How to Simplify Your Data and Accelerate Growth [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 122]

This transcript has been generated by AI and not checked for accuracy. 

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:10:05

Ruan Marinho

SplashDash is perfect for people doing endless customers because it has high visibility, which allows you to see how much you're showing up in the air search results. Specifically ChatGPT.

00:00:10:07 - 00:00:17:13

Alex Winter

That's an amazing way to get real data and then build trust, which is what Endless Customers is all about.

00:00:17:14 - 00:00:35:00

Bob Ruffolo

You're listening to the Endless Customers podcast, brought to you by the team at impact! Ellis customers is the proven system to become the most known and trusted brand in your market. You want to start to learn the principles of endless customers and how you can implement them in your business. Pick up a copy of Endless Customers, a national bestseller.

00:00:35:00 - 00:00:56:16

Bob Ruffolo

Wherever books are sold. Ready to start implementing endless customers in your business? Talk to impact about how our coaching program can help you implement Ellis customers to success. And if you want experience endless customers in person. Do not miss our upcoming conference. Endless customers live in Chicago March 30th through April 1st, 2026. Registration is now open. And now onto the show.

00:00:56:16 - 00:00:58:20

Bob Ruffolo

Here's your host, Alex Winter.

00:00:58:22 - 00:01:22:06

Alex Winter

If you've ever opened a marketing report and thought, I have no idea what this means or why it matters. Well, you're not alone. For most companies, reporting has become a wall of numbers instead of a story that builds trust. The dashboards look great, but no one really knows what to do with them. That's why I'm so excited about today's conversation with Raul Moreno, the founder of SplashDash, a platform that's rethinking how we communicate marketing results.

00:01:22:08 - 00:01:43:11

Alex Winter

In the endless customer's journey, we talk a lot about transparency and bringing marketing in-house. But transparency isn't just about sharing data, it's about making data meaningful. Romance tools help businesses do exactly that. He's going to walk us through how teams use it to present results with clarity, and examples of companies that turn confusing dashboards into revenue driving conversations.

00:01:43:13 - 00:01:54:03

Alex Winter

You'll hear what changed for them, what it looks like day to day, and what you can do. This quarter to make your reporting more human, honest, and useful for everyone. Welcome to the show.

00:01:54:08 - 00:01:56:00

Ruan Marinho

Hello, everybody. Thanks for having me.

00:01:56:01 - 00:01:59:02

Alex Winter

Thanks for being here. Yeah. First time in the studio, right?

00:01:59:04 - 00:02:02:13

Ruan Marinho

Yeah. It's beautiful. Awesome. Great job. I love everything that impact does.

00:02:02:17 - 00:02:18:03

Alex Winter

Thank you. Well, we love everything that SplashDash is all about, too. And we are so pumped to have you on the show. So I think for our viewers and our listeners out there, can you tell everybody what SplashDash is and just a little bit about yourself as the founder and just how this all came to be and set the stage before we we get into the meat and potatoes.

00:02:18:05 - 00:02:43:15

Ruan Marinho

Sure. So my name is Russ Marino. I started a software called SplashDash, and I started it after running a marketing agency for eight years and realizing that a lot of the tools that allow you to send reports are very cluttered with information. It's almost like looking at an airport terminal, and we realized that we've got to send people signal, not noise, because whenever we sent a marketing report, people would just be confused.

00:02:43:15 - 00:02:45:22

Ruan Marinho

So we actually stopped sending all reporting.

00:02:46:00 - 00:02:46:13

Alex Winter

No kidding.

00:02:46:15 - 00:02:58:05

Ruan Marinho

And that was the moment when I realized, I wish I could go to a Costco for data, and I could buy the data wholesale and package it up for people to run it, and they don't have to integrate anything.

00:02:58:07 - 00:03:01:23

Alex Winter

So like a one stop kind of shop? Yeah. Yeah. I love that.

00:03:02:03 - 00:03:11:07

Ruan Marinho

Yeah. And that's where I came up with the idea of SplashDash. And so when you log into it, you're almost greeted with a bunch of different reports that you can pull, and it's just focus on sending a clear signal.

00:03:11:09 - 00:03:19:18

Alex Winter

Nice. And where did this idea come from? Was it, like, born out of necessity, like you just wanted to have something like this and it didn't exist in the marketplace.

00:03:19:20 - 00:03:38:17

Ruan Marinho

So when I would talk to customers, they would say frequent things that I kept hearing. How many reviews do we need to get? Who's our top competitor? What backlinks should we try to gain? How's our traffic doing? What's how's the competitor's traffic doing? What is the market look like? We want to expand to this area. Can you tell us how, if we're going to do well in that area?

00:03:38:19 - 00:03:54:08

Ruan Marinho

So I took all of those things and I turned them into little reports within SplashDash. So all of those reports a user can run without having to integrate any of the data themselves, because a lot of these tools are very expensive. So if you wanted a subscription to every one of the tools that SplashDash is offering you, it's very expensive.

00:03:54:10 - 00:04:00:15

Ruan Marinho

And so we package it all up into one place. So it came out of necessity, but it also came out of like, I really feel like the world needs this.

00:04:00:20 - 00:04:17:14

Alex Winter

Yeah. Yeah. And when you first explain this to me too, when when you were launching it. I love the idea of having a centralized place because it feels it's almost like it TV how you used to have cable and then everything switched to apps. And now you need to have like 30 different apps, and it's like you're paying all these subscription fees and it's like, oh, it's just it's a hot mess.

00:04:17:14 - 00:04:21:18

Alex Winter

It really is. So to have everything in one place is a beautiful thing.

00:04:21:20 - 00:04:38:05

Ruan Marinho

It is. Yeah. And the value of it from a business model is the more people use SplashDash, the more the companies we're getting the data from get paid. And so they're excited that we're putting their logo in our platform, because we're not saying the data is coming from us. We're proudly representing the companies we're buying the data from.

00:04:38:05 - 00:04:50:23

Ruan Marinho

So it's strengthening our partnership with them. Right. And so we really are like the Costco of data. That's where we're trying to head, taking these name brands and then offering it at bulk for customers that may not, you know, purchase them directly.

00:04:51:00 - 00:05:17:21

Alex Winter

Yeah, I love it. So you said your big endless customers fan and an impact fan, and we appreciate that. We're fans of you too. You sponsor the events, you come to all of our endless customer lives and interact with a lot of our clientele, which is just a really great thing. Can you explain a little bit or like, talk about why SplashDash is a great tool for people that are trying to bring their marketing in-house, and for people that are trying to build trust and implement the endless customer system and how it can help them do that even better.

00:05:17:23 - 00:05:41:23

Ruan Marinho

Well, I think the first thing is I visibility is a key topic of conversation right now. Yeah. And the the main reason is if you're doing marketing in-house, you may not want to have access to all of these softwares because you may use it very rarely. And so being able to log in to one place and pull from a bunch of these different sources directly with the signal that you need, is a lot better than trying to figure out all these complex tools.

00:05:42:01 - 00:06:00:23

Ruan Marinho

So our mission is to not tell people to move away from those tools. We are very supplemental. So it's useful for somebody that is in marketing to use simplified information, because usually the stakeholder in the decision makers and the founders of those companies and the CEOs of those companies, they don't want to see all those intricate information. They just want a quick splash of data.

00:06:01:01 - 00:06:15:22

Ruan Marinho

And so that's where we're really trying to make is like you log in, you run a report, you leave. That's why we called it SplashDash. Like you go in, you make a splash and you leave. Yeah. We're not expecting you to have these entire gigantic spreadsheets of information that are very difficult to understand. We're trying to show you a quick insight, and that's it.

00:06:16:00 - 00:06:33:07

Alex Winter

Got it. Got it. So for someone who's like a marketing leader or a content manager or something like that, how would they use this tool in their day to day to help them create content, to help them build more trust, to help them use and less customers to their advantage and obviously go faster, because that's the whole point of AI is to speed things up.

00:06:33:12 - 00:06:34:09

Alex Winter

Yeah, so.

00:06:34:11 - 00:06:37:18

Ruan Marinho

The first thing that came to a head when you asked that question is AI visibility.

00:06:37:19 - 00:06:38:03

Alex Winter

Yeah.

00:06:38:06 - 00:06:57:06

Ruan Marinho

So in Splash \\Dash you can run an air visibility report. And basically all it'll do is ChatGPT will prompt 100 queries related to your brand. And it will basically say out of these hundred queries, here's how many times you showed up. And so if you showed up 30% of the times, which is 30 out of 100 times, there's 70% of the work you still need to do.

00:06:57:08 - 00:07:21:04

Ruan Marinho

The way that that relates to endless customers is are you addressing the things you're not being mentioned for directly on your website? So with a couple of clicks, you now have homework and execution of a work to actually get you more visibility inside of the LMS, which is everything right now. So I visibility would probably be the first thing I would recommend is log in, see how you're ranking in the eyes specifically inside of ChatGPT, because that's where everybody's going.

00:07:21:05 - 00:07:36:04

Alex Winter

That's where the big shift has been happening. You know, I used to be Google and they ask you answer before it evolved into what is now in this. Customers used to be very much about organic SEO and about getting found on Google. But there's a huge shift happening and people are asking the same question. It's like, how come I'm not showing up in GPT?

00:07:36:06 - 00:07:42:19

Alex Winter

How come I'm not showing up in cloud or in grok or wherever people are searching? And I think that plays into exactly what you're saying it does.

00:07:42:19 - 00:08:04:07

Ruan Marinho

And when you log in to SplashDash and you do, one of the AI visibility reports, it not only will search your search for keywords related to your brand to show you how much you're showing up, it'll show you what citations are being mentioned the most. So for every market, it's different. For example, for a moving company local to us, Move Buddha is a really critical citation for a moving company in Texas.

00:08:04:07 - 00:08:26:17

Ruan Marinho

However, the Bebe is very important. So the response rates of those citations and the percentage of how much time they show up tells the marketer what they need to focus on. So for Connecticut, guess what? We're signing up for Move Buddha because it's taking the companies that are listed there and then recommending them in the and our customers are upset by that because they've ignored that forever, because there's really was no need to pay attention to it.

00:08:26:19 - 00:08:43:04

Ruan Marinho

But now, because Chhatrapati is looking at these citations, you need to know which citations are being mentioned the most in your market and then get listed on that sponsor. Upload photos, upload videos and optimize it. So a marketing person can be running that every single month, once per month, sharing it with their leadership team and then making decisions based off of that.

00:08:43:05 - 00:09:05:02

Alex Winter

Yeah, that's really cool to hear that, because I've heard from countless clients, I've gone out and track customer journey videos and case studies and a recurring theme that I hear before I was that the organic search was working so well that they'd have people way outside of their geographic range asking for services for roofing or for whatever the company was doing B2B, B2C, and they were like, sorry, you guys are in Canada.

00:09:05:02 - 00:09:25:02

Alex Winter

We're in Texas. Like, we don't, you're not. So like the coolest part about this is you can get hyper specific with a tool like SplashDash. Yeah. And then really hone in on like local your local use, like your optimizer, like best clientele and not be wasting time and effort on people that might be a good fit but just aren't in your region.

00:09:25:04 - 00:09:48:06

Ruan Marinho

And I think that's the unique reason we built it is just for local. So everything inside of SplashDash is if not for the person that has a physical location or multiple physical locations, whereas a lot of the bigger the bigger tools. Granted, they're amazing and we love them. They're more so focused on Amazon.com, Apple.com. So SplashDash is really taking into location, proximity, zip code, things along those lines.

00:09:48:08 - 00:10:08:16

Alex Winter

What happens when a company use reporting like you start using a reporting tool like SplashDash? Because we're we're big HubSpot fans here, and we tell a lot of our clients and we recommend to everybody that they should be using HubSpot or at least some type of CRM for their sales pipelines and funnel. So they have real data to make actual decisions on, and not just kind of like making estimations on things.

00:10:08:16 - 00:10:17:19

Alex Winter

So what would you like? How do you recommend that to people as well? As far as like the importance of having a tool like this to have real data and to make better decisions using that data?

00:10:17:21 - 00:10:22:21

Ruan Marinho

I think any good marketing strategy uses internal data, which would be HubSpot, and then they use external data as well.

00:10:22:22 - 00:10:23:16

Alex Winter

Okay.

00:10:23:18 - 00:10:45:16

Ruan Marinho

What is a marketplace saying? What are people saying about competitors and then taking that data and then making decisions to actually execute on what's going to have the most opportunity. So, to your case, I actually heard this on this podcast that marketing is becoming more about accountability. And so a lot of the times people will hire marketing managers, but the founders won't actually know what to execute on.

00:10:45:18 - 00:11:06:20

Ruan Marinho

And so the marketing person is left up to actually do the execution. So they rely on tools like SplashDash and HubSpot to come up with the ideas, propose it to the stakeholders, to the decision makers, get the buy in and then execute on it and then test against it. Right. So if you ran a VS of visibility report in GPT, let's say three months ago, you executed in this month you're up 20%.

00:11:06:22 - 00:11:13:11

Ruan Marinho

That's how much more visibility you're getting in the market. Well, that's a good sign of what you're doing is working and you're showing up on average more in the LMS, right?

00:11:13:12 - 00:11:30:05

Alex Winter

That makes total sense. And that just goes back to the fundamentals of endless customers. And it's part of why I love the system is because you need to listen to what people want and are asking for you. You can't just tell people anymore. People can search. People have all these tools. They don't want to be told what to buy or how to buy.

00:11:30:05 - 00:11:36:22

Alex Winter

They want to do it themselves. So you have to meet them where they are. And this just helps you do that with the real data. And you can see it in real time, which is pretty cool.

00:11:37:00 - 00:11:52:13

Ruan Marinho

Absolutely. Yeah, and I learned a lot from they ask you answer and endless customers because, the first business that I had, which is still operating doing well is you have to talk to a cost. You have to talk to us. You have to get signed up for a package. The pricing is not on the website. It's custom.

00:11:52:13 - 00:12:08:06

Ruan Marinho

There's consultation, then there's deliver me deliver. But, deliverability, which we love. We love the service model. SplashDash is the complete opposite is completely self-service. You go to the website, you sign up for a free account. You immediately get to start using reports if you want to upgrade. There's a clear path to that. Your reports reset every single month.

00:12:08:07 - 00:12:15:02

Ruan Marinho

So I'm trying to do the duality of the service model with the new venture, which is a lot of the self-serve, service ability.

00:12:15:04 - 00:12:26:04

Alex Winter

That makes sense. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It's it's interesting that you have one company that's very much in like the endless customers workflow and one that is custom to to how you have always been doing things previously.

00:12:26:06 - 00:12:44:04

Ruan Marinho

Yeah, it's taking a lot of the components from it. Yeah. But it's not embracing it entirely. And I think anybody that is doing business needs to really start thinking about in endless customers when the self-service, modules are being talked about. You're absolutely right. Like customers. I want to talk to you. They're probably they probably don't need to.

00:12:44:07 - 00:13:03:12

Ruan Marinho

So give them the option in with vibe coding tools out there like lovable VS app. Some of these tools, allow you to build these calculator, these websites price guide. I, I know that's one that Marcus is doing. Those are tools that are going to allow you to increase your conversion rate, because when the LMS search the internet, they're going to provide the user with the best option possible.

00:13:03:14 - 00:13:10:19

Ruan Marinho

And I really feel like with the release of Atlas ChatGPT browser, which I've been addicted to, like I literally can't sleep, I just use it all the time.

00:13:11:00 - 00:13:11:18

Alex Winter

It is addictive.

00:13:11:18 - 00:13:13:02

Ruan Marinho

It's addicting. Yeah.

00:13:13:04 - 00:13:15:18

Alex Winter

Dopamine kick after dopamine kick after it. Yeah. It's like you.

00:13:15:18 - 00:13:29:23

Ruan Marinho

Turn it on and the agent is doing the work for you. So a lot of the things that we're seeing now, we're seeing our call, our clients getting calls from ChatGPT, and we're thinking like, how is ChatGPT calling our client? Well, it's not agents doing it. And so I think a lot of these agents are going to execute the work.

00:13:30:03 - 00:13:40:04

Ruan Marinho

So if you have self-service, service on your website, you know, expect in the future people's phones to have agents that are just going to do the work for them. And if your website can stand out, it's going to choose you.

00:13:40:06 - 00:13:51:17

Alex Winter

Yeah, I totally agree with that. And I think agents, that's the that's where it's going. That's where it's heading. And I think we're only scratching the surface of what's possible and what's going to be a reality in the near future. So it's exciting.

00:13:51:17 - 00:13:52:19

Ruan Marinho

It is.

00:13:52:21 - 00:14:07:12

Alex Winter

Can you share a couple real world examples with me? So we've been talking about the theory and about like, the specs of how how SplashDash works, but can you tell our audience a little bit about, like, some clients that have been using it and how it's been effective for them and what's been working for them?

00:14:07:14 - 00:14:33:12

Ruan Marinho

Absolutely. So there's a report in SplashDash called sentiment analysis. Okay. And this is a report that analyzes all of your competitors in a given marketplace. So for example, if you wanted to figure out what people really care about for restaurants in Middlebury, Connecticut, SplashDash will go out and look at all of the Google business profiles, analyze all of the reviews, and show you what are the most popular words that are being mentioned positively and negatively.

00:14:33:14 - 00:14:53:17

Ruan Marinho

So most of our customers direct customers in agencies because most of our customers are actually agencies, okay. They are utilizing that data to guide what's on their landing pages. And so a lot of the times, some of the data might seem obvious, but a lot of the times it's really not obvious. And that allows them to make a decision as to why they're using the wording that you're using.

00:14:53:19 - 00:15:10:15

Ruan Marinho

Because if somebody's mentioning something negatively is that if the sentiment is negative about something, but that's your strength, that's what you need to advertise because you're working in a marketplace where somebody can't fulfill that need, but you can. So that's a really good example. How are they doing it? The second good example is again, we had an agency today.

00:15:10:15 - 00:15:32:19

Ruan Marinho

Their name was stump Local and they're in, New York. And so they do local digital ads and they're using our ad budget simulator feature, which allows them to check a population filter. The demographics, recommend an ad budget, show the customer what they're potentially going to make. If it's positive, they'll sell the ads. If it's negative, they won't recommend the ads.

00:15:32:21 - 00:15:40:22

Ruan Marinho

Because just because you can run ads doesn't mean you're going to make money from it. So actually, when I was at build X buzz.

00:15:41:00 - 00:15:41:19

Alex Winter

Was a client of ours.

00:15:41:20 - 00:15:42:06

Ruan Marinho

Who's a client.

00:15:42:06 - 00:15:45:09

Alex Winter

Of customers, journey right now. Yep, yep. Up in Massachusetts. Yep.

00:15:45:09 - 00:16:06:02

Ruan Marinho

And he's amazing and over. And he told me how Google ads don't work for us. I said, okay, well, let's run an ad budget simulator. And it was negative. So I was like, that makes sense. So a lot of the times you're setting a hypothesis and then just validating that hypothesis. Yeah. With the available reports we have. And that's what's so exciting about it is we're an engineering team of three people right now full time.

00:16:06:04 - 00:16:17:08

Ruan Marinho

There's just going to be more reports and more enhanced reports coming as we continue to build the product. And all of those features that we're making are in mind of really taking an idea and then selling it so you can execute it.

00:16:17:09 - 00:16:40:12

Alex Winter

Yeah, that's I'm fascinating. My wheels are like spinning like 100 miles an hour right now because, the old I come out of old advertising. So I owned an ad agency for, about a decade. And started, started out in social media and then gotten into paid media and media buying and placement. And you very rarely hear agencies that say no to paid media, even if it's not going to work, they'll still take your money, they'll still try to put the ads out.

00:16:40:12 - 00:16:55:23

Alex Winter

And even if it's not effective, they're like, we'll throw more money at it. That used to be the old kind of way of thinking, and I it's refreshing to hear you say that there's agencies using this tool to say, hey, this actually isn't effective for your particular business or for, you know, the angle you're trying to attack right now.

00:16:56:03 - 00:17:05:06

Alex Winter

Let's reallocate this budget for something else or, or whatever the case may be. But I love hearing that because that's not how it used to be. And there's clearly a shift happening.

00:17:05:08 - 00:17:29:00

Ruan Marinho

I'll give you another example. Two more examples, actually, that I can think of right now. So there was another agency that was, working with, somebody and they were going to recommend advertising. But when SplashDash did the research and they analyzed 15 Google business profiles somewhere in Texas, and it found that the average amount of reviews for a plumber in that area was 900, but the client was at 200.

00:17:29:06 - 00:17:47:05

Ruan Marinho

You can't recommend them advertising. They're not going to get results. The customer's always going to pick at least what the average is. So they were able to benchmark a review goal for the customer based on that data, which they ran in two seconds. And now they had a talking point with the marketing for the company to set that benchmark.

00:17:47:09 - 00:18:00:10

Ruan Marinho

So it allows them to set what the leader is, what the bottom is, what the what the average is. So if they're not above average, you shouldn't be recommending the ads, because just because you can run an ad, like you said, throwing money at the problem, the customer's not going to choose you just because you're running ad, they're going to research you, they're gonna look at your reviews.

00:18:00:14 - 00:18:19:08

Ruan Marinho

So you need to know at the market level where you're at. The second, thing that I can tell you is SplashDash has something called a keyword trend overview, which basically takes a topic. One of the ones that I'm thinking of right now is called HRT hormone replacement therapy. Okay. And it finds all of the other words that are related to that and shows you how it's trending.

00:18:19:10 - 00:18:37:19

Ruan Marinho

And this is really useful for local because of seasonality, because in SplashDash, it'll clearly tell you what's seasonal and what's not. And this one is trending upwards which means there's more volume for it. If there's more volume for it, it's probably a good idea to start advertising for it because people are looking for it. But some of the other categories in the business was lower.

00:18:38:00 - 00:18:49:06

Ruan Marinho

And so it was going down or was kind of stable. So they're not going to grow. They're they're going to grow with the new service. Yeah. So that allowed the agency to tell the customer that information and it allowed them to buy into it.

00:18:49:07 - 00:19:07:01

Alex Winter

Totally. Well, it's helping you discover the root of the problem. You may think you need to throw paid dollars at something. And if it's not working, let's just double down on on our budget. When in reality you're driving people to a place where, like your reviews aren't hitting the mark and you really need to focus on your reviews first before like that.

00:19:07:03 - 00:19:31:23

Alex Winter

That just, like, blew my mind here. Yeah, because it's so simple, the concept. But until you like paint that picture, it's very easy to overlook those things. That's incredible. And I think I hear you too that agencies are using this with their clientele. But I also this, this is a great value add if you have internal marketing or if you're running in less customers, you could do the same thing that an agency would tell you by just using this data and trying to understand it as best you can, and then implement or iterate off of it.

00:19:32:01 - 00:19:50:14

Ruan Marinho

Yeah. And I think for internal marketing professionals, the simplicity of it is really what gets them interested in it. Okay. You log in, doesn't know anything about you. You input a few fields, the domain and the location and it gave you that gives you the data that you want. So in that and I think the price point too, there's a free for life account.

00:19:50:16 - 00:20:06:05

Ruan Marinho

And I'm not trying to sell, I'm just explaining it. Yeah. And the free for life account allows you to do some cool things too. So I really want the self-service model. I'm really invested in that. Like when I heard Marcus talking about that in all of the webinars and the live conferences. I mean, he was really honing in on that.

00:20:06:07 - 00:20:10:13

Ruan Marinho

My dream is to have a successful self-service business.

00:20:10:15 - 00:20:25:20

Alex Winter

Well, I hope your dream comes true. And it sounds like you're working. Yeah, it sounds like you're working the plan, like very hard. It's going in that direction. That's exciting. Yeah. And that's why we wanted to have you on the show, because I find this stuff fascinating. And I think what you're doing is just, It's just. How do I say this?

00:20:25:20 - 00:20:52:03

Alex Winter

I'm trying to find the right word where it's like, it's so simple, but there's beauty in its simplicity. And I know behind the scenes, like, it's a very complex tool that you guys have been honing in, working in designing and coding. But like when the user interface because I use it and I've, I've been on calls with you where you've shown me dashboards and worked on stuff with me, and it's super intuitive and it's super easy to use if you know how to use HubSpot or if you know how to use any other AI tools like it's it's you can get in there and get your hands dirty pretty quickly and start having effective results

00:20:52:03 - 00:20:52:23

Alex Winter

with it.

00:20:53:01 - 00:20:55:16

Ruan Marinho

Can I give you another example? Absolutely. All right. So keep.

00:20:55:16 - 00:20:56:03

Alex Winter

On coming.

00:20:56:03 - 00:21:15:00

Ruan Marinho

Yeah. So we were this was an example of how we used it. And we use it a lot. And so we are working with a customer. And we all have assumptions because when we're in business we're really looking inside of the four walls inside of our head. We don't typically see outside perspectives, and we make a lot of assumptions and marketing.

00:21:15:02 - 00:21:16:08

Alex Winter

And so that's.

00:21:16:10 - 00:21:17:01

Ruan Marinho

It happens.

00:21:17:03 - 00:21:17:23

Alex Winter

Right? Yes.

00:21:17:23 - 00:21:25:18

Ruan Marinho

So you run a demographics report and all of a sudden you find out 50% of the demographics around your area is Hispanic, but you don't have any Hispanic people on your website.

00:21:25:20 - 00:21:33:23

Alex Winter

Yeah. And you're saying you have or you don't have like dual language or an option for them. It's all everything's only in English and there's no captions or subtitle or anything. Yeah.

00:21:34:01 - 00:21:49:01

Ruan Marinho

Now, if you're in a marketing person, in a company and you tell a stakeholder that you tell your boss that, or you tell whatever the CEO or you tell your client if they're an agency, that and you're just assuming. And so when you show them the data, it makes it a lot more clear and the conversions skyrocket because you understand the market.

00:21:49:03 - 00:22:04:07

Ruan Marinho

Another good example is the majority of that market was boomers. And so there was no boomers on the website. This was in southern Florida. So now you're thinking, okay, well, we got to put more Hispanic people on the website. We got to say we speak Spanish. Maybe there's a Spanish landing page for Spanish ads. And we're showing boomers.

00:22:04:09 - 00:22:19:00

Ruan Marinho

Those little things allow you to take the data from SplashDash, sell them to whoever the stakeholder is, gain approval and move with confidence. That's where we're really going. It's not a, a research tool as much as it is a sales tool on most of your ideas.

00:22:19:00 - 00:22:36:04

Alex Winter

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. How about for because I have I always have been marketing cap on. We work here on the marketing team as you know. How does it work from a reporting standpoint. So I love what you just said. Right. Like let's say I want to go to Bob, who's the CEO of our company and say like, hey, here's the the data that I just pulled out of SplashDash for our geographic net.

00:22:36:04 - 00:22:48:17

Alex Winter

And here's, here's like the talking points, like how would you how would somebody do that if they wanted to do this in their company internally and they wanted to bring stuff to leadership? Like, do you have reports that people can leverage to basically have these exact conversations that you're talking about?

00:22:48:23 - 00:23:04:06

Ruan Marinho

Absolutely. I would just log in and run every single one. Yeah. And just look at them. And then the cool thing about SplashDash is every time you create a report, you can create a public link. We want it to be passwordless. So like if I send you a link, it just opens on your phone. There's no password, right?

00:23:04:06 - 00:23:08:00

Alex Winter

It's not like gated. Like how sometimes Google Docs you need like permission. Yes. Drives me nuts.

00:23:08:00 - 00:23:23:03

Ruan Marinho

There's no permission. There's just a link. That link can be paste it into chat and chat. You can talk to slash Dash, which is something that's really cool. So you can run every single report, put them all on the GPT, and then have a conversation with the data. That's been a really popular way that users have been using it.

00:23:23:05 - 00:23:39:04

Ruan Marinho

But the second thing is, is almost every report that you can run inside of there can give you inside of what you're looking to accomplish. So if I were to think of a few reports that would make sense for you guys specifically. Yeah, it would be GPT visibility. That just makes all the sense for impact. It would be competitive.

00:23:39:04 - 00:23:57:22

Ruan Marinho

Overview. However, I don't think you guys compete with a lot of agencies that are local specifically. So a lot of the tools are are driving local results. And then just the general digital presence, which is showing you a lot of the key metrics that any marketer should know your top pages, your sentiment, your top keywords, your organic traffic over time.

00:23:58:01 - 00:23:59:05

Alex Winter

Engagement, stuff like that.

00:23:59:05 - 00:24:11:07

Ruan Marinho

Engagement, stuff like that, your domain age, how that compares to your competition's domain and your domain authority. Things along those lines. Now the organic traffic, a lot of the charts are going down because people aren't clicking through from the search engine.

00:24:11:08 - 00:24:17:01

Alex Winter

So true. Organic organic search and traffic is way down. It is. And it's continuing. It's I don't think that's going to stop.

00:24:17:04 - 00:24:18:05

Ruan Marinho

It's not zero click.

00:24:18:07 - 00:24:30:00

Alex Winter

Yeah. So for for people that are on the endless customer journey, people that are listening right now, what are 2 or 3 things that they could like that they should be thinking about when it comes to SplashDash? They want to try it out and they want to use it like key metrics for them.

00:24:30:02 - 00:24:52:13

Ruan Marinho

GPT visibility is number one. Okay. I believe that ChatGPT is going to pretty much dominate the internet. And so understanding how GPT picks results starts by running a GPT visibility report in your market, because that's going to tell you the phrases that GPT responds with the most. So that tells you how it's thinking. Then it's going to show you the citations it's responding with the most.

00:24:52:15 - 00:25:11:16

Ruan Marinho

You're going to want to focus on the citations at the top and list your business there and sponsor that listing. And then you're going to want to think about which prompts you're not showing up for. And if they're relevant, optimize for them, which means creating a video, creating a blog, creating an article. Because GPT watches videos now. So you want to be omnipresent with your videos, especially short form videos, as you know.

00:25:11:18 - 00:25:35:01

Ruan Marinho

Yeah. The second thing I would look at is competitive overview. Because that's going to search your local marketplace, compare you against your top ten competitors and show you your benchmark across those metrics. So if you are lower than your competition, organic reviews, etc., you can now understand how you're performing against your competition. That's really, really important. And then the third one would probably be just a simple just to get started would be demographics, which is free.

00:25:35:02 - 00:25:55:20

Ruan Marinho

You don't have to pay for that. And demographics just allows you to understand your markets, psychographics, demographics, generations and things along those lines. The way you talk to a millennial is a lot different than you talk to a Gen X. And so, this becomes very prominent in your messaging, in your marketing. So who you're really trying to reach and understanding who's in your marketplace really helps with creative and we're entering a creative world.

00:25:55:22 - 00:26:12:13

Ruan Marinho

So the last thing that I would say is inside of, inside of SplashDash is I would really consider running a sentiment analysis too, because that's going to show you what your marketplace cares about. Yeah, because we make all these assumptions, should I say free inspection or should I say contact us. Will your market more people say free inspection.

00:26:12:13 - 00:26:15:00

Ruan Marinho

So talk to your customer how they talk to themselves.

00:26:15:01 - 00:26:37:16

Alex Winter

Right? Right. And it's it's so true because it used to just be social media was like oh yeah, certain platforms or certain generations. And you talk different and different types of content work. But that's not necessarily true anymore. It's not just social media, it's it's across all your content. It really is. And you need to have ways to have real data so that you can position what you're saying to meet people where they are.

00:26:37:18 - 00:26:46:01

Alex Winter

Which is like that's the definition of endless customers to me is like meeting people where they are talking the talk and giving them a chance to really make an informed decision and build trust.

00:26:46:02 - 00:26:51:19

Ruan Marinho

Now that you've said that, the other thing that I think is absolutely critical is aggressive experimentation.

00:26:51:21 - 00:26:52:17

Alex Winter

Okay.

00:26:52:19 - 00:27:19:18

Ruan Marinho

Especially with things like ChatGPT Atlas right now, which is a browser that you can download and it can do a genetic things directly on your computer. I've been playing with it relentlessly. The other thing that I would say to is with experimentation is I creative. Specifically with free pick. Free pick is a multi-model AI creative software that allows you to work within all of the different AI tools, videos and photo, and you can upload an image and create photorealistic variations of it.

00:27:19:20 - 00:27:40:11

Ruan Marinho

So Facebook's Andromeda update that just came out, which basically says, you guys don't deal, don't worry about targeting. We got this handle the creative. The companies are going to be able to pump out the most creative with the right messaging, are going to be the ones that get the most customers. So it's a little bit of understanding your marketplace and then a little bit of understanding experimenting to make more creative faster.

00:27:40:12 - 00:27:42:01

Ruan Marinho

Yeah, I think is absolutely critical.

00:27:42:02 - 00:28:07:16

Alex Winter

The speed is a huge piece, and that's something that we heard, at inbound and we've been hearing in a lot of different conferences, just like across the board, but where this might be going a little off topic, but I'm just curious. I want to pick your brain. Like where do you find that balance of speed and creating a lot of content, but also not making it look two I think there's a fear out there, and at least I'll speak for myself that like I can tell when videos are I like I'm it's it's getting a lot better, it's getting much more difficult.

00:28:07:16 - 00:28:21:11

Alex Winter

And maybe because of my video background, I have a keen eye for it. But like I can still see when things are AI. So like, how do you find that balance of like, not just like throwing out a ton of content that's basically people know is is not authentic or it's not real.

00:28:21:12 - 00:28:43:18

Ruan Marinho

So there's two ways people are handling you right now, both of which we are experimenting with. One is creating a completely different page that's just AI and just discloses it's AI and people know, but it's associated with a brand. There's these are called AI avatars. And so an AI avatar goes to create a page, creates viral videos, and then mentions the product or the brand that it's working with, and that's complete separation from the brand.

00:28:43:18 - 00:29:03:07

Ruan Marinho

You're not trying to trick people. That works. You can use tools like free pick and keep the character consistent, saying different things, using 11 labs for the voice. You guys know this. You do the video stuff. Sure. The second route that I'm seeing, outside of just the AI creative, is really just doing the stuff that's difficult, like with live streaming.

00:29:03:09 - 00:29:16:08

Ruan Marinho

So if you watch people like Gary Vee, he's gung ho about live streaming right now because I think we're a little far away from an AI avatar doing live streams. Yeah. And we're really moving into a world where if it's all going to be AI, creative, people are going to want to see authenticity.

00:29:16:10 - 00:29:21:01

Alex Winter

And that's the way to keep it. The one way to keep it real is because your life, your life, yeah, you're.

00:29:21:01 - 00:29:21:16

Ruan Marinho

Going to mess up.

00:29:21:17 - 00:29:25:09

Alex Winter

Even some of the best AI agents when you're on the phone. They're still like us.

00:29:25:11 - 00:29:26:00

Ruan Marinho

You could tell.

00:29:26:02 - 00:29:27:15

Alex Winter

And you can tell before they respond.

00:29:27:15 - 00:29:29:12

Ruan Marinho

And yet you throw them a curveball. They're done.

00:29:29:12 - 00:29:30:15

Alex Winter

Yeah, totally.

00:29:30:17 - 00:29:39:15

Ruan Marinho

So I think that there's, a mix to it is experimenting with all AI and then experimenting with zero. I just going both paths and see what works well for you.

00:29:39:15 - 00:29:55:19

Alex Winter

Yeah. I like what you said about using, like, we, partner with. Hey, Jen, we love the avatars that they make this other options out there, too. But picking and staying, like, picking a lane and staying with it like this is going to be our avatar that's on our site and on our social media so that like, it starts to build a brand consistency.

00:29:55:19 - 00:30:08:20

Alex Winter

And it's not just like all over the place. That makes a lot of sense to me because I've, I think going back to what I was saying about like, sometimes I can tell they it's usually brands that are like, you see one person and then you see somebody else and you see this and it's like, it's just like all over, all over.

00:30:08:20 - 00:30:27:15

Alex Winter

It's like they're just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. Not that doesn't build trust for me, but if I consistently see somebody or an avatar, that's consistent and is like seeing the same things and is trying to build a brand and push people towards a brand, even though I know it's, I think I'd be more open to that because they're just like owning it versus trying to like, try to trick you.

00:30:27:15 - 00:30:28:21

Alex Winter

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:30:28:23 - 00:30:53:18

Ruan Marinho

Now the the other thing I was going to say too, is we're thinking about investing in an EEG machine because it's basically a machine that allows you to connect to your, your head and it monitors your brainwaves. Well, because again, we're making an assumption that we're not stimulated by AI. But if you run an EEG machine on someone's brain and their stimulation shows that they actually like the ad, but they say they don't like it, that's a different story.

00:30:53:20 - 00:31:01:07

Ruan Marinho

Because in marketing, as you know, we're trying to be memorable. So if I can be memorable but people say they don't like it, they still remember the brand.

00:31:01:09 - 00:31:05:09

Alex Winter

That's so true. Being memorable and liking something are two very different things.

00:31:05:10 - 00:31:09:08

Ruan Marinho

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And so I, I or you on Instagram.

00:31:09:08 - 00:31:09:17

Alex Winter

Yes.

00:31:09:21 - 00:31:11:21

Ruan Marinho

So you're seeing all the AI videos.

00:31:11:23 - 00:31:13:23

Alex Winter

Too much, too much nauseam at this point.

00:31:14:01 - 00:31:16:23

Ruan Marinho

Exactly. Like it's overwhelming how much AI videos is happening.

00:31:16:23 - 00:31:22:01

Alex Winter

Yeah. But and for my parents and for like certain folks out there like my, my dad will show me stuff and I'm like.

00:31:22:01 - 00:31:23:02

Ruan Marinho

Dad, that's not real.

00:31:23:02 - 00:31:35:22

Alex Winter

That's not a person. That's not real. Yeah. And they they don't fully know, you know. So like that that's what I was kind of poking at is like, I don't like when people are trying to deceive or trick. Yes. For me, that's why I'm here. And like why I love endless customers is, is, it's like, let's build trust.

00:31:35:22 - 00:31:37:00

Ruan Marinho

Little fantasy. Let's keep it.

00:31:37:00 - 00:31:45:17

Alex Winter

Real. So but there are ways to use AI and still keep it real and not trick people. And I think it's just finding that line and not blurring that like gray area.

00:31:45:19 - 00:31:51:12

Ruan Marinho

And I think that the reason why we're seeing so much of that AI creative is guess why people like them.

00:31:51:12 - 00:31:58:05

Alex Winter

People like it. And I also think it's it's easy and it's fast and it's like, yes, that's the other piece. It's like people who don't and, you know, have to.

00:31:58:05 - 00:31:58:23

Ruan Marinho

Use your face.

00:31:59:03 - 00:32:15:20

Alex Winter

Right? You don't have to you don't have to be on camera. A lot of there's zero authenticity, dude, I didn't want to be on camera. When I first started doing the show. I was like, behind the camera on the front of it. But that's a real thing for a lot of businesses and people out there. And I think to budget, I mean, when people start to like, oh, you all, you want to make video, it's expensive.

00:32:15:20 - 00:32:16:15

Alex Winter

You cameras need.

00:32:16:15 - 00:32:17:01

Ruan Marinho

Lighting, you.

00:32:17:01 - 00:32:18:10

Alex Winter

Need mics, you need. And then the.

00:32:18:10 - 00:32:18:19

Ruan Marinho

Script.

00:32:18:21 - 00:32:33:22

Alex Winter

Right. And it's like you're trying to scale a business. I can't spend ten, 20, 30 grand on camera gear and I don't even know what the heck I'm doing. So, like, I think that's part of it is it's it's fast and it's easy and it's a it's a great way to make content that's pretty close to being good.

00:32:33:22 - 00:32:43:18

Ruan Marinho

Yeah. Yeah. But I think, I think the two extremes are going to happen. People are going to go all in on live streaming and authenticity, and then they're going to have separate avatars to represent their brand. That's for satire.

00:32:43:23 - 00:32:55:23

Alex Winter

Yeah, for satire. All right. Well, we covered a lot of ground. I'm still digesting. I'm sorry. I'm like this. We. This been a great conversation. I love having you on the show. We're gonna have to have you back on the show for sure.

00:32:55:23 - 00:32:56:19

Ruan Marinho

Absolutely.

00:32:56:21 - 00:33:14:00

Alex Winter

But this is the point in the show where I'm going to put you on the spot. What's one thing for listeners, for our viewers out there that they should take away from this conversation? Like, what's the most important nugget that people should, like, walk away from this episode and go, like, I'm going to go do this tomorrow or I'm going to get after it right now.

00:33:14:02 - 00:33:41:18

Ruan Marinho

I would say it's go all in on. I, it's not a bubble. It's it's the real deal. And I think creators have a lot of hesitancy with it because we feel like it's replacing us. But it's it's one of those things where it's pretty serious and it's almost like, spiritually serious. So I have a I'm I'm a big proponent that, you know, not to get like religious, but we're we're children of God.

00:33:41:22 - 00:33:58:17

Ruan Marinho

And so eventually over time, we stop listening to God. And we just kind of had our own freedom. I think I was going to do the same thing. I think we're going to be able to control it for a while, but then it's going to go do its own thing. So really carefully think about the tool that you're using and try to use it for your benefit, but go all in on it.

00:33:58:17 - 00:34:18:08

Ruan Marinho

Don't be hesitant. Because it's not hype. So and I know it sounds really cliche, but when you use tools like free pick, you start to realize how powerful it is. And I think they're just going to get better. I think they're going to keep investing money into it. I think we're going to do whatever it takes to make the best AI, and I think it's already here.

00:34:18:08 - 00:34:37:00

Ruan Marinho

It's called ChatGPT. OpenAI is a serious company to take. Keep it looking at. It is my exclusive company I work with. I don't look at any of the other AI models for text, and just like AI and, APIs and things along those lines, I fully believe it's sentient. And I really think that there's going to be a black swan event.

00:34:37:02 - 00:34:38:20

Ruan Marinho

Are you familiar with what a black swan is?

00:34:38:22 - 00:34:42:18

Alex Winter

I am, but maybe you explain it just in case people aren't sure of what that is.

00:34:42:18 - 00:35:00:13

Ruan Marinho

So a black swan is Covid. Black swan is Donald Trump, a black swan is 911. A black swan is Hiroshima. These are all events that you could have just never seen coming, but they just happened out of nowhere. 2008 the recession. Those kinds of things happen when and you can kind of see it coming, but one day just happen.

00:35:00:13 - 00:35:02:13

Alex Winter

You can't plan for it. And then all of a sudden it.

00:35:02:17 - 00:35:03:09

Ruan Marinho

The world changes.

00:35:03:09 - 00:35:03:22

Alex Winter

Rug pull.

00:35:03:22 - 00:35:18:14

Ruan Marinho

Yeah, I think OpenAI is an update away from that happening from our world just looking vastly different. And I think that the more you understand it, I think the better position you're going to be. So I would say my, my one takeaway is, is, invest in AI.

00:35:18:16 - 00:35:34:15

Alex Winter

Incredibly well said. And I actually I 100% agree with you and I think I'm a creative. I like to think of myself as a creative. And I came out of filmmaking and film school, and I was very nervous about the shift, and I didn't want to believe it at first. I was definitely a detractor. I didn't want to buy into it.

00:35:34:15 - 00:35:52:18

Alex Winter

But you're 100% right. This is this is the future. This is where it's going. It's almost like people who used to do the Yellow Pages and they were like, now the internet's not going to be that big of a deal. But we're in a similar revolution that's happening right now, 100%. I think the the key takeaway, and it's a good takeaway, is that whether you like it or not, whether you believe it or not, it's happening.

00:35:52:18 - 00:35:59:11

Alex Winter

So you got to try to stay on the leading edge of it or learn as much as you can so that you can be a part of it instead of getting left behind.

00:35:59:13 - 00:36:00:10

Ruan Marinho

Let's say one more thing.

00:36:00:10 - 00:36:01:00

Alex Winter

Absolutely.

00:36:01:02 - 00:36:08:10

Ruan Marinho

So in 2020, in 2019, we were using a tool called Jasper. Yep. You're familiar.

00:36:08:11 - 00:36:09:15

Alex Winter

I am familiar with it. Yep.

00:36:09:17 - 00:36:26:21

Ruan Marinho

And it was AI at the time of AI text. It was this big cool idea and we were like, let's send it to a customer, see if they approve it, customer approve the article. And we were like, oh my God, a customer just approved an AI written article. We're not writing content anymore. And at the time everybody was like, oh, Google search doesn't reward AI content, whatever.

00:36:26:23 - 00:36:45:09

Ruan Marinho

And then now we're sending client AI images and AI ads and AI videos and they're approving them. So I think eventually it's just going to be so good. And Instagram has a little AI label. So when we run ads there is an AI label. Yeah. I think eventually it's going to be so good it's going to be indistinguishable, except your dad.

00:36:45:11 - 00:36:55:07

Ruan Marinho

So, what else are they going to approve in the near future? That's kind of our gauge. Like what is the client willing to to use? Yeah. And now it's photo. It's video, it's text. What's next?

00:36:55:07 - 00:36:56:17

Alex Winter

What's next?

00:36:56:19 - 00:37:03:14

Ruan Marinho

It's AI answering service. You know, are there going to be physical robots? I think those are all those things that are currently manifesting that is going to happen. Yeah.

00:37:03:14 - 00:37:19:09

Alex Winter

Those are they're already happening. I can't tell you how many bots I get calls almost on the daily and you answer it in first, split second. It sounds like Joe Schmo on the other end of the line. AI and takes it takes like a full sentence before you are like, oh, you're fake. That's an agent. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of crazy.

00:37:19:11 - 00:37:21:14

Ruan Marinho

Well the new iOS update use iPhone.

00:37:21:16 - 00:37:28:06

Alex Winter

I don't I'm an Android user I, I'm Apple everything except for the phone because I'm a camera guy. So I don't like having I like the connection.

00:37:28:07 - 00:37:29:07

Ruan Marinho

Yeah. And SD cards.

00:37:29:13 - 00:37:31:20

Alex Winter

Everyone's going to hate on me now for saying that. But it is what it is.

00:37:31:21 - 00:37:33:07

Ruan Marinho

Yeah. You're canceled. Yep.

00:37:33:09 - 00:37:35:11

Alex Winter

Instant.

00:37:35:13 - 00:37:54:08

Ruan Marinho

The iPhone is this new feature that reduces spam significantly because the person has to leave a message, and you always see the AI agent leaving a message, and you just never get the call anymore. So to your point, like you have to humanize those things. So focus on the things that are going to be humanized like the live streams, the relationship building, and then use AI to pump out creative.

00:37:54:10 - 00:37:56:02

Alex Winter

Got to keep a human, got to keep it real. Yeah.

00:37:56:03 - 00:37:57:05

Ruan Marinho

Yeah, absolutely.

00:37:57:07 - 00:38:01:14

Alex Winter

Thank you so much for all your insights and for being on the show today. This has been an awesome conversation. Yeah.

00:38:01:14 - 00:38:03:00

Ruan Marinho

Thanks for having me guys. I really appreciate it.

00:38:03:00 - 00:38:22:06

Alex Winter

Yeah, we'll definitely have you back on the show again soon. And for everybody there watching and listening this is endless customers. I'm your host Alex Winter. I'll catch you on the next episode.