Episode 285 / Kirk Deis / Skydio / Senior Growth Marketing Manager
Top Growth Tips From a Digital Doctor
Subscribe to Our Newsletter
Kirk Deis goes by “conversion surgeon” as well as the “digital doctor” and specialises in “data, SEO, ads, and experimentation.” He is the Senior Growth Marketing Manager at Skydio, but also runs heydigitaldoc.com - where you can find lots of Chrome Apps to elevate your marketing.
Kirk’s shiny new object is “being a student of your own craft”- as he puts it, “the moment you think you know everything about marketing, that’s when you realise you know nothing.”
Aside from his day job, he spends his time experimenting with data and ads, which is a valuable way of understanding the end to end process of what he may be asking his teams to do at work. This allows him to learn new skills and increase his empathy to his work colleagues, too.
Kirk’s picked Google Chrome apps as his area of experimentation and you can download free apps for data driven marketers on heydigitaldoc.com.
Before that, tune into the podcast to also learn his 4 key tips for someone starting out in the industry and his top data driven marketing tip - all about the ROI.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Kirk Deis 0:00
They're hiring because they know they need the talent. They know they need the creative but they're not creative minds. They're thinking like I have a P and L that I'm managing. I have a bottom line. I have to make profit. So if you can find a way to understand ROI in your marketing, you're next level.
Speaker 1 0:20
are you a fitness loving foodie? Then defy snacks is for you. Defy offers real high quality chocolate you love, combined with functional ingredients giving you as much as 26 grams of protein per bag. So you can be both a little bit bad and a little bit good at the same time as a female owned brand defi dedicates a portion of its profits to other women owned businesses currently sold in the US. You can find us on defy with an eye snacks.com, and follow us on social at defy snacks.
Kirk Deis 0:53
Hello and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of the creative effectiveness, ad tech platform, automated creative. And this is a weekly podcast about the future of data driven marketing every week or so. It's my absolute privilege and pleasure to interview a smarty pants from the industry about where they think it's all going. What a job. And it's the first one of the new year. I think certainly won't be the first one we released. But anyway, it's the first podcast in the podcast of the year, and I'm on a call with Kirk Deis, and Kirk is the senior growth marketing manager at Skydio. So for anyone who doesn't know who you are and what you do, Kirk, could you give us a bit of a background on your career and where you are today?
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. Tom, and what a way to start the year. Yeah. So who am I at work? My colleagues call me the conversion surgeon, Kirk money. Online I go by the digital doctor. I've been in marketing for over 14 years. Used to run an ad agency. I'm obsessed with data, SEO, ads, experimentation. I'm looking forward to this. I'm looking forward to this conversation. You know?
Tom Ollerton 2:04
Did you say the conversion surgeon did that...?
Kirk Deis 2:08
That's what you heard. Yeah, my co workers gave me that name after pretty early on, to be at Skydio, because I go deep into data, and I make a lot of spreadsheets, and I make them look pretty.
Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it, but that's, that's quite the title, right? So, but as soon as that CPA starts to go in the other direction, then, you know, there's, there might be a new name, you know?
But just remember, the ones who control the data make the rules so they don't need to see that stuff right away.
Well, you maybe get into that a bit later, but before we get into a shiny new object and get to know you a bit better. My first question is, if someone wants to be a conversion surgeon and follow in your successful, very interesting footsteps, and if you've got a student who's doing all the right things, what advice would you give to them to be able to kind of elevate them into that first job, or to accelerate their career in the early days?
Speaker 2 3:01
So I would focus on four areas. The first one being social equity. The second one being, you can be so right, you can be wrong. The third being, you can only die on one hill at a time. So if you're gonna be you gotta really pick your battles. And the fourth, do your own thing. Don't wait for the job to tell you to do something. Go out and do it on your own way. Back when I started my ad agency, there was a point where I knew nobody. I knew nothing. I knew nobody in the world. So how did I get my first clients? If you're somebody who's trying to break into this industry, the thing that I did was I literally messaged every contact I had on Facebook, and I sent them a personalized message, getting like, Hey, John, how are the holidays? What's going on in your life? What's you know? And by the way, I'm starting this ad agency, and if you can give me a referral, I'll give you at the time, it was like 200 bucks. All that was is I had all these relationships with everybody. I had friends. Obviously, it's Facebook, so I actually knew these people. I had social equity that I could leverage to help build my ad agency. From that, I was able to land a client called Go Lance, and they're like competitors of Upwork Fiverr, and that really opened the door for me to meet other clients and other talents all around the world. The second thing is, you can be so right, you're wrong, right? So if you're looking to break into marketing or really any job, odds are it's because you're talented, odds are because you have some confidence your ability, you're hungry. Eventually you're going to be in a room where people disagree with you, and you're going to have your point of view, and you're not going to want to budge. All of us go through this. I've been guilty of it a million times over, but how you get across your points is really, really important. There can be a point where you're like, hey, one plus one is two, and you could be arguing with the person across the table from you, and it could get so escalated that even though you're right, you're wrong. So you have. You have to have to remember that when you're dealing when you're working with other people, that sometimes the way that you get across the information is actually more important than the information that you're giving. Which brings me to idea number three, you only have one hill to die on, so make it count, and hopefully you save that for when you're 1000 years old. Because remember, guys, this is just a job. You shouldn't be dying on hills, but there's going to become a point. And I remember early on for me, when I had my ad agencies, early on, I was like, you know, this is my thing. I'm going to do it my way. If I don't agree with the client, well, guess what? You're out. I can fire you and find another client. And as a business, that's a pretty stupid thing to do, especially when you're a small ad agency. So if you're going to go down that route, just remember you've only got one hill to die on, so you got to make it count. And the last thing I would pitch to people who are interested in getting to marketing, don't wait for the job to do the job. Go out, build your website, build that tech, write that blog, experiment with ads, do stuff on your own, like Reddit always has like these offers, and so do other platforms where you can sign up for Reddit, they'll give you 500 bucks if you spend 500 bucks, you know, imagine what the interview process would be like if you're going for, let's say, an ad position, and you have no experience, but you tell the hiring manager, hey, I did this test on my own on Reddit. I spent 500 bucks on my own. Here's what I learned. Here's a case study. Here's how I analyze the data. In my experience, I've only hired people who have done work outside of school, so and school being work, so doing your own thing on the weekends, being curious about your craft, having fun with it. I myself when I had my ad agency, there was, there weren't, like, a ton of podcasts back then, and there weren't a lot of resources except for, like YouTube. So there was a ton of things I was always doing, like on the weekend and before jumping online and after being on the matrix and just trying to educate myself and be better.
Kirk Deis 7:09
I think you've got the start of a book there. You know, Kirk's 10 Commandments of being an awesome entry into into the industry. And I kind of want to dig into this one of those but we ain't got time. So that's great advice for a new person coming in, into the industry. I don't want to say young person might be an older person, as was I when I joined this industry, but what I want to do now is get some advice for the other end of things, right? So if someone joins your team and they're like, look, you're, yeah, you're the conversion surgeon. What is your advice to that person to be a better data driven marketer?
Speaker 2 7:48
The number one thing every marketer needs to understand is that we work in a business, it's all about ROI, if you can separate your creativity and all the awesomeness you bring to the company, and understand, how is this $1 increasing ROI or accelerating pipeline? You're not a marketer. You're lethal. And a quick story about this. Am I laughing?
Speaker 3 8:12
What's sorry, what's it? What's a lethal? That's a new one to me.
Speaker 2 8:16
Lethal means there are a billion marketers in the world, but there are not a billion marketers who understand, like, there's marketing and understanding ROI, there's marketing and understanding the business side of things. If you can connect those two things, it changes what you produce. If you can, if you can say, like, Okay, I'm going to do this LinkedIn post, and I know when I do it and I boost as a thought leader ad, I can attribute $5 million in ROI to it versus I'm going to do I'm going to start commenting on LinkedIn, and there's no ROI. There's nothing I can prove. I'm just doing it. Just to do it. There's a difference. And business owners see that. You have to remember that most of us aren't going to start businesses. Most of us are going to work for people who own businesses, and they're hiring because they know they need the talent. They know they need the creative but they're not creative minds. They're thinking like, I have a P and L that I'm managing. I have a bottom line. I have to make profit. So if you can find a way to understand ROI in your marketing, you're next level.
Kirk Deis 9:15
Nice and so you you've been a business owner, right? So as am I, and I'd fully understand your perspective. But most people, most marketers, haven't, and, as you say, won't. So when, when you've been at the, you know, the gritty end of month end, and you're like, right? I need to make bank here, there's kids to pay for, there's mortgages to be paid, and wages and all of the pressures that pile up. It's easy to become a very commercial person. In fact, sometimes too much so. But how would you educate people on your team who haven't run an agency to become not a fable or whatever you said it was?
Speaker 2 9:57
Yeah. So one thing I would focus on is get comfortable with Google Sheets. Put the tactic that you're you're launching, and put how much it costs, and this is going to enable you and be a forcing function to measure what you're doing. Remember what gets measured gets managed, and you're going to want to write everything down. You know, I launched some ads, I launched a blog, I launched a video, I launched a website, launched a landing page. Start making it a habit of recording what you're actually doing and then leave yourself calendar reminders. In 30 days, I'm gonna see how this is performing, or in two weeks, or in three months, go back and check it. Make it a habit so that you know, hey, I spent $10,000 doing X, Y, Z, and this is what it generated. Be proactive about it. If you're ever in a situation where your boss or manager asks you, Hey, how did this perform? Then you're 10 steps behind. In my opinion. You're not curious about it. You need to be curious about it on that level.
Speaker 3 10:53
So you've given us great advice for student. You've given us great advice for a data driven marketer a bit further into their career. So we're now going to talk about your shiny new object, which is being a student of your craft. So what do you mean by that, and why have you chosen that to be your shiny new object?
Speaker 2 11:17
Yeah, this was a great question, because I kept going back and forth on what my shiny new object could be. And I started to reflect on, okay, what is it? The one thing that I always go back to for myself, just personally and as my career, and it's it's that it's the moment you think you know everything about marketing, that's when you realize you know nothing. It's about being curious and obsessed with your craft and just being a student of your craft. And how do you do that? Well, for me, one thing I'm doing on my spare time is, I'm after work. After I clock out, I plug back into the matrix and I start building things. What I've been doing, having fun with is building Chrome apps and just trying to understand, like, Okay, how do I actually do this? How am I going to market this? How am I going to what's the point this chrome app is even going to be useful? You know, going through that entire final process by yourself opens your eyes to so many different avenues. Imagine if you were doing this on a team. You know, you need a designer, you need a developer, or maybe you need an ad guy. Well, how would you do it if you did it all by yourself? What were all the questions that would come up that you'd have to answer and understand? This does so many things for you. One is you're going to learn new skills, you're going to make mistakes, you're going to have fun, you're going to have bad days. The other thing too is at some point, you're going to go back to work, or you're going to work on a project, and you're going to communicate with somebody, a creative person, for example, and you're going to understand what they're going through. And if you can understand what they're going through, it just makes the entire project so much easier. And selfishly, I mean, it'll be faster for you too, if you know, like, Okay, I can't just tell this person do X, Y, Z for me in two minutes, because I know from experience, it takes me two months.
Tom Ollerton 12:59
This episode of the shiny new object podcast is brought to you in partnership with madfest, whether it's live in London or streamed online to the global marketing community, you can always expect a distinctive and daring blend of fast paced content, startup innovation pitches and unconventional entertainment from madfest events. You'll find me causing trouble on stage, recording live versions of this podcast and sharing a beer with the nicest and most influential people in marketing. Check it out at www.madfestlondon.com.
Kirk Deis 13:36
How did you arrive at Chrome apps? Like I understand you like to go back into the matrix, but it's a Q. It's not, not hugely talked about, but in the industry. So what was it about Chrome apps that you felt was going to teach you more than doing something else?
Yeah, so what I wanted to do was build something for the least amount of money. So I didn't want to have, like, hosting fees. I didn't want to deal with databases. I didn't want to throw up a website, which, in the end, I'm going to have to put up a one page website to be like, here's where you can learn more about these apps. But Chrome app, to actually launch a Chrome app costs $5 it's a one time fee for life. And then from there it was like, Okay, well, if my budget is zero, 99 cents, okay, $5 is pretty close to and I'm over budget. The other thing is, I wanted to build tools where I could actually use them. So I use Google Sheet a lot, so I was thinking like, Okay, well, what if I started building just Chrome apps where I didn't have to go through my Google Sheet templates, or I didn't have to set up a new Google Sheet, I could just build an app, and these are around paid ads, and then it has all these qualifying questions that I normally go to and just spits out the information for me. I mean, how cool would that be? And on top of that, what if I just gave it away for free? You know, we live in this world where everything's like, okay, it's a monthly cost to use this. SaaS, I didn't want to do that. I. And this is kind of a safety net too, if these Chrome apps don't work while you're getting that for free, 99 What do you expect? But the other side too is, you know, just give it away for free. Have some fun with it. See if people like it. See people use it, learn how they're using it, and then maybe down the road, introduce a SaaS or something where it's like, Okay, now that I have all this feedback from everybody, what people are actually using, well, now here's an opportunity to launch something or it's paid.
Speaker 3 15:22
Can you give me other examples when you've been a student of your craft? So Chrome Apps think you said you doing over Christmas, amazing. But where else have you either succeeded or really failed in this approach?
Speaker 2 15:33
Oh, wow. So one of the things I do at Skydio is I manage ads, and I've done this in other roles too, but I feel like all the time, if you're if you're really honest, and you're managing ads, you should be failing all the time. And failing should not be something to be scared of. It should be a welcomed moment as a marketer. So what are some examples early on, mistakes is just going in thinking I know too much. I remember when I had my ad agency, one of the first clients, I won't say their name, but launching ads, being really excited that we landed the deal, having this huge budget, or I thought was a huge budget at the time, and just being like, Okay, let's go. Let's go. Let's go, launching stuff, and not actually pausing and just taking care of the basics. So the basics be understanding the audience, you know, understanding that, hey, not every ICP, every audience, every target, is in the same part of the funnel. So using the same message for everybody is a mistake. You know, it's all about right time, right content, right message. That was a costly mistake, or how you were joking earlier. You know, CPC was high cost. Reacquisition was high. That was a client where I retained them for about a year, but it was not a good deal for them.
Speaker 2 15:36
So if you'd been a student of your craft, what would you have done differently?
Speaker 2 15:59
What I've what I would have done differently is probably slow down. Probably it's okay to take your time, it's okay to do the research, it's okay to ask questions, it's okay to not be the expert in the room. Again, like as marketers, I feel like a lot of us have all all this, all these amazing ideas and all this excitement, and some of it's driven by ego. When we come into these rooms and we think we're the smartest person in the room, well, spoiler alert, I was not the smartest person in the room. There was things I didn't know and didn't know what to ask. So really, really taking a step back and just do your homework. Look at the foundation. How do you do that? Use tools like SEMrush. Do competitor research. When you meet with your client, come in with a batch of questions to ask them to really understand, what problem are they trying to solve? What have they done in the past? Those type of things really go a long way before you go in and pitch your ideas. And maybe another way, another way to think about it is, listen before speaking. You know, try to understand before being understood.
Kirk Deis 17:59
So I heard a really good version of that. It's quite probably quite cheesy. It's probably an Instagram quote somewhere, but it said, As soon as your mouth opens, your analytical mind disengages, which I think is quite nice. There's something in there. You know, as soon as you're sharing your view, you can't possibly hear or listen to someone else, and it's many different versions. But I'm curious what's next. You've got these Chrome apps. Maybe they'll be super successful. You haven't invested a ton of cash into it. Maybe you can assess on it. But what's next? Where's your next area of study?
Speaker 2 18:28
So what I want to do, I'm going to be launching these Chrome Apps probably in the next two months, and there'll be, like, a landing page. I bought the domain, heydigitaldoc.com, put it all there. I'm just going to give all these resources away for free, and I'm going to sit back, and I'm going to watch how people react with it. I'm going to put clarity on my website. I'll always have GA four, and I'll build some Looker dashboards, and I'll just see, I'll see, like, what's the feedback? Do people like this? Is it useful? Is it not and then the next step is, okay, well, that was fun, but is there a way where I could take this passion and maybe make a little side cash on it. So something I'm really interested in doing, I've been thinking about this a long time, is launching a SaaS, and I've been hesitant to do this for a couple reasons. One is because we're living in the AI era, and I honestly think the majority of SaaS are gonna die out. I think anybody paying like 300 bucks a month for a SaaS, I don't know. I just feel like it's almost a waste of money with the technology that's out there right now. I think it's going to be the way that SaaS's are going to charge are going to be based on output. So you know how, like when you use chatgpt, or any of these AI tools, they're charging you a fraction of a penny to use the the output that it gives you. So I think trying to understand how to do that on a SaaS would be a really fun project. What that SaaS is going to be, I'm not sure yet. I think I'll wait and see what the data tells me and be like, Oh, maybe I'll learn something. Maybe I'll learn like, when people are using these Chrome apps, what they really find helpful isn't actually any of the ad features, but. Is having everything organized and having the reporting function organized, you know.
Speaker 3 20:10
And so looking at data driven marketing and having the experience that you have, and you brought up, AI, how would you see that the data driven marketer being impacted by AI this year?
Speaker 2 20:22
I think, I think unfortunately, a lot of people are going to lose their jobs, and it's going to happen really, really fast. There's going to be a lot of layoffs, because everybody is obsessed with AI, and that business owner is going to see, oh, I can get, you know, chat GPT for 200 bucks, and I can replace all my engineers. Let's do that. And they're not going to realize that, you know, AI agents, it's the new craze for this year, but they don't really exist yet. So a lot of people, I think, are going to get laid off to do so that these business owners and leaders can do more with less using these tools. I think if you're a marketer, there's no escaping this, and there's no denying this. So you need to embrace this. You need to be obsessed with these tools. Check Out Check Out Bard slash Gemini. Check out perplexity, check out chat GPT, the big elephant in the room. Play with these tools. Have fun with it. I would bet money that there's going to be a lot more job positions of people posting like you need to know how to use AI, which always reminds me of those job posting where it's like, you need to know how to use Microsoft Word. It's like, yeah, of course, we grew up with this stuff. Definitely recommend use these tools. Don't have them replace you. And when you ask these tools questions really, really be curious about the answers. Make sure that you can answer these questions if that tool wasn't in the room, because I've seen plenty of times already being in meetings and somebody using chat GPT, and higher ups being like, Oh, how'd you get to this answer? Why'd you get to this answer? And they have the how, everyone's like, Well, I used AI, but why did you get to this? And if you if you say, like, well, I use chat GPT, you know, you lose a little bit of street cred. You know, it's better if it's like, Hey, I used chat GPT. It gave me this output. I dove a little bit deeper. I used analytics, Looker, sem rush, I connected the dots. And so this is why I agree with chat GPT, and this is what I recommend.
Kirk Deis 22:17
It's interesting. We interviewed someone at a certain point for position in the last six months, and it was very clear from their work that they'd used chatgpt in a task. And when we asked him, he said, Oh, yeah. How did you get to this? They didn't do that. They didn't say, I used chatgpt. If they'd said I used chatgpt, and I nailed it in a minute. What do you think of the answer? Fine, but they didn't fess up to it, and their answer was also very bad, and it was like a double double negative. You know, they kind of blew themselves out of the sky at that point in time. So, yeah, my my guess is, if, if people expect they're going to do less with more, I think they may well be able to do less with less. Have you get rid of if you sure you can spend less money, but you will get less quality. Would be if Saving money is your only thing, then you will, you will arrive at a you will get a less good product for less money. I don't think you will get more with less, is my guess at this point in time. Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 23:12
It's already happening now. I mean, like, jump on LinkedIn, all these posts where it's like, did you write this? Or did AI write this?
Kirk Deis 23:20
Yeah, it's not, it's not a good look, man. Even at Christmas, someone bought my daughter a book. She's six, and it was, it was like the day, it was this day the Santa Claus replaced all the reindeers with unicorns, right? Which, I don't you gotta have a small daughter or not, but that is like, peak six year old, in my experience. And I read it, and I was like, some of these rhymes sound weird, like, technically they're correct, you know, they make, they make sense. And all of the images are kind of fun. And my daughter was like, Oh, cool. Unicorn Santa got, you know, tick, tick, tick. I was like, This isn't good. Like, this, there isn't, there's no, there's no craft here. This is, this is what you get when you remove craft. And I'm like, I'm massively Pro. I we set up this business based on generative AI being a thing in 2018 so, like, you can't be more pro AI than us, but the way that it's playing out when people are relying on it entirely is to produce something that is less. It's not more. It's like, Wow, that's so much better with AI. Sure it's cheaper, sure, might be quicker, definitely, not bad, yeah.
Speaker 2 24:20
And I feel like it's, it's those creatives, it's those creatives who are like, target number one. I remember when AI was like, a craze a few years ago, oh, AI is coming. AI is coming. All these white collar jobs are gonna be out of business. And what we're really seeing is like, well, actually, no, it's, it's the copywriters, it's the designers. It's, well, now Soros trying to do their video generation, but I don't think it's really there yet, but it's really the creative that's hurting the most.
Kirk Deis 24:43
Yeah, you know. And it's we had a conversation before we started, yeah, you talked about designing a logo for the, I think, for the new website. And I said, Well, why don't you just AI it? And you're like, well, because there's nobody soul, you know, like, because you don't want to, so you don't want a company to look soulless, right? So you've not gone to AI, right?
Speaker 2 25:00
Yeah. And I, I'm guilty. I try to use AI, use Canva, they have all these extensions that you can use, and I generated all these logos. And they're, they're not bad, that's the thing. It's like, okay, this is pretty good. It's better than what I would get on Upwork or Fiverr, right? If I'm trying to spend nothing on it. But it is missing something. It's missing like, the heart. It's missing. The soul, it's missing. Like, let me have a conversation with my designer and tell them, here's my vision. I'm making a bunch of Chrome apps. I think they're going to be valuable. I think they're going to save time. I think they're going to save money, and I'm going to give it all away for free. Make me a cool logo. Like, how do you how do you tell AI that?
Speaker 3 25:35
You did not, you did not say cool. That was not, that was not your brief Kirk. I used to run an agency anyway. Look, I'm gonna stop giving you shit, right? We are done. Kirk, that was brilliant. Thank you. If someone wants to get in touch with you, or they talk to you about your Chrome apps, or your your career, or any of the things you've talked about, why would you like them to do that?
Speaker 2 25:59
Yeah, easiest way is look me up on LinkedIn, Kirk Deis, k, i r, k and the last name, Deis, d, e, i s, and then probably in about two months, I'll be launching my website. Heydigitaldoc.com, so you can check out those Chrome apps there.
Tom Ollerton 26:14
Brilliant Kirk. Thank you so much for your time.
Kirk Deis 26:16
Thanks for having me.,Tom.
Subscribe to the ‘Shiny New Object’ Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and Soundcloud.