Welcome to Stacking Girl, called to action, a show for the Trailblazers, change makers, and paradigm shifters. Each week, a different marketing hero who is called to make a change in their field will join us to walk through each step of their journey. They'll cover the highs, the lows, and what's coming next. Together, it will help you find the changes needed for your own business to win.
I'm Steph Canola here with Evan Hughes, and today we are so excited to welcome Refine Labs, Senior Director of Demand Generation, Ashley Lewin. Ashley is dedicated to educating our clients and community on the values of hybrid attribution with a focus on bridging that attribution gap. Ashley, thank you so much for coming on today. Absolutely, super excited for this topic.
Yeah, I'm really excited to dive into this and really get your expertise on it because I can't think of anyone better. So let's start at the beginning, your path into marketing, and the experiences you've had maybe when you've only had software-based attribution to work with some of the challenges or learning that you did there. Absolutely, so I've been in marketing for a decade plus at this point. I didn't start off in B2B SaaS.
I actually started off on more of the B2C side, and it was essentially a franchise coffee company. And so attribution at that stage, nowhere near B2B SaaS. So I think it was an interesting place to start because it gives you an interesting mindset to carry along. Since my tenure in my career, I've worked at probably every different piece.
I've worked at another agency that was very traditional, working with government, clients, and so on. It's been a good stint in the house at a software company where we were using a lot of attribution software just given the time that it was in the marketing world. I've been at Refined Labs for three and a half years. And so thinking back of when I had to use only attribution or software attribution and what that may have drove or decisions, I think a lot has changed in the last eight years, even two years beyond us with you, of how we measure.
I think at the end of the day, we've always had to remember why are we using attribution. And attribution is just to give you, I think of it almost like a compass. It's giving you direction of where you should go, but it's not the final destination. It's not the main thing.
It's a compass to give you direction. And so I think that's the first really important just to fundamentally think about when we're talking about this is what kind of insight does it give you? And so when I was using only CRM software attribution, first touch, last touch, multi touch, doesn't quite matter for the sake of this. It gave me sub-optimal insights.
And it kind of get left with us. So what? And is there more to it? Is this the right insight?
And am I going in the right direction? So it's been interesting to see the change that has happened of having hybrid attribution and having two layers of this to give you a little bit more direction on your compass, even thinking of it even more broader. So definitely very interesting to see the course of this topic over the years. It's a topic that is all over LinkedIn constantly.
And I think it just immerses the B2B world. I love how you use the reference of compass because it's so true, right? For a long time, anybody in a marketing role or function had to have some sort of compass to the results. And that's because everything we would read out on every report that we had had to show some sort of correlation or ROI directly impacted by the effort that we're making.
But there's that innate, like, I know something's not right. You know, and I feel like just as you're talking through that and describing kind of your feeling in your journey, like it's just there's so many core memories that pop up of like putting money into campaigns and knowing that there has to be so much more of an influence than what's coming back to, right? Like the SEO team's kicking ass. We were operating in silas, a lot of us.
But is it truly that they're driving like 85% of the revenue when we look at a marketing? No, like I don't believe that that to be true. I believe that it's an enabler and inhibitor of some sort of growth depending on how you want to get it. But I think that the conversation that we have now, they'll become a bit more challenging because it's not black and white.
Attribution created this black and white image where we knew $1 and $1 out, whether it was right or wrong. And I think for the listeners, most of us know like this whole idea of like credit can all be like kind of attributed back to these platforms that we give money to the Facebook, so we didn't the Google is like, we are giving them money and they're having to justify why we should keep investing in them. So effectively, they're going to say, of course, our platform's doing this. We are doing that.
And it starts, they start working with the software companies, the players who start thinking about attribution and it just gets really money. So I guess this is obviously like a hot topic for me. I think that's so important for us to dig in a little bit more. And you talked about kind of your journey, but I love that moment where you were like, holy shit, this is the change.
This is where I need to be like, I'm not doing this anymore or I don't believe this to be true. Like I have to push that boundary a little bit. I would love to understand how you really bought into hybrid. So there was a meeting I was a part of with an executive leadership team and we were dissecting performance and it showed X percent from organic, you know, submissions or performance revenue, whatever it is, like deals, et cetera, it's down.
SVM was being broken. What did we change on SEO? Like are we not, you know, it's a lot of posts or something break. And I remember kind of sitting there and there's this like nagging feeling in my stomach because I knew there was so much more to it.
I also knew we stopped posting on our organic social media. We cut down brand awareness spend, you know, there was sales behavior had changed. There was so many other contributing factors, but I knew that it was getting tagged as quote unquote organic and you know, having leadership immediately tried to dissect it as we need to fix something with our SEO strategy and not look at the bigger picture of what actually is driving that. Because if you think about, you know, if you take it back, you think of what organic is, it's someone searching for you.
It's not necessarily just your SEO strategy. It's not just because you are ranking higher, whatever it may be. There's just so many in single direct. There's so many competing, not competing, but so many factors that go into it.
So I remember just feeling in my, the pit of my stomach, but like this is not right. So there's so much more to this. And this is the wrong direction to send the team into a rabbit hole of figuring out like what happened to the site because that's not it. That we should be looking at a greater picture.
And so if we were looking at, you know, as our self reported attribution in there and thinking of it in a hybrid picture, well, are we seeing a lot less? I saw you on LinkedIn or podcast or whatever the top contenders are we seeing a decrease there? And this is more of a qualitative insight for us to, you know, look at and say, is it actually how should we, you know, investigate on another avenue a little bit further to figure out what isn't isn't working than we're seeing this dip from. So I think that was kind of a big one.
And even just thinking like even outside of our self report attribution, like, is there other ways that we could look at this and look at all the different competing factors and like quote unquote, even throw vanity metrics, you know, into it, like we're seeing impressions. So down we're seeing, you know, organic social go down. I think those are super important to have into the conversation. Yeah.
No, you triggered me there thinking about the times that you're just hoping that you find the issue so you can stop the conversation, even though you might necessarily believe it. You're just like, Oh, please for the love of everything contracting. Just be busted on the website. So then I can go forward to the leadership team and say, yep, that's what happened.
Let's move on to next month. Like that is just like, I've used that conversation so many times early in my career and there are times that I just want to use it now. Like please just be something broken. But because it is a hard conversation for us to grasp and you talk a lot about the models.
Last touch, multi touch, self reported attribution. And I think all of those are so important to evaluate based on customer journey, life cycle, sales cycle, size of company, you know, like what is the responsibility of the marketing team? Are they kind of on the brand level? Are they operating more on like the customer acquisition level?
I hope, I hope the listeners just understand maybe some of these different models. You can just start like talking through each of them, how you kind of like your interpretation of them right or wrong, right? I think that's all subjected to some degree, but I'd love to just understand like how you think of them and then maybe we can get into more like applying those to logic of executing like a demand generation strategy and where you might use them or the other. Yeah, man, it's been a little bit since I've done it.
So hopefully academically I'm spitting these off correctly here. You're going to be better than me at any point. So you're the expert here. But now we got.
So last touch, I think this is a very common one. And so basically it's crediting to whatever the last thing that someone did was they came to your site. It's going to auto. It's going to be overwriting constantly.
So the first thing that I'm going to note notes for last touch is that it's constantly overwriting. First touch gives all the credit to whatever the first thing that unless it gives all the credits the last thing that they did. Again, that's overwriting. First touch is gives all the credit to whatever drove someone into your system for the first time.
So I think this one is super misleading as well because for a number of reasons I get into later. So those are the two most common ones. Multi touch comes in as well. I think this is probably sometimes I think it probably can be with the other two as well.
Multi touch is giving credit equally across every single touch point in a journey. And so a lot of people like this model and B2B as well because B2B SAS is complicated. The buyer journeys are long. Sales cycles can be a year plus.
And so we know that there's so many different steps in that journey. So a lot of people will gravitate towards the multi touch because they want to make sure they're not cutting something out that is impactful and may not show up in the last touch or first touch. I generally think that a lot of people approach it with good intentions. It just drives a lot of poor outcomes and misled decisions because of it.
So first touch, last touch, multi touch. There's a ton of other ones. There's a U-shaped model, W-shaped model, et cetera. Just different ways that are weighted.
There's weighted after you should do customized attribution where you decide how much weight that you're going to score a certain touch point on. And then there's an attribution model that we really champion here. I find labs called the hybrid attribution model. And so it's coupling your conversion action.
I'm going to touch on this first. So it's essentially saying what was the last touch that you did stamped that when the opportunity was created or when the conversion happened. So it's not constantly getting overwritten. I think this is super important.
I don't see a lot of companies executing this super effectively because it is a little bit of customization here. So what is that last conversion action that's not overwritten? And then you're coupling it with a how did you hear about a qualitative field so that you can hear it from the customer. And so you're coupling almost where did you create the demand?
And it doesn't have to be 100% accurate. I think the huge pushback I see on this framework is how do you know if that's the first place that's going to be biased? That might not be the actual first place that I heard about you. But I think it's super important to understand where the prospect is remembering you.
I think that's also important. If you're talking about this as a qualitative metric. So you're taking what did they remember hearing about you for the first time? And then what was the thing that they did when they came in?
So that's the hybrid attribution model and one that we really champion here at our fine labs. Yeah. And by the way, you nailed the attribution kind of just baseline getting and understanding because I think sometimes we're so dependent on the industry that we're in or the niche that we're in. Sometimes we get to evaluate these a little bit differently.
And I think it's important to just think about the linearness that we try to define in a via journey, right? So the first interaction first click attribution like think how many times you and I have clicked something maybe by even accident or we thought we missed red on what it was and then you bounce right away, right? So there's like that fundamentally a slot if we use that as true like our true North Star. Same with last click.
Typically we go into your point like the B2B world VC ads on LinkedIn and kind of use this dark social element meaning we're not necessarily engaging with them. But people are kind of talking about us. We click on that like suddenly does that get credit? So I think that's such an important piece that you talk about like this hybrid model.
And I think also being honest with the audience too. It's so hard to assign credit and define because there's so many different levels. So you're coming here and listening and going on the walk away with like the perfect cheat sheet of how to just apply this at my company. That's the wrong way to think about it because you're assigning credit.
You're thinking about how to assign credit based on team satisfaction versus thinking about holistically about the organization at large or we're thinking about revenue, how are we recognizing the buyer signals and those signals influence and should influence the leadership conversation. So just like adding a bit of color there is what you say. I think it's so key and I would challenge you know, what are some of the issues you've seen to like maybe thinking about like the SRI component I come in and I'm like, all right, I want to fill out a demo for a software attribution tool. I'm here right there in itself.
But how did you hear about this tool? Oh, I heard about it from Steph. She told me she was a good girl company. It's a great tool, but I come in via organic.
I come in direct. So then like right there, there's two competing teams like raw Ravi did it, but the conversation is wrong and flawed. So talk to me about an example you've had where you've had a sneer conversation like that or how you kind of benchmarked conversation points. Yeah.
First of all, I think a huge highlight that I've had a notebook and was writing notes I put my highlighter on for you is the importance of knowing that if you walk away from this and wanting that cheat sheet, it just doesn't exist. Every single company is different. Every single plea book for every single company should be different. think it's really critical to first think of what are the most important metrics we need to track, you know, and then what are we trying to answer for these metrics and then you can fit the attribution models or how you're going to measure it to get that quote unquote compass to get you in that right direction.
I think it's just super critical to keep coming back to the idea of using this as a compass instead of thinking it's a, you know, one size that's all going to answer all my questions and credit is a really hard thing. We're trying to assign credit. When we really, again, it's a compass to give you directional because at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter where it comes from if the business is going. And we're just using this to dissect where to dig in, where to pull back, et cetera.
I think that's super important. Going to the, to the self-reported attribution bit, this one's really interesting and I, and I see both sides when it comes to kind of the conversation of how effective it is. So for instance, um, yeah, so Stephanie comes in, she says she heard about it from a friend, whatever maybe I kind of guys that was word of mouth. Like word of mouth is super important.
I ran self-reported attribution eight years ago, I want to say, um, at a company and we got a lot of word of mouth and to be honest back then you're like, well, is this even helpful? Like how do we even drive more marketing from word of mouth? Like, this is not helpful in retrospect. It was super helpful.
And I think it's just how you deploy that insight or marketing initiatives. That's the helpful part word of mouth. If you're seeing word of mouth is really great. Hey, let's, let's say it's, you're going to run a, um, an affiliate program a little bit more or a promotion with existing customers who refer a referral program.
Um, it could be delivering really great customer experience because the better that they're having, uh, with you as a customer, they're going to refer you more. And if you have a higher, you know, MPS score and you're seeing a higher self-reported attribution of word of mouth, there's a good correlation right there. I think a lot of times I'm marking through all about correlations as well and understanding where those correlations happen. So I think that's a super interesting one word of mouth.
I think it's a super great insight. Another one that I see is kind of like a pushback moment is when you get internet or Google. And rightfully so. I mean, helpful.
Yes. No, on the, on the surface, no, not helpful. But when you dig into it a little bit more, I think actually is really helpful because to me, that's signaling that you're not creating a memorable experience for someone to remember you and you can improve your demand creation and your brand awareness strategies so that they are remembering you. They remember that ad.
So to me, that means that there's something at the top or in the creativity department that is lacking that when they, when you're asked and they're just saying Google or whatever, that's why that's why you're getting out of your getting. So that's another kind of pushback moment. I see a lot of times when I'm deploying this with clients or even just in the market when the topic is brought up. I really love that you're using that pushback that a lot of folks use as an excuse not to implement this and like making it more of a self-reflective moment.
I think that's such a great, just 30 second clip to put out there because it's really important and you verbalize it so well. Are there any tools that you found to be of value or kind of what's your secret sauce in terms of how you're aggregating, like people like me, I love notebook and I love Google sheet and I just love data so I can input it. But have you found any tips or tricks that you're looking at or looking at a quarterly basis, weekly, whatever, some dependencies? Yeah, this is a great question.
There's a ton of really great tools out there that you can utilize to aggregate the data. I think first and foremost, I'd like to be scrappy with it and prove it out in your CRM first. So this is something that you can deploy tomorrow if you have the access to do so is creating your conversion action. So basically like stamping what the last offer and channels and sources are when the opportunity was created.
So that's something you can deploy to get to this hybrid attribution model. You can deploy a self-reported attribution, make sure it's a custom field within your CRM. So I'd say first and foremost, start out at the CRM level. Get that information there and then figure out what you need for more data aggregation or things that you are not getting from your CRM that would help you understand the journey a little bit more.
There's a lot of attribution tools out there. They're all really great. So I think figuring out which one serves what you are looking for because they're all very different from each other too. I think we'll really be helpful done to you.
First prove it out scrappy in your CRM and then you can move and figure out which tool you may need. But I think right now I do a lot in sheets in Excel and I think that's perfectly acceptable too. And I think a lot of teams right now are strapped a little bit too when it comes to software tools. And so don't let that hinder you either.
I think that they're really great. And if you get that chance where you can purchase them, definitely. And you can be super helpful. But if you are in a slot where you can't, I like to work on a sheet cell and use the CRM as kind of like baseline.
Yeah, me too. And I feel like we have the data available, right? So for those initial conversations, we have enough data to even scratch the surface. So if you are able to capture that conversion source or you are able to capture that self-reported attribution over the course of a month, depending on the volume of course, right?
So you get low form fields, you might need three to six months to capture enough data to then have that conversation with leadership. But until you start and I wouldn't recommend investing in tools until you establish that baseline for one and then you know what point of the conversation you're meaning to have because those hybrid attribution can take you every direction in a conversation if there's no managed expectations on what you're trying to utilize it for. So definitely love that. I think that that's the, sometimes the simplest things and access to the data that's just like kind of that unlock that we need to move the conversation further down the funnel.
It's like, okay, now I understand that we're seeing 80% of our SRA is different from our attribution software, meaning people are saying they heard about us through word of mouth or community, but it's captured versus organic or direct. Like that in itself is like, okay, what have we been in the community? How are we thinking about the strategic initiatives or tactics that we've deployed? And does that align with like the volume or fluctuations we've seen?
Okay, great. There's a correlation causation there. How do we move further down? So right?
You kind of are taking steps, stepping stones at each point of the conversation. So I just love that you're like honest, the tool won't solve anything. We talked about this at the top. We've talked about it now.
Like a tool won't solve just bad communication with leadership point point. So I, you know, I could go on for tools for a long time. I love this conversation. I almost want to do like an expert series where we can go deep into like how to do like setting up con point, the conversion points.
How do we set up our different flows in terms of hub spots, some of the things that we track directly that users can do. But like from a baseline standpoint, it's just nice to have an honest conversation that there isn't that secret sauce to win. It's just about getting scrappy and setting expectations. So I love that.
I love hearing all of this. I'm so excited. I can't believe we're only halfway through this conversation. There's so much more to learn.
But I do want to take it down a little bit, Ashley, what has been the lowest point of this journey for you and what kept you pushing forward? Was it pushback from leadership, maybe misguided protection of those software based models? Did that ever feel insurmountable? And how did you overcome that?
Yeah, I think, I think every marketer probably feels as pain a little bit, at least at some point in their career. I guess it's actually quite a bit still with getting kind of buy-in on this attribution model. And I think just overall go to market measurement as well. Like we're just touching the surface on attribution.
There's another layer to this that is, are we tracking the right things and are we goaling ourselves against the right things? And so of course we have the lead gen MQL versus pipeline and debate and conversation. That's another element here is we also, if you were to take another set of hires, I think this becomes really hard when you don't have the right goals or the right metrics that you're being asked to go after. And then of course, attribution is going to just make that a little bit harder, especially if you're only tasked with looking at last touch or only looking at multi-touch.
I had one where I was reviewing a company's performance and we wanted to understand what was driving pipeline. So in that case, I want to look at that conversion action or the last touch action because we really want to know what was the thing that they did that got them to say, aha, I want to talk to sales. Because that's super important to know as well because you're going to want to prioritize that and you're probably prioritize budget and outreach via sales a little bit differently for the ones that are performing a little higher. So we wanted to know that, but they only wanted to look at it in a multi-touch way.
And so it's really kind of hard to then get out of the hardest part, it was honestly getting the insights from the multi-touch because we were comparing the two. I think of two pie charts next to each other. One is the last touch attribution, the one's the multi-touch. But the last touch, you can see, okay, this offer, this pipeline source is a top converter.
Then we get to multi-touch and there's a little bit back to that analysis, paralysis kind of thought of, there's just so much going on here. I mean, no, if events were actually the most impactful piece that drove that, yes, I want to talk to sales moment, we don't, we just know that it was part of the journey. So it's a lot harder to extrapolate those insights. And so I think it's really helpful when you show the two together and you talk through the repercussions of using both of them and then asking them, which I think is super important to always ask what data is.
So what, like, what are we going to do with this data? I had a mentor who would always challenge me of when I came to data or something else or solve, she would have mentioned, like, how are you going to use this? Like, what does it drive? So what to it, essentially.
And I think that's really important. I think it comes back to attribution and kind of this mindset as well. Like, so what are you going to do with it? If it's multi-touch, is it just that you're going to keep investing in all the sources?
Or are you going to prioritize one? How do you know which one to prioritize versus if you're looking at, again, we're just trying to answer what drove someone into the pipeline, it'd be, okay, well, we know this is the thing, we're going to prioritize this. You can have a, you know, multi-touch does have a place and maybe we can look after, okay, we know demo requests, you know, bring in the most pipeline. What are other actions that we see in it?
Then you start the rabbit hole in, like, what I call like the onion feel to figure out a little bit later or lower. I think those are challenges is one, you know, you first have to have the right metrics and goals that you're being tasked with. And then two, if you're not using the right attribution model, but you're being asked to use it in that way, is really asking yourself, why are we doing this? What, what is it going to drive?
Is it giving a, is it putting us in the right direction with our compass? So a little bit there. Yeah, there, how do you take this any direction? And I, that's a good thing.
You know, I just, you give us so much to think about and, you know, moment of vulnerability for myself too, when I first started at Refine Labs and kind of we brought in this idea of hybrid attribution, right? A lot of it was a chatter in the market, you know, it was 2020. People were starting to talk about this now with the importance of it. And there was a bit of imposter syndrome for myself going into this.
Like, how do I have these conversations with leadership? I'm stepping up as the director of demand, talking to a CEO and trying to tell them that trust the process, we have to build the momentum, but they were so rooted in that attribution software. And that's how they forecasted their fiscal year. So we're trying to change the model on an already forecasted fiscal year.
That was some of the lowest moments of my career. I felt like because I just didn't know how to have that conversation because I was learning as we got and there was, there was this aptitude, like I was missing that trust component and I needed to build that first to recognize your point, right? It depends on what we are measuring. It depends on the goals we are trying to hit and it depends on the outcome that they are hoping for.
All of those different things can have different definitions by who you work with. You know, that convert, that company didn't stick around super long because they were rooted in the dated ways of thinking about marketing and Legion and they were just all volume. But yeah, like I can empathize so much as you talk about, some of these conversations are so challenging and it's, it's maybe not a lack of somebody wanting to understand. It's just a lack of like getting your head around this whole way of thinking about like a hybrid attribution and really trying to put yourself in the buyer's shoes and what we do day to day to interact with brands is the exact thing that people are doing when they purchase a software.
They're interacting with people, they're interacting with ads, they're interacting with email, all of that had the time in place and it's about like a uniformed ecosystem and like, how can we evaluate this at large? And when we start looking at attribution, then I think we start siloing ourselves again into dated ways to evaluate marketing, silo team, silo goals. So I'm a bit of a ramble there, but just kind of like empathize with you and understand like for everybody listening when you have those conversations and you're trying to move a needle, it's okay to feel uncomfortable in that. The best part is that you're able to manage expectations and be honest upfront, don't bullshit people.
I think that's where we get in a lot of times we can tell people we think versus like, let's push it, let's test it. These are the signals we're seeing. Are these signals in line with what leadership would like to see? No.
Okay. Back to the drawing board. Here's two more that I would look at. It's like having those honest conversations to build trust is so important when you think about this journey of shifting from like an organization to this hybrid attribution viewing.
Yeah, I think this is something really important to call out too is one having empathy for the marketing, you know, marketing as a whole. It's really hard. And there's so many different ways we can go about doing this. And I think first we need to figure out, you know, we're ultimately serving the company too.
There's different playbooks that we want to deploy. We also need to know, you know, what's the company strategy and because stewardship, two good stewards of that as well. And while we may want to come in and deploy something like this, it might not be a light switch overnight. You know, it might take a lot of, you know, buy in and conversations and so on.
So I think first of all, I just want to highlight that because I know, you know, being in other shoes, it can feel a little daunting. Like, oh my gosh, we should be doing this. But it's always important to remember what's your company strategy. You know, I think it's important to also be an investigator of the performance within a company too.
And so in the background, you might getting these hunches of like, this just doesn't feel right. Kind of similar to how I felt like, there's more to this organic story than meets the eye. And I don't think it needs to always be this gigantic pitch either to get by in for something like this. I had another mentor who told me about, you know, getting leadership by and are just buying in general within a company.
This act of slowly dropping nuggets of information or tippits casually over time. So it could be something like, Hey, I just don't feel like that, you know, us thinking that the SEO is actually the issue. I feel like there's something more to this because we also stopped posting on organic social media. Okay, we were triggering something for someone to remember.
They're like, Oh, you might be right. Why don't you dig into that? Well, if you keep doing this, you do it with all the stakeholders that will be needed for this type of charge of change management to take place. You're building that consensus in advance.
And you're also doing your due diligence of the research stage. I don't think any playbook, even attribution should be deployed blindly within a company because it also should be situational to the company's goals, the strategy, the type of company you're working for, the type of team, et cetera. So I think this is something important to note. If hybrid attribution feels like it is the right, you know, movement for you to figure out, how did you hear about this field on it, capture this running in the background, then be able to, you know, pull up a comparison of how you're currently attributing performance compared against this, or it might get different away or so on.
So this is also just something to point out is if you're wanting to change the attribution models that you're doing, I would strongly advise against doing a band-aid approach of ripping off right away, I would do your due diligence of researching almost build an MVP case and prove it out first and then build that consensus so that when it does come time to hopefully change, if it does work out, that you have it ready to go. Everyone's on board and you can have a successful transition. So I think that's a big thing that comes up with hybrid attribution, especially because it's very different. And so there is a little bit of that pushback.
So I think if you can build that, you know, think ahead of how to get around that, it can be set you up for more successful long term as well. Totally. It's like an initiator under campaigns with leadership. I do that often.
So making listening, you're welcome. But it's so true. Like you just kind of these ideas, these thoughts that I haven't spent enough time to bake out, but they're also like something I wanted somebody else to chew on. And then at some point it comes up and it's like, I had this revolutionary idea and you're like, I gotcha.
And then it's on them and not on you. So I appreciate that. As we think about like this full journey, right? So kind of your story into understanding like how hybrid attribution was starting to influence marketing and influencing your decision making.
We think about your kind of journey as you think about this call to action and like what made you want to do change, what initiated this like angst and like get started. What did this journey teach you about yourself? And what do you appreciate about the skills and passion that it's kind of heavy balled with this journey? Yeah, soft scale bias, I think curiosity has been one of the biggest ones to just always challenge myself of approaching it with that mindset.
Being really good at diving in and figuring out which layers you need to go down. I think it's a really important skill within marketing, understanding correlation, causation, things like that are super important that have also taught me. I think just also just being a much better analytical marketer is another thing that has definitely taught me and that I like to carry on with me. I think marketing is obviously an art and a science and it's going to be balanced in both.
This one has definitely challenged me to be a little bit more on the science side, which I think is nice. Well, thank you. It's always interesting to get perspective and self-reflection as we talk about a journey and understanding how people evolve and move through the different stages. And kind of like opening it more broadly here, the question that I love to close out with is what is a shift in marketing do you expect that's coming next?
And how do you think that listeners should prepare for it or what some of the things that they should be thinking about maybe that's different that's challenges the status quo? Yeah, I've been thinking about this one a lot lately. And of course, there's some flashy trends going around right now. AI is popping up.
ABM has been a huge moment. But I think if I was to kind of zoom out, I think we're going to see a little bit of a resurgence of creativity at a brand level and a brand awareness level and thinking about how do we tell the story of the brand, how do we cut through the noise, how do we just get back to the roots of being creative and how we story tell visually appeal to audiences. Like almost taking us back to a little bit of the madman era of just quality advertising. I think we're going to see a little bit of that because we've almost had the pendulum swing so hard the other way into performance marketing.
And it's becoming the audience is becoming a little numb to it because we can see an ad a mile away now with the lead done form and we've we've run away. And so I think we're going to see a little bit of a shift and this is going to be an interesting one if I if I'm predicting correctly because you can't track it as well as you can the performance marketing. So I think this will be an interesting one because you're going to have to rely on things like self reported attribution or other attribution models or other metrics to track it. So I'm really excited to see if that actually comes to fruition if we see it, I hope we do personally, but I just see what happens.
Awesome. Yeah, I'm excited for that kind of this brand demand and expand mindset that we're taking as refined labs into 2025 and like that's really kind of how we're owning in our positioning. So I love to hear that you're thinking along the same vein. So that'll be another conversation.
Yeah, we will definitely have to have a part two to this. Ashley, thank you so much for sharing your journey with us. We're so grateful for your time, your insights, and we hope everyone listening starts dropping their little breadcrumbs and doing some heavy reflection on how your current attribution strategies are or aren't working for you. If you like hearing these journeys, make sure to subscribe and share this episode out to your network.
And if you want to nominate a marketing hero to come on and chat with us, feel free to get in touch. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you all next time. Good luck.