Winning Paid Media in an AI-First World

Coby: Hey, Scott, you want to go get a treat?

Scott: Let’s do it man. 

Coby: Let’s go.

Nicole: Hi, it’s producer Nicole Denson. Today we’re talking with Scott Smoot, director of PPC at Big Leap. Scott has spent the last 20 years in digital marketing, working across industries from solar and SaaS to jewelry and apparel. Scott is a digital Sherlock Holmes, constantly testing campaigns and comparing results to see what really works. He’s truly motivated by the impact on his clients and their long term goals. When he’s off the clock. Scott is a proud girl, dad to four daughters, a daughter, and a gamer. So we’ve got plenty to get into today. Back to the show.

Coby: All right. Swig. We’re off.

Scott: Deal, man.

Coby: For viewers at home, we’ve already filmed this podcast, but we had to do it again because since our last joint rant. And I’ll take 80% of that rant. 80% of that was me. Maybe it’s good that it will never see the light of day, but there’s been a major update recently, right?

Scott: Yeah.

Coby: Can you talk to that?

Scott: So yeah, like what we talked about last time is how Google. And it’s still somewhat relevant because there’s still black box nature to what Google does. But what I was talking about last time is how Google wouldn’t tell us what headlines actually were performing best, or what descriptions or performing best. And so it made our optimizations just really difficult and really hard. And the information they gave us was just junk. So the update that happened was that Google gave us that information all of a sudden. So now we actually can see what headlines converted best, what headlines and descriptions convert best, which is something that we’ve been asking for for a long time.

Coby: So a couple questions. And some of these are purely speculative. So I don’t need to spend a lot of time on the speculative stuff. But why do you think they do that.

Scott: I think they are playing a harsh PR game right now, because right now AI is just taking over everything. And that includes the way that we do. Optimizations are bidding everything that we do from a fundamental level, from the bottom, all the way up to the top. But people have been yelling, screaming and complaining from day one that they made this change like a couple of years ago, that we don’t know what to do. We don’t know how to optimize our headlines.

Coby: So we’re just at the mercy of Google who is responding with, yeah, give us more money.

Scott: Pretty much. Pretty much.

Coby: You gotta love the cash grab.

Scott: Oh, it’s 100%. That’s all that it is. And that cash grab still happens. My word. Like today, as an example, literally happened today. So we turned on the Max campaign. Okay. Just, last week now. Performance max.

Coby: P max for those kids at home.

Scott: For those who own them. No. Yeah. So p max is a campaign that is completely automated, 100% you all the inventory, all the places that you can advertise on a Google property is controlled by p max. You just give Google all the assets, like Eric. Here’s my headline.

Coby: You take care of it for us. Exactly. We trust you implicitly. Exactly. Do you have any real estate? Any beachfront real estate in Ohio that you’d like to sell us kind of thing.

Scott: Right? Basically, yeah. Basically. And what’s really crappy about it, though, is that you have no control over where Google will show up. Yeah. You can’t do anything to say, hey, you know, that’s a crappy location. I don’t want you showing up there. I want you to be focusing on this inventory over here. So, like today, we actually had one of our sales guys call us up for Big Leap, and he’s like, hey, we’re getting a ton of spammy leads. Like, these are terrible quality people. We don’t know why they’re calling it. What’s going on?

Coby: Not terrible quality people. Terrible quality opportunities.

Scott: Correct.

Coby: Okay.

Scott: Because the people are important.

Coby: Yes. At Big Leap, we’re all important.

Scott: Good thing HR is not listening.

Coby: Yeah. Yeah, right.

Scott: But. Yes. So, like, the people are just, like, not qualified at all whatsoever. So they kind of call us when in a panic, like, hey, what’s going on? What are you doing with your ads? And like, my answer is I have to tie it. I can’t do anything. This is the Google black box doing the thing.

Coby: Just on so many levels. That makes me so angry that I don’t know what to do with myself.

Scott: So what’s happening, though? And this is why this maybe enhance your anger ness? No.

Coby: It’s just what I mean.

Scott: Is that, Google is first going out and is experimenting with ad inventory, like, banner ads and, display ads, those kinds of things. Traditionally, in historically, those are terrible for conversion rates. They suck. They’re just horrendous. Anytime we start up a new campaign, that’s usually the first thing that we check off. But when you start with p max campaign, that’s the first place it goes. It starts blasting out all this money to p max. And so there’s almost like an investment that we have to get past, like a spending limit that we have to go through before Google says, all right, fine, I’ll go to the good quality stuff.

Coby: Oh. Oh my gosh. So and so again, speculation. And we’ll get to the meat of what can be done about this. Because I have a sense that you’d like to talk about that. Yeah I want to know what can be done. I think that’s the question, but before that, like, is this a leading question? I’m asking anyway is does Google behave this way because they’re one of two, maybe three platforms upon which businesses all over the world can try to reach out to a customer base?

Scott: Yeah. Google is so incredibly dominant in the world that you don’t have nearly as much competition as the the that other advertising agencies have. Yeah. Like think about like a channel like ABC news. They have to compete with CBS, NBC and all the other channels.

Coby: Google’s got meta.

Scott: Google’s. Yeah. Google has does have meta. But that’s like the only competition that they really have. And nothing else even comes.

Coby: Close and demographically meta. I mean, they span the demographic spectrum because they’ve got Facebook and then they’ve got YouTube, right? So they can span it. But and those are two they’re slightly overlapping but really very different demographic. So yeah, I guess there’s that argument. But still that combined, it doesn’t even approach a fraction of what Google’s penetration is in, in the digital market right now.

Scott: Facebook is definitely up and coming. It’s becoming more and I think Google has actually responded by changing the way that it’s doing things, trying to do more of an audience focus, like what Facebook is doing. But they got nowhere near the level of data that Facebook has. They’re good. They’ve got a lot of good interesting info. Google’s got a lot of dirt on you, but not like Facebook does. Yeah. Even in the privacy age.

Coby: Really? Okay, so what can be done about now my enhanced anger? And how- so because it probably won’t see the light of day, you know, the whole premise of our previous discussion was that- and I’m quite proud of this- is that Google is a dating app. Dating apps don’t want you to find your mate, because then you get off the app and you don’t give them monthly money anymore. Right? So it’s all about the perception of progress without real progress. And I firmly believe that Google operates in that gray area. 100%. And so what can be done to leverage your space and spend in the preeminent digital marketplace without becoming a pawn in said marketplace?

Scott: So what happens with Google is that they try to make everything so stupidly easy and simple, right? It’s possible for a small business owner to go in and say, hey, I want to run an ad. Google will tell you, okay, here’s a pmax ad. This is what we recommend. Here’s how the ads that we auto generated for you that we think are going to do really good for you. Here’s, automated copy that we can do. In fact, we can, we can just make it for you. You don’t have to give us anything. We’ll just do it all for you. But then you have no idea how any of that performs in the end. So in order to get past that one, don’t trust anything Google does. Just don’t trust it.

Coby: I think that should be on a t shirt.

Scott: Oh, seriously. Like, I know that their motto is don’t be evil, but-

Coby: Do no evil. And I don’t think they abandoned it. I don’t even think that’s like, like my understanding, which is anecdotal, was that it was splashed on a wall somewhere in their corporate headquarters for a period of time. I don’t necessarily know if that’s true, and I don’t know if it is true if it’s still true. Yeah. So but yeah.

Scott: They’ve got a lot of slack about that. They’ve certainly been acting a little bit evil-ish lately. Yeah. So okay. Do you want to make an order here real quick?

Coby: Yeah. Let’s do it. Let’s do it. Scott, where are we going today?

Scott: Yeah let’s go to Swig, man.

Coby: All right. What are we going to get?

Scott: I personally, am a sucker for those Diet Mountain Dew ones. The Guava Have Its.

Coby: Okay. Guava Have It? Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Scott: I have to go with, like, a Diet Coke with vanilla. That’s kind of what got me started. A whole dirty soda thing. Okay. Diet Mountain Dew.

Coby: You went full sugar full. Yeah. I’m just. I’m just doing it. Okay. So when’s the first time you ever had a Guava Have It?

Scott: Oh, man. So when my wife got me started going on, like, dirty sodas, when she would take me to, like, to a maverick or something. and that, like, blew my mind. Like, oh, crud. Vanilla diet Coke is actually pretty good. Yeah. Then I go to a Swig and they had all this crazy stuff in there and like, that was just amazing. They totally ramp it all up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like the Guava Have It is like anything with, like, strawberry puree in it or cream in it.

Coby: Like, that sounds really good. And The Guava Have It has strawberry puree?

Scott: It does, and a few other things too.

Coby: So I’m going to have one of them.

Scott: Guava since the guava. In the name.

Coby: Right? Well, I mean if it’s a pun you got to try it. If it’s a good pun, it’s a good treat. Right? Okay. So Guava Have It at the Swig. There’s lots of different Swigs. You know which one we’re going to?

Scott: Yeah, this one just right off of the highway over there.

Coby: Okay, that’s where we’re going. All right, you know what? We’re going to talk about you, right?

Scott: I do.

Coby: Awesome, really looking forward to it.

Scott: Sweet man.

Coby: Cool. Let’s do it. That’ll make you stand up and slap your grandma.

Scott: That’s good. That is good.

Coby: That is really good. I gotta think of another way of saying it, because there’s grandpas out there that are getting slapped now because.

Scott: We just talked about how all people are good. We’re not slapping anybody.

Coby: We’re not slapping grandpas unless we’re drinking Swig. So. Okay, so you were answering what can be done?

Scott: Okay. Yes yes yes yes yes. So what can be done? And really, the shift of what we as marketers are doing as AI and machine learning is really taking over everything.

Coby: Yeah.

Scott: Is by understanding how the algorithm works and feed it just the right information so that it does do what we want it to do. So like in the past, for example, let’s say, hey, our CPCs are really high for this particular term or hey our conversion rates and our CPAs are bad. And this little section over here, but it’s not over here. We would go into like micro management levels of bidding changes and elements like, hey men, convert better. Let’s bid up on men, women, they don’t convert as well. We’ll bid down on them. Tablets. We get crappy conversion rates on tablets. We’re going to bid that down. We’re going to bid up in, Oklahoma, Texas, whatever. Because those states are really good. All of that is now gone. We can’t do any of that. We can’t control any of that. The algorithm just kind of does it all for us. So what we have to do is just make sure that the signals that we’re sending to Google are the right ones.

Coby: So define signals, because that’s one of the that, you know, I’m sure many people know that’s what it means. But yeah, honestly, I, I would like some clarification around that term because I hear it all the time. So what do you mean by signals.

Scott: Yes. So signal is going to be a conversion. Someone bought something.

Coby: So the type of conversion you’re solving for?

Scott: Exactly. So let’s say, for example, you’re a business, you do a lot of B2B. You got you want leads you’re a lead gen company. Well, if you send anybody that, went to your website and filled out a form, you’re gonna get a lot of junk. This is something that is really terrible about Google, and it’s a huge problem. You’re going to get so many people that are going to come in and just fill out the form willy nilly, and that’s going to count as a conversion. Facebook does this too. Actually. They have this nifty tool that we never use, where you can auto fill a form. The people will just come in, they’ll see the form, it’ll auto fill in and send right away. You get so many spammy, junky leads from that. And it’s horrible.

Coby: Because there’s no intent.

Scott: There isn’t any intent. It’s. It’s so easy that people don’t know what they’re doing.

Coby: So let me ask a question. And there’s requires a little context, but part of the big leap way that we’re building is not solving for a single conversion event. Yes, but recognizing that when you move from one stage to the next over, ultimately the seven stages where purchase is the inflection point, not really a stage in the customer journey that each one of those new stages is, is a new discovery, conversion, and invitation event. And that in order to solve for evangelism, which would be coming out the end of the customer journey, like on the other side. Yeah, and not just purchase, which is the middle you have to go through each of those stages discretely and, and in order and at the speed that is natural organic. So my question is this does it make sense to use paid, for instance, or any discipline? But let’s talk about paid., because that’s your bailiwick. Can you use paid and solve for a signal that you would send Google where all you want to do is move them from awareness to consideration? All you want to do is present a new bias, disabuse them of their current bias about the product or solution that they are searching for, where they think they need, present new kinds of information that reframes what it is they think they need in the first place, and then provide your worldview, or your product or your perspective on the market as a, as a as a company that’s marketing in place of what they used to think. The customer used to think. And that’s how I define moving from awareness to mid funnel to the consideration phase that can you devise a signal, solve for that signal, and then become a lot more precise in your paid efforts. Is that possible?

Scott: It is possible.

Coby: How would you do that?

Scott: Through really good data management okay. Really good data management. And this is a problem I think a lot of people have. Right, okay. Everybody has Google Analytics. Right, okay. But how well is it set up. Are you getting all the right information to getting the right setups and whatnot? Now there’s certain things that we’re never going to be able to optimize to. Like, hey, if somebody saw an ad and they’re like, hey, that’s really cool, but they don’t do anything like they don’t click on the ad, they don’t engage with it, then that is going to be some information that is lost. But there are also other things you can still do with that, like brand, retention. There’s a lot of like brand lift settings that we can even do in paid media.

Coby: What about ads that you know, what you want them to do? You know that you don’t necessarily want, that let’s call it, for lack of a better frame or phrase. Let’s call it a brand ad. Yeah. Where traditionally the concept is brand ads don’t have an attribution model to them. They don’t have a performance feedback loop that you can measure and optimize. It’s just there for quote unquote awareness, which I think is the wrong paradigm. And you’ve heard me talk about

Scott: Oh, 100%.

Coby: But let’s assume for a moment that we are kind of in that realm. And so we don’t put a feedback or a call to action or a feedback loop or a call to action opportunity in the ad, but that is part of a string of ads or a family of ads that build on each other so that, you know, subsequent to maybe exposure to that one where we’ve already know, hey, there’s no call to action here, so we’re not going to try to solve for a signal for Google. But there can be a follow up or number of follow ups, ads to that one that build on it where there is a call to action. And so if the call to action is taken, we can assume that collectively that AD has done the work. And the previous one that set the stage has done its work as well. Does that I mean, is that just too Unicorn-ish? Is that not how- would that work?

Scott: That would work. Let me try to say it in my words.

Coby: Okay. Say it in your words because you’re going to translate for.

Scott: For the paid mentality. Right? Because in the paid world we are so hyper focused on KPIs. Like we were chatting about this earlier. Yeah, right. Like we need to know the data works. And like I love what you were saying about brand. Hey, we put brand ads out there and we think it’s working, but that is so hard for us paid marketers to really understand. And I’m involving in this too. Like we are evolving as an industry, but also we’re figuring it out pretty well, I think at Big Leap. Yeah. So what we’re doing now is we’re saying, okay, we’re putting ads out there, but we’re looking for some type of engagement. Like do they actually click on the app? They do something on the website. How long are they staying on the website? We can measure those kinds of things. The other thing we might look at is like, hey, someone sees an ad that’s out there and disrupting things. Well, now they’re going searching for that keyword that we put into that ad that’s disrupting.

Coby: So that’s how you do it. You have brand ads that have a reframe some different language that people aren’t searching for, language that is proprietary. And then we can measure the market dynamic or the market shift to you because now are those key phrases showing up and they hadn’t shown it before. Yeah, that requires definitely an investment. But if you’re going to invest in that versus you’re going to invest in throwing money down the p max black hole to qualify for a little better placement from the from the gods of the algorithm. I would rather do it over here anyway.

Scott: Amen. Amen. Like, that’s the thing with the p max too, like p max is really focused on that bottom of the funnel, like it’s going to be going after the people who are going to convert right then and there. It’s not going to help you out with the branding stuff. It’s not going to help you through the entire funnel. Google will tell you that. It doesn’t do that. It’s not good at doing that.

Coby: No, I think there’s something to the, the, the conceit that people go to Google and when they do the search, they’re going to buy. I think that when folks do a search, they might buy, if there’s some things they have to buy, knowing whether you’re in a business where they have to buy if there’s a problem or they might want to buy but they might not, is is like one of the key indicators and, to determine and to inform how you’re going to use a bottom of the funnel versus a mid funnel strategy. Right? Yeah. Because if they have to buy then meet them at the bottom of the funnel. Maybe. But if they don’t then you have to spend a lot of time mid funnel. Not convincing them but orienting them or orientating them?

Scott: Orienting, Yeah.

Coby: Orienting them to your worldview and why this is the best solution versus something else. And that’s not a bottom of the funnel thing.

Scott: And to a lot of that degree. And we’ve talked about this before, when somebody knows what they’re going to buy. And the only interaction they have is that super bottom of the funnel Google search ad, the only person who wins is whoever has got the best price. And that’s a crappy place to be. Right. Yep. And so what we find in paid search is that if you have a good brand strategy, if you have a great brand, it helps your conversion rates at that bottom of the funnel to. Yeah. So you have good brand, you have a good messaging. You’ve talked to them throughout the whole thing. You own the conversation because you started it. I know we talked about that a lot. If you have that, then once they see you in that Google search at bottom of the funnel, they’re like, hey, I’ve already been talking to these guys. I have a relationship with them. I’ve been talking to them. I’m more likely going to go to these guys, and you don’t have to convince them that you’re the best because you’re the cheapest.

Coby: Yeah. The more you invest in establishing the conversation at the top of the funnel in the awareness stage. Yeah. The faster your sales process is generally. Yeah.

Scott: Exactly. The easier it is because they already trust you. You’ve already built that up and you don’t have that.

Coby: Which means the less you spend at the bottom, exactly the less you spend to close the deal. There’s so in developing proprietary KPIs against the Big Leap Way, one of the things we are measuring now is acceleration after a baseline through different parts of the funnel, not just new lead to close, but new lead to, consideration lead. Yeah. And then and also like, is there a decrease in the number of back and forth and the negotiation or do you have to do you have to revise the sales proposal less times with a, with a greater emphasis or pouring more resources into branding at the top of the funnel? Does that actually affect the sales processes and the premise is it’s true. And some of the anecdotal data so far is that it is. Yeah. So we’re really nailing that down. And I’m super excited about that.

Scott: It sounds super awesome. And that’s exactly what I want to do. Yeah. You know like from a paid media marketing effort. Like I want that to happen to us where people go like, hey, I recognize a need for this. And we’re looking at really a lot of it is not just, you know, the Google search ads, but it’s also okay, let’s be experimental. What about Reddit now? These days? Yeah. What if you got to be in Reddit? Like, what if you’re there like, and we’re talking about like, what about these article magazines reaching out directly to people and showing up there creating conversations? That’s all part of the media buying experience.

Coby: Now, I, I love Reddit solely for, I mean, for a lot of reasons, but one of the things I love most about it is that you don’t get to go in and cash grab on Reddit, you get flamed and thrown out. Oh, then you have to be authentic. They- it’s my favorite platform because you don’t get BS. You have to show up. You have to care about what you do. You have to care about your community. You want to you have to provide real delta. You have to back up the delta. If there’s a problem that you have to fix it like it is, it is where great business is born. Great business relationship is born.

Scott: And if you’re authentic enough. And if you are the right business and if you make it through Reddit, basically you’re good. You can make up just about anywhere.

Coby: Coolio. All right, let’s go back to work. So is it everything that you- that it always is for you?

Scott: Oh, absolutely. You know.

Coby: I Guava Have It. This isn’t something I usually, I’m not like, I’m always diet Coke if it’s soda at all. Yeah, but, this is definitely going to be worth the calories. Oh, this is so freaking good. I really so is there any last thoughts? Anything else that you wanted to say before we sign off?

Scott: Yeah, it’s just- AI is just changing. You know, there’s a lot of different ways that we can think about it because, like, it’s not going to go away, right? The hype. Because the thing that for me is I think about AI even two years ago, I was like, whatever AI it’s a cute little toy that people can go ask for.

Coby: Word predictor. blah, blah, blah.

Scott: Exactly right. But it’s gotten to a point where the more I’ve seen, the more I’m like, oh crap, this is changing everything. And we can either hate it or we can flow with it and be ahead of the curve. And that is what I’m doing. I’m trying to say, okay, I don’t love it. I don’t love what it’s doing, but I’m going to stay ahead of it, make sure that as we get more optimization, that’s I based understand how that works, experiment with it, control what we can control but then use whatever else that we can use.

Coby: So what’s your number like if you had to give we’re only able to give one pointer about remaining relevant in an AI driven marketplace. What is that pointer.

Scott: Have a brand strategy. Because that’s what really is going to make the big difference in the long run. Because the thing like a paid marketer, hey, I’m so used to going in and like trying to fine tune market the exact headline, the exact wording that’s going to get your click through rate up another point 0.3%. Right? But nowadays it’s so much better and it’s so much easier to focus more on the branding side of it, because if you own the brand and if you got a great, strong brand, it just makes everything else down the funnel that.

Coby: You’re controlling the conversation.

Scott: So much easier. Yeah, exactly.

Coby: Yeah. Now everybody is trying to attune to you as opposed to the other way around.

Scott: Exactly. I love that and that. And everybody has the same AI tools. So like there’s no secret box that we can all hold in our hands in the back pockets, like, hey, well, I’ve got this cool technique over here that I’m using. Like, I don’t know everyone’s using that.

Coby: Everybody’s using that. And if there was success then it’s only a matter of a couple days before somebody else finds it anyway. So it really is all about the uniqueness and originality of your brand in your conversation.

Scott: And it can exist in paid media channels. And it has to exist.

Coby: I believe so. Yeah. Yeah. All right. This was really fun. Thanks, Scott.

Scott: Appreciate it.

Nicole: Thanks for coming along for the ride. If you enjoy Sweet Takes, be sure to subscribe and leave us a review. Join us next time. There’s more sweetness ahead.