#56 Pete Housley of Unbounce on Marketing in a Downturn Economy

Pete Housley gave a speech four or five years back titled “How Data Saved My Life,” alluding to how he had a few battles in boardrooms with CEOs asking why marketing was not performing. “I would say, excuse me, I’ve got all the data here and you’re just wrong,” Pete said. As the fairly new CMO of Unbounce (which is the parent company of LeadsRx), he is excited for the opportunity to help businesses and entrepreneurs improve marketing performance with its landing page building technology. And now that LeadsRx and its multi-touch attribution solution are also under the Unbounce wing, he is happy to join the company “in a time when digital marketers hopefully need us most.” In this episode, Pete pulls from his years of marketing experience – including stints at Proctor & Gamble, two of the biggest department store chains in Canada, the largest internet dating site in Canada, an online men’s clothing store, restaurant chains, and more – to talk about how to market in a downturn economy. He talks about being a CMO and managing through past recessions, why multi-touch attribution analytics are so critical to understanding marketing performance, customer lifetime value (LTV), customer acquisition costs (CAC), cost per clicks, COVID, inflation, new marketing channels like CTV, and more. Here’s a related blog on using the right tools to market during a recession, and an Unbounce recession marketing survival toolkit.