How to adapt to PPC ad platform automation

Episode Description

Performance Max. Responsive Search Ads. Smart Bidding.

Automation by the major ad platforms like Google is really changing the way how we, the advertisers, work. While a lot of advertisers have adopted it, many of them haven’t seen the desired results.

As a result, advertisers are adopting automation layering i.e., adding a layer of their own automation over that of the ad platforms, to safeguard their #PPC accounts.

In this episode, we spoke to a couple of in-house marketers and an agency owner to learn how they’re adopting automation layering to regain control of their accounts.

Tune into this episode to learn:

- How PPC teams are using automation layering?

- How should a PPC marketer evolve their skillset due to ad platform automation?

- What strategies and tactics to implement and when?

and more.

Episode Takeaways

How PPC teams are using automation layering

• Automation layering involves creating controls and checks that work on top of platform-driven automations to prevent errors and optimize performance.
• It includes setting up alerts, automated rules, or scripts to supervise and guide the automated systems provided by ad platforms.

How should a PPC marketer evolve their skillset due to ad platform automation

• Marketers should enhance their skills in both creative messaging and technical aspects like tracking and analytics to effectively manage automated campaigns.
• Emphasis is placed on being adaptable and learning continuously, as the integration of business knowledge with PPC skills is becoming increasingly important.

What strategies and tactics to implement and when

• Marketers are encouraged to experiment with new features and automations by evaluating them on their merits and not dismissing them based on their origin.
• Building a strong understanding of business goals and translating them into PPC strategies is vital, ensuring that campaigns are aligned with broader business outcomes.

Additional Insights

• Networking within the industry and staying updated through conferences and professional interactions are essential for adapting to changes in PPC.
• Building a partnership with agencies can provide a hybrid approach that leverages agency expertise while maintaining in-house control and insight.

Episode Transcript

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Hello and welcome to another episode of PPC Town Hall. My name is Fred Vallaeys. I’m your host. I’m also the co founder at Optmyzr. So, you know, we keep talking about automation and let’s do that again today because it is, it is sort of the hot topic in PPC with things like Performance Max, really changing quite a bit about how we all work.

In today’s episode, we brought in some in house experts as well as some agency experts to tell us how they are making these transitions as Google and the other ad engines introduce much more automation. What does it mean for changes in strategy? How are tactics changing? How do you talk to clients differently based on everything that’s happening?

So we’ve got a great episode of PPC Town Hall. Thank you for joining us and now let’s get rolling with this episode.

All right, let’s bring in the guests. My guests today, we have something unusual. We have a guest from Optmyzr, Ashwin. w e have Christina who runs an agency, Capital C, and we have Indy who runs marketing and performance marketing for Ufurnish. Welcome all of you. All right, let’s let’s start with Ashwin.

Ashwin, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

ASHWIN BALAKRISHNAN: Yeah, so I head up marketing at Optmyzr. I actually started out producing these shows and it’s really interesting to be on the other side of it. I’ve been an in house marketer for the last five years now in B2B. And I’m really excited about the changes that are coming up in PPC.

I know there are a lot of challenges and frustrations, but I also think there’s a lot of opportunity and I’m excited to share So in perspective on what in house markers and prospective clients could be going through.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah, Nashorn has done a lot of the blogs that you may have read on the Optmyzr website.

So today he gets to speak about that instead of do all the writing, which I’m really excited about. So welcome to the show. Christina, let’s go say hello to you. Tell us what you do.

CHRISTINA BRAUER: Hi, I’m Christina. I’ve been working. In and around the Google ads universe for the last 12 years, starting out as an account, such as at Google and working in house.

And for the last five years, I started out freelancing, which then grew into my own little agency. And obviously automation is a big topic in my everyday work and in my client work and in my client conversation. So yeah, Looking forward to sharing.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah. And so you’re on capital C agency. If anyone wants to find you, we’ll we’ll put that out there, a little bit of branding for you, right?

So thanks for joining us, Christina. And then we’ve got Indy. I hope that’s the right way to use your name, Inderpaul Rai, but I think you go by Indy, right?

INDERPAUL RAI: Yeah, it’s a little, a little easier to say, but but yeah, you pronounce it correctly in DePaul, right?

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Awesome. Well, welcome to DePaul.

INDERPAUL RAI: Thank you.

So yeah, I head up performance and acquisition for YouFurnish. com. So in the UK, we’re a search, discover and compare platform for furniture. We basically plug in all the retailers in the UK where you can just find in one place anything you want from beds to wallpaper and saves the trouble of trying to go to each individual website yourself.

So a bit like Skyscanner, So I’ve been doing that since November. So we’re a startup of about 20 people. So really interesting challenge prior to that, I was at RS Components, which is a huge multi sort of country. So we had over 6, 000 employees across across the globe and I was there for about five years.

So I’ve had quite a lot of in house experience as well. I’m in a big corporate, so that was quite an interesting challenge. And then before that, I started my career 10 years ago on the agency side. So I’ve worked for small agencies and really big agencies across pretty much every vertical you can think of across B2C and a bit of B2B as well.

So yeah, really happy to be here.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Nice. And you also spoke recently at Hero Conf London. So if people want to catch that session, I think you can still pay to get access to, to that, but that was a great session. So let’s talk about automation. And then one thing that we had Optmyzr talk quite a bit about is the concept of automation layering, right?

And Ashwin, maybe I’ll let you explain what automation layering is. And and then my question is, what does that look like on your teams? Do you, do you use it? And then how, how do you implement it? But actually tell us a bit more about automation layering first.

ASHWIN BALAKRISHNAN: Yeah. So at its simplest automation learning is you building as an advertiser, you building automation that you control in a, you know, in contrast to automation that the ad platforms deploy, so it could be alert.

It could be automated rules. It could be scripts. It could be any of these things. And you can do it yourself if you’re Technologically inclined that way, or you can use a third party solution like Optmyzr or one of the others out there. And the idea is to create layers as the name. So that if automation on the platform side, you know, makes a mistake or.

As a malfunction as all technologies want to do it has to go through multiple layers before it can affect the performance of your account.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah, that makes sense, right? And the way that I like to think about it is Google spends millions of dollars, has thousands of engineers, and they’re really good at machine learning.

So for us, Optmyzr or Ufurnish or Capital C, It doesn’t make sense to try to compete against that. We just don’t have the same resources. And then even if we did, and we had like the best way to, to predict the right bid, well, we still couldn’t do anything with it because we can’t control the bid at the time of the auction.

So the, the really good way to control everything that Google’s doing is like Ashwin is saying is kind of a layer on top of it, where you set some boundaries for the system and keep it in check. And so Christina, I’m curious from your perspective, I know you’re an Optmyzr user, so you use some of the automation layering through us, but generally what does that look like in your agency setting and how have you been making that transition?

So

CHRISTINA BRAUER: I think of automation in, in two different ways. There’s the Big picture automations, I would call them, which is what the, what Google does. We’re like, you have smart bidding, taking care of your bidding or even performance max campaign, taking care of everything that the campaign does. And then other, other platforms do the same.

And yeah, there, I just tried, I adapt and I tried to get that work as well as possible. And then that’s also, yeah. What, what the automation layering, which is really. Keeping that in check, but then also making a marketer’s daily life just as easy as possible. Getting rid of manual work and at the one hand or like really complicated reports.

And then also just using notifications to get notified when something isn’t working. So I think a concrete, concrete example is Google ad scripts. Also, the functionality that Optmyzr has to implement them that tells you when. Certain thresholds are reached or when something is broken. I got us are broken things like that.

And then also using. Something like the, the PPC insights and Optmyzr, which if you want to find out, like why, why your spend has dropped, for example, or why your conversions have dropped, like it really easily and quickly tells you it’s because of that keyword. Like if I want to opt, if I want to find that out in Excel, it’s going to take me a long time.

Yeah. One thing that this technology comes in very handy.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: I love that. One thing that’s fascinating, of course, is with machine learning and artificial intelligence, it’s really. Good or reasonably good. We can debate how good it is, but it’s quite good these days at making predictions and doing things, but it’s really bad at explaining itself, right?

And so that’s where like you said, you might go into Excel and pull a bunch of reports to try to figure out, oh, what’s the machine seeing? What’s it doing? But now you can much more easily do that through scripts or something like a PPC investigator. So definitely automation layering. The point is make people’s lives easier.

Put a bit of we sometimes call it PPC insurance, right? Let the automated systems from Google do what they do. But if it goes a little bit wonky, you know, have a, have a thing that tells you pretty quickly, Hey, you should look at this and figure out why it’s doing that. And either adopt your strategy to it or turn it off and make sure it doesn’t do that anymore.

Indy, what does automation layering look like at your company?

INDERPAUL RAI: Yeah, it’s really interesting, actually, because this is probably the first time in about nearly 10 years since I’ve not relied on bid management platforms to do the bidding for Google. I’ve had to use Google Ads myself because we’re starting to see every penny we have at the moment is going towards media spend.

in the different advertising platforms. So that’s been an interesting time. And I think over the last three years at RS Components, where we were using bid management platforms, we were test, always testing and always trying to improve performance. And we got to a point where the bid managing platforms kind of reached their sort of, it kind of plateaued.

And then we started testing Google ads again and starting to get better results. So it’s been an interesting time over the last sort of three, four years, because over the last decade, I’ve worked with bid manager platforms. It’s been quite a comfortable and easy, easier way of managing things and going back to the Google app side of things.

It’s been it’s, it kind of goes against nature a little bit because of everything we’ve been doing over the last 10 years. So that’s been quite cool. So yeah, I was

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: thinking about that transition maybe. So what is it that you now have to like with those bid platforms? Was it very hands off? And now with Google, you have to like, what is it that you’re doing that you didn’t have to do before?

INDERPAUL RAI: Yeah, definitely. I think with a bit managing platforms, it was very much is I guess probably a bit more rules based in the sense of these are the rules you set up. This is what works for you. You keep testing those rules to get the best type of rules and you get to where this is. Getting the best forms for me at this time and then you kind of let it leave it leave it how it is with Portfolio being and whatnot and now transitioning back to google ads And google ads, of course has portfolio bidding as well.

But I think it works a little bit differently I think i’ve seen better success with google ads with portfolio bidding where rather than just having one big strategy across our account Which is what we often did with the big 100 platforms Actually, if we have enough data, You Having several strategies for different types of campaigns and different types of what forms we’re trying to get from those campaigns is working better for us at this time, and I’d say that.

That’s been quite good to see because with the bid management platforms, when we’ve tried to do that, we just don’t have, often come to the sort of brick wall of not having enough data for it to really be able to optimize for that. Whereas, as you mentioned with Google Ads being able to change the bid at the time of auction, it just gives, it gives the machine learning so much more opportunity to squeeze out their performance at a rate that we couldn’t do before.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah. And Christina, I’d love your take on this as well, but Indy was mentioning having multiple campaigns with different targets as opposed to sort of what Google often recommends, which is a single target across everything and everything in a huge portfolio. And kind of to explain the problem with that is that portfolio management, the way it works is it takes high performers and they subsidize the low performers to bring everything to an average.

And so you end up getting this Local maxima on the curve of efficiency, which is across that whole portfolio, but individually for different product lines, they might have had different maximal points that you’re not able to achieve because everything is balancing each other out. And by splitting things into multiple groups, multiple portfolios with potentially different targets.

Now, if you sell. Socks, they can find their own local Maxima and sneakers can find a different local Maxima. And then you combine those two together, it’s actually driving more performance than if you had put them all in a single portfolio where they would have balanced each other. And so it’s kind of counter often to what Google saying.

So I’d love to hear Christina at your agency. How do you think about all these automated bid management systems?

CHRISTINA BRAUER: So adopting the automatic bit management systems definitely was a learning curve and a journey because I obviously learned PPC at an age when you could control everything and had all the optimization levers and that worked quite well for me.

And my clients also came to me because Christina knows how to work the system really well. And then all of a sudden the system starts working itself and I have to rely on. Giving the right inputs and, and then just like hoping for the best, which was a bit of a transition that I had to hold myself through.

And that also now I think I got very good at holding clients. Yeah, they, they feel that like I know what I’m doing and it’s, and it’s working and then they, yeah, they, yeah, they can, they can chill a little bit. And I can also explain why, why the things happen as they happen. And when it comes to using, using bits, automated bit strategies and portfolios I, Try, I use them when I do not have enough data on a campaign level.

So then I would like group, a group, a bunch of campaigns together and create a portfolio. Or another use case where we, where I’ve used them is with a client. Who has a lot of local like studios, which with different availability, so they would very often like pause the campaign, reactivate a campaign, depending on on whether, whether they have a bit availability to actually.

Get conversions. They are not. And this is obviously a nightmare for for, for bidding algorithms because you can’t just pause and reactivate campaigns. They’re going crazy. So by making portfolios for different cities that perform similarly, we’ve actually managed to have like a steady performance on these and we can turn off campaigns as and when needed and turn them on again.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Nice. Hey, and I was in London and I talked to this guy and he was like completely unaware of the types of cool stuff Optmyzr could do. So I have to put in a shameless plug here because what you just sort of mentioned was taking cities that have different similar performance and grouping them together.

So we have this shopping campaign builder and Optmyzr that will literally take your historical ROAS performance across all different products, and it’ll group the products together based on that similarity so that you can set targets then that are pretty close to those historical performances.

And now Google can actually start to do a better job of building up volume and conversions for you. Anyway, shameless Optmyzr plug. That’s what you get to do when you’re the host of a show. Hey, but I, I think Christina, you sort of alluded it to it now, right? Like setting expectations with clients of here’s the old Christina who used to be like super good at managing bids and a new Christina is still really good at it, but she doesn’t get to do it anymore because Google does all of this.

So and I want to hear the agency perspective first and I want to hear the in house perspective, but how do you justify. Your existence to your clients. Why should they pay you? What is, what is your message? And and then India, I want to hear from you after that, but how do you convince your boss that you’re actually still a valuable human on the team?

CHRISTINA BRAUER: So when the clients that I’ve worked with me through the transition, that was, it’s obviously easier because they’ve, they’ve worked with me before. And we often actually joke that I’m the algorithm whisperer where my job is to get the right inputs for the algorithms, for the bidding algorithms, and just like the campaign manager for the campaign algorithms out and then put them in.

And then also the other way around, like when something happens, then or like any developments really like, I’m just explained to the client why that is. Based on any, any of the parameters that have changed. And when it comes to talking to prospective and new clients, it’s much less about the we do all your PPC work for you.

It’s more like, and, and we, I wouldn’t pitch or sell anymore as much about like all the work that gets outsourced. It’s more like, I am, I, I hold the responsibility and hold the space for it. For your, like, yeah, I hold the PPC basically. That’s my. You’ve outsourced the responsibility and I hold it. And we yeah, we’re.

The team works on on, on getting results and just not talking about the, oh, usually we would do all the search query reports and all the things, things and list all the tasks more talk about it more broadly and conceptually and also, yes, more strategic partner than a, Then like an outsourced marketing department.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah. And I was thinking about this recently and it’s like you know, does it really matter how the agency or your in house team achieves what it is that you wanted them to achieve is sort of similar to going to a tax accountant and, and saying, Hey, I would like you to do my taxes and my bookkeeping, but please do not use Excel and don’t use QuickBooks online.

Like I want you to use a paper ledger. Because that’s like the old school technology that I trust. No, that’s stupid. Nobody does that, right? Everybody would love for their agency, their in house team to use the best in class technology, whether that’s something from Google or whether that’s the automation layering that goes on top of it, because it makes you more efficient.

Gets you to actually. Do the high value stuff, the strategic stuff. So Indy, what does that look like at your team?

INDERPAUL RAI: Yeah, I think it’s a really good, interesting debate. I think on the whole, I think the way things are going, especially with Google ads and the way automation is going is it’s making it obviously easier for smaller businesses who don’t necessarily have the expertise.

To play the game and try and compete as it lowers that barrier to entry. But I think you still need to understand fully what inputs are going to drive the outputs. That’s still a critical skill and you really need to understand how the platforms work to understand how you can put those inputs in. So you might not be a PPC expert, but you We’ll know how your business works when you work in house.

So you kind of know what’s important to you in terms of a business goal, but you still need to translate that into a marketing requirement. And then on top of that, the PPC requirement. So if I give you an example of that, of how we’ve done that, ufurnish.com recently. So when I first joined the account was set up just purely to get as much long tail traffic as possible with a bit strategy layer that laid on top of it to try and.

Optimized to a conversion goal. But the way that we operate, because we’re a comparison website, we’re not an e commerce platform, even though we might look like we’re an e commerce platform, the transaction doesn’t happen on our website. That’s not our conversion goal, really. So our conversion goal was set up to basically every time someone clicks to a retailer website to make a purchase that counts as a conversion.

That’s what’s being optimized to. Now that doesn’t necessarily translate into revenue for our business and our business model. So our business model, we get paid. By the retailers on things like commission, or we charge on them that cost per click, just similar to how Google do with advertisers. So understanding that and then reshaping the accounts, take advantage of that.

And it’s something that we’ve done. So something we’ve been working on is we, we’ve created a DSA feed, which has custom columns, which tells us which which of the product pages are associated with which retailers. And because we know which retailers are on which product pages, we know exactly how much They pay us for whatever the goal is on their side.

And then we’re able to work out what’s the maximum CPC we’re prepared to pay in order to get that traffic instead. So we’ve completely flipped the bid strategies around priority retailers, rather than just trying to tell Google, just go after everything. And we hope for the best that it will translate to the business outcome.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: And I assume there’s an element there of the dynamic nature of how much your merchants are willing to pay. There might be some sort of an auction. And it also makes me think about the broader world, right? So. There was a point earlier that was made where things historically been consistent, but I feel like nowadays we live in a world where there’s so much flux and so much change and you kind of need these automated systems to make sense of the, hey, today, like some new variant of, of Some pandemic is going on.

And like, what does that mean? Like, are certain locations closed or other locations open had the highest temperatures ever in London a few weeks ago? What does that mean in terms of air conditioning unit sales? What does that mean in terms of the trains are not running? So maybe travel bookings can’t happen.

German airports are shut down because there’s a strike. What does that have? Okay, there’s so much change and there’s we all work in one location and staying on top of what’s happening in all these different locations can be very, very challenging. And so I feel like that’s a little bit where we can also add a lot of value because that does impact on what Indy was saying, the target setting based, based on the strategies and those strategies are based on what we’re seeing in the real world that’s happening.

Ashwin, I’d love to hear from you as well. Your thoughts on all of this.

ASHWIN BALAKRISHNAN: Yeah, I think, I think 1 thing that’s going to change over the next couple of months and years is the way that PPC teams, particularly agencies work with clients and internal stakeholders, right? So. If you’re talking to a CMO or a VP, chances are their priorities are largely going to be revenue oriented.

So when you have discussions, put things in perspective around how they’re going to impact growth on your top line or profitability at the bottom line. That’s going to make it easier to get the buy in. And then when it comes to educating them about all the changes in the platform, teach them. But don’t just, you know, be like, Show up to meeting and say, all right, so this is what’s changed because that’s not really going to get the message across.

Sometimes you’re going to have to actually run the campaign, make mistakes and explain where the gaps are. Other times you’re going to have to put together resources, do client education. You’re learning at the same time your clients are learning and that’s, that’s a really difficult place to be in.

But the more conversations you have about. Where expectations are, how realistically they should diverge from what has been established. The sooner you have those conversations, the easier that transition is going to be. I’ve heard a lot of PPC marketers say that to a certain extent, they’ve dug this hole for themselves with the amount of data and handholding they’ve done with clients in the past.

I don’t think anybody who’s looking to create growth for a business is going to have a problem with changing that, but it’s all going to come down to how. How well you can educate your clients and how far you’re willing to go to educate them. Sometimes an email is not going to do it. Sometimes a simple report isn’t going to do it.

You’ll have to open the ads interface or your your management tool and actually walk them through what’s going wrong, you know, where the gaps are. If Google’s not showing you something, you have to show them. Yeah, Google’s not showing us this information. So here’s how we’re going to get around that.

And the other side of it is obviously Christina made a great point work more closely with your clients to get that business information that’s going to make the good inputs for the algorithm I don’t think saying we’re PPC. We just run the campaigns. I don’t think that’s going to work anymore.

I don’t say that just about PC. I say that about any marketing discipline. Marketing has to be integrated. Otherwise, it just doesn’t work. So you got to have, it’s a two way relationship. I say the same thing to people who work with PPC agencies as clients. You got to work with your agency. He can’t say this information is mine.

I’m not going to share it with you and then expect them to still produce the same result. It’s not, it’s not the same world anymore. Yeah, exactly. And be more

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: integrated, think more holistically. So, so let’s go get into that a little bit, but the importance of taking a 360 degree view as far as your marketing Christina, I’d like to start with you.

Like, is that. been different now at an agency where maybe in the past you were tasked specifically with, hey, you do PPC, but now you have to look more broadly. And then it’s kind of a related question, but looking more broadly often means putting different attribution models in place, which means putting better measurement systems in place.

Sometimes means offline conversion tracking needs to be installed, enhanced conversions for web need to be installed. And these or the CRM integrations, All of these are investments, right? And so as you talk about kind of the importance of the 360 degree view and the investments necessary to get you there, how do you convince, in your case, a client to make that investment?

CHRISTINA BRAUER: That’s definitely something that over the past five years, like increasingly we’ve done like where I would have started with when I started working freelance and then started my agency. I would literally only manage the campaigns. And now Then we realized that actually we need more data to optimize.

So we need to track, track more data to put it into the system. So then we need Google tech manager. Then we need to set up different conversions and partially I, I, like we cover it in our workflows Yeah, make it part of part of the service, not saying we, we do PPC, but saying we basically do all your everything that is around that as well.

If that means that we need to set up a goal in tech manager for, or like a event in tech manager that we then feed into analytics to track any button clicks. Then we do that. And then. That you really have to educate the client and explain how things work. So if. If like a bigger investment is required to implement some more tracking infrastructure, then like being very clear about that and also about the potential impact as, as well as that can be yeah, calculated or classified, you’re like, okay, if we don’t do that, then what does our marketing look like and where do we end up versus.

If we want to run automated campaigns, we need to track all these things. And then that takes us there and almost, I mean, everything can be made into a business case somehow. And doing that in a transparent way is usually what works.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Makes sense. Indy, what does a 360 look like at your company?

INDERPAUL RAI: Yeah. So not just at my company, but even in the previous one at RS components from an in house perspective.

So I mentioned for the direction. Things are going in, you know, getting, mastering the inputs is what you’re going to get in terms of the outputs to be profitable for the business. Basically, clients and stakeholders might not understand the PPC, industrial advertising, but they do understand those commercial goals.

So, when you do have initiative, but you do need to understand how to do something you need to frame it in that way with them. And that will get them on board and a really good example that our components was back in, I think, 2017, 2018, when people’s first started to push profit margin as an opportunity in Google ads to optimize to and against for, especially in Google shopping.

And it’s still very new and. Actually having those conversations with our finance teams, our finance director, literally their eyes are lighting up that we would be able to do this. ROAS is obviously a marketing goal. not a business goal. And that’s where that disconnect can often happen between finance teams at companies and marketing teams, but we were finally speaking the same language and seeing that excitement in the room really got things going.

So they were, so our finance director was involved in our Google meetings. So they’re in the strategy meetings. They were putting input behind how the business has actually measured things after. Traffic comes to the website after purchases have been made. How does the business actually consolidate this data and measure success for the business and understanding that made it easier to understand how we could use the data in the first place to optimize too.

So, so for me, that’s what end to end sort of 360 campaigns is all about. It’s understanding the links between not just putting traffic on the website, but what happens after and then what does that cycle look like? And what does that mean for the business? And I’m starting that. Only then can you link it in with your PPC strategy and as in house marketer that’s easier to do.

It’s more difficult to do on the agency side. But what I would say to that is at RS when I first joined, we went through the extreme of not using any agencies at all and doing everything in house from the management of the campaigns building as well as measuring and testing and all sorts. That was the wrong thing to do.

I think, I think. Going fully agency where they do everything is also the wrong thing. I think there’s a happy medium with a hybrid approach and we learned that and we learned that quite fast. We became quite insular in our thinking and we were starting not not able to keep up with the latest innovations and and just the sort of testing that agencies are able to do across a vast array of clients is fantastic.

It’s fast knowledge, whereas it takes longer to build that knowledge in house if you’re just focusing on yourself. So we, towards the end of my sort of time there in the last few years, we started partnering with an agency on a consultancy basis, and that actually worked really well, particularly on the profit margin stuff.

They were able to give advice to us in terms of how things worked for their clients. So we, we learned from their mistakes rather than making those mistakes ourselves. And we still make mistakes ourselves, of course, because every business is unique, but that allowed us to do things faster than it would if we tried to do everything ourselves.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: And I love how that connects with Christina’s earlier points that we’re all learning together, right? But at least as an agency, you have 10 clients in the same space, so you get to try out PMAX and have some insights. And those nine other clients now benefit from the one client who is the guinea pig, unfortunately, and might not even know it, right?

Yeah. So, so I love how you’re putting that all together. Yeah. Ashwin, do you have any final thoughts on 360 before we move on?

ASHWIN BALAKRISHNAN: Yeah, so I started my career in an integrated agency. So 360 marketing has been ingrained in my mind since I started in this field. Of work almost eight and a half years ago, right?

So for a long time, I think there was a perception that PPC happens in isolation. Like, it’s not part of the mainstream marketing mix. A lot of businesses were guilty of that. A lot of other marketers were guilty of that as well. It’s simply not true. I think, I think the present, but more importantly, the future demands that PPC is very closely integrated with not just other marketing teams, but other business teams as well.

Like Andy said, it’s much easier to achieve if you’re in house, but as an agency that is what’s going to make you a more valuable partner. One example I can point to is every campaign you run has a Critical mass and then returns diminishing returns. Right? So at a certain point, you’ve succeeded as much as you can reasonably succeed.

But to know when that point actually hits, you need to be in touch with other teams. For example you might start scoring. A very high number of leads, but does the client or the team that has to fulfill that demand? Can they actually keep up with it? Whether it’s a sales team or a fulfillment team, a procurement team, can they actually fulfill it?

If your success on the PPC side is exceeding what can actually be delivered to customers. Then you’re on diminishing returns because people are going to be converting on your campaigns and then waiting for a really, really long time to actually get the product or talk to a sales rep at that point, you’ve Started to lose a lot of people, right?

So knowing the limits of other teams that are actually going to pick up the pieces afterwards, you know, once, once your PPC campaigns convert, that’s an example of something that cannot happen when you work in isolation. I think that kind of plays into you know, how. Roles are going to change, which, which will come to you later.

But the things that a PPC marketer did the last four or five years they’re not going to be the things that they do in the next four or five years.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah. I mean, so let’s talk more about that. Right. And maybe I’ll throw it to Christina or Indy. Either one of you can go, but what is that new role of the PPC marketer look like as things are evolving?

INDERPAUL RAI: Yeah. So I guess from my perspective, I think creativity. So being able to understand, you know, the things we can’t control, such as the message that we’re sending out there, there’s always going to be a need for that at the moment, automation and machines. Probably aren’t quite as good as humans at that, although that might change.

It seems to be going in that direction too, but it’s still a leap that we can pull and optimize at this moment. But I would also not just say got just creativity and I guess I’d copy and, and marketing messaging, but also creativity and thinking, so understanding what the art of the possible is and being able to make those links, as I mentioned before, about, you know, your sort of platform expertise and your business expertise.

So that for me stands out as a change in role, the PPC manager, you are in a unique position. To understand what the art of the possible is. The exact example I used before about DSAs and using that to optimize which retailers are going to get the share of the traffic and enable to actually build better business outcomes for the business.

Someone who isn’t in PPC is going to understand how to do that with Google Ads, no matter how easy Google makes automation. You can’t google can’t tell you how to get a business a better business outcome. Only you can know that So you kind of need to know both skills and that’s where the sort of ppc manager role is going And I think that’s always been important in this industry.

I think the best ppc managers from 10 years ago You’ve probably had that already but it’s become even more important now and it’s become the main skill that you need to have

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: I’ll ask you a When you’re hiring for your team, like what skill sets or backgrounds are you now looking for that may have been different from what you traditionally had?

INDERPAUL RAI: Yeah, that’s an interesting one. I think for me, I’ve always been interested in the automation and technology side of things, even at the beginning of my career. So I remember following your blogs back 10 years ago about PPC scripts and using that and to, to help you know, Make things easier. And I was quite, I’m quite a lazy person.

So that was music to my ears. I’m always thinking about how can I make my life easier? So that was great. And I guess I’ve always kind of looked for that in, in hiring as well. So people who aren’t prepared to settle for the status quo, because if you’re standing still, you’re actually going to go far behind.

The pack because standing still just isn’t good enough now, given the speed of change. So always having that thirst for knowledge that’s for, you know, how do we do things better is the key thing. And I try and get that from the interview stages or try and understand and find examples where they’ve done that either in their career, or if they’re just starting out where they’ve done that in their personal lives as well.

So what sort of things I’ve done before I started my career, I used to run a music blog, for example, and, and the way the things that I learned and tested learning through that is what really made me understand that, you know, Marketing is where I wanted to be. And originally I wanted to work in SEO. And then when I started my career, I realized PPC is, I guess it has a bit of a, more of a dopamine hit where you get instant results and I really enjoyed that.

So that’s when my career sort of let me, let me down where it’s before without really knowing what PPC was. I would have said I’d never want to work in it because it just seems too mathematical and I’m not, I don’t really care for math so much. So yeah, it’s interesting where your career kind of leads you and trying to find that in people and trying to find that potential is, is really exciting and that’s kind of what I try and look

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: for.

Thanks for sharing that. Christina. So we were talking about the evolving role of the PPC marketer. I would also love to hear from you what kind of skill sets you look for when you hire, but, but let’s talk about the. Evolving role, first of all. I

CHRISTINA BRAUER: think the role evolves in, in two directions. One is the creative or like, I think it was, it was always part, like it was always part of it, but like it’s evolving in two directions.

One is the creative, the messaging, the crafting messages, understanding the customer, connecting with the customer, and also being able to. But like, I find myself quite often also. Explaining that to clients or getting the, getting the right messaging out of the clients very often is something that we also yeah, work, work with the customers on and then the other direction is the technical being able to like implement tracking tags, setting up complicated complicated automations and spreadsheets and reports and things like that.

Similar to the example that Indy mentioned earlier that, so that’s the other direction. If you can find both in one person, that is amazing. But usually that doesn’t happen as my experience. I would look for, for one person that’s really good at one thing. And then that has the, yeah, either, either they only do that and that’s fine.

Or also at some point they grow into it. So I I studied communication science and I never really considered myself a numbers or a tech person until I worked at Google. I was like, Oh, this all really makes sense. And it’s super fun. And then. Yeah, I am 12 years later still doing that. So yeah, and now I love it.

And probably I would now say, consider myself more of a techie data person than a creative person, but yeah, good to have it both.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Cool. Yeah. Be ready for change, I think is one of the big messages in a way. And it was interesting too. So when I worked at Google, one of the original 10 principles of innovation was basically you want to, maybe this wasn’t the principle of innovation, but they always hired like these really smart people.

For these roles that didn’t really require that many smarts. I mean, like, I was in the bin ads and I have an electrical engineering degree from center. I’m like, I think I’m over qualified, but the whole point of Google was, well, we’re 500 people now. But we aspire to be way bigger. We’re going to be working on all these things that we don’t know what those things are yet, but we just need people who need, who will be flexible enough to morph into those roles and who have some skill sets and some backgrounds that may not be exactly in line with what they’re doing now, but that will put us in a better position in the future.

So I think, and that’s exactly what I hear you saying as well. You want those adaptable people who are really smart. So that they can evolve. Ashwin, what are your thoughts on these evolving roles?

ASHWIN BALAKRISHNAN: Yeah, so I might get a bit of flack for this, but I honestly think advertising is advertising. It doesn’t make a difference if you pay per click or you’re paying for airtime.

The core premise is the same. There’s a group of people who need the product or service that you’re offering. You want to have the right message in the right place at the right time. I think at a certain point, because of how popular the Internet became, this idea of digital marketing showed up.

But I honestly think, like, marketing, advertising, it’s all the same. And at least at a basic level everybody working. In paid and organic in more traditional mainline advertising you do have to be platform agnostic with certain things, right? Audience research is a must strategy is a must positioning is a must.

And I see, I think it’s fair to say that you’re always going to have more of a lean towards the creative side or the analytical side or more of the technical and development side of things. So pick one, but you do have to have an understanding of the other side. I think there’s going to be a bigger return to marketing fundamentals over the next few years.

So things like talking to customers is going to be very important developing new messaging, testing different things, working with other teams, the organic demand generation team on your, on your client side, or if you’re in house other teams that, that work in the same company You know, the information sharing, the, the, it’s going to be insights that they give to you, but also what information do you see, what patterns do you see in the performance data that you can share with other teams to improve what they’re doing and the more cohesive that becomes, again, it comes back to 360 degree marketing, the more cohesive that becomes the, the synergy between the paid team and the organic teams.

It’s going to improve everything. It’s going to improve customer experience. It’s going to improve site structure, site performance. There’s so many possibilities that open up, and I think, I think it’s all going to start with thinking of advertising less about, you know, this is a Google ad, or this is a Facebook campaign and more like I’m trying to reach people who want a solution to, you know, tooth whitening, for example, right?

So coming back to that core premise of people have a problem, we have a solution. What’s the best way that we can show them that our solution is the best.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Makes sense. All right. So great session so far, everyone. We’re kind of close to the end of the session. So is there anything that you all wanted to cover that we haven’t talked about?

It could be anything from things that you’re excited about for the future, things that automation is enabling you to do that you may not have had a chance to do in the past. Could be about how you’re The roadblocks you’re seeing, how you intend to overcome those or it could just be a final parting word and tell us how your agency, your company can help us furnish our homes or get better PPC results.

Indy, why don’t we start with you?

INDERPAUL RAI: Yeah, I think one of the sort of obvious challenges is, is having that access to business data to, and the ability to integrate it into Google ads and how you do it. And how you can use it. That’s, that’s probably the biggest challenge. And unfortunately businesses don’t really make it easy for you, even if, even when you work in house, they don’t make it easy for you.

So and this goes back to sort of the education piece with the stakeholders, helping them understand why it’s important and what we could actually do with that. What the outcomes could be. Once you start talking the same language that could easily be spun up in the, to a business case. So if you do need development time.

In house to build that infrastructure for you to send you that data, or if you need a specific tool and bring that in the budget for that needs to be signed off, but if they know what the outcomes could be, it makes it easier to get those things through whether you work in house or you work on the agency side, that education piece is super important.

And then the other challenge is being able to keep up with all the updates and how to do things. And I kind of mentioned it before, especially in house, it’s really difficult. So what I would say is it’s never been more important to network with, with the industry. There’s so many like minded people out there who want to learn from each other.

When you have the, the old age PPC chat on Twitter, there’s something that I don’t particularly participate in, but I do, I do read it. try to learn from it, even though I don’t participate in it. So things like reading blogs religiously, or if you don’t have time, just simply making the effort to go to conferences.

So I mean, Fred, you mentioned PPC sorry here at conference last week that I spoke out, which was a great experience for me. Cause I’ve never done that before, but it was also really great was meeting new people and hearing other people’s thoughts as well. So that things I hadn’t even considered like value based bidding.

In Google ads, like I haven’t even, I haven’t even looked at that for years. Like the last time I saw that was you could make, you can basically choose your own value for a conversion goal. And that was it. That was either do that or you dynamically populate it in the tag. There was no, nothing else you do there.

Whereas now you can actually use them as secondary conversions and you can use those as kind of micro conversions, but actually have a monetary goal associated to that. So for example, if you know, People signing up to a newsletter or people that request a call, you typically convert them at a certain rate.

You could predict what their sort of AOV or lifetime value is to you, and you can put a goal to that in Google ads. And then even though you can’t compete on the real short, short on a sort of revenue basis, you can probably compete on those micro goals. So things like that hadn’t even considered if I hadn’t gone to the conference and now I’m starting to think of, you know, how could I use that for eFurnished.

com and it might not be the right thing for us, but the point is I hadn’t even considered it. So yeah, I’d say that’s probably for me, the biggest challenges. I’m facing personally, but also I think the industry is facing. I think there are ways to get through. And I think it’s just, as we’ve spoken about, like oversharing, whether it’s emergencies or just meeting people and understanding what people are doing.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah, I’m a big fan of meeting people in person. And so even if you go to PPC chat, PPC chat is fantastic, but there is still something to be said for these in person conferences when they do happen just sort of the backstage discussions that you have or the, during the networking reception, that’s when the real truth comes out, right?

We’re all complaining publicly about the things we’re allowed to complain about, but then there’s things we shouldn’t say in front of the big ad engines, right? But those are the discussions we have over a drink and and then you really know what’s going on. So. Sign up for those sessions when they do happen.

Christina, what about you? Final thoughts?

CHRISTINA BRAUER: Yes, I was really excited to go to the next conference actually, after a while of not going to one, going to ones. And then I had one that I was going to, but then got COVID, couldn’t go. So very excited for that. And yeah, to discuss all the challenges and find the solutions, because I mean, it’s, it’s been 12 years that I’ve been working in the industry and like so many things have changed and we’ve always evolved.

I think we have some interesting. Things coming up like privacy playing a much bigger role that how that impacts tracking what that then does to the data that is going to fuel the machines that are currently doing the learning and all the calculations for us. So we have some. A very exciting times ahead, but I’m looking forward to working on that.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: That’s a, that’s a topic that we really should start talking about a lot more, I think, first party data with the privacy implications. So yeah, let’s, let’s do an episode on that on an upcoming PPC Town Hall, because The data is only going to get less, right? And we just saw the Facebook results for the first time ever.

They had a decline in revenue and in large part, that’s being driven by the fact that Facebook no longer can do a lot of the things they could before with targeting, because they’ve lost a lot of audience signals and acting a huge company like that, think of what it’s going to do to us potentially, if we don’t get ready for it and ahead of this game, Ashwin final thoughts from you.

ASHWIN BALAKRISHNAN: Yeah. So the first thing that, that. Piece of advice that I would, I would give to every PVC marketer is I understand the frustration that, that a lot of people have with ad platforms, particularly with the big two or three, but try to look at these new automation features and developments and assess them on their own merits.

Because very frequently I will see people. Dismiss something that has the potential to be beneficial and more profitable just because it comes from Google and it comes with a certain set of best practices attached to it. Consider the, the new feature on its own merits and apply it in the way that you believe is best.

The ad platforms recommendations are not gospel. You don’t have to follow everything they say. And consider change management from the full perspective, right? It takes time and it takes energy and it takes effort. It’s not just you adapting to the new automation. It’s also educating your clients, hiring the right kind of people with the right skill sets.

You know, it might even be the way you structure your teams. Yeah. So don’t expect that things will change overnight. It’s going to be tough. I came into marketing right as the. Shift to marketing automation happened. So that was a very difficult time to, to get started in a new field. But a lot of PPC marketers have been doing this for a long time.

They have a wealth of experience and expertise. That’s something that nobody can take away from you. All this changing is the way that you apply that knowledge.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Great. So final takeaways here. So not, not takeaways, but where do we find everyone? So Indy, we find you at ufurnished. com. If you need a new furnishings, new furniture.

Go use it. It sounds amazing. I wish I had that kind of a site in the United States. There’s way too many sites that I have to browse through to find new stuff. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us today. Christina, capital C agency. Thank you for joining us as well today. If anyone’s looking for an agency Indy even said it himself.

Everyone needs an agency, maybe not to do everything, but everybody needs an agency to help with something. So Christina. And where can we find you Christina

CHRISTINA BRAUER: at capital C dot agency, or you can find me on LinkedIn on

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: LinkedIn in India. I know you’re on LinkedIn. You’re also on Twitter. Tell us your Twitter handle.

INDERPAUL RAI: Yes. In the pool on the school. Right. Yeah.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Any other places that you want people to get ahold of you?

INDERPAUL RAI: Yeah. Twitter is probably the best place, but LinkedIn as well.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Okay. Let’s do that. Ashwin, how do people

ASHWIN BALAKRISHNAN: get ahold of you? Optmyzr. com slash blog. Right here on YouTube or Optmyzr and I’m at, at thecopytrail on Twitter.

My job is to help PPC marketers not sell subscriptions that that’ll happen on its own. So if we can help you in any way, please connect with me on Twitter. Come to our blog, write to us. If you want to see a particular blog post or a video We’re more than happy to collaborate.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yes, we are. Great.

And then of course, if anyone hasn’t tried Optmyzr quite yet, we have a two week free trial. You can find that on Optmyzr. com. Thank you so much for watching. We’re going to be doing more episodes soon. So subscribe to our YouTube channel. You can also go to pptownhall. com, subscribe for the mailing list.

So you’ll get notifications about upcoming episodes. Like Ashwin said, if you think you’d be great as a panelist on these sessions, let us know. We’re always looking forward. Great new speakers. Like the two folks we had today, actually the three, I have known Ashton for quite a long time, but all of them first timers for an amazing session.

So thanks so much for watching. We’re actually going to continue on this sort of a topic of automation and how it’s changing things. But we’re going to go a little bit deeper in two weeks on how it’s making an impact on agencies. We’re going to have two amazing agencies come in and tell us more about what they think.

So thanks again for watching. Have a great rest of your day. See you next time.