Kirk Williams' DTC Google Ads Strategy Actually Works transcript

I talk so much on this show about meta ads and using meta ads to grow your business but the truth is a large portion probably the number two advertising budget line item on your pnl and maybe even the number one ought to be for you Google ads and the reason I talk more about Google ads is because I don't know it that well I have tried recently and as you about to hear in this interview I've given up on trying to be good at Google ads because there are just too many details that I don't understand and when I don't understand them I go to my friend Kirk Williams my guest on this show Kirk is the founder the CEO owner operator of zet marketing a Google ads focused marketing agency and I talk with Kirk about Google ads anytime I can anytime I have a question because I trust him he's been in the game for a long time he knows his stuff really really well and understands the intricacies of the platform like few people that I know so hello and welcome to the Andrew Ferris podcast you're going to like this interview so much if you want to hear about why Google is in an antitrust lawsuit right now including some conversation around auction manipulation why and whether or not you should be using performance Max is that a viable category for your e-commerce business and what would you do what would Kirk do I should say if he had a you know midsize e-commerce business $5 million e-commerce business how would he set up his Google ads account if he was just really starting to invest in that platform you would like this conversation a lot let's jump into my interview Kirk Williams Kirk Williams at PPC Kirk how you doing good thanks for having me yeah man I actually can't believe that it has taken this long to do this I've been thinking recently about how I talk meta all the time and like I need to talk Google a little bit more because like the truth is many many e-commerce budgets ad budgets are like 60 plus percent 60 to 70% meta and 30 plus perc Google like it's like most accounts that I've run most clients that I've run they have some Google spend even if they don't have anything else besides meta and most of the bigger ones that I've run at some point get to like being a significant portion of Google spend and when I even when I talk about the idea I've done an episode at some point called like don't diversify your ad spend and the idea is like basically just spend your money on meta but I'm I actually have Google sort of in a separate bucket you probably should be spending some money on Google and yet I never talk about it because one of the things I've realized especially in the last year plus is that I suck at Google I've taken over and managed some Google spend for some clients and I can do a pretty good job not wasting money for clients but I do a very bad job actually pushing the account forward and so when I've wanted to do that I've leaned on you and your team at zet so anyway tell people about you who are you I did some intro already to talk about it but give us the Google Bonafide so that people know they should listen to you in this conversation yeah definitely so yeah thanks for having me I've been in the industry for about 12 years I think now so started actually in-house working at a at a brand it was a small like restaurant supplier coffee equipment supplier that sort of thing and I was I was the guy on the content stuff so they would hand me like a manufacturer like tech sheet right and I would I would literally like copy that word for word into the the product pages build those and then at some point they're like hey you want to give Google ads a try we'd like to try it I'm like sure let's give that a try so I started doing that loved it started getting my own clients eventually went out my own as a consultant added a few more people on as well so there's just five of us uh at zet we only do paid search so we only do Google and Microsoft and a few years back I started doing some Facebook stuff and I just didn't like it to be honest like it was I don't know there was this was probably five six years ago and there was enough complexity of trying to figure out like I was trying to figure out the creative side of things right even how to price it and I I became aware of the fact that a lot of my time I had I had hired someone and they were trying to figure out the Facebook thing with me and a lot of my time was focused on that and I realized like man I just keep getting these like Google leads right Without Really Trying just because that's where i' done my speaking my writing and that sort of thing and so at that point I was like I don't even like Facebook so we're just going to kill that side of the business lean all into Google and Microsoft since that's kind of what we know how to do and been doing that ever since and really like it so you're telling the exact same story that happened to me over the last year like I started emailing my clients and said I'm not going to manage to Google anymore we need to find somebody else to do this because again I could not waste their money but what you're describing is like trying to go figure out the technical things it's funny because when I started I started both Google and Facebook when I was learning paid paid media at Kao when I was at Kao I was running both Google and Facebook at the time I was pretty good in Google but it was so much simpler this is pre-shopping this is like you know pre YouTube spend I mean I don't I think you could maybe spend a little bit of money on YouTube at the time there was no performance Max there's no smart shopping there's some display in there but yeah it was a very it was a very different game and frankly it was just way simpler and what my experience with running Google ads now and I like Tred to take it back over for people is just that the tool requires more technical knowledge now than it used to which is sort of weird because so much of the Google positioning is around sort of taking that away from people in some ways right like performance Max where it's just like just give us all your stuff and we'll figure it out that kind of idea and at the same time I also feel like I can see the things that I can't I struggle to like actually maximize the tools that's kind of been my experience so I just stopped I'm like I'm just going to focus in this area and I'm gonna find a great contractor or two and you guys are are very high on that list in terms of people I I talk to about this so let's actually talk about this blackbox thing for a second I think there's this sort of interesting jumping off point I don't know how deep you are on on this this is people's concern about Google is that it's a waste of money e-commerce companies are really concerned that it's not incremental and all these things and Google is currently in a lawsuit over some of that stuff is that right I actually haven't paid super close attention to it like can you explain what the Google lawsuit is and maybe why people shouldn't trust them well so okay so I'll caveat this with like I'm not spending all day you know reading all of the court documents that they've released and stuff some of that's been interesting too by the way because then there are some things where the then the judge is like no we're not going to release these you know they release some documents and the judge was like Hey we're not going to release anymore and that's even kind of weird so basically the doj is going after Google is an antitrust uh antitrust case and um I think the big part of it is that like they have made agreements with apple and that sort of thing and so they're concerned that Google is you know giving themselves an unfair advantage in Search and all that sort of stuff that's kind of the big picture it'll be interesting because Google gets sued relatively often I mean you know it's typically the EU too you just have to remember with some of these really huge companies I I just think it's always important to take a step back too there there's a level where even if something big happen so like the EU went after Google a few years back and that's why comparison shopping engines or the comparison shopping Services the CSS that maybe you're familiar with is if you do any sort of advertising outside of the US especially in like Europe you're familiar with the CSS right because now you can have different CSS providers who are placing your shop cing ads in results as well that's because the EU sued Google whatever the specific term is right the EU and after Google and so Google's kind of like okay well we'll you know we'll figure a way around that and they they still do their thing they still grow money sometimes they'll get in trouble and then they're like they'll slap a fine like okay here's $100 million fine or something like that which this happens with meta too and it's always kind of funny to me because you're like you know if anyone's kind of really paying attention in doing the math right some of these findes they slap on for us would be absolutely like lifechanging $100 million you know how could your business survive that right well think about it I mean these cases are probably like a decade long you know they're just basically pushing that out think of how the market cap grows in that decade alone right so by the time like this business even gets there to actually having to pay the fine to whoever they've made that up you know a 100 fold by that time or whatever it might be right it's got to be just a budget line item for them is just like here's how much we expect to pay in legal fees this year and here's how much we're going to get slapped for and we'll just like we'll plan that the way that like I plan the fact that at some point I'm going to have to give a client some money back because I accidentally press the wrong number on the budget at some point you know like I just have I just have a line item for that and it's just the reality that all right mistakes happen and this is part of what this repr this business is and we're just going to assume it's going to be the case and you know for them it's a rounding ER for 100 million bucks you know yeah and so that's one of the reasons why it's kind of a big deal just cuz anytime someone does go after them in terms of especially antitrust is kind of a big deal and then probably there's part of it where it's not right but here's where maybe where things have gotten a little interesting with this case and I don't ever remember this happening before so the main guy I forget who he was I think he's like the VP of search or something like that whatever his main title was Jerry dishler he was one of the main people who were interviewed he's actually resigned now which is super interesting in the last like week or two but he in a lot of his interviews talked through a number of different ways you know as he's being questioned I hate to use the word manipulates cuz that kind of shows where you know my bias already but where Google manipulates the auctions in ways that you know a lot of times advertisers kind of suspected but was basically Google just saying yeah this is what we do and there's a few of them and so that's been maybe one of the ways where this case to me has been different and very interesting and you know I can talk real quickly about a couple of those just because they're they're somewhat interesting yeah this actually gets us towards some of the Tactical questions yeah right exactly you know so one of the things and you know any e-commerce owner listening will not be surprised by this at all with Google which and this is common in auction practices you have something called like bid floors right auction Reserve pricing bid floors and again that's not uncommon in an auction environment basically you know like if you put something on eBay and you're like hey I want to make sure I get at least 25 bucks for this old computer if I don't then I'm just going to keep my computer right that's kind of you know oversimplified example of a bid floor you know Google sets auction Reserve prices which I don't think is the end of the world on one hand but as with all things Google there's always like a little bit of information and then there's kind of some Black Box nature to that of exactly how like reserve prices are set because part of what I've seen over the years is you can have prices where you have barely any competition at all because you can see that in your auction insights within Google you can see your competitors who are you know in your specific auctions you'll have times that youve probably noticed where you know you'll have barely any competitors or nothing at all and you might have like a $25 CPC right and again like people who have been doing ads for a while like with Google you know you remember the old days of if you could find some more like we'd call them longtail keywords that were real specific you could find these keywords for like 20 cents that people were converting on that's one of the ways that Google was awesome because you could find all these specific terms go after them and advertise affordably right so that's one of the way that people really got into it and just like the reserve prices have been going up over time one of the things that came out in this hearing was that they said if we need to hit specific Revenue goals so that the market doesn't get scared before like a quarterly earnings or whatever report like they'll just up all those auction Reserve prices by like five or 10 per. or maybe not all of them I don't know some of them whatever right but just this idea that like in order to hit you know their earnings they'll just yeah just move that dial right at one point you might have seen people talk about this online a few of us like geeky pbcers like we joke about the phrase shaking the couch cushions so if you ever see something on Twitter about someone saying something like just shaking the couch cushions that's one of the phrases that you know Jerry dishler used in there where he's talking about you know sometimes you just shaking the couch cushions to see if you can get a little bit of coins falling out right just this idea that was one example another one was rgsp they said it was only for really big advertisers but basically if an Advertiser won the auction and I don't know this is kind of humorous to me because it almost like they like don't want just that large Advertiser to always win auctions so sometimes they'll just randomly flip that so that the second person actually wins the auction even though the main you know Advertiser won that auction so to me like you know step back a little bit because to me I look at that and it's not my place to say like that's unethical Behavior legal Behavior whatever like that's not the point to me and this is what I've been trying to communicate online a little bit is like my concern increasingly is more of like Advertiser trust with Google on the whole because I still think Google is a great platform but like I just think they're making so many stupid decisions lately on that sort of thing to impact Advertiser trust and I guess I'm hopeful over time that they can start you know taking steps a little bit more especially as we get in the Black Box Behavior like pmax that sort of thing while they're doing those behaviors then if they're also like starting to withhold data that UST advertisers are used to seeing in some of these black boxing like pmax all of those things together are really making for you know more strained relationships between advertisers and Google so so I think that's maybe like a big thing right now that like I'm even trying to speak into Google a little bit online as I can like just seeing hey how can you find Opportunities to regain trust so one of the ways to me would be actually getting more data back within pmax you know some of those like black box things as they introduce these black box things like being able to share more of that data and they have been starting to do that frankly too like you've been paying attention to pmax like insights in that there are more insights that they're starting to give more and more of like terms insights now include like conversion data and you know that sort of thing you can download things in the spreadsheet like there's more you can do than when pmax first started and some of that is because they're listening so yeah I mean I can't figure out why it would be good for them with that tool when you add the lawsuit on top to me like it seems obvious that people already felt that way about Google I mean ran fishkin's been beating the uh you shouldn't trust Google drum for years and years and years even when he was running you know MZ or is it MZ is that what it's called yeah it's funny because you know his whole thing was built around this notion of like how you work through Google's SEO but he he had a pretty adversarial mentality about Google he was like you shouldn't trust them they're massive Mega corporation that whatever and so anyway so there's been people who have been voicing that for a long time and then you've got the antitrust stuff at the same time and I think there's just sort of increasing concern about General antitrust big tech companies in culture and just sort of like how big they've gotten Amazon Apple meta all four of them like then when they introduce something like pmax like for me as an Advertiser like it's funny because I have competing ideas here one of them is the Baseline idea that it's a better idea to take my brain out of it and give machine learning more freedom to go get me what I want I'm all in on that's because I have a lifewide assumption this is true in my approach to meta ads is true in my approach to Google ads and it's true in my approach to like baseball analysis and other things which is that like data is often going to be counterintuitive to me in a way that my instincts are not going to serve me well by trying to sort through data sets and especially the larger the more complex the data set I am not going to be able to steer that ship very well and some machine learning that can actually leverage all the data get my little lizard brain out of the way and instead optimize the information from that data towards the outcomes that I want I am so for that everything anybody's listening to my podcast you talk heard me talk about meta in my approach to that is is totally rooted in that basic sort of foundational doctrinal belief about the world that's like a starting point me on the other hand my number one concern about Google is non- incrementality it's that like branded search and other even non-branded but still very low funnel terms are being lumped in with truly incremental upper funnel search behavior and display Behavior which in the case of display or YouTube it would be more about remarketing versus cold prospecting and the thing is the value of those different clicks imagine you were running ads for we'll take our friend our mutual friend Patrick kadu and when he was running Supply razors right if somebody searched the term Shark Tank razor that's not quite a branded search term and for all I know there have been multiple razor companies on Shark Tank but it's pretty close to a branded term that person is you know we might call it like a core term or like something like that right and so the value of that click I might hold that to a lower Rass standard than searching the term Supply those are very different clicks than somebody searching men's Razer right somebody searching men's Razer is in Market but upper funnel and you know or like I don't know funnel actually is probably the wrong analogy at this point they're the right person but they lack awareness to supply potentially and so I want to hold each of those clicks to different standards and so this is the challenge is that on the one hand I want the machine learning to optimize this on the other hand I need to be able to Value those clicks differently for them to be truly incremental to me and when I look at a a tool like pmax where there's lumping In Search terms and shopping terms and remarketing and prospecting and brand and I know you can you know get a negative keyword list now with with pmax and so you get rid of your brand terms all kind stuff but when I don't get insights back on that I'm just assuming especially given Googles practices in the past that I just I have no reason to trust that pmax is getting me what I want it's so hard to sort it out and there's so many competing factors that I just don't you know aside from really carefully measuring the revenue in Shopify or something like that it's just really really hard to see that so tell me about the current state of pmax I mean that's sort of my starting point but I think that represents a lot of people's starting point actually that people sort of theoretically like the idea but but in practice with Google are very concerned about some things tell me about your current approach to pmax and how people should be thinking about what that tool is and just in case anybody doesn't know briefly briefly explain what pmax is I think I agree with everything you said just in terms of kind of thinking about all that stuff and that's actually one of the things that I I try to point out especially like to Brand operators in that is I think there can be a tendency to almost think of pmax as a similar or same approach to face to meta right and is it I don't know meta is it is it it called Advantage Plus or what is maybe the campaign type that's almost in some ways similar to pmax this is actually good for people who listen to this who are more familiar there's some there's some element where that's right so Advantage Plus shopping now the similar thing that they do is that there's a little checkbox where you can decide how much of your existing customer audience your past customers you want in your advantage plus C or in your advantage shopping campaigns right so in those campaigns you can tell meta how much of your existing customer audience you want in there and if you do not check that they are going to run your ads to both existing customers and new customers but they are going to round all of the results up into an average and I have actually looked at this recently with a client who wanted to launch some ASC with everything and I said ah maybe not a good idea but we could test it and it was exactly what I expected to happen which is that like my my ads running to existing customers were running at like a six to one that's fine I actually want that spend I think five or six to one for existing customers totally fine but then the ads running to new customers even though it was the majority of the spend it was like well below our Target but unless you know to go break that out and go where to find that information it will all be Blended together into an average that looks like it's above Target so it's like let's just say like it's like a one to you know one. two for new customers and a six to one on returning customers and the average by the time you sort out how much traffic went to each ends up being a two two and a half you might look at that two two and a half and go like oh this is great and then you throw some view attribution in there if you don't know how to use the tool what happens is you end up sort of spending money on non-incremental new customer value in a way that is like o That's not great for the business and if you really don't know anything it might be an okay tool but if you know something about it it maybe is not a tool that you want to use for that exact reason so yeah I I think that's actually a very good comparison well so so here's the funny thing is there's kind of there is a comparison there but part of that to me is to also say like there's not a comparison those are different because sometimes what we see is like someone is like okay cool this is what I'm doing on meta let me just turn on pmax in Google and and it should operate in kind of the same way and there are just pretty significant differences that you know you've brought out some of that already I just think is really important just to be aware of with Google and meta right and you've brought out some of this before but even like the placement of these like there is a similar intent arguably at least in my mind in terms of when you are marketing to a meta user or an Instagram user right even though they are there for a different purpose to scroll their feed whatever it might be you are marketing overall to a generalized audience who does have a similar intent in what they're doing and then you're trying to distract them and we all know that right to me like Google and you've brought this out Google is quite a bit different and that to me is one of so I'm going to say I don't I don't think pmax is a totally like you shouldn't use it I'm not like anti- pmax I just think you need to know what's going on like you've noted remember that pmax is a conglomeration of a lot of different things it's kind of that YouTube like kind of social thing it's a ton of like what's going on in the the gdn the Google Display Network those are all of the websites around the web that someone can visit for literally any purpose I mean you could have any type of placement who has Google AdSense who's running Google ads that your you know ads are showing on and then you have the search and shopping side as well by the way Gmail can get in there and now discover as well but you have uh search and shopping which are a little bit of the core of what Google has been but that's a very demand capture way of marketing that's very different than those others but it's kind of all all conjoined into this one campaign type in bound versus outbound is always the way I think about it right like for meta it's like it's outbound you're going to people and putting something in front of them inbound is like they're searching and you're trying to be the thing they're searching for as long as the search term is relevant to you and so and so pmax is both of those which does not necessarily mean it's a terrible thing but again like that can be part of the issue sometimes because it is both those and I think that's why sometimes pmax can work for some and not others and that sort of thing because there can be there can be aspects around like whose product works better with what type and all that stuff to me that's a complexity and that even has some questions that need to be asked of if someone wants to start a pmax campaign or or if they prefer to go down to specific search or stand or shopping instead you know and break out like YouTube on its own and that sort of thing right that's part of where I like to start with people is initially like make sure that you're not even thinking of pmax it's not the same thing as as like a social automated campaign but just in Google it's not really that at all so you kind of need to know that and that's where then it gets into some of what you've noted in terms of yeah just like what is the user quality and pmax and you are putting quite a bit of trust in pmax to kind of like identify all of that like where is that user what click are they on because then you get into the attribution stuff I think that's where it can get Messy as well yeah I guess I'd say that like pmax is it is a campaign type that can be a tool that that can be helpful and you know people have probably used that and seen some growth we've used that and seen some growth I just think it's important to know like what it is and what it's trying to accomplish because it's not always going to be a good fit for everyone especially low sales accounts you know they can really struggle because if pmax is Automation and it just doesn't have enough data for that automation the automation just isn't going to work as well so I think there's just a lot of complexity around it that is important to know and be aware of that's more than just simply I don't know like let's try turning this on and throwing some Assets in and just see what happens right you have product feeded attributes and all that stuff can I aim it more let's say I have an Advertiser who wants to use pmax on some combination of search and shopping to generate new customer sales and not just remarketing so so if I want to aim pmax at the top of the funnel right which is what I'm trying to do with my meta ads can I do that sort of like exclude my brand terms maybe I exclude Shark Tank razor like you know those kind of core terms something like that so I could get Target those give it shopping assets you know all those things give it some YouTube assets that are really aimed at upper funnel stuff can I exclude remarketing audiences for both past customers and past website visitors right so like so really true people who have not been to website could I build a pmax campaign that does all of that and then essentially hold it to a Roa standard that I would hold maybe my meta ads to or something like that is it possible to build it with with that much Direction you can so there is a new customer acquisition option that you can select and say only go after new customers and then you define what that new customer is and so that's something that we've tested before is what you noted is literally like not just aiming at new customers because that's even an important distinction termin definitions matter right a new customer to Google is someone who has not purchased from you but like they could have clicked on 400 of your ads you know you could be well into the hole with them and yet they're still new customer and valued the same way to Google so again that's where I I tend to be like you where I'm a little more interested in if I'm building a campaign that really is more focused on upper funnel and like cold audiences I'll probably want to test excluding you know adding your remarketing list as well into that that customer acquisition setting it's within your conversions Tab and you actually Define here's who I would want to Define as my current customers and then you can add in like those lists and that sort of thing and then that's what Google uses in that campaign I'll note and here's where it gets a little tricky and this is why I'm thinking of Taylor holiday and you were just chatting on Twitter about this about the whole it depends thing I'm gonna say it depends there is a level where it's going to depend on a lot of things within your account I'm not saying you can't figure it out I'm just saying like there are a whole lot of different factors of if something is going to work in your account or isn't right that's one of the reasons why just turning something on and saying well did it work or not isn't always Fair because there might be aspects that someone else has shared in a case study something worked that did work for them but like you're different from them for a lot of reasons and to me that's the thing with stuff like that new customer exibition campaign is like we've tried that and like been super underwhelmed before then we tried it we're like yeah I think this is working pretty well like we're driving you know driving new customers is doing great and then there are times where we've not been that excited about it and this is again where you get into the complexities of if the whole point of a fully automated solution is that it gets as much information as possible so it can make the right decisions and that that's where gets tricky then is removing like all of the people from your bottom funnel who would be more likely to purchase to give Google all of that information is that actually that healthy for your automated system I don't know if it is it get tricky I mean it's funny cuz in my meta ads builds I do not separate out remarketing from prospecting I separate out existing customers as best as I can now all of those exclusions are going to be leaky and that's just something everybody needs to know calling in right there's just no world in which you're going to be able to perfectly exclude all those people because of you know tracking software issues in iOS 14 and whatever so there's all of those kinds of issues but I'm actually I was thinking about that as you were talking I was thinking like would I even want to exclude remarketing lists from those or would I actually say like no I I think I actually want Google to go spend money on the most efficient place as long as it's not spending all of its money there maybe you can answer this do you think Google exclusions work particularly well because if they do then I'd be more interested in probably separating the audiences and holding the different Rass standards whereas if they don't I probably would say like n lump them together you're not going to be able to make the exclusions work anyway I mean I do think that like let's say in that totally new customer campaign that you're sending that yeah I think it is sending that successfully after those those colder audiences my only concern there and I think sometimes why we don't see it work as well because maybe it will depend on okay what sort of audiences does Google have here like there's also other information Google's using like how are people searching and all that that informs their ability to make like to make this campaign successful that's why you can have two accounts who do the exact same strategy and one really sees that work well and one just doesn't as much because like Google like we've seen an account in a very specific Niche where Google had some really solid audiences already built in it was just kind of this like everything like a perfect storm of things that happened it was a great like micro site where it was very focused on a specific Niche it was almost like we knew like Google Google seems to be able to know exactly who the audience is and all this stuff and like pmax was absolutely killing it and that account just growing all that it wasn't an overly complicated pmax setup it just did its thing and then there will be other accounts where like that's just not as easy I I do think that you you can successfully aim pmax after that but again the question is if it doesn't have as much information about who are the people who will actually purchase sometimes that new customer campaign doesn't seem to do quite as well and I think maybe that's why is my theory is it just doesn't have as much information so maybe it's worth it which is sometimes why testing stuff but one thing on just like the actual focus and I do always try to call this out is especially on like the search side sometimes with standard shopping you might want to think about but so with Search keywords I'm a big fan of making sure if you do have your core terms your brand you know other you might have some core like they might be non-brand but they're more like mid to uper funnel pull those into their own search campaigns maybe even sometimes consider doing that in shopping as well with a standard shopping and there's like there's like a setup you can do where you're focusing on the right queries and all that maybe consider doing that so you really are making sure you're owning those terms especially on the search side and then pmax is a little bit more for like expansion and find me stuff Google find me you know maybe find me new people or whatever it might be so I am increasingly convinced that the number one area of efficiency for many e-commerce businesses that is untapped in their business is in their supply chain I believe that there are opportunities across our supply chain to get better payment terms to get uh better costs with your suppliers to get faster turnaround times to be do better inventory forecasting to clean up your Logistics and get better costs there 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everything else you should consider getting on the phone with more fractional supply chain who will help you do this they are really really good they will support you at exactly the level that you need and help you do all the things that I just mentioned talk to more fractual Supply Chain by going to more now.co you will see the listing there more now.co use the code AJF 20 to get 20% off your first three months it's really simple if you haven't seriously invested in those parts of your supply chain it's time to begin that conversation with my friends at more fractional supply chain go to Mor now.co get that conversation started now yeah that is interesting I mean this actually interesting conversation one of the things that I have sometimes thought about Google is that the time to optimization is longer and slower than it is in meta and like it's sort of the implication of what you're saying I'm going to ask you a question about whether or you think this is true like in meta one of the things that astounds me is how quickly meta can figure out what will work and what will not work this is part of why people have heard me talking about my creative testing strategy here which is like you don't need to run I don't think you need to run ads for a long time and let them accumulate a bunch of purchases for meta to figure out if the ODS are going to work or not like it can figure it out insanely fast to where even if you're only getting a few bucks in spend I think those few dollars represent hundreds of Impressions and that the engagement signal on those hundreds of Impressions is strong enough for meta to figure out pretty quickly whether or not this ad is going to play and it's rare not perfectly right but it's rare that it gets fooled that's what I think so in Google though I have often I feel like I have seen and sometimes heard people suggest this is not case that you actually need to plan especially in the earlier days of running a Google account to burn some budget essentially that if you want to build a Google account that really works and if you want to essentially run it at some point on a Target Roos or a Target CPA or something like that where you've got an automated bidding structure you're not bidding cpcs anymore like I've heard people suggest this is true whether it's search shopping YouTube pmax whatever like you need to have some runway on the front end for Google to be a viable tool for you essentially that it really does need to take some time to learn and that you have to get a bunch of purchases piling up for Google to figure this out do you think that's true that Google requires some Runway like that I do and it's interesting even as you're talking I was like thinking about that the meta side is really interesting because to me that's kind of this creative Focus that makes sense to me like if the creative is resonating with the people when they see it they're going to buy if not it's not working sure that makes sense that meta finds learns that real fast that's that's super interesting Google side is just really Google side is intriguing to me again because it's so much more than just here's this person over on this social Channel show them an show them an ad and are they enticed by the ad or not okay well let's figure out a better thumb stop type technique or something like that again like that's just not Google Google like let's even split them up either search and shopping which is very intent based but like keyword based like someone saying I'm very interested in this thing which is awesome super high intend but then you know that's different than pmax which is that conglomeration pmax is think almost think of it more in my opinion as like user based like Google is trying to find the users who are most likely to purchase from you and then it's kind of like wherever they are on the web you know display that sort of thing so there's this level of asset that's involved but also not so on the PEX side that can be where it just takes time because it's not really a matter of like being able to just say hey let's like test this one this creative to them first of all you don't even know what creative is being shown to any of them because there's like different assets you can add and that sort of thing so you can do some of that testing with like having unique asset groups where you have maybe you have like one and that's one of my suggestions even is to have like here's maybe your offer here where you do try to focus those assets but even then all of those clicks and stuff in there might not even be seen those assets because you have search and shopping Clicks in there too right so anyway so I think that's part of why it just takes more time is it's just not as simple as a process for pmax search and shopping I think some of why that takes more time is that there can be so many different keyword opportunities that you have within maybe a keyword you're bidding on or a shop ad or even if you're bidding specifically on a keyword it just takes time to get enough you know traffic to that keyword to try to determine not just simply from what attributions telling you either because we've had times where clients just they just know as they've advertised longterm that certain of their core keywords even if they don't see like the same Raz that they're expecting from other keywords they know that these are you know these are feeder keywords that are real core to their account and really start traffic even if they don't always see that coming into directly reported roas right so sometimes they'll they'll increase spin on that the only way to know that is to spend over time and see what happens so that can be sometimes the challenge especially starting a new account you do some very wise keyword research and try to to get as best as possible to say here's who would be most likely to purchase and then aim after them and then it just takes time to determine what is actually working you know this ad text does that work with those keywords all that you know final note I'll say too on the e-commerce side this just kind of is more of a this just kind of sucks because it's the way it is that's probably a little different than meta too it's just like average cpcs do tend to be higher on Google so I think that's also why it can be very challenging especially for a newer brand to look to Google more on the you know generation side of things because it's it's just going to be more expensive we literally just told someone that yesterday on a call where we're like hey these are the core terms we're aiming at as you can see based on these cbcs you might want to shift that budget if you have more room still on meta cuz you're really happy with how that's going you might actually want to shift that over there and like let's find some new like mid bottom funnel here on Google that we're aiming at because right now in your specific industry at your specific costs I just don't think it makes sense for you to be for you to be plugging money in you know when you have an $18 product you have $3 cpcs right you have to have an incredibly High conversion rate just to make that even profitable at all so yeah I mean it depends so much on who the audience is in meta right like I mean the classic example of this is like older wealthy women are very expensive I have an account that has run $8 clicks on meta and works great but it's because the CPM is so high I mean they actually get a good clickthrough rate but the CPM is so high because the audience is so valuable and it's in a really competitive category and so it just what it is this is why I don't really care about CPM and meta I just look at it and say it's an auction like it moves with the value of the traffic and that's the beauty of auctions as a pricing mechanism in general when they're not necessarily in the midst of an antitrust law for tinkering with them too much but like theoretically an auction is magical in its ability to match supply and demand and use price as the mechanism for lining those two things up perfectly and so not maybe not perfectly but as perfectly as they can be done to do those really really efficiently and then then to distribute a finite good as efficiently as possible which even for all of the users that meta has in a given day it's still a finite good there's still some limitation to how much available traffic there is and same with Google so that's why I don't really care about it very much and I think there's some element of that probably with Google where like if you know the CPM might be high on some things my experience especially for when the good is as finite as a search term like again we'll use our friend Patrick an example here like men's razor there's only so many searches for men's Razer or or like let's take it even a step further like best men's razor to buy you know like somebody who's showing some purchase intent like that kind of thing like there's only so many of those and those are going to be very expensive and this is my sense now maybe it's because people are shcking the couch Co right but also it could be because just that like Gillette just has a lot more dry powder than my little startup Supply does or something like that you know and so they're just like well we're just going to pay for the click in a way that other people and so that's kind of the way I've thought about this is like that's the challenge of competing on Google is that you're just necessarily in the game against monster players who have way bigger budgets than you do and the auction represents a fixed and finite resource and the thing that is like potentially compelling about Google the unlock that I want is like the YouTube traffic the display traffic some of those things that are like man that's borderline Limitless there might as well be an endless amount of that traffic and if I could turn that into money it's not surprising to me that those search and shopping clicks are just like so expensive that it's really hard to compete if you're a smaller brand but um it's part of the thing I sort of dream about is the idea of really turning you know YouTube and display into and display I mean display almost nobody believes in display right but if you could if you could make it work all right it would it would represent endless volume essentially I think it's worth noting let's just the auction side especially with search and shopping cbcs I mean on one hand you're exactly right if you're if you're breaking into a market where you're competition in your auction insights is Amazon Teemu Target Walmart right you are setting bids based on you know how you view all of that stuff your contribution Mar margin whatever and there's some level where yes to me the auction and your bidding and what you think that is worth to you based on even even like an expected conversion rate right then yeah it it might make sense that an 87 Cent click would be like the ideal razor auction but again that's where it starts to get tricky is yeah you're bidding up with people who like razors is part of their category which is part of their like $20 million budget this month and they're aiming at their targets which may or may not mean that individual auctions they don't even care about those individual AU in some of those specific categories and whether that's actually financially viable for them that to me is where sometimes where the auction can you know can struggle a little bit so one of the things that we try to do and here's kind of what i' say so one of the reasons I say that is not just to be like negative against Google obviously like that's my my job I love Google one of the reasons I say that is just to kind of like check someone who does hop in and has expectations of like sweet I'm ready to spend $66,000 this month on Google I want to go National with my you know whatever it might be my razors and all of a sudden they're up against everyone right to me your expectations do need to be aligned with reality of the auctions but then that's where I think there are some ways that you can kind of you know find some of those you know those opportunities because the the other thing by the way too is some of those like let's say Gillette that sort of thing they've been advertising for years probably over a decade on Google right and so part of what part of what history does in an account is it helps you and the Machine learning it helps you learn what's what's worked because you've put in the time and the money right so you know these auctions are valuable you know over here that you're not going to mess with keywords of this sort of keyword because even though it seems valuable for whatever reason you know people don't buy on that at all right they've learned that over time that's another challenge of being new and entering a space you just don't know that you're kind of starting to have to find that stuff out so one of the things that you can do especially with like newer you know newer Recon budgets is try to kind of determine how can I like shrink down what I'm aiming at so that my dollars can be spent more in this testing to get the results you know to get quicker results right so maybe that does look like hey instead of starting National with a $6,000 budget you know maybe we have you know information that Dallas Fort Worth and Atlanta Georgia are just like the two hottest markets for us right now in razors right maybe maybe what do is take the $6,000 and and just try it in Atlanta you know I think there are some things like that maybe instead of releasing all of your product on Google shopping you try these three you know these three top products in Atlanta Georgia and and maybe there are some other things you do too as well just to kind of narrow that down right you're actually not spending more than what your budget is but you're giving that budget a better shot at like more quickly learning on the terms actually reaching your audience more all that stuff so that that's one of the ways that you can do more of the small budget side and limited budget as well rather than just trying to compete with everyone because yeah you are going to get bulldozed I think that's really helpful I have not thought about Google that way and again that's so counterintuitive to the way I think about meta where like sometimes I literally dream about the idea of just like one worldwide campaign where literally every country like I'm serious like I really think about like there's like a part of that I mean I I have run campaigns where it's like us and then like the rest of the world and essentially it's just like you just tell meta like here's the cost I'm willing to pay and is you know and you can lump together as many countries as fit within that cost right so yeah that's very different than targetting Atlanta with obviously obviously it's a hypothetical example but this conversation actually went to some different places than I than I expected in some ways and there's a lot that I would like to talk to you about again I'm gonna ask you one last question and then we could be done which is let's say you have a $5 million e-commerce business five million in Revenue bootstrapped profitable but not rolling in cash right so they're making it work on meta and they want to start adding some Google will spend all other things being equal no it depend allowed here all other things being equal and let's say they're in a category where they aren't the creators of the category right so there's some search and shopping volume in their category we'll take the Razer let's just take the Razer thing right that maybe it's a good example like let's take that a razor brand at $5 million that's a big category but like some category like that where there is existing demand non-branded at the top of the funnel where do you start your Google testing budget where would you put it first what would the meta ads SP be in this case million and a half so it's running it's running at a little worse than a 4 to1 M as a business it's doing 10% operating income so there's $500,000 in profit at the end of the year let's say you've got 50 or 100 Grand that you're going like we can't probably burn this all but if we get beat up on this a little bit that's okay we're willing we're willing to test that you know and and of course you're willing to spend more you're willing to go up if it works but like that's kind of the way you're thinking about it yeah so yeah I was I was trying to run some quick numbers just to get somewhat of an estimate because that's some of what we try to do is even just just like often people do have a budget in mind sometimes they don't and they want some advice so that we might head in the category and just even see like what are some ideas of average cpcs that sort of thing but let's call it 10 grand a month 10 grand a month I was literally going to say 10 grand a month because based on some of that stuff it was like eight so I'm like okay let's let's think around the 10 grand a month this also gets into some interesting conversation by the way which at some point I know we had chat about even the management side of things and like what that looks like freelancer agency you doing it yourself that sort of thing 10 grand a month that can be a little tricky to hire an agency I know just because the the cost of around that let's give you more let's give you 20 grand 20 grand a month that's what you're going to spend yeah so 20 grand on a razor so they've never started Google ads at all because that'd be the next thing we'd ask is if they have something running just so we can see what they've done they say we want to deploy 20 grand a month and we'd like to get it to 50 but we're going to start it like with with the assumption that essentially it's a 10 to 20 spend in the first month or two and we're we're willing to do that we expect that you know we might only be at uh six to a one row ass forget branded search for a minute like just put that in a different bucket right let's just maybe they're spending a little bit on that right now they've got 10 to 20 grand that they're going like yeah look if we get a one to one on this it's not going to break our business even that's a net loss net net of cogs and everything but you know because the thing is you're not going to spend 10 to 20 grand and get zero dollars back right so that that's just not going to happen so that's part of the way I'm thinking about it is like if they end up losing net net five to 10 over that time they can they can deal with that so first of all at least with 20 grand a month I'm probably not chasing like exact match razor terms it be kind of funny if someone is actually managing these to be kind of interesting to know what actually they're like that's a terrible idea we've seen amazing success by broad match razors with t bras that could actually work you know Google machine learning is doing some good things lately so some of that is especially in our Discovery period we're also like trying to understand more about them too frankly like who is your main audience like what sets you apart right and those are not just throwaway questions cuz that's going to start refining like who are we trying to reach and how are they searching online right right how are they searching as well as maybe where are they spending their time we'll be asking questions about their assets and that because if someone's like hey we have this incredibly successful anchor video that works really well on meta it's kind of like whoa okay we're probably going to invest more in YouTube with this brand then we would and by the way this is me saying it depends without it depends but that is because it depends until you get more information about a specific situation right and that to me is part of that okay it depends so we need more information and I think that's where we'd probably start to try to get that information like okay if someone has like an incredible incredible video we're leaning way more into YouTube with them than we are with someone who's like what's a video right there's that aspect of that because to your point earlier that could be a really strong player even if they don't have a video we'd probably be recommending that they they investigate that so shopping would be another thing we we're definitely getting you know a feed running get a feed set up if they're on Shopify simis shopping feed app is fantastic super cheap helps you like edit product feeds that sort of thing but you know getting shopping running and then that's where again some of that information we learn about them so let's even just because you know we both know them like let's say you know Supply razors where a big at least from what I understood we never worked on the supply account but so this is just me guessing but a big part of like he was going after right was like it see it seemed to be a couple of things it seemed to be like the durability like the long lasting but it also seemed I don't know there just seemed to be kind of this like hearkening back to like the barber shop shave that sort of thing so there there seem to be things about that product that to me does start to inform even on the search side not just creative about how you're thinking of the audience that you're trying to reach and then like where they are I'm totally going off the go here but then like as we get that information what we might do then is start to do some cured research okay like not just not just simply razors but are there people out there looking for things like durable razors the best razor right I think there are terms like that and then so then as we do that research then you start to get like more information oh that's really interesting the people who I thought like people who like durable razors this is these are actually some terms they're also searching for you know you can start to build lists of actual terms that you want to aim after so that's probably how we'd be thinking on the search side of things especially if it was totally new of just seeing like are there opportunities out there that are more than you know just the highle general terms you know razors that sort of thing probably initially with some of those more specific core terms that we'd be interested in especially pulling their brand out as well probably leaning more into exact match as well as phrase match because again the purpose of that is is limitation since we don't have a huge budget that goes back into my comment earlier you know limitation like we don't necessarily want to open the floodgates yet but then and this is where some on my team probably because we'll have like discussions and arguments about how we should best set up each individual account and some really do like like I can actually hear one guy Eric he's like you know he might be totally right here kind of like that hey I'd love to have a little budget where we do test we find some of those audiences that Google wants to aim at we throw those into uh campaign we set the Tas a little bit little bit higher so we're keeping a lid on it but then we do actually do some like fairly broad matched terms and just see because of Google's machine learning if it can find people and you know it can maybe beat our row as on our more specific exact account we you know we might test that as well and then we definitely would be testing a pmax campaign as well and that's where then I'd be interested you know we'd probably think through kind of some of those asset groups it depends on the situation sometimes we'll break we break asset groups in different ways I actually wrote a blog post about how we like so like some different ways that we segment pmax based on you know certain accounts and that but you know this might be one of those times where you know there might be like their core raisers and then they maybe have a ton of accessories we'd probably definitely break those out you know into different into different things we could have different goals for you know razors versus all the accessories right and then just really try to work with the client to make sure that we have really you know solid assets to go in there get some of that same text in you know get also getting the ad text in that more highlights again like who that Target at the actual target audience is and you know sometimes too an interesting tip some sometimes what we've done in our ad Tex is actually add in if it's a product like this where it's actually a little bit more of a high-end thing but it's been a market where a lot of times people arbine like you know a $144 razor sometimes we'll actually include the price in there as well to almost try to like pre-filter just to hopefully like weed out people who aren't as interested in a product that expensive you know all that stuff I love doing that make the garden weed itself yeah I love that yeah as long as you don't get the Curiosity clicks but anyways hopefully that gives somewhat of an idea yeah I like the idea of trying to narrow the scope of who you're trying to reach if you have a more limited budget that's really really helpful like essentially like narrower terms narrow product sets all those kinds of things I think that's a really really helpful thing all right man super helpful I'm going to have you back for sure to talk more Google ad stuff because there's a bunch of stuff we didn't get to get to today we should definitely talk like agency brand relations I have a lot of thoughts on that and how both sides can do things well yeah yeah I would love to talk about that you know for sure talk about I think more Google tactical more agency life stuff you and I are have very similar size organizations at this point and sort of thinking about how this goes you got you've got a couple more folks than I do but yeah um okay go follow Kirk right now at PPC Kirk on X Twitter I still feel the need to call it both zet marketing.com the links to both of those are in the show notes of course as always Kirk thank you so much for your time it is always a pleasure to talk to you let's do it again soon yes same so there it is my conversation with Kirk Williams from zet marketing as I said at the end of the call definitely go follow him on Twitter at PPC Kirk go make sure to go to Z marketing.com if you need Google ads help they are great and I use them for multiple of my clients I think they're really really good really talented and and can help you a lot thanks so much for listening to me again today as we begin the New Year I hope the beginning of your new year is going well I've got all kinds of great content coming forward a bunch of interviews lined up a bunch of solo episodes lined up that you're going to like so make sure to subscribe to this podcast wherever you are watching or listening to it I hope to be some help to you and don't forget to reach out to my friends at more fractional supply chain to get help in the supply chain side of your business if you have not seriously invested and getting more efficiency out of your supply chain go to more now.co use the code AJF 20 to get 20% off supply chain to get 20% off the first three months working with more fractional supply chain it's just a no-brainer like it's just a inexpensive way to get serious help in an area of your business that has a huge impact on your p&l and on your cash flow so go do that at more fractional supply chain at more now.co you can reach out to me podcast aaf.com that's where you can email me you can reach out to me on Twitter at andrewj feris X I keep forgetting which one to call it X Twitter you know what it is and you can go to agf growth.com see everything that I'm working on right now and Beyond thanks so much as always for listening if you want to say rating in a review really helps and especially passing this episode along to your friends really really helps as well thanks again so much I will talk to you next [Music] time