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Diversifying Your Advertising Strategy for Amazon and eCommerce Brands with John Horn · Selling on Giants: The eCommerce Marketplace Podcast

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to another insightful episode of Selling on Giants.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Mr.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Will, and today we have an exciting topic that every e-commerce brand should pay attention to.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Diversifying your advertising strategy for Amazon and e-commerce brands.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: We are honored to have with us John Horn, the CEO of Stub Group, a renowned digital advertising agency and premier Google partner.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: John is ranked in the top 1% of all Google partners worldwide for performance and customer care, a testament to his expertise and dedication.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: Under John's leadership, Stub Group has generated over half a billion dollars in revenue for its clients across various sectors, including e-commerce, LeadGen, B2B, B2C, and Amazon.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: With over 2,000 clients and 15,000 campaigns under their belt, Stub Group is a powerhouse in a digital advertising space, adept to navigating paid ads and suspension issues.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: In today's episode, John will share invaluable insights and strategies on how to diversify your advertising efforts to maximize reach and mitigate risk.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Whether you're focused on Amazon or broader e-commerce platforms, this discussion will provide actionable tactics to enhance your advertising strategy.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: Remember to like, follow, and subscribe wherever you're tuning in to stay updated on more expert insights and practical tips from industry leaders.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: Let's dive in.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Hey John, welcome to the show.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: We're super excited to have you here.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for taking the time.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: Before we get into our main topic, which is diversifying your advertising strategy for Amazon and e-commerce brands, I'd love to get you, I'd love to get to know you a little better.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Would you mind uh telling me a bit about your journey and what led you to become the CEO of Stub Group and a top-ranked Google partner?
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Well, thanks so much for having me.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: I've been looking forward to chatting with you and uh appreciate you taking the time today.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, it's been it's been a fun journey, definitely getting to where we're at now.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, really on the Stub Group side of things, uh, started a little over a decade ago when the two founders of the company.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not one of the original founders, I've been on pretty much since day one, but the two founders of the company kind of looked at the industry and said, hey, there is this massive move from traditional advertising to digital advertising.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: It was already happening, you know, it wasn't the uh the first days of that, but there were just so many businesses who were making that move and who needed expertise and help in stewarding those ad dollars in the digital world.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so they created Stub Group to help with that.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: And we've been focused on paid search and paid social advertising ever since.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, like I said, I've been with the company since day one, um, assumed the CEO role about five years ago, and uh get to spend every day just trying to figure out how to make our clients happy and making money.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's beautiful.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: That I mean, that's a dream, right?
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: What was that evolution?
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: So you start, I know early on in the business you end up working in almost every role.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: You mind describing just a bit of kind of what that journey looked like?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 100%.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, like you said, you know, when you when you start a business, you pretty much do everything that needs to be done.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: So um, I feel like that's been useful from my own experience because I've done all of the, you know, work in the accounts.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: I know how to create ads, I know the intricacies of Google Ads accounts and Facebook accounts, I know what's worked, what's not worked, and I know what it takes to do the work.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so when it comes to building a team of people around us to do that on behalf of our clients, I've been able to have a really good sense for okay, this is who we want to hire and bring on board or not.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then obviously you learn over time.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so many, so many mistakes, things that you learn from and say, you know what, that didn't work.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we A best A B tested that approach.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go with B moving forward and learn from it.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and so it's been fun to just really, you know, find good people to bring around us, bring onto the team, and be able to help more clients and also just, you know, build the knowledge internally.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you have a lot of smart people together, they get to test different things, they get to come back together and say, hey, here's what's working, here's what's not working.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then everybody that is a client of the agency gets to benefit from those learnings.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well said, I totally agree.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it sounds like quite the journey.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really excited to talk about kind of our main topic.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: So let's jump in.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, what why is it crucial for Amazon and e-commerce brands to diversify their advertising strategies?
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there are, I said, you know, a lot of brands who are very Amazon oriented.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that is not a bad thing.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Amazon obviously is a great platform.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: You can have a very successful business through Amazon.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: But I think a lot of advertisers kind of reach a level of maturity where they say, hey, our entire destiny is tied up with this one platform that is known for making significant changes and maybe not always having the best interest of their sellers at heart.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so what can I do to diversify, to diversify my risk and also hopefully make more money by finding, you know, other sources of revenue that I can't find through Amazon.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think you see a lot of businesses kind of go through that.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, they start with Amazon or vice versa.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: They start with their own website and then they expand to Amazon.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: So it really works both ways, but it's all about diversifying A, the risk of the platforms that you're reliant upon for your business, and then B, finding new ways to connect with customers because there are people who don't use Amazon to purchase or who don't start on Amazon, just like there are people who only use Amazon.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, the ideal scenario for most businesses is to be everywhere where the potential customer is, whether that be Amazon, their own website, um, Walmart, etc.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and of course, the other big benefit of going direct to consumer yourself is just having more control over the relationships, the upsells, the customer service, the um, you know, the lack of fees that you have to pay Amazon.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so there are some of those, some of those benefits as well.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that's always a big thing when I meet with brands.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's like that retention marketing and building lifetime value.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: While Amazon as a platform that made strides to be more transparent, you hit on the head at the end of the day, you don't own that data.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Amazon does, and those are Amazon customers.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: So it's something to keep in mind as businesses are building out their advertising strategies.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: So on that note, what are what are the primary benefits of a diversified advertising approach for e-commerce, Brendan?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so let's kind of double-click on that, on that retention and owning the customer side of things.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: So with Amazon, obviously your ability to communicate with the customer after they purchase from you is limited.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Your ability to you know to do upsells, to tailor the experience is very limited because you're working within Amazon's ecosystem.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: And there's often, I would say, with ecosystems like that, a little bit of a race to a bottom, to the bottom, where you you know they're always trying to get prices down to be more competitive.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Reviews are certainly a factor, so that's one place where you can shine.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: But even there, you know, there are limitations on requesting reviews and how you approach things there.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: With your own website, you have complete control over that.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so what we see a lot of advertisers doing, especially as I'd say e-commerce has gotten more difficult in some ways over the last couple of years, is looking for ways to create an experience for people on their website to communicate what makes their brand different and why price isn't the only factor in that purchase.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Why, hey, maybe we shouldn't be racing to the bottom to just, you know, cut our margins until we're not making any money.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: But hey, we're able to give a really great experience.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when we send you a package, it is gift wrap, it is we're selling you, you know, sending you coupons for your next purchase from us.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: We're able to create a loyalty program to have uh customers who really like your product refer other friends and basically thinking through creatively, okay, how can we yes, capture a customer initially and get that first order, but then how do we increase that lifetime value of the customer?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's that lifetime value is what differentiates a lot of mediocre to poor e-commerce brands from the great brands right now, because when you increase that lifetime value, you can then afford to be more aggressive to bring those those customers in to begin with, and you're kind of inherently gonna be able to in a better position than a lot of your competitors.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: That makes total sense.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, what I hear too lifetime value and the great customer experience.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: I know uh I'm guilty of shopping on Amazon.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, I I drank the Kool-Aid and the shipping and stuff uh is there, but there is something to be said when you buy from some of these, you know, smaller, even medium-sized businesses that zero point, the gift wrapping, I've received handwritten cards and those types of um behaviors drive they drive us to come back.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh also, and I'd love to get your take on this, but I also know that on the website you can increase your average order value by having like buy two, get this for free, and there's all these different tactics.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: Have you seen this employed effectively with some of the brands that you've worked with?
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: A hundred percent.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd say some of the most common tactics probably are you know the the upsell slash cross sell.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, just say, you know, the cross-sell of hey, while they're going through the checkout process, hey, you want to get this?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Whether it's you know adding on a subscription, you know, warranty type of thing or getting another, you know, you're buying a pair of sheets, cool.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get a pillow as well.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Things like that.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Then I've seen some success with upsells as well, where hey, after someone purchases whatever they're purchasing, you actually give them the option to, hey, you want to add this to your order.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you've already paid us, really easy.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: You want to go ahead and add this on.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: That can work well.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, subscriptions is another area where you can really increase customer lifetime value.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, within Amazon, there are some subscription um you know options as well.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: But uh with your own website, um, I did a webinar a month or two ago, maybe two months ago, with uh a um service called stay.ai, and they're completely focused on Shopify websites and helping them with subscriptions and using AI to you know uh tailor promotions to maximize how long those customers actually stay around.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, they can predict when someone may be you know preparing to leave that subscription and hey, send them a coupon code or send them an offer to keep them, things like that.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of things you can you can play around with.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then you know, you can like add things that we know we talked about, you know, gift wrapping, things like that as well.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Basically just thinking through how can I how can I provide value to the customer?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, something that they want, but how can I keep getting that average order value, that lifetime value up so that I've got some padding in my margins and um actually actually making some profit and not just in that you know endless cycle of uh buy the inventory, sell it, we didn't make any profit, buy it again, and uh and go on and on.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, nailed it on the head of AI.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, dude, it's gonna be a matter of time before AI uh is just gonna be tapped into my bank account because I'm just gonna be ordering and doing all these upsells.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's way smarter than I am for sure.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: But on that note, I'd love to kind of dig into some advertising now.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I love to do scenarios, so let's just pretend only because I'm an Amazon guy, let's pretend I'm an Amazon-only brand.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually get this all the time.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh let's say I sell water bottles, let's do something pretty random.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I'm coming to you, John, and I'm like, hey, I'm tap.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we're doing X amount on Amazon.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: My I'm seeing diminishing returns on my ad spend, and now I'm looking to expand.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how can I acquire new customers and build that?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what would what would this be like?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like what's some of the advice you tell me, and then how would we get started?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, first I would want to have a conversation with you about the numbers and about the margins, because there are some brands who Amazon makes sense for, but their own website doesn't make sense for because it is expensive to get, you know, acquire your own customers out there.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: And let's let's take water bottles as an example.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you're selling uh, let's let's say you're selling a$5 water bottle through Amazon.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: If you give organic rankings on Amazon, that can actually, you know, that that can work and maybe even maybe some strategic paid ads there as well.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: But if you try and go over, let's say run Google Ads campaigns selling$5 water bottles, you're gonna lose a lot of money unless you have some way to make that your loss leader into, again, that lifetime value where, hey, now I've got, you know, I sell them a water bottle, I've got the customer, great.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm selling them, you know, personalized gear and hydration stuff and camelbacks or whatever.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really a lot of it comes down to the strategy of okay, what's what's our margin?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: What can we afford to pay to acquire a new customer?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then um looking at the looking at the platforms that we can use to advertise, which generally are going to be page search and page social, page search, Google, you know, the the primary thing that matters in page search and page social, uh, Facebook and Instagram are certainly still the biggest players there.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And just kind of running the numbers and saying, do we think we can be profitable for you based upon your numbers?
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: If the answer is yes, uh, which hopefully it will be, then it's a matter of, okay, well, let's, you know, let's get the website created.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, we got to get things ported over on that side.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's plenty of CMS options you can use out there.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Shopify is our go-to recommendation just because it makes everything really simple and it's a fantastic fit for most businesses.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, get that website created.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: But also then there we could talk with you about, you know, let's say you have 50 SKUs on Amazon.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you shouldn't start with 50 SKUs on your website.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've got five best sellers and we should just really hone things towards what's working best for you or what you have the best margins on, and then kind of work our way out from there.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so lots of you know, lots of nuance, obviously, per per business, but always want to start with the numbers and see what does success look like, and is that realistic to achieve through advertising?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful, well said, and actually that's really interesting too.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned five dollar water bottles.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: What is a good price point where you would consider because our experience with driving search traffic to Amazon, for example, it costs more, and like there's a fee you pay to get somebody to cross-platform.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, a lot of times like we won't advertise products even on Amazon if it's under$15, because like that the cost of the clicks and everything else, like economically, it's it's really tough.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: So, what does that look like in your world?
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: I would say if your price if your average order value is less than$50, it's gonna be tough to uh really you know sell a lot through Google Ads, for example.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's always there's always um outliers, there's always always an exception to every rule.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: But just given what traffic costs these days on Google, what kind of conversion rate you can expect, um, if you have a price point under$50, um, it's it's it's challenging because you know, numbers, you can only only do so much with the numbers, they kind of are what they are.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um and again, I say average order value too, rather than price point, because if you sell five dollar water bottles, but you have found a way to sell them in bulk and find bulk people, and so you're selling, you know, 10 water bottles at the same time.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, maybe you can make it work because you are you know have enough margin across those, across that sale to make it work.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: So again, you got to be creative thinking through well, even if I have a of a cheap, you know, a cheap product, a low price point product, what can I do to get my average order value up?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then maybe we could figure something out.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well said, and I like that.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: $50, I mean that's a really good base point.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, average order value too.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's something to consider.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: If a lot of times, too, with these lower price items, we'll do the same thing.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: How can we bundle them together to get that AOV up so we so we can turn on advertising?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: So that's really effective.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so let's spin it the other way.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: I have an e-commerce business now, I'm not on Amazon, so let's take that and put that to the side.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I'm gonna start advertising.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: Brand new store.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: I got a$50 item that I think will sell really well.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I have a role as target kind of what's the basic getting started point with Google Ads?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: Are we just going balls through the wall and we're just gonna do all the pay-per-click possible?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Or is there like, you know, is it remarketing like what's kind of the structure on our initial setup?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: I have a phrase I like to use a lot with clients and it's low-hanging fruit.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I like to start with what's a low-hanging fruit?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: What's likely gonna give us the biggest bang for our buck?
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: Start conservatively and then work our way up from there.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Cause it's it's really easy to spend money with Google, uh, but it's hard to spend it profitably.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: So generally, you know, for a new business or a new website in the position that you're um you know, extrapolating there, we're gonna start with Google shopping campaigns.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so those are the types of ads that come up.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: You search for something, you search, you know, buy a water bottle and you see some pictures of water bottles, you see price, you see the name of the product, and you click on it, it takes you to a product page.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: For most e-commerce businesses, that type of ad has the best conversion rate in ROI because you're you're somewhat qualifying that traffic before they click.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: They've already seen the product, they know what the price is, and so they have a little more sense of what they're getting into when they click on the ad.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: So generally we'll start with that as the lowest hanging fruit.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: And depending upon budget and depending upon what it is that we're selling, we'll often also start with what they call search campaigns, which is just the regular text ads that you see when people search on Google.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then usually we'll throw some remarketing in as well.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Remarketing is not expensive, especially starting out because you're gonna have a relatively small audience and you're only paying to reach the people in your audience.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: So you're, you know, you could for most businesses starting out, you know,$100,$150 a month of remarketing is gonna be plenty to um to reach you know an audience with a decent frequency on Google as you start to build the number of visitors to your website.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um so we'll often you know run that alongside of those Google shopping and uh search campaigns.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful, Google shopping too.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, Mike, manage my expectations.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: So if you were telling me what would be a rough timeline in the perfect scenario, as we know, inventory, there's indexation issues and all this other stuff.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: But I was gonna be like, um, I'm willing to spend how long do you think before I break even?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what's a typical of engagement for a launch brand in terms of time frame to see a good ROAS on their investment?
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a it's a super common question and important question.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and on average, I would say the three-month mark is what we try to set the expectation for, which is hey, it's gonna take some time to get things where we want to be, but within three months, we should have a really good sense for are we meeting your goals or are we you know close and have the right trajectory, or is it not working?
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's not to say that you're not gonna see results until three months in.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, one of the beauties of digital advertising is you can see results very quickly.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna know, hey, are people clicking on our ads?
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, are people starting to purchase, et cetera?
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: But it takes that time to learn from the data and say, okay, people are clicking these ads but not converting.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: We needed to, you know, change this message or stop targeting these types of keywords.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: We need to pivot over here.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so those first couple of months for a new business are lots of testing of pivoting both on the campaign side as well often as on the product and website side.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: And on that note, too.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: So, what are some of the common mistakes you find when you're taking over advertising accounts from these campaigns?
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: Do you find that uh oftentimes than not the owner's nephew is running these campaigns and it's just a complete uh you know circus?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely, definitely seen that more than once.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I would say there's you know several common mistakes.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Probably the most common mistake is not having accurate conversion tracking set up in the account.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: And um, people often make that mistake.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: A, it's it's not always simple to figure out how to set that up, um, or B, you know, they don't understand the importance of it.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason it's so important, I mean, there's the two reasons.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: A, yes, you want to understand how well the ads are working, what's your ROI, that's obviously incredibly important.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: But also, you need to understand which aspects of the campaigns are driving that ROI so that you can improve.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you, you know, if all you know is, yep, I'm running campaigns, I'm making X ROI, cool.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't know which 20% of the ad spend right now is driving all that all that revenue, and we can cut the 80% of waste and move that elsewhere or not.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so conversion tracking is is crucial.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's also crucial because most of the best bidding strategies that you can use these days on Google leverage that conversion data.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: They're they're automated bidding strategies using Google's AI, where you say, hey, I'm trying to achieve 300% return on ad spend.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you what's what my return is and where it's coming from.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then Google is able to make decisions about how much to bid, when to serve your ads, et cetera, based on way more signals than any human can uh you know can can evaluate to meet those goals.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: So conversion tracking, I'd say, is a big uh a big miss.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's a lot of confusion when it comes to a particular type of campaign on Google that Google pushes very, very heavily towards e-commerce advertisers, and it's called performance max campaigns.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's a lot of controversy, a lot of discussions about it.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, a performance max campaign is where you give Google a lot of flexibility to serve your ads across all of Google's platforms.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: So that's Google search, um, you know, text ads on, or I should say, Google Shopping, text ads on Google Search, YouTube, Google's display network, Gmail, basically the whole kit and caboodle.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: Google says, hey, tell us what you're selling, and we think we can find the right people, regardless of where they're at on our platforms and drive results for you.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that can work very, very well, and it can also work very, very poorly.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it really depends on how much conversion data you have, how you're structuring things, how you're setting things up.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so I see a lot of people who trying to use a PMAX, we call it PMAX performance max campaign, and it's struggling and they don't know how to improve it because it's kind of a black box and there's not a lot of levers that most advertisers know to push.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so they just kind of get stuck.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't know what to do.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Help me.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then too, so what what are some of the levers you can actually pull?
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: Is it do you need To know coding, is it like uh you know, obviously there's some advertising knowledge involved, but uh, you know, how do you manipulate PMAX?
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: Speaking from somebody who really doesn't have an idea of how that works.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, fantastic question.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: So a couple categories.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'd say the biggest ones are what you put in, you get out.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: So the quality of the data that you send to Google is super important.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: Conversion tracking, like we talked about, super important, but also the actual um product data.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: So the titles of your products, the images, descriptions, things like that.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: Performance max campaigns are very based upon that, and Google's looking at that to decide what is relevant to serve your ads to.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you're not giving, you know, very compelling or very precise product product titles as an example, Google's not going to be able to do as good a job at figuring out what searches are relevant to you and whether or not they should show your ad to a particular search.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: So really sending good data, good product feed data to Google is important.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then categorization is important as well.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: So making sure that you're categorizing by kind of what's what's important.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: You might have, for example, separate campaigns for different types of products if you have multiple categories of products, or you might break it out by margin if you're saying, hey, I've got really good margin for these products, so I can have a higher return on ad spend target here.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: I need it low over here.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, basically, you know, strategically structuring things based upon your goals or based upon your your product mix is really important.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then um there's also you know, some more advanced strategies.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we'll we'll run shopping campaigns alongside a performance max campaign.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes we see that actually give it a boost for whatever reason and both perform better when they're running at the same time.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um and there's obviously more as well, but those are you know some of the top things that that come to mind as kind of hacks or tips for uh for PMAX campaigns.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: Solid tips.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it's actually kind of no surprise that like uh the keyword architecture on a listing uh would play.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, I guess that goes to show you if anybody's still doing keyword stuffing uh and you're gonna use PMAX, that's a great way to kind of shoot yourself in the foot.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: So running shopping campaigns along PMAX, so if they're completely separate campaigns, but because they're running in the system, PMAX is gonna you know take in that data essentially and start to make even more informed decisions based on how consumers are finding and purchasing the products.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: Largely, yes.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: So that I guess a good way to put it.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'd say also another aspect is um Google has a lot of flexibility again with PMAX with where they show their ads, where they show your ads.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so, for example, often when we see PMAX campaigns going south is when there are a lot of there's a lot of display traffic where Google's not showing your ads when people are searching.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: They're showing your ads when they're browsing weather.com or whatever.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're getting maybe a bunch of cheap traffic, but that's not converting well at all.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so we found sometimes that when we also run those shopping campaigns alongside of it, that it seems something in the system seems to kind of force Google to be like, oh, you know what?
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um this this shopping campaign is working well.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe PMAX should also have more shopping um impressions and less display impressions.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so sometimes, not always, but sometimes it can kind of help bring it back on track and kind of give guide rails to Google to learn itself, you know, what what is going to work well for that particular advertiser.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's really interesting.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not surprised.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, display in general, it's not uh it's not really a ROAS driving machine, it's kind of like a brand awareness place.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: So it's no surprise that you know Google wants to spend money just like all the platforms want you to spend money.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: So no, it's crazy that they would recognize that opportunity and obviously push it uh on the sellers.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, 100%.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Google is um yeah, Google likes to make money.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I'm I'm very grateful for Google because uh much of much of my job is built around Google, much of our agency built around Google, but definitely, you know, got to keep them accountable and uh always keep our clients' best interests in mind because not every recommendation from Google is necessarily in the advertiser's best interest.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds like you're a good steward of the brand you represent.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: That makes a lot of sense.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: On that note, so let's uh let's spin this around.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: So let's just say we have a little bit of a larger brand, uh medium sized, maybe I'm doing a million to two million dollars a year.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: Let's just stick with the water bottle category because why not?
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, how do you guys do like full funnel marketing and advertising Google with Google?
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: Do you do you implement SEO tactics?
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like what would it look like when I say I'm good on PPC, but I want to start building awareness and I want to build my audience.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: What are some recommendations you would make to help me grow my brand and build my awareness?
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: And how would we measure that?
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, a couple areas.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: So the first key areas I'd look at are YouTube within the Google ecosystem, and then also talk talk about social, um, especially paid social.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: So Facebook, Instagram.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: So with search and shopping, they're really great at what I call pull marketing, which is where uh someone searches for something and then you pull them in.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: You're saying, hey, we're right here, come on in.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: YouTube, um, Facebook, Instagram, et cetera, really good at push marketing, where you are identifying the type of person that you think might be interested in the product that you're selling, and you are pushing your message out to them and saying, Hey, please come check us out.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so YouTube is super, super powerful right now, both shorts and long form at kind of higher funnel, uh, getting people into a funnel, creating awareness, also remarketing, even after they've been to your website or watched other video ads.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: So we do a lot of a lot of YouTube advertising for clients.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then also similarly on the Facebook, Instagram side, again, often with a lot of video, because video is very, very powerful on the uh the page social campaigns as well, of making people aware who wouldn't otherwise be searching for what you sell.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a lot of people might might not know, might not think to search for a customized water bottle, but they see an ad for it, they see it on YouTube and they say, Oh, that looks really cool.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got a you know, birthday present coming up.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give my mom a customized water bottle with her favorite color or name on it, and you've you know reached people who you never would have reached through search, whether paid or organic.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: That is pretty, and it makes a lot of sense too.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: I know I make uh a lot of times I'll I'll find something that uh I didn't even know I had the problem I needed, but you know, look at YouTube knowing how I search and my behavior, and they're able to really recommend some you know great products or great classes or whatever else I'm searching.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: So that really resonates with absolutely how do you guys tie so search and social like when we initially get started, do you guys go right to video, or are we mainly starting with that display and you're using a bit of search and social working together?
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: Do you mature into video?
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like how does that what does that kind of look like?
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, video some of it depends on on the client for sure.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: So some clients um are you know very into video and have the capability to create good videos, and so we have a lot to work with.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, for a lot of clients who don't have that capability, we will help them by kind of bridging the gap between them and content creators to get videos made for them, you know, kind of UGC content, unboxing videos, reviews, things like that.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we can help facilitate that to use that and paid advertising.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: We see that that style of ad work well on uh on YouTube, on you know, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, et cetera.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I would say when it comes to Google's display network, that kind of is my my last go-to if we're talking about proactively pushing out.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: For remarketing, I'll still use it for remarketing because I know the people who are seeing those ads are probably pretty relevant because they've been to the website.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: But if I'm going out and trying to find cold people and get them into my funnel, um I would rather go to YouTube with video content first before I go to the display network because there's just a lot of trash, traffic, and bots and things like that on the display network.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I very rarely see a campaign with you know great numbers, um, a proactive campaign with great numbers from a display network.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: That makes a lot of sense.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: To be honest with you, it's pretty much the same on Amazon.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: There is a place for use a lot for remarketing, but uh yeah, they're just you know, you're catching people who aren't always in the mindset to be shopping, and there's tons of bots and just uh not good platforms to be showing your ad.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just a drawback uh being display.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um then OQs share some insights on the importance of using multiple ad formats, whether it's video display, search in your diversified strategy.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, every every type of ad is gonna hit different, and often people are gonna need to see multiple ads before they convert.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so really ad format, a lot of that comes down to the channel that you're using to reach people.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're running search campaigns on Google, it's gonna be text ads with, you know, you can add some image assets to them, but mostly it's text.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so there it's about okay, testing what is the text that performs best.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: If it's shopping ads, again, it's it's your product image is the primary uh imagery that's gonna appear in those.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so you can test, okay, well, what happens if we use lifestyle photos versus just product images versus different color variations of our products, things like that.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'd say it's it's paid social, which is where you have more variety.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, in your feed on Facebook, you can run uh video ads, you can run image ads with text, you can vary the amount of text.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so there it's it's good to just test different iterations, uh different formats, and to have multiple options as well, because even with Facebook, it's not just the Facebook feed.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: There's a number of different placements.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: You can have it have ads appear in in the messages area, you can have it in the feed, you can have it on desktop versus mobile, different sizes, reels, et cetera.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so just giving a number of options to the system to play with can be very helpful at maximizing how many places you can reach your target audience in.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then also just you know, testing different different strategies, different messages, different approaches to see which really pops off and attracts people.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's something you know on the Google side of things, especially you know, search and shopping, people aren't you know liking the ads, they're not adding comments and things like that.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: So it's more click-through rate and conversion rate based, seeing how things are impacted there.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: On Facebook, Instagram, it's much more engagement of hey, if if you have an ad that people are commenting on a lot for whatever reason, sometimes even if it's negative and positive, but there's engagement, that ad can really take off.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you can really see legs under that particular ad where for whatever reason it just hit and then the algorithm kind of picks on that or picks up on that.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so you can see an ad, you know, run for a couple of weeks and have really, really good results.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then often it'll start to tailor off because of ad fatigue.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: You've reached all the kind of low-hanging fruit with that ad copy.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: They've either seen it and not engaged or already engaged, and so then you want to start freshening things up so that you're not just showing the same, uh, the same video to people, you know, 25 times in a row.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, beautiful.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: I've heard like weird hacks too, where if you find a video that works really well, get that influencer to reshoot the video and just have them put on a different shirt or in a different background.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: Do you find strategies like that pretty effective?
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think that can definitely can be effective.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have um as much data.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I can't point to a specific case study to say, hey, here's where we did this and it particularly worked, but the logic is sound, which is, hey, if you see a type of message works well, then yep, how can we still leverage that learning, not just create a completely different ad, but how can we leverage the aspects of what seem to be working ad to add and then vary them or improve them so that we're we're optimizing over time and getting better, not just throwing tons and tons of spaghetti at the wall and not learning from the uh from the sticking?
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: So testing, I what I hear in this conversation a lot, test, test, test.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: And like as any good market or advertiser, we're really data scientists.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: Can you tell me just how you guys do basic testing and what are some best practices for our listeners in terms of like if they're gonna run some of these tests, like how do you do it?
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: What do you look at?
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I'd say there's there's low-level testing and high-level testing.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: So kind of low-level testing is let's say within platforms is seeing, okay, which how are ads comparing with each other, how are different campaigns comparing?
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so there you're looking, usually some of the common metrics you're looking at are click-through rate.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: So how is people engaging?
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: You're looking at conversion rate once they get through.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, are they converting or not?
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're looking at sometimes we'll look at something called um conversions divided by impressions, which looks at kind of factors in both the click-through rate and the conversion rate to see which ad is more likely to get a conversion, regardless of what one of those two numbers are.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because you might have a ad with a great click-through rate, but a low conversion rate, or vice versa.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so it can be hard to know which ad maybe is working best.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: So if you divide divide impressions by conversions and look at that rate, that can be helpful as well.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, then you've also got kind of bigger picture testing, which is hey, we haven't been running Facebook.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna test running Facebook.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: We want to see how this impacts our numbers.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so we with most of our e-commerce clients, we also look at something called media efficiency ratio, which is where we're looking, you know, often on a monthly basis to see how much revenue is coming in, how much are we spending in advertising just across the board?
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then when we make big picture moves, like adding on a new channel, how does that impact overall revenue and the efficiency of that?
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: Do we see revenue went up?
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, spend went up, obviously, as well.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: Do we see revenue stayed flat and we just spent more money?
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's not getting more people into the funnel.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so that can be helpful for just kind of testing bigger picture changes to see how that's impacting the overall health of the uh the company.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: I love that, right?
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: Media efficiency ratio.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: What a great KPI for somebody who's uh like that uh story early on, somebody maybe starting out, like where to test, because obviously it gets expensive to be on all these platforms.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: It costs money.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh every click costs something, right?
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: It sure does.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: The uh yeah, the days of uh two cent clicks on on Google search back in the Wild West, those are those are long gone.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: So it is it is an expensive world, and that's why you've got to be really smart and creative and strategic because um, yeah, it it's it's not cheap.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: I believe it.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh on that note, so what are some of the emerging advertising trends that e-commerce brands should consider incorporating into their strategies?
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, like TikToks right now.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: Do you guys recommend that?
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: Or what are some trends you're seeing that you guys are trying to get behind as an agency?
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: I would say one trend um is the kind of shop advertising with TikTok, with Facebook Instagram, where uh those platforms let people actually purchase through the platform, just like Amazon is a marketplace, um but people don't even have to leave the um security of the Facebook uh platform, for example, and they can purchase right through there.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: That order goes into your Shopify account or whatever, and you send it out to them.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: So that's something that we've seen uh really growing and I think is going to continue to grow.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think social commerce is going to continue to grow, just makes sense given how much people, how much time, especially young people, are spending on social platforms.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I would also say I mentioned early in the conversation, e-commerce I think has gotten harder over the past couple of years.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I see plenty of businesses who have seen you know significant drops in revenue, especially if they're comparing to COVID times when uh there was you know lots of lots of money in e-commerce kind of sloshing around.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're really looking hard at their margins, at their costs, reevaluating their marketing funnel, their cost per customer acquisition, and thinking through, okay, what are some maybe hard decisions that we need to make?
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because we had some really good times and now things are a little bit more lean.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so let's um let's make sure we're watching every penny and being as efficient as possible.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that will that will continue to be the case for a lot of advertisers.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I think you know, ultimately the power, I'm I'm still a big believer in the power of video.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's nothing new, but I just see YouTube is still continuing to grow.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: I see video working so well on most social platforms as a way to make people aware of you, to show off your product or service, to get them into your funnel.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, video is is really powerful.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so for a lot of businesses, I recommend you know, have a video strategy, um, both organic and paid.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: Leverage that on your website as well.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if a if a picture is worth a thousand words, I think a video is inherently a thousand images.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so think through how you can um incorporate that into your product pages as well, your website to increase your conversion rate and ultimately drive more sales.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well said, totally agree.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: I love what you have there.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: TikTok, the shopping that's huge.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh e-commerce is getting harder.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: I remember, give or take, around the 20, 2021 time, we work with a lot of brands with like top line growth at all costs, and what we've seen pretty much since 2023, as things have been reset.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's been a lot more focused on efficiency and profitability.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really interesting you guys have seen the same trends on your side.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: So this was super helpful.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to chat a little bit more about Stub Group and kind of how you guys do business.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it you guys have an impressive reputation as a premier Google partner and a top 1% performer globally.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: That is crazy.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: So, what specific strategies or approaches do you believe set Stub Group apart uh from other other digital advertising agencies?
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, great question.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, get asked that a lot, and a lot of it comes down to just the basics.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm not I'm not gonna pretend that we're the only agency out there who does this, but I think looking at the basics, which is really caring about our clients.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's easy to say that, but we genuinely do care about our clients.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes that means having the hard conversations too, going back to what we talked about, you know, with the numbers.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: If if a brand comes to us and says, hey, we want to spend a bunch of money on Google, but we look at the numbers with them and we say, look, we can't be successful, you know, we can't make you money.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna just take their money and run.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna we're gonna tell them that.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: If they're an existing customer and we've tried things and it's not working because their numbers just don't work, we're gonna be honest with them, not try and you know, eke out some management fees for a couple more months, but say, look, you know, this is where things are at.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, conversely, too, uh sometimes you'll have customers who um, how should I put it, don't operate in their own best interest.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so you have to have kind of a hard conversation on the other end of things and nicely, transparently, diplomatically say, hey, the only way we can be successful is if you trust us and if you give us what we need to be successful.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um and if you do that, I think we can do great things for you.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're gonna you know micromanage the campaigns and not actually let us do what you've hired us to do, then hey, let's part ways because this isn't gonna work out.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I think really caring for clients is important.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, again, very, very conversion focused, tracking as much as we can and then importing that into the accounts and then optimizing based upon that, um, using Google's um, you know, advanced automated bidding strategies and things like that is important.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then I think the last thing I'll say is trying to have a really good balance of looking at the the tools and recommendations provided by the advertising platforms.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by that is some agencies kind of take the approach of if Google says to do this, let's not do this because Google just wants to make money.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, they do want to make money, but also sometimes they have great ideas and recommendations.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and at the same time, you have agencies who say, Well, Google said to do this, so I'm just gonna click yes to all the recommendations and run with it.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: And those are often those accounts that come to us and we look at it like, yeah, did you know that you were spending money on this?
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you probably don't want to be, you know, serving money for people looking for dogs when you sell scuba gear.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so it's about finding that balance, being that that steward of each of our clients' budget and ad spend, and also their advocate, both for them with themselves as well as with the advertising platforms.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: And those are those are things we strive for.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: Don't get it right every single day, but strive towards it every single day to get it right as much as possible.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I mean, hit it on the head, good customer experiences, every everything, and just being transparent at the end of the day, uh, it'll pay itself forward by just doing good work and being honest with people.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: So sounds like you guys are running a tight shop.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, our last question to kind of wrap this up.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_01: We love to talk about the future of e-commerce and technology.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna take this opportunity to ask as the landscape of e-commerce continues to evolve, what emerging?
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, we already did this question earlier.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna edit that out real quick.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, Carlos.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um so now to wrap it up, we're gonna go to our final questions.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: This is my favorite topic, the future of e-commerce and technology.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: So, John, I'd love to pick your brain about this.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, with the increasing importance of omnichannel marketing, how do you envision the role of Google ads shaping the future of e-commerce, particularly in driving traffic and conversions across various platforms and marketplaces?
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think Google is still very, very well positioned for a couple of reasons.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, they've done a good job in some areas of diversifying how they reach people.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: So most people, when they think of Google, they think of Google search.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: But YouTube is you know, makes more revenue uh than Netflix.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh YouTube um is the second biggest search engine after just Google.com.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, YouTube is a Tremendous factor that I think a lot of people underestimate and don't realize how how big it is.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're well positioned with YouTube.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and of course, they have other things like um, you know, smaller things like their Discover app, you know, Gmail where they serve ads, things like that.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: But they're positioned to reach a lot of people in a lot of areas, and they're best positioned because they know what people are searching for.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: They are the search engine that the majority of people use.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: When you think of a Facebook or an Instagram or something like that, they make a lot of inferences about what people are engaging with, um, what they seem to like or don't like, what information they entered in their profile, et cetera.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: But you saw them take a massive hit when the iOS 14 app changes came out because they weren't able to use a lot of that data that they used historically to see how people were navigating across apps and make those inferences.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas Google still has so much first party data because every day, you know, probably dozens of times a day, you are typing into Google what you want.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: And Google knows that, and they are really good at giving you what you want.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think for the for the foreseeable future, Google is gonna continue to play a very, very important role in the ecosystem of e-commerce advertising.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and probably the the most biggest thing I'm interested in seeing is just how uh LLMs like ChatGPT, Gemini, et cetera, how those are going to impact the way that people search and whether it's just gonna be, you know, a relatively small percentage of people who change their search behavior to maybe starting with those things, or if we see a significant percentage of people who started their searches on Amazon.com or on Google.com potentially switching over and starting with, hey, what are the five best water bottles, Chat GPT, and where can I buy them?
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a lot of unknowns there, but something I'm fascinated to uh to explore and see what happens.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: That is actually so funny you mentioned that.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: I was uh I had a conversation with another agency owner maybe a week or two ago, and he told me actually he stopped searching on Google, he just searches everything on Chat GPT now.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: So it's uh it's crazy that we could have a whole generation.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think search is going anywhere.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_01: You have a whole generation like myself hooked on it.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_01: Google is my first stop when I'm researching anything.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but yeah, I think some of the consumer behavior is gonna change and uh LMN, ChatGPT, they're they're not going anywhere.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: Really great insights.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: What do you uh before we jump up, what do you think of Bard?
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: How do you like uh how do you like Google's AI tool?
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: Have you got to play with it yet?
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: I have I right now I use ChatGPT the most.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's tough because they're all changing so quickly that you know one could be better today and the other is better tomorrow.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so I've taken more the approach of, hey, I'm just gonna kind of stick with one for right now because it is also an industry leader and I'm not not scared about it getting too far behind at the moment.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, Google, Google's got some great things as well.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Slaw is another one I've played around with that does some things well.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think you know, each one kind of has strengths and weaknesses, but again, they they change so frequently and uh get better so much that it's it's it's very hard to pick a winner because that might be different tomorrow.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: That is so funny.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's the new Wild West.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we'll be telling our kids, I remember when it is rolling it out and it changed the universe.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: Very much so.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I think it's an inflection point for sure, just like you know, the internet was previously.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, maybe, maybe not, maybe not as quickly as some people think, although I'm I'm nowhere close to the smartest person in the in the room when it comes to thinking through that.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I think it's it's a massive, massive change that we'll be talking to our kids about.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_01: All right, John, thank you so much for these valuable insights and and help and coming on and sharing all your knowledge with us.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: We've learned so much from everything from you know who's right to be using Google Ads, how to actually segment that, different price points for consideration, doing full funnel.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_01: We even got the chat a little bit about AI, lots of YouTube and video that I wasn't aware of that is so involved with helping brands grow.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: With that being said, jam-packed episode.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: I hope our listeners got as much value as I did getting to interview you.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: But before we wrap up, Chad, I'd love to tell you where where can we find you and what what should our listeners be looking out for in the future?
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, best place to find info about us is website stubgroup.com.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we've got some free stuff as well.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: So you go to stubgroup.com slash free.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: We like to put up different free resources there.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think right now we have a free Google compliance guide, which is not something we talked about much during this conversation, but something really important to be aware of, especially if you're starting a new e-commerce website.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to get suspended by Google.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I strongly recommend you go download that for free and check that out.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then also YouTube, we put out a lot of free video content.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_00: Check out Stub Group on theirs our uh channel name, and you'll see lots uh lots of content about Google and how to, uh we like to say, dominate Google ads.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: Amen to that.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: John, thanks for being with us.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: Have a wonderful rest of your day.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks so much for having me.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Selling on Giants.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you found today's discussion with John on demystifying your advertising strategy for Amazon and e-commerce brands as enlightening and practical as I did.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_01: Implementing a diversified approach can be a game changer for your business, offering both increased reach and reduce risk.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_01: If you enjoyed this episode and found it valuable, please take a moment to like, follow, and subscribe to Selling on Giants.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_01: Your support helps us bring more expert insights and practical tips from industry leaders like John to help you scale your business.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_01: Stay tuned for our next episode where we'll continue to explore strategies and tactics that can drive your e commerce success.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, happy selling!