PPC during COVID times

Episode Description

Discover in-depth discussions on the latest PPC strategies, including the implementation of free Google Shopping ads and the distribution of Google SMB advertising credits. Gain insights from PPC experts on optimizing ad copy and learn about the unique opportunities presented by virtual PPC conferences.

This comprehensive overview offers essential strategies and updates for enhancing your PPC campaigns in the current marketing landscape.

The panel discusses:

• Free Google Shopping Ads
• An exclusive first chance to attend a virtual PPC conference for free
• Google SMB advertising credits
• Learning PPC when in-person events are cancelled
• Ad copy strategies

Episode Takeaways

Free Google Shopping Ads: Google has introduced free listings in Google Shopping, marking a shift from an all-paid model to a mixed one, aiming to include a wider variety of retailers and increase competition.

Exclusive First Chance to Attend a Virtual PPC Conference for Free: The Paid Search Association is organizing a three-day virtual conference that’s free to attend, focusing on PPC topics like automation in the new normal, with various industry experts as speakers.

Google SMB Advertising Credits: Google is rolling out SMB credits starting late May, aimed at supporting small and medium businesses by allowing them to use these credits for future ad spends. Eligibility depends on consistent advertising over the past year.

Learning PPC When In-Person Events Are Cancelled: With in-person events halted, there’s a push towards virtual learning and networking opportunities, like webinars and online conferences, to continue education and community engagement in PPC.

Ad Copy Strategies: The importance of adapting messaging to meet current market conditions is emphasized, focusing on empathy and support rather than direct sales to connect with the audience effectively during challenging times.

Episode Transcript

Frederick Vallaeys: Hello everyone. Welcome to PPC Town Hall. This is going to be episode number five. And like I said in the email invite, we’re going to try to make this the best one yet. So we have a great new set of panelists. We’ve been rotating, rotating panelists for most of these sessions. Eventually, some of them will come back, but always great to hear some fresh perspectives as we continue to be In the coronavirus crisis.

So today we have a few people joining us. So we have Andrew McGarry joining us from the UK and everyone will get to do a quick introduction of themselves in just a minute. But so Andrew has been doing PPC Since 2003. So he’s a 17 year veteran and primarily active in the fashion industry. And then we have Ginny Marvin.

So she’s probably no stranger to any of us here today. Anyone who loves learning about PPC and wants to know what’s actually happening, probably read Search Engine Land and Ginny. Is the editor in chief of that. So you’ve probably read her stuff. And before she was editor in chief, she was focused mostly, I think on the search engine marketing side of things.

So definitely knows this side of the industry really well. I can’t wait to hear her perspective on things. And then we have another regular from the SMX conferences from hero. com. Joe Martinez. And he is primarily focused on well, he actually does everything he says, but he really likes YouTube display and remark.

So we’ll get to hear some of that from him and he works for clicks marketing. So as far as the format for these town hall, so thank you for many of the people who are coming back. For a 2nd time, a 3rd time, anyone who’s new, I just wanted to set some expectations. So the town hall is really here to share knowledge.

We’re all looking for the right answer. But the unfortunate reality is we’ve never been here before. So we all have opinions. We don’t have answers. But at least with having lots of opinions and hearing what other people are seeing, maybe we can come to some sort of insight into what we can do for our own businesses.

And so unlike most webinars, which are really sales pitches, like the whole point here is let’s have some fun. Let’s share knowledge. Let’s not do sales pitches. And let’s make this interesting enough that everyone here wants to come back for the next one next week. And by the way next week, we’re going to have Christi Olson from Microsoft.

They’ve done some great research. We’re also going to have Jim Banks from the UK. He’s probably one of the oldest or longest time PPC years in the industry that I know. So we’ll have a great panel again next week, but with that, I’m going to turn off my sharing here. And then we will let people introduce themselves.

So Andrew, why don’t you tell us a bit more about yourself?

Andrew McGarry: Sure, we’ll do. Hi, everyone. My name is Andrew. I’m the owner of the McGarry Agency. We’re a UK based digital marketing consultancy. We specialize in lifestyle and global fashion brands. So, you know, as I mentioned to the panel just before we joined, one of the things that I’m always very conscious of is someone who has spent a lot of time in retail.

And, you know, particularly just online shopping is there’s so many other perspectives out there. So for example, you know, you’ve got nonprofits, I’m, I’m going to just look at my notes here for a second, but you’ve got medical, you could publish in service industries. There’s just so many out there. For me, it’s fascinating to be able to hear, you know, other people’s opinions, you know, like what Joe’s got to say, you know, for example, you know, we all read search engine land, what Ginny’s, you know, publishing.

Regularly. So I think that, you know, when it comes to silver bullets or how can I help? I think we all have to kind of understand we are all in our own bubbles to a degree. And I think sometimes you can learn a lot, if not more from what other people have.

Frederick Vallaeys: I love that point. That’s exactly why we’re here today. Joe, how about yourself?

Joe Martinez: Hi, I’m Joe Martinez, director of client strategy at clicks marketing. Kind of what Frederick say, just to kind of expand upon that a little bit. I’ve always been a fan of. The awareness part and using PPC or paid media to help your brand grow and just build the awareness in front of the right target audience.

So I think whether people have been affected negatively or positively with what’s going on in the world. I have seen a shift of how people have actually changed their marketing strategies because of what’s going on. And they’re finding that some of these awareness, awareness tactics and other channels that you can use are actually extremely valuable and we can do a lot.

More with pay media than just what we can do with Google and Facebook.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah. We’d love to hear more about that. And then Ginny, welcome as well. Tell us about yourself a bit.

Ginny Marvin: Thanks. Yes. So I mentioned I’m editor in chief at search engine land and as well as Martech today and marketing land.

And so on those properties, I get to focus on sort of the broader realm of digital marketing, which is. Really helpful as we’re talking about sort of the being able to see other perspectives and keep learning. And you know, the great part of being in this role is I get to talk to people all day and hear what they’re doing and experiencing and seeing across a wide spectrum of disciplines before I was.

Mostly writing about paid media. I I guess I got into search and 2005 and before that I was doing marketing primarily in magazine ad sales and then started in SEO actually, and then moved into paid search and client strategy, sort of umbrella But focusing primarily on, on paid media and started out in mostly lead gen and then sort of ended up mostly e-comm and and manufacturing, brand manufacturing, so,

Frederick Vallaeys: and Ginny, am I on your show or are you on mine?

Ginny Marvin: I you are? I am on your show, .

Frederick Vallaeys: Okay. Wait, so I’m not on your show show as well, right?

Ginny Marvin: Yes, yes, we’ve been we’ve been doing, so we have the SMX conferences, which as you know, we’re all going through the same in person struggle. So we have been doing live with search engine land for the past 4 or 5 weeks.

And so, yes, hope to have you all on that show. So.

Frederick Vallaeys: Very good. Well, I’m struggling here. Like once you go into presentation mode with your slides, like there’s almost no way to get back to showing my screen. So I’m going to try to figure out how to do that. But Ginny, why don’t you start us off with the first topic we wanted to talk about?

And that’s actually something we might all know about. But the Google SMB credits long promised. But are we starting to see these? And what are you guys saying?

Ginny Marvin: So we are going to start. Seeing them in in May, late May will be sort of the first phase. And so my understanding from talking to Google is that it’ll be first phase.

In late May, and then they’ll sort of just keep rolling out these credits that are designed to help SMBs and what exactly constitutes an SMB. I know it was a little bit amorphous nebulous, I guess. And, but the idea is really for the smaller accounts to be able to Ad spend in the future. So looking into like Q3, Q4 and so depending on when you get your credit, you’ll be able to start using it, but it is meant for future spend, not to, you know, sort of pay yourself back for spending you may have run last month.

Frederick Vallaeys: Right. And is the amount in line with how much you had historically spent, or is it just like kind of the government program, everyone gets the same.

Ginny Marvin: No, yeah, that’s a great point. So the spend will vary and based on your historical spend and to be eligible, you need to have been advertising for the 10 out of 12 months in I’ve had active campaigns in 10 out of the 12 months of 2019, and then also have been advertising in either January or February of 2020.

So again, the idea really is to, to help support committed current advertisers. Yeah.

Frederick Vallaeys: And actually I think we have someone from Google on the call Emmy Rainer, who joined us a couple of weeks ago. So Emmy, if you can hear us and if your mic is on, can you tell us a bit about the that program as well?

All right. Just like on any good radio show where we’re having some audio difficulties there. So Amy, if you do want to chime in, your mic is unmuted and feel free to hop in at any time. Okay, cool. So yeah, I mean, there’s these Google SMB credits and you know, I just hope it’s not too little too late because situation is pretty dire for.

A lot of companies and actually was kind of curious, like most of us are in the United States here. But Andrew, from your perspective what are the things looking like? Is stuff shut down? How’s the government helping? What have you seen?

Andrew McGarry: Sure. Yeah. I mean, from the, from the European perspective, obviously.

You know, we all saw, you know, the pictures in Italy, you know, I think there was a certain delay so that by the time, you know, we were in the, let’s say where I am here in Scotland, in the UK, we were able to kind of see it coming to a degree. And so therefore I think government here anyway, had time to, to think about, okay, what’s the best way to deal with this.

Obviously, you know, there’s going to be criticism no matter what anyone does. Because everyone’s got their own particular scenario and they want, you know, a solution, but like ultimately, you know, in the UK there has been, for example, for SMEs, there’s the 10, 000 pounds loan, sorry, 10, 000 pounds grant that has been made available.

And actually that rates relief grant in the UK, my own company, because we have physical premises, I actually, you know, we were able to get that. And I think that, you know, For any business that has physical premises and you’re thinking about, you know, do I have to furlough staff? Do I have to, you know, consider closing my office?

All of these issues are very much live issues right now. Not only in the UK, I, you know, I would presume across Europe and in the U S I think that the, the furlough scheme that we have here in the UK for, for companies meant that up to 80 percent of salaries. With up to a cap of two and a half thousand pounds per month can be covered by the government.

There has been, you know, some people that fell through the cracks because of maybe they switched jobs, you know, so there has been a lot of a lot of confusion, but thankfully now that we’re further along that has started to clear up. And for example, if you go to the federation of small business website has some excellent information on there.

And obviously in terms of financial support for businesses during this period, you know, the government websites have been in the UK, at least advertising really well. I mean, I see the ads regularly, whether it’s on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn, but the advertising is there and people, I think, you know, business owners in particular will have seen that and been able to use that.

And the EU also have announced You know quite a large package as well. I think if you’re a local business owner, you just want to get in touch with, you know, whatever your local commerce, you know society or organization is and find out from them, you know, what grants or loans are available in your area.

So I think that’s probably the best.

Frederick Vallaeys: So, I mean, do speak up whenever you have a chance. I know there was a question that came in on the support and whether advertisers need to apply for this, or just like with the government programs, or if, in this case, it’s automatic. Ginny, let us know. It was automatic, but I’d love to hear from Google as well. You know, so, Gary, based on what you were saying, obviously, there’s a lot of uncertainty. It may be too little too late for some people, some people falling through the cracks. So kind of wanted to hear from everyone what you’re seeing in the industries that you’re currently working with. And as you do that, I’m loading up the COVID 19 vertical tracker, which is a tenuity product, and it shows us month over month changes as well as week over week changes in different industries. Joe, have you seen anything interesting across certain verticals that you work with in terms of shifting and span?

Joe Martinez: A little bit. I’ve kind of been on the flip side. I know a few of our clients. I mean, we have we had clients that were in travel. So, I mean, that is completely shut down, you know, employees for a load on that aspect.

We also had a few clients who they have products that help the restaurant industry. So, from there, and they’re looking at completely. Redirecting their strategy and how they can use their products. So from that aspect, they’ve been

Frederick Vallaeys: you’re not even talking about the restaurants directly, but you’re talking about like software and support for restaurants.

Correct?

Joe Martinez: Correct. Yeah. So they’ve seen now they realize like, okay, how can we take our current product? And this is going back up to the product level. So not necessarily advertising perspective of looking at for them to survive They need to look at how they can change their product up but then kind of on the flip side and I think i’ve been fortunate enough to handle this too I have three clients right now who are really benefiting from the current situation not like taking advantage in any way They just have products that are in really high demand now One is definitely a hands free type product from the tech side, which is extremely important with no contact and then I also have a another client who’s got a product within the healthcare industry that keeps people hydrated So, I mean people are really looking for this product right now, and it’s it’s getting to the point of yes They’re spending more they’re adapting their message a little bit in this time But at the same point for some of them they’re Actually been toning down spend a little bit because they’re getting so much traffic that they either can’t keep up with the inventory Or they’re getting the influx of traffic of anyone who’s looking for anything related to it that they’re getting a lot more unqualified traffic as well.

So it’s kind of a good problem to have but we still have to kind of wade through those waters a little bit.

Ginny Marvin: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s that that points to the kind of feast or famine. Yeah, you know what we’re seeing across, you know, commerce and service you know, it’s And their challenges with both Scenarios, right?

Because you’re either dealing with a how do I drum up interest when demand has just sunk through the floor? Or how do I deal with this incredible surge in demand where my either my supply chain is not ready for it? Or I don’t have the sales reps to be able to take all the calls or you know, whatever it is that there are new challenges that I don’t think in any way that there’s a business that has not been touched by this way.

Yeah, yeah,

Joe Martinez: absolutely.

Ginny Marvin: Yeah. One of

Joe Martinez: our clients who had, I’m sorry, Andrew, one of our clients, we had the fulfillment issues. They do all their fulfillment, even from their website through Amazon. And once they announced. The it’s still a product that people want but once they announced it’s a non essential item They completely ran out on amazon for weeks And then they had to wait weeks for that pallet or shipment to get back in there so like we they were in demand, but we still had to shut down ad spend a ton because They had nothing to sell.

So it’s kind of a fact of what

Frederick Vallaeys: they do in those cases, right? Are you still building your upper funnel and at least capturing that audience or just set it up?

Ginny Marvin: Yeah, I talked to one Amazon seller who she had been concerned that her products are made in the States, but she’d been concerned that the her warehouse or the manufacturing plant would get shut down because of safety reasons.

So she. Ahead of this order, you know, thousands and thousands of dollars, just small business, but ordered thousand dollars in new inventory. And then Amazon shut off the non essential shipments. So then she stuck with thousand dollars, but this is really an interesting story of like how we’re seeing businesses just.

Change and pivot so quickly. And so she’s like, you know, I’ve had this, I’ve been making this network. And I found a friend who they ship their own products. I can’t even remember what they make. They’re like a car part manufacturer in Tennessee. So I’m shipping my inventory down there. They’re going to fulfill my orders.

Cause they do direct shipping through Amazon. And so it’s just those kinds of stories that are remarkable and inspiring.

Frederick Vallaeys: How much can we actually change the longterm consumer behavior? Right. And like, not that I’m everyone here, but as a personal example, I mean, used to go on Amazon to buy stuff, but now that they.

For the most part, don’t really deliver the two day guarantee. Like I’m all over target target actually still delivers in two days. And you know what? They have a ton of stuff that I usually buy from Amazon. And so

Andrew McGarry: well, I mean, in the UK, if I go on Amazon, everything’s out of stock. I mean, at least from my perspective, the stock issues, I think are quite serious.

You know, I don’t know what it’s like in the States, but right now, you know, you couldn’t, I mean, we were joked about this earlier. You couldn’t buy a webcam, you couldn’t get a Nintendo switch. I mean, you know, I’m not saying they’re the essentials, but there are things that you’re used to just. You know, it’s kind of good.

You got to kind of have a shock when you go on Amazon and it’s like not available and then you go to the next product and it’s not available. So other marketplaces definitely have, I think, huge opportunity to capitalize. I mean, Joe, you mentioned the fact that there’s, you know, it’s not even just that there’s other marketplaces, but you know, advertisers are finding other ways to reach an audience.

Joe Martinez: And I think we’re, we’re, we’re researching other platforms, kind of like you said, if we can’t find it on Amazon, I still need my new pair of running shoes. True story. And I can’t walk into a Kohl’s or whatever and get them. So I’m going to go to wherever I can get them soon because I have more time to go walking around with my kids or go running or everything.

And I need these new pairs of shoes. So I’m not gonna wait for Amazon. I’m going to go to wherever I can find them. And that’s why I think it’s diversifying your marketing and finding where that user is. Cause they still want that product now. Aren’t you there? Yeah,

Frederick Vallaeys: no, absolutely. I mean, the marketplace and it’s also the different brand, right?

I mean, you might be brand loyal to some degree, but if that brand can’t deliver it, this is your chance to you know,

Andrew McGarry: yeah, I mean, Ginny made great points there, but the warehouses, I mean, with the clients that we work with, obviously in the e com site. There were huge concerns like, you know, would warehouses be closed on or if they weren’t closed on, would staff be available to come in and work?

And we saw that in the UK with, you know, large, you know, large brands like next closing down even their website. So it was this whole thing about, well, we have stock, we’ll be able to fulfill orders. I mean, you know, I work with a sneaker client and they said to me. On a call, you know, Nike and Adidas have told us that we may not get the stock we were expecting, you know, there’s going to be supply chain issues.

So, yeah, I mean, certainly in retail, it’s kind of gone from, you know, you would have your monthly plan or your quarterly plan to, you know, You know, it was so fluid. It’s just a day by day. What is the best way to tackle the situation right now? It’s kind of felt like black friday Like just but continuous

Frederick Vallaeys: Exactly.

Yeah, we’re hearing that from a lot of you know, it’s the the big winners here, right? But i’m also curious like in terms of Online apparel seem to be struggling. And there’s all these stories like the inventory is piling up. Do you think yes, a decent percentage of consumers are actually like shopping for clothes online for the first time, or are they just like not buying clothes right now?

Andrew McGarry: Well, I mean, there’s definitely been winners and losers. There’s no doubt about that. I mean, there was a graphic doing the rounds. I can’t remember who to credit it with, but it was like the top 100. Products that have gone up in the top 100 that have declined. And I find it really interesting. So for example, like there has been just before I mentioned a product, I would actually say that from an age perspective, I think that younger buyers.

Who maybe don’t have the, you would expect traditionally don’t have the same buying power. They were the people early on. I feel that actually we’re still shopping online because they felt like, well, COVID isn’t going to affect me. Whereas I think the longer it went on and the more that the news, you know, we’re able to report on, you know, people of all ages.

You know, having, you know, having cases, then maybe it was a case that you know, the, for, for younger people, they may be realized then we’ll actually, we’re susceptible as well. Older people with more buying power from the data that we could see initially were very wary of making purchases. And to be honest, it’s only in the last, I would say two weeks that we’ve started to see that trend whereby I think that the older.

Demographic is starting to feel like, okay, you know, even though it’s not, you know, we’re not in a good situation right now. Globally. I think people can see the exit plan on the horizon and therefore we are seeing retail numbers start to do well. But I think as Joe mentioned, it is very much about what particular type of product or service you’re dealing with, you know, in the service industry.

You know, you can deliver it. A lot of people are pivoting with delivery. If it is, you know, in terms of apparel, I would say that, you know, you’re going to have certain types of lines to do quite well. But, you know, obviously if you’re talking about the type of apparel, well, you know, like dress shirts or, you know, things that you would wear for occasions, you know, occasion where, you know, those are really, really going to suffer.

I mean, I’m not sure, you know, are people still going to buy swimwear? I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. But at the moment, you know, for key items, like, let’s just say polo shirts, for example. Yeah. Like we’re seeing. You know, the kind of numbers that even if they’re dying, we’re still seeing the overall seasonal trend that we would expect to see.

So from a data perspective, you can definitely start to take insights. I would say no. That, you know, four weeks ago, it was just all bats were off. Nobody could really understand. And, you know, you are reading, you know, retail news every day to try and get a handle on the situation.

Frederick Vallaeys: And Ginny, maybe let me loop you in here on this part of the conversation, but you wrote about this, right?

So Google made a major announcement related to e commerce.

Ginny Marvin: Yes. Yeah, it’s a really, it’s a, it’s a big, big shift. So Google is going to start now showing free listings in Google Shopping. So that’s the Google Shopping tab. It’s also the search results in shopping. google. com, Google’s hub in that’s It’s got redesigned in the U.

S. It’s also live in France. So it’s a really big change going from all paid for the last eight years to predominantly free with paid ads at the top and bottom, just like a regular search engine results page. I should note that the carousels of ads on the main results page will still be there.

That’s all paid. Not changing. But it is. It’s a really big ship is also part of an evolution. That’s you can kind of see happening over the past year. So Google first opened up the Google Merchant Center to anyone to upload their feeds. You don’t need to be an advertiser. Like, And, and then you could opt into services across Google, which is also you’ll need to do for now be included in Google shopping.

But we’re also seeing things like the popular product section in the search results page. That’s all powered through either product schema on retailer sites or through their the product feeds. That are uploaded to Merchant Center. So it’s really interesting. I will say the other thing that they launched yesterday or announced yesterday that was part of this is they’ve got a new integration with PayPal so that if you’re using PayPal, you’ll be able to just connect that account to your Merchant center account to kind of just speed up that data flow process and merchant verification.

And that’s

Frederick Vallaeys: a big question, right? So like, obviously this is a big boon for brick and mortar stores that maybe have not done e commerce yet. Now all they need is to speed up.

Ginny Marvin: Have you guys

Frederick Vallaeys: helped anyone with that? How easy is that process right now?

Ginny Marvin: And to get the feed in, sorry.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah, I mean, like maybe Andrew, but if you don’t have a feed and you’re one of the high street shops and yeah,

Andrew McGarry: I think that, you know, it depends where you are.

I mean, I think if you’re, you know, obviously if you’re a big brand, you’re probably, you know, you’ve got an in house team, you’ve got a big agency, you don’t have, you know, it’s not an issue. I think that for small businesses, particularly those who haven’t You know, focused online before that’s something they really have to look at for the first time.

And, and that would be my concern. I think that, you know, with the resource that Google has at its disposal, I would strongly, you know, encourage them to really focus on the education piece, because I think that there is, there’s going to be a natural fear there of. How much is this going to cost? You know, what’s the catch?

You know, how much technical knowledge do I need to have? I mean, you know, for most emerging brands they’re probably looking at Shopify, or maybe it’s a woo commerce setup, but they’re certainly looking for something that’s, you know, as. Easy to understand as possible. Like, is it a one click thing? So, you know, ideally if Google can help with the education piece, you know, whether it’s the credits, whether it’s, you know, getting, you know, free clicks from a product feed, I really do feel that.

You know, we need to take this opportunity as digital marketers to help, you know, small business and be there for them. And I would really hope that Google are able to kind of follow through on that education piece and say, look, this is not as scary or as difficult as it sounds. And that actually, you know, we can help drive traffic to whatever new website or whatever new marketplace, you know, project you’ve got up and running to get you through this difficult time.

Joe Martinez: There’s still so many companies that we run into that never heard of schema. They don’t know about a product feed at all. So they’re not even going to be able to utilize this at all unless they work with someone who knows how to deal with that stuff. So, I mean, but I think they’re also probably a business who doesn’t do marketing normally.

They’re probably not going to hear this announcement anyway, but they’re going to need

Andrew McGarry: marketers. You know, they’re, you know, you know, flyers still work. I mean, you know, there’s going to be businesses out there that are used to the old school techniques and a lot of those are highly effective, but obviously when they’re switching to online, they’re All of a sudden it’s like, well, what, you know, what, you know, what, I think the natural instinct is, well, what’s the catch.

And I think it’s really important that Google can kind of say, well, look, you know, here’s a YouTube video or here’s something that’s going to explain why it’s not that difficult and not as scary as, you know, maybe as it might be for some folks.

Frederick Vallaeys: I don’t know if that’s like a cultural thing. Right. But I grew up in Belgium.

And if someone. Smile at you on the street. You were like, Ooh, what does that person want? Like you smile at people and it’s like, Hey, we’re happy. Like,

in

Andrew McGarry: Ireland, we would, we would automatically be suspicious if you don’t say hello. But yeah, I think again, you know, You know, we talk about Amazon and, you know, there is, you know, whether it’s the affiliate commission being reduced or whether it’s buyers, you know, as Ginny mentioned earlier, people with stock that now have serious issues in terms of what they’re going to do with it.

You know, I think that, you know, if Google is able to help, you know, relieve some of that burden, yeah, the, the opportunity might be there, but we’ve got to do

Frederick Vallaeys: that. Sorry, you brought up Amazon here, right? And is this a Google play? Like, is that the play? They want to take away some traffic from Amazon. And then you talked about the affiliate commissions from Amazon going down.

Like, how is that whole ecosystem changing there?

Andrew McGarry: Well, I mean, look, first of all, I’m not a, an Amazon guru by any stretch of the imagination. But what I would say is that, you know, I, I mean, my, my Twitter timeline tends because I follow, I mean, I, I love Twitter. I love being able to learn from everyone.

My Twitter timeline blew up whenever the Amazon affiliate commission thing. You know, was announced and people were like, well, what are we going to do? And actually, you know, we talk about Google shopping, we talk about remarketing, you know, from a digital marketing perspective in the media industry, you know, the media industry has been getting hit really hard by COVID because people were blacklisting, you know, they didn’t want to advertise against those stories, but if that’s what all the stories are, then where do you advertise?

So that was an issue. But then you’ve got the fact that with Amazon remarketing becoming more prevalent on media sites and more media sites adopting those ad units, all of a sudden, you know, the commission that they maybe thought they were going to get, I mean, you know, there’s definitely media sites out there in the tech world that have reported this or ad tech world.

That, you know, there could be 30 percent of your media revenues just disappeared or is about to disappear. So, you know, is it a play by Google? Possibly. But I mean, I think we have to, there’s no point being cynical. I think our job is to, you know, protect jobs, help businesses. Help people get through this really tough time.

You know, I love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next one, the next person, but I think now we have to help people. Well, I think if I think on the Amazon front, I mean, the way I can see that just taking it from a user experience perspective for Google, looking at, all right, we. Are kind of losing the game to Amazon on the product search front and looking at we’ve now limited the universe of products that can appear and the vendors that can appear in our product search results based on are they paying or not.

Ginny Marvin: Whereas you’ve got Amazon that has a much broader universe because it’s open. And so. And conceivably, Google could be much, you know, X bigger than Amazon because you’re, Amazon’s still limited to those who are advertising. I’m going to do it over selling through that marketplace or you know, through the vendor and so Google has an opportunity to say, look, we really are, we have more.

Products to discover from more retailers. And we also facilitate buy on Google. You know, it could be a way for them to sort of keep building that program up, even though, you know, there was no mention of Google shopping actions with this news and there’s no like direct implication for it. But they’re, I think from a user experience standpoint, if they can You know, make that a better experience.

More product searches means more interest by by retailers, which means more competition and interest in advertising and potentially more interest in in Google shopping actions, which then, you know, sort of builds up their whole. More people on Google.

Frederick Vallaeys: Right. If you don’t have a merchant feed, you can’t do anything.

So maybe this is the incentive and now you can start advertising and then you can actually.

Ginny Marvin: Yeah. Although I do think the schema piece, I mean, yes, this, the Google shopping piece is, is a product feed primarily focused, but the schema piece, you know, you’ve got the Shopify and WooCommerce and big commerce that are making though, making it easier.

Much easier for stores to just be products team of ready whether that’s through their own, you know, the apps and plugins and all that kind of stuff. And so a lot of this stuff is happening behind the scenes without sites, even really knowing that it’s been happening in terms of where this product data is being surfaced.

I mean, there’s also just a whole data. Big benefit for Google, right? To have all of this retail and product data being sucked in from a massive universe is that, you know, I think that’s also a big piece of this as well and and not also Google never talks about it and I don’t know why, but manufacturer center is You know, the hub for brands and manufacturers to have like their ownership over their own data.

And that’s a whole other piece where that, that underlying data then can fill in for you know, third party sellers and, and others who are selling those, those brand products. So,

Andrew McGarry: yeah, the, the microdata piece is really interesting to me that, you know, if I, if I take off my PPC hat for one second and put on my SEO hat, you know, You know, I do start thinking about things like, well, hang on, what if, you know, if, if we’re going to say you don’t need a product feed.

You can just rely on, on micro, you know, micro data, then, you know, there’s going to be certain websites that if your international SEO isn’t done correctly and you’re behind an aggressive, you know, let’s say cloud flare setup. I mean, I’ve got clients who their PPC ads are affected by capture, you know, by a cloud flare setup.

And if PPCs, you know, affected by it and you’re saying, well, you know, if the, if the micro data is going to pick it up. Then you’re going to have to make damn sure that your, your cloudflare setup, it doesn’t interfere with it. Or your international SEO is up to scratch and quite often it’s not because you know, it wouldn’t surprise me if this takes a while because you’re going to get a lot of data that just isn’t accurate and the crawler won’t know what it’s looking at.

Again, this is an international issue and maybe if you’re, you know, if you’re a retailer and it’s. And in particular state or particular region is maybe a non issue.

Ginny Marvin: Well, no, I do think the data quality piece is really interesting though, because I, you know, that was one of the massive problems with Google product search before it was paid is.

Quality was awful. You’d have you know, people advertising or, you know, saying that their product was 3. You click through. It’s 30.

Andrew McGarry: It doesn’t

Ginny Marvin: match or it’s a totally different site or, you know, and I think that’s where they’re, they’re feeling much more secure in their ability to verify. You know, the site landing page.

And I don’t know, I guess that piece seems to be, I mean, it doesn’t get to the access piece that you’re talking about, Andrew, for sure.

Andrew McGarry: Yeah, there’s definitely, yeah, there’s definitely issues at the moment with. You know, stock and inventory levels because, you know, I, I see that I see people, you know, quite a lot online saying that, you know, at this point in time, it’s not uncommon for them to click on a Google shopping ad and they get there and the products not available, you know, and I think that’s the thing that there are.

You know, there’s going to be a lot of retailers out there that don’t realize that, you know, okay, maybe you thought you got a good deal and you’ve got cheap PPC set up or a cheap account management, but, you know, ultimately, you could be paying for clicks and, you know, you’ve got very low stock level, but that’s skew or that is still running.

So. Let me bring in Joe on this part of the conversation, right? You can’t really sell the thing right now and have that last look attribution model work. How do you use YouTube? How do you use display remarketing? Yeah, this is where we exactly how we see some of those brands shift completely the one I mentioned who they were out on On Amazon, well, they know, okay, now we have time, you know, and now it’s not as busy working about the additional numbers or anything, because we know we have to just wait a few weeks.

Joe Martinez: So now that kind of honestly cleared up time for them to kind of step back a little bit, actually focus on the creative that honestly, that we were asking for for a while that we wanted to do all these other campaigns. And we, we shifted that now this gave them the opportunity to test the Instagram stories ads that they were never doing.

And their product is very, it’s very beneficial for parents with kids at home. And it just happened that now, look, now there’s a lot of parents at home with their kids. So now they’re doing branding. Now we’re focusing on new targeting options that are trying to hit people who are at home. Doing that branding, we’re, And we’re stretching the dollar out just because overall, we’ve just seen the Facebook CPMs for their advertising become much more affordable, so we can put more budget from there.

We’re utilizing YouTube for awareness again to stretch budget out there a little bit too because we not necessarily have to pay for that ad every single time if they’re not watching the entire ad. So we’re testing out new creative and then we’re figuring out what’s working. We’re building the awareness now, and then in time expecting when we’re getting that inventory down then we’re going to double down on our search and shopping ads to really capitalize on this new intent.

That we’re doing. So it’s, it’s given us the opportunity to focus on the top of the funnel and we’re seeing search trends for these products go up for our clients that they’re in demand. So it’s, it’s a combination of people are needing these products, but we’re also seeing brand trend traffic grow up because we’re using our additional budget that we’re not using in search right now in building awareness for what we have to offer it.

We’re changing the messaging too. It’s not just, Hey, here’s this product come by now. It’s we’re a solution for you in this time. You know, you have a kid stuck at home when we’re, we don’t even mention shop now or anything. It’s we’re your partner in this. We’re going, we’re going to get through this together, that type of messaging.

And that’s what we’re seeing the branding aspect coming through. We’re not trying to be used car salesmen. We’re trying to be a partner in people’s lives while they’re going through some difficulty.

Frederick Vallaeys: I would want to hear from the others on that too. So I feel like there’s a bit of COVID 19 saturation in terms of messaging.

Every day you get 10 emails from CEOs and founders of companies to say they have hand sanitizer for their employees. And it’s like, yeah, I kind of figured as much. I hope so.

Joe Martinez: I just got it now. You know, we just want to let you know, we just got it now. Who knows yet? That’s terrible. I feel better right now.

Ginny Marvin: You know, I do think on the email side, there was with any of these things, right? The emails are like, there’s something there’s some sort of like trigger that companies feel like they need to blast out. Updates that no one cares about without actually thinking through what is the user experience going to be.

And I don’t know if it’s like the, you know, people see, I just got 10 emails. We haven’t sent it. We haven’t sent an email. So our customers are just sitting there wondering what are we doing about hand sanitizer? Which, no, right? No one’s doing that. But I did see cases where people were actually using that opportunity to reach out and provide value and you know, that I think was where you start to separate companies that are just knee jerk reacting to ones who are actually thinking through what the empathy piece of this is.

Right. It’s like not a how do I just shove my message out there? It’s what is the empathy and what is the problem I can solve or show support for in a way that’s actually meaningful to my audience and reflective of my brand.

Joe Martinez: Yeah, I just retweeted. I’m a, you see, I’m a big Star Wars fan. So I follow a few of the marketing people at Star Wars and one of the guys there just retweeted this morning.

I retweeted it out there. You can find it. I’m gonna read straight off of it. He had a tweet says, too many companies are creating melancholy ads tapping into our shared sense of sadness. Not enough companies are creating determined ads tapping into our shared sense of resolve Sure, the world’s got us down, but we got to want to kick this thing in the ass, right?

You know, it’s people We’re all bored. We’re all depressed. We’re all anxious. We’re all nervous, you know, just reminding people that that doesn’t really help That doesn’t really inspire someone, you know, make someone want to fall in love with a new brand So that’s kind of what I was going to say It’s just like shifting your message to be the partner to be there as let’s come up with a solution We’re going to get through this Here’s how we’re going to help you and that type of thing

Frederick Vallaeys: resolve and stability, right?

I think the other thing that the consumer needs to hear right now is like the brand that i’m investing in right now is going to be there for me and is not on the verge of For me, it’s like restaurants and gyms and a lot of the local small businesses like you keep supporting them Absolutely. Yeah Is that money down the drain and to what degree are we helping?

Yeah, and the

Joe Martinez: content that we’re giving away from not the e commerce side, but a lot of our SaaS clients and everything, they’re giving out instead of, hey, sign up for a free trial, free demo, they’re shifting to, here’s a free webinar, pretty much doing the same thing like what we’re doing, you know, just talking about what’s going through.

That is their call to action now. Here is, The white paper that used to be gated. No, now it’s free. I think that works

Frederick Vallaeys: in a b2b setting right because we can actually how business has survived is I think it’s a much tougher message When it’s b2c andrew, I mean, maybe you have something. Yeah, I mean I

Andrew McGarry: would I would absolutely I would absolutely echo what you know, what joe and Ginny were saying there that You know, the, it’s, look, nobody saw this coming.

And so there is, I guess, look, I’m a huge fan of Mark Ritson. And I think that, you know, digital marketers in particular can be very guilty. of being tactic driven, not being able to see the big picture and not being able to actually think strategically. You know, if I was going to hold my hand up and say, you know, what were my weaknesses, you know, over the years, it was probably thinking I was doing strategy when I wasn’t, I was actually just executing tactics.

And so it’s from people like, like Mark Ritson that, you know, I read about, you know, his and other senior marketers. Views on, you know, how this you know, situation has been dealt with by brands and yeah, like nobody wants to read, you know, all these emails that talk about, you know, yes, we’ve got hand sanitizer and all the rest of it.

I think we do want, you know, as Joe was saying there, we want to be. I don’t know if entertained is the right word, but we want to be reassured and we want someone to say, you know, the things that mattered to us before matter to us even more now. So, for example, you know, before this, you know, virus dominated the news, climate change was a big deal, you know, and we talk about sustainability, you know, particularly in the e com world.

And I think that a lot of the marketing campaigns that, okay, some of them obviously will have to change and have to pivot. But, you know, we should still care about climate change. We should still change about sustainability. We should still care about local business. You know, if there is a local restaurant that you really like and they’re offering vouchers for when, you know, they, they open again, then maybe that’s something you want to look at.

I think. You know, again, I would like to think we all have a responsibility to take care of those local businesses that, that we love, that we want to help them see them survive. And especially us who

Frederick Vallaeys: are still making, who are still working.

Andrew McGarry: Well, yeah, yeah,

Frederick Vallaeys: yeah.

Andrew McGarry: This is it, yeah.

Ginny Marvin: Bing has a integration with GoFundMe now where small businesses can put GoFundMe campaign donate buttons on their Bing places.

Listings, which is different than how Yelp dealt with it, where they just automatically put those on there. But it is interesting to see, you know, things like that, like how, how companies are helping to support other businesses and companies without You know, in a way that it is empathetic and makes sense for, for those companies,

Andrew McGarry: right?

And it’s authentic. It’s got to be authentic. Yeah.

Ginny Marvin: Yeah.

Frederick Vallaeys: And so I said there was going to be a big announcement. I don’t know how big it is, but in the vein of learning and sharing, And just the fact that we can’t really meet in person and we don’t know when that’s going to be possible again. The Paid Search Association, which most of us are members of, just is about to announce a three day conference, virtual conference.

It’s completely free. It is powered by Zoom, so there are limited seats available, so that’s why it’s pretty cool that we’re announcing it here. But this is the URL, so if you want to get content, and I know, I think, Ginny, you’re going to be a speaker at that conference, so that’s going to be happening here in about three weeks or so.

So go and sign up for that and hear from the experts and take a look at at the agenda. So I’ll be talking about automation in the new normal. I’ve talked a lot about automation over the past couple of years. Obviously it’s a big theme. We’re kind of asking questions like does automated bidding work in these types of situations?

How do we shift? How do we quickly update our messaging? If some of that’s been automated Ginny, what’s, what’s going to be your topic? Have

Ginny Marvin: I have told Gianpaolo to tell me what to do. So I I’m probably going to be

Frederick Vallaeys: most relevant at the time. Right.

Ginny Marvin: Yes. Yes. I will I will likely be moderating a couple of panels.

And I think on day two, I’ll be doing that. So I’m, I’m looking forward to some really great content, good conversations and It’s nice to see the community coming together like this.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah. And one thing we we try to do with this conference is give a little bit of credit to the organizations that have been doing in person events for a long time and who came to them right now.

So obviously SMX comes to mind, HeroCon, PopCon Gianpaolo’s event in Italy at World Experience. So a lot of. You know, great teams that have been putting on these events where we get to network, where we get to learn from each other, we can’t do it right now. So we wanted to bring together a mix of speakers from those conferences.

In the spirit of sharing and then hopefully, you know, in the not too distant future, we can all do it in person again. Absolutely. Yeah. Me from Google. I don’t know if your audio is still working. If you wanted to chime in, there have been a couple of Google points.

Ginny Marvin: Yeah. Can you hear me?

Frederick Vallaeys: Yes.

Ginny Marvin: Perfect. I was on.

Okay.

Frederick Vallaeys: All right. So yeah, I mean, what we wanted to hear about was the the Google shopping. One question that actually came up is when might has become available globally. I don’t know if you had any additional points on the free SMB credits coming out or any other resources from Google that people can take a look at.

Ginny Marvin: Yeah, so for shopping global expansion, we’re still working on it. The date is still TBD. I don’t have the date announced yet in terms of SMB credit. I think a genie made all the points that needs to be covered. The only point I would highlight is. Small businesses like franchises will not be covered. So just one point that we need to be careful and that wasn’t covered.

I think I shared the help center. So that’s a, that’s the best place to go. It was just recently updated on the 20th. So it has the latest information there. And it will appear. So your credit will appear and you’ll be communicated and then your credit will appear on the Google UI. So that’s how you will be redeeming your credit.

Frederick Vallaeys: Great. And then the Google Shopping, one question was, so how have those listings been up to date? So I believe they’ve all been paid so far.

Ginny Marvin: Could you say that again?

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah, so on Google Shopping, one audience question was so now these listings or some of these listings will become free. What was the model that Google was using before this change?

Ginny Marvin: That’s a good question. I don’t have the answer yet, but I am happy to get back to you on that.

All

Frederick Vallaeys: right, so I believe those were paid ads, right? So it’s just going to be a mix now of paid and free

Ginny Marvin: But

Frederick Vallaeys: we can follow up on that.

Ginny Marvin: Yeah

Frederick Vallaeys: great. So yeah, Emi, thanks for hopping on the call. Stay right there in case other Google questions come up, but we’re pretty close to the end here. So we’ve talked about I think most of the topics we covered today.

Had wanted to discuss I’ll give each of the panelists time to make a final point or something interesting. They they think we haven’t covered yet. Ginny, why don’t we start with you?

Ginny Marvin: I’m sorry. I was looking at the questions. I missed your question.

Final points. I guess, you know, I just wish everyone left during this time. And I know it’s. It’s challenging and no matter if you’re seeing great things or or really difficult things. So you know, hoping to continue being a resource and you know, love hearing from people, ideas, thoughts, and and ways that you’re making through that.

So you reach out to me on Twitter at Ginny Marvin or shoot me an email at gmarvin. thirddoormedia. com.

Frederick Vallaeys: Awesome. And about your show, how do people find out about the next episode?

Ginny Marvin: Oh so live with search engine land. The next one actually will be on this Friday at 2 PM Eastern. And you can find out about it on search engine land.

In probably today, I believe. And that is going to be hosted by my colleague, George Nguyen, who is going to be hosting a panel talking about primarily content marketing and during this time and things you can be doing in the future. So we’re kind of mixing up the topics week by week and So stay tuned.

You can find that on on search engine land.

Frederick Vallaeys: So great. And any thoughts on the SMXs as far as announcements when to go

Ginny Marvin: so we don’t have an announcement right now on SMX advanced. So part of this, you know, the challenge with being a Working with events is that you’ve got all these contractual obligations with hotels and conference centers.

And fortunately, we have a fantastic team who is dealing with all that. But you know, so stay tuned for for announcements on what we’ll be doing in the meantime to help support the community. So.

Frederick Vallaeys: Thanks for sharing that. Joe, how about you?

Joe Martinez: Yeah, just depending on if you lost budget, I just consider, and you still want to run ads and all, look at just different channels than the ones that you’re used to.

I even, I talked to a contact in town who has a few bars and restaurants panicking about traffic. It was like, well, then shift some of your Facebook advertising to maybe look at Waze Local. So, if people are still driving around, you can still advertise on Waze. Talk about your carry out ideas and just look at alternatives where you can make the budget stretch a lot more.

Other channels that we’ve seen cheaper is Quora, another, another one, especially if you’re in the flip side and you’re seeing Facebook has gotten more expensive or Google’s gotten more expensive because you can capitalize on the situation. Find out other channels where you can make the dollars stretch and you don’t necessarily have to stick to what you’ve always been doing.

This has actually been from both sides of the perspective that this is a good time to start testing out new creative, new channels, new messaging, and really find out what connects with your audience. And I would add on that is that think about building them as audiences retarget to later across other channels, right?

Ginny Marvin: Like that there’s. There’s pay for pay it forward mentality with time, right?

Andrew McGarry: Absolutely

Frederick Vallaeys: cool. And Andrew,

Andrew McGarry: yeah, actually on the, on the audience points this may be super obvious to other people out there, but I mean, I think that the, with the exponential intelligence of, of what Google’s able to do every, I don’t know, quarter, who knows, like with, with the machine learning, but you know, we definitely go back and test things all the time and go, wow, that thing that.

Didn’t work so well six months ago was really working a lot better now So, I mean, you know again, you know, it’s this whole thing of continuously testing things, but you know, one of the most recent Insights we had was that go back and look at some of your Google ads. Audiences may well be capable of delivering things that your Google analytics audiences, you know may not be capable of doing and vice versa.

So, you know, definitely go back and compare what you think. You know, things that you assumption basically challenge your assumptions. There could be things now that you categorically go, Oh, this works. So that doesn’t work actually, if it’s more than, you know, if it’s six months since she last tested it.

Go back and challenge those assumptions. And I think the only other obvious point that would make is that no Google shopping and from an e com perspective is probably going to be your biggest growth tactic this year. You know, if you do work with a partner, push them, push them to get as much value and as much optimization out of your feed as you can, and don’t just be like another billable invoice to them, like really, really push them.

So that, that would be my last point.

Frederick Vallaeys: Great points from everyone. Okay. Thanks everyone for attending. We’ll be back again next week, same time. New panelists, new topics the session today will be available as a podcast. The video will be uploaded on YouTube later today, and everyone who registered will automatically get a copy of that.

Stay safe, stay sane. We’ll see you next week. Thank you, everyone.

Andrew McGarry: Thanks, everyone.