[Top Agency Series] Crafting the Perfect Customer Journey With Riaz Sidi of Sidi.io

Riaz Sidi is the Founder of sidi.io, a digital marketing agency renowned for its expertise in demand generation, performance marketing, and funnel strategy. Sidi.io was named one of Ottawa’s fastest-growing companies in 2022 and 2023. With a background that includes a five-year streak at Postmedia in roles from digital strategist to National Training Manager, Riaz has rich experience in corporate media. A leader always on the cutting edge of marketing trends, he dedicates himself to understanding and optimizing the customer buying journey, leading a team that integrates online platforms to drive growth for diverse clients. 

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

• [4:01] Riaz Sidi explains how sidi.io reverse-engineers the customer buying journey for various industries
• [6:59] The surprising power of comprehensive digital marketing beyond single campaign tactics
• [12:30] Real-world applications of quiz funnels in lead generation
• [17:27] The demographic targeting and algorithm used in digital marketing for specific industries
• [21:03] The formula for crafting offers based on customer pain points and desired actions
• [31:42] How SPIN Selling revolutionized Riaz’s approach to seeing beyond traditional sales tactics
• [35:52] Riaz shares his journey from corporate media to founding his agency
•  [41:01] The pivotal books and resources that have shaped Riaz’s business and sales philosophy

In this episode…

Have you ever wondered how the evolution of digital marketing is changing the way we view traditional advertising? What if your business could predict the customer’s needs and cater to them even before they realize the necessity? Is your company ready to leap into an integrated, algorithm-aided marketing strategy?

Riaz Sidi, a sales and marketing leader with over 20 years of experience, spills the secrets to transforming a brand’s digital presence by dissecting and reverse-engineering the customer buying journey. By integrating innovative tactics such as quiz funnels and targeted Facebook ads, he explains how he helps clients from diverse industries achieve explosive growth. Riaz shares invaluable insights into how his team utilizes data, AI tools, and creative brainstorming to tailor each campaign to the client’s unique audience.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Riaz Sidi, Founder of sidi.io, about crafting impactful marketing strategies. Riaz delves into understanding customer pain points and leveraging this knowledge to drive demand generation, lessons learned from his retail struggles, and the demographic targeting and algorithm used in digital marketing for specific industries.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Riaz Sidi on LinkedIn
• Sidi.io

Special Mention(s):

• SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham
• $100M Leads: How to Get Strangers To Want To Buy Your Stuff by Alex Hormozi
• 80/20 Sales and Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More by Perry Marshall
• Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman
• Your Next Five Moves: Master the Art of Business Strategy by Patrick Bet-David
• Telemarketers

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
• “[Sweet Process Series] How to Save Hundreds of Hours a Month Using Top Productivity Tools With Adi Klevit of Business Success Consulting Group” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Does God Exist? With Perry Marshall, author of Evolution 2.0” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Leading with Passion With Gino Wickman Founder of EOS Worldwide” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable Moments:

• “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it, and that’s where understanding the customer buying journey is crucial.”
• “Modern marketing demands an integrated approach, beyond just running campaigns in isolation.”
• “Think beyond your limitations; what you perceive as success may only be a fraction of what is possible.”
• “Ad algorithms are intelligent, and leveraging them allows us to segment and target in ways we never thought possible.”
• “The foundation of my entire sales strategy was transformed by SPIN Selling – it’s about opening your mind and approach.”

Action Steps:

1. Investigate and fully understand your customer’s buying journey. This holistic approach ensures that each aspect of your marketing strategy works cohesively to guide potential clients to the desired outcome.
2. Utilize multi-channel marketing. By integrating various platforms and communication channels, businesses can catch customers at different stages and engage them effectively.
3. Tap into the power of algorithms for targeting. Algorithms can provide valuable insights into your audience’s behaviors and preferences, creating opportunities for highly effective targeted marketing campaigns.
4. Read and implement the concepts of SPIN Selling. The SPIN selling approach focuses on the customer’s pain points, encouraging deeper conversations and a more effective sales strategy.
5. Regularly take stock of your beliefs and push beyond perceived limitations. Challenging limiting beliefs unlocks the potential for greater success by prompting you to set higher goals and find innovative ways to achieve them.

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 Riaz Sidi, you can check them out at sidi.io and Riaz before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out and just as part of the top agency series, there was one with Kevin Hourigan. Kevin Hourigan of Spinutech, he started an agency back in 1995. So it’s interesting to hear the evolution of the kind of agency life and also just the evolution of his professional career. That was a really interesting one.

There’s another one, Jason Swenk, talks about building his agency up to eight figures and selling it and kind of him going through that process then also is another one of him. He’s in buying up agencies. And so he talks about the valuation and kind of landscape there. There’s another one of my favorites Riaz, which was Adi Klevit and Adi Klevit has a company that helps businesses build SOPs, right seems not sexy, but I think it’s sexy, and we geeked out on all our favorite productivity tools, and how do you become more efficient, and she kind of just shared some of her secret sauce around creating SOPs, which help with onboarding the staff or onboarding new clients, etc. So that was a really good episode as well.

And this episode is brought to you by Rise25. Rise25, we help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships. And how do we do that we actually do that by helping you run your podcast or an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast we do the strategy accountability in the full execution. Riaz we call ourselves a magic elves that work in the background and make it look easy for the hosts so they can create amazing content and amazing relationships and have time to actually run their business. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. And I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships. And I found no better way over the past decade to profile the people in companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on.

So if you thought about podcasting, you should if you have questions, go to rise25.com and Riaz was asking me how did you find me? And I was like our team was doing research and I wanted to feature some of the top agencies and top Canadian agencies and companies and we found Riaz, luckily so I want to introduce Riaz today. Riaz Sidi is the founder of sidi.io. Sidi.io was named one of Ottawa’s fastest-growing companies in 2022 and 2023 by Ottawa Business Journal, and they are a digital marketing agency focused on demand generation performance and growth, marketing and funnel strategy.

They have many specialties, they have a lot of different types of companies, which we’ll talk about, even from cemeteries like growing cemetery companies, technology companies, SaaS companies, retail events, education, professional services, he actually rose up the corporate media world with a five-year stint and post media in roles ranging from digital strategist to National Training Manager, and really talks a lot about leadership and marketing is on the cutting edge of those things. So Riaz, thanks for joining me.

Riaz Sidi 3:36 

Thank you so much, Jeremy, for having me. I’m looking forward to it.

Jeremy Weisz 3:39 

Let’s just talk about Sidi and what you do first, and if you are listening to the audio version, there is a video version as well. So I’m going to pull up his website, because I love the branding, part of his website and the orange hair, the glasses. So talk about Sidi and what you do.

Riaz Sidi 4:01 

Yeah, absolutely. So we are a demand generation digital marketing agency, as you mentioned, off the top. But really our goal is to understand our clients’ customer’s buying journey. So what we do is we’ll reverse engineer, the path to purchase that our clients customer would make when they are going to the dentist or going to an event or making a b2b professional services purchase. So really what our goal is, primarily is to reverse engineer the customer buying journey, and then use integrated online platforms to drive our clients’ customers from unaware all the way down to being a lead in their CRM, and eventually making a purchase with their sales team.

Or if it’s an e-commerce product, making a purchase or an event, ticket sale or what have you. And I think really what that looks like in an execution from an execution perspective, is running things like Google ads, Facebook Guys, so search and social LinkedIn driving traffic to landing pages, integrating with CRMs, like we are a HubSpot partner. So that full funnel journey, it’s really crafting it, measuring it, optimizing it for performance, to make sure that our clients are growing revenue from both a revenue perspective, and as a business perspective, helping to build out their infrastructure, we do things like websites, really, if it’s along that customer buying journey or that funnel, we’re playing a role there. Some of our clients, they outsource their entire marketing department to us.

Others, we run a paid campaigns here and there. But in all scenarios, what we aim to do is become an extension of your team. Because too often in the agency world, it can be a bit impersonal. And a lot of times, if you’ve ever hired an agency, sometimes you might feel like, one of the line items on a spreadsheet somewhere at the agency’s office, and we aim to go above and beyond to make sure that our clients understand that we are an extension of their team. We’re plug and play. And so our kind of real three differentiators, Jeremy are that we’re plug and play, we become a part of your team. We’re no fluff. So often, marketing jargon and numbers can overwhelm and confuse people. So we try and keep things simple, we really want to understand our clients, their KPIs, and make sure that we’re speaking and reporting on their KPIs. And finally, we’re a high-value premium service.

So we want to over index on value that we’re providing to our clients. Because often, our industry has a reputation for maybe taking a little bit too much money and not delivering enough results. So we aim to change that by really over-delivering on client experience performance and digital performance and products.

Jeremy Weisz 6:59 

It probably I imagined as opens people’s eyes when they actually start to map out the client journey. Right. And so I’m wondering, as you start to reverse engineer this, what are some of the examples you see, maybe that surprises the client, as you start to map out the client journey? It could be, I mentioned, I know you’ve worked with SaaS North, which you may talk about, with Valuetainment, with Beechwood Cemetery, whichever one comes to mind, what was a scenario where as you are mapping out this client journey, reverse engineering it, that you’ve had these people add some light bulbs or revelations.

Riaz Sidi 7:41 

So I think what happens, Jeremy is, businesses, they look at marketing very tactically, and they look at different solutions as ends upon themselves, versus being a means to an end. And what I mean by that is, with traditional marketing, a radio ad or a newspaper ad or television ad, it could kind of stand on its own legs and get the performance. And of course, over time, that performance has eroded. And I think what happened or what’s happens, what has happened, and what continues to happen, is that business owners look at new media and new marketing channels the same way they looked at those traditional channels, right? And the problem with doing it that way, is that you say, hey, I’m gonna run a Facebook campaign, okay, or I’m gonna run SEO, or my friend told me about doing a LinkedIn campaign.

And oftentimes, what you’ll see is people, businesses in doing that in isolation, and then falling off flat on their, on his face, and then wondering, why, what happened here, right? So where we aim to be quite different is taking a more holistic approach. And I think to answer your question, what surprises people is when we do have that visual diagram, because it is a really a visual diagram that will generate and it’ll show those touch points along the journey. And it’s not just a Facebook campaign, doing its own thing, or SEO doing its own thing, it’s all of these things working cohesively to get the desired outcome or result, right.

So what that could look like, for example, might be seeing an ad on Facebook, clicking over to a landing page, perhaps downloading some type of lead magnet or guide or coupon, getting put into a CRM and then being retargeted, which essentially means being served another ad, if you’ve ever bought a car or gone on a vacation, you’ll be familiar with being the end user of this process. Right? So we’ll take them through that process, and then get them towards that final conversion point. But it’s not that simple, right? Because you’re going to lose people along that journey, that buying journey. So we have contingencies in place to ensure that when someone maybe visits the landing page and doesn’t opt in that they’re getting served a different ad or they’re getting hit with an email or a text message or something to that effect, right. So I would say the real challenge or surprise, is how comprehensive digital marketing needs to be in order to get the results that typically people are looking for these days.

Jeremy Weisz 10:10 

Yeah, it’s really a multi-channel approach, even though you’re using Facebook or whatever channel doesn’t matter, you may have them opt in for a text message, you may have them opt-in, in the email, or you may retarget them, they may get different content. So there’s a lot of these touch points that have to be built in as opposed to like what you’re saying before, which is if it’s a radio ad, maybe one call to action, then that’s it. Is that accurate?

Riaz Sidi 10:39 

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, in fairness to those traditional models, those traditional mediums, radio and television, were able to, you know, take care of all stages of that funnel, if you will, right. Whereas these days, you need to be more comprehensive, there’s an abundance of information about out there on any given product or service. So you want to be part of that game, you want to make sure that you have content that is answering kind of the FAQ that your customers might have. And certain things like reviews, studying reviews that you might get to understand where you can make improvements in your business.

So not just leveraging marketing for the sake of generating new business, but leveraging marketing to make improvements on your business as well. Because within our organization, we do a thing called Seasides, which is essentially, like a customer survey. And from that, we’re able to, like take the pieces out of it, which we can then use in our marketing based on, well, we were working with this other company, and all of these terrible things happened. And now we’re working with you guys. And all these amazing things are happening. I’m paraphrasing, right. But if we can take those specific benefits that our clients are telling us and use that in marketing as well.

So I think with a lot of our clients, we’re doing the same thing, we’re looking at their reviews, we’re trying to understand the type of feedback they’re getting, because even to businesses in the same industry can be quite different. So it’s important for us to understand that and put out content that kind of speaks to that.

Jeremy Weisz 12:09 

I know that you work with different types of clients. And we mentioned, maybe I’ll start with Valuetainment. And what were some of the things you do with them. I follow their stuff for a while and Patrick-Bet David, he’s got a popular podcast and more some of the things you did with Valuetainment.

Riaz Sidi 12:30 

Yeah, so we’ve done a couple of campaigns with them. One was around, doing essentially a quiz funnel. And so what that looks like is a series of landing pages where, you know, people can answer a series of questions and get some type of result from that, based on the result that they get, they kind of get put into a segmented audience that we can use to provide more content to or sell programs to. So that was a short stint that we did with them. And then we’ve also helped in the past to promote their vault Conference, which I’ve attended all of them. I’m a big fan of Valuetainment.

Jeremy Weisz 13:12 

And we’re the speaker key. I know they have some fairly prominent keynote speakers of those steps type of events. When you went, who is speaking?

Riaz Sidi 13:19 

Yeah, well, I mean, I’ve been I’ve been to all of them. So I’ve seen all the speakers, fortunately, but I’d say some of the highlights are definitely Mike Tyson spoke last year, Tom Brady was another, obviously prolific speaker that’s been there. And it’s amazing to be in a room where you’re learning from Patrick and the speakers that come there as well. So, you know, we’re a big fan. Sidi.io, we’re big fans of the content that Valuetainment puts out. From a business perspective, I’d say a lot of our business success has come from a lot of the knowledge that has been acquired, from Patrick and Valuetainment. So to have the opportunity to work on their campaigns is something I absolutely treasure. And we did that for one of their events.

Jeremy Weisz 14:07 

What just in general, you mentioned quizzes. What do you feel works with quizzes, if someone’s heard that before? And they’re like, I probably should implement something like that. What are the mistakes people make and what works with using actually utilizing quizzes for lead generation?

Riaz Sidi 14:29 

So when your business developing a quiz, or survey funnel of some sort, you kind of want to think about what the end goal is, or the answer is going to be to that funnel. So I think, certainly the big mistake that someone that a business might make, is actually creating a quiz, which doesn’t lead to a very clear connection to their business, right. So you know, as an example, if you’re doing a quiz for a day dental office right? And you know, one of our clients that does sedation Dental, where do they kind of put you under? Right? So some of the questions in that quiz might be more around, do you have fears around potential pain or bad experiences to do with having been to the dentist in the past? Right?

Because that can naturally those answers can actually lead into, oh, well, the answer that we can provide you is we can put you under while loop while you’re getting your dentistry there. So the big mistake I see is having a unrelated questions that don’t ultimately lead to an answer, and it’s more of a fun quiz than leading to a desired outcome for the business, it should have both it should provide value to the end user, because you don’t want to deprive them or you don’t want them to feel like they’re getting bait and switch. Right? Nor do you want to, you want to sincerely provide value.

Jeremy Weisz 15:49 

Yeah, it’s like you fill out some random quiz like, and we have some sedation dentistry for like, they’re just totally caught off guard.

Riaz Sidi 15:58 

Yeah, it’s a bit creepy.

Jeremy Weisz 16:00 

What are some good examples from your work with companies? I don’t know if the Valuetainment would be good one, like what some of the things that you asked in the quiz that was interesting?

Riaz Sidi 16:12 

So they’re typically things like personality tests. And based on the outcome of that, it’s like, read this content. It could be things like pre-planning for funerals, or wills or things like that. It could be finance-related, in terms of, I would say a good example of like a quiz funnel that many of your listeners are probably familiar with are probably in the insurance or mortgage industries, right? So the insurance, quiz, quote, unquote, quiz, they’re basically just asking you all the hard questions, so they don’t have to ask you later, right? But based on how you answer that, you’re gonna get like a, hey, you’re gonna live until you’re 50? You might want to get insurance, right? Or like for the mortgage…

Jeremy Weisz 16:52 

All paths lead to you should get insurance but just different avenues.

Riaz Sidi 16:57 

Yes.

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