March 14, 2025 • 43 mins
Google's Performance Max (PMAX) campaigns have been around for a while, but many advertisers still struggle to fully understand how they work and how to optimize them. In this episode of The POMCAST, Seth Peacock, Associate Director of Paid Media at Premier Online Marketing, breaks down everything marketers need to know about PMAX—what it is, how it differs from traditional Google search campaigns, and the latest updates shaping its effectiveness in 2025.
Seth shares expert insights on audience segmentation, bidding strategies, creative optimization, and overcoming data transparency challenges. He also discusses recent changes in brand safety guidelines, GA4 integration, and campaign-level negative keyword controls—all designed to give advertisers more control over their campaigns.
If you're looking to maximize performance, avoid common mistakes, and better understand how PMAX fits into your broader paid media strategy, this episode is packed with valuable takeaways. Whether you're in automotive, multifamily marketing, or lead generation, Seth provides actionable strategies to help you leverage PMAX effectively.
Key Takeaways:
- PMAX campaigns integrate multiple ad channels into one campaign.
- Understanding PMAX is crucial for effective digital marketing.
- Recent updates include GA4 integration and campaign-level negative keywords.
- Data transparency remains a concern for advertisers using PMAX.
- Building a robust keyword list is essential for campaign success.
- PMAX is designed to complement traditional search campaigns.
- Bidding strategies in PMAX are automated and require careful management.
- Brand safety can be enhanced by excluding branded terms in PMAX.
- Advertisers should leverage insights from PMAX to inform their strategies.
- Effective campaign management requires understanding the nuances of PMAX. Play around with TCPA and ROAS for better performance.
- Segment campaigns by levels of intent for effective targeting.
- Use audience signals and search signals to enhance Performance Max.
- Tailor creative assets to user needs for higher engagement.
- A/B test creative performance regularly to optimize results.
- Don't repeat old advertising strategies; innovate instead.
- Utilize first-party data for audience segmentation.
- Engage with online communities for insights and support.
- Understand client needs to build trust and improve outcomes.
- Embrace AI and automation to streamline workflows.
Premier Online Marketing helps businesses grow through smart SEO, content, and search strategies. Learn more at www.premieronlinemarketing.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the Palmcast.
Ladies and gentlemen, we alwaysappreciate your time.
We don't want to waste it.
Today on the Palmcast, I got totell you we have yet another
rock star from the team, sethPeacock.
Seth, say hello to the audience.
Hey guys, thanks for having me.
Sean, of course, of course, ofcourse.
Seth, tell us what's your role.
(00:22):
What do you do over at PremierOnline Marketing?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
So I'm over at Premier, I'm an associate
director of the paid media, sospecifically specializing in
things like small to mediumbusiness, lead gen, auto lead
gen, so dealerships, and then Ialso support our multifamily, so
we've got a lot of condos andbuildings throughout the US that
we run lead gen for and lots ofgood stuff to get through.
(00:48):
Today I'm excited to talk aboutit.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Yeah, me too.
So to the audience, listen,we're going to dive in a little
bit with Google's PerformanceMax campaigns.
They've been out for a while,so that's probably not new to
everybody in the audience, butfor me, I have found this to be
true, especially in theautomotive vertical, where I've
spent most of my career, but itcertainly finds its way into
(01:10):
pretty much every vertical wheredigital marketing works.
Don't want to raise their handand say I don't really totally
get it, I don't reallyunderstand.
They want to be more of thecrowd of you know, I kind of get
(01:33):
it and just kind of move on.
And so that's the reason why wedo podcast episodes like this,
when we'll dig in and talk alittle bit about PMAX and we'll
start really kind of at thebeginning of just kind of well,
what really is it?
You know, maybe, why does itexist?
Because the advertisinglandscape now and we're in 2025,
can you believe that we'realmost in?
Like well, by the time thiscomes out, it's March 2025, seth
(01:53):
, it's insane.
Yeah, it's insane Time flies.
But we want to break this downin the episode so you have a
definite, better thanfoundational knowledge of PMACs.
We want to highlight Some things.
I don't think there's a lot of,but I'm going to ask, seth, if
there's really anything that'supdated, at least recently, and
we'll kind of dig in a littlebit to see if there's some,
(02:14):
maybe some best practices,things, top of mind, that
wherever you're at in yourbusiness, if you're a car dealer
, if you're in apartmentmanagement, legal, wherever you
might be, that you'll take awaysome things from the episode
that will be helpful as youthink about being successful
with what you do with digitalmarketing, especially as it
relates to PMAC.
So the first place, seth, thatI really want to start with you
(02:35):
is, like I mentioned, oftentimespeople want to pretend, or they
don't want to embarrassthemselves maybe that they don't
know.
So there are going to be peoplelistening and or viewing the
podcast that are maybe they'veheard of PMAX, but they're not
really familiar with PMAX.
So could you just start byhelping us break down what is
(02:56):
PMAX?
How does it differ from, maybe,what people know in traditional
Google search campaigns?
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah, I think the traditional Google search
campaign.
Everyone always associateskeywords, right, so we're
bidding on keywords enteringinto an option.
You see the keywords, you seeGoogle's estimated.
Here's what you would show forfirst page or estimated top of
page.
Now PMAX is Google's machine.
It's a beast of a machine too.
It first started.
They called it a local campaignwhen it first started out and
(03:22):
it was really based aroundtrying to drive like local
results and traffic, trafficinto locations, and so I jumped
on that.
When I saw that they announcedit and we started playing around
with it in lead gen, just askind of a supplementary campaign
.
You know, when we're looking atlead gen, there's generally
three major actions a user willtake calls, form submittals and
(03:43):
then then location actions rightThen indicating they're routing
towards the store, and so thelocal campaign, later to be
called PMAX, seemed like anexcellent way to try to drive
more of the tertiary localactions.
So we dug into that for a bitand then PMAX started evolving
and it created more channelsthat you could place ads on, all
(04:03):
within one campaign.
Now, as we played around with it, I think what you'll discover
in the community is that a lotof the unrest behind PMAX being
kind of maybe almost gray hat.
We call it black hat.
It's just that there's not manyinsights.
You know you're not bidding onkeywords like a regular search
campaign.
Google just keeps lauding its.
You know machine learning andyou know smart bidding
(04:26):
strategies and give it morebudget.
And we're over here like, well,give us more insights, right as
agencies.
And, uh, the thing that wediscovered as we trained it.
You know, instead of keywords,the way that, uh, the nature of
the market has been going in theway that we see that third
party cookies depreciating.
You know audience building waseverything.
(04:47):
And so P max instead ofkeywords, the way to look at it
is, you're really providing Pmax with performance max, with
its signal.
You're telling it, hey, goafter these specific terms.
And what performance max willlater do is based off of the
data that you give it, theaudience signals or search
signals.
Off of the data that you giveit the audience signals or
(05:08):
search signals, it'll go out andit will place ads across
discover gmail display.
So, like google search partners, if you're going on, you know
nbc to see uh who rushesinvading tomorrow you'll be able
to get that served an ad fromperformance maxis, a display ad,
but it will also place it insearch maps in youtube.
So, all these channels, youcan't choose which one or how
(05:29):
much budget, and you can'treally say, hey, yeah, I don't
want to spend any on youtube.
It's just bam.
When you set up the campaignit'll give you kind of a series
of things that you can gothrough, like oh, I want you
know ecom or lead gen, and maybechange the channel, but it'll
still be multiple channelswithout much control.
That kind of makes sense has it.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
It does.
Yeah, I, I think for a lot ofpeople that hear, like the you
know the term, in this case pmax.
Pmax on its uh, on its face.
You know Performance Max whatyou ad copy and it'll run it
into the display network.
(06:09):
It will go and use it smart,based on very little information
(06:31):
.
It will write ad copy and runyour search campaigns.
It will also run some stuffover onto YouTube and some of
which can be text driven.
You can upload videos into it.
So this is something thatGoogle's done for maybe almost
since the beginning of AdWords.
Certainly by the time they weretrying to look for agency
(06:53):
partners that would be thesellers and the provisioners of
AdWords.
This is like the be-all end-all.
It's always felt like that tome, where they just wanted the
easiest thing for especiallySMBs to be able to get in the
game and yet trust them.
That is a tremendous amount oftrust that has to be given to
(07:15):
Google within PMAX, and part ofthat, I think the reason why the
trust level interesting to knowif you would agree.
But I think part of the reasonwhy the trust level probably
goes up with pmax is because ofwhat you were just mentioning
and I've heard many peoplemention is you don't have as
many uh data points.
You don't have as many datapoints of depth.
(07:36):
Yeah, it's that, you can.
You can move around and I'veheard people say, yeah.
Just an example of that isvehicle ads used to live outside
of PMAX and then when itstarted to live inside of PMAX,
it's not the vehicle ads all ofa sudden are not effective or
smart for dealers to run, butyou certainly now don't have
(07:57):
some of those control mechanismsand, like you said, these
levers, levers yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
So basically what you're saying is Performance Max
is kind of an agency, you know.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
You're like is that what's happening?
Is it a campaign that'sbasically just saying, hey, here
are all the things that if youhave an agency and then other
agencies are like, no, we needthose levers, and so, yeah,
there's definitely a lot ofdistrust that that has built.
You know, specifically withagencies.
And you know specifically withagencies and you know we're here
to talk about how to kind ofalleviate some of those concerns
, how to actually use, becauseit's irresponsible of you to
(08:32):
look at some of the biggest newproducts that Google's lot in
and just say I don't have enoughcontrol, I'm not going to use
that, I'm going to stick with,you know X.
So you know, I think that's oneof the things that I'd love to
talk about today is how, howbest to leverage something when
you don't have a lot of leaguers, you know yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Okay, well, I I can't wait.
We'll get into that a littlebit.
Um, I mentioned this up top hashave there really been any?
I mean, since pmax has come out, is there anything that's kind
of recent update, anything 2025that they've been talking about?
I haven't been in the know onthat.
I'd bet maybe not much.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
They did add in.
You know they've added in a fewdifferent things and they've
hinted at a few different things, you know, one of them being is
they really wanted to dial inon your brand identity.
So they allowed you to and, ifanything, I believe it's
actually a requirement now foryou to have your business logo,
your business name.
They really want to make surethat when you're uploading all
(09:24):
of these assets headlines,descriptions, images that your
brand is involved in there, it'snot just going to be, let's say
, for an apartment community youknow, fitness equipment without
much branding.
So they really wanted toestablish better branding
guidelines and encourage peopleto use it as much as possible.
But I would say one of the moreimportant things is, before,
(09:45):
everything was Google hostedwith PMAX.
They have now allowed GA4integration and you know we we
might need a few more hours,sean, if we're going to start
getting into audience buildingand GA4 and conversion tracking
and, you know, capturing theuser journey, importing it into
Google ads, but all of that funstuff you can do in ga4, you can
(10:11):
now leverage with pmax, whichyou're going to do um, and then
say the final big one.
I know that's I just dropped abig one on you.
But the final big one is theywere only allowing us to add
negatives to performance max atthe account level, so that means
that it would impact all yourcampaigns that are running.
So there's this.
We can dig more into what thatmeans and why that was really
tricky for Performance Max, butthey're allowing us to add at
the campaign level now forPerformance Max, which
definitely allows a lot morecontrol when we can negate
(10:33):
certain terms.
So that is one of the big onesthat will, I'm sure, alleviate a
lot of the distrust and theconcerns that marketing
community has had when it comesto Performance Max.
If we can say no, we don't wantto show for this query.
So, yeah, good, yeah both ofthose are.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
The last two are very significant.
Uh, ga4 related.
That sounds like that's a wholepodcast episode in the future.
But regarding negatives, it'softentimes the first place where
you find really lazy managementof digital campaigns is you
know, how well are you managingnegative keywords?
(11:10):
Well, it's certainly hinderedwhen you actually have very
little capability to do thatinside of PMAC.
So that's interesting and I betyou guys are really glad that
they've made that adjustment,because that's an important
detail to be able to manage onbehalf of clients.
Absolutely yeah.
So there's a lot of advertiserswho are concerned about data
(11:35):
transparency with PMAX.
What's your take on that interms of current state of
reporting and insights that areavailable to users?
Speaker 2 (11:44):
You know I'm always a conspiracist whenever it comes
to certain things like this andI feel like if Performance Max,
if we're leveraging it, andGoogle starts to see that you
know the bottom line isincreasing we're seeing that
Performance Max is being usedmore often I think they're going
to start giving more visibilityon a lot of things.
However, there are and this isone of my big tips to people is
(12:05):
you know you look in theseforums there are scripts that
will break apart pieces of PMAX.
The Google Ads API does offermore data that's not directly in
the Google Ads user interface.
So do a little research, lookinto it, because you can break
apart where the traffic is goingby channel.
It won't report on that andyou're just typical insights.
You'll be able to see thingslike how much was spent, what
(12:27):
conversion activity occurred onsearch versus YouTube versus
display discover.
I mean you can download ascript that will interact and
get you a bigger search termsreport and you know I could kind
of maybe get us a little offthe rails with the question.
But search terms with PMAX andgetting visibility there
obviously is very important, buthow are you using that data
when you actually acquire it?
(12:47):
That's another.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Yeah, I think that's really actually very valuable.
So I'm going to move a littlebit into kind of maximizing
performance, talking a littlebit about strategies that are
really driven by data.
The overlap between PMAs andyour typical or standard search
campaign has not even justlately, that's always kind of
(13:11):
been a bit of an interesting hottopic for people.
How would you recommendadvertisers go about managing
and kind of analyzing some ofthe overlap in data?
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Yeah, that's a really good question and I've got a
lot there.
So one thing read the fineprint.
You know Google releases aproduct.
Read what they say.
If you were to go look at thedefinition for PMAX directly
from Google's mouth, this iscomplimentary.
Performance Max is supposed tocomplement your regular search
campaign.
Okay, so it's supposed to fillthose gaps.
It's not supposed to be.
You're not supposed to havethree Performance Max campaigns
(13:43):
running and then call it the dayyou know to be.
You're not supposed to havethree performance max campaigns
around them and then call outthe day you know.
So what's really important isthat you build a robust keyword
list.
So one very important thing toremember exact match queries
that you are bidding on will nottrigger in performance max if
you're bidding on them inregular search.
So what you're doing is that'swhy you have to do your keyword
research.
You build out your whole robustportfolio of all the keywords
(14:05):
that you have.
Have them in, whether they beexact match, phrase match, even
experimenting with broad matchsome interesting stuff there too
but if you do have that keyword, that question, whatever you're
trying to show for your alpha,non-branded, that drives the
most results.
And you've got that tweaked.
You've got your single thematicad group there Performance Max
will not steal from that.
(14:25):
And got your single thematic adgroup there, performance Max
will not steal from that.
And that's where you have allthe visibility and control.
So think about how you want thatcontrol with your regular
search campaigns and then letPerformance Max fill the gap.
So when I talked about runninga script that gets you more
visibility on the search termsthat are being triggered in
Performance Max and showingthese ads, that's what you
should leverage in bothdirections.
You look at Performance Max andyou see, hey, there's good
(14:47):
conversion activity around thesesearch terms.
I'm going to exact match bid onthat.
So Performance Max can feedyour strategy.
You can use it as a machine toacquire data, look at those
insights and then show the userexactly what you want, see what
the bids are going to be allthat control that we really want
.
You can pull out of peaks thatmake sense.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yeah, I'm sure for a lot of people that that all of
what you just shared there,that's that's unpacking a lot of
gold from the ground, because Idon't think a lot of people
think of it.
I mean, I don't want tooversimplify it, but to think
about pmax is something thatkind of is filling the gaps and
then knowing how to over, how toavoid some of those potential
overlaps.
(15:28):
I don't hear a lot of peopletalk about that in depth.
Most of the people that I hearon digital marketing podcasts or
if they're trying to offeradvice, it's all very, very,
either surface level, absent ofreally any expertise, and most
of it's just really peopletrying to uh sell uh under uh,
you know like they're.
(15:48):
They're.
It's like a veiled sales uhattempt as opposed to uh
information.
That is really actually beyondjust theory.
It's helpful and practical yeah, absolutely for sure.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
So google.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
recently they introduced some of these brand
guidelines for PMAX and I don'tknow you may have covered some
of that, maybe some of what youcovered there.
Are there anything else therewhere those things may represent
changes or impact in campaignmanagement, especially for that
kind of brand safety or brandprotection thought I?
Speaker 2 (16:25):
think my answer to that will actually be helpful,
for you know any agents oranyone out there who is all
about control and feeling alittle bit leery about using
PMAX and there is a little bitmore meat on that when we talk
about brand but performance max,because there is the option to
add in a brand exclusion, andthat's the direction that I
prefer to go in lead gen.
I'd rather not show up forbranded terms and PMAX, and the
(16:46):
reason why it's important isbecause you're going to have
clients who are going to be likewhy am I bidding on my own
brand when I'm showing up forfree?
So the age-old question.
And then you talk about branddefense and that's where you can
control the budget.
Right, we can say, all right,we're only going to cap it,
brand defense, at 10% to 15percent of your monthly budget.
But when we can't see all ofthose branded terms or we're not
(17:07):
being able to do that atperformance max, that's why I
recommend actually excluding.
But secondary to that, whatactions are you tracking?
What goals have you included inperformance max?
Because remember, that's,that's, that's the end.
All right there, that's, that'sthe target you're providing
this machine beast.
So if you've got something likeget directions.
Find directions as a goal,which is good, store visit,
(17:27):
something valuable, driving thatfoot traffic to.
Let's use a dealership as anexample.
That's valuable.
However, we do find that it'snot right for reporting.
We don't want to report on aclip where an employee
accidentally routed, clicking onan ad or a delivery driver.
They're kind of vanity metrics.
So we're proud in reporting ona correct CPA or CPL, so we
exclude that.
So then you wouldn't be able totheoretically use that goal in
(17:51):
a performance match campaign ifit included branded terms or if
you're also pushing all thetraffic to those exact match
queries in the brand campaign,where you have control over and
(18:11):
you can look at your auctioninsights at the keyword level
who's bidding on me, who'sshowing up with me?
So there is more that you cando when considering brand and
again, this is gonna be acase-by-case scenario.
This is the best practice I usefor lead gen, but sometimes the
user journey leading them downthe funnel to that branded query
.
Maybe it would be necessary tohave that in the machine
(18:33):
learning.
Maybe it's more pertaining toEcon, where I would want my
brand in there.
So, yeah, that kind of question.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
No, it's great and I love that you know just the
distinction like e-com in a cardealerships very, very different
goals that they're going towant to set up.
Car dealers have really notsince the Donna paid search.
They didn't get it in thebeginning but it didn't take
long before they realized thatthat brand side of the house is
really important to them andoftentimes they are not being
(19:03):
given the insights to understandreally even how much they
should still be.
Because you mentioned alsoplaying offense or defense, and
sometimes both right.
Usually for dealers it is both.
If you're in anywhere near ametro or in a metro, you're
probably playing defense andoffense if you want to be smart
in your strategy.
But then things like PMACs comealong and there are other
(19:25):
things that you need to considerbased on, you know, some of
these new campaign types, sothat you don't end up kind of
looking at a report and saying,well, gosh, we, we dumped all
this money, went into thesebrand related elements of the
campaign and and search results.
(19:45):
But we didn't really get what wewere looking for.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
You didn't see the sales or something Organic took
a hit.
Why did organic?
Well your money on brand.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Yeah, exactly so.
It's really good, I think, forreally all different types of
verticals.
But for dealers to kind of hearthese distinctions, it's really
, really important, so then theycan take that even, no matter
who they're working with, ifthey're not working with you
(20:27):
guys yet I say yet, because it'simportant for people to
understand kind of what's goingon behind the scenes so that
their you with some of thesethings, which is almost 99.9% of
the time, the best way to do it.
Sometimes in house you've beenlucky to hire a ninja that would
normally be working at anagency or running their own
business.
That's rare, and so it's reallyimportant for people to know
that at the business level, youhave to move beyond kind of
eating the baby food as fast aspossible and know how to eat
(20:50):
solid food.
Like, once you get up to like Ican eat a steak, and the
analogy obviously is that theknowledge that you accumulate
will help you not onlyunderstand it but really make
business decisions that you canfeel confident in the outcomes.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
So no, so so I'm gonna have to steal that analogy
there.
You know, I'm gonna use thatfor comparing, uh, what we're
bidding on top funnel versusbottom funnel.
The big scary considerationyeah, an adult there, you can't
get that steal away baby food,you know steal away, steal away.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
There's nothing new under the sun, man.
So I got it from somebody elseat some point in time and, um,
it's better to operate out ofabundance and scarcity, from my
opinion.
So take it.
I want to ask you about how doyou think businesses maybe
should adjust bidding strategieswhen they're wanting to look
(21:42):
for like a balance, becausethere's a lot of automation
right that's happening inside ofpmax.
Um, what are your thoughtsthere?
Speaker 2 (21:50):
well fun fact you can't use manual on pmax.
So there you go.
That solves that problem.
But so the other, the other, uh, the other possibilities for
bidding strategies are going tohave target, tcpa, target row as
maximized inversions andmaximized version value.
So really they're justsegmented into two different
aspects.
I'm going after value or I'mjust I don't know what the value
(22:11):
is.
I'm going after maximizing thequantity of conversions.
So generally, when you build aperformance-based campaign, it's
going to start off on Max, c,max Conversions and that's where
Google is using it.
It's like 70 million points ofdata it has on any given user to
go out and find.
All right, here are theconversions that were supplied
to me.
I need to find more Now.
You know you want to keep inmind this and a lot of people
(22:32):
forget about this when they'reusing maximized conversions and
there will be changes and itwill be less impacted the more
first party data you have.
I'm trying not to get too inthe weeds here, but max
conversions will perform best ifit has 15 conversions over a
30-day period.
Once max conversions, once acampaign is acquired at that
(22:53):
data, then Google has a targetand knows what to go after.
So we tend to build outperformance max kind of more
gradual, collect conversion dataand then layer it in once
Google has a better target.
Otherwise it's just going outtrying to find those users, not
really knowing what to do.
So you start off on maxconversion and you could switch
into target CPA or you couldwork into more of a maximized
(23:15):
conversion value.
But if we're thinking aboutPMax for lead gen, then you're
going to want to have aconversation with your client
because when you increase thevalue, those actions will need a
value assigned.
But in lead gen sometimes thosevalues are the same.
So you can have goodconversations with your clients
and say, hey, sometimes you guysmight not have enough staff you
know, as an example and youwant more often.
(23:35):
You want more forms coming inthrough the website so that you
can choose you know better timesto call these guys back versus
phone calls.
So you could theoretically puta hundred dollar value on forms
and a one dollar value on callsand run performance maximized
conversion value bit strategywhere it's going to go out and
try to increase those formsbecause that has a higher value.
So there's some things you cando there and I would recommend,
(23:56):
before playing around with TCPAlook at the best practices there
because it requires a minimumof five times your average daily
or your, your, uh, your 30-daycpa.
It requires five times that asthe average daily budget.
It wants 20 times that andwhere for it to perform.
So play around with tcpa androas if you have enough.
(24:17):
You know budget within theaccount, sometimes with smaller
lead gen.
You got two to three k a monthto play with.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Just stick, yeah yeah , yeah, that's, that's great
advice.
Let's, let's, let's talk alittle bit about uh, maybe
challenges, uh tactics tooptimize what are are.
Do you can you think of somecommon mistakes that advertisers
are making when they'retransitioning or starting to use
pmax and if you can think of afew, maybe also how they might
(24:45):
avoid them?
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
So let's, what we can think about is the overall and
I'm going to use the buzzword,the holistic structure of an
account.
And you know how are all thesecampaigns?
And you're how, where are they?
You have your campaignsegmented, I hope, by levels of
intent, right where you cancapture and spend various stages
in the funnel.
Performance max is going tofill those gaps.
But a lot of people will justbuild out that Performance Max
(25:10):
provide it with its requiredamount of headlines and images
and videos and descriptions inorder for it to run, but they're
ignoring the most key part, thefunction, the keyword behind
PMAX, those search signals.
So you'll have what's insteadof an ad group in Performance
Max, you can create multipleasset groups is what PMAX calls
(25:31):
them asset groups within thecampaign, which is essentially
the equivalent of an ad group,and you're going to want to
segment these by levels ofintent, just like you do.
Remember, you're mirroring thatholistic approach in
Performance Max.
It could be used in multipledifferent ways, but a good
practice is holistic approach inperformance max.
It could be used in multipledifferent ways, but a good
practice is what am I doing withmy campaign structure and why
aren't I doing it at the assetgroup level within performance
max, because you're able tocompare asset group data, see
(25:54):
what's performing well, what'snot.
There is the visibility withinperformance max to see which
asset groups converting better,which one's spending more.
You're able to see those thingsand then you know.
That's where you would want tostart looking into audience
building so you can pair thoseasset groups and let's switch
over to, let's say, amultifamily account, as an
example, where you'll have floorplan, studio one, two, three
(26:17):
bedrooms, so you can createcustom segment audiences of one
bedroom and 10, and then you cancreate an asset group paired
with that custom segment, pairedwith first party data from the
client of people who leased onebedrooms, and then paired with
the search signals.
You could pull data from youroriginal one bedroom campaign of
regular search best performersand then layer those in.
(26:38):
So you see how you can kind of.
There's the cross pollinationPMAX can inform regular search
and vice versa.
Explanation pmax can informregular search and vice versa.
Um, so you know those are someof the things that you should be
doing when launch performancemax, because if you don't supply
it with those, with theaudience signals and the search
signals, then it's just going togo out and spray and pray, and
that's what everyone is scaredof, so just don't do that yeah,
(27:01):
you'll end up with a whole lotof nothing in the bucket, but
you, you will have spent a lotto get it and that's aggravating
to any business, that's forsure.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
How could advertisers optimize when?
Because PMACs, of course.
We mentioned this up top thatyou can upload creative assets
right.
So how can advertisers optimizethe creative assets within
PMACs in a way that helps themachieve higher engagement or
better results?
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Again, it's going to be understanding Anytime that
people ever kind of ask thisquestion.
It's good to just put yourselfin the shoes of the user.
Think about what you want tosee and where you want to and
how you would want to see it.
So, as an example, if I'mbuilding out Performance Max,
that's complementing my wholecampaign structure with regular
search I may have an amenitiescampaign for that multifamily
(27:51):
I'm talking about.
That's showcasing how great thefitness area may be.
So you're going to want totailor your assets, your images,
your videos and your headlinesto capture that user.
You're supplying it with thesearch signals.
So don't just use that quickevergreen you know image
leaderboard or whatever it isthat says we're an apartment
complex.
(28:11):
Be granular with it.
You're nurturing a journey andyou need to provide the images
and the creatives that help thatuser make that decision.
And also just think about thefrequency of which you know
someone is seeing an ad.
If you've got different adswith the same brand, the amount
of trustworthiness andconfidence it lends the user is
what really drives the ultimateconversion, at least for this
(28:34):
instance.
So just make sure that you'resegmenting your creative.
Don't just throw all the samestuff in and then you're able to
access report on how thatcreative performs.
So spend time A-B testing.
Take a look at that performance.
Fight with whatever KPIs you'reable to.
Pmax does report on how thatcreated performs.
So spend time A-B testing.
Take a look at that performance.
Fight with whatever KPIs youknow you're using and pull it if
it's bad and add more if it'sgood.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Yeah, that's good advice and it's a good example.
In multifamily there's so manyof the newer, more modern
properties, have so manyamenities and you can tell some
of them really are trying tocater to a persona or maybe a
handful of people that you know.
It could be anything from howpet friendly they are to how
(29:19):
eco-conscious they are, to howfitness conscious they are.
That's a really good thing,just to always keep top of mind
and and really everything that acompany is doing, probably from
a content marketing and all thecreative that they make.
Um, the more that you have youreye on that and keeping it
(29:40):
focused on that end user, youractual target audience, the
better it's going to performwhen you throw it into pmax,
obviously.
And for dealers I this is justa little extra nugget, and tell
me if you would or your actualtarget audience, the better it's
going to perform when you throwit into PMAX, obviously.
And for dealers this is just alittle extra nugget and tell me
if you would agree.
But I think car dealers havealways had, unfortunately, a
tendency to continue to kind ofrepeat what's already been done.
(30:00):
It's like so newspaper ads thatincluded pictures the old, old
(30:24):
old days became today's displayad became today's right and
there are still a lot of adsthat end up in there too and,
like you said, even do somesplit tests to find out what's
actually driving better results.
I hate to say, don't be lazy,but it's like, don't mail it in.
When it comes to the creativeside of the assets that go into
PMAX, because I think it canactually be one of the elements
(30:45):
that separate those achievingbetter results than they would
even expect versus ones who areprobably thinking that they
could be doing better and itcould come down to well, you're
not really doing anything toinnovate or be different or test
different variables within thatcreative asset.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Absolutely, and it is an evolving machine.
So the more that it'scollecting this data, the
fairness is going to change.
A new competitor enters in and,you know, maybe the PMACs might
back off for a bit and you gotto start looking at your auction
sites.
So yeah, there's definitelydefinitely a lot more labor that
you can pull than it apparently, than it is apparent for sure.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
What role does audience segmentation?
You mentioned some of thisstuff in PMAX.
Maybe do a little coverage ofthat again, because audience
segmentation is really actuallyimportant across all sides of
digital marketing.
How does it wrap into successwhen it comes to PMAX campaigns,
(31:49):
especially when what we'vetalked about there's limitations
on how much reporting and howtransparent all of it is?
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Yeah, honestly, this one's kind of a simple answer,
just because when you'resegmenting your audiences you're
just trying not to confuse themachine.
So you're really just trying to.
You know there's two parts.
I guess You're not trying toconfuse the machine by saying,
hey, here's all of these things,go after it.
But you did it.
You know you've got it allunder one group, one asset group
or something.
You've got every part versusused Exactly or even, let's say,
(32:18):
acquisitions.
So there's a lot that peoplearen't doing with their first
party data to feed the funnel oftheir used inventory by
marketing to people who youalready sold vehicles, to Grab
that first-party data fromwhatever time period you have
there.
And then this is just as anexample.
So then you'll have your newand used over here and your
asset grouping and this is alsowhat can be mirrored in your
typical campaign structures andthen have an acquisitions asset
(32:40):
group or build out a mirrorPMACs.
That's acquisitions, so you canfile and budget appropriately.
But you've got your audiencessegmented based off of the
layers of intent you know, andthen that that's when you know,
all right, well, what messagingcaptures that intent and that's
where you modify it.
(33:00):
So it's really just the samesort of logic you're using with
your creative, same sort oflogic you're using with other
campaigns within your account.
But you know, spend time withit because I always think about
this meme I saw it's like a memeformat where it's like an old
lady and then you're helping theold lady and she's saying
something like oh, I rememberwhen you know X was, oh, let's
get you to bed, grandma.
I modify it where she wassaying oh, I remember there were
(33:21):
these things called keywordsthat you could bid on.
And it's okay, let's get you to.
And I actually modified it forMike at that point.
All right, mike, let's get youto bed.
So yeah, pay attention to youraudiences, spend time there, you
know, and you can.
So many people are not doingthings like when you build a
custom segment audience, there'scriteria.
You can expand on that audience.
(33:42):
If you look at it, you've gotthe bucket of and but, or if you
do a combined audience, you cannarrow that audience.
You can build multiple customsegments and say that they and
is the criteria for combined,whereas a regular custom segment
is or which expands on anaudience.
So that's where you know I talkabout getting people talk about
(34:03):
saying something out loud andthen their phone showing them
later.
You know you can get what wouldbe qualify as the the creepy
targeting.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
You start getting into that right, because you can
really narrow it down to thetrue user when you caption that
time yeah, very interesting andI love your thoughts there on
even though to some people itmight seem simplistic of new and
used.
But the acquisition side.
In the last three to five yearsthat's become really a hot part
of business for dealers and Istarted telling dealers when
(34:35):
they were coming back intostarting to spend more
post-COVID and returning to okay, we've got to actually start
putting some paid mediacampaigns back together.
Even before that I started tosay you shouldn't have really
shut it all down.
You should have actuallystarted some new messaging
around, offering your trade-uptool as part of your advertising
and or offering you want to buycars, sell us your car, sell us
(34:58):
your car, sell us your car.
You literally could build awhole segment around that part
of your business, landing peoplewith the copy, with the
creative, everything you do thatyou can land people in that
part, because that's also aprofit center for dealers.
It's not just the sales of thenew vehicles and the sales of
the used vehicles, it's also theservicing of all those vehicles
.
A lot of people don't realizethat the average service writer
(35:19):
actually is responsible for moregross profit in a dealership
than their top salesperson.
It's crazy.
But that acquisition piece too,it's just very interesting.
I think dealers always get kindof jazzed about learning like,
oh, maybe we should do that,Especially when there can be
fatigue around.
Oh, we've been doing somethinglike Google AdWords, Google Ads,
(35:40):
PMAX, vehicle ads.
When you've been doingsomething for so long and
there's two schools of thoughtaround it, oftentimes one side
is is deep in their knowledgeand their understanding and the
other side is really just tryingto throw confusion and pull you
into something else becausethey want you to spend your
money yeah yeah is usually whathappens.
(36:03):
So last couple of questions.
This has been a really goodconversation.
A lot of really good stuff set.
I want to ask you a little biton future.
Ai is huge.
We were talking about it evenbefore we started to record.
Ai and automation althoughthose things are really
different in my mind evolve, howdo you see the paid search, the
(36:30):
PPC landscape, how do you seethat maybe changing over the
next two years?
This does not have to bespecific to PMAX.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Just your general thoughts.
Yeah, yeah, you know that mighttake a whole nother podcast for
you and I to dig in.
I'll give you quick answershere on this one.
You know, I definitely thinkthat a lot of people have a
sense of fear surrounding it.
I, I think, adapting, embracingall of the little ways that you
can use ai to improve yourworkflow, even eliminate certain
sprint work, things like that Ithink you know it's probably
(36:55):
going to be the same adviceyou're just hearing from anyone
else when you're saying, likeyou know, have the courage to
adapt and to embrace it.
Um, but I would say, a littlelittle bit.
I'm a little bit, um, concernedabout the way that generative
ai appears on the surf.
So I would say, just, I'm goingto be paying close attention to
that, especially when it comeswhat?
What is google?
What carrot is google going touse when it comes to targeting
(37:18):
using generative ai over there,um, where it's only going to be
performance max and we don'teven get to see the ad anymore.
They just, you know, I'mcurious to see what's going to
happen there.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
So, yeah, I am, I am, I am too.
I really am.
I think it's going to be quiteinteresting.
I don't know if you would have.
You don't have to have a topthree.
If you have a top three, that'sgreat.
This is kind of one of thosetop three of feel overwhelmed,
(37:52):
uh, by changes, whether it'sthey still feel like pmax is new
to them or their knowledge ofand they're really under.
Their understanding of pmax waskind of shallow, maybe until
they've listened to all thegreat things that you've shared
on this episode.
But a lot of times in it's notalways even the marketers,
oftentimes it's the businessesthat they just feel buried by
changes and new things and allthat.
What would you say are yourmaybe top three or your maybe
(38:13):
best tip for people just kind ofstaying ahead of the curve when
it comes to paid search?
Speaker 2 (38:20):
This one is so simple and it's astounding to me how
few people I've met thatactually use it enough.
But just post to Reddit.
You used to have a combi.
I love Reddit.
Yeah, post to Reddit.
You start having a comb through.
I love Reddit.
Subscribe to a couple PPC orsubreddits, comb through.
There's so much good data andthere's so many people that are
going to be jerks to you andthat's fine because you're going
(38:40):
to get quick answers and you'regoing to realize if you ask a
dumb question, you're not beingbaited by anyone, not just
Reddit.
Know there's multiple forums.
Spend some time posting, uh,checking out.
You know various.
What's the latest podcast?
What's something interesting onyoutube?
You know um, and, and spendmaybe 45 minutes a day or 30
(39:00):
minutes with a cup of coffeejust looking at what's new there
, because it gives me so muchconfidence whenever I find
something that I can actuallyleverage and implement into our
workflow.
You know and I have often soanytime you're feeling a little
bit kind of lost uh, just justsee what the community's saying.
Make a post about it.
Hey, I'm feeling lost.
What's the new?
That you would try with pmax?
You know um and I and I'm onthere, I'm in the.
(39:23):
I'm in the subreddits answeringsome of those questions for you
guys too, yeah, and then Iwould say that one, one of the
ones that I find new accountmanagers and this may be more
like an agency side thing, butmistake a lot of people do or
make is that they check a lot ofboxes with the client but
(39:43):
they're scared to ask about thenegative stuff.
Find out what an unqualifiedlead is.
Spend time talking to yourclients.
Find out what an unqualifiedlead is.
Spend time talking to yourclients.
Find out what's actuallyimportant to them.
When you do that, when you cankind of build up just that trust
with them by you know them,feeling like you actually care
and understand it, it's going tocreate more of a better
(40:05):
environment for you to work in.
It's going to create more of abetter environment for you to
work in um, and that that's justreally going to help you stay
ahead of the curve when you'reseeing what the boots on the
ground opinion is like you know,get feedback, I guess I love
that advice because a lot ofpeople are afraid to uh, run to
the hot zone and and Iunderstand that very much it it
(40:28):
takes some courage to run to thehot zone.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
It does.
But what you're saying and Icompletely agree with it is
where you will get the mostprofound and real, authentic
learning and you will get itfaster there than anywhere else.
And it might be uncomfortable,it might, as a result, make your
(40:54):
skin thicker, but you'll comeaway with tangible things that
you can work on and improveimmediately, as opposed to
trying to go as far around it aspossible.
It's just ultimately not worthit Immediately as opposed to
trying to go as far around it aspossible.
Yeah, it's just ultimately notworth it.
And also, if where that takesyou, the hot zone takes you
(41:14):
closer to maybe the clientthat's experiencing the issue If
that's the case as well almostalways raises not just the trust
level but the respect level andit helps the reputation.
If you're a marketer, if you'rethe agency side, and you've got
to run to the hot zone tofigure those things out, yeah,
you might take some unfriendlyfire.
(41:36):
It may be very uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
But it also sorry to interrupt, but it also helps you
build those defensiblepositions, because you're going
straight to the source of truththere and yeah, yes, yeah, just
100% straight to the source oftruth there and yeah, yes, yeah,
just fantastic.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
This has been a great conversation.
Seth, I really appreciate youtaking the time to be on the
podcast today.
Where can people reach you?
I never want to be toopresumptuous.
Maybe that's LinkedIn for you,but maybe you'd send people
elsewhere.
Where's the best place forpeople to connect with you?
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Yeah, find me on LinkedIn, shoot us a message.
Premieronlinemarketingcom.
Connect with me if you have anyquestions.
I'm always happy to kind ofdiscuss any of this stuff.
I love expanding out on thenetwork.
But yeah, find me on LinkedInor check out our website your
(42:29):
time.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
Like Seth mentioned, you can go to
premieronlinemarketingcom andlearn all about what they're
doing as a company.
I always highly recommendpeople that are listening to the
episodes to make sure that yougo onto LinkedIn and look up
Seth.
You'll find him there easily.
You'll also find the business,the company page for Premier
Online Marketing, and you canfind all their employees.
I highly recommend youconnecting and following all of
them because they put outamazing content.
They are true experts in thisrealm, as opposed to just
(42:52):
theorists who can talk a goodgame but really don't deliver
much, and that's why I'm a bigfan and glad to host their
podcast.
So until next time, we willjust say thank you for joining
us for another episode of thepodcast.
See you again real soon.
Thanks, Sean.
Thank you.
Welcome back to the Palmcast.
Ladies and gentlemen, we alwaysappreciate your time.
We don't want to waste it.
Today on the Palmcast, I got totell you we have yet another
rock star from the team, sethPeacock.
Seth, say hello to the audience.
Hey guys, thanks for having me.
Sean, of course, of course, ofcourse.
Seth, tell us what's your role.
(00:22):
What do you do over at PremierOnline Marketing?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
So I'm over at Premier, I'm an associate
director of the paid media, sospecifically specializing in
things like small to mediumbusiness, lead gen, auto lead
gen, so dealerships, and then Ialso support our multifamily, so
we've got a lot of condos andbuildings throughout the US that
we run lead gen for and lots ofgood stuff to get through.
(00:48):
Today I'm excited to talk aboutit.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Yeah, me too.
So to the audience, listen,we're going to dive in a little
bit with Google's PerformanceMax campaigns.
They've been out for a while,so that's probably not new to
everybody in the audience, butfor me, I have found this to be
true, especially in theautomotive vertical, where I've
spent most of my career, but itcertainly finds its way into
(01:10):
pretty much every vertical wheredigital marketing works.
Don't want to raise their handand say I don't really totally
get it, I don't reallyunderstand.
They want to be more of thecrowd of you know, I kind of get
(01:33):
it and just kind of move on.
And so that's the reason why wedo podcast episodes like this,
when we'll dig in and talk alittle bit about PMAX and we'll
start really kind of at thebeginning of just kind of well,
what really is it?
You know, maybe, why does itexist?
Because the advertisinglandscape now and we're in 2025,
can you believe that we'realmost in?
Like well, by the time thiscomes out, it's March 2025, seth
(01:53):
, it's insane.
Yeah, it's insane Time flies.
But we want to break this downin the episode so you have a
definite, better thanfoundational knowledge of PMACs.
We want to highlight Some things.
I don't think there's a lot of,but I'm going to ask, seth, if
there's really anything that'supdated, at least recently, and
we'll kind of dig in a littlebit to see if there's some,
(02:14):
maybe some best practices,things, top of mind, that
wherever you're at in yourbusiness, if you're a car dealer
, if you're in apartmentmanagement, legal, wherever you
might be, that you'll take awaysome things from the episode
that will be helpful as youthink about being successful
with what you do with digitalmarketing, especially as it
relates to PMAC.
So the first place, seth, thatI really want to start with you
(02:35):
is, like I mentioned, oftentimespeople want to pretend, or they
don't want to embarrassthemselves maybe that they don't
know.
So there are going to be peoplelistening and or viewing the
podcast that are maybe they'veheard of PMAX, but they're not
really familiar with PMAX.
So could you just start byhelping us break down what is
(02:56):
PMAX?
How does it differ from, maybe,what people know in traditional
Google search campaigns?
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah, I think the traditional Google search
campaign.
Everyone always associateskeywords, right, so we're
bidding on keywords enteringinto an option.
You see the keywords, you seeGoogle's estimated.
Here's what you would show forfirst page or estimated top of
page.
Now PMAX is Google's machine.
It's a beast of a machine too.
It first started.
They called it a local campaignwhen it first started out and
(03:22):
it was really based aroundtrying to drive like local
results and traffic, trafficinto locations, and so I jumped
on that.
When I saw that they announcedit and we started playing around
with it in lead gen, just askind of a supplementary campaign
.
You know, when we're looking atlead gen, there's generally
three major actions a user willtake calls, form submittals and
(03:43):
then then location actions rightThen indicating they're routing
towards the store, and so thelocal campaign, later to be
called PMAX, seemed like anexcellent way to try to drive
more of the tertiary localactions.
So we dug into that for a bitand then PMAX started evolving
and it created more channelsthat you could place ads on, all
(04:03):
within one campaign.
Now, as we played around with it, I think what you'll discover
in the community is that a lotof the unrest behind PMAX being
kind of maybe almost gray hat.
We call it black hat.
It's just that there's not manyinsights.
You know you're not bidding onkeywords like a regular search
campaign.
Google just keeps lauding its.
You know machine learning andyou know smart bidding
(04:26):
strategies and give it morebudget.
And we're over here like, well,give us more insights, right as
agencies.
And, uh, the thing that wediscovered as we trained it.
You know, instead of keywords,the way that, uh, the nature of
the market has been going in theway that we see that third
party cookies depreciating.
You know audience building waseverything.
(04:47):
And so P max instead ofkeywords, the way to look at it
is, you're really providing Pmax with performance max, with
its signal.
You're telling it, hey, goafter these specific terms.
And what performance max willlater do is based off of the
data that you give it, theaudience signals or search
signals.
Off of the data that you giveit the audience signals or
(05:08):
search signals, it'll go out andit will place ads across
discover gmail display.
So, like google search partners, if you're going on, you know
nbc to see uh who rushesinvading tomorrow you'll be able
to get that served an ad fromperformance maxis, a display ad,
but it will also place it insearch maps in youtube.
So, all these channels, youcan't choose which one or how
(05:29):
much budget, and you can'treally say, hey, yeah, I don't
want to spend any on youtube.
It's just bam.
When you set up the campaignit'll give you kind of a series
of things that you can gothrough, like oh, I want you
know ecom or lead gen, and maybechange the channel, but it'll
still be multiple channelswithout much control.
That kind of makes sense has it.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
It does.
Yeah, I, I think for a lot ofpeople that hear, like the you
know the term, in this case pmax.
Pmax on its uh, on its face.
You know Performance Max whatyou ad copy and it'll run it
into the display network.
(06:09):
It will go and use it smart,based on very little information
(06:31):
.
It will write ad copy and runyour search campaigns.
It will also run some stuffover onto YouTube and some of
which can be text driven.
You can upload videos into it.
So this is something thatGoogle's done for maybe almost
since the beginning of AdWords.
Certainly by the time they weretrying to look for agency
(06:53):
partners that would be thesellers and the provisioners of
AdWords.
This is like the be-all end-all.
It's always felt like that tome, where they just wanted the
easiest thing for especiallySMBs to be able to get in the
game and yet trust them.
That is a tremendous amount oftrust that has to be given to
(07:15):
Google within PMAX, and part ofthat, I think the reason why the
trust level interesting to knowif you would agree.
But I think part of the reasonwhy the trust level probably
goes up with pmax is because ofwhat you were just mentioning
and I've heard many peoplemention is you don't have as
many uh data points.
You don't have as many datapoints of depth.
(07:36):
Yeah, it's that, you can.
You can move around and I'veheard people say, yeah.
Just an example of that isvehicle ads used to live outside
of PMAX and then when itstarted to live inside of PMAX,
it's not the vehicle ads all ofa sudden are not effective or
smart for dealers to run, butyou certainly now don't have
(07:57):
some of those control mechanismsand, like you said, these
levers, levers yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
So basically what you're saying is Performance Max
is kind of an agency, you know.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
You're like is that what's happening?
Is it a campaign that'sbasically just saying, hey, here
are all the things that if youhave an agency and then other
agencies are like, no, we needthose levers, and so, yeah,
there's definitely a lot ofdistrust that that has built.
You know, specifically withagencies.
And you know specifically withagencies and you know we're here
to talk about how to kind ofalleviate some of those concerns
, how to actually use, becauseit's irresponsible of you to
(08:32):
look at some of the biggest newproducts that Google's lot in
and just say I don't have enoughcontrol, I'm not going to use
that, I'm going to stick with,you know X.
So you know, I think that's oneof the things that I'd love to
talk about today is how, howbest to leverage something when
you don't have a lot of leaguers, you know yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Okay, well, I I can't wait.
We'll get into that a littlebit.
Um, I mentioned this up top hashave there really been any?
I mean, since pmax has come out, is there anything that's kind
of recent update, anything 2025that they've been talking about?
I haven't been in the know onthat.
I'd bet maybe not much.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
They did add in.
You know they've added in a fewdifferent things and they've
hinted at a few different things, you know, one of them being is
they really wanted to dial inon your brand identity.
So they allowed you to and, ifanything, I believe it's
actually a requirement now foryou to have your business logo,
your business name.
They really want to make surethat when you're uploading all
(09:24):
of these assets headlines,descriptions, images that your
brand is involved in there, it'snot just going to be, let's say
, for an apartment community youknow, fitness equipment without
much branding.
So they really wanted toestablish better branding
guidelines and encourage peopleto use it as much as possible.
But I would say one of the moreimportant things is, before,
(09:45):
everything was Google hostedwith PMAX.
They have now allowed GA4integration and you know we we
might need a few more hours,sean, if we're going to start
getting into audience buildingand GA4 and conversion tracking
and, you know, capturing theuser journey, importing it into
Google ads, but all of that funstuff you can do in ga4, you can
(10:11):
now leverage with pmax, whichyou're going to do um, and then
say the final big one.
I know that's I just dropped abig one on you.
But the final big one is theywere only allowing us to add
negatives to performance max atthe account level, so that means
that it would impact all yourcampaigns that are running.
So there's this.
We can dig more into what thatmeans and why that was really
tricky for Performance Max, butthey're allowing us to add at
the campaign level now forPerformance Max, which
definitely allows a lot morecontrol when we can negate
(10:33):
certain terms.
So that is one of the big onesthat will, I'm sure, alleviate a
lot of the distrust and theconcerns that marketing
community has had when it comesto Performance Max.
If we can say no, we don't wantto show for this query.
So, yeah, good, yeah both ofthose are.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
The last two are very significant.
Uh, ga4 related.
That sounds like that's a wholepodcast episode in the future.
But regarding negatives, it'softentimes the first place where
you find really lazy managementof digital campaigns is you
know, how well are you managingnegative keywords?
(11:10):
Well, it's certainly hinderedwhen you actually have very
little capability to do thatinside of PMAC.
So that's interesting and I betyou guys are really glad that
they've made that adjustment,because that's an important
detail to be able to manage onbehalf of clients.
Absolutely yeah.
So there's a lot of advertiserswho are concerned about data
(11:35):
transparency with PMAX.
What's your take on that interms of current state of
reporting and insights that areavailable to users?
Speaker 2 (11:44):
You know I'm always a conspiracist whenever it comes
to certain things like this andI feel like if Performance Max,
if we're leveraging it, andGoogle starts to see that you
know the bottom line isincreasing we're seeing that
Performance Max is being usedmore often I think they're going
to start giving more visibilityon a lot of things.
However, there are and this isone of my big tips to people is
(12:05):
you know you look in theseforums there are scripts that
will break apart pieces of PMAX.
The Google Ads API does offermore data that's not directly in
the Google Ads user interface.
So do a little research, lookinto it, because you can break
apart where the traffic is goingby channel.
It won't report on that andyou're just typical insights.
You'll be able to see thingslike how much was spent, what
(12:27):
conversion activity occurred onsearch versus YouTube versus
display discover.
I mean you can download ascript that will interact and
get you a bigger search termsreport and you know I could kind
of maybe get us a little offthe rails with the question.
But search terms with PMAX andgetting visibility there
obviously is very important, buthow are you using that data
when you actually acquire it?
(12:47):
That's another.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Yeah, I think that's really actually very valuable.
So I'm going to move a littlebit into kind of maximizing
performance, talking a littlebit about strategies that are
really driven by data.
The overlap between PMAs andyour typical or standard search
campaign has not even justlately, that's always kind of
(13:11):
been a bit of an interesting hottopic for people.
How would you recommendadvertisers go about managing
and kind of analyzing some ofthe overlap in data?
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Yeah, that's a really good question and I've got a
lot there.
So one thing read the fineprint.
You know Google releases aproduct.
Read what they say.
If you were to go look at thedefinition for PMAX directly
from Google's mouth, this iscomplimentary.
Performance Max is supposed tocomplement your regular search
campaign.
Okay, so it's supposed to fillthose gaps.
It's not supposed to be.
You're not supposed to havethree Performance Max campaigns
(13:43):
running and then call it the dayyou know to be.
You're not supposed to havethree performance max campaigns
around them and then call outthe day you know.
So what's really important isthat you build a robust keyword
list.
So one very important thing toremember exact match queries
that you are bidding on will nottrigger in performance max if
you're bidding on them inregular search.
So what you're doing is that'swhy you have to do your keyword
research.
You build out your whole robustportfolio of all the keywords
(14:05):
that you have.
Have them in, whether they beexact match, phrase match, even
experimenting with broad matchsome interesting stuff there too
but if you do have that keyword, that question, whatever you're
trying to show for your alpha,non-branded, that drives the
most results.
And you've got that tweaked.
You've got your single thematicad group there Performance Max
will not steal from that.
(14:25):
And got your single thematic adgroup there, performance Max
will not steal from that.
And that's where you have allthe visibility and control.
So think about how you want thatcontrol with your regular
search campaigns and then letPerformance Max fill the gap.
So when I talked about runninga script that gets you more
visibility on the search termsthat are being triggered in
Performance Max and showingthese ads, that's what you
should leverage in bothdirections.
You look at Performance Max andyou see, hey, there's good
(14:47):
conversion activity around thesesearch terms.
I'm going to exact match bid onthat.
So Performance Max can feedyour strategy.
You can use it as a machine toacquire data, look at those
insights and then show the userexactly what you want, see what
the bids are going to be allthat control that we really want
.
You can pull out of peaks thatmake sense.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yeah, I'm sure for a lot of people that that all of
what you just shared there,that's that's unpacking a lot of
gold from the ground, because Idon't think a lot of people
think of it.
I mean, I don't want tooversimplify it, but to think
about pmax is something thatkind of is filling the gaps and
then knowing how to over, how toavoid some of those potential
overlaps.
(15:28):
I don't hear a lot of peopletalk about that in depth.
Most of the people that I hearon digital marketing podcasts or
if they're trying to offeradvice, it's all very, very,
either surface level, absent ofreally any expertise, and most
of it's just really peopletrying to uh sell uh under uh,
you know like they're.
(15:48):
They're.
It's like a veiled sales uhattempt as opposed to uh
information.
That is really actually beyondjust theory.
It's helpful and practical yeah, absolutely for sure.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
So google.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
recently they introduced some of these brand
guidelines for PMAX and I don'tknow you may have covered some
of that, maybe some of what youcovered there.
Are there anything else therewhere those things may represent
changes or impact in campaignmanagement, especially for that
kind of brand safety or brandprotection thought I?
Speaker 2 (16:25):
think my answer to that will actually be helpful,
for you know any agents oranyone out there who is all
about control and feeling alittle bit leery about using
PMAX and there is a little bitmore meat on that when we talk
about brand but performance max,because there is the option to
add in a brand exclusion, andthat's the direction that I
prefer to go in lead gen.
I'd rather not show up forbranded terms and PMAX, and the
(16:46):
reason why it's important isbecause you're going to have
clients who are going to be likewhy am I bidding on my own
brand when I'm showing up forfree?
So the age-old question.
And then you talk about branddefense and that's where you can
control the budget.
Right, we can say, all right,we're only going to cap it,
brand defense, at 10% to 15percent of your monthly budget.
But when we can't see all ofthose branded terms or we're not
(17:07):
being able to do that atperformance max, that's why I
recommend actually excluding.
But secondary to that, whatactions are you tracking?
What goals have you included inperformance max?
Because remember, that's,that's, that's the end.
All right there, that's, that'sthe target you're providing
this machine beast.
So if you've got something likeget directions.
Find directions as a goal,which is good, store visit,
(17:27):
something valuable, driving thatfoot traffic to.
Let's use a dealership as anexample.
That's valuable.
However, we do find that it'snot right for reporting.
We don't want to report on aclip where an employee
accidentally routed, clicking onan ad or a delivery driver.
They're kind of vanity metrics.
So we're proud in reporting ona correct CPA or CPL, so we
exclude that.
So then you wouldn't be able totheoretically use that goal in
(17:51):
a performance match campaign ifit included branded terms or if
you're also pushing all thetraffic to those exact match
queries in the brand campaign,where you have control over and
(18:11):
you can look at your auctioninsights at the keyword level
who's bidding on me, who'sshowing up with me?
So there is more that you cando when considering brand and
again, this is gonna be acase-by-case scenario.
This is the best practice I usefor lead gen, but sometimes the
user journey leading them downthe funnel to that branded query
.
Maybe it would be necessary tohave that in the machine
(18:33):
learning.
Maybe it's more pertaining toEcon, where I would want my
brand in there.
So, yeah, that kind of question.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
No, it's great and I love that you know just the
distinction like e-com in a cardealerships very, very different
goals that they're going towant to set up.
Car dealers have really notsince the Donna paid search.
They didn't get it in thebeginning but it didn't take
long before they realized thatthat brand side of the house is
really important to them andoftentimes they are not being
(19:03):
given the insights to understandreally even how much they
should still be.
Because you mentioned alsoplaying offense or defense, and
sometimes both right.
Usually for dealers it is both.
If you're in anywhere near ametro or in a metro, you're
probably playing defense andoffense if you want to be smart
in your strategy.
But then things like PMACs comealong and there are other
(19:25):
things that you need to considerbased on, you know, some of
these new campaign types, sothat you don't end up kind of
looking at a report and saying,well, gosh, we, we dumped all
this money, went into thesebrand related elements of the
campaign and and search results.
(19:45):
But we didn't really get what wewere looking for.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
You didn't see the sales or something Organic took
a hit.
Why did organic?
Well your money on brand.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Yeah, exactly so.
It's really good, I think, forreally all different types of
verticals.
But for dealers to kind of hearthese distinctions, it's really
, really important, so then theycan take that even, no matter
who they're working with, ifthey're not working with you
(20:27):
guys yet I say yet, because it'simportant for people to
understand kind of what's goingon behind the scenes so that
their you with some of thesethings, which is almost 99.9% of
the time, the best way to do it.
Sometimes in house you've beenlucky to hire a ninja that would
normally be working at anagency or running their own
business.
That's rare, and so it's reallyimportant for people to know
that at the business level, youhave to move beyond kind of
eating the baby food as fast aspossible and know how to eat
(20:50):
solid food.
Like, once you get up to like Ican eat a steak, and the
analogy obviously is that theknowledge that you accumulate
will help you not onlyunderstand it but really make
business decisions that you canfeel confident in the outcomes.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
So no, so so I'm gonna have to steal that analogy
there.
You know, I'm gonna use thatfor comparing, uh, what we're
bidding on top funnel versusbottom funnel.
The big scary considerationyeah, an adult there, you can't
get that steal away baby food,you know steal away, steal away.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
There's nothing new under the sun, man.
So I got it from somebody elseat some point in time and, um,
it's better to operate out ofabundance and scarcity, from my
opinion.
So take it.
I want to ask you about how doyou think businesses maybe
should adjust bidding strategieswhen they're wanting to look
(21:42):
for like a balance, becausethere's a lot of automation
right that's happening inside ofpmax.
Um, what are your thoughtsthere?
Speaker 2 (21:50):
well fun fact you can't use manual on pmax.
So there you go.
That solves that problem.
But so the other, the other, uh, the other possibilities for
bidding strategies are going tohave target, tcpa, target row as
maximized inversions andmaximized version value.
So really they're justsegmented into two different
aspects.
I'm going after value or I'mjust I don't know what the value
(22:11):
is.
I'm going after maximizing thequantity of conversions.
So generally, when you build aperformance-based campaign, it's
going to start off on Max, c,max Conversions and that's where
Google is using it.
It's like 70 million points ofdata it has on any given user to
go out and find.
All right, here are theconversions that were supplied
to me.
I need to find more Now.
You know you want to keep inmind this and a lot of people
(22:32):
forget about this when they'reusing maximized conversions and
there will be changes and itwill be less impacted the more
first party data you have.
I'm trying not to get too inthe weeds here, but max
conversions will perform best ifit has 15 conversions over a
30-day period.
Once max conversions, once acampaign is acquired at that
(22:53):
data, then Google has a targetand knows what to go after.
So we tend to build outperformance max kind of more
gradual, collect conversion dataand then layer it in once
Google has a better target.
Otherwise it's just going outtrying to find those users, not
really knowing what to do.
So you start off on maxconversion and you could switch
into target CPA or you couldwork into more of a maximized
(23:15):
conversion value.
But if we're thinking aboutPMax for lead gen, then you're
going to want to have aconversation with your client
because when you increase thevalue, those actions will need a
value assigned.
But in lead gen sometimes thosevalues are the same.
So you can have goodconversations with your clients
and say, hey, sometimes you guysmight not have enough staff you
know, as an example and youwant more often.
(23:35):
You want more forms coming inthrough the website so that you
can choose you know better timesto call these guys back versus
phone calls.
So you could theoretically puta hundred dollar value on forms
and a one dollar value on callsand run performance maximized
conversion value bit strategywhere it's going to go out and
try to increase those formsbecause that has a higher value.
So there's some things you cando there and I would recommend,
(23:56):
before playing around with TCPAlook at the best practices there
because it requires a minimumof five times your average daily
or your, your, uh, your 30-daycpa.
It requires five times that asthe average daily budget.
It wants 20 times that andwhere for it to perform.
So play around with tcpa androas if you have enough.
(24:17):
You know budget within theaccount, sometimes with smaller
lead gen.
You got two to three k a monthto play with.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Just stick, yeah yeah , yeah, that's, that's great
advice.
Let's, let's, let's talk alittle bit about uh, maybe
challenges, uh tactics tooptimize what are are.
Do you can you think of somecommon mistakes that advertisers
are making when they'retransitioning or starting to use
pmax and if you can think of afew, maybe also how they might
(24:45):
avoid them?
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
So let's, what we can think about is the overall and
I'm going to use the buzzword,the holistic structure of an
account.
And you know how are all thesecampaigns?
And you're how, where are they?
You have your campaignsegmented, I hope, by levels of
intent, right where you cancapture and spend various stages
in the funnel.
Performance max is going tofill those gaps.
But a lot of people will justbuild out that Performance Max
(25:10):
provide it with its requiredamount of headlines and images
and videos and descriptions inorder for it to run, but they're
ignoring the most key part, thefunction, the keyword behind
PMAX, those search signals.
So you'll have what's insteadof an ad group in Performance
Max, you can create multipleasset groups is what PMAX calls
(25:31):
them asset groups within thecampaign, which is essentially
the equivalent of an ad group,and you're going to want to
segment these by levels ofintent, just like you do.
Remember, you're mirroring thatholistic approach in
Performance Max.
It could be used in multipledifferent ways, but a good
practice is holistic approach inperformance max.
It could be used in multipledifferent ways, but a good
practice is what am I doing withmy campaign structure and why
aren't I doing it at the assetgroup level within performance
max, because you're able tocompare asset group data, see
(25:54):
what's performing well, what'snot.
There is the visibility withinperformance max to see which
asset groups converting better,which one's spending more.
You're able to see those thingsand then you know.
That's where you would want tostart looking into audience
building so you can pair thoseasset groups and let's switch
over to, let's say, amultifamily account, as an
example, where you'll have floorplan, studio one, two, three
(26:17):
bedrooms, so you can createcustom segment audiences of one
bedroom and 10, and then you cancreate an asset group paired
with that custom segment, pairedwith first party data from the
client of people who leased onebedrooms, and then paired with
the search signals.
You could pull data from youroriginal one bedroom campaign of
regular search best performersand then layer those in.
(26:38):
So you see how you can kind of.
There's the cross pollinationPMAX can inform regular search
and vice versa.
Explanation pmax can informregular search and vice versa.
Um, so you know those are someof the things that you should be
doing when launch performancemax, because if you don't supply
it with those, with theaudience signals and the search
signals, then it's just going togo out and spray and pray, and
that's what everyone is scaredof, so just don't do that yeah,
(27:01):
you'll end up with a whole lotof nothing in the bucket, but
you, you will have spent a lotto get it and that's aggravating
to any business, that's forsure.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
How could advertisers optimize when?
Because PMACs, of course.
We mentioned this up top thatyou can upload creative assets
right.
So how can advertisers optimizethe creative assets within
PMACs in a way that helps themachieve higher engagement or
better results?
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Again, it's going to be understanding Anytime that
people ever kind of ask thisquestion.
It's good to just put yourselfin the shoes of the user.
Think about what you want tosee and where you want to and
how you would want to see it.
So, as an example, if I'mbuilding out Performance Max,
that's complementing my wholecampaign structure with regular
search I may have an amenitiescampaign for that multifamily
(27:51):
I'm talking about.
That's showcasing how great thefitness area may be.
So you're going to want totailor your assets, your images,
your videos and your headlinesto capture that user.
You're supplying it with thesearch signals.
So don't just use that quickevergreen you know image
leaderboard or whatever it isthat says we're an apartment
complex.
(28:11):
Be granular with it.
You're nurturing a journey andyou need to provide the images
and the creatives that help thatuser make that decision.
And also just think about thefrequency of which you know
someone is seeing an ad.
If you've got different adswith the same brand, the amount
of trustworthiness andconfidence it lends the user is
what really drives the ultimateconversion, at least for this
(28:34):
instance.
So just make sure that you'resegmenting your creative.
Don't just throw all the samestuff in and then you're able to
access report on how thatcreative performs.
So spend time A-B testing.
Take a look at that performance.
Fight with whatever KPIs you'reable to.
Pmax does report on how thatcreated performs.
So spend time A-B testing.
Take a look at that performance.
Fight with whatever KPIs youknow you're using and pull it if
it's bad and add more if it'sgood.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Yeah, that's good advice and it's a good example.
In multifamily there's so manyof the newer, more modern
properties, have so manyamenities and you can tell some
of them really are trying tocater to a persona or maybe a
handful of people that you know.
It could be anything from howpet friendly they are to how
(29:19):
eco-conscious they are, to howfitness conscious they are.
That's a really good thing,just to always keep top of mind
and and really everything that acompany is doing, probably from
a content marketing and all thecreative that they make.
Um, the more that you have youreye on that and keeping it
(29:40):
focused on that end user, youractual target audience, the
better it's going to performwhen you throw it into pmax,
obviously.
And for dealers I this is justa little extra nugget, and tell
me if you would or your actualtarget audience, the better it's
going to perform when you throwit into PMAX, obviously.
And for dealers this is just alittle extra nugget and tell me
if you would agree.
But I think car dealers havealways had, unfortunately, a
tendency to continue to kind ofrepeat what's already been done.
(30:00):
It's like so newspaper ads thatincluded pictures the old, old
(30:24):
old days became today's displayad became today's right and
there are still a lot of adsthat end up in there too and,
like you said, even do somesplit tests to find out what's
actually driving better results.
I hate to say, don't be lazy,but it's like, don't mail it in.
When it comes to the creativeside of the assets that go into
PMAX, because I think it canactually be one of the elements
(30:45):
that separate those achievingbetter results than they would
even expect versus ones who areprobably thinking that they
could be doing better and itcould come down to well, you're
not really doing anything toinnovate or be different or test
different variables within thatcreative asset.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Absolutely, and it is an evolving machine.
So the more that it'scollecting this data, the
fairness is going to change.
A new competitor enters in and,you know, maybe the PMACs might
back off for a bit and you gotto start looking at your auction
sites.
So yeah, there's definitelydefinitely a lot more labor that
you can pull than it apparently, than it is apparent for sure.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
What role does audience segmentation?
You mentioned some of thisstuff in PMAX.
Maybe do a little coverage ofthat again, because audience
segmentation is really actuallyimportant across all sides of
digital marketing.
How does it wrap into successwhen it comes to PMAX campaigns,
(31:49):
especially when what we'vetalked about there's limitations
on how much reporting and howtransparent all of it is?
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Yeah, honestly, this one's kind of a simple answer,
just because when you'resegmenting your audiences you're
just trying not to confuse themachine.
So you're really just trying to.
You know there's two parts.
I guess You're not trying toconfuse the machine by saying,
hey, here's all of these things,go after it.
But you did it.
You know you've got it allunder one group, one asset group
or something.
You've got every part versusused Exactly or even, let's say,
(32:18):
acquisitions.
So there's a lot that peoplearen't doing with their first
party data to feed the funnel oftheir used inventory by
marketing to people who youalready sold vehicles, to Grab
that first-party data fromwhatever time period you have
there.
And then this is just as anexample.
So then you'll have your newand used over here and your
asset grouping and this is alsowhat can be mirrored in your
typical campaign structures andthen have an acquisitions asset
(32:40):
group or build out a mirrorPMACs.
That's acquisitions, so you canfile and budget appropriately.
But you've got your audiencessegmented based off of the
layers of intent you know, andthen that that's when you know,
all right, well, what messagingcaptures that intent and that's
where you modify it.
(33:00):
So it's really just the samesort of logic you're using with
your creative, same sort oflogic you're using with other
campaigns within your account.
But you know, spend time withit because I always think about
this meme I saw it's like a memeformat where it's like an old
lady and then you're helping theold lady and she's saying
something like oh, I rememberwhen you know X was, oh, let's
get you to bed, grandma.
I modify it where she wassaying oh, I remember there were
(33:21):
these things called keywordsthat you could bid on.
And it's okay, let's get you to.
And I actually modified it forMike at that point.
All right, mike, let's get youto bed.
So yeah, pay attention to youraudiences, spend time there, you
know, and you can.
So many people are not doingthings like when you build a
custom segment audience, there'scriteria.
You can expand on that audience.
(33:42):
If you look at it, you've gotthe bucket of and but, or if you
do a combined audience, you cannarrow that audience.
You can build multiple customsegments and say that they and
is the criteria for combined,whereas a regular custom segment
is or which expands on anaudience.
So that's where you know I talkabout getting people talk about
(34:03):
saying something out loud andthen their phone showing them
later.
You know you can get what wouldbe qualify as the the creepy
targeting.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
You start getting into that right, because you can
really narrow it down to thetrue user when you caption that
time yeah, very interesting andI love your thoughts there on
even though to some people itmight seem simplistic of new and
used.
But the acquisition side.
In the last three to five yearsthat's become really a hot part
of business for dealers and Istarted telling dealers when
(34:35):
they were coming back intostarting to spend more
post-COVID and returning to okay, we've got to actually start
putting some paid mediacampaigns back together.
Even before that I started tosay you shouldn't have really
shut it all down.
You should have actuallystarted some new messaging
around, offering your trade-uptool as part of your advertising
and or offering you want to buycars, sell us your car, sell us
(34:58):
your car, sell us your car.
You literally could build awhole segment around that part
of your business, landing peoplewith the copy, with the
creative, everything you do thatyou can land people in that
part, because that's also aprofit center for dealers.
It's not just the sales of thenew vehicles and the sales of
the used vehicles, it's also theservicing of all those vehicles
.
A lot of people don't realizethat the average service writer
(35:19):
actually is responsible for moregross profit in a dealership
than their top salesperson.
It's crazy.
But that acquisition piece too,it's just very interesting.
I think dealers always get kindof jazzed about learning like,
oh, maybe we should do that,Especially when there can be
fatigue around.
Oh, we've been doing somethinglike Google AdWords, Google Ads,
(35:40):
PMAX, vehicle ads.
When you've been doingsomething for so long and
there's two schools of thoughtaround it, oftentimes one side
is is deep in their knowledgeand their understanding and the
other side is really just tryingto throw confusion and pull you
into something else becausethey want you to spend your
money yeah yeah is usually whathappens.
(36:03):
So last couple of questions.
This has been a really goodconversation.
A lot of really good stuff set.
I want to ask you a little biton future.
Ai is huge.
We were talking about it evenbefore we started to record.
Ai and automation althoughthose things are really
different in my mind evolve, howdo you see the paid search, the
(36:30):
PPC landscape, how do you seethat maybe changing over the
next two years?
This does not have to bespecific to PMAX.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Just your general thoughts.
Yeah, yeah, you know that mighttake a whole nother podcast for
you and I to dig in.
I'll give you quick answershere on this one.
You know, I definitely thinkthat a lot of people have a
sense of fear surrounding it.
I, I think, adapting, embracingall of the little ways that you
can use ai to improve yourworkflow, even eliminate certain
sprint work, things like that Ithink you know it's probably
(36:55):
going to be the same adviceyou're just hearing from anyone
else when you're saying, likeyou know, have the courage to
adapt and to embrace it.
Um, but I would say, a littlelittle bit.
I'm a little bit, um, concernedabout the way that generative
ai appears on the surf.
So I would say, just, I'm goingto be paying close attention to
that, especially when it comeswhat?
What is google?
What carrot is google going touse when it comes to targeting
(37:18):
using generative ai over there,um, where it's only going to be
performance max and we don'teven get to see the ad anymore.
They just, you know, I'mcurious to see what's going to
happen there.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
So, yeah, I am, I am, I am too.
I really am.
I think it's going to be quiteinteresting.
I don't know if you would have.
You don't have to have a topthree.
If you have a top three, that'sgreat.
This is kind of one of thosetop three of feel overwhelmed,
(37:52):
uh, by changes, whether it'sthey still feel like pmax is new
to them or their knowledge ofand they're really under.
Their understanding of pmax waskind of shallow, maybe until
they've listened to all thegreat things that you've shared
on this episode.
But a lot of times in it's notalways even the marketers,
oftentimes it's the businessesthat they just feel buried by
changes and new things and allthat.
What would you say are yourmaybe top three or your maybe
(38:13):
best tip for people just kind ofstaying ahead of the curve when
it comes to paid search?
Speaker 2 (38:20):
This one is so simple and it's astounding to me how
few people I've met thatactually use it enough.
But just post to Reddit.
You used to have a combi.
I love Reddit.
Yeah, post to Reddit.
You start having a comb through.
I love Reddit.
Subscribe to a couple PPC orsubreddits, comb through.
There's so much good data andthere's so many people that are
going to be jerks to you andthat's fine because you're going
(38:40):
to get quick answers and you'regoing to realize if you ask a
dumb question, you're not beingbaited by anyone, not just
Reddit.
Know there's multiple forums.
Spend some time posting, uh,checking out.
You know various.
What's the latest podcast?
What's something interesting onyoutube?
You know um, and, and spendmaybe 45 minutes a day or 30
(39:00):
minutes with a cup of coffeejust looking at what's new there
, because it gives me so muchconfidence whenever I find
something that I can actuallyleverage and implement into our
workflow.
You know and I have often soanytime you're feeling a little
bit kind of lost uh, just justsee what the community's saying.
Make a post about it.
Hey, I'm feeling lost.
What's the new?
That you would try with pmax?
You know um and I and I'm onthere, I'm in the.
(39:23):
I'm in the subreddits answeringsome of those questions for you
guys too, yeah, and then Iwould say that one, one of the
ones that I find new accountmanagers and this may be more
like an agency side thing, butmistake a lot of people do or
make is that they check a lot ofboxes with the client but
(39:43):
they're scared to ask about thenegative stuff.
Find out what an unqualifiedlead is.
Spend time talking to yourclients.
Find out what an unqualifiedlead is.
Spend time talking to yourclients.
Find out what's actuallyimportant to them.
When you do that, when you cankind of build up just that trust
with them by you know them,feeling like you actually care
and understand it, it's going tocreate more of a better
(40:05):
environment for you to work in.
It's going to create more of abetter environment for you to
work in um, and that that's justreally going to help you stay
ahead of the curve when you'reseeing what the boots on the
ground opinion is like you know,get feedback, I guess I love
that advice because a lot ofpeople are afraid to uh, run to
the hot zone and and Iunderstand that very much it it
(40:28):
takes some courage to run to thehot zone.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
It does.
But what you're saying and Icompletely agree with it is
where you will get the mostprofound and real, authentic
learning and you will get itfaster there than anywhere else.
And it might be uncomfortable,it might, as a result, make your
(40:54):
skin thicker, but you'll comeaway with tangible things that
you can work on and improveimmediately, as opposed to
trying to go as far around it aspossible.
It's just ultimately not worthit Immediately as opposed to
trying to go as far around it aspossible.
Yeah, it's just ultimately notworth it.
And also, if where that takesyou, the hot zone takes you
(41:14):
closer to maybe the clientthat's experiencing the issue If
that's the case as well almostalways raises not just the trust
level but the respect level andit helps the reputation.
If you're a marketer, if you'rethe agency side, and you've got
to run to the hot zone tofigure those things out, yeah,
you might take some unfriendlyfire.
(41:36):
It may be very uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
But it also sorry to interrupt, but it also helps you
build those defensiblepositions, because you're going
straight to the source of truththere and yeah, yes, yeah, just
100% straight to the source oftruth there and yeah, yes, yeah,
just fantastic.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
This has been a great conversation.
Seth, I really appreciate youtaking the time to be on the
podcast today.
Where can people reach you?
I never want to be toopresumptuous.
Maybe that's LinkedIn for you,but maybe you'd send people
elsewhere.
Where's the best place forpeople to connect with you?
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Yeah, find me on LinkedIn, shoot us a message.
Premieronlinemarketingcom.
Connect with me if you have anyquestions.
I'm always happy to kind ofdiscuss any of this stuff.
I love expanding out on thenetwork.
But yeah, find me on LinkedInor check out our website your
(42:29):
time.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
Like Seth mentioned, you can go to
premieronlinemarketingcom andlearn all about what they're
doing as a company.
I always highly recommendpeople that are listening to the
episodes to make sure that yougo onto LinkedIn and look up
Seth.
You'll find him there easily.
You'll also find the business,the company page for Premier
Online Marketing, and you canfind all their employees.
I highly recommend youconnecting and following all of
them because they put outamazing content.
They are true experts in thisrealm, as opposed to just
(42:52):
theorists who can talk a goodgame but really don't deliver
much, and that's why I'm a bigfan and glad to host their
podcast.
So until next time, we willjust say thank you for joining
us for another episode of thepodcast.
See you again real soon.
Thanks, Sean.
Thank you.
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