Insights to build your personal PPC brand

Episode Description

Join Frederick Vallaeys and top PPC influencers as they delve into essential strategies for starting in PPC, building a powerful personal brand, and keeping up with the rapid changes in digital marketing. Discover the best PPC tips of 2020 and learn how to stay ahead in the industry with insightful discussions and expert advice. Perfect for digital marketers looking to enhance their skills.

Topics discussed:

• How to get started in PPC
• How to build your personal brand
• The best PPC tips you’ve heard so far in 2020
• How to stay educated with constant change in digital marketing

Episode Takeaways

How to Get Started in PPC:

• Engage with the PPC community through platforms like PPC Chat and Twitter to learn and share knowledge.
• Attend training sessions from experienced practitioners like Brad Geddes to develop a foundational understanding.
• Start small by experimenting with campaigns and utilize resources like Moz’s guides and Google AdWords tutorials to build practical skills.

How to Build Your Personal Brand:

• Share your unique insights and experiences by speaking at conferences, writing blog posts, or participating in online forums.
• Network with industry leaders and peers to gain visibility and establish credibility.
• Focus on contributing valuable content to the community, which helps in building a reputation as a knowledgeable and reliable professional.

The Best PPC Tips You’ve Heard So Far in 2020:

• Utilize Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs) with page feeds to optimize e-commerce campaigns, allowing for better targeting and coverage of product listings.
• Implement responsive search ads (RSAs) to test different combinations of headlines and descriptions to improve ad performance.
• Focus on conversion rate optimization by refining landing pages and ad copy based on data-driven insights from campaign performance.

How to Stay Educated with Constant Change in Digital Marketing:

• Regularly attend webinars, online courses, and industry conferences to keep up with the latest trends and technologies.
• Follow influential PPC experts and digital marketing thought leaders on social media and professional blogs.
• Participate in community discussions and forums to exchange ideas and strategies with peers, staying informed about new tools and best practices.

Episode Transcript

Frederick Vallaeys: Welcome to PPC Town Hall. My name is Fred Vallaeys and I’m your host today. So this PPC Town Hall, we have the great pleasure of meeting two of the top PPC influencers from 2020. So speaking on a personal note, PPC or having influence in PPC, Has been fantastic. So my own background I was at Google Obviously big brand in the PPC space So I was able to turn that into building a bit of a personal brand myself And then when I stopped working for Google having that personal brand really meant that I could get clients more easily I could get clients to commit to doing strategies that were maybe a little bit more cutting edge where they were taking a chance on things.

Turn that into the company that I run now, Optmyzr. So I think we all sort of understand that having a brand and having influence in the industry that you work in is really important. So I’m really excited to be able to talk to two people who’ve made it to that top of the list for this industry, get to learn a few things from them about how they did it, how you can do it as well.

And of course, given that these are two of the smartest people in PPC today, I also want to ask them what’s on their minds, what’s happening in COVID 19, what are they doing? What do they think is exciting for the coming year? What are they going to be talking about? So that’s going to be the session today.

Stay tuned and we’ll be right back.

All right. So let’s bring in our first guest. Actually I brought in both of them at the same time. All right. Welcome Michelle. Welcome Purna. Great to have you.

Michelle Morgan: Great to be here. Yeah. Thanks, Fred.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah. So Michelle, let’s start with you. So you are number one on PPC Heroes top 25 PPC influencers list.

So big congratulations. Thank you very much. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah, so I am the Director of Client Services at Klix Marketing. I’ve been in the PPC space for about a decade now eight years in this role. So been around for a little while.

And on a personal level, I saw that you are a highly confident crossworder.

Michelle Morgan: No it’s probably false confidence. So there are a lot of like half done crosswords with things scratched out because you can’t obviously erase pen. So it’s definitely a bit of hubris that kind of bites me in the butt from time to time.

Frederick Vallaeys: And then I see you’re also a huge space nerd. And, and let’s space nerd out for a second here.

So. I’ve got this, this frame that you see in the background right there. I can put photos on it and I just discovered the SpaceX Flickr account. Flickr is actually still a thing. I didn’t realize that that thing was still going on but they have some amazing photos, so for all the space nerds out there, take a look at all of the cool shots that SpaceX is doing.

Michelle Morgan: Yeah, it’s very clear that somebody with a design mind has been putting these things together. So it’s not just somebody looking at function.

Frederick Vallaeys: Exactly. Good. Well, great to have you, Michelle. So let’s bring in Purna for a second here and we’ll put Michelle in the background. So Purna, welcome to the call today.

So We’ve known each other for quite a while as well. You are number two on this year’s list. But you, you’ve actually made it to number one in the past. And I believe you’re also the PPC personality of the year. At what was it? The U. S. Search Awards?

Pruna Virji: Yes, U. S. Search Awards. I know I’m still pinching myself, Fred.

I don’t believe it. I’m like, they made a mistake, but I’ll take it. Thank you.

Frederick Vallaeys: But you’ve got the crown to prove it, right?

Pruna Virji: Yes, I do. It’s five. You have it

Frederick Vallaeys: right there. Put it on. I do.

Pruna Virji: I look at it when I’m having a bad day at work. Honestly, I’ll just look at the crowd and be like, maybe, maybe things are okay.

Frederick Vallaeys: So so tell us a bit about yourself. Microsoft there.

Pruna Virji: Of course. So I’m Purna. I I sit in Microsoft advertising, learning and customer experience team. And for Microsoft. com. I love that my role tends to be all around, like looking at our new products, our features, what’s coming up across even broader Microsoft and translating that into trainings and information that I can share with, with everyone in the industry to use, to how they can make their businesses grow.

And right now, like my whole, I have my whole new role for this fiscal, and I’ll be focusing deeply on shopping and retail. This year. So before it was everything now I’m focusing.

Frederick Vallaeys: Okay. I love shopping and retail and online shopping. Very important when all the local stores are closed. Where are you guys based?

Michelle Morgan: I’m just outside Philly and I’m in Indianapolis.

Frederick Vallaeys: Are the stores open? Can you get haircuts yet?

Michelle Morgan: Apparently not. But yes, you can. I cut my own hair. I watched a YouTube

Pruna Virji: tutorial. It was so uneven. My husband had to fix it.

Frederick Vallaeys: I’m about to buy myself a pair of clippers and make a YouTube tutorial.

Pruna Virji: There you go.

Frederick Vallaeys: But yeah, here in California, so On Monday, the barber shops and a bunch of stuff reopened and some gyms reopened for exactly one day. And then they shut down again. Right. We’re like, yeah, great. But good. So Purna, you said a large part of your role is about education. And Michelle, I know you have a YouTube channel, so we’ll talk about that a bit.

And so how did you build that personal influence in the PPC space? Did it Was it a natural progression? Like what was the moment that you sort of went on that path?

Michelle Morgan: Which one? Which one? Her army, ,

Frederick Vallaeys: whoever. Michelle,

Michelle Morgan: you can take it and I’ll go next. Okay. So in terms of choosing the industry I really didn’t know what I was doing when I applied for the job out of college.

It was online marketing assistant. And it just so happened that that was. And it had a lot of things that I really liked about it. There’s a lot of the immediacy of getting results because you’re doing paid advertising, all that kind of stuff. All the benefits of PPC just really appealed to me. And I believe, I forget what year it was, but About a year into that job.

I was starting to get better at what I was doing. I was seeking out more Influencers trying to find more things that I could do in the account and trying to kind of better my skills And that’s when I stumbled on ppc chat on twitter so i’ve been that was one of the members of the first ppc chats at like 7 p.

m On a tuesday or something way back in the day. Yeah, we had

Frederick Vallaeys: matt umber on the call Yeah. Yep.

Michelle Morgan: Absolutely. There was a, there was a small but mighty group of us that I think I stay in touch with most of them at least today. But just kind of started me down the path of learning, sharing knowledge, all that sort of thing.

And it just kind of snowballed from there because that community is very open and willing to share and wants to talk about things and develop new strategies. And I think that it was really a. Good community to get into around that is just it’s always been a very sharing and open community and just kind of Seated that in my mind of this is how you behave in your professional adult person job So go ahead and do that.

Frederick Vallaeys: I love that right because I don’t know if this is just our industry But we often talk about how like nice everybody is to each other and how helpful And maybe it helps that we’re in such a massive industry and what are the numbers these days being spent on like search marketing per is like 100 billion plus?

Yeah. So it’s like fortunately there’s enough money to go around for all of us but I was in a meeting with google at some point I think it was right after i’d left google and they brought in a bunch of consultants and agencies And it was so interesting to me that when they did a poll Basically a roundtable with all the small agencies and the small consultants.

Nobody wanted to give any input because they were all like, Oh, my competitors sitting to my left, like anything I say, they’re just going to use it. Whereas with the bigger agencies, the ones that kind of made it, everybody was so willing to share everything they knew and best practices. And it was like, I think that being engaged in that community actually does make you more successful because when that day comes that you need something, People will help you and, and, and, you know, return the favor.

So,

Michelle Morgan: yeah, absolutely.

Frederick Vallaeys: So PPC chat helped you learn how to get started.

Pruna Virji: I had a journalism background. So I worked in TV and then I worked in PR for a while. I didn’t love PR. And my best friend in London was working for one of the big search agencies at that time. And she told me about this thing called SEO and this thing called AdWords at one point.

And she’s like, why don’t you try it out? And. I got into it at my, I have, I worked at a very small agency that really service SMB clients and I went to my CEO and I’m like, Hey, I know we’re doing PR, but what if we also added this service on, it will set us out. And I just learned, I learned online by the generosity of people.

Others like the Moz beginners guide. I read stuff from I attended a Brad Geddes is two day training series and he helped me fall in love with PPC. And when you get that spark, that love of learning that aha moment, like to me, it’s like, that’s now a better feeling. And. I just wanted to help others feel the same.

Like it feels such a paid forward industry, isn’t it? Like you learn thanks to the teachings of others. There’s no, there’s no course. So at least at the time we started, there wasn’t any. So we go out, we learn because others were generous enough. And that was my motivation. I’m like, I want to go out there.

I want to, if I discover something cool, like I also want to go and share it so that others benefit. And it just snowballed from, from that desire. And then. Tremendous allies in the industry who will support and lift others up. That’s a big thing. My first speaking gig ever was an SEO Moz when they were called SEO Moz way back when they were doing a tour of different cities.

And they had Moz at Seer Interactive that’s run by Will Reynolds. And Jan Lopez at the time had put out a request for local speakers. I only did it at that time because I wanted to like impress my boss at that time. But like, look, look, I threw my hat in the ring to speak. And then I got selected. And I’m like, oh no, now I actually have to do this.

No, I have to deliver. And I was so bad, but I just covered, I enjoyed it. And then it was like other really good speakers at their time. Like Marty Weintraub, Brad Geddes was a big one. He’d be like, you know, go and pitch SMX or, you know, I’ll recommend you. It was just the kindness of others. And so it’s the same, like others lifted me up.

I need to keep. Lifting others up as well. So we keep this going because this is the best industry to be in. Like, I, I’m very biased, but I think it’s true. I think it’s true where everyone is so kind. Yeah, I agree.

Frederick Vallaeys: I have so many questions based on everything you just said. Right. So for someone watching today, and by the way, everyone watching today, so put chat and we’ll put questions in the chat box or just give us a thumbs up and we’ll show that on the screen.

We’ll put your picture up. But for all of those people who want to get started and would love to be on a panel at a conference I mean, I think most of us basically get asked, right? They’re like, Oh, you didn’t put in your pitch yet. Like, can you please pitch? What’s that perfect pitch for someone who’s never done it before?

Or what’s the path to even build the credibility that you need to be accepted?

Michelle Morgan: Yeah, I think for me, my first speaking experience is very much the same as Purna. I did it. It was terrible. I had friends in the audience who helped answer the questions because I didn’t know.

Frederick Vallaeys: You did it for them, right? So what was your boss happy?

They didn’t have to do it. That you did that work for them. I

Michelle Morgan: was, I was literally filling in for John cause he couldn’t make it last minute. So yes, I think he was thankful that I did it. But I think that in terms of kind of getting started, I went a long time writing lots and lots of pitches and just submitting it and getting rejected over and over and over again.

The things that really helped were to reach out to the people who had spoken on similar panels that I knew. And ask them kind of what makes a good pitch because if you don’t know then you don’t know what to write like what format does this need to be in, does it need to be bullets or paragraphs or whatever does it, what’s it need to be?

And then as I kind of got a little bit better, I then got to a point where I just went and found, The people who were the moderators of the sessions that I wanted to be on. And luckily they were very open people like Brad Gettis and Jenny Marvin and all those folks. And I would just go ask them like, what makes a good pitch?

What do you want to see? What types of topics do people need to talk about? And just tried to honestly just pestered people until they told me what I needed to do.

Frederick Vallaeys: Pitches are blind pitches, right? So the moderators, they don’t really look at the names of who’s submitting it. But what I have found in some cases is that.

The topic will come up and they’re like, this is a topic we must talk about at the conference, but then they don’t have any pitches for it. Which is weird, right? I mean, these were the big topics, but nobody thought to pitch for specifically that one. And then it actually matters that they know you because they’re going to come and that whole pestering thing.

Like I did that. Back at Google as well. It’s like, okay, like I got to talk to this person four or five times before they remember my name.

Michelle Morgan: Yeah,

Frederick Vallaeys: they remember my name now. Now they’re going to call me if they need something, right?

Michelle Morgan: And I mean just in terms of like making it making proof that you know what you’re talking about Just if you can’t speak it shows Write stuff and then you you pretty much always get to link to whatever your writing is Even if you need to build your own website Just start writing things and put your smarts out there And then they’ve at least got something to go refer back to to say this was a good pitch And it seems like they know what they’re talking about on a regular basis

Frederick Vallaeys: And porno you said just like michelle you were pretty bad your first time on stage I’m sure you weren’t that bad, but, but how did you get so great?

What was the, was it just doing a 10, 000 hours or did you take classes? Toastmasters?

Pruna Virji: It was a couple of factors that I think helped me like the first time. Oh, I was terrified. I was so terrified. Like I had terrible stage fright, which was also why I wanted to get over that fear and conquer that fear. I did three different things.

I think the first thing was I looked at all of the speakers that I strongly looked up to, and I’m like, what is it about them that I that so resonates with me? Because sometimes you don’t know your own speaking style. Like when you start, you want to try to Oh, I don’t know. I’ll speak for myself. Like when it was me, I’m like, Oh, that person sounds really intelligent.

I should try to sound like them, but it’s not authentic. It’s not you. And so what I did was I kind of watched like a few, a few different speakers. I’m like, I really love these speakers. What did they have in common? What did they do that I liked? So for example, when like a Rand Fishkin is speaking, He’s very empathetic.

He’s very caring. He takes the data. I’m like, I like that. If I watch somebody like Will Reynolds, he’s so passionate. He’ll come out and do this. If I watch Elizabeth Marston, like she brings in humor to her smarts to make it very relatable, you know, so on and so forth. I’m like, okay, humor. I can do that.

I can do this. And then. I found the key is just to practice because you want to remove the barriers in your head that are making you nervous so for me it was Watch if I forget everything when I go on stage So then i’m like i’m going to practice it so much that I know I know the general slide

Frederick Vallaeys: Goes out right i’ve seen that happen and then you got the people who are just like hey, this is it That’s the end of my presentation With it

Pruna Virji: And then being able to riff and then the second thing I did was also get feedback.

So the second concern I would have was like, what if everybody hates it? What if I’m not adding value? And the key to be confident that you’re adding value is to just look at the discussions, what’s happening on PPC chat, what is being posted on SCJ on SCL. What are the topics are these. Teams coming up often and then sometimes sends check it reach out to anybody on PPC chat and be like listen I have this idea.

I don’t know. Is it a good idea? Is it going to add value get a second opinion? like our community is very warm and welcome and then those two are like the biggest fears that I would have i’m like what if It doesn’t add value to people and what if I forget and then i’m like, okay I can take steps to overcome those fears and then then enjoy yourself.

Rick Dragon had given me this at one of my early SMXs where I would be like, my legs are shaking, I’m so terrified. And he’d be like, Purna, just go out there and have fun, like very few people get to do this and just enjoy yourself. And I really took that to heart.

Frederick Vallaeys: Michelle, what about you?

Michelle Morgan: Yeah, I think a lot of that resonates really true to me.

I love the idea of kind of finding the biggest fear points that you have and making a strategy to work around them. One of the big things that I connected with there was around the personality of being on stage. And, when I was younger, I would have to write reports and all this kind of stuff. We all had to do it in school.

And, I would always get so clammed up just trying to write a report. And, the way that my dad would get me to write, he’s like, just tell me what you need to say. And then I would say it. And he’s like, okay, just write that and that’s going to be just as good as just about anything anyway. So that has kind of always been the way that I approach what, how I’m like, what I’m going to talk about and what I’m going to speak about.

And then I just try and say it in my own voice. I am a very dry, sarcastic type of person. I use too many cuss words. I do it even on stage. And if people aren’t paying attention, I’m not afraid to call you out. I have been known to stomp on the stage before to get people to pay attention. But just like, Do you, I mean, there, there can only be so many Purnas or Brad Geddes or any of the other people that are out there and you don’t want to be exactly the same person that somebody else is because then you get confused.

And just because Amy and I get confused all the time, that’s a completely different story, but just be authentically yourself talking about something that you are passionate about. That’s going to help a lot. And there’s my double, which the best joke that we have at this point is that I told her that as long as I’m not around, she can inherit the number one most influential person in PPC, as long as I’m not at the same show, because people get as confused anyway, so she can use that from time to time.

You don’t know,

Frederick Vallaeys: Michelle, is that she she was standing by just in case you couldn’t make it to the call today. People, that sounds

Michelle Morgan: about right. That sounds about right. Well, too bad, Amy, I’m here and you’re not. So. By the way,

Pruna Virji: can I give one tip for pitches because like Michelle you made really excellent points about the pitches and just for anyone else who wants to submit a pitch, I would say this two tips that I found have been really helpful is Make sure you’re sharing exactly like three or four very actionable tips.

Like what is the audience going to leave your talk and learn? What are the key takeaways from them? So the more specificity you can add in, that’s really key. Like I find sometimes, or I used to do this when I first started out where I’d be like, yeah, this is such an important topic and stress why it’s important.

But I feel like the conferences. They know why it’s important. That’s why they have it programmed. So maybe just talk about what’s the research that you have done? What’s the angle that you’re bringing in? And what’s the value you add to others? And I would say that is a trait that is common amongst everyone, like, who I look up to, who’s a good speaker.

Like, they are very vested in bringing value to others and helping others. Others. Our industry is really smart at reading out those people who are just there to be famous, quote unquote. And you know, they don’t last. Like, have value. So always even in your pitches as well, think about what are the key takeaways.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah and the whole being authentic part that resonates with me as well. And so I think one mistake that sometimes people make is they Go to a keynote and they’re like, I love that speaker. And some of the names you called out, they’re keynote speakers, right? And a keynote is very different from the panel session that oftentimes is a first time speaker you’ll get.

And so those keynotes need to be hugely inspirational. They need to be funny, but I’m not funny. Right? So if I try to go up there and do humor, it’s going to fall completely flat. But what I can do and what everyone can do is you’ve. Your PPC practitioners, you’ve done this stuff. And even at Google, like that was the huge disconnect, right?

So the engineers, they would build a product and put it out there, but then actual advertisers had to use it and how you used it. In the real world was often very different from how it had been specked and all the workarounds that you had to do and that was like that was the value you were bringing it’s not like everybody can read the help materials everyone can read what google says, but It’s us who’ve done it or who’ve used microsoft ads who who know like the little tweaks that we need to do and that’s the value that you bring right?

So don’t model yourself too much after One of the greats in the beginning, because like you said, you don’t want to be a clone of Ryan Fishkin, for example, you, you got to be you.

Michelle Morgan: You are funny, Fred. I was going to say, I’ve seen you on stage. You’re funny.

Frederick Vallaeys: Thank you. But the point, I suppose the point is be who you are.

And if you say something and it happens to be funny, then people will laugh. But if you don’t stand up, don’t go and prepare a sad, don’t like prepare a joke. Cause that just doesn’t work. I said I had lots of questions, right? So part of the next thing that I was sort of thinking about whether you’re writing or whether you’re up on stage, like we always do deal with a varied education level in the audience.

So some people are complete newbies to PPC. Others have been doing it for 10 plus years. How do you like balance that? And I think especially. In writing it’s easier, right? Because you just kind of like write the intro and then maybe you skip to the advanced stuff and people can skip along with that.

But for me, that’s been one of the most challenging things as you go to these shows and everybody’s always like, we have an advanced audience, but the reality is no, these are advanced companies that send their most junior people to become educated. And so you get that weird mix and how do you keep it engaging for all of them?

Pruna Virji: That’s a good question. And it’s really something that we strongly all have to think about. My approach is to mix in. So if it’s a live in person audience, this works really well. It’s harder to do virtually, but I will make sure I have the most advanced steps in there as well. But then I will have a couple of slides that I have explanations on it.

So what I can do is I can pull the audience, say, by the way, is let’s make up like a smart shopping, for example, Hey, are you all familiar with smart shopping? Anyone? Not so sure. Let me know. I’ll Take 60 seconds to go over it and then usually people will raise their hands and I’m like, okay, great Let me quickly overview and then virtually how I do this.

I’ll just be like, hey everyone I’m, just going to take 60 seconds. So we’re all on the same page And I’ll do the overview, but then I’m like, okay, advanced people, here’s this tip. So it’s always good to bring both, but try to bring everyone else on the same page. Cause otherwise then they’ll be like, Oh, I didn’t understand that tip because I didn’t have that little bit of background knowledge and you want everyone to benefit, right?

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah. And one little tip that I picked up along the way somewhere was if you’re going to say something that may be a little bit basic, just preface it by like, I’m sure you guys already all know this, but. I’m just going to throw it out there. And then the audience sort of feels smart for it. Yeah. Yeah.

I did actually know that already everyone along at the same time. But yeah, I think a lot of it comes through lots of practice, right? So the more sessions that you do like this the better, but Michelle, let’s shift topics here for a second, but you do a lot of YouTube stuff, right? So I’m going to load up paid media pros.

What’s the difference between doing video where you have an audience of a camera in front of you and doing it in front of a live audience? Doing it in front of a live audience, you basically talk through your bloopers, which is the difference for me. It, it requires me to sit still doing things on video, which is already a bit of a challenge.

Michelle Morgan: And more so than when I’m on stage, I try to be a little bit more scripted, but if you’ve watched, Any of the videos that are on there if we’ve especially watched any of the blooper reels that we’ve put out we really do say different things every time and just find the best take that makes the most sense.

So it it is very different but the the beneficial part for the video is that We’re usually very, very focused on one specific thing and we try and do some of the same stuff that Purna was talking about in a specific video that I would do on stage where I start, we start from kind of the fundamentals and then we move through to the most advanced thing that we need to talk about.

The benefit of video is I can talk for as long as I want. Doesn’t matter. Whereas on stage, you’ve kind of got a small amount of things and there, there’s always this feedback when you have an audience where even if you do a poll, which I usually do a poll at the beginning of a session to say, Are you guys more advanced or more basic or kind of where are you?

And I try and focus my talk a little bit more in that section of the deck. And maybe I’ll speed one of the other ones up. But you can usually tell in person if you’re losing somebody, whereas video, you can’t, but the good news is they can rewind. But it’s been, it’s been quite a lot of fun. You should absolutely subscribe.

We bring out videos every Monday and Wednesday at this point, so that may or may not change, but, exactly. So there’s a lot of us just straight up messing up. There’s a lot of bleeping over cuss words in there. So just, just keep an eye out for that, but it’s been a lot of fun. It’s very different, but I’ve really enjoyed it.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yes. And we don’t have a bleeping functionality here. So it’s

Michelle Morgan: already built into the video, so you just got to know when you can and can’t say stuff. So

Pruna Virji: those videos are great. I would highly recommend everyone subscribe to that channel.

Michelle Morgan: Thank you so much. Yeah, and shout out to my co conspirator in that, Joe Martinez.

I remember, it was over a couple years ago now, his grand idea coming to me was, let’s write a book! And it eventually turned into this YouTube channel, which, thank God, we wised up about that. But, worked out pretty well. Well, yeah, let’s talk about that for a second, right? So, we’ve talked about writing, we’ve talked about speaking at conferences, we’ve talked about videos now a bit.

Frederick Vallaeys: A book. It seems like you’re not a fan of writing a book. I have no more interest in writing a book after doing the video stuff. I really don’t. I used to, a lot. I was really into it. That’s why we started working together Joe and I, but once we’re doing the videos, that’s all I’m doing.

A video is more current, right?

And it’s obviously snippets. It’s easier to put together in a way. By the way, any favorite software that people should know about if they’re trying to make cool youtube videos?

Michelle Morgan: We use camtasia And it has the recording software for your mic your camera all the different things your screen on screen demo And it’s an entire video editor suite all in one so and it’s a one time price it was like Couple hundred bucks, which has been more than worth it

Frederick Vallaeys: world paying just one time.

Oh, yeah software.

Michelle Morgan: Oh, yeah I honestly thought it was gonna crap out pretty quick with how cheap it was, but it’s great. So

Frederick Vallaeys: I’m a camtasia user too Love it By the way, anyone in the audience if you’re using different software, especially the stuff that we may not all know about I think most people know about adobe premiere rush But put it in the comments.

We’ll show it up on there Purna, how about you? Video wise, book wise, are you writing a book? You must be writing a book.

Pruna Virji: No, you know, honestly, like, I’m so tired. Like I said, I’m so tired with like, like the thought of a book. You know, it’s always been like, yes, I really want to. And then every time I said, no, I think I have I’m going to have to think about these and plan and get much more serious.

Like I want to be able to help more people as possible. And I’m like, I don’t know, there’s already such great books that exist. Like there’s, Brad’s book is still like such a good buy, but I’m like, what can I do that’s different to stand out? There’s already enough. So I’m trying to look at other ways that I can help.

And I think like something that I am really passionate about is. Helping others go out there and, and make a name for themselves. Like, you know, I feel really strongly, like, how do you, I’m an Indian woman on stage. Like there was very few people who ever looked like me when I started speaking, right. Where are the quote unquote underrepresented people in our industry.

And so, you know, how do you go and make a name for yourself when you’re already like underrepresented? And like, how do you do that? So I want to go and help others. Like, that’s my main goal that I would want to do as my passion project on the website.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah. And so that’s a really good point is you have to have a passion project and then you can translate that into.

The medium. That makes sense. And so I’ve written a book. It’s right there , but I, I, I like you, Michelle, I think I never thought I would write a book because I just couldn’t think of how much time it would take. Mm-Hmm. . And I had talked to Brad when he was doing his book, and I’ve talked to others while they were doing their books and they all seem to like pull out their hair by the end of the process. But I think there’s also two kinds of books, right? There’s the how to book, which is outdated, the moment you’ve even pinned it. Let alone a year later after it actually publishes it, but then there’s the you know what’s happening to our industry book and that’s what it sounds like you are thinking about doing Purna Like how do you get better representation? And so for me how it ended up going was on search engine land wrote three blog posts on The topic of automation and scripts. And at the end of the year, they put out the list of the, the top articles. And quite a few of those were in the top 10 and I was like, Hmm, maybe there’s something to this.

And then gave that to a company called scribe media and scribe media has ghostwriters. So they will basically interview you for. Many, many hours, but then they’ll actually do the writing based on the transcripts that you’ve given them. And they help you structure your thoughts in a, in a flow that works for a book.

And so it was actually a relatively painless process. I think if you have,

Michelle Morgan: wow,

Frederick Vallaeys: maybe

Michelle Morgan: I’ll just send them the link to the YouTube channel and say, make a book and then

Frederick Vallaeys: so I can’t remember who it was, but somebody basically had 50 blog posts they done and they just did a compilation of those into a book and they Kind of like put the thread between the blog posts but again, I think it speaks to the fact that you have to have the Unique valuable content and then the format it ends up taking that’ll just figure itself out and there are certainly other ways to Yeah,

Michelle Morgan: I was gonna say and I think it also depends on what medium it’s not only what medium suits you But also what medium suits your audience like we have a youtube channel.

I also write for a number of different blogs I’m sure that those don’t 100 overlap and people probably don’t like all of the same types of things There’s probably a lot of people who don’t want to watch youtube videos. They’d rather have a blog post and I think another instance of a book I think we’re, we’re thinking of books it sounds like your latest example, the 50 blog posts and kind of tying them together is a little bit of a different version, but I think when we all think of a book, we think of something that would be like, Makes a big thud when it hits a table, right?

Like something like a big book. But I do know that one of my friends, Akvila Defazio wrote a Facebook marketing ebook and sold it on Amazon. And it’s relatively short compared to like book length. I’ve got air quotes here. Like book length if we’re thinking of like encyclopedia thick books, that sort of thing.

But that’s the medium that spoke to her. It worked really well. I know that it has been doing really well and everybody that I’ve ever talked to that has read it really liked it. So it’s just another great medium to go into. Don’t always assume that what you, like, What you find as the best one or the best medium for you isn’t also going to be the best medium for somebody else Like I said, i’m in the video quite a bit now But that doesn’t mean that books in whatever way shape or form they take can’t be valuable

Frederick Vallaeys: yeah, exactly and I I agree with that totally like you get these business books and they have to be 250 pages and it’s like They told me everything I needed to know in the first chapter and then the publisher told them we need 200 more pages And so they wrote 200 more pages and then it’s a different world, right?

It’s eBooks. It’s Kindle books. I don’t know how big a book is anymore when I read it on my Kindle. It’s just, it’s all the same and I just want to get the content. Yeah, so for anyone who’s watching the video not listening on the podcast We have that book up on the screen right now from agfield defazio and we’ll put those in the links for the show resources as well and then we got james commenting here that both seth coden and derek cybers have put books together from writing articles That’s right want to go back to this rights of representation and you know, someone who looks a little different up on stage and taking the number one or the number two position.

So just wanted to run through the list here, kind of show people what we’re looking at. Women are actually really well represented on the top 25 list and obviously took the top two spots. The people of color are certainly not very prevalent. Oh, there you are again, Michelle.

Michelle Morgan: Closing out, right? One and double ones. There we go. Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Frederick Vallaeys: So we’re looking at Amy Bishop’s photo right there. But yeah, so there’s the list. And then one nice thing that PPC Hero does is they also, give credit to the rising stars, right? So the people who may not be at the top of the field, but just breaking into it.

Right there. I don’t think they did it this year, but I’ve seen them do it in the past year, which was do this by region. I mean, it’s sort of weird because Purna and Michelle and all of the other people, like we basically were a traveling circus in a way. Right. We go to Paris together. We go to Munich together.

We go to all the shows together and we just hang out and it’s always the same people. And then you get a couple of local people who get pulled in but you don’t see quite as much of that, like a European contingency that always travels to the U. S. together, right? So and I don’t know if that’s.

Cultural between the U S and Europe. I know in the U S so I grew up in Europe but the U S values much more public speaking group participation. So the types of skills that make you good at being up on a stage and taking life Q and a and so people, and then I think people in the U S are also much more focused on building a personal brand.

Michelle Morgan: Yeah, that’s interesting. I always joke that I have a lot of close friends that I never see. Like I never see where we live. Like we never just go out for drinks on a Wednesday in our hometowns. We go out for dinner on a Tuesday in India. So like I saw, I saw Purna in December and I, I don’t think I’ve ever really been too terribly close to anybody’s house, which is strange enough.

But it is kind of cool to, I mean, we’ve talked about Amy enough on this show. She lives. Probably two hours from me. And I don’t think that I’ve ever actually seen her anywhere close to like less than three hours away from my house by plane ride. So it just, you end up making pretty good friends that you see around the world and just not at your house.

So kind of weird.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah, I remember this one time. I think it was spring of last year I went to four different cities and wherever I was like brad gettys would show up and not only that he’d be on the same Plane he’d be like the taxi behind me. I was like, dude, what’s going on?

Pruna Virji: That’s what michelle was following me all over last year, too We were I was peru together.

We did berlin together. We were in india together I’m, like jeez, we even came to my country doubt. I did it was the best. It was so nice

Frederick Vallaeys: Do you guys count how many events you do in a year?

Michelle Morgan: I don’t, I don’t normally. Last year was the year that I decided that I broke myself on that. I had kind of been trying to scale up and do as many as I could.

And I think last year I ended up with I think I had only two months where I didn’t have some sort of travel schedule. And then the rest of them, I had some, like one month, I had something that I did every single month. And in some months I did quite a lot. So toning down from that, but, I mean, there, there’s kind of a healthy medium, and sometimes you can parlay a couple of them together.

Like, I drove the West Coast from Portland down to San Jose one year, because I did Engage, and then I drove down to SMX West, because they were just the back to back weeks. But yeah, I’d say, I mean, aside from this year, I’d been getting to a point where I would do anywhere from Four to 12 events in a year.

Frederick Vallaeys: And then I want to, and I know we’ve talked a lot now about personal brand and that may be all we end up talking about today, but I think it’s great stuff. Okay. So obviously you love going to different cities, hanging out with cool people having breakfast in Sydney, having dinner and like Singapore on the same day.

But how do you convince your boss? How do you convince the organization that you work for that there’s actual value in this? And so Purna, I think your job is a bit more, this is your focus. Michelle, probably a little bit less so. So how do you balance it? How do you still stay sharp on actually doing PPC when you end up spending so much time on the road?

Michelle Morgan: The key is to do your work when you’re traveling. Go ahead, Prerna. I still have to work. No, no, no, you go ahead.

Pruna Virji: That was a good one. Yeah, like these events, they used to be part of my remit at work, but then they, it’s been, Now it’s like really like my passion project I’ve worked as well to do that because I’m much more focused on Like meeting clients one on one, but i’m still passionate about giving back to this industry that has given me so much.

It’s given me like Closest friends in the world has given me a career, you know It’s like i’m really passionate about giving back like that’s my main thing so I will do it like nights and weekends is when I Say if I have to do it,

Frederick Vallaeys: that’s not your main role at the at the company like you’ll still do it That’s like your hobby basically You

Pruna Virji: Yeah, exactly.

It’s my passion project at work is because of my scope has increased to other things like these industry events for me are a passion project. And you know, I’m very lucky that Microsoft supports that and is very kind to let me do this. But yeah, for me, it’s

Frederick Vallaeys: important. What are the results from this?

Do they look at it in terms of like how many people you touched? How many clients you brought? Do they correlate it? And again, I think it’s kind of complicated for Microsoft being such a big company, being one of the, you know, the ad engines basically, like how do you get measured or do they just not care?

Pruna Virji: It’s not a KPI for me because this is a passion project. So the industry stuff is not a KPI for my manager. So they wouldn’t ask though. Of course they see the value that it brings. They see the scale of reach. We go back and be like, you know, if we’ve come out with a new pilot, for example, like we have a new, like static headlines on, on dynamic search ads pilot.

That’s how they’re like a new beta Can we get the word out there? How do we get people to listen? So of course as long as it adds value to the company as well as the audience I mean, that’s win win And for me as long as my main job is getting done. That’s fine. Like what I do on my nights and weekends is They are fine with me doing that on my own time So I

Frederick Vallaeys: google so I was the ads evangelist And then there’s the analytics evangelist Avinash Kaushik.

And it was funny because Nikesh Arora, who at one point was SVP at Google in charge of sales, he he would wine and dine all of the CMOs of fortune 500 and fortune 50 companies. And he would tell them listen, at the next meeting where Google comes and presents, like we’ll bring in anyone you want, literally anyone, if you want me to bring Madonna to the business meeting, like I’ll get you Madonna.

And so the the CMO of GM goes. I want Avinash Kaushik and Nikesh looks at him and is like, who’s that? Okay, so then he

Pruna Virji: gets

Frederick Vallaeys: the education so now Nikesh comes into the meeting and literally in that meeting drives like 20 million dollars in incremental ad spend that they’re gonna do Or some crazy number.

And the cash who never even knew who Avinash was he turns out, he’s like, Oh, we got to scale this. Like, okay, you got to stay back in the office. Don’t go to meetings anymore. Like take a hundred people, train them to do exactly what you do. And sort of the point that he was missing was like, the whole point of it is that, you know, you are that face of the company.

You are different. You are not part of the thousands of people in the Salesforce. Right. And that’s what gives you the ability. To maybe be more hands on, have kind of a role that crosses the different boundaries of the company. And that’s what enables you to drive 20 million in additional value. Right.

And I think for me, that was an important lesson. And if you have a personal brand, like the way that you maintain that and the way that you monetize it is, first of all, you have to stay sharp on all sides of the business and you have to remain sort of a practitioner at some level. But then you also unfortunately have to prove it to your management that this is bringing value and be able to quantify it.

Michelle, how do you quantify it for clicks?

Michelle Morgan: Yeah. So I also have the benefit of having a boss that understands that this is an important piece. Being visible helps get clients and we’ve kind of come to embrace the fact that yes, there are times where people will come up directly afterwards and say, can I have your business card?

Like I want to work with you and you email them and that, and that’s great. That’s a really easy. Touchpoint and attribution model, that sort of thing. But we also understand that as much as everybody likes talking about attribution, there’s a lot that can be said just for the fact of you already have somebody in the sales cycle.

They came to you having no idea who you were, whether it was a referral or they just kind of found you one way, shape or form. But then whenever you’re going through conversations and you’re like, oh yeah, and we have team members who speak at these industry events and they write for these industry blogs and like, here, here are the things that they do.

It’s one of those things that if somebody didn’t come through those. platforms. It also is kind of an air of expertise that helps convince people that you’re in the right place or at least you are vetting a potential partner that knows what they’re talking about. We’re not just blowing smoke because you can’t and continue to get invited back to all these different shows.

Frederick Vallaeys: Right. So it’s like the fatal flaw of last click attribution. And now apply that to the humans, right? You don’t drive direct sales for most part, but you build that credibility. You build the brands that enables people to come through the funnel. And by the time the salespeople talk to that potential client, they’ve seen Michelle on stage, they’ve seen Purna on stage, they trust what your company stands for and you’re able to close that deal much more easily.

So you deserve a lot of credit for

Pruna Virji: that. Can I add one more thing? Like it also will help you. Like if you build a brand for yourself, it can also help you in your career. Like, I’ll be completely honest with you. Like I started speaking like many years before I got my job at Microsoft and like, part of the reason why A Microsoft person reached out to me was because they had seen me speak before they’d seen that I contributed to the industry and like articles and so on.

And they were like, Hey, we’re creating this brand new team, and we think you’d be a really good fit for it. And that really, really helped. It helped that even when I was looping for my interview at Microsoft, like I had like two out of the people I loop with, like I from events. And, you know, it was really, really, I don’t think I would have even been considered for that role if I hadn’t had that sort of brand before it

Michelle Morgan: as well.

And I would say even outside of that, it doesn’t have to be speaking. You don’t have to feel like you have to speak to kind of get those different things. Cause that’s great. And I’m happy that you did my in house job. I did not have any speaking gigs. I just participated in PPC chat. I wrote blog articles where I could, that kind of stuff.

But then, because I participated and because I did those things, when it got down to where John Lee, who used to work at Clix, who now works at Microsoft when he was putting out feelers to try and find somebody to freelance and to become full time worker at Clix, that sort of thing, I retweeted it.

And shared it and did this kind of stuff and he just sent me a direct message. He’s like, why don’t you apply? I was like, I don’t think i’m qualified. He’s like i’ve seen your answers in ppc chat. You’re more than qualified. You’d be fine So if you want the job apply for it and here I am It just share the knowledge that you have you do need to prove some sort of expertise If you don’t know what you’re talking about Don’t say things that are wrong go out and learn from people who are smarter than you.

There are still Tons of people that I want to learn from and actively seek out at different shows or read articles, all this kind of stuff to get yourself to kind of level up.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah, great advice. Be visible and be right and Everybody’s watching all the time, right?

Pruna Virji: I think it’s very comforting. It’s very karmic like you do go to help others and you know The universe is gonna give it back.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah,

Pruna Virji: absolutely

Frederick Vallaeys: agree okay, good stuff. So let’s shift into news here and let’s talk about some PPC and not personal brand. As amazing as this been

Pruna Virji: No, let’s talk about us more I know I want to talk about me some more bread. Come on You

Frederick Vallaeys: Do you love that, like, rising, uplifting music? So

Michelle Morgan: intense. I do. I really do like it very much. I’m gonna be stoked to eat lunch here in a minute.

Frederick Vallaeys: By the way, Michelle, I just noticed the amazing symmetry behind you of the two frames and the two candles.

Michelle Morgan: I have a problem. It’s definitely true. So, yep.

Frederick Vallaeys: All right.

It’s not bad, but

Michelle Morgan: I don’t want it.

Frederick Vallaeys: You know, the most common question on webinars these days is, Hey, tell me about that thing behind you. What’s on that wall behind you? Right? So as we’re all working from home, the first article here on search engine land, you guys more productive more burnt out.

Cause that’s what what seems to be the case for many.

Michelle Morgan: I have a fake answer for that, is that I am just as productive as I was before, but that’s because I’ve worked from home for eight years. So, I have always worked from home. It’s been great for me. You have to have a certain personality type to do it.

You have to understand that working from home does not mean doing the laundry and the dishes and playing Xbox and all this kind of stuff. It literally means working and doing your job. But I love it. So, that’s why I chose to do it.

Pruna Virji: Yeah, I am the same. Like, I Would go into our New York office. So like my job would involve travel, usually about two or three days every week, but the other two days I’ve always worked from home since I started at Microsoft and I love working from home.

Like I’m really productive when there’s no interruptions. Like when I’m in the office, I love people and I have. The best colleagues in the world like really I’m not biased here. I can tell you the truth Like if I’m in New York or if I’m in the office Like I want to go and like hug everyone and chat everyone and catch up and So I’m very happy

Frederick Vallaeys: I’m, very sorry.

No more hugging

Pruna Virji: Hugging is canceled. No hugging virtual virtual hugs, but now I love I love working from home exactly what michelle said like I have my I’m lucky enough that I’ve always I’ve been created a separate office in my home and I closed the door and I’m in, I’m in Narnia. It’s like my door to Narnia.

I’m in another land. The dog, the family all doesn’t exist. Until like I’m done work. So I, I am just as productive. I’m even more so potentially because we’re not, I’m not going to airports. I’m not traveling. So I have more functional work time, which can also be a little bit tiring. Like I completely empathize with anyone who’s feeling exhausted now.

Like when COVID hit, when we were all working from home and like when that worry was in the air, like my distraction was my work. Like I threw myself into my work and I was doing like these full 80 hour weeks. I wouldn’t have to think about anything that’s going on. And I would not recommend that for anyone.

Cause that is the recipe for disaster and burnout. So pace yourself, my friends engaging with the community is like very uplifting. So come and join PPC chat, come and hit us up anytime. Like it’s these people that keep me going.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah, exactly. For me, it was a weird thing. It was after a couple of months of not getting on a plane anymore.

I was like, I haven’t seen a movie in like three months, four months. I need to see a movie again. Like, I need to sit on a plane where somebody serves me a meal and I can just not have internet and spend two hours. Paying attention to what’s on that screen, right? And so I did have a little bit of that burnout Purna you wrote this article recently about page feeds and dsa for e commerce.

Tell us about it.

Pruna Virji: Yes. Oh, it’s such a good article of

Frederick Vallaeys: course

Pruna Virji: I’m, only kidding guys. I’m, sorry. Yeah, so I I wanted to share like dynamic search ads. They’ve been around forever Like what’s very often like if i’m visiting a client if i’m doing a training On dynamic search ads for clients. They’re all like, yeah Purna we’ve had this Forever like what’s next like how do I take it to the next level?

And the more and more I started digging into page feeds and I would hear all these amazing success stories from People in engineering or from people on our on our account teams who work with different clients And so i’m like, all right page feeds can be really really impactful And then I said that People can get overwhelmed when they’re creating a feed or especially retailers at this time, right?

Hasn’t been, it’s been all up and down. Things are, some people are extra, extra busy. Some people are not as busy. How can you optimize? So I talked about how retailers can create dynamic search ad page feeds from their shopping feed. It’s essentially like delete all those extra columns, just keep URL and then.

Custom label one if you would like optional and that way you have a separate DSA feed that you can go and upload For the products that you’re focusing on so this way if you have a product listing ad And maybe you don’t show up in every single time You don’t get all the impressions a dynamic search ads can help you plug those gaps or sort of reinforce your product And you can do the same if you’re running merchant promotions as well.

So if you are, have a merchant’s promotions feed, you can use that to create a DSA page feed as well. And that way, again, you get the double reinforcing of your, just your promotional products with your DSA. Text ads as well. And I also talked about a static headline. I know I’m taking so much time. I’m on out, Fred.

Sorry.

Frederick Vallaeys: That’s okay. That’s okay.

Pruna Virji: So the DSA is a new, it’s a new beta that’s available to anyone who’s running dynamic search ads on Microsoft advertising. It’s unique to us. Google does not have something like this at the moment. It’s really essential for Retailers or really any client, if you’ve struggled, let’s say you’re in pharma or legal or just more heavily regulated industry, you’re like, well, I don’t think I can do that.

That dynamic aspect might be too risky for me. In that case, you can use DSAs with static headlines where your headline remains static. It’s pre approved, but you can still leverage that exploratory power of DSA to go and match additional terms and queries that you don’t show up for. So those are the things I shared in that.

And hopefully, like, P3s are so easy to do and they’re so high impact that I would encourage everyone to do it. Like, I don’t know, Michelle, like you’ve used them.

Michelle Morgan: Oh yeah. Yeah. I used to speak a lot on a DSA, big fan of DSA. I don’t do quite as much with the e commerce side. I ended up being more lead gen, but they’re a great way to expand your reach and then in a lot of ways.

Snap it back down. I actually wrote an article. I don’t remember where and I don’t remember how long ago it was but in my view the main purpose of DSA is to Make it useless by getting the expanded reach that it has and then adding those keywords to your campaigns where you can And kind of using things around but the the page feeds are something that makes it a lot easier to manage If you have a really easy sitemap available You can filter for finding the URLs you want and get rid of the stuff that People don’t think about it’s kind of nice to export your site map and see all the URLs that it could match to because you probably don’t know what all is there like your terms of service, your privacy policy, your jobs page, all that stuff is in your website.

If you tell it to crawl all URLs. So it’s an easy way to limit down to only the things that you want. And like you said, customizing with those labels, there’s a lot that you can do with that to find different segmentation. And then you can target based on the label that’s included. You don’t have to include like URL rules, all that kind of stuff.

Big fan of page feeds. Sounds like a whole other session we got to do just on DSAs and feeds. I mean, I love the shopping stuff. So we’ll definitely have an upcoming town hall on that. In fact, next week, we’re going to be talking a bit on shopping. So Purna, if you want to come back, you’re more than welcome.

Frederick Vallaeys: Thank you.

Pruna Virji: Michelle and I were giving Fred a hard time earlier. Cause we’re like, we’ve been wanting to be on the show for so long. Right. About our colleagues though. And now we’re just going to come back all the time,

Michelle Morgan: Fred.

Frederick Vallaeys: And I was like, Oh, Michelle, I’m sorry. I didn’t have your email address.

Michelle Morgan: Excuses, excuses.

It’s fine. You know,

Frederick Vallaeys: so Google just announced new responsive search ads features. So they’re bringing some of the. Add customizers back into it so you can automatically include the location that the user is in in those RSAs. You can also do the countdown timer partner. Tell us a bit about RSAs.

Microsoft doesn’t as well. What are you guys seeing? Because I know, like in the industry, there’s basically two camps on that one, right? A bunch of people hate them because they think it shows worse ads. It doesn’t actually work. And then others do see incrementality. What’s your take on it?

Pruna Virji: Well, firstly, I’m going to preface it by saying it’s very limited.

I haven’t focused heavily on RSAs just yet, personally, for training, because we have We have a set of feature priorities that I focused on and for my region, like RSA wasn’t that high, but no people like it. I think it’s a valuable product. There’s a lot of encouraging stories that we are seeing. But I would say I would link to our Microsoft advertising blog post on it.

So you have the latest updates. I don’t want to give you wrong info at the moment.

Frederick Vallaeys: Another important lesson. If you don’t know the actual answer, be willing to tell that there’s better resources out there. I do that all the time too. Good. So Michelle, any thoughts on RSAs from your end?

Michelle Morgan: I am somebody who is in both camps that you mentioned earlier.

Some people like them, some people don’t. You’ve got to

Frederick Vallaeys: measure it, right? To figure out which camp you’re

Michelle Morgan: in today. Exactly. I like whatever gets the best performance for my clients. So we tested these pretty much across the board. The places that it works well, we keep it. The places that it didn’t work, we take them off.

And then every once in a while, we’ll try and retest again after a couple months, see how they perform. But it’s a, it’s a mixed bag for us. So it’s one of those things that if they work for you, fantastic. That’s great. If they don’t, great. Turn them off. It doesn’t matter. We’ll be fine.

Frederick Vallaeys: A little device.

Google Analytics just added some predictive audience lists. So likely churners are on that list. And so that list is automatically generated by Google Analytics. You can import it into your Google ads account to target. This is a legitimate question. I’ve actually never done this. But can you take an Google Analytics audience list and use it in Microsoft ads?

Pruna Virji: If you have would it fall under your custom audience list? Then maybe if you can put it in, I don’t know,

Michelle Morgan: I don’t know the answer to that. Actually. I don’t think that you can, cause it’s built, it’s built on the GA platform and you can import that because Google speaks to Google nicely. But you couldn’t, if you were just trying to target them on Bing, you could do a piggyback where you target them on Google and then create a specific UTM parameter and then retarget those users on Bing and see how they perform.

So you can. You can kind of get it there, but you’ve got to get Kevin Bacon and his six degrees of separation to link you together on that one.

Frederick Vallaeys: And then this is a Microsoft update. LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft, adds pronunciation to people’s names. Purna, what’s the worst pronunciation of your name you’ve ever heard?

Pruna Virji: Oh my god, so many. I’ve heard Prune. I’ve heard Bruno. The worst one I’ve heard is Porno Virgin. I’m like, no, no. Purna Birji, please. Thank you very much. So yeah, those would probably be the worst ones I’ve heard.

Frederick Vallaeys: And Amy Bishop, how did they mispronounce your name?

Michelle Morgan: I was gonna say the worst pronunciation of my name is Amy Bishop.

So yeah, that’s the worst sensation of my name.

Frederick Vallaeys: I think I’m actually personally guilty of that one as well.

Michelle Morgan: That’s fine. A lot of people are. People that I would not have thought would do that, they end up doing that. So it’s totally fine.

Frederick Vallaeys: And then the last one I want to bring in here. Michelle, you wrote this article on a placement exclusion. I think part of this is like you said that the internet is full of dark corners. And you gotta be really careful where your ads show up right now with the whole Facebook advertising boycott and some of the stuff happening on YouTube seems really relevant. So I’ll just stop you can read this article.

I don’t know if you have any quick thoughts on this before we wrap up.

Michelle Morgan: No, just the fact that the sites that get opted into the GDN I have a site that was technically opted into that. I never paid attention to it, didn’t do anything, but I also could have had mal intent and just putting a bunch of crap content out there.

It’s very easy to get Display Network ads to show up on your site. All you have to do is have an AdSense account and have it show up and those are constantly changing. So display placement reviews are really important. If for no other reason, all brands want to be very brand safe at the moment.

So this is the first of a two part series. I need to do the other part. But that’s, you know, writing is so hard, you guys but this one focuses on trying to find just the content things that are a problem. So staying out of new sites, staying off of kids, YouTube channels, all these things that just don’t make sense for your companies.

It’s a great place to start and try to be proactive in getting away from a lot of sites that just aren’t going to be relevant and would probably lend you to being a little bit. Overcautious and trying to not be on sites that you don’t know what they’re about, unless you’re willing to go through each of them one by one, which is what I used to do.

And that is what makes all of your retinas burn. So don’t do that. Use smart filters for that.

Frederick Vallaeys: Or use Optmyzr.

Michelle Morgan: Or use Optmyzr. Yes. I’ll have to check that out.

Frederick Vallaeys: It took me a whole hour to get that one plug in.

Michelle Morgan: That’s

Frederick Vallaeys: like the longest I’ve ever waited in a show. Anyway, we’ve come to the top of the hour. I know people are having to go, so.

Thank you both for being on today. So Purna, there’s your Twitter handle. People can follow you on Twitter. Any other call to action from your end other than go to Microsoft advertising? A lot of people search on Microsoft.

Pruna Virji: I guess I would definitely say check out Microsoft advertising. Check out our COVID 19 insights for your industry or your geo.

Those are we update them regularly and many people have been finding them helpful.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah, we haven’t covered that, but the resources are in the show on the show page. So they are actually much better than Google’s. They’re much more detailed. So do take a look at those and some amazing insights in there.

One that I picked up on. Americans increased usage of different devices, including desktop. So 2020, no longer the year of mobile. It is the year of desktop that we didn’t want, but take it, take it from here. So thank you for that. Michelle check out your paid media pros, YouTube channel.

Twitter handle on there. So thank you for being on.

Michelle Morgan: Yeah. Thanks for having

Frederick Vallaeys: me.

Michelle Morgan: Final thoughts. Don’t be afraid to just start sharing your thoughts. I know one of the questions that was in the comments is how do you get started writing? Just start. Do just, if you need to build your own website, there are very cheap hosting pieces out there.

Just start writing things, share it within the PPC community. Don’t spam us. Like if we want to read it, we’ll read it, but don’t like. Spam, a hashtag or anything. But just start doing things. You’re never gonna get better unless you do it. And as you heard, both Purna and I were self-admittedly terrible during our first speaking presentations, but we knew that that made us want to keep doing it.

That was literally the takeaway I had in the moment. I told people that. So don’t be afraid to not be as good as you would like to be. Don’t let perfection get in the way and just start doing stuff.

Frederick Vallaeys: Awesome advice. Thank you both for being Yeah. Thank

Michelle Morgan: you.

Frederick Vallaeys: And thanks everyone for watching. Thank you all.