our data, we were able to go actually, let's spend another next amount, spend another 20 percent, send another 30 percent. We managed to over double what we're spending on our um. Our campaigns actually keep the cpa. For when I talk cpa I'm talking like quality conversion. So, yes, see, like a quantity form fill or a quality phone call. Yep, that has pretty much remained. It's either dropped or, you know, it sort of goes up and down throughout the year, but it's either dropped or it's remained the same. So it's essentially allowed us to push that diminishing returns curve upwards so that we've been able to continue to drive volume without driving up the cost per. Driving up the cost per.

Speaker 1:

So what you've been able to do is prove your return on investment your AdWords and then use that data to go and get more budget so you can then go and drive more quality leads, more quality fraud rules into the business to hit your targets.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, and I suppose this isn't all about search, because marketing is much more than search, right? So we've got organic search, we've got paid search, both of which we can track, really know really well with with 360, which is great, so we know what we're getting on those. But actually there's a lot of and we have to remember there's a lot of people come through the ivf journey that aren't ready to make a phone call. So just because it hasn't come back, it doesn't mean you shouldn't be there. Yeah, and actually what we're now trying to do is become much more intelligent about going.

Speaker 2:

Okay, this type of search here is the type of search somebody's probably doing because they're learning and finding information, and this type of search is more that. They're probably further down, yeah, the funnel, and actually they're ready and they're selecting a clinic. That journey can be quite long. That can be, yeah, six months or 12 months, but you know, um, people, people selecting the clinic and deciding what they want to do, um, so it's not just about search. It's fundamentally about, well, let's understand one channel at a time. Yeah, let's understand it as best we possibly can and give it the right data so that it can optimize as best we can, and then you go on to the next thing and you, you apply the same sort of principles to the next chart but being able to essentially, you know, double your lead volume using call 360, that's a pretty good headline, right?

Speaker 2:

I hope so yeah, I think we're doing all right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we're doing pretty well, good, good so where do you see the future of ai for for marketing? So obviously you used it to solve an attribution gap that you had um within your business. Where do you see ai helping you as a marketer moving forward?

Speaker 2:

um, I think it's. I go back to what I said earlier. So the key here is how do you take those annoying mundane jobs that you have to do and automate them? Something else in the organization that we're trying to do in a different team is really interesting, and what we're doing is trying to use AI to be able to predict what's going to happen. So when we are creating our forecasting, actually the AI is going. Well, look, based on historics and based on all of this information, we think this is what next month's gonna look like.

Speaker 2:

On the next month, the next month, and actually being more intelligent, using that sort of intelligence to be able to predict those things, it gets us away from that traditional world of oh my god, we've got to go and do this year's budget right, yeah, and um, you know, actually I'd love to be in a world where actually this year's budget is we go and go over to our AI and say what does next year's budget look like? And actually we then start prompting it with some stuff. Well, what if we spent a bit more? What if we did this? Like? That, for me, would be really, really helpful, and I suppose it'd be helpful for more than just marketeers. But essentially it's what every you know investor and all that stuff they're looking for. They're looking and going. Well, what if I invested a bit more?

Speaker 1:

How much more would you take? Because that's what AI is it's a prediction model, absolutely so it's good that you're using it, or thinking of using it, in that way, because I remember budgeting back in the old days.

Speaker 2:

It's months worth of process, Whereas now, if you're using AI to budget, actually it's probably more accurate because using more live data rather than just fingering the air or what do I think I'm going to get from it and I think we are quite forward thinking as an organization and I'm really thinking about, well, how can we use tools and ai to streamline our organization but also just do those things that are really time consuming and and you know, because at the end of the day, a budget process is a really good example it sucks up loads of time, lots of senior individuals If you can make that really, really slick, suddenly you've got, you know, could have months of additional resource that are focused on growing the business, not just on growing the budget model.

Speaker 2:

So I mean, that's just one example, right, but you know there's lots and lots of examples out there. So I mean that's just one example, right, but you know there's lots and lots of examples out there. No-transcript something and do something with ar. You can turn stuff around, yeah, and I think the more you know, more businesses get smart to that, the you know, the more content we're going to see out there. Actually, the more entertaining everything's going to be and easier it is to produce and quicker, absolutely, and the more effective businesses.

Speaker 1:

So what interests me about you, mark, is you were very much. I want to be a thought leader in my industry. I want to learn AI. That's what really struck me about you. Why did you want to pick that mantra?

Speaker 2:

Why did you want to be a thought leader within your industry? It was more that, if we can, you know you only have a certain amount of resource. When you get a job, like you know your marketing director, you sort of have a limit on how many heads you can put on seats and and how many, how much sort of hands you can do. So, if you've got you, you're aspiring to get to a certain place, you've got to be smart about how you do it Right. So, um, if you can automate things, be smarter, uh, then you can ultimately do more with less, if that makes sense. Um, yeah, cause their budgets are very tight.

Speaker 2:

It's not, it's the same in every any. It's not an unlimited pot of money. So I think and marketing is always a it's a cost center, right, yeah, and we're always the one that everybody looks at. Um, when we need to save money, well, let's go to marketing. Well, actually, you want to almost flip that around and tell yourself into a value center and using ai to streamline all of your processes, to make things happen quicker, to make all of your team more effective, yeah, all of those things put together suddenly, when that's presented, you're more a value center than you are a cost center and suddenly then you you feel like a much more valuable part of business so what advice would you give to someone who's who's watching this podcast or listens to this podcast?

Speaker 1:

what advice would you give them? Um, if they think about solving the attribution problem that you had?

Speaker 2:

there's loads of there's tech out there that can solve it. Um, you've got to, you know, just come and talk to. You know, talk to people, talk to peers that everybody's sort of trying things out. One thing I'd say is don't be afraid to try it, because I think a lot of people I've spoken to are a bit like oh AI, I don't know if I want to. You know, I want to bring that in my organization. Well, if you don't, your organization is going to get left behind and ultimately, somebody else is going to get left behind and ultimately, somebody else is going to come in and do all the things that you're going to do in the future. It's here, it's here to stay. We've got to use it.

Speaker 2:

I think the only other bit I would say is, once you've implemented it, really don't go in with a view of well, I know the answer it's going to give me, because it's never what you think. The call example is suddenly to go from being able to manually listen to 10, 15, 20 calls a week to being able to analyze 1,000 calls a week, or 2,000 calls, or 5,000 calls a week. The insight you get is completely different and it's not what you're going to expect. Use that insight then to go it's not just about solving problems to get more sales. Yeah, this is also about providing people a really great experience, and I'm going to jump one.

Speaker 2:

One last example was we actually used the, the, the ai started to recognize there was a particular question or particular questions that our patients were asking, and actually what that's done is that is feeding our project. To go, okay, we need to be better at telling our customers these things, or telling our patients these things. That's pre-empting. They're going to phone us Because actually, those phone calls, that's because they're probably sat at home going, oh, I'm not really sure about this. Well, if we could have had that conversation at the beginning or given them an information sheet or whatever, whatever, whatever, that person wouldn't have had to make that call and probably wouldn't have had that anxiety pre-making call and all of that sort of stuff. So, yeah, this isn't just about sales or, you know, getting more customers or patients.

Speaker 1:

This is about how do you provide an outstanding experience, and ai can help you do that and I guess that customer journey, because it's making sure that custom journey is as slick as it can be, so they become an inquiry, so there isn't a barrier or a block to them calling you or filling out form full, or they feel like during that custom journey, actually you're the band that will want, hopefully, yes, cool. And then one final question I'm going to ask you are Birmingham City going to get promoted this season? Absolutely, absolutely, well, listen, it's been a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Thank you very much, um, next episode will be out in a week, continuous time. Thanks very much for listening.