How to prepare your Performance Max and Shopping campaigns for Q4 2023

Episode Description

We’re getting pretty close to the holiday shopping season. And if you work in digital marketing, you can never be ready soon enough because consumers are starting their holiday shopping earlier and earlier every single year.

So where do you start? How can you prepare your campaigns, especially shopping and #PerformanceMax campaigns for this season? And what have the last few shopping seasons taught us?

In this episode of PPC Town Hall, I spoke to Marcel Smal of Roots Network. He shared how his agency is getting ready for Q4, plus tips on how to prepare your campaigns for the upcoming shopping season. We covered so much in this episode that we think will be of great value to you. Be sure to check it out.

Tune in to learn how to:

- Prepare your Performance Max campaigns for Q4

- Implement seasonality bid adjustments, data exclusions, etc.

- Use historical data for product discounts

Episode Takeaways

• Prepare Your Performance Max Campaigns for Q4:
  • Ensure that asset groups are mutually exclusive for clarity in product targeting, considering the unique challenges and dilemmas posed by Performance Max campaigns for different advertising channels.
• Implement Seasonality Bid Adjustments, Data Exclusions, Etc.:
  • Utilize seasonality bid adjustments for better control during high-peak periods like Black Friday, adjusting bids in real-time based on sales performance and spend rates.
• Use Historical Data for Product Discounts:
  • Analyze past search volume and consumer behavior trends to plan effectively for discounts and promotions, leveraging historical data to predict and strategize for upcoming holiday sales.

Additional Takeaways:

• Start promotions and audience building early to capitalize on pre-holiday search behaviors.
• Customize and prepare creatives and campaign materials well ahead of peak seasons to avoid last-minute rushes and potential approval delays.

Episode Transcript

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: And for our Dutch viewers, I know we have quite a few. People using Optmyzr and watching this show Europe and specifically the Netherlands and Belgium. Shall we speak how if it’s just a native on store.

MARCEL SMAL: Yeah.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: So Hey, for for our English viewers and everyone else. So we both speak Dutch. I’m Belgian. So, Hey, we had to work that in.

MARCEL SMAL: I always like, whenever I set up like a performance max campaign, I feel like I’m sort of pushed into like a number of dilemmas, you know, and So I know like how you can build like the perfect keyword setup and like a really good shopping setup and a really good like setup for YouTube and for dynamic remark, remarketing.

But then if you have to set up a performance max campaign, and sometimes I feel like, okay, what I’m now doing is the best for search, but now it’s not good for like shopping anymore. And then I feel like, well, and then it’s not really good for remarketing anymore.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Hello and welcome to another episode of PPC Townhall.

My name is Fred Vallaeys. I’m your host. I’m also the CEO and one of the co founders at Optmyzr. So we’re getting pretty close to the holiday shopping season, which is actually kind of crazy given how far that period is still away. But you know, if you work in digital marketing, you can never be ready soon enough because as we see consumers.

For some reason they start shopping earlier and earlier every single year for the holidays So we have an episode today where we bring it where we’re bringing in a great ppc expert And we’re going to ask him what he’s doing to get ready for his campaigns and his clients To be ready for black friday cyber monday and the holiday shopping season And one of the angles we wanted to talk about as well is where performance max campaigns fit into this performance max being You Relatively new, but also having been around long enough now to be significant, that might actually be a big part of the strategy.

So we wanted to talk to real PPC practitioners and experts about where that might fit in. So welcome to PPC Town Hall and let’s get rolling with this episode.

And here’s my guest for today, Marcel Smal from Roots Network. Welcome to the show, Marcel.

MARCEL SMAL: Hey. Yeah, good morning to you. Really, really awesome to be here. Really cool.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Great to have you on. So you’ve been doing PPC for a long time, right? So tell people a little bit about your background.

MARCEL SMAL: Yeah.

I’ve been working in PPC for over 10 years already. So started in 2013 and always worked at a big. Paid search agency and then a year and a half ago as of 2022 together with a friend, we decided to start for ourselves. So we started our own paid search agency, and now we’re working for a number of really cool, like retail fashion clients, some B2B clients, like an all just like aimed at PPC.

So

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: yeah, Nice. And that’s called Roots Network, right? And you guys are based in Amsterdam.

MARCEL SMAL: Yeah. Yeah, indeed. Indeed. And it’s called Roots Network because my father used to have like a tulip farm and the friend, like I started Roots Network with, he always, he also used to work there. So we like grew up working in tulips.

And we also feel like in paid search, it’s all about like, like the basics should be good, you know, like the roots of your campaigns. Everything should be. Like good and then you can grow on top of it. So, so that’s where that that comes from.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Get, get your PPC fundamentals and the roots correct.

And then the rest will be much easier. Yeah. So like an Optmyzr, we have a couple of different tools, right. And one of them is, is your audits and that’s exactly what it’s for. It’s making sure that your structure is right. And your, Your fundamentals are good. It’s , your Ks can

MARCEL SMAL: Yeah, indeed. Like if, if the basics, if like the, the fundamental is good, then you can grow on top of it.

So that, that’s also like always how, how we like to approach it. Yeah. Indeed.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: And for, for our Dutch viewers, I, I know we have quite a few people using Optmyzr and watching this show in Europe and specifically the Netherlands and Belgium. Sh shall we speak how which is needed on store?

MARCEL SMAL: Yeah, claim beijing com. Leg .

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: So hey, for our, for our English viewers and everyone else, so we both speak Dutch. I’m Belgium, Marcel is in Amsterdam, so hey, we had to work that in . And, and my, my team in the Women’s World Cup Belgium is not playing in that one. So USA was my team. They went up against the Netherlands.

Netherlands is a little bit more successful in that regards but you guys are much more of a soccer country as well, right?

MARCEL SMAL: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Indeed. Indeed.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah. And do you want to say who your team is in in the regular leagues?

MARCEL SMAL: Yeah, it’s like Or is that

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: a question? Is that going to alienate you? No, yeah,

MARCEL SMAL: it’s, it’s, it’s okay.

Like, I live in Amsterdam, but I grew up, like, more, like countryside. And there’s a team called AZ in, like, close to, like, it’s, it’s in Alkmaar. And that always used to be my my club. Yeah. Nice.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Well, very good. So let’s bring it back to PPC here. So the holiday shopping season, right? Like, do you feel like it’s happening tomorrow or where are you guys at as an agency in terms of getting your clients ready for Q4?

MARCEL SMAL: Yeah, it’s, it’s, you know, like, I feel like with this, you can’t. start like too early, like, I think like people who worked in, in retail or with retail clients in paid search, I think everybody knows like a holiday season where you started to start too late, for example. And then, you know, like the chaos that, that can happen, you know, like at a certain point, it just starts.

And then it’s like like, like the one thing after another, like, like if, if you’re a retail client is really. Promotional heavy. Then it’s like, yeah, really intense that period. And if you need stuff like, like creatives or videos or, you know, like I want to know like what kinds of. Promotions that are going to be, or like what kind of products are going to be in promotion, like you have to start early.

Otherwise, like you’re gonna sort of miss the moment. And that’s just like really such a pity.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah. And obviously you don’t want to miss the moment, but talk a little bit about, you know, getting creatives ready ready for when, like, what does it look like in terms of your overall strategy? Like when do you run certain types of ads and is that looking earlier this year than last year?

MARCEL SMAL: Yeah. If I look at our clients, like it’s kind of like an entire well, it depends per client, of course, but it’s often sort of like a whole holiday season sort of like starting as of November and then you’ve got like. Pre promos, then you’ve got like your promotion and then like, sort of like, like the, the, the, the times that, that come after that sort of, and also with your creatives, those are going to be different, you know, like it’s going to be different discounts.

It’s going to be communicated. Like it’s going to be like, like the tone of voice might be different. So you want to make sure that everything is created like like well in advance. Also because in the moment itself, like it’s, it’s. Too difficult like to get those assets, for example, so you really have to start well in advance.

And also what I kind of like to mention here is like certain strategies, like with your promotional period are also going to be about, you know, like getting leads in, for example, or like making sure that your app strategy is going to be okay, or like, certain things with automation, like that you have to make sure that it’s like all finished already.

Like that’s really for the period before the promotion starts. Like now is when you can do it and not when it’s already starting. So I think that’s also really important to, to now already have a strategy for that. Otherwise, like. You’re going to be too late with that.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Right. I mean, so the way that I think about that, you talked about roots, right?

So you want to get those roots and those fundamental components in place. And so first you want to have your strategy, like what is it we’re going to do? And that is really about. How many campaigns? What types of campaigns are we using? What type of bid management are we going to have? And all of those things that those fundamentals, those roots need to be in place right now.

Because obviously you’re not going to come to November and all of a sudden say, Oh, well, we’re going to go from TCPA bidding to TROAS, but we’re going to make that shift at that point, you know, that’s yeah. Yeah,

MARCEL SMAL: exactly. Like, can you, you kind of sort of have like a milestone where you have to work towards, like some of the things that you really wanted to have in place.

Like everybody’s got like big projects going on, for example, you know. Yeah. And, you know, like, okay, we kind of have to fit, have to finish, have it finished before this date. Otherwise we’re going to have to do it like in promo season. And then, then it’s going to be mayhem, you know, like that’s not gonna, that’s not gonna work.

So, so those things you want to have finished in time, but also certain things like, for example, if you have an app, like what, what’s your app strategy going to be before the promotional period, for example. So I think it’s really cool to think about, for example, that during The promotion, you know, like it’s really good to have your own channels to, to use it the most, you know, like to have your app, to have like the app note that the push notifications, for example, but then it could be part of your strategy to now make sure that you get more app downloads, for example.

So then you have to think like, okay, maybe now we have to like use more universal app campaigns, for example. So, so that those are also things to, to kind of. Think about because yeah, you, you have to start at now and otherwise you’re going to be too late with that.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah, what i’m hearing there is a strategy that mirrors what we talked about in a recent episode about video ads and the point was a little bit use your The pre season like right now use this to build audiences and for video that was just like People who watch videos, you put them on an audience list because they might be in, right.

It’s kind of upper funnel. And what you’re describing here is use this early stage to have an app campaign or universal campaign and get people on the app. Because then when the actual promotion drops, you don’t have to go and pay those high CPCs when everybody else is advertising on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, but the notification actually shows up directly on the user’s phone.

MARCEL SMAL: Yeah, I think like, indeed, like it’s. I think it’s kind of with with app, then you can use your own channels, but also if you’ve got your web to app deep linking implemented in the right way, like during, like afterwards people deep linking into your app, you know, like the conversion rates in general are going to be higher.

So that will also work like that. That’s already like a good optimization to have already in a time when. You know, like all other competitors are going to be like really out there as well. I think there is gonna, then you can, can make a little bit of a difference there, you know, like that, that’s going to have a big impact and the same goes with, with the audiences, if you now can get people in, if you can now fill your audiences, or if you can now get like.

to to, to, to get leads. And I think that that’s not now, now, but I mean in, in the period leading up to the to, to black Friday, for example, people are already sometimes wanting to find out like, okay, what kind of black Friday deals are there, for example? I know that like with, with the telecom provider, like for them Black Friday, you know, like they knew there was going to be a big deal for, for, for the new iPhone, for example.

And people also really wanted, they wanted to go for that, but they couldn’t communicate it yet. But then they did have a landing page where people could get you know, like where they could leave their email address and then they would get emails like leading up to that moment. And then. That is an audience that you can then also use again during Black Friday.

And then it’s pretty cool. Like then you’ve got this audience of like really engaged people and then you can advertise on basically everything, you know, like, even if it’s too far away from your product, like you’re going to be able to advertise profitably, profitably there. Yeah. Yeah.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: That’s very interesting because black Friday used to be this one moment in time and it used to be very US focused around the Thanksgiving holiday.

But then obviously it went global. And now Amazon basically made a fake holiday, which is prime day. Which is almost exactly six months from christmas And and the whole point was that they saw there’s always this sales lull that happens in summer People are just buying less stuff and they made a fake holiday They were like we’re going to call it prime day And then all of the other merchants all of the other retailers at least in the united states They said well, let’s let’s start calling it black friday in july and and so I think what you’re describing is that black friday is now like this generic concept of like What’s the best deal that you can offer me?

You and, and no matter what time of the year it is, you can put your name on the list. And if that deal is not available today, the day that it becomes available, you’ll be notified. Right. And that’s, that’s actually fascinating because that means that, you know, do you think PPC is still going to. Be as big on black Friday and cyber Monday itself.

If you’ve kind of been preloading it with these audience.

MARCEL SMAL: Yeah, it’s, I think it’s also like, it’s, you know, I think that’s also kind of a thing, like some advertisers think too much like that, those. Days that, that’s, that’s where everything’s going to happen, but, but actually like you already see like all the search behavior, like, like the, the, the, the volumes are start rising before that already and, and afterwards as well, so it’s, it’s not only on those two days, like it’s, it’s surrounding that period as well.

I think that that’s pretty important to, to take. For people to kind of look at like, okay, what were the search volumes like last year, for example, like when do people actually start searching for it already? When do people start like having orienting kind of searches, then buying sort of purchases and that’s, And then you like, like what we saw last year, for example, like it’s, it’s, it’s a much longer period.

And I think that is also something from our ends that we have to share with like, you know, with, with category managers, for example, like, okay, be aware. It’s not only like these days, like people are going to be like in market, like much, much longer. So we also can profit from that longer.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Interesting. And so say that you’re this telecom provider, right? And there’s going to be a great deal on the iPhone. How important do you think is timing of all of this? Because obviously there’s multiple telecom providers. They can all compete on a slightly better deal. Right. And you might have that list that you built up saying, Hey, we’re going to have a great deal, but you haven’t said how much that deal is, how much our consumer is going to say potentially, well, okay, this other one came in and said they had a good deal and it was pretty good.

Maybe not the best. Could be, but it looks good enough to me. So I just bought it. Right. And how that, that other company that waited until black Friday basically lost half their audience to this competitor.

MARCEL SMAL: Yeah. I think maybe that’s also why you said like, it, it looks like it’s starting every year a bit earlier because I can imagine that advertisers also like then kind of try to start earlier as well and then, yeah, and then like, you kind of don’t want to start.

Like too early that you’re like ahead of the market, but then you also don’t want to have like competitors sort of cut you off. Like, it’s kind of like like a fine line sort of.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Exactly. It’s a fine line where you don’t want to give more of a discount that would have been necessary to get that sale.

Right. You don’t want to wait too long. And this makes me sort of think about like predictive analytics, right? Is that something that you’re using because you said you look at historical patterns of data and so in Optmyzr, we have tools that look at a couple of years of history and show the seasonality expectations for your industry, your account.

But to what degree are like predictive and maybe more of the the machine learning systems that we see now, how much can that help people figure out how much to discount and when to start the discounting?

MARCEL SMAL: Yeah, yeah. That’s something that we don’t like use like in, in like that concretely basically, but what we, what we kind of look at is, okay, like historical search volumes, for example, and then also we try to work like together with Google, you know, like if you’re a bigger advertiser and that’s, that’s also kind of like this, they start around this period.

No, like in the coming month, Google will start contacting you. Like, are you preparing for the holiday season? And some of the, like, like some of the suggestions they give, you know, like our, our no brainers, but like, they do give you quite some good insights of what you can expect of search volumes, what will be happening, for example.

So, so that way we kind of try to, you know, like close, close the gaps and, you know, like get it, get it better every year, basically.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: And I completely agree with that. I mean, so Google and Microsoft are certainly going to put out these reports and they will say, Hey, you got to use P max, you got to use automated bidding.

That’s sort of the things we’ve heard again and again. And where we also know I mean, automated bidding for sure. Like that works really well. P max, you know, that can be debated. I will debate that here in a minute. So like take that for what it is, right? It’s Google speak, it’s Microsoft speak. But what is really important is this huge amount of data that they sit on where they understand what is that search behavior?

What is that consumer journey looking like this year versus last year? Like definitely pay attention to that because individually, you know, We just don’t have that much insight on these things. So let’s talk a little bit then about, you know, these big days that are still going to happen. Right? So even if people are shopping earlier, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, these are still going to be like keystone events.

Do you do anything like seasonality, bid adjustments, data exclusions? Do you get more aggressive with your TROAS targets? Like what do you do on these days? Yeah.

MARCEL SMAL: Yeah, yeah. Like it also definitely depends on like your, the type of advertiser, you know, and you also kind of have to be honest with, okay, how good are the deals that we’re going to be having this year?

So, but we’ve got one advertiser, for example, like they’ve got like super good deals and yeah, during those days,

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Can you say who it is?

MARCEL SMAL: Yeah, it’s called OGM. It’s a, it’s a fashion outlet. So they already have like really good deals on fashion, but then during the holiday season, you know, like it gets even better.

And then it’s, it’s. It’s really interesting, but like everything sort of like sticks during that period, you know, like that, that’s like it, like it, it forms all really well, you know, but in, in that case, you know, like, you, you know, it’s gonna get really big. So in those cases, we make sure we’re going to set like more aggressive rows targets, for example, and then.

During those days, we’re going to just start with a seasonality adjustments. And then also during those days, we just check it hourly, basically. So we check like day over day, like how are we progressing in spans? And there is sort of like a delay in your conversions that you’re measuring, like during the day, but then.

You have to kind of be in touch like with with the advertiser, like, okay, how are your sales going today? And like, how are we progressing in spent during this day? And based on that, we’re gonna decide like to, you know, like have higher seasonality adjustments or lower seasonality adjustments, but like the spend on those days can be like so high.

You have to be really on top of it to make sure that you’re not, you know, like either spending way too much or too little and, and miss miss the moment. But I have to say seasonality adjustments. I, like, I, I really love it. It’s, I think it’s like one of those. Tools where I feel like, or features where I feel like that is where Google really listened to like what a specialist had to say, you know?

I think, you know, like automated bid management is a no brainer or like for 90 percent of the advertisers. You should do like automated bid management, but like adjusting to those really big changes, like up or down, like it, like we, it was always struggling. And with seasonality adjustment, you can see it react like so quickly.

Like if you set a seasonality adjustment, it will like, in my experience, it will start working in like 10 minutes, 15 minutes. So you can. For those moments where, you know, the performance is so much better than what the bidding algorithm is actually thinking then you can have like that, that, that amount of control, which, which makes a big difference.

I feel

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: nice. So the seasonality, but adjustments and then data exclusions, right. Do you use those in combination with each other?

MARCEL SMAL: It depends. I often see if the fluctuations aren’t too big, then if, if you had like a positive seasonality adjustment, then afterwards, if it’s if, if it’s not implemented anymore, then it will start lowering the spend really quickly as well, so then it’s not necessary to have a data exclusion event.

But. If it is like, if a lot happened, you know, like if the performance was that good, then you can sometimes see like, okay, now it is really struggling with slowing down, you know and, and with the biggest um, changes there, like with the, with the biggest impact then we will implement a data exclusion event, or sometimes we will set like a negative seasonality adjustment.

So

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: another question I had for you, Marcel, was about different campaign types and maybe some of the stuff you run before Black Friday to build some of these audiences. Do you use anything like video, discovery, any of those campaign types?

MARCEL SMAL: Yeah both like, and yeah, and, and, and like remarketing campaigns and like GDM prospecting campaigns.

But yeah, I think it is important to mention with also with those campaign types, you do have to like. Yeah, already think about like what that is going to perform like during the holiday season. So for example, discovery campaigns, I like it to use it like mostly during when you have something to offer basically.

So during like those moments you have something to offer. So then I feel like it works really well. Otherwise, sometimes I feel like the performance isn’t quite there. But then you also have to take into account that discovery campaigns do have a ramp up period. So I think People have experienced with discovery campaigns.

They know, like, it will take a few days before it starts going, you know, and it is, you only have like the automated bidding option. So target CPA, target ROAS or maximize conversions, maximize conversion values, I think. And so there isn’t an option like sometimes where you think like, Oh no, you know, like we have to ramp it up right now.

Okay. I’m going to do like manual bidding, like really high bids and get it started. You know, like you don’t have that option. You can set more aggressive targets, but it will still take a few days sometimes. So I would definitely recommend with those campaign types or like, and then especially discovery ads use a ramp up period where, you know, like a few weeks leading up that you will have it running already, like general creatives, maybe also with like much, like much lower spent, but then it will just start getting traction and then when you need to, you know, like then you change the And then you can set a target more aggressive, your budget’s higher and then you can go.

But it’s, I’ve, I’ve had that like one season, like with a big campaign. Yeah. Everything was ready to go, you know, like, and, and, and, and we felt like, yeah, this is like a good strategy with all the campaign types that we’re having. And then like discovery campaigns, you know, like, like the last hours of the promotion, it was like doing something and then we had to pass it again.

So that’s, yeah, that’s something that I learned like the hard way.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah, that’s a great tip. Thanks for sharing that on how Because a lot of times like with search ads, you’re just used to turning it on and there’s almost an instantaneous approval But clearly a little bit different for discovery ads.

Yeah

MARCEL SMAL: And that’s also kind of something that like and that’s also something that I found out the hard way, but that’s Changing your ads for example during like let’s say back friday, you know that there is sometimes a risk of You You know, like if you’re a retailer and you’re selling like brands if you change like a lot in your ad copy, then it might get re approved again, for example.

And you might get into like things of uh, approval settings that, that, that you’re. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that’s kind of the stuff that you again, don’t want happening. Like, especially during those days, like a lot of things are happening with support, so you might not get the support and then it might be with your most important brands that you.

Are not able to like show your, your promotional ads, you know, like, and that’s, and that’s also something that you have to take into account. And what, what we, what we do with a number of advertisers that we use, like at customizers, then you already have like that piece of. They, you know, like, okay, we want to communicate this at these places like the promotions and then during the promotions, you just change the ad customizer and there you don’t have the problems with reapproval.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: That’s another great piece of advice Marcel there. Just get ready and use those ad customizers. You know, and also like promotion feeds or price feeds getting disapproved. That’s one of the things we recently put an Optmyzr. So we now have like a feed audit system that will automatically tell you if you know, things are getting disapproved for price or for some other reason.

And clearly that’s a really important thing to get ready for the Q4 season. Are there any like. Tools that you use. Are you, are you a user of scripts or anything to like automate maybe some of these checks that you do to to keep, because you, you talked about like checking hourly, right? Like that seems pretty intense if you’re not automating.

So how do you guys go about that?

MARCEL SMAL: Yeah, we, we. There’s a few tools that we use like for campaign building, we use like mostly channel ball. So that’s like a feed management tool and a campaign automation tool. So for that part, we use that. And then there’s always like, sort of like scalable automation that we see that can happen.

Like, for example, like adding negative lists, like in a really specific kind of way. For, for that, we use scripts. I can’t write code myself, even with chat GPT, I can’t do it. I like how now people explain like, okay, you, everybody can now be a coder. Well, I can’t, you know but I, but I do know, like, we do know, like how to explain the business rules and then we know a really good coder who can create those scripts no scripts for us.

And then like in the past, we’ve used like Optmyzr true clicks for like Like, like auditing and like those kind of like little, like, like scalable optimizations that you can do.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Nice. Yeah. And I love that whole point about you still need to know how to do code to write scripts, even despite GPT.

And so I’ve been playing with that and I’m doing a few sessions here and there, but it is interesting because the more specific you are in your instructions, the better the GPT generated code seems to be. So I’ll, I’ll keep plugging away at that. I’ll keep teaching and hopefully like eventually everybody in the world.

Well,

MARCEL SMAL: I know like at a, at a talk here in the Netherlands, you said like that you use chat GPT, like to build your own script. And then like, we needed a script and I thought like, okay, I’m going to try this with chat GPT. And then like, it was really. Kind like that, like it kept failing and then like just kept saying, Oh no, you’re right.

Like you have to do this. And then like, and then after like 20 iterations, I’m like, okay, now, now I’m going to ask like a developer. And then with a few little things, like he said, like, okay, you have to do, do like this and that, and then it works. But, but for me, it kind of did show like I don’t know.

Like, I feel like some people feel like, okay, with JetGPT, like you can be like, you can do everything sort of, but, but I feel like, yeah, it will like really make specialists even much better specialists, you know, and, and that’s also with people who can write code. For example, like if they use it, then they’re much more efficient or like they can do much cooler things, for example but you do have to have Like really specific skills to, to still like also get the most out of that tool, for example.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah. Super good point. I mean, I think that comes down to the fact that it hallucinates or it’s not like always factually correct. So if you go in as someone who doesn’t know the topic and you ask it to write about something Sure, it looks great what it spit out, but is it actually true? Is it correct?

You don’t know about that and that’s the case of scripts so so I had an instance where I said write me a script and pull like the two date ranges and compare them to each other. So you could tell me things about it. And in my initial prompt, I said like, pull me to these two date ranges. And it would just like do one query, two scripts to the AdWords API and try to get to two date ranges in one query.

And like, I know as a scripts developer, that doesn’t work. You have to do two independent queries and then you have to combine them together. But I, so I could identify that mistake in the code and then I was like, well, how do I get it to actually separate this out? So I literally said in my next prompt, like first.

Ask for this data and then ask for this data for the next state range and then combine them and then it was able to to really write it correctly. And so it sped up my development. Yeah, you’re right. If you couldn’t identify that, oh, you need to do two calls instead of one. Like, yeah.

MARCEL SMAL: And then that’s your, your skill, you know, like that’s what you have to offer is like you notice like right away, like, okay, this is where it’s wrong.

And now I can give a better prompt and then it works, you know, but, but otherwise it’s still going to take like. Yeah, a lot of time, I think.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Hey, let’s talk for just a couple of minutes here, maybe about performance max. And again, I said at the beginning that this is a campaign type that’s relatively new, but it’s not been around long enough that you could legitimately run your whole Q4 shopping campaign and shopping season on a PMAX campaign.

So I was curious what your thoughts are and what’s your strategy around PMAX?

MARCEL SMAL: Yeah, like we use performance max for, I feel like 50 percent for our customers. And then like, there are like, first of all, like for, for like how we feel about performance max, like for some clients, it works like pretty well.

And then like, we use it sort of like as part of our strategy for others, like for some reasons, like sometimes we have to have like, for sort of. Like legal reasons. We have to like keep control of the search terms, for example, like in Google shopping. So, so those are really examples where we have to use, like, have to keep on using regular shopping, for example.

But we do like test it always and then like, see how good it works. And then and in some cases it works pretty well. In general, like I feel like some. Insights are definitely still missing. Some features are a bit missing. And I always like, whenever I set up like a performance max campaign, I feel like I’m sort of pushed into like a number of dilemmas, you know?

So I know like how you can build like the perfect. Keyword setup and like a really good shopping setup and a really good, like set up for a YouTube and for dynamic remark, remarketing. But then if you have to set up a performance max campaign, and sometimes I feel like, okay, what I’m now doing is the best for search, but now it’s not good for like shopping anymore.

And then I feel like, well, and that’s not really good for remarketing anymore, like, like to give like a really quick example for that, like. You want your asset groups like to have like mutually exclusive, like, if you, if you’re retail, you’ve got products, then you want your asset groups to be mutually exclusive with the products, you know?

And then I’m sometimes thinking like, okay, but then for remarketing, like, how’s that gonna work? You know, like, then are people gonna only be shown the products from that asset group, or also like more of the products, because that’s what you Kind of want to have happened with with, with remarketing.

And especially if you have like an asset group, which is like, sort of like your rest, rest of your products, you know, like you’ve got like an asset group for like a number of your big brands or big categories, but then you also have like your long tail of products, which don’t perform really well.

You’d still want to advertise on it. And then I’m thinking like, okay, are people who visit those products going to get also remarketed? With like those other products, which are like, which basically are the worst selling products, you know, that’s like, I sometimes feel like a bit conflicted when I’m setting up like the performance max campaigns, like, yeah.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah, no, I mean, that makes sense as a dilemma. And I think it also speaks to your point about the lack of insights. And If we really knew the answer to that question, then maybe we’d be more comfortable with it, right? Yeah, I know there’s one script that everyone seems to, to love that Mike Rhodes had put out.

Yeah. So for anyone who hasn’t seen that, if you want to tell people what that is about.

MARCEL SMAL: Yeah. It’s a, it’s a script that you can implement in your account and then it will show you. Like deeper insights in performance max, which you otherwise can’t see. So like asset group performance and like really importantly, like the performance over the different types of inventory.

And it’s. It gives, I feel like you, you have to use this script basically, because it, sometimes it can just tell you like, okay, just don’t use performance max. For example, like I’ve, I’ve had like one client where we saw like immediately, like, yeah, 99 percent of the traffic costs conversions, everything is coming from.

From, from shopping basically. And then, then you kind of know, like, okay, we’re making this really big trade off, like of all these insights that we’re not getting, like all the search term data, you know, like that’s, that’s an essence in itself, you know, like that’s really useful data. And we’re giving that up for like 1 percent that is sometimes shown like in video, sometimes like in, in in, in display.

And I feel like that script like shows you like, okay. Yeah, it gives like, like, like much, it makes it a bit more transparent, you know,

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: that makes a lot of sense. And so your point is, I’m basically like, listen, if PMAX serves as a shopping campaign, then why not have an actual shopping campaign with all the data, all the controls?

And yes, it’s a bit more complexity at the beginning, but ultimately that’s what agencies, that’s what PPC experts, that’s what we make our living, right? Is better than the average. And PMAX is fantastic. Listen, if you can’t hire an agency, if you don’t have that much time to set up the correct campaign structure, then PMAX is like a godsend.

It’s just going to do a lot of stuff for you and get you pretty decent results. But if you want to get that next level and basically unlevel the playing field and tip it back in your favor, then then go and use those individual campaign types.

MARCEL SMAL: I, I think so as well. And also like you also have to, like, for example, with retail clients, you know, like they, or retail brands.

Sometimes, you know, like shopping in itself can be the most important marketing channel. You know, it isn’t weird for not generic shopping to sometimes get like 30, 40, 50 percent of the total sales. You know, like if it’s if, if, if it’s a type, like if it’s an online retailer and then I feel like, It’s, it’s so important for your business.

And also with that feedback of the search terms that you can see that I feel like, okay, like just be cautious if you go into performance max and really know that you’re like, That you’re really getting incremental sales, basically.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Well, good. That brings us pretty close here to the end of the episode.

So you’ve been a fantastic guest, Marcel. If people wanted to catch up with you and and talk a little bit more about some of these things, where can they find you?

MARCEL SMAL: Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn Marcel Small or you could visit our website rootstripenetwork. com. Yeah. Really cool.

Like if you want to spar about anything, then yeah, we, we, we love talking about PPC, so yeah,

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: yeah. And good Dutch search events friends of search. I know you go to that one. I go to that one. So people should definitely check it out. Get to say hello in person. i’m guessing that’s going to happen again next year in february is usually the timing.

Yeah Well good, but again Thanks for sharing all these tips on getting ready for the holiday shopping season and how pmax fits into that lots of really specific tips If people want to see more of these episodes use the buttons below on youtube you can subscribe and you’ll get notified You can also visit our website, pptownhall.

com. We have a mailing list there. You can see all of the old episodes. And then, of course, if you want to streamline some of these things that Marcel talked about or some other things, that’s what Optmyzr does. We’re a tool company, so we have a two week free trial. Go check it out and give us a try.

So thanks for watching. We’ll see you for the next