[Top Agency Series] Data-Driven Digital Marketing: Harnessing Analytics for Success With Jessica Li

Jessica Li is the President of Advertience, a media investment management consulting firm that helps organizations leverage data for insight-driven advertising. With over 22 years of experience in online marketing, she has worked with esteemed brands like Alibaba, Yahoo China, and Under Armour. Jessica is passionate about operational efficiency and data analytics, implementing automation to optimize reporting systems. She holds a background in biomedical engineering, aligning an engineering mindset with marketing strategy to create a unique approach at her agency.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [03:19] How Advertience revolutionizes digital marketing with a scientific approach
• [04:06] The importance of obtaining analytics before making marketing decisions
• [07:25] Targeting strategies for successful fundraising campaigns
• [10:29] How lead generation can be tailored to the education sector
• [14:13] How Advertience approaches the digital industry with operational efficiency
• [16:18] Why manufacturers can benefit from improved reporting efficiency
• [18:54] The valuable lessons Jessica learned from her experiences with Yahoo and Alibaba
• [24:38] Jessica’s experiences and responsibilities as President of Advertience
• [28:17] Advertience’s unique approach to mental health and continuous learning

In this episode…

What all goes into running a successful international marketing campaign? How can analytics and operational efficiency transform a company’s digital strategy?

Jessica Li, a seasoned marketing professional, has the answers. She delves into the power of data in driving insights, targeting, and performance across various sectors, including nonprofits and education. She shares her experiences with the Olympics Foundation, helping to generate significant funds through innovative lottery campaigns, and discusses the importance of efficiency in digital analytics and reporting. By sharing her experiences with Yahoo, Alibaba, and other industry leaders, Jessica reveals the pitfalls of overemphasizing the process and the advantages of a culture that embraces change.

In this episode of Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Jessica Li, President of Advertience, about leveraging data and efficiency in digital marketing. Jessica shares Advertience’s approach to the digital industry, including a unique emphasis on operational efficiency and automation. She highlights the advantages of her firm’s methodologies, how automated reporting systems have cut down their workload, and the importance of focusing on insights over mere data gathering.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Jessica Li on LinkedIn
• Advertience

Special Mention(s):

• Raymond Reid on LinkedIn
• TEC Canada

Related episode(s):

• “[Top Agency Series] Navigating a Merger and Becoming an End-to-End Digital Partner With Kevin Hourigan of Spinutech” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Agency Series] Growth Through Acquisitions – What is Your KPI and Northstar? With Jason Swenk” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Building a Great Team and More Helpful Insights with Jason Swenk Host of The Smart Agency Master Class Podcast” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable Moments:

• “We want our clients to hire us by our brain instead of by our hands.”
• “We don’t just get numbers; we want to get insights.”
• “Every agency can give you data, but we give you data that leads to decisions.”
• “Operational efficiency in reporting is not just about saving time; it’s about creating value.”
• “We build processes for the benefit of the business, not just for the sake of having processes.”
• “Embrace changes. It’s the Alibaba mentality, and it’s probably one of the key things that made the business successful.”
• “It’s so important for me to know that between the team members, they are having great relationships of helping each other instead of just competition.”
• “Entrepreneurship can be a very lonely place, but when you sit amongst peers who understand, you don’t feel that loneliness anymore.”

Episode Transcript

Intro  0:01 

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz  0:22 

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, founder of inspiredinsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today is no different. I have Jessica Li of Advertience. And Jessica formally introduce you in a second. But before I do, I always like to point out other episodes, people should check out of the podcast. And since this is part of the top agency series, I had Kevin Hourigan on the podcast who runs Spinutech, and he’s had an agency since 1995. And so he really talks about the evolution of the industry, the evolution of his career, which kind of went through some ups and some downs, too. So check that one out.

Also, I had Jason Swenk on. Jason Swenk talked about how he built up his agency to eight figures sold it. And then he started buying up agencies in his next chapter. And also he runs an agency group for top agency owners as well. So check that episode out, there’s actually two episodes on that. He talks about valuation of agencies, the agency landscape and different operational things to which Jessica and I are going to talk about as well. So check those out, and more on inspiredinsider.com. And this episode is brought to you by Rise25.

At Rise25, we help businesses give to and connect their dream 200 relationships. And how do we do that we actually do that by helping you run your podcast, we’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast we do the strategy, the accountability and the full execution. Jessica, we call ourselves a magic elves that run around in the background and make it look easy for the hosts in the company so they can create amazing relationships and great content. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships. And I found no better way, Jessica was asking why do you do this.

And before we got on, I was like I found no better way over the past decade to profile that people and companies I admire and really share with the world what they’re working on. And so if you thought about podcasting, you should. If you have questions, you can go to rise25.com along with relationships and professional development and authority and content, all those things. So check it out. But I am excited to use Jessica Li for over 22 years she has been in I don’t want to age you, Jessica or anything. But she has over 22 years in online marketing experience, both in Canada and China.

She’s worked with brands such as Alibaba, Yahoo, China, Under Armour, HP, Home Depot, Nintendo many more. She’s president of Advertience. And Advertience is a media investment management consulting firm. They help organizations leverage the power of data to drive insights, targeting and performance. She’s actually an engineer by trade. And actually she studied biomedical engineering, like myself, my background was actually I studied biochemistry. So we have a lot in common there, she bridge and marketing and engineering. And she’ll talk about that’s part of the things that makes Advertience unique as well. So, Jessica, thanks for joining me.

Jessica Li  3:17 

Thank you for having me, Jeremy.

Jeremy Weisz  3:19 

Let’s start off and just talk about, I mentioned a little bit but what does Advertience do?

Jessica Li  3:27 

Advertience the stands for advertising and science. And by its name, it’s fairly clear that we’re trying to use the scientific approach to solve some advertising and digital marketing challenges there.

Jeremy Weisz  3:48 

You can see here, if you’re listening in the audio, there is a video piece as well. And you can see, my background is biochemistry, I’ve never seen the element Da, but that’s probably because that’s just your data analytics. But you can see here on the website, as well.

Jessica Li  4:06 

Yes. And the core of our offer is analytics. So we prefer, and we highly suggest all of our clients to have analytics in place before they do any digital marketing. So in that case, they have their effort measured, tracked, and so they can have insights at the end of the day. So they know that they’re making decisions based on the insights instead of based on someone’s guessing.

Jeremy Weisz  4:36 

How did the service offering evolve at all or has it always been like that?

Jessica Li  4:45 

It has always been like this. Service has evolved. We’d certainly grow during the past several years. But the data and analytics-focused approach has not changed. That’s in our DNA since we started.

Jeremy Weisz  5:06 

Well talk about some examples. One of which so people can understand a little bit more, because I know you help companies and nonprofit and education the public sector. But let’s talk about the Olympics for a second. And in the kind of work you did there.

Jessica Li  5:21 

So for Olympics Foundation, so we started to working with them four years ago, and it was storing the Olympic game that got postponed during the COVID. So during that time being that Olympics is such a international event. However, we all know that in many countries that athletes they’re basically sponsored, so they don’t really get paid really well. So as a foundation or Olympic Foundation, they are responsible for raising the funds so they can provide a support to those athletes. So when we work with them, we were their digital marketing arm during the games, to raise the awareness and also to raise the funds that gets to the foundation.

Jeremy Weisz  6:22 

So then what are some things you do to raise awareness?

Jessica Li  6:26 

During the time being that we can give you a small example that what we did was Canada is one of the countries that nonprofits are allowed to run a lottery campaigns. So, especially here we’re talking about a 50/50 Lottery campaign. So if you buy a 50/50 Lottery, you’ll get half of the price, and the foundation gets to keep the other half as the donation. So that means that that one of the aspects that we did with them was based on the 50/50 tickets that are sold during the Olympic Games. So specifically, what we did was to one, we need to find out that of who are more likely to watch the games during the time being, and also more likely to feel that they want to support and also during the time, we would think that that is going to be fun, if you’re supporting at the same time with the possibility of…

Jeremy Weisz  6:48 

You can win some money.

Jessica Li  7:25 

Yes. So it’s all in one place, however, from a marketing perspective, is how do you find these people? It’s not just you can just say, hey, it’s the firm. So everybody would have jumping? We’re going to have to find those people who are more likely to play we’re more likely to enjoy and at the same time, they need to be required the legal age to buy any lottery tickets.

Jeremy Weisz  7:49 

Do you remember what the jackpot builds up to? By the way, that’s a genius idea. I love it.

Jessica Li  7:59 

So in Ontario, we had the jackpot got up to over a million dollars. Wow. That’s amazing. Yes, thank you lottery tickets are by province, their CANS across the province borders. So in Ontario, it was over a million and they in Alberta, it was also over million. And in DC it was around 700,000 altogether. And in many other smaller provinces it was lower.

Jeremy Weisz  8:32 

Do you have partners that help you put that stuff together? That seems like there’s a lot of moving pieces there?

Jessica Li  8:36 

Yes, we do have a partner. We work with the technology partners in terms of setting up those tickets. So they’re the technology partner. So in terms of when you buy those tickets nowadays, you don’t go to a booth to buy a physical ticket anymore. You buy a digital ticket, and it will be sent to your email.

Jeremy Weisz  8:59 

Very cool. That seems like an out of the box way of doing stuff. Are there any other examples? Not necessarily with just the Olympics but like raising funds with lotteries? I would consider I guess out of the box. Are there any other fun out-of-the-box scenarios that you’ve used to help companies

Jessica Li  9:17 

Yes, we work with a lot of nonprofits. Another nonprofit and other we work with our strategic partner in terms of helping them design the nonprofit fundraising products. One of the products that we assisted them was symbolic gifting ideas. So many of us wanted to help someone but we don’t feel that we just want to give you 20 bucks, but we want to feel that I give you something that’s meaningful that will change your life. So and the symbolical gifting development entails that you can help someone who are in the hospital, during the holidays, a, a pair of reading glasses. Or you can help some children during the Christmas time that give them a center hats, things like this. They don’t have to be the actual product, but it’s a symbolic.

Jeremy Weisz  10:20 

Love it. You did some work with Tim Hortons Foundation too. What did you do there?

Jessica Li  10:29 

Tim Hortons, we did the same thing. It is the lottery campaign.

Jeremy Weisz  10:35 

It’s like a lifetime supply of Tim Hortons?

Jessica Li  10:43 

The 50/50 rule is very strict that they will have to be the cash price at the end. You can just get to do unlimited coffee.

Jeremy Weisz  10:56 

Too bad. I don’t drink coffee anyway, so you wouldn’t help me. But how do you at the end, is there some announcement or some special media piece at the end for the winner? How do you manage that?

Jessica Li  11:12 

The announcement will be made by the organization. And funny thing was that at the very first game, we are allowed to participate. So I tested the system and thinking that I’m going to buy a ticket. And I was the very first winner of winning the first.

Jeremy Weisz  11:36 

Yes, do they say this is rigged? They let you win? They did. They did oh, this is digital as you can track it. But they’re like, “Hey, this is rigged.”

Jessica Li  11:46 

Right? There was no rule that vendors cannot buy.

Jeremy Weisz  11:51 

I’m not going to ask how much you won because.

Jessica Li  11:55 

It’s early bird. So it’s only $1,000. It’s now a little much. But I was happy that someone taught me saying that oh, and the Canadian Olympic Foundation. And I was thinking that it must be my client. And then they said no, you won our early part. And I was so thrilled…

Jeremy Weisz  12:17 

So it was multiple winners there. So they’ll do like an early bird winner and not just like a jackpot winner. So there’s multiple winners, correct? Correct track that I imagine gets them a lot of great positive publicity to each winner they announced. Right?

Jessica Li  12:32 

Correct. Exactly. And I’ve been on several calls with some clients, when they make that phone call. It’s always the better thing in your life that to tell somebody you just won the lottery.

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