Connecting the Dots: Turning Insights Into Scalable Strategies With Brad Schlachter

Intro: 00:00

Welcome back to the Response Drivers Podcast, where we feature top marketing minds and dig into their inspiring stories. Learn how these leaders think and find big ideas to push your results and sales to the next level. Now let’s get started.

Rick Rappe: 00:19

Hey, I’m Rick Rappe, host of the Response Drivers podcast. Here I dive deep with marketing experts and innovators to learn how they approach targeted marketing and use data driven strategies to acquire and retain customers. We’ll talk about what’s working, what’s changing, and how we can stay ahead in evolving marketing landscape. Response Drivers is brought to you by RPM Direct Marketing. RPM helps companies develop hard hitting direct mail creative and utilize advanced testing and targeting methodologies to reach customers and prospects.

Our goal is to fully optimize your marketing performance to drive more sales and exceed growth expectations. RPM delivers smarter, more, more profitable direct mail solutions so you can turn direct mail into an efficient, scalable sales channel. Check out rpmdm.com to learn more. My guest today is Brad Schlachter. Brad’s the Founder of Rise Business Ventures.

You can check him out on risebusinessventures.com. Brad serves as a full funnel growth marketer and fractional CMO who specializes in scaling customer acquisition, increasing conversions, and reducing churn. He’s an expert at connecting the dots between acquisition, analytics, and retention, transforming insights into high performing strategies that scale businesses. Brad combines data driven performance marketing with compelling brand storytelling to build full funnel systems that deliver measurable, repeatable results. Thanks so much for joining the show today, Brad.

Brad Schlachter: 01:49

Thanks for having me and pleasure to be here.

Rick Rappe: 01:52

Can you share the pivotal moments and some of your background from your early career that shaped your approach to marketing and leadership.

Brad Schlachter: 02:01

I mean, I think it goes back all the way to when I was in college and I always had a strong interest in the social sciences, and I was a psychology major. And marketing for me was always an extension of that. You know, it’s not you know, consumer behavior is human behavior and really trying to understand human behavior, consumer behavior, those are things that were always very interesting to me. And, you know, as my career evolved, you know, it’s the thing that I really enjoy a lot about marketing is at its essence, you’re telling a story and you’re hopefully you’re telling a story that resonates with someone on an emotional level in some way, as well as on a rational level, and is meeting a need or an unmet need, hopefully. And I think all those kind of to combine for me in terms of human behavior and understanding it and, and then trying to come up with ways to tap into our emotions and our needs to be able to tell a story and, and hopefully sell a product or a service effectively.

Rick Rappe: 03:15

Well, I know you had some amazing jobs in your early career. I believe you worked at corporations like Microsoft and Disney. Can you talk a little bit about how those experiences influenced your strategies and developed your marketing point of view?

Brad Schlachter: 03:32

I mean, early on, I was fortunate to be able to work for some big companies, including Microsoft and Disney and Hallmark and some others. And really was able to learn a lot from, you know, world-class organizations. And the thing that’s been interesting for me is that later in my career. Now as a consultant, I’m working mostly, mostly with smaller and medium sized businesses and scrappy startups. But what I’ve learned is that there’s even if you are scrappy startup or have limited resources, there still are a lot of things you could borrow from the big companies to be successful and need to borrow from the big companies.

And you know, one thing that I’ve noticed is many founders, you know, really place a lot of emphasis on performance marketing. And, okay, let’s show our investors that we could scale and let’s start running those ads. But sometimes they’re not taking the step of really thinking through their brand positioning and their key messaging. And what’s the emotional hook or what’s the real story we’re trying to tell? And that enterprise-level storytelling can be done at a scrappy startup, but it just requires you to put in the work and develop that brand positioning and really develop your brand tone and voice and make sure that that is the filter through which all of your marketing materials and communication goes through.

Rick Rappe: 05:14

I’ve heard that from other people that work with startups that, you know, that that’s really important to build that foundation up and that a lot of startup founders are sort of more from the engineering perspective, and they build a product and they want to just like throw it out there and like people will understand it and buy it, and it doesn’t necessarily work that way.

Brad Schlachter: 05:35

Yeah, I mean, it’s natural, I think it’s kind of a natural thing where especially startups who recently have been funded and they’re immediately under pressure. It’s like, okay, we need to show our investors that we could scale, that there’s a product market fit and they want results yesterday, right. And it’s so it’s very easy to sort of just jump into this mindset of, okay, let’s get out there. Let’s start marketing this. Let’s start shouting from the rooftops, so to speak.

Yeah, product or service. But they you know, it takes a little bit of experience to understand that, you know, you need to combine that storytelling and, and have that well crafted brand positioning. That combined with the performance marketing is really what’s going to enable you to succeed. One without the other is never going to allow you to be as successful as you could be.

Rick Rappe: 06:32

Yeah. Do you find and this is I mean, do you find that you’re ever in conflict with leaders in startups where they sort of have this fail fast sort of startup mentality would throw it out there? Let’s see what happens. And like we just have to iterate, iterate, Iterate does that. Is that in conflict with what you’re talking about there?

Brad Schlachter: 06:56

You know, not necessarily. I mean, because, you know, you still it doesn’t have to take a long time to really try to hone in on a well-constructed or well thought out brand positioning strategy. Yes, there’s research involved and doing the Swot analysis and, you know, understanding what’s different and better about your product or service. And yes, there’s some work involved in doing that, but it doesn’t have to be something that you spend a lot of time on. And you could create that brand positioning framework.

And yes, in a perfect world, you would recommend that. Okay, now that we’ve come up with this brand positioning framework, let’s test this and let’s, you know, let’s do some market research and talk to our target audience and see if this resonates. And you know, but and so sometimes those short you know, removing that part of it is, is certainly something that’s a trade off that I think, you know, is okay. What I think is not okay is really just going out there without you, without really having put in that analysis and thought to really understand how you, you know, what you’re doing is different and better because I’ve seen, you know, too many products and too many startups that really didn’t have a clear point of difference or a clear value proposition, or it was very much a me too product. And, you know, that’s where you’re going to run into, you know, into challenges.

Yeah. It’s a, you know, it’s a balancing act.

Rick Rappe: 08:36

Yeah, I get it. I’ve definitely worked with lots of startups in my career, and I know I have one that comes to mind as you’re talking about this was a company that we worked with heavily with direct mail because they were at a very targeted product that they were trying to sell. So we we and their product was a $99 offer, $99 product, and they decided that was the price of the product and that they had to stick with that. And I wish they would have tested the price early on and said, well, does $99 work or does 149 work, or does 199 work? The reason why is, I mean, ultimately the company went out of business because they had just set the price too low.

They weren’t able to be profitable at $99. And they might have been, you know, so much more profitable at a higher price point. Let me ask you, in your experience, how do you ensure alignment across the entire marketing funnel? Once you start working with a client and you’ve developed this foundation, how do you get alignment across the marketing funnel from acquisition to retention?

Brad Schlachter: 09:51

Yeah, I mean, I think it could be a challenge, right? Usually there’s a lot of key stakeholders and there could be differences of opinion. And stakeholders can have different objectives. But I think it starts with, you know, you know, understanding okay. You know, where are you now?

What are the business metrics or KPIs that are going to define success and getting alignment on that. And then coming up with a plan saying, okay, basically this is where we are now. This is where we want to be and this is how we’re going to get there. And everything in that plan really should be tied back to achieving those business goals. And those marketing strategies tie back to the business goals.

And so if you get that alignment up front, that’s going to make things a lot easier. There still could be disagreements. But then you can, you know, hopefully your disagreements are more about maybe tactical things or maybe some strategies, but you’re at least aligned on what the objectives are and what the what what what’s going to equal success.

Rick Rappe: 10:58

With the abundance of data that’s available now to marketers, how do you determine which or advise your clients about which metrics are the most critical for them to focus on?

Brad Schlachter: 11:09

Yeah, I know that’s a good question because there’s an endless amount of data out there and endless amount of metrics or KPIs that you could report on. And quite honestly, one of the things that have given marketers in some instances a bad rep is that, you know, you could, I don’t want to say manipulate the data, but you could choose to report on the metrics that are going to put yourself in a positive light. And they may not be the metrics that really matter. And, you know, for example, some people may talk about social media and how many fans or followers they’ve gained, and fans or followers do matter. But your engagement on social media is much more important than the number of fans or followers you have.

What your interaction rates are, and that’s really what’s going to drive your reach. So my point is that sometimes people stress vanity metrics, and sometimes it’s easier to talk about the vanity metrics and paint a positive picture. Really need to ultimately talk about the metrics that are going to be driving revenue and driving growth. And so if you’re in a subscription business or an app business, instead of talking, you know, sometimes it’s easy, hey, we drove X amount of app downloads. Well, how many of those people converted to becoming a user or paying subscriber, and obviously so it’s going to be a smaller number.

But those are I mean, ultimately it’s about not just the top of funnel stuff, but getting them people through the funnel to the desired actions. And as marketers, that’s really what we need to talk about and be upfront and honest about. You know, these are the metrics that matter. Instead of maybe trying to impress people with, you know, top of funnel vanity metrics.

Rick Rappe: 13:10

Yeah, I totally agree with that. I mean, looking at the volume of sales that you’re driving is really important. And then, of course, the sales rate of how many people did you contact or that type of metric. But then I also find it’s really important to look at the cost per sale. I think a lot of clients don’t look at the cost per.

And they think and they think, wow, we really hit a home run. But like, oh, how much did you spend on that? It was really expensive. Maybe it’s not the best idea. So, you know, I always think about show me the way to use my money most efficiently.

And that’s the metric that I can, you know, really latch on to. Can you provide an example of where you’ve used, like, data insights to lead a strategic pivot or a strategic direction in a marketing campaign? Does anything come to mind?

Brad Schlachter: 14:00

Yeah, I mean, one of the things you mentioned earlier, which I certainly have a strong opinion on, is you. You talk about pricing and pricing is a tough conversation sometimes to happen to have with founders because, I mean, I think you talked about an example where the price was too low. A more common example is that a founder or a CEO might feel that their product or service is worth more than maybe what a customer is willing to spend for it. And even if you have data to support that, it still could be a conversation that they don’t want to have or don’t, you know, emotionally, it’s just not something they’re willing to accept. But the thing that’s kind of interesting about price, especially with subscription based services, and I happen to have worked with a number of video streaming services, including MotorTrend on Demand, which was sort of like a Netflix for auto enthusiasts.

But the thing about subscription services, it’s not really, you know, the price that matters. It’s ultimately the lifetime value, right? How long do people stick around or stay subscribed? That’s going to be the ultimate definition of winning from a revenue perspective. And so sort of one of the things that fortunately at MotorTrend, they gave us the flexibility to a B test pricing and other companies I’ve been at, they’re like, no, you know, we don’t want to do that.

We’re not comfortable with it. But the thing that’s kind of interesting about MotorTrend is that it may be somewhat counterintuitive, but when we lowered the price, not only was it less expensive to acquire a customer at a lower price, which you would expect, but when we lowered the price, people also ended up sticking around longer and the lifetime value went up. So people think, oh, if we lower price, you know, revenue is going to go down, it’s going to hurt our business. It might damage the brand. And yes, you don’t want to lower a price where you’re — it’s a race to the bottom or you know, you’re doing massive discounts.

But there is a sweet spot and you need to experiment. The best companies will allow their teams to experiment, to find that spot where the price is at a point where it’s driving growth. It’s increasing lifetime value. And, you know, it’s going to take a little bit of time typically to find that right, that right price point.

Rick Rappe: 16:35

Yeah. That’s so true. It’s so critical in marketing teams to build that environment where ideas can bubble up to the surface and then be tested without having to jump into something like completely without testing it at all first. So that’s very, very good advice. A little bit about our current marketing landscape.

I know everything seems to be constantly evolving and changing. How do you stay ahead of emerging trends and technologies in your practice?

Brad Schlachter: 17:14

Yeah, I mean, I think you just have to put in the time and the work. You know, you need to read your various, you know, everyone, every industry or has its own, you know, respected trade publications and forums. One of the companies I happen to have worked for was a company called Simpler Media Group. I was head of marketing for them, and they publish some digital magazines once called CMS Wire and one’s called Reworked, and CMS Wire is just using that as an example. It’s really geared towards marketers and CIOs and CEOs, and it’s all about the latest tools and technologies and headless CMS and AI driven, you know, platforms.

And so I’m using that as just one example, but certainly on LinkedIn a lot. I’m on various forums. You’ve got to put in the time. You’ve got to embrace technology. I’ve been in marketing long enough or I’m old enough.

I should say that when I first started, it was all about, you know, traditional, what we call now called traditional marketing and TV and print and radio. And if I hadn’t evolved to become also a digital marketer, I would have become extinct. So, you know, you have to embrace technology. And AI is the latest, most maybe disruptive thing that’s come to our industry. And we were talking a little bit earlier before we got started about how there’s pros and cons about AI or people have mixed feelings about AI.

But it’s something that you still need to get immersed in and take advantage of.

Rick Rappe: 19:00

Yeah. How are you seeing AI play a role in marketing, and are you starting to leverage any AI in your strategies?

Brad Schlachter: 19:08

Yeah, I mean absolutely. I mean, at the end of the day, it was interesting. I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who works for Nintendo, and this is a little about this was about a year ago. So maybe things have changed, but Nintendo partly because they’re a Japanese company. They were very anti-AI.

And he was my friends in PR and they forbid him from using AI to help write press releases or do anything related to improving his output or quality of his work. And I think that’s a mistake. Because, you know, certainly I think marketers who embrace AI become more productive and it makes you better and more productive. And so if you’re using AI and you’re a colleague at another company is not. I think you’re putting yourself in a position to be more successful than that person or that company’s putting themselves in a position to be more successful than that company.

But I do also understand the hesitance or the reluctance. You know, you have there have to be guardrails. You know, you don’t want to upload proprietary information about your product or company to ChatGPT. You have to be smart about things. And there are certainly some risks with AI.

And yeah, I could help you be more productive, but also it’s also eliminating some tasks or eliminating some positions in marketing and in other fields, which is certainly concerning.

Rick Rappe: 20:50

Yeah. Well, we were talking also a little bit about the impact of AI on the creative side of, of marketing and the creative teams working in marketing. I know my wife is a graphic designer and she’s not a big fan of AI. Like, you know, people can get on and design their logos in five minutes and like, that’s something that she’s been doing and, and does wonderfully for her clients. But it’s a longer process.

And, you know, she involves a lot of human creativity in the process. So how do you feel about AI in the creative arts?

Brad Schlachter: 21:26

Yeah, I mean on one hand it’s kind of exciting and empowering for people who lack the creativity or the skills that someone like your wife has. You know, being able to design logos or even create videos and things that weren’t necessarily part of my skill set before. I mean, so that’s kind of empowering. But at the same time, you know, it’s also creating challenges where now if you create content marketing has always been a big part of the mix for me. I’ve worked for a lot of content driven companies, and now there’s just a flood of AI driven content out there, whether it’s videos or blog posts or white papers.

You know, there’s just a and so it just it’s become that much harder to break through the clutter. Right. Because of the, the flood of content and the other, you know, obviously thing that troubles me and other people is that as if you are in a creative field, whether it’s designing logos or creating video content, you know, I live in LA and there was a writer’s strike here, you know, not too long ago. And a lot of the reason behind the writer’s strike was because of concerns about AI, you know, taking away jobs in Hollywood. And it already is.

And it’s a legitimate concern for lots of different people. And, you know, I worked for I guess my philosophy on it is that I prefer to work with tools or companies that empower creators, but aren’t going to be replacing them. But, you know, I don’t know where that line is necessarily.

Rick Rappe: 23:18

And yeah.

Brad Schlachter: 23:20

That are helping or empowering creators. Now, maybe the same companies or tools that end up, you know, replacing people down the road too. So I don’t know if that’s like a good way to look at it or not.

Rick Rappe: 23:32

Yeah. I mean, I think back to when we long time ago when I started my career and we would do design work, we would do it with paste up boards and, and X-Acto knives and put things together with a waxer and, you know, make a physical art board.

Brad Schlachter: 23:49

Yeah. And write.

Rick Rappe: 23:50

Mechanicals and. Yeah, exactly. My first job, I was an intern, and I had to, like, take the art boards and run to the airport, get on an airplane and fly to the client’s city and hand them off. Yeah. But that was just for proofing, actually.

And then we got our first Macintosh and computers, and all of a sudden everything changed. But that technical innovation probably caused some people to lose their jobs. You know, along the way. But now computers are just accepted technology for design. And everybody, everybody does it that way.

And that old way of doing it is lost and nobody knows about it anymore.

Brad Schlachter: 24:28

Yeah, and look, AI is going to create jobs too. And it already is. And so it’s a very complicated I don’t think there’s, you know, an easy way to analyze it. I mean, there’s a lot of AI startups now and I’ve worked for them. So I know I’m, I’m, I’m in some cases benefiting from it.

But I also know that it’s creating a lot of challenges for other people. I think maybe more for people who are starting out in their careers. Those are the jobs, I think, at least initially, are being the most impacted by. Yeah, but we’ll see.

Rick Rappe: 25:04

I think, I think sometimes I think it’s funny that I can take 2 or 3, you know, ideas, bullet points and put it into AI and it’ll write a whole article for me based on my thoughts. And then somebody else can use the AI to summarize my article and boil it down to my thoughts, you know, back. So it’s going through this weird loop. Reflecting on your career at this point? What’s been one of the most challenging things that you’ve worked on and what did you learn from it?

Brad Schlachter: 25:31

I think generally speaking, you know, as you advance in your career, and I’ve been doing marketing for a long time. You know, you get pretty comfortable with, you know, obviously there’s always going to be new tools and things that you need to learn. But you know, you know what to do. You have systems hopefully in place. You’ve had a track record that you could lean on.

And so the physical aspect of marketing certainly gets easier over time. You know, I just because of the experience. But what always is challenging or can be challenging is the personalities involved. Right. And the relationships.

And so, you know, we’re all human beings. And so maybe not maybe not AI bots, but we’re we’re we’re both humans here. And I think, you know, one of the really important things I’ve learned is that, you know, starting out with a new company or a new client is earning that trust and building those relationships early on. Because you could have the best ideas and you could have all the answers or most of the answers anyway. But if you can’t get them implemented, if you don’t, people don’t trust you to, you know, to make those decisions.

You’re going to get stuck. And so for me, the most challenging thing lately is just working through those relationships and personalities so that I can do what I’ve been hired to do. Because I think nothing is more frustrating for a marketer or really in anyone’s field where you’re brought in as the subject matter expert, you come up with the plan, but then for whatever reason, they don’t want to implement or there’s resistance. And I think, you know, that’s partly on me or whoever’s, you know, recommend making those recommendations. You have to also be able to earn that trust and respect for people to, to, to, to act on your recommendations.

So that’s I think to me that’s the most challenging part of marketing is that aspect.

Rick Rappe: 27:50

I agree with you, especially from the from the agency or or service provider side, you know, that having that trust and having them understand, like you hired us as an expert, allow us to do what we’re what we’ve been hired to do, and we can get the results that we promised we will get. You know.

Brad Schlachter: 28:08

And I’ve got to go a step further. I’ll even sometimes have the data to back it up, because I think, you know, I don’t expect anyone to just take my opinion at face value when you’re first building a relationship. But, you know, sometimes people are reluctant to accept data if it’s something they don’t want to hear. It’s very easy for them, for people, for some people to say, well, what the data really means is this. And they’ll have their theory on why customers are saying X, Y, and Z.

And anyway, when someone has that deep-rooted belief or has an emotional, especially founders who can be very emotionally attached to their company, that’s their baby. Yeah. You know, that’s where I think that that’s the challenging part.

Rick Rappe: 28:55

Cognitive dissonance. Is that what that’s called when people. Yeah. People have a belief and they will find the proof for it one way or another.

Brad Schlachter: 29:03

Yeah. Sometimes, sometimes it works that way.

Rick Rappe: 29:05

Yeah. Yeah. How do you envision the role of CMO in evolving with the increasing emphasis on data and technology?

Brad Schlachter: 29:18

Yeah. I mean, I think it’s been evolving now for a while. Certainly from a macro perspective, you know, I think it was Ogilvy who said, you know, half of all advertising works, but, you know, we don’t know which half, you know. And obviously, we’ve come a long way, right, in terms of measuring and having data informed decisions and tracking and attribution and all those things that come on the digital side. So I think marketers now are, you know, expected to be very, very data driven, very analytical.

And yes, they’re also expected to be constantly testing and optimizing because even as good as you’re doing, you could always be doing better. And so there’s always going to be that desire to just keep improving. Yeah. And that’s, you know, it requires that constant mindset of relentlessly testing and optimizing and trying new things.

Rick Rappe: 30:23

Yeah.

Brad Schlachter: 30:24

Yeah.

Rick Rappe: 30:25

And I think the CMOs of the future might also have to become experts in picking the right tech stack to use for the company, or helping the CIO pick the right tech stack to use. Yeah. All this new technology.

Brad Schlachter: 30:39

And as I said before, the other thing is that, you know, as a CMO or a head of marketing, marketing, like many functions, is highly dependent on, you know, product and technology. And so being able to work cross-functionally with the leaders in other departments and coming up with plans that are not just doing marketing in a silo, but if you have a big new product launch or you’re rolling out a new platform and making sure you’re coordinating your marketing campaign campaigns around these other, you know, meaningful events or pillars that are happening for the company is going to be really is really key, because you’re always going to get more bang for your buck. If you can roll out a campaign that has multiple levers to pull, and it isn’t just focused or siloed around a marketing incentive.

Rick Rappe: 31:39

It looks like we’re running out of time. So I want to wrap up, but this has been really wonderful getting to know you and learning from you. So thanks again for being on Response Drivers.

Brad Schlachter: 31:48

Well, thanks for having me. I know it was a pleasure.

Outro: 31:50

That’s a wrap for this episode of Response Drivers. Thanks for tuning in. If you found today’s insights valuable, make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you’re enjoying the show, we’d love it if you left a review. Got a question or a topic you’d like us to cover?

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