1179: Driving Business Growth Through Digital Accessibility with AudioEye CMO Chad Sollis

Robert Plank 0:04 Hey and welcome back to the podcast. We're going to be talking about something that's very exciting, very relevant. It's this idea of accessibility on the web. And our guest here, Chad Sollis, from audio eye.com that's audio E, Y E, by the way, Chad is a seasoned marketing and product leader with over two decades of experience in driving business growth and innovation across various industries. He's a data driven executive. Chad scales businesses. He grows companies. He's taking the companies from $30 million to $3 billion in annual revenue. He's helped four companies execute successful IPO. So we're gonna find out about how marketing has evolved, how we can get the most out of our marketing teams, prioritizing digital accessibility, content creation, so much more. So Chad, glad to be speaking with you.

Chad Sollis 0:54 Robert, thanks for having me. Excited for this opportunity.

Robert Plank 0:58 I am as well. And so we introduced you a little bit, but in your own words, what are you all about? What has you just passionate? Fired up?

Chad Sollis 1:06 Yeah, you know? What has me fired up is I love growing businesses. I love doing it in a meaningful, profitable and efficient way. I'm not a grow at all costs kind of guy. I like to do it efficiently and effectively and really, you know, that's what I'm about. But what gets me excited is about creating meaningful digital experiences that drive happy customers, which ultimately, at the end of the day, drive happy shareholders, wonderful.

Robert Plank 1:37 Well, I need to know in a moment what a meaningful digital experience is. But I also I kind of got like two, two thoughts coming in my head at once, because the other thing is like, well, you think about like by kind of becoming the the best person you can meet, right, becoming the upper tier, the upper crush. You think about, well, a lot of people are just content being like nine to five employees. Then you have this other level of like entrepreneurs. But then when you become an entrepreneur or you grow a business, you realize a couple of things, either you're kind of in one person mode and you hold yourself back, or sometimes you partner up with people who like they themselves. Are afraid to really like take risks. They take calculated risk, right? They're afraid to talk to people and grow the company. And sometimes you get blocked there. So I'm really glad that we're here with a scaling guy, a growth guy, who can kind of push us out of our comfort zone and tell us to have the marketing budget, build the team, do all these things that are necessary. But like, what do you have to say about that right off the bat is how as far as, like, we can be our own worst enemy. We can self sabotage, we can limit ourselves. Like, what have you seen in the trenches over the years?

Chad Sollis 2:41 Yeah, I think there's a few things. Number one, I think marketing and sales teams don't align early enough in the process, because you mentioned a few things, like budget. For example, it's one thing to have a revenue number you're chasing, but then you don't have a marketing budget that aligns to that, that revenue number. The other thing is that you know the buyer is the buyer behavior is changing. And you know that changing behavior becomes more reliant on marketing being well ahead of that buying process. Buyers are are doing their research with communities, peer to peer review sites, all before they're engaging with you as a business. And so your marketing strategy has to be actually well ahead of that buying process to really be considered in a purchase process by a customer. And that's, and honestly, that's inclusive of B to B or B to C. And so, you know, that's where, you know, I see things happening a lot earlier.

Robert Plank 3:54 That's a great insight, because there's that thought of, well, I've got my landing page, I got my sales letter, and that'll do all the convincing. But as you're explaining that, I'm thinking like, it's, it's very rare for me, if I make a purchase to get convinced, start to finish on that web page, right? I'm usually already following the person. I've already done research. I go to the web page, I'm like, hey, what else is out there about them on social media and YouTube and Google, and then I come back, or might come and like, do my other research, but it's like, we would all love to be in that position of our sales leader doesn't have to do all the work, right? They're already kind of pre educated. They've already done the research. We have these other kind of marketing aspects in place. And maybe it can be like, counterintuitive, right? Because, like, when you're looking at the numbers, maybe they are warmed up from the email sequence, the retargeting, the ads. And so it's a great insight there that we have to have, like both sides on the same page, right? You have to have the marketing budget able to match what is being done, as far as pouring in that kind of marketing juice. And so when we are trying to get the word out right, trying to. That marketing, do you have a favorite channel or, like, a favorite way of getting that website traffic?

Chad Sollis 5:07 Man, you know that it may sound like a cliche, but it has to be an omni channel experience. It has to be. And I would actually back up and say, What depends on the audience. And all marketing begins with the audience. And once you understand who your audience is, where they get their information, where they're doing their research, that becomes my favorite channel, you know. So that is frequently in today's buying market, you know, that's frequently social media, from YouTube shorts to long form, YouTube to Tiktok, and then LinkedIn is an emerging channel, as far as social media, and buying behavior is also buying behavior, and it just depends on your audience. Because some you know, if like your audience is, say, government or education, they're not going to be on LinkedIn. They're going to be in other channels. And so you move that direction. If your audience is high tech, or, you know, consumer packaged goods, or, you know, other B to B SAS, like FinTech or something, you're going to find them in certain categories as well. So typically, you need to be everywhere. There's some core channels that are, you know, Google, Google ads is, is always going to be a strong channel, but that's going to be a channel that's going to be focused on the latter half of the buying cycle. If you want to be focused on the top of the funnel, true awareness, you're gonna be more strongly in awareness channels like YouTube, Tiktok, medium articles, Reddit, things like that.

Robert Plank 6:52 I love it. And because you think about how, when social media became used by a lot of people, there was always that question of, like, well, how will this fit into marketing? And there was like, That disconnect at first, right? Like, well, if someone's on, say, Facebook, then are they? Are they there? Like, just for entertainment purposes? Can I eventually convert them to a buyer? But it seems like now they're more developed, right? Now, there's the like you said, the Google ads is more of, like, the end of the buying process. They're maybe rated to buy, or it's more urgent, but then these social media channels, they're spending all day every day there, so why not follow them around with ads and warm them up so that way when the timing is right, or they're just at least, kind of staying warmed up for us, and then when it comes time to pull the sugar, then they can, and they will. And then we mentioned at the beginning this idea of a meaningful digital experience, and you're a accessibility company, and I have, like, a couple of ideas what that might be, but I know that I can't be 100% accurate. So what are we talking about when we talk about, like, a meaningful, accessible experience on a website?

Chad Sollis 7:55 Yeah, very great question. And you know the meaningful to me, means you become individualized with whoever that prospect or customer is on your website or your mobile app. And what that means is you understand their needs. You understand their goals and objectives of why they're engaging with you. You also understand their potential limitations or complications that they might experience while purchasing from you, and I look at accessibility as dovetailing into those personalized experiences. Yes, there are some big advantages, especially if you're a big brand where you become a target for lawsuits and things like that, and digital accessibility becomes about compliance and protection around that. But you know, there are other scenarios where it actually becomes a personalization and that becomes part of your audience, up to 25% of your audience on on your website is someone with a visual, auditory, auditory or neurodivergent disability that would help make it difficult for them to actually experience your website, and accessibility creates fills that gap that allows end users To ultimately gather information about your product or service and ultimately engage with you, whereas without it, it would be like, you know, going into a grocery store and nothing have labels on it, and you expect them to go find the milk or the, you know, the vegetable that they're Looking for. Nothing has labels and so accessibility, just like you would personalize, you know, a creative message to someone without a disability to optimize their conversion and their experience. Accessibility becomes that for those with disabilities,

Robert Plank 9:54 wonderful so so personalized. Be accessible, meet people where they're at they might be. Be neurodivergent. They might have a bad hearing, bad eyesight. Might be elderly. Who knows who you're dealing with? You're missing out on a lot of people if you don't kind of perform these customizations. And so from a lay person's point of view, you mentioned accessibility. I picture like that, that wheelchair icon in the bottom corner where you can, like, pop things out. What comes to mind is, like large text, or if you have a video playing, there's like, maybe, like a caption button. But what are people missing when it comes to accessibility? If someone says, Well, my website needs to be accessible, it could be, mean, all these things. What's like a logical starting point, or maybe, like the first step or two in this? Yeah,

Chad Sollis 10:39 great. Question, Robert the you know, there is no silver bullet in solving for digital digital accessibility. And oftentimes, in a world of AI and technology, marketers will look for something as a silver bullet. And unfortunately, that doesn't exist. We believe there is a gold standard too, though, that solves for digits digital accessibility, and does so in a, you know, thoughtful, progressive way, which is a three, three prong approach. We do use AI based technology for automation. Those that you know to use, the example you shared, the little wheelchair in the bottom of the screen that solves a portion of the accessibility problem. It's a great place to start, but it only solves about 40% of the accessibility problem. We then believe the second step in that is through human assisted efforts. And we, you know, through expert audits at AudioEye, we use both trained professionals as well as those with disabilities to audit experiences and then share that those changes and recommendations back to the customer to either make directly, or we can provide that, that those custom fixes for for the business directly. And then the third part is actually the best way, which is solving for that at the source of the code. And so we do that with SDKs that can integrate with, you know, a variety of development platforms for your product or website or E commerce platform. So the three, those three approaches, you know, fix it, source expert audits, and then AI driven technology, we feel ultimately solve that accessibility problem.

Robert Plank 12:28 Very cool. And I think this accessibility thing, it's so underrated, right? Because even if you think it's the simplest web page, the simplest software, the simplest kind of step by step process, it's simple to you because you've seen this company. But anyone who has like, helped, like their mom or their dad, or someone like, set up a smart TV, you do it in a couple of seconds. You like, enter, you go to the web page, enter in the code, scan the QR code, but it's still if you haven't done it, or this is not your world. It's just like, it might take all day, you might get stuck, you might never do it. And so I can definitely see the value in you doing the this kind of testing here and just making sure that the website's accessible, because that way it converts better. You mentioned earlier about like, avoiding lawsuits and things like that. And then you always hear about how Google is always trying to like, be the like, rank and reward the most highest websites that there are, and they have all kinds of ways of being like, well, if it's accessible to the most people, then we'll reward you with a more search engine listings, higher rankings, things like that. And so that's what we want to do. And so you may mention how you kind of do these things, like, like audits and ways of improving. And so can you walk us through Do you have a fun success story, case study of some company you've helped with this accessibility issue.

Chad Sollis 13:48 Yeah, you know, I might, you know, just to make it personal, I'll take it back to where I came into awareness of digital accessibility. You mentioned a little bit of my bio. You know, I've been doing digital marketing and growing companies for over two decades, however, the you know, and for some really big national and international brands. But the first time I came across it was during my experience at a recently in the last five, six years for a company called Traeger, who has an econ, a big E commerce president, but they also have a mobile app and a physical product, all of which kind of work together, and we, we were going through a lawsuit, or at least a potential lawsuit. The nice thing is this, this particular individual wasn't after money. He just wanted an experience to use our product. And so we, I engaged with digital accessibility for the first time, and in 20 years, just recently, five, six years ago, and going through that process, it, you know, is a really big learning experience. You know, people. People with disabilities want to have the same experiences that those without down to smart cooking, smart devices. You know, you mentioned the Smart TV. They want the same experiences that everyone else has, but they they are. They're unable to do so because of certain technology limitations. And so at Traeger, we went through a process. We were a fix it source team, and so what we did was have expert audits come in. We audited everything between the E commerce platform, the website and the mobile app, and then we deployed all of those changes directly through the code, but that, to be honest, was a very expensive task, doing it directly with our own engineering team and our own staff, where we weren't familiar with audio at the time, and that's where audio, I actually solves that much more simply and more elegantly and with less cost.

Robert Plank 16:02 And when, when you and audio, I go and, like, fix these problems, right? Is there any like, repeat mistake you see being done on web pages? Because I can imagine if someone says, okay, and you might make my website accessible. But like, for who and like, Where do I even start? Like, have you seen you see something like, over and over again when you look at these websites,

Chad Sollis 16:23 yeah, you, you know, you would think, given that it's, you know, 2024 coming into 2025 that some of the basic things would be, would those problems would be removed at this stage, if for no other reason for SEO, but they still become a problem. So inappropriate use of title tags, lack of use of alt tags on images, a really big infringement is, you know, if you're doing alt text, you're actually not providing the correct contextual information. That makes makes it useful. There's still contrast and font issues, but overall, like, what gets missed a lot is actual, just contextual changes. So like I mentioned, the alt tags, because automation will solve for font and contrast and size issues, and even had header tags and things like that. But what it can't solve for is the contextual pieces and getting that right for end users. So you know if something, if something's changing color to signify something, or if you know you're describing a product image, but you're, you know you're you just say it's a pair of shorts, rather than it's a pair of brown shorts that are nine inch inseams with pockets on the side, zipper pocket behind the primary pocket, and the primary pocket on the hips. You know, something that's a lot more descriptive that you know automation can't solve for that, and that's where you know, the expert audit component comes in and contextualizes, which really makes it powerful for someone with disabilities as an end user. So I'd say that even your most common things still though, are only let me back up, only 4% of the web is accessible, so 96% of the web is still missing those basic fixes that make an experience tremendously better. For for an end user with disabilities,

Robert Plank 18:28 that's amazing. Only 4% I had no idea. And you know, you're giving me a little bit of an AHA here, because I think I do sometimes notice when the title tag isn't quite right, when I see it in the browser tab, I'm like, Hey, why do they use that for the title. But then I've been seeing, I don't see it all the time, but sometimes I'll, I'll hover over an image, and it'll be like this big paragraph of text, like, exactly describing the brown pair of shorts and the pockets on the sides and the nine inch inseam. And I didn't think much of it, but now you're giving me a flashback. It's like, oh, that's there. So that way of someone who is vision impaired can, like, know what the image is without it having to be there. And that's just a little bit of a mind blowing moment there that now, for now and forever, when I see an image with an alt tag, or I happen to see, like, the super detailed caption, it's like, oh, that's so that way it's accessible, right? So that way someone can still understand what it is. And so, you know, we've had this discussion here of accessibility and a little bit about, like, business growth and what you've done, but in these last few minutes here, I want to make sure, since this is your first podcast here, Mr. Chad, and congratulations on that milestone, but you being on a podcast, the focus on is on you and your successes. And because we just met, I might not know the exact right question to ask you. So in our conversation, either about accessibility or about you, is there a missing, hidden, invisible question that you wish I was asking you, and can we just pretend I asked it and tell me the answer?

Chad Sollis 19:55 Yeah, you know, sure you know what I what I would say for that. Yeah, and it comes up in in every role that I've had when, when I'm growing a business, you know, the single most important, they're like, What is the most, the single most important thing you can do, and they're looking for a silver bullet, or, you know, a program like, do I go to Google ads? Do I do Facebook ads? Or do I, you know, what technology should I buy? And the answer is, is always the same for me, but the there is no silver bullet, but there's a few things that are a home run every time. One is, understand your audience, understand your buyer. And when I say that, I mean, you know, not your classic persona that you like pin up on the wall in the office, and it's like they like to get coffee at 7am and they read this magazine while they have their morning coffee, and then they like to open their dashboard. That's not helpful. It's the things that they're doing in their actual everyday life and their personal life, where they're consuming information and where they educate themselves. That's the single most important thing to understand your audience. Then the next piece is, once you understand that test, everything from your programs to your ad copy to your scripts with with your selling team, and when you test, you're not looking for a single winner. This is the biggest mistake I see all the time. They're like, Well, which one won? I want to know the best. You know, what's the best homepage design? And the answer is, never one single one. The answer is, what is the right one for the right audience, for the right time in the buy cycle? So for one individual, you might have three or four home page over time because their buy cycle changes. So your home page, your product page, your solution page, your product itself, should adapt to where they are. So that means at some point in time, you may have hundreds or 1000s of versions over time and again. Some people get overwhelmed by that. But it's not happening overnight. It might happen over five years, but you start finding these little segments of opportunity. And when you do that, I've seen sites grow from, you know, you know you do with classic AV tests, and you might see, you know, a 20 or 30 or 40% lift in something, you actually do a personalized to a segment AB test, and then you do that across all segments. You might have a net, or, sorry, an aggregated conversion increase in the 1000s of percentages. And I've seen that actually at multiple companies where we were dealing with one to 2,000% increases in conversion, not one to 200% or even 10 to 50% and that, that all comes down from understanding the audience, testing a lot and then optimizing to a segment, maybe a little more long winded than you were after, but you know, that's what I would say, has been one of the keys at every business I've been at

Robert Plank 23:02 and that's it. Long wind is okay. It wasn't wasn't that? Too bad? And that's what we have Mike the content guy, to do some trimming, and he can get that fit into a real all the best parts of it. But I love your insights here, like, what are your segments? And that helps you to figure out what their problems are. And sometimes you hear about like, having the sales calls, or, like, the customer onboarding calls, even if it might be kind of repetitive, you have 3040, 50 of these to, like, really get to know your people, where they're stuck, what they like. And then you mentioned earlier about traffic and marketing channels, and there's probably, like, you know, a handful, like four or five, but get to know your people. Where are they hanging out? That's how you can get in touch with them, follow up with them, and then when they're near the end of that buying cycle, hit them with some more ads. That way you just kind of guide them along until they get to where they want to be. And then you mentioned about AB testing and having special landing pages for these segments, and as soon as Facebook enabled that feature where you can look at a Facebook page and see all the ads they were running, man, that was like marketing heaven, wasn't it? Can you just scroll and scroll and see all the kind of and like the best ad people, they're always cranking these out, right? They're always trying these new experiments. And then sometimes on a website, I'll like do like the Google search to find all the web page on that domain, or look at the Wayback Machine. It's always fun just to see these people that these companies that have their marketing really dialed in. They're doing these things that you're mentioning right? They're always refining, improving, enhancing, looking at the segments, looking at how they can make it a better experience for them. But it can be overwhelming just for one person or one team to get their head around this. It's kind of like, if you're if you want to have a nice house, well, go to someone that builds houses, right? Go to a plumber, go to an electrician. Don't just try to, like, figure this new thing out. And so in this, in this crazy world of accessibility and conversions and everything else that's involved with. It, I'm sure that someone can use audio eye to get their company to the next level to implement some of these solutions that we're talking about. And so how does someone know if their company is a good fit for audio? I and what are some possible solutions here?

Chad Sollis 25:16 Yeah, good. Great question. So every if you if you have a personal website down to you're a giant e commerce or, you know, B to B software company, you are a candidate for for audio eye and we have solutions from small business to enterprise. And the economics follow that. You know, it's very affordable for small businesses. We serve over 100,000 websites currently of all various sizes, and then we have solutions for massive, massive enterprises. And you know that to get started, I would say, you know, give us a call, and we'd be happy to consult with you and work through that accessibility problem. For you, the reality is, is, at some point, you know, there's kind of two approaches with accessibility. There's one which is usually the primary driver, because, again, companies are feeling the pinch of trying to be profitable. And so there's a cost component, and so they have to trim out wherever they can. So sometimes it comes down to a compliance or a lawsuit, and that's what's going to drive your purchase. For other brands, you don't have that pinch point. And so it's more of a proactive How do I how do I do what's right from just a corporate responsibility perspective, but then also, how do I again, create these meaningful digital experiences for every component of of my audience? And you know, up to 25% again, are experiencing the web with disabilities, that group and their families represent up to $13 trillion of buying power. And so if you're, you know, you fall into that category, you're a good candidate for digital accessibility. And again, I would just talk to us or talk to other professionals of how to get into it, because, you know, it is a solution for everyone. In fact, for me personally, as I've moved forward now, digital accessibility is now a core component of my marketing strategy and my marketing technology strategy as well.

Robert Plank 27:33 Very nice. Well. Thank you for educating us about this. It can be an easy aspect to overlook, but then you look at like these huge companies, these huge brands, they all make sure to apply accessibility to their website, and you're sure as heck. Are on brand, aren't you? Chad, because you know your segments, right? You say, Well, hey, maybe there's a lawsuit, or maybe the urgency is less, but either way, this is something that we need to be doing, especially you said that only 4% of the web is accessible, but then there's this 25% component that has some kind of disability. So we need to get get this stuff figured out with the expert help of audio eye and there's no harm at all in going to audio eye.com check out the demo schedule, a demo schedule that phone call. Have that conversation and talk about possibilities and what audio eye can do for you. And so that web page is a, u, d, i, o, e, y, e.com, and so is that home page the logical place to go, or is there a special landing page?

Chad Sollis 28:30 No, that that will do it. You can, you know, you can start with just scanning your website right there on the home page. You can also schedule based on your availability and calendar right right there on the homepage as well, and talk to one of our professionals. So we are here to help and to make the web more accessible,

Robert Plank 28:50 very nice. And now, with the help of Chad and Mike and everyone at AudioEye, you can make that happen. That's audioeye.com and as we close the door on our conversation here, Chad, it's time to put you on the spot just a slight bit. I like to ask my guests for a fun quarter lesson that has just helped them along in their journey, that can help us. So what comes to mind, as far as one of these shareable quotes or lessons that has helped you, that can help us?

Chad Sollis 29:16 Yeah, that's a great question. Um, you know what I would say, you know, I'll just relate it to, to audio eye and what I shared previously. But, you know, there is no silver bullet to digital accessibility, but there is a gold standard, and that gold standard is, is what I described earlier. That is the way to make the internet more accessible and to create equality across all digital experiences.

Robert Plank 29:45 Very nice. Well, let's make it happen. Let's make some money. Let's help some customers. Let's make the web more accessible. Chad Sollis, from audioeye.com, we'll see you there. And thank you very much, Chad, for stopping by and sharing with us some stories and advice. I really appreciate it. You. Bet.

Chad Sollis 30:00 Thank you, Robert, appreciate the time.

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