Surviving the recession: How PPC agencies can prepare now to thrive in 2023

Episode Description

Are we in a recession? Well, it depends on who you ask.

But, whether we are already in one or heading toward one, we’re clearly seeing the effects of inflation and other macroeconomic factors on our businesses. So it’s always better to prepare in advance before it’s too late.

That’s why we spoke to two very experienced PPC agency heads — Kirk Williams and Dev Basu — to learn and understand what their plans are as we move into an uncertain 2023.

Kirk and Dev start off with the macroeconomic implications on the PPC industry and then discuss how ecommerce and B2B agencies can prepare to come out safely from this looming crisis.

Tune into this episode to learn:

- How you can continue and sustain relationships with your clients

- If you should hire more people or upskill existing ones

- How to be more efficient with your budgets and channels

and more

Episode Takeaways

Sustaining Client Relationships

• Focus on being adaptable and scrappy, especially in tough economic times. Evaluate core values versus nice-to-haves in client relationships.
• Consider adjusting service scopes to match clients’ budget constraints without drastically cutting service quality.
• Maintain strong communication, showing how you can continue to add value through efficiency and strategic adjustments.

Staffing Decisions: Hiring vs. Upskilling

• Assess the need for new skills versus enhancing existing ones. In times of economic uncertainty, it might be more beneficial to upskill current employees to fill gaps.
• Hiring should focus on roles and skills that are critical and might be missing within the organization, like specific technical skills or new service areas that align with emerging client needs.

Budget and Channel Efficiency

• Re-evaluate ad spending and focus on channels that offer the best ROI. Cut back on underperforming areas without compromising on key performing channels.
• Emphasize loss aversion and efficiency in client communications and strategies, shifting the narrative from growth to maintaining and efficiently managing existing assets.
• Use data-driven insights to reallocate budgets effectively, ensuring that spending aligns with client expectations and market conditions.

Additional Takeaways

• In an uncertain economy, prioritize strategic flexibility and operational efficiency both in client management and internal operations.
• Leverage first-party data and innovative ad formats (like LinkedIn’s Document Ads) to enhance engagement without increasing costs.
• Prepare for the potential shifts in the labor market by creating roles that can fill gaps left by layoffs or reduced hiring in other sectors.

Episode Transcript

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Hello and welcome to another episode of PPC Town Hall. My name is Fred Vallaeys. I’m your host. I’m also the co founder and CEO at Optmyzr. So today we wanted to talk about what’s happening in the economy. If you ask different people, they all have different answers. It seems like some people say there’s going to be a recession or people have been saying there’s going to be a recession next quarter, but we’ve been saying that for quarters on the end.

One thing we can’t argue though, is there’s been inflation. Things are just getting more expensive. The other thing we can’t argue is we’ve seen massive tech layoffs happening. So things are definitely changing, but do it, does that mean anything for the PPC industry? So today we brought in two amazing PPC experts and agency owners and CEOs to help us understand how all of this change in the world is impacting our business so that we can not only survive it, but also thrive in it.

Welcome to another episode of pbc town hall.

All right. And here are my guests for today. We have Dev Basu and Kirk Williams. Hello guys. Hey, good to see you Kirk, welcome back to the show. You’ve been on a number of times, Dev, thank you for coming on as a first timer but you’re no stranger to social media, but for people who haven’t met you before, Dev, tell us a little bit about who you are, where you live and what you do.

DEV BASU: I’d love that. Thanks for coming out of the time and for inviting me on. So I’m the CEO of Powered By Search. We are a B2B demand generation agency that only works with the latter stage B2B SaaS companies. I’ve been doing that for about half my life now. I started working in agencies at the age of 17.

I’m 34. I live in Toronto, Canada with my wife, my son, and a beautiful golden retriever, Jack. And yeah, we are seeing lots of winds of change in what this year has sort of been bringing about. So excited to dive into that and more.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah. Can’t wait to hear it. And that’s amazing that you’ve been in An agency world since the age of 17.

Was that basically when the other people in high school were flipping burgers at McDonald’s, you were like, Hey, I’m going to go work at an agency.

DEV BASU: Pretty close actually, in terms of the story. I started out working at Microsoft in Canada over here, and then. Got a knack around learning a bit more about SEO and paid media started applying that to my own affiliate marketing business.

And before you know it, someone said, Hey, can you help me with X? And I said, of course I can. And so that’s how it started. And then a local agency owner had reached out and said, would you come work with us and a couple of brands? And so I fell into it like many, many people in this industry really do.

No one, I think no one says, you know, they grew up and they go. I would love to work for an agency. It just kind of happens. And then you go roll with it.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: It does. Yeah. I was a, an affiliate way back when as well, the days of go to big affiliate for eBay mostly, and then, yeah, you just learned so much because as an affiliate, you’re competing against a parent company.

So the only way to actually make money at it is to be really, really good and do it better than a lot of other companies. So I can’t wait to hear what you’re going to share with us today, Dev. And Kirk, welcome back to the show. You know, most people probably know you, but for those who don’t tell us who you are, where you’re calling in from and what you do.

KIRK WILLIAMS: Yeah, definitely. So Kirk Williams, I’m PPC Kirk on social media, so you can find me there. I’d love to connect. I own Zato. We’re a PPC marketing agency, a small agency. We focus just primarily on Google and Microsoft ads for e commerce brands. So I like to say like any channels within Google ads and Microsoft will, we’ll manage, otherwise we let.

Other people do the other stuff so we can stay, stay in our lane. So yeah, especially around the e commerce side of things. So definitely, definitely keep an eye on everything that’s been happening which to me basically started more in like the COVID era and it’s just never ended. And I think that’s, that’s even part of probably what we’ll talk about is the particular challenge of this specific period of inflation recession is also coming on the tail end of that.

So it’s just been crazy for e commerce, especially e commerce, retail, and lots of talk about.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah, I mean, let’s go there, right? So we already work in one of the fastest moving industries in the world, I would think, and PPC and it’s just Google makes so many changes and just keeping up with that is one thing.

And then, like you said, we went through the pandemic and then other things happen, recession, inflation. So it’s like this never ending cycle of change now. Black Friday has just ended. We’re recording this around cyber Monday. Any early insights in what you’ve seen from the e commerce perspective, Kirk?

KIRK WILLIAMS: We we saw sales do fairly well. So it was a little account specific. And at least from what I. It seemed to be especially around if brands had done a good job in kind of filling the funnel through the year, they had you know, good, good loyalists that they could send emails to and get people exposed to it and they had good deals tacked onto that.

Those, those brands seem to do very well for us. So, you know, probably no surprise to anyone this year, especially those brands who didn’t have any sales probably really had a little bit of a, a more of a struggle year. And again, that, to me, that just fits really well into the narrative of the overall economy.

I mean, people, money’s getting tighter, credit card debt is just rising like crazy. So people were shopping for sales. Yeah, so I, I think that’s kind of what, what we saw in it. And from what I’ve observed, like from other agencies and that agency owners, it seems to be pretty similar.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Dev, I mean, you obviously work in a little bit of a different industry, right?

So you said it’s a B2B SaaS later stage. What have you seen and not specific to Cyber Month or Cyber Week, but generally coming into. Kind of Q4 here. Yeah.

DEV BASU: Well, so I think when the economy starts to tank tech is actually 1 of the 1st industries to start dipping. And so we had a market top in November of 2021.

It’s actually been a year that we’ve been in a bear market right now. If you look at the NASDAQ and how that’s been going down or. Hot ETFs like the arc ETFs, for example, they’ve all been going down somewhat precipitously. And what we’ve been really seeing is SAS companies are really marching on.

There’s not really been any demand destruction up until I would say in Q4 where we are right now in 2022. And the, the way that’s showing up on our client side is. Longer sales cycles. Number one people are a little freaked out in terms of committing for annual renewals for 2023 and beyond. So really I think the, the outcomes are longer sales cycles, more flexibility, sort of being sought out.

There’s more negotiations and concessions that are, that are essentially being made and some reticence to longer term commitments overall. And so a lot of that is probably the feeling, if you will, of what we’re seeing and the output metrics are. There’s a, you know, lower sales velocity, lower sort of sales acceptance lead.

There’s a lot of people who are window shopping versus actually buying in B2B SaaS right now. It’s not that they won’t, it’s just taking a bit longer to actually transpire.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah. And I’ll give the perspective on what we’re seeing at Optmyzr being a SaaS company as well. But echoing a lot of what you’re saying.

So we still have a lot of people coming and looking at the software. We actually have much bigger companies coming in, looking at the software because they understand they need to become more efficient. Right. And there’s that whole march towards automation. But as that automation happens, you know, you want to control some of that automation, so you want to have your own software in place that does that.

But then just the decision takes much longer. People are hesitant to part with their money. But then one area where that doesn’t really fully pan out, like where you said, people are not willing to commit to a year we run annual sales or where we extend for one more year. There’s always some people who say, well, we don’t know what’s going to happen next year, but I still have the budget from this year.

So let’s get down so that we’re safe. And we at least know we’re going to have to help for that next bit of time. But kind of echoing then what Kirk was saying too, it’s, it’s really very dependent, right? So. We’re lucky being a SaaS company that works with a variety of industries, really any industry.

And if one industry in COVID was really hard hit like travel, we saw a huge dip in that, but it was made up for by all the e commerce companies who were delivering to people’s houses when they couldn’t get out. Same thing is happening now, right? So it’s, it’s kind of balances out. So net net. Things are pretty consistent, pretty normal for us.

But individually, you might see accounts where that does shift around a little bit.

So let me tee up the next question then. So there’s kind of like three factors that are these really big Change agents in the economy. The first one that we can’t really argue about is inflation. So inflation being at around 10%. In the UK, I think it’s even higher. It 10 percent is in the United States.

It did come back down a little bit. I think it’s around 8 percent or something now, but you know, how is that. Changing consumer or business behavior. And what does that mean in terms of your your sales?

KIRK WILLIAMS: Yeah, I can start this one. So like I look around at just like, well, I live in Billings, Montana, right?

I can’t remember if I said that, but not a, not a huge metropolis. All right. We’re kind of a, a Western Midwest type of an area. And so there’s just a lot of, you know, a lot of, a lot of blue collar workers. Like there’s a lot of people like, who are my neighbors who work in like the oil industry in like, there are some who work in like the mine, things like that.

So you have a lot of that and a lot of these, these sort of people, especially in a lot of like, let’s just call it the flyover States, I think are looking at. Not really a prospect of income in, in the near future, like accelerating and yet, because income with like tech and things like that seems to shift a lot, right?

Salaries and that, but in a lot of these just normal blue collar type jobs, you, you don’t really have the ability to grow an income a lot. And yet what they’re looking at. I mean, their, their food bill has pretty much doubled, right? Groceries are basically double at this point for us. Get, you know, gas has been high.

So all of the essentials have just risen dramatically. You know, even, even things like health insurance in that, right? Like some of the, some of people’s health insurance plans are just spiking, right? So you have all of this stuff that is increasing. And so what’s, what’s happened is you’re watching credit card debt rates.

Like the, I think it’s the credit card actual, like how credit cards are increasing. So the actual rate of it increasing is like the highest it’s been in like 15 years or something like that. So I think a lot of people have been living in some sort of a little economic bubble where they’re just, they just keep shoving things in a debt and that just cannot be sustainable.

So, so that’s where I look at stuff like inflation that, and I, and I’m, and this is kind of what we’ve been expecting for a while. And so. I was a little curious to see what would happen this black Friday season, but it’s so far, at least the narrative that I’ve been thinking of and planning for this is matching it.

And that’s that, like, I think a lot of people pushed through the holidays to like, make things as normal as possible gift buying and things like that. I think Q1 is going to be. Like, I think it’s going to hit the fan. And so that’s just, you know, my theory, I’m literally not an economist. And so, but we, we’ve been trying to have that in mind and, and some of where we’re seeing that to go into our clients and that as well in advertisers Mike Beckham, CEO of simple modern on Twitter, he shared he shared a tweet a few weeks back of like, Exports from China that are coming into the U S and like that’s dropped off a cliff and a big part of that is because companies have been focusing more on clearancing out their inventory as they’re looking ahead to people not purchasing as much either.

And so what you have is you also have kind of this thing where companies are not buying as much inventory importing it because they’re trying to clearance out what they have as they’re expecting this as well. So, so I, I kind of think we’re still on the cusp of like. So I hate to say it, but I kind of think the worst is still to come in that regard.

So that’s just my non economist theory.

DEV BASU: While Fred’s coming back, Kirk, I’ll add to that. So on the consumer side, entirely on the same page, like I live in Toronto you know, inflation has, I think, really hit two key places energy. So gas costs are sky high. Food cost is another area, basically, as well. And wages have not inflated at the same time.

So we’re sort of seeing this sort of spillover effect of what happened and. 2020, 2021, a large percentage of this inflation is really caused because of the, the fed basically pumping in money. And it’s been at a rate that was never happened before. Like we, I think in the U S it tripled the money supply or something like that.

And so there’s like a yo yo effect that everybody’s facing right now on the the one point you said about the worst is still yet to come. I actually agree with that. There’s a, an economic theory called the hope cycle, which is basically H is for housing, O is for orders, P is for profits, and E is for employment.

And we’re at the profit and employment erosion stage right now. So again and in terms of cycles, tech always goes first going into a bust. And what the last is always like utility companies, for example, energy utility companies. So when you see like. You know electricity company laying off people.

That’s like the worst, basically when a utility company starts having lower profits, which doesn’t happen in recessions are pretty, fairly inelastic goods, so people still have to pay for heat and electricity and things like that, water and so on. But usually tech leads as like a precursor. And also the tech is one of the first to come out of a, A recession, basically, as well.

And so we’re in that sort of profits going down. If you look at most of the companies in the S& P 500, they’re all guiding down for the next few quarters in terms of their profits. And the last one to go is employment, which tech layoffs have started. And you’re going to start seeing layoffs from Walmart, from Target, from Costco, and So on to happening as well.

Amazon has come out and said that they’ll do layoffs as well. We’re not sure if it’s going to be more of the blue collar side of the business or more of the knowledge worker side of the business, but it’s going to happen just part of that cycle, essentially. And now we’ll just, the question is how long will it last for, right?

That’s the big question mark basically associated with it. In B2B, the effects of inflation haven’t played out quite as much because again, from businesses to businesses, the biggest component of this is actually interest rates not inflation quite as much, but borrowing has become quite Expensive.

And so a lot of tech companies are either VC backed or private equity funded. And so the ability to raise the next round is challenging because valuations are they’re dimetrically opposite. A high interest rate means low valuations. Low interest rates means higher valuations. Cause you can punt out the ability for profit a few years into the future.

That’s no longer the case. So the best tech companies now are the ones who have free cashflow. The only way to do that is to keep your expenses under control and to grow the company even faster, basically. So Fred, I’m not surprised that Optmyzr is continuing to see success because we would consider you guys as a mission critical software versus a vitamin.

It’s hard to rip and replace. And so, and that’s primarily the. The segment that we at Powered By Search work with, we work with mission critical B2B SaaS primarily selling to mid market and to enterprise companies themselves. So if you’re mission critical and you’re going to have a bunch of layoffs, the software is going to have to pull a bunch more of the weight in terms of efficiency and doing more with less people overall.

And so in some ways, that’s one of the reasons why tech will usually rebound at the bottom of a recession first, and then all the other. Kind of markets and segments will, will recoup later in the, in that cycle.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Well, thank you. Kind words saying that we’re mission critical. I completely agree, but I like hearing it from someone else as well.

DEV BASU: Oh, we’ve been customers for years. So I think we’ve probably been paying for Optmyzrs. Maybe, I don’t know, 2016, 17, maybe even earlier than that. We’re not sure, but a long time customer for sure.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah, thank you. So yeah, you, you mentioned the tech layoffs then, and then sort of like these B2B companies having less capital, it’s harder to raise the next round.

So the run rate looks a little iffy in some cases. Right. So you’re probably cutting back because you have to get that money to last longer or going to doing layoffs and restructuring. What was I going to ask you here? So, oh yeah. So then the question is, do you keep your foot on the pedal here with advertising or what do you see?

I’ll ask the questions to both of you, right? But are these B2B companies continue to advertise? And then do, do consumer oriented e commerce companies also still continue to advertise when they know that that credit card debt is going to hit the ceiling and eventually people just can’t extend that anymore.

But yeah, let’s start with you, Dev.

DEV BASU: So in general. We tend to think about this as layers of an onion. So almost all of our clients are coming to us and saying, what can we do to, and there are some intractable problems. How can we have the pipeline growing the cost of acquisition going down and the budget cut back at the same time, which makes things difficult.

Obviously there’s not an easy answer to that, but when you think about PPC, we think about it as. Who, what, where are we spending money on product and solution aware audiences who are very close to buying already? So Google ads, for example, certainly fits that high intent type of channel. And so we’re less likely to pull back funds over there.

Rather than more experimental exploratory channels where, you know, kind of quote, unquote, would be at the top of the funnel. We’re pulling back funds there. We’re doing a bit less testing and learning. It’s not what we want to do, but it’s what the CFOs on the company sides we work with want to hear.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Right. Let’s pause on that for a second, right? Because I think that’s really CFO who looks at the numbers, it makes total sense. You’re going to keep investing in the thing. That says, okay, this drove the conversion, which was that final click. Are they killing their business by forgetting about the upper funnel?

And I see Kirk nodding his head. So Kirk, do you want to hit him on this?

KIRK WILLIAMS: Yeah. I mean, that’s funny. That was one of the points I was going to bring out. And to me, that’s just, that’s just why this stuff is this, why this stuff is tricky, right? If it was easy, everyone could do it. And, and part of it is like, yes, you need to shoot for efficiency and you need to start aiming.

And that’s why exactly, as Dev said, even on the e comm side, right? Google ads is often kind of the. The winner for budget in a lot of you know, marketing channels, marketing mixes, just simply because of that, it tends to be a little closer to that bottom of the funnel, but you just have to be really careful that because what you’re doing is you could be, could be killing yourself down the line by strangling your funnel.

By like shifting like too much away from that top of funnel. So I, I just think you really have to at least, at least start with that in mind, that that’s even a risk and then try to think of that wisely rather than just running to the bottom of the funnel.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: And how do you navigate this as an agency?

Right? Because so you’re getting pulled in, but from the CFO who says, okay, like that was saying your CPA needs to get better. Your ROAS needs to get better. Right. So we can easily achieve that by changing all of our attribution models to last click attribution do more remarketing spend, right?

All the easy stuff. But then at the end of the day, we want to keep these clients for the longterm. So we do need to guide them towards keeping that funnel full and doing some of these more experimental things like Devo was saying. So how do you navigate that conversation with a client? Devo, do you want to start on this one?

DEV BASU: Yeah, sure. I mean, look, I think the first thing we want to say is that what time range are you trying to think about? Are you thinking about the next 2 quarters? Are you thinking about the next 6 quarters or 8 quarters? And so where is your internal board meeting? What is that like? Basically, what’s your conversation with your investors?

With your, your founding team, for example, and some clients are coming back and saying, look, we just need to survive the next 2 quarters because we’re 2 quarters away from we think from being able to raise again. Some are coming back and saying, we’re 18 months out from our P company, hoping to sell us and to.

To sell us to a different PE company and recap, essentially some are saying that we’re in a bad debt situation because, you know, our debt leverage or debt costs, for example, is going to go way, way up. And so we literally need to make something in the 3 next 3 months sort of work. So there’s some dependency on what their optimization metric is over there that we look at.

And then we’ll say, well, what do you need to cut? Don’t cut like with the machete. It’s much more cut with a scalpel essentially is the the analogy we’re using there. Okay. Much better to be surgical in terms of precision than to, you know, to, to spray and pray in terms of budget. Because often what that comes down to is the CFO is looking at a line item on an Excel spreadsheet and going, how much do we pay for a PPC again?

Like all up. They don’t look at it by channel. They don’t look at it by type of campaign. And they’re just going, we need to be able to call back 50 percent of this spend. And. They’re not really tying that to the ability of being able to have marketing that contributes to bringing in revenue. So we’ll look at that and say, okay, now we’ll create a bit of a constraints metrics around their time frame, what they want to do.

Usually we’ll give them options and basically say. Here is what we can cut back without hurting you too much, right? Here is what we can cut back if you just want to keep the lights on. So somewhere between that spectrum is where they’ll end up choosing. And then we’ll attach a timeline to it as well and say, you’re going to have some leading and lagging effects in terms of your pipeline to like what Kirk was saying.

If you cut back too hard, Yes, you’ll save a dollar right now, but it’s going to cost you 10 down the line in, in your future. So is it sort of, are you trying to be default alive just to basically survive, or are you going to thrive through this opportunity? I’d say maybe about like 20 percent of our clients are they’re large enough that they know they’ve been through different market cycles like this, where they, some of them are actually jumping on the opportunity and asking to spend more.

We have a, A client right now that’s coming on board with spending 200 K per month and hoping to scale to a million a month. You know, and it’s, they’re being very bullish basically about it because they know that in a recession cycle, as demand starts to drop off, they’re looking at audience building.

They’re looking at playing the long game. CPMs will drop and alongside that, depending on the right optimization target, you know. CPAs for things like demos and trials may go up the super bottom of the funnel. But if you’re trying to build a large list and trying to get into a big brand preference, sometimes recessions can offer really good deals on getting in front of people like that.

And so it is different strokes for different folks at the end of the day. And we’ll have a strategy depending on what they’re trying to optimize for at a business level. And then we translate that down to a channel and to a campaign level.

KIRK WILLIAMS: That makes sense. And there’s, there’s good news to me in this and that the benefit of an auction based system is that efficiency is built into it naturally.

And like, that’s, that’s, that’s really, that’s like good news. And so what I mean by that, right. Is if everyone in an auction based buying system, like Google ads, right. Hey, we all want to go after this keyword for area rugs. Cause we’re selling area rugs. All right. And you have everyone, if everyone in. Big economic recession type thing is feeling that oftentimes you really are seeing your CPCs literally decrease as well.

So again, not, not always, but the idea is when all things are considered in the auction is, is fair and everything. So, you know, put on my tinfoil hat, take a cheap shot, maybe at P max a little bit for as long as you don’t have these completely hidden proprietary things like filling. Placements that Google wants to fill just to keep them filled that don’t actually have that direct value to the consumer.

All right, I’ll take off the hat. Like as long as that is the case, that’s always to me, Ben, just a really awesome benefit to Google. And I think that is, that is why it’s nice is because when we all see specific value in certain audiences or keywords, like we’re kind of willing to adjust. You know, accordingly.

So, so oftentimes you actually do see some natural efficiency built in, in these more difficult times because of that, because everyone’s feeling the crunch and they’re just not bidding as aggressively as one things or as one times are good. So I think that’s some good news.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah, no. And I think that’s a really good point to bring to your clients, right?

It’s the efficiency of that system. And so the, the CPCs can go down because the competition is, is maybe getting a little bit less, but then on the other side of that, the conversion rate may be decreasing because consumers have reached their credit card.

KIRK WILLIAMS: Fred, you froze up on us.

DEV BASU: Is he frozen for you, Dev? He’s frozen for me. I think we made such an impact on literally.

KIRK WILLIAMS: It’s that they don’t have very good internet in Silicon Valley. It’s the tech layoffs guys.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Nobody’s working here anymore. So, okay. So interesting thought. Or Sorry. Thought experiment is what would happen if Google laid off all of its employees? How long would you, how long would Google still make billions of dollars before like the last server finally like dies and nothing works anymore?

But yeah, that’s why my internet is broken and we’ll put this in.

KIRK WILLIAMS: We’re kind of seeing that with Twitter, right? A little bit of that question. How long can Twitter continue? Right. Because

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: this was one of the topics we wanted to talk about. Like Kirk, you’re so big on Twitter. Dev, I don’t actually follow you on Twitter.

Are you on Twitter as well? I’m on Twitter as well. Yeah, I’m sure that’s my mistake for not, I think I follow you on Twitter. I should, but at this point, does it still matter what happens on Twitter? So Kirk, I mean, you brought us there. So what are you going to do with Twitter? What do you think is happening?

KIRK WILLIAMS: Yeah. Okay. So maybe, maybe a big picture thought, and then like me personally, like a big picture thought I’ve seen, you know, some people referencing Twitter has really been this really healthy, awesome, like as news is breaking boots on the ground type people talking, so I actually think there could be some negative to it, you know, like dying, right.

Kind of, kind of cultural that, although you always have negative ramifications as well, so whatever. I’m sure life will go on, you know, philosophically if it dies for me personally. Or did you want to throw something in there, Fred? Well, no, I

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: was going to say, like, how are you hedging your bets? Like where I know you’re on TikTok too now, and you are, that’s a natural fit.

KIRK WILLIAMS: TikTok is funny because I was like, I’m going to try to like give PBC knowledge and I would get like no views. And like two weeks ago, so I have, I had like, I don’t know, 150 followers and like maybe a thousand video views, which is zero. That’s nothing. And like two weeks ago, I was like, I’m just going to shoot like a 10 second video of my Lego sets.

And I started doing that. And I have like hundreds of thousands of like video views and like lots of likes. I’m like, I might just ditch PPC on TikTok and just have fun with Lego. So anyway, so that’s why I’m laughing because I’m like, I don’t know about TikTok.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: That’s kind of the point you’re making too, right?

So Twitter has been really good for that breaking news and then having a conversation around it. TikTok, because of its algorithms, like PPC is boring. Like, but to us, that’s not boring. Like to us, that’s, that’s what we need to talk about. So

KIRK WILLIAMS: yeah. Are you going to chill? Jill, I think you’ve had her on here as well.

Like she’s built like an actual PPC following from. PPC knowledge on Tik TOK, like, like really impressively. So great job. She figured it out. I couldn’t crack the code, but no, so I’ve been, I’ve been realizing for maybe like, honestly, like three years that I’ve been over leveraged personally on Twitter.

And so I’ve been trying to really kind of like think that through. And probably LinkedIn is where I found the most success. Just trying to get, you know, business connections and build that a little bit. I mean, I’ve tried a ton of stuff, you know, you to me I’m, I’m trying like, like we did a podcast we’re going to do a season two as well.

Yeah. YouTube channel now focused on Merchant Center stuff. So I feel like I’m always like trying different things so far. Haven’t really found as much success with Twitter. LinkedIn for me is about the closest, but

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: yeah. Right. And then you wrote a book And Dev, I want to get to you in a minute, but like Kirk, so having done all these things the one thing that was also big was conferences.

That’s still happening or are you like more virtual these

KIRK WILLIAMS: days? I’m definitely more virtual. Some of that is, it was good timing for me personally. I just got burned out to be honest. And I wasn’t even traveling as much as you Fred. And I was just starting to get a little burned out of, I couldn’t, I just felt like I couldn’t keep up with other stuff when I was always preparing like this one conference thing, and it was good for building authority.

So I’m really glad how I did it. I wouldn’t do it differently. But also I’ve just been finding more value, man, if I can put. A good merchant center clip out on about merchant center on YouTube. Like the potential for people seeing that and being able to reuse that stuff is just huge. You know, I might give a conference session and you know, some of those smaller conferences, you could work real hard and you might have 70 people in the room and then like, It’s done like that’s, you either hit those 70 people who may or may not have been your target audience or not.

And then like that content you did is done aside from where I found a ton of value, which was like networking, you know, with, you know, with people like you, but you

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: use that, you know, being on the very limited exclusive speaker panel, as that’s building the authority and enables you to be someone on Twitter, on YouTube and all these other places.

But you’re right. I mean, that’s where the scale then picks up. So it’s a. And once you have the authority, it’s kind of yours to lose, right? Mm hmm. So yeah. What about you, Dev? What’s what’s your take on the future of Twitter and where will you be?

DEV BASU: I think Twitter’s going to be just fine. You know, there’s some good studies around this where every time you have sort of this big rip and replace that ends up happening, it’s happened in tech a number of times over the last 10 or 15 years, the companies end up actually most of the time doing just fine afterwards.

And there’s like a reset almost. And it’s natural again on that cycle for to go between sort of fatter periods and leaner periods. Essentially. I’m looking forward to Twitter ads as a product getting better. It’s the type of product where we have been running Twitter ads for our agency for quite a while now, probably three years, four years.

And all we’re doing is getting People who are in our sort of tech buyer, ideal customer persona to see our blog content. And so and then they get retargeted Omni channel, multiple different channels and things like that. So I enjoy Twitter. I think if I were to maybe go all in on a channel and 2023 would be LinkedIn, which is where we’ve been spending a bunch more time, the reach is much better.

Our clients are actually on there as well versus on Twitter. I feel like Twitter is a better place for marketers to meet other marketers, especially consultants, agency owners, that type of thing. You’ll see a lot more on Twitter. LinkedIn is where the corporate marketer basically hangs out and has a profile and is actively spending some time on as well.

And so it’s quite an interesting we see. When we publish content on LinkedIn, our own clients actually like it and share it and comment on it, which does not happen on Twitter at all. And, you know, the only other channel to get in touch with them is direct, like email basically, or hop on a zoom call or something like that.

So in a way, LinkedIn is interesting in the sense that it’s a way of actually keeping in touch with. Your clients and your clients, second and third degree connections, because when they like your stuff, their network sees it. And if you operate in sort of the kind of a somewhat of a homogeneous type of sector, like, like we do in tech, you know, tech people work with other tech people, they end up seeing it e commerce people work with other e commerce people and so on just to the kind of the way that they curate their networks.

So I would be spending more time on LinkedIn. I do think Twitter is going to be fine, but I think their ads product needs a heavy reset. It’s a, it’s still very nascent. And so excited to see what Elon will do once he puts in a real CEO or a consistent longterm CEO in I think he’s going to be great for coming in and basically doing the rip off the bandaid and be able to implement some new leadership, but I don’t think he’ll be able to keep it up.

And frankly, I don’t know that he should, given that he’s got. Other like conquest, like, yeah, like it’s, it’s not like he’s busy or anything, you know, like just getting us to Mars or, you know, democratizing internet access with with Starlink or trying to solve for energy. These are small problems compared to social media.

Out of all those problems,

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: what was the most important, right? Maybe Twitter. No, but I mean, like living in Silicon Valley, I have a lot of friends who worked at Google and then eventually went to Twitter. Not very many, honestly, have stuck around. And then this is speaking way, way before these these layoffs.

And it was always like, they couldn’t get things done. Like the just structurally Twitter was not your typical tech company. And it was a little bit to leadership. So Jack Dorsey. Just never came to the office. And like, even before COVID he was like really hands off and not wanting to be that involved in being, being there physically.

And that’s sort of rubbed off on people and innovators, nothing wrong with that, right? Because they have decent enough business, like why chase that hyper growth that all these tech companies are always after. Right. But then it also means that there’s not enough innovation in the, like you said, the ads products.

So they become subpar and they make a little bit of money on it, but not We’d like to spend more money on that because we don’t have all our eggs in the google basket but then when that company is not going down that path, it makes it hard for us. So in that way I agree with you. I’m excited to see what they do with the ads product and making all of that better But then also like you guys are saying linkedin.

Absolutely. That’s the place where businesses hang out but but twitter twitter has for some reason that we can’t really explain has been huge for ppc You Managers talk to each other to find out what’s broken with Google today. What’s Google announcing today, kind of get that back channel on things.

So I also hope that it sticks around and we continue to have it.

KIRK WILLIAMS: Yeah. Generationally will be really interesting to watch as well. I’m no social media expert or generational expert, but it does seem that, that younger generations are not as on to LinkedIn and Twitter. And especially as they’re beginning to come into the workplace in a strong way.

So yeah, it’ll, it’ll just kind of be interesting to see what, what happens with that, cause we can’t all go to like Reddit, but

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: right. And so that younger generation is also not on email, certainly not on Facebook. And Kirk in the beginning, I can’t, I can’t remember who said it, but basically if you had that loyal customer base cyber week comes along and you have a list that you can go after with email.

But all of these young people now being on email, like, are you, Doing SMS campaigns. Are we bringing social into this mix? Like what’s, what’s been the shift that’s happening there?

KIRK WILLIAMS: Yeah, no, I, sorry. I wasn’t sure if that was directly directed to me. Yeah, I mean, I mean, so that’s where, so we, we are very tactically focused at, at Zato.

So a lot of what we do is with Google and that we’ll, we’ll consult with in that with our clients. But honestly, like we’re not as involved in the decisions as that. But from, from just from what I’ve seen. Definitely, definitely text messaging is a huge thing that has begun, especially in the e com side.

We’ll see what happens. I just, I struggle to see that. As a real long term solution, because at some point, like no one wants to receive 27 different, Hey, your cyber Monday sale has been extended another day, sort of a, of a thing to their, to their phone as well. Anyways, I don’t have much to add there.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: I think you want to be respectful of people’s inboxes, whether that’s an email inbox or a phone inbox. So I think consumers do like hearing like, hey, we actually have a legitimately good deal. Come and check it out. But getting that reminder that, hey, it’s been extended and it’s been extended again, like that gets annoying.

And so putting those frameworks in place, just like with remarketing, right? Where a lot of consumers were frustrated that we were bombarding them after they’d already made the purchase. It’s like, stop it. It’s just, you’re actually doing a negative that’s negative towards the brand.

KIRK WILLIAMS: And, and honestly with, I mean, first party data is, is obviously such a huge thing with With privacy changes, but it just really might be more and more difficult to do that, to, to build your loyalist lists, if you will, as opposed to more like really identifying.

And like, I, I’m thinking of people that I follow online, like a Taylor holiday with common thread collective and some of these others very hot and others. That really do a lot on more of like the social side. And so they really are doing a lot of marketing, like a Gen Z and that sort of thing. And, and what I see them doing and talking about would is, is a little bit more on the really nailing what they’re going after in terms of who that is with the demographic and then really crushing the creative.

And that’s almost to me how I see them thinking more about building that loyalists following in that, especially in younger genders. Rations and not so much like let’s obsessively get all their data into this first party of ours somehow. Cause I think that’s just gonna be increasing the harder anyways.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: You’re right. I mean, if you have a smaller group of loyalists who are truly loyal and they stay engaged because you have amazing creative that keeps them coming back, that is probably worth more than constantly trying to acquire new customers. Right. So totally get that. Dev, any thoughts from you on sort of like this whole transition?

Of how consumers and businesses being consumers behave.

DEV BASU: Well, I mean, first party data is definitely a big conversation point with many of our clients. They’re always trying to think about more ways of doing it. But B2B is somewhat of a laggard. Like if you think about, again, spectrums, like. Gambling and the adult industry always ends up like leading basically with whatever innovation there is in marketing and communication mediums.

Then it’s like B2C social media sites, then it’s e comm. And then like down here is B2B and even further away is like government or something like that. Right. So frankly, like there’s still, we’re still trying to get our clients to just, you know, Do a weekly newsletter in many cases, just to be able to capture email.

That’s not a marketing qualified lead that you hand over to a sales team to call immediately after you download some Gartner white paper or something like that. And so I’d say, you know, that’s, that’s 50 percent of the market is still just there. Things like SMS have worked actually for us as well.

So when it depends on industry. So we have a couple of tech clients in that service segments like restaurants, and so they offer like a point of sale product and such. And when we identified who the influencer was in the sale and it was not the owner of the restaurant, it actually might’ve been a server, even being able to deliver a content asset to SMS instead of just an offer, like you Kind of the way that e commerce companies typically do it.

That was actually much better than trying to get it to an email, for example. Or trying to do appointment confirmation via SMS, which is transactional versus trying to get a Calendly link to email. That seemed to work much better when the software company was selling into SMB primarily in B2C SMB.

So we’ve seen success over there. The, the younger generation element, like the Gen Z marketing components. I think a lot of it is just. Can you build creative and some sort of episodic content where the subscription essentially to the YouTube channel or following the brand on insert social media platform over here is effectively permission as opposed to opting into a form.

And so we always think about this sort of in a concept of there’s three lanes on the highway. You know, the passing lane is for people who want to go fast and go immediately trial the software. Or book a demo, the middle lane is people who want to nibble on content. And there’s a slow lane, which just you know, just send me your next video when it pops up, which is the same thing as YouTube kind of subscription, right.

Or, or like, and subscribe. And so you want people to do all of those where as an advertiser, you offer cascading options, depending on what they do. For example, with remarketing, if someone’s been to a demo page, our first set of sequential remarketing ads are always gain loss, gain, focus, loss, aversion, focus, logic, focus, creative to get them back and actually complete that action, but as days go on.

We, we start tailing that off because it can get annoying after some time. So then we go to the middle lane, which could be a buyer’s guide or a comparison or a calculator, for example, in B2B, and then 14 days out, it’s just a, Hey, would you like us to send you some tips on a newsletter or something like that?

And so it’s, it’s again, going from sort of. Super high commitment to super low commitment. And then eventually there’s win back campaigns that we’ll do where people who saw an ad a quarter ago, we’ll start seeing remarketing ads to welcome them back effectively. But I think the, the, the first party data will start moving more and more to subscriptions on on social media platforms versus an email or an SMS opt in at least in B2B.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Right. And the tricky thing with first party data is that you want to own that data, right? So it’s great to get people in the slow lane and subscribing to the YouTube channel, but then hopefully you’re able to use that list. And so with Google you are, you can. Take that from YouTube. But what if somebody goes on Vimeo, right?

Like, can you bring that back into Google? It’s no longer first parties now, third party and barriers being built. So navigating that landscape is, is a huge deal. And that’s sort of my next question within the agencies that you both run. Things are obviously evolving. I mean, at Google, we’re talking about P max.

We’re talking about first party data. How do you. Your people and what are the skills you’re looking for? Are you hiring new people with a new set of skills or are you looking at taking existing employees and teaching them new skills or how do you deal with all of that? Kirk, do you want to start with that one?

KIRK WILLIAMS: Yeah, I can, I can give some thoughts. So we’re, we’re a very small agency, so there’s, there’s five of us, right? I’d like to say we’re purposefully small and we really are trying to figure out how do we, how do we find like clients who’d be a real good fit for us and then stick with them, even if that prevents us from growing as fast as we could.

And one of the things that’s done, like just to really be Frank is, especially over the last couple of years I think COVID scared me a little. And so like real, really focused on saving as well. And so even as we’ve hit. Now the last few months, and we’ve had some clients pulling back on budget.

We’ve had some clients leave already for economic reasons, and then we’ve gained some back. It’s been, it’s been a little bit of a crazy month for us in terms of a lot of transition around that. But some of that has been, we’ve just been very stable and that’s been a purposeful thing. So in terms of like.

What are, like, are we looking to grow as an agency and add more headcount on like right now we’re, we’re not really we’re trying to get to a stable place so that, and then what I might do is actually start turning some clients away here soon so that we can remain at that kind of sit, make sure we’re good.

And again, that’s just very different than a lot of people. That’s fair. So, so I’m like to answer your question specifically. I’m a little more interested in then seeing, Hey, with a fantastic team we have. Yeah. How do we. How do we, you know, help their knowledge increase? And so we, we’ve, we’ve started like thinking through, okay, even with as little as we are, how do we implement some sort of like training type stuff that we, we all learn something specific about the never ending changes at Google and like train one another in, in, you know, in our meetings and things like that.

So that’s, that’s kind of a quick look at just how, at least how I’m seeing things and how we’re trying to keep our employees, you know, you know, With their, with their skills high, especially on the Google side so that we can, cause that’s where I see a lot of our value with clients saying, Hey we still need someone who knows what they’re doing with Google ad side.

And I want to make sure that we still really know that well. And so like, how can we be the best? So it’s a no brainer to keep us on. So that’s, that’s always kind of my bigger picture. Ask not so much. How do I do it? Grow my agency as fast as possible to sell it. Cause I don’t, I’m not trying to do that. I don’t even know what I’d do if I sold it.

So no plan.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Well, maybe hang out with your kids, right?

KIRK WILLIAMS: Yeah, for a little bit, but I’d have to find a

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: job. Doug, what about you at the agency?

DEV BASU: So I think that we’re, we’re kind of like the, yeah, two questions. One is what are we doing with our people and growing that? And what are you doing clients? The second one was up sort of upscaling.

Are we bringing in skills externally into the business or are we training up? So I’ll answer the second one first. We are, are primarily over the least the next. Two quarters thinking about where we have sort of a high level of competency already. Like, for example, we manage a lot in Google ads and we have great people working within the business, a team of 30, just for context over here, what we’re doing is we’re saying, look, we can level each other up and teach each other on real client accounts, basically as well.

So just like there’s a, I think about things in bell curves. There’s like, you know, early adopters that are keen clients who want to test and learn no matter what the environment is, there’s only reactors. And so much like Kirk, we had a couple of people who basically froze up because of where the economy is right now, whether or not they’ve got real sort of financial hardship in their future or not.

And said, we’re just pulling back. Like it just, this is we’re, we’re just pulling the rug to, so we don’t, we don’t get into a situation where. We have to make even harder decisions and that’s fair. And it’s going to happen in every economic cycle. The same, same people will come back when times are better and be the first in just like they were the first out.

We do have these clients who are keen. So as an example LinkedIn’s come up with something called document ads and they’re working pretty darn well. They’re a way you can either gate content or you can not gate them. Most of our clients have some sort of middle of funnel content offer. Usually it’s a report of some kind that they want to give away a buyer’s guide, Gartner report, that type of thing.

And so we’re using clients who are savvy and want to actually test this. And we’re just saying, Hey, we would like to do this. We’re running a pilot group of campaigns for, for clients. Would you like to be a part of it? Clients say yes. And then what we’re doing is we’re using peer review around those and we’re learning together and upscaling the team that way.

But it’s for people who are, if you think about sort of maybe five levels, level one being complete newbie and level five being a pro, our people are kind of level four on average. So, you know across their, their intermediate and senior in their careers. So they’re able to pull each other up and learn new skills that way.

We are hiring in areas that we know clients are going to need. More help that are different than skill sets. We’re already rocking at. So, for example, we’re hiring rev ops people right now who know how to make Salesforce and HubSpot work better together. How to do sense of systems integrations around that.

Because the bet we’re making is as clients start. Remember, the last part of the hope cycle is E for employment. And so the layoffs will be the last bit. And so when unemployment is the highest, I’ve done a little bit of research on this is when markets tend to bottom. And so as tech companies start laying off more people, they’re going to have this hole of work that someone needs to fill.

So the bet we’re making is actually. Good agencies will be more in demand in the future rather than not, frankly. And so we’re we’re preparing for that and basically saying, what types of things do you think you’re going to run into? And so it’s easy to say that your Salesforce admin was part of the layoff.

Very unfortunate, obviously, but now your Salesforce is going to go into disarray. Somebody needs to be able to come in and manage that. So we’re hiring for skillsets that aren’t. Kind of old hat, if you will, for us. And so those people will hire externally for the rest of the, you know, kind of our bread and butter, we’re going to keep upscaling internally.

In terms of growth, like we just did our 2023 planning, we still have, you know, good growth goals for 2023 hiring as well the same, but they’re more on the back half of the year versus the front half of the year. So we’re expecting softer Q1. Because usually when these markets tend to bottom, like we end up having that same thing that happened in like March 19th or 20 of 2020 and like everybody feels like the sky is falling.

And so we’re expecting that that moment will probably be sometime in in Q1 and, you know, it could be a coin toss. Either you’re going to see Jerome Powell coming back and actually saying, all right, we, we were a little too aggressive with rates. Let’s back off. And then people will feel good about that.

Or the pain could continue for some time. So we’re just being as fiscally responsible as possible, but not. Not just pulling things back and, and, you know, hiding under a blanket, if you will.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: And the pain is that it’s always next quarter that we’re going to see what really happens one way or the other.

Yeah. And uncertainty that makes people want to not open up the purse strings. But I think there’s also a lot of opportunity in here that you guys are describing, right? So as these tech layoffs happen, it does mean there are going to be more people becoming consultants while they look for that next opportunity.

And they have skills that we can definitely use, right? So There’s that there’s availability people. It’s also a little bit of competition. I mean, obviously these consultants freelancers will compete against agencies. So you may have to remind your clients or your prospective clients. What does a an agency of multiple people bring versus that one freelancer who may have been really good at their job when they worked at, say, Twitter?

But I can, can they do the same thing without the resources of that big company behind them? And then I think the other thing that’s happening here that’s going to be a positive is sort of a recalibration of salaries And expectation of where you work, right? So everybody’s sort of been in the mode of I can work from wherever and I can ask for money and life’s going to be Right now it’s like, Oh, okay.

Well, maybe there’s other things happening. I need to be a little bit more reasonable. And it’s fine. Some companies like Optmyzr has a policy where you can choose. You can come into the office or you can just work remotely. That’s fine. But companies make these decisions, but now he can’t go into a company as you got to be at the office, like Tesla, for example, right.

They, they require people to badge in 16 days out of the month because they really want people there. So, but, but you can’t go to that sort of company anymore and say, well, I’m, I’m special. I’m going to get that double the salary and not have to show up at the office. So I’m hopeful that these things are going to help all of us help our clients too.

Right. And as it helps our clients, they’ll have more money to invest in ads. And that comes back to us at the end of the day.

KIRK WILLIAMS: We’ve, we’ve started to get a little bit more I like to use the word scrappy in terms of just how we’re thinking as well about like what, what services and that we offer. So again, when times are good, I’m just, I’m just very picky about.

The specific client, the exact client we take on as, as, you know, as the, the pinch comes on, I think it’s helpful to really identify, okay, you, you know, your little agency, let’s say you’ve been losing some clients. You’re trying to think through next steps, right? I think it’s really helpful to really identify like what really are like core value things of who we would take on.

And then what are some things that are nice to have in terms of like an ideal client when the times are good. And that, that we can make sacrifices on it just as like one example, you know, so to me, like if I’m going to own an agency and we have clients who are like cursing out my employees on the phone type of a deal, like I just, I don’t want to own an agency basically.

Like I see that as kind of a core value thing. That’s just, I just don’t want to deal with that day to day and I don’t want to force that on my employees. So that would be something where I’d look at that as a core, a core value where like I still want to find clients who overall. We just, we just meld with and are just kind of decent people with who we’re talking to, right?

The flip side of that, like in the past, you know, when things are just, you know, when we really are, have people beating down the door with leads and we can really be picky, we might really try to have very high expectations upon, let’s really define exactly how our communication takes place and blah, blah, blah.

And like, that’s some, some sort of thing where, Hey, if we end up having a little bit more than normal phone calls with this one client, they’re really nice. They’re just, they just have lots of questions. We, you know, we might be willing to have a little bit more phone calls right now, type of deal, you know, right.

So again, to show our value. So I think that’s one way of kind of thinking through like what our actual. Reasons that you would say, no, we’re not taking on that client or like, you know, it’s okay to lose that revenue. And what are some ways where you do maybe need to get a little scrappier? And, and like one other thought too, just as a thought is you know, I do think that more and more agencies will start having clients come to them and say, You know, we’re, we’re going to, we’re going to in house like I, I would agree with that, but I still think there’s a huge benefit of actually the opposite happening as well.

I think sometimes you have like a fruit basket upset where just things shuffle, people just change what they’re doing, right. To try to solve the problem as they’re panicking, but there might be people who say, Hey, you know, we’re going to. We have this one marketing manager and we’ve had a couple of agencies doing things.

Now we’re just going to have this one marketing manager do like all the channels, which good luck to that poor person, but also that’s kind of what they think. And some of these short term things, one of the things to communicate on is try to get an idea if this really is revenue focused, they had the CFO and you know, they were in there and they were just like, here are the numbers we got to hack down.

Maybe, maybe you can. Bring up a, a scope shift. So like open up the conversation, like, what is it that you actually value and need from us, how do we actually help and work, and then there are ways that we can decrease our scope so we can actually charge you a less fee, but, but like, you know, we’re doing less, it’s a, it’s a scope thing, so it’s not that you’re just all of a sudden cheaper, right?

But there might be actually be something right now in this time that everyone kind of agrees on. They’re like, you know what, you’re right. We don’t need the weekly calls. If that helps you on the scope thing, we still would love to have you manage those specific Google ads search campaigns. And then here’s the new fee.

Yeah. That actually works better with our 2023 budget. So I just think being a little bit scrappier and thinking through that stuff for, especially for smaller agencies I think have those conversations and be willing to think through that stuff. People still need advertising. So figure it out.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yep.

Completely agree with all of that. Dev kind of getting through the wrap up phase here. So any final thoughts from you and remind people how they find Powered By search what you guys can do for for advertisers and how people get ahold of you. Yeah.

DEV BASU: Okay. So I’m going to add onto sort of Kirk’s comment over here.

One of the things that we have been seeing in our industry is that Because we’ve gotten so high off the good times since 2010 onwards, and everything’s been in a bull market, a lot of the positioning has been around gain, right? Like, make more money, save time, right? Those types of value props, where, where we are now working on things is do more with less, still hit those targets, even if you have less people.

So loss aversion, focused scarcity, efficiency mindset. And we’re just like leaning into the conversation that’s already happening. So what we’re doing with all of our, our PPC you know, clients is saying, let’s look at your messaging. Let’s look at those landing pages. Let’s cut back spend where you shouldn’t be spending it in the first place.

Let’s look at your wasted ad spend and actually let’s deliver a win for the marketing folks that we work with and demand generation roles so they can take a win to the CFO and literally say, we have freed up budget, so we’re giving you the money saved win without sacrificing the, the future longterm prospects of the business.

And by the way, we’ve had added some flexibility where our agency is able to pay for themselves because. One of the things that I’d say for the folks watching this is You know, you’d actually be better off reducing your ad spend than to either downsize or fire a agency because those people investments in high stakes times when the times are like this, where people are a little bit more frazzled, they’re acting a bit more emotionally.

The value of experience really shows itself the most right now. And so if you have people who can stay cool, calm, collected, operate from first principles and they cost you somewhere between, call it 5k to 20k a month for a group of people to do all that work, cutting that, that spend might feel like the right decision in sort of the time, but it’s going to hurt so much down the line.

It’s much better to cut. Five to 20 K and spend from Google ads or from a different channel like that, that is not renewable. And that can’t compound rather than to, to, to basically economize and be penny wise and pound foolish on the people decisions themselves in the same way that you would be careful about making those decisions with in house staff, you know, a good agency is worth its weight in gold.

I’ve certainly, and I’m not even talking about us. I’m talking about like, I’ve seen great operators. You know, over the last 15 plus years of being in this business and it’s it, it’s very clear, just like a good hire is a creative and pays for itself very quickly. Same thing happens with agencies as well.

We’re offering that type of, of service right now to our clients, which is how can we get you, you know, have more done with less, less, everything, less people, less funds, less time to be able to put it together. And so you can find us at poweredbysearch.com. And then myself on Twitter or LinkedIn, just Twitter is Twitter.

com. DevBass is the handle there and on LinkedIn, DevBass is the handle over there too.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Great. That’s solid advice about the investment in people. Kirk, where do people find you and parting thoughts?

KIRK WILLIAMS: Yeah. PBC Kirk. So pretty much everywhere, even TikTok. All right. If you are into Legos and star Wars, then sure.

Join me on TikTok. Cause now I’ve completely changed that channel around. And also a merchant center mastery on YouTube. I’m really trying to go all in on merchant center. Although I heard a rumor lately, I think it was from Mike Ryan. He shared on Twitter that Google might be totally overhauling the merchant center UI.

Which I’m like, of course they would right after I joined that. I went all in on smart shopping, like content and stuff. And then they killed smart shopping. I was like, come on. But anyways, merchant center mastery, even if they change things, then you need to know like how to navigate the new UI. And so that’s what we’ll focus on in that new YouTube channel.

And then people see Kirk everywhere. So zetamarketing. com is, is the business site as well.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: I feel your frustration, Kirk. I mean, that is the life at Optmyzr as we. Build great tools for a specific product feature that Google has. And then they go and change it. And we have to redo the whole thing and change the whole API.

But at the end of the day, you know, we got really good customers and both of you and many other people. So we love our customers and you know, we’re helping you and that’s why we love doing this. Well, I’ll just keep

KIRK WILLIAMS: adapting.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Exactly. So thank you for watching this episode. Thank you to both of my guests for being on.

If you’ve enjoyed this, please subscribe. There’s the button at the bottom there. You can also go to ppctownhall. com to subscribe to our email list, to be updated when we have new episodes. And of course there’s a two week free trial of Optmyzr, which is a great tool to help you deal with uncertain times and, you know, just become a bit more efficient, you That’s some of the things your people will do and put them on automations and get some new insights, automate reporting.

Many of our customers are saving many, many hours per month, and that’s definitely paying for the software. So thanks again for watching and we’ll see you for the next episode.