How Data Shopper Turns Website Visitors Into Real Clients

Quentin Edmonds (01:31)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Investor fuel podcast. I am your host. Come on, y’all say it with me. Edmonds, Quentin Edmonds better known as Q Edmonds. And today I am joined by someone I know that you’re going to get great value from. know how we do. We always bring people on that. They give you great value to let you know you’re not in it by yourself and let you know, hey, I was just thinking about that. And they can come in and kind of help you charge this solution, get a solution to the problem that you’ve been looking at. So.

I am so excited to have with you today my friend Mr. Erik Taurence. He is going to tell you about marketing technology, right? ⁓ man, how to position yourself when it comes to marketing. I am so excited to talk to my friend, Mr. Erik. How are you feeling today, my friend?

Erik Taurence (02:23)
I’m doing well, man. Happy Friday, Quentin. Thanks for having me on. Really excited to tell people more about Datashop or where they can find us and how we can be an effective marketing tool for them to grow their business. So thank you so much for having me. Looking forward to chopping it up with you for the next 15, 20 minutes and hopefully providing value at mass.

Quentin Edmonds (02:41)
Absolutely, man. Absolutely. I know our listeners is going to get a great insight on what you guys are doing What you got is guys are building and so hey, man, if you don’t mind, I want to dive right in so of course some people They’re getting to know you for the first time and so they’re coming into your world And so if you don’t mind telling this like what are you focused on? What is your main focus these days? And if you don’t mind if you want to tell it will market you in, know, but mark your operate. Yeah

Erik Taurence (03:10)
Yeah, absolutely. So data shoproads core is a marketing technology platform that will be powerful for your, your mom and pop shops that just looking to grow their brand, but it’s also very much an enterprise omni-channel marketing platform. So what we’ve done or what we’re rolling out at scale as of Monday, we’re doing this on Friday is going to be very much a low end SAS resolution for people to identify anonymous web traffic that’s coming to your website. These people don’t have to.

Fill out any forms or request any further information. They simply show up on your website and we identify about 30 to 50 percent of those folks. ⁓ I would say most of our clients are identifying right about 45 percent right now, ⁓ which is a huge opportunity because most people that do land on your website aren’t buying things or they’re just perusing. They’re obviously interested. And this just allows you to continue to reengage with them. Now we can reengage through many different outlets.

One being direct mail, which has been a lot more effective as of recently, because I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but like Google, all these big, you know, email chains are sifting out your promotions. So people getting an actual targeted direct mail piece is very effective right now for folks. ⁓ so that’s been one way we do it, but we also have integrations with Google meta, ⁓ other integrations to different ad platforms so that as this audience is coming into your website, it’s going directly back to these folks that continue to stay in front of them.

So that’s one way we’re working very effectively. Put a very lightweight pixel on your website to get that information. Update your privacy policies, give people an option to opt out. But the second, which is most powerful, which is what we’re rolling out Monday, is you will be able to develop audiences in real time. So what that means is most of your listeners might be in real estate. So I’m going to say anybody that’s looking to sell a home in your local area

within a 50 mile radius or whatever your service area is.

you can go into our platform, click a couple buttons and pull an entire audience of folks that are looking to sell their home. And then now you’re able to market effectively whether with all those channels we just discussed, right? So you’re, it’s giving you an opportunity to introduce you to folks that otherwise wouldn’t know who you are and that should grow your brand effectively. So it is a very powerful tool and I’m excited to, for people to know about it and hear more about it and ⁓ provide value at scale to, you know,

the smallest realtors and the biggest real estate companies in the world.

Quentin Edmonds (06:23)
I love it, I love it. think what really caught my attention is how you want to give it to them at a very low cost solution, but you want them to be in position where they can market just like with the big companies, no matter what size you are. Exactly.

Erik Taurence (06:40)
So if your traffic is less than 10,000, you know, per month to give people an idea of what our cost is going to look like, it’s going to be 149 bucks. And then you’re also going to be able to build up to about 35 audiences per month. So it gives you a chance to play with that tool, figure out certain ideal customer profiles that you’re looking to cohort and put in a marketing campaign and send out. You know, I have a mortgage background. So thinking of first time home buyers, there’s a lot of programs that

real estate company or mortgage companies have that can target these folks effectively. So it’s gonna be very powerful, man. I’m really excited for people to see it.

Quentin Edmonds (07:19)
Absolutely man, me too brother. Now listen, I know, you know, people, you know, are becoming more aware of data, right? And using data, right? And so, you know, they can get a little leery and scared, but I love your approach. I love how you’re trying to do it with integrity. And so in this climate, I know it’s not easy because you have some, you know, things pushing back against you, but what is it that keeps your machine running smoothly?

Erik Taurence (07:46)
What keeps us running smoothly is kind of the people within our organization. I think we really balance each other out really well. The owners of the company have a marketing background and developing background. I would say I’m much more sales forward and people oriented. I love meeting new people similar to yourself. I think you and I could probably sit here and talk all day if we really wanted to. But I think we’ve really developed a good balance of folks to really help.

drive data shopper and like you said, keep integrity at the front of our mind, making sure that we’re making relationships with the right folks, helping people genuinely grow their business. We want our people to be as successful. A lot of our platform that we’ve built out that we’re, you know, building out at scale right now has been developed by input from a lot of our clients too. So for example, like it used to just show the gateway for where people came from. So if they came from Google or if they came through Facebook, it would just show that.

But one of our clients really wanted to see like each individual, maybe the lifespan that they were on our platform, which website did they go to? And they were an RV dealer. there, if they go to a certain trailer or a certain RV, now they can market directly to that RV that that person was looking at. So it allows you to be extremely targeted in your efforts and just get more data. And yeah, it is, people are a little weary about data, but it’s out there. ⁓

We’re using it for the right ways to market effectively, help people grow their business, offer it at a very low cost to, and we’re gonna provide guided tutorials along our platform so that people know how to use it effectively, and we’re gonna have support as well.

Quentin Edmonds (09:25)
Absolutely, man. I love it. I love it. Now, you know, one thing we like to do, we want to normalize the hard, right? Business is not always easy, right? And what I love about the chances that we get to talk here is that you get a chance for us to understand and talk about our hard times together. And because we tell the success stories, but sometimes we got to peel behind the layers and be like,

This is not always easy, And so, you your business is ramping up. You guys are doing great things.

But please, if you don’t mind, tell me maybe about a time when maybe Adele went sideways or, you know, a time you really had to pivot fast. Like, let’s bond together over the heart, if you don’t mind, Ms. Yeah.

Erik Taurence (10:49)
No, I mean, a couple of different things. are tough right now, man. Like people are stretched thin. ⁓ You know, we’ve lost a client or two and you know, we always reach out and we say, hey, ⁓ you know, is there anything our platform didn’t provide? And unfortunately, a lot of them saw the value in our platform. They’re just like, hey, like we’re really stretched on budget right now. So that’s kind of what triggered us to think about, hey, our pricing model, do we need to change it? And that’s what we’ve done over the last three months. So we have completely pivoted as a company to roll this out at scale.

I would say our previous four months have been developing, building an agency around our platform. So people would see our capabilities and what we can do. And they would say, all right, we want you to action on all this data that you’re providing. We want you to run ads for us. We want you to work on content creation, so on and so forth. So from that aspect, we were becoming a marketing agency and the owners of my company previously owned a marketing agency and they’ve sold it. They work with very well known companies.

companies like Rocket Mortgage, Benzingo, stuff like that. So they were very successful in the space, but we wanted to provide our platform at a higher scale and take away the agency feel from it. We just wanted to help enterprise folks, help the small folks grow their business. So we are completely transitioning in real time. And as of Monday, everything should be live. So we’re really excited about the rollout. really excited to see how many people we can help out.

And, ⁓ especially with like marketing agencies are, since we are pivoting away from the execution side, when people sign up, they will click, Hey, are there services that you need? Whether it be SEO, ad management, ⁓ running content, whatever their need is, they will be able to let us know. And we will put them in contact with one of our agency partners to help them execute whatever service that they’re looking for. So our agency partners are going to love us because we’re just going to be referring them business left and right.

Quentin Edmonds (12:48)
Absolutely. I see you. Thank you sharing man. Thank you for Yeah, if we put your honesty, you know, thank you for for sharing, know, you know, I like you to wear vulnerability, right like yeah for shame because

Erik Taurence (13:01)
Sunshine’s

and rainbows, man.

Quentin Edmonds (13:03)
There you go. There you go. And really that would, that’s what position a business owner and people that’s in business to stay in a long term is when they can talk about the honest moments when they can pivot, when they can keep, you know, you know, get back on it and keep moving forward. And so it’s no doubt. know you guys are ramping up. know Monday is coming, but there’s no doubt in my mind that you guys are in this for the long term just because of that perspective. Yeah. Yeah. So I appreciate that. So let me ask you this.

Erik Taurence (13:29)
Yeah, absolutely.

Quentin Edmonds (13:33)
What are you most focused on solving right now? Like, is there a scale up point? Like what’s the next real goal for you, Mr. Erik?

Erik Taurence (13:41)
Our next goal is to try and get as many agency partners, enterprise clients, and get as many people on our platform as we possibly can. And the reason for that is because I’ve seen the marketplace and what we do, and I think we are probably the most easy to use platform in the space. We have built-in integration so that people can just effectively use our platform. And the more people that we have signed up, the more people that can grow their business.

the more people that can, I’m just thinking like a local roofer, know, that is, you know, hoping to get 10 roofs a month can get to 15 or 20, right? That’s going to change their lifestyle. That’s going to change their ability to be an advocate in the community, so on and so forth. So we really see our platform just really trying to scale out to across the entire U S that’s where we’re focused right now. ⁓ agency partners are important because then we can provide those services to our

clients that need them, right? ⁓ You know, we have a good network started. We have a good base of folks and they’re super excited. You know, we’re already referring business over to them because we have existing clients that we need to get website build outs for or SEO or paid management or content. All those things have come across my desk in the last week. So our agency partners are going to love us. So,

you know, they’re going to get discounted rates on our pixel. They can either white label it as their own, or they can be an agency partner, just, you know, rep rep in data shopper.

but they’re going to have the ability to have attribution in their marketing as well and know, you know, if their ads are working. So it’s extremely powerful. And I’ll kind of wrap it up at this is we have one agency partner that said they will not take on any new clients unless they’re willing to use data shopper as well, because it shows how powerful they, they pretty much know if their ads are working through data shoppers platform, it shows how many people are coming to your website. Is that number trending up? We ran an ad on this date.

How much did it, how many people came to visit our website or that specific landing page, right? So it is that for your smallest company and your biggest company. So it is, it’s a pretty powerful machine.

Quentin Edmonds (16:29)
Absolutely. I love it, man. I love I’m glad you pointed it out and y’all heard them are very easy to use platform, very friendly, easy user, because I know one of the opportunities right now for you for you guys is actually getting people to know who you are. That’s a great opportunity. And so listen, data shopper, friendly, friendly user, you know, use a platform like we trying to get you connected so that you can have what you need when you need it. And so I love it, man. And y’all making moves.

Man, y’all pushing forward, y’all grinding. And so of course, you know, like the next move, you know, it can either compound things or it can create chaos, you know?

Erik Taurence (17:09)
expect chaos. mean, I very much buckled in. I am buckled in to probably be sitting right here for the next year or two, man. do think, I do think when people know who we are, see what we can do and how they can effectively use our platform. I really do think this is going to be a home run for pretty much anybody that wants to give it a try. Yeah, there are some cohorts that are harder to find, maybe some intense signals. Speaking to some of the trials that we’ve had, have, you know, a very

⁓ prominent blind, ⁓ somebody that does high end blinds and window treatments. Like we don’t have necessarily an intense signal for them, but we’re working with them to figure out, hey, do we want to target new homeowners? Do we want to target people that ⁓ are expecting new kids because they might want some blackout shades in their kids’ room and their studies and, you know, stuff that says kids will sleep better if the room’s darker. So like we are working

in conjunction with our clients to make our platform be as effective as possible. sometimes we’re not the all like the perfect solution. I’m gonna say 95 % of the time we are but for that 5 % we will work tirelessly to put our marketing brains on and try and figure out a cohort that pretty much reverse engineers their ideal customer.

Quentin Edmonds (18:25)
Yeah, I love it, man. I love it, man. And so I mean, I love everything you saying, you know, you got people that they’re listening in and they’re new on their journey, you know, their their Monday, maybe right around the corner, right? They’re living, they’re looking to level up. And I think they can benefit from hearing from you because how you just said you had one like, listen, I’m not even rolling anything out unless they got data shopper connected to it. Like I’m not introducing nothing new unless this is in place. So

When it comes to building relationships and growing your network, what’s made the biggest difference for you?

Erik Taurence (19:02)
I think listening. Listening is the biggest part. ⁓ When you are talking and you got to care. I mean, I’ve tried to train people in sales and you can’t tell people to care unless they genuinely do. my, am just a very curious human being. If I am at, if I am traveling through an airport solo, I will probably grab a seat at the bar, drink a beer, and I will talk to random people all the time. Because throughout my experience, I don’t love to read. ⁓ I am very much somebody who has learned from other people’s

triumphs and other people’s mistakes. And the best way I do that is through communicating with folks. as you know, the chief growth officer here at Datashopper, my job is to listen to our clients, listen to the things they’re struggling with, listen to the things that are going well. For example, that window treatment company had a call with two of their franchisees and we just said, Hey, how do we reverse engineer this? And we had a great call of like, I think this can work.

So those are the things you have to do as a company. Same with our agency partners. I work with agency partners that have helped us make enhancements to our platform. Hey, I think this would be really nice. Hey, this integration is not working as great. And that’s what we’ve spent the last month doing is tidying up those things so that when we do that roll this out at a very mass scale, it is just a well oiled machine. And if people need help, we’re always going to be here. But my job is to listen to our clients.

Listen to our agency partners, listen to our huge clients, our enterprise clients, and just make sure that they have a sounding board. We are listening if they have an issue with our platform or if they have a great success story. We’re echoing that so that more people are comfortable using our services. Right? I think of it back from the mortgage space. If you are getting Google review on five star, five star, five star, that just builds trust in the community, man. So that’s what we’re trying to do is build trust in the data.

in the marketing technology space, have these success stories, have these small companies that are doubling revenue over a three to five year period, just by retargeting effectively or getting two more deals a month, man. Every little thing helps a small business or a very big business. The margins are tight right now. People are struggling and that’s why we want to roll it out at very low cost for folks so that if they get one deal man from just retargeting somebody that came to their website, it’s going to change, change their company.

Quentin Edmonds (21:25)
Man, I absolutely love it, Erik. ⁓ Relationships are everything. And you guys are building connections, building relationships, trying to position yourself to help people the best way you can. so I absolutely love it, Absolutely love it. So listen, before we wrap up, if someone, they didn’t hurt you, they didn’t hurt about data shopper, they want to connect with you, reach out, maybe want to reach out to you personally, collaborate, learn more about what you’re doing. What’s the best way for them to reach out to you,

Erik Taurence (21:55)
Best place to go right now, datashopper.com, see what we can do, see what our capabilities, that new website will be live as of Monday. If you want to reach out to me personally, I’m pretty active on LinkedIn now and probably will be more active as this rollout comes. So just look at Erik Taurence, look for somebody who is driving growth in the, in the data shopper world. I don’t think there’s many people with my name and that’s Erik with a K, not a C. And then also if you want to shoot me an email, erik at datashopper.com. I’d love to set up a meeting.

And then, you know, I’m very active in my email gives me anxiety if I don’t respond. So if you do reach out, I will I will definitely respond. But I’m also on X2. I find myself to be more active there in the near future. I haven’t been as of late, but you can find me on there as well. Erik Taurence to search it should probably come to the top of the list.

Quentin Edmonds (22:45)
Man, there he is. Erik Taurence, man. I appreciate you, sir. Appreciate your time, your story, your perspective. We definitely need more people like you and your company, Dated Shopper, that’s doing things the right way with integrity, helping people, trying to set people up for the long haul. So I appreciate you being with us,

Erik Taurence (23:04)
Quentin, I really appreciate your time, man. I’m sure we’ll chop it up more times in the future, but I really appreciate you taking the time to learn more about our company and what we’re about to do.

Quentin Edmonds (23:12)
Absolutely,

man. Absolutely now. Hey, you know what I say you’re tuning in you love what you heard Please make sure you’re subscribed You do not want to miss when we have incredible people on just like my friend Erik Taurence Alright, so make sure you are subscribed and so until the next time y’all have a great day. We’ll see you again

Erik Taurence (23:33)
Cheers, everybody.