E187 – Why Your Marketing Team Needs Documentation and Processes

Old habits are hard to break and new ones can be difficult to start. In the crunch of time at work and life we sometimes forget to do small things (or big things) in the heat of the moment.

  • Crunched for time to get some code out? Maybe you forget to QA something.
  • Tight deadline for that report? Maybe you forget to look up a data point or validate the dates for the data you pull.
  • Writing something? Maybe you don’t go over all of it as closely as you should have.

Dave starts the episode off with a story about ordering pizza. The deep dish part of the story is when he dives into how his habit of ordering took over vs. what he was suppose to order and why he was suppose to be changing his order that day. We all forget things or miss details but the goal is to make sure we miss as few as possible and don’t let it happen time after time.

People hire consultants/agencies for SEO, Social Media and PPC and then forget why – to improve biz/efficiency/process. Do we listen? Sometimes yes, but often no and while it isn’t out of malice or not thinking the suggestion was important (well, maybe sometimes that is why) rather it just was forgotten.

We aren’t taking exactly about “Set it and Forget it” SEO but rather a lack of process or just missed opportunities.

Note that no cats were actually hurt, but Dave’s cat Cooper did think that this is his favorite show and he loved being on the show driving Dave crazy!

So what can you do?

  • Set reminders for whatever you think you are forgetting. Set calendar reminders for the year that happen every X weeks or X months.
  • Create checklists to help you, your team and other teams.
  • Created processes to help your team now and in the future know what to do, how to do it and when to do it.
  • Document and define processes – if nothing else do this for one thing a month and slowly integrate it into your team and other teams and then do another.

Full Transcript

Matt Siltala: [00:00:00] Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt  and Dave roar. Hey guys, excited to have everybody join us again on another one of these fabulous business of digital episodes. And I, uh, just want to give a shout out to my cohost, Dave. How’s that 

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:21] yay. That was, I don’t know why that came to mind, but it did.

I just wanna

Matt Siltala: [00:00:26] make sure, cause you know, our, our. Our pre recording conversation is your cat. Okay. Have you killed them

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:31] yet? He’s out there feeding, uh, in, in, in my cat’s defense, he really didn’t have much food in his bowl and the water was empty. So there was, there was a reason why he would not leave. Oh, and guess who’s at the door.

Matt Siltala: [00:00:45] Seriously. We’re going to have a cat. We are going to have a dead cat by the end of this recording folks. So. All right,

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:59] cat in my car, not a [00:01:00] dog.

Matt Siltala: [00:01:01] I think it’s funny. I think we should just, I think we should just leave this in the cats.

Dave Rohrer: [00:01:05] Leave in 30 seconds of Cooper. This is my life. Every day Cooper. They’re going to install a cat door and my door probably at the rate.

We’re going

Matt Siltala: [00:01:14] well, that’s a perfect segue into what we’re talking about because you’re doing something to make it easier on you. And so you could just, you know, put the door in and forget about it and not have it. You know, it wasn’t a great setup, but

Dave Rohrer: [00:01:28] what we’re talking about good after golf

Matt Siltala: [00:01:30] class. Well, the golf club, what we’re talking about today, folks is, uh, again, we don’t know exactly what we’re going to title it yet as, as we’re speaking, but it’s something to the effect of, you know, we have habits where we kind of set things and forget about them and we need to not do that.

And I know that this is going to be. I’ll let Dave set this up and then I have a story to share, and then we’ll go from there. But, uh, what brought this on Dave?

[00:02:00] Dave Rohrer: [00:01:59] Why I can tell this story, but I was also going to say, just even around the house, like, you know, imagine doing something, you know, fixing something in the car.

And we were just talking about earlier about you, you keep trying to fix something in your car. And imagine fixing it in the G I think it’s the Jeep you were saying in your Jeep and, you know, it breaks every once in a while. So it’s like, do you write down the directions of what, what it was and how to do it?

No, you’re like, Oh no, I’ll remember fast forward three or six months or nine months later, that same thing happens. And you’re like, man, How did we do this last time show wrote a cog don’t recall, and that fixed it. He’s no longer at that mechanic. You know, the mechanic doesn’t work there anymore, or you don’t remember who mechanic was.

And I’ve run into this before with our house. Like this thing broke, who fixed it last time? Well, it was someone from one of these three companies that we’ve talked to in the past year. Oh, shoot. I have no idea because I didn’t document it. Um, there was no process. [00:03:00] Yes. I’m talking about documentation and process somehow from this.

Um, but the story of how this all came about and it’s, again, it’s like, you’d probably laugh. Um, if you saw this, it’s like in our little Google sheet, it looks like it’s one sentence. And then I copy and paste it into our little. Chat like log thing for where we record this. And it’s like five sentences heard words.

I’m like, that’s a little goofy. Well, like what did I write? It’s just like a brain dump of here’s the quick story. So I remember it. And then here’s what it’s about. Um, again, cause it’s process and I’m trying to think ahead, you know, efficiency. It’s kind of what we’re talking about a little bit, but what happened is the beginning of lent, uh, this year 2020, I’m dating this for once.

Um, I was like, it’s Friday. We’re not supposed to eat meat. So order we’ll have some, you know, veggie and cheese, pizzas and stuff tonight. Awesome. Great. Old [00:04:00] habits sinks in. I go to order the pizza and I’m like, what’s your usual order. I’m like this, but we want to change it. I want to get, you know, these toppings and this.

And I was like, looking at the menu going, Oh, that chicken Cal zone with the Buffalo. Yeah. Let’s get that because we usually order it and we haven’t ordered it in a while. Completely forgetting why I’m ordering veggie pizza is because I don’t, I don’t. I, well, one, no one knows what day it is. So that’s my defense and I’m sticking to it.

I had no idea it was a Friday. It wasn’t even thinking about, you know, that lent had just started. It was a Friday. Any of this stuff, I just know my habit is, you know, this is what it, is there an order of these things, Hey,

Matt Siltala: [00:04:38] well, sometimes the stomach just takes over

Dave Rohrer: [00:04:40] too. That might be part of it. Um, I also knew that we had a bunch of people, um, like just in our house, we didn’t have a lot of people.

Um, But, you know, it was like, Oh, we’re all hungry. You know, DJ’s getting bigger, max. You know, all the kids, we’re all hungry, we’re all gonna eat the two little pizza that was going to get, aren’t going to be enough. I [00:05:00] need more. What can I do? And I think to segue into the actual thing, it’s, you know, you’re working on your website, you’re working on your marketing plan.

You’re working on a product launch. You’re focused on that main task, that current project, that current, you know, deliverable that thing that’s due to your boss, that report, you’re not thinking about. All of the other stuff that you’ve been working on the last three months or the thing that someone told you about two months ago about, you know, here’s a checklist.

Anytime you create a new page, make sure that you check, you know, the Google tag manager, make sure you check the Google analytics fires, make sure you check this form that goes into Salesforce or HubSpot. You know, you have these checklists and if it’s not on that checklist, you don’t think to do it because you’ve got 50 other things going on.

And I think a lot of times. My example. Cause then, you know, I ordered it and didn’t even think about it until my wife pointed out that I was eating the chicken. I was like, [00:06:00] I didn’t even think about it. Um, I think we’re the same way with SEO and PPC and just marketing and things in general like that, you know, it’s not, I don’t think it’s set it and forget it because that was like one of the titles, but it’s, I think it’s just distraction.

Distraction, distraction. Yeah.

Matt Siltala: [00:06:21] Like autopilot makes it easy to

Dave Rohrer: [00:06:25] yeah. Habits, you know, our habit is, this is what you do. Um, you know, if you’re used to, whenever you have a new blog post that you’re going to do, if it’s not a habit to create this, go through a checklist. If it’s not a habit to check certain things, if it’s not a habit to spell, check something in the URL, then.

It’s not going to get done because you’re doing 50 other things. So what you need to do is kill the cat. Are you getting into more

Matt Siltala: [00:06:57] stuff? Well, you know [00:07:00] what that made me think of Dave is I’ll kind of, you know, like you, you, you mentioned a little bit about the, and I think that, I think a chat might be dying now, but you mentioned a little bit about, about paid and so.

Recently I had a story with there’s. There’s a group of people I’ve mentioned to many times in this podcast, Mr. Fox

Dave Rohrer: [00:07:18] outside. There’s a really big Fox outside. Saw him yesterday and cross the street, dude. You’re killing me cat. Well, um, I’ll just, I like how, you know, you talk, he talks now.

Matt Siltala: [00:07:34] So getting, getting back to this story, I’ve, I’ve mentioned them before, uh, you know, the, the, the scone place, the restaurant.

And, uh, I did notice that the other day, uh, I was going through some posts on Facebook, Instagram, and they had their ads there. It was Sunday and their ads were all going and, you know, their sponsored posts. And so I reached out and I was like, Hey, did you guys know that you had your ads running today? And they were like, Oh [00:08:00] no, we had no idea.

And so like, they had just set it up and completely forgot that they needed to, you know, if you’re closed on Sunday, you absolutely do not need to try to drive traffic to your restaurant on Sunday. And so anyway, it’s just one of those things where it’s like, they didn’t think about these kinds of things.

And so we kinda did an audit again, that word, um, of everything that they’re doing or that is automated and made sure that, Hey, this isn’t gonna. This is not going to show up on, on a Sunday or this isn’t going to be promoted on a Sunday or this isn’t going to be promoted when this is not offered. Um, you know, there was, uh, instances where certain specialty items that were not allowed on or were not offered on certain days were showing up anyway.

So just, it was a good opportunity to say, Hey, let’s go through everything. And again, I, you know, my part of it is just, I helped on the side consulting. I don’t even make anything for it. Um, these are just good friends. And so I’m not in [00:09:00] the trenches of it everyday, but I just noticed this and, and brought it up.

And so again, that’s just where the kind of thing that you’re talking about your day, we just need to pay attention to this stuff. And then, uh, you know, not, not let it just go on automatic auto mode.

Dave Rohrer: [00:09:16] Well, there’s, there’s also, there’s that aspect where it’s like, you have you set up things and you, you know, you forget about it or you just assume that it’s running.

And if you don’t check in on it, You know, if you don’t do your audits and whether it’s monthly or quarterly or every so often, you know, at the start of the year or start of, you know, you, after you listen to this, go in your calendar and set a reminder for every three weeks to do whatever thing you think you might be forgetting, just put it on your calendar.

And every two weeks do something else. And every fourth week do this and you’ll have calendar reminders going out the rest of the year. That you know, so in six months, when you totally forget about [00:10:00] it and you haven’t done it for a couple of weeks, you’ll still be getting those reminders. Even if you forget, why the heck when the heck you started doing it, it’ll always be there

Matt Siltala: [00:10:11] old school, like, uh, you know, I, I used to always say when I had one of those old school, Franklin planners, you know, paper, like write it down and forget about it.

Because you’re going to forget about it anyway, write it down so you don’t forget about it. And you’re reminded at that time.

Dave Rohrer: [00:10:27] Well, and the other thing that I see often is it is the it’s like, I don’t want to say checklist. It’s not checklist SEO. It’s um, some, one saying that we need to hire a PPC agency, someone hiring saying, we need to hire an SEO and we need to do SEO.

So we’ve talked to three people. We like you. Um, do your thing. Okay. We can’t make changes to the website. We can’t do this. We can’t do that. You can’t do this, but give us [00:11:00] that audit so that we can take it and put it on the shelf. You know, it’s like, would you hire someone, a mechanic to fix your car and then not listen to them or even take any other advice or let them change anything.

You know, if a PPC person doesn’t audit and says, wow, you know, You’re spending a ton of money over here and you’re doing these branded things, or you’re doing these display or you’re on this network, but you’re not on this network. Why wouldn’t you listen to them?

Matt Siltala: [00:11:29] Well, that makes me laugh because I’m always, you know, reading, uh, whether it’s Rob woods rants or Alan BLI, Weiss’s rants about, about, Hey, I did this, you know, you paid me for this, uh, extensive audit and you refuse to do anything.

I tell you. So of course. Nothing’s improved, you know? And like, why would you pay for this if you’re not gonna do the things that I told you to do, it just makes no sense.

Dave Rohrer: [00:11:52] Yeah. It’s been three months, you know, we’ve, you’ve, we’ve been working with you for three months now and we haven’t seen any improvements.

[00:12:00] Well, here’s the first document I gave you. Did you make any of those changes? Well, we can’t make any of those. Well, did you hear is the other document I gave you? Can you do this? No, we can’t. We don’t have resources to do that. What about this one? No, someone said that one costs too much. Why’d you? Well, then those are the three that we’ve been doing deliverable, uh, you know, every three weeks or six weeks or whatever.

Good luck in your bill changes. Yeah. You know, or they’re like, well, we hired you to fix it. And you’re like, but that’s what I’m trying to do.

Matt Siltala: [00:12:32] It reminds me of that, uh, that part from rush hour. When Chris Tucker’s all, do you see either way it’s coming out of my mouth. They’re just not

Dave Rohrer: [00:12:39] listening pretty much.

Yeah. Yeah, you, you, you, you hired a company, you said, Hey, go fix this, but you won’t let them, you know, it’s like, um, like a PPC. It’s like, well, we’re driving traffic to these landing pages, but these landing pages are bad. Well, those are the landing pages we have, like we’ll can we fix them? No. Can we update them?

No. Can we [00:13:00] change them? No. Well, why do we have really low quality score? Welcome. And we changed those landing pages. No. Yeah, like, um, But we keep suggesting things. We keep telling you to do things like, can we show, can we reduce the form? So it’s a little bit easier to fill out, but still, you know, creates a hurdle and, you know, so we don’t just get, you know, junk.

No, we have to have that question. Well, who needs that question? You know, someone does and they don’t have a reason why, but we still have to have that. You know, five-part really difficult question on the form, which basically no one ever fills out.

Matt Siltala: [00:13:38] Or what’s the, what’s that saying? The D the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting different results.

Yeah.

Dave Rohrer: [00:13:46] Well, you know what, maybe we’ll call this insanity marketing.

Matt Siltala: [00:13:49] Hey bone. There you go. People on the fly

Dave Rohrer: [00:13:54] insanity marketing. There we go. Sure. It’s not going to be searched a lot, but Hey, if there’s a [00:14:00] company named it, I’m by apologize. We’re about to rank for

Matt Siltala: [00:14:03] it.

Dave Rohrer: [00:14:05] Yeah. Uh, yeah, like episode five, we did, you know, it was one of the first topics we did actually.

I think that was one of the very first we recorded almost four years. Oh,

Matt Siltala: [00:14:16] wow. Four years ago. I know. It just doesn’t seem real because this whole last COVID year just doesn’t seem real. Like, I can’t believe it. I mean, I don’t want us to go so far off topic, but I can’t believe it was almost a year ago that all that started.

But

Dave Rohrer: [00:14:30] anyway, Yeah. Episode five, Matt and Dave discussed. Why SEO? Isn’t something you just do once, but rather it is ongoing covered in this episode. Uh, dah, dah, dah, dah, uh, quick tips on some tools. Yeah. So we didn’t really talk about this at all. I, I made sure we weren’t re you know, even four years later, I’m like, we don’t need to talk about the same thing again,

Matt Siltala: [00:14:50] March 12th last year.

I w believe it or not, I was in Disneyland. And then we left the next day and came home and on the 15th, on the 15th, [00:15:00] they shut Disneyland down.

Dave Rohrer: [00:15:03] Crazy. It’s still been shut. They’re still shut down. I

Matt Siltala: [00:15:05] heard that it’s going to open in April. No,

Dave Rohrer: [00:15:09] I don’t know. Anyway. All right. I’m sure your daughter Lee, very excited.

Very she’s not counting down the days.

Matt Siltala: [00:15:15] Have you found your patent? I don’t know

Dave Rohrer: [00:15:18] where it’s at. It’s somewhere around here. I think my wife has them. Um, Side note. Um, but yeah, I think like, I don’t know. I think just so often, you know, we forget, especially that SEO thing, it’s like four months later, you know, you go back or someone’s producing some page and it’s like, well, where’s the internal links?

What do you mean? Well, why, why did we, why did you write this post? Or why does this press release on this site? And there’s no internal links. Why did we write, you know, this new service page? Or why did you update the product, you know, page? And there’s like, no call to action. There’s [00:16:00] no demos. There’s no internal links.

There’s no like any of this stuff. It’s like we talked about this three months ago, six months ago. I think a lot of the time as a consultant, And working at agencies and even in-house, you know, you go to someone and you’re like, Hey, product team, can we do this? Or, Hey, dev team, can we do this? And they just forget that, you know, three months ago you, you sat down with them and I’m sure what I, you know, even when I, you know, someone probably sat down with me too, and I was like, Hey Dave, when you check in your code, do this.

Okay. Two weeks later, I completely forget. Um, you know, it’s, it’s just the way we are. We’re humans. But we have to create, I think if nothing else create reminders, create checklist, create re a process to, you know, uh, some sort of process that works for you that will work for you now, and also help remind and reinforce whatever good habits you need or your [00:17:00] team needs or other team needs.

And I think if nothing else of this rambling, whatever 17 minutes we’re going to be at or something, um, I think sit down and think about what processes and where you’ve had failings with your digital marketing, offline marketing, dev, whatever, you know, whatever your area you work in, social media, you know, maybe people forget to tag certain things.

Um, I recently talked through some people and they’re like, Tag pages let’s please kill them off on this website. Um, pretty much anytime I do an audit and it’s a WordPress site and I find tag pages, the very first slide in my presentation for the tech audit is let’s kill off these tag pages. Like literally it’s usually one of the first slides.

Yeah. Um, because it’s like, how many blog posts do you have? 10 50, a hundred, 300 whatever. How many tag pages do you have? Whatever it is. Times 10. [00:18:00] And they’ll, the tags will be run. Running, runs, ran I’m like, where is, where’s the strategy with this? Like, well, we started, right. And then three months later, someone else took over and there was no document.

There was no process. There was no checklist. And there was no strategy that overall they could pass along. Therefore, They didn’t know what to do, and they just did whatever they wanted. And now you have 380 tag pages for 15 blog posts, and most of them are duplicate

Matt Siltala: [00:18:40] and that’s not

Dave Rohrer: [00:18:40] a good thing. And that’s why I always say just delete them.

Matt Siltala: [00:18:44] Perfect. Well, um, those sound like some good final thoughts, Dave,

Dave Rohrer: [00:18:51] I’m going to end there cause it’s been a long week.

Matt Siltala: [00:18:53] Awesome. Yeah, you get out a cat to go and kill or take care of. You guys

Dave Rohrer: [00:18:59] really kill [00:19:00] them. I’m just going to, he

Matt Siltala: [00:19:01] loves cats by the way. I just we’re joking. Just calm down people. He’s

Dave Rohrer: [00:19:05] driving me crazy.

Matt Siltala: [00:19:07] Well guys, thank you as always for joining us. Um, if you have a moment to go to Google play and give us a five-star rating or review, we’d love that. Um, this helps us be able to do this, um, more and bring you more. So thank you guys for, for your support for Dave roar, with Northside metrics. I met so to live with avalanche media and thank you for joining us.

We’ll see you on the next one, guys. Bye.